The Children of the Sky

by VernorVinge

  “Of course,” said Jef, a bit abruptly. “I was just keeping watch.” He walked off toward the wagons, Ravna and Amdi trailing behind. Maybe Jef had been afraid she’d accuse him of hiding things if he started the inventory without her. Ravna realized she had still not figured out Jefri Olsndot.

  The two cargo wagons were big enough for gear and supplies. And for hiding places—such as for those maps that Chitiratifor and Remasritlfeer had been using. Jefri broke into the locked cabinets. There were no maps, but one of the boxes held clean blankets and two more changes of crude human clothes! The main supply bays were more familiar territory. The food was mostly gone, especially the kind that humans could eat. There had been one unexpected human on this expedition, but even so, maybe Chitiratifor had expected an end to this trip—or to the humans—relatively soon.

  Ravna had seen most of the camping hardware before, but rarely in good light. Some of this equipment was not the sort that Scrupilo’s factories made, but neither was it medieval. Jefri held up two canteens. They looked identical, stamped from tin or pewter. “You noticed the logo, right?” Both canteens bore the same impression, a godlike pack surrounding the world.

  “That’s the mark of Tycoon,” said Ravna. Johanna had shown the design at an Executive Council meeting. At the time it had seemed a very poor payoff for three tendays scouting Tycoon’s East Coast headquarters.

  “A twelvesome,” said Amdi. “He’s a confident fellow.” God was usually shown as twelve. Any more and there were comical implications of a choir. “I’ll bet no one has ever seen Tycoon because he’s really just a wimpy four.”

  The middle wagon contained Nevil’s technological gifts. Nevil had not been overly generous: there was a camera and the lamps, all originally from Oobii. The radio was locally made, one of Scrupilo’s creations. It was as dumb as a rock, but still the Domain didn’t have enough of them. “The radio we’re going to have to dump,” she said regretfully. It was something that Nevil could track via the orbiter. If he was clever, he could probably pulse the orbiter’s transmitters hard enough to get an echo even if the radio’s charge had leaked away.

  “Yes,” said Jefri, looking nervously at all the equipment. “We should get rid of all this gear.” To him, a child of the High Beyond, machines were capable of unfathomed sneakiness.

  Ravna gathered up the camera, and poked around under the lamps. “The cam will have to go.” She was no High Beyonder, but anyone from a tech civilization had default assumptions about such machines. “On the other hand, I’ve used these lamps. They’ve got a security local mode. I’ll set that. If we’re careful when we use them, they should be fine.”

  “Okay,” said Jefri, looking dubious.

  Amdi was still snouting around in the cabinet. “I want to know where the maps were. This should be where Chitiratifor and Remasritlfeer kept them.”

  Their hour or so of direct sunlight had passed. Even the snow dazzle from high peaks was fading. “What in hell are we going to do?” said Jefri, sounding very tired.

  “One way or another,” said Ravna, “we have to get back to the Domain, on our own, without getting ‘rescued.’ If we can get close to Oobii, I can—” It hurt that she was afraid to tell them all that she could do.

  Jef didn’t seem to notice the hesitation. “Well, I don’t want to go back the way we came. Parts of various nasty packs may still be alive. And I don’t want to go forward. I’ll bet there are some complete nasty packs waiting for us ahead.”

  Amdi emitted annoyed squeaking sounds. “So help me find the maps!”

  “Okay.” Jefri walked forward to where Amdi had climbed up on himself to rummage in the wagon. “Though maybe Chitiratifor had them in-pack.”

  “No! Not yesterday. They’re in this wagon.”

  Jefri leaned over the pack and looked down into the compartment. “There really is nothing more there, Amdi. Trust my human vision on this.”

  “Well then, it must be above or below. I watched Chitiratifor almost every time he got the maps.”

  “A secret compartment then.” Jefri walked along the side of wagon, tapping it above and below. “It must be small and well shielded. I could get one of the axes and open this thing up a little.”

  Some of Amdi was trailing along behind him. “Maybe there’s no need. I’ll hear it eventually. You keep tapping on the wood, and I’ll…” He built a little pyramid of himself and snuggled close to the hull of the wagon. The rest of him had climbed up on the wagon and hunkered down in various places. “…and I’ll listen.”

