Tides of Light (47 page)

“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“We could have withdrawn if you’d told us.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—”

“That is
enough!
” His Supremacy’s eyes flickered with a strange pale cast.

“I demand that you—”

“
No
one demands of
God
. You will now—”

“Some God! You’re just a—”

His Supremacy made a small gesture with his hand. One of his guards stepped smartly forward and clipped Jocelyn expertly on
the side of her head with a pistol, as if he had
done the same thing many times. She went down heavily and lay still.

“Stake her,” His Supremacy said. “She is obviously ridden by the demons she has battled.”

He gazed out over the ridgeline where Bishops were gathering. A knot of them had formed behind Killeen, who stood absolutely
still.

“And as well, I see there are
others
among the Bishops who seem to neglect the holy nature of my office.” This was plainly calculated to throw fear into the Bishops.

A Bishop man shouted, “You’re bunch cowards!”

“You turn ’n’ run pretty quick, for a God,” a woman called sarcastically.

Some Bishops’ hands began to creep toward their weapons but His Supremacy’s escort leveled theirs immediately, catching them
by surprise. His Supremacy said hotly, “I believe I see demons dancing in the eyes of many here. Careful of your wild talk.”

“Keep your damn hands off Jocelyn,” a voice yelled from the knot behind Killeen.

“Yeasay!”

“Gutless bastard!”

“Yellowbellies!”

“Fatass poltroon!”

His Supremacy gestured slightly and two men in his escort started toward the knot. They trotted forward, trying to see who
had yelled.

Killeen said, “Stop them or you’ll have a fight.”

His Supremacy gazed at him as though looking down at an insect. “You would threaten the deputy of All Living Holiness?”

“Just predicting,” Killeen said evenly.

—and as he finished saying it he clenched his jaw solidly shut against a sudden boiling turmoil inside. The wedge at
the back of his mind was a swelling sore. Pressure bulged through him. His vision narrowed down to a tight blue cone centered
on the swarthy face of the strutting little man.

His Supremacy raised a hand and his guard stopped. He licked his lips and assessed the gathering crowd of Bishops. Killeen
wondered if the man had the stomach for a shootout at close quarters. If so, a lot of people would die very quickly.

But then the curious vacant look came into His Supremacy’ s eyes and Killeen saw that the man would try to talk himself out
of this.

Talk. Endless empty talk. All Killeen’s buried anger and sorrow rushed into his throat. Bile stung his mouth. A storm swept
from the jellied presence at the back of his mind, blowing through him.

His Supremacy went on, “We are marching to meet again the bountiful grace of God as it descends from heaven. I say to all
you brethren, turn
away
from these decriers of the immaculate path. Your Cap’n Jocelyn has erred gravely. She caused you many, many tragic losses
upon the exalted battlefield. Be
rid
of her. Let—”

—and compressed rage ripped the air like a scalding release. Killeen felt a squeezing pulse of electromagnetic energy hum
past his shoulder. It refracted the air with its wake and struck His Supremacy solidly in the head.

Killeen dove sidewise and hit the ground. The Cyber pulse had come from above and his first thought was to find the source.
But as he rolled to his left he felt a sudden sweet dwindling of the heavy wedge behind his head. He realized in a rush that
it was his Cyber who had fired the bolt. He sat up amid cries and shouts.

The little man who called himself His Supremacy was down. Killeen somehow knew there was no more danger. He stood up and walked
to the crumpled form.

Tribe members gaped at their fallen leader. Confusion swept them. They looked for the source of this assassination and saw
nothing.

The madman seemed even smaller in death. In repose Killeen could see that the face had carried its expression of dignity and
power through sheer effort of will. Relaxed, it was an ordinary, bland face. But that was not what caught his eye. The pulse
had fried away a big section of His Supremacy’s temples where the comm gear and sensorium were lodged. The violence of the
overheating had blown the entire molding material out of the head, revealing something beneath.

All along the skull lining lay an elaborately gridded inset. The heavy mesh was embedded below the ordinary gear.

Killeen knelt and plucked at it. Through his enhanced nerves he felt a repellent strumming sensation. The reek struck solidly
at his memories.

“Mechtech,” he said. He peeled back more skin.

Shibo squatted next to him. Her eyes widened when she saw the intricate sheath all around the crown of the head. It tapped
into the brain directly with myriad connections. “Micro’tronics.”

“No scars on the scalp. Been in here awhile, I’d judge,” Killeen said tightly.

“What… what could it…” Shibo said.

“They must’ve got him before the Cybers ever came here. He was leadin’ the Tribe by then and this must’ve been how he got
that high.”

“They could give orders directly this way.”

“Yeasay. And be sure they were followed.” Killeen looked cautiously at the Tribe members nearby but they all seemed in shock.
They stared at the shattered head in confusion. He wondered what this would do to their precious faith.

Shibo said, “I guess when the Cybers came, mechs turned him against them.”

“Yeasay. That’s why he wouldn’t allow anything but attack, never mind the cost.”

“This…” She seemed unable to say the words. “Humans run by mechs…”

“We’re just pawns here.”

“It must have been awful. He was trapped inside there.”

“Poor bastard. He wasn’t just crazy after all.”

