The Children of the Sky (73 page)

As she stumbled along, she heard human and packs running the length of the pier. There were shouts, some in Samnorsk, but too loud to be human. “Johanna! Where are you?” … “You say she dove into the water?”

“So where is she now?”

She reached the stairs and discovered an unexpected challenge. Normally, you took Tinish stairs three at time, but now Johanna had to lift her numbed legs with her hands, and carefully watch that she set her nerveless feet down. It was like climbing on stilts. Fortunately, the stairs were only member-wide, so she could lean against the walls as she lifted first one foot and then the other.

She shrugged off the last of her icy cloaks. Sometime really really soon she needed to get dry and warm. For a few moments she forgot everything else as she negotiated the last few steps.

Then she was at the top, in a covered passage. She saw a dirty glass window mounted in an external door. She got close and looked back—just to see how everybody was doing, she told herself. Never mind that she was too weak to do much else.

Nowadays Scrupilo’s glassworks could turn out clear glass by the square meter. This little window was from the early years; for Johanna’s purposes, it was good enough. She could see humans and packs clustered around the raft. The second and third rafts were pulling in behind it. When the entire fleet arrived, the South End harbor would look like that jumble on the River Fell.

She could step outside and wave to the kids on the pier. She’d still be out of
Oobii
’s sight. The hell with further paranoia. As she reached for the door handle, she noticed several Tropicals climbing onto the pier, approaching the Children. They had recovered the radio!

No!

The side blast from the beam gun sent shards of glass ripping past her face. The shuddering wall bounced her off her feet. She rolled to her knees, her ears ringing with the thunder. No need for a door or a window now. In places the wood panels had been blown away from the wall studs. Thirty meters down the pier a cloud of steam was rising from a hole punched through the pier itself.

As Johanna struggled to her feet she tried to wipe the blood from her face, but the stuff kept dribbling. There were survivors, lots of wounded. She tottered a step or two toward the open pier.
I should help! Yeah, and give crazy Nevil reason to shoot again.

She turned the other way and staggered up the passage, into the warehouse.

Vendacious’ airship was slightly smaller than Tycoon’s. Tycoon could believe that he was the star of this operation. Inside, of course … that was a different story. Tycoon did not come here; Vendacious could do as he pleased. Tycoon had staterooms and crew quarters. Vendacious had room for cargo and cages and weapons. Crew could sleep at their posts. Tycoon had his command deck high in the bow, unbalancing his ship and isolating him from his servants. Vendacious ruled from his ship’s control gondola with just enough quilting so the crew didn’t interfere with his thinking. Instant discipline could be exercised. None of those silly speaking tubes for Vendacious. He often thought that Tycoon’s command deck was what the eight imagined of human automation. Though Tycoon would have fiercely denied it, he was a slavish admirer of almost all things human. That was just one more reason to keep humans and Tycoon from getting friendly.

“M’lord, the
Pack of Packs
is pulling away from us.” This news came from Vendacious’ ship’s captain, the sound focused so that only the nearest member of Vendacious could hear.

“Very good,” Vendacious replied. As he’d directed, his airship was lagging behind, keeping relatively close to the ground. Vendacious was watching with binocular telescopes, following as Tycoon flew blissfully on into the jaws of the mantises. Vendacious really didn’t want to follow, but soon he would have to expose himself to those same jaws.

He suppressed his trembling fear and concentrated on the audio from Ut. The singleton had its own perch, well away from the crew. Ut’s purpose in life had been very simple for some years now. He wore his prison around his shoulders, the radio cloak glistening black with hints of gold. Ut should be happy, though. He was treated better than most crew.

Tycoon bragged endlessly about the Radio Cloaks network. In fact, it was Vendacious who had persuaded Nevil to supply the cloaks. It was Vendacious who had winnowed hundreds of singletons to find the few who could wear the cloaks and still survive. It was Vendacious who controlled the network. All eight lived in proper fear of him. Vendacious had trained them to speak only along the paths he directed, when he directed. And he was just as careful to keep them from ever getting all their heads together. Now they were his ears across the empire: Earlier this day, he had spoken via the Ut/Ta/Fur/Il relay to Aritarmo down on the Tropical Reservation. An hour later he talked via Ut/For/Fyr to Dekutomon, on the mainland south of Hidden Island. Now he was simply listening via Ut/Zek as Tycoon used the network to make final preparations for the landing on Starship Hill.

