by John Barnes
A life torn off unused, she thought, so what he might have been stays just on the edge of the possible.
She hefted the body up and others came to carry it with her. —Let’s move!— she sent.
They could go doggo, of course. Usually a mech Marauder couldn’t find a human in a wholly powered-down suit. They sniffed out circuits, not skin.
From their shuffling gait she saw that this fragment of Family Bishop was worn and slow, suffering a hard loss at day’s end. So far as they knew they were the only remaining remnant of humanity, now that some of Family Bishop had left this world, fleeing. So they now moved always, slogging on. They needed shelter.
Yet some chose to shrug off the sadness with taunts, jokes and mild irony. She heard:
—I don’t mind livin’ day-to-day so much, it’s the hour-to-hour gets old.—
—Think this is hard? I belonged to a poor, hungry family. Our mother used to count us after every meal.—
—Y’know, fact that nobody understands you doesn’t mean you’re some kinda genius.—
—You sound almost reasonable. Time to up my alky dose tonight.—
THEY SLOGGED ON, each Family member struggling with the tragedy that had just happened, each in their own way. Meanwhile, the dusk was purpling into night.
Joy sent —Got something here. Looks like a Trough.—
Erika went to see. Tucked into a narrow seam was a concentrated mechwork. She could see gray navvys and dark blue wogs clank and roll in their mining and fab jobs, the endless energy that had given mechs their onrolling dominion over this blighted world.
Joy said, “Looks like standard Trough. A seam of ore, a spring: see that debris stream running down the canyon? Enough to do ’facturing.”
“Enough for feeding, too, if there’s a chem section,” Erika said at Joy’s elbow.
Joy nodded. A glad howl ran through the comm. The Family descended.
They kept low, skimming along in short parabolas, using savvy earned through hard decades of flight. She headed down into the slight valley where knobby, domed mech sling-ups stood, and landed on the roof of one.
The main ’facturing shed was a long old barn, sheet metal walls and processing lines on running belts. Crude but effective, dimly lit, musty vats and red-hot furnaces crammed in.
A coppery navvy was running an ore-smelting line and Joy aimed a scrambler at it. “Use a thumper,” Erika said. Joy jacked forward a short, disc-loaded tube that administered a circuit-freezing jolt with a hollow thump. The navvy whined into silence. “Strip the powerpack and mainmind. Check there’s no malf signal going out.”
The Family looted the Trough fair enough, but after many days in the field their goal was comfort. They all headed for the vats at the back of the Trough. In the savory air they entered in move-with-cover mode, each member slipping forward with others aiming for any defenders. A Marauder mech would use the inky confusions cast by dim lights here. Erika made sure they scoured every hiding hole. No enemy.
They cleared the area quick enough. Kirchoff was first to shed his suit. All Family dressed alike in jumpsuits and armored body sheaths, but Kirchoff’s sideburns and long beard stood out. His hair was the color of straw, eyebrows burned to white gold by the sun.
The Family flaunted themselves with wild hairstyles and tattoos, their portable, wearable art. As Family shucked gear nobody stared at bodies, beyond nodding in tribute to reverse mohawks, curls, beards, scalped pelts where their legs joined. Joints showed skin rubbed red where insulation bunched.
Erika and Joy crept carefully along lines of vats, boots sticking in the slop. Kirchoff came, too, carrying a stunner. “Good!” he pronounced, holding up a fist covered in a syrup and strutting a bit. “Gluten goop! Sugar too.”
Erika ignored him. His slab-muscled thighs inspired no answering lust in her. They had by Family assent in Whole Council agreed to numb their sex centers, for the duration – and how long was that, now? Too long, Erika felt. Single-minded alertness rewarded the vigilant with survival, but still... she missed body joy.
Len yelped – he had found some sweet yeast in a big vat, twenty meters across. Many gathered to eat. Len had tossed a pinch of catalyst primer in already, so the sweet yeast was busy reversing the helix of its useful proteins. Mechs made organics for their own internal use, carefully making it useless to humans – but the Family had learned how to re-twist those proteins, and so dodged the mech tricks.
