Authors: Gregory Benford
Unfair
. The Calamity had been such an unfair end to Abraham and all he built. For they had done
nothing
, nothing unusual, to draw such overpowering attention from the mechs! And yet titanic forces came down to crush them.
Why? Why? The question had tortured Killeen for years. Things happened on that day which Killeen still did not understand.
Sensations… bizarre colors in the sky. Swift clouds and flickerings he had never seen before or since. It had been as if all
nature had joined with the mechs in their assault.
Yet Abraham had fought on. Never flagging. Resonating encouragement. No one lost confidence in him, even at the last, as he
held the rear guard firm, allowing Lieutenant Fanny a narrow chance to guide survivors away into scabrous exile.
No one ever lost confidence in father
. The words echoed inside him.
Even in defeat, he was all a man should be
.
Miserable, Killeen allowed his head to slump down into his hands. He smelled acrid smoke, and knew that it was not from today’s
struggles. Rather, it was from that day long ago. The day when he should have died at his father’s side. His sensorium had
inadvertently called up the scent association.
Why… do you persist… in thinking that he died?
Killeen’s head snapped up, partly in surprise that his Grey Aspect would rise up, unsummoned, to make a personal observation.
He blinked.
…
The magnetic entity said
…
He shook his head. “I believe what I saw. I saw a bolt
take away
what was left of the Citadel. A flash, an’ it was gone. Abraham is dead. An’ soon so will we be.”
Killeen realized he had muttered aloud. He glanced around and saw Toby looking at him across the way. For his son’s sake he
made an effort to straighten his posture. He tried to wear an expression more serene than he felt, and had partly succeeded
by the time a skinny boy with instruments and cold hands came to take away his command chips. He sat still, making no motion
as the tech snapped open the back of his neck and removed bits of sensoria that had become as familiar as the nerves of his
hands. A numbness settled in where each had been.
He was in a good position to watch when Jocelyn came up the hill with a punishment detail and a Bishop man, Ahmed. They bound
the man’s hands and Jocelyn flogged him. From the techtype Killeen learned that Ahmed had made some disparaging remark to
a member of the Sebens and His Supremacy had overheard.
Normally such a thing would be passed over. Matters were not going to go easily for Bishops, that was clear.
Killeen watched silently as Jocelyn whipped Ahmed. He recalled how agonizing he had found such matters on
Argo
. It was no easier to watch now, but at least he did not have to feel responsible.
He had been vaguely planning to strike some deal with
Jocelyn, since he knew she would have trouble leading a Family which had already suffered so much. Changing Cap’ns was unwise
amid disaster, and their situation transcended any difficulty he could remember, even the worst days on Snowglade.
He now saw in her glinting eyes and set mouth a woman who had waited for just such a moment, and would not be talked into
sharing the smallest speck of authority. He wondered for an instant whether he would have done the same if their situations
were reversed. It didn’t matter.
In that moment he felt the weight of the Cap’ncy lift from him, cutting through the shock and sorrow of loss. He could be
just another Bishop again. He could pay more attention to Toby and Shibo and perhaps escape the catastrophe he felt closer
and closer now, a dark presence lying in wait in this blighted place.
The cold-handed boy was finished. With genuine relief Killeen got up and walked away.
Shibo and Toby cooked the green stuff over a crackling fire. It tasted far better than it had any right to, a sign of how
tired and hungry they all were. Killeen let his feet soak in a warm, briny bath, hoping to drain his blisters. The pleasure
of it alone was worth the trouble. This water-rich world had its compensations. His years aboard
Argo
had softened more than merely his feet. He thought wistfully of the comforts of the ship, the rich and exotic foods, the
simple but crucial matters of warmth and light. He studied the haggard faces around the fire. How quickly they all had been
cast down from the skies, forced back to the desperate existence they had known on Snowglade. Shibo had kept them together,
but their dreams were shattered forever.
There was no way to avoid discussing the battle and at first they kept their tones almost dispassionate. Their voices
were low, somber, carrying the accumulated gravity of memories too fresh to be digested.
First they analyzed the Cyber defense, a relatively neutral subject. Besen said, “If they know where main attack’s comin’
from, they can block shots.”
