“It was about mechs, for sure,” Killeen went on. “And this ‘she,’ a great leader—they took her away somewhere.”

Cermo’s brow wrinkled doubtfully. “How’s that?”

“Plain as starshine,” Killeen said, getting up with muscular energy and pacing before the screen. “See? This ‘she’ ‘voyaged on to place immutable’ after her ‘bodily form evaped’—evaporated? She’ll ‘rise as shall we all who plunge inward to the lair and library.’ They left the Chandelier, at least some of them. And went somewhere else, this ‘lair’ where they’d be safe.”

Cermo nodded reluctantly. “Yeasay, I remember a tomb. As for the rest . . .”

“It’s obvious!” Killeen paced quickly. “Look, I recorded it using one of my Aspects. Here—”

On a screen flashed:

He,

on whose arm fame was inscribed, when, in battle in the vasty countries, he kneaded and turned back the first attack. With his breast he parted the tide of enemies—those hideous ones, mad-mechanical and unmerciful to the fallen.

There was more, and Killeen rattled on, reciting passages and comparing them with the inscription they had seen near a tomb, and none of it made any particular sense to Toby. Some, like He: Who led Humankind from the steel palaces aloft, probably referred to the Chandelier Era. Others, such as He: by the breezes of whose prowess the southern ocean is still perfumed, must have come from a time when there were oceans on Snowglade, not just the lakes he knew, that shrank every year. But there were plenty, like He: Who set forth Humanity in the names of the Pieces, that made no sense at all. And his Isaac Aspect told him that even the folk of the Arcologies were mystified by such wordy relics.

Killeen paced and talked, paced and talked. When his famous ardor came on him like this, he had a hypnotic energy. But Toby could see a quiet frenzy building in his father and did not like the signs.

Cermo intervened, voice smooth and soothing. “Could be, lotsa big fat maybes in there—but that’s not the point, Cap’n, ’member?”

Killeen blinked and took a deep breath. “I . . . suppose not. I had hoped that the engraving would give us some way to deal with this tight spot we’re in.”

Toby tried to keep his voice light and businesslike. “What spot?”

Cermo said to his Cap’n, “We should hold a Gathering.”

“Yeasay. I can present our choices to the Family—”

“What spot?”

Cermo said, “The explosion in the Chandelier, it was the energy source for a pulse of radiation. We thought it was meant to catch us, but could be the emission was the true intent.”

Toby kept his face blank to cover his surprise, the way his father sometimes did. “I didn’t pick up anything, on any comm band.”

Killeen thumbed up a spectrum plot on a wall screen. “No wonder. It was far up in frequency, way above anything we can see. Gamma rays. And beamed—Argo picked it up, just barely.”

“Beamed which way?” Toby persisted.

“Outward. Toward some of those places Quath told us to avoid.” Killeen gazed somberly at his son.

Toby felt a burst of sympathy for his father. Killeen had taken so much on faith, and now that would all be tested. They had followed Quath’s advice ever since their long flight began from Trump. They had gone to that world hoping to make it be New Bishop, thinking they would settle there. But they had been driven out.

And the Family had not even protested when members of Quath’s species had followed them—though at a distance, propelling forward a huge glowing instrument of their own gigantic craft. It was somewhere behind them, acting as a kind of rear guard that nobody quite understood. They had swooped and dodged to get this close to True Galactic Center, avoiding obstacles Quath found in the confusing star maps. All on faith, flying nearly blind. Without knowing what strange strategies would work here.

“Burglar alarm,” Toby blurted.

Cermo asked, “Huh? The emission?”

“Beamed at somebody who wanted to know when humans returned here,” Toby said with more certainty than he felt—a skill he thought of as adult, manly.

Killeen nodded. “Mechs.”

“Why not just leave a bigger bomb?” Cermo said. “Kill us total.”

Toby spread his hands. “Maybe they thought they’d catch us.”

Killeen shook his head. “They master enormous energies. If they wanted to kill, they’d have done the job.”

“So why’d they want to catch us?” Cermo asked.

Toby said quickly, “And the explosion, maybe it was just to make us think we had gotten away, that we were okay.”

Killeen pursed his lips, still pacing tensely. “Mechs think we’re pretty dumb. Could be.”

“Something else, too,” Toby said, listening to Shibo. “That bomb spoke our kind of talk. Not this ancient lingo.”

Killeen stopped pacing and regarded his son with interest. “Yeasay—it didn’t rummage around among dialects. Something told it how we talk.”

“So . . . they’re coming to scoop us up?” Real fear edged Cermo’s words.

“Depends on what level mech we’re dealing with. The stupid rat-catcher type they used against us on Snowglade—”

“They’re not subtle enough,” Toby said. “But the Mantis . . .”

Killeen and Cermo exchanged a glance. The Mantis had already loomed into legend for Family Bishop, the most intelligent mech they had ever met. It had hounded them, using its elaborate electronic illusions. They had thought it was just a better killer, but the Mantis itself showed them, in a horrifying moment, how it used humans in its “works of art.”

“Y’know,” Toby mused, “Quath told me once that the mechs, they don’t send their best down to kick us around on the planets. They just use the dregs.”

Cermo bristled. “They send ’em, we kill ’em. Mechs big, mechs small, don’t matter.”

Killeen stared off into space, and Toby knew he was seeing again the long history of humiliations Family Bishop had suffered at the hands of mechs. Together they had witnessed human bodies used by mechs as biomachine parts. As lubricants. As decorations. As bloody, twisted chunks of what the Mantis thought was beautiful.

“Yeasay, Cermo—they could be coming to scoop us up,” Killeen said. “Or worse.”

“We got to run,” Cermo said.

“Yeasay.” Killeen turned to a wall screen. It spilled with swirls of brooding dark and smears of blazing luminescence. The plane of the galaxy, alive with deadly energies and shrouded histories.

“But where?”

SIX

The Song of Electrons

Toby stood on the hull and gazed out, through the gliding stellar majesty toward True Center. The entire galaxy spun about a single cloud-shrouded point. So much brimming brilliance, made to waltz by a hub of remorseless dark.

Already the ship was gaining momentum, cutting across shrouded dust lanes and bringing fresh splashes of light into view. Toby felt a smoldering anger at the mechs who were approaching on blue-white exhaust plumes, driving Argo to flee. They were relentless, riding their lances of scalding plasma, an age-old enemy that would hound down any remnant of humanity. They had been just a light-day away, hiding somewhere in the churning murk.

Even in this swirl of stars there was little chance to escape. Argo’s long-range scanners had picked up mech exhaust images coming from several directions—cutting off the easy orbits, the ones out and away from the Center.

So their trajectory was being pressed ever-inward. Toward the black hole that squatted at True Center. A trap.