Great Sky River (41 page)

“Mantis?” Shibo asked wonderingly.

He was still panting and the air cut clear into his lungs. Memories of the horde seeped away. “It… knows about… what it calls
’sentient information.’ Can keep subsystems… Aspects… in line.”

“You can stand?”

“It did somethin’ more, too. When the Aspects opened up, the Mantis could reach them. And farther in, too. Undid some stuff
I got in there. I can feel it… different.”

“You need rest.” Shibo wiped his brow with a cloth and he was surprised to see it come away sopping wet.

“The Aspects, they… saw what I was thinking.”

Shibo frowned. “Did Mantis?”

“Don’t think it had time.”

“You think there’s… hope?”

“Yeasay.”

Shibo’s face of planes and angles showed relief and lingering puzzlement.

I can solve that puzzle,
he thought. The abrupt idea seemed both odd and yet certainly right, obvious.

Then Toby was hugging him and sobbing with long-stored tears that seemed to patter down on Killeen from the limitless sky.
Arms wrapped around him. Hands helped him up. The manmech barked. They crowded around, talking and patting and asking.

There was not much time to rest before the Witnessing. Killeen lay for a while thinking and then people came knocking tentatively
at the door of his hut.

They were Bishops. Killeen talked to them in turn, not being too specific but telling them the outlines of what he had learned.
He spoke calmly and with assurance, feeling a certainty he never had before.

But not true assurance, he reminded himself. When he momentarily wondered what to say, he would ask himself what Fanny would
have done. Often he was not sure but he got through the difficult points somehow.

He could see in the faces of the other Bishops a surprise that evolved into interest and then agreement. A grudging agreement
for some of them, but he sensed that it would stick. As word had spread about the Mantis, about Hatchet and what the man had
been doing, everyone in the Families was sobered. Some Rooks came by, too.

After they had eaten some baked sharproot, Shibo and Toby and Killeen went for another walk around Metropolis, just exercising
the boy’s legs. They left the manmech sitting inert, its solar panels repowering. Killeen was afraid the Mantis could interrogate
it from a distance if it was running normally. The information about the Argo was best kept secret for a while longer.

Kileen deflected people who came up to him and wanted to discuss things. A clammy fog shrouded the growing fields to the south
of Metropolis. They walked among towering fragrant corn. Toby had never seen cultivated plants so high and couldn’t recall
even the long rows of tomatoes where he had once played near the Citadel. The Eater rose and cut through the thin fog, bringing
a crisp savor to the air. Killeen went back to the hut and slept easily until the Witnessing.

The Kings spoke against him.

They had worked on their arguments, using testimony from the Kings in the raiding party to good effect. They made a simple
case, plainly thinking that the facts would be enough.

Fornax presided, since he was the Cap’n who had been in power longest. The Kings were deferential to him. They would choose
a Cap’n soon after the Witnessing, but until then Fornax was in nominal control of the Cap’nless Family. And he would be a
good ally to have later.

Once the opening charge was made, and the Kings were done, Cermo and Shibo spoke in opposition. Following tradition, Killeen
sat in the middle of the crowded bowl carved from a hillside. Each speaker took turns at
the center of the bowl. Except for the perimeter guard, the bare scooped rock held all known humanity.

Shibo said few words but conveyed much. She was respected. Though she gave the same picture of Hatchet’s killing that Cermo
did, her words weighed more heavily. In the Witnessing, all that mattered was the final vote of the assembled Families. Every
person convinced by Shibo’s simple eloquence was a gain.

After her, Ledroff spoke as Cap’n of the defending Family. He was vague, saying that Killeen was reliable and not the kind
of Family member who would ever attack a Cap’n unless it was in some way unavoidable.

Killeen thought this did him no good at all, but he was not prepared for Fornax.

As presiding Cap’n, Fornax was nominally neutral. But as the wiry man began, Killeen saw that his every sentence was slyly
shaped.

