The Children of the Sky zot-3

by Vernor Steffen Vinge

  “Turn. I turn … here,” said the stonemason. They were at the turnoff to the Fragmentarium. Johanna followed the pack down the flagstoned path. They passed a wick lamp and she got a look at the other two packs. One was just a threesome. The other was four but two of its members were scarcely more than puppies. So, mystery explained.

  As they came near the old-members barracks, the other two packs both started gobbling. Various voices responded from within, and the packs were both racing off toward the building. The stonemason stayed with Johanna. As they came near the entrance, it spoke again: “You don’t remember me, but except for my puppy, I was with you and Pham Nuwen when you entered the New Castle. You know, the day Pham made the sun go dark.”

  Johanna turned to the pack, struck by its sudden fluency. An old, balding member had limped out of the shadows. The stonemason had flowed around it, and now all heads were pressed close together. The pack must have been one of Woodcarver’s guards at the Battle on Starship Hill.

  Jo smiled. She didn’t remember this particular pack, but—“I do remember the day. You were outside? You actually saw the sun go out?” Almost any technology could overawe a pre-tech civilization such as on Tines World, but what Pham had done, twisting the laws of nature across hundreds of lightyears … that was something that awed even the Children. It was no surprise that the act had sucked up all the output of the sun.

  The five—even the little puppy—were nodding agreement. “A thousand years from now, it may only be a myth in the mind of the pack of me, but it will be the greatest myth of all. When I looked up at the dark of the sun, I felt the Pack of Packs.”

  The stonemason, now including the halt member who lived in the Fragmentarium, was silent for a moment. Then it gave a shiver. “It’s too cold out here for some of me. Why don’t you come inside? There are several whole packs tonight. They don’t speak Samnorsk, but I can translate for them.”

  Johanna started to follow the other into the hall, but then she realized that most of the critters within were not reunited. They really were falling behind. If she stayed more than a minute or two she would start blabbing about what Harmony had in mind … and too many would understand. She stopped at the door, and waved the stonemason through. “I’ll come here another night,” she said.

  The pack hesitated a moment. “Okay, then, but you should know. I’m grateful to you. Part of me is very sick, but with her I am much more clever. I can plan better. Every night I come here, and I work better the next day. It’s partly the planning I do when I’m smart. It’s partly what my new puppy learns from my old part. Rich people do this all the time.” All the heads looked up at Johanna. “I think that’s part of how they stay rich. Thank you for suggesting this place to Queen Woodcarver.”

  Johanna bobbed her head. “You’re welcome.” Her words came out strangled. She turned and walked stiffly away, into the dark. Damn, damn, damn.

  She wandered in the mists for some minutes, long enough for the guilt to boil back into rage. She needed a proper act of creative revenge against Harmony and all of his traditionalist ilk. Something that would kick even Woodcarver in the teeth if she couldn’t see sense.

  Eventually she ran into the high fence that surrounded the exercise yard and the able-bodied barracks. She walked along the barrier, trailing her fingers against the wooden slats. So Harmony figured there wasn’t enough room. Yeah, it was crowded. Helping one’s old members was more popular than anyone had predicted. No doubt Harmony was also complaining about the various resources consumed too. That would make more of a difference to Woodcarver. But Woodcarver was rich. If she wasn’t rich enough, Ravna could kick in some of Oobii’s tech rents. This world was so poor, so stupid. In the High Beyond, caring for individual sophonts was one of the smallest costs of operations, handled invisibly for the most part. Wealth went for other things.…

  She almost tripped over the creature that was digging under the fence. The Tine pulled its head and paws out of the dirt. Its jaws snapped shut just where Jo’s face had been before she startled back—but there was no further attack. The critter had no backup; it was a singleton. No, wait. There were a couple others, lurking about in the misty moonlight. They were all Tropicals. Glares were exchanged, but then the mangy critters backed down. The three wandered off—and in different directions. You’d never see a pack casually lose itself like that. How many of these troublemakers were lurking around the Fragmentarium? The notion of bundling the Tropicals off to a separate camp wasn’t completely stupid.

