Killeen grasped Toby’s arms and pulled him away. “Get… get back.”

“What is it?” Toby’s voice rasped.

“Something… awful.”

As they backed away he could see round, leathery bulges hanging from some of the tubes. Balls. Balls conjuring some foul semen.

The engorged fissures were growing hair. Matted black wire sprouted along the tubes as he watched.

The waxy light around them quickly faded. Toby asked more questions for which Killeen had no answers and he shushed the boy. He took two steps forward. The light brightened. Did the restless slithering of the suspended mass quicken? He moved away. Yes, the diffuse glow ebbed. The mindless motion slowed.

“It’s made to… operate… when somebody’s near.”

“Thought it was a machine,” Toby said matter-of-factly.

“So did I… not sure now.”

The others stared at other nearby shapes, frowning. Only a moment had passed but to Killeen it seemed a yawning, stretched time. Hatchet called shakily, “Form up! We got to move.”

They obeyed mutely. Long lanes of the suspended masses stretched away. As they approached, each mass in turn stirred in sullen, waxing light. They soon learned to move quickly past.

Cool quiet enveloped them. Mist rose from the hanging masses, layering the air with acrid traceries. Their steps rang hollowly.

They knew they had no plan, that Hatchet was leading them without a clear goal. But it was better to go on than to endure the strangeness here, and the enveloping sense of awful forces moving with purposes beyond human understanding.

They walked quickly. Pools of brimming glow dogged them as the masses began their performances, then ebbed. The sensation of being followed, if only by automatic mechanisms, hastened their steps.

Ahead a dark blankness grew. It was a grainy wall of black mesh.

Hatchet dispatched Cermo to the right and the wounded Kingsman to the left to find a way through. The Kingsman was back within moments, gesturing silently. No one spoke. Hatchet revived their sensoria long enough to cast tentatively along the wall. Nothing showed. He sent a darting yellow call-back to Cermo, then let the web of sensoria dwindle to a pale nothingness.

The Kingsman had found a hexagonal hatch. Rails led to it from far down the lines of sculptures. Hatchet thought some kind of service mech probably ran along the rails. He used one of the key cylinders the Crafter had given him. The indented plate accepted it and clicked three times. The hatch slid aside.

Shibo went first this time. Killeen helped the Kingsman who had lost control of his arms. They all had to bend down for the short, wide little passageway beyond.

Shibo cautiously worked her way forward. People bumped one another in the dark. Killeen’s back began to ache. He tried not to think at all about their chances. To think was to despair and that meant you stopped. Once you did that you were only waiting for the end. He had learned that in long years on the march, had seen good men and women cut down by the despair that reached into them like a claw of ice and seized their hearts.

Fatigue tugged at them all.

No one talked. Killeen’s world had narrowed to the close darkness and the feel of his hand on Toby’s shoulder.

Abruptly light forked into his eyes, bringing searing brilliance. A panel had opened automatically ahead.

“Looks clear!” Shibo called.

They stumbled out into a vault so large Killeen could not see either the walls or the ceiling. Buildings dwindled away in the distance. Complex machinery festooned each surface of the humming factories. Mechs zoomed high in the air below a canopy of gray fog. Amber blades of luminescence shot through rising bubbles of greenish vapor.

They blinked. Eyes darted nervously. The air smelled of harsh acid.

“Heysay,” Hatchet called. “Let’s go.”

Cermo wheezed. “Where?”

“Out. Gotta find our way out.”

Cermo said slowly, “Great. Which way?”

“We search till we find, is all,” Hatchet said adamantly.

A Kingsman asked, “Think maybe we try find the Renny?”

“Renny’s gone,” Killeen said. “Mantis eats mechs like that for breakfast.”

Hatchet’s eyes narrowed, sharpening the V of his face. “You got better idea?”

Killeen shook his head wearily.

They started toward the far wall even though they couldn’t see it. Hatchet said he had a good sense of direction and that this was the way toward the surface of the mountain-building that enclosed them.

They walked for an hour before the Mantis found them.

SIX

He stood in a warm valley between hills of bright green. Beneath his feet was a spongy brown mat. It stretched away about as far as he could throw a stone—but for the first time in his life, he saw no stones within reach.

The brown mat’s ragged margin gave way to the hill’s slick green, glinting in the sunlight. He peered upward but ivory clouds hid all hints of Denix or the Eater. Somehow the radiance still slanted down strongly.

He felt the fibrous carpet. It gave a soft resistance, suggesting something solid beneath. He wondered what the green slick stuff was. Grass? And another question. He groped for it. Something…

Toby. He whirled, looking in all directions.

Nothing. He was alone in a rolling landscape. A moment before he had been with Toby, he remembered, and now there was only the rough brown like tightweave beneath his feet and…

The hills moved.

The one ahead of him was shrinking. Ponderously, with a slight murmur. He turned to see the rise behind him swelling, its green luster catching glints from the skyglow.

He felt a surge. A faint rippling tremor came up through his feet. He was moving backward… up the slick mound. The brown mat slid upward, pressing him slightly farther into the soft resistance. He felt himself slowly rise up the green hill as behind him a polished green valley opened.

Somehow he was riding on something which could climb the smooth green hills. Steadily the brown weave beneath his feet made its way up toward a rounded peak.

Killeen took a step. The spongy mat cushioned him. He started walking uphill toward the edge of it. In the several moments this took he saw the hillcrest draw near and took advantage of the added height to look in all directions. There were other green hills, arranged in long ridgelines. But no other mats, no feature to give perspective.

He reached the edge just before the mat topped the hill. Seen up close, the green was mottled and flecked with white and yellow motes. He reached down to touch the glassy surface rushing under the mat.

He had never seen moisture as more than the tinkling brooks which broke free of a rocky clasp. In the Citadel he had enjoyed three full baths, aromatic occasions surrounded by ritual. He had had one at his Outcoming, one after his first hunt with his father, and one more with Veronica the night of their marriage. There should have been another bath, shared with Veronica, at Toby’s birth. But there had not been enough water then and they had put it off. The drought never lifted. Snowglade’s slow parching deepened.

His heart gave three slow, solid thumps before Killeen could fathom what he saw.

The rushing polished green splashed over his hand. Water. He put his hand in again, unable to believe in so much water. White froth churned over his fingers. He blinked in amazement and threw some into his face. It was warm and tasted of a spice, salt.

As he looked up, the mat reached the top of the hill. He could see a long way now, over a landscape of endless green slopes and foamy crests.