Images cascaded in his mind—silent, meditative, embroidered. Section views of Argo. A striking picture of something large and sticky-white, attached to descending, puffy-pale strands.

Then, like a swift slap in the face out of nowhere, it let him go. His mind lost its pervasive, leaden fog. He felt a grimy wind stir his hair.

The cyborg’s massive bulk moved away. It had a long, lizardy tail that ended in an antenna, like the bulb of a leathery flower.

The cyborg simply walked away, moving with surprising speed. Its many legs clacked and hummed.

Killeen limped away across the broken land, sore and tired. Slanting sunlight brought a twilight glow to a far rumpled ridgeline of tawny hills.

He stopped and leaned over to shake his head. Some milky stuff oozed from his ear and his hearing sharpened. Slime dripped from his suit.

The cutting yet spongy-sweet smell of the cyborg’s interior spaces clung to him. He began trotting. Soon his own sweat washed away the alien scent.

For hours he made his way down a crushed valley. The cosmic string hung just above the horizon, its dull ruby-hued curve cutting across the shimmering of a frayed molecular cloud. Killeen remembered the perceptions he had gotten (accidentally?) from the cyborg—something about a temporary halt, stilling the cosmic string, to allow construction to catch up with the supply of vacuum-formed nickeliron. Now magnetic fingers held the loop steady, a smoldering cut in the sky.

Without its bright golden glow the slow coming of sunset allowed the far reaches around Abraham’s Star to display their fitful life. Faint flashes wriggled deep within the glowering banks that hung beyond this cramped solar system. Quick bursts of saffron yellow seethed against a slowly gathering wash of blue. Vibrant pink discharged energies within a cloak of sullen brown dust. Spidery scarlet filaments formed and died and swelled again, as though beads of blood caught the setting sun and glinted with evil beauty.

Killeen wondered if these momentary effervescences that washed through dark sinews of dust were mechworks, or natural storms and tossings brought forth by the constant whirl of matter in the Galactic Center. Or could unimaginable tools like the cosmic string be at work there?

He moved cautiously, using natural cover. There was plenty of it among the upturned stone slabs and jutting hummocks. The cyborg had returned to him all his equipment, even his shortarm rifle. His shanks were fully fueled. His Arthur Aspect commented:

Indeed, they have far greater capacity. Your suit reading says there is more than one hundred kiloJoules stored in each fuel gram—far higher than anything Snowglade tech achieved. The cyborg has outfitted us well.

Killeen moved cautiously, ignoring the tiny pleadings of his Aspects. In this strange world he relied on the instincts of his youth. His hunting senses were still tuned to the subtle graces of Snowglade. Here each detail was slightly skewed. He automatically searched each gully for a trap, sniffed the breeze for oily clues. A distant cone-shaped mountain gave the air an acidic tinge with a long, charcoal plume.

The land needed rest. Everywhere once-proud cliffs had slumped. Layers of rock splayed out like decks of cards tossed aside by a bored gargantuan. Dust covered every ledge and narrow, and fat dirty clouds of it drifted lazily on the horizon.

Yet here and there tinkling springs leaped into the air, frivolous fountains among ancient upturned strata. He stopped by one and let the stream play over his hands. Scooping some into his face, he tasted a distant, rusty echo of waters he had drunk on Snowglade so long ago.

The internal heat liberated from the infall has worked outward from the core. I suspect deep-buried ice deposits are melting, providing this water.

“Uh-huh.”

Killeen was not in a mood for techtalk from Arthur. Still less welcome was the piping voice of Ling. He needed to flee the clogged, solemn pockets of his mind; the cyborg had left a damp, musty smell there.

It was time also to let go the control he had sustained for so long, while the cyborg rummaged through him.

All that while he had run his mind from the top down, keeping consciousness in the foreground, a hard layer which his lower minds could not penetrate. Now he let his inner self emerge and relax, beginning to digest his wrenching experience and make his mind’s peace with them. The simple fact of living, of survival, was a continuous miracle. He gave himself over to it. From Snowglade’s raw battles he knew the sensation well, and relished it. Pain, grief, fear, rage—all had to flourish and ebb and find their places.

Bemused, be released his Aspects—Ling, Grey, Arthur, even the lesser Faces like Bud—and allowed them to play joyfully in a cloistered pocket of him, but without letting their squeaky voices snag his attention. They frolicked as they tasted the chilling air of New Bishop, caught the dusty fragrances. They talked to and through one another, minute presences strumming through his sensory net, streaming by integrating nodes and causative factor points.

So much had happened to him! To avoid crippling disorder, he had to enlist his Aspects and Faces in at least a partial integration of his torments. Without the Family he was an odd scrap wandering this smashed world…but he did not know if the Family lived. He had to keep himself together until he knew, even if that meant years of questing.

So he focused on the crushed forests that he picked his way through, on the gutted plains and ruptured ridgelines that swept beneath his fast-flying boots. The limp was gone, his servos responded again, and now he was gnawingly hungry.

Family Bishop had always been deft foragers, and he called up an old woman’s Face to help him locate edible berries and leaves. She was a cranky sort, full of curt advice. Much of her lore did not apply to this strange world. She found tasty roots but squawked with alarm at the acidic leaves and ellipsoidal fruit he found. Tentative bites told him they were suitable.

He prowled the wrecked forest. Trees had been slapped and mangled by a vastly casual malice. They slanted crazily, exposing their bowls of snaky roots. Leaves of exact, pale green circles piled high in streambeds, and small things skittered deep in them. Damp flats were covered with tracks: three-toed, seven-toed, split-wedged, with some broad smooth pads. Killeen had never seen traces of such large creatures, and they filled him with respect for the past wealth of this place. His Arthur Aspect put in:

All the cyborgs’ work, of course. They emptied the tube we fell through. That kilometer-wide shaft caused the land to fall only the length of a finger here.

“Huh? Take that much rock and metal out, seems like there’d be a big drop here, too.”

Not at all; it is a property of simple geometry. The loss is spread over the much larger surface area of the planet. Watch—

The three-color diagram that sprung into Killeen’s right eye made sense, once he studied it, but even so—“Droppin’ a finger’s length did all this?”

All layers felt it. Seismic adjustments occur unevenly.

“I’ll say.”

Killeen was crossing a clearing. Suddenly a tan fountain sprayed up, showering water and sand on him.

Ah yes. Hydrostatic forces still being released. The vibrations have made the soil here more like a slurry.

Rolling, sea-swell tremors drove Killeen to make for more solid ground, drowning out the Aspect voice in his own panting. He found edible leaves and chewed them down with relish. The ground continued shaking and bucking, as if trying to throw off the scum of persistent life.

Filled for the first time in what seemed like days, he began to feel better once he broke into a steady, loping trot. Over the next line of hills lay a mech city. It had been torn to pieces. Explosions had ripped apart immense factories. Much of the destruction seemed to have come from charges planted inside, as though someone had smuggled in bombs.