She'd talk to Burnside, suggest he take counselling. His best bet would be Quincannon. The Quince had been through it all and come out the other side. He'd been on these roads forever.
They rode into the night.
Nathan was the recruiting poster image of the Cav. Tree-tall, broad-shouldered, strong-chinned. But he looked down at the ground, not up at the skies. Every time Tyree won a commendation or earned a qualification, he found it necessary to throw a major drunk. In the sand, there was no one better as backup, but in everything else Nathan was never there for her. His priorities were hard to figure.
In their next rotation, to Fort Apache in Arizona, Tyree would be riding with Trooper Stack. She didn't know how she was going to feel about that. The worst thing would be if he came over masculine and protective and got himself crippled or killed trying to cover her ass.
Something birdlike with white hair froze in the light-funnel, red eyes staring. Tyree and Burnside swerved in formation to avoid the beast (a mew-tater of some species) but the cruiser ground it under.
Yorke blathered about racking up another score and the Quince told him it was Des etiquette to eat whatever you killed. Yorke suggested that Ms Redd Harvest of T-H-R must get mighty tired of tucking into a roasted Maniak every suppertime.
The Association of Women in Law Enforcement, of which Tyree was Fort Valens chapel boss, had invited Redd Harvest to address them; she had sent back their invitational fax with a scrawled comment, "I'm not a woman, I'm an Op". Tyree planned to resign. It was important she advance herself on merit, not by soliciting positive discrimination. She knew how she'd feel if anyone she knew got killed because an inferior woman occupied a position of power and made a mistake. Captain Julie Brittles, to whom the Quince reported, was a hard-ass of the old school and had never been in the AWLE.
"Leona," Quincannon said, "the bus's heat patterns are scrambled up ahead."
"Are we losing the trail?"
"It's still clear, but someone crossed the path."
"Could the quarry have made us? Is someone waiting to give us a surprise?"
The Quince considered.
"Nope, this is too recent. The heat signature suggests something big and alive, now off the road a ways to the north."
Tyree scanned and saw nothing but the dark.
"An animal?"
"Could be, but it's heading where there's nothing to drink. Only people are stupo enough for that, or smart enough to pack a canteen."
The sand was thin on the road, a light white brushing in which wheeltracks were black lines. Quincannon's phantom trail crossed. It was behind them in an instant, but the image imprinted in Tyree's visor, fading slowly.
"Man on a horse," she guessed. "Weird."
IV
Waiting for dawn was the quixotic act of a unit too close to the meatmind to realise day and night were mere conveniences for those lacking infrared sight. Olympia's aesthetic decision should be outweighed by wastage of time. Once recharged, Franken conceived no reason why they should remain at Canyon de Chelly waiting for an illusory apt moment.
They should blow the column and move on. There were many more anomalies waiting to be tidied up. To pass the time, Olympia danced with Kochineel, her face set in a razor smile.
The resettlers might have notified the authorities. Canyon de Chelly was a National Monument and thus conspicuous. The Knock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots could best any number of individual patrols but if the US Cavalry were to mount a campaign like the one that shattered the Western Maniax, the cyborg future would die a-borning. War must eventually be carried against meat, but now the 'bots were too few to make large-scale hostilities pursuable.
Besides, strategy decreed the cybermind take complete control of the processes of perfectibility before meatfolks were rendered entirely obsolete. Dr Zarathustra, so amused by the symbolic face he had given Franken Steinberg, must yield BioDiv to his creation.
After Franken, Kochineel was the most complete machine among them. He wore only black scarves to cover meat forearms and skin shins. The rest of him was perfect automaton. His jester's cowl was metallic pseudoleather. Most of his external body was a ceramic carapace.
Andromeda watched Kochineel with interest. His form was what she could expect of her forthcoming alterations. When Franken had been reshaped, durium was state-of-the-art; now, molecule-locked ceramics were proven superior to any alloy. Kochineel's warranty was good up to and including tactical nukes, though he was not inclined to test it. Suppliers only guaranteed robo-bits; they did not extend insurance cover to the graymass where consciousness lived or any original parts required if you were to remain legally and psychologically yourself.
The dance was deliberate and measured. Through his chest-organ, Talos played the "Barcarole" from Tales of Hoffmann. It was the wrong tale for the dance, but Franken let it pass.
Kochineel lifted Olympia and morphed her through the air. Their moves were perfect, unwavering. No meat could match the precision. Every step and pose was calculated, computer animation in solid matter. If required, the dancers could encore, replaying their routine exactly to the micro-millimetre. Digital dancers would render obsolete stubborn fools who insisted on remaining trapped in steadily rotting carcasses. Kochineel stumbled.
An alarm! display lit up in Franken's vision. Something was seriously awry.
Olympia screamed, more in surprise than fear. Somersaulting, she landed on her points. She backed away in horror from her suddenly-imperfect companion, long legs like scissor-blades.
Pinocchiocchio stepped forward but Kochineel waved him away. His cowl-bells sounded, desperately. Kochineel's scarves were wet. He gingerly unpicked the scarf from his left forearm, unwinding cloth away from skin. Much of the skin, and a layer of meat, came away with the scarf. Kochineel's painted doll face could not register shock but the set of his ceramic shoulders, as if he were trying to distance himself from his own arm, gave away his feelings.
The meat of the arm was melting like wax, revealing the clean piston inside. Kochineel's hand clasped and unclasped, then, without the meatmuscles, seized up. It was as dead as alabaster. The Zarathustra rods that threaded through Kochineel's muscles were exposed. The effect was general. All organic matter in Kochineel's body was rotting away.
A splash of thick blood fell around him and dwindled into dead scum, leaving only the microscopic ticks of the nanomachines that had coursed through the cyborg's system. He fell to his knees, molten meat squelching, and looked up. His imploring eyes shrank and fell into his mask.
In the blackness of Kochineel's empty eye-holes, Franken read a bleak future. He signalled the others to stay away. There was a 76.83 per cent probability the effect was viral. Contact could be fatal. Olympia had already made the calculation and scrubbed herself. Franken shut down his ventilation system and systematically expelled air from inside the spaces of his body. The little of his meat that remained was not exposed.
Talos's organ still played. Offenbach drifted across the desert, accompanied by the rasps of Kochineel's exposed gears grinding uselessly against each other.
A diagonal crack shot across Kochineel's face, running from forehead to eye to mouth to neck. Liquid seeped through the fissure and flooded across his face. The graymass was gone. Kochineel pitched into the sand, inanimate as a store mannequin. Purely mechanical parts still functioned inside him and would do until his solar batteries perished, but there was no controlling intelligence. Insofar as he could die, Kochineel was dead.
"Most interesting," Franken concluded.
"Look," Olympia said, pointing.
Franken wheeled. Andromeda held up her ceramic hand, staring at it, gripping it with her meat hand. The robo-bit worked perfectly but Andromeda deliquesced. The athlete's stricken face ran behind her veil, soaking through. She assumed a position of traditional prayer, whimpering.