  Now the snow in the higher hills was just a lighter shade of gray against the sky. Ravna heard something behind her. She looked around with a start, saw four dark shadows gliding toward the wagons. It was Screwfloss, returning from sentry duty. She gave him a little wave, and wondered at the remnant’s on-again off-again diligence. Screwfloss lolled about, watching Amdi and the two humans. If this had been the entire Screwfloss, she would have been sure that he was amused by their searching. He had his old personality, less the cheeky repartee.

  She cocked her head at him and asked, “So you can do better?”

  Screwfloss emitted a burbling sound, probably a chuckle. Then he got to his feet and shambled past her. He nosed around under the wagon.

  She heard a metallic click, but from the top of the wagon.

  “Nice camouflage sound!” said Amdi.

  “He did something down here,” said Ravna, and she ducked under the wagon. Screwfloss was standing around, his aspect smug. One of him was pointing at a narrow wooden platform that had swung down from the belly of the wagon. Ravna reached up, felt a narrow ledge. She felt silken paper within.

  “Aha!” She drew a heavy, flat object into the open. “Huh?”

  Yes, she was holding oilskin paper, but it was just a bag. Jefri helped her open it. Inside was…the most opulent suite of Tinish clothing she had ever seen, clean and new as if never worn.

  Jefri thumbed through the thin wooden holders. “Six sets,” he said. “What was crazy-asses Chitiratifor thinking?”

  “This is for when he returned to his boss in triumph.”

  “Maybe, but—” Jefri felt further into the bag, pulled out a small, bejeweled disk. It glittered even in the dim light, showing Tycoon’s logo in tiny gems. “Packs use this kind of badge the way we would a comm token, to establish authority. I wonder—”

  Amdi had swept around them. “Never mind. Where are the maps?” He stuck a couple of snouts deep into the secret space, sweeping back and forth as a human might search with hands. “I found them!”

  Ravna and Jefri set the fancy clothes on the top of the wagon, then helped Amdi bring his finds into the open. They stepped aside so Amdi could unscroll them. Ravna had a glimpse of suspiciously fine graphic artwork. Okay, it was Nevil’s data, but who did the print job?

  “Wow!” said Amdi, then after a second, “But it’s so dark now, I can’t see the details; we need those lamps.”

  “I don’t want to use the lamps when the night is clear,” said Ravna—though maybe it didn’t matter, if Nevil was tracking the radio.

  Jefri reached past Amdi and lifted the maps up to a flat surface on the back of the wagon, where the last light of day was brightest. In a moment, Amdi was topside, heads weaving about to get the best view.

  “Ha!” he said. “This is really detailed.”

  “Now if we only knew where we were,” said Jefri.

  Amdi glanced up into the twilight. “With maps this good, we should be able to match to landmarks. Meantime”—three of him were still peering nearsightedly at the map—“I know we’re about here.” He tapped the paper with a nose.

  Jefri was standing by the wagon; he was tall enough to see the map. He looked at the spot Amdi had indicated and said, “Oh-oh.”

  “What?” asked Ravna. She should get up there with Amdi.

  As she climbed up top, Jefri enlightened her. “There’s a snout-drawn ‘X’, just a few kilometers ahead. I bet we’re almost to Chitiratifo
r’s welcoming committee.”

  “Yup,” said Amdi.

  She settled down with Amdi and looked where Jef was pointing. The ‘X’ was in a widening of the valley one to three days’ drive ahead, depending on their own precise location. “They have a fort this near the Domain?”

  “I don’t think there’s a fort there,” said Jefri. “That looks like a wide place in the valley, not a choke point. And the ‘X’ mark is in the middle of the open area. I’ll bet Chitiratifor—or Remasritlfeer—intended to meet some larger party there.”

  “Ha, yes,” said Amdi. “They may even think Chitiratifor is doing fine, on schedule…except he won’t be checking in with them tonight.”

  Ravna shrugged. “So we can’t go forward. And we can’t stay here. We haven’t seen anything of Chitiratifor. Surely it can’t be that dangerous to go back?”