  Jo continued toward the entrance to the able-bodied barracks. There was plenty of noise from inside the building. Outside, on her side of the fence, she saw occasional shadows move, heard an occasional howl. Harmony must still have his broodkenners playing dogcatcher all over the valley; she was here all by herself. The thought was not frightening, quite the opposite. The Tropicals weren’t especially friendly, but they also seemed to be total scatterbrains. And the fragments in the barracks ahead were Johanna’s friends—at least to the limits of their intelligence.

  In fact … being alone here, she was in a position to get that proper revenge she’d been thinking of. She walked faster, purpose informing her direction. The idea was crazy, but it would create plenty of the precious “room” that Harmony was complaining about. It would show that sonsabitches and Woodcarver, too, that the fragments weren’t to be pushed around.

  The racket from within the barracks was really loud. Johanna came up here a lot, and in the wintertime her visits were necessarily after dark—but she had never heard this much angry gobbling. Of course, these frags were never as civil as whole packs. They had the moods and whimsies of hundreds of separate animals. Most in this barracks were big and healthy, and desperate to be part of whole packs. That was why the fence and the barred gate were necessary. Most of the time, most of the frags were a little bit frightened of escape—even at the same time they yearned to run out into the wide world and find some likely pack. Over the last two years, Jo had made such matchmaking her business. Carenfret actually called Johanna the “littlest kenner.” Johanna could walk right into the barracks and chat with singletons and duos who knew a little Samnorsk. Even when speech wasn’t possible, the frags enjoyed having something as smart as a pack that they could come near to, that they could pretend with. Any number of times, she had started new packs by pairing duos or getting a singleton together with a duo. At least as often, she had chatted up damaged packs on Hidden Island, or Newcastle town, or Cliffside, and persuaded them that she had an ideal completion for them.

  It was that sort of effort, both by her and the decent broodkenners, that made the escape attempts very half-hearted.

  Tonight sounded very different.

  The wick lamp mounted over the gate showed dozens of fragments milling around just inside the entrance. More were coming by the second, pushing and shoving against the fence.

  As she came into view (or hearing, which perhaps was more important for Tines) there were the usual calls of “Hei, Johanna!” “Hei, Johanna!” Those shouts were drowned out by angry gobbling, by howling and yapping that almost sounded like the baying of dogs.

  The more articulate actually made sense. The occasional Samnorsk matched what Interpack she could understand: “Let us out. We want to be free!”

  Now she saw what might be the explanation for all the incautious wanderlust: the Tropicals that had sneaked inside the fence. She could spot only a couple, but they were in the loudest clusters. Apparently, their attitude had tipped the overall consensus.

  She’d never seen so many fragments simultaneously eager to break out. Besides banging the fence, some were digging at the foundations of the barrier. Right at the entrance, a knot of singletons had piled up, trying to reach over the top. If they had been a coordinated pack, wearing jackets with paw straps, they could have boosted some of themselves out. As it was, the pyramid would reach about two meters fifty and then fall back on itself.

  “Hei, Johanna! Help us.” The voice came f
rom those piling against the entrance.

  “Cheepers!” said Johanna. She recognized the white splash of fur on the back of its head. This was the most fluent of the Samnorsk speakers; sometimes he actually made sense. The poor guy would have been a big plus to almost any pack, but he was from one of Steel’s recycled monster packs. He had memories that eventually repelled whomever he was intimate with. Cheepers himself was gentle and friendly, and as smart as a singleton can be, which made his situation that much sadder to Jo. She went to one knee so she could look at the singleton eye to eye, through the tiny gaps in the fence. “What’s up, Cheepers?”

  “Get us out, get us out!”

  Johanna rocked back. How could she explain? Nuance was rarely a singleton’s strong point. “I—” she started to make some excuse and then thought, Well, why not? Slowly, she stood up. Yes, she really could have revenge. And it would end the crowding, and it would give Cheepers and his friends what they wanted.

