Great Sky River (16 page)

Fornax and Ledroff seemed not to get on well. They did agree that the Families should march. It was risky to remain anywhere
near the Mantis carcass, even after its dismemberment. Passing Marauders could perhaps repair it. And there might be more
than one Mantis.

Killeen felt a vague unease, for no one seemed to have grasped the essential difference between it and the other Marauders.
The Mantis died but rose again. It seemed to have been designed for persistence, for unflagging and remorseless energy and
especially for tracking humans.

Only the narrow human sense of category had lumped it together with the Marauders, as though the Clans were unwilling to grant
it in their language the status of a preserve beyond and above the well-known pillagers of
human destiny. Though they knew of vast mech cities, of bewildering constructions and enterprises unfathomable, something
in the human spirit drew back from assigning a name or emblem to the unreachable heights a Mantis might imply.

No one had ever seen anything like a Mantis scavenging or navvy-policing or hunting the assets of other mech cities. It was
not from a class of laborers. Unlike Marauders, it did no apparent work. It had no known interest but human-hunting. Killeen’s
own father had sighted something resembling the Mantis a few years before and lived to report it. Clannish legend spoke of
various seldom-seen mechs, striding down through centuries of obliterated foraging parties and terrifying moments when many-legged
silhouettes scrambled across a distant horizon. These higher orders left broken lives and widestrewn suredeath, but even more
tangibly now they bequeathed to the Families a tradition of inherited horror, both ghostly and undeniable, living in the dry
sure images of Aspect memory as well as in rumored encounters which few humans ever survived.

It was impossible for Killeen to believe all this could be due to the Mantis.

Killeen’s own father had carefully laid out for his son the whole litany of Marauder types, the slow, resonant precision of
his voice bespeaking the high human price that learning each facet had cost—and, if forgotten even for a terrible moment,
could cost again.

Killeen now knew each Marauder signature from experience in the open ground. But even more strongly he felt it in the remembered
mournful way his father’s voice had lowered as he gave over to his son the ancient folklore and skills.
Thing about aliens is, they’re alien,
he had
said innumerable times. With a gravelly chuckle he would add,
Plan on bein’ surprised.

The most terrible fact of all was that Marauders killed only as a side task. Even Lancers, the vicious, darting, smalleyed
protectors of factories, would attack humans only at the factory site.

Only the Calamity contradicted this rule. Perhaps it was fitting that his father had fallen at the Citadel Bishop, for that
had ended an era. Killeen had not seen his father’s end, had caught only scattershot words over the comm while himself fleeing
with Toby, and heard later the lists of those gone. So the details, perhaps best not known, had mingled with so many other
questions, lingering in the twilight of all things unfathomable.

In the freshening air of halfmorning they harvested the property of the dead. Killeen found himself a bubble pack made of
some shiny mechstuff he had never seen before. It saved him kilos of carrymass and caught snugly at waist and hips and shoulders.
Each of the dead yielded up their compacted food and water flasks, by far the most useful of the mute legacy.

Killeen stood and chewed on a wad of tough gum that Old Robert had been carrying. He watched Cermo fit himself with a carbo-aluminum
set of shank compressors, clasping the mechmetal so it snugged into his flared-out boot cuffs. Others wore makeshift hip shock
absorbers and double-walled helmets, loading themselves up with equipment Killeen full well knew they would spend a week discarding
as it proved heavy or vexing. Killeen preferred to carry food and fluids and forget the extras. Twice he had broken ribs in
falls because he’d worn no chest protector.

While others hammered and fitted, Killeen rested, using only his web-jacket as a pillow, and hooked a derisive eyebrow at
the softrolls some toted to sleep on. He had to stop Toby from trying to load on a cook-kit. It was a marvelous little thing,
subtly shaped from flexmetal by some ancient hand. It would flare into life with bluehot flame. But it gave the boy too much
packmass and Killeen had no idea how to find the fuel for it. He seldom ate cooked food anyway. Marauders could sniff the
fumes halfway around Snowglade, he suspected.

The Families slowly pulled themselves together as morning stretched into noon. Ledroff and Fornax consulted their Aspects
and argued over what route to take. Killeen stayed out of it. Jocelyn invariably backed Ledroff’s ideas, and gave other small
signs that her relationship with Killeen was now cool at best. Killeen shrugged this off, though it hurt a little.

