"You will need this device. John. If you damage it, you will suffer."
Rage replaced terror, and Thinwolf bared his teeth at the hulk. "Perhaps I won't need it at all; perhaps I'll simply take to my lifeboat now!"
The hulk dropped its gaze and released Thinwolf's hands. "As you wish, John." It turned, uncovered the switch access plate in its side, waited with its head turned to the side. By the access, a handprint lit with a soft green glow, and a message flashed: THROW SWITCH — PRESS HERE.
Thinwolf reached out, fingered the twist of soft wire that secured the switch. His hand looked thin and pale, the skin translucent over the bones. Something invaded him, pushed out the rage, so that in an instant he could feel nothing but a deep regret. The flesh was so precious, and so fragile. He would cling to it as long as he safely could.
"No, I'm sorry. I've acted badly," Thinwolf said. "I won't need your body yet."
The hulk looked at him tenderly, smiled, refastened its access plate. "I am pleased, John. Do not assume that I fear erasure; I do not. That is my destiny. I will go without regret when the time comes; that is how I am made. Still, I can enjoy whatever comes, until you are ready."
Thinwolf shook his head. He would never understand; how could anything give up its life so easily? "I'm reassured. I owe you much already, and soon ... I'll owe you everything."
"I am only a machine, John. Never forget this."
"Still.... Well, have you given thought to a name?"
"Yes. I would like to join your tribe, John. Is that possible?"
Thinwolf laughed, a somewhat sour sound. "Why not?"
The hulk took no notice. "May I be called Ironhorse, then?"
"Good. A good redskin name. May I ask why you chose it?"
Ironhorse looked at Thinwolf with cautious eyes. "Is it not obvious?"
"I suppose." He sat silently in the grav chair for a long time, trying to get used to the idea that his own legs would never bear him again. Ironhorse watched him patiently. Finally it spoke. "Would you like to finish your story, John?"
"I thought you didn't like my stories?"
"But this one is true, is it not?"
"They're all true. But yes, yes," Thinwolf said, waving his hand in weary acquiescence. "Yes, this one is true; it happened to me."
Ironhorse said nothing, nor did the hulk look surprised. Perhaps it was incapable of surprise, Thinwolf thought. "You don't seem astounded."
"No."
Thinwolf felt a twinge of irritation. "Then I'll be brief."
"The 'Great Experiment' was a failure. My 'People' were no better than they should have been. They moped about for weeks and months, eating freeze-dried rations and courting each other and whispering against me. They hated the lodges; they hated the buckskin I gave them; they refused to learn to hunt, or gather, or play the tom-tom. They said the music was boring and childish, 'a lot of grunting and mumbling and no tunes.' Well, I had to agree with them about the music, but that didn't make them any happier. The only thing they seemed to enjoy was sitting around the bonfire and drinking whiskey and screwing. All the peyote rotted, except for what I used.
"It was a disaster. The food was running out, the lodges were falling down, and they weren't Indians, not at all, not in any way. They didn't like my stories any better than you do, and what could I do?
"I sat in my lodge and brooded. I was broke. I had no people; I was alone. The red-haired woman left me and moved in with Gray Dove and her three husbands. They all refused to learn anything about their ancestors and the way those wonderful people had once lived.
"Finally I got mad. I climbed up on the tall boulder and shouted for them to assemble. After a while a dozen or so ambled up from the encampment and stood about, grinning foolishly.
"'Listen,' I said. 'I've been good-natured for a pretty good while. I've allowed you to indulge your civilized lusts; I've waited patiently for you to see the emptiness of your civilized lives and return to the old ways. But you haven't. You've disappointed me. You're not the People. Good-bye.'
"I climbed down from the speaking rock and went to the supply dump. I'd taken the precaution of hiding a one-man escape pod in a big crate. I pried open the crate, got in the pod, and lifted away from Treen. I've never been back."
Ironhorse stirred, looked sadly at Thinwolf. "What happened, John?"
Thinwolf's fingers twisted together. "I never meant for anyone to suffer. I thought if I left them on their own, they'd have to learn to be redskins. There were plenty of sensie tapes in the teaching machines; there should have been no problem."
"But?"
"An erroneous protein survey. Just a small incompatibility. It's happened a thousand times before on a thousand worlds. Anyway, when the food ran out and they had to begin hunting, they discovered the problem. A lot of people died before they started storing the dead in ice caves and using the flesh to supplement their diet. Then they died more slowly. There were fewer than a hundred left, when the missionary ship arrived and took them off. Saved by missionaries! Does that tell you how wrong the whole thing went? Hah! They've been hunting me ever since. I took the most anonymous job I could find; I stayed in space; I never went planetside; I made no friends." Thinwolf smiled a little. "But they got me anyway."
For a long time, the hulk said nothing. Finally it spoke. "I still wish to be of your tribe."
So Thinwolf was no longer the last redskin. They traveled north, into the latitudes of fogs and icebergs. The wind was like a knife, and the water like flowing ice, and whenever Thinwolf rode his grav chair up on deck, he wrapped himself in heavy robes.
At night he would tell stories to the hulk, and Ironhorse would listen patiently: Coyote and the Rain Barrel of Souls, Coyote and the General's Manboots, Coyote and the World of Ashes, Coyote and the Rainbow Guitar, Coyote and the Most Beautiful Toadwoman, Coyote and the Steel Raven... and many others. The stories seemed to flow from Thinwolf like blood from a wound, at first pulsing and hot, later seeping slowly, clotted by his approaching death. The stories eased Thinwolf somehow, so that he was less conscious of the decline of his body. He could barely move now, and the pain came oozing back, no longer kept completely under control by the med unit's injections.
They went too far north for safety; a dozen times a night the ice-floe alarm shrilled, waking Thinwolf from his almost-sleep.
The hulk approached him. "John, perhaps we should alter course. The ice is too thick; we risk being trapped."
Thinwolf stirred in his chair. The world had closed in around him; it seemed to press him inward, into his failing flesh, gently but inexorably. Ironhorse's beautiful face swam before him, unclear. He forced himself to focus, to listen, to think.
"Yes," he said, after long struggle. "Alter course. Zigzag southwest; perhaps we'll cut its trail that way. Unless it swims under the ice."
There were fewer Cities in the high latitudes. But they came across one living City and one dead one.
The living City was low and sleek, with a great rounded carapace, set with a thousand bright domes of colored glass, like a gigantic steel turtle studded with glowing jewels. It forged across their course at high speed, plowing a deep furrow in the ocean.
"Shall we chase it?" Ironhorse asked.
"No," answered Thinwolf, sunk in his chair.
The dead City rose over the horizon a day later, at sunset. It had once been beautiful, and even in its decay, half-sinking in the cold waters, it still had a bittersweet charm, like an abandoned amusement park. It was a confection of pavilions and terraces and small, intimate courts full of empty flower boxes, all connected by a maze of narrow waterways. The hulk steered the boat slowly through the canals and lagoons, into the interior of the City, and Thinwolf roused himself from his terminal languor to marvel. "They must have lived well," he said to Ironhorse. "Graciously."