Free Great Sky River by Gregory Benford Page B

clear, bright air and landed on the run. He yelped with sudden energy and
     in moments was alongside his father.
    In his son’s voice Killeen had heard a treble of Veronica. Though he had recordings of her, he never called them up from his
     longstore chip at the base of his spine. Thus, the slightest trace of her could spear him bitter-sweetly. Toby was their full
     child. They had used no other genetic components in making him. Which meant that Toby was Veronica’s entire legacy.
    For Veronica had perished in the Calamity and was suredead.
    Most of the Clan had fallen then, scythed down by the deft cut and thrust of a mech onslaught against the Citadel. For hundreds
     of years before, the mechs hadslowly claimed parts of Snowglade, and humanity had watched warily. Snowglade had been a cool, water-rich world with winds
     that stirred the moisture in great towering cottony clouds. Mechs did not like such planets, which is why humanity came to
     be there, to prosper in their own humble fashion.
    So went as much of history as Killeen had ever heard—though in truth he cared little for it. History was tales and tales were
     a kind of lie, or else not much different from them; he knew that much. Which was enough. A practical man had to seize the
     moment before him, not meander through dusty tales.
    Family Bishop had lived in rugged rockfastness and splendor in the Citadel. Killeen remembered that time as though across
     an impassable murky chasm, though in fact it had been only six years since the Calamity. All years before that were now compressed
     into one daybright wondrous instant, filled with people and events which had no substantial truth any longer, had been swept
     away as if they had never been.
    Since then the Bishops were swept forward not so much by a victorious horde behind, but rather by the mounting tide of the
     names of battles lost, bushwhacks walked into, traps sprung, Family members wounded or surekilled and sometimes even left
     behind in a disheartening white-eyed dishonorable scramble to escape, to save the remnant core of the Family, to keep some
     slender thread of heritage alive.
    The names were places on a map—Sawridge, Corinth, Stone Mountain, Riverrun, Big Alice Springs, Pitwallow—and maps were not
     paper now but encoded in the individual’s memorychip. So, through the six years of pursuit, as members of the Family fell
     and were swallowedup by the mechmind, the Family lost even the maps to understand where their forebears had stood and fought and been vanquished.
     Now the names were only names, without substance or fixity in the living soil of Snowglade.
    In retreat the Family could carry little, and cast aside the hardcopy maps and other regalia which had once signified their
     hold upon the land. So a string of dropped debris stretched across years and continents.
    Killeen’s father had vanished at the Citadel, gone into chaos. Veronica had been hit standing right beside Killeen. He had
     dragged her body with him, seeking a medic who could repair the damage. Only when he had fallen exhausted into a muddy irrigation
     ditch did he see that a burst had taken her sometime as he carried her. He had been too dazed and tormented to notice. Her
     eyes had bulged out, shockbright and with the pus dripping from them. Suredead.
    Until the Calamity he had known countless cousins, Family that had seemed boundless. Now he had only Toby.
    —Looksee. A navvy,— Toby called. He pointed and went bounding off
    “Heysay!” Killeen shouted. “Check that thing first.” He leaped forward and overtook his son.
    The navvy seemed innocuous. Its bright crosshatched carapace was freshly polished. Its stubby arms rummaged among scabbed
     mechwaste—cowlings, rusted housers, worn gray biojoints.
    Killeen approached. The mech spun its lightweight treads. They caught and clacked against an eroded spur of peppery, chipped
     granite. Fore-lenses swiveled to study Killeen. It paused a long moment, seeming to