“Let me know if you hear more.”
“Hard gettin’ much from ’em.”
“Howcome?”
“They’re full of talk ’bout righteousness and how if they follow the true path everything’ll turn out right and so on.”
“Could be some their Aspects ridin’ them a little hard.”
Besen surveyed the valley as she said, “Yeasay. From the High Arcology time seems like.”
Killeen felt oddly pleased. “Most young people don’t care enough about history to remember stuff like that.”
She turned to study his face. “How can you not? Only way we can make sense of all this.”
“Sure—if you’ve got time. We’ll be hustlin’ pretty hard now.”
Her eyebrows narrowed. “Forget who we are, what’s the point goin’ on?”
“Right.” Killeen was obscurely proud of her quiet vehemence. This Tribe might succumb to His Supremacy, but he was quite sure the Bishops would not.
“Besen…I’m glad you’re with Toby. He and I aren’t getting on well right now.”
She smiled. “Rough times for us all.”
“The time when a boy breaks away and makes his own path, well…”
“I know.”
“I…I appreciate the help,” he finished lamely.
“You’re not doing so bad,” she said, and went back to her labors. Killeen stood regarding the valley and wrestling with his thoughts. In principle he was in a simple situation. A Cap’n followed Tribal orders. But he sensed something deeply dangerous in all this.
“Reportin’, Cap’n,” Jocelyn said formally. He had not heard her approach.
“You take care those chips?”
“Kicked a li’l ass, looks like it’ll be okay.”
“Good. How’re our reserves?”
“Not much.” She punched her wrist and a graphicdisplay inventory of edible supplies appeared in Killeen’s right eye, available on blink-access.
He studied the hills. There had been thick woods in the arroyos. Many were clogged by mudslides. Swaths of trees were already gray and dead. “Bet we’ll scavenge the territory around here fast, too. Pick it clean.”
“I’ll see if the Families got any food stores.”
Killeen gestured toward the creek that snaked its way down the dusty valley. “Water’ll be no problem for a while. If something samples that creek downstream, though, it’ll know we’re here.”
“Cybers?”
Killeen scowled, looking at the sprawl of Families open and careless in the valley. “Likely. Point is, what we get from fightin’ Cybers?”
Jocelyn studied his face. Did she suspect anything? he wondered.
He had told Shibo as much as he could about his time inside the Cyber. She had agreed that until he understood it better, it was probably a bad idea to relate the story in full to others.
To the Family’s questions he had let on, without actually lying, that he had somehow stowed away on the body of a Cyber and then escaped from the subterranean nest when a chance came. He could scarcely explain the colliding sensations that had assaulted him inside the Cyber’s body. Those memories now provoked shudders of disgust in him. Images from them shot through his sleep. He had intentionally worked hard the day before in hopes that fatigue would grant him oblivion in sleep. But the brooding, shifting dreams had troubled him again. This morning’s fire had roused him from a terrifying sensation of suffocating in spongy air that swarmed into his lungs whenever he tried to draw a clean breath. To be yanked into the real world, even one with a raging fire to be put out, had been a relief.
“We have any choice?” Jocelyn asked, her eyes concerned. Killeen wondered if he seemed odd to the Family; certainly Jocelyn was acting a little awkward and formal with him. Shibo, too, had been careful with him since his return, as if he were both fragile and unreliable. Well, Killeen reflected, maybe he was.
“Prob’ly not. Looks like Cybers’re mostly interested in guttin’ this planet, though, not usin’ its surface.”
He gestured above, where a thin skirt of clouds partly obscured a distant gray mottling. Patches of Cyber construction arced in polar orbits low on the horizon. The long arc of the cosmic string was a faint, pale yellow scratch across the sky. Something turned at the limits of his vision. He focused on it but saw only a thin trace image moving in equatorial orbit. Cybers owned space but for some reason did not use sky assault against them. Why?
Jocelyn said, “They suck the core dry, take all its metal, we’ll have nothin’ but scrap left. That’ll kill all the plants, and prob’ly us, too.”
Killeen listened to Arthur a quick moment and said, “My Aspects say there won’t be any big change in temperature for a while. Quakes are the big problem.”
“His Supremacy says—”
“Look, a man who thinks he’s God can’t be trusted much.”
“I think we should believe in him.”
“Believe him, or in him?”
Jocelyn said warily, “I’ve watched him several more days than you have. He was most gracious. After all, we were people who suddenly dropped from the sky and placed demands on his Families—food, shelter. He helped us get away from the shuttles, before the Cybers tracked them. He is a natural commander!”
