Great Sky River (24 page)

“You’ve got my habits,” Hatchet said with gusto. “Like everything strong and in plenty. Right?”

“Um.”

“Thought more ’bout that Mantis?”

“Some.”

“Why you figure there were brains in that navvy?”

Killeen slurped tea and squinted. “Mantis must’ve done it.”

“How you figure?”

“We killed all the midminds it had in its main body, back when it killed so many. We didn’t guess it was using navvys with
midminds, too.”

Hatchet’s eyes widened with surprise. “It does?”

“Sure. That navvy we rousted and got burned by—that was no accident.”

Hatchet did not respond to this. Instead—and unlike either Fornax or Ledroff—he simply sat and thought for a while, feeling
no need to keep their conversation going or pretend to have understood everything. Killeen liked that. Hatchet was large and
sat in a brown cloth deck chair of distended and misshapen form which seemed to have molded itself to him. He rocked forward,
putting his big wide hands on his knees, and said finally, thoughtfully, “It’s changing itself. Adaptin’.”

Killeen nodded. “Looks like.”

“Not like the other Marauders.”

“Double naysay that.”

It was a relief to be able to blurt it out this way, his
stored-up and undefined misgivings. Ever since Fanny had suredied Killeen had felt a gathering vague unease about the Mantis
and what it meant. The thing was no legend now, but a very real, if unseen, force.

Hatchet slapped his hands together, the hard clay walls reflecting the sharp clap and concentrating it. Killeen had been so
long in the open the sound came as a surprise, intense and startling.

“Just like that, eh? It changes its pattern. When you and Family Rook met, it surekilled plenty you.”

Killeen frowned. “Yeasay?”

“But now three Families meet and it does nothing.”

So Hatchet had seen it. “That navvy means it’s nearby.”

Hatchet nodded. “It knows of Metropolis. If not before, it does now.”

Killeen did not like this line of thought, but since he had been over it before he could scarcely refuse to follow the idea
to its conclusion. “So why didn’t it attack right away?”

Hatched mused, his big lower lip thrust out in a pensive unconcern for appearances. “It may not have known we were here. Wants
to look us over a li’l first. Or maybe it’s afraid of coming up against a defended position. We got plenty mech traps ’round
here.”

“Didn’t seem scared last time,” Killeen said dryly.

Hatchet’s eyes narrowed. “You tryin’ say something?”

“Naysay. Just that I can’t fashion it hanging back.”

“Other Marauders don’t want come this way, why should it? We’re smack in the middle of the Splash. Wetlands. Why, over south
there’s even marsh. Marauder treads’d sink up over the rims there.”

“Could be.”

“Why else’d they stay away?”

Hatchet was getting irritated now. Killeen tried to figure why. He knew something of clay and mud from watching his uncles
make spot repairs at Citadel Bishop. This new Citadel was no more than a couple of years old, judging from the age of the
plastering on the better walls. He guessed Hatchet was trying to make out to Ledroff and Fornax that he was the natural leader
of all the reassembled Families, since after all Hatchet had made a working Citadel. And kept the Marauders at bay. Somehow
Hatchet had equated in his own mind the solidity of these clay walls, and of his own tenuous metal and wood fence, with keeping
Marauders out.

Killeen had a sharp reply to Hatchet’s question ready on his tongue. But then he saw which way the talk would go and saw too
that he could make a choice. He could push Hatchet further and then end up stomping out, or he could take a fresh angle.

He made a few remarks about how impressed he was with Metropolis and how everybody looked well fed. Then he said casually,
to draw Hatchet out, “What you figure all this points at?”

Hatchet rubbed his long, pointed nose. “What you mean?”

“Been what—six years?—since the mechs hit all our Citadels.”

“Seems like.”

“Yeasay, seems like forever. All the time since, we been on the run. Couldn’t stop more’n five, six days. No thinkin’ time.”

Hatchet shrugged. “So?”

“Ever figure that might be the idea?”

“Huh?”

“Could be they don’t want us thinking. Learning from. our Aspects. Why’d they destroy the Citadels, anyway? Just because we
poached on their factories?”

“They hate us.” Hatchet said this as if it were self-evident.

“Maybe. Anybody ever ask ’em?”

Into Hatchet’s face came a guarded look. “Who could?”