  “Okay,” said Jefri, but he was shaking his head. “You realize that once the bad guys realize we’re free, that’s just the route they all will be searching.”

  Amdi was still snuffling at the map, oblivious to their dilemma. “This valley doesn’t stay steep and cliffy forever,” he said. “See, right before the ‘X’, there’s all sorts of paths up the eastern wall. We could wriggle out sideways. Who’d ever think?”

  CHAPTER 23

  Johanna Olsndot roamed the strange raft, and watched her fellow-travelers. She had no sailing skills herself, but she had been aboard seacraft of the Domain. A common design was the multiboat, a meshwork of pack-sized boats; individual packs could retain their identity. Multiboats might have a central structure for larger cargo items and be big enough so a number of packs might comfortably meet.

  Even the largest Northern multiboats were smaller than the rafts in this flotilla of ten. Johanna wondered how the mess managed to sail together. Every raft had masts and sails, but nothing like packs to manage them. On her raft, the mob wandered here and there, collecting in little groups that might tug on a tiller, while others climbed in the rigging (and sometimes fell off into the sea!). The squeaks and chirrups from above might have been directions, though very few of those below paid any attention.

  One by one, these rafts must surely founder, perhaps the last ending up on some faraway shore, like the shipwrecks that used to wash up on the rocks below Starship Hill.

  On the second day, she sought out one of those temporary almost-packs that gathered near the booms and was tentatively pulling the sheets this way or that. Not all of these Tines were sparse-haired Tropicals. Some had deep fur pelts, scruffy and ragged and surely uncomfortable in the heat, but very Northern-looking.

  “Hei, Johanna. Hei, hei.” A clot of five was all looking at her and the Samnorsk words were very clear. When Johanna sat down by them, the almost-pack surrounded her, the heads bobbing with friendly regard.

  “We sailing north, I think,” it said. That might be nonsense blather, since actually they were sailing west, and the coast of the continent was just few thousand meters to the north. But if they sailed west far enough to round the Southwest Horn of the continent, then it would be north to the Domain. She took a closer look at the five heads. The nearest had a white star splash on the back of its head. It was hard to remember all the fragments she’d known over the years, but this one…she reached out her hand. “Cheepers?”

  “Hei, some maybe, some,” it said. Wow. Cheepers would count as a failure by broodkenner standards, but he had survived his flight from Harmony’s Fragmentarium, and made it all the way to the Choir. Over the years, others had too, but there were still only hundreds spread through all the millions of the Choir. When Vendacious chased Johanna into the Choir, when the killing swarm knocked her down, the image and the strangeness of her must have spread at near-soundspeed across the city. Here and there, the sight had reached some few who remembered, and mercy percolated back. Just in time.

  The almost-pack stayed with her a moment longer, then was joined by others and reassorted. Some of them wandered off to another mast while others merged with the larger mob that was tricking seabirds to come down for lunch.

  —————

  By now all the Tines on her raft seemed to recognize her. She had no more aborted, hostile encounters. And yet, the mob did have moods. Five nights out to sea, there was a deadly riot. Johanna hunkered down, listened to mouth-screams of mortal pain. The next day, she saw dark stains smeared across timbers near the edge of the raft. I hope they weren’t fighting over me. Maybe not. Even milder fights were rare, but she eventually saw one or two in daylight, sub-mobs of Tines facing off. She couldn’t see any motive, nothing like food or sex—and there didn’t seem to be enduring fighter cliques. Singletons were scarcely smarter than dogs, but something like memes must battle around in this choir. After a while she learned to recognize the crowd’s most harmful moods and craziest rules. For instance, she always got in trouble if she tried to open any of the storage boxes that were stacked everywhere, highest at the middle of the raft. Maybe that reaction was some vagrant meme left over from the raft squatters; maybe it was something kinkier. The wooden sides of each box were marked with circular burn marks, a little like Northerner hex signs. For whatever reason, nobody messed with cargo.

  Perforce, Johanna spent hours each day studying her mob. This wasn’t like the Fragmentarium; random sex and mindsound was perversity to coherent packs, and the broodkenners did their best to suppress it. Here, perversity was the name of the game. But these singletons rarely did really stupid things like pissing in the raft’s rain cistern. In fact, they had some sailor skills, and they were quite coordinated in their diving for fish. That last was good for Jo, though raw fish could not sustain her indefinitely.

