Great Sky River (26 page)

The rise and fall of Toby’s chest was itself a small, persistent miracle.

He thought of the mechs and the Citadel and his own mutinous arm as he watched the simple majesty of breathing. He knew he
was thinking, but as a man who did not as a matter of habit make his conclusions achieve the solidity of words, he thought
without the pressure of any result. There simply came a moment in the tranquil, hovering air when Killeen knew that he would
sense what to do when the moment came. Then he watched his son awhile longer for the plain pleasure of it. The thought had
struck him that this might well be the last time when he ever could.

At last Killeen got to his feet, feeling muscles stretch and complain in his legs. From his left arm he felt nothing and expected
that he never would feel again. His head swam as Aspect voices rose with their gusty advice.

He squeezed shut his eyes and forced down the fibrous words. He could understand their worry about their own safety. Still,
none of them had anything to say that he had not thought of before, and their incessant talk was a churning irritation worse
than the fly.

He strode toward Hatchet’s picket fence. His unsteady walk stirred dirt into the soft wind. He thought the fence looked even
more ridiculous than before, a puny gesture against the silently implacable world. As he approached, the meeting inside broke
up and the three Cap’ns came
out. Each wore newly cleaned vest and pants and leggings of tightweave. Killeen dimly remembered that he should have cleaned
his own, just as he should have tended to his hair. He ran fingers across his scalp and could tell that he sported not an
artful cut or wave but a storm-racked sea of knots and spiky tufts.

Fornax saw him first and chuckled. “Better?”

“Yeasay.”

Hatchet studied Killeen with slitted eyes. “Ledroff here says you’re a fast man when you’re not sick or drunk.”

“So’s he.” This made everybody laugh but Ledroff.

“Said you got a Face we can use.”

“What for?”

Ledroff grinned the small grin of someone divulging a secret and wanting to play it out for a while. “A li’ 1 job. Translation.”

“I don’t—” Killeen stopped.

Ledroff grinned wider at Killeen’s evident confusion. “Ever seen a Rennymech?”

Hatchet had told something important to the other Cap’ns. They’d all been planning together.

“Heard ’bout ’em.” Killeen was cautious and kept his voice flat and neutral.

He had never seen a Renegade. They were mechs which had gotten into some kind of trouble with their own kind. Outcasts. Loners.
They lived on the outskirts of mech civilization. There were few of them.

There had been sporadic cooperation between men and Renegades in the past. Contacts occurred by accident, when a Renegade
was desperate. Negotiating was difficult because there was no shared language. Relations had seldom gone beyond simple trade.
Most Renegades
treated humanity as scum. They would deal with men and women only if in extreme need. But Renegades lived longer than men
and so their contact with the Families spanned generations and became legend.

Bud, his Face, had translated when Family Bishop had dealings with two Renegade mechs. That had been long before Killeen was
born. There had been a prearranged meeting signal. Both Renegades had vanished inexplicably.

In the space of a heartbeat Killeen summoned Bud and threw quick questions.

1. Both the Bishop Rennies got caught by Marauders.
   
2. Died the suredeath I guess.
   
3. I knew some their mechspeak then.
   
4. Mostly tech stuff though.
   
5. I didn’t understand whole lot mechtalk.
   

Hatchet said, “We been using a Renny for two, three year now.”

“That’s
how Family King built this city,” Ledroff said.

Killeen nodded, even though he was still stunned. This was why the Kings were so sure they could burn uncovered fires at night,
too. They had help from a mech itself. Some kind of deal that deflected Marauders from the center of the Splash. He asked,
“What kind Renny?”

“A Crafter,” Hatchet said.

“Trust it?”

“Have to.”

“Why?”

“So can get any damn help at all, is why!”

“What kind help?”

“Information. Supplies, even.”

“In return for what?”

Hatchet looked uneasy. “This one know who he
is?
Rest your people like this?” he asked Ledroff and Fornax.

“Killeen’s a hardass,” Ledroff said.

“Better humor him or he’ll never go along with anything you say,” Fornax added.

Hatchet nodded, looking sour. “We got do some jobs for the Renny Crafter.”

“What kind?”

“Steal things, mostly.”

“From where?”

“Mech storage tunnels.”

