Read Online Great Sky River by Gregory Benford - Free Book Online Page B

fidgeted clasps into fittings, making himself suit-ready. And Arthur broke in with:
    I’ve analyzed that scrap of memory from the Crafter. Quite interesting, I think you’ll find.
    “Uh?”
    See? Views the Crafter had gathered.
    His eyes filled with yellow-green still-lifes: a journal of repairs made and things shaped. There were closeups of complex
     machine parts. Tangles of circuitry. But beyond, as needless incidental background, were hills of florid green and even windblown
     silver-yellow growths that Killeen recognized. Trees.
    “These… they’re not from the oldtimes?”
    No. From the Crafter’s encrypted data, I gather these are recent. They are from sites only a few days’ march from here.
    “Great!”
    Abruptly the lush still-life switched off. Arthur sensed an approach even before the still-fuzzy Killeen could. Ledroff loomed
     before him, the thick black beard like a shield to hide the man’s true expression.
    “What’s great?” Ledroff demanded. “You near ready?”
    “Uh, yea… Cap’n.” Killeen made himself say it. The word was hard to get out. “Look, I was just processing some quickgrit from
     that Crafter.”
    Ledroff shrugged. “Crafters dunno nothin’.” He turned away.
    “Naysay! This one attacked, didn’t it?”
    Ledroff turned, hands on hips. “It made a mistake.”
    “It organized those navvys. Took Jake.”
    “So?”
    “I think it’s something new.”
    “Programmed to recognize us?”
    “Yeasay, if it chances on us. And then not just call for a Marauder and wait. It recruits some navvys and strikes.”
    Ledroff frowned. “Yea, so I’ve thought as well.”
    “I sliced a frag from its memory.”
    Ledroff looked guarded, as though Killeen was lying. “You’ve been downdoggo.”
    Killeen answered sheepishly, “Just a rest, that’s all.”
    Ledroff was a big man but seemed now curiously unsure of himself. He did not welcome new information, but instead distrusted
     it. Killeen realized that the man had finally gotten what he wanted for so long—the Cap’ncy—but had no clear idea of what
     to do next. And feared that this fact would come out. This was in his voice, a mere shade of defensiveness. “So?”
    “Can read some.”
    Gruffly: “Do.”
    “Have.”
    Suspiciously: “And… ?”
    “Big green valley. Three-, four-day march.”
    Ledroff looked startled, then beamed with sudden relief. The Family had been without good maps or sure direction ever since
     the Calamity, when all humanity’s orbiting satellites were destroyed. They had wandered, using only old maps and surveys.
     Their only certain guide was the need to avoid the mech cities, where surely they would be killed. Yet the ever-shifting weather
     of their world, Snowglade, had by now confused their remaining maps. They had no true vector any longer.
    Ledroff thought out loud, “A transmech just came in at the factory outside. If we can redirect it, override its routine…”
    “This greenland, it could be a fringe of a Splash.”
    “Yeasay, yeasay.” Ledroff looked relieved.
    Killeen smiled, glad to be for once not the layabout he knew Ledroff had always thought him to be. “Let’s go. Come on!”

FIVE
    Jake-the-Shaper’s laying-low had taken a while, and then the grumbling of the Family took more as they got ready to move again.
     Voices rose in fatigued dissent. Tired, sun-browned faces knotted. Eyes narrowed, considering hangdog resistance.
    The Family was only beginning to shake off the dust of the last several weeks. Legs ached from the long shuffling march. Bellies
     growled for more of the vatsoup, the protein cakes, the spongy sourbread. They hungered for the Trough’s moist illusion of
     security and wanted to cling to it.
    Ledroff showed some leadership then. He had stopped several from trashing the Trough itself, after the Crafter attack. Such
     fever-blind revenge might well have raised an alarm, brought a Marauder to answer it. Ledroff calmly disarmed the alky-soaked
     few, set