  Most coherent packs didn’t like to swim, couldn’t stand the way the water interfered with their mindsounds. The members of the mob were not so squeamish. In the water, they zoomed around like they were born of the sea. Parts of her crew were in the water almost all the time—except when something black-and-white and larger than any Tines swept through the area. The Children called those animals whales; they spooked the Tropicals as thoroughly as they did Northern packs.

  The whales must have been loud and relatively stupid, because the Tines seemed to know when it was safe to go back in the water. By the fourth day, Johanna was swimming with the Tines. Over the next tenday, she visited all the other rafts. The mobs on each were similar to those on her own. In the end, she became familiar with all the “crews.”

  On every raft, she eventually communicated the same question: “Where are we going?” The answers were mostly variations on “we go north,” “we go with you,” and “this big river is fun!”

  She eventually returned to the first raft, partly because Cheepers was there, but partly because she had decided that this raft had been intended as the primary vessel of the fleet. It was the largest, certainly. It also had an open area near the masts: the space was bounded by drawered cabinets—not subject to the cargo taboo, though the drawers were mostly empty. If she hadn’t hijacked the fleet, perhaps these drawers would have held equipment for the proper crew.

  The first couple of tendays were all cloudy and rainy, with open sea on one side, and coastal jungle on the other. They were going generally west and at a fair average speed. She did some arithmetic—not for the first time she thanked goodness that Ravna had forced them to learn that manual skill—and concluded that soon they would round the Southwest Horn. Truly, this fleet might be headed for the Domain. Was I really that persuasive? Or was this flotilla supposed to go north, and I just forced a premature departure?

  Johanna had a lot of time to think, perhaps more time than ever before in her life. Most of that time was useless circling; some of it might save her life.

  Nevil had turned out to be evil beyond anyone’s imagination. She saw so much in a different light now that she understood that. Since well before he had betrayed Ravna, he had been spreading lies. She thought of all the times he had persuaded Pilgrim and herself to steer clear of the Tropics.
For years they had searched for Tycoon, everywhere but where he was. Now, perhaps, Nevil had overreached himself. Woodcarver and surely Ravna had known of this flight to the Tropics. Not even Nevil’s marvelous persuasiveness could cover things up for long now.

  The first time Johanna looped through that logic, her spirits had risen—for about three seconds, until the implications came crashing down upon her. Who else did Nevil murder the night he crashed Pilgrim and Johanna? If she ever got home, what allies might still live?

  There will be allies. I must be smart enough to get home and find them. So she spent a lot of time thinking about everything Nevil had ever said, assuming every word a lie. There was a world of consequences. Nevil said the orbiter’s vision was barely a horizon sensor, with only one-thousand-meter resolution. What if it was better? She remembered the orbiter; she and Jef were the only Children who had seen the inside of it. She remembered her mom saying that there was nothing useful left aboard. So Nevil’s claim had been plausible—but wouldn’t one-centimeter resolution be equally plausible? Unfortunately, just assuming Nevil lied about everything did not give her definite numbers!

  The first time she’d run through this reasoning was only a day out to sea; up until then, there’d been very little clear sky, and that had been at night. She’d looked up into the rain and overcast and concluded that probably Nevil’s “horizon sensor” could not see through clouds—else she would not be around to think about the issue. And even in clear weather, the orbiter’s surveillance could not be much better than one-meter resolution and/or not effective at night.

  Two tendays into the voyage, the sky was often clear, and stars were visible at night. The rafts were truly headed north; Johanna was all but certain that they had rounded the Horn. By day, she kept under the sails, or hunkered down in a little cubbyhole she’d made for herself in the jumble at the center of the raft. At night, she would carefully peek out. The orbiter was a bright star, always high in the southeastern sky, further east than it had ever been since Nevil took control. How does he explain this to Woodcarver? Does he have to explain anything anymore? What service does this do Vendacious and Tycoon? She had lots of such questions and no way to get answers. The good news was that if Nevil was searching for her, he was looking in the wrong place! She became a little less paranoid about exposure to the sky.