Tides of Light

by Gregory Benford

  Religious fervor…typically arises in times…of unsettling change. End of the Chandelier Epoch saw…much ardor…Nialdi…came from…shortly after… seems likely His Supremacy carries…several such personalities…and may give him…charismatic power…over the Tribe…

  His Grey Aspect whispered weakly. Killeen saw her point. Nialdi applied the apparent truths of that time to the present. His Supremacy was doing the same. Maybe the trick of hiring his people out to mech cities had given the man enough power to let the underlying powerful Aspects come into play.

  Killeen said, “Still, we can’t let—”

  “Look,”’ she said heatedly, “I been tryin’ ever’thing. His Supremacy put me in charge since we thought you were dead. It’s all I can do, just getting food. We were pretty bad off when we landed. These people took us in. We’re lucky—”

  “Crazy man will do you in bad, you follow him,” Killeen said, exasperated.

  He stalked back to the woman, unsheathing a tool to unwind the wires. They were hard to free because the wire had cut deeply into her wrists. Before he was through he saw that blood was running out of her mouth, spattering the gray mud and mingling with the spitting rain that came blowing into the gully. She was dead.

  Back in the Bishops’ camp he assembled Cermo and Jocelyn and Shibo and questioned them closely. He started with the escape.

  Shibo had led the flight from the station. She had even reactivated the Flitter where Jocelyn was hiding. The Cybers who captured Killeen had ignored the craft. As soon as they moved away and lifted their control of it, Shibo had commanded it to join the dispersed Flitter fleet that carried the Family.

  They had been very lucky. When the cosmic string stopped spinning Shibo saw their chance. Her deft handling of the shuttles’ microminds had brought them on a steep dive into the atmosphere. One shuttlecraft had come apart with four Bishops aboard. She guided them to a rough landing a day’s hardmarch from here. They had come down at night. The watch here had sent a runner to see who they were.

  “Thing is, who’re they?” Killeen asked.

  “Tribe of Cards. They’ve got pasteboards they play games with, got their Family names on ’em,” Cermo said. His face was drawn and crusted with beard.

  “Um. Seems funny, makin’ Family from some game,” Killeen said. “But they’re all we got here.”

  Shibo said, “A Niner told me our Families come from a game.”

  Killeen snorted in disbelief. “Bishops ’n’ Kings ’n’ Rooks?”

  Shibo shrugged. Cermo said, “I bet they made that up. Just ’cause we thought was funny they’re named for li’l cards.”

  Killeen said thoughtfully, “We got lot in common though. Tribes, Families, even same rules.”

  Shibo said, “Must’ve come from same place.”

  Jocelyn nodded. “His Supremacy says we’re all from same Chandelier.”

  Cermo asked, “How’s he know?”

  “His Aspects,” Jocelyn said. “I bet Aspects kept us all ’bout the same. Rules and such—Aspects’re big on those.”

  “And talk,” Killeen said. “Aspects always nag about speakin’.”

  Shibo said, “That might explain why we can still understand these Cards.”

  “Makes sense,” Jocelyn said. “Our language changes, we couldn’t understand our Aspects. Or trade ’em with these Cards.”

  Killeen said carefully, “Who says we’d do that?”

  “His Supremacy,” she answered.

  “Why?”

  “Pool our tech.”

  Killeen said, “The Sebens’ Cap’n didn’t seem interested in that.”

  “Well, His Supremacy says he wants to check out the Aspects the Bishop officers use.”

  They looked at each other.

  Shibo said, “Maybe he thinks we don’t have enough God-loving Aspects?”

  Jocelyn said, “All I know is what His Supremacy tells me.”

  “Which sure’s not much,” Cermo said.

  “I can deal with him,” Jocelyn said proudly. “I got us food and tents.”

  Killeen remembered how, years before they left Snowglade, the Family had been surprised at night and had to leave behind all their bedding and tents and a lot of cooking gear. Though they had fallen far from the wonderful, hypnotically exotic comforts of Argo, he was glad to see that the Family had adjusted quickly to the hardships of the land.

