Her solid footing grew flesh-soft. Quath plunged forward helplessly, each frightened step taking her up to the knee in the cloying, mossy past. Suddenly she was falling, falling—and petrifying fear shot through her like red pain.

No! her subminds cried. She landed in soft feathers.

Here beneath the street of the dead lay a labyrinth of sultry darks. Its angled corridors fanned like fingers into webbed designs. Quath tried to follow. She was running hard now.

Though she knew that in some sense she was merely immersed in the falsity of another’s electro-aura, she could not extricate herself. It was like the time before, with the Nought who had held her, but far worse. She was not pinned to the sliding experiences of one Nought now, but caught in some swamp of deep desire, some collective mystery.

The shambling things came to her, finally. She had heard their feet slapping on the worn, ebony floors, not pursuing but still coming. They loomed up in the dank darkness that seemed to come streaming out of the walls. Pervading and consuming shadows, exhaled by far antiquity.

Quath lurched away from them. Whacked hard against a brittle corner. Stumbled on.

Though they had only two legs these Noughts were quicker than she expected. They drew closer in the alloyed silence and then she saw their faces and knew it all.

<Tukar’ramin!> she called.

The talus slope she slid down sent boulders crashing before her, like heralds announcing the coming of a queen. <Tukar’ramin!>

Her experience had jarred her deeply, but now the world was not muddled as it had been before. A hard-edged clarity pressed toward her out of the congealing, sharp air.

*I feel you weakly.*

<Here! Here I am! Narrow your spectrum and we can cut through the electroblizzard.>

*I tried to send reinforcements but they were blocked and ambushed. Beq’qdahl and others have isolated your area. They serve an unwise faction of the Illuminates. They seek—*

<I know, I know. Forget them—I have made a discovery!>

*Do not dismiss their threat—*

<I know the source of the Philosoph genes.>

*What? How could—*

<It is these Noughts!>

*Impossible. Little Noughts could not have—*

<They were not Noughts then. They have been so trampled by the mechs that they muster few resources now. But long ago they knew our Elders. The Philosoph elements entered us then.>

*You delved into them?*

<Deeply! And found my origins!>

*I… I see. This is even stranger than I had imagined.*

<Imagined? You suspected these Noughts?>

*From the beginning I sensed complex elements beneath the surface chatter of their minds. I was curious. That fact, and the arrival of more Noughts in a ship—it all aroused my slumbering suspicions.*

Quath had thought that there could be no more surprises in this day, but a lancing thought came to her. <The station! You sent Beq’qdahl and myself there. You knew me for a Philosoph and—>

*Yes. If there were any uncovered aspects of these supposed Noughts, I knew you were the best of the podia to seek it out.*

<You should have told me the true nature of my task!>

*No. Your ability lies in the formulating of questions—and those cannot be assigned.*

<But, but—some hint! It would have saved me much soulful worry.>

*Anxiety is your lot.*

<That is what it means to be a Philosoph?>

*This you must discover. The genes express themselves in many ways.*

Quath felt empty, adrift. <To be so related to such Noughts… many of them I have already killed….>

*Quath, I master great weighty arrays of information, and have a bounty of technical skills far transcending yours—but I do not and cannot have the queer talent you manifest.*

<But… what does it mean, to be related to these mites?>

*I can venture no answer.*

<Who can?>

*You.*

<No, there are others,> Quath said with sudden conviction. <The Noughts.>

THIRTEEN

It was at this moment, Killeen thought, when he could see the fight but was not yet in the middle of it, that fear rushed up into his throat and clamped it shut.

No matter that he had flung himself into a hundred conflicts before—all the old sensations returned. Fear of injury. Of death. Here, to be hurt badly was the same as dying, but slower—carried in the baggage train, suffering lurches and slow bleeds.

More acutely, Killeen felt the piercing fear of failure. To falter now would render pointless everything they had attempted. If they lost, their long pursuit of a shelter for humanity, any shelter, was vanquished and would never return.

He knew how to loosen the tight grip that choked his breathing. Once engaged, training and instinct would take over. But as his eyes searched the dry broken plain, flickering through the spectrum, there was still some trifling chance to back out. The rational side of him pleaded for a reason, any reason, to halt, to reconsider. After all, he had been left here by Cap’n Jocelyn, in charge of the reserves. Yesterday she had rightly claimed the overlay chips which gave a Cap’n a complete view of all Family movements.

And a few moments before she had taken the reserves under her own direct command. Cermo’s advance was stalled below. Jocelyn evidently wanted to break the impasse by quickly throwing more into the head of the attack. She had led them off to the right, down a narrow ravine which afforded good cover from the prickly, long-range shots of the Cybers.

She had pointedly left Killeen nothing to do. Very well. He could join in the attack as the Family plunged down the long slopes of the mountain, into the confusing welter of foothills.

Or he could simply stay here. So said the thin, hoarse cry of judgment. If he fell back he could provide cover for the Bishops in the Tribal baggage train. That, too, was a vital role….

He had not felt this way in years. It was momentarily, darkly delicious to skirt responsibility, take the easy way. Safer, too.

He sighed. He was a different man now. Not wiser, maybe, but aware of how he would feel if he carried out such a fantasy.

Wistfully he aimed downslope. He could never hang back while those he loved fought.

He found a fleeting Cyber target and fired. No sign of a hit, but that did not matter. His training carried him forward, running and dodging now, and he let it.

Family Bishop was spread over the entire belly of the mountain. They moved down through the forests of spindly trees that thronged the slopes. Slanted afternoon sunlight cast confusing shadows. His Supremacy had insisted on launching the action even though not many daylight hours remained; his Divine judgment had, of course, prevailed over his officers’ advice.

Killeen had watched the valley beyond from a group of fat boulders above the tree line. As he entered the woods he glanced up through the curious umbrellalike arches of the trees and searched the sky. No sign of any craft. That was a relief. Cybers seemed never to copy the mech advantage in the air.

“Cermo! Bear left. You can bring enfilading fire down through that notch in the hill.”

—Yeasay,—Cermo answered on comm.—Taking some IR bursts here. Nobody hurt.—

“No point getting blinded. Damp down.”

—Already have,—Cermo replied primly.

Killeen reminded himself to let the officers have free rein. Jocelyn was Cap’n, even though Cermo and Shibo gave her only grudging acceptance. In the heat of the fight, the officers would probably still react to his suggestions as though they were commands.

He ran through the thick forest with a long, loping stride. Rich loam absorbed his footfalls. The dense woods seemed to listen for the battle with a hushed expectancy. Fresh power reserves for his leggings gave him a buoyancy that carried him downslope quickly, not even bothering to seek cover. The only useful information they had learned from the previous, disastrous battle was that Cybers still devoted a lot of their energies to microwave pulses. Mechs saw the world principally in the microwave and perhaps the Cybers thought humans did, too. Or else, he reminded himself, they thought so little of their human opponents that they did not bother to refit their weaponry.