Tides of Light

by Gregory Benford

  “Bishop.”

  “No such.”

  “We’re not from this planet.”

  “Never heard such.”

  “We came here searching for refuge from the mechs.”

  “Ha! You chose well. Here we have vanquished them.”

  “So I see.”

  “You see only that which I determine,” the short man said reasonably. “You will understand that.”

  “I, ah—”

  “It is the devil Cybers we fight now. They too shall yield to our bravery and ardor and spirits of fire.”

  “Cybers?”

  His Supremacy nodded, eyes empty again. Lips pursed, expression expectant, he seemed to be listening to some distant voice. Then his attention returned and the muscles of his face stretched his olive skin so that it gleamed beneath the cone of phosphorescent radiance that cascaded around him. The brilliant ball directly above cast a pearly circle on the floor, with the swarthy man as its center. The crowd kept its distance, venturing only as far as the softer glow of the oil lamps intruded into the hard, white circle.

  He continued abruptly, as though there had been no pause. “They cut the lands with their great sword. Just as victory came to us, as the mechs fled before our assaults, these giant things fell upon us from the sky. Our triumph was denied. But we shall conquer!”

  This provoked loud shouts of agreement from everyone in the tent.

  The man looked expectantly at Killeen. “This action is, of course, a tribute to my immortal nature. They send against me the very worst that the evil-hinged skies can muster.”

  His eyes left Killeen and shot around the room, moving intently from face to face beneath the oily yellow glow. His lips bulged out as if barely containing a vast pressure.

  “They compliment us! By sending their most awful and powerful, now that the mechs are rabble scurrying to escape our bootheels. They do us honor! And they shall die.”

  Abruptly he deflected his glowering, building rage down to where Killeen knelt, and in a long sigh the rage evaporated. In a blink his eyes regained their neutral emptiness.

  He said mildly, “And I am glad that you have come to aid in my time of need.”

  Killeen said carefully, “I am alone now, sir. My—”

  “Supremacy!” a hard whisper in his ear urged.

  “I am alone, Supremacy, my Family—”

  “The Bishops, you called them?” the short man said judicially.

  “Yeasay, they—”

  “I had thought they were lying. I had never heard of any such Family, and fancied them wastrel renegade Deuces or Trumps.”

  Killeen asked excitedly, “Bishops? Here?”

  “You understand, a mind focused on the defense of our race cannot but leave details to others. I reserve my time for communion with the spirit that moves over and within and through us.”

  “They’re here, Supremacy?”

  The heavy, dark eyebrows arched in an expression of bemused interest. “We found them wandering. They had a story about landing in mech craft and escaping the Cyber air raids that we had seen the day before. I thought this a mere fashioned lie. Now that you appear—a Cap’n, I judge from your insignia—this explains it.”

  “How many?”

  The man’s face froze and Killeen realized that he had made some error. What could it be? Was his question too direct? The complete silence of everyone around him suggested that he could amend his mistake….

  “Your Supremacy, I beg you—yield to me the number who have lived.”

  His Supremacy’s mouth lost some of its tightness and he flicked a glance at a woman to his left.

  “Over a hundred,” came the reply.

  Killeen’s breath caught. Most of the Bishops had gotten out.

  “I shall cause them to be released,” His Supremacy said grandly, his arms making a sweeping gesture. Everyone in the tent cheered, as though this were some unique act, as though this man who called himself by a ridiculous title had somehow saved the Bishops’ lives.

  The swarthy man’s face knitted into a reflective cast, his eyes wandering up to the peak of the tent. “I had judged them as scabrous cowards, laggards from destroyed Suits in the Families. As such, they were unworthy of any role in our grand assaults to come, and so would be used for labor. Fighting within our invincible Tribe is an honor not lightly dispensed. You understand, I am sure.”

  “Uh, yeasay.”

  The eyebrows met in a scowl.

  “Yeasay, Your Supremacy.”

  The eyebrows parted and the face relaxed, the eyes again sliding into blankness. “Now they may take part in the heroic struggles to come. I expect you to assume command of them again, as Cap’n.”

