“Oh no, nothing like that. Or almost nothing like that. Over the centuries, Woodcarver and her people learned that if they waited till a good chill autumn and a surface current that was mainly southerly, you could get rid of most of the survivors in an almost friendly way: just repair their rafts or make new ones. After all, it’s not that hard to make junkwork like that out of the flotsam that is always rolling in.”
“You mean the surviving Tropicals can just be led aboard and put out to sea?”
“Not quite, though sometimes that’s enough. What the Old Woodcarver learned was that the Tropicals are like jaybirds. They like shiny things. They like firemakers—which doesn’t make sense since those go bad so fast in humid weather. They like all sorts of silly things. And long ago, folks around here figured what those things were. So pile the trinkets up on the rafts. Put some food aboard—and if the tide is right you can coax the remaining Tropicals aboard. Then just push them out into the southerly stream. Hei, problem solved!”
Johanna reached for the smooth silvery metal of the agrav flier. Her touch caused the side hatch to flip upwards, and a ramp to slide out. The craft had been designed for wheeled creatures. Entrance was easy for the likes of humans or Tines. She climbed aboard and settled into her usual slot (which was not so well designed for the human form).
Pilgrim came scrambling over the rocks, and one after another padded up the ramp. “It’s not as if they are whole people, Johanna. You know that.”
“You of all people don’t really believe that, do you, Pilgrim?”
The fivesome was busy seating himself all around the flight cabin. The agrav’s user interface might have been flexible in the Beyond, but down here in the Slow Zone, it defaulted to the form most fit for its original owners. Those had been Skroderiders. There might not be a single one alive on the whole planet. Too bad, since that default user interface had the flight controls scattered around the periphery of the cabin. Maybe a human crew could have flown the agrav—if that crew had trained their whole lives for the instabilities of the flight system. A pack, on the other hand, if it were as practiced and crazy as Pilgrim, could fly the thing, but just barely.
As the door closed and Pilgrim busied himself resetting the boat’s agrav fabric, part of him looked around at her, considering her last question. He made his human voice a little bit sad sounding, “No, they’re more than animals, Johanna. My love Woodcarver might say that they’re also less, but you know I don’t believe that. I’ve been in pieces often enough myself.” He pushed at one of the dozens of control holes set in the console. The agrav lifted up on the left side, then on the right. They slid sideways, smacking into the cliff face. He corrected, and the boat sagged left, coasting away from the cliff but bouncing against the largest of the rocks below. By then Pilgrim had the rhythm, and the boat fluttered upward, only occasionally scraping the cliff. Two years ago, after it became apparent that someone like Pilgrim was needed to fly the boat, Pilgrim had made a hobby of scaring the pee out of his passengers. Partly that was pilgrim humor and partly it was to give him an excuse to fly wherever he pleased. Johanna had been on to his game even if Ravna was fooled. She had called him out on the issue, and she was pretty sure that nowadays when the boat behaved insanely it wasn’t Pilgrim messing around. The problem was that the agrav fabric was weakening and becoming less rational. More and more, the best performing parts of the fabric were salvage from Oobii. Pilgrim was forced to constantly relearn the boat’s flight characteristics. He didn’t have time for his old hoaxing around.
The skiff slid down five meters, but well away from the cliff. It was twenty meters above the rocks now, with enough clearance all around so that its wobbling was not a concern. This was really not a bad takeoff at all.
As they drifted generally upward, most of Pilgrim turned to look at her. “I forgot to ask. Where is it you want to go?”
“We’re going to get these sailors a decent home,” Johanna replied.
• • •
Woodcarver’s Fragmentarium was perched in the lower walls of the Margrum Valley, not far above Cliffside harbor, where the Tropicals were being herded. Pilgrim’s flight path was more or less straight toward the Fragmentarium. That is, it wobbled in all directions, but the average was straight. At higher altitudes he could have risked supersonic speeds, but for short little hops like this, a running pack might outpace him.
