The Children of the Sky (38 page)

Pilgrim’s voice again: “I think the packs I hear are searching for us. We must have made quite a racket coming down.”

Johanna replied with a nearly subvocal whisper. Scar, with his head at the level of her waist, would pick it up fine. “Are these normal packs?”

“Yes, indeedy. We should be in the middle of mindless Choir chaos, but what I’m hearing is East Coast Interpack.” So even if they discovered nothing more, they had answered the big question behind this trip. Now the problem was how to get the news back to Ravna and Woodcarver. It might be nice to survive the mission, too.

“You have the commset?” she asked.

“Got it.” Pilgrim was urging her along, away from the crash site. Her pale violet light hinted that they were walking between high walls of stone. Walls of brick actually, with nice right angles and waterfalls every few meters. This was an alley, and somewhere above them were roofs with rainspouts.

“The end of this path is open—and there are no voices beyond that. There are some real advantages to this situation, you know.”

Pilgrim was jollying her along. He did that when things were … tense. Well, he had a couple of centuries of fairly successful survival experience. She played along: “You mean because we’re still breathing?”

“That, and I’m still thinking. No Choir-driven mental destruction. If we can find a hiding place, we can operate almost like on our other trips. Except for the flying, I mean.”

“Yeah, okay. And we can report back.”

“Right. This may be the best possible place to go snooping. We may actually be able to learn if these guys are manipulating your boyfriend.”

“He’s not my boyfriend!” she almost said that in full voice.

“Whatever,” said Pilgrim. “In any case—” The voice in her ear hesitated. “Wait up a second.”

Johanna swung her lamp around. Llr had fallen behind. The member had a clear limp and her pannier had slipped partway off her back. Johanna reached down and unclipped the pannier.

“Thanks—”

But Jo wasn’t done. She slipped her hands behind Llr’s forelegs and raised the creature into her own arms.

“Hei wait!” said Pilgrim. “I don’t need that much help.”

Johanna didn’t reply, just proceeded along with the pannier slung over her shoulder and Llr struggling in her arms like a big, fussy baby. After a moment, she heard Pilgrim give a resigned sigh. Llr relaxed in her arms, then reached up and nipped Johanna’s ear—but only with the soft tips of her mouth.

They followed the alley for another thirty meters, moving at a better pace than before. That was good, since now even Johanna could hear Interpack gobbling somewhere behind them. Pilgrim said there was also a “spiky hissing” noise, probably not part of their speech. Directly ahead something hulked a little brighter than the violet backglow of the rain. A stone wall.

“I thought you said this end of the alley was open?” said Johanna.

“There’s a turn,” came Pilgrim’s whisper, “to the right.”

Now Johanna could hear the strange noise Pilgrim had reported. Something bright lit up behind them. “Come on!” she said to Pilgrim. They ran for the end of the alley. Just as they made the turn, the noise sharpened and a brilliant light shone through the veil of rain, lighting up the walls behind them.

They had escaped the light, but—there was a chord that meant “After them!” and she heard the clatter of metal tines.

Johanna and Pilgrim kept running, with Llr passing Jo directions about which way to go.

High ahead of her, she saw occasional flashes of light as the pursuers swept their hissing spotlight back and forth. It must be some kind of electric arc. Scrupilo had wanted to make such things, till Ravna found a low-power design that was actually easier to make. Such arcs were
bright
, surely bright enough for Tines—if they pointed them accurately and didn’t blind themselves.

Pilgrim was leading her in a flat run along a stone way just a little higher than the puddles. By the light reflected from the enemy’s crazy arc lamp, she glimpsed brickwork and half-timbered walls—very much like northern buildings except for the mossy fungus that grew all over them. Maybe the northern style didn’t last long here. They ducked behind wooden sheds, out of sight of the probing light.

Jo felt Llr’s claws tighten, cautioning.
Slow
down
. Now that they couldn’t be spotted, it was best to be as quiet as possible.

“But we need to get further away,” said Johanna.

Pilgrim’s Llr gave her a little pat on the shoulder, agreeing. But now their progress consisted of the pack moving a meter or two, testing for things that might cause noise, then signalling Jo how to bring herself and Llr forward. Behind them, the noise of the chase was slightly diminished. It sounded like several packs were pacing around, talking quietly to one another, almost as though they were embarrassed by all the noise they had made.