The Families were listless, the emotional backwash of yesterday leaving them pensive and slow. He felt some of it himself.
It mingled with his hangover, from a small transparent vial of aromatic fruit wine he had found on the body of Hedda, a woman
of the Rooks. He had shared it out with three Rooks and Shibo. Even a cup of its amber silkiness held a vicious punch. He
had not sipped much but still he was ashamed that he had fled into drink again. A thickening headache spread across his brow
and burrowed into his eyes. That reminded him of his trouble seeing detail at long distances, so he went in search of Angelique.

She seemed to welcome his asking, and broke out her tools. Killeen had always rather liked the feel of being worked on as
the camp commotion around him gradually
quickened. He relaxed into the softness of humanity, the implicit reassurance of daily ritual.

He was sitting rock-still when he noticed the woman nearby. Angelique was tinkering with the farseer at the back of his neck.
He couldn’t turn his clamped head but he did shift his eyes a fraction. The woman was unnaturally still. He swiveled his eyes
farther. Even this made Angelique grunt and hoarsely swear at him. She was the last Bishop who knew anything about farseers.
She made a few adjustments in his neck, slapped the fleshmetal cover closed, and poked him sharply in the ribs with her fibertool.
Killeen yelped.

Angelique said coolly, “Just checking your reflexes. Seem fine.”

“Like hell.”

“Next time sit still.” Angelique grinned and walked away, her chromed leggings reflecting crisp Denix-light.

Killeen massaged his neck and tested his eyes by closeupping the woman nearby. She was a Rook, young and well muscled. Her
black hair swirled up from her temples like an ebony firestorm, poking jagged teeth into the air. He zoomed in on her eyes
and saw there blueblack threads entwining with crimson blood vessels. She sat stiffly, unmoving, head canted as if she were
listening to someone unseen.

She was. Her lips moved rapidly, soundlessly, as she tried to give voice to the torrent of Aspect talk that raged through
her.

Killeen had not seen anyone so possessed in a long time, not since the retreat from the unfolding disaster of Big Alice Springs.
Drool formed on the woman’s lips. Her left hand began to jump. In a moment a twitching around her right eye seemed to answer
the hand.

Killeen sent a signal to Fornax. It was his job to take care of his own. Toby came ambling over, his pack already mounted,
and stared at the woman. “Jazz, a clowner,” he said.

“Don’t call them that.” Killeen said, watching the woman carefully.

“She’s really goin’.”

“Be okay.”

“Don’ look it.”

“Gotta expect some of this.”

“I don’t’spect it.”

“Aspects die if their hosts die, y’know. They got a righta be scared.”

“What’re they doin’?”

“If they get panicked, they start talking all at once.” Killeen felt awkward apologizing for somebody else’s Aspects.

Toby stared with the unashamed fascination of the young. “Can’t she turn ’em off?”

“Not if they’re all goin’ at once.”

“Why’re her eyes rollin’ up?”

White showing all around her irises. Lips pulled back in a rictus from yellowed teeth.

“Damn! Where’s Fornax?”

Killeen touched the woman’s face. It felt clammy, spongy.

“Lookit her hands.” Toby didn’t know to be worried.

Killeen glanced around, saw no Fornax, nothing but some Rooks looking their way. “They’re taking big chunks of her sensorium.
Living through it.”

“They can see us?”

Killeen hesitated. He didn’t want Toby to have to think about things like this, not added on to everything else that
had happened. But the boy would wonder anyway, now that he’d seen. “Yeasay. When Aspects get like this, they drop the filters
we have. They let everything flood in. Try grab all the world they can, while they can.”

“Jazz…”

“But if they overdo it—”

The woman jumped to her feet. She began to dance frantically, kicking high with her boots, flailing her arms in impossible
arcs. Her feet and hands were in the air at the same time, forming strange arches and rhythms. She crashed to the ground.
Legs flailed and she kept dancing. She kicked wildly against the dirt and stones. By sheer effort she thrust herself upright
again, legs still pumping wildly. Her whole body writhed in absurd fast-time, counterpointing every movement of hands or legs.
Sweat jumped out all over her and yet her face remained impassive. She blinked incessantly as though strobe-cutting her vision,
and her eyes rolled farther into her head. Her mouth opened. A low, guttural song. The notes slid into a moan as she heat-danced
faster, throwing up a cloud of dust.

