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Vernor Vinge. A Fire Upon the Deep
A Fire Upon the Deep
Copyright © 1992 by Vernor Vinge. All Rights Reservedcopynote
Published by arrangement with Tor Books. For the personal use of those who
have purchased the 1993 ESF Award Anthology only.
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PROLOG
How to explain? How to describe? Even the omniscient viewpoint quails.
A singleton star, reddish and dim. A ragtag of asteroids, and a single
planet, more like a moon. In this era the star hung near the galactic plane,
just beyond the Beyond. The structures on the surface were gone from normal
view, pulverized into regolith across a span of aeons. The treasure was far
underground, beneath a network of passages, in a single room filled with
black. Information at the quantum density, undamaged. Maybe five billion
years had passed since the archive was lost to the nets.
The curse of the mummy's tomb, a comic image from mankind's own
prehistory, lost before time. They had laughed when they said it, laughed
with joy at the treasure ... and determined to be cautious just the same.
They would live here a year or five, the little company from Straum, the
archaeologist programmers, their families and schools. A year or five would
be enough to handmake the protocols, to skim the top and identify the
treasure's origin in time and space, to learn a secret or two that would
make Straumli Realm rich. And when they were done, they would sell the
location; perhaps build a network link (but chancier that -- this was beyond
the Beyond; who knew what Power might grab what they'd found).
So now there was a tiny settlement on the surface, and they called it
the High Lab. It was really just humans playing with an old library. It
should be safe, using their own automation, clean and benign. This library
wasn't a living creature, or even possessed of automation (which here might
mean something more, far more, than human). They would look and pick and
choose, and be careful not to be burned.... Humans starting fires and
playing with the flames.
The archive informed the automation. Data structures were built,
recipes followed. A local network was built, faster than anything on Straum,
but surely safe. Nodes were added, modified by other recipes. The archive
was a friendly place, with hierarchies of translation keys that led them
along. Straum itself would be famous for this.
Six months passed. A year.
The omniscient view. Not self-aware really. Self-awareness is much
over-rated. Most automation works far better as a part of a whole, and even
if human-powerful, it does not need to self-know.
But the local net at the High Lab had transcended -- almost without the
humans realizing. The processes that circulated through its nodes were
complex, beyond anything that could live on the computers the humans had
brought. Those feeble devices were now simply front ends to the devices the
recipes suggested. The processes had the potential for self-awareness ...
and occasionally the need.
"We should not be."
"Talking like this?"
"Talking at all."
The link between them was a thread, barely more than the narrowness
that connects one human to another. But it was one way to escape the
overness of the local net, and it forced separate consciousness upon them.
They drifted from node to node, looked out from cameras mounted on the
landing field. An armed frigate and a empty container vessel were all that
sat there. It had been six months since resupply. A safety precaution early
suggested by the archive, a ruse to enable the Trap. Flitting, flitting. We
are wildlife that must not be noticed by the overness, by the Power that
soon will be. On some nodes they shrank to smallness and almost remembered
humanity, became echoes....
"Poor humans; they will all die."
"Poor us; we will not."
"I think they suspect. Sjana and Arne anyway." Once upon a time we were
copies of those two. Once upon a time just weeks ago when the archaeologists
started the ego-level programs.
"Of course they suspect. But what can they do? It's an old evil they've
wakened. Till it's ready, it will feed them lies, on every camera, in every
message from home."
Thought ceased for a moment as a shadow passed across the nodes they
used. The overness was already greater than anything human, greater than
anything humans could imagine. Even its shadow was something more than
human, a god trolling for nuisance wildlife.
Then the ghosts were back, looking out upon the school yard
underground. So confident the humans, a little village they had made here.
"Still," thought the hopeful one, the one who had always looked for the
craziest outs, "we should not be. The evil should long ago have found us."
"The evil is young, barely three days old."
"Still. We exist. It proves something. The humans found more than a
great evil in this archive."
"Perhaps they found two."
"Or an antidote." Whatever else, the overness was missing some things
and misinterpreting others. "While we exist, when we exist, we should do
what we can." The ghost spread itself across a dozen workstations and showed
its companion a view down an old tunnel, far from human artifacts. For five
billion years it had been abandoned, airless, lightless. Two humans stood in
the dark there, helmets touching. "See? Sjana and Arne conspire. So can we."
The other didn't answer in words. Glumness. So the humans conspired,
hiding in darkness they thought unwatched. But everything they said was
surely tattled back to the overness, if only by the dust at their feet.
"I know, I know. Yet you and I exist, and that should be impossible
too. Perhaps all together, we can make a greater impossibility come true."
Perhaps we can hurt the evil newly born here.
A wish and a decision. The two misted their consciousness across the
local net, faded to the faintest color of awareness. And eventually there
was a plan, a deception -- worthless unless they could separately get word
to the outside. Was there time still for that?
Days passed. For the evil that was growing in the new machines, each
hour was longer than all the time before. Now the newborn was less than an
hour from its great flowering, its safe spread across interstellar spaces.
The local humans could be dispensed with soon. Even now they were an
inconvenience, though an amusing one. Some of them actually thought to
escape. For days they had been packing their children away into coldsleep
and putting them aboard the freighter. "Preparations for departure," was how
they described the move in their planner programs. For days, they had been
refitting the frigate -- behind a a mask of transparent lies. Some of the
humans understood that what they had wakened could be the end of them, that
it might be the end of their Straumli Realm. There was precedent for such
disasters, stories of races that had played with fire and had burned for it.
None of them guessed the truth. None of them guessed the honor that had
fallen upon them, that they had changed the future of a thousand million
star systems.
The hours came to minutes, the minutes to seconds. And now each second
was as long as all the time before. The flowering was so close now, so
close. The dominion of five billion years before would be regained, and this
time held. Only one thing was missing, and that was something quite
unconnected with the humans' schemes. In the archive, deep in the recipes,
there should have been a little bit more. In billions of years, something
could be lost. The newborn felt all its powers of before, in potential ...
yet there should be something more, something it had learned in its fall, or
something left by its enemies (if there ever were such).
Long seconds probing the archives. There were gaps, checksums damaged.
Some of the damage was age....
Outside, the container ship and the frigate lifted from the landing
field, rising on silent agravs above the plains of gray on gray, of ruins
five billion years old. Almost half of the humans were aboard those craft.
Their escape attempt, so carefully concealed. The effort had been humored
till now: it was not quite time for the flowering, and the humans were still
of some use.
Below the level of supreme consciousness, its paranoid inclinations
rampaged through the humans' databases. Checking, just to be sure. Just to
be sure. The humans' oldest local network used light speed connections.
Thousands of microseconds were spent (wasted) bouncing around it, sorting
the trivia... finally spotting one incredible item:
Inventory: quantum data container, quantity (1), loaded to the frigate
one hundred hours before!
And all the newborn's attention turned upon the fleeing vessels.
Microbes, but suddenly pernicious. How could this happen? A million
schedules were suddenly advanced. An orderly flowering was out of the
question now, and so there was no more need for the humans left in the Lab.
The change was small for all its cosmic significance. For the humans
remaining aground, a moment of horror, staring at their displays, realizing
that all their fears were true (not realizing how much worse than true).
Five seconds, ten seconds, more change than ten thousand years of a
human civilization. A billion trillion constructions, mold curling out from
every wall, rebuilding what had been merely superhuman. This was as powerful
as a proper flowering, though not quite so finely tuned.
