“Yeasay—and you all add up to a hundred, right?”
I do not follow.
“Forget it.”
The Mantis-mind has expended much effort to find you. Its allied intelligences—great minds, which of course cannot in truth be fully separated from itself—demanded your capture.
“How come?”
You harbor information of great importance.
“Oh, sure,” Toby said sarcastically.
But he recalled the dying man and the thin, reedy voice: Why you so important? You got something to do with all this?
—and he was somehow still running over a broken landscape. Sweating. The thick green forest was closer—
He sat down on the silky sand. It slid away to shape a comfortable, cupping seat. If none of this was real he might as well be comfortable. He was hungry and thirsty and as he thought about that some oddly shaped food of maize and flowery buds appeared. It lay neatly on sand that shaped up into a little table and then sprouted a transparent glass.
He picked up the glass. It was warm, as though just formed out of melted sand, and there was ice-cold water in it. He drank eagerly. The condemned man ate a hearty though nonexistent meal.
You do not know what this information is?
“Damn right.” If he did, this thing could force it out of him, he was pretty sure of that.
Isaac’s voice lost its tone, going flat and distant as the Mantis spoke more directly through the Aspect. Isaac was now a puppet.
I calculated this from my prior knowledge of you and of Killeen. Yet buried somewhere in your minds there must be a key which will lead to the message. The difficulty for forms such as myself lies in your mental organization. Much of your selves you cannot access.
“Sorry I can’t help you. My memory isn’t so good these days.”
He finished eating. His sarcasm went right by the Mantis again. It used a stilted form of Isaac’s voice to reply.
These tiers of your selves make it quite difficult for me. I am an anthology intelligence which can find any fragment of my own thought processes quicker than you can blink your eye. Though I am obliged to attempt such discoveries, my true interests lie elsewhere within you.
—its words reached him through the flickering of two conflicting images. He was sitting on the sand and he could feel the fine grains cupping around him. And he was trotting steadily toward the green, keeping on against a massive weight that wanted to drag him down. Hunger rumbled in his stomach. Breath rasped.—
Back on the sand. Heart thumping, lead-heavy.
There was probably no way out of this place, this Mantis-space, if “out” meant anything here. But so long as he didn’t know for sure, he had to try. “I got wind of that back on Snowglade. Your ‘creations,’ right?”
My work proceeds from higher purposes. It is understandable that you cannot entirely fathom this.
“You killed plenty Bishops. Herded us, fooled us, played with us until you got bored and—”
Not at all. Earlier I “ambushed” you to lessen the pain of dissolution as I gathered in your Bishop components.
“Took Fanny and my mother and, and—without even givin’ us the chance to preserve an Aspect.”
Isaac surfaced, like a breaking froth on the curl of a slow undulation. Its voice was plaintive and congested.
Do not believe that my trimmed life in here is enough. We Aspects are like your pets, no better. We were men and women once! We kick against the walls at times—did you think we were merely being childish? We are shadows! I once commanded vast audiences, walked proud hallways with supplicants trailing in attendance, supped fine wines and knew—
“Can it.”
But this time he did not have to suppress the Aspect. The slow swell in his mind blended with the undulating sand. Uncountable torrents of infinitesimal grains flowed, eddied—and smothered Isaac. Then the Aspect’s voice returned, humble and stiff.
I regret that such small matters intrude.
“He’s just worried some.” Toby rose to Isaac’s defense without knowing why. “You surekill me, what happens to my Aspects?”
They would be discarded with the harvesting.
“So it’s ‘harvesting,’ huh?” Like shucks peeled away from the rich maize kernels. And tossed aside.
Your father did not like this term either. An interesting similarity.
“Listen, nobody’s going to like it. My father told me about talkin’ to you this way, inside this place you’ve made. I can’t see as how you’ve learned any more since then. ‘Harvesting’ isn’t it, not for us.”
