Tides of Light

by Gregory Benford

At the merest hint of dawn he paddled the bobbing carapace ashore. He waded onto a rocky beach, cold and sore and dizzy with fatigue.

  Carefully expanding his sensorium, he caught the hazy fog-dots of Cybers. They were far behind him. Spread out, combing the riverbank. But coming fast.

  He got back into the carapace boat. The current was weaker here. It took him in a jouncing path over boulders that swelled up from the muddy waters like enormous speckled white fish.

  He went through two rough rapids before he heard the dull bass roar up ahead. It sounded like no battle he had ever heard before. When he asked his Arthur Aspect, the small mind said:

  I had forgotten that Snowglade had dried out so in your lifetime. I remember that sound from pleasant days of sport on the rivers that once blessed the valley of the great Citadel. It is a waterfall—probably a high one, judging from the amplitude.

  Arthur drew him a quick sketch. Killeen had always visualized water as a glorious, rare, placid entity. That it could rage and kill seemed a violation of some implicit promise. He quickly stroked against the suddenly gathering current. The shore was near but he swept by like a leaf in a gale.

  The water numbed his hands. He leaned far out of the awkward boat and stroked with furious energy. The shore inched closer. A roaring was all around him now. Spray hovered just ahead. He looked in that direction but the river seemed to vanish. It was hopeless. The carapace was speeding faster toward the brink.

  Killeen rolled out of the carapace. The water stung as he sank. His head went under just as he sucked in a breath. His boots struck something solid. He stroked against the current to keep upright. Already he wanted to breathe.

  The water was a brown wall. Where was shore? Currents had turned him around so much he could not tell. He stepped heavily and found that the riverbottom was steep. He headed upward. Knowing little about water, he saw that his only hope was that the mass of his equipment would keep him from being swept away.

  He slipped. For an agonizing moment he tumbled. He got his boot on a rock but it rolled out from under. The water was bitterly cold. He pulled himself forward with his arms and then got enough purchase to stand up. The burning in his lungs was worse. He surged forward, hoping he was going the right way. His boot slipped but he fanned his arms against the current and kept upright. Three more steps—and his head broke water. He struggled up the slope and fell on gravel.

  He sat letting the cold seep away and watched the plume of spray towering nearby. Glassy-smooth water shot by into empty space. Trees and bushes bobbed in the slick, brown surface—and then lurched into oblivion.

  He walked through the roaring and watched the great white column crash down with dazed fascination. The water had such a quixotic spirit, going from placid muddy flow to harsh, beautiful froth in the space of a heartbeat. He wondered if in some sense it was truly alive, as much entitled to the sovereignty owed to all life as were the plants and small creatures and humanity.

  Then something pricked at his weak, collapsed sensorium. He started, suddenly afraid that the Cybers had caught up to him already.

  But no—it was a faint voice. A gathering call on Bishop comm.

  It fell silent but he had gotten a fix. He followed it for a while toward a range of slumped, ruined hills. The jagged stones of shattered strata seemed to snatch at his boots. He stumbled and nearly fell.

  —This way,—Shibo sent.

  He could not use his searching sensorium for fear that Cybers would detect him—if they hadn’t already.

  —Dad!—Toby’s quick spike was enough to give him a fresh directional.

  He ran down a crumpled hill into the seeming shelter of a thick forest. The same umbrella trees stood stately and serene in the faint promise of dawn. Beneath them he felt safer, cloaked in the remnants of life in this battered place.

  His power reserves ebbed. He slumped against a tree. The woods were silent and brooding, and then without transition Shibo was walking steadily toward him and the weight of the night lifted away, insubstantial.

  “You… you…” He could not shape any words that expressed what he felt. Then Toby was there and it was like his return to camp before, the Family enclosing him in an unspoken clasp.

  He simply let go, sinking to the ground. Time meant nothing. The world was immediate, without past or future. Every tree and bristly bush attained a sharp, stark clarity. Faces loomed, split by immense grins. Crisp light poured through them all, illuminating everything with an even, eternal glow. A mouthful of water drenched his throat in pure coolness. The snap and bite of rations burst in his mouth like explosions of unendurable pleasure. His muscles sang with release. The brush of Shibo’s hand, Toby’s arm about his neck—these framed each moment, lending a halo of incandescent immediacy.

