by Vernor Vinge
Someone else gobbled something dismissive. Ravna looked around. Ah, there was Zek, on a separate perch, draped in his radio cloak. So there were others listening in, offering advice. Was there anyone else physically present? Behind her, she noticed a head or two of the gunpack, sticking up from the stairwell. Wait. There was one more, not a pack or a Radio Cloak member: It was Ritl. The singleton was sitting in the sunlight, on the bow side of Tycoon’s thrones. There was something self-satisfied about her; she had gotten away with something.
Ravna gestured at the singleton. “I thought you were leaving Ritl back in the Tropics?” she said to Tycoon.
Tycoon made an irritated noise. “Yes. The creature popped out of a storage cabinet last night. Remasritlfeer was an excellent employee, but perhaps I’m honoring his memory too much.” He gave his employee’s remnant a speculative glare. Ritl wriggled insouciantly on her velvet perch and let loose with chords that sounded sassy even to Ravna.
Tycoon ignored the comments. He waved grandly ahead. “We’re approaching the Domain.”
From where she was sitting, all Ravna could see was sky. She came to her knees, and looked down over the edge of the bow windows. She saw painfully bright snow, patches of shade and dark stone. The glaciers and peaks of the Icefang Mountains spread out before them. She remembered the maps, Amdi planning their final run over these mountains. The valley below led to one of the Domain’s southern border posts.
“I see you still have some hills to climb,” said Jefri.
Vendacious said via Zek: “Enjoy the delay, humans. Nevil will take you soon enough.”
Tycoon said something peremptory, and then in Samnorsk: “I will decide that, not Nevil.”
“Sorry, sir,” said Vendacious. “Of course, Nevil has no authority in this.”
Some of the eight were looking at Jefri. Even against the glare of the day, you could see that it was not a friendly stare. “We’ll get over these mountains by tomorrow at latest. The winds can change much faster than the tides.”
The great Tycoon was silent for a moment. All eight of him resumed their contemplation of the gleaming snowfields and jagged black rock. Knowing Tycoon, this was an heroic pose, mainly for their benefit. Maybe Ritl thought so, too: She emitted some belittling remark. Tycoon laughed and shrugged it off.
From way aft, the muffled buzz of the engines came slightly louder. Tycoon’s flight crew—presumably in the airship’s control gondola—was changing direction again. Ravna wondered what starting a day late would do to Tycoon’s plans and Nevil’s. And I wonder how often his crews have been over these mountains? It hadn’t happened before she was kidnapped; Oobii would have spotted the intruders instantly.
Partway through the long, slow turn, the deck dropped from beneath Ravna, then bounced back, knocking her across the deck. Jefri grabbed her under the shoulders, and they managed to ride out about thirty seconds of turbulence.
The Tines had it easier. They didn’t use tiedowns here, but those perches had rows of wooden bars, and every paw she could see had its claws securely wrapped around a grab hold.
Tycoon gobbled something at Zek.
Jefri translated: “He’s talking to Vendacious about the turbulence.”
Zek squawked something back. His radio cloak had slipped sideways, off-center from his tympana. The poor guy shrugged this way and that, finally got the cloak on properly. He slowly spoke seven separate sounds; they sounded like member names. Checking connectivity with the rest of himself?
Then Vendacious was back on line: “We’re fine, but the air is still bumpy. Tell the humans that their pack of puppies is feeling a bit under the weather…” Okay, a threat. Maybe Vendacious thought there were things she might say that could turn Tycoon.
Tycoon nodded soberly—missing the meaning that Ravna heard. “We must track back and forth across the front of these mountains. I am sure there are passes in the air, just like there are mountain passes for travellers on the ground. The difference is that the air passageways must be guessed at and they change from hour to hour. I say again, we’ll be over these mountains in the morning.” He spoke with the assurance of someone who is never contradicted.
They reversed course twice more, a long slow scan across the Icefangs. Except for fast and contrary windflows, they found nothing, certainly no airway over the mountains. Tycoon passed the time by unleashing his geeky side to pick Ravna’s brains about the “high spaces.”
