Killeen glanced around, saw no Fornax, nothing but some Rooks looking their way. “They’re taking big chunks of her sensorium. Living through it.”

“They can see us?”

Killeen hesitated. He didn’t want Toby to have to think about things like this, not added on to everything else that had happened. But the boy would wonder anyway, now that he’d seen. “Yeasay. When Aspects get like this, they drop the filters we have. They let everything flood in. Try grab all the world they can, while they can.”

“Jazz…”

“But if they overdo it—”

The woman jumped to her feet. She began to dance frantically, kicking high with her boots, flailing her arms in impossible arcs. Her feet and hands were in the air at the same time, forming strange arches and rhythms. She crashed to the ground. Legs flailed and she kept dancing. She kicked wildly against the dirt and stones. By sheer effort she thrust herself upright again, legs still pumping wildly. Her whole body writhed in absurd fast-time, counterpointing every movement of hands or legs. Sweat jumped out all over her and yet her face remained impassive. She blinked incessantly as though strobe-cutting her vision, and her eyes rolled farther into her head. Her mouth opened. A low, guttural song. The notes slid into a moan as she heat-danced faster, throwing up a cloud of dust.

Toby backed away, startled, his mouth turning down at the corners with dismay and fright. Killeen pushed him away farther and then leaped at the woman’s back. She twisted, all the while keeping up the mad rapt dance. She flailed at him open-handed. Her right foot caught him in the knee with a back kick that was part of the frantic syncopation and he went sprawling. He looked around. Family were running this way, but he could not see Fornax. The woman got back to her feet from sheer force of her drumming heels. She began to leap higher and higher, using her boots to perform huge, exaggerated pirouettes. Abruptly a soprano shriek burst from her.

Killeen lunged at her again. This time he caught her as she prepared for another grand leap. He popped open a small capillary mound on her shoulder. With a wrench he rolled her back over his hip, thrusting his weight against her to stop her from moving.

The capillary socket was an ageold feature of every human. It had been designed directly into the human DNA to give ready access to the brain. Using it demanded precise tools. Opening it required delicate adjustments. It was the most exacting portal in the body.

Killeen stuck his finger in it.

She howled, flexed—and went limp.

Toby helped cradle her to the ground. Killeen clapped the capillary shut and was thumbing the tablock back in place when Fornax’s voice boomed from above. “Don’t open that. Don’t you know—and that’s Ann! One of ours!”

“Yeasay,” Killeen said, getting to his feet. “I won’t open it.”

“You—you’ve already popped it.” Fornax looked aghast, his pale lips pulled back above his scraggly beard.

“No choice. Aspects were ridin’ her.”

“You could’ve—”

“Let her hurt herself, pull a muscle, pop a seam. Sure.”

Fornax bristled. “That is a Rook Family matter!”

Killeen saw Fornax was going to stand on principle and in that moment took his measure of the man. “Yeasay, and I apologize.”

“You put your finger…”

“Stops ’em, usually.”

“You might’ve caused mental damage!” Fornax was still angry, unable to let go of it right away even in the face of an apology. Even as his eyes still flashed their stern admonition, his mouth pursed in momentary inner reflection. Killeen saw that the man let his emotions run on until his head caught up, put a brake on things. Not a good way to be Cap’n. At least Killeen knew that much.

“Her Aspects got so much spunk, let them fix her mental stuff,” Killeen said.

“Well now, I—”

Toby burst in, “You weren’t here. Had do somethin’!”

Killeen patted him on the shoulder, pleased and yet not wanting Fornax to get the idea the boy was a smartmouth. “Rooksay wins here, Toby.”

Toby persisted, “But it—”

A long, steaming moment passed between the two men.

“Thanks for your help,” Fornax said gruffly, suddenly aware of others watching. “Both you,” nodding at the boy.

Killeen touched his forehead in way of tribute. Fornax had made a good, quick change, showing the sort of control people expected of a Cap’n. He decided Fornax wasn’t half-bad. The march to come would be a finer, truer test. Still, he could see that Ledroff and Fornax might weather and grow into the kind of Cap’ns the Families so desperately needed. Neither of them was worth Fanny’s left thumb, but then, who was?

They marched hard for two days. On the open, sun-washed plain their only safety lay in fluidity. Ledroff and Fornax kept the Families separated into two triangular wedges with three fore-scouts, four flanking, and three trailers. Marauders had a history of attacking from the rear flank, often using as approaching cover a ridgeline just crossed by the trailers.

They headed inward, toward the apparent center of the Splash. They had only crude navigation and no one knew how old this Splash was. Yet as they skip-walked across sloped valleys the evidence gathered about them. Brambles gave way to thick-leaved bushes. Dry scrub slowly ebbed. Tufts of tan sprouted in the shadows. Streambeds yielded moist soil only a single spadeful down.

Midafternoon of the second day, the Families were beginning subtly to intermingle. They traded encouragement and information about easier routes with the ease of worn veterans. Killeen could feel a slow melding. Perhaps the genetic and historical basis for keeping Families separate would recede before the tide of necessity and diminished numbers. But this was a detail, compared to their seldom-spoken yet always-felt dilemma. They sought refuge.

They were a people seasoned in the Citadels, in the enveloping comforts of a fixed sanctuary. Only the daring, the brave and young, had gone forth from the Citadels to capture and steal from the mechciv. Now all the Family had to live as nomads. Their only hostels were the Troughs and the rare Casas. So they clung to the hope of some final resting site, some permanence in a reeling world.

Killeen ruminated on this vaguely, glad that they had Cap’ns to confront such issues. He felt Arthur’s presence simmering in the back of his mind, and the cool, ironic voice arose:

You realize, don’t you, that humanity started as nomads?

“Back before the Citadels?”

Far before that, of course. Surely you remember what I discussed before?

“Damnation, I can’t recall everything! You’d rather talk than breathe, way I see it.”

I’ve told you, I don’t have adequate maps of this Splash. It is recent. But I am sorry about that messy episode when you awoke two days ago. We are worried; and I suppose it does come out at the worst times for you, and in the worst way.

“Just keep your place. No jabber. I got be sharp.”

Let me merely add that the nomad way of life is genetically quite all right for us humans. Civilization is a relatively recent invention—

“Mechciv you mean?”

No, our civilization. Not simply the crude forms we had in the Citadels. The original human society. It was vast, glorious! They built the ships which brought us here—a voyage of incomprehensible distance. They came to make contact with the voices they could hear over radio. They—

“Whose?”

Arthur’s voice begrudged the fact:

Well, apparently the transmissions were leakage from a faction of mech civilization. But understand, it spoke in a difficult code, one we may have misinterpreted. The original Captains were coming to find what the message promised—a library of all galactic knowledge. Think of it!— the collected writings and pictures and songs, who knows what wealth? The Captains’ ships could cruise just under the speed of light Even so, their voyage required over seventy thousand years. Such sacrifice—