Killeen didn’t say anything. The look on his face was enough to make Hatchet explain, “Hey, look, we got ways. Tricks.”

“You better,” Ledroff said flatly. “You heard what we agreed. You better have
good
ways. Else I don’t send any my people.”

The three Cap’ns argued a little then, giving Killeen the chance to watch Hatchet’s face. Their words volleyed across the
space between them.

It seemed to him he could see all Hatchet’s inner tightness wound down into the knot at the end of the sharp chin. The little
knob of flesh there jittered, as though it weren’t attached to the rest of the face at all and could express whatever it wanted.
It was anxious, small, nervous, while the rest of Hatchet’s face was shrewd and sure. The straggles of black hair on the wobbly
knob seemed alive.

Hatchet was plainly the best leader of the three. Killeen was going to have to use him, without being too obvious about it.
He had to take the role of a Bishop Fam
ily member with a legitimate problem. That would let him deflect Hatchet onto the other Cap’ns.

Killeen recalled Shibo’s gesture, finger to temple.
Hatchet not right.

Well, maybe Hatchet was a quirky but brilliant leader. The man was certainly clever. He controlled his face well, making it
convey what he wanted without giving away what he really thought. He could produce a broad, friendly grin and then slowly
cloud it as it dawned on him that his friend wanted something that Hatchet, for the best of reasons, could not give.

But the face wasn’t perfect. Hatchet’s inner tensions tapered into the waxy ball chin. A drop of sweat formed among the black
fuzz and trickled to the underside. It hung there, jiggling as Hatchet’s mouth worked, making hard, savvy points to the other
Cap’ns. The fragile drop clung to the oily skin like a desperate man on a ledge. No one else seemed to notice this small drama.
Killeen suppressed a smile. Cap’ns had a dignity and position that everyone wanted upheld. Maybe they didn’t even see the
drop.

Killeen waited until the Cap’ns had finished arguing and three or four other people had come and gone with minor bits of business.
There were plenty of delicate issues having to do with matters between Families. As hosts of the only human settlement the
Kings had the upper hand. But ancient human custom gave the other Families nominal equal status and that was what Killeen
had to use.

At a lull he asked, “Can this Renny Crafter do medical repair work?”

Hatchet frowned. “I got it to fix something for the
woman Roselyn last year. It knows some subsystems. But you’re not—”

“Sure I am.”

Hatchet looked at Killeen’s arm and then at Ledroff. Best to let the Bishop Cap’n deal with this.

“No, Killeen, look,” Ledroff said. “You got an arm out, yeasay. But we can’t be trying patch ever’body up. Go along. Translate
some. You can’t carry goods, after all. Don’t ’spect too much.”

Killeen nodded. This showed that he acknowledged his Cap’n but stopped short of active agreement. There was something more
here and he wanted to uncover it, use it.

In a level voice he asked Hatchet, “How come you don’t use your own translator?”

Hatchet’s face closed more tightly, making shadows cleave from his high cheekbones. “She’s sick. You know that.”

“What from?”

“Aspect problems.”

“Like what?”

“King Family business.”

“Anything she got from the Renegade mech?”

Hatchet barked, “You forgetting I’m a
Cap’n?

Ledroff started to apologize for one of his Family talking this way. Killeen cut him off with; “Don’t want know
who
it is, just what’s wrong. I respect King Family matters.”

Fornax said, “Man’s got a point.”

“I don’t have to answer questions ’bout Family.” Hatchet’s lips compressed into thin bloodless lines. His face became a mask
of adamant withdrawal. But his ball chin let a generous bead of sweat drop.

Fornax and Ledroff scowled. They looked at each other. They were both less powerful than Hatchet but on this point Killeen
saw that they could hold firm.

“Want help on this job, you’d better,” Ledroff said ominously.

Hatchet didn’t like this. He studied the two Cap’ns. Keeping his face clear and sure, he said grudgingly, “She had some kind
overload. Not like yours, though. You look okay. She just stares at the wall.”

“What happened?” Killeen persisted.

“She was on the last contact we had with the Renny. Came back with the others all right. Then she had an Aspect storm and…
stayed that way.” He looked away.