Then someone dove into the vat. A chorus of joy rose. All went for a swim in the thick muck. Others kept eating; nobody was that concerned with hygiene any more.
Erika ate some and moved on. Alleys of hanging blue-green lichen waved in an almond-scented breeze. Navvys kept working in the lanes, ignoring humans. Stacks of grease paste stood in tall canisters. These slimy nuggets fed mech internals, she knew. She slashed the sides, letting grease coins tumble into the slop. She trashed it all in a few minutes, letting her anger run. If humans starved, so would mechs.
They found the main water storage and jimmied in, so everybody went for a real swim. Erika had to stage the rush of Family, set schedules, or the water would overflow.
Somebody turned up some rank but nourishing paste that tasted like metal filings in salty cardboard slush, but the cooksters said it was nutritious. Everybody gobbled it.
The days of slaughter before had brewed with pulled muscles and sore thighs into a salty soup of discontent. Nags and whines and plain grunting sighs were all around. Some spent time on hair arabesques that would snarl up next time they put on their helmets.
Kirchoff gestured to her and Joy and they found a quiet place to confer. He opened with a Family song of ancient, raw lines, “Being brave, Lets no one off the grave.”
It was eon-honored and so stayed with them. “Right, we need a new Cap’n.”
“We need repairs more,” Kirchhoff said. “Five more had inboards damaged. Cap’n Hermann had two Aspects who could do the fixes, and they were the last of that kind.”
Joy said, “I saw an old place, at the top of a leap – one valley over. Maybe human made, but gotta be old. Could be somethin’ there.”
“Aspects?” Kirchoff scowled. “Haven’t seen a human depot since Pitwallow, wayback past.”
“Let’s go see,” Erika said. “We need a new Cap’n, soon.”
“You standing?” Kirchoff asked.
“No, don’t need the grief,” Erika said.
“I think you should,” Joy said quietly. Erika knew she didn’t much care for Kirchoff.
“Let the Family decide,” Erika said, getting up and striding off to dismiss the subject.
IN OUTLANDS SUCH as this, scavenger mechs did not bother to pick up rusted cowlings or heavy broken axles for the long transport to smelters and factories. Over centuries the mess had gathered. These jumbles blighted the land now, rust-red spots freckling the soil. Mechmess blew in the soft breeze.
As her grandmother used to say, there wasn’t a speck of nice to this place.
After too-little sleep in the Trough, they were rounding into the next valley where rock-nobbed hills rose, dotted with mechtrash. Her back was tight, legs hurt, throat sore. She had lost sleep to dance her respect to the dead Cap’n, to sing the hoarse cries of farewell. The alky hadn’t helped; she had a throbbing head and recalled what had been said.
Once each Family had its own Citadel, home to thousands, and their leaders met in grand ballrooms. Now they squatted, grimy and tired, around the crude pyramid that held Cap’n Hermann’s body. The slow, resonant precision of their voices bespoke the reverence for their ancient ceremonies. Some were still angered and spoke of Hermann going into battle “as to a dance,” but that kind of talk no longer worked among a Family in dire retreat. She ignored it. As soon as proper mourning had passed, Kirchoff had worked around the crowd, gathering support. She ignored all that, too. Still, they missed Hermann’s steady leadership, his slow, kind voice. Her daughter’s eyes had that shine close to tears that gray eyes often take on,
and her mouth was wobbly. She embraced Mina wordlessly.
Family Bishop harvested the property of the recently fallen because, with the steady loss of their people, came also the loss of knowledge. Nobody knew how to repair most of their gear. The dead yielded up of course their compacted food and water flasks, a mute legacy. Emily had gotten a fresh-fashioned carbo-aluminum set of shank compressors, shaping the odd mechmetal so it snugged into her flared-out boot cuffs. Others took on double-walled helmets and new shock absorbers, some to no doubt be discarded as their new gear proved heavy or vexing.
This valley was greener than the bleached lands they had just crossed, and Erika relaxed into its green humidity. A spring tinkled – everybody watered up – and small animals scampered in the bushy undergrowth. A few trees, even.