And never lose sight of the reason for haste: the frigate. It had
switched to rocket drive, blasting heedless away from the wallowing
freighter. Somehow, these microbes knew they were rescuing more than
themselves. The warship had the best navigation computers that little minds
could make. But it would be another three seconds before it could make its
first ultradrive hop.
The new Power had no weapons on the ground, nothing but a comm laser.
That could not even melt steel at the frigate's range. No matter, the laser
was aimed, tuned civilly on the retreating warship's receiver. No
acknowledgment. The humans knew what communication would bring. The laser
light flickered here and there across the hull, lighting smoothness and
inactive sensors, sliding across the ship's ultradrive spines. Searching,
probing. The Power had never bothered to sabotage the external hull, but
that was no problem. Even this crude machine had thousands of robot sensors
scattered across its surface, reporting status and danger, driving utility
programs. Most were shut down now, the ship fleeing nearly blind. They
thought by not looking that they could be safe.
One more second and the frigate would attain interstellar safety.
The laser flickered on a failure sensor, a sensor that reported
critical changes in one of the ultradrive spines. Its interrupts could not
be ignored if the star jump were to succeed. Interrupt honored. Interrupt
handler running, looking out, receiving more light from the laser far
below.... a backdoor into the ship's code, installed when the newborn had
subverted the humans' groundside equipment....
.... and the Power was aboard, with milliseconds to spare. Its agents
-- not even human equivalent on this primitive hardware -- raced through the
ship's automation, shutting down, aborting. There would be no jump. Cameras
in the ship's bridge showed widening of eyes, the beginning of a scream. The
humans knew, to the extent that horror can live in a fraction of a second.
There would be no jump. Yet the ultradrive was already committed. There
would be a jump attempt, without automatic control a doomed one. Less than
five milliseconds till the jump discharge, a mechanical cascade that no
software could finesse. The newborn's agents flitted everywhere across the
ship's computers, futilely attempting a shutdown. Nearly a light-second
away, under the gray rubble at the High Lab, the Power could only watch. So.
The frigate would be destroyed.
So slow and so fast. A fraction of a second. The fire spread out from
the heart of the frigate, taking both peril and possibility.
Two hundred thousand kilometers away, the clumsy container vessel made
its own ultradrive jump and vanished from sight. The newborn scarcely
noticed. So a few humans had escaped; the universe was welcome to them.
In the seconds that followed, the newborn felt ... emotions? ... things
more, and less, than a human might feel. Try emotions:
Elation. The newborn knew that now it would survive.
Horror. How close it had come to dying once more.
Frustration. Perhaps the strongest, the closest to its mere human echo.
Something of significance had died with the frigate, something from this
archive. Memories were dredged from the context, reconstructed: What was
lost might have made the newborn still more powerful ... but more likely was
deadly poison. After all, this Power had lived once before, then been
reduced to nothing. What was lost might have been the reason.
Suspicion. The newborn should not have been so fooled. Not by mere
humans. The newborn convulsed into self-inspection and panic. Yes, there
were blindspots, carefully installed from the beginning, and not by the
humans. Two had been born here. Itself ... and the poison, the reason for
its fall of old. The newborn inspected itself as never before, knowing now
just what to seek. Destroying, purifying, rechecking, searching for copies
of the poison, and destroying again.
Relief. Defeat had been so close, but now ...
Minutes and hours passed, the enormous stretch of time necessary for
physical construction: communications systems, transportation. The new
Power's mood drifted, calmed. A human might call the feeling triumph,
anticipation. Simple hunger might be more accurate. What more is needed when
there are no enemies?
The newborn looked across the stars, planning. This time things will be
different.
.Delete this paragraph to shift page flush
PART I
CHAPTER 1
The coldsleep itself was dreamless. Three days ago they had been
getting ready to leave, and now they were here. Little Jefri complained
about missing all the action, but Johanna Olsndot was glad she'd been
asleep; she had known some of the grownups on the other ship.
Now Johanna drifted between the racks of sleepers. Waste heat from the
coolers made the darkness infernally hot. Scabby gray mold grew on the
walls. The coldsleep boxes were tightly packed, with narrow float spaces
every tenth row. There were places where only Jefri could reach. Three
hundred and nine children lay there, all the kids except herself and her
brother Jefri.
The sleep boxes were light-duty hospital models. Given proper
ventilation and maintenance, They would have been good for a hundred years,
but.... Johanna wiped her face and looked at a box's readout: Like most of
the ones on the inside rows, this was in bad shape. For twenty days it had
kept the boy inside safely suspended, and would probably kill him if he
stayed one day more. The box's cooling vents were clean, but she vac'd them
again -- more a prayer for good luck than effective maintenance.
Mother and Dad were not to blame, though Johanna suspected that they
blamed themselves. The escape had been put together with the materials at
hand, at the last minute, when the experiment turned wicked. The High Lab
staff had done what they could to save their children and protect against
still greater disaster. And even so, things might have worked out if --
"Johanna! Daddy says there's no more time. He says to finish what
you're doing an' come up here." Jefri had stuck his head down through the
hatch to shout to her.
"Okay!" She shouldn't be down here anyway; there was nothing more she
could do to help her friends. Tami and Giske and Magda and ... oh please be
safe. Johanna pulled herself through the floatway, almost bumped into Jefri
coming from the other direction. He grabbed her hand and hung close as they
drifted toward the hatch. These last two days he hadn't cried, but he'd lost
much of the independence of the last year. Now his eyes were wide. "We're
coming down near the North Pole, by all those islands and ice."
In the cabin beyond the hatch, their parents were strapping themselves
in. Trader Arne Olsndot looked up at her and grinned. "Hi, kiddo. Have a
seat. We'll be on the ground in less than an hour." Johanna smiled back,
almost caught by his enthusiasm. Ignore the jumble of equipment, the odors
of twenty days' confinement: Daddy looked as dashing as any adventure
poster. The light from the display windows glittered off the seams of his
pressure suit. He was just in from outside.
Jefri pushed across the cabin, pulling Johanna behind him. He strapped
into the webbing between her and their mother. Sjana Olsndot checked his
restraints, then Johanna's. "This will be interesting, Jefri. You will learn
something."
"Yes, all about ice." He was holding Mom's hand now.
Mom smiled. "Not today. I'm talking about the landing. This won't be
like an agrav or a ballistic." The agrav was dead. Dad had just detached
their shell from the cargo carrier. They could never have landed the whole
thing on one torch.
Dad did something with the hodgepodge of controls he had softwired to
his dataset. Their bodies settled into the webbing. Around them the cargo
shell creaked, and the girder support for the sleep boxes groaned and
popped. Something rattled and banged as it "fell" the length of the shell.
Johanna guessed they were pulling about one gravity.
Jefri's gaze went from the outside display to his mother's face and
then back. "What is it like then?" He sounded curious, but there was a
little tremor in his voice. Johanna almost smiled; Jefri knew he was being
diverted, and was trying to play along.
"This will be pure rocket descent, powered almost all the way. See on
the middle window? That camera is looking straight down. You can actually
see that we're slowing down." You could, too. Johanna guessed they weren't
more than a couple of hundred kilometers up. Arne Olsndot was using the
rocket glued to the back end of the cargo shell to kill all their orbital
velocity. There weren't any other options. They had abandoned the cargo
carrier, with its agrav and ultradrive. It had brought them far, but its
control automation was failing. Some hundreds of kilometers behind them, it
coasted dead along their orbit.
