“Got to happen sometime. Damnfine girl, too.”

“Glad you finally woke up,” Shibo said happily. He kissed her.

His Ling Aspect said sternly:

I still advise against public displays of affection. You face grave difficulties, and every lessening of the command structure—

Killeen shoved the Aspect back into its cramped space, relishing the sensation. Now that they were back on solid ground, he could trust his instincts more.

He left Shibo and moved among the Bishop camp, wondering what measures he could take to ease his increasing sense of danger. Besen was sitting on a natural ledge as she flux-shaped some mechmetal into carrygear.

“Toby’s nose’s li’l bent,” she said as he sat down.

“So’s everybody’s,” he countered.

He had always been able to speak naturally to Besen. Now that he thought about her it gradually dawned that this “girl” was in fact a woman with easy self-assurance. Her angular face had a quality of shrewd reserve.

“Some say we’re worse off than we were on Snowglade,” she said.

“Could be.”

“They figure that string’s up there ready to move any minute. We’ll never get back through it.”

“Unless we can figure when it’ll move,” Killeen countered.

“How?” she asked.

Killeen grinned. “No idea.”

Besen laughed. “Well, least with you back everybody’s not so glum.”

Killeen blinked. “Huh?”

“I’d given up on us. We just sat around starin’ at the ground till you showed up.”

He was genuinely startled. “Why?”

“Jocelyn tried to pull us together. It just didn’t work.”

Killeen said nothing and she went on, “We followed you ’cause you had a dream we believed in. That’s the only reason to leave home, ever.”

“Dream’s gone.”

“Yeasay, we know that. We’re not dumb.” She gave him a stern look, mouth pursed.

“And Cybers’re worse than mechs.”

“You got more than one dream in you though.”

Killeen was startled again. “What?”

“You’ll think of some way. We know that.”

He did not know what to say and covered this by standing up. “C’mon, you can show me the area.”

Her wide mouth seemed to hold some suppressed mirth at his awkwardness. She said solemnly, “Yessir.”

By all the precepts he had learned, to idle in a huge camp like this, clearly conspicuous from the air or even from orbit, was foolhardy. Bonfires at night, smoke plumes by day, regular arrays of tents—all these mechs knew well. Cybers, too, presumably.

He walked by the Bishop slit trenches, already fragrant, and tested the grab-pole running along one side for strength. More than once, when a boy, he had squatted beside a trench without one and lost his balance. This pole was a long alum-ceramic arm from some meáhtech, caught in Y-sticks at the ends. It took his full weight as he squatted and did his daily ritual, always performed after breakfast. The Bishops had long since lost their shyness about such matters and did not erect any shelter around the trench; even in the longlost Citadel, privacy had been a minor concern. He walked over the spur of the next low ridge and saw that this Tribe felt differently. Some had fold-up shields, one even with a roof. But farther down the valley he saw a rivulet, gorged with the recent rain, serving first as drinking water and then, downstream, as a sewer.

“Plain dumb,” Besen said at his elbow.

“The river?” he asked.

“Yeasay. Already got dysentery in some the Families. Big camp like this, you get a worse sickness, it’ll jump aroun’ pretty quick.”

“Any signs yet?”

“I heard rumors,” she said.

“Let me know if you hear more.”

“Hard gettin’ much from ’em.”

“Howcome?”

“They’re full of talk ’bout righteousness and how if they follow the true path everything’ll turn out right and so on.”

“Could be some their Aspects ridin’ them a little hard.”

Besen surveyed the valley as she said, “Yeasay. From the High Arcology time seems like.”

Killeen felt oddly pleased. “Most young people don’t care enough about history to remember stuff like that.”

She turned to study his face. “How can you not? Only way we can make sense of all this.”

“Sure—if you’ve got time. We’ll be hustlin’ pretty hard now.”

Her eyebrows narrowed. “Forget who we are, what’s the point goin’ on?”

“Right.” Killeen was obscurely proud of her quiet vehemence. This Tribe might succumb to His Supremacy, but he was quite sure the Bishops would not.

“Besen…I’m glad you’re with Toby. He and I aren’t getting on well right now.”

She smiled. “Rough times for us all.”

“The time when a boy breaks away and makes his own path, well…”

“I know.”

“I…I appreciate the help,” he finished lamely.

“You’re not doing so bad,” she said, and went back to her labors. Killeen stood regarding the valley and wrestling with his thoughts. In principle he was in a simple situation. A Cap’n followed Tribal orders. But he sensed something deeply dangerous in all this.

“Reportin’, Cap’n,” Jocelyn said formally. He had not heard her approach.

“You take care those chips?”

“Kicked a li’l ass, looks like it’ll be okay.”

“Good. How’re our reserves?”

“Not much.” She punched her wrist and a graphicdisplay inventory of edible supplies appeared in Killeen’s right eye, available on blink-access.

He studied the hills. There had been thick woods in the arroyos. Many were clogged by mudslides. Swaths of trees were already gray and dead. “Bet we’ll scavenge the territory around here fast, too. Pick it clean.”

“I’ll see if the Families got any food stores.”

Killeen gestured toward the creek that snaked its way down the dusty valley. “Water’ll be no problem for a while. If something samples that creek downstream, though, it’ll know we’re here.”

“Cybers?”

Killeen scowled, looking at the sprawl of Families open and careless in the valley. “Likely. Point is, what we get from fightin’ Cybers?”

Jocelyn studied his face. Did she suspect anything? he wondered.

He had told Shibo as much as he could about his time inside the Cyber. She had agreed that until he understood it better, it was probably a bad idea to relate the story in full to others.

To the Family’s questions he had let on, without actually lying, that he had somehow stowed away on the body of a Cyber and then escaped from the subterranean nest when a chance came. He could scarcely explain the colliding sensations that had assaulted him inside the Cyber’s body. Those memories now provoked shudders of disgust in him. Images from them shot through his sleep. He had intentionally worked hard the day before in hopes that fatigue would grant him oblivion in sleep. But the brooding, shifting dreams had troubled him again. This morning’s fire had roused him from a terrifying sensation of suffocating in spongy air that swarmed into his lungs whenever he tried to draw a clean breath. To be yanked into the real world, even one with a raging fire to be put out, had been a relief.

“We have any choice?” Jocelyn asked, her eyes concerned. Killeen wondered if he seemed odd to the Family; certainly Jocelyn was acting a little awkward and formal with him. Shibo, too, had been careful with him since his return, as if he were both fragile and unreliable. Well, Killeen reflected, maybe he was.

“Prob’ly not. Looks like Cybers’re mostly interested in guttin’ this planet, though, not usin’ its surface.”

He gestured above, where a thin skirt of clouds partly obscured a distant gray mottling. Patches of Cyber construction arced in polar orbits low on the horizon. The long arc of the cosmic string was a faint, pale yellow scratch across the sky. Something turned at the limits of his vision. He focused on it but saw only a thin trace image moving in equatorial orbit. Cybers owned space but for some reason did not use sky assault against them. Why?