You are the oldest and have the acoustic trigger.
Abraham looked like a wizened combination of Toby and Killeen, with the same guarded gleam in his eyes. “I do.”
Stand and deliver.
“Yeasay, Isay,” Killeen said. “Give it to them.”
Nigel was not sure whether Abraham knew what was going on. He said quickly to Killeen, “Do we want this?”
Killeen glared at Nigel. “Sure do.”
“They’re after the same thing in the long run, y’know,” Nigel said mildly. He tired to carry the sentence with confidence, though it was a bit difficult when he came scarcely to Killeen’s waist.
“What d’you mean?”
“They’re working on the grand problem. Preserving all life-forms, far up ahead in time.”
Killeen frowned in disbelief. “What?”
“By preserving themselves in electron-positron plasmas. A bit of an abstract apotheosis, I’ll admit—”
“They’ve murdered us!” Killeen exploded.
“More than you know,” Nigel said. “Question is, what’s right now. The past can’t be allowed to—”
“This thing—” Killeen jabbed a thumb at the Mantis-shimmer that had curled up from the hills, wrapping them all, “it hunted us, killed us, ripped babies to pieces for fun. I say—”
You must deliver up this acoustic code and cease this obvious theater. It is designed to dissuade me and those I represent—the Exalteds—
from our path. Do not imagine such a lowly deception will gain you delay. Your fate is sealed. It has but to be played out.
Killeen shouted, “You’ll get yours!”
Nigel took Abraham’s hand and looked into his deep eyes. This old man had been rescued from the fall of the Citadel, all at the hands—wrong metaphor, but the hell with it—of the bird. Some mechs had died then and some other things, beings Nigel himself could not name. All so that this wrinkled old man could come to this place and give his part to a puzzle that none of them understood except in fragments.
“Do you know what will happen, if . . . ?” Nigel’s voice trailed off into a whisper.
Cermo stepped forward suddenly and pushed Nigel away. “Leave him be.”
Nigel staggered. “I don’t think any of us understands—”
<This is an abyss of squashed duration,> Quath said. <It resembles the passages between Lanes, holding purpose ransom to the unknown. I think we must venture, despite our fears.>
Nigel saw in the face of the old man a crafty nostalgia. Ah. He remembered something, had probably meant to pass on its subversive facet to Killeen. But the mech attack at the Citadel had cut him off from Family.
So the final key had been carried in the seemingly fragile cup of human culture. The designers long ago had written into the Bishops and countless other Families and Teams and Corps a variety of secret messages, all encased in culture. They knew that the central character of humanity was continuity—and without it, humans were lost.
People escaped their own mortality through laughter and connection, the two great consolations.
To unite the two was wise. So they had chosen something, he guessed, that carried joy and insured connection. Something ancient and enduring that the mechs would think little about.
<It is in your primate nature to dare,> Quath chided them. <We myriapodia had surmised that you carried the code in widespread parts. In both mind and body, it seems.>
Nigel turned with new respect to the alien. “I still—”
“Do it, father,” Killeen said passionately. “What’s the code? Say it!”
The old man’s face crinkled with confusion. “Code?”
“Something to hand down.”
“Well, there is something . . . but . . . no damn code in it.”
“We’ll see.”
“I mean, it’s just a—”
You will deliver it up or else face infinite pains, infinitely prolonged.
The alarm that flitted across Abraham’s face told Nigel a lot about what dwelling on the planets for these many centuries had done to men. He felt a pang, but there was no time to think.
Killeen demanded, “Give it, Abraham!”
The old man began to sing.
SIX
Uses of the Mose Art