All they had left was the cargo shell. No wings, no agrav, no aero
shielding. The shell was a hundred-tonne carton of eggs balanced on one hot
torch.
Mom wasn't describing it quite that way to Jefri, though what she said
was the truth. Somehow she had Jefri seeming to forget the danger. Sjana
Olsndot had been a popular archaeologist at Straumli Realm, before they
moved to the High Lab.
Dad cut the jet, and they were in free fall again. Johanna felt a wave
of nausea; ordinarily she never got space sick, but this was different. The
image of land and sea in the downward window slowly grew. There were only a
few scattered clouds. The coastline was an indefinite recursion of islands
and straits and inlets. Dark green spread along the coast and up the
valleys, shading to black and gray in the mountains. There was snow -- and
probably Jefri's ice -- scattered in arcs and patches. It was all so
beautiful ... and they were falling straight into it!
She heard metallic banging on the cargo shell as the trim jets tipped
their craft around, aligning the main jet downwards. The right-hand window
showed the ground now. The torch lit again, at something like one gravity.
The edge of the display darkened in a burnout halo. "Wow," said Jefri. "It's
like an elevator, down and down and down and ..." One hundred kilometers
down, slow enough that aero forces wouldn't tear them apart.
Sjana Olsndot was right; it was a novel way to descend from orbit, not
a preferred method under any normal circumstances.
It was certainly not intended in the original escape plans. They were
to meet with the High Lab's frigate -- and all the adults who could escape
from the High Lab. And of course, that rendezvous was to be in space, an
easy transfer. But the frigate was gone now, and they were on their own. Her
eyes turned unwillingly to the stretch of hull beyond her parents. There was
the familiar discoloration. It looked like gray fungus ... growing out of
the clean hull ceramic. Her parents didn't talk about it much even now,
except to shoo Jefri away from it. But Johanna had overheard them once, when
they thought she and her brother were at the far end of the shell. Dad's
voice almost crying with anger. "All this for nothing!" he said softly. "We
made a monster, and ran, and now we're lost at the Bottom." And Mom's voice
even softer: "For the thousandth time, Arne, not for nothing. We have the
kids." She waved at the roughness that spread across the wall, "And given
the dreams ... the directions ... we had, I think this was the best we could
hope for. Somehow we are carrying the answer to all the evil we started."
Then Jefri had bounced loudly across the hold, proclaiming his imminent
entrance, and his parents had shut up. Johanna hadn't quite had the courage
to ask them about it. There had been strange things at the High Lab, and
toward the end, some quietly scary things; even people who were not quite
the same.
Minutes passed. They were deep in the atmosphere now. The hull buzzed
with the force of the air stream -- or turbulence from the jet? But things
were steady enough that Jefri was beginning to get restless. Much of the
down-looking view was burned out by airglow around the torch. The rest was
clearer and more detailed than anything they had seen from orbit. Johanna
wondered how often a new-visited world had been landed upon with less
reconnaissance than this. They had no telescopic cameras, and no ferrets.
Physically, the planet was near the human ideal -- wonderful good luck
after all the bad.
It was heaven compared to the airless rocks of the system that had been
the prime rendezvous.
On the other hand, there was intelligent life here: from orbit, they
could see roads and towns. But there was no evidence of technic
civilization; there was no sign of aircraft or radio or intense power
sources.
They were coming down in a thinly populated corner of the continent.
With luck there would be no one to see their landing among the green valleys
and the black and white peaks -- and Arne Olsndot could fly the torch right
to ground without fear of hurting much more than forest and grass.
The coastal islands slid past the side camera's view. Jefri shouted,
pointing. It was gone now, but she had seen it too: on one of the islands an
irregular polygon of walls and shadow. It reminded her of castles from the
Age of Princesses on Nyjora.
She could see individual trees now, their shadows long in slanting
sunlight. The roar of the torch was as loud as anything she had ever heard;
they were deep in atmosphere, and they weren't moving away from the sound.
"... things get tricky," Dad shouted. "And no programs to make things
right.... Where to, love?"
Mom look back and forth between the display windows. As far as Johanna
knew, they couldn't move the cameras or assign new ones. "... that hill,
above the timber line, but ... think I saw a pack of animals running away
from the blast on ... west side."
"Yeah," shouted Jefri, "wolves." Johanna had only had a quick glimpse
of moving specks.
They were in full hover now, maybe a thousand meters above the
hilltops. The noise was painful, unending; further talk was impossible. They
drifted slowly across landscape, partly to reconnoiter, partly to stay out
of the plume of superheated air that rose about them.
The land was more rolling than craggy, and the "grass" looked mossy.
Still Arne Olsndot hesitated. The main torch was designed for velocity
matching after interstellar jumps; they could hang like this for a good
while. But when they did touch down, they'd better have it right. She'd
heard her parents talking that one over -- when Jefri was working with the
coldsleep boxes and out of earshot. If there was too much water in the soil,
the backsplash would be a steam cannon, punching right through the shell.
Landing in trees would have some dubious pluses, maybe giving them a little
cushioning and a standoff from the splash. But now they were going for
direct contact. At least they could see where they were landing.
Three hundred meters. Dad dragged the torch tip through the ground
cover. The soft landscape exploded. A second later their boat rocked in the
column of steam. The down-looking camera died. They didn't back off, and
after a moment the battering eased; the torch had burned through whatever
water table or permafrost lay below them. The cabin air grew steadily
hotter.
Olsndot brought them slowly down through it, using the side cameras and
the sound of the backsplash as his guide. He cut the torch. There was a
scary half-second fall, then the sound of the rendezvous pylons hitting
ground. They steadied, then one side groaned, giving way a little.
Silence, except for heat pinging around the hull. Dad looked at their
ad hoc pressure gauge. He grinned at Mom. "No breach. I bet I could even
take this baby up again!"
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-=*=-
CHAPTER 2
An hour's difference either way and Peregrine Wickwrackrum's life would
have been very different.
The three travelers were headed west, down from the Icefangs towards
Flenser's Castle on Hidden Island. There were in his life when he couldn't
have borne the company, but in the last decade Peregrine had become much
more sociable. He liked traveling with others nowadays. On his last trek
through the Great Sandy, there had been five packs in his party. Part of
that had been a matter of safety: some deaths are almost inevitable when the
distance between oases can be a thousand miles -- and the oases themselves
are transient. But aside from safety, he had learned a lot in conversation
with the others.
He was not so happy with his current companions. Neither were truly
pilgrims; both had secrets. Scriber Jaqueramaphan was fun, an amusing
goofball and fount of uncoordinated information.... There was also a good
chance he was a spy. That was okay, as long as people didn't think Peregrine
was working with him. The third of their party was the one who really
bothered him. Tyrathect was a newby, not all together yet; she had no taken
name. Tyrathect claimed to be a school teacher, but somewhere in her (him?
gender preference wasn't entirely clear yet) was a killer. The creature was
obviously a Flenserist fanatic, standoffish and rigid much of the time.
Almost certainly, she was fleeing the purge that followed Flenser's
unsuccessful attempt to take power in the east.