  He had no idea how long he spent like that, but the moment came when the ordinary world snapped back solidly.

  “On your feet,” Jocelyn called. She stood among the scattered party of Bishops, looking tired, her jaw set stiffly. “I located His Supremacy. They’re headed down, followin’ that ridgeline up there.”

  “What about Cybers?” Toby asked.

  “We’ll deal with ’em better if we got the Tribe with us,” Jocelyn said.

  “Besen can’t make good time,” Toby insisted.

  Besen leaned against a tree. Her eyes were hollow and her face was drawn.

  Jocelyn nodded. “We’ll take turns helpin’ with the wounded.”

  “Not good for ’em,” Toby said. “Wear ’em out.”

  “We got no choice.”

  “Howcome we should hook up again with those son-bitches?” Toby demanded.

  “’Cause when the Cybers run us down, I want help.”

  There was no good answer to that. Killeen was proud of the way Toby had stood up for Besen but he knew Jocelyn had to keep them moving.

  Nobody said anything as they got up and wearily made ready to march. There was no time for the Family to gather and count the dead or to mourn them. Desperation hung in the dry silence.

  Killeen discovered that his feet were sore. His boots had kept their water seal intact but his leggings were still damp from the night. It was a simple fact of life in the field that such a discovery quickly banishes whatever joy or pain the previous day brought. Every fresh pain demands its own audience. Every joint protested. As he got up Killeen swore he could hear himself creak.

  He helped Toby reset the bandage around the boy’s hand. They said little. Toby spent all his time caring for Besen, who was dazed and weak. The boy seemed far more energetic and focused than he had been before.

  Killeen moved down the line cajoling a few Bishops who were simply staring into space. There were always those who could not forget the losses of one battle and carried them into the next. Years on the run had taught Killeen that people would put aside emotional weight when action came first. Their resilience was surprising, even noble. But if they had time to brood, or if someone belabored them about it, they could crack completely. He chided a few onto their feet and got them started. It helped him forget how many faces he did not see in the marching column and never would again.

  Everyone was low on power now. Some had a little more and they started out strongly, taking long strides and getting out in front. Killeen smiled at that. It was stupid to waste your reserves when you were still fresh. Jocelyn barked at this vanguard and made them take flank and point positions.

  Sunrise sent yellow blades cutting through the upper cloud decks. Killeen thought of all the activity above the misty overcast—the huge warrens abuilding, the cosmic ring orbiting as it waited to be used again, the Skysower that churned on, planting its seeds. For what? All these immense structures seemed without human implication, as natural and inevitable as the weather—and equally beyond human hope of changing.

  The Family line straggled out along the slopes as they worked up into the hills. Cermo had taken a tech hit in the waist; no bodily wound, and he could still walk. He fussed with his equipment and got most
of his upper shocks working again. Then he went up and down the line, joshing and giving sympathy and pulling together Family elements that seemed most discouraged. Jocelyn did the same toward the front of the column.

  Killeen watched all this with approval, curiously calm. Up ahead lay the Tribe and the supply train. Behind came the Cybers. If they were to survive this day the Family would have to be swift and lucky.

  Having turned the matter over in his mind for a while, he put it aside. There was nothing more to do but enjoy what was probably his last glimpse of morning. He walked with his arm across Shibo’s shoulders, resting on her exoskeleton. It was charging from her solar panels and helped her up the steepening slope. Its catlike purr seemed to waft on the warming air. The slow, lazy sound floated through his mind. It was a long while before he realized it was not sound at all.

