by Vernor Vinge
The troops on the walls backed far out of his way. This was more than courtesy, more than their fear of Steel. His troops were still not used to the cloaked ones, and the cover story Shreck was spreading did nothing to ease their minds: Lord Steel was accompanied by a singleton—in the colors of a Lord. The creature made no mind sounds. It walked incredibly close to its master.
Steel said to the singleton, “Success is a matter of meeting a schedule. I remember you teaching me that,”cutting it into me, in fact.
The member looked back at him, cocked its head. “As I remember, I said that success was a matter of adapting to changes in schedules.” The words were perfectly articulated. There were singletons that could talk that well—but even the most verbal could not carry on intelligent conversation. Shreck had had no trouble convincing the troops that Flenser science had created a race of superpacks, that the cloaked ones were individually as smart as any ordinary pack. It was a good cover for what the cloaks really were. It both inspired fear and obscured the truth.
The member stepped a little closer—nearer to Steel than anyone had been except during murders and rapes and the beatings of the past. Involuntarily, Steel licked his lips and spread out from around the threat. Yet in some ways the dark-cloaked one was like a corpse, without a trace of mind sound. Steel snapped his jaws shut and said, “Yes. The genius is in winning even when the schedules have fallen down the garderobe.” He looked all away from the Flenser member and scanned the red-shrouded southern horizon. “What’s the latest estimate of Woodcarver’s progress?”
“She’s still camped about five days southeast of here.”
“The damned incompetent. It’s hard to believe she’s your parent! Vendacious made things so easy for her; her soldiers and toy cannon should have been here almost a tenday past—”
“And been well-butchered, on schedule.”
“Yes! Long before our sky friends arrived. Instead, she wanders inland and then balks.”
The Flenser member shrugged in its dark cloak. Steel knew the radio was as heavy as it looked. It consoled him that the other was paying a price for his omniscience. Just think, in heat like this, to have every part of oneself muffled to the tympana. He could imagine the discomfort… Indoors, he could smell it.
They walked past one of the wall cannon. The barrel gleamed of layered metal. The thing had thrice the range of Woodcarver’s pitiful invention. While Woodcarver had been working with Dataset and a human child’s intuition, he had had the direct advice of Ravna and company. At first he’d feared their largesse, thinking it meant the Visitors were superior beyond need for care. Now … the more he heard of Ravna and the others, the more clearly he understood their weakness. They could not experiment with themselves, improve themselves. Inflexible, slow-changing dullards. Sometimes they showed a low cunning—Ravna’s coyness about what she wanted from the first starship—but their desperation was loud in all their messages, as was their attachment to the human child.
Everything had been going so well till just a few days ago. As they walked out of earshot of the gunner pack, Steel said to the Flenser member, “And still no word from our ‘rescuers’.”
“Quite so,” That was the other botched schedule, the important one, which they could not control. “Ravna has missed four sessions. Two of me is down with Amdijefri right now.” The singleton jabbed its snout toward the dome of the inner keep. The gesture was an awkward abortion. Without other muzzles and other eyes, body language was a limited thing. We just aren’t built to wander around a piece here, a piece there.“Another few minutes and the space folk will have missed a fifth talk session. The children are getting desperate, you know.”
The member’s voice sounded sympathetic. Almost unconsciously, Lord Steel sidled a little farther out from around it. Steel remembered that tone from his own early existence. He also remembered the cutting and death that had always followed. “I want them kept happy, Tyrathect. We’re assuming communication will resume; when it does we’ll need them.” Steel bared six pairs of jaws at the surrounded singleton. “None of your old tricks.”
The member flinched, an almost imperceptible twitch that pleased Steel more than the grovelling of ten thousand. “Of course not. I’m just saying that you should visit them, try to help them with their fear.”
“You do it.”
“Ah … they don’t fully trust me. I’ve told you before, Steel; they love you.”
