“Just integrate your people’s electromag-tags, hailing codes, stuff like that.”

“But look, there’s planning—”

“We go in separately, once the team’s penetrated into the tunnels.”

“What about supporting fire?”

“Manage it yourself. Each Family backs up its own.”

Killeen said skeptically, “Seems it’d be better if—”

The Cap’n of the Treys gave him a tired, sardonic look. “I kinda like it this way. His Supremacy says do it this way, fine. That way I can pull my Family out fast, if things go bad.”

“But coordination—”

“Look, this plan’s the word of God.”

The Cap’n said this in a voice that was suddenly flat, factual. Killeen opened his mouth to reply with a cutting jibe and saw that behind them walked three officers. When he glanced over his shoulder they seemed to be taking an interest in what he would say. He shut his mouth and nodded woodenly.

He reached the Bishop formation just before His Supremacy began speaking. The words came to them over general comm, broadcast by linked capacities of a triangle of officers assembled just below His Supremacy on a small knoll.

Even though Killeen had been told that the Tribe numbered well over two thousand, the sight of so many people turned out in ranks, nearly crossing the valley with their columns, was impressive. He had not seen so many since a grand holiday at the Citadel, when he had been a boy younger than Toby was now. Then the occasion had been festive; now a solemn, grim air pervaded the comm. Hoisted Family flags fluttered and snapped in the wind, patched and sunbleached.

His Supremacy began with a convoluted history of their valiant battles, so filled with names and honorifics that Killeen could make no sense of it. Certainly it told him nothing of how the Families had fought, and Killeen began to suspect that His Supremacy in fact cared little for the essential details of maneuver and command. This emerged soon, as the man waved his hands wildly and described the evils of their enemies, his face congested with rage. The Cybers did not accidentally resemble demons from the pit, no—and soon they would return there, banished.

“Rebuke and scorn, do they face! Defeat and castigation!”

His Supremacy drew himself up and, even though Killeen kept a cool and skeptical part of himself withdrawn, the force of the man’s ardor began to penetrate.

“Death comes to us all! But it cannot sting. The grave has no victory! It is where we are rewarded.”

The vast crowd stirred as more long, rolling sentences washed over them. Killeen felt himself moved by the rhythmic, chantlike sweep. For the first time he understood how His Supremacy had held together a Tribe that had suffered shattering defeats and now faced an incomprehensible enemy of casual viciousness.

“—at whose coming, to judge the All that Is, I shall stand upon the right hand—”

The very air seemed to flicker with new intensity, hot filaments running on the breeze.

“—render the things of metal and flesh into base matter! Shatter these minions of history’s last battle against us! For we arise from the natural substances of the universe, and are at one with it, and enjoyeth its fruits without artifice or corruption of spirit. We are the product of God’s own evolution. Monsters shall not fall from the sky and have these holy rewards, not if we hallow the ancients’ names.”

Distant rumblings, as if mountains rubbed a coarse sky.

“—for after the final liberating battle we shall go faring forth. We shall call to the most holy and majestic Skysower and be fed and brought forth!”

Illuminations shot through the clouds. Something silvery stirred high up.

“—to deliver us from the evil of this place. These devourers of worlds will fall, as the mechs fell before them. Believe in me—”

A cyclonic churn parted the banks of mottled clouds. Killeen felt the crowd begin to notice.

“—on Earth…as it is…in heaven!”

Striations of blue descended, curving along long arcs. Traceries frenzied the air. A rush of heat beat down from a sky that seemed emptied. Yet Killeen’s sensorium quivered with pale, swift intricacy.

“Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done. Malevolence focused by supreme will, we entreat you—”

A gathering presence loomed in Killeen’s sensorium—yet the air showed only translucent, skittering feelers of luminescence. Killeen remembered suddenly seeing such immense flickerings before. They had lit the distant skies the night after the cyborg released him.

“What—what?” His Supremacy croaked. His rhythm broken, he gaped at the display above.

And a voice Killeen knew came fluttering, at first almost lost in wind-whisperings:

I seek a particular human. Give sign if you can perceive this. I speak on magnetic wings, and bring tidings from the very center of this realm.

His Supremacy’s voice boomed, full of undisguised surprise and joy. “I am here! I have brought your word by sword and daring—”

No, you are not the one. I am enjoined to convey this only to the target human. My feet are mired in plasma, while these arms extend even unto your bitter-cold zones. Find me the one named Killeen. I speak for his father.

NINE

A tide of rustling disquiet swept across the valley. The ranks of the assembled Families wavered. Feet shuffled nervously, stirring dust that rose like a visible answer. Heads leaned back, trying to make out the shadowed filigree that danced featherlight across the sky.

“What?” His Supremacy’s voice was weak and strained, compared with the full, resonant power that came hammering down from the fretted air. “It is…God? God speaks in this manner?”

I seek a being of the class I perceive is gathered here. I have searched this world far beyond my obligation to do so, and found fair few of you small things. Such low forms are usually numerous, but you are rare among these sheltered enclaves I have examined—these rude, chilly planets of uninteresting, slow matter.

“I speak for all humanity here,” His Supremacy cried.

In Killeen’s sensorium the human voice seemed awash in a lapping fretwork of smoothed waves. The massive swells were gridworks that bulged and slid. He remembered the mathematically generated ocean he had sailed in the grip of the Mantis’s mind.

Are you the one I seek? You emit a pungent reek, similar to his, I see. But your essence is shaped with less angularity, and colored in the deeper hues of frying gases. No, you are not that one. Be gone.

His Supremacy’s mouth twisted with dark rage. “You are not God! You come from the Cybers. You must! Say it! Be gone with you, foul demon!”

Killeen held himself back, unsure. This was the very voice that had called to him years before, on Snowglade. It had advised him to not rebuild the Bishop Citadel, and to seek the Argo. After the Bishops had found Argo buried under a weathered hillside, Killeen had expected further contact with the voice, more orders—but nothing had come in the two years of Argo’s voyaging. He longed to answer it.

But here? The voice would be heard by all, and might reveal what Killeen should do next.

He tried to guess what His Supremacy would make of it, especially since the man’s red face had already knotted with frustration. The act of receiving the message might in turn make it impossible for Killeen to act upon it, if His Supremacy could somehow turn the information to his own ends.

So many of you small things, each with a different aroma and shape. Vexing! Creation is diverse, but trivially so—what need can there be for this variety, these endlessly multiplied shadings and nuances? It is not as though you mites are works of true craft, after all. It simply makes my task more difficult.