Deep Eyes

Toby asked, “What’s the sense in that?”

“To lighten up,” Cermo said.

Toby tossed it in his palm. “No mass to this thing.”

“Probably just junked a whole seg and this is a frag.” Cermo said. He had tracked mechs of all descriptions and held them in a lofty contempt despite the fact that mechs had brought down many of his friends.

“Good sign,” Killeen said flatly and they went on.

The ground began to move under them. The worst of it was in the gut-deep confusion, nausea, and sickening lurches. Toby’s eyes did not tell him true about what his feet and body felt. He remembered Quath saying once about the timestone, The defining feature is the lack of definition.—which he had thought to be a joke then.

Not now. Rock parted and pearly vapor churned from the vent. Sheets of esty purled off in gossamer sheets, dissolving as they rose. Spray rose, enclosing him in a halo of himself, somehow caught and momentarily reflected in the event-haze, as if he were both there and also flickering into the surroundings and joining them. The other self peeled away and circled to the tops of the cliffs and became a wreath in the shearing wind, soon frayed into refractive vapor.

“Gets hard here,” was all Killeen said. They went into broken country ahead.

Then he knew he should have stayed behind once he and Quath had sighted the Mantis. He was a Bishop full grown now but for this pursuit experience was crucial and he had little. The Mantis and Killeen had fought each other ever since he could remember. Toby wanted to be here but he knew he was a drag on the others, though of course they would not speak of it.

Cermo said it with his eyes, firm and black. There was nothing to be done, the pursuit was on. This terrain was too dangerous for Toby to backtrack by himself; the Mantis was not the only high level mech here. They had watched from a distance as navvys and grubbers mined and foraged for mech debris.

So he settled in. He went hard and long and said nothing. Around their passage seethed strange vegetations, curled rock and clotted air, the esty’s energy expressed in frothy plenty. To Toby it seemed some moronic God kept reshaping the land beyond any probable use. The green profusion here seemed demented, underserved. He realized only dimly that his irritation came out of his fatigue. For that there was nothing to be done and in his father’s face he saw that. He kept falling behind their long, loping stride and so was glad when they stopped suddenly. To stay on his feet as they studied something on the ground he leaned against a rock, out of fear that he was already stumble-around tired.

It was a spool of something translucent yet mica-bright. Quath said.

In a hollow were dusty locomotion parts, a whole tractor assembly, footpads—all junked. Toby looked them over and saw they were modular.

Quath rattled her flanks.

Cermo and Killeen inspected the ground. They had done that all along the trail, talking to each other about the tract. Toby looked at the round depressions and flattened angular prints and saw the broken twigs where the thing had passed. The twig stems were not dry yet and Cermo fingered them around there. Crushed wild grass lay squashed but not browned as it would be soon.

“It’s doin’ pretty well for broken country,” Cermo said.

Killeen frowned. “Going to be hard.”

Toby said, “If I could make it out, maybe its systems are so far down—”

“You said you didn’t see it,” Cermo said. “Just felt it.”

“Yeasay.”

Cermo shook his head slowly as he looked down at the matted grass. “If we run up on it, won’t be feelin’ our way.”

Of course he was right. The Mantis was invisible to human sensoria. It could deflect attention from itself, disperse telltales, turn a thousand tech-tricks. Toby scuffed at a stone and said nothing.

Quath said.