Great Sky River Read online

  No.

  He wrenched away and crossed the narrow sheetmetal walkway. He must know more.

  His fingers found a pressure release and here too a window fluxed.

  Legs labored in a moist blue realm. At the far end of the pod the legs were shorter, as though they had not fully grown yet.

  He quietly moved away from the others. A feeder line dripped out into the decking. He knelt and smelled a sweet aroma. Food.

  He fluxed another window. Here more veined legs worked and he could see another production line above.

  Arms. Bulging human arms worked against an intricate set of pressers and cam gears.

  Feeder lines laced them. Wires hooked into the leathery biceps and wrists. As he numbly watched, one arm shifted to bring its rhythms to bear on a different set of pressers, and lunged more furiously for a short moment. Then it swiveled with quick grace and returned to its earlier job.

  Six sets of arms labored beneath pale, sickly light.

  Biceps tapered into massive deltoids. These anchored at double-ball jointed shoulders set into the back wall.

  There were no hands. The motive energy did not require such deft dexterity. Momentum flowed with jerky purpose into the ratcheting network below.

  “Ho! It’s leavin’,” Hatchet called.

  Killeen stood slowly, dazed. He got control of himself. Walking back to the team, he was grateful for the abrupt interruption. Splinters of pain shot through his back, reminders of the labor of carrying Toby. He only vaguely noticed this. He made no sign to Shibo. He just bent and picked up the end of Toby’s sling.

  Ahead, the Crafter lumbered off. The team marched on.

  FOUR

  The Crafter found its goal quickly in the cool silences of the colossal complex. A bin of separate compartments dominated the far wall of the towering room. Vapor poured from the faces of the enameled hatches. A tide of pearly fog descended on them from the wall as they approached.

  Mist fell like a slowmotion ivory waterfall, chilling Killeen and setting Toby’s teeth to chattering. The boy was tired from his struggle. He had a hacking cough. A gray pallor had crept into him. Killeen’s good arm now throbbed in steady protest. He was grateful for the chance to put Toby down at the foot of the high, endlessly featured wall. Regularly spaced vault hatches stretched away, up into the swirling cloud layer high above. He wondered how even a mech could get up such a sheer face to open the high compartments.

  Use grappler mechs.

  Climb like spiders.

  We don’t need grapplers though.

  Parts Crafter wants are low on wall.

  Killeen relayed this to Hatchet, as he had been doing throughout the march. Hatchet listened, nodded. The entire team was edgy, eyes leaping at any sudden sound. The least surprise made hands grasp for weapons.

  Killeen shared their jittery alertness despite his fatigue. To come here at all meant placing your trust in the Crafter. It knew mech ways. But it was a criminal among mechs and could not save them if things went seriously wrong.

  Hatchet began organizing the work. Killeen relayed the Crafter’s orders automatically. Bud’s small laconic voice was a silvery tenor note in his mind among a rich burgundy surge of emotion. He was a mote tossed by deep loathings and fears that seethed within him but could not find a voice. He spoke woodenly. Hatchet nodded, seemed even pleased at Killeen’s robotlike reciting of Bud’s messages.

  Killeen felt cold strike into his chest from the chilly refrigerated wall, like a long-fingered hand jutting from the enameled vaults and piercing his heart. He worked stiffly, trying to isolate his mind, to stop its endless spinning in a black abyss. He found himself gazing at his own legs as they moved, looking in absolute amazement at how easily they functioned, thinking of himself as a machine which did not know it was a machine.

  He shook his head but nothing would clear it.

  “Pop that first one. See? Yeasay, that one!” Hatchet was calling orders to Cermo-the-Slow.

  The men pulled forth the Crafter replacement bioparts. Each vault held organic segments in chilly isolation, fully grown. Killeen called out Bud’s directions, his voice flat and dry. He caught Toby looking at him strangely but gave it no mind.

  The vaults were the right height to allow men to slide the packaged units out and hand them down into an open hatch in the Crafter’s upper cowling. Some parts required delicate handling. There were great disks of chunky, fibrous stuff like huge kidneys.

  Many-elbowed articulating units like coiled bronze wire that could dance and weave, snakelike.

