by Vernor Vinge
“Hei!” Ravna cried. “I’m doing what you want. Don’t kill any more of Amdi!”
She ran across the stage toward Tycoon. Amdi was eight—had been eight. He could still be mostly the same person at seven.
There were scattered shouts. In the sky above, she saw a second body, dressed like the first, drop away from the airship. Its legs pumped as it fell, as if it was fighting for traction.
Johanna had risen above Tycoon to look at the sky. The pack surged around her, dragging her down. He pulled Jo across the stage toward the main stairway. The gunpack spread out in front of him, its rifles aiming at Flenser and Woodcarver, and then at Ravna.
Tycoon stopped by Zek, gobbled a fierce interrogative. The singleton made some reply, but he was still twitching. Tycoon seemed to think a moment—he could still think in the middle of all this!—and then he grabbed Zek by the collar of his cloak and continued toward the stairs. As the eightsome passed her, Ravna reached out to Johanna. Jaws snapped at her, driving her back. “Now you will see what I do to liars and murderers,” said Tycoon. Then he was down the stairs with Zek and Johanna, his gunpack clearing the way.
More screams, maybe for Johanna, maybe—Ravna turned back to the west. Parts of Amdi were still falling from the sky. Three bodies, tumbling. Or maybe it was four, since one of them might be two members holding tight to each other. Then another … and another. Now that Amdi was mostly dead, Vendacious was just flushing the rest.
Ravna slumped to the deck. But I am not injured. Not at all. Why not? The bad guys had won and all the good intentions in the world had not made a bit of difference.
“Ravna? Ravna?” snouts poked gently at her. Woodcarver. Ravna turned and embraced the nearest of her. It was a gesture she had never dared with the Queen before, but just now she had to hold on to someone. A puppy—the Puppy from Hell?—crawled across another member’s back and nuzzled Ravna’s cheek. Woodcarver’s voice was a purring vibration from all her members: “Do your best now. Please, Ravna. There are still so many things to do.”
CHAPTER 41
Vendacious’ airship was flying off into the east even as the last of Tycoon’s gang loaded themselves onto the larger craft. Nevil’s people were the only ones helping, but the great airship made it into the air without problems. The craft was perhaps forty meters up as it passed over the stage—heading westward toward the Straits. These ships couldn’t turn in place; no doubt Tycoon would swing around to follow Vendacious.
She ignored the airship and looked around. Nevil’s buddies looked back uncertainly. They and the mass of the Denier children were drifting off the field. Most were heading uphill, toward Newcastle town. No one was stopping them, but Ravna noticed that suddenly there were lots of Woodcarver’s troops in evidence. Nevil himself was nowhere to be seen.
She turned towards Oobii and shouted several commands into the air. Nothing. “I need comm with Oobii,” she said to Woodcarver.
“I know. I have a runner bringing a radio.”
“You don’t have one with you?” asked Ravna.
“No.” Three of Woodcarver’s turned their gaze on Ravna. An angry hiss was the background of her words: “Nevil demanded we come without them. He used Oobii to destroy any radio that wasn’t used according to his desire. I still had most of the people on my side. He thought to change that with today’s meeting. You and Johanna made things come out a little differently.”
They watched as Tycoon’s airship made a broad turn over the Inner Straits. Children and packs swept around them, shouting and crying and pointing, imagining another body falling, this one human. No. Tycoon was a different kind of villain. Pray he was different.
Poul Linden came through the crowd, pushing even through Woodcarver. “Ravna!” He was gasping, so out of breath that the words wouldn’t come at once. “I’m sorry, I wasn’t able to stop him.”
“What? Who?”
“Nevil! I found him coming out backstage, but he was too much for me.”
“Show her what he dropped, Poul!” That was Wilm, flapping his arms impatiently.
“Oh, yeah.” He held out the HUD. “This is yours.”
Nevil had been dumb not to destroy it, but smart to let it go.
As she took crystal tiara, the Children around her grew silent. Awed? I hope not, thought Ravna. It was the sort of moment later times made paintings and Princess myths about. And I’ve sworn off all that garbage. She set the device on her head.