Meter by meter, Pilgrim edged away from the Easterners. Then light flared on a wall ahead of them, right where they would be in another minute or so. The light swept away, came back briefly a second later, then was gone again.

Johanna sat on the stone way, putting some of Llr’s weight on her knees. “Maybe we should just hide here for a while.”

She only mouthed the words, but that was enough sound for Pilgrim. He shook a head or two, then said: “See how tumbled down everything is in that direction?” Some of the structures were barely more than mounds of rotting timber. “I can hear Choir noise ahead. We seem to be moving out of whatever safety zone is protecting these East Coast bozos. Maybe we can go far enough to lose them, but not so far that the Choir destroys my mind.”

“Okay.” What else could she say?

Pilgrim’s Scar had crawled forward, edging his snout out to look at their pursuers. He froze, and Jo felt Llr tense. “Heh. You gotta see this, Jo.”

She set Llr down and crawled out behind Scar, all but hugging the slimy stone. She saw four packs about fifty meters away. One of them managed the electric arc light. It was a miracle that the contraption had not electrocuted anybody. The pack was swinging the arc around. Jo got a good view of the others. Two of the packs bristled with strange-looking pikes, all pointed at the ground. Huh! Those looked like miniature cannons, though nothing like Nevil’s design. A numerous pack stood in a commanding posture in the middle of all this. Its speech was almost inaudible, but clipped and demanding. What was so familiar about that one?
Can it be?
… The arc light swept carelessly across the packs. The leader was wearing lightweight cloaks, barely more than pockets on harnesses. One member was turned so she could see its complete right side, the white streak that extended from haunch to snout.

Ten years ago, that one’s teeth had hissed along Jo’s throat, while another poked a knife into her side, and its pack gloated at the prospect of torturing her to death.

Pilgrim must have noticed the recognition startle through her. His secret voice said. “That looks like Vendacious, doesn’t it?”

Johanna nodded. She had absolutely no doubt. So it really was Vendacious, pulling the strings.
Whose strings exactly?

Pilgrim gave her a tap on the shoulder. “They’re dazzled. Let’s sneak across.” He pointed at the gap in the timbers ahead.

It might not have worked with human pursuers, but the light was turned away from Jo and Pilgrim, and the Tines probably were bedazzled. Vendacious seemed to be complaining about something, maybe that very abuse of the arc light.

Jo slithered across the flagstones. Pilgrim was all around her. He was probably generating sound-damping noise; Pilgrim was more clever than most packs at such synthesis. In a matter of seconds they were out of eyeshot of the searchers. “Quiet and slow,” said Pilgrim. Quietly, slowly, they crawled forward. Llr had no trouble keeping up. The buildings around them were still of the northern style, but the wood was rotted and buckled. In the pale violet light of her handlamp, she could see that some timbers were almost consumed by mossy fungus. Now the water carried a miasma of smells: food, sewage, rot, the body odor of myriad Tines. Was it her imagination or was that chanting ahead?

Pilgrim seemed to sense her unease.

“You can hear something, too,” he said. “They’re making noise all the way down.”

“How can you stand it?”

“The rain and mist is damping mindsound to almost nothing, but we’re moving toward something … enormous.” Johanna had seen Pilgrim react to a starship coming down from the sky. Even that he had taken on with enthusiastic curiosity, but tonight there might be fear in his words. Then he urged her forward and seemed to recover some of his usual spirit: “I can get a lot closer. Closer, I bet, than Vendacious and company can come.”

In fact, their pursuers seemed to have lost them. Johanna saw an occasional flash from the arc light but that was way to her left. She also heard quiet conversations, but those seemed to be on the right. The searchers were moving forward, but not straight toward her and Pilgrim. Were they scared of triggering a response from the Choir? Maybe the biggest mystery was how Vendacious and his pals could survive in this environment at all. What kept the Choir from sweeping across this area and destroying all coherent packs?