  Small, intricate pumps that were clearly made from hearts.

  Each had its attached tubes and monitoring wire couplers.

  Each pulsed with muted energy.

  Killeen tried not to look at most of the things the men took from the vaults. But he was standing halfway up the Crafter when Cermo-the-Slow jerked away from a vault he had just opened and cried, “Nossir noway! This’s human!”

  It was one of the legs.

  Feeder tubes forced sluggish fluid through fat blue veins. It was bigger than the ones Killeen had seen. The leg bulged with muscles and thick tendons. It wore collars of carefully shaped cartilage at each end, where the hip and foot should be.

  Cermo dropped the leg. He backed away, eyes wide.

  One of the leg’s feeder tubes popped free. Its collar of gristle spasmed.

  Hatchet came rushing over, yelling, “Pick it up! Don’t let it lock up on you, it’ll go bad.”

  Cermo stood stock-still. Hatchet fumed in exasperation and snatched up the leg himself. He plugged the feeder line back in. A tiny digital window in the cartilage flashed five meaningless symbols. Hatchet ignored this and shoved the leg into the top hatch. Some minor mechs inside the Renegade were taking the cargo from the men.

  Crafter wants you to know.

  It must use human parts, yes.

  Sometimes better than metal parts.

  These legs can regrow selves.

  Easy to reproduce.

  Mechs need.

  Efficient to use.

  Killeen smiled grimly. Was the Crafter apologizing? “So we’re a resource? Why they kill us, then?”

  Crafter says humans also damage mech factories.

  Mechs have to control humans.

  Use them in factories though.

  Cartilage good for shock absorber.

  Not all of human used.

  “So I saw.”

  Hatchet stood with hands on hips, watching the last of the Crafter bioparts come out of the vaults. He licked his lips. “Best damn haul ever. Renny’s gonna owe us a lot.”

  Killeen said, “You knew they use human parts?”

  Hatchet’s eyes slid toward him, then away, decided to be offhand. “Sure. I was the one met this Crafter, set up the first trade. It was me took the risk.”

  “By yourself?”

  “Damnsight right. We were down, had nothin’. I saw this Crafter limpin’, treads all wore out. Figured I could take it. Only it didn’t fight. Made some pictures in my head. I had my translator along, she explained the pictures. That’s how I saw it was a Renny. Made my first deal.” Hatchet said this flatly and factually, the way a man does so he can’t be accused of bragging.

  “You got it bioparts?”

  “Yeah. Was easier then. Mechs’ve got smart since.”

  “You saw things like that leg?”

  Hatchet pursed his lips and shot Killeen an assessing look. “Yeasay. Gotta understand, mechs have their own way. It just figures.” Hatchet said this like a man explaining his religion, as if it were simply common sense. “We do what we gotta. Help our Families. Can’t change the mechs.” Hatchet smiled tightly at the very idea.

  “Just you be sure this Crafter delivers.”

  “My Family’s been dealin’ with Rennies lot longer’n any Bishop ever did,” Hatchet said mildly. He was right, Killeen knew. His father had told him once that the Kings had a dozen or more Rennies. They specialized in it, the way Bishops
knew scavenging better than anybody, and Pawns could grow food better. It was a tradition that came down from the earliest times.

  Still, the Kings needed his Face’s translating ability. He could see that this galled Hatchet. They’d lost their translators on these raids, in ways Hatchet didn’t want to discuss. All this made Killeen doubly wary of the King Cap’n.

  He went over to see if Toby was all right. Shibo was helping hand down the last bioparts. The team stayed atop the Crafter.

  Get on.

  Crafter take us.

  “Where?”

  Fix you.

  Then must go. Hurry.

  Overseer is in complex.

  “What’s the Overseer?”

  Image not clear.

  Is small mech.

  But many parts.

  Very smart mech I think.

  They mounted and rode. There were few mechs working the huge bay. The Crafter froze them with staccato microwave bursts. Killeen’s eyes swept each lane as they passed.

