The Children of the Sky

by VernorVinge

  Hmm. Ravna looked across the airfield. The hangar doors had been slid shut, and there was no further activity around them. This side of the mysterious barracks, there were hectares of open space with just a pack or two, perhaps fishing at one of the ornamental water pools. This emptiness was in the middle of the most densely populated place on the planet. Somebody had some clout. Rather than fraud and façade, maybe this was Tropical reality.

  The sun had slid into afternoon before they were finally ushered into Tycoon’s grand palace. Yes, it was grand inside, too. Everywhere she looked, packs hustled this way and that; most of their members had the plush pelts of Northerners. Ravna and Jefri were led through vast carpeted rooms, up more stairs to only slightly smaller rooms, their walls draped with acoustic quilting. She noticed the kinds of imperfections that Jefri had mentioned. There was a faint odor of mildew, an occasional squishiness in the carpet. But the walls soared, and the dome overhead almost seemed to float. Tycoon and company had been cribbing a lot of tricks from Domain designs and, at least indirectly, from Oobii.

  After the fourth set of stairs, Ravna would have been just as happy to be back under the outside awnings.

  Up here the rooms were not large. Their guide opened doors to reveal a short hallway. At the far end, a pack stood by another set of doors. This pack was dressed in full cloaks that would have made sense on a summer day up North—but which looked a bit silly here. Gunpack waggled its rifles, urging them forward as the doors behind them swung shut.

  The shutting of those doors seemed to be a signal to open the inner doors. Almost like an airlock. The thought flitted by at almost the same instant as a breath of cool air swept through the opening. They walked forward, into a room in which the air temperature couldn’t have been more than 25C. She stumbled at the surprise; the sudden change was both a relief and discomfort. Jefri helped her across the room to benches set before a cluster of Tinish thrones. This was some kind of audience chamber.

  Sunlight spilled through muddy glass. It was their first view to the east since they had left the airship. A second-degree pyramid towered high, but the second-degrees were like foothills before the immensity of the first-degree pyramid. Ravna had to look up through the ceiling windows to see the top of that.

  It was an odd thing to see in a throne room. Ravna had to forcibly yank her attention back from the windows. Directly ahead were elevated throne seats. A smaller perch—for a singleton?—was set close by. All of those were unoccupied, but the room was not: To the right, a sevensome spread across a set of lesser thrones. Some meters to the right of him was a second pack. At first she thought it was Godsgift—but no, it wasn’t, though it was dressed with the same harlequin gaudiness as the Godsgift she had known in the Domain.

  The first pack gobbled something at the gunpack and then spoke in Samnorsk: “You don’t recognize me, do you?” Two of the pack had patchy Tropical pelts. “Not even the voice I’m using?”

  Vendacious. At least it was the voice they’d heard via Zek, doing business with Prince Puce.

  Jefri gave him a stony look. “Where are Amdi and Screwfloss?”

  A smile rippled across the pack. “They are guests in my annex. They are cooperating with my investigation. They have nothing to fear. You have nothing to fear if you cooperate equally.” He jabbed snouts at them as he spoke. Now he paused and sat back in a dignified posture. “In a few moments you will have the honor of meeting the great Tycoon.”

  The Tropical pack popped into the conversation with, “I’m sure we’ll get along famously if we all cooperate.” The speech was chipper and unthreatening—and where did this fellow learn to speak Samnorsk so well?

  The question was forgotten as the gunpack came to attention and bugled out royal flourishes. An instant later, the pack-wide doors behind the thrones were pulled open. A single member came strolling through, wearing a radio cloak. It looked well-fed and rested and almost certainly wasn’t Zek. The critter headed for the low seat by the thrones. Immediately after the singleton was seated, a heavyset eightsome came through the doorway.

  Ravna had seen packs as numerous—Amdi was eight, too—but several of this fellow’s members were hulks, bigger than Pilgrim’s Scar, even if not as tough-looking. The pack wore plain silk cloaks that would have been understated elegance, except that one or two had drag stains. Ravna watched the eight settle themselves on the thrones, their gaze focusing implacably on Ravna and Jefri. So this was the pack at the center of all their problems the last few years. What sort of creature could conspire with Vendacious—and still be alive after all those years?

