Tides of Light (27 page)

The human sprawl down the valley was broad and impressive. Two women escorted Killeen through the knots of Family gatherings.
They were both Cap’ns but Killeen asked them nothing.

He had allowed himself to be led into this massive encampment because the men and women who had found him insisted. But every
sense in him shouted
Caution!
These people were grim, silent, and the interview with His Supremacy had unsettled Killeen considerably. He remembered his
father’s wry advice: “
Thing about aliens is, they’re
alien.” That might apply to this distant vestige of humanity, too.

Twilight cast slanted sulfurous rays across the wracked land, picking out details for fleeting amber moments.

A wheezing old man passed, dragging a carryframe that dug deep ruts in the soil. Young couples held hands around smoky campfires,
squatting together with their small babies. Beside a spitting orange lamp, a dumpy matron made an outraged face as she haggled
with a trader over a plastic sack of grain. Children scampered among lean-tos, aiming and firing at one another with sticks
and calling Family battle-cries in hoarse, excited voices. Men sat solemnly checking and oiling weapons, the shiny parts carefully
arranged on worn dropcloths, their scarred stocks held between bulging, augmented knees. A young woman leaned against a commandeered
mech transporter, idly playing a lightly liquid tune on a small harp. She kept her boots and calf sheaths on, pneumatic collars
gleaming and tight at her ankles, plainly still on ready-guard. But the music lilted on the tumbling breeze, promising a lightness
nowhere to be seen.

Here and there were rickety huts and stalls made of poles and canvas. Greasy fires inside them splashed ruddy light against
the thin walls, amplifying every inner movement into pantomime shadow dramas. Crowds clustered around the brimming flames
and in their faces Killeen read not the exhaustion he had expected, but a firm, silent, unassuming strength. They worked at
their techcrafts, using the last glow of available light.

Gangs unloaded mech carriers. There was a whole fleet of mech autotrucks as well. He was impressed at their high level of
scavenging; this surpassed anything he had seen on Snowglade. Everywhere there were mech implements and a wealth of spare
parts.

Killeen asked for Family names and his escorts called them out as they passed campsites: Treys, Deuces, Double-Noughts, Niners,
Septs, Five-ohs, Jacks, Aces. As they approached each group a guard hailed and they replied with code words.

There was a plan to the camps, which he at first had thought just a random conglomeration. Each Family was deployed in a pie-shaped
wedge, its long-range weapons facing outward to command a fraction of the perimeter. He passed a wide wedge of Family Niner,
clustered beneath an array that poked long-snouted rods skyward.

“Skybolts,” one of his escorts replied to his question. She sniffled with a cold and her eyes were swollen. “Can knock down
mechs.”

“How?”

“Electromagnetic.”

“What band? Microwave? IR?”

Her sunburned face tightened with suspicion. “Family business.”

“You a Niner?”

“Naysay. Families keep their tech stuff to selves, though.”

“Your Family does?”

“Sure. I’m Cap’n of the Sebens. Believe me, we got reasons.”

“Like?” Killeen persisted.

“Old ways, from back in the days when the Families didn’t have so much trouble from mechs.”

“I thought we were all united under the Supremacy.”

“
His
Supremacy.”

“Yeasay, yeasay. Look, how the Sebens fit in w’all the other Families? I can’t follow all the Family names and—”

“Old sayin’, Seben Come Elebben. Only there aren’t many Elebbens left now. Mechs cut ’em up somethin’ awful. What was left
the Cybers pretty well mashed.”

The woman’s voice was like gravel poured down a pipe. Killeen could hear the edge of authority in it that Fanny had possessed.
He said carefully, “Still, we united, why not share tech?”

“Wont be secret then.”

“It’d help if we knew each other’s weapons.”

“Howcome?”

“Things get tight, more’n one Family can use ’em.”

The woman shook her head. “You don’t keep a craft to yourself, you lose it.”

“But—” The woman’s exasperated shake of her head told Killeen this was useless territory to explore. He changed tack and said
casually, “Must be hard, carryin’ ’quipment big as all that ’round on your backs.”

“Seen worse.”

“Okay for holdin’ someplace, like a Citadel, but—”

“Your people had a Citadel?”

This was the first sign of interest in his origins anyone had shown. Killeen wondered how concerned he would have been when
he was running from mechs on Snowglade; probably not much. “Yeasay, a great one. Good air defenses.”