  She looked at the gate. It was barred on the outside, but with a simple timber and clasp. It was almost two meters off the ground. An escaped singleton couldn’t reach the bar. She was vaguely aware of the three Tropicals on her side of the fence, watching her. No doubt they were too scatterbrained to figure out the mechanism, but any coherent pack on this side of the fence could have opened the gate easily, just by climbing up on itself. Johanna could open it most easily of all.

  Jo stepped forward, already gloating about imagined consequences. She reached for the gate bar, then hesitated. Consequences, consequences. There was a reason these poor creatures had been brought here. Where else could they go? In the towns of the Domain, a very few might find new minds, but the rest would be cuffed about, some killed, some enslaved. There was a reason for having the Fragmentarium. She herself had fought to make Woodcarver’s wartime field hospital into this institution. Releasing the patients would be vengeance mainly on these patients themselves. She glanced to her left, at Cheepers bouncing up and down, urging her on. If they hadn’t been all whipped up tonight, these frags would mostly shrink from escape.

  Johanna stepped back from the gate. No, there were some things too loony even for her, even in a rage. But I could have, and the look on Harmony would have been—

  Something came streaking in from her left, knocking her off her feet. All three Tropicals bounded past. They clambered over each other even as she scrambled to her feet. Maybe they had seen what she was going to do, maybe they were that smart by themselves. In any case, the top one eased its snout under the bar and flipped it loose. The pressure from within swung the gate open, knocking the three’s pyramid in all directions. The crowd within stampeded through, some of them knocking Johanna down again, most flowing smoothly around her. Some even said “Hei” on their way past.

  Johanna curled forward, protecting her face behind her knees and arms.

  Finally the thundering herd had passed. Their shouts and caroling echoed back from the hills as they chased themselves both south and north along the Queen’s Road.

  Jo got back on her feet. The damp ground had been trampled into mud. The open gate hung at an angle. She saw a half dozen figures near the entrance.

  “Guys?” Johanna walked toward the remaining Tines. It wouldn’t be surprising if the departure had left some injured behind.

  Even close up, she didn’t see any blood. None of the Tines were limping, except the one she called Dirty Henrik, and he’d had a bad forepaw ever since the rest of his pack got squished in a rock fall. No, these six just couldn’t decide whether they were staying or going. They milled in and out of the entrance, making nervous noises as they looked out into the dark.

  Jo stood by the gate for a moment, feeling just as uncertain as the remaining Tines, and thinking through her reasoning of moments before—before the Tropicals had put everyone on the other side of the question. Finally she said, “You gotta make up your minds, guys, cuz I’m gonna close this gate.”

  None of them understood Samnorsk, but when she put her hands on the gate and began to push it shut, they seemed to get the message. All but Dirty Henrik quickly slipped inside. Henrik remained half in and half out, his nose twitching as he smelled the night air. His pack had been a lumberjack; maybe he could do all right in the outside. Dirty Henrik wobbled back and forth, then realized the gate was still closing on him. He gave a little squeak and retreated within.

  Jo had to force the gate upwards to overcome the bent hinge, and then it was shut. She left the lock bar on the ground. Hell, if he wanted to badly enough, Henrik could probably push his way out.

  And now … Johanna stood in silence for a moment, trying to make sense of what had happened and decide how she should feel about it. Finally she shook her head and started up the steps that led to the admin building. She had some phone calls to make.

  • • •

  The other Children called the events of that night “Jo’s great jailbreak.” Some of them thought it was all very funny. The consequences? Maybe they were as bad as Johanna had imagined, though not quite so obvious and visible. For the next year or so, the back alleys and garbage dumps of villages all around had a surplus of singletons and duos, aimless beggars who importuned and incompetently burgled and robbed. A few came back to the Fragmentarium. A very few found refuge in the new Tropical “embassy,” though the Tropicals seemed much less happy to have recruits than they were to raise hell with the local singletons.

  The majority of the runaways simply disappeared into the awesome wilderness. Pilgrim thought that more than a few of the disappeared had survived and made packs of themselves. “I can tell you from personal experience,” he told Jo some tendays later, when he caught her crying, “when times get really tough, you’ll patch up with parts you could never imagine sharing even a single thought with. Hei, look at me.” That turned her sobs into a hiccupping laugh; she knew what he meant better than most humans. Nevertheless, she was sure that the wide, deep silence of the northern forests had swallowed the lives of most of the runaways.

