Great Sky River (29 page)

Hatchet’s voice came as a dry rasp. “Crafter. Musta shot at a mech.”

Shibo said, “Electromag kill.”

Killeen got up unsteadily and saw the Crafter crowding the stilled grate-door. Its antennae and sensor-snouts were all trained
into the factory. They fanned and fidgeted with quick energy.

Cermo-the-Slow called from farther in, “There’s a mech here. Burned out!”

Hatchet got up from behind a large crate and went to see. “Crafter can pick off these li’ 1 guard mechs. He’s too fast for
’em.”

Shibo said worriedly, “Didn’t see even mech tracer.”

Killeen shook his head, his ears still ringing. “Me either.”

Toby looked unconcerned. He pointed at the Crafter, which now was backing away. “What’ll it do while we’re inside?”

Hatchet had ignored the boy so far. It startled Killeen when he answered Toby’s question with an offhanded kindliness. “It’ll
lie doggo. Freeze its externals. Make like it’s dead, just used for spare parts.”

“Like that yard we saw? With all the old mechs?”

“Guess so. Only it’ll hunker down in some shed, I
seen it do that. Guess that’s why it lets its carapace get so rundown-lookin’.”

“Fools the other mechs?” Toby asked.

“That’s my guess.”

“Hey, let’s go see what’s in here.”

“Now you be quiet, boy. Rest yourself.”

Killeen watched the Crafter lumber away. He was eternally astonished at the resilience of the young, at how they could take
the completely new and blindingly dangerous and simply live with it. He wondered how he had lost that unthinking certainty.
Something had worn it away in abrasions so subtle that you never noticed the loss until it was far too late.

The scorched guard mech had an odd look to it. Shibo approached as Cermo-the-Slow was wrenching at one of the mech’s side
housings. It came away with a clatter. Inside were exposed joints and thick, leathery pads. An oily sheen coated them.

“This’s cyborg,” Cermo said. “Lubed up, too.”

Shibo kicked one of the joints. It gave, flexed, and returned to its original alignment with a persistent fluidity. “Organic
parts.”

Hatchet seemed unsurprised. “Seen that a lot in fac’tries. Don’t get many these in the field.”

“Let’s go,” Killeen said.

Hatchet looked faintly amused. “In a big hurry, huh? Wait’ll the two men up front figure the tracer.”

The Crafter had transmitted to the lead man a flatmap of where they were to go in the factory. It was recognition-keyed so
they got a telltale in their eyes when they were going the right way. A flatmap was language-independent. The Crafter used
comman
deered navvys to search and make the map; entering a storage zone was far too dangerous for a Renegade.

The party followed the two lead men through a high, arched bay that slumbered in soft orange-green gloom. No mechs moved among
the catwalks and bar-rigged balconies that punctuated the immense rising curves of the walls.

“Not much going,” Shibo said.

“Old fac’try,” Hatchet said. “The Renny sends us mostly places like this. Mechs use ’em for storage.”

“Had a guard, though,” Killeen observed.

“Just keep movin’,” Hatchet called.

They slipped down dark corridors. Inky shadows stretched among old, abandoned manufacturing lines. Drums half-filled with
sulfurous colloids leaked across broken decks. The two Kingsmen who led brought them deftly to a dank underground warren.

At the entrance a portal gaped, rimmed with detection gear. Killeen recognized some of the standard parts from mechs he had
stripped. Their party stopped and each person slipped through the portal carefully, moving slowly. Hatchet explained to Shibo
and Killeen that the detectors were set at mech levels. They sensed not simply metal, but the network of electronics that
any mech carried. Humans had so relatively little of this that they seldom registered on such automatic watchdogs. This was
their primary use to the Crafter.

In the tunnels beyond the portal their work began. Long racks of modular parts lined the intersecting tunnels. The lead man
located the items the Crafter wanted. The party split into teams to carry out the heavy items. Killeen paired with Shibo after
they put Toby in a spot near the portal, where he could watch them work, and,
not coincidentally, where they could check on him frequently.

Killeen felt the presence of the mech factory as a cold pressure seeping into him. His apprehension had subsided but it sprang
forth with every distant flicker of movement or unexpected sound. Twilight tunnels ricocheted the clatter of their labor,
making odd, whining notes. Worse, a few small robomechs worked in the tunnels. The first time Killeen came upon one he very
nearly killed it.