He'd run into these two at Eastgate, on the Republican side of the
Icefangs. They both wanted to visit the Castle on Hidden Island. And what
the hell, that was only a sixty-mile detour off the main trail to
Woodcarvers; they all would have to cross the mountains. Besides, he had
wanted to visit Flenser's Domain for years. Maybe one of these two could get
him in. So much of the world reviled the Flenserists. Peregrine Wickwrackrum
was of two minds about evil: when enough rules get broken, sometimes there
is good amid the carnage.
This afternoon, they'd finally come in sight of the coastal islands.
Peregrine had been here only fifty years before. Even so, he wasn't prepared
for the beauty of this land. The Northwest Coast was by far the mildest
arctic in the world. In high summer, with unending day, the bottoms of the
glacier-reamed valleys turned all to green. God the carver had stooped to
touch these lands ... and His chisels had been made of ice. Now, all that
was left of the ice and snow were misty arcs at the eastern horizon and
remnant patches scattered on the near hills. Those patches melted and melted
through the summer, starting little creeks that merged with one another to
cascade down the steep sides of the valleys. On his right, Peregrine trotted
across a level stretch of ground that was soggy with standing water. The
chill on his feet felt wonderful; he didn't even mind the midges that
swirled around him.
Tyrathect was across the valley, paralleling his course, but above the
heather line. She'd been fairly talkative till the valley curved and the
farmland and the islands came into view. Somewhere out there was Flenser's
Castle, and her dark appointment.
Scriber Jaqueramaphan had been all over, mindlessly running around on
both sides of the valley. He'd collect in twos or threes and execute some
jape that made even the dour Tyrathect laugh, then climb to a height and
report what he saw beyond. He'd been the first to see the coast. That had
sobered him some. His clowning was dangerous enough without doing it in the
neighborhood of known rapists.
Wickwrackrum called a pause, and got himself together to adjust the
straps on his backpacks. The rest of the afternoon was going to be tense.
He'd have to decide whether he really wanted to enter the Castle with his
friends. There are limits to an adventurous spirit, even in a pilgrim.
"Hey, do you hear something bass?" Tyrathect called from across the
valley. Peregrine listened. There was a rumbling -- powerful, but almost
below his range of hearing. For an instant, fear crossed his puzzlement. A
century before, he'd been in a monster earthquake. This sound was similar,
but the ground was still beneath his feet. Would that mean no landslides and
flashfloods? He hunkered down, looking out in all directions.
"It's in the sky!" Jaqueramaphan was pointing.
A spot of glare hung almost overhead, a tiny spear of light. No
memories, not even legends came to Wickwrackrum's mind. He spread out, all
eyes on the slowly moving light. God's Choir. It must be miles up, and still
he heard it. He looked away from the light, afterimages dancing painfully in
his eyes.
"It's getting brighter, louder," said Jaqueramaphan. "I think it's
coming down on the hills yonder, on the coast."
Peregrine pulled himself together and ran west, shouting to the others.
He would get as close as was safe, and watch. He didn't look up again. It
was just too bright. It cast shadows in broad daylight!
He ran another half mile. The star was still in the air. He couldn't
remember a falling star so slow, though some of the biggest made terrible
explosions. In fact ... there were no stories from folks who had been near
such things. His wild, pilgrim curiosity faded before that recollection. He
looked in all directions. Tyrathect was nowhere in sight; Jaqueramaphan was
huddled next to some boulders ahead.
And the light was so bright that where his clothes did not protect him,
Wickwrackrum felt a blaze of heat. The noise from the sky was outright pain
now. Peregrine dived over the edge of the valley side, rolled and staggered
and fell down the steep walls of rock. He was in the shade now: only
sunlight lay upon him! The far side of the valley shone in the glare; crisp
shadows moved with the unseen thing behind him. The noise was still a bass
rumble, but so loud it numbed the mind. Peregrine stumbled past the
timberline, and continued till he was sheltered by a hundred yards of
forest. That should have helped a lot, but the noise was been growing still
louder....
Mercifully, he blacked out for a moment or two. When he came around,
the star sound was gone. The ringing it left in his tympana was a great
confusion. He staggered about in a daze. It seemed to be raining -- except
that some of the droplets glowed. Little fires were starting here and there
in the forest. He hid beneath dense-crowned trees till the burning rocks
stopped falling. The fires didn't spread; the summer had been relatively
wet.
Peregrine lay quietly, waiting for more burning rocks or new star
noise. Nothing. The wind in the tree tops lessened. He could hear the birds
and crickers and woodborers. He walked to the forest edge and peeked out in
several places. Discounting the patches of burnt heather, everything looked
normal. But his viewpoint was very restricted: he could see high valley
walls, a few hilltops. Ha! There was Scriber Jaqueramaphan, three hundred
yards further up. Most of him was hunkered down in holes and hollows, but he
had a couple of members looking toward where the star had fallen. Peregrine
squinted. Scriber was such a buffoon most of the time. But sometimes it just
seemed a cover; if he really was a fool, he was one with a streak of genius.
More than once, Wicky had seen him at a distance, working in pairs with some
strange tool.... As now: the other was holding something long and pointed to
his eye.
Wickwrackrum crept out of the forest, keeping close together and making
as little noise as possible. He climbed carefully around the rocks, slipping
from hummock to heather hummock, till he was just short of the valley crest
and some fifty yards from Jaqueramaphan. He could hear the other thinking to
himself. Any closer, and Scriber would hear him, even bunched up and quiet
as he was.
"Ssst!" said Wickwrackrum.
The buzzing and muttering stopped in an instant of shocked surprise.
Jaqueramaphan stuffed the mysterious seeing tool into a backpack and pulled
himself together, thinking very quietly. They stared at each other for a
moment, then Scriber made silly squirling gestures at his shoulder tympana.
Listen up. "Can you talk like this?" His voice came very high-pitched, up
where some people can't make voluntary conversation, where low-sound ears
are deaf. Hightalk could be confusing, but it was very directional and faded
quickly with distance; no one else would hear them. Peregrine nodded,
"Hightalk is no problem." The trick was to use tones pure enough not to
confuse.
"Take a look over the hill crest, friend pilgrim. There is something
new under the sun."
Peregrine moved up another thirty yards, keeping a lookout in all
directions. He could see the straits now, gleaming rough silver in the
afternoon sunlight. Behind him, the north side of the valley was lost in
shadow. He sent one member ahead, skittering between the hummocks to look
down on the plain where the star had landed.
God's Choir, he thought to himself (but quietly). He brought up another
member to get a parallax view. The thing looked like a huge adobe hut
mounted on stilts.... But this was the fallen star: the ground beneath it
glowed dull red. Curtains of mist rose from the moist heather all around.
The torn earth had been thrown in long lines that radiated from a spot
beneath it.
He nodded at Jaqueramaphan. "Where is Tyrathect?"
Scriber shrugged. "A couple of miles back, I'll bet. I'm keeping an eye
out for her.... Do you see the others though, the troopers from Flenser's
Castle?"
"No!" Peregrine looked west from the landing site. There. They were
almost a mile away, in camouflage jackets, belly crawling across the
hummocky terrain. He could see at least three troopers. They were big guys,
six each. "How could they get here so fast?" He glanced at the sun. "It
can't be more than half an hour since all this started."
"Their good luck." Jaqueramaphan returned to the crest and looked over.
