Tides of Light (32 page)

Mechanicals are pervasive. They are the dust that hangs between the suns
.

There was almost a note of sympathy in the brooding voice that pressed through Killeen’s sensorium.

“Look, is there any way my father can help us? We’re trapped here. Some other lifeform’s ripping the whole planet apart. No
way we can get free, unless somethin’ powerful as you aids us.”

I am a messenger, not a savior
.

“Tell my father, if he’s still alive. Send us help!”

The small mind I can interrogate sends wails of remorse, if that is any comfort to you. But nothing else. My powers are not
at its disposal, in any case
.

The colorful traceries began to fade.

“Don’t leave us here!”

Farewell
.

“No!”

But it was gone.

Killeen slumped to the ground with sudden fatigue. A heavy depression settled into him like a cloud and he panted as if he
had been running. Color seeped from the world.

Shibo tugged him up. Hands supported him. Toby put an arm around his shoulders and brought Killeen forward. The Bishops still
held their defensive star formation. The air was tense as the other Families studied them, hands hovering not far from weapons.

Shibo said, “It will return. Don’t give up.”

Killeen gazed around at the bleak, dusty plain and the ranks of ragged humanity that filled it. “Right. Right,” he said automatically,
without believing the words.

His Supremacy’s voice boomed, “We have frightened it, be sure of that. The being fled our show of solidarity before it!”

Killeen shook his head and said nothing. He expected instant retribution from His Supremacy but the swarthy man merely glared.
An empty, glazed look came into his eyes.

His Supremacy turned from the Bishops and began intoning more of the ancient litany. Killeen made a sign and the Bishops relaxed
from the star formation, making straight ranks again. But the edgy tension on the plain, though muted, did not go away.

Beside Killeen, Toby whispered, “That guy won’t forget.”

Besen added, “Maybe that sky thing scared him. Sure did me.”

“Hard, scarin’ a man who’s already God,” Shibo said wryly.

Killeen listened to the rest of the service numbly, the words passing like raindrops sliding on a windowpane.

When the ceremony was finished he led the Bishops from the plain. They stepped smartly, though their eyes were hollow and
distracted. He registered the bitter whisperings from the other Families. Some called taunts and threats. He let it all slip
by. He was remembering his father’s face.

As they passed the clump of officers around His Supremacy, the man gave Killeen a pinched, assessing look, eyes narrow and
dark. “We will speak to you later, Cap’n,” was all he said. Then he turned away sharply and stalked off.

Killeen’s Grey Aspect said:

Yon Supremacy…has a lean and hungry look. Such men are dangerous…as the ancients said.

Killeen nodded, but compared to what the Bishops had just lost, the opinions of mere men seemed quite trivial.

PART FIVE

Skysower

T
wilight seeped through grimy clouds, casting pale blades along the hillside where Family Bishop retreated. Killeen stopped
and looked back. The tail guard had just reached the foothills of this slumped ridge and would stop there to defend their
rear.

“Hold till we clear the summit,” he sent to Cermo.

—Yeasay,—Cermo replied at minimal comm level. They were keeping their transmissions few and weak, to avoid detection by Cybers
in pursuit.—Running low on ammo.—

Killeen did not answer because there was nothing he could do. There was no more ammunition with the main body of the Family,
where he was. Given the Cybers’ ability to attack from any direction, there was no point in reinforcing either the advance
guard or the rear party.

Cermo had been forced to use arms and energy-store to pick off the small, tubular things that were trailing the Family. These
dog-size creatures seemed to be miniature Cybers, with reddish carapaces and aluminum-sheathed legs. Unarmed, they had followed
the Family ever since the disaster at the magnetic generating stations. And they had proved smart, too; they hung back and
scattered when
Cermo sent people to pick them off, delaying the Family still further.

Even one of the cyborged insects could give away their position, and there were thousands of hiding spots in the jumble of
the valley they had just left.

He walked up the steep hillside. His feet were blistered and he favored his left, hobbling slightly. Some water had gotten
into his thigh sleeves and had dribbled down into his webbing socks. All the boot- and compressor-shock tech in the world
could not keep pressure off the sore, inflamed tissue of his heels.

The water had come from geysers bursting suddenly from a sandy canyon. They had been crossing it at full speed after the battle.
There had been no time to stop and check, and now dozens of Family limped along with the same ailment.

—I’ve found Jocelyn’s beeper,—Shibo sent. She was already over the summit, leading the advance guard. Killeen sent a quick
trill note as acknowledgment, hoping that would be less telltale than a human voice if the Cybers picked up the transmission.

The message brought a glimmer of cheer. Jocelyn led the Family’s other party, cut off during the battle. Their fallback plan
of retreat was working, then; she had found a way along parallel ridgelines and passed through the low canyons beyond, leaving
a signifier, as planned. That meant they hadn’t been forced to skirt around any Cybers, which in turn implied that perhaps
the aliens were not following the Bishops at all. Slim evidence, but Killeen grimly allowed himself that hope. At this point,
hope was as vital as energy.

But then Shibo sent,—More dead,—and Killeen’s mood darkened.

He cut in his reserves of power, and bounded up the last long shelf of shattered rock before the summit. A red sunset cut
momentarily through the smoky cloud deck, casting
stark shadows in the rutted arroyos beyond. He reached the top, panting. He expanded his sensorium momentarily and picked
up Shibo’s green tracer. Closeupped he saw her dispersing her party to the flanks, where they took up defensive positions.

Killeen boosted off on full power and made his way down the steep slope in a series of jumps. His compressors wheezed and
he let his calves take most of the shock, but his feet howled in pain.