Tycoon’s various pronouncements and directions were mainly directed at his crew. Vendacious paid a small amount of attention to that; mainly he was interested in any trouble the Ravna maggot might stir up. Abruptly, he realized that Tycoon was talking to
him
: “Where in hell are you, Vendacious? My lookouts have lost sight of you.”

Damn you, I’m not being a perfect target in the sky.
But aloud, Vendacious said, “Sorry, my lord, sorry. We’ve had a bit of mechanical trouble, unable to make much altitude.” In fact, mountain walls loomed on either side of their path, thousands of feet of rock between his precious members and the maggots’ beam gun.

“Are you going to crash then?” said Tycoon. “I’ve told you to be more careful about repairs. It’s stupid to have your own maintenance crews.”

“Not to worry, sir. My people have a solution. You’ll be seeing us soon.” Vendacious glanced at the dataset display in front of him. The position map showed that he was running out of mountains to hide behind. He must soon decide between trusting Nevil Storherte and dropping out of the game.

“Very good then!” Their conversation was in Interpack and thus free of maggoty smart remarks. “Another thing,” continued Tycoon. “I need to talk to Nevil directly. There’s final planning—”

“I believe I’ve covered everything, my lord.” Vendacious did his best to be the middlepack in all contacts between Tycoon and humans, even—and especially—Nevil Storherte. Fortunately, Storherte really didn’t like to talk to packs. Keeping Tycoon from chatting with Nevil had been much easier than keeping the eightsome from talking to the various surviving prisoners.

Not today: “I’m sure you’ve done your best, Vendacious, but now you’re lagging and I’m less than an hour from landing. I want to ask Nevil some questions about just who is present, and the current status of the likes of Woodcarver and Flenser and—” Tycoon’s voice scaled up a couple of octaves as he spoke.

“Yes, my lord! Have you used your ordinary radio? Nevil is listening all the time via the orbiter. Now—”

“I’ve tried that! The two-legs is not replying.”

“I’ll look into it, my lord. I have agents on the ground.”
And other means of communication.

“I need results on this quickly, Vendacious. As you know, the Ravna two-legs has been saying many harsh things about Nevil. Now is not the time to have her proven right.”

“I agree, sir. I’ll get back to you directly.” In this, he was utterly sincere. “I’ll be out of communication with you for a few minutes.”

“I understand. Use the cloaks network and whatever else is needed.”

Vendacious waved at Ut to stop relaying with Tycoon’s ship.
Damnation.
Too many problems were suddenly piling up. He should prepare for one of those problems immediately. Vendacious glanced down from his platforms, “Cargomaster!”

“Sir!”

“Bring up our special prisoners. The four goes in its usual cage, but I want Amdiranifani shackled around the bow hatch.”

The Cargomaster cowered slightly, then it hustled immediately off for the prison cells. The pack had been through this procedure before.

As for the more difficult problems: How to get in touch with Nevil? Was that maggot playing some new game? He thought he had Nevil figured out, but the prospect of facing the beam gun made him want to rethink everything.
Dekutomon is close to
Oobii.
I could have him take
Fyr
and visit the maggot.
If there’d been more time, that would’ve been the best approach; let Nevil know that Vendacious’ agents were everywhere, even on Nevil’s doorstep.

Or, he could use an ordinary radio to try to reach Nevil through his heavenly high orbiter. No, that was grovelling, and it hadn’t worked for Tycoon. Besides, ordinary radio might be overheard by the radio sets Tycoon had aboard
Pack of Packs
.

Vendacious glanced at his dataset. Right now it was displaying a map of his ground track, the ridges on either side of his ship marked with altitudes and proximity. In the early years of his exile, this dataset—Oliphaunt, Johanna had called it—had been his most precious possession, the true reason why he was so esteemed by Tycoon. Since his alliance with Nevil, the dataset had not been nearly so important an informational tool, and at the same time he had come to worry about the possibility that Nevil might be able to corrupt the device. Nevertheless, like his commset, the dataset was galactic technology, putting him on a par with the maggots. And now that Nevil controlled the starship, it was by far the most secret communication path between them.

