The Children of the Sky

by VernorVinge

  One of Tycoon’s airships had just taken off, heading north. That was the personnel shuttle that touched down at every one of the far reservations. At the same time, she could see the daily flight from the Wild Principates coming in for landing. Most freight went by sea and river and caravan, but it was radio communications and those airships that kept Tycoon’s markets in synchrony.

  Beyond the airstrip stood the long gray rows of Tycoon’s first Tropical factories. Nowadays they covered practically every square meter of the West Side. And beyond the western edge of the reservation she could see the Choir’s wild factories. Those ramshackle structures were continually being ruined and rebuilt. Tendays would go by with no output. Then just when you concluded that the copycat effort had failed, suddenly product would spew out, misshapen or miswoven and barely recognizable. Mostly, such items were junk…but sometimes, as with their mirrors and glasswork, there were real improvements.

  Jo was on the third switchback now, more than one hundred meters above the reservation. The crowds here were as thick as ever, Tines swarming over the network of smaller paths that branched from the main path she was on. They kept an open space around her, but it wasn’t a well-respected boundary. Tines brushed against her, going this way and that. The sounds of the Choir pounded her, gobbling and hissing and honking, scraps of Interpack speech mixed with imitations of thunder and rain. Behind all this noise, there was the feeling of something louder, a buzzing in her chest and head—all a human could ever sense of mindsound.

  Most of the creatures ignored her, but some gave Jo a squeak or a honk. There were little swirls of coherence, a godsgift that might last just for seconds. “Hei, Johanna!” was all those might say, but sometimes there was more, words that might have been relayed Tine to Tine from far away, even reminiscence of their time on the fleet of rafts. Perhaps one in five of these Tines was a full-pelted Northerner, but as often as not it was a hairless Tropical who claimed to remember Woodcarver’s Fragmentarium.

  Sometimes she’d see an unusually large, full-pelted Tines, or a pattern of black and white that reminded her of Pilgrim. Twice she had chased into the mob, careless of whether she bumped those who stood in her way, her only goal to get close to the familiar sight. And both times, when she got close she found only a stranger. Still, parts of Pilgrim could be out there, surviving in singleton form. She’d found little pieces of his attitudes in some Tines of the Choir.

  The last switchback was only twenty meters long, but by now the sun and the clear sky had conspired to make the morning broiler hot. Sweat was streaming off her and those last twenty meters felt like a real climb. When she finally reached the summit, she was quite ready to stop and sip from her canteen. She leaned against one of the gilded spikes that bordered the tiny plaza at the top. If there was any logic to the pyramid, this open space would be the most holy of holies. To Johanna it was just a small muddy field—and the Tines on the summit usually avoided it.

  The video camera was on the other side of the summit, and indeed it had been knocked over. She crossed the field and retrieved the box. The gadget was purely analog, Oobii’s design. It was so simple that Tycoon’s factories could make it—by the millions, if the Choir was sufficiently enchanted by the gadget, or if somebody else was enchanted by video cameras and had something to trade for them.

  She picked up the gadget, wiped the mud off the glass lens. Abruptly the box was talking Samnorsk at her:

  “You took long enough.” It was Tycoon’s new voice. He still liked Geri’s voice—said it sounded “pretty”—but he accepted that it tended to give human listeners the wrong impression. “Are you okay?” he continued. “I’ve had to slow some of the harbor operations. Even the Tropicals don’t like these really clear days.”

  “I’ll bet those were Tines with too much pale skin. We humans are dark-skinned all over, perfect for hot, sunny weather.”

  “Oh. Right. You know, sometimes the Choir isn’t very careful of itself. I wonder…” Tycoon hummed to himself, no doubt coming up with something crazy. Then, slipping back into bossy mode, he said, “That’s really neither here nor there. We need that camera you’re holding. And this time, set it up so it doesn’t get knocked down!”

  “Hei, Tyco, if you want it perched at the top of everything, the mob is going to knock it down occasionally.” Johanna reseated the camera and righted the tripod. Actually, the assembly was sturdy and bottom-heavy. It would have taken a bump from a large Tine—or the concerted effort of a group—to knock it over. Well this is the heart of the Choir. Plenty of strange maybe-ceremonies happen here all the time.