  Hatchet was jubilant in a subdued way. He moved among the team, reassuring, complimenting them on their fast work. The Crafter hummed down corridors nearly too narrow for it. Its treads clanked and at this lower speed Killeen could hear it squeak and grind and whir. He knew the sound of parts worn nearly to the breaking point. When Hatchet passed by, using the pipes for handholds, Killeen asked him how old the Crafter was.

  “Plenty,” Hatchet said. “It’s been runnin’ for its life for long time, I figure.”

  “How you tell?”

  “It’s made from old stuff. Designs I never saw before. My translator said the mechciv changes parts deliberate like that. So’s they cut off the Rennies.”

  “Make ’em come in like this one? Looking for replacements?”

  Hatchet shrugged. “Sure. More likely a Renny just craps out. When I was a boy I saw some Rennies broke down. Out in middle nowhere, busted. Marauder comes by, catches it easy.”

  Killeen cradled Toby in his arms against the swerving of the Crafter. “How’d this Crafter become a Renegade?”

  “Dunno. Didn’t answer the call-in, I guess.”

  “Call-in?”

  “When mechs get wore out, comes a call-in. They report, get dismantled.”

  Killeen frowned. “Even the smart ones?”

  ” ’Specially them. Smarter mechs get replaced faster. I think that’s ’cause the mechciv keeps redesignin’, makin’ them even smarter. Always changin’.”

  “Mechciv kills ’em?”

  “Seems like. Enough reason not answer the call-in, huh? Rennies just want stay alive. Same’s you ’n’ me.”

  Hatchet’s eyes bulged with an excited acuity which his stiffly held face sought to belie and disguise. Killeen saw the inner drive that this man had used, harnessing the Renny-craft heritage of his Family to save them from the wilderness-wandering all the other Families had suffered after the Calamity. He had been fearless, and had wrested from the Renegades a fragile Metropolis—all based on trust of mankind’s deadliest enemies. And no one knew better than Hatchet how precarious Metropolis was. Every obligation Hatchet could use to ensure some added scrap of protection, even from Renegades who could themselves be snuffed out—every fractional help was worth risk. Killeen respected what Hatchet had done. But something in him curled a lip at the price.

  The Crafter clattered, slowed.

  Repair station.

  Crafter try find right circuits.

  The team dismounted before a glassy wall of complex machinery. Fluids bubbled in translucent lattices that wove among gnarled metallic work stations. The Crafter extended tiny six-fingered hands at the ends of tripod chromed arms. They found twin-barreled interlocks and inserted steel dowels. Its long workarms spun. Ceramic ears mounted on carbo-sleeves listened intently. After some minutes three sharp clicks echoed in the stillness. The work station brimmed with neon life.

  Boy goes first

  Put legs in receiver.

  Hurry.

  Shibo and Killeen carefully worked Toby’s legs into a soft-ply receptacle at the base of the station. It went slowly. The boy was wide awake now. His lassitude dispersed as the station began purring and muttering.

  “I can feel something,” Toby said.

  “In your legs?” Killeen asked, holding the boy’s shoulders off the green tile floor.

  “Can’t tell. Kinda fuzzy… like all over…” Toby’s eyelids fluttered. “Ahhh…”

  Hold steady.

  Crafter searches for code.

  Has to silence station alarm.

  “Hold still, son.”

  Hatchet called from behind Killeen, “Crafter say how long it’ll take?”

  “No,” Killeen said warningly. If Hatchet pressured him…

  Toby jerked. “It… hurts…”

  1. Locked in circuit.

  2. Searching for encoded flaw.

  Toby trembled. “I… I can’t….feel anything anymore. My guts, it’s creeping up my guts….”

  Must check his service systems first.

  “All goin’ cold.” Toby began gasping. “Dad—I—gettin’ higher up—I—arms—so cold—I’m scared—I—”

  Killeen tightened his grip with his good arm around Toby. He tried to keep the boy from wrenching away from the effects of the station. The boy’s hands curled, losing their tension. Killeen watched color drain from fingertips which were red-raw, the nails split.

  Behind him Hatchet said, “What’s wrong? Listen, this don’t work, that’s it. Got that? ’Cause time’s runnin’ and—”

  “Shut up!” Shibo spat at him. She held Toby’s legs.

