I cannot stop. Your memories intersect me and there I am.
“I don’t need it.”
I am who I am. Or was.
He walked on, keeping his eyes away from the bodies as much as he could. There were only one or two in each field.
The bodies showing no damage had probably died from loss of Self. They were suredead. Without the Self the brain went on running the simple routines that inflated lungs and pumped blood and digested food but very soon something went out of the whole thing. Then the body stopped.
Nobody had ever studied much why this was. There seemed no point in it. The person was gone in the most profound way possible. An old ship like Argo had techtricks to keep the body alive or at least frozen for future use, but there would be no point with the suredead.
He could see scuffed-up dirt and crushed yellowing maize where some of them in their last moments had pounded their boots against the ground, feet drumming and arms flailing though they were already down. As control slipped from them their bodies had fought in the only way they knew. Their fists were still clenched and their wrists were blue-black. Some had torn away their clothes in a mad frenzy to shuck off the thing that was inside them and eating where hands could not reach.
Toby thought about burying them but there were many and the stench was worsening beneath the yellow sky. He caught motion to his left and circled around a thick field of maize just going ripe. The movement registered as human in his sensorium. It would be smart to just keep going away from this place but he felt some need to see a living person so he angled back toward the spot.
One person. A lean woman kneeling beside a man’s face-down body.
For a moment Toby thought she was praying and he turned to leave. She held her hand up to the light then. Her little finger reshaped itself into a snub-nosed tool and she jabbed it into the body’s lower neck. The skin there was red and puckered up. She twisted her hand this way and that and pulled something from the spine. He recognized a slate-gray Aspect disk. The woman took no notice of Toby though he must have popped up on her sensorium at this range. She slipped the disk into a pouch.
Another body lay only a few steps away. She made two of her fingers into probing and unlocking tools and slipped them expertly into the spinal ports of the body. This time she got two disks and a square cartridge which Toby recalled could carry three Faces in Family Bishop. When the woman had them in her pouch, she stood up and looked directly at Toby.
“You got rights here?”
He stepped from behind the rustling maize. “No. You?”
“Sure. Salvage rights.”
“They your Family?”
“Who’s asking?”
“I’m Bishop.”
“I’m Banshee.”
Toby eyed her. “I never heard of any Banshees.”
“I never heard of Bishops. It’s a big esty.”
“Any use taking those Aspects?”
“Might be.”
“Suredead usually have Aspects sucked out of them.”
“Depends on how fast it was done.”
“Even if some’re left, won’t they be crazy?”
“Got to take that chance.”
“I heard they get all fried out some way.”
“They’re still worth something.”
“What you mean?” Toby edged a little to his right.
“Trim an Aspect down to a Face maybe.”
“Might be better to let them go.”
“That’s Banshee business.”
“How I know these are Banshee people?”
She looked at him square and hard. “You mind your own business.”
He stepped back. “Yeasay.”
“Yee-sah? Whuzzat?”
“Means I agree.”
Her lips turned up in a faint derisive smirk. “Your ‘yea’ rhymes with ‘see’ and your ‘say’ is like ‘ha’? Funny way to talk.”
“Yeasay, ma’m.”
He gave a half-salute and turned and walked away. Her sensorium played at his back and set off his micros all the way across the field and down into the stand of trees beyond.