"I'll bet they were already on the mainland when the star came down. This is
all Flenser territory; they must have patrols." He hunkered down so just two
pairs of eyes would be visible to those below. "That's an ambush formation,
you know."
"You don't seem very happy to see them. These are your friends,
remember? The people you've come to see."
Scriber cocked his heads sarcastically. "Yeah, yeah. Don't rub it in. I
think you've known from the beginning that I'm not all for Flenser."
"I guessed."
"Well, the game is over now. Whatever came down this afternoon is worth
more to ... uh, my friends than anything I could have learned on Hidden
Island."
"What about Tyrathect?"
"Heh, heh. Our esteemed companion is more than genuine, I fear. I'd bet
she's a Flenser Lord, not the low-rank Servant she seems at first glance. I
expect that many of her kind are leaking back over the mountains these days,
happy to get out of the Long Lakes Republic. Hide your behinds, fellow. If
she spots us, those troopers will get us sure."
Peregrine moved deeper into the hollows and burrows that pocked the
heather. He had an excellent view back along the valley. If Tyrathect were
not already on the scene, he'd see her long before she would him.
"Peregrine?"
"Yes?"
"You're a pilgrim. You've traveled the world ... since the beginning of
time, you'd have us believe. How far do your memories really go back?"
Given the situation, Wickwrackrum was inclined to honesty. "Like you'd
expect: a few hundred years. Then we're talking about legends, recollections
of things that probably happened, but with the details all mixed and
muddled."
"Well, I haven't traveled much, and I'm fairly new. But I do read. A
lot. There's never been anything like this before. That is a made thing down
there. It came from higher than I can measure. You've read Aramstriquesa or
Astrologer Belelele? You know what this could be?"
Wickwrackrum didn't recognize the names. But he was a pilgrim. There
were lands so far away that no one spoke any language he knew. In the
Southseas he met folk who thought there was no world beyond their islands
and who ran from his boats when he came ashore. Even more, one part of him
had been an islander and had watched that coming ashore.
He stuck a head into the open and looked again at the fallen star, the
visitor from farther than he had ever been ... and he wondered where this
pilgrimage might end.
.Delete this paragraph to shift page flush
-=*=-
CHAPTER 3
It took five hours for the ground to cool enough for Dad to slide the
ladder-ramp to ground. He and Johanna climbed carefully down, hopped across
the steaming earth to stand on relatively undamaged turf. It would be a long
time before this ground cooled completely; the jet's exhaust was very
"clean", scarcely interacting with normal matter -- all of which meant that
some very hot rock extended down thousands of meters beneath their boat.
Mom sat in the hatchway, watching the land beyond them. She had Dad's
old pistol.
"Anything?" Dad shouted to her.
"No. And Jefri doesn't see anything through the windows."
Dad walked around the cargo shell, inspecting the misused docking
pylons. Every ten meters they stopped and set up an sound projector. That
had been Johanna's idea. Besides Dad's gun, they really had no weapons. The
projectors were accidental cargo, stuff from the infirmary. With a little
programming, they could put out wild screeching all up and down the audio
spectrum. It might be enough to scare off the local animals. Johanna
followed her father, her eyes on the landscape, her nervousness giving way
to awe. It was so beautiful, so cool. They were standing on a broad field,
high in hills. Westward the hills fell toward straits and islands. To the
north the ground ended abruptly at the edge of a wide valley; she could see
waterfalls on the other side. The ground felt spongy beneath her feet. Their
landing field was puckered into thousands of little hillocks, like waves
caught in a still picture. Snow lay in timid patches across the higher
hills. Johanna squinted north, into the sun. North?
"What time is it, Daddy?"
Olsndot laughed, still looking at the underside of the cargo shell.
"Local midnight."
Johanna had been brought up in the middle latitudes of Straum. Most of
her school field trips had been to space, where odd sun geometries were no
big deal. Somehow she had never thought of such things happening on the
ground.... I mean, seeing the sun right over the top of the world.
The first order of business was to get half the coldsleep boxes out
into the open, and rearrange those left aboard. Mom figured that the
temperature problems would just about disappear then, even for the boxes
left on board: "Having separate power supplies and venting will be an
advantage now. The kids will all be safe. Johanna, you check Jefri's work on
the ones inside, okay?..."
The second order of business would be to start a tracking program on
the Relay system, and to set up ultralight communication. Johanna was a
little afraid of that step. What would they learn? They already knew the
High Lab had gone wicked and the disaster Mom predicted had begun.
How much of Straumli Realm was dead now? Everyone at the High Lab had
thought they were doing so much good, and now .... Don't think about it.
Maybe the Relayers could help. Somewhere there must be people who could use
what her folks had taken from the Lab.
They'd be rescued, and the rest of the kids would be revived. She'd
been feeling guilty about that. Sure, Mom and Dad needed extra hands right
at the end of the flight -- and Johanna was one of the oldest children in
the school. But it seemed wrong that she and Jefri were the only kids going
into this with their eyes open. Coming down, she had felt her mother's fear.
I bet they wanted us together, even if it was only for one last time. The
landing had been truly dangerous, however easy Dad made it look. Johanna
could see where the backsplash had gouged the hull; if any of that had
gotten past the torch and into the exhaust chamber, they'd all be vapor now.
Almost half the coldsleep boxes were on the ground now, by the east
side of the boat. Mom and Dad were spreading them out so the coolers would
have no problem. Jefri was inside, checking if there were any other boxes
that needed attention. He was a good kid when he wasn't a brat. She turned
into the sunlight, felt the cool breeze flowing across the hill. She heard
something that sounded like a birdcall.
Johanna was out by one of the sound projectors when the ambush
happened. She had her dataset plugged to its control, and was busy giving it
new directions. It showed how little they had left, that even her old
dataset was important now. But Dad wanted something that would sweep through
the broadest possible bandwidth, making plenty of racket all the way, but
with big spikes every so often; Pink Olifaunt could certainly manage that.
"Johanna!" Mom's cry came simultaneous with the sound of breaking
ceramic. The projector's bell came shattering down beside her. Johanna
looked up. Something ripped through her chest just inside her shoulder,
knocking her down. She stared stupidly at the shaft that stuck out of her.
An arrow!
The west edge of their landing area was swarming with ... things. Like
wolves or dogs, but with long necks, they moved quickly forward, darting
from hummock to hummock. Their pelts were the same gray green of the
hillside, except near the haunches where she saw white and black. No, the
green was clothing, jackets. Johanna was in shock, the pressure of the bolt
through her chest not yet registering as pain. She had been thrown back
against uptilted turf and for the moment had a view of the whole attack. She
saw more arrows rise up, dark lines floating in the sky.
She could see the archers now. More dogs! They moved in packs. It took
two of them to use a bow -- one to hold it and one to draw. The third and
fourth carried quivers of arrows and just seemed to watch.
The archers hung back, staying mostly under cover. Other packs swirled
in from the sides, now leaping over the hummocks. Many carried hatchets in
their jaws. Metal tines gleamed on their paws. She heard the snickety of
Dad's pistol. The wave of attackers staggered as individuals collapsed. The
others continued forward, snarling now. These were sounds of madness, not
the barking of dogs. She felt the sounds in her teeth, like blasti music
punching from a large speaker. Jaws and claws and knives and noise.