  Nearby a metal-crafter was fashioning a carryrack from some wrecked mech tubing. The Bishop camp stirred with effort as old talents came into play again, and Killeen could see on faces a reborn confidence that came from finding the old methods still good and true.

  He covered the arrangements Jocelyn had made with the Tribe, details of supplies and food. He dispatched fifty Bishops to help with the day’s foraging, which was conducted as a coordinated effort ranging far from the Tribesite. There were many matters of Family business to straighten out. Killeen had to decide how to reconfigure the Family’s elaborate sequence of order-giving, since they had lost the four in the shuttlecraft and, of course, Anedlos. That matter Killeen dealt with, speaking between clenched teeth. “We won’t take such treatment. But we’d better look sharp till we understand things better.”

  His lieutenants nodded. Even as he went on to discuss other issues he knew that there was really nothing he could say that would inspire much confidence among them. The plain bare facts of their predicament spoke in the barren plain. Here they squatted in the ancient manner, ready to jump up and move at the slightest alarm. They had lost everything, the Argo and their dreams as well, in the span of a few days.

  It was Shibo who made their thoughts plain. “Comes a chance, I say we get back aboard Argo.”

  “Wish you could’ve gotten control of it,” Killeen said gently. “Could’ve gotten away then.”

  “Naysay,” Shibo countered. “That Cyber ship that got you—it moved lot faster than Argo. Could’ve caught us easy.”

  “It took off after me, though. Caught me on the other side the whole damn planet.”

  “Only after we’d left in the Flitters,” Shibo countered.

  “Guess they wanted me,” Killeen said lightly, trying to slip by the moment.

  “For what?” Jocelyn asked.

  “Gave me a lookover, let me go.”

  “Sure that’s all?” Jocelyn eyed Killeen.

  Was she trying to raise suspicions? “Can’t explain it. Just lived through it.”

  Jocelyn picked at her coveralls and said nothing. Killeen felt some uneasiness seep out of his officers. The simple presence of a clear leader helped.

  He had learned from Fanny the value of putting past errors and disputes behind the Family. Abraham had been a genius at that. Killeen knew he lacked his father’s lightness of touch at moments like this.

  To break the mood he slurped from a cup of warm brown fluid—and then abruptly spat it out. “Send out a small party, the five with the best noses,” he said. “See if there are any jodharran bushes in this godforsaken place. We could brew a decent drink, at least.”

  Cermo gulped his. “This stuff’s not so bad.”

  Killeen wrinkled his nose. “Tastes like mechpiss.”

  “Yeasay,” he agreed. “Got some good features, though.”

  “Like what?”

  “Well, it’s not addictive.”

  They all stared blankly at one another for a long moment, and then from Cermo came a mild chuckle, and a guffaw from Jocelyn, and then they were all laughing, the yelps and rattling coughs issuing from them as though from deep internal pressures, bursting forth into the rain and chilly air like small cannon shots, explosive assertions, little gestures against bleak fortune.

  SEVEN

  Dawn of the next day brought a howling flurry of dust that sleeted through the stinging air. It came as work started on breakfast. The Family Niner campfire got out of control. A moaning wind swept it in angry gusts. The flames blew into tents and across the spare dry grass. A pall of smoke rolled through Family B
ishop’s grounds and Killeen hurried to pull a team together.

  Nobody wanted to come, of course. The wind snatched his orders away and that made a good excuse to not hear them. The fire was the Niners’ fault but that wouldn’t matter much when it reached them. He had to haul more than a dozen men and women out by the scruffs of their necks.

  They advanced into the teeth of the gale, clawing away the grass before the tongues of orange that leaped forward with blurring speed. They couldn’t get control of it. They linked up with a brigade of Niners who were devoting most of their effort to getting tents and equipment out of the way.

  Killeen argued with their lieutenant and got nowhere. He didn’t dare leave his own team and search out the Niner Cap’n, or he might well return to find that most of the Bishops had gone back to protect their own valuables. The biting dust made it easy to slip away into the billowing banks of grit that skirted along the ground like huge dirty brown animals. There was no good solution so Killeen sent a runner back with orders to muster the whole Family, and set to work.