Yet it is a correct description. You embody a high form of the organic realm, with the characteristic feature: you know that you shall end. When we anthology beings are harvested—as all must be, in time, by chance or plan—some fraction of oneself is saved, to be used in further advanced forms. You have this now in the stunted Aspects and Faces and Personalities.
—running harder now. Fear like ice shards in his spine. The green coming, closer—
“Pretty talk, but it still means you’re killin’ us.”
In harvesting, yes. In a sense. I use your reaped selves to construct new mixed life forms. They blend the two facets of organic life, the lowly plant and the high-animal, such as yourselves.
With the words came images, flicker-fast:
A green mat that bristled with extended organs. It crawled swiftly over a rutted plain and raised slick, snaky organs in a kind of salute.
Tubular knots that thrust into each other with demented fury. Slit-mouths bit deep and from the wounds blue blossoms sprouted.
A fog that made a greater being, its vapor rivulets shaping up and melting with bewildering speed. Only when a tapered arm reached up did Toby see the scale: it clasped a passing thunderstorm and shredded it with playful glee.
Through such constructions, equally plant and fleshy, we probe the aesthetic levels of your kind. I include possibilities not admitted by the random forces of your evolution. It is interacting, transphylum art.
“Killeen told me that once. You’re an artist.” Toby laughed.
True. Thus you shall live in the hands of greater forces. Only I, artist and conservator, can make this possible for you, through timely harvesting.
“We’d like to keep ourselves the way we are. Getting planted in your art, well, that’s not what I had in mind.” He said this mildly so as not to tip off the Mantis, and because something was happening to his sensorium and he did not understand it.
To harvest is to sow.
“And that’s what you’ve got in mind for me?”
—like logs his legs thumped against the timestone. Cold air rasped in his throat and he could not get enough to make the legs move faster, faster—
Not yet. This little discourse has aided me in my plans for future projects, but for now I am carrying out the precepts embodied by my allied intelligences. I must help in the gathering of enough Bishop primates to test for this buried knowledge.
“What’s that mean?”
I must bring you to a spot where we collect your lineage. We shall assemble your generations.
He thought fast. He could feel his legs pumping harder and they were real, not the intricately slick touch of the sand-sea.
One part of him was plunging ahead. Gasps rasped in his throat.
Another fraction bent over and studied the sand. Picked up a handful. Grains. Mica winked at him. Between the grains a blur. Not quite defined. As he noticed the slight smearing, the image sharpened. The Mantis had increased definition. Now its world was a bit more distinct. Even the smallest grain now had clear edges.
An artist, tidying up its work.
Running. Chest heaving, a thumping in his ears.
He knew he had to find some way to deflect the moment.
The jerky lattice of rods had an eerie, hovering presence as the Mantis paced among the garden of bleached bones. It had smashed the grinning skulls flat. Along the sand dune wave played strange shadows o
f the mind behind all this.
Toby struggled between two worlds. He could not sort out his own senses.
—so hard to move his legs now, arms pumping strong to keep himself going against a blunt pressure that wanted to stop him from reaching the green moistness. Close now but the pain—
I am sure you understand the necessity. I assure you that when my allied minds have made proper use of you to clear up this ancient and bothersome matter, I shall harvest you with the attention to detail and genuine concern which characterize my best work. Though I have my critics among these same allies, they do not question my reverence for the ancient and lesser forms such as yourself. Rest secure that—
—he reached the inky line of tall trees. Cool, moist.
No phony sand waves. No mech made of rods.
He remembered the kids playing with their fake digital worlds so long ago back in the marketplace and laughed, out of control as he crashed into the shadowy recesses—
Solid. Real. He reached out tentatively. Touched.
The canopy of trees and cabled, spreading parasite-webs was thick, so that the air was damp and dim. He went into a silence impermeable. It was made thicker and not broken by the soft bell notes of birds and flying rats. By the tick of descending fronds. By the soft thump of falling fruit. By the high caterwaul of vine-dogs.