The other two Cap’ns stirred. When things got worse there was more Aspect trouble. Nobody knew what to do about it.

“I respect your problems,” Killeen said seriously. “I share them. I’ll go, of course.”

“For your arm?” Ledroff asked. “I know you need it, sure. But chances are you won’t get any help from a Renny. Just you do
what you’re told, right? Family can’t let you go if Cap’n Hatchet here can’t trust you. As Cap’n I—”

“Going for Toby,” Killeen said.
“With
Toby.”

He turned and moved off without waiting to hear what they would say.

There would be no more bargaining now. He had said his piece and it was time to stay silent. Let Hatchet consider. Let Fornax
and Ledroff think a bit.

They would come around. Killeen had in his Face, Bud, the crucial thing Hatchet needed: translating ability.

His arm hung slack and dead while the right one took up the pace of his walking.

The Dreaming Vertebrates

T
hey had to walk a full day to make contact. Hatchet led their column out of Metropolis.

Hatchet had let no one witness his transmission to the Renegade mech. A Cap’n’s private rooms were inviolate, by old Citadel
tradition, and Hatchet made much of the things he had there. After he had spent fifteen minutes in the small, rock-lined hut
he came out smiling. He had a look of pride and some relief and talked to several of his own Family about how hard it had
been to arrange everything with the Rennymech, using a prearranged code.

The Renegade had no way to encode human speech, Hatchet said, and used a system of number-signs. Killeen’s Bud Face reported
that this was good. The Renegades Bud had worked with long ago had used a barebone number-code, too.

At close range, though, Renegades could speak to the Aspects in a human’s head, relaying more complex sentences through the
host-sensorium. Killeen had no experience with this and took it as more past lore, a tool, and
did not waste time trying to figure what in the distant past would have yielded such a thing.

Hatchet loped steadily on the move and with surprising grace. He covered ground quickly and was impatient at Killeen and Shibo,
who were carrying Toby in a sling. Shibo had found a way to attach the sling to her exskell and this made the going easier.
Hatchet took upon himself the job of patrolling, giving his energy over to long sweeps of both sides of the column.

There were ten in the party. The Cap’ns had agreed that sending members from each Family would help bond the Families together.
Hatchet would lead, as he had in all King raids before. Three seasoned Kings came, and three Rooks.

Ledroff sent Cermo-the-Slow, because he was good at carrying loads. Killeen would have preferred Jocelyn. His old closeness
with her was gone, but she was sharp and quick. Killeen refused to go unless Ledroff agreed to send Shibo. She had a quiet,
sure way of dealing with mechs that he admired. Without his asking, she volunteered to help with Toby.

Ledroff did not like sending her, but Killeen dismissed any other possibility with a single shake of his head. Only later
did he realize that Ledroff and Fornax might be quite pleased with an arrangement that took feisty Shibo and Killeen, plus
the rival Cap’n Hatchet, on a dangerous raid.

None of the Bishops or Rooks had had dealings with a Renegade in this generation. They were edgy without wanting to seem so
and that made the pace a little faster. Killeen and Shibo labored to keep up. They dug hard into the soft loam of the narrow
valleys and panted heavily
when Hatchet led them up into sloping, sandy arroyos to make shortcuts.

They all carried only lightweight arms. Hatchet wanted minimal marching mass, to give them speed. He argued that if they got
into trouble it was far smarter to run than to fight, anyway.

Toby bore up well. He swung in the carrysling without a murmur, though occasional spasms flickered in his face. Killeen checked
with him every few minutes and tried to carry on a conversation, but the boy was lethargic. He slept most of the time, which
was just as well.

Hatchet was a good leader on the march, as Killeen had expected. The man knew how to keep spirits up. He even got them all
into a mild, humorous ranking session. This was hard to do on the move and doubly so among people who didn’t know one another
well. Hatchet made it a contest, bringing out the best, most pointed barbs of each Family.

About a fellow Kingsman Hatchet said, “He’s such a tightass, needs a shoehorn just to fart,” and that was the key remark that
started them all to laugh and forget their apprehensions. Killeen remembered Fanny doing this, joshing each Family member
in turn as they marched. It got so you waited with pleasure, hoping she’d lay into you next, because she had a limitless fund
of barbed one-liners.