The Children of the Sky

by VernorVinge

  Certainly, Jefri heard that too. His tone was reassuring: “It’s okay, Amdi. How did you manage this? Who—what—is Mr. Radio Cloaks?”

  “Utzekfyrforfurtariil is a Vendacious creation—though Tycoon doesn’t know that. Vendacious figures that by controlling the Mr. Radio network, he’s the puppetmaster of everybody.”

  Ravna looked at Zek suspiciously. “So what went wrong?”

  Zek relayed Amdi’s very human, little-boy laughter. “What do you think? Vendacious himself. He’s smart, but he’s the craziest, meanest of Woodcarver’s offspring. And he’s still all-male.”

  “Still?” said Jefri. “Any other pack with that makeup would have self-destructed years ago. That’s Vendacious’ miracle and a disaster for everyone else.”

  “Not necessarily,” said Amdi, “Even his minions hate him. In any case, Vendacious isn’t as smart as Old Flenser. And he’s nowhere near as smart as me.” Amdi’s voice filled with confidence. “It’s been scarcely a day, and I’ve already figured how to talk along paths Vendacious can’t hear. That’s how I contacted Ut, right under Vendacious’ snouts. That’s how we smuggled out Ut’s cloak during his off-duty time. Of course, it helped that most of Vendacious was barfing sick at the time.” His voice trailed off. “Vendacious has already figured out who Screwfloss really is. Vendacious, he capered when he learned the truth. Poor Screwfloss. Oh Jefri—” His voice collapsed into weeping, all confidence fled. “Oh, Jefri, this isn’t like my show in the circus.” The sounds of weeping abruptly stopped, and his voice continued: “Th-this is something I have to do. I’ll do my best; I promise.”

  Jefri started to say something comforting, but was interrupted by another voice:

  “I help.”

  “Who spoke?” said Ravna. There was a moment of silence, long enough to be aware of oppressive meat breath and animal body heat. Finally:

  “I’m sure that was some part of Utzekfyrforfurtariil,” said Amdi. “Every one of him hates Vendacious.”

  “But I thought Mr. Radio was being used like a line? How smart can it be?”

  Amdi said, “As a line or a ring or a star, he’s as dumb as you’d expect, just good enough for Vendacious’ purpose. I think if he were all in range of himself, he’d be smarter than most packs. But he hasn’t been together much since Vendacious’ broodkenners first assembled him.”

  Jefri took a closer look at Zek. “But even partially connected, he’s still smart enough to learn some Samnorsk. Or is he just a blabber like Ritl?”

  Amdi emitted a snort (via Zek): “He’s much smarter than that idiot singleton. In fact—and this is something Vendacious doesn’t know—big parts of Mr. Radio sometimes have mutual radio communication. Right now, there’s three of him on these two ships—not enough to be very smart. But depending on atmospherics, he can reach several others and be almost a complete person. That doesn’t happen very often, and so far, Mr. Radio has kept it a secret from all the packs who are using him.”

  “Hmm,” said Ravna. “I wonder if he’s smart enough to play Princess Pretending.”

  “Huh?” The word came from both Amdi and Jefri. After a moment Ritl chimed in with a mimic interrogative of her own.

  “Sorry.” She had violated her personal ban on Princesses. “Straumers call it a ‘Man in the Middle’ attack.”

  “Oh yeah,” said Amdi, “I thought of that. The problem is Vendacious has conditioned all the members to follow certain forwarding protocols. At best Mr. Radio is variably intelligent. From moment to moment, he may be smart enough for simultaneous lying. In between, he’ll drop the ball.”

  Jefri nodded. “And if he fluffs even once, the game is over.”

  “Right.”

  Zek’s own voice spoke over Amdi’s: “Besides, I still not good to be a person, even when I can think with all of me.”

  Amdi’s voice: “His whole life has been torture, but if he ever gets himself together, I’ll envy him. That’s our radio future! And I’ve never even gotten to use radio cloaks!”

  Ravna smiled. Amdi had never given up on having his own radio cloaks. Even at the edge of a torture pit, that annoyance could still distract him. “Amdi, when we get out of this, I promise we’ll get you your own cloaks. You, you all have worked a miracle here.” Even Ritl.

  “Yeah,” Jefri was nodding. “Can we meet again, Amdi? Safely?”

