Great Sky River

by Gregory Benford

  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.

  Hatchet was better than Ledroff or Fornax, but something about the man put Killeen off. Hatchet didn’t have the rock-hard sense of honesty that Fanny had projected without trying.

  The land they covered grew drier as they left the center of the Splash. As life ebbed Killeen grew more alert. Machines naturally shied away from moisture, but the factory they had breached before showed that the mech civilizations were encroaching into wetter zones.

  “Don’t fret,” Hatchet said while they were taking a break to eat some light provisions. “The Renny told me there’s no Marauders along this route.”

  “It can fix that for you?” Killeen was impressed but tried not to let his face show it.

  “Sure.” Hatchet’s angular face had seemed more animated out here on the march, more in tune with the curious bobbing afterthought of a chin.

  “How? Me, I never heard such.”

  “It can reprogram Marauders, I figure. Least the smaller ones.”

  “Must be pretty powerful Renegade.”

  “The best,” Hatchet said with casual smugness.

  “It operating alone?”

  Hatched blinked, as though this was a new idea. “Yeasay. I never saw it with another mech.”

  Killeen didn’t think that meant much, since mechs communicated through their sensoria over huge distances. He let it pass. “How’d you make contact with it?”

  “The way things was, it found us,” he said. “We’d been running over a year after the Calamity. It tracked us some way.”

  “Maybe has a tip into the whole Marauder comm net?” Killeen asked. Shibo sat silently studying Hatchet, her face giving nothing away.

  “Not a steady one,” Hatchet said. “Else we wouldn’t get the occasional Marauder wanderin’ into Metropolis.”

  Killeen frowned. He hadn’t heard of this. “Any get away?”

  “Not that we know. We peg ’em square.”

  “So the Marauder net still doesn’t know Metropolis is there?”

  “The Renny takes care that.”

  “Risky.”

  Hatchet’s ball chin stuck out farther as the rest of his face hardened. “That’s in our deal. The Renny’s got some trick, can tap the mech geo-survey. He kinda paints over the picture for us. Makes Metropolis look like somethin’ natural.”

  “Call it ’he,’ do you?”

  Hatchet blinked. “Well, Rennies’re almost human, some ways.”

  Shibo said, “Not good, think that way.”

  “Listen, I got Metropolis built,” Hatchet said sternly. “Kings’re settled, eating good. Better’n wanderin’ like you!”

  Killeen nodded but he didn’t set his uneasiness aside. Mechs were enemies, no way around that. Any thinking that forgot that fact was dangerous, foolish. Who knew what Renegades really wanted?

  The afternoon was hard going because Hatchet insisted they reach the target point by Denixdown. They were marching directly into the hotpoint of the Eater and the seeing got worse. Toby did not wake from his long swaying sleep but he made small troubled sounds. Killeen could not tell if the anxious groans and sleep-clogged sighs were from true pain or were the escaped remnants of nightmares. Everyone had those; among adults it was often Aspects striving to live. Toby’s face wound into wrenching lines, eyes sliding spasmodically under eyelids. Somehow his injuries had triggered growth. Toby’s hair was shoulder-length and his fingernails jutted out, slim white spikes.

  Shibo was tiring of the load, her exskell slowing. Killeen could feel a spreading ache in his shoulders where the slingstraps bit in. He put his mind to ignoring it by making everything else in the world hard and sharp and clear, so clear it pushed aside the pain. He managed to keep that until he saw the landing site. It was a broad plain, flat without having been scraped by mechs.

  There was nothing on the plain. No mechwaste, even. They took shelter under an overhanging rock ledge so nothing could see them from the sky. Then they waited. Denix reddened as it sank and a chilled blue came into the rest of the sky from the Eater-glow brimming at the other horizon. Killeen liked to watch the play of light on the few high skittering gray clouds. He had not seen many clouds in these last years. Arthur told him unbidden that most lands were now dried so much they could not breathe moisture into the sky anymore. He guessed that was why there were some flat, silverfringed slabs of haze back toward Metropolis, with its upwelling icemelt. He squinted, trying to find the Chandelier as the blue above hardened. Then the Duster came up on them.

  Killeen froze. The Duster kept on a straight glide. Its underbelly was seamless and polished, reflecting the terrain below. It came down low as though it was searching the plain. No hatch opened to spew forth vermin. Killeen sat absolutely still until Hatchet clapped him on the shoulder and said loudly, “Easy. That’s ours.”

  A Kingswoman was already swinging on her pack, grinning at the little scare they had caused the Rooks and Bishops. Killeen saw the rest look a bit sheepish but he felt nothing like that. Just because the Kings treated the Duster as a known thing, something they’d dealt with before, didn’t mean he should.

  He and Shibo brought up the rear. Toby was asleep again, his mouth open and face a strange white. Killeen could see the pulse beating firmly in the boy’s neck, though, so let him sleep.

