“Parents often don’t.” She smiled.
“Well, I…”
Killeen struggled to say something wise and firm, and gave up—his inner world was a muddle. He knew he was being absurd, but his first reaction to this news was a piercing sense of loss. To acknowledge that seemed to slight Shibo—he still had her, after all. And Toby’s growing up was inevitable.
He told himself that maybe this crisis had made him vulnerable, and the sudden pang he felt was a side effect of the greater concerns that weighed upon him. While he tried to sort this out he saw Shibo’s mouth tilt with compressed merriment, and realized that she could read his consternation. Finally, he gave a resigned chuckle and threw up his hands.
“Got to happen sometime. Damnfine girl, too.”
“Glad you finally woke up,” Shibo said happily. He kissed her.
His Ling Aspect said sternly:
I still advise against public displays of affection. You face grave difficulties, and every lessening of the command structure—
Killeen shoved the Aspect back into its cramped space, relishing the sensation. Now that they were back on solid ground, he could trust his instincts more.
He left Shibo and moved among the Bishop camp, wondering what measures he could take to ease his increasing sense of danger. Besen was sitting on a natural ledge as she flux-shaped some mechmetal into carrygear.
“Toby’s nose’s li’l bent,” she said as he sat down.
“So’s everybody’s,” he countered.
He had always been able to speak naturally to Besen. Now that he thought about her it gradually dawned that this “girl” was in fact a woman with easy self-assurance. Her angular face had a quality of shrewd reserve.
“Some say we’re worse off than we were on Snowglade,” she said.
“Could be.”
“They figure that string’s up there ready to move any minute. We’ll never get back through it.”
“Unless we can figure when it’ll move,” Killeen countered.
“How?” she asked.
Killeen grinned. “No idea.”
Besen laughed. “Well, least with you back everybody’s not so glum.”
Killeen blinked. “Huh?”
“I’d given up on us. We just sat around starin’ at the ground till you showed up.”
He was genuinely startled. “Why?”
“Jocelyn tried to pull us together. It just didn’t work.”
Killeen said nothing and she went on, “We followed you ’cause you had a dream we believed in. That’s the only reason to leave home, ever.”
“Dream’s gone.”
“Yeasay, we know that. We’re not dumb.” She gave him a stern look, mouth pursed.
“And Cybers’re worse than mechs.”
“You got more than one dream in you though.”
Killeen was startled again. “What?”
“You’ll think of some way. We know that.”
He did not know what to say and covered this by standing up. “C’mon, you can show me the area.”
Her wide mouth seemed to hold some suppressed mirth at his awkwardness. She said solemnly, “Yessir.”
By all the precepts he had learned, to idle in a huge camp like this, clearly conspicuous from the air or even from orbit, was foolhardy. Bonfires at night, smoke plumes by day, regular arrays of tents—all these mechs knew well. Cybers, too, presumably.
He walked by the Bishop slit trenches, already fragrant, and tested the grab-pole running along one side for strength. More than once, when a boy, he had squatted beside a trench without one and lost his balance. This pole was a long alum-ceramic arm from some meáhtech, caught in Y-sticks at the ends. It took his full weight as he squatted and did his daily ritual, always performed after breakfast. The Bishops had long since lost their shyness about such matters and did not erect any shelter around the trench; even in the longlost Citadel, privacy had been a minor concern. He walked over the spur of the next low ridge and saw that this Tribe felt differently. Some had fold-up shields, one even with a roof. But farther down the valley he saw a rivulet, gorged with the recent rain, serving first as drinking water and then, downstream, as a sewer.
“Plain dumb,” Besen said at his elbow.
“The river?” he asked.
“Yeasay. Already got dysentery in some the Families. Big camp like this, you get a worse sickness, it’ll jump aroun’ pretty quick.”
“Any signs yet?”
“I heard rumors,” she said.