  She struggled to shift the tripod and camera closer to the edge of the parapet, where it would have an unobstructed view. A dozen Tropicals moved in close to her, but they weren’t objecting. Instead they bumped around among themselves. It was quite unlike the coordination of a real pack, but she could tell they were trying to help her move the equipment. Johanna and the moblet tipped the tripod this way and that, in effect walking the gear out onto the stony parapet.

  She shooed them back and did the final placement herself, this time making sure that the tripod was wedged between the golden spikes of the parapet. Maybe Tycoon was watching her through his telescopes and the camera: “Be careful. If they think you’re harming the pyramid—”

  Johanna had been watching the Tines as she worked, with just that concern. “Nobody’s complaining. You know I’m special to the Choir.” That was probably true; in any case, she liked to tease Tycoon.

  Tycoon made a grumbling response, but in Tinish. Then in Samnorsk: “I don’t mind my employees risking their lives. I just want them to know that’s what they’re doing! Now, since you’re up there, how about pointing the camera so we can get some useful information. I want coverage of the north road.”

  “Hei, I’m your advisor, not your employee,” she replied, but she turned the camera toward the northwest horizon. The “road” was really a system of clearings that changed from tenday to tenday, but it extended nearly a thousand kilometers into the deepest jungle of the Fell Basin. At first glance, the Choir was the chaotic saturnalia that Northern packs always claimed, but something more complicated than nonstop joy was going on. The coast needed an enormous hinterland to support itself. With cameras like this—and the remote reservations—Tycoon was beginning to figure it out.

  This pattern of Tropical life had existed in some form for centuries, but Tycoon’s reservation had been a revolutionary upgrade—witness the Great Pyramid. Now that revolution was accelerating. Raw materials were flooding in and millions of manufactured items were streaming out. Woodcarver and the Domain saw this as a tidal wave of products. Ravna saw it as advancing her projects by decades in just a year or two. Johanna knew that what Northerners saw was just a fraction of what Tycoon’s factories were producing. Most of that output—and all of the output from the new, far reservations—was being used within the Choir. Just stand at the output end of the factories. Watch the wagonloads of fabric and radios and solar cells being carted off along the North Road and the River Fell. On a really clear day—like today—this camera could follow the road traffic for many kilometers, see it split into tributaries, apparently reaching every nook and cranny of the Choir’s domain.

  Something had awakened here, the combination of the Choir and Tycoon and the shortcuts from Oobii. Jo knew it; Tycoon knew it. He never tired of bragging about the size of his “new markets”; sometimes the businesscritter in him literally rubbed its snouts together in glee. This camera and the reports that Mr. Radio made from the new reservations were all part of Tyco’s ceaseless efforts to anticipate his customers.

  “Okay,” came the voice from the camera. “Point a little to south. That’s good! Nevil may have his eye in the sky, but I know what’s happening on the ground. And when I get better telescopes mounted on the video…” Tycoon’s voice drifted off, his technical imagination taking over. When he resumed, he was back to worrying about her. “Now that you’ve got the camera
set up, you should get yourself back down here. I have a godsgift on a dumb radio from North One. He says there’s been some kinky moodshifting up there. If that propagates to us, there could be a sex riot on the Pyramid.”

  Johanna looked down at the House of Tycoon. Tycoon’s audience hall was marked by a row of windows. The new ones were three meters high, but still tiny-looking at this distance. She’d bet Tyco was watching her from there. She gave a little wave. “Don’t worry. I’ve seen that before. No big deal.” That was a little bit of an exaggeration. “Besides,” she continued, “I didn’t come up here just to fix your silly camera. I want to sit and take in the scenery.”

  “Grump. Mumble.” The tiny speaker on the camera couldn’t do justice to Tycoon’s response, the mix of indignation and concern and envy.

