He stood slowly, feeling his chilled muscles stretch and protest.

The Citadel was gone.

Veronica.

Abraham.

He had left now only Toby, his son. Only a fragment of Family Bishop.

And finally, he had left before him now the endlessly stretching prospect of flight and rest and flight again.

PART ONE

Long Retreat

ONE

Something was after them.

The Family had just come straggling over a razorbacked ridge, beneath a pale jade sky. Killeen’s shocks wheezed as his steady lope ate up the downgrade.

The red soil was deeply wrinkled and gullied. Cross-hatching was still sharp in the tractor-tread prints that cut the parched clay. There had been so little rain the prints could well be a century old.

A black-ribbed factory complex sprawled at the base of the slope. Killeen flew over the polished ebony domes, sending navvys scuttling away from his shadow, clacking their rude dumb irritation.

Killeen hardly saw them. He was watching spiky telltales strobe-highlighted on his right retina.

There: a quick jitter of green, pretty far back.

It came and went, but always in a new place.

There, again. Far behind.

Not directly following them, either. Not a typical Marauder maneuver. Smart.

He blinked, got the alternative display. The Family was a ragged spread of blue dabs on his topo map. He was pleased to see they kept a pretty fair lopsided triangle. Cermo-the-Slow was dragging ass behind, as always.

Killeen saw himself, an amber winking dot at the apex. Point man. Target.

He grimaced. This was his first time ever as point, and here came some damn puzzle. He’d tried to beg off when Cap’n Fanny ordered him to the front. There were others better experienced—Ledroff, Jocelyn, Cermo. He’d much rather have stayed back. Fanny kept giving him extra jobs like this, and while he’d do whatever she said without protest, this had made him jittery from the start.

Fanny knew more than anybody, could see through Marauder tricks. She should be up here. But she kept pushing him.

Now this. He dropped from the air, eyes slitted.

Killeen came down on a pocked polyalum slab, the old kind that mechs had used for some long-forgotten purpose. Packing fluff blew in the warm wind, making dirty gray drifts against his cushioned crustcarbon boots. Mechmess littered the ground, so common he did not notice it.

“Got a pointer behind,” Killeen sent to Fanny.

—Snout?— she answered.

“Nossir noway,” Killeen answered quickly to cover his nerves. “Think I’d sing out if was that same old Snout, been tagging us for days?”

—What is, then?—

“Dunno. Looks big, then small.”

Killeen did not understand how his retinal area scan worked, had only a vague idea about radar pulses. He did know things weren’t supposed to look large on one pass and small the next, though. Habit told you more than analysis.

—’Quipment’s bust?—

“I dunno. Flashes okay,” Killeen said reluctantly. Was Fanny joshing him? He didn’t know which he liked less, something that could come up on them this way, or his gear gone flatline on him.

Fanny sighed. She was a nearly invisible speck to his right rear, wiry and quick. Killeen could hear her clicking her teeth together, trying to decide, the way she always did.

“Whatsay?” he prodded impatiently. It was up to her. She was Cap’n of the Family and had a long lifetime rich in story and experience, the kind of gut savvy that meant more in dealing with Marauder mechs than anything else.

She had been Cap’n for all the years that Family Bishop had been on the move. She knew the crafts of flight and pursuit, of foraging and stealing; of deception and attack. And through terrible years she had held the Family together.

—Comes closer?—

“Looks. Dodging fast.”

Fanny clicked her teeth again. Killeen could see in his mind’s eye her wise old eyes crinkling as she judged their positions. Her warm presence suffused his sensorium, bringing a sure, steady calm. She had been Cap’n so long and so well, Killeen could not conceive how the Family had done without her before, when they lived in the Citadel.

—We make the fist, then,— she said with finality.

Killeen was relieved. “Goodsay.”

—Sound the call.—

He blinked. “Won’t you?”

—You’re point. Act like one.—

“But you know more about…” Killeen hesitated. He did not like admitting to his own doubts, not with Ledroff and others probably listening in. He liked even less the prospect of leading an attack.

“Look, Ledroff has done this before. Jocelyn, too. I’ll drop back and—”

—No. You.—

“But I don’t—”

—Naysay!— She was abrupt, biting. —Call!—

Killeen wet his lips and steadied himself. He sent over general comm, —Heysay lookleft! Fist!—

Most of the Family were over the ragged ridgeline now. That would provide some shelter from whatever was coming from behind. He watched as they came spilling down the ruddy, gorge-pocked hillsides. They were a slow tumbling fluid, their individual tinny acknowledgments coming as thin insect cries.

Killeen did not consider for a moment that the voices he heard were carried on radio waves, for he had lived all his life in a sensory bath provided by the linking of acoustic and electromagnetic signals. The distinction between them would have demanded more science than he had ever mastered, ever would master. Instead he heard the gathering peppery voices as scattershot ringings, carrying long and remote across the hot still silence of dusty late afternoon. Though each Family member glided in beautiful long arcs, the Family itself seemed to Killeen to hang suspended in the middle distance, so gradual was its progress, like thick dark down-swarming molasses. Gravid and slow they came, this worn and perhaps only remaining remnant of humanity: eagering, homing, tribing.

Killeen caught fragments of talk from Ledroff.

—Why’d Cap’n put him… Damfino why he’s up there…—

“Cut the chatter!” Killeen called.

—Couldn’t find his ass w’both hands…—

“I said quiet!” he whispered fiercely.

Killeen had heard Ledroff’s muttered jibes through the comm before. Until now he had ignored them. No need to provoke a faceoff with the big, self-assured man. But this time Killeen couldn’t let it pass. Not when it endangered them.

—Seems me he’s jumpin' at spooks,— Ledroff got in, then fell silent.

Killeen wished Cap’n Fanny had come on full comm line and cut off Ledroff. A mere disapproving click of her tongue would have shut him up.

The Family skimmed low, using savvy earned through hard years. Wheeling left, they seeped down among the knobby, domed buildings of the manufacturing complex.

Factory mechs wrenched to a stop as the Family skipped light and fast through their workyards. Then the blocky, awkward-looking machines hunkered down, withdrawing their extensors into marred aluminum shells. Such mechs had no other defense mechanisms, so the Family gave the slope-nosed, turtlelike forms no notice.

Still, the humans had to be fast. They knew if they stayed here long these slow-thinking drudges would send out a call. Lancers would come. Or worse.