“Ship!” she said.
─────
Having Oobii’s support was like stepping out of the dark. Tasks that would have otherwise taken Ravna hours or days could be done in minutes. Unfortunately, the most important things were still beyond her power.
The two enemy airships were heading steadily eastwards, not responding to the various radio methods that Nevil had been using. Both ships were at Ravna’s mercy, a fact that was worth exactly nothing.
The orbiter was not responding either. Maybe no surprise there. That was still Nevil’s special domain. Ravna did manage to talk with Scrupilo aboard Eyes Above, persuading him not to go chasing off after Tycoon.
Here on the ground the Children and their Best Friends swirled around her. They had shown remarkable patience with her these last few minutes, but now they were calling a thousand questions, crying—and crying for vengeance.
Ravna held her hands up. After a moment, the babble quieted. “Let the Deniers go back to their homes in Newcastle. Those are still their homes. They are almost half of the human race. We need them.”
Woodcarver boomed out: “I agree. No pack may harm them. But none of us should have to put up with Nevil anymore. Where is he, anyway?”
The question was put to everyone, but the answers were scattered and contradictory. Of course, this was one of the easier problems. Nevil might lurk out of Oobii’s direct sight, but his people were using radios. Sooner or later, Ravna would have a definite location for him. The current best guesses showed as a bright dot in Ravna’s HUD. Strange. “It looks like Nevil is heading out of town—” going northeast, toward the valley forest.
“Follow him!”
“We are.” Oobii is. Meantime—
─────
They found Jefri behind the stage. Alive. Nevil’s people had left him hogtied in the mud. It was probably not deliberate that they had provided him with a forced view to the west. When Ravna showed up, Jef had been untied. He sat on the ground with his back to the timbers, staring into space. The front of his shirt was splattered with vomit. He didn’t seem to notice.
Several Children were on their knees, talking softly at him.
Ravna walked around in front of Jef, blocking his view downslope. “Jefri?” she said. “We think Johanna is still alive. We’ll get her back.”
Jef’s gaze came up to her face. She had never seen him so bleak, even in his deepest shame. After a moment his voice came low and hoarse. “We’ll do whatever we can? Yes, but…” but what good has that been so far? He staggered to his feet, helped by the kids around him. “The best I can do now is find what’s left of Amdi.” He would have stumbled away across the meadow if the others had not held him back.
There was no way they could keep Jefri from this search. There’s no way they can keep me away either. “We’ll all search,” she said.
─────
It turned out that some Children and Best Friends had already taken the funicular partway to the water, then climbed down pilings to reach the cliff face. Now they were close to being stranded, their rescue operation in need of rescuing. Ravna and Woodcarver sent some of the older kids after them, with instructions not to get anybody killed.
There were safer ways down the cliff, and that was a proper reason for Ravna to come along. Oobii did not have a line of sight on the cliff face, but over the years, the area had been carefully surveyed. With her HUD, Ravna was probably a better scout leader than anyone.
Now they were moving from ledge to ledge, back and forth across the r
ock face. Before the funicular train, the trip from Hidden Island up to Newcastle had taken a good part of a day. The cliffs were a deadly attraction that over the years had maimed adventuresome packs and killed two Children. Today, the leaves of spring rose all around them, clothing the evergreens with extra softness, obscuring the teeth of stone.
“Here, take this,” said Woodcarver, passing a safety rope forward. The pack was mainly behind Ravna, but staying close. Nowadays, the Queen was young—maybe too young for this, with the two puppies—but she seemed to be having no problems. As she walked along, she was calling loudly to packs above her. In her own way, Woodcarver was coordinating operations, too.
Ravna took the safety line, passing the remaining loops forward to Øvin, the only human ahead of her in the party.
“Do you think there’s any chance that—” said Ravna, her voice low, for Woodcarver. Thank the Powers she had persuaded Jefri to stay with Magda and Elspa in the middle of the troop.
“—that any of Amdi survived?” Woodcarver finished the question. “I don’t see how. These springtime leaves are gossamer, and the evergreens beneath are like steel bars. But this … recovery is going to happen anyway.”
