Great Sky River Read Online Free PDF

and picked up the sputtering slight promise-note
     again. He surged over rumpled, scarred hills and realized he had overshot only when the signal faded.
    “It’s buried,” he said.
    “Where?” Ledroff asked with a cutting, impatient edge.
    “Under that old factory.”
    Tucked into a dimpled seam were sloping sheds of wrought rockmetal. Navvys clucked and rolled and labored around them, carrying
     out the endless production that had given mechs their steady dominion over humanity. Such sheds were erected wherever the
     land offered arich seam of weather-collected minerals. This was a neglected station, far from the lands where mechs chose to build their
     majestic woven ceramic warrens. Yet the endless succession of such minor stations had flooded this world with mechlife and
     soon, Killeen reflected, might end the long battle between the mechs and all else.
    “Nosee! No is,” Sunyat called from far away. She was always the most cautious of the Family. “Maybe trap.”
    Killeen made a show of ignoring her, same as he had done to Ledroff. Most times that was the best way, rather than talk. “Trough’s
     buried. Navvys’ve built on top of it.”
    “Troughs’re
that
old?” Jocelyn asked.
    “Old as mechs. Old as men,” Killeen said. He landed beside a navvy and followed the half-blind thing as it rolled into the
     factory. Sure enough, the navvys were refining some ceramo-base extract from the rocks, oblivious to the large rusted door
     that formed one whole wall of their little world.
    Within moments the Family had converged on the factory. They sapped each navvy, powering them down enough to pry out some
     portable power cells, but not so far that the navvy would register a malf. At this they moved with accustomed grace. This
     small place had no supervisor mechs to confront, no dangers. Navvys were easy pickings. The fact that the Family was like
     rats stealing crumbs from a back larder did not concern or bother them.
    Ledroff went into the Trough first, Killeen behind. It was a vast old barn, ripe with scents Killeen savored in the air. The
     Family conducted its entry automatically, each darting forward while the others covered, exchanging not a word. Killeen and
     Jocelyn crept carefully along rows of leaky vats, boots squishing in the slop.
    Nothing. No navvys came to greet them, mistaking them for mechs. That meant this Trough was tended poorly, expected few visitors.
     Its navvys were loaned to the factory outside.
    “Out of business,” Ledroff grunted, sitting down on an iron-ribbed casement. He started shucking off his suit.
    “Food’s good,” Jocelyn said. She had already stuck a fist into an urn of thick syrupy stuff. She licked it with relish. Long
     brown hair spilled over her helmet ring, escaping. Her bony face relaxed into tired contentment.
    Killeen listened as other Family prowled the long hallways, sending back the same report: nobody home. He went back to the
     entrance and helped swing the big moly-carb hatch closed. That was it, for him. They were in safe haven and now he let himself
     lie down, feeling the quiet moist welcome of the Trough envelop him.
    Around him the Family unsuited. He watched them lazily. Jocelyn shucked her knobby knee cowlings with a heavy sigh. Mud had
     spattered her shin sheaths; she had to pop their pinnings free with the heel of her hand. Her slab-muscled thighs moved gracefully
     in the dappled light, but inspired no answering in Killeen.
    The Family removed their webbed weaves and tri-socketed aluminum sheaths, revealing skins of porcelain, chocolate, sallow.
     Their flesh had red, flaky areas where insulation bunched and rubbed. Many carried ruddy seams of forgotten operations. Others
     showed the blue-veined traceries of old implants. These were add-ons from the days when the Family still knew how to work
     such things. Glossy slick spots spoke of injuries soothed. But nothing could shore up the sagging flesh, the pouch-bellies
     of inflamed organs. The