No harm.

The machine is an anthology intelligence. It suppressed us in order to let you get your bearings. It can speak better through us than directly with you.

“Why?” Killeen’s voice rasped with rage.

Obviously, we are far more like it. As stored intelligences we Aspects can, through our digitized manifolds, better perceive the coded holographic speech of a machine. The Mantis has been teaching us how to do this these last few hours. I—

“Hours?”

The Mantis came steadily nearer on thrusting, jerky legs.

You are in fact unconscious. This is a medium of communication for the Mantis. It incorporates us all into its… well, sensorium is too narrow a word. It has ranges and capabilities I cannot fathom. In a certain view, this place is a combined Fourier transform of both our minds and that of the Mantis. It is easier to engage such different intelligences in Fourier-space, where waves are reduced to momenta and a localized entity (such as yourself) is represented as a spreading packet of such momenta in the flat space-time of the Mantis. An interesting—

“You understand it?”

Not fully, no. Employing the help of this suitably tapered Fourier-space modeling, it still has difficulty communicating with even me, an Aspect. The Faces, of course, can barely fathom it. We are attempting—

“What’s it want?”

The Mantis stopped and settled down on the sloping ground. Killeen had to consciously stop his hands from clenching. His feet wanted to turn and run. He stood his ground.

Human things, it says.

Has already much.

Wants to help humans live forever.

Killeen spoke with razor-thin control. “That’s why it’s been hounding us? Killing us?”

I report its true meaning here.

You would die anyway, it says.

It wants to help.

“Leave us alone!” Killeen exploded, his fists tight and shaking at his side.

Cannot.

The mechmind will find you.

Only the Mantis can save.

Even a scrap is better than nothing left.

“We’re not a goddamn scrap! We’re people. All that’s left after you brought on the Calamity and, and—”

Killeen made himself stop. He had to keep control. There was probably no way out of this place, no hope of survival. But as long as he didn’t know that, as long as Toby or Shibo or any of the rest might still be alive, he had to keep going. Keep control.

The Mantis knew that humans were congregating in Metropolis. It did not wish to disturb us. The Renegade Crafter was bound to make a mistake sometime and that would bring down the full force of the Marauders on the Metropolis. Surely, the Mantis says, we knew that.

“Knew we’d fight someday, sure. Give us time, we’d do damn well against the Marauders.” Killeen put his hands on his hips to show he wasn’t thinking of running anymore. Even if this was some kind of mathematical space—whatever that meant—he knew the Mantis would understand the signal.

When Arthur spoke the Mantis’s reply there was a decided edge to it:

Such bravado is amusing, and perhaps ordained in you, but unwise. Only because the Crafter concealed your location did Metropolis survive this long. And the Mantis helped with that, as well.

“What? The Mantis…?”

It helped Crafter.

Crafter didn’t know though.

“But the Mantis killed the Crafter!”

Mantis seized Crafter.

Crafter not dead.

“I don’t understand, Hatchet said—” 1. Mantis kept Marauders away.

“But Hatchet told me himself, couple Marauders found Metropolis. The Kings blew ’em away, clean-easy.”

A few, yes.

Were necessary.

Otherwise Kings get suspicious.

“Suspicious? Of what?”

The fact that their Metropolis was an enclave supported by the Mantis. A spot where humans could congregate and merge. The Mantis herded the Bishops and Rooks toward Metropolis with that in mind.

Killeen grimaced. “Herded us? It killed us! Suredead!”

The wording in human speech is difficult here. The Mantis does not regard what it did at the ambushes as killing. The word it wishes to choose is, well, harvesting.

Something in the way this was said, calm and flat in the tiny voice of Arthur, made a cool fear come into Killeen.

“Surekilling… not giving us a chance to even preserve an Aspect…”

Aspects very limited.

Only get a little of us.

I was complex man once.

Now am tiny thing.

Senses dull or gone.

Never again feel it all.

Alas, my stunted friend is correct. You surely did not think this trimmed existence of ours was enough, did you? We are small dolls, compared to the men and women we once were. Do you blame us for rattling the bars of our cages now and then? Even the maddened among us feels our truncated state, wants—

Call me insane? I be the only who won’t kneel to this devil-machine before you! I will not yield—

In a flash Killeen felt something huge and dark settle in his mind, snuffing out Nialdi’s shrill cries.

“Wait! You can’t destroy an Aspect just ’cause…” His voice trailed away as he felt the absurdity of this. He was embedded in the Mantis’s mathematical spaces. Whatever he felt as real were mere phantoms. His protests were like the tiny squeakings of a mouse caught in a cat’s paw.

He remembered again the mouse he had seen so long ago, the bright and eager eyes staring fixedly up at him. It had had its desires, too, its dim plans. Its dignity.

Killeen’s mind spun in dry vacancy, swept by clashing winds of cold despair and brimming hot anger.

Wonder what is like?

To be harvested.

Sadly, we Aspects shall never know. We would doubtless drift away, needless extras, while the actual person was preserved. But the Mantis wishes to show you what its “harvesting” means. Perhaps only by exhibit can we learn.

Killeen curled his lip in chilly contempt. “Exhibit? I saw a lot back there. Those legs pumping. That awful sex-thing—remember?”

The Mantis stirred. Its dozen separate chromed spheres shifted on the carbo-rod lattice, crisp and metallic.

That was not finished work. It is part of a larger project.

“I could damn sure see what kinda—”

You—and we—did not understand. The parts of that “sex-thing” were mixed organic and machine. Made for a purpose. Somewhat experimental, yes. As were the other constructions displayed in that room. But what the thing became depended upon who viewed it.

“What you mean? It was grotesque, ugly—”

Such constructions assume forms expressing the subconscious of whatever approaches it. The work was intended as a kind of psychodynamic analyzer for mechs. It can display the conflicts and programming malfunctions attendant upon any advanced machine intelligence. What it picked up from you—from us—was a constellation of submerged feelings and needs. Admittedly, the depiction was direct and graphic, but the Mantis says that only through such explicit schemes can mechminds be cleansed, repaired, realigned.

Killeen paled.

The Mantis inquires whether you knew that the shutting down of your sexcen would result in the accumulation of these elements elsewhere in your self. Indeed, it understands the practical efficiency of this for the short term, but as a longterm strategy this seems beset with complex—

“You shut up! Shut up!”

Killeen heard himself shout as if from a great distance. It was as though he could feel himself being two different people. One was furious at any revelation, while the other yearned to escape from a sticky, clouded net. There was something terribly wrong inside him, something he only vaguely glimpsed. Threads of deep anger and longing shot through him. How could he maintain the fragile reeds of dignity and self against the Mantis when it could penetrate to the quick of him?