Great Sky River (32 page)

He could see seven legs bunching and stroking, each at a different phase of the cycle. They delivered thrust to the complicated
brown nexus where the foot should be, a power train that converted flywheel energy into a complex series of modulated crankshaft
motions.

Pump. Stroke.

Flex. Turn. Kick.

A slick sheen kept the parchment-yellow skin moist.

He turned away, breathing hard.

He had the impression that the arms and legs were growing, bulking out the muscles. But for what?

He deliberately made himself not think of what he saw. There was no room in his mind for anything but essentials.

His sensorium gave back a numbed hollow shock. At the base of his spine he felt a brimming warmth that was a temptation. The
sensorium itself could move to protect itself. With stealthy fingers it reflexively tried to soothe the images in his mind.

A tempting oblivion. To let a blank indifference ease an icy slab between him and the remorselessly pumping legs.

No.

He wrenched away and crossed the narrow sheetmetal walkway. He must know more.

His fingers found a pressure release and here too a window fluxed.

Legs labored in a moist blue realm. At the far end of the pod the legs were shorter, as though they had not fully grown yet.

He quietly moved away from the others. A feeder line dripped out into the decking. He knelt and smelled a sweet aroma. Food.

He fluxed another window. Here more veined legs worked and he could see another production line above.

Arms. Bulging human arms worked against an intricate set of pressers and cam gears.

Feeder lines laced them. Wires hooked into the leathery biceps and wrists. As he numbly watched, one arm shifted to bring
its rhythms to bear on a different set of pressers, and lunged more furiously for a short moment. Then it swiveled with quick
grace and returned to its earlier job.

Six sets of arms labored beneath pale, sickly light.

Biceps tapered into massive deltoids. These anchored at double-ball jointed shoulders set into the back wall.

There were no hands. The motive energy did not require such deft dexterity. Momentum flowed with jerky purpose into the ratcheting
network below.

“Ho! It’s leavin’,” Hatchet called.

Killeen stood slowly, dazed. He got control of himself. Walking back to the team, he was grateful for the abrupt interruption.
Splinters of pain shot through his back, reminders of the labor of carrying Toby. He only vaguely
noticed this. He made no sign to Shibo. He just bent and picked up the end of Toby’s sling.

Ahead, the Crafter lumbered off. The team marched on.

The Crafter found its goal quickly in the cool silences of the colossal complex. A bin of separate compartments dominated
the far wall of the towering room. Vapor poured from the faces of the enameled hatches. A tide of pearly fog descended on
them from the wall as they approached.

Mist fell like a slowmotion ivory waterfall, chilling Killeen and setting Toby’s teeth to chattering. The boy was tired from
his struggle. He had a hacking cough. A gray pallor had crept into him. Killeen’s good arm now throbbed in steady protest.
He was grateful for the chance to put Toby down at the foot of the high, endlessly featured wall. Regularly spaced vault hatches
stretched away, up into the swirling cloud layer high above. He wondered how even a mech could get up such a sheer face to
open the high compartments.

1. Use grappler mechs.
   
2. Climb like spiders.
   
3. We don’t need grapplers though.
   
4. Parts Crafter wants are low on wall.
   

Killeen relayed this to Hatchet, as he had been doing throughout the march. Hatchet listened, nodded. The entire team was
edgy, eyes leaping at any sudden sound. The least surprise made hands grasp for weapons.

Killeen shared their jittery alertness despite his fatigue. To come here at all meant placing your trust in the Crafter. It
knew mech ways. But it was a criminal among mechs and could not save them if things went seriously wrong.

Hatchet began organizing the work. Killeen relayed the Crafter’s orders automatically. Bud’s small laconic voice was a silvery
tenor note in his mind among a rich burgundy surge of emotion. He was a mote tossed by deep loathings and fears that seethed
within him but could not find a voice. He spoke woodenly. Hatchet nodded, seemed even pleased at Killeen’s robotlike reciting
of Bud’s messages.

Killeen felt cold strike into his chest from the chilly refrigerated wall, like a long-fingered hand jutting from the enameled
vaults and piercing his heart. He worked stiffly, trying to isolate his mind, to stop its endless spinning in a black abyss.
He found himself gazing at his own legs as they moved, looking in absolute amazement at how easily they functioned, thinking
of himself as a machine which did not know it was a machine.

