They had come back from the silent spaces. A blank and yet expectant pressure came upon him.
Facts, facts, yes. Always the blunt mass of facts.
They were stranded in a ruined land, besieged by two breeds of hostility. The Family dwelled in the close embrace of a strange strain of humanity.
His plans for New Bishop were dashed forever. Escape seemed the only solution, yet—if he understood the mottled, warping time he had spent in the bowels of the alien—the Argo was captured, lost.
Killeen curled up against Shibo and let himself seep into the musk of her, seeking a moment more of forgetting.
SIX
Plips and plops of rain dampened his spirits. Pale morning cut through a mass of purple cloud. Killeen huddled under a lean-to, sheltered by a tarp that flapped in a cold wind that seemed to be racing to catch the storm front.
“Looks like clearing,” he said to Jocelyn, who squatted nearby.
She surveyed the low, jumbled valley where dozens of breakfast fires sent threads of smoke slanting up the sky, blown by the wind. “Hope so. I’d hate running in this mud.”
“I been thinkin’ the same. How come they camp like this, a whole Tribe rubbin’ elbows?”
“His Supremacy says so.” Her face was blank, eyes giving nothing away.
He bit into a grain bar. There were weevils in it. Well, there had been weevils in the Argo, too; pests were eternal. But here humans themselves were pests.
“Mechs’d smash this place,” he said, “if they knew they’d catch so many.”
“Near as I can tell, mechs don’t matter. They’ve got ’nuff trouble with Cybers,” Jocelyn said.
“Okay, how ’bout the Cybers? Those campfires last night give us away. Howcome they don’t hit a big crowd like this?”
“Not their style.”
“Who says?”
“His Supremacy.”
“And what’s he? He put on a show last night, was all I could manage keepin’ a straight face.”
Jocelyn’s brow creased with a disapproving frown. “Don’t make even small fun.”
“Everybody crazy as he is?”
“Come look.”
Killeen didn’t feel like creaking over the muddy terrain but something in Jocelyn’ s voice made him follow. He felt every joint and servo like heavy damp wedges moving in his legs. He had run a fair distance yesterday, and hiked some of the night with the party that brought him in. Along with the crew he had exercised in the g-decks of Argo to keep muscle fiber. Optimistically, he had expected that the lesser gravity of this world would help. Not so. The rain brought a special dull ache into his calves and lower back, making him hobble around all tight and gimpy, hunching over the way old men did. He was mulling this over as he grunted up a steep hogback ridge behind Jocelyn, and wasn’t ready for what he saw on the other side.
A large steel girder was stuck into the ground so that it stood nearly upright. A woman was tied to it, head down. Her purple tongue stuck out between clenched teeth and her eyes protruded. “Ah, ah, pl-please…” she croaked.
Killeen stepped toward her, unsheathing his knife.
“No.” Jocelyn put a restraining hand on his shoulder. “Touch her and you’ll be in trouble. We’ll all be.”
“Ah, please…hands…God…”
Killeen saw that the woman’s hands were swollen and blue where wire tied them to the girder. At her ankles wire cut into grossly large feet, dark with congested blood. “I can’t let—”
“We’ve all kept clear. His Supremacy says anyone who helps them gets the same.” Jocelyn’s voice was careful, controlled.
“Why’s she up there?”
“She’s an ‘unbeliever,’ as they put it around here.”
“An unbeliever in what?”
“In His Supremacy. And their inevitable victory, I guess.”
“This is…” Killeen’ s voice trailed off as he looked beyond the woman’s pleading, reddened face. In the narrow gully three more girders had been jammed into the soil and kept nearly upright with stones. Each held an upside-down body. He remembered suddenly the “art” that the Mantis had displayed years ago. Human artworks. These crude monuments to human evil had a strangely similar quality.
He took a few steps toward them before he saw the cloud of insects that whispered and buzzed around each. He approached the nearest on wooden legs, scarcely believing the sight of hundreds of mites swarming over the inverted body. They buzzed angrily as he came near and stooped to see the congested, blood-black face.
“This is Anedlos!” Killeen cried.
Jocelyn tugged him away. “Don’t look. They put him up days ago. Yes’day he died. Other two are Tribe—from Card Suit.”
Stunned, Killeen stammered, “Anedlos—Anedlos was a good crafter. He…he…”
“He wouldn’t take part in their religious service. He argued with His Supremacy.”
“And for that—” Killeen made himself stop, try to think. “What did you do?”