“Ha! And they’ve seen through to your meanness, eh?” The situation made Steel proud. He had succeeded where Flenser’s own methods would have failed. He had manipulated without threats or pain. It had been Steel’s craziest experiment, and certainly his most profitable. But “—Look, I don’t have time to wetnurse anyone. It’s a tiresome thing to talk to those two.” And it was very tiresome to hold his temper, to suffer Jefri’s “petting” and Amdi’s pranks. In the beginning, Steel had insisted that no one else have close contact with the children. They were too important to expose to others; the most casual slipup might show them the truth and ruin them. Even now, Tyrathect was the only pack besides himself who had regular contact. But for Steel, every meeting was worse than the last, an ultimate test of his self control. It was hard to think straight in a killing rage, and that’s how almost every conversation with them ended for Steel. How wonderful it would be when the space folk landed. Then he could use the other end of the tool that was Amdijefri. Then there would be no need to have their trust and friendship. Then he would have a lever, something to torture and kill to enforce his demands.
Of course, if the aliens never landed, or if… “We must do something! I will not be flotsam on the wave of the future.” Steel lashed at the scaffolding that ran along the inner side of the parapet, shredding the wood with his gleaming tines. “We can’t do anything about the aliens, so let’s deal with Woodcarver. Yes!” He smiled at the Flenser member. “Ironic, isn’t it? For a hundred years, you sought her destruction. Now I can succeed. What would have been your great triumph is for me just an annoying detour, undertaken because greater projects are temporarily delayed.”
The cloaked one did not look impressed. “There is a little matter of gifts falling out of the sky.”
“Yes, into my open jaws. And that is my good fortune, isn’t it?” He walked on several paces, chuckling to himself. “Yes. It’s time to have Vendacious bring his trusting Queen in for the slaughter. Maybe it will interfere with other events, but… I know, we’ll have the battle east of here.”
“The Margrum Climb?”
“Correct. Woodcarver’s forces should be well concentrated coming up the defile. We’ll move our cannon over there, set them behind the ridgeline at the top of the Climb. It will be easy to destroy all her people. And it’s far enough from Starship Hill; even if the space folk arrive at the same time, we can keep the two projects separate.” The singleton didn’t say anything, and after a moment Steel glared at him. “Yes dear teacher, I know there is a risk. I know it splits our forces. But we’ve got an army sitting on our doorstep. They’ve arrived inconveniently late, but even Vendacious can’t make them turn around and go home. And if he tries to stall things, the Queen might… Can you predict just what she would do?”
“…No. She has always had a way with the unexpected.”
“She might even see through Vendacious’ fraud. So. We take a small chance, and destroy her now. You are with Farscout Rangolith?”
“Yes. Two of me.”
“Tell him to get word to Vendacious. He is to have the Queen’s army coming up Margrum Climb not less than two days from now. Feel free to elaborate; you know the region better than I. We’ll work out final details when both sides are in position.” It was a wonderful thing to be the effective commander of both sides in a battle! “One more thing. It’s important and Vendacious must see to it within the dayaround: I want Woodcarver’s human dead.”
“What harm can she do?”
“That’s a stupid question,”especially coming from you.“We do
n’t know when Ravna and Pham may reach us. Till we have them safe in our jaws, the Johanna creature is a dangerous thing to have nearby. Tell Vendacious to make it look like an accident, but I want that Two-Legs dead.”
Flenser was everywhere. It was a form of godhood he’d dreamed of since he’d been Woodcarver’s newby. While one of him talked to Steel, two others lounged about the Starship with Amdijefri, and two more padded through light forest just north of Woodcarver’s encampment.
Paradise can also be an agony, and each day the torment was a little harder to bear. In the first place, this summer was as insufferably hot as any in the North. And the radio cloaks were not merely hot and heavy. They necessarily covered his members’ tympana. And unlike other uncomfortable costumes, the price of taking these off for even a moment was mindlessness. His first trials had lasted just an hour or two. Then had come a five-day expedition with Farscout Rangolith, providing Steel with instant information and instant command of the country around Starhip Hill. It had taken a couple of dayarounds to recover from the sores and aches of the radio cloaks.