Jo swept her violet light across the rubble ahead. This wasn’t the decay of Northern-style buildings. The soaking mess looked like garbage, organized here and there into structures that might have been nests. She had seen a weasel nest once, briefly, when its inhabitants were trying to kill her. “Weasels” were about the size and appearance of gerbils. She quailed at the thought of what such monsters would be like if they were as big as Tines.

She angled her light upwards. The violet drowned in the falling rain, showing nothing but misty backglow beyond a few meters. Right at the limit of her vision, there was something—it looked almost like a long, low spider web.

It was a fence! The “spider threads” were cords hung between wooden posts. Vertical strands dropped from the top cord to tie to each of the cords below. How could this stop anything? Were the cords poisoned? As they got closer, Johanna could see how frayed and ripped the network was, especially near the ground, where it was clear that critters at least the size of small Tines had broken through.

Pilgrim tugged at her sleeves, drawing her down to the ground. A moment later, the arc light swept along the fence.

“Sorry,” she said softly. Then, “Are you okay?”

“Yeah. Let’s see if Vendacious and company dare follow us beyond that fence.”

The ground immediately beyond the fence was flat and open. Even if Vendacious wouldn’t chase them, he could still see—and shoot—them. At the limit of her vision she saw piles of … something, maybe the true form of Tropical buildings. The thrum of Choir voices murmured loudly and yet she saw no Tines.

She and Pilgrim reached the fence. The cords were just woven plant fiber. Tearing a hole would be easy. They crawled along the fence line.…

Their pursuers had spread out. They must know that Pilgrim and Jo were at the fence, even if they didn’t know precisely where.

“They’re going to find us,” she whispered.

“Yeah, yeah,” was all Pilgrim said. He was still searching for the perfect breakthrough point. At least here, the open area beyond the fence was not as wide as before. They skulked another three meters. Abruptly, Pilgrim jabbed a snout upwards, pointing. A sign medallion hung from the top fence rope. The patterned ceramic disks were a style of announcement that dated from long before the humans landed. Day or night, a pack would hear the echoes from it. By the pale light of her handlamp, Johanna could see the design that was painted on the surface: the death symbol, a pentagram of skulls. Someone thought it was a really bad idea to go beyond this fence.

“And I don’t want any
shooting
.” Vendacious glared around at his trigger-happy minions. “We’re not in my territory anymore.”

The crowd of packs straightened and looked properly obedient. They might be trigger happy, but they weren’t crazy enough to cross him. Normally, these fellows patrolled the west side of the Reservation, making sure that no one crossed the boundary. Of course, no pack would voluntarily walk
off
the Reservation, but there was a constant dribble of Tropicals coming in. The creatures were dumb singletons. That was the thing about the Choir: it wasn’t a proper tyranny. Its behavior was describable only in the mean. There was always a tiny fraction of outliers who were confused enough or ornery enough do almost anything. Guards like these working for him tonight were supposed to pick up such and take them to the convocation bourse. That was a pain. It was much easier just to shoot disobedient intruders. On the far side of the Reservation, that was easy to do. It was good sport, Vendacious thought. On
this
side, such shooting would be heard by Tycoon people who would loyally report the behavior, raising all sort of problems for Vendacious.
Tonight of all nights
, thought Vendacious,
I don’t want Tycoon’s guns out here, nosing around.

Having made his point, Vendacious eased off on the homicidal glare. He wanted his people to be at the top of their form this evening. “The two I want are somewhere between us and the fence. Don’t worry about exactly where. Push forward along a broad front. Eventually we’ll flush them out.” Two of the gunpacks broke into uneasy smiles. They had been on similar outings before. Killing dumb singletons was one thing. Forcing a thinking pack into Choir territory was a different matter entirely. “Go quietly. Listen for my signals.” They would have to stay quiet till the next density of the Choir swept through. When that happened, they could probably make as much noise as they wanted.

Vendacious watched as the packs spread out in a ragged skirmish line and started toward the fence. The lamp manager stayed somewhat back, sweeping its light toward likely shapes and sounds.

Vendacious followed his people forward, unlimbering his own small rifle as he did so. At the same time, he reached into one of his pockets and unmuted the commset hidden there, but at such a low volume that even he could scarcely hear it.