Fornax’s lined face wrinkled with skepticism even as his mouth formed wry, scornful phrases. He treated gravely everything
the Kings claimed. Then Fornax passed over the Bishops’ version as mere opinion.

He did it subtly, choosing his words to soften the facts and round them to his end. His face, turned up to the rings of faces,
carried a sorrow at what he had to say.

Killeen could not tell if the expression was real. He did know that Fornax could reasonably expect to exert much power in
Metropolis as the senior Cap’n. Though a King would still run Metropolis, the new King Cap’n would necessarily be less powerful
because he or she would be fresh. The more Fornax appeared as a wise figure, the greater would be his influence among all
the Families.

Fornax sat down and it came to Killeen by tradition to say the last words.

Killeen felt himself alone. Yet he did not doubt what he should do. Against Fornax’s eloquence he had no wordy defense. The
gathered Families looked at him with expectant faces.

“I speak flat and plain. You know what happened. Point to all this is
why.
You can’t know that without feeling it yourself. So I call on the one way you can see that and feel it and know it for what
it was. Not through talk can anyone do that. Only this way.”

He stepped back a pace as though admitting someone else to the flat slab of tan-flecked gray rock. This was the speaker’s
spot; Hatchet had spoken often from that already worn place.

I know you’re listening.
Killeen made each word separately in his mind.
You must have stored it. Bring it. That’s the best way.

Something shimmered at the speaker’s spot. A whirlwind frenzied the air.

And abruptly Killeen was
there
again.

The mechplex. The vast shadowed plain dotted by gray-moist contortions.

In awful, gravid grace the events unfurled. The Fanny-thing shambled closer to the figure which Killeen only slowly saw was
himself.

Hatchet stepped forward. Unhitched his harness and then his pants. Let them drop. Reached out. Drew the scaly thing toward
him.

She cupped him with a blunt, budded hand.

With a quick soft jerk he entered between the canted thighs.

They worked together. A soft sucking sound came from them.

And the fragile world of the sensorium shattered.
Killeen’s shots came as rushing hard claps that reflected from icewall layers, hammering at the images of falling bodies
and maddened frosty air.

And then Killeen was back.

He let his breath ease and slow, watching the bowl of stunned faces. He had made no attempt to use his sensorium to reach
the Mantis, not since the party had left it in the hills beyond.

Yet he had sensed what to do. He saw the long journey ahead and knew it whole, though each step his feet sought was fresh
as it came to him.

He said nothing as a shaken Fornax stood. Long moments drifted by as the people recovered. They said little. Talk trickled
over Killeen like mild warm rain. He answered the questions with only a few words but that seemed enough. The voices tapered
away.

Fornax called the question. Killeen sat.

He could not vote himself and did not look up to see the oldfashioned raising of hands. They could as easily have taken a
vote through the sensorium, but it still echoed and seethed with the presence that had passed through it like a chill wind.

Fornax counted, grimaced. His face a grave mask, he summoned up the ancient formal terms, “By a factor three do the assembled
Families absolve he who stands in trial. I so validate said judgment. I do welcome the once-pariah back to the manyfold. I
do salute the once-cast-out as reborn into the Family of Families. Rejoice!”

The ritual embrace from Fornax was stiff and unfriendly and told Killeen more about the man than words could. As he stepped
back in the still silence the Mantis voice came.

A good ending. Now that I am summoned forth by your needs, let me speak.

The Mantis voice was a sure, steady thread in their sensoria.

I offer you all protection from the buffeting you have received for so long. I express my sorrow at your suffering. (Unintelligible.)
I shall keep you here and prevent further attacks. Know this as tribute to the essence of what you are.

Killeen nodded. He had known this would come. One more step.

The Families stirred. Fear and hope dawned upon them in equal measure and fought across their faces.

Your ways must be preserved and exalted in the manner of art. You are valuable. Your quick and savory lives are themselves
your highest works. Give this to me and I shall preserve the best in you now and forever.

A fevered breeze rippled through them.

The Mantis paused.