  And consequences for Johanna Olsndot herself? Leave aside her most idiot classmates who thought it was all a joke. Her little brother seemed to regard the incident with uneasy awe. She was the sister who corrected his foolishness. In his view, this situation upset the natural order.

  Woodcarver actually stopped talking to Jo for a time. Her Majesty knew the odds against singletons in the wild. She had allowed the Fragmentarium from the same good will that she extended to her war veterans—and Harmony’s plans had been an attempt to make room for those healthy singletons to remain in safety. More, she knew that the escape was a slap not just at Harmony Redjackets but at Woodcarver herself.

  Maybe it was because of good words from Pilgrim to Woodcarver, but the Fragmentarium remained open. Indeed, one happy consequence was exactly as Johanna had imagined: now there was plenty of room in the institution. Woodcarver did not move to boot the old members out of the place. Mr. Stonemason and the others had a place for their elderly parts, even doomed as they were. That crowding problem was postponed for a while—and Harmony looked like the ineffectual, pompous assholes that he was!

  Any time in the first days after the Breakout, Johanna could easily have proclaimed her innocence. After all, the evidence against her was circumstantial, with Harmony the loudest proclaimer of her guilt. The only eyewitnesses were very confused singletons, and some of them apparently thought she had been the one to throw the gate open. She almost told Pilgrim the truth—except that she soon guessed that he already knew. Johanna came even closer to telling Ravna Bergsndot. It hurt to think that Ravna saw her as just a stupid little teenager; the poor lady had to deal with too many of those already. But the days passed, and Johanna’s reputation grew and solidified. Yeah, she was very glad she hadn’t done what people thought she had. But hell, it had happened—and in the future, maybe people like Harmony would think twice before they crossed the Mad Bad Girl of Starship Hill.

  Ten years after the Battle on Starship Hill

&nb
sp; Chapter 04

  Remasritlfeer had been working for the Great Tycoon for more than two years. This was a constant source of surprise to Remasritlfeer, who had never taken kindly to fools, even ones as rich as Tycoon. The two years had been one crackbrained mission after another, some more dangerous and exciting than the explorer in Remasritlfeer would have ever dreamed. And maybe that was why he continued to work for the madpack.

  This latest piece of insanity might finally bring an end to their relationship. Exploring the Tropics! The assignment was more dangerous, more insane—literally insane—than anything Tycoon had demanded before. But truthfully, the first few days had been magnificent: Remasritlfeer had totally survived and in two ways he’d matched or exceeded the triumph of any explorer in the history of the world.

  Unfortunately, that was four tendays ago. Tycoon just didn’t know when to give up. Glory had degenerated into deadly tedium, tenday after tenday of failures.

  “There has to come an end to it, you know.” The words expressed Remasritlfeer’s heartfelt opinion, but they were spoken by his passenger on this flight. This final trip, if there was any mercy in the world. Chitiratifor was a well-dressed sixsome who barely fit in the balloon’s passenger platform. The Sea Breeze’s gondola was a cramped place where every pound had to be accounted for. The insulation round the passenger platform was so thin that Chitiratifor’s anxiety was painfully loud. Remasritlfeer could see claws and jaws here and there through the partition. His passenger was gouging the frame of the gondola with all his strength. There were retching sounds, some of his members barfing into the muddy water below.

  Remasritlfeer waggled a semaphore at Tycoon’s sailing fleet below. They paid out the tether a bit faster, let the sea breeze blow the Sea Breeze steadily toward the swampy inland. This had been the routine twice a tenday since the beginning of this horrid exercise. All through the predawn, Tycoon’s support vessels would puff away, mixing iron filings with various corrosive poisons, filling the gas bag of the Sea Breeze or its alternate. Then, as the morning wind picked up, Remasritlfeer would lift off, sailing through the air like no one in history, like no one in the world (if you didn’t count the Sky Maggots).