Vendacious reached out a couple of noses and tapped the sequence of instructions that should change Oliphaunt from an atlas to a commset. Johanna had always been more adept at this than he, but then she had used it all her human life; Vendacious took considerable pride in how adept
he
had become with the device. There, he was in commset mode and … He noticed the red light blinking at the bottom of the display. That was the special signal he had installed; Nevil was trying to call
him!

Vendacious startled into action. The parts of him nearest Ut pulled on cords that dropped heavy quilts on every side of the singleton’s perch. He checked it above and below. Now, properly pitched sounds would not be heard by Ut. Not that the Radio pack would dare to deliberately betray Vendacious, but stretched out as it was across the continent, the individual parts were scarcely more than relays. Vendacious had used that fact to snoop across hundreds of leagues—but he lived in horror that his innermost secrets might inadvertently be revealed to others.

He tapped a snout at the dataset, initiating a call, but with the sounds shifted way up into frequencies so high that they came close to interfering with thought. Such squeaking would never penetrate the quilts that surrounded Ut; no chance that dear Tycoon would be bothered by inadvertent relays.

“Vendacious here,” he said, squeaking soft and super-high himself. Oliphaunt dataset had Tinishly good hearing. Somewhere inside, it transformed Vendacious’ voice into
digital
(whatever that was) and boosted it out to Nevil. Vendacious’ heads hurt when he tried to imagine all the things the dataset did automatically.
Somewhere
out among the stars, there were things worth fearing.

Some seconds passed. Was he going to have to leave a message?

Then Nevil’s upshifted voice came from the dataset: “Why in hell are you flying so low, man?”

Vendacious suppressed a snarl. Aloud, he made a noncommittal human noise.

“Never mind,” the maggot continued. “We’ve got a problem. You told me Johanna was out of the picture.”

“Of course. Torn to pieces.” But suddenly Vendacious had a very bad feeling.

“
She was on your frigging fleet!
”

“But I saw her die.
You
were listening yourself.”

“Well, I just saw her alive through trusted video. Now we know why we haven’t had contact with the rafts. Powers on High, Vendacious! How could you?”

Vendacious’ jaws snapped. If the maggot had been physically present, he would have lost his one and only throat. “You think I arranged this complication?” he said.

“I, no.” Nevil’s voice was choppy, as if he were trotting or climbing stairs; humans were such simple animals that they couldn’t disguise that sort of thing. “Look, things are a bit dicey here. If we bring this off, Woodcarver will be so discredited that she won’t dare grab power. My sisters and brothers will be safe. We can make something of this miserable exile—with your help of course. You can have all this damn world when we are done with it, but—”

Vendacious’ spies often reported that Nevil was wonderfully persuasive with his fellow larvae. That was very difficult to believe. The maggot had
never
sounded like anything but a crude manipulator to Vendacious.

In a way, that was comforting. Vendacious let Nevil rattle on for a moment more. When the maggot came to a natural pause, Vendacious had something reasonable and constructive to say: “All agreed, of course. The question is, what should we do about this unpleasant surprise?”

“Well, I’ve already done what was necessary. That’s one reason I’m so pissed.” Nevil explained how he had blasted Johanna and a crowd of maggots into superheated steam. “The beam killed six of my brothers and sisters. We Children count, Vendacious! I need every one of them to work with me.” He was silent for a moment.

Was he inviting a reply? Vendacious couldn’t think of anything non-sarcastic; finally, he responded, “So this has damaged your credibility.”

Nevil gave a sour laugh. “I’m not an idiot. Used this way, beam gun targets just explode. You know, like a bomb. I’ve made a big deal of the terrorist factions within the Tropicals—it’s what today’s ‘peace treaty’ meeting is all about. So the story is, Tinish dissidents on the barge fleet tried to sabotage Tycoon’s generous gift. There are rough edges, but I can make it work. If anything, this will strengthen our current position—but that’s not the point!”