Though the boat looked like silver metal from the outside, Pilgrim kept the hull transparent for those within. The view remained surprisingly bad. The scavenged agrav fabric was stubbornly opaque, a patchwork of russet scraps. In some places the repair work was so extensive that it looked like a Tinish muffling quilt sewn together by a crazypack. It was that pattern of obstacles that determined Johanna’s favorite perch. Her seat really wasn’t a seat—she had to lean forward to clear the ceiling—and the safety harness was ad hoc. On the other hand, she had a good view straight down.
They were just passing over the Children she had seen down by the shipwreck. Five boys and two girls. From this altitude she could recognize every one. Yeah, these were the ones. Johanna shook her head, muttering to herself. “You see that?” she said to Pilgrim.
“Of course I see.” Pilgrim had three snouts pressed close to one clear spot or another. He had no trouble seeing in multiple directions. “What’s to see?”
“The Children. They were throwing stones at drowning Tines.” She checked off the names in her mind, vowing to remember. “Øvin Verring. I never dreamed he would do something like that.” Øvin had been exactly her age. They’d been evenly matched at school, and friends in a non-romantic way.
The skiff performed a tooth-rattling dip and bounce. Johanna had learned to keep her tongue from between her teeth when she rode this gadget. Nowadays she barely noticed the acrobatics, except when they were close to hard objects.
Pilgrim recovered control; he didn’t seem to notice the bouncing either. “To be honest, Jo, I don’t think Verring was throwing stones. He was hanging back.”
“So? He should have stopped the others…” They passed over another Child, this one smaller, falling behind the others. A fivesome was walking with the boy. It was one of only three packs that seemed mixed up with these delinquents. “See? Even little Timor Ristling was down there messing around. He was acting as lookout for the others!” Timor was a cripple now. He had been healthy enough at the High Lab, but even then she had pitied him. He’d been about her brother’s age, but he came from a family of low-level integrators, far beneath the brilliant scientists and archeologists who were reanimating the old archive. The closest analogy on Tines World would be to say Timor’s folks were janitors, sweeping up the glittering trash that more gifted folks left behind. The boy had never done well in his school classes; he just didn’t have a mind for technological thinking. You’d think all that bad fortune would make him more kindly disposed to those poor souls on the shipwreck. Hmm. “I’ll bet it’s that pack he’s hanging out with.” The pale fivesome was clustered around him. Belle Ornrikakihm was a grifting wannabe politician out of Woodcarver’s pre-human empire. It was a shame she’d gotten her claws into Timor. The boy deserved a better Best Friend, but he was old enough to refuse mentoring.
Their agrav skiff had pulled ahead of the cluster of humans. She could see back now, almost into the faces of the kids at the front. Yeah, there was Gannon Jorkenrud, waving and joking to his pals. Jerkwad. Back at the High Lab, Gannon had been one year older than Johanna. He’d skipped grades, had been at the point of graduating from their little school. Gannon was a flaming genius, even more talented than Jo’s little brother. At age fourteen, Gannon was as much a master of anguille borkning as any of the research staff. Everybody agreed that someday he would be the best borkner in all Straumli Realm. Down Here, Jerkwad’s talent was good for nothing.
The agrav wobbled higher, flying a little faster. Below them were more shore patrol packs and ordinary citizens, walking north from Cliffside village, probably headed for the
shipwreck. There were even a few humans. One of them was running.
“Hei, that’s Nevil down there,” Johanna said.
“He was throwing rocks?” Pilgrim sounded surprised.
“No, no, he’s coming from Cliffside.” Nevil Storherte was the oldest of the Children. Certainly he was the most sensible. At the High Lab, Johanna had had such a crush on him, but necessarily from a distance. He probably didn’t even know she existed back then. She’d been barely a teenager and he’d been almost ready to graduate. A year or two more and he might have been one of the Straumer researchers. His parents had been the Lab’s chief administrators, and Nevil—even when so young—had had a natural aptitude for diplomacy.