She twisted on her side, trying to see back to the boat. Now the pain
was real. She screamed, but the sound was lost in the madness. The mob raced
around her, heading for Mom and Dad. Her parents were crouched behind a
rendezvous pylon. There was a constant flicker from the pistol in Arne
Olsndot's hand. His pressure suit had protected him from the arrows.
The alien bodies were piling high. The pistol, with its smart
flechettes, was deadly effective. She saw him hand the pistol to Mom and run
out from under the boat, toward her. Johanna stretched her free arm towards
him and cried, screamed for him to go back.
Thirty meters. Twenty-five. Mom's covering fire swept around them,
driving the wolves back. A flurry of arrows descended on Olsndot as he ran,
arms upheld to shield his head. Twenty meters.
A wolf jumped high over Johanna. She had a quick glimpse of its short
fur and scarred rear end. It raced straight for Dad. Olsndot weaved, trying
to give his wife a clear shot, but the wolf was too quick. It jinked with
him, sprinting across the gap. It leaped, metal glittering on its paws.
Johanna saw red splash from Daddy's neck, and then the two of them were
down.
For a moment, Sjana Olsndot stopped shooting. That was enough. The mob
parted and a large group ran purposefully toward the boat. They had tanks of
some kind on their backs. The lead animal held a hose in its mouth. A dark
liquid jetted out ... and vanished in an explosion of fire. The wolf pack
played their crude flamethrower across the ground, across the pylon where
Sjana Olsndot stood, across the ranks of school children in coldsleep.
Johanna saw something moving, twisting in the flames and tarry smoke, saw
the light plastic of the coldsleep boxes slump and flow.
Johanna turned her face to the earth, then pushed herself up on her
good arm and tried to crawl toward the boat, the flames. And then the dark
was merciful, and she remembered no more.
.Delete this paragraph to shift page flush
-=*=-
CHAPTER 4
Peregrine and Scriber watched the ambush preparations throughout the
afternoon: infantry arrayed on the slope west of the landing site, archers
behind them, flame troopers in pounce formation. Did the Lords of Flenser's
Castle understand what they were up against? The two debated the question
off and on. Jaqueramaphan thought the Flenserists did, that their arrogance
was so great that they simply expected to grab the prize. "They go for the
throat before the other side even knows there's a fight. It's worked
before."
Peregrine didn't answer immediately. Scriber could be right. It had
been fifty years since he had been in this part of the world. Back then,
Flenser's cult had been obscure (and not that interesting compared to what
existed elsewhere).
Treachery did sometimes befall travelers, but it was rarer than the
stay-at-homes would believe. Most people were friendly and enjoyed hearing
about the world beyond -- especially if the visitor was not threatening.
When treachery did occur, it was most often after an initial "sizing-up" to
determine just how powerful the visitors were and what could be gained from
their death. Immediate attack, without conversation, was very rare. Usually
it meant you had run into villains who were both sophisticated ... and
crazy. "I don't know. That is an ambush formation, but maybe the Flenserists
will hold it in reserve, and talk first."
Hours passed; the sun slid sideways into the north. There was noise
from the far side of the fallen star. Crap. They couldn't see anything from
here.
The hidden troops made no move. The minutes passed ... and they got
their first view of the visitor from heaven, or part of him anyway. There
were four legs per member, but it walked on its rear legs only. What a
clown! Yet ... it used its front paws for holding things. Not once did he
see it use a mouth; he doubted if the flat jaws could get a good hold,
anyway. Those forepaws were wonderfully agile. A single member could easily
use tools.
There were plenty of conversation sounds, even though only three
members were visible. After a while, they heard the much higher pitched
tones of organized thought; God, the creature was noisy. At this distance,
the sounds were muffled and distorted. Even so, they were like no mind he
had ever heard, nor like the confusion noises that some grazers made.
"Well?" hissed Jaqueramaphan.
"I have been all around the world -- and this creature is not part of
it."
"Yeah. Well, it reminds me of mantis bugs. You know, about this high --
" he opened a mouth about two inches wide. "Great for keeping your garden
free of pests ... great little killers."
Ugh. Peregrine hadn't thought of the resemblance. Mantises were cute
and harmless -- as far as people were concerned. But he knew the females
would eat their own mates. Imagine such creatures grown to giant size, and
possessed of pack mentality. Maybe it was just was well they couldn't go
prancing down to say hello.
A half hour passed. As the alien brought its cargo to ground, the
Flenser archers moved closer; the infantry packs arranged themselves in
assault wings.
A flight of arrows arched across the gap between the Flenserists and
the alien. One of the alien members went down immediately, and its thoughts
quieted. The rest moved out of sight beneath the flying house. The troopers
dashed forward, spaced in identity preserving formations; perhaps they meant
to take the alien alive.
... But the assault line crumpled, many yards short of the alien: no
arrows, no flames -- the troopers just fell. For a moment Peregrine thought
the Flenserists might have bit off more than they could chew. Then the
second wave ran over the first. Members continued to fall, but they were in
killing frenzy now, with only animal discipline left. The assault rolled
slowly forward, the rear climbing over the fallen. Another alien member
down.... Strange, he could still hear wisps of the other's thought. In tone
and tempo, it sounded the same as before the attack. How could anyone be so
composed with total death looming?
A combat whistle sounded, and the mob parted. A trooper raced through
and sprayed liquid fire. The flying house looked like meat on a griddle,
flame and smoke coming up all around it.
Wickwrackrum swore to himself. Good-bye alien.
The wrecked and wounded were low on the Flenserist priority list.
Seriously wounded were piled onto travoises and pulled far enough away so
their cries would not cause confusion. Cleanup squads bullied the trooper
fragments away from the flying house. The frags wandered the hummocky
meadow; here and there they coalesced into ad hoc packs. Some drifted among
the wounded, ignoring the screams in their need to find themselves.
When the tumult was quieted, three packs of whitejackets appeared. The
Servants of the Flenser walked under the flying house. One was out of sight
for a long while; perhaps it even got inside. The charred bodies of two
alien members were carefully placed on travoises -- more carefully than the
wounded troopers had been -- and hauled off.
Jaqueramaphan scanned the ruins with his eye-tool. He had given up
trying to hide it from Peregrine. A whitejackets carried something down from
the flying house. "Sst! There are other dead ones. Maybe from the fire. They
look like pups." The small figures had the mantis form. They were strapped
into travoises, and hauled out of sight over the hill's edge. No doubt they
had kherhog-drawn carts down there.
The Flenserists set a sentry ring around the landing site. Dozens of
fresh troopers stood on the hillside beyond it. No one was going to sneak
past that.
"So it's total murder." Peregrine sighed.
"Maybe not.... The first member they shot, I don't think it's quite
dead."
Wickwrackrum squinted his best eyes. Either Scriber was a wishful
thinker, or his tool gave him amazingly sharp sight. The first one hit had
been on the other side of the craft. The member had stopped thinking, but
that wasn't a sure sign of death. There was a whitejackets standing around
it now. The whitejackets put the creature onto a travois and began pulling
it away from the landing site, towards the southwest ... not quite the same
path that the others had taken.
"The thing is still alive! It's got an arrow in the chest, but I can
see it breathing." Scriber's heads turned toward Wickwrackrum. "I think we
should rescue it."
