Tides of Light

by Gregory Benford

  This news of more planned battles had quieted the Families, damped their aimless celebration. His Supremacy again used the device of lighting up his own skeleton. In the cloudy night the effect was more eerie than in a tent. Killeen had wondered why anyone would keep electrical tech which had so little everyday use. Maybe it came along with some larger craft.

  Still, Killeen had seen no such human abilities on Snowglade. The Mantis had displayed similar skills when Killeen was embedded temporarily in its sensorium. Humanity here must have used such craft in the past, perhaps as a tradition to augment leadership. He had to admit that the articulating, luminous bones had a strangely commanding presence. Other Tribes, he reminded himself, were sometimes as distant as true aliens.

  Killeen also had great respect for their way of dealing with the unending funereal air that enveloped their retreat. His Supremacy’s closing, gravelly chant:

  Sower, sorrower,

  Giver, griever

  spoke of a long and mournful history that incorporated the Skysower into the fortunes of humanity.

  These Families had their casualties in order, including the men and women who simply stared into the distance and had to be told what to do next. They kept the wounded in the care of the old and the young, all those who could not fight cloistered at the center of the Family formation. All this, too, resembled the tactics handed down through time-honored practice on Snowglade, habits that ran marrow-dark, blood-deep.

  He lay in the morning’s sharp, chilly air and stared up into the scudding, dusty clouds raised by the quakes. The cosmic string had stopped during the celebration. The mountain still creaked and rumbled, as though trying to shrug off the human mites upon its brow. Between gusting, grimy clouds he caught glimpses of the pale blue above and searched for a thin, swift line. Nothing. The puzzle of the Skysower vexed him still.

  He summoned his Grey Aspect and the scratchy voice took a long while in replying.

  I believe… must be… pinwheels, they were called… by our historians. Living cables… grown in interplanetary space… even between the stars… or in molecular clouds.

  “How they live in space?”

  The ancient woman’s voice carried a quality of wonder and regret.

  Legend… all lost… do not know why were made. Some partial texts… appear to imply… evolved from asteroid harvesters… or some say from… comet-steering craft… must then date from… at least… Age of the Chandeliers… or even before.

  “What’s it doin’ here?”

  Forages for planet surface… lays seeds… this is its reproducing phase… must have access to biowealth… not enough in comets… or so was believed by historians. This was long before… era of my… foremothers…

  Abruptly there bloomed in Killeen’s left eye a chart of the Skysower’s orbit. He tasted Arthur’s skill in this, but the voice remained Grey’s.

  “Comes clean down through the whole atmosphere?”

  Killeen could scarcely believe these frames from a stop-motion simulation.

  I must say I find this information more than a bit doubtful. Grey must be addled. Consider the engineering difficulties of such a project! The strength of materials required! Further, no planet is a perfect sphere. Bulges would attract any such orbiting cable, causing it to drift in longitude and latitude. Moreover, there must be severe torsional vibrations induced by its passage through the atmosphere. And how can such a dynamical system overcome the drag of the atmosphere? No—it would crash to the ground in short order.

  “How you explain what we saw, then?”

  I am formulating a model at this moment. It will require work, of course.

  “Look, just do the calc’lations, yeasay?” After a pause Arthur’s nettled voice said:

  I cannot disprove these vague memories, of course, but I feel called upon to point out that the speed of such a thing would be more than a kilometer per second when it entered the atmosphere. Such—

  “Yeasay, that’d make those booms we heard.”

  You miss my point. How could a plant withstand such forces? I find it impossible to believe—

  Killeen let the faint, often garbled and heavily accented voice of Grey come through.

  Many historians… even those of the Chandeliers… thought the same. But we knew that… starfarers spoke of them… pinwheeling over worlds of grass and forest… beneath far suns…

  “What for?”

  Concept of motivation… in biology… complex. Life seeks to reproduce… to fill as much… of its environment… as it can.

  “But this thing, it lives in space.”

  Could fill… whole galaxy… in time…

  “Seems like mechs’d be better at that. They can take vacuum and cold.”

  True… and perhaps in reply to that… somehow… someone… made biological materials… could survive cosmic rays… drift among stars… spread.

  “Who?”

  Historians of… Chandeliers… spoke of earliest humans at Galactic Center… of the Great Times. Thought… perhaps… pinwheels made then…

  “They could do that… I mean, humanity?”

  We were… so grand… not like my own age… of pitiful… crude… Arcologies… that were no larger than this mountain… mere tiny things… compared with the Chandeliers….