“I used to wonder about the spaces beyond the sky,” he said, “but it never brought an ounce of profit and then I expelled that unproductive part of my imagination. Now I wish I had been more understanding. You humans give us new insights at the same time you do monstrous things. Someday we will visit the highest spaces, and not just scrabble over mountains.”
“Yes, sir,” said Ravna, “the stars are not too high.”
Talking about what that meant got them through another turn. He regarded her claims about the Zones and speed-of-light limitations as naive negativism—and he had even less interest when she tried to explain the Blight.
“No more religious nuttery!” he said. “I want humans of a practical mind, who are open to new concepts. We could do so much with my ideas, and your machine skills, and Nevil’s whatever—”
“And without Woodcarver’s interference,” put in Vendacious.
“Yes, of course,” said Tycoon. A head or two looked out at the mountains. The afternoon shadows were stretching deep across rock and glaciers. “This is insufferable!” he said. “There will be moonlight tonight, but I can’t risk as close flying as during the day.”
Ritl gobbled something.
“You be quiet!” Tycoon replied. The eight were not nearly so tolerant of Ritl as earlier in the day. He jabbed a snout in Zek’s direction. “What are the consequences of another day’s delay?”
Vendacious replied, but sounding more tentative than usual. “I’m afraid that Nevil Storherte is rather, um, insistent. He says that he’s set up a public meeting, and used various intrigues and coercion to persuade Woodcarver to attend. If we don’t arrive by tomorrow afternoon he’s afraid there’ll be catastrophe.”
“Damn that two-legs. I should talk to him directly!”
“That might not help, my lord. I think Nevil is being truthful in this. I know that Woodcarver can be very difficult to get the advantage of.”
“Is it just Woodcarver? Has Johanna surfaced? Or Pilgrim?”
“No, my lord.”
“Keep watch for surprises,” said Tycoon. He was silent for a moment. “Nevil aside, we need to arrive by afternoon. There’s our sea fleet to consider. That’s some tonnes of cargo, including 1024 radios, a gift that will surely impress both the humans and Woodcarver’s supporters. Heh, after all, it could just as well have been a thousand guns on the backs of gunpacks. You’re sure the fleet is to arrive by midday?”
“Yes, my lord. Its progress has been very steady. Nevil has been tracking it, and my own agents have now spotted it too.”
“Right,” Tycoon was nodding emphatically. “One thing I’ve learned about marketing. You have to have the pitch and the move and product all coordinated. I—”
Zek interrupted him, but the voice did not belong to Vendacious: “What I don’t understand, is why we haven’t heard directly from the fleet? They have radios; we should simply request that they delay landing till it fits the overall schedule.”
Vendacious replied to the unknown speaker: “It’s true, we haven’t had direct word. After all, the Choir is more a thing than an ally, and these rafts are only a small fragment of that. The fleet should never have left as early as it did, but it had the full merchant cargo on board.”
“Who is Vendacious replying to?” asked Ravna, the words just popping out. Whoever this was, it spoke pretty good Samnorsk, and sounded strangely familiar.
Tycoon said, “That’s partly the godsgift you knew in the Domain, relayed from the south via Zek/Ut/Ta/Fur/Ri. I asked him to replace the usual Tropical counselor. Even
now, he understands the North better than most of us.”
“Oh!” Jefri looked as surprised as Ravna felt. “I’m glad, I’m glad he made it home.”
Zek shook himself and gobbled briefly. Then in Samnorsk: “I mostly survive, not the best talkers. No thanks to you murderous humans. If it had been Johanna—”
Zek was interrupting himself even before he finished, Tinish chords overlaying the Samnorsk. Poor Zek twisted this way and that. It seemed to Ravna as though he was shrinking from invisible blows. After a moment, Zek recovered and spoke with Vendacious’ voice. “Sorry, we hit a spot of turbulence here. My lord, I have various suggestions about how we might accommodate late arrival—but if you intend your two humans to be present at the landing, I suggest we carry on this conversation in private.”
There was a back-and-forth between Tycoon and the remote advisors, entirely in Interpack. At least four of Tycoon was looking out at the sunset colors that were deepening across the icefields. He gobbled something at the gunpack and Ravna and Jefri were led down the twisty stairs.
