The Children of the Sky (64 page)

Timor moved as fast as he could down the aisle between the leaky glass tanks. Any other time he would have stopped in wonder, and stayed to chat. The aquarium had a water ladder down to the pools and streams of the airfield, so there was often news here from very far away. The cuttlefish were such marvelous creatures. The torpedo-shaped bodies were just thirty centimeters long. Their eyes covered one end; their tentacles extended the rest of their body length. Hundreds of them tumbled and turned as they swarmed to follow his progress.
I don’t have time, little ones!
Their greetings had shifted into questions. The cuttlefish were not mindless, but they were differently minded. The cuttlefish were scatterbrained and careless of their own lives. But they spoke Interpack. Tycoon claimed that they had spoken a Southseas version of pack talk when they were first discovered. They had learned a little Samnorsk just since he had started talking to them.

Two of Sharps ran a little way ahead. One looked around the corner in the direction of Tycoon’s audience hall—and suddenly the whole pack seemed to go on parade, all its steel claws clacking on the floor in unison. Something strange was going on ahead. Timor slowed down, provoking an irritated hiss from Sharps’ two behind him.

He reached the corner, and peeked around. The audience room doors were shut! Tycoon hardly ever did that. He liked to wander back and forth and schmooze with the cuttlefish. Not today. He must be running the air-conditioning a lot, like he did when he really wanted to impress someone. Okay, that was good.

Unfortunately, there was a pack standing by the doors, glaring in their direction. That was Sharps’ boss, what would have been the royal chamberlain back in Woodcarver’s palace. Timor straightened up as much as he could and approached him. Mr. Sharps’ two walked in formation with him, then merged with its two members that had gone on ahead. All four stopped and came to attention. Sharps’ maneuver was supposed to be fierce and impressive, but to Timor he just looked like doggies with toy guns strapped to their backs.

Timor walked on forward, right up to the boss pack. He really needed to get through these doors. If Tycoon would give Ravna a fair hearing, they were all home free. The problem was, sometimes the Big Guy would go running with his preconceptions. Vendacious was always trying to take advantage of that.
What if Vendacious is in there too?
Timor stifled the thought.

“Hei, Boss.” He waved at the doors. “Tycoon want me now. I help with words.”

The boss pack stared back impassively. This one had no sense of humor, and today he seemed even less jolly than usual. Several of him looked past Timor at Sharps. There was a warbling exchange of views. Timor could only pick out a few of the chords, but he made up the rest with this imagination:

Boss pack: “Hei, Sharpsie. Did this two-legged clown really get an order from the Big Guy to come down here?”

Sharps, doing his best to stay at full attention: “No way, Sir. Jailer is the only one who’s been to the tower today.”

The Boss turned all his attention back to Timor, and what he actually said in Samnorsk came as a surprise even to Timor’s imagination: “You no go here. Tycoon make that real order. To me, about you.”

Tycoon’s great palace might not have been
where
Ravna had expected, but it was every bit the grandiose thing she had imagined: huge, domed, and spired. Unfortunately, she and Jefri spent the rest of the morning stuck in the lowly outskirts of the place, even as the rickshaw whisked Ritl merrily off to some more honored destination. The gunpack guided Ravna and Jefri toward magnificent twenty-meter-wide stairs—then off to the side, where there was an awning-shaded area. Packs brought them food (yams!) and some kind of weak beer. So they sat and looked across the airfield at the airships and the long barracks-like structures beyond. Eventually the airships were wheeled into their hangars, but there was no end to mysterious comings and goings near those barracks. The clouds scudded away and the sun beat down and things got
really
hot, even here under the awnings. Jefri paced to the limits that the gunpack would allow, looking at everything, arguing with gunpack and the occasional servant, even though nobody seemed to speak Samnorsk. Finally, he came back, looking as wilted as Ravna felt. “You okay?” he said.

“Yeah.” This was very much the setting of the Age of Princesses, and yet another blow to her childhood fancies.

“I think this is some kind of psychological warfare,” Jefri said.

“They’re softening us up?”

“Maybe.” He looked around. “You know, a lot of this doesn’t look so regal up close. I see mildew, water stains. Choir aside, there are good reasons why Northerners never settled here. Maybe Vendacious and Tycoon came here out of
weakness
. Maybe they’re moving the furniture around right now,” he jerked a thumb at the palace’s main entrance, “polishing up the part we’re going to see.”