This latest exercise in omniscience had lasted twelve days. Wearing the cloaks all the time was impossible. Every day in a rotation, one of his members threw off its radio, was bathed, and had its cloak’s liner changed. It was Flenser’s hour of daily madness, when sometimes the weak-willed Tyrathect would come back to mind, vainly trying to reestablish her dominance. It didn’t matter. With one of his members disconnected, the remaining pack was only four. There are foursomes of normal intelligence, but none existed in Flenser/Tyrathect. The bathing and recloaking were all done in a confused haze.
And of course, even though Flenser was “everywhere at once”, he wasn’t any smarter than before. After the first jarring experiments, he got the hang of seeing/hearing scenes that were radically different—but it was as difficult as ever to carry on multiple conversations. When he was bantering with Steel, his other members had very little to say to Amdijefri or to Rangolith’s scouts.
Lord Steel was done with him. Flenser walked along the parapets with his former student, but if Steel had said anything to him it would have taken him away from his current conversation. Flenser smiled (carefully so the one with Steel would not show it). Steel thought he was talking to Farscout Rangolith just now. Oh, he would do that … in a few minutes. One advantage of his situation was that no one could know for sure everything Flenser was up to. If he was careful, he would eventually rule here again. It was a dangerous game, and the cloaks were themselves dangerous devices. Keep a cloak out of sunlight for a few hours and it lost power, and the member wearing it was cut off from the pack. Worse was the problem of static—that was a mantis word. The second set of cloaks had killed its user, and the Spacers weren’t sure of the cause, except that it was some sort of “interference” problem.
Flenser had experienced nothing so extreme. But sometimes on his farthest hikes with Rangolith, or when a cloak’s power faded … there was an incredible shrieking in his mind, like a dozen packs crowding close, sounds that scaled between sex madness and killing frenzy. Tyrathect seemed to like times like that; she’d come bounding out of the confusion, swamping him with her soft hate. Normally she lurked around the edges of his consciousness, tweaking a word here, a motive there. After the static, she was much worse; on one occasion she’d held control for almost a dayaround. Given a year without crises, Flenser could have studied Ty and Ra and Thect and done a proper excision. Thect, the member with the white-tipped ears, was probably the one to kill: it wasn’t bright, but it was likely the capstone of the trio. With a precisely crafted replacement, Flenser might be even greater than before the massacre at Parliament Bowl. But for now, Flenser was stuck; soul surgery on one’s self was an awesome challenge—even to The Master.
So. Careful. Careful. Keep the cloaks well charged, take no long trips, and don’t let any one person see all the threads of your plan. While Steel thought he was seeking Rangolith, Flenser was talking to Amdi and Jefri.
The human’s face was wet with tears. “F-four times we’ve missed R-ravna. What has happened to her?” His voice screeched up. Flenser hadn’t realized there was such flexibility in the belching mechanism that humans use to make sound.
Most of Amdi clustered round the boy. He licked Jefri’s cheeks. “It could be our ultrawave. Maybe it’s broken.” He looked beseechingly at Flenser. There were tears in the puppies’ eyes, too. “Tyrathect, please ask Steel again. Let us stay in the ship all the dayaround. Maybe there are messages that have come through and not been recorded.”
Flenser with Steel descended the northern stairs, crossed the parade ground. He gave a sliver of attention to the other’s complaints about the sloppy maintenance around the practice stands. At least Steel was smart enough to keep the discipline scaffolds over on Hidden Island.
Flenser with Rangolith’s troopers splashed through a mountain stream. Even in high summer, in the middle of a Drywind, there were still snow patches, and the streams running from under them were icy cold.
Flenser with Amdijefri edged forward, let two of Amdi rest against his sides. Both children liked physical contact, and he was the only one they had besides each other. It was all perversion of course, but Flenser had based his life on manipulating others’ weakness, and—but for the pain—welcomed it. Flenser buzzed a deep purring sound through his shoulders, carressing the puppy next to him. “I’ll ask our Lord Steel the very next time I see him.”
