“Come on! You get first hack.”

“What… ?”

“Gone take one these down.”

“One of—”

“Big crash time! Big! Cel’brate!”

Already some of the Family were scrawling marks at the base of one of the slender towers. Cermo-the-Slow tugged Killeen toward them. It was no longer interesting to pillage mech factories, but this strange place was different.

“You don’t understand,” Killeen said. “This isn’t a mech building.”

Cermo snickered. “Think’s a hill? Huh?”

“Humans made it”

Cermo laughed.

“They did! There’s a voice from over there—”

“Hearin’ voices,” Cermo called to the others. “Rattler musta addled him some.” Raucous catcalls answered.

“Humanity built this. That’s why it’s so, so beautiful.”

“Mechstuff, ’s all.” Cermo walked to the foot of the tower.

“No! Long time ago, somebody—men and women, us—did such work. Look, just look at it.”

Cermo had the others with him, faces smirking and chuckling and preparing in their bleary way to do what men and women did whenever they found undefended mechwork.

“More damn foul mechstuff, ’s what it is,” Cermo said with a touch of irritation. “You don’t want part of it, we’ll take it all.”

Two women laughed and handed Cermo a cutter-beam tube, one ripped from the Crafter so long ago. Cermo thumbed a button and a ready buzzing came from it.

A fevered mix of anguished rage propelled Killeen forward. Cermo half-turned to the tower and pointed the cutter-beam at one of the creamy stone plates. The crowd made a murmuring noise of anticipation, highpitched threads of glee racing through it.

Killeen hit him solidly in the back. Cermo lurched. His face smacked into the tower. Killeen caught him with a roundhouse kick in the ribs. The cutter clattered on marble.

“You—” Cermo blurted. Killeen kicked the buzzing cutter away.

Cermo feinted and hit Killeen squarely in the right eye.

Killeen staggered back, trying to focus.

Cermo ducked down and lumbered out. Killeen tripped him. The big man struck a broad stone plate and groaned.

Killeen looked for Ledroff or Fornax. They were far away and seemed unconcerned. He shouted to a sea of angry faces, “Leave it! It’s ours. Human.”

A woman called, “You protectin’ mech garbage? I—”

“People ’way back did this. People different from us.”

The woman bared her gray teeth. “Who says? This’s mechwork!”

“Not going argue with you. Back off.” Killeen stared at them, stony and redfaced, eyes wide.

Slitted eyes regarded him, assessing chances of taking him in a fight.

Hands grasped at air, eager for the weight of a weapon.

Wind whistled among the high bright towers.

And the moment passed. The crowd shuffled to the side, muttering darkly, eyes averted. They went to try to recapture their merriment.

Killeen helped Cermo sit up, brought him water. Cermo was a man of quick moods and the anger had passed. Killeen shared some brandy with him. They embraced. The matter was over, except for Cermo’s sore ribs and Killeen’s bruised eye.

Then he stood and watched thin cirrus skate across the sky, framed by the towers and the enchantment of the great curving dome.

Again he listened to the ancient hollow voice and its singsong chant. He paid little attention as Ledroff and then Fornax briefly spoke to him about the incident.

Toby peered at the towers for a while and Killeen told him it was a manwork. Toby wrinkled up his nose with blithe boyhood wonder and a few minutes later was playing again with the Rook children.

He told Shibo and she nodded but said nothing. Around them the momentum of celebration spent itself.

The Cap’ns decided to put distance between them and the Rattler. The Families, after all, had eaten, and could regain their earlier pace. To groans and complaint they ordered the Families back on the march.

Killeen shook his head and tapered the aged voice down to a dim dry warble. He, too, would like to rest here for a while. To grieve for Old Mary. To fest. To relive through story and celebration the humiliation of the Rattler.

Tugging on his pack, Killeen frowned. If mechs honored this human place, then humans should too. Of that he was sure.

“March!” Ledroff called. “Hanks out. Go!”

They left the flat plaza without looking back.

Arthur was excited but Killeen was in no mood to listen closely. The Aspect could not explain how this monument got here or why. Arthur knew of nothing like it in his own time. It seemed to have no connection with the slab of Chandra nearby. Killeen tuned down Arthur’s puzzled excitement. Again he took flank left for the journey ahead.

Arthur kept repeating a name. He turned it over in his mind, trying to make sense of it. It was like no language he had ever known.

Finally he gave up. Lost in time, it meant nothing, though he did note that the slow and gravid sound, Taj Mahal, rode pleasingly on the lips.

FIVE

The next morning Killeen rose to news that buzzed through camp. On the night watch Shibo had spotted a navvy reconning them from a distant hill. She had shot at it but her bolt either missed or, ominously, was deflected.

Ledroff and Fornax decided to send a tracking team after the navvy. The two Cap’ns took the Families off at a diverging angle.

Six formed the party, all volunteers. Two were Bishop men still smoldering from the Mantis-brought deaths of relatives. Two were women from Family Rook, lean and angular. They wore their hair chopped short and curled in tight knots, forming a design and lettering from some ancient monumental symbol whose purpose no one remembered. They were outrunners, trained for hunting and led by their own character to the passion of pursuit. Shibo, though not an outrunner herself, was their friend and volunteered as well.

They laughed and joked with the two men and seemed to Killeen—who was the sixth—no different from other women he had known. Family Bishop had no women hunters, though Jocelyn was an outrunner of sorts. Killeen gathered from their talk that the Rooks had always kept scrupulously equal divisions of labor, so that men and women shared in cooking and hunting, defense and craft, even in carryweight and outrunning. The Rook women displayed through their gravgreen tightweave great slabs of muscle in thigh and calf. Yet they carried themselves with a light and airy nonchalance.

Killeen found them all agreed: the special navvy could lead to the Mantis, and taking the Mantis by surprise was a lot better than the other way around.

So they set out on a long and wearisome day. Though centuries had shaped them for running, Killeen knew he had to pace himself. Age had begun to tug at him. Aches and familiar soreness in his knees and hips told him that he was pushing his endurance. Thin sensations came from embedded sensors, reporting micromolecular inventories. Killeen automatically took these into account without the faintest notion of their origin.

Shibo sent, —Toby safe.—

Killeen blinked. “I’m that obvious? But you’re right— I don’t like leaving him.”

—Mantis goes for elders, seems like.—

“That’s what I keep tellin’ myself. Worth the risk, I figure, if we get the jump on the Mantis.”

—Hope. We hope,— she said pensively.

They followed the navvy treads along an arroyo swampy from runoff. Streams broke freely from the loamy hills. The ice was melting underneath and seepage welled up in the low pockets, celebrated by flourishes of greenery.