Quath tried to fire at Beq’qdahl’s approaching image… and could not.
She swiveled her antennae. The companion who had shouted welled up in her sights. She sent a crisp bolt into the target. Its upper carapace blew to tumbling fragments.
Beq’qdahl did not even cry out in dismay. She ducked into a hollow, as though she had expected conflict all along. Quath lost sight of all the podia as they dodged and ran and threw out conflicting aura-clues.
She resisted the desire to fire at momentarily exposed targets. They could triangulate her that way. If she kept her silence, though, she could hold them off. They could not reach her here, she knew, across so much exposed ground.
Taunts came to her as they realized their predicament: Sphincter-sharer! Orifice for all!
Their insulting warblings dwindled as she relegated them to a submind. If they slipped and said anything revealing, this smaller facet would alert the full Quath-self.
Now she had one great goal. The urgency of it surged through her like the sudden, biting, inexplicable sandstorms of the ancient
podia homeworld. Something primordial seized her imagination, a fevered desire that went far beyond her duty to the Tukar’ramin
or even to the distant, mysterious Illuminates. Quath had to seek the Nought.
ELEVEN
“Family Bishop will carry out the flank attack,” His Supremacy said dramatically.
The morning sun seemed to press against the tattered walls of the large tent. There would be heat in this day down the slopes of the mountain, but up here the tent still held the cold of the night. The Cap’ns and underofficers of the assembled Tribal Families stood at parade rest before His Supremacy, who paced back and forth.
Killeen remembered the huge desk which His Supremacy had lounged behind the first time Killeen saw him. No doubt it had been abandoned by the baggage train. Even the commandeered mech transports had trouble getting up the mountainside, and no team of men could have pushed the desk so far uphill. Still less likely was the possibility that anyone could be induced to try.
“I shall direct the main body, of course. After the Bishops have diverted the enemy, I shall strike the final, mortal blow.” The man stopped, stamped his feet, and looked searchingly at his officers. “Understood?”
Jocelyn, standing beside Killeen, said, “We Bishops are honored at being given first chance at the enemy.”
His Supremacy’s face, which had been compressed with concentration, smoothed. “You are being accorded an opportunity to make up for your regrettable performance in the most recent action.”
“Rest assured we’ll do well,” Jocelyn answered, bowing her head slightly.
His Supremacy’s eyes showed pleasure at this. Then the eyes went blank as a rapt look came over him. “This is the opportunity we have awaited. The foul Cyber demons are concentrated in the broad valley to the east, as our scouts have shown. With their attention directed down the valley, they will certainly bunch up as they move to attack the Bishops. At that moment we can mass our fire. Once we make a breach, all the Tribe can flow through it. The Bishops can then disengage and join us in the next valley, beyond the eastern ridge.”
The Cap’n of the Sebens said, “How we know we can hit ’em hard enough? Could be plenty Cybers there, and we’d—”
“The more the better,” His Supremacy said vehemently. “They will be dense on the ground and vulnerable to directed fire. We can hit them even more easily from the mountain as we come down.”
“Yeasay!” another Cap’n called. “More we hit them, fewer we have to fight through later.”
The entire tent rocked with the shouted assent of the other officers. His Supremacy nodded, rewarding them with a thin smile. “We do not know their numbers, but we know our cause is holy. We shall win through!”
Killeen could not stop himself from saying, “There’re twenty-eight.”
Complete silence. His Supremacy’s eyebrows arched. “Oh? You have patrolled the valley?”
“Naysay. But I… I can tell how many there are.”
“You see through Divine revelation?” His Supremacy seemed to be asking a genuine question, as though this was a plausible source of knowledge.
Killeen caught a significant look from the sharp-nosed woman who was Cap’n of the Sebens. She shook her head very slightly.
“No, I’ve gotten a good count by watchin’ the valley.”
Killeen saw now the fixed look in His Supremacy’s eyes and guessed its cause. Of course—the man believed himself God, and so any other person who claimed a direct line to the infinite would be a rival. Killeen thought of the men and women spitted and left in the sun. Perhaps some of them had claimed a special role, to their misfortune.
“Very good. But I should think that even a person of your little experience and lack of battlefield skills could see the error in your statement. You count only the enemy who reveal themselves. We know that the demons often burrow below ground, as doctrine says they must, since they are agents of the underworld Therefore, you have counted only a fraction of them.”
“Ah, yeasay, Your Supremacy,” Killeen said.
“I apologize for this officer’s outburst,” Jocelyn put in.
“We understand,” His Supremacy said grandly.
“Be assured, Supremacy, that we Bishops shall carry the fight hard and sure,” Jocelyn added firmly.
“Very good. There is no need to stay here, caged in by these demons. Skysower will not soon return to this mountaintop, my computational Aspects tell me. It spreads its sacred wealth around the girdle of our globe, a hundred descents in a single day. Our nourishment complete, we now fulfill our exalted mission.”
The man lectured as though speaking to children, his eyes focused up into the tent top.
“Supremacy, we wish your battle benediction,” the Cap’n of the Niners said in a closing ritual.
Killeen kneeled with the rest and received the windy, singsong speech. It contained references to battles lost and cities fallen long ago, all meaningless to him but somehow ringing with the same sad truth that he had heard in the orations at Citadel Bishop as a boy. No matter that this Tribe had clutched at this queer little man in their desperation—their pain was perhaps even greater than those on Snowglade had suffered. Here humanity had enjoyed what it thought was a kind of victory over the mechs, actually destroying cities—only to have the more deadly Cybers arrive and finish the job. To be lifted and then dashed again did double damage. Perhaps this finding refuge in religion, and in one tyrannical Elder, was understandable.
As Killeen left the tent he caught the sidelong glances of others and understood what a close call he had survived. His Supremacy brooked no competition.
He had felt the urge to tell them of the odd perceptions that shot through him incessantly now. It was like being swallowed whole, gripped in a moist mucous cloud. In lacy filaments he saw shifting dun-colored terrain. Huge Cybers ran quickly through it, their shiny skins sprouting projections. Snatches of percussive talk came in a hollow, staccato language.
Killeen knew the valley they would try to cross, knew it in a deep, skin-tingling sense. He could close his eyes even now and feel the taste of Cybers moving through it. But how?
He thought he knew. What the answer implied, though, he could not guess.
