by Vernor Vinge
Shattered days and shattered nights. A pack sat with her in most of these longer pieces of time. It had perfectly matched blazes on two of its snouts. Screwfloss? The pack fed her, turned her head when she choked on vomit, cleaned her as she soiled herself. He was not always nice. Many times, he hurt her face with a wet cloth. And he fell into jaw-snapping rages. “I’m just the prisoner’s asswipe!” he once said. That was funny, but he also complained that she was delirious. “You’re repeating what I say,” he hissed at her, a head close by her throat. “‘Prisoner’s asswipe, prisoner’s asswipe.’ Can’t you just shut up?”
The longest pieces of time were in bright daylight. She was wrapped in warm blankets, trussed to the top of a slowly moving wagon. When her eyes were open, she saw variously: snowbound forest, Screwfloss driving the wagon, Gannon Jorkenrud. Jefri, walking behind the wagon behind hers. Jefri looked so gaunt.
There were other packs. Sometimes they paced along with her wagon, and more than one shard began: “So. Will she die soon?” This from the pack with the ragged ears. The creature was a sixsome, each member as heavy as Amdi’s biggest, but more muscular-looking. Its Samnorsk was crude, a patchwork of several human voices.
And Screwfloss replying: “Quite soon, my lord Chitiratifor. You can see the injury to her snout. Day by day, she weakens.”
The two packs spoke softly. No human but Ravna could hear them. “Don’t take shortcuts, Screwfloss.” Parts of the creature were looking beyond where Ravna could see. “This must be a natural death.”
Maybe Amdi came to chat, but Ravna only remembered Screwfloss chasing him off.
One other pack visited Screwfloss. This was a lean, small-bodied fivesome. It spoke no Samnorsk, but it seemed to be interrogating Screwfloss about Ravna’s upcoming death. The parts she could see up close had pale, unfriendly eyes. There was deadly anger in its Tinish gobbling.
Then came the longest single fragment of time. It began with another visit from Raggedy Ears. The pack walked quietly along with the wagon for some minutes, just watching Ravna. “She is not dead yet, Screwfloss.”
“Sigh. Quite so, my lord Chitiratifor.”
“Her breathing is different. Her eyes move. She is not weakening day by day, like you say.” The raggedy-eared pack emitted an angry hiss. “Humans should be easy to kill, Screwfloss!”
“But you said no shortcuts, my lord. Yes, the two-legs may survive after all—but take a look at her crushed-in snout. She will never have more mind than a singleton.”
“That may not be dead enough.” Chitiratifor looked away, watching something—someone?—beyond the front wagon. Finally he said, “I’ll get back to you, Screwfloss.” And he walked on ahead.
They rolled on for another minute or two, then Screwfloss gave her a little jab in the back. “Getting better, are you?” he said.
Ravna didn’t reply. She remained still and lifeless throughout the rest of the afternoon, watching all that she could without moving her head. They were in a deep valley, and she had occasional glimpses of a white-foaming river paralleling their course. She could hear a wagon ahead of her. She could see a wagon behind her; it was the enclosed fodder carrier that figured in some of her most incoherent memories. Behind the fodder wagon walked Amdi and Jefri and Gannon. In times past, Jef and Gannon had been—perhaps not friends—but at least fellow delinquents. Now they scarcely spoke. When Gannon wasn’t watching him, sometimes Jefri’s hands tightened into fists.
Sunlight had left the forest canopy. She caught glimpses of brilliant snows on valley walls above that. This was far sunnier than … before. As the afternoon slid toward twilight, she heard the low hooting of a Tinish alarm. The wagons drove off the path, through the snow into the deepest shade. Chitiratifor came racing back along the path, unlimbering telescopes as he ran. He settled in the snow, angling the telescopes through a break in the tree cover. The wagoneers hustled ’round to their kherhogs and tried to quiet the animals. For several moments, everyone was silent, watchful. The only motion was the slow rising of Chitiratifor’s telescopes. He was tracking something, and it was coming this way.