Humans had long before Urthed this world, bringing their own UrEco riches of microbes, plants, animals – the entire megasphere of life, air, waters and shaped bio-ambitions. The past uncounted generations had so altered Snowglade, nearing completion, when – came the Mechs.
The Mechs saw life-bearing planets not as biospheres deserving respect, but rather as a special sort of factory. Biology’s ability to reproduce and grow was a useful manufacturing technique, to them. So they simplified a natural world into a spherical factory farm, to yield whatever materials their own mechsphere needed. Sisal gave them tough fibers. Irontrees had metal woven into their cores that made strong beams and rugged sheets suitable for building. Ooze-bushes yielded oily wealth that a chem factory made into sophisticated lubricants. These plants the Mechs had developed and sowed around the entire planet, counting on the native biosphere to supply the soil and air and water to make entire valleys into bland, industrial sameness.
But here old Urth plants hung on. She picked up odd soft wisps in her sensorium, as did most of the Family. Further ahead.
Then there it was: a mysterious, beautiful creamy stonework at the back of the valley.
It was massive, made of plates of ivory polyceramic and stone, yet it seemed to float in air. Pure curves met at enchanting though somehow inevitable angles. Walls of white plaques soared upward as though there were no gravity. Then they bulged outward in a dome that seemed to grow more light and gauzy as the rounded shape rose still more. Finally, high above the gathering Family, the stonework arced inward and came to an upthrusting that pinned the sky upon its dagger point.
A voice whispered in Erika’s sensorium, a woman’s soft vowels in a language she did not know. They all stood transfixed, listening for a while, comprehending nothing beyond the singular fact of it: that men and women had once made things such as this.
Mina pointed to a bare plane of pale yellow stone. “Heysee – writing.”
“No language I know,” Kirchoff said.
“Might be maths,” Mina said.
“So?” Joy was anxious to get on. “Old building, ’nuff said.”
“We built it,” a younger said. “We made something... beautiful.”
Emily looked around as the Family reconned this strange, ancient plaza and its stone that opened like a flower toward the gray, troubled sky. Now each windgouged rock, though itself dull and worn, cast a lively colored shadow. The Old Sun’s outer ring was smoldering red, while the inner bull’s-eye glared a hard blue. The ring was a work of ages past, unfathomable now, made for some strange task. By who? She was beginning to consider, besides this elegant building, that it might have been humans. Long ago.
Leaves on a spindly tree rattled in the arid wind, a tinkling sound like a mockery of rain. Joy came up to her and said, hipshot and tired, “We eat, rest again. One night in that Trough, not enough.”
“Wonder why mechs didn’t plunder this place,” Erika said. “So fine it is.”
Joy nodded. “Maybe mechs won’t bother us here.”
“Hope so.”
Silver sunset fingers stroked the land. Smoky vapor rose from a recent rain on red hillsides. Insects sang their background chant. Red dust made gritty dunes that rippled like cloth under the breeze, down the valley. White termite hills stood like sentinels taller than humans and no doubt firmer. The vast vault of sky held drifting mountains of surly cloud.
“Forage,” Erika called, and the Family set to it. She had seen mounds nearby, which meant those tiny creatures that lived on the scant wood here. She went that way.
Everyone worked to make the meal. Erika decided to use a trick her grandmother had taught her. Take a clean slap-bucket and place a small bright light in it, one of the sunbulbs that renews daily. Stand the bucket in the gathering twilight and as that glow fades the best termites will come to the sunbulb. She watched them, these kings and queens of the next bug generation, who alone among termites could fly because they evolved to spread the species to new places and build fresh gray mounds. These seekers buzzed around and plunged into the open bucket mouth, gathering close to the light. When enough of the fat, winged things had come – hundreds, within mere minutes – she clanged the lid on. No need to add oil; the insects carried the milky grease they used to hatch eggs forth. Under heat, the buzzing motes gave up their tangy wealth and so oiled their own cooking. In a moment longer they singed a bit, sizzling. She lifted the lid and the escaping aroma tantalized the noses of all around.
