Great Sky River Page 29

“I… think so. That place…”

  “The islands? That ocean, with—”

  “Naysay. I was in some sorta cave. Things crawling the walls. Real spooky…” Toby’s head snapped up, alert. “Not that I was scared.”

  Killeen grinned. “Suresay, yeasay. Just a little show from the Mantis, it was.” He didn’t feel that way, his heart still raced, but there was no point in letting it roust them.

  “It asked me lotsa questions. I didn’t understand ’em.”

  “Forget all that.”

  Toby stood up. “Let’s get outta here.”

  Hatchet came over, looking disoriented. “Whatever that was, I think we—”

  The scissoring sound made them all stop and turn. The Mantis appeared from around a nearby corner. Killeen watched it now without real fear. They were utterly in its control and he knew enough to simply bide his time.

  The Mantis approached slowly, high and angular, tiptoeing through a series of sculptures. The nearest work was an immense human hand, cupped upward to hold Shibo. She climbed out of it, holding on to a huge lacquered fingernail and swinging down.

  Was easier with you all in my world.

  But you truer to selves in real-form.

  From the reactions of the others Killeen could see that they, too, heard this in their sensoria. The Mantis had now learned how to penetrate the human net fully.

  “Let’s go!” Cermo-the-Slow cried with bitter anguish.

  Killeen wondered what Cermo had seen in his own private visit within the Mantis’s interior labyrinth. Each journey had been shaped for the individual, he guessed. The Mantis had certainly known how to trigger Killeen’s deepest emotions. For what dark purpose?

  I have not finished.

  Each must yield more.

  I seek your inner senses.

  Intensity is the prime element missing in my collection.

  Around the humans dark sculptures began to stir with gravid life. Near Killeen a great eye opened, its lash like a huge fan. Yellow veins traced intricate patterns in the bluewhite iris. Tear ducts exuded globes of shimmering gray fluid.

  It was as though the complex of human organs, here rendered separately grotesque, was responding to some summons. The monstrous eye batted its lash with a whispery whipping quickness. The pupil contracted and expanded like a pulsing, spherical heart.

  The Mantis had atomized human experience and now wished to integrate it, through them.

  And when it was done with them…

  Killeen grabbed Toby’s arm. “Come on.”

  They started away, threading among the huge working things. Killeen deliberately did not look at them. The high ceiling lamps gave little illumination here. The slug gishly moving parts were veiled in twilight, giving off rank odors that cut the air.

  Questions remain.

  I ask for help.

  In return comes freedom.

  “How can we believe that?” Killeen asked.

  They did not slow. He glanced back and saw the others were stilled, heads turned as though listening. The arms of the Kingsman that were paralyzed back on the Crafter had regained their function. He lifted them trembling to his face. For each in the party there was some special, unguessable message.

  The trust between intelligent beings.

  This is all you have.

  Or I.

  Killeen shrugged this off and kept moving. Then, ahead, something stepped from the veiled shadow. It had been lurking there.

  He had thought that the things he had seen on the glassy green sea were illusion. Now he wished they had been. The reality was worse.

  The Fanny-thing stretched, muscles stringy and trembling. Its eyes flashed, liquid-quick. Circles of flaking corruption rimmed the stem where a mouth should be. Mucus clogged its sighing breath-hole beneath each shriveled breast.

  “So you did make it,” Killeen said with quiet despair.

  Actuality holds elements not found in any synthetic construct.

  “This… No…”

  Toby stepped backward, mouth an incredulous O.

  Some categories of human experience are apparently not memory-stored in sufficient detail for myself to harvest. Thus I require that you mate. Your close connection with this female human promises to bring a high response function.

  Killeen froze. “You don’t—you can’t—”

  Your reaction in the trial was most surprising. Gratifyingly so.

  “Trial?” Then the entire illusion of ocean and islands and Fanny had been a preparation for… this.

  Many aspects of human response remain to be analyzed and expressed artistically. However, it has been my impression that the emotions of fear and lust parallel each other. Often fear induces lust shortly afterward. This can be understood as an evolutionary trigger function. Fear reminds you of your mortality, so in answer, lust ensures some fragmentary sense of immortality—though a pale shadow of the true lastingness to be found in our recording of your selves, of course. It is this dimension of fear/lust that I wish to study now.

