THREE

Killeen woke with a technicolor headache.

Ledroff’s voice came booming down from somewhere high in the air. Killeen rolled over and blearily realized he had fallen asleep on his watch.

“Lazeball!” Ledroff shouted at him. “Up!”

“I… what…”

“Naysay you anything. Up!”

Killeen got to his hands and knees, feeling every muscle stretch tight and stingsore.

Ledroff kicked him in the butt. Killeen yelped. He sprawled. A damp moldering smell rushed up into his nostrils, sharp and biting.

Ledroff grabbed his collar and jerked him to his feet. Killeen staggered forward, pushed by the rough, callused hands of other men. His legs were wooden stumps. The hollow cavern swerved eerily. Women hooted, rebuking him. A hand cuffed his cheek. A muttered curse found strident echoes. The Family formed a grumbling circle in the dappled gray light. Ledroff marched Killeen to the center of it and booted him again in the ass.

“Watchdrop,” Ledroff said simply, a plain indictment.

“Drunk, he was!” a woman accused.

Jake-the-Shaper, whose word carried far in the Family, said disgustedly, “Coulda got us raided.”

Ledroff nodded. “Whatsay punishment?”

The family didn’t hesitate to answer.

“Three fullpouch!”

“Naysay, four!”

“My thermpack!”

“Mine too!”

“Let ’im carry my medkit.”

“And canisters.”

“All the canisters.”

“Yeasay. He slept, let him stagger now.”

Killeen kept his head bowed. He tried to remember what had happened. The alky, right. He’d had some. Done some dancing. Started sobbing, he remembered that. Drank some more…

The Family bickered and joked and hooted. Idle rage, frustration—Ledroff orchestrated them to vent their feelings. Anger diffused into mere irritation. They finally settled on a penalty load for Killeen to carry: one fullpouch and the medkit, relieving two of the older women of a good third of their burden.

“Take you it?” Ledroff demanded ritually.

Killeen coughed hoarsely. “Uh, yea. Doubly yea.”

Killeen then recited the sorrow-giving, letting the words trip out through swollen lips without having to think about them. Silence followed the ancient sayings.

Ledroff laughed, breaking the remaining tension around the circle. His lips twisted in an unreadable expression, Ledroff made a joke about the stains on Killeen’s overalls. The Family chuckled. Killeen didn’t even look down to see. He knew he had fallen asleep on something sticky. He welcomed the laughter. To be the butt of a joke was nothing compared with the humiliation of not handling the alky, of falling asleep on watch.

He didn’t look up to find his son’s eyes as Ledroff cuffed him aside. He felt a smarting in his eyes, perhaps from tears, but the roaring ache in his head made it impossible to cry. He would’ve liked to slink away, humiliated, but his mouth and throat were parched from the harsh malty alky. He walked unsteadily down an alleyway shadowed by a row of vats, away from the Family, until he found a spring of processed water. Someone had popped a feeder line, creating a frothing geyser. He slurped it up, stripped, washed himself in the bitterly cold spray. As he stood in the warming air, letting the breeze of a yawning duct dry him, Toby came from the inky recesses of a forging machine.

“Dad…what…?”

Killeen looked into the upraised, trustful face. “I… the laying-low. Guess I let it get me.”

“Looked like alky,” Toby said sardonically.

“The alky was a way out.”

“Thought it was… Ledroff, maybe.”

Toby was trying to comfort him, Killeen saw, and thought that being direct was the best way. Or maybe Toby simply wasn’t old enough to know how to talk and say nothing at the same time.

Killeen nodded slowly, so his head didn’t ache so much. It was all coming back. “Ledroff…”

“After the laying-low songs,” Toby said matter-of-factly, “he talked some.”

“I remember…” A blur.

“Decided we’d head for a Casa.”

“Great. He got any idea where one is?”

Toby shook his head. “Hesay lots, but not that.”

“ ’Cause he dunno.”

“Family liked how he talked, though.”

“He make sense?”

Guardedly: “Some.”

“What’d I say?”

“Nothin’ that went over real well.”

“Oh.” Killeen couldn’t recall any of this. “I get much support?”

“Some. Paid off lots better for Ledroff.”

Killeen shook his thick hair free of droplets, wrung it in both hands. “Huh? How come?”

“They made him Cap’n.”

Killeen stopped, dumbstruck. “Cap’n?”

“Yeafold, the voting was. Ever’body but you.”

“Where was I?”

Toby shrugged, a silent way to say that Killeen had been insensible by then.

“We got better than Ledroff. Why, Jocelyn’s—”

“He talks good.” Toby didn’t have to say better than you, drunk, but he didn’t need to. Killeen knew the Family thought he was good but unreliable, and not really old enough to be Cap’n anyway. Even if Fanny had been training him, same as Ledroff and Jocelyn.

Until now Killeen had been glad to have them think that way, too. It kept them from always coming to him with disputes to settle, intrigues, the rest of it. Every Family had that, and on the run everybody whined more and sought shelter in the casting of words around their problems.

“Well, maybe Ledroff will have some ideas after all,” Killeen said lamely.

“Uh-huh.”

“I got look after you, anyway.”

“Uh-huh.”

Something distracted him from his son’s guarded, puzzled expression—a small warning somewhere in the back of his mind. He brushed it aside. Time to scheme later. Right now he wanted to gain back some of his son’s respect.

“You don’t really believe that,” Toby said solemnly, accusingly.

“Well, let’s give him a chance.” Killeen climbed back into his overalls, scratching where the water hadn’t taken all the scum from his skin.

“You figure he’s any good?” Toby persisted.

“Well…” There was an obligation not to badmouth the Cap’n. Boys didn’t understand that.

“Dad, you could’ve talked sense into them.”

“Look, son, I don’t want to mess in that. Got enough just lookin’ after you.” Killeen sat and began drawing on his hydraulic boots.

“You could’ve.”

“Yea… well…” Killeen had no words. Ledroff had made him look stupid before he’d started drinking, he remembered that now. The man had been playing for support. Calculating that Killeen would drown his grief in alky. So Ledroff had held up the Witnessing until Killeen was thick into the sauce.

“Well, I know I… I had a problem….”

“Sure did.”

“Guess I let it get away from me.”

Toby swallowed with difficulty. “Y’shouldn’t do that”

“Yeasay… it’s just…”

“Fanny. I know.”

“Fanny.” Last night the full weight of it had come in on him. He would never see that weathered, crusty face again. Never hear the gravel-voiced jokes. Never.

Killeen rummaged for a way to deflect the talk. “Come on, let’s go outside.” He pulled on his helmet, secured it.

Suspiciously: “What for?”

He reflected wryly that Toby could see around him pretty easily, and only twelve years old at that. Even better evidence that he wasn’t cut out to be Cap’n. Everybody would guess his moves before he knew them himself. “Have a look at the land, now we’re not so tired.”

“If Ledroff lets us,” Toby said sarcastically.

“Don’t be so—”

A faint tinny sound, high up.

“Huh?” Toby asked.

“Naysay!”

Toby didn’t hear the sound. The boy opened his mouth to say something more, eyes serious and adamant. Killeen clapped a hand over the mouth and sent a whispery red Mayday to the Family. Something coming. But not on the floor.