Quath squeezed her shot cleanly between the Noughts. The narrow spike struck soundly against the strange mech-ridden Nought.
She felt the inner mech presence disintegrate, fragments and figments whirling off into emptiness. Good.

Her plan, hatched all through the smoldering night, hung only moments from completion. Until minutes ago, the Noughts had
been perfectly arranged. She had only to act.

But then had come this squabble among the Noughts. And far worse, the arrival of Beq’qdahl nearby. Quath could feel her elegant
plan slipping away.

Time slowed for her. Her subminds sorted and arrayed the flashflood of implications.

The mech parasite had been cleverly concealed. Quath had fleetingly felt it before, on the mountaintop. But the muggy Nought
minds had obscured the steel-edged intelligence that scurried shadow-thin whenever Quath probed.

In the instant of killing, the mech lurker splashed open.
Quath caught the maggot essence of it, the delicate, mosaic power. It had cleverly fastened upon a Nought weakness. Quath
stretched and snared the scent of that Nought flaw: a black, festering need, heavy and clogged with bloodknot pain.

Yes! With monumental irony, this poisoning soft spot hinged upon the Noughts’ great strength. Their wisdom, she knew, flowered
forth from their keening sense of mortality. That gave them the sure grasp of each passing moment as unique and, if one peered
remorselessly into it, luminescent.

Yet from that bedrock strength many Noughts fled. Their dewy fever drew them to fantasies of being not Noughts at all, but
instead the most powerful of agencies, somehow linked with the embodiment of all nature itself. Madness! Surely wisdom meant
accepting your station in a hierarchy of life and intelligence. To claim grotesquely huge powers belied all that life taught.

But in grasping this Nought facet Quath saw that her own podia were equally foolish. The Verities, the Synthesis—were they
any different? To claim a connectedness between self and inert matter. To intone beliefs in unseen powers.

Clever mechs, to see this Nought vulnerability. A bitter chill ran through Quath as she realized that the mechs must then
fathom the deepest motivations of the podia, as well.

After such knowledge, the mechs must have enormous advantage over the podia. Why, then, had they allowed podia to seize this
planet so easily?

Quath felt the very ground slipping away beneath her, all in the fractional instant that her minds knitted together thin threads
of suspicion that had been waiting for so long.

Yes!—there was more to the mechs than the podia had ever guessed. Her subminds rattled off long-smoldering riddles:

Their introduction of these Noughts and the ancient ship into the struggle with the podia.

The strange mech experiments near pulsars, never explained.

Their defense of Galactic Center against all lifeforms, for unknown purposes.

Of course, one of Quath’s subminds argued, energy densities were great here. Mechs were supreme at harnessing the raw flux
of currents and photons. Life was more vulnerable to such hard energies. In the natural scheme of matters, organic life would
not naturally be drawn to dwell near the all-gnawing appetite of the black hole. Even the podia, encrusted with ceramics and
tough alloys, suffered from the ripping hail of protons in deep space. The soft Noughts were far more threatened by the endless
sleeting effusions of the hole.

Yet they came. Why? Quath had never pondered this mystery to its depths—indeed, until this moment, had not seen it as a profound
puzzle.

All life, whether swaddled in bone or carapace or filmy flesh, seemed to feel that Galactic Center held a goal, a secret.
A clue, perhaps, to the meaning of their brief passage.

But what did they seek? Why?

Did the Illuminates know? The simple fact that those lordly beings had split over the destiny and use of a mere Nought argued
otherwise.

Could the Noughts hold some crucial tidbit of the puzzle? Suddenly the notion did not seem entirely mad.

Quath reeled for the smallest fragment of an instant. Then the ageold lessons asserted themselves. She focused outward, beyond
the raucous clamor of her subminds.

For the worst had come. Beq’qdahl’s gang now moved to attack.

Quath had lain hidden among the broken strata above where the Noughts clustered. Their rear guard had already passed and their
destination lay not far beyond.

Here the faults were like fractured planes snapped off in midair. Shelves of stone jutted at a platinum sky. Beq’qdahl and
her podia had crept among these to within easy range of the Noughts, who milled in confusion.

Quath caught the ready signal from Beq’qdahl. They would wreak havoc. She had to give the Noughts time and warning.

Quath called. She let the signal scatter through the spectrum. Her Nought was sure to sense it.

Beq’qdahl jerked with surprise.

Beq’qdahl was cautious, striving to conceal her anger.

<
Some
Illuminates.>

now
—>

Quath sent a hard, prickly burst toward Beq’qdahl’s voice. It scattered among the walls of rock.

The battle began. Quath ran and dodged. She had chosen her position well. Her superior equipment enabled her to block most
shots. She disabled three podia with quick, stuttering pulses. But her armaments were wearing thin.

Beq’qdahl was the key. The others would flee if their leader fell. Quath reached out with a cone-shaped aura and touched Beq’qdahl.

Now she saw into Beq’qdahl’s true self. Her goals were simple. Lounging in burr-rich strands. Sucking down sweetbreads and
plotting meanness, guilty only of casual malice and ignorance, stuffed with a bland assurance of self.

Beq’qdahl would have been no worse than this, but for the distant conflict of Illuminates. For such a minor, accidental matter,
should she die?

Quath could not reason the question. Had her Philosoph genes left her alone, she knew, these vexing issues would not even
arise. Gathering herself, she rushed forward.