“Flee, foul agent!—or we will crush you!” His Supremacy put all his considerable throaty power into the jeering shout.

You venture to clash with me? To crush a being made of the most tenacious fields? My magnetic skirts could sweep you to dust, little worrisome grub. The discharge of my merest idle thought would wreak charring violence through a thousand such as you. But no matter—I cannot be bothered to fathom the mire of vile scents and squashed angles that make up your fledgling race. I cannot rummage through a legion of such, all to deliver a message of muddled meanings. I go.

The roiling seethe began to ebb from the heavens. The pressure in Killeen’s sensorium trickled away.

“No! Wait!”

He leaped in the air, arms flung up as if to grab the retracting lines of blue flux high above them. “I’m Killeen! Here!”

The lacy pattern of radiance paused and rippled. Killeen watched it shoot fresh feelers downward, following the arcing magnetic field lines of the planet.

So you are. I sense your flat odor and slanted self. Good—I tire of this pursuit, this obligation. I received this injunction from a power which sits farther in toward the Eater than do even I. Though my head can reach up into the realm of cool, sluggish worlds such as this, my many feet stand upon a crisply ordered plane of storm-cut plasma, the accretion disk that hotly feeds the appetite of the Eater. From far inside my tossed realm comes this frame of questions which I now ask.

Killeen watched His Supremacy as these words poured down. The man’s anger seemed bottled up, making his eyes bulge and lips protrude. His jaw waggled to the side, back and forth. But he gave no orders. Killeen stepped clear of his Family so his sensorium would be as clean as he could make it.

“Tell me—last time, you said somethin’ calling itself my father was there. What—

The first is a question. How is Toby?

Any doubts Killeen had harbored about the meaning of that strange sentence, years before, now vanished. Who but Abraham would ask first about his grandson?

“He’s fine—growin’ like a weed. Standin’ right here beside me. See if you can pick up his—”

I perceive a weaker aura, yes, somewhat similar to yours. I shall relay it backward, down magnetic lines which spiral into the Center. It shall be refracted into the tangle of geometries where something darkly awaits. There is a spray of antimatter near my footpoint, arising from some artificial means, and thus I cannot guarantee precise transmissions of such flimsy data as your minute auras.

“My father’s there with you? Tell him we need—”

Not here with me, no; all I ken is the assertion that he lived farther in, whirling somewhere in time-racked eddies.

“Lived? Does he live still now?” Killeen’s voice tightened.

Forms such as yourself seem to lurk there, for purposes not revealed to me. I cannot tell if that particular unit persists. The presence there of such inconsequential, primitive entities is a greater mystery than anything in your messages, little mind, but I shall not trouble you with issues you cannot comprehend. Attend you, then: The next message is Apply the Argo ship’s codes to the Legacies.

Killeen shouted, “Legacies? But we’ve lost—”

Silence, small mind.

“Our ship is gone!”

Unconcerned, the electromagnetic entity above stirred as though restless. It cast auroras of shimmering green into the nearby clouds, pressing them back so that the whole vault of the sky opened. The high cirrus banks yawned, as if to bite the somber sky beyond.

The messages I am enjoined to deliver are not simple statements, but rather microscopic intelligences—fragments of the mind that sent them. Thus I must wait for this speck to conjure up some reply to you. It now says, Then you are lost.

“But that’s—”

His Supremacy shouted, “Cap’n of the Bishops! I command you to desist. Converse with this agent of corruption will confuse all our Tribe and bring error to us all.”

Killeen glanced at His Supremacy and waved him away, trying to think. His father—

“I warn you!” His Supremacy’s voice gained menace. “Dealing with—”

“Cermo! Perimeter star!”

The Bishops broke rank and reformed into a well-spaced, outer-directed phalanx. The air sang as their sensoria focused outward, crisping the tangled fields of the other Families.

Killeen said levelly, “I’ll brook no interference. This is no devil or God-killer. Leave us be!”

“I command—” But His Supremacy broke off the sentence as he felt the impact of the massed, merged Bishop field.

Weapons came down from shoulders, clicked on, pointed at primary targets—beginning with His Supremacy.

“We Bishops require a moment. Hear me! I invoke the ancient rules, the first and most revered among them being Family privacy.”

The valley buzzed with unease. The other Families made no move. His Supremacy clenched his fists but only watched as Killeen turned his sensorium back skyward.

I was not to deliver these portents until you were free of the grasp of mechanical intelligences. That was why I did not speak to you on your ship. It is inhabited by mechanical forms which should not receive the key to the Legacies.

“Argo’s got mechs aboard?” Killeen had known some small forms still evaded capture after the successful human mutiny on Snowglade, but he had thought they were powerless and insignificant.

Mechanicals are pervasive. They are the dust that hangs between the suns.

There was almost a note of sympathy in the brooding voice that pressed through Killeen’s sensorium.

“Look, is there any way my father can help us? We’re trapped here. Some other lifeform’s ripping the whole planet apart. No way we can get free, unless somethin’ powerful as you aids us.”

I am a messenger, not a savior.

“Tell my father, if he’s still alive. Send us help!”

The small mind I can interrogate sends wails of remorse, if that is any comfort to you. But nothing else. My powers are not at its disposal, in any case.

The colorful traceries began to fade.

“Don’t leave us here!”

Farewell.

“No!”

But it was gone.

Killeen slumped to the ground with sudden fatigue. A heavy depression settled into him like a cloud and he panted as if he had been running. Color seeped from the world.

Shibo tugged him up. Hands supported him. Toby put an arm around his shoulders and brought Killeen forward. The Bishops still held their defensive star formation. The air was tense as the other Families studied them, hands hovering not far from weapons.

Shibo said, “It will return. Don’t give up.”

Killeen gazed around at the bleak, dusty plain and the ranks of ragged humanity that filled it. “Right. Right,” he said automatically, without believing the words.

His Supremacy’s voice boomed, “We have frightened it, be sure of that. The being fled our show of solidarity before it!”

Killeen shook his head and said nothing. He expected instant retribution from His Supremacy but the swarthy man merely glared. An empty, glazed look came into his eyes.

His Supremacy turned from the Bishops and began intoning more of the ancient litany. Killeen made a sign and the Bishops relaxed from the star formation, making straight ranks again. But the edgy tension on the plain, though muted, did not go away.

Beside Killeen, Toby whispered, “That guy won’t forget.”

Besen added, “Maybe that sky thing scared him. Sure did me.”

“Hard, scarin’ a man who’s already God,” Shibo said wryly.

Killeen listened to the rest of the service numbly, the words passing like raindrops sliding on a windowpane.

When the ceremony was finished he led the Bishops from the plain. They stepped smartly, though their eyes were hollow and distracted. He registered the bitter whisperings from the other Families. Some called taunts and threats. He let it all slip by. He was remembering his father’s face.