She poured the nearly filled bucket into serving trays, then washed the bucket and with a twist-slap she sent it into flat mode, just a metallic sheet. Without collapsing utensils their nomad life would be dire indeed.
The Family gathered for the appetizers, adding salt to taste.
By now the slow-setting sun lanced across the great plain, tricking the eye into seeing it as three-dimensional, the shadows as gloomy canyons. Threading through them was a muttering stream that gleamed like an oily snake. She and Kirchoff made sure no one drank straight from that river; mechs poisoned whatever they could.
They got on well enough with the compressed chaws they carried, the bugs, some boiled veggies, but... They needed meat. These leafy green plants had shallow roots, and gave mild foods. But there were other roots, within humans, and they went far deeper. Hunting lived in the Family.
Before they unfurled their mats and bags for sleep, Erika and Joy and Kirchoff made the rounds of the ill and ornery. There were few real medications, so mostly they used ancient lore. Sour fig could cure diarrhoea well enough and other belly dires. Jadebush presses on wounds and cuts pulls the skin back together. Angletree leaves could disperse suit-warts, too. But for sore shanks and mind-rumbles there was nothing. “Sleep it off,” they said much more than once.
She liked looking up as she fell into grateful slumber. The sky was like campfires lit in an ocean of night.
ON THE DRY plains a thing is true at first light and a lie by noon. She watched the lovely, perfect shimmering lake she saw across the sun-baked vastness where they knew killers lurked. She had walked across such plains on other mornings beneath the pale dawn and knew that no such lake was there. Such open water had not been for eons now, with the mechs sucking moisture from this world, to render it all the better for their metal and ceramo-selves. So again the blue lake was there, absolutely true, beautiful and believable. Yet it was a swindle of optics, she knew. Refraction of the air made things desirable yet false. Not only mechs and humans played tricks.
“Mom? I think I figured out that puzzle.”
Mina led her to the enigmatic mark.
“I got just the one Aspect, Nialdi, and he says that’s an ancient language sign, named ‘sigma.’ Also means to add up. To what? I figure that 100 by it means, everything up to there. Add all the numbers from zero to 100, which is 5050.” This came out in a rush as Mina gestured at the space below the ‘sigma.’
Erika blinked. “How’d you add up all those –”
“Easy, see. Take 0 and 100 – adds to 100, suresay. Then 1 and 99 do the same. Count all those, but there’s left over the 50 in the middle. That makes 5050.”
“I’m sure damn bedazzled. So what’s –”
“I
figure it’s a telltale. See up there? Just below the sigma, a blank spot, looks different from that creamy stone around it. Give me a boost.”
Not quite following, Erika knelt and lifted Mina on her shoulders, to reach the spot. The moment Mina’s hand touched it, a fluorescent background oozed across the surface. “Hey!” Mina touched it and inscribed 5050 in blocky numbers.
Something brushed Erika knees. A hidden door had popped open in the smooth stone.
They knelt together. “It’s a stash!” Mina cried out.
“Somebody figured mechs couldn’t puzzle that out,” Erika said, brimming with pride.
It took little time to see what had been hid. And for how long? She wondered.
“Aspect trove,” Kirchoff said when he set his inboards to analyzing the tiny disks arrayed in e-mag-proofed boxes. “Defended against interference. A library of selves.”
There was ancient, intricate gear that could wrest from dying men and women vital fractions of their selves, Aspects – deftly lifted bits of pastlife and personality, before people became suredead.
“Look for repair Aspects,” Joy said. She was already using her inboards to check each disk in turn. They all set to.
The capillary socket was an age-old feature of everyone. Using the most exacting portal in a body demanded precision. When Mina said firmly, “I want one,” Erika saw it was her time, and so did not object.
There were drawbacks. Erika’s Aspects idled as nattering insect voices in the back of her mind, sometimes recalling a party some era before. They would murmur on about opulent glittering ballrooms, sideboard groaning with keenmeats, yukatas translucent yet crisply warm. But ask them about mech insignia seen last week and they went vague. Still, they could tell one how to fix the older gear, and sometimes figure out the newer geegaws. Not enough, so these new ones could be critical