Not really jokes.
“No, they weren’t.”
Toby clasped the man and knew he was Killeen. Shibo laughed when they both did, not a joke but joy.
A long moment passed between them. “Dad, Dad . . .” No words.
Toby grinned and the two of them pounded each other on the back, the laughter just bubbling up and out, and so he took a moment to register stresses arcing in the air, a pressing sharp presence—
The sky ripped open.
Above them a blackness spread like oily ooze across the Lane.
“Down!” Killeen called.
Pointless, Toby thought. He crouched. Whatever was up there was sweeping fast. It ate the Lane. Edges turned up like a fire curling the pages of a book. But this thing was consuming the esty itself.
I could not stop the Highers from allowing this.
He knew instantly that this was the Mantis. Its manifestation was different, tinged with currents of emotion and echoing knowledge which he could not catch.
He looked around them and felt the Mantis now as a seethe in the air. Killeen was down in firing position but their weapons plainly could do no good here.
A jab of pain. He turned as a small winged thing lifted off his right arm. A metallic buzz, anxious with its single-minded task. It shot away.
I have taken a sample of you. Yours is the last DNA needed.
“I saw a copy of Abraham, Dad. The mechs must’ve read his DNA and mind as well.”
“Damn!” Killeen shouted. But there was nothing for him to shoot.
I am the lowest of my Order which can speak to you primates. The Exalteds cannot occupy so narrow a conceptual space. They have granted me special abilities for this supreme task. But other logics prevail as well. The Lane above is about to tear open into the wrack of the Eater. I cannot save you, but I did come to harvest the youngest’s genetic material.
“Son, I figured it would help me find you, so—”
“You let it help you get here.”
Winds rose, growling. Leaves stripped from the bushes.
Killeen said bitterly, “It didn’t give me much choice.”
“I know.” Toby gripped his father’s arm. Something wordless passed between them as they both squatted, cowering beneath a whipping gale that shrieked toward the blackness above.
My tracking of you, Killeen, was always benign. I had hoped to harvest you all, once my obligation to the Highers was exhausted. We could be together then.
“We’ll rip your guts out!” Killeen spat back. Toby admired the bravado in his father’s automatic answer. Meaningless, of course.
Such consummation is the greatest fate such as you can hope to share.
Killeen fired a bolt at a glow that frisked through the air. Not the Mantis, no, but his father was never one to meekly listen.
You have played a role, as well, in the bringing of fulfillment to our kind. When this sample is read, then united with the codes of yourself, Killeen, and your own father—perhaps we can speak then.
“Speak?” Toby shouted against the wind’s howl. “We’ll die here!”
I fear I cannot intervene to rescue you. This esty is coming apart. I now depart.
“You can get us out!” Toby hollered.
I cannot waste time and energy opening a portal. My central task, brooking no compromise, is to save this manifestation of myself, to bring the sample of Toby to the Highers.
The entire dome above them swarmed with black, eating tongues.
Killeen cried, “Save Toby! You dunno but what you’ll need more than that little bit of him! Leave me, take—”
But the Mantis was gone.
The first booming shocks hit them then. Like immense drum rolls they flattened trees and smashed the men to the ground.
Toby rolled, stunned. He looked up into the far sky and saw where the blackness was leading. Pulverized knots of fiery orange fled away from it—backward, down. Fragments of the Lane. Ripped away and already tortured into incandescence.
Away. Inward. Toward the final consuming point of the Eater, the singularity cloaked in its own twisted geometry. The esty was spilling into the black hole. The snarl of curvature had finally won. It would draw them to it, the final grave.
At first he saw the dust whorl in the corner of his eye. He was trying to concentrate on the swallowing dark above even though the wind now battered at him. A limb hit him in the leg and gouged a painful streak of red as it departed. Killeen was trying to say something, arms waving. The violence overwhelmed their sensoria comm.
Bushes, grass, brown clouds of dirt—all tore and rasped at him.
