But the game was narrowing. The Noughts were backed to the river now and there was little Quath could do for them.

She heard Beq’qdahl bray excitedly, <The main pack of Noughts is moving! See them?>

Quath tuned to the far mountain, where tiny Nought auras flickered. She had wondered why these distant Noughts did not give battle.

One of Beq’qdahl’s podders asked, <Shall we pursue them?>

Hope leaped in Quath. But Beq’qdahl answered, <No. Finish the mites here first. Otherwise we shall never be sure.>

Of course. Quath had forgotten that Beq’qdahl did not know which Nought was crucial. Still less did she suspect that in the end, they might all be necessary, how interdependent these seemingly autonomous beings were.

<Get them all!> Beq’qdahl cried.

Quath caught a distant podder with a quick burst of ultraviolet. It lurched, disoriented, and rolled down a hillside, snapping two legs. Good.

As she drew closer to her own Nought she caught a tremor of the scorching outrage it—no, he—felt. Not toward the attacking podia, but toward the distant main body of Noughts.

These nearby Noughts were webbed together by the gossamer strands Quath could now feel ever more strongly. Their curious tension between self and other gave forth a binding energy. There was true sinew in them. She felt the translucent threads gradually cloaking her own minds. Their touch was cool and oddly comforting.

And their smoldering rage arced among them. A marrow-dark anger at their own kind, fueled by betrayal. Quath realized with a start that the bitter scents were akin to the core-hot ire she felt toward Beq’qdahl and the other traitors.

Quath’s mood rose alkaline in her dry throats. She slipped down a yawning gap freshly torn in the hills. Her Nought was ahead, his mood urgent. Those close to him fought on, wrapped in a haze of burning fatigue. Despair laced bile-yellow through them.

Quath saw Beq’qdahl clambering forward in short rushes, using the shelter of the shattered rock and broken mech factories. Gloom descended. Orange flames crept up the cowling of a dead hexpodder nearby.

Quath switched to her full normal vision. The soil simmered in crisp pinks. The far mountains cooled faster, fading blue redoubts sinking into the night. A purple-black streamer marked the great fault line.

She articulated softly forward. A multipodder appeared briefly and she quickly numbed its microwave dishes with a stinging shot.

As she turned, she saw a Nought retreating. Before she could even judge which of the podia might catch the little fleeing form, a sharp bark split the night.

Too late. Another Nought wounded or lost.

And the web among all the little creatures wrenched and tore violently. This was what they felt in the face of death—if anything, even stronger than Quath’s stunned recoiling from the flat facts of the universe. A deeper sadness, laced with somber mortality. It was worse, she saw, to be small and fragile and still face the great night. Yet these things did.

Too late. Too late.

SEVENTEEN

Killeen had tried to sleep in the makeshift boat, but the shallow mech carapace spun and slewed and rocked endlessly. Once he had dozed off, but only because the current had swept him into a slow vortex inlet. He did not know how long he had circled there.

At the merest hint of dawn he paddled the bobbing carapace ashore. He waded onto a rocky beach, cold and sore and dizzy with fatigue.

Carefully expanding his sensorium, he caught the hazy fog-dots of Cybers. They were far behind him. Spread out, combing the riverbank. But coming fast.

He got back into the carapace boat. The current was weaker here. It took him in a jouncing path over boulders that swelled up from the muddy waters like enormous speckled white fish.

He went through two rough rapids before he heard the dull bass roar up ahead. It sounded like no battle he had ever heard before. When he asked his Arthur Aspect, the small mind said:

I had forgotten that Snowglade had dried out so in your lifetime. I remember that sound from pleasant days of sport on the rivers that once blessed the valley of the great Citadel. It is a waterfall—probably a high one, judging from the amplitude.

Arthur drew him a quick sketch. Killeen had always visualized water as a glorious, rare, placid entity. That it could rage and kill seemed a violation of some implicit promise. He quickly stroked against the suddenly gathering current. The shore was near but he swept by like a leaf in a gale.

The water numbed his hands. He leaned far out of the awkward boat and stroked with furious energy. The shore inched closer. A roaring was all around him now. Spray hovered just ahead. He looked in that direction but the river seemed to vanish. It was hopeless. The carapace was speeding faster toward the brink.

Killeen rolled out of the carapace. The water stung as he sank. His head went under just as he sucked in a breath. His boots struck something solid. He stroked against the current to keep upright. Already he wanted to breathe.

The water was a brown wall. Where was shore? Currents had turned him around so much he could not tell. He stepped heavily and found that the riverbottom was steep. He headed upward. Knowing little about water, he saw that his only hope was that the mass of his equipment would keep him from being swept away.

He slipped. For an agonizing moment he tumbled. He got his boot on a rock but it rolled out from under. The water was bitterly cold. He pulled himself forward with his arms and then got enough purchase to stand up. The burning in his lungs was worse. He surged forward, hoping he was going the right way. His boot slipped but he fanned his arms against the current and kept upright. Three more steps—and his head broke water. He struggled up the slope and fell on gravel.

He sat letting the cold seep away and watched the plume of spray towering nearby. Glassy-smooth water shot by into empty space. Trees and bushes bobbed in the slick, brown surface—and then lurched into oblivion.

He walked through the roaring and watched the great white column crash down with dazed fascination. The water had such a quixotic spirit, going from placid muddy flow to harsh, beautiful froth in the space of a heartbeat. He wondered if in some sense it was truly alive, as much entitled to the sovereignty owed to all life as were the plants and small creatures and humanity.

Then something pricked at his weak, collapsed sensorium. He started, suddenly afraid that the Cybers had caught up to him already.

But no—it was a faint voice. A gathering call on Bishop comm.

It fell silent but he had gotten a fix. He followed it for a while toward a range of slumped, ruined hills. The jagged stones of shattered strata seemed to snatch at his boots. He stumbled and nearly fell.

—This way,—Shibo sent.

He could not use his searching sensorium for fear that Cybers would detect him—if they hadn’t already.

—Dad!—Toby’s quick spike was enough to give him a fresh directional.

He ran down a crumpled hill into the seeming shelter of a thick forest. The same umbrella trees stood stately and serene in the faint promise of dawn. Beneath them he felt safer, cloaked in the remnants of life in this battered place.

His power reserves ebbed. He slumped against a tree. The woods were silent and brooding, and then without transition Shibo was walking steadily toward him and the weight of the night lifted away, insubstantial.

“You… you…” He could not shape any words that expressed what he felt. Then Toby was there and it was like his return to camp before, the Family enclosing him in an unspoken clasp.