Killeen saw suddenly that the man believed totally what he was saying. Killeen would never know what had happened to Hatchet on his own time in the Mantis sensorium, what deep demons had slipped their leash. But he could see the effects in Hatchet’s dancing eyes. The man’s entire face was open now, all calculation gone. Hatchet could no longer conceal the manic expressions that raced across his face, twisting his red mouth, making his chin into a tight ball of hard muscle.

“Get away, Hatchet,” Killeen said quietly.

“Listen, you gotta.” Hatchet put his hand on Killeen’s shoulder in a warm gesture, showing that he had completely misread Killeen’s mood. A jagged smile lurched across his lips.

“That thing isn’t human, Hatchet.”

“Not all human, no,” the man said, his voice chillingly reasonable.

“You can ’t.”

“Look, Crafter’s dead. Only way we can protect Metropolis is stay in good with this Mantis.”

“No” Toby whispered.

The Fanny-thing stopped, its glittering eyes watching them in the quilted glow. The rose bloomed garishly from the furrowed bones of its face. Its breasts were wrinkled and rosy-nippled. Beneath them a shallow breath whistled, giving a strange sour scent.

“C’mon. Just slip the old rod to it.”

Killeen stepped back from Hatchet, his throat clenched tight, unable to speak.

“Dammit! Won’t take a minute. What is she, an old woman, right? Made up somehow.”

Killeen could tell that in Hatchet’s mind he was patiently explaining the simple facts of the matter, showing how this hideous reeking thing was really only a mo mentary obstruction on the way to ensuring that Hatchet’s lifework, his Metropolis, could carry on. Nothing else mattered in Hatchet’s world and nothing ever would. Nothing personal or even human could stand against Hatchet’s plan and destiny.

“An old woman with a flower. Only lookit the tits on ’er. Wouldn’t mind eatin’ some that fruit, right?”

The forced jollity brought a fine film of sweat to Hatchet’s face and Killeen could see the idea bloom there, see it ricochet in the hot eyes.

Hatchet’s head swiveled, listening. Waves of strain swept his face. Then he nodded. “Yeasay. Nice ripe fruit.”

Hatchet turned and walked toward the wavering figure. Its quick wet eyes studied his approach. “Job calls for a man.” Hatchet’s voice was hollow, as though coming from far away in cloudy madness.

He reached the Fanny-thing. Dropped his pants. “Takes a man t’do it.”

Killeen could not make himself move. He had killed the Fanny-thing in the Mantis’s sensorium. Done it without thinking. The Mantis had watched him build up to it, talking to him all the time. And then had shattered his son before his eyes.

All, Killeen saw, in preparation for this.

He clutched at Toby, pulled his son to his side. Neither could say anything. They watched as the Fanny-thing stood slowly on one foot. It hooked the other around Hatchet’s waist. Hatchet was stiff, ready. His eyes stared off into dreamy space while his hands were already braced on the Fanny-thing’s shoulders. She lifted her free leg still farther to rest it on his jutting hip bone. As she moved Killeen could see that between her legs was something that rustled and trembled eagerly. At the middle of the shadowed cleft two furrows opened. The ridges pulsed, closed, pulsed. The narrow slitted mouth had whiskers that moved languidly in the still air.

The Fanny-thing’s eyes rolled. Its rose bulged and reddened.

Hatchet’s knees bent as he sought the angle. The creature cupped him with its blunt, budded hands.

All in absolute silence and darkness.

“Ahhhhh…” Hatchet sighed as he entered it.

Killeen shot them both. He used his small pellet gun. The charges struck each in the side of the head and ended it instantly.

He lowered the gun and gripped Toby tightly by the shoulders. If the Mantis sought retribution this time it would have to come at them and they would have some infinitesimal chance. Only a moment.

He looked at Toby and they both nodded, silently.

Bodies cooled in the soft gloom and the two humans waited.

But the Mantis did not come.

NINE

They made their slow recessional through a land cut and grooved. For some unknown purpose mechs had furrowed and shaped the rough hillsides into tight, angular sheets and oblique ramps. Huge cartouches marked laminated, swooping metallic planes. Clouds of pale, shimmering gray dust gathered in the air above gleaming mechworks. The Crafter had to twist and work its way through the labyrinth.

“I didn’t know what it meant,” Killeen said to Shibo abruptly, as though he were taking up a conversation where they had left off. But they had not spoken together since they were inside the mechplex.

“Can’t know,” Shibo said.

“For a while you think you do,” he said. “It was showing us things, I know that. Things it thought would mean something, something human. I didn’t care about that so much.”

Shibo nodded. She had had a different experience inside the Mantis thought-space, he knew. They all had.

“Part of me was sitting back from it. I thought I could keep it that way. Just watching. The place was real and then it wasn’t and then it was again.”

She nodded again.

“I think it was proud. Proud what it had done. Art, it said. I kept it that way in my head for a while and then I couldn’t.”

Shibo watched him with flat, expectant eyes. “You killed what it showed.”

“I didn’t think.”

“Didn’t need thinking.” She watched the slick surfaces go by.

“So when I saw the thing like Fanny for the second time there was a while when I didn’t think it was real either.”

She nodded.

“Then Hatchet was with it. I would have killed it a second time anyway I guess. Even without Hatchet,” Killeen said distantly.

“It was not-us.”

“No. Not-us.”

“Mantis had it all wrong.”

“Howsay?” she asked.

“It can’t tell kinds love apart.”

“Hard for us sometimes too.”

Killeen’s jaw muscles bunched and relaxed, bunched and relaxed. “When Hatchet went with it he joined it. Not-us.”

“All gone now,” Shibo said. “Forget.”

“There might have been more to it than that. I didn’t know. Hatchet might have done that before. Maybe you make yourself do it the first time and then later it gets easier and finally you don’t mind. Don’t even think about it. Hatchet maybe did it before. I didn’t think about that.”

“Could ask the other Kings.” She looked at him calmly, just letting the idea hang there.

He thought for a long time. Then he shook his head slowly, as though dazed. “No.”

They watched the strange hills. In some places you could see down through into deep caverns. Translucent layers showed blurs of darting mech motions.

“No,” he said again. “Can’t ask a Family ’bout something that bad.”

They rode for a long time without anyone in the party talking. Of them all only Killeen had killed but no one had said anything about it.

The Crafter was subtly different now. It moved less certainly, slower, with a murmuring drone.

Killeen sighed, stood, stretched. He searched for something to say.

“Guess when the Mantis ’harvested’ the Crafter, that took the life out,” Killeen said to Shibo.

They rode on a cleft in the Crafter’s side. Toby swung from some piping below, climbing among them for the sheer sport of it. He seemed unfazed by all that had happened inside the mountain-sized building. It had only been a few hours and the adults were still dazed and silent, clinging to the Crafter’s side and watching with absent stares as the landscape rumbled by.