He did catch from far above the ratcheting squawks of something big and angry, heard it hopping and thrashing among lofty limbs. He was uneasy at his own intrusion, moving more quietly so as not to wake the spirits of this place. Dust spun in cathedral light, long yellow light shafts that cut down from on high. He found underfoot a silent procession of something like ants, except that they had tiny tails. When he studied them they formed a curling pattern and held it, a dark ribbon. Slowly it dawned on him that they were signaling him, writing a message with themselves—but he did not know how to answer. He waved helplessly and went on, careful to not step on them.
Somehow the Mantis was not here. He had escaped into a wedge of time that might end at any instant. Why?
He slipped by huge, taut webs, wondering what got caught there. And what came to harvest the prey. Bright fruit swelled in the chinks of the canopy, dabs of color congealing like blobs, in air so thick it looked green.
—and back came the Mantis, rushing hard against his mind.
I lost you. Something—I do not know—something—is making it difficult—
In Toby’s sensorium he now sensed the Mantis far above in the esty tube of this Lane. He felt also around him the stresses that cut and frayed the Mantis’s speech.
Vagrant tensions working, blunt and voiceless. Converging.
SIX
Eating the Storm
The violence began as a flicker.
Down the long bore of the tube eased a sun-yellow trickle. At the vanishing point where the green tunnel narrowed into misty confusion the ray ebbed, flowed, seemed to Toby like a distant campfire. Yet something prickly crept into his mind.
He stood in pale darkness. No good to run anymore.
Clouds thinned above and showed the naked other side of the Lane. A bowl of clay-red timestone suddenly beamed down remorseless heat. Spirits seemed to edge forth from the green around him. Snaps and wriggling noises.
His sensorium jumped, alert, sweeping the area.
Nothing. The silence was empty. He probed the thick, moist forest to his right. It curved up into a misty distance, curling into the sky. When it became simply a filmy green it broke at last on outjuts of brown rock halfway up.
A bird landed on a limb nearby. Toby glanced at it and it said, “Help.”
Toby blinked. “Uh . . .”
The bird had wings and feet and a beak but was not a bird. Its face held huge eyes and a fleshy, pouting mouth below the beak—which was more like a nose, lemon-yellow and pointed. Even as he registered this the face worked with fevered intensity, shifting from a frown to a grimace to a fleeting smile. “I need help,” the mouth said with a perfect Bishop accent.
“Who—what—are you?”
“This place, this time, which is urgent to your needs.” The whole bird fidgeted, feathers twitching, wings vibrating like thin sheets, feet quickly shuffling on the rough branch.
“Urgent to . . . ?” No time for mysteries. “Look, there’s a Mantis up there. I need a place to hide.”
“The opposite is needed.” The bird’s beak pointed to the ground. “You must open, not close.”
“Open what?”
“A door. Essences need entrance to this esty. Quickly!”
“Uh, how?”
The bird took a step on its branch, wings fluttering. “Do not think we are neglectful of you. We do hope you live to help.”
Toby snorted. “Thanksay, friend. But what the hell—”
Into his sensorium cascaded a wash of sensations. Images. Instructions. The sense was so vital and full that he moved instantly, unbuckling his tools with one hand while he scuffed up leaves, looking for the right spot. There. Exposed esty.
Abruptly, the furnace glare above clicked off. Solid night. Where was the Mantis?
He worked in the utter solid black.
Torch, laser, microwave bursts. He could not tell how the esty responded, except for a momentary red glow.
But he felt a pulse of wrenching energy come from the spot he worked. A stab of gravitational energy released, a wave like a tide twisting at his guts.
Beneath him, a throb of energy. Mute, restive.
“Not enough,” the bird’s voice came. “Sad.”
“What more—”
“Too late.”
It came. A fever of probing energy rained around him. Sheets of pearly light shot along the great axis of this Lane. Toward him.