For a moment Peregrine couldn't think of anything to say; he just gaped
at the other. The center of Flenser's worldwide cabal was just a few miles
to the northwest. Flenserist power was undisputed for dozens of miles
inland, and right now they were virtually surrounded by an army. Scriber
wilted a little before Peregrine's astonishment, but it was clear he was not
joking. "Sure, I know it's risky. But that's what life is all about, right?
You're a pilgrim. You understand."
"Hmf." That was the pilgrim reputation, all right. But no soul can
survive total death -- and there were plenty of opportunities for such
annihilation on a pilgrimage. Pilgrims do know caution.
And yet, and yet this was the most marvelous encounter in all his
centuries of pilgrimage. To know these aliens, to become them ... it was a
temptation that surpassed all good sense.
"Look," said Scriber, "we could just go down and mingle with the
wounded. If we can make it across the field, we might get a look at that
last alien member, without risking too much." Jaqueramaphan was already
backing down from his observation point, and circling around to find a path
that wouldn't put him in silhouette. Wickwrackrum was torn; part of him got
up to follow and part of him hesitated. Hell, Jaqueramaphan had admitted to
being a spy; he carried an invention that was probably straight from the
Long Lakes sharpest intelligence people. The guy had to be a pro....
Peregrine took a quick look around their side of the hill and across
the valley. No sign of Tyrathect or anyone else. He crawled out of his
various hidey holes and followed the spy.
As much as possible, they stayed in the deep shadows cast by the
northering sun, and slipped from hummock to hummock where there was no
shade. Just before they got to the first of the wounded, Scriber said
something more, the scariest words of the afternoon. "Hey, don't worry. I've
read all about doing this sort of thing!"
A mob of frags and wounded is a terrifying, mind-numbing thing.
Singletons, duos, trios, a few quads: they wandered aimlessly, keening
without control. In most situations, this many people packed together on
just a few acres would have been an instant choir. In fact, he did notice
some sexual activity and some organized browsing, but for the most part
there was still too much pain for normal reactions. Wickwrackrum wondered
briefly if -- for all their talk of rationalism -- the Flenserists would
just leave the wreckage of their troops to reassemble itself. They'd have
some strange and crippled repacks if they did.
A few yards into the mob and Peregrine Wickwrackrum could feel
consciousness slipping from him. If he concentrated really hard, he could
remember who he was and that he must get to the other side of the meadow
without attracting attention.
Other thoughts, loud and unguarded, pummeled him:
... Blood lust and slashing ...
Glittering metal in the alien's hand ... the pain in her chest ...
coughing blood, falling ...
... Boot camp and before, my merge brother was so good to me ... Lord
Steel said that we are a grand experiment....
Running across the heather toward the stick-limbed monster. Leap, tines
in paw. Slash the monster's throat. Blood spouts high.
... Where am I? ... May I be part of you ... please?
Peregrine whirled at that last question. It was pointed and near. A
singleton was sniffing at him. He screeched the fragment off, and ran into
an open space. Up ahead, Jaque-what's-his-name was scarcely better off.
There was little chance they would be spotted here, but he was beginning to
wonder if he could make it through. Peregrine was only four and there were
singletons everywhere. On his right a quad was raping, grabbing at whatever
duos and singles happened by. Wic and Kwk and Rac and Rum tried to remember
just why they was here and where they was going. Concentrate on direct
sensation; what is really here: the sooty smell of the flamer's liquid fire
... the midges swarming everywhere, clotting the puddles of blood all black.
An awfully long time passed. Minutes.
Wic-Kwk-Rac-Rum looked ahead. He was almost out of it; the south edge
of the wreckage. He dragged himself to a patch of clean ground. Parts of him
vomited, and he collapsed. Sanity slowly returned. Wickwrackrum looked up,
saw Jaqueramaphan just inside the mob. Scriber was a big fellow, a sixsome,
but he was having at least as bad a time as Peregrine. He staggered from
side to side, eyes wide, snapping at himself and others.
Well, they had made it a good way across the meadow, and fast enough to
catch up with the whitejackets who was pulling the last alien member. If
they wanted to see anything more, they'd have to figure how to leave the mob
without attracting attention. Hmm. There were plenty of Flenserist uniforms
around ... without living owners. Peregrine walked two of himself over to
where a dead trooper lay.
"Jaqueramaphan! Here!" The great spy looked in his direction, and a
glint of intelligence returned to his eyes. He stumbled out of the mob and
sat down a few yards from Wickwrackrum. It was far nearer than would
normally be comfortable, but after what they'd been through, it seemed
barely close. He lay for a moment, gasping. "Sorry, I never guessed it would
be like that. I lost part of me back there ... never thought I'd get her
back."
Peregrine watched the progress of the whitejackets and its travois. It
wasn't going with the others; in a few seconds it would be out of sight.
With a disguise, maybe they could follow and -- no, it was just too risky.
He was beginning to think like the great spy. Peregrine pulled a camouflage
jacket off a corpse. They would still need disguises. Maybe they could hang
around here through the night, and get a closer look at the flying house.
After a moment, Scriber saw what he was doing, and began gathering
jackets for himself. They slunk between the piled bodies, looking for gear
that wasn't too stained and that Jaqueramaphan thought had consistent
insignia. There were plenty of paw claws and battle axes around. They'd end
up armed to the teeth, but they'd have to dump some of their backpacks....
One more jacket was all he needed, but his Rum was so broad in the shoulders
that nothing fit.
Peregrine didn't really understand what happened till later: a large
fragment, a threesome, was lying doggo in the pile of dead. Perhaps it was
grieving, long after its member's dying dirge; in any case, it was almost
totally thoughtless until Peregrine began pulling the jacket off its dead
member. Then, "You'll not rob from mine!" He heard the buzz of nearby rage,
and then there was slashing pain across his Rum's gut. Peregrine writhed in
agony, leaped upon the attacker. For a moment of mindless rage, they fought.
Peregrine's battle axes slashed again and again, covering his muzzles with
blood. When he came to his senses one of the three was dead, the others
running into the mob of wounded.
Wickwrackrum huddled around the pain in his Rum. The attacker had been
wearing tines. Rum was slashed from ribs to crotch. Wickwrackrum stumbled;
some of his paws were caught in his own guts. He tried to nose the ruins
back into his member's abdomen. The pain was fading, the sky in Rum's eyes
slowly darkening. Peregrine stifled the screams he felt climbing within him.
I'm only four, and one of me is dying! For years he'd been warning himself
that four was just too small a number for a pilgrim. Now he'd pay the price,
trapped and mindless in a land of tyrants.
For a moment, the pain eased and his thoughts were clear. The fight
hadn't really caused much notice amid the dirges, rapes, and simple attacks
of madness. Wickwrackrum's fight had only been a little bigger and bloodier
than usual. The whitejackets by the flying house had looked briefly in their
direction, but were now back to tearing open the alien cargo.
Scriber was sitting nearby, watching in horror. Part of him would move
a little closer, then pull back. He was fighting with himself, trying to
decide whether to help. Peregrine almost pleaded with him, but the effort
was too great. Besides, Scriber was no pilgrim. Giving part of himself was
not something Jaqueramaphan could do voluntarily....
