Only as he stiffly picked himself off the curved carbochrome back of the Crafter did he understand: Jake-the-Shaper was dead. Not just killed, but suredead. Something up among the halfdark girders had found Jake, sucked him of self, and was now gone.

Toby swam into his vision, leaned him back against the Crafter cowling. His son popped a drink into Killeen’s mouth and spoke to him anxiously. Killeen muttered something, his voice a dry croak. Slowly, the world came back.

Ledroff came clumping down the sky, bounding among the now-ordinary girders, torchlit in orange. Ledroff was in a pureblind rage, eyes glowering. Five women searched the struts for the things that had attacked, but there was nothing left. Ledroff saw Killeen leaning against the Crafter’s ceramo-shank and landed a few steps away, his legs wheezing with the impact.

“What’d you do?”

“Heard ’em coming. Went up top.” Killeen squeezed fingers against his eyesockets, trying to make them trigger over to normal vision.

“You shoot first?”

“Sure.” Killeen felt his eyes click back to normal. The world leaped toward him, then steadied.

“I naysayed shooting.”

“Wasn’t time to ask.”

“Damnfool! These’re ordinary mechs. They wouldn’t’ve left us if you hadn’t—”

“Belay the noughtsay, Ledroff. They were directed.”

Ledroff’s face bunched into a grimace of disbelief. “By what?”

Killeen slapped the Crafter.

“This’s a laborer,” Ledroff said dismissively. “It wouldn’t hunt us.”

“It did. Way I figure, we surprised it while it was laid up in this Trough, getting fixed. Toby found the parts, ’member?”

“Coulda been left here anytime.”

“Navvys woulda picked up the parts. Crafter dropped them and finished up its repair job quick, once it heard us comin’ in.”

“Took its navvys with it?”

“Looks like. Those mechs up there, you give ’em a look. Modified. Crafter’s good at that. It heard us, backed off. Thought things through. Built a little raiding party while we were resting up last night.”

Ledroff scowled. “Maybe.”

Killeen sighed. “Hasta be.”

Toby put in, “That’s what happened.”

Ledroff smiled at the boy. “I’ll decide that.”

Killeen was about to spit back a sharp reply when Jocelyn came up hurriedly and said, “Cap’n, we tried with Jake. Couldn’t save even a scrap.”

Ledroff nodded soberly. Hearing Ledroff addressed as Cap’n startled Killeen. He was going to have to take orders from this man.

Ledroff already carried the mantle of the Cap’ncy with unconscious gravity. He said, as though to himself, “Point is, what’d the Crafter want?”

“Kill us,” the boy said with horrible simplicity.

“Crafters make things, Toby,” Ledroff said. He lifted an extruder arm from the burntout carcass and hefted it. “They don’t hunt humans.”

“Till now,” Killeen said. “Till now.”

FOUR

Two dead in two days. Suredead. Gone.

The Family was thus diminished more than through the loss of three or even four to the ordinary death. Centuries had piled upon them this injunction: that while the shuddering final gasp of the body was a tragedy to the person, it need not hurt so deeply those who loved the vanquished soul.

If Fanny or Jake had lingered there would have been time. A few Family members carried the small intricate gear which could extract vital fractions of the neardead—quickly, deftly, gathering up threads of pastlife and personality.

But something in the rafting girders had aimed at Jake the most awful of weapons. The suredeath was, until now, encountered only in the Marauder mechs.

The thing above had escaped. If it was a mere navvy, or even another Crafter, that meant the mechs had added another hateful ability to their riverrun of innovation.

Two suredead. So deep a wound made it impossible for the Family to leave the Trough that day. Wisdom would have forced them out, away from such a betrayed trap, but wisdom comes only from reflection. The Family mourned and hated, both acts sapping them of purpose.

In vengeance Killeen fell upon the Crafter. He kicked in plates, ripped away whipwire antennae. The Family gathered and in pureblind rage they stripped the Crafter clean. They yanked free the parts and servos, booty used to maintain their own suits. Over the finely machined carcass they crawled, pillaging the finest workmechship of factories men had never seen and never would.

Mourning Jake-the-Shaper, women savagely ripped away delicate finetuned components, slashed through orchestrated constellations in copper and silicon, and tossed aside what they neither recognized nor could use. This was almost all of the Crafter, for none in the Family knew how such things worked. The most able of them could only connect modular parts, trusting her eye to find the right element. Of theory they had little, of understanding even less. Long eras of hardship and flight had hammered their once-rich heritage of knowledge into flat, rigid rules of thumb.

In place of science they had simple pictures, rules for using the color-coded wires which carried unknown entities: Volts, Amps, Ohms. These were the names of spirits who lived somehow in the mechs and could be broken to the will of humanity. Currents, they knew, flowed like water and did silent work. Clearly, the shiny wreaths of golden wire and perfectly machined onyx squares somehow bossed the currents. Electrons were tiny beasts who drove the motions of larger beasts; such was obvious.

In the days of the Citadel there had been men and women who knew crude electrocraft. The years of long retreat had eliminated them. And there was no time to patiently learn anew from the Family’s Aspects.

The Family scavenged with a vengeance, tearing the Crafter apart brutally. Cylinders bled oil on the tile deck. Optical threads snarled up and tripped the plunderers, only to be stamped flat and kicked into dark corners.

Killeen slowly let his rage seep from him. He had known Jake-the-Shaper all his life, a rather distant man of hangdog eyes and a thin, perpetually exhausted mouth. He mourned him. But the implications of the attack would not leave his mind. He left off the looting and instead probed its inert entrails, lured by curiosity.

He found the inboard mainmind by accident. A frosted aluminum panel suddenly popped free. Killeen blinked, startled out of his reflective daze. He knew he had only moments to act. He had assumed the Crafter was already dead, but the encrusted mass inside hummed with muted energy.

He could call for Sunyat, ask her what to do. She might know and she might not, but in any case the time it took her to arrive would narrow their chances greatly.

So he mentally braced himself. He made the few twists and taps at his skull and called up his Arthur Aspect.

You have been very busy.

“Arthur? Look—”

Perhaps you do not recognize me? Six times you have summoned me in, I believe, some several years.

“Yea, yea.” Damned if Arthur didn’t bring up a gripe, right in the middle of— “Look, how I disarm this one?”

Why do you want to? I doubt you can fathom it.

“Dammit, no backtalk! How?”

Very well. See that yellow relay? Pull it up.

An overlay winked in Killeen’s left eye, a ghost image of the relay rising, disconnecting. He followed the picture.

Now use the pliers. Tweak the blue cables free.

He did. An ominous buzzing began.

Quick! The spring clip!