Strangely filigreed foliage cloaked the arroyos. He slowed to get through it. Spindly trees formed a green canopy over him
as he passed Family members in the shadows. The tough, warped trunks still clung to the ruptured soil and already had begun
to correct their slant, turning to seek the sky along new verticals. Though there were wide swams cut in the willowy, silent
forest by hillslides and fresh, carving streams, life seemed able to hang on tenaciously. Sharp paw prints testified to the
survival of large animals, though Killeen seldom saw these except at great distances. They were wary of mechs and Cybers and
men alike.

He found Shibo sitting at the base of a rise, staring upward. He followed her gaze and saw a body hanging from a large, gnarled
tree. “Any of ours?”

“Naysay,” she answered. “Looks like a Jack.”

Several Family members followed them as they approached the tree. The woman’s gaunt body swayed on fiberweave ropes, expertly
trussed. Her entire chest and stomach bulged with one of the glassy, opaque blisters Killeen had seen before. This one was
oozing milky fluid from its peak.

“Looks ’bout ready. It’ll pop soon,” Shibo said.

“Right. How long ago did Jocelyn come by here?” Killeen asked.

“I figure couple hours. Her beeper was pretty played out.”

“Where was it?”

“Down where I was sitting.”

“So either she left it here so we’d see this…”

“Or somethin’ left this by the beeper.”

“Yeasay—after she’d gone on.”

Shibo peered at him, the blades of bone beneath her cheeks seeming to stretch her browned skin taut and shiny. “Which?” she
asked uncertainly.

Killeen tried to figure how a Cyber might think. “Why’d Jocelyn point out this? More likely she’d steer us away.”

Shibo nodded. “So some Cyber found her beeper and left this.”

Killeen stood back and watched ants swarming over the face of the body as it turned slowly in the wind. “Wonder if it’s s’posed
to scare us.”

“See that?” Shibo pointed.

The hands and feet were pierced. From the bloody wounds protruded green stalks ending in fully opened yellow blossoms. The
flowers seemed to grow out of the woman.

Killeen felt a sick chill spread through him, remembering the grotesque sculptures of the Mantis. The same horribly rendered
theme. “Why’d a Cyber do that?”

“Combined plant and animal,” Shibo said.

“Some kind of message?”

“Why’d it do that?”

“Thing ’bout aliens is, they’re alien.” He spat on the ground in exasperation. Why did both Mantis and Cyber make this “art”
warping humans and plants?

A man nearby moved toward the body and extended his knife to cut the ropes.

“No!” Killeen knocked down the man’s hand.

“I’s just fixin’—”

“Don’t touch it.”

“—get it down, poke the thing that’s livin’ inside it.”

“It’s prob’ly tagged. You cut it down, alarms go off, Cybers come running.”

The man looked outraged. “You let it grow in there, come out, it’ll be one more Cyber!”

Shibo said, “Naysay. They grow their li’l helpers in us, not themselves.”

The man blinked and then a pale, washed-out expression stole over him and he turned away. Killeen looked down the rise to
the forest, where Bishops were straggling in from the long retreat. They slumped down, not even bothering to lean against
trees, and lay with their heads resting on their carry-packs.

“We’re ’bout played out,” he said reflectively.

“Can’t stop here,” Shibo said. “Cybers know this place.”

Killeen nodded. “Might come back.”

He wondered if Cybers found it any more difficult to move and seek at night. Probably not, since he remembered their natural
optical senses worked best in the infrared. Which meant that the gathering gloom gave Family Bishop no advantage here.

He walked to the middle of the gathering crowd and sat, his legs gratefully ceasing their aches. The quakes had shaken most
of the odd, triangular leaves to the floor of the forest, providing a deliciously soft loam for rest. Approaching Bishops’
bootsteps made no noise whatever, and the ebbing twilight suffused the scene in a soothing, serene light.

His feet screamed for release, but he did not dare take off his boots for fear that he would not be able to get them back
on when his feet swelled. He was tempted to expand his sensorium
and get a quick head count, but the hanging body had made him wary of even the slightest electromagnetic tracer.

And in any case, he knew the rough dimensions of their loss. Family Bishop had been the outer flanking element in the assault,
a relatively less dangerous position affording a clear escape route. They had gone in after the forward units sprang from
their concealment in the Cyber tunnels. The battle had played out on the plain beneath the magnetic generator buildings. Those
units had appeared directly among the Cybers.

Killeen had witnessed the fate of those brave Families. The assault ratio must have been at least one Family per Cyber. The
first rush had brought down two Cybers and things had looked good. Then men and women began to fall on the plain as though
blown over by a sudden soundless wind. Killeen had not been able to pick up any signatures of microwave or optical or even
kinetic-kill weapons. People fell in midstride, as though picked up and slammed into the ground by an invisible giant.

The rush came to a sudden halt. Families regrouped behind the fallen, smoking Cybers. Even there some weapon picked them off
one at a time. They tried a rush toward the magnetic generators that loomed above like mud-colored, rectangular hills—and
fell by the dozens, their strangled cries twisting through the comm.

The Bishops answered the blaring attack signal of His Supremacy. More Families poured over the distant hills. They spread
out and moved in jerky dashes between the covering shelter of arroyos and clumps of trees and boulders. The battlefield was
a gray scabland left by some recent magma-spewing vent which had obliterated the life there. Whether this was by accident
or design Killeen could not tell. The Cybers had already bored tunnels in the barely cooled lake of lava. Cracks in the crusty
scab gave some
shelter as the Tribe descended and brought withering fire to bear on the four remaining Cybers.

Had they been mechs, the directed bursts would have sheared away legs and burned out antennae. Here, nothing happened. The
Cybers paused, as though reassessing the situation, and then went on picking off the darting human targets, as if nothing
more bothersome than a summer’s rain fell upon them.