by VernorVinge
“So what happened?” That was Nevil’s voice, from Vendacious’ commset. There was ill-concealed uneasiness in his voice.
Vendacious didn’t answer immediately. He stared out at the piles of soaked, stinking garbage. Somewhere under all that, just fifty feet beyond the fence, lay the corpse of the creature that had ruined his past life and threatened his future. Fifty feet. So near, and yet he could not safely cross that distance to crunch the marrow with his own jaws. He looked slyly at his loyal troops. It would take the threat of painful death to force them across. After watching the Choir, no normal pack could believe the stories about the Choir’s endless joy. The chances of coming back from a fifty-foot sortie—even during a rarefaction—were close to zero. Besides, Vendacious operated this close to the House of Tycoon only when there was the deadliest necessity.
Vendacious thought a moment and realized there was something more he could do. He spoke into his commset, replying to his own pet human: “Where is Johanna’s commset?” Is it still functioning at all?
“It’s been stuck about twenty meters from you ever since she started screaming. There’s no motion now. I—I could try to flush her out for you.”
“Yes.” Let’s be sure.
There was silence from Vendacious’ commset, and then Nevil’s voice came from across the open area. Nevil seemed to be whispering, but the volume was easily loud enough to hear. “Sst. Johanna? Are you okay? Telemetry showed a problem with the skiff. Johanna?” This went on for several seconds. Vendacious thought it was quite artfully plaintive. Considering all the other evidence, it was wasted effort, but Vendacious admired the craft.
CHAPTER 19
The second time she went down, Johanna knew she would not be getting up. The first bites had been tasting nibbles. She’d seen that behavior in the members of coherent packs—just before they went into a feeding frenzy with unusual meat. Now her face and arms were slick with blood. Swinging her equipment as a flail only seemed to excite the mob. They butted her behind her knees in a coordinated way that sent her down again. She covered her face with her arms and rolled onto her front, leaving her knapsack covering part of her body. Paws and jaws rolled her over, again and again. They were tearing at her clothes, pulling her gear out of the knapsack.
And yet, the feeding frenzy never came, though the crowd was a crushing mass upon her. It was almost as if they were battling each other just to get a snout down and take a nibble. She tried to keep an airgap between her face and forearm as she wriggled in the direction she guessed would take her out of sight of Vendacious and company. The crushing weight seemed to ease; the nips and jabs were distant pain, like memories.
Huh? She was lying flat on her back, dizzy even so. Everything was dark. She wiggled her hands and felt about her. There was the commset and what was left of her knapsack. The ground was like slick mucous. Nowhere did she touch Tinish fur or skin. Somehow, suddenly, she seemed to be alone. Or maybe she had died. Okay. So what’s my next move?
“Sst. Johanna? Are you okay? Telemetry showed a problem with the skiff. Johanna?” It was Nevil’s voice, a loud whisper.
She reached for the commset—then froze and tried to be very very quiet. There are betrayals and Betrayals. Until this moment, her worst suspicion was that Nevil had been used by Vendacious. Until this moment, she had not believed that Nevil was capable of Betrayal. She stared into the dark, in the direction of the commset. I don’t have proof even now…only certainty.
—————
Nevil’s voice came back on Vendacious’ commset. “No reply,” said the two-legs. “What about Pilgrim?”
“Both Pilgrim and the maggot are very dead,” Vendacious replied. In fact, there might still be one or two members of Pilgrim alive, but past experience showed that such did not come back.
Nevil was silent for a moment, and then he sighed. “Well, that simplifies things, at least.”
Vendacious smiled to himself. Though they had rarely met, Vendacious had studied Nevil Storherte thoroughly. Storherte was a young predator. Until recently he had never killed anything. The creature thought he was moved by virtuous necessity. He was still growing into his true nature.
Aloud, Vendacious said. “Indeed, it does simplify things.” All revenge aside, my most dangerous lie is now much more secure. “And now it should be possible to deal with our other great enemy.”
“Yeah. I’m going to enjoy giving you Ravna Bergsndot.”