“We kept some our big weapons. Held off the mechs long enough so’s we could break ’em down, pack out the parts on carryslings.”

Killeen could guess the price paid in such a holding action, caught in the wild, unreckonable swirl of battle, crossed by
deviant slants of deadly fortune. He said respectfully,
“That stuff must slow you down when you hit and move, though.”

“That’s true ’gainst mechs. Up ’gainst Cybers, though, you have the heavy stuff or they’ll squash you. Cybers’re harder.”

“Howcome?”

“They can read your tech straight out. Feel a ticklin’ in your head and then it’s gone.”

“You mean invade your sensorium, take your knowhow? But that’d kill you.”

“Don’t hafta.” She hawked roughly and spat a brown wad a hand’s length in front of her right boot, all without breaking stride.

Killeen said, “Where I come from, mech bothers to do all that much, it just kills you suredead long as it’s taken the trouble.”

She nodded and coughed. Fifteen men came struggling up the path carrying a piece of mechtech that Killeen could not identify
and the three of them stepped aside to let the party pass.

She said, “I ’member when mechs did that. But they stopped when we started gettin’ the better of ’em.”

“His Supremacy says you had ’em beat.”

Grudgingly she said, “For a while.”

“How?”

“We cooperated a li’l with some mech cities. Helped ’em take out their competition.”

Killeen was puzzled. “Other mechs?”

“Yeasay. His Supremacy worked it out with ’em.”

“Where I come from, we had some Families try that. Dangerous, though. The deals never lasted long.”

“Ours did. We’d smuggle stuff onto mech carriers. See, one mech city would give us fake supplies. Made up so
looked like real thing. We’d slip in, get it onto a convoy headed from the outside fact’ries into the big cities.”

“Impressive,” Killeen said respectfully. “How?”

“Wear no metal. Crawl through the convoy’s detectors real slow.”

“Sounds pretty slick.”

“Was. Kept us alive.”

Killeen said, “His Supremacy did all that?”

“Yeasay. Started out cuttin’ a deal for just his Family. Mechs they’d work for would give ’em protection. Once we seen how
it went, whole Tribe was his for the askin’.”

“I saw some mech cities pretty well done in.”

“We did that. We’d smuggle in bombs, plant ’em.”

“Dangerous work.”

“With mech help we could get through the traps.”

“We never learned that,” Killeen said, hoping to keep drawing her out.

“Easy, once you know. We’d grab fancy stuff, ’quipment. Wish it’d gone on like that.”

“What happened?”

“All sudden, no mechs aroun’. Least not many. Seemed like most were up in orbit. We’d see ’em at night….”

“Maybe they had more important business. Cybers.”

“We figured.”

“When was that?”

“A while back, maybe two seasons—not that we had a decent summer, not with the clouds coverin’ the sun most times.”

“And you skragged the mechs good,” Killeen prompted her. She kept looking alertly around, a habit Killeen knew never left
you after you had spent years running in the open.

“His Supremacy, he said this was our big chance. We raided mech cities ourselves. Knew the tricks, see.”

“Ah,” Killeen said appreciatively.

“Hit ’em hard. Just when we’re seein’ our way clear, there comes five nights when there’s big lightballs goin’ off up there”—she
gestured with a gnarled hand skyward—“and thunder comes down sometimes. All over the sky, loud as you please.”

They were passing a large roaring bonfire with hundreds of people packed around it. Killeen could feel the heat snapping off
the flames. A low moaning song rose in the surrounding murk as the last traces of twilight ebbed. It was unfamiliar and yet
carried a mournful bass solemnity that reminded him of the Citadel, long ago, and Family songs unheard for many years.

The Sebens’ Cap’n walking beside him made a gesture, crossing from shoulder to hip, through the belly and back to the opposite
shoulder, evidently a sign of respect. The crowd blocked the path and they stopped.

She whispered, “So then after that we don’t see mechs much anymore. But Cybers we get plenty.”

“You ever see Cybers before these times?”

“Naysay. Family Jack say they fought some Cybers long ’fore this, but my man Alpher says Jacks, they’re always yarnin’ on
’bout things they dunno ass-up ’bout. And he’s right.” A closed look came into her face. “Not that I’m sayin’ anything ’gainst
another Family united under the Supremacy, you understand.”

