“Well, His Supremacy says he wants to check out the Aspects the Bishop officers use.”
They looked at each other.
Shibo said, “Maybe he thinks we don’t have enough God-loving Aspects?”
Jocelyn said, “All I know is what His Supremacy tells me.”
“Which sure’s not much,” Cermo said.
“I can deal with him,” Jocelyn said proudly. “I got us food and tents.”
Killeen remembered how, years before they left Snowglade, the Family had been surprised at night and had to leave behind all their bedding and tents and a lot of cooking gear. Though they had fallen far from the wonderful, hypnotically exotic comforts of Argo, he was glad to see that the Family had adjusted quickly to the hardships of the land.
Nearby a metal-crafter was fashioning a carryrack from some wrecked mech tubing. The Bishop camp stirred with effort as old talents came into play again, and Killeen could see on faces a reborn confidence that came from finding the old methods still good and true.
He covered the arrangements Jocelyn had made with the Tribe, details of supplies and food. He dispatched fifty Bishops to help with the day’s foraging, which was conducted as a coordinated effort ranging far from the Tribesite. There were many matters of Family business to straighten out. Killeen had to decide how to reconfigure the Family’s elaborate sequence of order-giving, since they had lost the four in the shuttlecraft and, of course, Anedlos. That matter Killeen dealt with, speaking between clenched teeth. “We won’t take such treatment. But we’d better look sharp till we understand things better.”
His lieutenants nodded. Even as he went on to discuss other issues he knew that there was really nothing he could say that would inspire much confidence among them. The plain bare facts of their predicament spoke in the barren plain. Here they squatted in the ancient manner, ready to jump up and move at the slightest alarm. They had lost everything, the Argo and their dreams as well, in the span of a few days.
It was Shibo who made their thoughts plain. “Comes a chance, I say we get back aboard Argo.”
“Wish you could’ve gotten control of it,” Killeen said gently. “Could’ve gotten away then.”
“Naysay,” Shibo countered. “That Cyber ship that got you—it moved lot faster than Argo. Could’ve caught us easy.”
“It took off after me, though. Caught me on the other side the whole damn planet.”
“Only after we’d left in the Flitters,” Shibo countered.
“Guess they wanted me,” Killeen said lightly, trying to slip by the moment.
“For what?” Jocelyn asked.
“Gave me a lookover, let me go.”
“Sure that’s all?” Jocelyn eyed Killeen.
Was she trying to raise suspicions? “Can’t explain it. Just lived through it.”
Jocelyn picked at her coveralls and said nothing. Killeen felt some uneasiness seep out of his officers. The simple presence of a clear leader helped.
He had learned from Fanny the value of putting past errors and disputes behind the Family. Abraham had been a genius at that. Killeen knew he lacked his father’s lightness of touch at moments like this.
To break the mood he slurped from a cup of warm brown fluid—and then abruptly spat it out. “Send out a small party, the five with the best noses,” he said. “See if there are any jodharran bushes in this godforsaken place. We could brew a decent drink, at least.”
Cermo gulped his. “This stuff’s not so bad.”
Killeen wrinkled his nose. “Tastes like mechpiss.”
“Yeasay,” he agreed. “Got some good features, though.”
“Like what?”
“Well, it’s not addictive.”
They all stared blankly at one another for a long moment, and then from Cermo came a mild chuckle, and a guffaw from Jocelyn,
and then they were all laughing, the yelps and rattling coughs issuing from them as though from deep internal pressures, bursting
forth into the rain and chilly air like small cannon shots, explosive assertions, little gestures against bleak fortune.
SEVEN
Dawn of the next day brought a howling flurry of dust that sleeted through the stinging air. It came as work started on breakfast. The Family Niner campfire got out of control. A moaning wind swept it in angry gusts. The flames blew into tents and across the spare dry grass. A pall of smoke rolled through Family Bishop’s grounds and Killeen hurried to pull a team together.
Nobody wanted to come, of course. The wind snatched his orders away and that made a good excuse to not hear them. The fire was the Niners’ fault but that wouldn’t matter much when it reached them. He had to haul more than a dozen men and women out by the scruffs of their necks.
They advanced into the teeth of the gale, clawing away the grass before the tongues of orange that leaped forward with blurring speed. They couldn’t get control of it. They linked up with a brigade of Niners who were devoting most of their effort to getting tents and equipment out of the way.
Killeen argued with their lieutenant and got nowhere. He didn’t dare leave his own team and search out the Niner Cap’n, or he might well return to find that most of the Bishops had gone back to protect their own valuables. The biting dust made it easy to slip away into the billowing banks of grit that skirted along the ground like huge dirty brown animals. There was no good solution so Killeen sent a runner back with orders to muster the whole Family, and set to work.
With trenching tools they cut a broad gap before the leaping flames. It was impossible to face into the storm, with its smarting flame and stinging sand. They stopped the fire just before it reached a stand of dead trees, uprooted and dried out, that would have gone up in a rush, spreading cinders everywhere.
The wind trickled away as suddenly as it had come. They stomped out the remaining flames and went back to their camp and found dust everywhere. Every tiny crack in a tent let in powdery drifts of the stuff. Killeen and Shibo were sweeping out their little tent when Toby came ambling along, hands stuffed into his side pockets.
“Knew I’d be glad I pitched in the open,” he said happily.
“Yeasay, I saw you hunkered down under somebody else’s shelter yes’day, when it rained.” Killeen grinned.
“All dried out now.”
“You just sleep in a bag?”