  The Duster gave a thin, high shriek as they straggled out onto the plain. It did not use wheels but instead seemed to hold itself up with air alone in a way Killeen could not understand. Then, when it slowed, he saw four things like skids pop down. A thick plume of tan dust burst forth behind. It slowed and came toward them. He had to make himself keep walking. The Kings were nonchalant as the Duster came rumbling near.

  They were making a show of having mastered a Renny, of knowing what to do. Killeen knew they thought it was dumb to bring Toby this way, that the Kings had already written off the boy. If they hadn’t been able to extract much medical help from their Renny, certainly this bunch of vagrant and battered Bishops wasn’t going to. But they needed a translator and would tolerate his dragging along a doomed boy if that was the price. Hatchet’s face had said that the day before, but the civility between Families still meant something, so he had not spoken it.

  The polished belly split. A ramp clunked into the dust. Hatchet led th
e others up it, the Rooks and Bishops coming last, their eyes showing white and jumpy.

  Killeen had to make himself go up the ramp. The prickly smell of active mechworks alerted him, set his senses dancing.

  They settled among large, blunt housings that jutted from the walls. Inside the Duster was gloomy, the grids of struts and snubnosed machines a looming canopy. Luminosities stirred fitfully in the walls. The vagrant bands cast dull red wedges of light into the strained faces of those sitting. Killeen remained standing and alert. He felt the deck tremble. A sudden bump sent him glancing off a smooth aluminum housing and made the others laugh. It was the first human sound anyone had made inside the Duster. Everyone chuckled as Killeen felt ruefully for a seat, and then they settled into an apprehensive yet silent waiting. A strumming filled the walls and soothed them. Toby slept.

  Killeen watched the dim, smoldering darkness. Dirt and mechmess inhabited the corners. Everything looked old, worn. He guessed that the Duster was not smart itself, was just a tool other mechs used. He remembered that Toby had called the small machines that fell from Dusters “sky-roaches,” after an insect that had infested the Citadel. He had no idea if they lived inside Dusters. If he came up on one of them in the ash-glow dimness, he would kill it without question, no matter how jaunty Hatchet was.

  Killeen watched the timer tick in his left eye. He managed not to think about being in the air, of how far down they could fall. It was more than an hour before he felt them slow. The others stirred as the Duster nosed down. Landing jarred several from their seats.

  The ramp sighed down onto pale yellow concrete. Black skid marks and cracks forked across the rectangle Killeen could see. Hatchet led them down. They emerged onto a vast field of speckled concrete that stretched to the horizon. Mech factories dotted the hills. The first thing Killeen did when he reached the ground was closeup the hills and check them. Navvys swarmed everywhere. Wedge-backed trucks ground loudly among sloping roads and curious tapered towers. No Marauders.

  Shibo whispered something and Killeen turned. He went absolutely still. A Crafter stood beside the Duster. It was doing something to an electrosocket in the Duster’s side. Giving it orders, Killeen guessed.

  But the size. It was fully five times larger than any Crafter he had ever seen. The general outlines were still there, ornamented and elaborate. Grainy layers of added housings gave it a muscular presence. From pylons fore and aft hung burnished conical pods. Antennae turned nervously to regard the humans.

  “Like no Crafter I ever saw,” he whispered to Shibo.

  “Modified,” she answered softly. “They get free, change themselves.”

  The Renegade Crafter squatted on heavy treads which supported the weight of a swollen hull. Ceramic curves bristled with retrofitted capabilities. Snouts. Antennae. Tools. Grapplers. Sensors. Polybind extrusions. Ports. Distorted gunmetal-blue pouches like livid sores.

  He stood motionless as his internal alarms jangled with nervous, skittering fear. The Crafter looked dangerous. His sensorium shrieked with warnings of the electromagnetic net the Crafter cast about it. Cloying fields wrapped like cobwebs around Killeen. Probing. Poking brassy filaments into his sensorium.

  “Killeen!” Hatchet called. “Translate.”

  He had to force himself to stop staring at the Renegade.

  He turned to Shibo. Her gaze said to him silently that she, too, was fighting an impulse to bolt.

  They exchanged rickety smiles. Killeen let out a long breath, then unlocked his internal alarms. His sensorium subsided into muttering, worried notes.

  He and Shibo lowered Toby carefully to the spattered concrete. “We’re safe, standing here?” Killeen asked Hatchet.

  “Safe as anythin’ gets. The Renny’s already sent out identifyin’ codes, say we’re a mech work team.”

  “But a mech could see—”

  “Wouldn’t bother. ’Round here, work area, they just go by the electromag-tag, the Renny told me.”

  “Still, should we—”

  “Get goin’ ! Tell him ’bout that list things we want.”

  Killeen took hesitant steps toward the Crafter. It towered on its augmented treads. Wads of compacted mud and mechwaste were trapped in the lower grooves of it. In some places the metal was slick, polished, and fresh-turned. Back behind that Killeen could see a scabbed, pitted carapace—the original Crafter, which had mutinied against mech civilization to save itself.