Killeen nodded. “So the Cybers beat the mechs, you figure?”

“Looks like.”

Killeen considered telling her about his experience in the Cyber nest and decided he hadn’t sorted it out enough himself to
make good sense. Instead he started working his way around the close-packed crowd. They were singing their slow song more
rhythmically now, punctuating it with unnerving shrill wails that made his scalp prickle. All faces
turned toward the crackling flames, eyes unfocused and tear-filled. Killeen sensed the gravity of this Family ritual but it
was unlike any he knew. A large red insignia on a man’s shoulder told him they were Eight of Hearts.

The three of them circled around and reached the rutted path just as a small cart emerged from the gathering amber dusk, drawn
by six women. Killeen stepped aside for them to pass and at that moment the crowd saw the cart and a collective sigh rose.
Twisted, anguished cries filled the gloom.

An honor guard flanked the cart, weapons at port arms. People swarmed around, pressing Killeen against the cart. He saw three
bodies arranged formally on the flatbed, their arms at their sides. Each stared open-eyed at the night above, faces unlined
and dispassionate above bodies that belied their calm. Two were women—scrawny, their skins puckered and lacerated. And each
bore a massive bruise that spread down from her prominent collarbone to her belly.

But it was not truly a bruise, he saw. The purpling had spread up into the women’s breasts, pushing up ridges of yellowing
flesh. The edge of the wound was crinkled and warped, as though something inside had tried to escape by prying off the chest
of each woman, and finally had failed, and so was still lurking within them, the pressure of it forcing the ribs apart and
making of their bellies and lungs a great swollen blister that peaked in a watery, transparent sac.

The male corpse between them lay face down; ragged hair covering his head entirely. A bulge split the back of his uniform.
Another glossy, stretched dome. His was ringed by a crusted brown scab like dried mud.

The three were laid close together, just fitting into the width of the cart, so that the bodies could not roll and burst the
tight, shiny, grotesquely bloated wounds.

Killeen felt his mouth water with incipient nausea. He turned away, sucking the air through his teeth to take away
the sudden foul taste that came through the air like a slap. Pushing out against the press of bodies, looking directly into
the eyes that stared past him without seeing, he made his way back to the path. The two women were waiting. He whispered,
“What…what caused…”

“Cybers,” the talkative woman said. “They do that sometimes, when they can get in close.”

“But…what…”

“Infested, that’s what those people are. His Supremacy says they must be cleaned, purified. Dealt with right.”

“Let’s…let’s go.”

She shook her head, the coils of her black hair wrestling like living ropes. “We leave now, it’d be disrespec’ful.”

Bodies pressed against him, their mute momentum carrying him toward the bonfire. In the wake of the cart the slow grave swell
of the Eight of Hearts’ mourning song rose. He watched as gloved hands drew the dirty, stiffening bodies from the cart. The
corpses were laid out gently, the man still in the center and face down, and a single red heart made of cloth laid upon the
head of each. Then a tall woman wearing a Cap’n’s signifiers spoke, her voice well modulated and practiced and strong.

Killeen did not follow the words. He was watching the bodies. As the corpses stiffened further their legs and arms jerked
and trembled slightly, as though the rhythms that defined a Family’s way—running, the endless succession of nomad flight—carried
on remorselessly across the divide of death.

Then the Cap’n approached the first woman, made a ritual pass with a long knife, and plunged it hard and sure into the glassy
blister. The shiny dome broke with an audible pop. Milky fluids gushed all down it, over the corpse’s face, running into the
open rictus, covering the still-staring eyes, trickling down over the legs. There seemed an impossible
quantity of the stuff and when it drained away the yawning husk of the blister cracked and broke under the Cap’n’s repeated
thrusts.

She probed deeper. The point of the knife burrowed in and abruptly the body shook within, shuddering with a wet sucking noise.
Something struggled inside, rocking the body from side to side, jerking, pushing the broken ribs farther out. A spasm, a last
convulsion, and then the body went completely still. Snapped ribs collapsed inward.

The dead woman looked shrunken, emptied. In final rest her face now resembled those of her Family hemming in the spectacle,
a blade of a nose between prominent cheekbones. Her eyes seemed to sink beneath the darkened lids. A tiny insect crawled out
of one nostril and lingered on a bloodless lip.