Nigel! There are bipolar drafts. I cannot find my footpoints. If this is what the mechanicals have been doing in their works near the accretion disk, then I—
“They’ve found a way to populate the Magnetic Mind’s own field lines,” Walmsley said with unnerving calm. “Pried open the magnetic canopy over us.”
Toby felt a rising pressure all around him but he could still see nothing out of the ordinary. Magnetic presences were beyond his diagnostic ability but the sheer pent-up energy hovering above them set off his alarms. Tiny dismayed voices called for his attention in his sensorium. His internal defenses did not know what to do but they smelled something bad.
“Shouldn’t we get inside?” he asked.
“And miss the show?” Walmsley seemed unafraid.
Knots plunged down the field lines. Toby suddenly saw that the lines now all converged on the pyramid and the knots were thickening as they fell. They turned an oily brown and slowed but kept coming.
“The Galactic Library!” he shouted against a crackling wind.
“The Magnetic Mind is defending it,” Walmsley answered as he walked back along the parapet.
“But it looks like—”
“You’re right. Let’s get inside.”
Apparently this was all the notice Walmsley would take of the danger. He still did not hurry, and instead spoke rapidly to Nikka in a whisper Toby could not make out.
I cannot apply pressures to them, Nigel! They butt against me. Hurt! I hear voices from them. Digital. Stuttering. They are mechs of a kind I have not seen. Vicious, sharp, like rats! I—
The sky fell.
The distant ceiling of the esty collapsed inward. An instant later Toby sensed that the magnetic fields were refracting his vision. The fields were plunging. Fighting, snarling, dying in dazzling explosions of scorched red.
“Inside!” Walmsley called.
Ah! It is, is shredding me. Shear waves—I—
Something shrieked like metal ripping apart high up in the air. Toby ran for the open doorway. It started closing. He heard Nikka’s name called in a voice that boomed down around him. His senses contracted. Too much was battering at him. Walmsley was slightly ahead and then he was down, arms flailing, as though his legs had gone dead.
Toby had been trained by Family Bishop to help vital Family members wounded on the field. He stopped to grab Walmsley but the man slapped away his hands. “Go!”
He had also been trained to follow orders. He went.
TWO
Flight
Something like a defeated army was retreating. It was easier for Toby to tell that it was defeated than that it had been an army.
Things were moving through the thick woods that he had never seen before and had no desire to see again. There were limits to his curiosity.
He kept low and in shadows. Angular forms were retreating along with him but he did not trust any of them. Aliens, mostly. Quite alien.
He had gotten out of the pyramid by luck. The walls knew he was coming and guided him through the massive underpinning of the mountain. They kept up with his dead run. He had taken no time to look at the columns that rose out of sight, glittering mica-sharp.
Data banks, one wall told him. They looked more like huge shimmering trees.
He reached a blank stone wall that did not answer. In one corner of it was a tiny booth, apparently made for dwarves like Walmsley. He grabbed his ankles and waddled in. A voice that sounded offended told him to make the second person get out. He banged on the wall to improve its understanding. Just when his hand got numb from it the door wheezed “Vandal!” and shut.
The booth accelerated for a long time, slammed to a stop. He got out, went up a ramp—and was in this forest.
Outside was a shambles. Mechs prowled high up in the esty spaces. He could not see the pyramid at all but the rumpled horizon looked a lot like the distant perspective from the pyramid top, only seen from the other side. A man came loping by Toby and in response to a shouted question answered only, “Magnetic Mind’s dead! Dead!” and ran on.
Nikka too, he supposed. And maybe Walmsley as well.
He had grown up on the move and retreats were his specialty. The Galactic Library had seemed the most solid and reliable thing he had ever seen, and Walmsley had stayed alive a long time, but if it was all gone it was just gone and he would not think about it any further. He settled in.
His boots adjusted themselves without his thinking. For broken ground they grew high insteps and sturdy heels. As he picked up the pace the heels shaped in response to being slammed down at a particular angle and pivot. They threw him forward of his normal stance, making Toby feel as if he were being helped ahead.
Boots could even be made into serviceable weapons. They sharpened along the outer edge if lifted well free of the ground and the leg cocked into kicking position. They could slam-cut certain mech parts in a way that was not pretty.
A slim shiny thing like a snake came zipping through the air and veered toward him. He had no time for a microwave burst or any of the other weaponry so he sprang at it, boot first. He caught it in its middle and the boot did the rest. The edge could sense material and slice it, his internal systems having already given the command when they sensed his alarm. They were better than the human nervous system, and quicker.
This was called “giving ’em the leather” in Family lore, though of course nothing had been made of animal parts within living memory and the idea would have horrified any of the Families. His Isaac Aspect refused to confirm that any Bishops of ancient times had been animal-eaters. Toby suspected that Isaac was concealing his own habits but did not pry. He had other things on his mind.