  “Yeasay, Supremacy, as soon—”

  “And sacrifices will be exacted.”

  Killeen looked at the man but could not read his meaning.

  His Supremacy gestured and someone unbound Killeen’s arms. Should he get up? Something in the way the short man stood, hands on hips and legs stiff, told him to remain kneeling.

  His Supremacy pursed his lips, eyes wandering again. He said distantly, “I understand, in my all-reaching facets, your confusion. You have voyaged here from some other sphere of human action, and that was as I wished. You moved in response to my injunctions, though ignorant and in darkness. I was the unseen force which drew you across the night canyons that separate the worlds. I desired it and sent my emanations to guide you.”

  A murmur greeted this speech. Hushed exclamations of awe filled the tent.

  “Now you enter onto the full stage of human destiny.”

  This speech had the ringing quality of a set piece. “Ah, yeasay…Supremacy.”

  “I am the given. You have in this conversation verged on disrespect toward me.” The eyebrows knotted. “Mayhappen this arises from ignorance. If so, now it is just and proper that I reveal to you my deepest nature.”

  Killeen said guardedly, “Yeasay.” The tent rustled with anticipation. Someone damped the lamps and shadows crowded the tent further. A hushed expectation rustled among the men and women like a sudden wind.

  “Witness!”

  The short man extended his arms and abruptly his entire body shimmered and glowed. Against the blue fabric a yellow skeleton appeared, like a second entity that lived inside the man. It moved with him, bones and ribs and pelvic girdle performing their rubs and rotations as His Supremacy stepped first to one side, then to another. Atop the curved spine a death’s-head grinned, turning proudly. The bones worked smoothly, suggesting that a creature made of the pure, radiating hardness could walk and know the world, encased in its enduring strengths. It oozed ample light into the tent, cutting a blackness as deep as that in the unblemished spaces between stars. In these dim working shadows, with breezes flapping the tent like far-off thunderclaps, the intricate lattice of crisp light implied an interior race of invulnerable beings, harder than human.

  Its burnt-yellow jaw pulsed on an unseen hinge as His Supremacy said, “I am the essence of humanity itself, come to avenge and save. Through me human destiny will be made manifest. The mechs and Cybers shall be vanquished alike.”

  In the thick, shadowy air his skeleton vibrated with life. Vagrant hues shot through the bones as they articulated, knotty joints swooping with artful animation in the framing dark.

  “Mortal?” he cried. “No. Mortality lies within me and yet I am not mortal. I am the manifestation! God Himself!”

  Killeen gathered that this techtrick was supposed to impress him. He let an expression of amazement settle onto his face while he tried to see how the moving rib cage and legs were imaged on the blue.

  “I am the immanent spirit of humanity, as given by Divine God! In this most dire and yet pregnant hour of mankind, the glorious truth is that I have been endowed with godliness entire. No longer does God act through me. He has become me. I am God! This is why the Tribe will follow me to its certain destiny. This is why you, Cap’n of the lost Bishops, will give your final ef
fort to my cause, the cause of humanity’s true God!”

  FOUR

  The human sprawl down the valley was broad and impressive. Two women escorted Killeen through the knots of Family gatherings. They were both Cap’ns but Killeen asked them nothing.

  He had allowed himself to be led into this massive encampment because the men and women who had found him insisted. But every sense in him shouted Caution! These people were grim, silent, and the interview with His Supremacy had unsettled Killeen considerably. He remembered his father’s wry advice: “Thing about aliens is, they’re alien.” That might apply to this distant vestige of humanity, too.

  Twilight cast slanted sulfurous rays across the wracked land, picking out details for fleeting amber moments.

  A wheezing old man passed, dragging a carryframe that dug deep ruts in the soil. Young couples held hands around smoky campfires, squatting together with their small babies. Beside a spitting orange lamp, a dumpy matron made an outraged face as she haggled with a trader over a plastic sack of grain. Children scampered among lean-tos, aiming and firing at one another with sticks and calling Family battle-cries in hoarse, excited voices. Men sat solemnly checking and oiling weapons, the shiny parts carefully arranged on worn dropcloths, their scarred stocks held between bulging, augmented knees. A young woman leaned against a commandeered mech transporter, idly playing a lightly liquid tune on a small harp. She kept her boots and calf sheaths on, pneumatic collars gleaming and tight at her ankles, plainly still on ready-guard. But the music lilted on the tumbling breeze, promising a lightness nowhere to be seen.