Hmm. Ravna looked across the airfield. The hangar doors had been slid shut, and there was no further activity around them. This side of the mysterious barracks, there were hectares of open space with just a pack or two, perhaps fishing at one of the ornamental water pools. This emptiness was in the middle of the most densely populated place on the planet. Somebody had some clout. Rather than fraud and façade, maybe this was Tropical reality.

The sun had slid into afternoon before they were finally ushered into Tycoon’s grand palace. Yes, it was grand inside, too. Everywhere she looked, packs hustled this way and that; most of their members had the plush pelts of Northerners. Ravna and Jefri were led through vast carpeted rooms, up more stairs to only slightly smaller rooms, their walls draped with acoustic quilting. She noticed the kinds of imperfections that Jefri had mentioned. There was a faint odor of mildew, an occasional squishiness in the carpet. But the walls soared, and the dome overhead almost seemed to float. Tycoon and company had been cribbing a lot of tricks from Domain designs and, at least indirectly, from
Oobii
.

After the fourth set of stairs, Ravna would have been just as happy to be back under the outside awnings.

Up here the rooms were not large. Their guide opened doors to reveal a short hallway. At the far end, a pack stood by another set of doors. This pack was dressed in full cloaks that would have made sense on a summer day up North—but which looked a bit silly here. Gunpack waggled its rifles, urging them forward as the doors behind them swung shut.

The shutting of those doors seemed to be a signal to open the inner doors.
Almost like an airlock.
The thought flitted by at almost the same instant as a breath of cool air swept through the opening. They walked forward, into a room in which the air temperature couldn’t have been more than 25C. She stumbled at the surprise; the sudden change was both a relief and discomfort. Jefri helped her across the room to benches set before a cluster of Tinish thrones. This was some kind of audience chamber.

Sunlight spilled through muddy glass. It was their first view to the east since they had left the airship. A second-degree pyramid towered high, but the second-degrees were like foothills before the immensity of the first-degree pyramid. Ravna had to look up through the ceiling windows to see the top of that.

It was an odd thing to see in a throne room. Ravna had to forcibly yank her attention back from the windows. Directly ahead were elevated throne seats. A smaller perch—for a singleton?—was set close by. All of those were unoccupied, but the room was not: To the right, a sevensome spread across a set of lesser thrones. Some meters to the right of him was a second pack. At first she thought it was Godsgift—but no, it wasn’t, though it was dressed with the same harlequin gaudiness as the Godsgift she had known in the Domain.

The first pack gobbled something at the gunpack and then spoke in Samnorsk: “You don’t recognize me, do you?” Two of the pack had patchy Tropical pelts. “Not even the voice I’m using?”

Vendacious.
At least it was the voice they’d heard via Zek, doing business with Prince Puce.

Jefri gave him a stony look. “Where are Amdi and Screwfloss?”

A smile rippled across the pack. “They are guests in my annex. They are cooperating with my investigation. They have nothing to fear. You have nothing to fear if you cooperate equally.” He jabbed snouts at them as he spoke. Now he paused and sat back in a dignified posture. “In a few moments you will have the honor of meeting the great Tycoon.”

The Tropical pack popped into the conversation with, “I’m sure we’ll get along famously if we all cooperate.” The speech was chipper and unthreatening—
and where did this fellow learn to speak Samnorsk so well?

The question was forgotten as the gunpack came to attention and bugled out royal flourishes. An instant later, the pack-wide doors behind the thrones were pulled open. A single member came strolling through, wearing a radio cloak. It looked well-fed and rested and almost certainly wasn’t Zek. The critter headed for the low seat by the thrones. Immediately after the singleton was seated, a heavyset eightsome came through the doorway.

Ravna had seen packs as numerous—Amdi was eight, too—but several of this fellow’s members were hulks, bigger than Pilgrim’s Scar, even if not as tough-looking. The pack wore plain silk cloaks that would have been understated elegance, except that one or two had drag stains. Ravna watched the eight settle themselves on the thrones, their gaze focusing implacably on Ravna and Jefri. So this was the pack at the center of all their problems the last few years. What sort of creature could conspire with Vendacious—and still be alive after all those years?