  Killeen got a steely grip on himself. The Fanny-thing shambled forward in its agonized way.

  He had killed a sensorium-construct of this thing. In some sort of reply the Mantis had shattered the sensoriumimage of Toby. Was that a threat?

  Killeen gritted his teeth. It was impossible to guess intentions. The Mantis had used the incident simply as information, one more icily abstracted data point. That was what they were to it. Masses of numbers and geometries, curved by the fragmented events that humans called lives, and that this Mantis viewed as mere interesting trajectories.

  “You can’t understand how wrong you are,” Killeen said defiantly.

  Toby’s voice came to him, a wavering note of disbelieving horror, “Dad… Dad… it’s not really … for… is it?”

  “Not really.”

  You refuse then?

  I can make you.

  I wish only data.

  As the shambling thing came nearer in the quilted shadows Killeen saw that it was a decayed construct. Instead of Fanny’s sun-browned and wind-roughed skin, it had a mottled, purplish hide. Scabrous fungus ran from the great yawning nostrils below the breasts, a green scum that flowed down its left side to the heavy-socketed hip. The buds of each hand ended not in flesh but in a running shiny brown pustulance.

  “It’s sick.”

  Now the Mantis spoke directly, using Arthur’s voice:

  Constructing the entire organism from purely mental information is difficult. Combining it with other lifeforms is the very height of the artistic frontier. Admittedly I may have made errors, unaccountable errors, in some details.

  “Mighty big of you, admittin’ it.”

  Some are stylistic choices, as well. But I believe you will find the production is quite fully human. I ask of you a mere few moments of coupling, to see if the powerful emotions engendered—

  “No!”

  Toby pulled at Killeen, speechless and terrified. The two backed away as the Fanny-thing advanced.

  The eyes of the thing seemed to plead, to beckon. Killeen felt an ache rise from his diaphragm into his clenched chest.

  Then Hatchet said at his elbow, “Listen, man, you gotta!”

  Killeen turned, confused. “What… you don’t…”

  Hatchet had come out of the shadows as if called. He gestured at the approaching figure. “You don’t, we can’t cut any kind deal.”

  Hatchet’s voice was bland and factual. His eyes, though, burned with a fevered intensity.

  “What did you do for it?” Toby demanded.

  Hatchet curled his lip. “You never mind, boy. It asked me, I did. Took only a minute. Now I heard it ask you for a li’l somethin’, and you sayin’ no. So I come over. Seems you’re havin’ trouble.”

  Killeen saw suddenly that the man believed totally what he was saying. Killeen would never know what had happened to Hatchet on his own time in the Mantis sensorium, what deep demons had slipped their leash. But he could see the effects in Hatch
et’s dancing eyes. The man’s entire face was open now, all calculation gone. Hatchet could no longer conceal the manic expressions that raced across his face, twisting his red mouth, making his chin into a tight ball of hard muscle.

  “Get away, Hatchet,” Killeen said quietly.

  “Listen, you gotta.” Hatchet put his hand on Killeen’s shoulder in a warm gesture, showing that he had completely misread Killeen’s mood. A jagged smile lurched across his lips.

  “That thing isn’t human, Hatchet.”

  “Not all human, no,” the man said, his voice chillingly reasonable.

  “You can ’t.”

  “Look, Crafter’s dead. Only way we can protect Metropolis is stay in good with this Mantis.”

  “No” Toby whispered.

  The Fanny-thing stopped, its glittering eyes watching them in the quilted glow. The rose bloomed garishly from the furrowed bones of its face. Its breasts were wrinkled and rosy-nippled. Beneath them a shallow breath whistled, giving a strange sour scent.

  “C’mon. Just slip the old rod to it.”

  Killeen stepped back from Hatchet, his throat clenched tight, unable to speak.

  “Dammit! Won’t take a minute. What is she, an old woman, right? Made up somehow.”

