In the end all this was about the Self. Killeen had made it hard for Toby to be himself, though maybe that was something that had to happen with all sons and fathers. And he would never know how much of that had come from Shibo’s silent diffusion into him.
In a strange way the Mantis wanted the same thing. The one commodity that Toby would never give. The Self.
He remembered the joy and pace of commerce, back in that portal city. But there the trading enhanced the Self. Giving fair value meant trading true. It helped define who you were. Same with the Family, which was a kind of machine for the making of Self through action.
It would never have happened this way if he had been with the Family or even with Quath. Family kept the sharp edges away. Family was a fiction, he knew that now. A fiction defending against the furious gulf that yawned in all directions.
But a truthful fiction, too, because the story Families told by their example made it possible to go on. The gulf was always there and you would see it again, certainly for one last time, but there was no special haste in getting to that moment. After you had seen the gulf you spent the rest of your time knowing that it was there waiting and would come again. In knowing this he was now free.
Below all the colossal energies of mechs and matter lay the whole long history of the human Hunker Down. Who had made that happen? Why had Bishops and all the rest of the Families been condemned to the hard-scrabble skin of planets, when a refuge like the Wedge was here? While dwarves like that Andro got to enjoy it.
Below that riddle were the Bishops, still alive when plenty of other Families were dead. Just luck, Toby thought. But it made you wonder.
And finally there was the Calamity. He had fled from that catastrophe long ago, back when he was a boy but did not know what a boy was. He and his father had lost Abraham that day. But now Abraham was here somewhere. Somehow.
To understand even a little piece of all this, Toby would have to find Abraham. In a place where direction meant nothing and time was a place.
Partway up he heard footsteps. He was sure they were steps and coming from above. He hurried up the slope. There were level walkways spaced at even intervals as he went up.
The walkways went off to left and right and he presumed they led all the way around the structure. They curved into the distance and he could see no one on the ones below. He labored against a steepening incline and reached the next walkway.
No one on it. But the footsteps came slower now. As he climbed farther the footsteps got fainter as though he had left them behind. They spaced farther and farther apart.
Dopplering in time. Going away into a future or a past, borderlands of the real. As if the walker were slowing, hesitating, getting sluggish from fatigue. Toby himself began to tire but he could still hear the steps coming in long low notes and so kept on.
The top was not what he expected. Broad and flat and smooth, the surface flecked with gray dabs. Magnetic field very strong.
No one. He could not hear the footsteps any longer.
He looked down. The walkways were so far away he could not tell if anyone was on them or not. Featureless and unmarred, the great structure stretched away. In the hazy distance he could make out the endless wrestling forms of the timescape, esty fighting against itself, Lanes intersecting in wrenching turbulence.
He turned away from the edge as he thought about resting for a while before going back down.
“Where’ve you been?”
The pale-skinned man before him was short and compact. The same size as Andro and the other dwarfs, but wrinkled and completely nude.
“Understand, do you?”
Toby looked around and could not see where the man had come from.
“Look, we haven’t much time. You’re a Bishop, right?”
Toby’s tongue felt thick and useless. “Uh, yeasay.”
“Good. Latest generation, I’d judge.”
“Yeasay. Who—”
“Come on, get back inside where it’s safer. And warmer.”
The dwarf showed Toby his leathery back as he marched quickly across the smooth plain. As Toby caught up the stone split. A clean rectangle opened and there was a ramp leading down. “Come on.”
Toby stopped at the head of the ramp. “In my Family you don’t walk into a place till you know what it is.”
“Oh? It’s an operations center.” The dwarf turned to go down.
“Whose?”
“Um? Mine. Ours. Human, if that’s what you mean.”
“And who’re you?”
“Oh. Sorry.” The dwarf walked over and held out a hand. “Walmsley. Nigel Walmsley.”
“What Family’s that?”
“The Brits.”
“How do you know who I am?”
“History. I’ve been waiting for you a long time.”
“How long?”
Walmsley looked as though he were calculating. “I make it about twenty-eight thousand years. Your time frame, of course.” To Toby’s blank look he volunteered, “Approximately.”
“How come? What for?”
