Strength of Stones Read Online Free Page A

have a way, now."
    "Okay," Thinner said. "We can go back. It's on the other side of Arat. You've got me a little curious now. And besides, I think I might like you. You look like you should be dumb as a creeper, but you're smart. Sharp. And besides, you've still got that club. Are you desperate enough to kill?"
    Jeshua thought about that for a moment, then shook his head.
    "It's almost dark," Thinner said. "Let's camp and start in the morning."
    In the far valley at the middle of Arat, the Mesa Canaan city -- now probably to be called the Arat city -- was warm and sunset-pretty, like a diadem. Jeshua made a bed from the reeds and watched Thinner as he hollowed out the ground and made his own nest. Jeshua slept lightly that evening and came awake with dawn. He opened his eyes to a small insect on his chest, inquiring its way with finger-long antennae. He flicked it off and cleared his throat.
    Thinner jack-in-the-boxed from his nest, rubbed his eyes and stood.
    "I'm amazed," he said. "You didn't cut my throat."
    "Wouldn't do me any good."
    "Work like this rubs down a man's trust."
    Jeshua returned to the river and soaked himself again, pouring the chill water on his face and back in double hand-loads. The pressure in his groin was lighter this morning than most, but it still made him grit his teeth. He wanted to roll in the reeds and groan, rut the earth, but it would do him no good. Only the impulse existed.
    They agreed on which pass to take through the Arat peaks and set out.
    Jeshua had spent most of his life within sight of the villages of the Expolis Ibreem and found himself increasingly nervous the farther he hiked. They crawled up the slope, and Thinner's statement about having tough soles proved itself. He walked barefoot over all manner of jagged rocks without complaining.
    At the crest of a ridge, Jeshua looked back and saw the plain of reeds and the jungle beyond. With some squinting and hand-shading, he could make out the major clusters of huts in two villages and the Temple Josiah on Mount Miriam. All else was hidden.
    In two days they crossed Arat and a tilled terrain of foothills beyond. They walked through fields of wild oats. "This used to be called Agripolis," Thinner said. "If you dig deep enough here, you'll come across irrigation systems, automatic fertilizing machines, harvesters, storage bins -- the whole works. It's all useless now. For nine hundred years it wouldn't let any human cross these fields. It finally broke down, and those parts that could move, did. Most died."
    Jeshua knew a little concerning the history of the cities around Arat and told Thinner about the complex known as Tripolis. Three cities had been grouped on one side of Arat, about twenty miles north of where they were standing. After the Exiling, one had fragmented and died. Another had moved successfully and had left the area. The third had tried to cross the Arat range and failed. The major bulk of its wreckage lay in a disorganized mute clump not far from them.
    They found scattered pieces of it on the plain of Agripolis. As they walked, they saw bulkheads and buttresses, most hardy of a city's large members, still supported by desiccated legs. Some were fifty to sixty yards long and twenty feet across, mounted on organic wheel movements. Their metal parts had corroded badly. The organic parts had disappeared, except for an occasional span of silicate wall or internal skeleton of colloid.
    "They're not all dead, though," Thinner said. "I've been across here before. Some made the walk a little difficult."
    In the glare of afternoon they hid from a wheeled beast armored like a great translucent tank. "That's something from deep inside a city -- a mover or loader," Thinner said. "I don't know anything about the temper of a feral city part, but I'm not going to aggravate it."
    When the tank thing passed, they continued. There were creatures less threatening, more shy, which they ignored. Most of them Jeshua couldn't fit into a picture