Killeen was concentrating on his own thoughts but he noticed the small hesitation in Hatchet’s hooded eyes. The man’s sharp
chin turned and caught the dying light of Denix’s sunset through an open hole that served as window. Hatchet was hiding something.

“Kings used be good at mechtalk.”

Hatchet’s mouth narrowed. “Yeasay.”

“Thought you might’ve picked up some information since your Calamity.”

“We spent years runnin’, same as you.”

“You’ve sure done a lot better’n us,” Killeen said, to take the edge away from the conversation. Better to back off and come
at it from a different direction.

Hatchet relaxed a little but said nothing.

Killeen went on easily, “We had one trained translator. Mantis killed her.”

“Uh-huh. We got one translator, a woman.”

“She learn much?”

“Nothin’ real useful.”

“I see.”

Hatchet said, “You Bishops got any Aspects can translate?”

“Read signs, things like that?”

“Anything you can. Always need skills.”

“Well…” Killeen asked Arthur, then replied, “No Aspects, no. One my Faces can, though.”

“Any good?”

“Some.”

Hatchet looked interested behind his veiled eyes. “Good.”

“That woman translator—”

“She’s sick now.”

Killeen wondered what Hatchet was still hiding. It might just be private King Family business. Probably better to skirt the
issue.

Ideas brimmed in Killeen and he could not resist giving them voice. “Point is, why’d they attack the Citadels?”

Hatchet pursed his lips, the expression drawing his face even longer in the shadowed burnt-gold twilight. “Irritated, maybe.”

“Why send the Mantis now? Why build a special Marauder?”

“Finish us off.” Hatchet was distracted, bothered, and did not want to show it.

“Why take all that trouble? A whole new design. First it used mirages on us, really good ones. Looked absolutely real. I never
saw a Marauder could do anything near so good before.”

“So?”

“We killed what we thought was its mainmind. Great.
Then
we find it’s dispersed its intelligence into midminds. So we kill those. Looks okay. Then yesterday we run into a navvy carrying
a full mind—
and
weapons.”

“Hey, easy,” Hatchet said, sitting forward.

Killeen realized he had been shouting, his right fist
balled tight. His left hung useless, limp. “Well, you see. They’re putting a lot into the Mantis.”

“Yeasay to that.” Hatchet sucked on his teeth, gazing into the distance. “You people’ve suffered a lot. More’n us. Mind, we
don’t begrudge you space, even if you’ve drawn this Mantis.”

“We’re ’preciative,” Killeen said. The unspoken truth was that Metropolis might not be able to resist the Mantis. Hatchet
feared that.

Still, the Kings had a lot of confidence. Several had already come by his hut and regaled Killeen with stories of how they’d
crushed Marauder attacks. But Hatchet could see the Mantis was different.

The coming of the other Families might not be simply the blessed reuniting of humanity. Equally, it could spell the end of
Metropolis.

Had this realization been what Hatchet wanted to hide? No, there was something more. Hatchet had quickly passed over what
their translator had found out.

There was no point in suggesting that they go out and track the Mantis. Hatchet would never rob Metropolis of its main force.
What’s more, Killeen realized, he himself was no advertisement for the wisdom of tracking the thing. His left arm hung as
a limp rebuke at his side.

He said a few more things to make their gratefulness apparent, though he was sure Ledroff and Fornax had done the same. It
never hurt to layer on the sweet manners between Families.

He added, though, “Point is, though,
why
are the mechs tryin’ mash us down in the dust?”

Hatchet said again, “They hate us. Pureblood simple.”

Killeen took a breath and said decisively, “Naysay.”

“How come, then?”

“I think they’re afraid of us. We scare ’em some way.”

Hatchet laughed strangely. Then he stood, the signal that Killeen’s time was up, that the Cap’n of the Kings had things to
do.

“Dad… ?”

Toby had been asleep for so long Killeen could no longer resist the urge to shake him gently, seeking reassurance that the
boy had not slipped into some down-winding neural spiral.

“Yeasay, yeasay. I’m here. You’re all right.”

“I feel… funny.”

“Any pain?”

“No, I… kinda… can’t feel.”

“Where?”

“Legs. Just the legs now.”

“Guts okay?”

“Yeasay.”

“Sure?”

Unexpectedly, Toby grinned. “Sure I’m sure. Put your hand down there, I’ll pee into it.”

“Think you can hit a pot?”

“It’s either that or try for the window.”