  “Uh… I suppose.” Killeen tried to imagine a city as big as the great slabs of rock that spread so far around him. If those were what Grey considered small, trivial constructions… “The Chandeliers, sure, they were the best we ever did, so—”

  Oh no, never… there were grander works… far grander… before… in the Great Times…

  Killeen wondered whether he should believe the disconnected rememberings of the little Aspect. Maybe Grey was just repeating old stories. Humanity had subsisted for a long time now on little more than scavenged food and glorious lies.

  He shook his head and started to get up, his joints protesting. Time to look after his duties. Then the singular fact hit him once more—that he was no longer Cap’n. Simultaneously he felt elation at the burden lifted and depression at his reduced role in the Family. In all, he decided, they came out even.

  Which meant he could forget Family business for a moment. He got up without waking Shibo and went to see how Toby’s wounded hand was doing.

  TEN

  Quath lay in wait for the approaching podia. They came up through a long, rumpled valley in which dust haze settled like a dull gray blanket. Stands of the curious spindly trees obscured their approach, but Quath could see them plainly by the pulsing, pale electro-auras they could not help but emit as they communicated.

  Here on the lower flanks of the mountain the land was turned and crumpled. All the humans had retreated to higher ground. An ominous quiet prevailed all down the range of tossed rock. The shards of broken hills gave countless hiding places for enemies.

  Were there already podia out there, sent by the Illuminate factions? The Tukar’ramin had warned that some were coming. Then her signal had fallen behind the curtain of static.

  she called sharply. The party was still at a great distance, but she was cautious.

 

  Quath tasted spiked emissions and recognized their familiar signature.

 

  Quath brought her high-resolution sensors to bear.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  Quath felt sudden tightness as her subminds understood the implications of Beq’qdahl’s seemingly innocuous words. The Tuk
ar’ramin was out of contact. A wall of hot static had descended between Quath and the great Hive to the south.

  Quath said joshingly,

 

 

  Beq’qdahl’s shimmering voice-tastes took on a hedged air.

  Quath said stiffly.

  Beq’qdahl made a flavor of dry mirth.

 

 

  Beq’qdahl was either boasting for the benefit of the podia around her or being crafty beneath her air of idle arrogance.

  Quath said,

 

  Quath said pointedly.

 

  Quath countered.

  Beq’qdahl sent a spike of wry amusement.

  Quath made her decision.

 

  The squat outlines of the podia moved quickly. They seemed to flow around the outcroppings and faults that marred the valley floor. Quath had a good vantage to see them. She found Beq’qdabl and sighted in on her old friend and rival.

  Quath cried. Try as she might, she could not keep wavering tones from undercutting her stern carrier wave.

  Did Beq’qdahl’s hormone-tinge carry irritation, or the darker musk of crafty guile?

  Quath hoped this ruse would deflect them.

 

 

  This was only a partial lie. Quath felt her Nought’s faint, strumming flavor atop the mountain even now. In truth, she could not get the heady, enticing scent of it to leave her now—a disturbing fact. But she needed time to locate the Nought precisely. Then she had to devise a way to capture it without provoking a struggle that might kill the Nought instead.

  Beq’qdahl said mildly.

  One of Beq’qdahl’s companions cut in,

  Quath’s proboscis clacked angrily at this insult, and found the offending one in her target array.

  the companion added.

  Quath gave them back quick, raucous contempt.

  Beq’qdahl suddenly sent a sharp, bile-laced taunt:

  Quath aimed at Beq’qdahl, began to charge her capacitors… and found a curious reluctance steal over her.

 

  Quath said simply,

 

 

  The podia spread into an attacking fan formation. Beq’qdahl called wildly.

  Quath tried to fire at Beq’qdahl’s approaching image… and could not.

  She swiveled her antennae. The companion who had shouted welled up in her sights. She sent a crisp bolt into the target. Its upper carapace blew to tumbling fragments.

  Beq’qdahl did not even cry out in dismay. She ducked into a hollow, as though she had expected conflict all along. Quath lost sight of all the podia as they dodged and ran and threw out conflicting aura-clues.

  She resisted the desire to fire at momentarily exposed targets. They could triangulate her that way. If she kept her silence, though, she could hold them off. They could not reach her here, she knew, across so much exposed ground.

  Taunts came to her as they realized their predicament: Sphincter-sharer! Orifice for all!

  Their insulting warblings dwindled as she relegated them to a submind. If they slipped and said anything revealing, this smaller facet would alert the full Quath-self.

  Now she had one great goal. The urgency of it surged through her like the sudden, biting, inexplicable sandstorms of the ancient podia homeworld. Something primordial seized her imagination, a fevered desire that went far beyond her duty to the Tukar’ramin or even to the distant, mysterious Illuminates. Quath had to seek the Nought.

