This nearing Nought said something incomprehensible. Its primary message lay in the timbre of the speech, rising higher as the crude acoustic stutterings came faster. Quath did not want to frighten away this pack before she had a chance to explore it. And there was some deeper element about them that she could not fathom. Even clotted sub-minds should have appeared by now. They must be oddly integrated.
She put aside the matter and decided to leave the Nought. No need to alarm its fellows, after all. She disconnected smoothly. In an instant she was back inside her own electroaura.
Now rain came sweeping toward her, warming and oddly pleasurable. It reminded her of the tantalizing food-streams of the Hive. She basked in the soft caress of wind and air. Then she wearily crept forward. This business of finding her particular Nought might prove difficult. She regretted not giving it a steady, bright telltale. She had feared that even a dull-witted being would eventually notice. Very well; she crept on through the splashing torrent.
THREE
It was sunset again before they scaled the last foothills and straggled across the breast of the mountain.
Killeen watched a ruddy sun sink beyond the next peak in the chain that marched up from the south. He had been slow to adjust his senses to this planet and to realize that it had milder seasons than Snowglade. Its lesser gravity and shorter days threw off his rhythms. The effect told on them all, he thought, as he watched the Bishop rear guard struggle up the slope of dark granite. A chilly wind had come up after the rainstorm of the night before, making marching harder. Once water got into their leggings, nothing worked quite right until they had a chance to stop and work on metal-shaping. But there had been no time for that. Killeen had cajoled and ordered and joshed, keeping the Bishops moving across silted mud and wrecked forests.
He looked back now, searching for Cyber pursuit. His feet yearned to be set free of his boots, and he compromised by sitting on a boulder and releasing the pressure-catches of his shocks. The relief would have made him sigh, but Cermo was passing nearby and Killeen’s sense of discipline kept his lips closed.
The land had been ribbed and ridged anew by the quakes. A river below was busily digging a fresh channel, having been tossed from its old one. Geology seemed to have hastened its pace, as if in fear of more disasters. The rain had clogged innumerable new streams with mud, and they spread like hands with snaky fingers across the plains, feeding brown lakes. Drowned stands of spindly trees poked from the waters, the slanted sun catching their doomed topknots.
We are near the equator, so at least we have not suffered the cooling effects occasioned by the cosmic string. It seems to have stripped away some of the atmosphere, so there is less insulation against the cold of space.
“Thought the land fallin’ would heat things up,” he answered his Arthur Aspect.
The loss of air has a larger immediate effect. Deep heat must diffuse out from the interior. However, we can soon expect another excavation from the core. Note how the string pulses with more energy.
Killeen peered up into the darkening sky and saw the razor-sharp curve against the mottled colors of the interstellar clouds. It had not moved in the sky all day, which meant that the Cybers were rotating it with the planet. If it began to spin they would have to prepare for quakes or worse.
Only for dwellers in cities or Citadels are quakes a threat. In the open your greatest risk would be landslides, and I expect most loose soil has already been shaken free.
“Maybe, ’less this whole mountain decides it’s better off in the valley.”
He heard gravel scattering down the slope nearby, as if in forewarning, and turned to find Shibo coming from the advance party.
“Tribe pickets up ahead,” she reported. They had been keeping comm silence since emerging onto the mountain face, because line-of-sight receivers could pick them up at a great distance. It meant greatly slower information flow, but Killeen felt too conspicuous here already. Every pebble could be a Cyber telltale, waiting for a foot to step on it or merely set down nearby.
“Police up the column,” he ordered. “Let ’em see us march in all formed up, gear in place.”
He was proud of the Bishops as they passed through the Tribal lines, headed for the crown of the mountain. The Families were spread out on the jutting slabs of silver-flecked granite below the summit, but Killeen did not stop to pitch camp. He marched the Bishops straight into the center, where the large tent was already erected and billowing in the cold winds. Killeen gestured to his lieutenants to flank him and did not slow their step until they reached the broad clearing at the very peak of the mountain, where the tent flapped loudly.
His Supremacy emerged to meet them. Standing beside his officers, he gazed stony-faced with empty, expressionless eyes as Killeen gave him the traditional salute.
“You withdrew without my order,” the man said abruptly, without returning the salute.
“I felt my Family would be overrun,” Killeen said formally.
“Who could outrun those who turn tail so quickly?”
“We took large losses. Eight—”
“All Families sustained such casualties,” His Supremacy said. Then he repeated it loudly, tolling out each word. People heard and came running.
Killeen watched as the Bishops were engulfed by the Tribe’s greater numbers. There was going to be a show.
“That is the way… we must follow… if we are to defeat these monsters.” His Supremacy boomed out the long sentence with relish, a clarion call. An exalted expression transfixed his face with passion as he turned to Killeen. “Other Families have not bellyached about their dead. They simply bury their heroes and carry on, obeying.”
“We buried no one,” Killeen said cautiously. “They were left on the field.”
“Ha! The Niners brought out over a dozen dead.”
“How many’d they lose doing it?”
A rustle from the gathering crowd. His Supremacy scowled.
“We do not count those losses as different. All fell in the noble cause.”
“I’d rather get hit on the attack, not haulin’ bodies around.”
“So I’m sure you would, Cap’n. I have noticed that you have little respect for our time-honored methods. Nor do you have any sense of your transgressions.”
Killeen started to reply and held back. This was to be a public humiliation. Or worse. He tried to see a way to mollify the short man whose face had a transfixed, glassy quality.
“Further, I have noticed that you have verged on disrespect toward My Holiness. I have until this moment been kind enough to ascribe this lapse to your origins around a foreign star.”
Killeen could not resist agreeing. “Yeasay, that might be it.”
His Supremacy’s eyes lost their odd blankness. A dark look narrowed them to menacing slits. “Perhaps you think that God’s rules do not apply to foreign Families?”
Killeen’s effort to catch his tart reply made his jaw go tense. Then he said slowly, “Of course not. Your tongue is different from ours. I have trouble speaking in it, maybe my meaning gets garbled. We humans been separated a long time, ’member. How…” He clenched his jaw again, then went on. “How could anybody possibly imagine that I lack respect for His Supremacy? For the greatest mind in the history of our race?”
The short, swarthy man nodded as though this last lavish compliment were simple fact. Killeen was relieved to see that flatout flattery did not bring forth the slightest suspicion. Such talk was probably a steady daily diet for this man who thought he was God Himself.