NINE

Killeen woke in a puffy languor. He rolled over and found himself beside Shibo. She snuggled spoon fashion against him and he let the moment of lazy pleasure take him. It was a while before the restive minds of his Aspects nibbled at his sweet indolence, bringing forward the questions which he had put aside the night before.

The seed-fruit, that was it. Its aromatic wealth had swarmed up into him, canceling all the vexing voices, smothering his long-trained instincts of vigilance and nervous caution.

Partway through the celebration Shibo had said to him, “Good for you. For us all.” When he had only mildly agreed, she had laughed merrily and pushed his face down into a moist husk of seed-fruit.

The rogue banquet had spun on for hours. The fruit baked and fumed over the Families’ fires. Songs had rolled over the mountainside. Spontaneous, mournful dirges for the newfallen dead had risen from the firesides. The chants roiled with rage and then swerved into bursts of bawdy energy. As the bountiful seed-fruit had its effects, the songs turned to soft, low ballads of the oldtimes. These Families had their former great ages, their sites made sacred by work and sacrifice, their Citadels and lush fields now lost and smashed. Yet they carried on singing into the teeth of fresh defeats.

There had been alcohol, too. The precious small flasks that some carried were much like those the Families of Snowglade had so lovingly fashioned and ornamented. Killeen had made himself pass the fruit-flavored brandy each time it came by him, even though his mouth watered at the heady smell of it. That way lay a steep slope.

His Supremacy had gathered the Families finally, as the general celebration-and-wake subsided into addled fatigue and drunkenness. Killeen had half-listened to the man’s shouted words, hoping they would explain what had happened this night. His Supremacy spoke of the Skysower, and such it was: The seeds came down on each descent.

Religious jargon obscured His Supremacy’s rhythmic incantations. Rolling phrases described the Skysower as the source of humanity’s connection to all natural forces. The Tribe felt itself somehow part of Skysower’s life cycle. The small but commanding man spoke of returning the bountiful gifts with the ripeness of the infinitely fertile soil. The signature of life was its webbed unions, threading All into One. There was much loud, vague talk of the Skysower as the Tribe’s living link to the time of the Chandeliers, as God’s sovereign messenger, as the one living being no mech could destroy. Eating its seeds was a religious act, a holy communion with the high sources of life’s dominion.

“The blood and body of vaster realms was here delivered unto us,” His Supremacy had yelled, his eyes rolling and face streaming with glistening sweat. “Take! Eat! And prepare!—for tomorrow’ s march. For victories to come!”

This news of more planned battles had quieted the Families, damped their aimless celebration. His Supremacy again used the device of lighting up his own skeleton. In the cloudy night the effect was more eerie than in a tent. Killeen had wondered why anyone would keep electrical tech which had so little everyday use. Maybe it came along with some larger craft.

Still, Killeen had seen no such human abilities on Snowglade. The Mantis had displayed similar skills when Killeen was embedded temporarily in its sensorium. Humanity here must have used such craft in the past, perhaps as a tradition to augment leadership. He had to admit that the articulating, luminous bones had a strangely commanding presence. Other Tribes, he reminded himself, were sometimes as distant as true aliens.

Killeen also had great respect for their way of dealing with the unending funereal air that enveloped their retreat. His Supremacy’s closing, gravelly chant:

Sower, sorrower,

Giver, griever

spoke of a long and mournful history that incorporated the Skysower into the fortunes of humanity.

These Families had their casualties in order, including the men and women who simply stared into the distance and had to be told what to do next. They kept the wounded in the care of the old and the young, all those who could not fight cloistered at the center of the Family formation. All this, too, resembled the tactics handed down through time-honored practice on Snowglade, habits that ran marrow-dark, blood-deep.

He lay in the morning’s sharp, chilly air and stared up into the scudding, dusty clouds raised by the quakes. The cosmic string had stopped during the celebration. The mountain still creaked and rumbled, as though trying to shrug off the human mites upon its brow. Between gusting, grimy clouds he caught glimpses of the pale blue above and searched for a thin, swift line. Nothing. The puzzle of the Skysower vexed him still.

He summoned his Grey Aspect and the scratchy voice took a long while in replying.

I believe… must be… pinwheels, they were called… by our historians. Living cables… grown in interplanetary space… even between the stars… or in molecular clouds.

“How they live in space?”

The ancient woman’s voice carried a quality of wonder and regret.

Legend… all lost… do not know why were made. Some partial texts… appear to imply… evolved from asteroid harvesters… or some say from… comet-steering craft… must then date from… at least… Age of the Chandeliers… or even before.

“What’s it doin’ here?”

Forages for planet surface… lays seeds… this is its reproducing phase… must have access to biowealth… not enough in comets… or so was believed by historians. This was long before… era of my… foremothers…

Abruptly there bloomed in Killeen’s left eye a chart of the Skysower’s orbit. He tasted Arthur’s skill in this, but the voice remained Grey’s.

“Comes clean down through the whole atmosphere?”

Killeen could scarcely believe these frames from a stop-motion simulation.

I must say I find this information more than a bit doubtful. Grey must be addled. Consider the engineering difficulties of such a project! The strength of materials required! Further, no planet is a perfect sphere. Bulges would attract any such orbiting cable, causing it to drift in longitude and latitude. Moreover, there must be severe torsional vibrations induced by its passage through the atmosphere. And how can such a dynamical system overcome the drag of the atmosphere? No—it would crash to the ground in short order.

“How you explain what we saw, then?”

I am formulating a model at this moment. It will require work, of course.

“Look, just do the calc’lations, yeasay?” After a pause Arthur’s nettled voice said:

I cannot disprove these vague memories, of course, but I feel called upon to point out that the speed of such a thing would be more than a kilometer per second when it entered the atmosphere. Such—

“Yeasay, that’d make those booms we heard.”

You miss my point. How could a plant withstand such forces? I find it impossible to believe—

Killeen let the faint, often garbled and heavily accented voice of Grey come through.

Many historians… even those of the Chandeliers… thought the same. But we knew that… starfarers spoke of them… pinwheeling over worlds of grass and forest… beneath far suns…

“What for?”

Concept of motivation… in biology… complex. Life seeks to reproduce… to fill as much… of its environment… as it can.

“But this thing, it lives in space.”

Could fill… whole galaxy… in time…

“Seems like mechs’d be better at that. They can take vacuum and cold.”

True… and perhaps in reply to that… somehow… someone… made biological materials… could survive cosmic rays… drift among stars… spread.

“Who?”

Historians of… Chandeliers… spoke of earliest humans at Galactic Center… of the Great Times. Thought… perhaps… pinwheels made then…

“They could do that… I mean, humanity?”

We were… so grand… not like my own age… of pitiful… crude… Arcologies… that were no larger than this mountain… mere tiny things… compared with the Chandeliers….

“Uh… I suppose.” Killeen tried to imagine a city as big as the great slabs of rock that spread so far around him. If those were what Grey considered small, trivial constructions… “The Chandeliers, sure, they were the best we ever did, so—”

Oh no, never… there were grander works… far grander… before… in the Great Times…

Killeen wondered whether he should believe the disconnected rememberings of the little Aspect. Maybe Grey was just repeating old stories. Humanity had subsisted for a long time now on little more than scavenged food and glorious lies.

He shook his head and started to get up, his joints protesting. Time to look after his duties. Then the singular fact hit him once more—that he was no longer Cap’n. Simultaneously he felt elation at the burden lifted and depression at his reduced role in the Family. In all, he decided, they came out even.

Which meant he could forget Family business for a moment. He got up without waking Shibo and went to see how Toby’s wounded hand was doing.