The Family was well dispersed. Even if a mech flyer spotted them and dropped an explosive bomb or a jammer, only a few could be within range.

“Lookleft,” Ledroff called to Killeen. “See some-thin’?”

The landscape leaped into bright focus as Killeen landed atop a rust-riddled hulk. It had been a crawler. Ancient in design, stripped of ore-rich parts, it rattled like a forlorn drum as he studied the far horizon.

“Looks to be mechs, only…”

“What’s your Far-Ranger say?”

“Mechmetal, sure plenty that. But I’m not smellin’ mechthink.”

Killeen’s sensors had a library of typical mech electronic signatures, and they sampled the tiny sputterings of unshielded emission ahead. Killeen could neither have read nor understood a graphics display detailing which signals were mechlike. The data flowed to him as cloying scents, laced with crisp darting odors.

“Could be they’re downwindin’ you?”

Killeen bristled. “I can tell a mechfart faster’n any,” he said. This was not true—Cermo-the-Slow had a better nose. But the big man lacked judgment and speed.

Killeen reluctantly called up Arthur and asked for help.

You ask if mechs could hide like this? No, I doubt they could fully shield their transmissions. Nor could they fully elude the sensors we carry.

“You sure?”

I participated in the development of these techniques, I’ll remind you.

“If we let that many get within scannin’ distance…”

I assure you—

—Dad, I hear talking,— Toby called.

“What kind?”

—Some kind strange voices, I dunno who.—

Ledroff sent, —Could be a mech trick.—

Killeen was confused. His instincts said Run!—and he automatically bent down to check-tighten his boots, running gloved fingers along glassy fiberseals. He turned his head. A small shift in the capacitance of his sensorium brought him a tinny chime of talk. He froze. Overlapping, garbled, human voices:

—They’re comin’.—

—Too many. Can’t pick ’em off.—

—I say we cut right now.—

—Checkleft. Any sign they’re surroundin’?—

—Might just be navvys.—

—Naw, they step too high.—

—I smell plenty mechmetal in ’em. Stinks powerful.—

Toby cried, —They’re people!—

And here they were, a thin wedge straggling across the deep-rutted plain. Killeen’s mouth formed an incredulous O.

A distant ringing voice demanded, —What Family? What Family?—

Ledroff answered, —Bishop! Six years from the Citadel!—

A woman’s voice answered, —We’re Rooks.—

—We have kin here, kin of yours.—

—Cousins and uncles and aunts!—

Boots dug into timeworn sand and the two triangles on the plain rushed at each other. Pellmell running, shouting.

Questions about lost relatives yelled into the sensorium, and hoarse answers calling back. Windmilling of legs at the high point of high leaps. Then the tips of the spear-points met and men and women flung themselves at each other. Behind scratched helmets were faces half-remembered, people who were until a moment before only faded images from a wondrous life that had ceased to be. The faces carried furrows and brownscabbed rashes, sewn-up cuts and even hollowed-out eyesockets where no replacement parts could be found. Mouths showed ruined gray-stubbed teeth, blood-rimmed lips. They barked and called to one another, even though most of them in fact knew only a few of the bobbing faces coming across the broken plain. The Citadel had held thousands. They had gone so long in their own close and knotted company, their memories had been overladen by such a weight of daily terror, that any face was a sudden reminder, undeniable and fleshy, of the collectivity of their kind. Lost friends embraced. Shouts laced the air. Abruptly they saw themselves as far more than a straggling band of hunted creatures. Their yelps and startled joy celebrated humanity itself.

Toby found immediately a boy and two girls, who came bounding out in front of even the fleetest of running men. They embraced and jabbered and capered and even wrestled in their unthinking frenzy, while about them the two Families collided, two long-separated fluids flowing in a throughstreaming torrent of bodies and talk and simple mindless whoops and cries and sudden tears.

Killeen found a man he had known, had worked with in the fields: Sanhakan, heavybrowed and cleanshaven still, eyes dancing in a net of webbed, sunburned wrinkles. Sanhakan clapped him on the back, swore, swung Killeen off the ground in a bear grip. They both laughed wildly, peering at each other through filmed helmets, as if to be sure the other was in fact substantial and not a fever dream. They popped helmets, just as everyone was doing around them, and kissed in incredulous greeting. Only taste and touch were trusted now, the human press of warm and pungent flesh. Killeen breathed in the rank running-smell of Sanhakan. Then the slightly muskier odor of a woman who was suddenly at his elbow, heavy lips outthrust. Another woman, old and weathered and smelling of salty exertion, white hair, and something indefinably sweet. Slapping and patting and hugging, he made his way through the welter of closepressing bodies that knocked him about in their lurching joy. Faces, scabbed and furrowed. Sobbing. He came to an old man with eyes slitted nearly closed, but whose teeth sparkled with lustrous youth. Killeen embraced him, unable to hear what the man shouted over the babble-river around them. Then Killeen was passed by eager hands on to the next, and in turning away from the old man heard a sudden spang that sprang up from his lower spine and hurled itself through his head. Red filmed his vision. Something hit his nose, bringing the instant thick taste of blood into his mouth. He licked at it in wonderment. His tongue rasped on sand. His vision cleared slightly, clouds blowing away, and he saw he was facedown. He moved leadened muscles and rolled over. Next to him lay the old man, legs and arms stretched full out. The tongue protruded and there was a certain look to the face that struck a sudden coldness into Killeen, the awful twisted look that Fanny had.

He struggled up onto an elbow. The streaming talk around him now had a harsh high register. Screams. Bod ies falling. Killeen tried to push the edge of his sensorium outward, find what was happening. It was thick, clouded, muffled, like swimming in dust. He got to his knees and saw that some of the Families were down, sprawled. Others fled. Some were frozen with shock.

Toby.

Brittle pain shot through his arms. Killeen groped around.

And saw his son lurch up uncertainly, a bare short distance away.

“Toby!” Killeen got to his knees. “Get behind something!”

Toby saw him. “Which way?”

“Come on!”

Teetering unsteadily on feet of wooden weight, Killeen stumbled toward an outcropping of jagged boulders.

“Get… there.” They both dropped weakly behind the largest stone. Then Killeen realized he did not know which direction the attack came from.

Toby stared at the running figures, eyes white. “What… ?”

“It’s the Mantis,” Killeen said.

EIGHT

Twenty-two bodies. His subsystems counted them automatically as he carefully surveyed the far hills.

Twenty-two, all sprawled like loose bags. Suredead.

They had been hit by something firing from long range, something with remarkable aim. To do that took size, to get good triangulation.

Something big should be easy to spot. Even in the excitement, they should have seen it coming. As far as Killeen could see, there was nothing obvious, no crinkling play of sandy light.