Through such constructions, equally plant and fleshy, we probe the aesthetic levels of your kind. I include possibilities not admitted by the random forces of your evolution. It is interacting, transphylum art.

“Killeen told me that once. You’re an artist.” Toby laughed.

True. Thus you shall live in the hands of greater forces. Only I, artist and conservator, can make this possible for you, through timely harvesting.

“We’d like to keep ourselves the way we are. Getting planted in your art, well, that’s not what I had in mind.” He said this mildly so as not to tip off the Mantis, and because something was happening to his sensorium and he did not understand it.

To harvest is to sow.

“And that’s what you’ve got in mind for me?”

—like logs his legs thumped against the timestone. Cold air rasped in his throat and he could not get enough to make the legs move faster, faster—

Not yet. This little discourse has aided me in my plans for future projects, but for now I am carrying out the precepts embodied by my allied intelligences. I must help in the gathering of enough Bishop primates to test for this buried knowledge.

“What’s that mean?”

I must bring you to a spot where we collect your lineage. We shall assemble your generations.

He thought fast. He could feel his legs pumping harder and they were real, not the intricately slick touch of the sand-sea.

One part of him was plunging ahead. Gasps rasped in his throat.

Another fraction bent over and studied the sand. Picked up a handful. Grains. Mica winked at him. Between the grains a blur. Not quite defined. As he noticed the slight smearing, the image sharpened. The Mantis had increased definition. Now its world was a bit more distinct. Even the smallest grain now had clear edges.

An artist, tidying up its work.

Running. Chest heaving, a thumping in his ears.

He knew he had to find some way to deflect the moment.

The jerky lattice of rods had an eerie, hovering presence as the Mantis paced among the garden of bleached bones. It had smashed the grinning skulls flat. Along the sand dune wave played strange shadows of the mind behind all this.

Toby struggled between two worlds. He could not sort out his own senses.

—so hard to move his legs now, arms pumping strong to keep himself going against a blunt pressure that wanted to stop him from reaching the green moistness. Close now but the pain—

I am sure you understand the necessity. I assure you that when my allied minds have made proper use of you to clear up this ancient and bothersome matter, I shall harvest you with the attention to detail and genuine concern which characterize my best work. Though I have my critics among these same allies, they do not question my reverence for the ancient and lesser forms such as yourself. Rest secure that—

—he reached the inky line of tall trees. Cool, moist.

No phony sand waves. No mech made of rods.

He remembered the kids playing with their fake digital worlds so long ago back in the marketplace and laughed, out of control as he crashed into the shadowy recesses—

Solid. Real. He reached out tentatively. Touched.

The canopy of trees and cabled, spreading parasite-webs was thick, so that the air was damp and dim. He went into a silence impermeable. It was made thicker and not broken by the soft bell notes of birds and flying rats. By the tick of descending fronds. By the soft thump of falling fruit. By the high caterwaul of vine-dogs.

He did catch from far above the ratcheting squawks of something big and angry, heard it hopping and thrashing among lofty limbs. He was uneasy at his own intrusion, moving more quietly so as not to wake the spirits of this place. Dust spun in cathedral light, long yellow light shafts that cut down from on high. He found underfoot a silent procession of something like ants, except that they had tiny tails. When he studied them they formed a curling pattern and held it, a dark ribbon. Slowly it dawned on him that they were signaling him, writing a message with themselves—but he did not know how to answer. He waved helplessly and went on, careful to not step on them.

Somehow the Mantis was not here. He had escaped into a wedge of time that might end at any instant. Why?

He slipped by huge, taut webs, wondering what got caught there. And what came to harvest the prey. Bright fruit swelled in the chinks of the canopy, dabs of color congealing like blobs, in air so thick it looked green.

—and back came the Mantis, rushing hard against his mind.

I lost you. Something—I do not know—something—is making it difficult—

In Toby’s sensorium he now sensed the Mantis far above in the esty tube of this Lane. He felt also around him the stresses that cut and frayed the Mantis’s speech.

Vagrant tensions working, blunt and voiceless. Converging.

SIX

Eating the Storm

The violence began as a flicker.

Down the long bore of the tube eased a sun-yellow trickle. At the vanishing point where the green tunnel narrowed into misty confusion the ray ebbed, flowed, seemed to Toby like a distant campfire. Yet something prickly crept into his mind.

He stood in pale darkness. No good to run anymore.

Clouds thinned above and showed the naked other side of the Lane. A bowl of clay-red timestone suddenly beamed down remorseless heat. Spirits seemed to edge forth from the green around him. Snaps and wriggling noises.

His sensorium jumped, alert, sweeping the area.

Nothing. The silence was empty. He probed the thick, moist forest to his right. It curved up into a misty distance, curling into the sky. When it became simply a filmy green it broke at last on outjuts of brown rock halfway up.

A bird landed on a limb nearby. Toby glanced at it and it said, “Help.”

Toby blinked. “Uh . . .”

The bird had wings and feet and a beak but was not a bird. Its face held huge eyes and a fleshy, pouting mouth below the beak—which was more like a nose, lemon-yellow and pointed. Even as he registered this the face worked with fevered intensity, shifting from a frown to a grimace to a fleeting smile. “I need help,” the mouth said with a perfect Bishop accent.

“Who—what—are you?”

“This place, this time, which is urgent to your needs.” The whole bird fidgeted, feathers twitching, wings vibrating like thin sheets, feet quickly shuffling on the rough branch.

“Urgent to . . . ?” No time for mysteries. “Look, there’s a Mantis up there. I need a place to hide.”

“The opposite is needed.” The bird’s beak pointed to the ground. “You must open, not close.”

“Open what?”

“A door. Essences need entrance to this esty. Quickly!”

“Uh, how?”

The bird took a step on its branch, wings fluttering. “Do not think we are neglectful of you. We do hope you live to help.”

Toby snorted. “Thanksay, friend. But what the hell—”

Into his sensorium cascaded a wash of sensations. Images. Instructions. The sense was so vital and full that he moved instantly, unbuckling his tools with one hand while he scuffed up leaves, looking for the right spot. There. Exposed esty.

Abruptly, the furnace glare above clicked off. Solid night. Where was the Mantis?

He worked in the utter solid black.

Torch, laser, microwave bursts. He could not tell how the esty responded, except for a momentary red glow.