  With trenching tools they cut a broad gap before the leaping flames. It was impossible to face into the storm, with its smarting flame and stinging sand. They stopped the fire just before it reached a stand of dead trees, uprooted and dried out, that would have gone up in a rush, spreading cinders everywhere.

  The wind trickled away as suddenly as it had come. They stomped out the remaining flames and went back to their camp and found dust everywhere. Every tiny crack in a tent let in powdery drifts of the stuff. Killeen and Shibo were sweeping out their little tent when Toby came ambling along, hands stuffed into his side pockets.

  “Knew I’d be glad I pitched in the open,” he said happily.

  “Yeasay, I saw you hunkered down under somebody else’s shelter yes’day, when it rained.” Killeen grinned.

  “All dried out now.”

  “You just sleep in a bag?”

  “Got no bag, don’t need one. Suit keeps me warm.” Toby had on his full running gear—aluminum pelvic cradle and shin servos and heavy carbosteel shank shocks.

  “Must get tired, haulin’ all that around,” Killeen said.

  “I like ’em,” Toby said, sitting down and adjusting a compressor lock. “Traded some my ’quipment for ’em.”

  “What’d you give?”

  “Some backup chips I had in my shoulder.”

  “Those’re Family chips.”

  Toby looked edgy. “Well…”

  “They ask for any old religious Aspects?”

  “Huh? No, no, nothin’ like that.”

  Killeen felt relieved. He was sure His Supremacy would eventually try to get chips away from the Bishops simply because knowledge was power. On the other hand, he shouldn’t mistake every minor incident as a vast portent.

  “What’d you give?” he repeated.

  “C’mon, Dad, I’m carryin’ tech chips nobody’ll ever use again.”

  Killeen kept his voice flat. “Like what?”

  “Buildin’ stuff. Puttin’ up walls usin’ mech parts, like that.”

  “We might need that.”

  “When? Can’t build anything here.”

  His voice finally got away from him, turning sharp. “We’ll find someplace. Build a Citadel, one bigger’n the last. Better, too—only we won’t know how, ’cause you gave away the knowhow.”

  Toby said sarcastically, “That time comes, I’ll just trade ’em back. If I’m gonna settle down, won’t need trekkin’ gear.”

  “You’ll find whoever you gave the chips—”

  “Two Niner guys, it was. And I traded ’em square, didn’t give ’em—”

  “—and trade whatever you must. Just get those chips back.”

  “Dad!” Toby sprang slightly into the air, driven by his compressors. “I can’t just go—”

  “You will. Family property stays in the Family.”

  “Look, other people’re tradin’. It’s natural.”

  “Who?”

  “How you expect we got runnin’ gear, tents, cookin’—”

  “Make it, same’s on Snowglade. Who?”

  “There’s not enough mechwreck around. And shapin’ it would take—”

  “I saw parts over at the Niner camp. Scrounge some, set down, ’n’ start usin’ the craft you got stored in you. Now who else?”

  When Toby had told him the names of four others, he called Jocelyn and gave her the job of finding them and getting back the gear they’d bartered. He could see from the stiff set of Jocelyn’s mouth that she didn’t like the job but she went off to do it without a word.

  Killeen stood watching Toby making toward the Niner camp. He was vaguely aware that he could have handled matters better. Shibo came over and slipped an arm around him, nuzzling his cheek wordlessly.

  He grunted with frustration. “Hard to switch back to father after bein’ Cap’n.”

  She nodded. “Toby’s scared, like us all. Needs something that gives him a lift.”

  “I can see that. But…”

  “We’re all recovering. Lost Argo, need some direction.”

  “Toby seems pretty steady.”

  “He and Besen have helped each other.”

  “You mean…?”

  She nodded, making a sign that meant love, romance, courting.

  “Oh.” Killeen blinked. “I hadn’t noticed.”

  “Parents often don’t.” She smiled.

  “Well, I…”

  Killeen struggled to say something wise and firm, and gave up—his inner world was a muddle. He knew he was being absurd, but his first reaction to this news was a piercing sense of loss. To acknowledge that seemed to slight Shibo—he still had her, after all. And Toby’s growing up was inevitable.