  A dry cool weight rested in the space just behind the nape of his neck. That was the way it felt when he had just taken on a new Aspect—a lumpy wedge tugging at the back of his brain. But this was stronger, as though air had twisted and condensed into a hanging dark syrup. Traceries of half-sensed ideas flapped through the ball of blotchy air. Killeen labored up the gravelly slopes, keeping march speed with the others, saying nothing, his attention sucked toward the presence that seemed to hover like buttery heat. He felt his arms and legs moving as though in thick oil. His lungs contained a patient, gurgling fluid. Air tasted like metallic blood.

  “It’s here,” he whispered.

  Shibo looked at him quizzically. He stumbled, caught himself.

  The massive, deliberate movements were unmistakable. It was the Cyber who had captured him. And it was behind them.

  No wonder the Cybers had stuck to them so well, he thought. They undoubtedly had a tracer of some kind planted on him. Nothing complex, just a transponder which could reflect a keyed signal. It could be no thicker than a thumbnail.

  At the next rest break Killeen inspected his equipment. It would have been put somewhere he was unlikely to see it….

  In only a few moments he found the small circle stuck to the inside of his left upper shocks. But it was cracked and pitted, probably from the spills he had taken. When he tried some sounding signals it failed to respond.

  He tossed it aside and stared off into the rumpled hills. Morning mist rose from the great stands of barrel-trunked trees. Their topmost limbs arced evenly out in the characteristic umbrella formation. Birds circled and dove among the pale emerald reaches. And the sluggish presence still sat at his neck.

  The circular transponder had probably failed some time ago. Now the Cyber was following him by sniffing out his sensorium.

  The thought sent hollow dread through him. But another memory tugged. In the fighting yesterday he had also felt something like this tenuous weight. And it had made clear things that had helped disable and elude Cybers.

  The blunt presence did not seem hostile. Still, Killeen became more uneasy as he felt the ponderous wedge waiting, expectant. Images like frescoes of the real world slid through his mind, filigree-thin. They dimly recalled his past voyages in the mind of the Mantis. There had been huge caverns of separate experience, volumes that dwarfed Killeen.

  Now he felt himself on the verge of another plunging gray abyss. The sensation made his heart race but gradually fear left him. He got up wearily, leaning on Shibo, and started into the next stand of trees.

  Some Family were foraging for food. Small shoots on the bushes were edible, his Ann Aspect told him. The big trees had fungus of deep turquoise circling their lower trunks. A Bishop woman was scraping it off with a laser cutter in one hand, eating with the other. As they went by she gave them some and it was sharp but meaty.

  Toby and Besen were too far behind. Besen could walk steadily now though there were still dark circles under her eyes and she moved with rickety care.

  They had gone a few steps when the woman behind cried out. The tree was smoking. She stepped back, cutting off the laser pulses, and the tree trunk began jetting a thin, whitehot flame. Blowtorch intensity threw a sudden, welcome heat. The fierce gout of smokeless flame grew rapidly.

  The woman stared dumbfounded at the glowing lance. Toby pulled her away. “Run!” he shouted.

  Killeen tugged Besen uphill. The Bishops took a moment to register the danger. Then they started off at a determined trot, laboring uphill as the flame grew behind them. Cermo was shouting orders.

  “What… what you think… was?” Shibo asked beside him. The best they could manage uphill was a ragged trot.

  “Some kind energy resource, maybe,” Killeen answered. “Mechs must’ve grown ’em.”

  “Mechs use biotech?”

  “Did on Snowglade, some.”

  “Just fact’ry stuff. Replacement parts for their own innards.”

  “Far as we know, yeasay. Here they did better.”

  They stopped at the first shoulder above the broad forest. Toby and Besen struggled up the slope with a wall of billowing smoke behind them. The woman had started a ferocious forest fire.

  At least it might slow the Cybers, Killeen thought. He tried to see a way to use the flame trees against them when they came up through the forest. The thought gave him a spurt of energy and he overtook the point party, led by Cermo. He was still mulling over the possibilities when they saw a squad of people on the far ridgeline.

  “Tribe!” Cermo called ahead. “Bishops approach.”

  —That fire’ll show us up good,—a distant voice answered sardonically.

  “You bastards left us back there!” Cermo called.

  —Orders. His Supremacy said was only way.—

  Cermo said, “Only way of savin’ your asses you mean.”

