“Maybe we could find some of the others to help us,” he said finally, feeling doomed and trapped, but unable to bring himself to abandon her.
She shook her head. “No, Ahren. There is only you and me.” It was the first time she had used his name, and he was surprised at the depth of feeling it aroused in him. It was as if she knew just how to say it-as if by saying it, she was linking them in the same way that she was linked to Walker.
It drew him to her and at the same time it made him afraid. “I can’t go with you,” he said quickly, shaking his head for emphasis because he thought his voice was shaking.
She did not reply, simply sat there looking at him. He couldn’t bring himself to meet her gaze, but kept his eyes directed out at the city, at the miles of rubble and debris, at that mirror of the wasteland he was feeling inside.
“My brother knew what he was doing by sending me on this voyage,” he said to the empty landscape, at the same time trying to make the girl understand. “He knew I was weak, not strong enough to survive-“
“Your brother was wrong,” she interrupted quickly. He turned and stared at her, surprised at the vehemence in her voice. “My brother-“
“Your brother was wrong,” she repeated. “About this voyage. About Walker. But especially about you.”
He took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, feeling a shift in his thinking that was impossible to reconcile with common sense but equally impossible to ignore. Could he do what she was asking of him? Could he possibly find the resolve that seemed to come so easily to her? It was madness of the sort that he could not quite manage to dismiss. Something deep inside was responding to her need, and it made him disregard all other considerations.
Even so, what could he do that would make a difference? “I don’t think I can protect you, Ryer Ord Star,” he whispered.
Then a distant sound caught his attention, one so tiny and insignificant he almost missed hearing it. He froze momentarily, afraid of what it might be. The seer watched him, waiting. Finally he rose to peer from their hiding place into the ruins. She was beside him at once, pressing close.
The sound had come from the maze. Dozens of tiny metal creatures skittered and wheeled their way through its intricate system of walls, none of them more than perhaps two feet high. There were several different kinds, each clearly built to perform a specific task. Some hauled away the bodies of the dead Mwellrets, gripping them with pincers at the end of stubby arms and dragging them across the smooth metal floor, where they dropped them down chutes that opened briefly and then sealed again. Some used a torch mechanism attached to their bodies to repair the rents caused by the fire threads in the metal surface of the maze. Some swept and polished and otherwise cleaned away all traces of the one-sided battle, restoring the maze so that it looked as if nothing had ever happened there.
It took them less than an hour to complete their work, speeding about like mice in a cage, sunlight gleaming off their metal shells, the sounds of clicking and whirring and buzzing barely audible in the stillness surrounding them. When they were finished, they wheeled into lines and disappeared down rampways that opened to admit them in the same fashion as the chutes that had swallowed the Mwellrets. In seconds, they were gone.
Ahren looked at Ryer Ord Star. A surge of relief swept through him. He felt giddy. “Sweepers,” he said, gesturing toward the tiny machines, the word popping into his mind all at once, causing him to smile in spite of himself.
She did not smile back. Instead, she pointed to something just behind him. His heart lurched as he followed her gaze and found one of the newly named sweepers parked not three feet away.
The sweeper wasn’t doing anything. It was just sitting, a squat, cylindrical body on a set of multiple rollers. Its round head might have been the top half of a metal ball resting on a set of heavy springs. Thin, short probes stuck out from the head in various places and directions, and a pair of fat knobs stuck out of its body on opposite sides, each about the size of a fist.