Free Furious Gulf by Gregory Benford Page A

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
    T oby 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