Toby said, “Then let’s fire from different directions at the same time.”
“Hard,” Shibo said. “Their screens move fast.”
“Still, we can try it,” Besen said.
Killeen was glad to see that Toby and Besen had figured their way through the lessons to be learned without prompting. They
were growing up fast. Besen particularly would make a good lieutenant in a while. She was decisive. And Toby was improving
under her influence. Killeen remembered how a boy was first entranced with sex, and then somehow started to learn from it.
He felt a quiet satisfaction that Toby was coming out of the awkward teenage muddle. Both he and Besen had shrugged off the
horror of the battle well.
But then Toby said quietly, “Who started the runnin’?” and Shibo looked at Killeen.
“Like most times, panic started in the rear,” he said evenly.
“Howcome?” Besen asked.
“People back there got a better view, can see what’s happenin’.”
She said pensively, “You’d think it’d come in the front.”
Shibo said, “The rear units think nobody’s watching them.”
“Nobody at the front broke,” Killeen said.
Toby blinked. “You mean Loren wasn’t turnin’ tail?”
“Naysay,” Killeen said softly. “He was cuttin’ left, tryin’ for a better angle on a Cyber.”
Relief washed over Toby’s face. “Good. Rumor was he’d dropped his beam-shooter, cut, and run.”
“Naysay. Cyber killed him outright while he was in what looked like good cover.”
Besen and Toby both sighed, their faces losing some of their pinched sorrow. Killeen understood then that the seemingly small
issue of Loren’s behavior in the moments before he died had loomed as large for them as his death itself. The curious and
yet utterly human morality of the battlefield shielded them from the full brunt of their grief; they clung to the hope that
good conduct meant a good death. He envied them that common defense of the young. It would not last long.
Killeen sat immersed in his own gray thoughts until Toby abruptly said, “Fudd gud.”
Killeen glanced at him, thinking that the boy had his mouth full.
“Mauf fills rung.”
Killeen gave him a quizzical glance, suspecting a joke. Shibo and Besen seemed more concerned.
“Fir hiss gud.” Spasms flitted across Toby’s face like storm clouds scudding.
Toby got up unsteadily, eyes veering around. “Ah donut fill so gud.”
On ramrod-straight legs the boy took awkward steps away from the fire. Killeen called, “You better lie down. This chow—”
Toby fished forth his belt knife. It was a prized possession, the blade of worn but flexible blue steel, fully as long as
the boy’s foot. Toby’s mouth worked as he peered down at the blade as though he was studying his reflection. Then he took
two stiff steps to a thick tree with rough bark that slanted out from the ravine wall. Without a pause Toby drew
back the knife with his right hand and placed his left hand on the tree, palm down.
Killeen saw what was going to happen a long, slow-motion instant before it did. He leaped forward, a shout beginning in his
throat.
Toby slammed the blade down into his hand, pinning it to the hilt in the tree.
By the time Killeen reached him Toby was screaming with all the force of his lungs. When the air ran out the boy gasped and
then started screaming again. Blood flecked his checks and hair. A thin red trickle began running down the tree, following
the crevices in the crusty bark.
Toby’s right hand now yanked back on the handle of the knife but without effect. He screamed hoarsely and gasped, gulping
in air, and screamed again—forlornly, this time, hopelessly.
“Let go!” Killeen shouted. He grabbed Toby’s right hand, which was trying to wrench the knife out. The blade was driven halfway
into the bark.
“Let me take it, son. I’ll get it.”
Through a glazed, crazy sheen in his eyes Toby seemed to recognize his father. He opened his mouth to gasp and began screaming
again.
“You’re twisting it!” Killeen shouted. Toby’s yanking at the handle had rotated it, cutting the hand more.
The trickle of crimson thickened. It reached the ground and began to spread into a pool.
Killeen cried to Shibo, “Hold him.”
She and Besen quickly slipped arms around Toby, who had started to rock back and forth on his feet, screaming and gasping.
The wail roughened and Killeen could hear his son rasping his throat raw.
He carefully pried Toby’s fingers from the handle.
“Grief! Grief!” Shibo cried, an ancient mournful curse.