—————
Johanna lay still for some minutes, but Nevil had nothing more to say.
All things considered, playing dead was easy. The mob had departed, but their warbling chant was still out there. Maybe that was enough to keep Vendacious’ crew from searching for her corpse. The rain continued its windless heavy fall. Water dripped through the pile above her; what trickled down to her felt oily.
After a time, the Choir noise grew loud again. She could hear ten thousand paws scuffing in her direction. She could hear individual voices that made no sense, but just added to the grand susurrus. Now there were members snuffling all around, so close that their mindsounds, even though far kilohertz above human hearing, still made a buzzing through her body. They crowded over her, much as before, snouts pushing, but this time there were no painful bites, just gentle mouthing with soft forelips. The smells and sounds were overpowering, but after a moment, the swarm was flowing past her and almost no one was touching her.
Okay, so she was not to be eaten. And the mob’s noise would be ideal cover, if only they would let her move. Johanna thought a moment, made sure she was taking nothing with her that might betray her to Nevil. My Knife? For sure. My light? She took a chance, kept that too. Then she rolled to her knees, tucked her head down, and crawled deliberately against the flow of the Choir, testing.
The mob was a tide of plush and flesh—but the Tines who rammed into her weren’t biting. In fact, they seemed to be struggling to get out of her way. It was the pressure of the myriad bodies behind them that made that impossible. Then suddenly, as if some traffic information had been transmitted upstream, the pressure eased and the mob slid around her. Johanna crawled slowly through the roaring, warbling flow. She held the lamp in her mouth, the faint violet light splashing over the mob. The corridor’s beslimed walls turned this way and that. In places there were forks or merges. Tines were coming from all but the lowest openings—maybe those were under water tonight. Johanna found that when she came to a fork, there were moments when the crowd was impassable, and then they would spread apart for her once more.
She must have spent an hour in the soggy catacombs. When she finally emerged, the rain had become drizzle and mist. Behind her, she could see lights, faint in the murk. She stared at them for a moment, noting the flickering, the occasional dark curling shadows that must be smoke. She was seeing torches in sconces. When the drizzle faltered she could see the straight edges of stone-and-timber walls, standard architecture from northern lands. Vendacious’ landholding. The rest of the horizon was the unrelieved moaning darkness of the Choir.
She limped quietly away from Vendacious’ lights, into the dark of the Choir. Oh Pilgrim!
Johanna wandered numbly for a time, vaguely aware of her slowly bleeding wounds, mostly remembering Pilgrim’s dying. Her violet lamp was just bright enough to see her feet, to keep from walking into walls or water-filled pits. She’d kept the lamp so dim because some Tines could sense that violet color, if only as a nebulous patch at the edge of their vision. That fact had gotten her and Pilgrim into trouble on one mission to East Home. It really didn’t matter anymore; she brightened the lamp, saw a few Tropicals ambling along their separate ways. None showed much interest in her. If anything, they were avoiding her. Where she was walking was almost like the middle of a city street. A city conceived in a mad and contradictory delirium, rebuilt and rebuilt on its own muddy ruins.
She proceeded along the gently descending street. In some places, the surface was rain-slick fungimoss over stone; in others, it l
ooked like matted leaves. Where would downwards lead?
Silly question, when there was nothing more to lose.
And yet, just as she continued to walk, Johanna continued to think. Why am I still alive? Vendacious had seemed in mortal fear of crossing into Choir territory. He seemed to think the Choir would destroy Johanna as surely as it had Pilgrim. Vendacious was not stupid. He must have had precedent and observation to back up his belief.
On her left, the Choir noise was increasing. The simple solution to the mystery was that her survival was to be very temporary. The mob was thickening, oozing out from the vague walls. Their progress was the same slanting, scissors advance that had caught Pilgrim. There was a narrow cleft on the right, ahead. Maybe she should try to hide there.
Too late. The crowd was already upon her. But its touch was only occasional, and as she slowly walked onward, her private space moved with her. She still had no explanation for her survival, but it was clear that after the initial attack, something about her had been discovered, and communicated outwards from that contact.
