He relaxed into elemental sensation, just as he eased into the moist clasp of alcohol when he could. As he squatted and relieved himself he was abruptly surprised to see a small mouse venture from a tangle of crusty vines and stare at him.

This was the first animal Killeen had seen in years. He blinked, startled. The mouse peered up at the man-mountain and squeaked. It seemed unafraid but in some way puzzled.

“Know what I am?”

Moist eyes studied him warily.

“I’m like you! See?”

Tiny paws arched, ready to run.

“We both crap, even.”

A nose twitched skeptically.

“See? I’m flesh too. Not a mech.”

The small furry thing was fascinated with Killeen’s size. It sniffed audibly. They studied each other across an unbridgeable chasm.

Finally he finished his toilet and stood up. “Heysay, found a mouse,” he sent on the general sensorium. This provoked cries of delight. When Killeen booted off the hillside and onward, the mouse was still gazing, tiny eyes bright and clear.

That night they camped between two twisted hills. Ledroff gave Killeen the midnight guard duty, though this was the third night in a row he had stood it. Ledroff was growing into the Cap’ncy, but leaned on Killeen a bit harder than on the others.

Shibo did part of the watch with him. She was firm about keeping talk to a minimum, so their sensoria could pick up the smallest signal. Killeen liked the simple feel of her company. The night was cloud-shrouded, but stars broke through in patches.

Her watch was next and they had to circle the camp once as he showed her the minor telltales he had spied in the shadowed plain. It was pleasant to walk beside her, even if they spent the time in nearly wordless, sensoriumlinked communion, than to lie inert and resting in the camp, sleep shot through by conflicts.

“Quiet?”

“Plenty,” he answered.

Her broad smile split the gloom, a white crescent. “Tired?”

“Naysay. Could kick down a mountain.”

“Ummmm!” she murmured in mock admiration.

“Sleep good?”

“Hard ground.”

“Ball up some them bushes, make a pad.”

“Best pad human.”

Her glittering eyes caught the dim Eater disk-radiance and he saw that she was jazzing him. “Man or woman?”

“Man best.”

“Nope. Woman’s best. Got more fat.”

“Fat? Naysay.”

“You got more’n me.”

“No porker, me.”

“Right kind pork. Just right.”

“I lie not-flat under you.”

This was not only the longest sentence he had ever heard from her, it was the most interesting. “Wouldn’t ’spect you to lie flat.”

“Good.” Again the quick, white smile. He couldn’t think of anything to say next. The ever-strobing sensorium subtly invaded them, made their worlds prickly-acute. But with him downtuned in the sexcen, the banter and wry, sideways glances finally sputtered off into the quilted halfnight, fruitless and without a sure vector. Killeen regretted this and fumbled for a way to say it to her. But then an animal bolted from scrub nearby and they had to spend a while parallaxing it and being sure it was nothing more. By that time the moment had trickled away and he did not know how to bring them back to where they had been. It seemed things were slipping away a lot like that lately, that the world was hurrying by before he grasped it.

Skirting a cracked plain, Killeen heard a cool, dry ratcheting.

“What’s that?” He had been trying to coax a word or two from Shibo. Now he stopped suddenly, head cocked.

“Singing,” Shibo said.

“More Families?” Killeen asked hopefully. For years the Bishops had thought themselves alone. Now he dared imagine repeated miracles. Toby spent every free moment with his new child-friends, and hungered for more.

“Strange.”

“Not singing,” Killeen said after a moment. “Sorta…”

“No acoustics.”

“Like a voice far off,” Killeen said. “From a mouth made of metal.”

They scanned all directions, eyes running up and down the spectrum, all sense amped to max. Nothing.

“I sense no mechs,” Shibo confirmed.

“What’s it saying?”

“Heard such once. Magnetic.”

“Huh?” Killeen shifted to the ultraviolet and caught a faint radiance.

He felt the hairs rise on the back of his neck.

Something hovered in the night.

But nothing made of matter.

He had been looking for approaching figures on the hummocked ground and had not paid attention to the air above. He saw above them playing tides of gauzy luminescence. Down from some lofty focus sprayed lines of tangled bluewhite light. He amped his eyes still more, blessing Angelique’s expert craft.

The lines made an immense dim web. It spread angularly across the sky, narrowing and converging toward the south. Killeen sent a silent question to Arthur.

You’re seeing the dipolar lines of Snowglade’s magnetic field. It varies inversely as the cube of the distance from the southern pole—which lies below the horizon, beyond that butte. This local pattern, however, is some type of anomaly. I do not understand it, but I can speculate—

“Answer!” Shibo urged.

She heard something he did not. Killeen’s caution made him hesitate. The thing might be an extrusion of the mechs, after all.

He listened hard. Once he’d shut off Arthur’s small, warbling voice he could just barely pick up a strumming.

I stem and break and waver. Hear me out. Now!

Killeen shot a questioning glance at Shibo. Her smooth face was rapt.

“Where’re you from?” Killeen asked on the sensorium. With effort he made his voice a blend of acoustics and electrospeech. He constricted his throat like a man trying to imitate a frog. The effect, transduced and filtered by buried chips, sent electromagnetic ringings into the fine, thin air.

There was a long moment of wind-stirred silence. Then,

The storms howl where I am. You are but vague whisperings. You talk so fast.

“I said, where’re you from?” Again the stretched moments.

I circle the Eater.

“So do we,” Killeen said, exasperated.

Above he saw flickering orange gouts descending along the blue field lines. Arthur’s voice squeaked in his mind, pointing out that these were particles infalling toward the pole, striking the atmosphere, making a gauzy aurora.

These tracers showed him the enormity of it. The auroral voice-thing had shaped the local field lines into a magnetic cone which spread down from a point far above. A tentlike web fanned evenly to all sides. Killeen saw he and Shibo were at the center of the circle it marked out. So it was no accident; the thing intended to speak specifically to them.

I am slow. Stretched this far, I tire. I wanted to reach a being called Killeen.

Killeen blinked with such startlement that his eyes flipped into the gaudy infrared. “Wha—? That’s me!”

In long seconds of silence he thought he heard several faint, timorous voices whistling down the field lines. Sliding forth from some immense, outlined presence.

I have a message for you. Here.

Subtly the ringing tone shifted, as though reciting.

Don’t try to build a Citadel. Keep moving. Ask for the Argo.

“What? What’s an Argo?”

I am relaying this message. I do not understand its content “Where’s it from?”

It comes from further in. Toward the Eater.

“Who from?”

I do not know what kind of thing sends it.

Shibo asked pointedly, “What’re you then?”

A knit of magnetic flux. A mere garment, some say, for plasma winds to wear. I swim in copper-hinged light, beside the mouth that knows no end. I am trapped in many-poled field lines, wrapped rubbery about the accreting disk of the Eater.

Killeen sputtered, puzzled, “How in hell did you get there?”

I once was something else. I do not know what. Perhaps an Aspect. Now I am a holy anointed spinning toroid of plasma and field.