  “I’ll figure something out. We’ve talked too long this time. One last thing. Vendacious and Tycoon are both scary, but they’re very different, and Vendacious is lying to Tycoon about lots of things. Vendacious doesn’t want you talking to Tycoon. Your greatest near-term danger is that Vendacious will assassinate you. He would have killed you back at Prince Puce’s, except it would have been too hard to disguise from Tycoon. He was very angry that you got put on Tycoon’s airship.”

  There must be a bright side to this. “Could Tycoon be turned into an ally?” said Ravna.

  There was a moment of silence. Then: “Maybe. But see, Tycoon really, really hates humans. And one in particular.”

  Ravna thought of what Tycoon must have done to little Geri. If this was what the creature did to lesser enemies—

  “So who is his number-one enemy?” asked Jefri.

  “Johanna.”

  “What!”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know!” Amdi’s voice was plaintive. “Johanna has always been the most beloved human in the Domain—sorry, Ravna, but you know what Jo did for the veterans. You’d be second, though!”

  “Ah, thank you.” She glanced at Jefri. “We’ve got to figure this out.”

  “And not get killed.” That was probably Mr. Radio, but the point was valid, whoever made it.

  “Yes,” said Amdi. “Now we gotta go. I…”

  Amdi seemed to hesitate, then Zek gave a squeak and collapsed across Ravna’s middle. He remained silent as Ritl gobbled softly at him.

  Jefri bent to stroke Zek with his own forehead, much the way a pack will try to rouse an injured member. Ravna was surprised that any good could come from a human making the gesture, but after a moment, Zek struggled back against the wall. He swayed, still disoriented.

  “He must have lost comm very abruptly,” said Jefri.

  Ravna heard no alarms from the hallway. Without Radio, their activity here might remain unnoticed for some time. “Amdi’s side could be fine,” she said.

  Jefri nodded. “But we have to get these two back to wherever they’re supposed to be.” He said something to Zek. It sounded like he was humming and whistling at the same time, but different tunes. Ravna had never figured out how some of the Children could manage such coordination. But Zek waved his head uncomprehendingly. Next to Johanna, Jefri Olsndot might be the most Tinishly-fluent human, but it still took practice for a pack to make sense of humans attempting Tinish. “Okay,” said Jefri, speaking Samnorsk now, “can you understand me?”

  “I hear,” Zek said.

  “Amdi?”

  “No.”

  “He’s making sense,” said Ravna. “He may still have a link to some other members.”

  Jefri nodded. “You alone now?”

  Zek gave another uncomprehending shake of the head.

  Jefri glanced at Ritl. “Together, these two could probably get back where they came from…at least if they don’t run into somebody who wants explanations.”

  “They got here okay,” said Ravna.

  “Yeah, but that was when Radio had most of his mind and Amdi was along for the ride.” He paused. “Well, if Zek is nearly single now, there is something that might work. After all, Ritl is already a desperate singleton and Mr. Radio Cloaks must be a loosely-held soul.” Jef reached out and softly patted Zek’s shoulder. Then he slipped his hand under the creature’s cloak, pushing it away from where it covered Zek’s shoulder tympana.

  Zek flinched back with a whistling sound. Lots of needle-sharp teeth were just centimeters from Jef’s face.

  “Not to worry,” Jefri spoke the words gently, calmingly�
�to whom? “If this is like Flenser and his cloaks, Zek has sores all around his tympana. I just have to be very gentle. And Zek has to trust me.” He lifted the cloak free of Zek’s left side. The creature was trembling, but it didn’t bite.

  Jef folded the left side of the cloak over Zek’s back. “You’re really out of contact, aren’t you, kiddo?” He looked at Ravna. “This is a long shot, but I can’t think of anything else.” He waved for Ritl to come close. The singleton hesitated, maybe taking one more close listen on the hallway, then it crawled close to Jefri. Ritl’s eyes were on Zek, her head shifting uneasily back and forth. Jefri scooched himself out of the way, then tugged at both creatures, urging them close together. Now they were both sitting mostly on Ravna.

