“Let’s go. The Families’ll need help.”

He helped her surmount the gully and cross the bleak landscape strewn with the newfallen dead.

PART TWO

The Once-Green World

ONE

He came awake but did not come alive. He heard and saw nothing.

Killeen had to guide him only a seeping perception of gradients in temperature. He was lying on his belly and felt a thin chill steal up into him from the dank ground. It was as if the soil itself struck upward into him, slow and methodical, spreading through his jumpsuit, into groin and hip, creeping across his chest and into his shoulders. His arms were crossed, his forehead resting over them. In his nostrils the chill sank upward into his oozing sinuses. The sharp bite of it kindled spatterings of rosy heat in his eyes.

He turned his head. No sight, no sound. The shredded heatspurts dwindled. As if in reply, crosscut sensations of bitter cold lashed over him. He felt crisp warm waves ripple his still-numb skin. Elusive traceries of dulling cold fought across his face. Thermal battles mixed the two in whirling knots he felt as pinprick flares, darting in hard vortices, sputtering. To his surprise the flux resolved not into minute threads of hot and chill but instead into what they had been all along: voices. The tiny, mingled, raucous speech of his Aspects.

The Grail will brook no mealymouthed stalling now Arthur. We have got to force these people to move and right quick, too.

Got to get shelter.

Mantis—don’t understand it.

Can’t take these losses.

Of course, I feel quite as threatened as the rest of you by the reckless way they have been squandering opportunities. They could have followed the path we advised back at that place—what was it?—Lost Mother Ridge, that was the name. If they had, we would almost certainly have reached a Casa. I distinctly remember a Casa near there. Nialdi, your memory for the grand old days surpasses mine. What was that Casa called?

It was Oasis Godstone. I blessed the site myself at its consecration to our cause.

Ah yes, a lovely event, I’m sure. There were so many in those fine centuries, when we had proportioned way stations between the Citadels. What wealth! We traveled without fear nipping at our heels, never bothering to carry water or provisions, for we knew they lay a mere short-march away, in Casas or Citadels where—

1. Stick to topic.

Very well, Bud. You needn’t be snippish. As I see it, with the remaining maps, we could still retrace our steps and search for Oasis Godstone. Spotty and dated as the maps are, of course I cannot be sure, but my calculations—

They’ve erred far more, Arthur, by ignoring the words of our Fellowship. The vouchsafed command we carry from the first days here—nay, from the Providential Truth made known unto us from aeons immemorial!—definitely shows that this wandering in a mechmade wilderness is a wrongful path to the eventual resurrection of us all. My halfdead brothers, if we are to walk the land in strength and fullness, we must pull together.

I take offense at your hectoring, Nialdi. Your medical skills I respect and do not deny, but—

I am a spiritual guide to the Family, as well! I was encased as Aspect for my moral sense, not merely—

Pulpit-pounding not same as wisdom.

Stick to what we can do now.

What we must do, my stunted little Face friend, is exert leadership. This blighted desolation wherein we so humbly lie is an abomination! Our dwindled-down Family still carries our honorable name and is still capable of attaining the heights humanity once harbored—

How we go?

Anyplace better than this.

Maybe build ship.

Lost lastship 269 years ago.

You are leaping too far ahead, Bud. I am quite aware of the mech atrocities which resulted in our losing the last of the starships which bore us to this hive of gargantuan—

Mech devils! Use no other nicey-nice word for it, Arthur! These are unholy—

Hard to build ship.

Have to make Citadel first.

Nobody knows shipcraft now.

Don’t talk so fast you two.

I’m only a Face you know.

All this went by in a shredded heatpricked blur. Killeen lay motionless.

Somewhere in him sentience and volition were unjoined wires trying to snugfit again. The heat-spilling voices blended with chilly tremors in his eardrums. Their tangential argument resounded in sweeping thermal bellnotes—vexed, rambling, incoherent.

He focused himself and wrestled back command of his sight. A square in his left eye filled with dawn-gray radiance and a fuzzy rounded edge of a stone.

He felt the voices shrinking, talking even more rapidly now. His blunted, part-blinded sensorium translated their speech into waning thermal codes. Rude dashes of hot and cold rushed over his chest and neck, blaring. Arthur and Nialdi and Bud didn’t want to shrink back into their cramped cells. They called to him.

Penitent you be who jostles into silence the word and wisdom of and from your forefathers! Dare you not—

I believe you could benefit from this discussion yourself, Killeen. I fully grant your need to arise and see what is happening, but I suggest you will find much of what we say germane to the situation now faced by both Families. We need to work out a strategy based on careful assessments of potentialities and risks, including—

Listen, Killeen, I can figure for you.

You give me time I could take apart that Mantis.

See how it works.

He swept them away, squeezed them toward their crannies.

Into Killeen’s eyes leaped angular blocks of light. His blindness fluttered away. The outside world rushed at him. He turned his head and saw the dry plain surge and twist, stretching away. The Family was sleeping. The Eater was a hazy violet whirlpool squatting above a distant mountain peak.

As his Aspects relinquished his perception-processing space, he caught the dusty savanna scent, mingled with fragrant human musk. His ears crackled, letting in the wind-whisper.

Aspects needed time to sense the world directly, not as mere leftovers. That kept them from becoming dry, husk like embodiments, slow to respond, little better than an ancient library book. When Killeen was awake, they got snippets of the world, sitting behind his consciousness. As he slept, they could raise his eyelids, catch glimpses that gave them a gratifying sliver of experience. Such thin gruel was all they got. They listened through his eardrums, savored his sensorium—while also providing the service of isolating him, ensuring deep sleep.

Aspects craved the rush of perception, for it was all they now knew of life. As he awoke, Killeen could not hurry matters. He had to let them withdraw slowly, yielding up chunks of his sensorium sadly, one at a time, as they retreated into their bleak cells of chipstore.

This last night, Killeen had let out two Aspects, Arthur and Nialdi. They were his strongest and needed the most airing.