“My Family’s escape from Snowglade . . .”
<Perhaps it was not as it appeared.>
“Maybe it was a setup?”
<It brought you to the world where I captured Killeen.>
“You figure the Mantis meant for that to happen?”
Quath settled down on her many legs. Their shared sensoria contracted further and her sensors, better than his, scanned the sky. <If so, to what end? With the Illuminates and Philosophs to guide, I helped you reach this eerie place.>
“So? Why’d any mech want us here?”
<You assume the mechanicals act with one vision, one cause.>
“I never saw them do any different.”
<For the lower mechanical orders, perhaps.>
“Lower?”
<The types you could kill.>
“We did all right. Stayed alive.”
<I suspect the higher ones would be impossible to kill.>
“Umm. Like the Mantis.” Shadowy shapes came nearer, slipping over hills like sheets of gliding oil.
<If we have come here as part of some larger aim—>
“Doesn’t make all the work and danger look so damn glorious, does it?”
<I suspect that is too narrow a view. Very primate.> Quath had an antiseptic tone, a polite disdain for such animal excesses.
“Look, what’s this Mantis after?”
<Certainly not merely to kill us.>
“Suredead us, then.”
<It probably could have done that before now.>
“Then what’s it want?”
<You, I suspect. All of you.>
Toby’s brow wrinkled. A shadow fell over the thick canopy. He squeezed down his sensorium. With acoustic suppressors even the wheeze of breathing could not leak out. He lay covered by the loops of spiral blue-green that had showered down. He raised his head slightly and was just in time to see a thin yellow spark come caroming among the trees. It struck some and bounced off, humming as if it were talking to itself. About the size of his head. The spark turned darker and orange-tinged with each collision. It came nearer—and moved faster than he could follow.
It hit Quath. Angry red embers shot over Quath’s carapace. One leaped off her and chewed at Toby’s left side. He rolled automatically, trying to get away from the pain. “Ah!” The embers fizzled away.
Toby lay absolutely still. Nothing changed. The shadow had passed on and with it the pale wedge in his sensorium. Aches hardened into swift, shooting pain in his arm. “Q . . . Quath?”
No signal. “Quath!”
<Quiet.>
They lay that way for a long time as winds whipped through the high spiral folds above. Toby probed at himself. He flinched when he moved his left arm a certain way and found out that the arm was broken. He blocked most of the nerves from there but could not get all of them. To stop all the hurt would have meant losing motor control of the arm.
Quath moved. Slow, tentative.
He had been thinking of himself and felt guilty when he saw how much damage she had taken. It was all on the far side of her. “Hurt bad?” The words sounded stupid. Three legs shattered. Spokes of white metal jutting through the carapace. Brown fluid everywhere.
<I have tapered down the pain centers.>
“Can you walk?”
<Marginally.>
“Can I help?”
<Yes. Leave.>
“Huh?” Toby stood, staggered, and picked up one of her splintered shanks. “No way!”
<I will only draw fire to us. You should leave. Escape this Lane. Your only protection is to immerse yourself among humans. The Mantis will have more difficulty finding you that way.>
Toby scowled. “What’s changed. Quath?”
