BOLO RISING
13
Jaime's brow furrowed as he tried to remember the kid's name. Names were important... the last bit of individuality the ragged-scarecrow survivors possessed. Rahni. That was it. Rahni Singh. He'd talked to him more than once in the slave barracks. He claimed to have been a reporter for Cloudnews Network before the Killing, though Jaime suspected that the lad had been padding the truth a little.
"We don't have to take it, anymore!" Rahni said, rising, dripping, his arms outstretched. "What's the worst they can do, loll us? No! The worst is if we keep on living like, like animals! Like things to be slaughtered, or picked apart piece by piece!"
"Get down, Rahni," Jaime said quietly. "There are easier ways to die."
Rahni s voice rose to a quavering shriek. "What can they do to us that they haven't done already . .. ?"
"For God's sake!" Wal cried. "Shut up and get back down!"
But it was already too late. Jaime heard them coming, heard the scissoring swish of sliding metal parts, the hum of floaters, the clacketa-clacketa snaps and clickings of oiled and glistening machines drawn by the commotion.
Like ripples spreading from the splash of a rock chucked into a pond, the other slaves nearest Rahni began crowding back, moving away, leaving the standing man at die center of a widening empty space. Wal, too, backed away, and he reached out with his good hand, grabbed Jaime by the arm, and pulled him clear as the machines closed in.
In the lead was a heavy floater, a dark gray, metal construct of smoothly rounded, convex and teardrop-shaped surfaces set round about with the gleaming red lenses of a dozen optical sensors. It rode upright on a humming contra-gravity field, a faceless machine taller than a man and massing at least one hundred fifty kilos.
14
William H. Keith, Jr.
Behind came three smaller floaters and a stilter, one of the walking clackers, a tripod with blade-edged legs scissoring as they moved with oiled precision. Its lumpy body sported a nest of segmented tentacles ... and an organic prosthesis as well, a human hand grafted to a shining, jointed arm of blue-gray steel and duralloy.
Rahni spun at the machines' approach, but only when he saw that upraised, once-human hand did the enormity of what he'd done strike him.
"No!" he shrieked, stumbling backward, arms raised as if to ward off the attack. "No! I... I didn't mean it! I'll work! I'll work hard...!"
The largest floater advanced. A tiny patch on its side seemed to soften and run like water, and a glittering snake of a tentacle, silver and segmented, whiplashed into the air with a faint snicker of sound.
"I didn't mean anything by it... I"
Jaime pulled free of Wal's trembling grip and stepped into the floater's path. "Wait!" he said, raising his voice in challenge. "He just got a little carried away, is all. Let him go back to work!"
"MOVEўASIDE," the big floater said, its harsh voice grating like the rasp of steel and broken glass.
A Speaker! There weren't many of them, and it was assumed that they were fairly high up in the Masters' caste hierarchy.
"Look, you don't understand!" Jaime called, desperate. "Surely the great !*!*! don't need to kill him for what he's done!" He pronounced the alien name carefully, as he'd been taught. "!" was a clucking sound of tongue against molars, made with the lips pulled back in a grimace. "б" was the same sound, but made with the fips pursed for a whistle. The rapid alternation, "I*!*!," was the only name the aliens used for themselves. All of the others, "clackers," "cluckers," even "Masters," had been invented by their human slaves.
BOLD RISING
15
The Speaker hesitated, and for a moment Jaime thought it was going to answer him. The answer, when it came, was not in words, however. A lightning bolt, ragged, blue-white and searing, snapped from the tip of one tentacle and brushed along Jaime's bare left arm. His body spasmed, twisting as crackling fire convulsed him, knocking him down. He hit the mud with a splat as the floater drifted past, its contra-grav field prickling.
Rahni turned and started to run, but his bare feet slipped and squelched in the mud as he splashed for the distant edge of the pit. The big floater accelerated, sprouting two more tentacles as it moved.