And then, finally, Ravna heard it: the purring buzz of steam induction engines. Scrupilo and Eyes Above 2. The airship’s sound grew over the next minute … and then faded to silence in the minute after. Chitiratifor set down his telescopes and started to get up. Some pack outside of Ravna’s view emitted a preemptory hiss, and Chitiratifor dropped back to a prone position. Everyone remained quiet for several minutes more. Then Chitiratifor came to his feet and irritably waved for the wagoneers to get back on the road.
As they drove into the deepening twilight, Ravna thought back over the afternoon. She could remember it all as a continuous stream of time, logically binding cause with effect.
It might be too late, but her life had resumed.
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Pretending to be comatose might have been the safest plan, but Ravna soon realized that was flatly impossible. The smell that drenched her memories—that smell was her clothes, her self. Without Screwfloss, she would surely have oozing sores. For all his apparent anger at her, he had done miracles with a few damp rags and perhaps one change of clothes. But now that she was coherent, she couldn’t go on like that. So be a broken singleton, and hope that that is dead enough.
When they stopped for the night, she let Screwfloss set her on the ground by the wagon. She let him rewrap her blankets. But when he brought food and tried to tease it into her mouth, she wriggled her hands out from the blankets, reached for the bowl. Screwfloss held back for a moment, then he let her take the bowl. He watched her with almost ferocious intensity as she sipped from it, but he didn’t say a word.
This evening was Ravna’s first good look at her captors. She counted at least four packs spread out around a banked fire. Amdi and Jefri and Gannon seemed to be doing most of the scutwork. They had their own small campfire, whence Screwfloss had brought her food. Even in the dim light, Jef looked as awful as she remembered. He was doing his best not to glance in her direction. Amdi was less successful at that, but he had more heads to account for. And Gannon? Gannon Jorkenrud did not look like a happy camper, but he was eating heartily.
These three might not be prisoners, but they were very junior members of the kidnap gang. Now that she had recovered her mind, Ravna had a million theories. Jefri had betrayed her in the past … but this had to be different. And Gannon? Another covert ally? That was much harder to believe.
The syrup-grain didn’t quite make her sick, but now … Ravna struggled to get her feet under her. “Gotta go,” she said to Screwfloss. The pack hesitated, but this time very briefly. Then he brought over Jo’s old boots and helped her put them on. As she stood up and he chivvied her into the bushes, she heard Gannon laugh.
It wasn’t hard to act like a brain-damaged singleton. Even her staggering progress would have been impossible without Screwfloss’ support. When they finally stopped, she collapsed into a squat. Screwfloss steadied her for a moment, then all of him stepped back. It might be too dark for any pack to see, but Ravna noticed a wave of palpable joy spread across Screwfloss. He was no longer the prisoner’s asswipe. And maybe his joy was for more than that:
“You’ve finally got your mind back, haven’t you?” Screwfloss’ voice was the faintest whisper, seeming to come from inside her ears. It was the sort of focused audio that a coordinated pack could do. Ravna made a nondescript affirmative noise. “Good,” continued Screwfloss’ whisper. “The less mouth talk you make, the better … we have a lot to catch up on.” But then he said nothing more.
As they lurched back to camp, Ravna noticed that Screwfloss had a small limp of his own. He was the pack who had chased her out of her house, the one whose leg she had smashed.
She was aware of numerous heads watching as Screwfloss settled her down by their wagon. After a moment, the second-scariest kidnapper came over and waved Screwfloss away. This was the lean, pale-eyed pack. It poked around at her, talking Samnorsk that ma
inly showed it had no real understanding of human language. Ravna moaned and swayed and hoped she looked mindless. After several minutes of this, the fivesome stood back. It seemed as irritated by her progress as Chitiratifor had been. It turned, said something imperative to Screwfloss, and walked away. So, thought Ravna, am I dead enough?
Most of the camp settled down for the night; the dimly glowing embers were not bright enough for Tinish vision. That didn’t stop the two chief kidnappers: a greenish light appeared atop the front wagon. Ah, they had one of the tunable lamps from Oobii. Chitiratifor had spread something across the flat of the wagon top. Maps? He seemed to be consulting with the lean fivesome.