  Here and there were rickety huts and stalls made of poles and canvas. Greasy fires inside them splashed ruddy light against the thin walls, amplifying every inner movement into pantomime shadow dramas. Crowds clustered around the brimming flames and in their faces Killeen read not the exhaustion he had expected, but a firm, silent, unassuming strength. They worked at their techcrafts, using the last glow of available light.

  Gangs unloaded mech carriers. There was a whole fleet of mech autotrucks as well. He was impressed at their high level of scavenging; this surpassed anything he had seen on Snowglade. Everywhere there were mech implements and a wealth of spare parts.

  Killeen asked for Family names and his escorts called them out as they passed campsites: Treys, Deuces, Double-Noughts, Niners, Septs, Five-ohs, Jacks, Aces. As they approached each group a guard hailed and they replied with code words.

  There was a plan to the camps, which he at first had thought just a random conglomeration. Each Family was deployed in a pie-shaped wedge, its long-range weapons facing outward to command a fraction of the perimeter. He passed a wide wedge of Family Niner, clustered beneath an array that poked long-snouted rods skyward.

  “Skybolts,” one of his escorts replied to his question. She sniffled with a cold and her eyes were swollen. “Can knock down mechs.”

  “How?”

  “Electromagnetic.”

  “What band? Microwave? IR?”

  Her sunburned face tightened with suspicion. “Family business.”

  “You a Niner?”

  “Naysay. Families keep their tech stuff to selves, though.”

  “Your Family does?”

  “Sure. I’m Cap’n of the Sebens. Believe me, we got reasons.”

  “Like?” Killeen persisted.

  “Old ways, from back in the days when the Families didn’t have so much trouble from mechs.”

  “I thought we were all united under the Supremacy.”

  “His Supremacy.”

  “Yeasay, yeasay. Look, how the Sebens fit in w’all the other Families? I can’t follow all the Family names and—”

  “Old sayin’, Seben Come Elebben. Only there aren’t many Elebbens left now. Mechs cut ’em up somethin’ awful. What was left the Cybers pretty well mashed.”

  The woman’s voice was like gravel poured down a pipe. Killeen could hear the edge of authority in it that Fanny had possessed. He said carefully, “Still, we united, why not share tech?”

  “Wont be secret then.”

  “It’d help if we knew each other’s weapons.”

  “Howcome?”

  “Things get tight, more’n one Family can use ’em.”

  The woman shook her head. “You don’t keep a craft to yourself, you lose it.”

  “But—” The woman’s exasperated shake of her head told Killeen this was useless territory to explore. He changed tack and said casually, “Must be hard, carryin’ ’quipment big as all that ’round on your backs.”

  “Seen worse.”

  “Okay for holdin’ someplace, like a Citadel, but—”

  “Your people had a Citadel?”

  This was the first sign of interest in his origins anyone had shown. Killeen wondered how concerned he would have been when he was running from mechs on Snowglade; probably not much. “Yeasay, a great one. Good air defenses.”

  “We kept some our big weapons. Held off the mechs long enough so’s we could break ’em down, pack out the parts on carryslings.”

  Killeen could guess the price paid in such a holding action, caught in the wild, unreckonable swirl of battle, crossed by deviant slants of deadly fortune. He said respectfully, “That stuff must slow you down when you hit and move, though.”

  “That’s true ’gainst mechs. Up ’gainst Cybers, though, you have the heavy stuff or they’ll squash you. Cybers’re harder.”

  “Howcome?”

  “They can read your tech straight out. Feel a ticklin’ in your head and then it’s gone.”

  “You mean invade your sensorium, take your knowhow? But that’d kill you.”

  “Don’t hafta.” She hawked roughly and spat a brown wad a hand’s length in front of her right boot, all without breaking stride.

