The Children of the Sky

by VernorVinge

  Her lamp light reflected off sheets of snowflakes coming down ever more densely around her. She had reached the outskirts of Newcastle town. Ten years ago, this had been where she first set foot on Tines World. There had been no town here, and the castle was still being built. This ground had been a battlefield. Now it was a medieval city. No, not medieval. The buildings were stone and wood and wattle, but they had pipes climbing their walls, and hot water towers sticking high above the rooftops. No one threw garbage out the windows overlooking this street, and even at the height of summer, there was no sewage floating down the gutters. In building Newcastle town, Scrupilo had used Oobii’s design archives to plan his understreet sewer pipes—and Oobii’s beam gun to keep water flowing year-round. Such tiny changes had created a place that might be safer and friendlier than any other in the world.

  …And just now, here on the Queen’s Road, she was close to being lost! She could see only a meter or two, and her stupid handlamp was perhaps worse than useless. The new snow had already covered all but the deeper wheel tracks—and even her own footprints. Looking up, Ravna could see a blurry bluish glow: probably a light in a high window. Huh. In a rainstorm, even a blinding drencher in the middle of the night, she could have walked over to the nearest building and proceeded along with one hand on the wall, recognizing locations as she went. Here, this afternoon, the snow shoveled up from previous storms blocked her from touching anything familiar.

  She proceeded, assuming that the main axis of the street was simply where it was easiest to walk. The occasional window lamps were her stars. There ought to be a fountain square every hundred meters or so.

  “Sssssss.” The sound was barely louder than the sound of the falling snow, and matched its timbre precisely. Either her ears were playing tricks on her, or a pack was quietly trying to attract her attention. She drifted away from her guess about the road’s center, toward the sound. There was a gap in the snow pile, a notch that would mark an alley or side street. She pointed her lamp onto the space.

  The strange hissing stopped. At the center of her lamplight she saw a pack hunkered down in the snow. The creature gave her a little wave. “Screwfloss here.” The voice was a whisper, and she suspected it was focused on her head alone, inaudible anywhere else. “I wonder if we might have a brief chat?”

  Ravna stepped forward and took a good look at the pack. Yes, this was Screwfloss; she recognized two of him by the white blazes running from muzzle to crown. “What do you want?” she said.

  Screwfloss was backing away from her, angling his heads for her to follow. “Not so loud,” he said. “One of Bili Yngva’s boys is about, um”—his heads bobbed a measuring gesture—“about thirty meters behind you. I’d just as soon he doesn’t know you took a detour.” He was already sweeping snow over her tracks.

  Oh! She hadn’t realized anyone was following her; damn, the new Ravna should have assumed that was case. She brought her light down to a dim point, just enough to keep her footing and see the nearest of Screwfloss. The pack led her down the alley and around two turns. It moved all together with itself. Ravna knew that the snow damped mindsounds down to just a couple of meters; the pack would probably lose its mind if it didn’t bunch up. Looking up, she saw no more bluish lights. This must be one of the windowless, single-pack-wide streets. They were ubiquitous down on Hidden Island; the new town had some, too.

  “Okay,” said Screwfloss. “This should be private enough. The human will just follow the main road. He could get to the castle before he ever figures out he lost you.” The pack gave a crafty chuckle; this critter watched too much human drama. “It’s just a little further. My boss is waiting to talk to you.”

  Ask him straight out: “Flenser, right?”

  “That’s supposed to be a secret.” He sounded insulted.

  A proper caution was finally catching up with her—now that she was deep into the windowless alley. She had decided Oobii’s later surveillance of Flenser was essentially noise—but this was much more of a test of her theories than was sensible. She trudged along after Screwfloss, but now she was watching for turnoffs. The snow was deep-piled and untrodden. In such fluffiness, maybe she could outrun him. Finally Screwfloss hesitated. “The Boss is a few meters on, my lady.” In her dimmed lamp light she had the impression of his heads bowing her graciously forward.

  There was no help for it, so: “Thank you, Screwfloss.” She gave his nearest head a patronizing pat and strolled forward.