“Thank you.” A puppy nuzzled at his cloak, then mercifully moved away; Flenser was a mass of sores beneath that cover. Perhaps Amdi realized that, or perhaps—more and more Flenser saw a reticence in the children. His comment to Steel had been a slip into the truth: these two really didn’t trust him. That was Tyrathect’s fault. On his own, Flenser would have had no trouble winning Amdijefri’s love. Flenser had none of Steel’s killing temper and fragile dignity. Flenser could chat for casual pleasure, all the while mixing truth with lies. One of his greatest talents was empathy; no sadist can aspire to perfection without that diagnostic ability. But just when he was doing well, when they seemed about to open to him—then Ty or Ra or Thect would pop up, twisting his expression or poisoning his choice of phrase. Perhaps he should content himself with undermining the children’s respect for Steel (without, of course, ever saying anything directly against him). Flenser sighed, and patted Jefri’s arm comfortingly. “Ravna will be back. I’m sure of it.” The human sniffled a little, then reached out to pet the part of Flenser’s head that was not shrouded by the cloak. They sat in companionable silence for a moment, and his attention drifted back to—
—the forest and Rangolith’s troops. The group had been moving uphill for almost ten minutes. The others were lightly burdened and used to this sort of exercise. Flenser’s two members were lagging. He hissed at the group leader.
The group leader sidled back, his squad shifting briskly out of his way. He stopped when his nearest was fifteen feet from Flenser’s. The soldier’s heads cocked this way and that. “Your wishes … My Lord?” This one was new; he had been briefed about the cloaks, but Flenser knew the fellow didn’t understand the new rules. The gold and silver that glinted in the darkness of the cloaks—those colors were reserved for the Lords of the Domain. Yet there only two of Flenser here; normally such a fragment could barely carry on a conversation, much less give reasonable orders. Just as disconcerting, Flenser knew, was his lack of mind sound. “Zombie” was the word some of the troops used when they thought themselves alone.
Flenser pointed up the hill; the timberline was only a few yards away. “Farscout Rangolith is on the other side. We will take a short cut,” he said weakly.
Part of the other was already looking up the hill. “That is not good, sir.” The trooper spoke slowly. Stupid damn duo, his posture said. “The bad ones will see us.”
Flenser glowered at the other, a hard thing to do properly when you are just two. “Soldier, do you see the gold on my shoulders? Even one of me is wort
h all of you. If I say take a short cut, we do it—even if it means walking belly deep through brimstone.” Actually, Flenser knew exactly where Vendacious had put lookouts. There was no risk in crossing the open ground here. And he was so tired.
The group leader still didn’t know quite what Flenser was, but he saw the dark-cloaks were at least as dangerous as any full-pack lord. He backed off humbly, bellies dragging on the ground. The group turned up hill and a few minutes later were walking across open heather.
Rangolith’s command post was less than a half mile away along this path—
Flenser with Steel walked into the inner keep. The stone was freshly cut, the walls thrown up with the feverish speed of all this castle’s construction. Thirty feet over their heads, where vault met buttresses, there were small holes set in the stonework. Those holes would soon be filled with gunpowder—as would slots in the wall surrounding the landing field. Steel called those the Jaws of Welcome. Now he turned a head back to Flenser. “So what does Rangolith say?”
“Sorry. He’s been out on patrol. He should be here—I mean, he should be in camp—any minute.” Flenser did his best to conceal his own trips with the scouts. Such recons were not forbidden, but Steel would have demanded explanations if he knew.
Flenser with Rangolith’s troops sloshed through water-soaked heather. The air over the snowmelt was delightfully chill, and the breeze pushed cool tongues partway under his wretched cloaks.
Rangolith had chosen the site for his command post well. His tents were in a slight depression at the edge of a large summer pond. A hundred yards away, a huge patch of a snow covered the hill above them and fed the pond, and kept the air pleasantly cool. The tents were out of sight from below, yet the site was so high in the hills that from the edge of the depression there was a clear view across three points of the compass, centered on the south. Resupply could be accomplished from the north with little chance of detection, and even if the damn fires struck the forests below, this post would be untouched.