THIRTEEN

He had expected the Mantis to respond with an icily reasoned attack. Or some strange mindstorm. Perhaps with an assault on Killeen himself.

He had certainly not expected utter silence.

The Families were apprehensive as they left the bowl. No one knew what the Mantis’s lack of reply meant.

Killeen felt a vast sense of relief as he walked back from the Witnessing.

Toby chattered at his side, eyes dancing with bright visions. Killeen had awakened those thoughts in the Families and the experience had drained him.

Speaking, he had felt for the first time what it was to drive forth into the unforgiving air your own self, projected through the weblike sensorium but riding finally on the resonant tones of pure voice. Words were blunt, blind things to use in aid of the clear way he himself saw the world. He wrestled with them like strange tools, forcing their soft meanings to drive hard facts into the minds of the others. Words not only meant things, they made the mind feel and stretch, the blood pound faster.

He had sketched for them his way, the tale of the Argo. From the Families had come an answering song, a muttered assent peppered by questions, doubts, naysays which bobbed like flecks on a dark ocean. They did not all agree. At best a fraction had the resolve and spirit to follow where the ideas led, to take the first few steps marked in uncertain sands.

But some had it. Some had heard.

He had never thought it could be so exhausting. He had great respect for what a Cap’n had to summon up. His mouth was dry and his legs ached as though he had been marching for hours.

Then he felt the pressing weight of the Mantis mind returning to his sensorium.

Despite your phylum’s limitations, you are capable of surprises.

“Thanks most kindly and fuck you,” Killeen said.

The people walking nearby heard the Mantis as well. They all stopped, heads tilted back. The Mantis seemed to crowd the very air with its presence.

Even given my great abilities, your invitation is at root impossible.

“It’s an expression, not a proposition.”

I see. I have interrogated historical compilations from our cities, circling Snowglade. Among the messy archives of (admittedly, nearly indecipherable) human lore, there are faint traces of such a craft named Argo. It may have been built to reach your Chandeliers. Apparently, when we began to spread over Snowglade and carry out the necessary changes in it, your forefathers elected to store the fast-vanishing human technology.

“You understand my offer?”

Your threat, yes. (Unintelligible.) Indeed, if you attempted to reach the Argo by yourself, I could easily stop you. I can cause Marauders to block your path.

Killeen smiled coolly. “Sure. Stoppin’ us is easy. Just kill us.”

Which is precisely what I do not want, of course. I had believed that I could complete my art in one human generation. I see now this cannot be. You are deeper and stranger than I suspected.

Shibo broke in, “Always be some stay here, in zoo. You use them.”

But do they represent the full range of your odd talents? This I do not know.

“You’ll find out. Just let some of us go.”

A hollow pressure rang through the sensorium, repre senting some alien reaction Killeen could not interpret in human terms.

I will do more than that. I shall even help you.

Killeen did not take part in the cheering that broke out among the Bishops and Rooks nearby. Wary, he wondered what the Mantis’s true thoughts were, and motives.

“Mantis present now?” Shibo asked.

“I can feel it.” Killeen rubbed his face. He had a headache that ran like strips of fire along his brow. He asked her to press the spots behind his ears at the base of his skull. That was the old Bishop way of releasing the pain and it soon brought easing. His senses seethed and sought, awakening. To him her hands were purring ruby-hot.

“It’d always be like this if we stay here,” he said as the warmth crept over him. “Mantis’ll be there in the background.”

“Watching?”

“Wish it was only. Naysay noway we can stop it.”

“Senses us?”

“We could get rid of it if we shut down our sensoria. Went blind.”

“Don’t want.”

“Me either. I… I’ll try…”

Carefully he focused his attention on the points where the faint buzzing presence entered him. He pushed it away. Gently, carefully. Then harder. The subdued hum vanished.

“I think it’ll go if we want.”

She nodded. “I feel too.”

“Still around though.”

“Yeasay. But it goes.”

“I’d’ve never got through the Aspect storm without it. I’d be in a trance, same as that woman Hatchet used have as his translator. Her Aspects must’ve panicked on a raid.”

“Crafter couldn’t fix her?”

“That’s what I figure. Mantis gave me just enough help. It’s some use.”

“I don’t like though.”

He knew what she meant. Life under a benign umbrella would always hint of distant eyes.

Slowly she let her eyes stray from the stars visible out the window. She looked at him aslant, speculatively. A thin knowing smile illuminated the smooth planes of her face.

“The interlock commands I had. The sexcen modifications. They’re gone.”

She said nothing, just smiled.

He kissed her neck, face, mouth. All tasted of the air and soil but the mouth was stronger, deeper, moist. His knees dropped him to the rough dirt floor. His teeth searched for the pullstring of her jumper. The weave was harsh and his beard scraped a purr from it. The cloth came free and slid easy and she locked her legs over his back. The small room was twilight cool and had no bed. They rolled over twice on the fragrant lumpy dirt. His saliva soaked through the cloth before he got it all off her using only his mouth. He would not give up his hold on her, or she hers. They rolled again, this time against the wall, stubbing toes, bumping knees.

She wriggled away. A popping sound, snaps. She slid free of her exskell.

Then he encountered in the gathering dark her hip, her marvelous compact breasts. His tongue discovered her back, sharp shoulder blades, furred nape of the neck. Kneading. Rubbing away the riverrun layered silt of tension and fear that had built up in them both. He felt thick years of it shimmer and dissolve. Her teeth plucked delicious pain from his lips. His chin bristled in her hair. A wind blew down from her great nostril mountains. Layers peeled away and he felt deep within an old Aspect of his, a woman, sliding down his arms and into his fingers. He had not felt it this way before, with Veronica or Jocelyn. A soft womanly weight came into his touch. Going layers down. Access. Slow nudges. Rolling down slow tremors together, they moved in a hovering hush. Her legs enclosed him. Cradled heat burst into his mouth. Grab, release, return, circle. A liberating toss of the hip brought bone to bone. Bellies opened and a shoulder fell through to the vexed heart. The woman in him felt her trip-hammer pulse quicken, ebb, come again. A hushed audience seemed to attend each movement, the slick slice of him and her together ramifying up into higher chords. Fit snug. Passages widened as muscles stuttered. He grasped and suspended himself, felt her spiral up. Heat lifted her hair.

Twists and twinges set off sure long motions and he felt in the instant the meaning of the grotesque statuary he had seen back in the mechplex. The tortured coiling thing reflected his need for this and yet in its relentless plunging power and opening fissures managed to get the whole thing profoundly wrong. The Mantis would never know them. There was a press of essences beyond the digital romance. A deep-buried spirit filled organic life. It came from origins in the way the universe was made, and generated out of itself the life each mortal being felt throbbing in every sliding moment. The Mantis had robbed such moments as this from the suspended minds of the suredead but it could not surecopy this; Killeen knew this fact solidly and forever in the mere passing twist and twinge of a second. She felt it too, gave him a flex and thrust that brought moist skirtings into him. She loosened a knot in his wrist so it snapped up into his elbow, whizzed through his shoulder, wakened a hollowness behind his right ear. She kissed him, sinking teeth into soft gums. Their tongues slid rough over each other, finding the slick underside. Hothearted, she nicked him higher. Something had unlocked him and he felt the secret source of the power he had that day in the bowl, the push behind his solid words. Life regenerate. As he was his father had been and Toby would be: tongue into ear, moist brush of seabreeze. His father lived. He passed the movement back to her and her teeth drew red lines down his throat. A bead grew from a slow delirium firepoint. Centripetal violence clasped them both. It hit him hard.