Killeen found it harder than he’d have guessed to get Toby sitting up on the raised pallet. Toby, too, seemed sobered by the
effort. Shadows passed in his eyes and his
throat contracted with some interior struggle. Then it was gone, leaving no sign in his smooth, papery skin. He peed roisterously
into the clay pot, laughing.

“When’ll my legs come back?” Toby asked when he was lying back down.

“Rest a bit, we’ll see.”

Killeen had tried to keep his voice easy and cheerful but Toby caught something in it. “How long?”

“They don’t know. Never saw a case like this, where a Marauder was surekillin’ and got interrupted.”

“Marauder? Looked like navvy.”

“Well…”

Toby’s face clouded. “Reg’lar one?” To be brought down by a mere navvy…

“Naysay. Was a Marauder disguised as a navvy. Mantis made it, I figure.”

Toby brightened. “Least I wasn’t got by some damn navvy.”

“Nasty one, yeasay.”

“How’s your arm?”

“Not good.” No point in lying.

“Use it any?”

“Can’t even wipe my ass.”

“Since when didja?”

Killeen grinned, the lines splitting his sunburned face like trenches. “Look I don’t snatch off one them legs and close that
mouth with it.”

“Least it’d be something decent to eat.”

Killeen fed him supper. He carried on conversation as wan halfnight fell, shadowing the room. He made making his own tour
of Metropolis seem more colorful than it really had been. Toby was enthusiastic about getting out and seeing it on his own.
Killeen promised to
take him out tomorrow. He would have to carry the boy in his arms or else devise some wheelchair. He had to struggle to keep
his voice from giving away much of what he felt. Hatchet and the others who knew about these things said there was no way
any of them could fix Toby’s damage.

Even Angelique, when she had come to visit in the day, had mournfully shaken her head. She knew how to adjust eyes and mouth-taste.
She could get into some other chips at the skull base. Whole body systems were beyond her, though. No one had even a hint
of how they worked or where their neural junctions came into the spine. Toby had three tapjoints set into his spine, small
pink hexagonal notches. The woman who installed them had died at the Citadel Bishop. Nobody among the Bishops or Rooks or
Kings knew how to connect through the notches, or even if Toby’s damage was repairable through them.

He was relieved when Toby drifted into sleep, just as Killeen had begun rummaging for interesting things to say. He went out
of the small square building to get more water from the King wells and met Shibo on the path.

Her look framed her question. Killeen said, “Seems fine ’cept for the legs.”

“Head?”

“Well, he talks okay. I’ll take him out tomorrow, test his reflexes maybe.”

She blinked slowly in the slanted, dry light. Her eyelids slid like gray ghosts and he had the feeling that he could see through
them to the ivory masks of her eyes. “You?”

“What, this arm? ’S okay.”

She kneaded it with both hands. “Feel?”

“No, nothing.”

“Fix?”

He shook his head, still thinking about Toby. Nobody knew how to fix much of anything, it seemed. They began to walk together,
directionless. It seemed profoundly odd to be moving down a path, amid forms shaped by human hands. The small, almost obsessively
precise details of mechwork were missing. In their place were agreeable errors, lines askew, artless curves. “Hatchet say?”

“Family King doesn’t know if any other Families survived. We’re the only ones who’ve found them. If the Splash attracts more…”

He let the thought trickle away. He could not think far ahead to distant, theoretical possibilities when Toby’s face bobbed
in his memory, pale but still cheerful.

In the boy’s eyes had been a puzzlement with his own body that would quickly turn to futile anger and then despair. Killeen
knew the cycle. He had seen it on the march with the injured.

“You talk Mantis with Hatchet?”

He was always surprised at how much she knew without his telling her. “Yeasay naysay,” he quoted an old rhyme, “mansay noway.”

“Mantis?”

“He’s worried ’bout it, sure.”

“Wonders if Metropolis safe.”

“Yeasay. I do, too. Hatchet’s… hiding something.”

“What?”

“Dunno. Me, I wonder why Metropolis is here at all. How come the Mantis left it alone?”

“I checked defenses. They’re good, but…” He could tell by her arched eyebrows that she didn’t believe this explanation.

“Wish Fanny was here,” he said wistfully. This was the first time he had said her name in a long while. The events since her
suredeath had opened a chasm in all their lives. He wished she had left an Aspect he could carry.