Part 14 (1/2)

”They're dead anxious for news from out of the Far Black, as they call it,” Toby added.

The guards, their squinty-eyed tautness and all, made him nervous.

Even the air here itched with faint striations, as though electricity hummed through it. These people, their funny little stunted city, the sheer incredible but rock-solid fact of it being here at all--they added up to a profound unease. And things were moving so fast, he couldn't get straight answers to any of the myriad questions this place conjured up.

”If that's what they're buying, then that's what we're selling,” Killeen said. ”Cermo! Heave a.s.s down that alley and sight on those far clouds.”

”What spectrum?”

”Give me a see-through, infra or better.”

Cermo swaggered forward, decked out in full field regalia, clicking and rattling with techno-ornaments. His fine-webbed electronets seethed with energy. Antennas embedded at shoulder, waist, and b.u.t.t looked every-which-way, in full 3D. His weaponry was polished from long hours of care and repair on s.h.i.+p, but still pitted and burnished from a thousandorays.

Toby recalled the times when such gear was everyday wear for all Bishops. They had been on the move, their sensoria stretched out to max perimeter, each Bishop a sentinel. For years after the Calamity they had roamed like that, rising weary, red-eyed, and sore each morning, to a world drawing always dryer, with hunger and mech pursuit the only constants.

Locals peeped at them from around distant corners. They seemed interested and amused. Rats in bow ties.

Cermo clumped down an alleyway and into an open area, where he could get a full sight on the far horizon.

Toby couldn't figure out the sky here. He knew this wasn't a planet, not by any stretch, but still there were billowy white clouds drifting not far above the stunted buildings. There had even been a thunderstorm, catching them on the hike back to Argo's berth. That had startled him--pure, tasty water falling from a sky like G.o.d's gift. He hadn't seen such a tasty shower since he was a boy, had played for hours in its mud.

--and at once was in a torrent, a downpour, spattering crystal drop175.lets over his face. Her face. Her face. Endless gouts and flurries of blessed clear streaming cold, a waterfall hammering and thundering down a mountainside, she standing gleefully under it, yellow party dress plastered to her slim legs, a young girl getting ecstatically drenched-- The intrusion was sudden, raking across his mind. s.h.i.+bo.

Her rising b.u.t.tresses, flanked by granite ma.s.ses. He felt within her Personality a sweeping reach, the sinks and hollows of another's interior sell a fresh continent spread bone-broad before him. The waterfall faded.

Rain fell in the great distance, slanting from troubled clouds, signature of her own sad presence.You have not summoned me forth for some time.”I've been busy.” Something in the waterfall, the pleasures of it, made him uneasy. He noticed that he had a hard-on, and hoped she wouldn't.I know how hard it is to get along with your father. I did, once.”He's running the show, sure, but... I just don't feel easy about it.”He is the man whose sense of opportunity has brought you far, so very far--”I don't know what he's after anymore.”I believe his goals are as ever. But he is a man who hides his inner self, now. A Cap'n must.”Not from me, he doesn't.”

As if from a great distance, she said,Even from you. You are becoming a man, more than a son.He coughed to cover the dark seethe within him. His erection would not go away and he was breathing deeply, mind buzzing.

”Clouds're pretty thick,” Cermo sent back. ”Can't see much. In the far infra the view's all jiggledy.”

”Now there's a fine tech word,” Jocelyn joshed him.

”Jiggledy how?” Killeen asked.

”Looks like they reflect the city itself. I mean, stronger I look, more I get wavy pictures of streets, buildings.”

s.h.i.+bo receded. Toby had focused his attention on the conversation around him and she had faded into the background. He concentrated, to push her further back. Made himself breathe slower. He couldn't see anything through the clouds.

Cermo sent, ”Microwave says it's solid up there.”

176.”Solid?” Killeen nodded to himself. ”Fits, yeasay.””Glad to see you getting humble, o1' c.o.c.kroach,” Toby said. Hewanted to cheer up the lumbering shape, but Cermo's discovery made hisvoice shake a little. A city dangling over him, with nothing at all to hold it,i,..

kept up by some invisible law of physics--the thought made him hunch:.

down a little, until he noticed and stood up straight again.

Three arms of ruby sh.e.l.l reached down suddenly and plucked TobyC.

up above the street cobblestones. They swung him playfully to and fro, then dumped him onto the flat yellow carapace behind Quath's head.”Hey!”

,” .

”Whoos.h.!.+ Not that there's so much to see. I was already taller than thestreet signs. Funny names, aren't they?”The Bishop party was crossing Peach Boulevard on Pomegranate,.

Camino Real, names Toby had to call up his Isaac Aspect to understandwere mouth-watering ancient fruits--but there wasn't a plant in sight.(i .

”If I take the measure of them right,” Killeen said, ”they don't giveanything away free.”Toby said, ”Yeasay--downright nasty.”<the illuminates=”” spoke=”” of=”” your=”” tribal=”” habits,=”” the=”” great=”” variation=”” incustom.=”” they=”” disagree=”” over=”” whether=”” this=”” is=”” a=”” source=”” of=”” your=”” strengths,=”” or=”” asubtle=”” weakness.=””>:,,'.,.

”Ummm, maybe both. See, we're used to people helping each otherk I automatically, no questions asked. These folk don't think like that--whichllimplies a lot.