Killeen rose and spoke to the bowl with a powerful voice.

“Some would live in such a place. There is an old word for it.
Zoo
. And some would not.”

The Mantis countered:

Without my skills, the Marauders will have you. I am but one element in a complex beyond your
imagining. I cannot stop the Marauders, for they proceed from a longer logic. Forces align against you.

“Not everything’s against us,” Killeen said dryly. “The magnetic mind, it made you speak true ’bout that.”

The Mantis voice returned, cool and sure. Killeen could see by the transfixed eyes of the Families that they heard.

True, I cannot conceal what was forced from me. Organic intelligences do range elsewhere in the zone of the Eater (as you
call it) and measures are proceeding to see that they do not unite. You are such an element. Though diminished now, your potential
is harmful. Thus vectors intersect and bequeath for you a future of perpetual onslaught from the Marauders. (Unintelligible.)
Only if you consign yourselves to my aid shall you survive.

These thoughts came with the solidity and massive presence of words written in granite.

The rude scooped-out depression seemed suddenly a small place, a bowl into which the Mantis voice poured, encompassing the
human tribe and defining its puny position.

People stirred, fitful expressions of wonder and fear flickering among them like summer lightning. They all knew from their
sensoria that this intelligence was massive, complex, vastly calm. From it came tremors of large intent, an impression of
solidity and complete, unblinking honesty.

Killeen waited for the effect to wear upon the Families
for a long moment. He remembered his father’s old words, back at the Citadel:
Thing about aliens is, they’re alien.

The Mantis might be honest and it might not. Any sense of that was a human projection. He had to remember that. He could not
assume that he understood the machine. Or that it fully comprehended them.

I ask now that you agree to accept my shelter against these harsh winds which shall continue to buffet you. Agree, and I shall
enter into a partnership with you Families. I may be able to rescue other humans still lost in the plains of this planet—though
I must tell you there are few such. Agree, now, and we can begin.

Killeen waited again for the effect of the forceful thoughts to disperse. Then he raised one hand in a fist.

The Families noticed him standing there, still at the speaker’s spot. He stood silently and looked steadily ahead, waiting
until the tension and focus he felt could spread through his own sensorium and into theirs. Scattered remarks died down. The
bowl quieted. He could hear Snowglade’s soft winds stroking the hills. Humanity watched him. He now had to speak of his own
vision. He had to make it real to them.

“To follow the Mantis way is to ensure that there will be no true destiny remaining to us now, or our children, or to that
long legion which will come forth from us. You can take the Mantis’s shelter, yes. You can hide from the Marauders. Raise
your crops. Birth sons and daughters and see them flower, yes. That would be human and
good. But that way would always be hobbled and cramped and finally would be the death of what we
are.”

Killeen swept his gaze through the ranks of watching eyes, seeming to catch each in turn for a brief moment.

“There is another course. A larger way. One that believes—as you did here today, in your vote for the Witnessing—in the enduring
worth of simple human dignity.”

In the sudden alarmed and yet excited looks which greeted his words he saw in the Families, for the first time in his adult
years, a heady opening sense of possibility.

He had expected the Mantis to respond with an icily reasoned attack. Or some strange mindstorm. Perhaps with an assault on
Killeen himself.

He had certainly not expected utter silence.

The Families were apprehensive as they left the bowl. No one knew what the Mantis’s lack of reply meant.

Killeen felt a vast sense of relief as he walked back from the Witnessing.

Toby chattered at his side, eyes dancing with bright visions. Killeen had awakened those thoughts in the Families and the
experience had drained him.

Speaking, he had felt for the first time what it was to drive forth into the unforgiving air your own self, projected through
the weblike sensorium but riding finally on the resonant tones of pure voice. Words were blunt,
blind things to use in aid of the clear way he himself saw the world. He wrestled with them like strange tools, forcing their
soft meanings to drive hard facts into the minds of the others. Words not only meant things, they made the mind feel and stretch,
the blood pound faster.