  Killeen ignored them. He tried to get more information from Bud but his Face would not answer.

  Toby went slack. His eyes rolled up, showing pure white.

  “Damn!” Killeen whispered to himself. He massaged the boy’s skin. It was ghostly pale.

  Subsystems are reactivated.

  Correcting.

  Hold still.

  Toby let out a sudden explosive breath. His eyes shot from side to side. His arms twitched and the hands danced frantically. Toby’s entire body seemed to jerk like a doll being animated by something within.

  A relay popped loudly in the station panel.

  “My… my…” Toby blinked. “My feet hurt.”

  Wonderingly, in the sudden quiet, Killeen and Shibo looked at each other.

  They pulled him carefully from the receiving sleeve. Toby could move his legs but the muscles were stiff and sore. Killeen and Shibo started to help him toward the Crafter. Hatchet clapped Killeen on his bad shoulder and spun him around. “You want fixin’, get back there.”

  Killeen levered his dead arm into the receiver. The soft-ply would take the arm only at a steady, slow insertion rate. He could feel faint throbs and hot flickers of sensation as something probed it.

  The team watched in all directions, their feet scuffing nervously, weapons drawn. Fluids burbled in the elaborate frosty glassware that towered over them all. An orange vapor suddenly vented above, hissing down among the team. They fled from it with racking coughs.

  Hatchet watched this and turned to Killeen, who knelt before the receiver, arm now up to the elbow “Workin’?”

  “Can’t tell.”

  Around his shoulders ran hot, quick jolts. It was like having pins thrust into him so quickly they were gone before his nerves could react.

  Found code.

  Crafter goes fast.

  Says it smells Overseer.

  “Feel anything?” Hatchet asked.

  “Yeasay.” Soundless deep bass tremors echoed in his arm.

  “Damn, I wish we’d—”

  “Ah!”

  The receiving sleeve released him. Killeen yanked his arm free. It ached but the fingers moved. His skin was puckered, hairless, clammy.

  “Damnfine!” Hatchet waved to the team. “Let’s go. Headin’ home!”

  Killeen stumbled toward the Crafter. His gait was off balance and he realized how much
he had been compensating for the dead arm. He reached the mudguard and pulled himself up, sprawling on it clumsily with boyish elation. The Crafter churned backward, freeing itself of the station. Then the Renegade rumbled away, picking up speed. Killeen had to snatch for a venting tube to stay on the carapace.

  Small buildings flashed by. These were set into the slanted decks and ramps of a colossal room. The floor was a labyrinth of odd, angular buildings. Conduits connected everywhere. Except for an occasional stain there was no sign of mess or sloppiness. Oddly turned-out mechs worked on some of the high ramps. They did not move when the Crafter shot by them.

  Killeen clung to a pipe and hugged Toby. The tingling in his arm seemed to sweep into all parts of his body as his systems reintegrated. Images washed through his sensorium. Data had been stored in his arm, digital splashes which jittered and poked in his eyes. He saw sprockets coupling to oily drivechains. Heard long-dead Veronica’s tinkling laughter. Tasted his mother’s cooking.

  Sensations released him into a kind of strength. Impulsively he kissed Shibo. She responded. Killeen laughed, enjoying the taste of pungent air sucking in and out of his lungs, every scent amplified in the backwash of the onrushing Crafter.

  The whole team was talking, merry whispers sounding over the sensorium net. The Crafter slowed at a corner and Killeen glanced up. A large transparent panel was lit from within by pale green light. Inside Killeen could see something working. Gargantuan legs and arms. And connecting them were bodies. Racks of ribs labored like huge bellows. Bruised pouches hung on the bellies, like bags of entrails. Waxy skins stretched and thrust and wrinkled and stretched again.

  He turned away.

  The Crafter reached a broad plaza. Navvys crisscrossed it. A few larger mechs scuttled on darting missions. The Crafter speeded up. The humans held on as the Crafter veered to miss navvys, never slowing. The wind furled their hair and stilled their voices.

  Killeen could feel a wordless excitement building in the sensorium net. The distance to home is the sweetest, yet the longest, as the mind leaps ahead.