Ravna nodded. “We can make it safer.” For the next few minutes, she had no time for chitchat. Her head-up display was synched with her position. She could see through the trees to Oobii’s topo map—and guide Øvin Verring along the safest paths. At the same time, she had windows opened on other problems. Nevil’s people were making no attempt to mess with Oobii, but there was a plume of hot air rising from the Dome of First Landing. Ravna even had video from inside the castle! Apparently Nevil had diverted all the cameras into his spying—that was why she had only low-resolution information on the bodies’ trajectories. But she could snoop all around the castle. Bili or whoever had stuffed the Lander with flammables and lit it off. Woodcarver’s firefighters had already doused the fire, and she could see that the coldsleep caskets were unharmed.
Ravna pulled her attention back to the rocks ahead of her. “Øvin, don’t go down that way.” The higher ledge was narrow, but it became a real path a few meters further into the greenery.
“Okay.”
As Ravna sidled onto the ledge after him, a little red alert flag popped up in her HUD. Behind her, Woodcarver was talking loudly with unseen packs at the top of the cliffs. She translated for Ravna: “They say something’s happening at Newcastle town.”
“Yeah.” That red alert flag. As she followed along after Øvin, she accepted the alert: It was a view of the north road out of town. The Denier Children had returned to their houses after the debacle on the Meadows. Now they were on the move again—but not back to Murder Meadows or to Oobii. The ship counted seventy Children, including Bili and Merto, but not Nevil. The older ones had knapsacks or sling bags. There were a few wagons, but most were walking—out of town, toward the northeast. “You know, I think some of them are carrying guns,” exactly the human-style weapons Ravna had pictured for Nevil.
“My troops have many more guns,” said Woodcarver. “I could stop them. Does this look like a mass kidnapping?”
Ravna watched the scene for several seconds. “… No.”
“Then I suggest we let these people go. No civil war today.”
Ravna suddenly realized that while her attention had been on the other side of Starship Hill, she had walked along a ledge that had narrowed to thirty centimeters. Woodcarver was gently pulling her back from the edge. She came to a full stop and leaned against the sheer wall of the cliff face.
“You’re almost there, Ravna. Give me your hand.” She looked up and saw Øvin. He had reached the wider path that the topo map had promised. A second later she was standing beside him. She sat down for a moment and waited until the rest of their party came up. Woodcarver settled close around her. The new puppy was barely old enough to be a constructive member. It peeped out of a puppy pannier, whereas little Sht rode on an older member’s shoulders.
The Queen must have noticed her gaze. “The new puppy? It’s to balance Sht’s paranoid nature, a very old-fashioned bit of broodkennery. It was Pilgrim’s suggestion … and his last gift to me.” Woodcarver was silent for a moment, and then she spoke publicly loud: “I hear Scrupilo’s airboat.”
Ravna nodded. She had been following his progress via Oobii. “What’s become of his airship?” she asked.
“That’s a bit of history,” said Woodcarver, rolling her heads. “Nevil’s all-human crew crashed EA2—on their very first solo flight. There were no casualties, but that put an end to long-range searching for you. Opinion is divided on whether the crash was a real accident or a Nevil accident.”
“Ah.”
Now the boat’s little electric motor was audible to human ears. It wasn’t visible through the spring leaves until it flew directly overhead. Then she had a naked-eye glimpse of it—and two of Scrupilo’s heads stuck over the gunwales, peering down. A year ago I was up there with Scrup, looking down, trying to track Nevil’s thieves—only we thought we were chasing Tropicals.
She relayed through Oobii: “Scrupilo, we’re at—” she sent her map position. “Poul Linden and the other team are on another path about fifty meters below us.” The other path was a safer walk, but it didn’t extend as far into the region where Oobii figured most of bodies had come down.
“I see Linden, but not you,” Scrupilo’s voice boomed down from the sky. He wasn’t bothering with radio.
“Okay. Do you see any sign of, of the bodies?”