After a time, the mob passed, and again she was almost alone on the street.
The lights of Vendacious’ “safe” area were lost behind the muddle of the Choir’s city. Johanna continued downslope, plans beginning to poke at her despair. If she could survive, could somehow tell Ravna and Woodcarver…This path would eventually lead to the River Fell. The maps had shown it flowing south, just west of the agrav’s ground path.
Around her feet, the mud was ankle deep. As she continued into the swampy mess, she heard creaking sounds. They were noises that Tines could make easily enough, but…the buildings were moving. It was a gentle, repetitive motion, up and down just a centimeter or two. She went to the side of the street, and put her hand against the sodden mass of a wall. Yes, up and down, but with small horizontal motions too. She walked along the wall, still touching it. She crossed some irregularity in the street surface—and now the street had joined in the same mild motion. If she hadn’t had the wall to lean against, the surprise would have sent her sprawling.
The edge of the street was floating in the River Fell.
Though she couldn’t quite tell where rooted buildings gave way to floating rafts, the sound of quietly bobbing real estate grew louder as she walked on. Her street was more than a sandbar and less than a pier, and it extended into the slowly flowing Fell. In places, her light reflected off dark, rippling water. Whatever had been moored there had sailed away or simply broken off. In other places, the buildings were canted, piled two or three deep, perhaps the careless result of incoming rafts running onto occupied frontage. After heavy rains or a typhoon, all this might be swept away and even this roadway destroyed.
Tonight she had seen thousands of the Choir, but not a single froghen, not a single edible plant. However inefficiently, cargo must move into and out of here. The road ahead narrowed, but the rafts were larger. A crazy idea floated up; she knew where some of these rafts voyaged.
She walked onward, occasionally sending a violet light behind her, watching for the mob she heard coming. Ahead of her was a dead end: the tip of a peninsula. She could hear the Fell sweeping along like slow syrup. Her light gave a clear view of “buildings” festooned with rigging and jagged masts. Here and there, Tinish heads popped up from the jumble. A half dozen came off the rafts, running toward her, hissing displeasure. They circled close, nipping at her legs.
Meantime the main mob had returned from up the street. Okay, now she was truly trapped. But as these hundreds arrived, surrounding her, the Tines who had been hissing and nipping gave her space, merging with the rest. The crowd jostled and swirled, the space around Johanna disappearing as the hundreds behind came flowing into this bounded area. She heard splashing sounds that must be the occasional Choirmember squeezed off into the river.
The open space around Johanna was gone. Tines pressed upon her from all sides, even as they resisted the force behind them. Then, almost like a spring bouncing back, there was an easing of pressure and space opened up.
And yet, this wave of the mob did not ebb—perhaps because there was only one obvious way out. She watched the creatures mill around her. Their gaze seemed mutely curious, as if they were waiting for some insight.
Me too, thought Jo.
Around her, the empty spaces widened. The critters drew together in little clumps and clots. From their posture, they looked almost like…packs. An ad hoc fivesome approached her. Its members were almost naked, though a couple carried ragged panniers. Four were balding, but they looked healthier than the one with a full coat of fur. That fifth member came very near Johanna. It was missing an ear, and an interrupted scar ran across one shoulder. The scar could be evidence of an ax attack, balked by an armored jacket.
It spoke Samnorsk: “Hei, Johanna. Some of me remembers you.”
There were less intelligible comments from the other transient packs. In the mob beyond, Johanna saw occasional bobbing heads—singletons who remembered the Domain and the Fragmentarium?
She looked at the masts in the moorage behind her, and then turned back to the godsgift who had just spoken. “I think I remember some of you, too.” The idea that had been percolating up as she walked down this muddy path suddenly seemed quite reasonable…at least imaginable. She adjusted her light so that it would be dimly visible to those around her. “Do you suppose I could get a ride back to the Domain?”