  ELEVEN

  “Family Bishop will carry out the flank attack,” His Supremacy said dramatically.

  The morning sun seemed to press against the tattered walls of the large tent. There would be heat in this day down the slopes of the mountain, but up here the tent still held the cold of the night. The Cap’ns and underofficers of the assembled Tribal Families stood at parade rest before His Supremacy, who paced back and forth.

  Killeen remembered the huge desk which His Supremacy had lounged behind the first time Killeen saw him. No doubt it had been abandoned by the baggage train. Even the commandeered mech transports had trouble getting up the mountainside, and no team of men could have pushed the desk so far uphill. Still less likely was the possibility that anyone could be induced to try.

  “I shall direct the main body, of course. After the Bishops have diverted the enemy, I shall strike the final, mortal blow.” The man stopped, stamped his feet, and looked searchingly at his officers. “Understood?”

  Jocelyn, standing beside Killeen, said, “We Bishops are honored at being given first chance at the enemy.”

  His Supremacy’s face, which had been compressed with concentration, smoothed. “You are being accorded an opportunity to make up for your regrettable performance in the most recent action.”

  “Rest assured we’ll do well,” Jocelyn answered, bowing her head slightly.

  His Supremacy’s eyes showed pleasure at this. Then the eyes went blank as a rapt look came over him. “This is the opportunity we have awaited. The foul Cyber demons are concentrated in the broad valley to the east, as our scouts have shown. With their attention directed down the valley, they will certainly bunch up as they move to attack the Bishops. At that moment we can mass our fire. Once we make a breach, all the Tribe can flow through it. The Bishops can then disengage and join us in the next valley, beyond the eastern ridge.”

  The Cap’n of the Sebens said, “How we know we can hit ’em hard enough? Could be plenty Cybers there, and we’d—”

  “The more the better,” His Supremacy said vehemently. “They will be dense on the ground and vulnerable to directed fire. We can hit them even more easily from the mountain as we come down.”

  “Yeasay!” another Cap’n called. “More we hit them, fewer we have to fight through later.”

  The entire tent rocked with the shouted assent of the other officers. His Supremacy nodded, rewarding them with a thin smile. “We do not know their numbers, but we know our cause is holy. We shall win through!”

  Killeen could not stop himself from saying, “There’re twenty-eight.”

  Complete silence. His Supremacy’s eyebrows arched. “Oh? You have patrolled the valley?”

  “Naysay. But I… I can tell how many there are.”

  “You see through Divine revelation?” His Supremacy seemed to be asking a genuine question, as though this was a plausible source of knowledge.

  Killeen caught a significant look from the sharp-nosed woman who was Cap’n of the Sebens. She shook her head very slightly.

  “No, I’ve gotten a good count by watchin’ the valley.”

  Killeen saw now the fixed look in His Supremacy’s eyes and guessed its cause. Of course—the man believed himself God, an
d so any other person who claimed a direct line to the infinite would be a rival. Killeen thought of the men and women spitted and left in the sun. Perhaps some of them had claimed a special role, to their misfortune.

  “Very good. But I should think that even a person of your little experience and lack of battlefield skills could see the error in your statement. You count only the enemy who reveal themselves. We know that the demons often burrow below ground, as doctrine says they must, since they are agents of the underworld Therefore, you have counted only a fraction of them.”

  “Ah, yeasay, Your Supremacy,” Killeen said.

  “I apologize for this officer’s outburst,” Jocelyn put in.

  “We understand,” His Supremacy said grandly.

  “Be assured, Supremacy, that we Bishops shall carry the fight hard and sure,” Jocelyn added firmly.

  “Very good. There is no need to stay here, caged in by these demons. Skysower will not soon return to this mountaintop, my computational Aspects tell me. It spreads its sacred wealth around the girdle of our globe, a hundred descents in a single day. Our nourishment complete, we now fulfill our exalted mission.”

  The man lectured as though speaking to children, his eyes focused up into the tent top.

  “Supremacy, we wish your battle benediction,” the Cap’n of the Niners said in a closing ritual.

  Killeen kneeled with the rest and received the windy, singsong speech. It contained references to battles lost and cities fallen long ago, all meaningless to him but somehow ringing with the same sad truth that he had heard in the orations at Citadel Bishop as a boy. No matter that this Tribe had clutched at this queer little man in their desperation—their pain was perhaps even greater than those on Snowglade had suffered. Here humanity had enjoyed what it thought was a kind of victory over the mechs, actually destroying cities—only to have the more deadly Cybers arrive and finish the job. To be lifted and then dashed again did double damage. Perhaps this finding refuge in religion, and in one tyrannical Elder, was understandable.