The gunpack’s bugling stopped, but now Vendacious took over with, “Bow to the great—”

There was an angry squeak from behind the thrones. One more figure came into the room. Could a pack as numerous as Tycoon be raising a puppy? No, this was Ritl—and as loud as ever. She was dragging a large stool, and Ravna guessed her squawking meant something like, “I could use a little help here!” Ritl dragged the stool across the carpet, toward Tycoon’s thrones. She tipped it down unseemly close to Tycoon, then scrambled aboard and looked around. You really couldn’t see much expression in a single Tines, but somehow Ritl looked … smug.

Ravna glanced back at Tycoon; he was still all staring at her and Jef. The pack waited a moment for Vendacious and Ritl to pipe down. When he finally spoke, it was with that totally inappropriate and self-damning Geri voice they had already heard via Mr. Radio: “I have waited far too long for this.” He switched to Interpack for a moment, then back to Samnorsk: “Vendacious, which is the leader, the one your puppet deposed?”

“That’s the smaller of the two, sir. Ravna Bergsndot. She managed the Domain’s invention development program.”

Tycoon hooted gently, a Tinish chuckle. “Ah yes. The machine operator.” He pointed at Jefri. “And the big fellow? Is that really…?”

Vendacious replied in Interpack. Ravna only recognized the name “Johanna,” superposed on a connection marker.

Jefri must have understood: “Yes, I’m Johanna’s brother,” he said.

Tycoon leaned forward, all of his eyes on Jefri. He stared for a full ten seconds while Vendacious gobbled on, urging Tycoon to do … something. Finally, Tycoon shook his heads, an irritable negation. Some of him looked at Ravna; one of him was watching Ritl. “You two humans should have been here seven tendays ago. Instead you murdered Vendacious’ best assistant. You murdered most of Remasritlfeer. Then you managed to trek almost all the way back to your precious starship. Was this magic technology, or are you simply much deadlier than even my friend Vendacious has always claimed?”

Jefri’s face clouded. “Neither, and you are full of lies. We—”

Ravna interrupted: “What does Ritl say happened?”

The singleton in question was glaring at Vendacious, a low-level faceoff. A strangely large percentage of Vendacious was glaring right back. It occurred to Ravna that Ritl might be one of the few creatures with whom Vendacious had no leverage.

Tycoon reached down and focused a soft hooting sound on the singleton. As Ritl twisted to look up at him, he said, “Poor Ritl. I tried to question her before this meeting. She is a talker, but not very smart. It’s quite possible that she doesn’t remember exactly how the rest of her pack died.”

Vendacious gobbled something.

“Speak human,” said Tycoon. “I want these two to understand what we’re saying.”

“Yes sir. I just said, we’ll eventually figure out what these two humans did. After all, I still have their servants to question.”

The eightsome waved dismissively. “However you humans escaped, you only hurt your cause by doing so. Events have passed you by.”

Jefri: “We’d be dead now if we hadn’t escaped.”

“Nonsense!” said Vendacious. “My lord Tycoon’s purpose in this expedition was to show Ravna that cooperation was her only choice.”

Ravna had the feeling that murder and conspiracy were piled in very deep layers here. She touched Jefri’s arm.
Put the Olsndot temper in a bottle, okay?
After a moment, he settled back on the bench, seeming to get the unspoken message.

She looked up at Tycoon. “You say events have passed us by. What is it that you want from us now?”

“I want nothing from the Johanna sibling.” Perhaps Tycoon didn’t notice that he was clawing the thrones as he said that. “But from you … I want to convince you that opposing my wishes and those of”—he glanced at Vendacious—“what’s the stooge’s name?”

“Nevil Storherte, my lord.”

“Yes. Opposing me and Nevil is suicide. You and Woodcarver must accept the coming alliance—ah, but you don’t know about that either, do you?”

Ravna tried to smile. “As you say, we’ve been out of touch. Why would my opposition matter?”

“You still have the loyalty of many of the two-legs. You may have technical knowledge that will help us manage two-legs machines. And you may have influence with Woodcarver.”

I bet Woodcarver is still the Queen, and Nevil has his back to the wall. Nevil is so desperate he’s finally gone public with his foreign allies.
She tried sit up a little straighter, act like she had some kind of power in the world. “I mean no disrespect, sir, but how did you intend to convince me?”