  Ritl made a Tinish “yech” sound, then gobbled on, softly complaining. Now that Zek was out from under his cloak, his mindsounds would be loud to any nearby member. This close to each other, the two creatures were in a fight, flight, or merge situation. For normal pack members, “merge” would have been by far the least likely outcome. Even in this desperate situation, the two acted like debutantes confronting sexual perversion.

  “Well, crap.” The human words seem to come from the space between the Tines.

  “They synched up!” Jefri’s voice was full of wonder. “Can you understand me?”

  “Yesss.” The voice sounded more annoyed than frightened. Ritl plus Zek might be smarter than either was separately, but it wasn’t a happy camper.

  Jef said, “You lost contact with the rest of yourself, right?”

  “Hurt noise, lost all radio.”

  Ravna said, “Zekritl? Can you make it back to your cabins?”

  Puzzled head-weaving was the reply.

  Jefri rephrased: “Go back? Safe and quiet?”

  The duo looked at each other. “Okay. Will try.” The two climbed over Jefri and Ravna, an elaborate dance that endeavored to keep Zek’s exposed side available to Ritl’s hearing. Ritl lowered her head and slid the door open. A moment later she was out in the hall, turned so that mutual thought was still possible.

  Zek followed, but the top of his cloak caught on the door. Jefri helped undo the snag and guided him out. Jef peeked out into the hall, blocking Ravna’s view. She heard someone say softly, “Bye bye.”

  Jefri watched them for a few seconds more. Then he slid the door shut and jiggled its bolt into position. He was shaking his head. “By the Powers, they look like Tami and Wilm staggering home from the pub.”

  He lay back, silent…“You know, it could have been a low charge problem. Scrupilo’s radios fail like that. When they’ve been away from sunlight too long—bam, no error message, no bit-rate backoff, just silence.”

  “Right,” said Ravna. “I’ll bet these cloaks were at the end of a long-use period.” She thought about it for a second, imagining innocuous explanations for the apparently global failure. They were possible.

  After a moment, Jefri said, “Oh, Amdi. You didn’t have to be a hero.”

  CHAPTER 32

  The next morning, it was the friendly steward, not the gunpack, who was at their door. “Amdi must be okay, too, Jef,” said Ravna. Believe it.

  The airships were cruising lower than ever, but the cloud cover was incomplete. Sunlight slanted down in misty shafts, shining in fragments of rainbows where it found patches of rainfall in the greenish dark.

  The city extended to the limits of their vision. It was still chaotic; you could see it was a slum. But now Ravna sensed patterns lurking in the landscape. If you ignored its constituent junk, this place had a claim to beauty, a clash of fungus and forest pretending to be a great city. And even the details were not all unpleasant. She could smell cooking fires. The food smells were good, almost covering the sewage taint that also hung in the air.

  “Powers. Look, Ravna, the Tines just swarm!”

  Most of the streets were hidden by surrounding structures, but she saw…plazas? Most were just five or six meters across, but they were connected to occasional larger open spaces. In the distance she could see what might have been a hectare of stony open space. Tines were everywhere—on rooftops, in the streets, in the plazas. Myriads of Tines, but crowded so close together there surely could be no packs at all.

  “Ten years ago, this looked different,” said Ravna. “Oobii took pictures as it approached Tines World.” The Tropics had been in the whole disk images only, and there had been only a few breaks in the jungle cloud cover, but, “What we saw back then was not so crowded and somehow—well, it looked simpler.” She watched silently for a moment, wondering. Down Here there was no possibility that the Choir itself was super-intelligent. For that matter, there wasn’t even the communication technology to support wide-area cognition: Mindsounds would take minutes to percolate across the megacity. And yet, there was some form of group activity. The mob seemed to have greater and lesser densities, and not just where Tines gathered around the piles of rotting vegetation that filled many of the smaller plazas. There were places where she could see the ground, where members were separated by meters of empty space. Such open areas couldn’t be for coherent thought, though, since there was no pack-like clustering. It was almost as if…She focused on one particular empty area, watching until the airship had passed it by. Ah! “Those empty areas? They’re moving.”

  “What?”

  “Just look—” Given that they each had their own tiny porthole, it was impossible for her to point. “Look down that street,” zigzagging into the distance, mostly unobscured by surrounding structures, there was only one thing she could mean.