—————
By the time the mob finished wreaking enthusiastic havoc on the riverfront, at least eight rafts had been pushed into the river. The operation had not been entirely peaceful, as the small number of Tines who’d been living in the rafts (squatters? caretakers?) were completely taken by surprise by the sudden departure of their housing. Some of these were chased away; others merged with the mob. As far as Johanna could tell, nobody got seriously hurt.
She was thousands of kilometers from rescue, adrift on rafts that were scarcely more than flotsam, crewed by accident. In cold fact, her situation was as desperate as before she pushed off. But now remembering Pilgrim did not jam all other thought.
The vague gray light of morning showed in the east, maybe her first and last light on the grand landscape of the Choir. The city’s low, jumbled silhouette still stretched across three-quarters of her horizon. A few lights marked taller buildings in Vendacious’ safe area. She sensed something huge and dark looming over them. It must be a cloud, but it doesn’t move.
Her motley crews had raised sails on at least three of the rafts—though at the moment there was scarcely a breeze and the Fell’s slow current was steadily moving them along. They were drifting through the area where she and Pilgrim had intended to hide. That plan would have worked, too; there were stumpy trees and a canopy of leaves.
Johanna gave a little wave at the mystery disappearing behind her. I will be back, Pilgrim. I promise I will find what became of you.
CHAPTER 20
For Ravna, time was shattered, cause and effect broken into rubble enough for days. The smaller pieces were isolated snatches of sound and sight and smell: Pain. A bumpy ride. Suffocating in offal-smelling darkness. Gentle hands. Jefri’s voice, angry and loud.
Other fragments were twilight bright. In one small shard, she was surrounded by warm, furry bodies. Amdi. He was talking to her, quiet, urgent words. In another—maybe the same one—a pack with ragged low-sound ears beat Amdi aside and nipped at Ravna the way a carnivore might tease its food.
Shattered days and shattered nights. A pack sat with her in most of these longer pieces of time. It had perfectly matched blazes on two of its snouts. Screwfloss? The pack fed her, turned her head when she choked on vomit, cleaned her as she soiled herself. He was not always nice. Many times, he hurt her face with a wet cloth. And he fell into jaw-snapping rages. “I’m just the prisoner’s asswipe!” he once said. That was funny, but he also complained that she was delirious. “You’re repeating what I say,” he hissed at her, a head close by her throat. “‘Prisoner
’s asswipe, prisoner’s asswipe.’ Can’t you just shut up?”
The longest pieces of time were in bright daylight. She was wrapped in warm blankets, trussed to the top of a slowly moving wagon. When her eyes were open, she saw variously: snowbound forest, Screwfloss driving the wagon, Gannon Jorkenrud. Jefri, walking behind the wagon behind hers. Jefri looked so gaunt.
There were other packs. Sometimes they paced along with her wagon, and more than one shard began: “So. Will she die soon?” This from the pack with the ragged ears. The creature was a sixsome, each member as heavy as Amdi’s biggest, but more muscular-looking. Its Samnorsk was crude, a patchwork of several human voices.
And Screwfloss replying: “Quite soon, my lord Chitiratifor. You can see the injury to her snout. Day by day, she weakens.”
The two packs spoke softly. No human but Ravna could hear them. “Don’t take shortcuts, Screwfloss.” Parts of the creature were looking beyond where Ravna could see. “This must be a natural death.”
Maybe Amdi came to chat, but Ravna only remembered Screwfloss chasing him off.
One other pack visited Screwfloss. This was a lean, small-bodied fivesome. It spoke no Samnorsk, but it seemed to be interrogating Screwfloss about Ravna’s upcoming death. The parts she could see up close had pale, unfriendly eyes. There was deadly anger in its Tinish gobbling.
Then came the longest single fragment of time. It began with another visit from Raggedy Ears. The pack walked quietly along with the wagon for some minutes, just watching Ravna. “She is not dead yet, Screwfloss.”
“Sigh. Quite so, my lord Chitiratifor.”
“Her breathing is different. Her eyes move. She is not weakening day by day, like you say.” The raggedy-eared pack emitted an angry hiss. “Humans should be easy to kill, Screwfloss!”