The Red Neoanders were clearly audible. All but one of them were below her, and as she paused and waited, she heard the thudding footfalls of the straggler going by her. They were getting orders from their B, or Beta, as per racial stereotype. To her credit, the B was not hanging back and commanding from the rear; she seemed to be in the thick of things, which placed her downslope just where the going started to get marshy enough to give them second thoughts about the way they were heading. They must have noticed by now that the native scout on their left had disappeared, which might encourage them to steer toward the right. In any case, they were briefly stymied. They were all downhill of Kathree. And they were all facing the other way.
Looking directly across the slope she saw nothing but tall pinelike trees, forming a canopy that had stifled development of undergrowth. It would be easy going. A traversing run would take her rapidly to the opposite side of the field of battle, where she ought to be able to follow the other Digger’s trail down to wherever he’d stationed himself and zap him with an ambot before he was able to do anything heroic and stupid.
The bang of a Neoander’s flynk whip sounded from below, and she heard someone cry out and a clamor of whanging noises as ambots were projected toward targets.
Feeling suddenly very late, she began to run through the trees, moving openly now. When gaps appeared, she looked down across the bog. The vantage from here was excellent.
Which explained why she nearly collided with a lone man who had stationed himself in one of those clear places, perfectly situated to overlook the bog and the cove below. His only company was a robot: a siwi with a video camera for a head, capable of rising up out of its coils like a cobra from a basket and aiming its lens in any direction. The man was standing with his back to the fight, facing his siwi, which was shooting down the hill. Kathree was quite close to that siwi when she stumbled upon this, and so, when she first took it all in, she understood the setup exactly, just as a billion Red viewers would be doing in a few minutes: in the foreground, the man, framed in rugged rocks and trees that would fill habitat dwellers with that aching need to come down here and colonize the surface. In the near background, the bog where the fighting was under way. Beyond that, the cove nestled between the pincers of wave-beaten rock, the flynk barge with its column of light making the whole scene into day, Ark Darwin farther out, rocking slowly on low seas, and the sky adding some light of its own as the dawn approached.
The man wasn’t expecting her. She got the impression, somehow, that he’d been rehearsing, going over his lines, clearing his throat, preparing for a performance. So she had a few moments in which to stare at him.
The three incarnations of Kath Amalthova had, in their collective lifespan, only laid eyes on live Aretaics a few times, and then only from a distance. So she had no clear measure of what counted as impressive or handsome among that race. But this one had to be one of the finer specimens. He must be over two full meters in height. His long raven hair was swept back from his forehead to make the most of a high noble brow, a strong prominent nose, large, jet-black, deep-set eyes. A few creases on his face gave him an air of sober maturity.
Five thousand years ago, aristocracy had died, along with almost everything else, and yet the idea of aristocracy — the aspirations that it, at least in an idealized form, drew out of the human psyche — lived on in everything about this man’s appearance, his attire, his posture, and the way in which he gazed upon Kathree when he had recovered from his astonishment and understood what was happening. The look on his face said that this unexpected encounter was fascinating, as well as slightly amusing, the sort of twist of fortune that happened from time to time to sophisticated persons, and that, political differences notwithstanding, the two of them might one day discuss the whole affair wryly over a glass of fine red wine from Antimer. Or at least that was the case until Kathree’s ambot struck him right in the middle of his forehead.
Sensing movement and hearing the discharge of her katapult, the siwi — which apparently had some rudimentary ability to follow what was interesting — swiveled in her direction, but she stomped at its neck from behind. It gave way beneath the impact of her heel and made a creditable effort to remain standing, but was forced to uncoil itself so as to effect a soft landing on the ground. From there it might have pursued her into the trees, had it been programmed for pursuit. But it was really nothing more than a moderately smart camera platform, and so it stayed where it was, doggedly trying to center the face of the Aretaic in the middle of its frame. Since the Aretaic was rolling and writhing like a man on fire, this gave its algorithms a vigorous workout.
Kathree resumed her headlong run through the trees. She bent her course back toward the sea, entering the final leg of a U-shaped career around the bog. She slowed down. If her conjecture was correct, she must be drawing close to the other Digger. And unlike Bard, Beled, and Roskos Yur, she had nothing to protect her from those steel-headed arrows.
She heard a creaking noise from uphill — behind her. She turned around to see a redheaded, blue-eyed Digger, no more than five meters away, holding an arrow at full draw, aimed right at her. The freshly sharpened edges of its hand-forged steel warhead made bright arcs as they reflected the light from the cove. She had holstered her katapult to leave both hands free for scrambling. She had nothing.
Cantabrigia Five hadn’t exactly commanded her to incapacitate both of the Digger scouts. Just to prevent them from doing harm, and to prevent their dead bodies from showing up on video screens around the ring.
“You’re making a terrible mistake,” she said.
The Digger didn’t move, but he did blink slowly. She took it as assent to keep talking. “Those people — the Reds — are only pretending to be your friends so that they can piggyback on your claim to the surface. They want to take it all for themselves.”
“And you?” he asked.
“Blue is no better, in some ways.”
“Then why should we heed your counsel?”
“You should heed no one’s counsel blindly. Neither mine — nor his.” She made a little movement of the head toward the Aretaic.
Silence as he considered it.
“Do you know Ceylon Congreve?” she asked.
“Of course.”
“Has Ceylon Congreve spoken to you of chess?”
“We do not need a Cyc to tell us of chess,” the Digger said. “We play it all the time.”
“Then you know that pawns are weak — except for when their position on the board gives them power. Early in the game they are sacrificed freely. Late in the game they may checkmate the king.”
She was interrupted by another whipcrack from below, followed by two more in rapid succession. She fought the temptation to turn around and look. The Digger’s blue eyes strayed toward the battlefield, took something in, then returned to her. At no time did the arrowhead waver.
Kathree continued: “You are pawns. You can’t begin to imagine how small and weak you are compared to the forces above. If you allow yourself to be played as such by Red, you will be sacrificed as soon as it suits their purposes. If you play a longer game, though, you can yet grow powerful. As powerful as the other human races.”
With a suddenness that made Kathree flinch, the Digger raised his weapon and relaxed the arm that had been drawing the arrow back. He plucked the nock off the string and placed the arrow back in his quiver.
“I take your words with a grain of salt,” he said.
“Good.”
“But some of what you say confirms suspicions that I have harbored in my breast since the coming of the Red people, and so I have made up my mind to go back and speak to the others of these matters.” And then he simply turned his back on Kathree and began hiking back up into the mountains of Beringia.