Scrupilo was as grumpy blunt as ever. “The birds know. They’ve found three places to swarm. I’ve got a crappy little camera here; I’ll send Oobii pictures of what I’m seeing.” The video was already showing in Ravna’s windows.
Two of Woodcarver’s foresters came up from the ledge below, and then—Jefri wobbled along the path, staring upward and ignoring all of them. “Scrupilo!” Jef shouted. “How many bodies are we looking for?”
The pack responded: “Most people say eight, but some of the younger Children say seven with one holding onto a member-sized object.”
Jefri stood silent for a moment, still staring up. Then he started up the path, walking past Ravna. She came to her feet, reached out to stop him. For an instant, she thought Jef would shrug away. Then he was trembling in her arms.
“I can lead us there, Jefri. You’ll see all we see, but stay in the middle for now. Please?”
Magda and Elspa caught up with Jefri and softly encouraged him to let Ravna and Woodcarver go ahead.
As Ravna turned to follow Woodcarver, she heard a burst of angry Tinish. A single member came scrambling up from the lower ledge. “Ritl! What the devil…?”
The critter gave Ravna an imperious nod, emitting a chord that meant something like “You again” as it swept past.
Heida Øysler was next up from the ledge. She seemed to take Ravna’s question as directed at her. “Yeah, yeah. I’m sorry. We thought this was part of Tycoon. Hei, it was member-close to the guy, and wearing the same insignia. It even talks like a boss. So we grabbed it.” The kids coming up behind her looked a little shamefaced, too; maybe this had been a group effort. “Now it looks like we got someone’s ugly pet.”
Oh my, I don’t have time for this. “But why did you bring her here?”
Heida glared at the singleton. “Well, it wasn’t our choice.”
─────
Scrupilo’s video was so low-resolution that it must have come from his own locally-made camera. However much he might call it crappy, Ravna bet the guy was vastly proud of the device. And when she had Oobii mesh them with the survey imagery … they were everything the recovery parties needed.
There were three towering swarms of birds. The pictures didn’t reveal what was on the ground beneath them, but Ravna’s topo map showed one of the sites was just ahead of Poul Linden’s group. Woodcarver shouted guidance down to Poul as Ravna’s group closed in on the highest projected impact point, one that the birds had not yet
discovered. This spot might take some hard climbing, but for now Ravna and Øvin walked almost abreast of each other, with Woodcarver occasionally extending herself out between them.
As they walked, Ravna cycled through her task list: Nevil’s radios were motionless on the other side of Newcastle, under forest cover. Either he had discarded the devices, or he was waiting for “his people” to catch up with him. The Denier Children were visible on the north road, heading toward the valley forest, shadowed by Woodcarver troops. More wagons had joined the group. Several packs seemed to be guiding the caravan. Dekutomon and company? There was no avoiding the conclusion that this was a planned exodus. Nevil was either nuts or still playing a turn ahead of Ravna and Woodcarver.
Whatever Nevil’s strategy, it didn’t look like he would be rendezvousing with his main Tinish allies any time soon: Vendacious and Tycoon were still driving into the eastern sky, rising steadily as they approached the Icefangs. If they thought they were out of beam gun range, they were dead wrong. They would be visible to Oobii for hours more, unless they decided to play a risky game of hide-and-seek in the mountain valleys. Even now, Ravna could count the fasteners on Tycoon’s steam engine gondolas. A word from her and Oobii could flash-fry both airships.
Øvin interrupted her impotent daydreaming: “Hei! Where did this come from?” He was kneeling at the side of the path. Now he held up something bright and yellow.
Two of Woodcarver eeled forward for a close look. “A gold coin. Long Lakes mintage.”
Øvin turned it over a couple of times, hefting it. Like a number of Children, he had gone native to the extent of valuing heavy metals; gold and silver could be exchanged for things the starfolk couldn’t yet make. “When I was little, we used to hike around here a lot,” he said, glancing up at Ravna.
“All forgiven,” she said. Rascal.
Øvin smiled fleetingly. “The point is, we never saw anything like this. And if we had, we’d have snarfed it up.”