Tides of Light

by Gregory Benford

  “What’re you doing?” Jocelyn asked at his elbow.

  Without thinking Killeen said, “This high up, anything can get an IR on these fires from down below. They’ll stand out against the sky.”

  “His Supremacy’s allowed fires tonight. Celebration coming.”

  “I still think—”

  “You’re not Cap’n anymore,” Jocelyn said sternly.

  “I—well, look, we both know namin’ Cap’n is a Family affair. That lunatic doesn’t have power over—”

  “He’s Elder. You heard him, he invoked emergency power. And you’ll do as you’re told.” Jocelyn folded her arms and smiled coldly.

  From her look, Killeen suspected that Jocelyn had already willingly accepted some of the special “priestly” Aspect chips His Supremacy had offered him upon his arrival. They were to be in exchange for what the leader had termed “irrelevant” Aspects from more recent times. The carrying of Aspects was so personal, by ancient tradition, that even the messianic Elder could do no more than “‘strongly advise” this swap. Killeen had managed to politely decline. Conversations with other Cap’ns had convinced him that those chips reinforced the fanaticism of His Supremacy’s followers.

  Was Jocelyn even now hearing new, forceful voices, urging her to zeal and obedience? If so, how long before such Aspects were installed into every member of Family Bishop? How many, then, would have the force of will to retain independent thought? It was rare, by all appearances, among the locals.

  When he simply looked at her Jocelyn said angrily, “And I’ll thank you to deliver up the tactical systems chips.”

  This was at least reasonable. A Cap’n carried those into battle. “You want ’em now?”

  “I’ll send a techtype to pop ’em.”

  Killeen watched her go, feeling a churning in his gut.

  A demotion from command can have serious psychological consequences….

  He savagely suppressed Ling, before the ancient starship captain could pronounce eulogy over his unsatisfactory tenure in command. Killeen had other ghosts to do that for him.

  Sitting on a rock, waiting for the tech-boy to arrive and strip him of his last prerogatives, Killeen moodily recalled the other Bishop Cap’ns he had known. Fanny—so sure and capable—who died in his arms. Old Sal—who retired in honor and grace to make way for one apparently born for leadership… Abraham.

  Yes, Abraham himself. Whose smile was relaxed. Whose laughter was earthy and infectious. Whose confidence was unshakable. Who led Family Bishop through times of grit and grinding poverty, skillfully foiling thè tricks of the mech exterminators, showing them how to hold back the encroaching desert, guiding the Family’s labors until their Citadel was the flower of Snowglade.

  Abraham had drawn little notice from mech civilization, leading precise, efficient raids which took from the mechs no more than needed. He had taken just enough to maintain a level which—if inestimably lower even than the High Citadels of Arthur’s time—nevertheless afforded dignity and grace. One in which even luxury was not unknown. Killeen recalled never missing a full, aromatic bath on his birthday. Not while his father was alive.

  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.

  K
illeen 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.”

  SIX

  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.

  Yet somehow this interior battle did not yield mere confusion and scattered indecision. Somehow a single coherent view emerged, holding the vital, fervent factions in check. Its actions sampled of all the myriad influences, letting none dominate for long.

  Quath marveled at the sheer energy behind the incessant clashings, and at the same time felt a mixture of recognition laced by repulsion.

  This Nought’s inner landscape was far more complex than it should be. No wonder it had not attained the technological sophistication of the podia!—it labored forward in a howling storm, its every sharp perception blunted by fraying winds of passion.

  But by the same stroke, it had a curious way of skating on the surface of these choppy, alchemical crosscurrents. Some balance and uncanny steadiness came from that. It was much like the way they walked—falling forward, then rescuing themselves by catching the plunge with the other leg. This yielded a rocking cadence that echoed the precarious nature of the being itself.