Somehow he had learned that Gannon and the others were coming down here. He hadn’t been in time to stop them, but she could see that he wasn’t running to be first to the shipwreck. He had turned inland, heading for the cluster of Children. As he approached he slowed to a walk, waving to Gannon and the others, no doubt giving them a proper chewing out. She leaned down further, trying for a clear view. The sea mists had been driven inland and the kids were almost out of sight, but she could see that Nevil had stopped all the miscreants and was even waiting for Timor and Belle to catch up. He looked up and waved to her. Thanks, Nevil. She wouldn’t have to feel bad that she hadn’t hung around herself.
Johanna leaned back and looked out the south-facing side of the flier. Though they were half hidden by sea mists, she could see Cliffside village and its little harbor, right down at the mouth of the Margrum River. The agrav climbed into a cloudless day of late summer, and she could see forever. The “U” of the glacier-carved Margrum Valley stretched inland, green lowlands rising to stony bluffs and the patches of high snow that lasted all the way through the summer. Historically, the Margrum had separated Flenser’s domain from Woodcarver’s. The Battle on Starship Hill had changed all that.
Woodcarver’s Fragmentarium was ahead, just above the mists. The Fragmentarium had started out as a temporary war hospital, Woodcarver’s effort to honor the packs who’d suffered in support of her. The place had grown into something much more. Pilgrim claimed there had never been such a thing in this part of the world before. Certainly, there were plenty of packs who still did not understand its purpose.
The buildings sat on a small tableland in the side of the valley. Fences followed along the edge of the flat space, taller than any Tinish farmer would ever build. The buildings within were crammed together, leaving as much open space as possible for exercise and play. Woodcarver joked that it was actually to give enough space for Pilgrim to make a safe landing. Considering how often Johanna and Pilgrim came here, that was a good thing.
As they came fluttering downwards, she noticed that among the Tines drifting around the exercise yard there were some who looked suspiciously mangy. How had they gotten past the fence? She realized that she might not be the first person bringing word of the shipwreck. She began revising her sales pitch accordingly.
Three years after the Battle on Starship Hill
Chapter 03
Usually, Johanna was mobbed by whatever singletons were out in the exercise area. Today a few of the more articulate called out to her, but most of the patients seemed more interested in the Tropical visitors. None of the place’s keepers—the broodkenners—were in evidence.
Johanna and Pilgrim left the exercise field and walked past buildings that Ravna Bergsndot called the “old folks’ home.” Pack members rarely lived longer than forty years. These buildings housed Tines that were too aged to live and work with their packs. The rest of theirselves would visit, in some cases stay for days at a time, especially if the old ones had been some special intellectual or emotional part of the pack. For Johanna, it was the saddest part of the Fragmentarium, since without decent technology none of these fragments would get any better. The rest of theirselves would visit more and more rarely, eventually incorporating younger members, and not coming at all.
Here and there a head raised to watch her. Some of the visiting packs—the ones who valued their old selves enough to be united—honked greetings and even whole sentences of Samnorsk. There were grateful folk here, but all in all it was too much like the dark ages of human prehistory, like what we Children ourselves must face Down Here.
The broodkenners’ office was at the upslope end of the encampment, beyond the exercise field and the barracks for able-bodied fragments. There was one more shortcut they could take, but Johanna and Pilgrim stayed well away from the war criminals’ compound. That was an institution that many Tinish kingdoms supported, though usually it was a public pillory where partially executed enemies of the state could be put on display. Woodcarver had never been such a sadist. Pilgrim often assured Jo that the Children were fortunate to have fallen in with the kindliest despot in the world. Since Flenser was rehabilitated and Vendacious had escaped, there was only one war criminal left in the Domain, and that was Flenser’s monster, Lord Steel. The original Steel had been cut down to three members. His remnant had a prison cell with its own little exercise yard. She hadn’t seen that fragment in two years. She knew her brother came here occasionally to talk to the threesome, but then Jefri and Amdi had personal issues with Steel. She hoped the visits were not meant to taunt the creature. Steel was thoroughly mad, surviving in a weird tug of war between Woodcarver’s caution and Flenser’s demand that the remnant not be destroyed. Today she heard shrieks of rage coming from the prison compound, demands to be released. The Remnant Steel knew something was going on, and apparently there was no keeper to let it out into its exercise yard.