  Killeen could tell that in Hatchet’s mind he was patiently explaining the simple facts of the matter, showing how this hideous reeking thing was really only a mo mentary obstruction on the way to ensuring that Hatchet’s lifework, his Metropolis, could carry on. Nothing else mattered in Hatchet’s world and nothing ever would. Nothing personal or even human could stand against Hatchet’s plan and destiny.

  “An old woman with a flower. Only lookit the tits on ’er. Wouldn’t mind eatin’ some that fruit, right?”

  The forced jollity brought a fine film of sweat to Hatchet’s face and Killeen could see the idea bloom there, see it ricochet in the hot eyes.

  Hatchet’s head swiveled, listening. Waves of strain swept his face. Then he nodded. “Yeasay. Nice ripe fruit.”

  Hatchet turned and walked toward the wavering figure. Its quick wet eyes studied his approach. “Job calls for a man.” Hatchet’s voice was hollow, as though coming from far away in cloudy madness.

  He reached the Fanny-thing. Dropped his pants. “Takes a man t’do it.”

  Killeen could not make himself move. He had killed the Fanny-thing in the Mantis’s sensorium. Done it without thinking. The Mantis had watched him build up to it, talking to him all the time. And then had shattered his son before his eyes.

  All, Killeen saw, in preparation for this.

  He clutched at Toby, pulled his son to his side. Neither could say anything. They watched as the Fanny-thing stood slowly on one foot. It hooked the other around Hatchet’s waist. Hatchet was stiff, ready. His eyes stared off into dreamy space while his hands were already braced on the Fanny-thing’s shoulders. She lifted her free leg still farther to rest it on his jutting hip bone. As she moved Killeen could see that between her legs was something that rustled and trembled eagerly. At the middle of the shadowed cleft two furrows opened. The ridges pulsed, closed, pulsed. The narrow slitted mouth had whiskers that moved languidly in the still air.

  The Fanny-thing’s eyes rolled. Its rose bulged and reddened.

  Hatchet’s knees bent as he sought the angle. The creature cupped him with its blunt, budded hands.

  All in absolute silence and darkness.

  “Ahhhhh…” Hatchet sighed as he entered it.

  Killeen shot them both. He used his small pellet gun. The charges struck each in the side of the head and ended it instantly.

  He lowered the gun and gripped Toby tightly by the shoulders. If the Mantis sought retribution this time it would have to come at them and they would have some infinitesimal chance. Only a moment.

  He looked at Toby and they both nodded, silently.

  Bodies cooled in the soft gloom and the two humans waited.

  But the Mantis did not come.

  NINE

  They made their slow recessional through a land cut and grooved. For some unknown purpose mechs had furrowed and shaped the rough hillsides into tight, angular sheets and oblique ramps. Huge cartouches marked laminated, swooping metallic planes. Clouds of pale, shimmering gray dust gathered in the air above gleaming mechworks. The Crafter had to twist and work its way through the labyrinth.

  “I didn’t know what it meant,” Killeen said to Shibo abruptly, as though he were taking up a conversation where they had left off. But they had not spoken together since they were inside the mechplex.

  “Can’t know,” Shibo said.

  “For a while you think you do,” he said. “It was showing us things, I know that. Things it thought would mean something, something human. I didn’t care about that so much.”

  Shibo nodded. She had had a different experience inside the Mantis thought-space, he knew. They all had.

  “Part of me was sitting back from it. I thought I could keep it that way. Just watching. The place was real and then it wasn’t and then it was again.”

  She nodded again.

  “I think it was proud. Proud what it had done. Art, it said. I kept it that way in my head for a while and then I couldn’t.”

  Shibo watched him with flat, expectant eyes. “You killed what it showed.”

  “I didn’t think.”

  “Didn’t need thinking.” She watched the slick surfaces go by.

  “So when I saw the thing like Fanny for the second time there was a while when I didn’t think it was real either.”

  She nodded.

  “Then Hatchet was with it. I would have killed it a second time anyway I guess. Even without Hatchet,” Killeen said distantly.

  “It was not-us.”

  “No. Not-us.”