  The gunpack’s bugling stopped, but now Vendacious took over with, “Bow to the great—”

  There was an angry squeak from behind the thrones. One more figure came into the room. Could a pack as numerous as Tycoon be raising a puppy? No, this was Ritl—and as loud as ever. She was dragging a large stool, and Ravna guessed her squawking meant something like, “I could use a little help here!” Ritl dragged the stool across the carpet, toward Tycoon’s thrones. She tipped it down unseemly close to Tycoon, then scrambled aboard and looked around. You really couldn’t see much expression in a single Tines, but somehow Ritl looked…smug.

  Ravna glanced back at Tycoon; he was still all staring at her and Jef. The pack waited a moment for Vendacious and Ritl to pipe down. When he finally spoke, it was with that totally inappropriate and self-damning Geri voice they had already heard via Mr. Radio: “I have waited far too long for this.” He switched to Interpack for a moment, then back to Samnorsk: “Vendacious, which is the leader, the one your puppet deposed?”

  “That’s the smaller of the two, sir. Ravna Bergsndot. She managed the Domain’s invention development program.”

  Tycoon hooted gently, a Tinish chuckle. “Ah yes. The machine operator.” He pointed at Jefri. “And the big fellow? Is that really…?”

  Vendacious replied in Interpack. Ravna only recognized the name “Johanna,” superposed on a connection marker.

  Jefri must have understood: “Yes, I’m Johanna’s brother,” he said.

  Tycoon leaned forward, all of his eyes on Jefri. He stared for a full ten seconds while Vendacious gobbled on, urging Tycoon to do…something. Finally, Tycoon shook his heads, an irritable negation. Some of him looked at Ravna; one of him was watching Ritl. “You two humans should have been here seven tendays ago. Instead you murdered Vendacious’ best assistant. You murdered most of Remasritlfeer. Then you managed to trek almost all the way back to your precious starship. Was this magic technology, or are you simply much deadlier than even my friend Vendacious has always claimed?”

  Jefri’s face clouded. “Neither, and you are full of lies. We—”

  Ravna interrupted: “What does Ritl say happened?”

  The singleton in question was glaring at Vendacious, a low-level faceoff. A strangely large percentage of Vendacious was glaring right back. It occurred to Ravna that Ritl might be one of the few creatures with whom Vendacious had no leverage.

  Tycoon reached down and focused a soft hooting sound on the singleton. As Ritl twisted to look up at him, he said, “Poor Ritl. I tried to question her before this meeting. She is a talker, but not very smart. It’s quite possible that she doesn’t remember exactly how the rest of her pack died.”

  Vendacious gobbled something.

  “Speak human,” said Tycoon. “I want these two to understand what we’re saying.”

  “Yes sir. I just said, we’ll eventually figure out what these two humans did. After all, I still have their servants to question.”

  The eightsome waved dismissively. “However you humans escaped, you only hurt your cause by doing so. Events have passed you by.”

  Jefri: “We’d be dead now if we hadn’t escaped.”

  “Nonsense!” said Vendacious. “My lord Tycoon’s purpose in this expedition was to show Ravna that cooperation was her only choice.”

  Ravna had the feeling that murder and conspiracy were piled in very deep layers here. She
touched Jefri’s arm. Put the Olsndot temper in a bottle, okay? After a moment, he settled back on the bench, seeming to get the unspoken message.

  She looked up at Tycoon. “You say events have passed us by. What is it that you want from us now?”

  “I want nothing from the Johanna sibling.” Perhaps Tycoon didn’t notice that he was clawing the thrones as he said that. “But from you…I want to convince you that opposing my wishes and those of”—he glanced at Vendacious—“what’s the stooge’s name?”

  “Nevil Storherte, my lord.”

  “Yes. Opposing me and Nevil is suicide. You and Woodcarver must accept the coming alliance—ah, but you don’t know about that either, do you?”

  Ravna tried to smile. “As you say, we’ve been out of touch. Why would my opposition matter?”

