“Shut up!” Killeen muttered. His Arthur Aspect had no sense of time and place and decency and Killeen was not in a mood for his coolly analytical views. He glanced up from his serving of baked savory eggplant and saw that no one had noticed his exclamation, or else were too polite to show it. Ignoring outer manifestations of Aspect conversations was now considered good manners. Argo’s soft life was at least making the Family more refined.

He could not help reliving the battle, a habit he had picked up through the years on the run on Snowglade. The Family always held a Witnessing if a member was wounded or killed in an attack, and this time there had been Waugh and Leveerbrok, both brought down by electric weapons. So the Witnessing summoned up the mourning, and then the Family broke into smaller families and guests for a meal which put the dead behind them and made muted merriment over the victory. Killeen had seen many such, most celebrating nothing more than escaping another mech ambush or pursuit. It was pleasant to greet this meal as a Cap’n fresh from his first engagement, an intense action swiftly won.

“I sure hope next time you saddle somebody else with the scanner,” Toby said, passing an aromatic zucchini casserole.

Killeen allowed himself a slight smile. “Cermo makes minor staffing decisions,” he said curtly.

“Oh, come on, Dad,” Toby said. “You’re frappin’ over.”

“I’m what?”

“Frapping over,” Besen explained, pronouncing the words carefully. “It means dodging.”

“New lingo for young Turks?” Shibo asked.

Toby and Besen looked blank, but the second young guest, Midshipman Loren, said brightly, “Well, guess we sorta have our own way, y’know, talkin’ things out.”

“Turks?” Toby persisted.

“Old expression,” Shibo said. “The Turks were an old Family who lived vibrantly.”

This was news to Killeen, who had never heard the term either, but he did not show this. He was fairly sure that if the Turks had been a Family, it must have been long before humankind came to Snowglade. Perhaps they had inhabited the Chandeliers, or even had come from ancient Earth. Shibo had made good use of the years of voyaging, communing often with her Aspects, learning much. Along with tech help, Aspects and even the lesser Faces prattled about their own lost times and traditions.

“Yeasay,” Killeen said, “the Turks fought hard, ran swift.” He saw Shibo give him a skeptical glance but kept on. “They never had a better day than the one you brought off, though.”

“Yeasay, we blasted ’em,” Loren said, eyes bright.

“Took those mechs clean,” Toby agreed.

Besen nodded. “New kind mechs, too.”

“You noticed,” Shibo said approvingly, passing a platter of mustard-laced ship’s biscuits.

Toby looked insulted. “Why, course we did. Think we can’t remember, can’t tell a navvy from a Snout?”

Besen said mildly, “Those were Snowglade mechs. Why should here have same mechs?”

Toby answered, “Mechs’re ever’where, that’s why.”

Loren was taller than Toby but thinner, and this gave the steep planes of his face a look of studious care. “Who says?”

Toby snorted. “Family lore. Mechs’re all over Galactic Center.”

“Maybe they’re adapted for each star,” Loren said reasonably.

Toby had no answer to this, but Besen pursed her lips and observed, “Mechs could adapt faster on a planet, sure. It’s life that has a hard time.”

“Life?” Toby asked indignantly. “We can zig and zag faster’n any mech ever did.”

“No,” Besen said patiently, “I mean real adapting. Changing the body, stuff like that.”

Killeen gave Shibo a veiled look of approval. For midshipmen they knew a lot more than he had at that age. “How were these mechs here?”

Toby snorted. “Slow as sundown.”

Loren said more judiciously, “They seemed disorganized. Couldn’t form up right.”

“Don’t think they were fighters,” Besen said.

“They sure fought enough,” Toby said. “I ’member you dodgin’ plenty bolts.”

Killeen leaned forward quizzically. “Besen, why you think they weren’t fighters?”

She paused, aware that the Cap’n had been letting them pour forth their own ideas, and now suddenly feeling self-conscious. “Well…they had grapplers, screwjacks, poly-arms. Work ’quipment.”

“They tried fryin’ us,” Toby pointed out.

Besen held her ground. “Those microwave disks were prob’ly comm gear, not weapons.”

“How ’bout that thing almost caught us at the main-mind?” Toby pursued.

Besen paused reflectively. “I’m not sure.”

Killeen watched her carefully. Whatever had been lurking near the mainmind had disintegrated when the cluster charges went off. The Family had found only meaningless fragments. There had been chunks of fleshy stuff, but mechs on Snowglade had used compounds which mimicked the self-repairing chemistry of life.

Besen went on, “Don’t think we’ll savvy out the answer till we meet the mechs who made the station.”

“C’mon, you’re just inventin’ boogeymen.” Toby chuckled.

“I know navvy-class mechs when I see ’em,” Besen said. “That’s all we saw in the station. The higher-class mech was at the mainmind.”

“You dunno that,” Toby said. “We never got a good look.”

“Stands to reason.” Besen gave Toby an affectionate, bemused look. “Station was already damaged. Prob’ly some mech faction took it from another. We caught ’em before they could build up defenses again, I figure.”

Killeen watched Toby wrestle with the idea. The boy was bright but he let his enthusiasm cloud his thinking—or replace it.

Toby began, “Even if it was a manager mech or some-thin’, we were faster.”

“We got lucky, is all,” Besen said.

“Luck?” Toby looked insulted. “We were quick!”

“If Cap’n hadn’t made us drop everything and run, we’d be mechmeat.”

Killeen was glad to see Besen not meekly following whatever Toby said. There was in the Family a regrettable tendency of adolescent females to accept their boyfriends’ views of the world. The generations of sedentary life in the Citadels had somehow instilled that. The Long Retreat after the Citadel Bishop fell had seemed to erase this, but a scant few years aboard Argo now threatened to bring such customs back. He wanted his midshipwomen to give no ground to the usual swaggering male self-assurance, to develop their burgeoning ability to lead. In a battlefield crisis, such timidity could prove fatal.

Killeen shared the Family’s traditional view that females usually made the best Cap’ns. Conventional wisdom held that once women were through their adolescent-romantic phase, and had reared children, their abilities could again come to the fore, especially diplomacy and compromise. They could ripen as mates and executive officers into Cap’ns. But the Family had no time now for such extended, subtle, and probably wasteful methods. He had to encourage independent thinking in everyone, and to hell with the ageold mating dance.

“I think the same,” Killeen said.

Besen brightened. Toby looked surprised, though he quickly covered it by slurping at his cold potato soup. “But Waugh and Leveerbrok might disagree.”

Besen’s face darkened. Killeen instantly regretted being so blunt. He couldn’t get the hang of handling young crew. “But you’re right. I think they made mistakes.”

Loren nodded soberly. “Didn’t stop, didn’t fix up their suits when they took hits.”

“True,” Shibo said emphatically. Killeen caught her veiled glance, which told him that she was coming to his rescue even though she saw what a clumsy lunk he was. “Got laser punctures into circuitry. Didn’t slap-patch. Voltage found ’em.”

Killeen was still unclear about the difference between Volts, the powerful spirits that inhabited mechs, and Amps, the mysterious sense of quick flow that somehow aided the Volts to seek and move within the world of the machines. Volts embodied intent, and Amps were the runners who carried out those intentions, against the Ohms. He expected he never would fathom such lore. He had heard the scientific explanation but couldn’t keep it straight.