  —Stuff that. His Supremacy says, you do. Lucky you got out.—

  To Killeen the Tribe’s attitude was bizarre. As the Bishops came up onto the stark ridgeline they found ranks formed in moving defensive perimeters. The Tribe was making good time toward a high, wooded knoll. Though the Tribe greeted the Bishops with some warmth, many showed no sign of guilt over having left their fellows on the battlefield. Bishops muttered angrily. Some of the Tribe were reticent and moved away. The bulk, though, looked at the struggling Bishop remnants with interest but obviously without for a moment considering that a gross breach of ordinary human morality had occurred.

  “Don’t give a damn ’bout us, do they?” Toby said.

  “It’s their faith,” Besen said. “His Supremacy says we’re expendable, so be it.”

  “None so blind as she who will not see,” Shibo said, her voice soft with fatigue. She had helped Besen up the last rise and her power reserves were gone.

  Killeen looked at her quizzically and she said, “One my Aspects fed me that. Old saying from Cap’n Jesus. Figure we need all the wisdom we can get.”

  The situation would have been far more tense if the Bishops had not been so tired. They rested along the ridgeline as more Families marched past in open-arrow formation, wedge flanks far out to guard against Cybers.

  Oily smoke came rolling up from the spreading fire below. Killeen could see trees catch and spurt out their pencil-thin gouts. Curiously, the trees burned only at regularly spaced points up the trunk. He watched as a tall one caught. The first plume shot out near the base. Then another started farther up the trunk and directly above the first. Soon there were seven whitehot flames evenly spaced along the trunk. The top of the tree began to rock and then it went over, pushed by the thrust of the escaping brilliant gas. He marveled at them in his exhaustion.

  The forest fire guttered out into sour smoke as the stand of trees was exhausted. Killeen felt in his mind the persistent weight of what he now thought of as his Cyber, but he could not tell if it was getting closer. Smoke layered the valley like smudged glass and made it impossible to see approaching Cybers. He smelled their fog-dabs at the edges of his sensorium, though.

  They lay in the waxing morning sun and let it take some of the ache out of them. Besen was throwing off her dizziness
and even made a joke. It was as if they had all agreed to set aside the press of the world and evoke some vestige of earlier Family times. Shibo contended with a riddle: “What’s the best kind pain?”

  Killeen murmured, “What’s this, old Pawn Family saying?”

  “Yeasay.” Shibo was the only surviving Pawn member.

  “No kind pain’s good,” Besen said reasonably.

  “I give up,” Toby said.

  “Can’t be real pain, right?” Shibo hinted with a slight smile.

  “Fake pain?” Toby was puzzled.

  “Right,” Shibo said. “Champagne.”

  It was weak humor but they were weaker and everybody laughed. Nobody had seen champagne since the Citadels and the origin of the term was buried in antiquity. His Grey Aspect tried to tell Killeen something about Family France but he lay back in the warming sun and ignored her. Bishops repeated Shibo’s joke and he could hear the tired laughter work its way along the ridgeline.

  A rest can seem to last a long time when you need it and so Killeen came back from a place far away when the voice said loudly nearby, “So you have rejoined us?”

  His Supremacy stood with his marching escort talking to Jocelyn. Killeen had not registered any of the conversation until this point, but when he did sudden anger spiked through him.

  “You left us out there,” Jocelyn said flatly.

  As Killeen got up, His Supremacy said grandly, “I determined that your feint was insufficient.”

  “We lost plenty people!”

  His Supremacy coughed slightly as a wreath of greasy smoke drifted up from the valley. “In our heroic struggle there are martyrs, of course.”

  “You ran off!” Jocelyn’s fists were clenched.

  “I used your diversion to effect an escape—”

  “You turned tail!”

  “—from our untenable situation. And I expect you to keep a respectful tongue while addressing myself.”

  “We could have withdrawn if you’d told us. Before we reached the valley floor.”

  “As I said—”

  “I couldn’t even raise you on deep comm. You wouldn’t—”