  “You still have the loyalty of many of the two-legs. You may have technical knowledge that will help us manage two-legs machines. And you may have influence with Woodcarver.”

  I bet Woodcarver is still the Queen, and Nevil has his back to the wall. Nevil is so desperate he’s finally gone public with his foreign allies. She tried sit up a little straighter, act like she had some kind of power in the world. “I mean no disrespect, sir, but how did you intend to convince me?”

  Tycoon looked back and forth at himself, nonplussed. “Didn’t you look out the windows as you flew here?”

  “Yes. We saw hundreds of kilometers of chaos, and then this reservation you’ve built in the middle of it all. Is there some secret weapon that we missed?”

  “I suppose I’m the secret weapon.” The voice came from the other side of room, from the harlequin-cloaked Tropical. “Or in proper terminology, I should say that I represent the secret weapon. I am the Choir’s gift.”

  “Godsgift?” said Ravna. “We ran into another of you up North.”

  “You murdered another of him up North,” said Tycoon.

  Next to her, Jefri was all but shaking with outrage. Lies and truth, how to untangle them?

  The local version of Godsgift was watching them intently. “Don’t bother to deny the murder,” it said smoothly. “Some of that godsgift escaped, enough to tell us how it left part of itself behind to attempt negotiating. We know what happened.” It waved the issue away. “It’s not a great matter. We gifts come and go, rather like a feeding clump in a city square, though we are rarer and globally significant.” The pack slid off its seats and strolled around the other packs to come closer to the humans. The gunpack had to retreat to make room.

  The Tropical walked up to them with the ease of a pack who knew humans—or who didn’t fear losing its mind in others. In either case, it had none of the aggressive posture of Tycoon or Vendacious. “Our secret weapon has been all around you. The Choir.” It gestured through the high windows at the mountain range of pyramids.

  “And your god is speaking through you?” Sarcasm edged Jefri’s voice.

  The godsgift cocked a head. “Oh no. Or only indirectly. But by this evening the Choir will know everything that is being said here now.” The creature pointed again at the pyramids. “Surely you see the gathering?”

  Ravna looked through the crudely made plate glass. Sunlight was coming almost straight down, mottling the golden surface of the grand pyramid.

  Jefri’s voice was soft and wondering: “Those shadows, Ravna—I think they’re mobs of Tines.” Individual members were visible as dots on the closest of the second-degree pyramids. On the great pyramid, the thousands were a finely mottled discoloration, creeping higher and higher. This surpassed Pilgrim’s most extreme Choir tales.

  “Are you impressed?” said Tycoon. “I’m impressed, and that is not easy to do.”

  Ravna looked way from the windows. “…Yes,” she said. “But just how does this make a secret weapon? I know the Tropical Choir has existed at least as long as the northern civilizations, but it has never mattered except as a barrier to land travel between the north and the south. There’s no way that the Choir could be any smarter than an individual pack or human.” Not down here in the Slow Zone. There were group minds in the Beyond, but even they were never more than witless hedonists. You had to go into the Transcend to do better—and there large group minds were just one of a number of paths to real Power.

  “Ha ha!” said Tycoon, his high-pitched voice like a child teasing. “They doubt your Choir’s godhood.”

  Godsgift had settled itself on the carpet around the humans. Now it laughed. “You doubt the Choir’s godhood, too, O Tycoon.” The pack shifted around in its harlequin cloaks. Its mangy pelt had big bare patches, altogether consistent with the ragamuffin clothing. Ravna wondered how uncomfortable the fellow was with Tycoon’s air conditioning.

  Godsgift continued with a kind of sly diffidence: “In truth, all I remember from the Choir is an enormous feeling of well-being. I pity you Northern packs who won’t give yourself to it. I pity the humans even more that they can never become part of it, even if they wished. Both you and they are so upset about the murders the humans committed. How little you have to lose that you squabble over a member here, a pack there.” But now it paused. “I suspect that as a matter of cold fact, Ravna Bergsndot is right about us. The Choir is not smarter than a unitary pack. But there are places and times—millions of places and times every day—where it is almost as smart. And sometimes, the Choir’s gifts—those such as myself—last longer. It is a sacrifice, since for a time I am left as limited as you.