  “Mantis had it all wrong.”

  “Howsay?” she asked.

  “It can’t tell kinds love apart.”

  “Hard for us sometimes too.”

  Killeen’s jaw muscles bunched and relaxed, bunched and relaxed. “When Hatchet went with it he joined it. Not-us.”

  “All gone now,” Shibo said. “Forget.”

  “There might have been more to it than that. I didn’t know. Hatchet might have done that before. Maybe you make yourself do it the first time and then later it gets easier and finally you don’t mind. Don’t even think about it. Hatchet maybe did it before. I didn’t think about that.”

  “Could ask the other Kings.” She looked at him calmly, just letting the idea hang there.

  He thought for a long time. Then he shook his head slowly, as though dazed. “No.”

  They watched the strange hills. In some places you could see down through into deep caverns. Translucent layers showed blurs of darting mech motions.

  “No,” he said again. “Can’t ask a Family ’bout something that bad.”

  They rode for a long time without anyone in the party talking. Of them all only Killeen had killed but no one had said anything about it.

  The Crafter was subtly different now. It moved less certainly, slower, with a murmuring drone.

  Killeen sighed, stood, stretched. He searched for something to say.

  “Guess when the Mantis ’harvested’ the Crafter, that took the life out,” Killeen said to Shibo.

  They rode on a cleft in the Crafter’s side. Toby swung from some piping below, climbing among them for the sheer sport of it. He seemed unfazed by all that had happened inside the mountain-sized building. It had only been a few hours and the adults were still dazed and silent, clinging to the Crafter’s side and watching with absent stares as the landscape rumbled by.

  “Mantis said needed Crafter harvested,” Shibo answered.

  Killeen nodded. The Mantis had penetrated each human’s sensorium, deciphered ways of talking to each of them separately. This had dawned on him as he staggered away from where he had killed Hatchet and the Fanny-thing. Apparently each human had undergone some encounter with the Mantis. Each had been shocked into pensiv
e silence.

  They left the strange place of carved, laminated land and surged across a flat tan plain. Mechs buzzed and flew everywhere. Kileen felt himself getting edgy again, his eyes shifting at each passing mech, hands aching to reach for a weapon.

  Arthur’s cool voice came laden with the brittleness it had when in the possession of the Mantis:

  No need for alarm. I have cleared the way.

  The tones were distant, scrupulous. Arthur was crammed into a small compartment by an intruding personality of far greater heft and power.

  The Mantis had made no mention of the killing. It had brought the Crafter with it and directed the humans to board, like any ordinary mech quickly cleaning up debris after a job was done.

  Now the Mantis escorted them back toward Metropo lis. Its presence was pervasive. Dry and distant, it answered questions and gave orders.

  From what the Mantis had implied, Killeen now saw how deeply they had been drawn in. The Crafter had all along been operating, without knowing it, under a safe umbrella cast by the Mantis. That was why the Crafter had been able to lead Hatchet into so many mech factories without getting caught.

  The mech civilization was complicated. Separate fiefdoms regulated defense of the factories, so the Mantis could not ensure complete safety. Two humans had been lost to a new type of guard, developed by the factories to defend against just such Renegades as the Crafter.

  A similar, adapted mech had attacked the Bishops in the Trough that night after Fanny died. The Mantis could not completely control the Marauders, could not stop the hunting of humans. On occasion it had to surekill humans itself, or else arouse suspicion.

  Still, it had managed to conceal the Metropolis; the Crafter had spoken true about that. But the Crafter had never known that itself was a tool of another presence.

  Now that strange intelligence carried the human party back to their enclave, a scruffy village that dared to call itself Metropolis. And Killeen had a good idea of how the Mantis would treat them henceforth: as pets. Clients. Raw material for its art.

  “We’re going back on that Duster?” Killeen asked. He addressed the Mantis directly. The reply came in Arthur’s voice, but the Aspect was only a narrow funnel through which a far greater bulk forced and compressed itself. Killeen could sense Arthur struggling to translate. Often Arthur would simply blurt Unintelligible and skip on to what he could render into human terms.