“Hurt?”
“Running. You ground-pounders sure make big targets.”
“I haven’t noticed your people doing so well.”
Andro nodded soberly. “Dunno where I’ll find my woman. My son, he skated for Thermograd two days ago, so I suppose he is clear.”
“Is that a portal place? Like your city?”
Andro blinked. “Uh. I see.”
Killeen bobbed his head over the rim again and sat grimly watching the result. The city had slid into slag. Andro was an irritating little man but there was no point in saying the obvious. Mechs would probably hit as many portals into the esty as they could. They were systematic. When they had decided to destroy Citadel Bishop they attacked the other Families, too. Thermograd would be no different.
“Let’s move. I have to find my Family.”
Andro made to stand up and look over the rim and Killeen put a hand on his shoulder. “No point.”
“I want one last look.”
“I’m shielded. You aren’t.”
“Your tech is trivial compared with theirs.”
“Sure. But only children take risks they don’t have to. If a mech sees you—”
Andro slipped away and scrambled up the slope. He was quick about looking and Killeen let him go rather than drag him back. When the man came back down the expression on his face told Killeen that he would be all right now. Andro was from a different kind of people but he knew that you had to close a door on some things and just walk away.
“Let’s go,” Andro said.
“Moving draws attention.”
“I doubt it makes a difference to this kind.”
“You know much about them?”
“We have some intelligence estimates. Data down the timeline from outside. We’re further up the esty gradient, so we are closer to their tech developments.”
Killeen knew that somehow the Argo had entered this esty thing on a twisty course through the Far Black—by which the locals meant the region swirling around the fat-bellied middle of the Eater itself. And portal cities ran slower than time outside, in ordinary “flat” space-time. Places further inside the esty from the portals ran slower still—only “inside” wasn’t the right word, for some reason of geometry he could not grasp. “Neighboring” was closer to the truth.
Killeen stopped checking his gear. “Can you sniff them?”
“Sometimes. Most of the mechs went on farther into the esty, once they’d dumped the ooze on us.”
“I saw it hit some people.” They had turned to sulphurous liquid while he watched and did nothing. “Just a drop or so.”
Killeen finished his inventory and wondered what to do with this man. He had ordered all Bishops into field gear the instant Andro told him that they were picking up mech emissions from the Far Black beyond the portal. Due to time dilation effects, that was as much warning as they got, though by physical calculation the mechs would have to spiral in along a tortured path in the Eater’s ergosphere. That tangled descent compressed to barely an hour of local esty time.
Killeen was Cap’n of the Bishops but by age-old custom he hauled gear just like anyone. Backpacked on his lower spine were the topo and mapping system he had worn back on Snowglade. Family lore had it that the topo man was the first to fry. Hunter mechs—Lancers, Hawks, Rattlers, Stalkers, Vipers—bounced their low hooting voices off the topo register. Then they backtracked on him and slithered in electromagnetic finger knives.
“These mechs, they’re different,” Killeen said, reflecting.
Andro nodded. “A new species.”
Killeen set his shank compressors. Like almost all Bishop gear they were shaped from the most pliant kind of mechmetal. Bishop artisans had lost their independence from mechtech generations ago. He had entertained the notion of adding to his gear in the portal city but was glad now that he had not bought any of the double-walled helmets or hip shocks.
“You should have better stuff,” Andro said, studying him.
“Load up and you’ll just throw it away in the field. Speed’s your best defense.”
“We’re not making any speed sitting here.”
“You got a lot of opinions for a desk commander.”
“I’ve seen you Hunker Down types come and go.”
“Bishops are different.”
Andro sobered immediately, his face bleak and drawn. “That’s what we learned at the Replicator. Those Legacies of yours—who would’ve guessed?”
“I can’t say I followed it all,” Killeen said guardedly. In fact he wanted to see if Andro would give anything away. The little man now barely came up to Killeen’s belt. Maybe bulk alone would impress him.
Andro smiled wearily. “C’mon, I’m not hiding anything.”
“We’ve got to find Toby and Abraham, I got that.”
“The ‘Way of Three,’ wasn’t that the phrase? Imagine, putting a message in so deep it can’t express itself overtly in just one copy of the code. I’d have thought the genotypic—”
Here Killeen lost track utterly of the man’s jargon. Biological information came so fast and casually that his head swam. It was enough to fathom that people carried their genetic information in double helices, without layering that fact with slabs of meaningless words.