  Killeen said, “Where I come from, mech bothers to do all that much, it just kills you suredead long as it’s taken the trouble.”

  She nodded and coughed. Fifteen men came struggling up the path carrying a piece of mechtech that Killeen could not identify and the three of them stepped aside to let the party pass.

  She said, “I ’member when mechs did that. But they stopped when we started gettin’ the better of ’em.”

  “His Supremacy says you had ’em beat.”

  Grudgingly she said, “For a while.”

  “How?”

  “We cooperated a li’l with some mech cities. Helped ’em take out their competition.”

  Killeen was puzzled. “Other mechs?”

  “Yeasay. His Supremacy worked it out with ’em.”

  “Where I come from, we had some Families try that. Dangerous, though. The deals never lasted long.”

  “Ours did. We’d smuggle stuff onto mech carriers. See, one mech city would give us fake supplies. Made up so looked like real thing. We’d slip in, get it onto a convoy headed from the outside fact’ries into the big cities.”

  “Impressive,” Killeen said respectfully. “How?”

  “Wear no metal. Crawl through the convoy’s detectors real slow.”

  “Sounds pretty slick.”

  “Was. Kept us alive.”

  Killeen said, “His Supremacy did all that?”

  “Yeasay. Started out cuttin’ a deal for just his Family. Mechs they’d work for would give ’em protection. Once we seen how it went, whole Tribe was his for the askin’.”

  “I saw some mech cities pretty well done in.”

  “We did that. We’d smuggle in bombs, plant ’em.”

  “Dangerous work.”

  “With mech help we could get through the traps.”

  “We never learned that,” Killeen said, hoping to keep drawing her out.

  “Easy, once you know. We’d grab fancy stuff, ’quipment. Wish it’d gone on like that.”

  “What happened?”

  “All sudden, no mechs aroun’. Least not many. Seemed like most were up in orbit. We’d see ’em at night….”

  “Maybe they had more important business. Cyb
ers.”

  “We figured.”

  “When was that?”

  “A while back, maybe two seasons—not that we had a decent summer, not with the clouds coverin’ the sun most times.”

  “And you skragged the mechs good,” Killeen prompted her. She kept looking alertly around, a habit Killeen knew never left you after you had spent years running in the open.

  “His Supremacy, he said this was our big chance. We raided mech cities ourselves. Knew the tricks, see.”

  “Ah,” Killeen said appreciatively.

  “Hit ’em hard. Just when we’re seein’ our way clear, there comes five nights when there’s big lightballs goin’ off up there”—she gestured with a gnarled hand skyward—“and thunder comes down sometimes. All over the sky, loud as you please.”

  They were passing a large roaring bonfire with hundreds of people packed around it. Killeen could feel the heat snapping off the flames. A low moaning song rose in the surrounding murk as the last traces of twilight ebbed. It was unfamiliar and yet carried a mournful bass solemnity that reminded him of the Citadel, long ago, and Family songs unheard for many years.

  The Sebens’ Cap’n walking beside him made a gesture, crossing from shoulder to hip, through the belly and back to the opposite shoulder, evidently a sign of respect. The crowd blocked the path and they stopped.

  She whispered, “So then after that we don’t see mechs much anymore. But Cybers we get plenty.”

  “You ever see Cybers before these times?”

  “Naysay. Family Jack say they fought some Cybers long ’fore this, but my man Alpher says Jacks, they’re always yarnin’ on ’bout things they dunno ass-up ’bout. And he’s right.” A closed look came into her face. “Not that I’m sayin’ anything ’gainst another Family united under the Supremacy, you understand.”

  Killeen nodded. “So the Cybers beat the mechs, you figure?”

  “Looks like.”

  Killeen considered telling her about his experience in the Cyber nest and decided he hadn’t sorted it out enough himself to make good sense. Instead he started working his way around the close-packed crowd. They were singing their slow song more rhythmically now, punctuating it with unnerving shrill wails that made his scalp prickle. All faces turned toward the crackling flames, eyes unfocused and tear-filled. Killeen sensed the gravity of this Family ritual but it was unlike any he knew. A large red insignia on a man’s shoulder told him they were Eight of Hearts.