  Killeen called up Bud. The Face said:

  Ready to try.

  Can’t promise I’ll get it all.

  Killeen studied the Crafter warily. A long moment passed. Without thinking he held his hands open in front of his chest. It would not help make contact but it did give him the feeling of being ready for whatever the Crafter might do. Abruptly Killeen remembered the mouse he had seen long days ago. It, too, had stared in fascination at a being huge and unknowable. It had put its paws up, as if to touch the untouchable. Killeen had been squatting to relieve himself. The mouse might not have understood even that much.

  Killeen searched among the Crafter’s many sensor probes. He could not tell which might be watching him.

  “Trying to reach it?” he asked Bud. He had tapped Bud’s dry presence fully into his sensorium. At this range the Crafter could easily pick that up from stray fringing fields.

  Killeen sensed something gray and huge sliding into the cloudy verge of his sensorium. An angular weight.

  Feel something.

  Language is changed.

  Lots of this I don’t remember.

  I’m trying to—

  A spike of color exploded in his head. It swelled and faded within one heartbeat and left him.

  It reads the list from you.

  Approves.

  Will get most of it today.

  “When?” Killeen asked.

  Another soundless splash of color. Then a raw scrape, like sand in his throat. He blinked.

  While we do our work.

  Wants us go with it.

  “Where?”

  This time the colors dispersed in waving ivory filaments.

  Factory nearby.

  We steal some things.

  Hatchet asked, “What’s he saying?”

  “Wants we steal from one these factories.”

  Hatchet nodded. “We been here before.”

  Killeen slowly thought words without speaking. I want medical help for my boy. He had to visualize each word separately to be sure Bud got it. The Face was good at picking up on speech, but faulty at internal work.

  A pause. Then fine traceries of amber crackled in him.

  Boy has Aspects?

  What difference does that make? There was no point in telling it anything extra.

  Is good if not.

  Boy is young human?

  “Of course,” Killeen said irritably.

  There was some translation difficulty between Bud and the mech. The Crafter had no word for “children.”

  Hurry up. The soundless, livid explosions in his mind burst against his eyelids.

  Boy not have even full human sensorium?

  “No, not yet, I—”

  “What’re you telling it?” Hatchet demanded. “Leave me be, I’m—”

  “Dammit, don’t waste time on—”

  “Back off!” Killeen pushed Hatchet away one-handed without turning his head.

  Not yet. Look, a navvy caught him with some Marauderclass weapon. Got my left arm, too, see? Whole control complex is cut off. If—

  Boy is like animal then.

  Crafter says is useful.

  We’re not animals! You—

  No.

  Says is like animal.

  If boy without Aspect disks in head.

  I asked for help, I’ll bargain for it, see? We steal for the Crafter, it fixes my boy.

  “Killeen! What’s—”

  Crafter says you not understand.

  Boy is to help steal.

  Killeen forgot himself and spoke out loud.
“The boy isn’t part that!”

  Boy must steal.

  “Look, he’s not part of the deal,” Killeen said angrily. “We want—”

  Hatchet shoved Killeen. “Dammit, what’re you—”

  Killeen batted at the man with one hand, still looking up at the Crafter. He wished he knew which sensor to address.

  Hatchet punched Killeen in the gut. Killeen hooked his boot behind Hatchet’s leading foot and yanked it off the concrete. Hatchet fell. Killeen kicked him in the side and backed away. “Shibo!”

  She glided between them from nowhere, hands held out in what seemed a casual way. But her fingers were rigid, curved cutting edges. Her exskell hummed. It would be good armor in a hand-to-hand fight.

  Hatchet sputtered, swore. Cermo-the-Slow edged closer, automatically moving to help his fellow Bishops.

  Killeen watched Hatchet get up on hands and knees, his big eyes judging the situation. Striking a Cap’n was a major offense. Hatchet might call on the other Kings to rush both of them. Killeen could see Hatchet think this through, his wobbly chin tucking under, and decide against. Then the chin bobbed up as Hatchet reset his face to mask some of his anger. “You make the deal straight, hear?”

  “I am. Crafter’s got some fool idea.”

  “You listen him!” Hatchet got up, dusting his palms. He stayed in a crouch. Killeen saw that if Hatchet gave the sign the others would come at them.

  “I will. But—”

  “Listen good!”

  “It’s talking about using Toby. The boy’s in no condition—”

  “You listen.”

  “I won’t—”

  “The Renny knows lots more’n you.” Hatchet frowned, thinking. His face went suddenly blank. “Ah, right.”

  Hatchet had somehow understood what the Crafter meant. Killeen wanted to ask but knew he could not trust the answer. The man’s face was now impassive. His chin was underslung, as if to disown what the mild expression implied.