  He told himself that maybe this crisis had made him vulnerable, and the sudden pang he felt was a side effect of the greater concerns that weighed upon him. While he tried to sort this out he saw Shibo’s mouth tilt with compressed merriment, and realized that she could read his consternation. Finally, he gave a resigned chuckle and threw up his hands.

  “Got to happen sometime. Damnfine girl, too.”

  “Glad you finally woke up,” Shibo said happily. He kissed her.

  His Ling Aspect said sternly:

  I still advise against public displays of affection. You face grave difficulties, and every lessening of the command structure—

  Killeen shoved the Aspect back into its cramped space, relishing the sensation. Now that they were back on solid ground, he could trust his instincts more.

  He left Shibo and moved among the Bishop camp, wondering what measures he could take to ease his increasing sense of danger. Besen was sitting on a natural ledge as she flux-shaped some mechmetal into carrygear.

  “Toby’s nose’s li’l bent,” she said as he sat down.

  “So’s everybody’s,” he countered.

  He had always been able to speak naturally to Besen. Now that he thought about her it gradually dawned that this “girl” was in fact a woman with easy self-assurance. Her angular face had a quality of shrewd reserve.

  “Some say we’re worse off than we were on Snowglade,” she said.

  “Could be.”

  “They figure that string’s up there ready to move any minute. We’ll never get back through it.”

  “Unless we can figure when it’ll move,” Killeen countered.

  “How?” she asked.

  Killeen grinned. “No idea.”

  Besen laughed. “Well, least with you back everybody’s not so glum.”

  Killeen blinked. “Huh?”

  “I’d given up on us. We just sat around starin’ at the ground till you showed up.”

  He was genuinely startled. “Why?”

  “Jocelyn tried to pull us together. It just didn’t work.”

  Killeen said nothing and she went on, “We followed you ’cause you had a dream we believed in. That’s the only reason to leave home, ever.”

  “Dream’s gone.”
/>   “Yeasay, we know that. We’re not dumb.” She gave him a stern look, mouth pursed.

  “And Cybers’re worse than mechs.”

  “You got more than one dream in you though.”

  Killeen was startled again. “What?”

  “You’ll think of some way. We know that.”

  He did not know what to say and covered this by standing up. “C’mon, you can show me the area.”

  Her wide mouth seemed to hold some suppressed mirth at his awkwardness. She said solemnly, “Yessir.”

  By all the precepts he had learned, to idle in a huge camp like this, clearly conspicuous from the air or even from orbit, was foolhardy. Bonfires at night, smoke plumes by day, regular arrays of tents—all these mechs knew well. Cybers, too, presumably.

  He walked by the Bishop slit trenches, already fragrant, and tested the grab-pole running along one side for strength. More than once, when a boy, he had squatted beside a trench without one and lost his balance. This pole was a long alum-ceramic arm from some meáhtech, caught in Y-sticks at the ends. It took his full weight as he squatted and did his daily ritual, always performed after breakfast. The Bishops had long since lost their shyness about such matters and did not erect any shelter around the trench; even in the longlost Citadel, privacy had been a minor concern. He walked over the spur of the next low ridge and saw that this Tribe felt differently. Some had fold-up shields, one even with a roof. But farther down the valley he saw a rivulet, gorged with the recent rain, serving first as drinking water and then, downstream, as a sewer.

  “Plain dumb,” Besen said at his elbow.

  “The river?” he asked.

  “Yeasay. Already got dysentery in some the Families. Big camp like this, you get a worse sickness, it’ll jump aroun’ pretty quick.”

  “Any signs yet?”

  “I heard rumors,” she said.

  “Let me know if you hear more.”

  “Hard gettin’ much from ’em.”

  “Howcome?”

  “They’re full of talk ’bout righteousness and how if they follow the true path everything’ll turn out right and so on.”

  “Could be some their Aspects ridin’ them a little hard.”

  Besen surveyed the valley as she said, “Yeasay. From the High Arcology time seems like.”