Something countered it. He felt without truly seeing a massive, blue-black presence. It reared up, thunderhead-thick. Bulky and bristling.
Like a top-heavy animal, head towering to the high roof of the Lane. It struck teeth of stone there and snapped at them.
The sheets of pearly light forked around this. Then they were on him, before he could believe something could move that fast. Shards of quick hotness struck down from the axis.
It attacked not merely him but the forest. Thousands of volts dropped their potentials along snaking paths in the sheared air. They struck, their transaction enacted.
In electric-blue brilliance he saw the bird fall dead from its branch.
And then a countersurge kicked skyward—quicker, a bright ricochet red-fast and yellow-hot. Snarling up through the air.
His sensorium told him all this as he dove for shelter—knowing at the same time that the gesture was meaningless, before such magnitudes—and data crackled through his spine.
Quath! Killeen! Dad, Dad! he sent in pure blind panic.
The splintering red-fast stroke came again. Blinding. The racing sharp reply. Again. And again.
The whole argument carried forward in wracked air. A long flash and crack. Only his sensorium could sort it out, presenting it to him like a solved problem. But telling nothing of what it meant.
Wind cut cold. He flattened himself against a tree that had fried into charcoal in an unnoticed instant. Acrid fumes bit his nostrils.
Stay down. He could not cough, would not cough, though he ached to do it. He could not let it find him.
Something heavy and muffled came stalking above the forest.
Looking. Easing down, around, through. He felt it without knowing how.
In the clogged dimness he could make out animals that for some reason ran in circles, demented, yelping their small cries. Air surged and they fell. Many screamed—small, thin shrieks, like fingernails scraping on slate. Then they dropped out of his sensorium, dead. He did not have time to think of them but their cries burned into him, for reasons he could not say.
A scarlet howling came seething down the axis. Bangs and pressures, piling atop each other. Accelerating, blunt collisions. Something deep, droning, metallic.
&
nbsp; He crawled out from under a roof of smashed limbs and stood up. Better to face it this way. Though he knew this was unreasonable and not smart and probably not even adult.
A great power came slamming into the Lane. He crouched in fear.
From the thickets and timberlands came a slow-building reply.
Something seeped up the air, coiling like heavy fog, but with a disturbing momentum. The minute woven carpet of life here had evolved to absorb, he suddenly saw. Somehow, encoded in them was a response.
He felt even the minute beings around him digging in soft earth. Piping to each other. Working to some unimaginable purpose.
Each cog fitting together. Primed. And he was somehow linked into it. He had to decide when and where to deliver such energies.
He did not know how he knew, but the certainty of it laced through him. He was the most sentient here. He had to judge.
He had to try to kill the Mantis.
He hacked again at the esty. He emptied his power pack into microwaves, sensing the boil of energies beneath the esty here. Something wanted out. What had the bird said? Essences need entrance to this esty.
A pulse of gravity rippled up through his boots. Coming—
He kicked in his laser, tuned to infrared. So what if the Mantis could see it? Too late to worry now. Too late for anything but this moment. He fired it between his feet.
He was a hair trigger, balanced—
Conduit. Connector.
Draw it in. Coax.
Toby let a sliver of himself leak upward. A small wedge opening in his muted sensorium.
The presence edged closer. Sent feelers.
Time to do what he could. Even if it didn’t matter, in the face of such colossal energies. Toby cast his sensorium upward.
Here I am. See?
The weight descended. Darted its inspecting eyes at him.
Hovered. Nearer, nearer, still uncertain—
Then the forest opened. Toby sprang away, hit and rolled. A volcano erupted where he had been. And spread.
Violence whipped up from a billion leaves. Shallow roots, slumbering only a moment before, discharged stored charge. Luminous savagery arced up through intricate connections in the bodies of corkscrew trees. The canopy itself discharged frayed green fingers into welcoming air.
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