<That is what it means to be a Philosoph?>
*This you must discover. The genes express themselves in many ways.*
Quath felt empty, adrift. <To be so related to such Noughts… many of them I have already killed….>
*Quath, I master great weighty arrays of information, and have a bounty of technical skills far transcending yours—but I do not and cannot have the queer talent you manifest.*
<But… what does it mean, to be related to these mites?>
*I can venture no answer.*
<Who can?>
*You.*
<No, there are others,> Quath said with sudden conviction. <The Noughts.>
THIRTEEN
It was at this moment, Killeen thought, when he could see the fight but was not yet in the middle of it, that fear rushed up into his throat and clamped it shut.
No matter that he had flung himself into a hundred conflicts before—all the old sensations returned. Fear of injury. Of death. Here, to be hurt badly was the same as dying, but slower—carried in the baggage train, suffering lurches and slow bleeds.
More acutely, Killeen felt the piercing fear of failure. To falter now would render pointless everything they had attempted. If they lost, their long pursuit of a shelter for humanity, any shelter, was vanquished and would never return.
He knew how to loosen the tight grip that choked his breathing. Once engaged, training and instinct would take over. But as his eyes searched the dry broken plain, flickering through the spectrum, there was still some trifling chance to back out. The rational side of him pleaded for a reason, any reason, to halt, to reconsider. After all, he had been left here by Cap’n Jocelyn, in charge of the reserves. Yesterday she had rightly claimed the overlay chips which gave a Cap’n a complete view of all Family movements.
And a few moments before she had taken the reserves under her own direct command. Cermo’s advance was stalled below. Jocelyn evidently wanted to break the impasse by quickly throwing more into the head of the attack. She had led them off to the right, down a narrow ravine which afforded good cover from the prickly, long-range shots of the Cybers.
She had pointedly left Killeen nothing to do. Very well. He could join in the attack as the Family plunged down the long slopes of the mountain, into the confusing welter of foothills.
Or he could simply stay here. So said the thin, hoarse cry of judgment. If he fell back he could provide cover for the Bishops in the Tribal baggage train. That, too, was a vital role….
He had not felt this way in years. It was momentarily, darkly delicious to skirt responsibility, take the easy way. Safer, too.
He sighed. He was a different man now. Not wiser, maybe, but aware of how he would feel if he carried out such a fantasy.
Wistfully he aimed downslope. He could never hang back while those he loved fought.
He found a fleeting Cyber target and fired. No sign of a hit, but that did not matter. His training carried him forward, running and dodging now, and he let it.
Family Bishop was spread over the entire belly of the mountain. They moved down through the forests of spindly trees that thronged the slopes. Slanted afternoon sunlight cast confusing shadows. His Supremacy had insisted on launching the action even though not many daylight hours remained; his Divine judgment had, of course, prevailed over his officers’ advice.
Killeen had watched the valley beyond from a group of fat boulders above the tree line. As he entered the woods he glanced up through the curious umbrellalike arches of the trees and searched the sky. No sign of any craft. That was a relief. Cybers seemed never to copy the mech advantage in the air.
“Cermo! Bear left. You can bring enfilading fire down through that notch in the hill.”
—Yeasay,—Cermo answered on comm.—Taking some IR bursts here. Nobody hurt.—
“No point getting blinded. Damp down.”
—Already have,—Cermo replied primly.
Killeen reminded himself to let the officers have free rein. Jocelyn was Cap’n, even though Cermo and Shibo gave her only grudging acceptance. In the heat of the fight, the officers would probably still react to his suggestions as though they were commands.
He ran through the thick forest with a long, loping stride. Rich loam absorbed his footfalls. The dense woods seemed to listen for the battle with a hushed expectancy. Fresh power reserves for his leggings gave him a buoyancy that carried him downslope quickly, not even bothering to seek cover. The only useful information they had learned from the previous, disastrous battle was that Cybers still devoted a lot of their energies to microwave pulses. Mechs saw the world principally in the microwave and perhaps the Cybers thought humans did, too. Or else, he reminded himself, they thought so little of their human opponents that they did not bother to refit their weaponry.
He broke from cover above the foothills as hoarse calls resounded through the comm. Jocelyn cried,—Form the star!—to the main body. He saw her moving quickly across a barren scarp. The reserves were mere scampering dots at this range.
Turning to his left, he watched Cermo’s party firing steadily through the notch in a steep hillside. Landslides had opened jagged opportunities in this terrain and Cermo was skilled at making use of them.
But Cybers could do the same, he noted, as a distant figure crumpled. Killeen blinked three times and into his left eye jumped an electromag amplification. A crackling blue swarm was fading around the fallen Family member, signature of a microwave halo strike.
—Dad!—
The shrill quality in Toby’s voice forked sudden fear into Killeen. Could the fallen figure be—but no, Toby’s signifier flickered in an arroyo farther east. “Yeasay,” Killeen answered.
—Shibo’s cut off downslope.—
“Where?”
—Can’t tell. Cybers’ve thrown up some static screen.—
Killeen scanned for Shibo and found no answering color-coded trace. The center of his expanded sensorium was a gray sheet. “Hold still.”
He set off at full tilt, damping his sensorium to the absolute minimum as he plunged downslope. Amid the brush and stubby trees insects sang merrily, oblivious to the stinging death that arced through the air.
Toby was crouched at the rim of a narrow gully. As Killeen landed on loose gravel, a microwave burst reached down toward them, then dissipated into a hiss.