  “So yes, the Choir as a whole may not have what you call intelligence, but it is a happier way to know reality than is your stunted existence.” Godsgift was silent for a moment, most of the fellow staring out at the pyramid—doing a good imitation of thoughtful yearning. Abruptly the pack gave a start. “It just occurs to me that you two humans could satisfy your curiosity about the Choir in a way that no unitary pack ever could.”

  Tycoon leaned forward. “What can they do that I cannot?”

  “Well, sir,” replied the godsgift, “you could experience the Choir, but it’s unlikely your parts would ever reassemble into that unitary self you value so much. On the other, um, hand,” he waved a paw in an artificial flourish, “these two humans could ascend with the crowds. They could witness the highest pinnacle of the Choir, where myriads stand within the diameter of a single song, where even such as I would dissolve. Their minds would survive—by the fact that, alas, they can never be more—and they could report back on the experience!”

  Vendacious perked up. “I think that is a capital idea!”

  Tycoon had his heads together, apparently giving the suggestion serious thought. “I don’t think it is as simple as you say. A few years ago, I had Remasritlfeer build a closed and padded rickshaw wagon, one that he could propel from the inside. The idea was similar to what you’re suggesting but without the humans—and of course the rickshaw couldn’t have climbed any pyramids. Even so, the project was a failure. Remasritlfeer wasn’t more than twenty meters outside the Reservation when the mobs attacked his rickshaw and tipped it over.” Tycoon was watching Ritl, but the singleton just continued grooming its claws, oblivious. “He would have died in the experiment, except that we had a cable attached to the wagon and were able to drag it back before the mob could get to him.”

  “Ah, but consider the ecstasy lost!” said the godsgift, carried away by an ecstasy of its own salesmanship. “I think it’s likely the Choir was simply trying to free what it regarded as imprisoned members. I know you Northerners have all sorts of terrible myths about the Choir, but in fact, except for boundary fights and occasional pyramid sacrifices, individual foreign Tines are rarely killed by the Choir. For humans it should be even safer, since the creatures have no mindsounds to provoke aggression.”

  “Hmm,” said Tycoon. His technical curiosity reminded Ravna a little of Scrupilo: nothing was too gross if it had an experiment in it somewhere. “But wouldn’t the two-legs be dealt with as corpses or invading animals?”

  “Oh, no, I doubt that would happen.�
�� The godsgift waved breezily. “In fact, I’d wager that no human would ever be harmed at the heart of the Choir.”

  Ravna glanced at Vendacious. She saw a smile flicker across the members Tycoon couldn’t see. So Vendacious knew this claim was false. The godsgift and Vendacious were doing a good job of maneuvering herself and Jefri into a front row seat at the Tropical sacrifices. The godsgift didn’t have Vendacious’ air of palpable menace, but maybe that just meant that he was the more dangerous of the two.

  The godsgift rattled on enthusiastically, ignorant of or ignoring Vendacious’ sly smile. “I tell you, I almost wish I could be human. You could go to the very top. You could see everything there is to see—and still exist afterwards to remember it! Maybe there is something beyond the sounds of mind there. Either way, you would know!”

  Ravna raised a hand. “No. I think we’ll pass.” She noticed Jefri nod emphatically. “Perhaps another time.” When we’re not being held prisoners under threats of torture and death. “In any case, I thought your point was that the Choir was Tycoon’s secret weapon.”

  “Oh! You want the crass details.” The pack sounded hurt that it had failed to sell them on a hike up sacrifice hill.

  “Enough of this religious talk,” said Tycoon. “The crass details are the important part. Here we’re sitting cool and comfortable in the middle of endless mind death. From the safety of the Reservation, I do business with the Choir. The combination of their multitudes and my genius makes me the greatest power in the world.” He waved at the radio-cloaked Tines that sat silently on a nearby stool. “With my radio network, I am watching across a market domain that is ten times wider than your royal Domain. My factories create more goods than all the other businesses in the world put together. I’ll wager you’ve seen some of them yourselves. My presence simply can’t be disguised anymore. My inventions are changing the entire—”