  Shadows and flickering sheets of falling snow. So how could Flenser get to the top of Starship Hill unnoticed? This wasn’t Hidden Island, with its old maze of secret passages.

  She brightened her lamp and swept it quickly around her. She saw snow up to shoulder height and windowless, half-timbered walls above that. This was not a cul-de-sac. It was more like a T-intersection—and another pack sat in a clump beside one of the exits. It was a fivesome. One of the members was perched in a wheelbarrow.

  Ravna walked up to the pack, and gave a shallow bow. “Flenser-Tyrathect,” she said, using the full name. A feeble attempt to remind you of your better three-fifths.

  As usual, the pack sounded sly and coy: “And greetings to you, Ravna Bergsndot. I had hoped for a private conversation, and now the elements have cooperated to make it even more so.”

  Ravna tried to sound nonchalant: “You can get the ship’s weather predictions just like everyone else.”

  “Um, yes. Still, I didn’t want to postpone this meeting much longer. Will you walk with me?” Snouts gestured toward the path behind him. “This alley intersects the Queen’s Road a bit further on. With any luck, Nevil’s boy spy will never even guess you strayed.”

  “Lead on, then.”

  Flenser came to his feet, and struggled to turn the wheelbarrow around. Ravna reached out to help. “No, no, I’m quite good at this.” Flenser’s voice might have been frosty; in any case, it lacked some of its slithery quality. Most of the pack was healthy, but navigating the wheelbarrow that held his maimed member—that raised in Ravna’s imagination the vision of an elderly medieval human, hobbling through his last years. Many broodkenners would have advised the discarding of such a weakened member.

  Then the pack was underway, a lurching progress, but still as fast as a slowly walking human. Somehow this cripple had popped up all undetected in the middle of a blizzard in the heart of Woodcarver’s most secure city. Ravna couldn’t resist: “How did you manage this, Flenser? I thought you were down on Hidden Island—”

  She heard the characteristic sly laugh. “And I was, all tidily bundled up in the Old Castle, with Woodcarver’s police watching the entrances three packs deep, and her secret cameras watching my ‘innermost’ haunts. Yes, I know about those cameras. Ha ha. And I know Woodcarver knows. But she can’t see me when I’m in other rooms or down in the catacombs. I have ways out of my castle, and I still have a few truly loyal retainers. With the Inner Channel frozen, it was easy to sneak me across to the mainland.”

  Ravna knew that Flenser had used that trick in the past, to visit Steel’s remnant on the mainland. She hadn’t told Woodcarver, partly because the visits seemed innocent, and partly because it would have revealed Ravna’s “magical” surveillance system. “So sneaking over the ice got you to the mainland. That’s still six hundred meters down from where we’re standing now. How did you get yourself up here all unseen?”

  “I would have been noticed on the funicular, that’s for sure.” He gave her a sly look. “Who knows, Ravna? I’m a master of disguise; perhaps I came up separately.” He let her chew on that for a moment. “But I’ll let you in on the secret: call it evidence of my good faith.” Or evidence of the well-known vanity of all Woodcarver’s creations. “You see, while you and Woodcarver and Scrupilo were congratulating yourselves about Newcastle town’s water and sewage system, I was more interested in the fault map that Oobii devised. Using that map, it was an easy matter—well, years of labor, actually, since doing it under Woodcarver’s snouts was a nightmar
e—to dig a stairway. It’s a narrow thing, almost as narrow as my member tunnels of old. You remember those?”

  “Yes,” Ravna said shortly. Amdi and nine-year-old Jefri had come close to being burned alive in something similar—though that had been on Steel’s orders. “You couldn’t get the wheelbarrow through one of those tunnels.”

  “True. On the stairs, I use a special sling for my White Tips”—the maimed one—“but even so, the climb is excruciating. Isn’t that so, Screwfloss?”

  “Yeah, Boss.” The voice came from immediately behind her. She flinched and turned: Screwfloss was practically treading on her heels—which put him barely two meters behind Flenser. That was amazingly close for packs. Okay, the snowfall attenuated mindsounds considerably—but perhaps Screwfloss was one of the old White Jackets, a Flenser lord. Those had been trained to give up hunks of identity when their master demanded it.