As they crawled along the main corridor toward their cell, Jefri said, “I wish we were even half as clever as Vendacious says.”
─────
By now, Johanna had been at sea for six tendays. Since the crates of radios had revealed themselves, it had been a never-ending struggle to keep the mob away from the devices. Thank goodness, only this primary raft carried radios. (But why so many? She still hadn’t figured that out.) She’d persuaded her people to repair the crack in the crate that had split open, so the only loose radio was the one that had fallen out of it, the one she still “protected.”
You’d think that fooling a choir would either be impossible or trivial. In fact, Cheepers’ various associations truly did believe her every word. They had defended her again and again from the complaints and the little nips, and in one case from a screeching crowd of the incredulous.
For a time, Johanna had been tempted to throw her own radio overboard: just wait for a stormy night and hope that no Tines heard her commit the act. But then she noticed the occasional Tines sniffing around the radio crates. Such random contrarians were a major source of choir creativity. When their foolishness didn’t kill them, these fragments discovered things no one else had imagined. Even if the mob stayed generally loyal, eventually someone would break into those crates—and the fleet’s radio silence would fail in a big way.
So she might as well hold on to her own radio. It took some nights of work, messing around under the blankets, but she’d managed to get the gadget open and remove the spring on the send switch. She was a little unclear about mechanical springs, what would make them push or pull when you pushed and pulled on them—so she took out all the little moving parts. She bet herself that even the mob’s distributed intellect couldn’t make that button work.
After that, she put the radio out in the sun. The mob immediately swirled around her, amazingly quiet. They were listening intently as only Tines can. After a time, they relaxed a bit. Cheepers reported to her, “It sounds like this.” He played back his amplified interpretation, a clicking and stuttering that sounded like random impulsive noise to Johanna. Maybe Nevil had given up on his robot query—but then loud noises came from the box, interrupting Cheepers’ rendition. It was that Tinish voice, asking for a reply again and again. The mob went wild trying to answer—with no success, of course.
The transmission ceased after about five minutes. An hour later, the voice loop ran again, and again an hour after that. Vendacious and Nevil were just poking them desultorily on the off chance that comms could be established. Johanna smiled to herself. That wasn’t going to happen, but she would find some use for this gadget.
─────
They were past Woodcarver’s old downcoast capital. To the east, Johanna recognized the cliffs and glacier-reamed valleys of the Domain, of … of home. The west was no longer open sea. The islands of the North began as little mounds. Gradually, she saw more and more of them, half-drowned mountains that turned this part of the sea into a network of straits. Very soon they would run into Hidden Island or Cliffside and things would get really exciting. One way or another she wouldn’t have to drink fetid water and choose between smoked meat and raw fish anymore.
One afternoon, multiboats flying Domain colors came into view. The vessels cruised along on the mainland side of her path, but at a distance, never coming close. When Johanna first saw them, she almost raced to the top of her raft to wave and shout. Surely Nevil and Vendacious hadn’t taken over Woodcarver’s Domain? Surely?
In fact, she didn’t know, so she hunkered down, out of sight.
The next day, her radio was still receiving hourly pokes from Nevil or Vendacious, but now there were more interesting sounds. Many of these were lost in noise, but Cheepers and his friends repeated them to her clearly. They were human voices; they belonged to Nevil’s special pals.
The conversations were fragmented and one-sided. Nevil was using Oobii or the orbiter to reach individual radios—as well as sense their weak emissions. Johanna couldn’t hear Nevil except when he aimed his silly automatic message at her, but as the rafts got closer to the heart of the Domain, she was in range of the nearest of the other senders:
“Yeah, Nevil, there’s ten barges, just where you said. What?… How should I know? They look like junk to me.” That was Tami Ansndot, as argumentative as ever. “One is only halfsize, like it got split down the middle.… So why don’t you have Scrupilo fly over in that gasbag of his, and take a look?”
