They followed the treadmarks out onto a broad plain. Killeen got more and more exasperated as they searched the area. He knew the navvys’ typical speed, their general ability to negotiate terrain. These tracks followed a clean, intelligent path between outcroppings of ice-worn stone and the boggy low washes where treads would foul and jam. This navvy was smarter than any he’d seen. As they covered the plain in lengthy, skimming, boot-boosted strides, the others noticed it too.

—Naysay,— one of the Rook women called over comm, —track stops here.—

—Wind erased,— Shibo sent.

The area was parched and took a print well. Where the firmly packed clay gave way to sand the treadmarks faded. Killeen sped over the tawny stretch. “Can’t see where it came out,” he said.

—Perimeter it!— the other Rook woman called. She was in charge and seemed to take as a personal affront any delay in finding their quarry.

They traced the outer boundary of the broad, shallow wash. Nowhere did a track emerge, yet in the wide area there was nothing substantial to hide a navvy.

—Section search!— the Rook woman called. They divided the oblong area into pieces and paced off a regular grid search, peering under every bush. Nothing.

The Eater and Denix were both low on the knobby horizon before she gave up. There was no sign of the navvy. —I hate going back without even a sighting,— the woman said.

—No damn sense innit,— a Bishop man said in fa tigued exasperation. —We’d’ve seen any transporter come, pick it up. No place navvy could go.—

Shibo said, —Air maybe.—

—Navvys that fly!— the second Rook woman snorted. —Never heard such.—

And a Bishop man added, —Navvys’re too dumb. Always were, always will be.—

On the march back they had to scale truly mountainous terrain. It was the first time Killeen could remember going over high passes, for the Bishop tactic had been to keep to the valleys, avoiding conspicuous heights. The Rooks seemed more used to it, and their woman leader made a good case that they had to go over the saddle-backed peaks if they were to reach the Families by dusk.

On the long climb Killeen reflected on what the man had said. The Families had always carried in the backs of their minds that assertion, uninspected and capricious: always were, always will be.

Yet everything now pointed oppositely. It struck Killeen suddenly that they were always behind the zigs and zags of the mechciv. Humanity needed the traditions and rituals which held the Families together, and had once united the Clans. Yet change was their only true weapon now, not the puny and often ineffectual pistols and guns they carried. Or looted, rather—projectors plucked from the inert carcasses of Marauders, or lasers ripped from ore-seeking burrowers like the dumb Snouts. Weaponry adequate for the day but not for the slow steady passage of this unending war, a conflict desperate on one side and almost casual on the other.

He called Shibo on close-comm and asked what she thought. Her self-sufficient, enclosed distance had melted slightly, and Killeen had overcome some of his shyness.

Even so, he was gratified when she immediately answered, —Must learn mechtech, yeasay.—

“Y’mean scavenge better?”

—No, build.— Her voice was flat, firm.

“From mech parts we could build mech weapons, yeasay, but—”

—Build human weapons. Not just copy mechs.—

“People hate mechs, Shibo. Don’t want learn it. Can’t, anyway.”

He could hear her flinty um-hummm though she was some distance away. They had spread out to avoid ambush. The team was making quick time through a raw mountain pass. Snowglade was so young a world that the mountains had no topsoil at all. —Mechs deliberately make understanding hard.—

This startled Killeen. “You figure?”

—They defend their tech against other mech cities. What’ll confuse them’ll confuse us.—

“Sounds hopeless, then.”

—Naysay. Human tech we could learn. Did learn, in the Arcologies.—

He didn’t want to hear about how great things had been in the old days. To keep her talking, though, he said, “You mean that Taj Mahal thing we saw?”

—Yeasay.—

“If humans could do that once…”

—We could again,— she said simply.

“That weapon yours—how’s it work?”

—I’ll show you tonight.— She hefted the long, tubular gun. —I sized it out for human use.—

“Damnfine.” Killeen was impressed.

They reached camp as the small sheltered fires started. There were burnable brambles in the sequestered notch Fornax had found for the Rooks, and over a nearby hill spread the Bishops. It would be demeaning to give up the dignity of separate and defensible campsites, no matter how diminished the resources of each Family. So each built the ordained three fires and covered them with a stretched-frame tent of tightweave. The flame was far too visible in the infrared, but the wide and steepled tent would disperse the image too broadly for a mech sensor to pick it out. Or so went the litany.

As he clumped heavily into camp, shrugging off his equipment, Killeen was acutely aware of the curiously comfortable way the Families bedded down among their own softening assumptions. They used rules of thumb inherited from grandfathers who had fallen in conflicts which now, in the swift compression of their own legacy, were but names: Skipjohn’s Draw, Stonewall, Grammaw’s, Bowles-son’s Surprise, The Three-Rattler One, Chancellorsville. Fine names, spoken of reverently around the fires. Killeen wondered, though, if for each name they also inherited in equal measure an unseen vulnerability. This thought troubled him, for until now he too had felt without thinking that the Family’s survival lay in their traditions.

He ate with Toby and Jocelyn and Shibo. They all scavenged for roots or berries that could mix agreeably with the hardpack grub brought from the last Trough. Checked for human biocompatibility, mashed and heated with streamwater, the paste gave off a fructifying aroma. They made short work of it.

Then the Family entered into that most pleasurable of hours in their days, a time of relaxed muscles and the loggy stuffed feel that casts an obliging film over the coming sleep. The talk began then. It stirred around the three encased fires like whorls of enchantment, taking them away from their sore bodies and constant low apprehension. Two Rook visitors described their flights and battles. Rook women traded stories of mech giveaway smells and signs, how to read their tracks for age and intent, how sometimes they would lie craftily in wait near springs and ponds. First Fornax led a mild ranking, then Ledroff.

They all savored the blending of Families, for it meant the wash of new tales, jokes, stories. There was rumor of romance, too, though this Ledroff cut short with a raised eyebrow and bemused scowl. Better not bring this up. Despite their adversity, the Rooks were not all down-tuned in the sexcen, and the Bishops could scarcely reply with intimations of their own dehydrated lusts. This might provoke a certain wan and wistful discontent.

Success has many voices but failure is mute. It would have been good to have a tale to tell from the day’s tracking team. Killeen brooded over their losing the navvy’s trail. He took only nominal part in the singing after dinner, and listened to only the first of the talk, before sneaking off.

Cermo saw him go and caught up, offering a flask of coarse but powerful brandy. Killeen felt a quick, darting hunger for it, reached out—and drew back his hand. “Don’t think so.”

“Aw, c’mon. Hard day. Li’l alky’ll set you right.”

“Set me on my ass. Set me dumb. Get me started, I’ll slurp up all you got.”

“Not ’fore I do,” Cermo said merrily, and Killeen could see the man was already far gone.

“Sorry, Cermo,” he said gently.