Great Sky River Read online

  “Near now,” Shibo said at his elbow. Killeen nodded. “Kingsmen come.”

  “Kings… ?”

  The word triggered memory. The scattershot piping voices heard on the left flank had been hails from the Family King. While the right flank pursued the navvy, the left was held back by Ledroff’s order to group defensively. So meeting the Kings had been delayed until the navvy was dead. The wonderful news from and of the Kings had come to Killeen as he lay sprawled, his sensorium a sheltering hazed cocoon.

  And there ahead were the Kings.

  Ledroff had sounded a full alarm. Outrunners watched all approaches. But this time there was no sign of the Mantis as the Families met The Bishops came down a dusty draw canyon and emerged onto a plain ripe with swelling green life.

  A man led the small party which met them. He was tall, with thin, blackclad legs and gaunt arms, and his every gesture said he was Cap’n of Family King. His face gave him his name: Hatchet. The brow was wide and bare, beneath a fine red carpet of hair cropped to avoid the rub and snarl under a helmet. A blue tightweave rag circled above his ears. From a square forehead tapered an angular nose and slanting cheekbones. A narrow yet powerful mouth checked their descent. Below the full lips Hatchet’s face came together in an extended sharp triangular wedge, bare of beard.

  All this swam toward Killeen in layered air as Hatchet approached, the Kings’ Cap’n radiating authority with every step. Around them the Families greeted one another. Ledroff escorted Hatchet and made introductions but it was not until Hatchet directly said to him, “Just the arm, is it?” that Killeen registered anything.

  Killeen shook his head, not in rejection but to sense the vacancies in himself. He lifted his left arm a fraction with great effort. “That’s… all,” he said through lips that felt fat, swollen.

  “This your son?”

  When Killeen nodded Hatchet bent over and examined Toby’s eyes, which still moved restlessly under the filmy lids. “Ummm. Might get some this back. Legs, is it?”

  “Dunno for sure. He breathes fine. ”

  Hatchet’s hands moved expertly over Toby, pinching and tugging. “Moved his arms?”

  “Some. Said he couldn’t feel his legs. Then fell asleep.”

  Hatchet waved a hand without even looking up and the line resumed its march. “Could come back. I seen cases like this. Just luck the Marauder only got partway through his sensorium. Hadn’t finished its work.”

  Hatchet’s face scrutinized Killeen and something in the gaze blew away the last of the clammy fog that encased him. The stark world came rushing back and with it a surge of fury and despair, familiar because they had been there all the time, behind the mist. “It was a navvy!” Killeen blurted.

  Hatchet frowned. “Navvys can’t fight.”

  “A Mantis navvy.”

  Hatchet frowned. “Mantis? What’s that?”

  When Killeen described it haltingly, with thick lips, Hatchet said, “No Mantis ’round here I know of.”

  “Is now.”

  Around them had gathered oddments of the Families Rook and Bishop and King. Flanking guards covered the hills. The hundreds remained spread out, watching all approaches as they made their way steadily down the long grade to the plain.

  Killeen’s words had made the King party rustle with dispute and incredulity. He heard their objections through a thin, distorting haze.

  Shibo came forward and added, “Navvy had mid-mind.”

  Hatchet turned to her. “A navvy with a big-size mind? You sure?”

  Shibo never answered such questions. She simply stared directly at Hatchet and let her silence give assent.

  More murmuring from the Kings. When they paused Killeen said, “The Mantis navvys put the Mantis back together again, I figure. Twice now it’s done that.”

  Hatchet blinked and his air of authority lessened a fraction. “The Mantis mind’s dispersed?”

  Killeen was glad Hatchet had seen the answer right away. Ledroff still didn’t believe it. A Cap’n who was smarter than the rest of the Family would be a relief. “First time we brought down the Mantis it had a main-mind. Second time it surekilled plenty Rooks and Bishops. Then it had midminds.”

  Hatchet scowled. “Stowed in different parts?”

  “Yeasay,” Shibo said.

  “What’dyoudo?”