After a time, they put out the light, but at least one pack was still moving around. She saw shadows sliding off into the undergrowth. A sentry being posted? Time passed. There were little animal noises, and then even that quieted. No doubt parts of the sleeping packs were still awake, but they made no humanly audible sound. Far away, she heard the river she had noticed this afternoon. She turned in the direction of the sound, and saw a tiny flicker of greenish light, surely too faint for any pack in the campsite to notice. So some pack had business down by the river, technical business they wanted done away from their fellow-kidnappers.
Ravna saw the light a couple more times, in the same direction, faint and vagrant through the underbrush. Eventually, one of Screwfloss shifted in its sleep, blocking her view. The pack had made no more secret talk.
It was getting hard to stay awake. She resisted sleep for a time, inanely. Consciousness was fun; what if she woke up without her mind again? As she drifted off, she played with possibilities. She’d heard Screwfloss conspiring about her murder, but since the abduction, his every action had protected her. Jefri, Amdi, Screwfloss. What if they were trying to save her? They hadn’t explained themselves, first because she was out of her head, and now because they were in the midst of enemies with the sharpest natural hearing of any race Ravna knew. Never mind that these three had chased her from her house and grabbed her once she got outside. Ah, what Flenseresque ambiguity! But if she had to bet her life on a theory about friends and enemies, she knew what it would be.
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The next day, Ravna sat among Screwfloss atop the middle wagon. He made a big deal of bracing her with supplies and tie-downs, but in fact she was suffering only occasional dizziness. She did her best to stay slumped and motionless—and not touch her face! Her nose and cheek still hurt, but it was touching the crushed bone and cartilage that that made her cry out in pain.
Pretty obviously, they were south of the Icefang Mountains, and following one of the long geological rifts that scarred this side of the continent. Nothing like these rifts had been active during humanity’s time on Old Earth (or Nyjora), but such structures were common on terrestrial planets. On a time scale of centuries, these valleys suffered enormous ground shifts and killing lava floods. Even more commonly, carbon dioxide or methane would surge the length of a valley, killing everything that needed oxygen, or causing tornadoes of fire. The result was a turbulent patchwork of ecologies, full of paradoxes—at least to Oobii’s simple-minded analysis.
Her kidnappers were either crazy or they had an expert guide, some pack who knew the transient escape routes and understood the treacherous peculiarities of whatever life currently survived.
The wagons stopped near midday. The packs spread out, hunting lunch. Some of the results were humanly edible. Ravna was kept well away from other humans and Amdi. Screwfloss risked a few more words of focused whispering: “I think Chitiratifor has decided about you. I dunno quite what to do.”
Late in the afternoon they crossed the boundary of some recent cataclysm. In the space of two hundred meters, the dense undergrowth and bushy trees were replaced by an open forest of tall, slim trees. The direct sunlight had melted the snow down to isolated drifts. This might have been a different world, except that the same river continued to roar along just a few meters downslope of their path. The other wagoneers looked around nervously. Chitiratifor paced the wagons, emitting blustery encouragement that didn’t sound credible even to Ravna. She, on the other hand, was cheered by the change. If Eyes Above 2 flew over today, it would be much harder for these guys to hide. Pilgrim’s agrav skiff would do even better; Chitiratifor would have no audible warning at all.
That thought was the most exciting event of the afternoon.
As twilight deepened, Chitiratifor went on ahead; Ravna saw him consulting with the lean-bodied fivesome. When Chitiratifor returned, he waved the wagoneers forward another hundred meters and then off the road, into a relative dense stand of trees—tonight’s campground.
─────
Dinner went much like the night before, though now she got a little meat—and she was enormously hungry. She did her best to disguise her appetite. Screwfloss helped with her act, but in an enormously irritating way, cutting her meat into tiny chunks and pushing one piece at a time at her. He made preemptory gobbling noises, as if encouraging an animal to eat. Okay. Ravna played dumb, and did her best not to look across the gloom to where Jefri and Amdi sat with Gannon.
This night, no pack came around to inquire about her medical status. Yes, something had been Decided. Raggedy Ears and the fivesome had another map conference and then it was lights out. The packs spread out a bit, each hiding itself as few human campers would do. It was hard to tell just where they all were, or who might be on sentry duty, but somebody was moving around. She saw shadows departing in the direction of the river. Chitiratifor.