Toby backed away, startled, his mouth turning down at the corners with dismay and fright. Killeen pushed him away farther
and then leaped at the woman’s back. She twisted, all the while keeping up the mad rapt dance. She flailed at him open-handed.
Her right foot caught him in the knee with a back kick that was part of the frantic syncopation and he went sprawling. He
looked around. Family were running this way, but he could not see Fornax. The woman got back to her feet from sheer force
of her drumming heels. She began to leap higher and higher, using her boots to perform huge, exaggerated pirouettes. Abruptly
a soprano shriek burst from her.

Killeen lunged at her again. This time he caught her as she prepared for another grand leap. He popped open a small capillary
mound on her shoulder. With a wrench he rolled her back over his hip, thrusting his weight against her to stop her from moving.

The capillary socket was an ageold feature of every human. It had been designed directly into the human DNA to give ready
access to the brain. Using it demanded precise tools. Opening it required delicate adjustments. It was the most exacting portal
in the body.

Killeen stuck his finger in it.

She howled, flexed—and went limp.

Toby helped cradle her to the ground. Killeen clapped the capillary shut and was thumbing the tablock back in place when Fornax’s
voice boomed from above. “Don’t open that. Don’t you know—and that’s Ann! One of ours!”

“Yeasay,” Killeen said, getting to his feet. “I won’t open it.”

“You—you’ve
already
popped it.” Fornax looked aghast, his pale lips pulled back above his scraggly beard.

“No choice. Aspects were ridin’ her.”

“You could’ve—”

“Let her hurt herself, pull a muscle, pop a seam. Sure.”

Fornax bristled. “That is a Rook Family matter!”

Killeen saw Fornax was going to stand on principle and in that moment took his measure of the man. “Yeasay, and I apologize.”

“You put your
finger
…”

“Stops ’em, usually.”

“You might’ve caused mental damage!” Fornax was still angry, unable to let go of it right away even in the face of an apology.
Even as his eyes still flashed their
stern admonition, his mouth pursed in momentary inner reflection. Killeen saw that the man let his emotions run on until
his head caught up, put a brake on things. Not a good way to be Cap’n. At least Killeen knew that much.

“Her Aspects got so much spunk, let
them
fix her mental stuff,” Killeen said.

“Well now, I—”

Toby burst in,
“You
weren’t here. Had do somethin’!”

Killeen patted him on the shoulder, pleased and yet not wanting Fornax to get the idea the boy was a smartmouth. “Rooksay
wins here, Toby.”

Toby persisted, “But it—”

A long, steaming moment passed between the two men.

“Thanks for your help,” Fornax said gruffly, suddenly aware of others watching. “Both you,” nodding at the boy.

Killeen touched his forehead in way of tribute. Fornax had made a good, quick change, showing the sort of control people expected
of a Cap’n. He decided Fornax wasn’t half-bad. The march to come would be a finer, truer test. Still, he could see that Ledroff
and Fornax might weather and grow into the kind of Cap’ns the Families so desperately needed. Neither of them was worth Fanny’s
left thumb, but then, who was?

They marched hard for two days. On the open, sun-washed plain their only safety lay in fluidity. Ledroff and Fornax kept the
Families separated into two triangular wedges with three fore-scouts, four flanking, and three trailers. Marauders had a history
of attacking from the rear flank, often using as approaching cover a ridgeline just crossed by the trailers.

They headed inward, toward the apparent center of the
Splash. They had only crude navigation and no one knew how old this Splash was. Yet as they skip-walked across sloped valleys
the evidence gathered about them. Brambles gave way to thick-leaved bushes. Dry scrub slowly ebbed. Tufts of tan sprouted
in the shadows. Streambeds yielded moist soil only a single spadeful down.

Midafternoon of the second day, the Families were beginning subtly to intermingle. They traded encouragement and information
about easier routes with the ease of worn veterans. Killeen could feel a slow melding. Perhaps the genetic and historical
basis for keeping Families separate would recede before the tide of necessity and diminished numbers. But this was a detail,
compared to their seldom-spoken yet always-felt dilemma. They sought refuge.