“Toby—how, what—” Besen began, then burst into frightened tears.
Sobs escaped from Toby’s strained throat. His mouth contorted but he could not speak.
Killeen braced himself. He concentrated and with one movement pulled the knife cleanly from the tree.
Toby collapsed. The women lowered him to the dusty gravel nearby, avoiding the puddle of brown-crusted blood.
Killeen threw the knife aside and found his carrypack a short distance away. He found some organiform cloth tucked in a pocket
and cut it into slices with his own knife. Toby was thrashing under the women’s hands, moaning, gulping, shouting incoherently.
Other Bishops came running.
Killeen made a tourniquet and bound up the hand while the women continued to hold Toby down. Then Shibo untied it and did
the job again, better.
Toby gasped fast and shallowly, face ashen.
“Son—son,” Killeen said. The boy stared up at the night, where ruddy light seeped from distant molecular clouds between the
stars. “Son, what…?”
Besen had stopped crying while the three of them worked on the hand and now she started again, sobbing softly. Killeen’s mouth
was dry and he could not get the coppery tang of blood out of his nostrils.
“I… Somethin’… Had an idea. Do that.” Toby got the words out between chapped, white lips.
“Your idea?” Shibo asked.
“I… dunno.”
“What was it like?”
“A big… Slick. Shiny, almost.”
“What did it
look
like?” Besen asked, choking back her tears.
“I… Big, pressin’ in on me. Look…?” Toby frowned, staring into space.
“Oh, why, why—” Besen began.
Killeen held up a hand to cut her off. He nodded to Toby. “Yeasay, son. What did it look like?”
“Looked so… so shiny. And… no face. No face at all.”
The jut and tumble of these ragged mountains snagged Quath as she fled. Sharp stone teeth nipped at her. She stumbled several
times, barely catching herself. Fresh outcroppings had flowered into spreading black fans, liberated by the last quake. They
rasped on her undercarriage. Her minds rattled with percussive confusion and her only reaction was to move, run, escape.
It had been a near thing. She had almost been caught and pinned, drawn into the Nought mind she had invaded.
Yet that was
impossible
. Hers was a well-ordered, multiple mind, capable of calling up enormous volumes of knowledge, of marshaling mental resources
in a microsecond, of overwhelming with layered mass any simple, linear Nought mind. When she had carried her own Nought inside
herself she had merely verged on its mind. Preoccupied, she had made only glancing contact. Occupying her second Nought had
been equally simple. And, she now saw, each time some unsuspected barrier had fallen.
All her wrenchings and lacerating blows had not gained her freedom from this latest, apparently minor intelligence. Trying
to extricate herself, she had found her self-aura immersed
in a swampy, sucking underlayer. It was cloying and thick, a muddy sludge of clotted, unconscious impulses, memories, gnarled
subsystems.
Here
was where this Nought truly lived. Quath had sensed its raw, sticky pull in a jolting instant of profound surprise. The mind’s
upper layers were mild and obliging, like cool, smooth corridors beneath the linear engagements of the conscious—while far
below, in chambers walled and ramified with bony purpose, lurked a complex, ropy labyrinth of strange power.
Or minds. Quath was not even sure the Nought
was
a single intelligence.
Its highest echelons had seemed to be more like a passive stage than a directing entity. There, on a broad, level area above
the syrupy seethe, factions of the undermind warred. An abyss yawned.
Instincts spoke quietly, effectively, never falling silent. Emotions flared prickly hot—heckling, yearning, always calling
the higher intelligence away from its deliberations.
Zesty hormones surged—not to carry wedges of information or holistic images, as in Quath, but to flood the bloodstream with
urgent demands.
Organs far from the brain answered these chemical heralds, pumping other hormones into the thumping flow, adding alkaline
voices to the babble.
Ideas rose like crystalline towers from this swamp, glimmering coolly—but soon were spattered with the aromatic chemical murk,
blood on glass.
These elements merged and wrestled, struggling armies rushing together in flurries, fermenting, spinning away into wild skirmishes.
Lurid splashes festooned the brittle ramparts of analytical thought. A churning mire lapped hungrily at the stern bulwarks
of reason, eroding worn salients even as fresh ones were built.