<such nuances=”” of=”” primate=”” behavior=”” are=”” beyond=”” my=”” kind.=””> ”Simple, really,” Killeen said. ”They aren't under threat all the time.

Comfortable people can afford to be choosy.”

Toby thought about that. ”Could mean they're pretty used to strangers, too.”

”Oh? And what's that?” Toby didn't have any deeper idea, but he wasn't going to acknowledge that here, the only kid among adults. You kept your luck to yourself.

<there are=”” many=”” more=”” people=”” within=”” this=”” structure=”” than=”” we=””></there>< p=””>

Enough to make most be strangers.> ”Ummmm.” Killeen watched their guards edgily. ”Could be.”

Toby felt edgy, as though some game was going on just beyond his seeing. Killeen was composed, controlled, giving nothing away. As he fretted over this he glanced down an alleyway and saw a building in the 177.

distance abruptly seem to melt, windows and arches dissolving, turning a mottled green. ”Look!” It reformed itself with a freshly slanted roof, a new line of windows.Killeen's eyes narrowed. ”That fits, too,” he said distantly.”Fits what?” Toby watched new doorways pop open, ovals instead of the earlier strait-edged type.”This city's a kind of tech we've never seen. And I'll bet it runs itself.”

Cermo sent a puzzled murmur. ”Itself? Andro--””He's a clerk.” Killeen gave Andro a bland smile, amused that they could talk this way right next to him. ”These people, they're no higher level than we are, come right down to it.””They sure don't seem like they could build a Chandelier,” Cermosaid.”They didn't,” Toby said firmly. ”Don't expect them to ever admit it, though.”He walked past a splas.h.i.+ng fountain, ideas tumbling fruitlessly, and felt a tilting, a rising presence----She moved lithely, inspired, skipping from stone to stone across the broken road, puddles from the night fogs showing her self and counter-self in the shredding gray light. Playing in the fresh dawn's ruins. Jagged teeth from a night raid. Stumps of stone. A spider slept within the city, she saw it silver-fine and waiting. Stirring its barbed legs, the razor rub unheard beneath the waking bustle of her loved Citadel, fine and forlorn and always waiting for the next blow. Yet joy seeped from every moment.

Shapes swarmed through this morning, the eternal going of people about their busyness, to strive against and fail and strive again. Even though they knew that the spider waited too, rustling in the eyesocket of a bleached skull--He snapped out of it, panting. Forced his attention back to the street where his boots trod, his eyes caught the liquid dance of water.Yet s.h.i.+bo's world was entrancing, too. It called forth a lightness of being, an airy sense of things merging, yet solidly grounded in a web of interplay, of casual and unspoken delight. These glimpses into her Personality contrasted hugely with the masculine edginess all around him, the holding-back, the control and a.n.a.lysis. Killeen's blocky, muscular stride ahead of him spoke silently of purpose, precision, separation. Toby respected that, knew Family Bishop had to be led that way.Yet this was his father, too. In the years since they had fled together across arid, murderous plains, the edges in Killeen had sharpened. Like a knife stroked on stone, Toby thought, a law of nature. And now Killeen expected of his son the same hardness, the same resolute separation that leaders.h.i.+p demanded.Toby lurched, the strife in him like a blow--a clash between the beckoning sense of the world s.h.i.+bo held forth and the demands he felt radiating from Killeen. Cermo looked at him oddly, one eyebrow raised.

I 78.Toby realized his face must show his feelings, and tightened it up--only to feel the s.h.i.+bo Personality laughing gently at him, then fading back into its ghostly berth in him. He marched on.

They wound through twisted streets, across a broad plaza of black stone, and into the most impressive building Toby had seen here--a steep pyramid of hard, glaring white. His Isaac Aspect said it was ”pearly” and when Toby pressed his hand against the stuff it was shockingly cold.

Sticky, too--and then they were being hustled through a wide portal and into seats before a high dais. The chairs were Bishop-sized and Toby's clasped him with a warm, ma.s.saging grip. It was downright insinuating, fitting itself to him all along back and legs. He wondered if it would let him go, if whoever ran this place decided otherwise.

To his surprise, the judge, Monisque, appeared at the dais--this time in blue robes. ”I figured she was something more than a judge,” Killeen whispered on closed comm.

”I'm happy to greet you again, far wanderers,” Monisque said lightly.

”Now I'm wearing my other hat--Chief Swapper.”

”Sounds to me like you do everything here,” Killeen said.

”Appearances are deceiving. Most people have no interest in visitors, no matter what esty they hail from.” She nodded as dozens of the short people filled the remaining seats, buzzing among themselves. Toby noticed that the seats conformed to the dwarves, too, shrinking as required, and felt a little less paranoid.

”Our friend here, Quath'jutt'kkal'thon, is willing to yield data about any area not proscribed by his own, uh--” Toby could see Killeen struggle to put Myriapodia notions, even approximately understood, into human terms. ”Uh, priestly orders. In return we've got a whole fistful of questions.''”I'm not here to give away the whole store, Cap'n,” Monisque said skeptically.

Killeen was in no mood to start haggling right away, and Toby shared his impatience. ”First, we want to know what this place is--how it works, its history, who made it. Second--”

”We can tell you what we know. I do not speak for the Lanes, though.”