They had all seen mechs dying the ecstasy death and there were innumerable stories. There always were. Soon it was like a thousand other nights Toby had spent listening to older Bishops yarn on, but now he had things to tell too.
There were few lost Bishops, it seemed. They had survived reasonably well in the Lanes. Of course some of them Toby had never much cared for and they all seemed to have come through fine. He came to feel that Family Bishop was beautiful by being also partly ugly.
Some had taken a bit too well to the pharmacological possibilities afoot in the Lanes. It was amusing watching one of his boyhood friends, Abel, getting into his underwear. He held the pants in front of him and sort of tried to catch up with them. Each step somehow missed and soon he was stumbling forward so fast he seemed to be running after the underwear, which had its own opinion of him and was hurrying away, Abel never getting closer than an arm’s length.
He sat beside a popping fire, feeling the whispery presences of Shibo and of Cermo. They were each in him in ways the Bishop technology did not account for and each was a faint scent rather than a presence. He was listening to the Bishops and thinking about how their birthplace rang in their vowels when Killeen sat down next to him. They spoke idly for a while and some ease came back between them. The Mantis hunt had faded and he would take a while to understand it, he knew.
Then Killeen said, “Can I speak with her?”
Toby stiffened. “I pulled her.”
“Some’s left.”
“You can tell?”
“Yeasay.”
“How?”
“Don’t know.”
There was plenty Toby knew now without being able to say how, so he just nodded. “What for?”
Killeen smiled wanly, his face a web of creases. “Real business.”
Toby did the internal work of summoning her. He poured her scattered droplets into tiny streams and these slid into rivulets of gurgling words and finally filled a basin. She was a smooth pond in his mind. In its serene blue surface her face floated mirror-sharp. He let her speak through his throat.
I know why you have done this.
“You always were a move ahead.” Killeen grinned and looked younger.
You wish to express me again.
Killeen nodded. “You been on vacation long enough.”
And you are a son of a bitch.
“Prob’ly.”
You would take this fragment of myself, unite it with the chips Toby carries—
“And go looking for the Restorer.”
Its ruins, more likely.
“Prob’ly.”
You will not give up. Nothing I say—
“Only what you do, not what you say. And to do, you got to be out here. In the flesh.”
You are a son of a bitch.
“You’re repeating yourself. ’Course, you’re only a partial. I want the whole of you.”
Know that even this partial loves you.
“Then you’re coming back out into the world. To me.”
Toby said, “That’s it, Dad. I can’t speak for her anymore.”
Killeen nodded. “You’ve been fine, son. Things we don’t see eye to eye on, they’re nothing. Like the Mantis back there. And Cermo.”