  Screwfloss continued. “I had to drag White Tips up 151 stairsteps. It will be worse going back down. We won’t get home till after tomorrow noon twilight.”

  She turned back to Flenser and tried for nonchalance. “Okay, you’ve shared a real secret with me. What do you want?”

  “Simply to help, my lady. It’s as I’ve always told you and your co-Queen, from the very first day that you and she met the New Me.”

  “But you’re not sharing this with Woodcarver?”

  “Alas, she is so untrusting!” He paused, struggling to roll the little wheelbarrow through a shallow snow drift. “And now I fear we are dealing with a new Woodcarver. No, not something evil, but maybe something worse. Something foolish.” He layered a regretful chuckle over his words.

  “Foolish? I’m sure Woodcarver knows that Nevil is trying to manipulate her.”

  “Of course,” said Flenser. “And she thinks she is in control of the situation. She’s dead wrong and—well, I’m here to rescue you both. I’m cleverer than Woodcarver ever was. And you—”

  “I’m the utter fool who didn’t see even the most obvious parts of all this conspiracy.”

  Flenser’s wheelbarrow came to a halt. All of his members were staring up at her, and his voice was suddenly somber and uncoy. “No, Ravna. You’re not a fool. You’re an innocent, too pure of heart to live on this real world. Outside of damaged packs and saints, I’ve never seen that among my people. Tell me. Is this a feature of star-born culture? Are there places where such minds as yours can survive?”

  I’m doing my best to change! Aloud she said, “You packs have your innocents. What about Tyrathect?”

  “Heh. But she didn’t survive as a mind, did she?” Flenser shrugged, looking back and forth at himself. “Tyrathect graduated to being an attitude, the bane of my otherwise happy life.” He pointed a snout at his maimed member. That creature’s rear was hidden in blankets, but its eyes were large and dark, and right now it was staring at Ravna. “If White Tips dies before the rest of me, things will suddenly become very interesting for the Domain.” He gave a theatrical sigh. “In the meantime, I would find it quite amusing to be your special secret advisor. Please, I’m at your disposal.”

  They walked some paces in silence. Powers! There were consequences, good and bad, stretching in all directions. What if Woodcarver thought Ravna and Flenser were conspiring against her? What if Flenser was using Ravna just as Nevil had? There was that little threat analysis program she’d found the other day; it could probably list a hundred more possibilities. I have to talk to Pilgrim and Jo. Meantime, here and now, what was she going to say?

  The wily pack just let her stew…

  “Okay, Flenser. Your advice would be welcome. Not that I feel any obligation in receiving it.”

  “Oh, of course, of course. And this first meeting was mainly to establish our trusting relationship. I have one major insight and few minor facts for you. You see, Nevil has made such a mess of you.”

  “That’s an insight?”

  “Even now you don’t truly know. And Woodcarver, my overconfident parent, is equally ignorant. She thinks Nevil is just a simple-minded dilettante.”

  “You think he’s more.”

  “In himself? Certainly not. But what you’re both missing is that Nevil is the tool of persons much more clever than he is.”

  “Huh? I know the Children, and there’s no one else in Nevil’s league.”

  “I agree. Nevil’s senior partners are Tines—and not in the Domain at all.”

  Flenser rolled on, leaving Ravna to stand for a moment in the falling snow. “Impossible!” she said, then trotted to catch up. “Most of the older Children don’t have close contacts with packs. Nevil Storherte certainly doesn’t.” Nevil treated packs cordially enough, but she suspected he was as much a racist as all extreme Straumers, hell-bent on achieving their special form of Transcendence.

  Flenser shrugged. “I didn’t say they were his friends. They use him and he thinks he uses them. The combination is dangerous, especially if you and Woodcarver don’t know about it.”

  Ravna slowed again, boggled by the possibilities—but there were things about the claim that didn’t make sense.