Ravna gave it about ten minutes, then leaned toward the nearest of Screwfloss. “Gotta go. Gotta go!” she said.
Screwfloss emitted complaining noises, but came to his feet quickly enough. Even better, he didn’t object when Ravna started off in the direction of the river sounds.
Between the tree tops, the stars provided just enough light to avoid low-hanging branches. Ahead, the rushing river was loud, hiding whatever other sounds there might be. She saw no gleams of greenish lamp light. Finally Screwfloss drew her down. “Stay!” he said, in a focused whisper. So he wasn’t willing to risk serious snooping. She should probably be glad. But as she squatted down, she noticed Screwfloss slinking off downslope on his own snooping expedition.
She had crouched down about as long as seemed reasonable, when she heard soft gobbling. This was like Tinish Interpack speech, but with most of the chords unstacked, the squeaks and hisses spaced out. If it had been a little louder, she might have understood it. Someone was using one of Scrupilo’s voice-band radios, speaking very carefully to compensate for some kind of transmission problem. Even so, who could be in range? Now the words were Samnorsk … Nevil speaking. Nevil was giving them relay service via the orbiter! She stood, took a step or two in the direction of the muttered conversation.
A hand abruptly covered her mouth. An arm went around her waist. She was lifted off her feet and lowered gently to the ground. It was Jefri. They lay for a moment on the chill moist earth, both silent. Amdi’s voice came in her ear. “We have to go back now.”
Ravna nodded. Amdi was all around them. She and Jefri stood up and—
From downslope, there was an explosion of caterwauling, the sounds of monsters tearing each other apart. Jefri dived for cover, drawing her down with him. The night erupted with the cries of packs running from the campsite toward the river. Screaming rage was all around them. They huddled under something bushy as pack members hurtled past.
All the action was down by the river now. The fighting was louder, punctuated by whistling screams of mouth noise. Somebody was being murdered.
Jefri came to his feet and reached down to help Ravna out from the bush.
Her legs were tangled in the branches. Somehow she had wriggled in too far! She twisted around, looking toward the battle noises. That was louder now, but saner sounding too. Someone was shouting real language, orders. There were lights. A search—but still down by the river.
“I’m st
uck!” she whispered.
Jefri braced his back against the lower branches and pushed up. She heard his knife slashing. Amdi had been at the edges of the undergrowth. Now he pulled as Jefri lifted, and Ravna slid out.
Someone had come running up from the direction of the river. Screwfloss, all five of him. “Get back to camp!” he said. With Jefri supporting her, the walk took only moments. As they reached the wagons, Jefri paused, let Screwfloss help Ravna the rest of the way. Then he walked around the wagons into the campsite.
“What the fuck!” came Gannon’s voice, but this was no brave challenge. When Ravna staggered in with Screwfloss, she noticed that Gannon seemed alone. Even the kherhogs were clustered together as far as they could get from the sounds of the fighting. The draft animals were making their own frightened sounds, probably with as much sense as Gannon. Now bright lamplight was visible downslope, but the noise consisted of solitary screams and Tinish laughter.
A cold nose butted into Ravna’s hand. She stifled a squeak and slid her hand around the head. It was one of Amdi, but his whisper came from all of him, audible only in its sum. “I’m so scared, Ravna.”
“Amdi, get over here!” That was Jefri, already back by his bedroll.
Screwfloss settled Ravna down on her bedding and they both sat looking downslope. The survivors were already coming back, dark shadows that moved with the enthusiasm of hunters returning. She could smell blood on them, but their triumphant gobbling was edged with unease. Minutes later, six more shadows quietly moved into camp: Chitiratifor. She felt sure that some of his heads were turned in her direction, but he did not approach. All the surviving packs settled down and soon the night was quieter than it had been before the deadly fuss. There were no whuffling snores and less of the nighttime noise of small animals.
Ravna’s stark panic gradually eased, even as her mind raced around the possibilities. She was sure that Screwfloss was entirely awake, apparently resolved to keep silent. After a while, Ravna realized something else. Now she really did need a potty break.