“So where are the broodkenners?” said Johanna. Not even Carenfret was around, and she was obsessively dutiful.
“Harmony’s here. I can hear him talking.” Pilgrim jabbed a snout toward the admin office.
“He’s here?” Damn. Harmony was the chief broodkenner, a pack of the old school and a real jerk. Now she could hear Tinish gobbling ahead. It was loud enough; she’d mistaken it for the usual random shouting that came from the patients’ barracks. Yes, the pack was talking on the telephone. That was probably a good thing, since Harmony’s judgment could only benefit from outside advice. She lifted the high bar on an inner gate and let herself and Pilgrim through. The admin building was actually a dorm for the overnight broodkenners, most often Carenfret. It was big enough for two or three packs, but right now there seemed to be just the one voice within. The front door was open. She bent low and awkwardly waddled indoors, preceded and followed by Pilgrim.
Harmony was way in the back, in his official office. That wasn’t as large as Harmony would probably like, but it was the room with the telephone, and the Chief Broodkenner had claimed it his first day on the job. Johanna was pleased that no one had ever told him how easy it would be to wire the phone into a different room. She wasn’t the only one who thought ill of this pack.
Harmony was just racking the phone when Pilgrim and Johanna stuck heads into his room. “Well, well,” he said, sounding cordial. “Here is the source of so many of my problems.” He gestured at the floor in front of his desk. “Do please have a seat, Johanna.”
Jo settled herself on the floor. Now she had to look up to see Harmony’s heads. Well, it beat standing stooped over to avoid the ceiling beams. Pilgrim settled himself in the hall, with just one head poked around the door. He could participate in the discussion without his mindsound interfering too much.
Johanna had put together a little speech, but this phone call might change things. “So,” she said, winging it, “you’ve heard about the shipwreck.”
“Of course. I just finished discussing the matter with the Tinish Queen Herself.”
“Oh.” So what did Woodcarver say? Harmony looked too self-satisfied for it to be anything good. “There are almost two hundred surviving Tropicals, sir. Pilgrim tells me that’s substantially more than in the average South Sea wreck.”
Harmony gave an irritated little ripple of his heads. “Yes. I understand you a
re largely responsible for this problem.”
“Well, I helped too,” Pilgrim put in cheerily.
Harmony waved a dismissive snout at Pilgrim. The Chief Broodkenner always tried to ignore Pilgrim. The two packs were about as different as packs could be, one as tightly held as a human’s clenched fist, the other so loose that sometimes it seemed to dissolve into lesser parts. Unfortunately for Harmony, Pilgrim was the queen’s consort, had been for more than two years. Part of the queen herself was now from Pilgrim. Harmony was far too cautious to say anything reportable against him. All his heads turned back in Johanna’s direction: “No doubt you’re wondering where my assistants are this afternoon.” He meant the other broodkenners, most of whom were very nice people.
“Well, yes.”
“You’re the reason for their absence. That’s what I was just discussing with the Queen. It’s bad enough that you’ve transformed this shipwreck from a commonplace opportunity into a serious inconvenience. But it’s inexcusable that you directed them to come here for refuge.”
“What? I did no such thing.”
Pilgrim said. “Hei, I was there, Broodkenner. Of course, Johanna did no such thing. I doubt if any of the Tropicals knows a word of Samnorsk.”
Harmony all came to his feet, his various members adjusting the trim red jackets of his uniform. Two of him came partway over his desk, gesturing emphatically at Johanna. “Forgive me then. This is simply what I would expect of you. It’s what my assistants thought too. Every one them is downhill from the broodkennery right now, holding off the onslaught of Tropical riffraff. We all speculated just who put the creatures up to this.”
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