He shook his head but nothing would clear it.

“Pop that first one. See? Yeasay, that one!” Hatchet was calling orders to Cermo-the-Slow.

The men pulled forth the Crafter replacement bioparts. Each vault held organic segments in chilly isolation, fully grown.
Killeen called out Bud’s directions, his voice flat and dry. He caught Toby looking at him strangely but gave it no mind.

The vaults were the right height to allow men to slide the packaged units out and hand them down into an open hatch in the
Crafter’s upper cowling. Some parts required delicate handling. There were great disks of chunky, fibrous stuff like huge
kidneys.

Many-elbowed articulating units like coiled bronze wire that could dance and weave, snakelike.

Small, intricate pumps that were clearly made from hearts.

Each had its attached tubes and monitoring wire couplers.

Each pulsed with muted energy.

Killeen tried not to look at most of the things the men took from the vaults. But he was standing halfway up the Crafter when
Cermo-the-Slow jerked away from a vault he had just opened and cried, “Nossir noway! This’s human!”

It was one of the legs.

Feeder tubes forced sluggish fluid through fat blue veins. It was bigger than the ones Killeen had seen. The leg bulged with
muscles and thick tendons. It wore collars of carefully shaped cartilage at each end, where the hip and foot should be.

Cermo dropped the leg. He backed away, eyes wide.

One of the leg’s feeder tubes popped free. Its collar of gristle spasmed.

Hatchet came rushing over, yelling, “Pick it up! Don’t let it lock up on you, it’ll go bad.”

Cermo stood stock-still. Hatchet fumed in exasperation and snatched up the leg himself. He plugged the feeder line back in.
A tiny digital window in the cartilage flashed five meaningless symbols. Hatchet ignored this
and shoved the leg into the top hatch. Some minor mechs inside the Renegade were taking the cargo from the men.

1. Crafter wants you to know.
   
2. It must use human parts, yes.
   
3. Sometimes better than metal parts.
   
4. These legs can regrow selves.
   
5. Easy to reproduce.
   
6. Mechs need.
   
7. Efficient to use.
   

Killeen smiled grimly. Was the Crafter apologizing? “So we’re a resource? Why they kill us, then?”

1. Crafter says humans also damage mech factories.
   
2. Mechs have to control humans.
   
3. Use them in factories though.
   
4. Cartilage good for shock absorber.
   
5. Not all of human used.
   

“So I saw.”

Hatchet stood with hands on hips, watching the last of the Crafter bioparts come out of the vaults. He licked his lips. “Best
damn haul ever. Renny’s gonna owe us a lot.”

Killeen said, “You knew they use human parts?”

Hatchet’s eyes slid toward him, then away, decided to be offhand. “Sure. I was the one met this Crafter, set up the first
trade. It was me took the risk.”

“By yourself?”

“Damnsight right. We were down, had nothin’. I saw this Crafter limpin’, treads all wore out. Figured I could take it. Only
it didn’t fight. Made some pictures in my
head. I had my translator along, she explained the pictures. That’s how I saw it was a Renny. Made my first deal.” Hatchet
said this flatly and factually, the way a man does so he can’t be accused of bragging.

“You got it bioparts?”

“Yeah. Was easier then. Mechs’ve got smart since.”

“You saw things like that leg?”

Hatchet pursed his lips and shot Killeen an assessing look. “Yeasay. Gotta understand, mechs have their own way. It just figures.”
Hatchet said this like a man explaining his religion, as if it were simply common sense. “We do what we gotta. Help our Families.
Can’t change the mechs.” Hatchet smiled tightly at the very idea.

“Just you be sure this Crafter delivers.”

“My Family’s been dealin’ with Rennies lot longer’n any Bishop ever did,” Hatchet said mildly. He was right, Killeen knew.
His father had told him once that the Kings had a dozen or more Rennies. They specialized in it, the way Bishops knew scavenging
better than anybody, and Pawns could grow food better. It was a tradition that came down from the earliest times.