Scrupilo lives! Consequences, consequences …
There was a pause, probably for Nevil’s explanation of why Scrupilo couldn’t help. Johanna bit her lip, trying to imagine just what lie was being peddled, and what it covered up. If I hadn’t busted my send button, I’d give Tami a piece of my mind! It was bad enough that Tam was a Denier, but worse that she believed the rest of Nevil’s lies.
She recognized all the voices, Deniers with some forest experience. Nevil must think these rafts were important. So where was her brother’s voice?
Throughout the afternoon, Johanna continued to listen. Here and there, she picked up useful information. Her flotilla was indeed important; somehow it would reveal Woodcarver as the “obstructionist fool we’ve always suspected”—that tidbit from some idiot obviously parroting Nevil’s current propaganda. A great treaty was about to be consummated; these ten rafts would seal the bargain and show the way to the new future. Yeah, but only if they can get control of my mobs!
At one point Tami said something like, “Too bad about Jo and Ravna. If only they could be here, to see how wrong they were about everything.”
Johanna was just as glad she couldn’t hear the choked up, false grief coming back from Nevil.
“The last raft just passed my position.” This was a new voice. It sounded like Bili Yngva. No, it was his little brother. Merto probably knew all about the murders and betrayal, but he wasn’t quite as smooth as Bili or Nevil. Right now, he sounded furtive. “No. Like I told you, there’s no sign of a human on any of the boats. Why don’t you just send someone out to check on them before they land?… Yeah, yeah. Well after today, that’s all gonna change.”
CHAPTER 37
For the next twenty hours, Tycoon’s airship buzzed back and forth, knocking at the door of the mountain airs, hoping to finally find the winds asleep or at least flowing in the proper direction. Somewhere before dawn, Tycoon’s strategy paid off—or maybe Nevil figured out how to coordinate the orbiter’s observations with Oobii’s programs, and guided the airships to the right mountain pass at the right time.
In any case, by late the next morning both airships had made it over the top of the Icefangs and were descending. On this side of the mountains, the day was a gloom of towering clouds, clouds above and below. The chop and the buffeting was not clear air turbulence, but the violence of thundering squalls.
When the ship’s steward came for Ravna and Jefri, the light was
still as dim as dawn—except for an occasional flash of lightning. The three of them, with gunpack trailing behind, made their way along the main corridor, which was swaying far more than usual.
Ravna wriggled up the spiral stairs into Tycoon’s bow chamber. Behind her, Jefri climbed up almost as easily. Apparently, Tycoon had removed some of the railings, widening the stairway just enough for him.
As usual, the view from the bow was spectacular, but there were no sun-dazzled glaciers this morning. Tycoon’s airship was scudding through the bottoms of clouds. From moment to moment there was zero visibility—then they would see forested valleys, and meadows that were impossibly green beneath deep clouds and rain.
Most of Tycoon was gazing out at the sky, as usual pretending to ignore such trivia as the arrival of his prisoners. Stretching off to port and starboard were ranked kilometer after kilometer of clouds. Lightning played between them and the ground below. Every few seconds, the bow was lit by a blinding flash, and thunder shook the grid of the windshield. Tycoon flinched, then turned a head or two back in the direction of Ravna and Jefri. “There is nothing to be alarmed about. Vendacious tells me that we’ll come out of the storm area in less than half an hour.”
Fifteen minutes of very bumpy ride followed this assurance. Tycoon and his various remote advisors exchanged occasional remarks, but it was all Interpack gobble. There were at least four packs talking through Zek. One of them was clearly Vendacious; another seemed to be the godsgift who had been on the network the day before. She heard Nevil’s name popping up now and then.
“Tycoon is sounding less and less pleased with Nevil’s advice,” Jefri whispered to her. Two of Tycoon looked up at Jef’s words, but otherwise the pack continued to ignore them.
Twenty minutes passed. They had lost sight of the ground. Who knew what mountain height lurked just ahead? Then, in the space of ten seconds, the ship broke through the edge of the squall line, emerging from bright cliffs of cloud. They were well within the Domain, past the hardscrabble farms of cotters and peasants, approaching the highest of the rich steadings. The land was splotched with snow and muddy waterfalls.