SEVEN
Killeen was sleeping deeply when the first hard jolt rolled through the mountain. He came awake at once and rolled out of the tent, coming to his feet as Shibo followed him out. A second shock knocked him down.
Jarred, his opticals took a moment to adjust. His eyes automatically cycled through to their most sensitive mode, because he had left them set for night vision. But this made the landscape glare as if under a noonday sun.
Brilliance cascaded down, bleaching out colors and shadows. The entire bowl of the sky glowed with rich gold.
The Syphon. The cosmic string was again revolving, sucking the rich ore from the planet’s center. Imploding rock far below sent immense waves. He felt through his feet the slow, rippling surge of colossal movements thousands of kilometers below.
“Out!” he called on comm. “Leave the ravines. Get into the open!”
He and Shibo had slept in their full boot rigs. They swept up their packs and were headed out of the arroyo when he saw that Toby and Besen were sitting, pulling on their boots.
“Belay that!” he called. The ground wavered beneath him, making it hard to stand. “Run barefoot.”
Toby looked up at his father vaguely, still half-asleep. They had given him what pitifully few medical measures the Family still had against the pain and infection of his wound.
Killeen scooped up Toby’s pack and Shibo got Besen’s. “Come on!” she yelled.
A rock as big as a man came thundering down the ravine. It rolled straight through two tents above them. It thumped hollowly and rushed by. Edges smashed off, showering them with shards as it lumbered past. It took their tents with it.
They ran up the slope until they reached the scree. Killeen helped Toby stumble along the parts where recently settled dust made slippery going. The boy was still groggy and cradled his left hand. Killeen kept an eye out for the stones clattering down and steered Toby away from them.
The sky’s steady glow made it easy to dodge the debris and boulders that rumbled past them. Not everyone was as quick or as lucky; surprised cries of pain came from the ravine below.
They stopped when they got onto a flat, open slab of rock. The tall granite buttress and angular crest above seemed already scoured of loose stone. “Rally here!” Killeen called on comm.
—Shut up!—Jocelyn shouted furiously.—Bishops! Home on my point!—
“Jocelyn, it’s clear over this way,” Killeen said.
—Bear on me! Don’t rally to Killeen!—
The ground shook and rolled and trembled endlessly. Bishops crawled and ran up the flanks of the saddleback, fleeing the ravines which funneled rockslides. Killeen said no more on comm.
Jocelyn was clinging to a chimney slope nearby. It looked safe as long as the shoulder range above didn’t slide. Few Bishops joined her. Most made their way to the ground below Killeen. The quakes eased slowly. Jocelyn’s area held. After a while she inched down the slope and led her small party across the saddleback. She came onto the open slab where by now over a hundred Bishops had spread out so they could easily dodge the tumbling rocks.
“You’re undermining my Cap’ncy,” Jocelyn said, panting, as she approached.
Killeen shook his head, not trusting himself to say any- thing. From downslope came crashes and shouts. A deep, slow rumbling swept up the mountain, as though the whole were breathing in painful gasps.
—Assemble! Assemble!—came the harsh call of His Supremacy.
“Let’s go!” Jocelyn cried to the Bishops.
“Safer stay here,” Killeen said.
“You’ll do as His Supremacy orders!” Jocelyn snapped.
Toby and Besen had gotten their boots and packs in shape. The four of them set off across a granite plain scarred by rockslides. The tremors muted somewhat, as though the gnawing at the center of this world had ceased. Killeen studied the shimmering curtain of gold overhead but could see no sign of the extruded core metal. Something dark moved high up, a mere scratch against the glow, but nothing more.
When they arrived at the next broad rock shoulder His Supremacy was already speaking to the Families that were raggedly assembling before him. “This is yet another attempt by the demons and devils released upon us, a failed attempt to make us disperse, to miss our conjunction with our sole remaining thread of hope. The Skysower shall arrive soon, my Aspects calculate. Prepare!”
The other Families began to gather gnarled branches and bushes for a large fire. They stumbled and fell as the ground shook, but they kept on. Killeen and the others stared in disbelief.
Then His Supremacy cried, “Behold! The moment is upon us!”
Killeen looked up. A thin band hung above the mountain, visible only as a black segment against the glow. It moved. The nearly straight line slowly shortened and grew wider.
Killeen had the sense that he was looking along the length of something far larger than it appeared. The band curved slightly with an almost languid grace. The gossamer glow behind it added to the perception that the band was moving rapidly, sweeping across the sky like a black finger that turned adroitly, serenely. Killeen thought that it looked absurdly like a stick thrown so high that, twirl as it might, it would never come down.
Then the sound of it came. At first Killeen thought he was hearing a deep bass note that came up through the soles of his boots, but then he realized that the slow, gravid sound came pressing down from the sky. It boomed, a single note that frayed into a chorus of shifting overtones, plunging deeper and deeper into frequencies that he felt rather than heard, wavelengths resonant with the entire length of him, so that he listened with his whole body. It was like the beating of great waves from space itself, driven by tides of light to hammer against the small pebbles of planets and stars, washing over them in rivulets.
Something came climbing down the sky.
The slow, rolling notes brought long-reverberating fears. The rock below them had betrayed its ageold promise of solidity and now the strange dark ribbon above opened its own chasm of doubt. Killeen wondered if the thing could be some Cyber device, like the cosmic string. If so, there was no escape. Clearly it was headed down toward them here on the bald, exposed crown of the mountain. He sensed the immensity of the thing without being able to see any detail in it.
Then he began to hear strumming notes that hung in the air. They rose like the sound of wind streaming through tall trees, as though a gale swept the huge thing above, as though it were made of wood and leaf.
His Supremacy was shouting something, religious phrases that ran together and made little sense to Killeen.
“Behold, a sower went forth to sow. And to those chosen it was given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, brought by the sower. And to all things mechanical it was not given!”
He saw suddenly that the ribbon above, expanding gradually, was slowly curving down to point its long, tapered end directly at the ground. At them.
Now that it drew closer, Killeen could make out details lit by the skyglow. Great sinews like cables stretched down, interrupted by knobby bulges, like the vertebrae of an immense spine. It groaned. The thing rushed down the sky at them, emitting vast twangings. Taut strands split the air with great hard cracks. A symphony of snappings and protracted pops sounded, building to a torrent of noise—
—and something smacked into the rock near them. It smashed open, showering Killeen with aromatic juice that caught in his beard. He jerked back, but the smell was pleasant, sweet, cloying.