  “Right…okay, I see a couple thin spots in the crowd.” He watched for the minute or so that they could keep the path in view. “Yes,” he finally said. “I think the uncrowded areas were slowly moving further away. Huh. I suppose you would see that in pre-tech cities. Didn’t they have special policemen to order the traffic around?”

  “I don’t think it’s traffic control. The sparse areas also shrink and expand. Look at that plaza.”

  For a moment the view was nearly perfect for Ravna’s purpose. Thinning swept in from a side path. Then the plaza and the main street became a little less crowded, Tines moving slightly to the sides of the street. As they drifted back to the middle of the street, it became as packed as ever—but the thinning continued to propagate down the side path.

  “Yeah,” Jefri said slowly, amazement in his voice. “These are density waves moving across the city, but we can only see them in the streets and plazas.”

  “It’s like the Tines are swaying to music.” Truly a Choir.

  The airship executed one of its long, slow turns and their view swept across territory that had been directly ahead. Now the nearest lands were hidden by low clouds, but pillars of sunlight shone into the far distance…upon the largest structure Ravna had ever seen on Tines World. “Powers,” she said softly. “There was nothing like this in the approach photography.”

  They were too far away to see details, but the main structure was tetrahedral. Its edges were slumped and irregular, but on average, the pyramid’s lines were perfectly straight. Parts of the surface gleamed golden even in the haze. Secondary pyramids sat at the base of the huge one, each quite possibly larger than Newcastle—and at the corners of those were still smaller pyramids. Smaller and smaller, Ravna followed the progression down to the limits of her vision.

  Their airship was turning again. The pyramid slid out of sight. “There’s the other airship,” said Jefri. The craft was well below them, descending into the lower cloud deck. It swirled the cloud surface like a fish diving through sea foam. Then it was gone, and a moment after that they, too, were in the clouds. They broke through into a drizzly gray morning. The ground below looked nothing like the jumbled slums or the great pyramid. She caught sight of spires and domes very like the palaces of East Coast royalty. I’ll bet that’s where Vendacious and Tycoon lord it over the locals. Directly ahead of the other airship, the ground was as open and flat as a tabletop. The landing fie
ld would have been recognized by any low-tech inhabitant of an earthlike planet, though this one was marred by floodways and several large ponds.

  Five structures hulked at the end of the field. They were small by comparison with the pyramid, but each was large enough to shelter an airship. The clamshell doors on two of them had been slid open.

  —————

  Vendacious stood by his ship’s landing pylon and watched the ground crews work to lash down Tycoon’s airship.

  How I hate the Tropics! The thought surfaced every time he returned here. The heat and humidity were as bad as any he’d known in his well-remembered life; this morning’s drizzle counted as comfort by the standards of this place! Then there were the parasites, the gut worms and flesh burrowers, and all the diseases—themselves caused by microscopic predators, according to the ever-cheery Dataset. He never used to get the vomits, and now that happened regularly. In the early years of his time here, Vendacious had lost two members to disease. Finding appropriate replacements had been no small challenge, even with an endless stream of raw material to choose from.

  And yet…part of Vendacious was gazing to the left, at the magnificent palace Tycoon had built for him. Vendacious couldn’t have risked such magnificence up north, not with Woodcarver’s death sentence hanging over him. Now that two of Vendacious were Tropical, sometimes he actually felt an insane fondness for the place. In Dataset, Vendacious had read about natural selection. The notion was quaint and obvious, but no fun when you were doing it to yourself! It was frightening to realize that if his triumph were delayed long enough, he might prefer this hellhole to the north.

  Meantime, he’d have to put up with both the climate and Tycoon. The local fragment of Radio stood just a few meters away, providing a link to the great Tycoon. Ut looked even more miserable than Vendacious felt. Part of that was the heavy, muffling cloak the creature had to wear. Part of it was the fear in the creature’s eyes. Ut had been taught to fear and obey and keep secrets. The lessons necessarily had been delivered in covert ways, unseen by those outside Vendacious’ inner court. After last night, Ut had even more to fear. What had the animal been up to, playing with the cabin keys? The guards said he hadn’t been wearing his cloak, so whatever it was had been mindless and confined to the ship. That was the only thing that had saved Ut from a proper and final punishment—no matter how suspicious the death might look to Tycoon. Nevertheless Ut faced some strict discipline; no more deviations would be tolerated.