  Jo gave the palace another cheery wave and sat herself down on the parapet. In this swelter, her most extensive piece of clothing was her sunhat, and now she plunked it on her head. Black hair and dark skin were all very fine, but she still needed some protection against this sun.

  Johanna looked out, but she wasn’t watching the physical scenery. She liked to tell Tycoon that from here she had a clear view of the Choir’s innermost thoughts. Tyco claimed she was spouting superstitious nonsense—but then he tracked the moods that swept across the Tropics like superfast weather fronts. That was marketing information.

  Here at the City of the Choir, it all came together, a million times bigger than what Johanna had seen on the rafts. She leaned her elbows onto her knees, and stared off toward the northern horizon. This world was in the Slow Zone, not the Beyond, not the Transcend. Most intelligent life in the galaxy had originated in this primordial ooze. Nothing much smarter than human could survive Down Here. So no way was the Choir a superhuman intellect. Right? It was the sort of question that made Johanna wish she knew more about Slow-Zone limitations. The subject had never been big in the High Lab. The grownups were too busy becoming God to waste their time on the problems of lesser minds.

  Very soon the charade with Nevil must be abandoned; the cooperation between Tycoon and Woodcarver was too blatant to disguise. My friends will know I’m alive. I can visit them! Ravna would be able to come down here and see Greenstalk, and see what the Choir was really like. Commset chats were not enough. There were things Ravna didn’t understand—like that promise she’d asked of Johanna, to save the Choir from exploitation. In one sense that was an easy promise to keep. But at the level of individual Tines, of Cheepers—the problem was just the same as Johanna had argued with Harmony Redjackets and even with Pilgrim…

  Johanna drew herself a little further under the shade of her broad hat. It would be great when she could travel back to the Domain, but there were so few humans in the world; she couldn’t imagine finding anyone now. Even Ravna was better off, at least if my stupid little brother will get his act together. From what Johanna could tell, Jef alternated between thinking Rav was too good for him and regarding her as the agent of ultimate evil.

  Finally, the sun was too much. Johanna stood and started slowly down from the summit. She often hit an emotional low just as she retreated from the pyramid. Sometimes she thought the Choir’s mood changed too. Maybe the Tines are unhappy to see me go! Hah, absurd of course. And yet, after losing the High Lab, losing her parents, losing the promise of Nevil…after losing it all, she had a fate that was kind of a marvelous thing. She knew that Nevil’s gang had called her the “Dog Lady.” Well, they were right. She had the fragments, the packs, and the Choir. It was a weird trade she had made, and maybe she didn’t care about the rest.

  CHAPTER 45

  Today was the longest day of summer. For many Tinish nations, that was a big holiday. Here in Woodcarver’s Domain, the holiday was celebrated, but it came in the middle of almost seven tendays when the sun never set. The dayaround tendays had always been a time for unending, often joyous, activity. There was an unrelenting enthusiasm about the sunlight, something that only total exhaustion could correct. Both Children and Tines worked almost nonstop, slowing down just a little when the sun got lowest, what would be the starry dark in any other season. Even then, there were often parties at low sun, exhausted kids dancing.

  On this Longest Day, Ravna took a low-sun break of her own. Coming out from her private entrance to Oobii, she skirted the western edge of the Meadows. The path should have kept her out of sight of where the kids partied. But this time she ended up walking past Children and Tines playing with the gliders that Scrupilo had recently built. She stood in awe for a moment, forgetting why she was outside so late. Øvin Verring was running straight toward the cliff’s edge. He leaped over the dropoff and popped his wings. Ravna felt an instant of stark fear. True, the glider rig was an Oobii synthesis of a thousand civilizations’ history, optimized for exactly these conditions—but there was not a bit of automation aboard the contraption! It could tumble and fall, and she had already seen enough bodies rain from the sky…But the wings did not tumble. The glider sank smoothly, flying straight. And then Øvin, the mind onboard, took the glider into a shallow bank, searching for updrafts, climbing across them until he was above his launch point, soaring almost as if he had agrav.