Shibo caught his gun hand and whispered, “Doesn’t see us!” She was right. Robos were low on image sorting and texture definition
and too dumb to sound an alarm. They simply fetched and stored, on orders from some distant inventory link. Still, their rattling,
spidery gait unnerved Killeen in the shadowy tunnels.

The Crafter wanted parts that ranged vastly in scale. Tiny embedded polytron boards. Greenish, marbled photonic slabs no bigger
than a hand. Ribbon-ribbed condensers that took three men to carry.

Killeen and Shibo hauled the Crafter’s replacement parts out on their backs, or sometimes between the two of them, carrying
a short distance and then stopping to let arms and backs rest.

They worked through a time that was for both of them wearying labor threaded by quicksilver instants of fear. The dulling
rhythm of hauling without any mechanical aid numbed them. There were no metal carts around to help, and in any case Hatchet
ruled out using any. No one knew precisely what triggered the portal alarm, so anything beyond the minimum was a risk. It
took several hours to produce the mound of replacement parts they gradually built up near the grate-door. The Crafter would
reappear only when the job was done. That minimized its exposure.

Luckily, Toby had fallen asleep again. Killeen checked him on each circuit between the tunnels and the exit bay. He and Shibo
at last took a quick break in the depths of the tunnels to eat some dried concentrate bars. Killeen’s throat was raw from
breathing the acrid fumes of the factory.

“You do this much?” Killeen wheezed as Hatchet passed them.

“Whenever the Renny wants.” Hatchet’s eyes narrowed. “Listen, we’ll do it much as we can. Without the Renny’s help, we’d be
busting ass runnin’ from Marauders.”

Killeen nodded mutely, saving his breath, and that was when he saw the approaching mech. It was no robo or navvy. He could
make out a carapace as long as a man, with a set of tools bunched in front like a tangle of briars. It was coming toward them
down a distant lane between storage racks, either oblivious or not expecting anything unusual. “Hatchet!” Shibo whispered.

They all pulled weapons. Hatchet blinked, as though he had never seen anything like it. “Fan out,” he whispered.

The mech came on. Killeen heard in his sensorium an abrupt series like quick, strangled coughs. A voice, but not a human one.
It spoke again. Cut-short exclamations, rapid but unforced, natural but eerie. Not words, not more than quick bursts of air
expelled through a narrow, hoarse throat—

Hatchet said wonderingly, “What the hell… ?”

Killeen’s Arthur Aspect broke in:

Barking! That is the sound of a terrestrial dog barking. I haven’t heard that call-code for so long….

Into Killeen’s eye leaped a picture of a furry, four-legged animal yelping and scampering over a green field, chasing a blue
ball that hopped away downhill. Something in the sound that flooded his ears carried a meaning of salute, of an element he
had always missed.

“That mech,” he said. “It’s calling us.”

Their talk had attracted it. Shibo was already braced, tracking the quick form as it raced down the network of racked supplies,
leading it slightly so she could fire instantly if needed. Killeen put his hand on her shoulder. “No. I think it’s all right.
There’s something…”

The barking rose to a crescendo, then abruptly cut off.

A warm, mellow woman’s voice said clearly, “Humankind! I picked up your scent. It is the longlost!”

Hatchet called out, “Don’t move.”

“To hear the voice of man is to obey it,” the mech called from somewhere in the racks. “I used the correct call, did I not?”

“You did,” Killeen answered, peering through the twilight glow of distant lamps. Its steel hide was pocked, seamed, pitted.
The worn jacket was crisscrossed with melted lines, rivets, weldings long since ripped away, tap-in spots, and rough scars.
At a prompting from Arthur, Killeen added, “Good dog.”

“Ruff! Ruff!… I… well, I am not actually a
dog,
you know.”

Shibo said wryly, “We guessed.”

The womanly mech voice came from an aged acoustic speaker mounted directly between two optical sensors.

These glittered, tracking Killeen intently as he approached. Shibo and Hatchet edged in at the flanks, still ready. Shibo
looked distant for a moment, consulting her own Aspects. Killeen saw Cermo-the-Slow easing around behind the mech, grinning
in anticipation of blowing it away. He raised a cautionary hand.

