Free Great Sky River by Gregory Benford

them to useful work.
    He also tolerated no mean, spiteful talk. In the years since the Calamity the Family had learned that aimless jawing had to
     be carefully controlled. In a crisis—slowcoming or quick, no matter—it was always better to run than to talk.
    Someone had to cut off the winding jabber that passed for discussion. This Ledroff did, using his booming voice to override.
    The Family meandered to their gear and reluctantly figured how much they each could carry away from the Trough. They dallied,
     ate some more, took every chance to stop and sit and fidget with their harnesses, their’matics, their carefully tended boots.
     Ledroff’s voice boomed again then, cajoling them to resuit and pack away foodstuffs for a march of uncertain end. Killeen
     nodded, still smarting from his humiliation, but he saw what had to be done.
    There were jobs. Ledroff assigned some to covering their tracks in the Trough. The worst task fell to Killeen and Cermo-the-Slow:
     disposing of Jake. There was no place to bury the carcass, a stiffening, stilled clockworkwhose skin was a patchwork of blotchy browns and oblongs of stark white. As he hoisted it, Killeen felt Jake’s deadweight
     as a thing more solid and bulky than the living Jake had been.
    They had to feed Jake slowly into one of the vats, letting the flesh dissolve into a ruddy mucus. It was wrong to waste flesh
     in the soil, that they knew and felt deeply. What went into a Trough could someday come out of it.
    Still, watching Jake blur and bleed, the ghostwhite bones first poking up through translucent papery skin, and then splitting
     it, the peeling parchment curling away—
    Killeen’s heart had climbed into his throat. His hands were slippery on Jake’s ankle. The harsh fumes that rose from the waxy
     vat scum found their way high up into his head and fogged his eyes, leaked tears from his eyes.
    Yet it was Fanny he wept for, not Jake.
    Time ticked on. The smell cut sharper. At last he could let Jake go. As a foot and spindly calf sank into brown, crusted mire,
     Killeen said goodbye to Fanny as well. Then he stumbled away.
    He helped Toby suit up, carefully sealing his son’s pullpoints, letting the details of preparation fill up his mind.
    Only when they were moving again did he think.
    Across the sloping valleys they came. Killeen carried his punishing penalty load on upper and lower back. He huffed in air
     as he took long strides, letting his percussive landings exhale it.
    He had long since learned from his father the effort-saving, forward-tilted stride. In Snowglade’s low gravity the muscles
     of humanity, augmented with servos and cobbled-together suits, made them stride like giants. Theparts were filched from mechs and hand-wrought to human calves and shoulders. Shapemetal blended and smoothed like a soft
     chrome clay, when it was triggered with the right de-poly signal.
    This was the principal craft the Family still retained— indeed, would die without. Jake-the-Shaper had been best at it. Jocelyn,
     Cermo, and a few more knew the shaping art. The talent lived mostly in the hands, so the Family carried it as an ongoing dexterous
     art. Many of the Aspects which rode in the backminds of the Family members knew as much. But mere talksay was not enough.
     Aspects could not work your muscles. You had to have the feel of it, or else seams would pop, burrs would rub at bunching
     muscles, servos would clog and freeze.
    Killeen listened with a fraction of his mind to the hum and work of his suit, letting his senses range over the land ahead.
     Tawny scrub bushes dotted the hills, life persistent and uncrushed, though the orange clay was crosscut by myriad mech treads.
    “Looking damper,” he sent.
    —See any streams?— Jocelyn answered.
    “Those gullies southward look fresh.”
    —You suresay this is the right vector?—
    “Dead on.”
    Arthur came in unbidden:
    I’m recalculating every ten minutes. We are heading at the bearing I judge appropriate