  A sigh went up from the Children on the ground, maybe remembering heritage lost. Then everyone was cheering, and the packs among them were complaining because there was no way they could participate in the adventure. This is so dangerous, thought Ravna. Someone turned and saw her standing there. A year ago, Ravna would have had to stop this, and the kids would have known that and everybody would have been hurt and embarrassed and irritated. More recently, after her return, it would have been worse; they might have meekly obeyed her! Now when the Children saw her, they waved. And Ravna waved back…and few moments later, another glider sailed out over the abyss. Ravna stayed at the fringes of the crowd, watching the launches. She counted five of the craft in the air, circling back and forth along and above the cliff face. These vehicles would never be of use in real applications. But the pilots may be. It all depended on how fast other tech progressed.

  Ravna watched for a few minutes more, then drifted back from the crowd and continued on her walk. The shouts of excitement faded behind her. Ahead, sunlight sparkled blindingly off the north end of the Hidden Island straits. The island itself was set in a kind of silhouette by the brilliance of the surrounding water. Her path led around the northwest face of Starship Hill, toward a very special place.

  —————

  The Cemetery for Children and Tines. She had been here only once since her return, a memorial for Edvi Verring and the Norasndots. She hadn’t been here by herself since that rainy, treacherous night with Nevil. You’d think that that night would have cured me of my attraction to this place. Okay, the important lesson was that if she ran into anyone up here, she should question the coincidence very seriously.

  And truly, this visit wasn’t one of desperation. Things were going well. Come this winter, Scrupilo’s Cold Valley lab would fabricate its first microprocessors. When those made it into Tycoon’s production stream, tech would be everywhere. Something like civilization would be right around the corner.

  Even Jefri seemed to be doing okay. He and Amdi were working with the reconstituted Screwfloss to build cargo highways. Both Woodcarver and Flenser were sure that Jef wasn’t acting as Nevil’s agent. More and more, it looked like he would stay with the Domain.

  Ravna walked between rows of headstones set in a field of spongy moss. At the memorial, she’d noticed a few new stones, not just those for Edvi and the Norasndots. There’d been flowers on the graves of Belle Ornrikak and Dumpster Peli. The Children, at least some of those who remained with the Domain, were turning to older forms of remembrance. It was something they argued about among themselves.

  Today—tonight—she had one particular person she wished to remember. Pham’s rock, the huge irregularly shaped boulder that crowned the promontory, was at the far end of the field. She could sit on the north side for a time, lean
ing against the sun-warmed rock.

  She came around the rock—and was confronted by eight Tinish heads looking back at her.

  “Ah! Hello, Amdi.”

  “Hei, Ravna! What a coincidence.”

  The pack occupied almost every flattish niche on the north side of the rock. Amdi had regained most of his weight, and nowadays he wore rakish eyepatches on two of his heads. He didn’t really seem surprised to see her. Of course, he probably had heard her coming from forty meters away.

  Amdi shifted aside to make room for her on a human-butt-sized flat space.

  As Ravna sat down, he said, “You up here to talk to Pham?” There was no sarcasm in his question.

  Ravna nodded. I was. She looked down at Amdi’s nearest heads. He was already snuggling close. “What are you doing here, Amdi?”

  “Oh, I come up here a lot now. You know, to sit and think.” Amdi was into solitary contemplation? Could he be that changed?

  He settled a head in her lap and looked up at her. “Really! Well, today I had another reason. I was waiting for someone.”

  She brushed her hand across the plush fur. “Am I that predictable?” So not a coincidence at all.

  Amdi shrugged. “You’re somebody to depend on.”

  “And why were you waiting for me?”

  “Well,” he said mischievously, “I didn’t say you were the person I was waiting for.” But he didn’t deny it.

  They sat there for a time, warming in the sun, watching its glare reflected off the chop in the straits. There really was peace here, even if it didn’t feel quite the same with Amdi above, below, and beside her. Amdi reached another head up to her. Petting it, she could feel a deep scar under the fur. It ran from the throat to just short of a fore-tympanum. So, more of Vendacious’ work. “Don’t worry,” said Amdi. “It’s all healed, good as new.”