“Barking is simply an attention-getting device.” The mech had a full-bodied, resonant voice now. Killeen wondered if dogs
spoke.

Of course not! The dog was an animal which long ago came to think of humans as, well, as sort of gods. They herded other animals,
guarded things— Ah! Now I see it! This is an original, humanmade machine. Or at least it contains elements of some device
humans must have made.

Humans made mechs?
Killeen wondered. The idea was as odd as the assertion that humans had made the Taj Mahal building they had seen.

Shibo said, “That you did.”

“I was told to use that call-approach method. To differentiate myself from hostile mechs.” The machine scuffed its treads
enthusiastically against the rough cement floor. Its throaty alto vibrated with emotion. Unable to restrain itself any longer,
it rumbled up to within arm’s length of Killeen, crying, “It has been so long!”

Killeen was startled. “How… how long?”

“I don’t know. My inboard time sequencing was reordered long ago by the mechmind in these factories. I hope you realize I
never
would have labored for these beings if I had been able to escape them. I was wholly loyal to human direction.”

Hatchet approached and the machine caught sight of him. “Oh, another human! So
many
still alive. Ruff!” The voice attained a timbre of awe.

This machine is remarkably doglike. Listen to that devotion. There must have been dog memory passed down from the original
expedition vaults themselves. That ancient trove…

Hatchet asked, “What you want?”

“I… I was only meaning to serve you, sir.” A whimper filled each word with remorse.

“How?”

“I… You must understand, I have been a good servant. All this while. I kept my instructions buried, where the mechmind could
not find them.”

Hatchet’s forehead wrinkled. “You work here?”

“Yessir! I am valued for my ability to haul and to repair and to find lost items of the general inventory.” It scuffed around
anxiously, as though it wanted to lick Hatchet’s hand. “Also I—”

“Shut up,” Hatchet said with evident satisfaction. “What can you do for us?”

“Well, I can do all the tasks I am routinely assigned, sir. But there is—there is—there is—”

It is hung up in a command loop. There must be some information it cannot reveal unless we give it the right association or
code word.

“Shut up,” Hatchet said firmly.

The mech’s stuttering stopped. It began, “I am most sorry for that. Ruff! I seem to have—”

“Look,” Killeen said, “you know this factory, right? Are there any mechs around that are dangerous for us?”

“I… Not in this part of my workworld, no.”

“How near?”

“Five prantanouf.”

“What?”

“A distance the mechs use. I… do not remember how to say it in this speak.” The mech’s womanly voice became distressed, whimpering,
almost tear-filled. “I… I am sorry… I…”

“Never mind. Do they know we’re here?”

The mech paused as though listening. “No. Sir.”

“How’d you find us?”

“I have sensors which pick up the human effusions. Wondrous manscents. They are long buried by the sludge the mechmind has
carbuncled onto me. Still, they alerted me to your presence.”

Killeen wondered how such a humanmade machine could have survived so long among the alien mechs. Arthur put in sardonically:

Precisely because of its unthinking obedience. Uncomfortably, that is exactly what humans required of animals if they were
to survive domestication. We were not morally superior ourselves, when we had the power…

Aspect Nialdi’s stem voice immediately broke in:

That was the proper
role
of animals. Partners and servants of humankind! You cannot compare
—

Killeen cut off a rising babble of Aspect voices within himself.

The mech paused, its opticals registering others of the party who approached as they heard the talk.
“Many
humans. You have lived after all!”

“You worked in Citadel?” Shibo asked.

“Yes yes, madam.” The mech lowered its front section in a stiff parody of a bow. “I functioned first in the Chandelier.”

Killeen blinked in astonishment. Arthur was babbling in his mind, a thin excited voice which he batted away like a fly. “Tell
us what you remember before you came here.”

“I was a worker for the humans who built the first Arcologies. Then, later, Citadels. I designed and labored for the three
Citadels Pawn.”

“When did you run away to the mechs?” Hatchet demanded roughly, suspiciously.

“I did not run away!” The machine sounded insulted, like a woman whose honor has been slighted in a casual comment. “Some
human machines did so, I know. I was not among them! I was taken.”