  “We blew all them.”

  “That shoulda killed it,” Hatchet said.

  “Didn’t.”

  Killeen said, “This navvy’s a new kind. Suckered us in.”

  Hatchet and the other Kings glanced at one another, liking none of this. “Mantis followed you?”

  “S’pose so.” Killeen noticed he was rocking slightly from sudden giddy fatigue.

  Ledroff said something Killeen couldn’t follow and Hatchet brushed the remark aside. “We’re founding a new Citadel here and I don’t want attract Marauders. Certainly not this Mantis thing.”

  Killeen blinked. Shibo asked, “Citadel?”

  Hatchet’s voice swelled. “Citadel King. We call it Metropolis.”

  And there it was. Killeen had been concentrating on walking and watching to see that Toby was all right. It had taken all his effort to talk. Now he looked outward and saw rising from the plain before them a cluster of brown mud huts of one and two stories. Tall doorways. Open oblong windows without glass.

  “See the crops?” Hatchet and the Kings smiled with the pride befitting the Family which had first restored a Citadel. “We plant in patches. That way the mechs can’t pick up a pattern from their flyers.”

  Killeen nodded. The huts seemed fused in place beneath the twilight stillness, like earth that had itself climbed upward and made a blunt gesture at the emerging stars. A distant warbling sound seemed to skate on the air. Killeen recognized birdcalls, dozens of cheerful songs floating out from the lush trees and high bushes. “The Splash. This the center?”

  “Yeasay,” Hatchet said. “We build on top the ice-moistness, our true and rich and holy Snowglade. Bring back those times.”

  A far cry, Killeen thought, from the battlements and bulwarks of Citadel Bishop. In those days humanity had expressed its assurance in eternal stone. Now they used mud that promised to dissolve if a hard rain lashed at it.

  Arthur piped up:

  Yet this is a more beguilingly human environment.

  “Primitive,” Killeen muttered so only Arthur could hear.

  Note the umbrella-shaped trees. The little lawns before each rude hut. See there—a pond. Sizable, too. I’d wager that inside we will find carpets, which are essentially lawn analogs. Humans evolved in a mosaic environment where there were trees to scamper up for protection, open water, and broad grassland for foraging. This new Citadel King unconsciously resembles the ancient savanna. Hatchet has made a new kind of Citadel, deeply reflecting the way we evolved.

  Killeen nodded, wondering how the Kings had managed all this. Hatchet spoke on, welcoming the Bishops and Rooks with simple, direct courtesy. There would be a full ceremony later, he assured them, as befitted such a portentous event.

  Ledroff asked for the privilege of dakhala. This required a Family to give shelter to any of humanity which fled for their lives. Never had it applied to whole Families in flight, but Hatchet nodded warmly and formally agreed. This shoring up of human tradition was greeted with applause. Hatchet presented them with bowls of scented water.

  Killeen felt the weight of Hatchet’s words, the blunt, inexorable force of the man. Hatchet, builder of the new Citadel.

  In Killeen’s mind blossomed a hope that this man knew something he did not, had firm basis for the incredible hope here expressed in rude mud. After all, a Citadel meant there would be no question of abandoning Toby.

  As they marched into the shouted greetings and fervent cries of their reception, Killeen banished all doubt and let himself be drawn into the wondrous quality of it. He could scarcely walk from the heavy seeping tiredness but he shrugged it aside, wanting above all else to believe.

>   A day later he did not. Clarity had returned as Killeen lay sunstruck through the inert morning and afternoon.

  The throbbing ache in his left side eased. He still could not lift the arm more than a few fingers’ width.

  Hatchet and some of the other Kings said the navvy must have depleted whole sections of his and Toby’s sensoria. Interrupted, the probing mechmind had departed, taking Killeen’s left arm control centers and all Toby’s leg command and nerve integrations.

  Other things were gone, too. Rummaging through the perpetual tiny voices in the back of his mind, Killeen found missing a Face, Rachel, and an Aspect, Txach. He had never used them much but still the vacancy left a quiet, hollow void.