  Flenser wasn’t slowing. He said something in Interpack. She couldn’t pick apart the chords, except to understand that it was an interrogative. A second later there was a reply from ahead of them. “Ah,” said Flenser, talking to her again. “I fear we’ll have to cut this short. We’re almost to the exit of this convenient alleyway—and you should be back on the road ahead of Nevil’s spy. I’ll get all the details to you soon.” One of him came back to her and grasped her mitten in its jaws, drawing her forward.

  “But, but…” All the minutes he had spent on build up and now he had no time for the details! That was Flenser for you! She dug in her heels. “Wait!” her whisper was almost a hiss. “This doesn’t make any sense. An international Tinish conspiracy? Who is involved? And how could you know the details?”

  Flenser didn’t relax his hold on her mitten, but his voice came from all around her. “How do you think, my dear? The conspirators think I’m on their side.” Two more of him came back and gently pushed her out onto the Queen’s Road.

  “Now, shoo.” His last words faded into the sound of the falling snow.

  CHAPTER 15

  Johanna and Pilgrim both agreed that Flenser’s news should be passed on to Woodcarver immediately. Pilgrim reported back the next evening: “I told her the claims Flenser made, leaving out the details of just where and how the meeting happened.”

  “Did she believe you?” asked Ravna.

  “What is she going to do to Flenser?” asked Johanna.

  Pilgrim gave a little laugh. “I don’t think Flenser has any more to fear than before. At least, the Woodcarver of the moment is mellow. She told me she had always figured that Flenser was conspiring with Vendacious and/or Tycoon, and she’s not surprised that they’re doing their best to manipulate Nevil. She asked me to congratulate you, Ravna.”

  “For what?”

  “‘Tell that silly Ravna she’s a step closer to understanding what a mischievous threat Flenser is.’” Pilgrim was suddenly speaking with Woodcarver’s voice; it was more a playback than an imitation.

  Ravna realized her mouth was hanging open. “So why would Flenser come to me with this story, now?”

  Pilgrim shrugged. “Woodcarver thinks it’s just Old Flenser sadism; after all, he didn’t provide you with any details. Personally, I don’t think Flenser-Tyrathect is truly sadistic. He just wishes he was.”

  Johanna waved away his point. “But if this is more than Flenser games, if Vendacious is playing with Nevil…”

  The comment seemed to bring Pilgrim up short. He was quiet for a moment and then his voice was serious. “Okay. You’re right. We need to squeeze some of those details out of Flenser.”

  Johanna’s look was haunted. “We know Nevil is a self-convinced son of a bitch. But Vendacious is a monster. A soft little politician like Nevil wouldn’t stand a chance with him. Maybe…maybe we should warn Nevil. There are
games that are too deadly to play.”

  CHAPTER 16

  “So what does this word ‘crone’ mean?” Belle pointed a snout at the page in Timor’s storybook, Fairy Tales of Old Nyjora.

  “Um, I don’t know,” Timor replied. His brow furrowed the way it did when he was puzzled. “We can look it up the next time we’re over at Oobii.” When she had first known this Child, such a question would have provoked a panic attack. Timor’s eyes would get wide at the shock of realizing there was a question for which he didn’t instantly have an answer. Such was the best evidence Belle had that these human creatures had once been something like all-knowing.

  Nowadays, when confronted with a question, Timor would ask someone else or go to the public place on Oobii or devise the answer from materials at hand. Right now, the boy was paging back and forth through the storybook, his nimble human fingers flipping the pages. “Okay!” he said. “Here on page thirteen, the wise archeologist is talking about the lady who was called a ‘crone’ on page forty. He says she’s a ‘beldame.’”

  “Belle means beautiful,” said Belle. It was her taken name, one of the earliest any pack had chosen in the human language. That had been a bold move, even if it was right after she was kicked out of Woodcarver’s cabinet, when her former name, “Wise-Royal-Advisor,” became a mockery.

  Timor squinched his mouth in a smile. “I know. Hei, and I remember from the story of the ‘Princess and the Swamp Lilies’—‘dame’ is just a word for lady. So ‘beldame’ must mean ‘beautiful lady.’”