Still, the Kings needed his Face’s translating ability. He could see that this galled Hatchet. They’d lost their translators
on these raids, in ways Hatchet didn’t want to discuss. All this made Killeen doubly wary of the King Cap’n.

He went over to see if Toby was all right. Shibo was helping hand down the last bioparts. The team stayed atop the Crafter.

1. Get on.
   
2. Crafter take us.
   

“Where?”

1. Fix you.
   
2. Then must go. Hurry.
   
3. Overseer is in complex.
   

“What’s the Overseer?”

1. Image not clear.
   
2. Is small mech.
   
3. But many parts.
   
4. Very smart mech I think.
   

They mounted and rode. There were few mechs working the huge bay. The Crafter froze them with staccato microwave bursts. Killeen’s
eyes swept each lane as they passed.

Hatchet was jubilant in a subdued way. He moved among the team, reassuring, complimenting them on their fast work. The Crafter
hummed down corridors nearly too narrow for it. Its treads clanked and at this lower speed Killeen could hear it squeak and
grind and whir. He knew the sound of parts worn nearly to the breaking point. When Hatchet passed by, using the pipes for
handholds, Killeen asked him how old the Crafter was.

“Plenty,” Hatchet said. “It’s been runnin’ for its life for long time, I figure.”

“How you tell?”

“It’s made from old stuff. Designs I never saw before. My translator said the mechciv changes parts deliberate like that.
So’s they cut off the Rennies.”

“Make ’em come in like this one? Looking for replacements?”

Hatchet shrugged. “Sure. More likely a Renny just craps out. When I was a boy I saw some Rennies broke down. Out in middle
nowhere, busted. Marauder comes by, catches it easy.”

Killeen cradled Toby in his arms against the swerving of the Crafter. “How’d this Crafter become a Renegade?”

“Dunno. Didn’t answer the call-in, I guess.”

“Call-in?”

“When mechs get wore out, comes a call-in. They report, get dismantled.”

Killeen frowned. “Even the smart ones?”

” ’Specially them. Smarter mechs get replaced faster. I think that’s ’cause the mechciv keeps redesignin’, makin’ them even
smarter. Always changin’.”

“Mechciv kills ’em?”

“Seems like. Enough reason not answer the call-in, huh? Rennies just want stay alive. Same’s you ’n’ me.”

Hatchet’s eyes bulged with an excited acuity which his stiffly held face sought to belie and disguise. Killeen saw the inner
drive that this man had used, harnessing the Renny-craft heritage of his Family to save them from the wilderness-wandering
all the other Families had suffered after the Calamity. He had been fearless, and had wrested from the Renegades a fragile
Metropolis—all based on trust of mankind’s deadliest enemies. And no one knew better than Hatchet how precarious Metropolis
was. Every obligation Hatchet could use to ensure some added scrap of protection, even from Renegades who could themselves
be snuffed out—every fractional help was worth risk. Killeen respected what Hatchet had done. But something in him curled
a lip at the price.

The Crafter clattered, slowed.

1. Repair station.
   
2. Crafter try find right circuits.
   

The team dismounted before a glassy wall of complex machinery. Fluids bubbled in translucent lattices that wove among gnarled
metallic work stations. The Crafter extended tiny six-fingered hands at the ends of tripod chromed arms. They found twin-barreled
interlocks and inserted steel dowels. Its long workarms spun. Ceramic ears mounted on carbo-sleeves listened intently. After
some minutes three sharp clicks echoed in the stillness. The work station brimmed with neon life.

1. Boy goes first
   
2. Put legs in receiver.
   
3. Hurry.
   

Shibo and Killeen carefully worked Toby’s legs into a soft-ply receptacle at the base of the station. It went slowly. The
boy was wide awake now. His lassitude dispersed as the station began purring and muttering.

“I can feel something,” Toby said.

“In your legs?” Killeen asked, holding the boy’s shoulders off the green tile floor.

“Can’t tell. Kinda fuzzy… like all over…” Toby’s eyelids fluttered. “Ahhh…”

1. Hold steady.
   
2. Crafter searches for code.
   
3. Has to silence station alarm.
   

“Hold still, son.”