  It was twilight again when Killeen went out to walk the random streets of Metropolis. Pathways deliberately swerved and veered among the vegetation to avoid mech analysis from the air. Huts were dispersed, to present no easy target. The Family King wore headrags and paid less attention to their hairshaping. They all seemed invested with purpose, busily cultivating and crafting. There were hundreds visible in the windy streets.

  Like the Bishops and Rooks, they wore shirts and leggings of scavenged tightweave. Theirs were far more ornately marked, mutely advertising the leisure they had to stitch elaborate King emblems, loops, and wide swirls. Each Family member had a different design. Some proudly wore patches signifying their familial tasks.

  Killeen had hoped the walk would renew his belief in Hatchet’s dream. As he shuffled down dusty lanes he did feel a kindling of mute wonder at a Family which had escaped the worst depredations of the Marauders and could even thrust up crude, thick-walled structures.

  Frying fritata cakes layered the air with pungent promise. Walls wandered, crudely shaped and misaligned. Though freshmade, he saw them as tired. There was none of the precision Killeen automatically expected of mech constructions. To him buildings were mechmade, of precisely laid-out sheetmetal and ceramic. The only counterexample in his experience was the Citadel where he grew up, which was a majestic conglomerated accumulation of centuries.

  Citadel Bishop had had interlaced warrens of rock and mechmetal, shaped and counterpoised to accommodate stories and stories piled upon broad arches. By daylight, this new Citadel King was an insult to the memory.

  Still, he reminded himself, this was at least a beginning. He had no place criticizing.

  He knew he should be encouraged by the fervent activity and solid walls. But he could think only of Toby.

  The boy could speak weakly now. He responded to Killeen’s easy massaging everywhere but in the legs, which were immobile. More than the physical pain, which was tapering away, Toby felt the apprehension that came with any disabling injury in the Family.

  He had to be convinced—not by Killeen’s words, but by the solidity of the hut walls—that he was in a home, a fixed place. That the Family Bishop would not need to march away. That he would not be abandoned.

  Killeen had spoken to him. Slowly the points had come through. These realized, Toby’s face had collapsed into a smooth calm. He had plunged into sleep.

  Killeen’s fears were not so easily quieted. He made his way back to where he had heard Hatchet was negotiating with Ledroff and Fornax. He let himself through the crude fence surrounding Cap’n Hatchet’s own large lean-to hut. The fencing strip was plain unfaceted mechmetal but the pickets were fashioned crudely of wood and had to be humanmade.

  He fidgeted with the latch on the gate and only then missed the use of his left arm. He had been able to swing it while walking, a wooden weight that at least did not get in his way. Until now he had been able to regard his injury as a mere sickness. As he walked to the lean-to he realized that he would not be able to run or carry or fight as he had before. Which meant that he was married to this Metropolis in a way he had never thought.

  Hatchet was ushering Fornax out as Killeen arrived. There had been a full day of back-and-forth negotiation, Killeen knew. Skills to trade. Aspect and Face chips with rare knowledge. Already the bargaining instincts emerged. He had heard the occasional shouting a full three huts away.

  There was an ordained manner for the Families to interact, a liturgical line. The Bishops and Rooks would be guests in this rude Citadel. Offering of food and rest-place had its ornate protocols. These took time, but more essential matters like survival and defense consumed far more. Once protocol was done, the three Cap’ns had at one another with sharp tongues. Both Fornax and Ledroff could only gape at what the Kings had accomplished. Every standing stick or clay wall was a reproach to the other Families. The dignity of the Bishops and Rooks demanded that they not show a bare hint of envy, though, so there had to be some blustering and even outright arguing. Killeen was glad to have missed all that.

  He asked admittance of the young woman guard outside. To his surprise, he was let in immediately.

  Hatchet sat him down, gave him a cup of dark, heady, minted tea. Killeen downed it automatically, asked for more. Hatchet nodded with satisfaction, took the brewing pot, and poured into a larger cup from the shelf behind him.

  “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 th
e 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.