The light voice came hesitantly.—I, I, yeasay.—
“Toby?”
—I’m here, Dad.—
Yes, Killeen thought, we’re all here. Together in the only way possible now.
Toby lay in the control vault with complex apparatus enclosing his head. Close comm link brought his voice to Killeen. And Shibo… she was only an Aspect of Toby’s now.
“You sure this won’t do you harm?” Killeen asked.
—No, Dad. I trust her techcraft.—
Through Toby, Shibo had engineered this union. Normally an Aspect could never speak through its host. The term for that was “Aspect storm” and Family would take immediate measures to pull the offending Aspect chips from the host’s neck.
But this was different. Killeen was tapped directly into Toby’s sense of Shibo. The intricate meshing was Shibo’s invention and, used cautiously, might extend the Family’s abilities. She had modified techniques known to Family Pawn, she said. There had been no call for such a trick before, one that verged on Family taboos.
Now it was pure necessity. Only Shibo’s deft command of Argo could save them.
“Any better fix on that Cyber ship?”
Shibo’s wispy Aspect voice replied,—It has executed another dodging maneuver.—
“Damn! What’s Quath say?”
Toby answered,—She’s calibratin’ somethin’. You want, I can tap her in here.—
“Naysay, let her work. Her last estimate said we still got a few minutes before they start firn’.”
—Argo is ready,—Shibo sent reassuringly.
He still had trouble getting used to her voice. It was a fully incorporating Aspect and gave every appearance of a complete operating personality. He and Toby had managed to get Shibo’s body into the recording room of Argo before there was significant damage from oxygen loss. The machines had spoken of potassium balances and digital matching matrices but it had all taken place someplace far from him, under glass.
He knew from sad experience that some people survived grotesquely bloody wounds while others seemed to die of a scratch. That had not helped when Shibo had slipped away from them, her systems simply tapering to zero.
Toby had taken the Aspect, of course. Not simply because Family rules were firmly against carrying a dead lover; that was inviting disaster. No, the overpowering reason had been that Killeen was too shaken to accept Shibo’s Aspect. He had recovered only when her voice spoke to him through Toby. She had chided him and somehow dragged him back into the world. He had clung to her voice.
But it was only a voice. He would never see her again, never touch her silky skin, see the glinting mirth in her eyes—
He made himself stop. It was pointless. Stupid.
Killeen had told himself this a hundred times through the last few days. His emotions were held in check only by the necessity of command. Chaos would not wait for his grief to abate.
He looked back at the crescent of New Bishop. Explosions still flickered there on the nightside. Cyber conflict still raged. Quath’s allies seemed to have the upper hand now, though.
The Family had been fortunate to take only a few dozen casualties there. Only because humans mattered so little had they been able to slip away.
Cermo and Jocelyn had been resourceful and brave in getting the Family off the planet. In the chaos that followed His Supremacy’s death, they had held the Family together and slipped away from the Tribe.
The revelation that His Supremacy was a mech interloper had been enough to shatter the Tribal organization. The remaining Cybers had inflicted more casualties, but they, too, had seemed leaderless.
Jocelyn’s dash and Cermo’s confidence in the face of what seemed utter disaster had extracted Family Bishop with deft timing. Killeen knew well the difficulties of such a maneuver, the most intricate of all tactical feats. He had decorated both officers.
None of their work on the ground would have meant anything without Quath’s help, of course. She had steered the sleek Flitter craft down to the surface, understanding that the Family had to be kept intact.
In the warfare between Cybers a mere band of fleeing humans was now irrelevant. The Flitters had managed to get off again with the Family aboard. No one fired at them.
Some members of the Tribe had rushed toward the shuttles when they saw the landings. They had gathered at the Bishop perimeter and begged to go, too.
Killeen had been adamant. He could not trust anyone from a Tribe already infiltrated by mech-ridden humans. They had taken most of Family Seben and some other ragtag elements of the Tribe. But once aboard, each was carefully inspected. Three proved to have mech inlay riders in their skulls.
They were killed. The decision had been a bitter one, but he had to make it. For a while he tortured himself with the admission that the decision was easier since he had not done the killing himself. But Jocelyn and Cermo had carried out his wishes without hesitation. In many ways, he reflected, they were tougher than he could ever be.
We have word which may reconcile you to the outcome, came Quath’s diffuse message.
The bulky alien was inside the ship, but that did not impede communication between them. Killeen still did not know how this was done and expected he never would.
The alien did not speak in clear sentences. Killeen had to frame the filmy impressions he received into something resembling words before he could fully comprehend. It was like groping through a fog while fitful chill breezes struck you in the face. Each touch brought new comprehension. Equally, each brush left unanswerable questions in its wake. And the mist remained.
Killeen could not follow Quath’s meaning. “How so?”
The Tukar’ramin now prevails in her struggle. Remnant elements flee. The Illuminates of good spirit shall emerge triumphant.
Much of this gave Killeen only a diffuse sense of the vast events playing out around New Bishop. He knew now, after only days of direct communication with Quath, that he would never fathom all the alien tried to convey. Much of Quath’s explanations were unintelligible. The Illuminates were superior intelligences, apparently, but not above resolving disagreement by force. Killeen’s task was to see that their conflicts did not casually and unthinkingly destroy his Family.
“How’s that affect us?”
The Tukar’ramin will guarantee that those of your kind left behind shall be allowed to live.