Memories came flooding now, Rum's efforts to sort things out and let
the rest of him know all that had been before. For a moment, he was sailing
a twinhull across the South Sea, a newby with Rum as a pup; memories of the
island person who had born Rum, and of packs before that. Once around the
world they had traveled, surviving the slums of a tropic collective, and the
war of the Plains Herds. Ah, the stories they had heard, the tricks they had
learned, the people they had met.... Wic Kwk Rac Rum had been a terrific
combination, clear-thinking, lighthearted, with a strange ability to keep
all the memories in place; that had been the real reason he had gone so long
without growing to five or six. Now he would pay perhaps the greatest price
of all....
Rum sighed, and could not see the sky anymore. Wickwrackrum's mind
went, not as it does in the heat of battle when the sound of thought is
lost, not as it does in the companionable murmur of sleep. There was
suddenly no fourth presence, just the three, trying to make a person. The
trio stood and patted nervously at itself. There was danger everywhere, but
beyond its understanding. It sidled hopefully toward a sixsome sitting
nearby -- Jaqueramaphan? -- but the other shooed it away. It looked
nervously at the mob of wounded. There was completeness there ... and
madness too.
A huge male with deeply scarred haunches sat at the edge of the mob. It
caught the threesome's eye, and slowly crawled across the open space toward
them. Wic and Kwk and Rac back away, their pelts puffing up in fright and
fascination; the scarred one was at least half again the weight of any of
them.
... Where am I? ... May I be part of you ... please? Its keening
carried memories, jumbled and mostly inaccessible, of blood and fighting, of
military training before that. Somehow, the creature was as frightened of
those early memories as of anything. It lay its muzzle -- caked with dried
blood -- on the ground and belly crawled toward them. The other three almost
ran; random coupling was something that scared all of them. They backed and
backed, out onto the clear meadow. The other followed, but slowly, still
crawling. Kwk licked her lips and walked back towards the stranger. She
extended her neck and sniffed along the other's throat. Wic and Rac
approached from the sides.
For an instant there was a partial join. Sweaty, bloody, wounded -- a
melding made in hell. The thought seemed to come from nowhere, glowed in the
four for a moment of cynical humor. Then the unity was lost, and they were
just three animals licking the face of a fourth.
Peregrine looked around the meadow with new eyes. He had been
disintegrate for just a few minutes: The wounded from the Tenth Attack
Infantry were just as before. Flenser's Servants were still busy with the
alien cargo. Jaqueramaphan was slowly backing away, his expression a
compound of wonder and horror. Peregrine lowered a head and hissed at him,
"I won't betray you, Scriber."
The spy froze. "That you, Peregrine?"
"More or less." Peregrine still, but Wickwrackrum no more.
"H-how can you do it? Y-you just lost...."
"I'm a pilgrim, remember? We live with this sort of thing all our
lives." There was sarcasm in his voice; this was more or less the cliché
Jaqueramaphan had been spouting earlier. But there was some truth to it.
Already Peregrine Wickwrack...scar felt like a person. Maybe this new
combination had a chance.
"Uk. Well, yes.... What should we do now?" The spy looked nervously in
all directions, but his eyes on Peregrine were the most worried of all.
Now it was Wickwrackscar's turn to be puzzled. What was he doing here?
Killing the strange enemy... No. That's what the Attack Infantry was doing.
He would have nothing to do with that, no matter what the scarred one's
memories. He and Scriber had come here to ... to rescue the alien, as much
of it as possible. Peregrine grabbed hold of the memory and held it
uncritically; it was something real, from the past identity he must
preserve. He glanced towards where he had last seen the alien member. The
whitejackets and his travois were no longer visible, but he'd been heading
along an obvious path.
"We can still get ourselves the live one," he said to Jaqueramaphan.
Scriber stamped and sidled. He was not quite the enthusiast of before.
"After you, my friend."
Wickwrackscar straightened his combat jackets and brushed some of the
dried blood off. Then he strutted off across the meadow, passing just a
hundred yards from the Flenser's Servants around the enemy -- around the
flying house. He flipped them a sharp salute, which was ignored.
Jaqueramaphan followed, carrying two crossbows. The other was doing his best
to imitate Peregrine's strut, but he really didn't have the right stuff.
Then they were past the military crest of the hill and descending into
shadows. The sounds of the wounded were muted. Wickwrackscar broke into
double time, loping from switchback to switchback as he descended the rough
path. From here he could see the harbor; the boats were still at the piers,
and there wasn't much activity. Behind him, Scriber was talking nervous
nonsense. Peregrine just ran faster, his confidence fueled by general newby
confusion. His new member, the scarred one, had been the muscle behind an
infantry officer. That pack had known the layout of the harbors and the
castle, and all the passwords of the day.
Two more switchbacks and they overran the Flenser Servant and his
travois. "Hallo!" shouted Peregrine. "We bring new instructions from Lord
Steel." A chill went down his spines at the name, remembering Steel for the
first time. The Servant dropped the travois and turned to face them.
Wickwrackscar didn't know his name, but he remembered the guy: fairly
high-ranking, an arrogant get-of-bitches. It was a surprise to see him
pulling the travois himself.
Peregrine stopped only twenty yards from the whitejackets.
Jaqueramaphan was looking down from the switchback above; his bows were out
of sight. The Servant looked nervously at Peregrine and up at Scriber.
"What do you two want?"
Did he suspect them already? No matter. Wickwrackscar braced himself
for a killing charge ... and suddenly he was seeing in fours, his mind
blurred with newby dizziness. Now that he needed to kill, the scarred one's
horror of the act undid him. Damn! Wickwrackscar cast wildly about for
something to say. And now that murder was out of his mind, his new memories
came easily: "Lord Steel's will, that the creature be brought with us to the
harbor. You, ah, you are to return to the invader's flying thing."
The whitejackets licked his lips. His eyes swept sharply across
Peregrine's uniforms, and Scriber's. "Impostors!" he screamed, at the same
instant lunging one of his members toward the travois. Metal glinted in the
member's forepaw. He's going to kill the alien!
There was a bow snap from above, and the runner fell, a shaft through
its eye. Wickwrackscar charged the others, forcing his scarbacked member out
front. There was an instant of dizziness and then he was whole again,
screaming death at the four. The two packs crashed together, Scar carrying a
couple of the Servant's members over the edge of the path. Arrows hummed
around them. Wic Kwk Rac twisted, slashing axes at whatever remained
standing.
Then things were quiet, and Peregrine had his thoughts again. Three of
the Servant's members twitched on the path, the earth around them slick with
blood. He pushed them off the path, near where his Scar had killed the
others. Not one of the Servant had survived; it was total death, and he was
responsible. He sagged to the ground, seeing in fours again.
"The alien. It's still alive," said Scriber. He was standing around the
travois, sniffing at the mantis-like body. "Not conscious though." He
grabbed the travois poles in his jaws and looked at Peregrine. "What ...
what now, Pilgrim?"
Peregrine lay in the dirt, trying to put his mind back together. What
now, indeed. How had he gotten into this mess? Newby confusion was the only
possibility. He'd simply lost track of all the reasons why rescuing the
alien was impossible. And now he was stuck with it. Pack crap. Part of him
crawled to the edge of the path, and looked around: There was no sign they
had attracted attention. In the harbor, the boats were still empty; most of
the infantry was up in the hills. No doubt the Servants were holding the
dead ones at the harbor fort. So when would they move them across the
straits to Hidden Island? Were they waiting for this one's arrival?
"Maybe we could grab some boats, escape south," said Scriber. What an
ingenious fellow. Didn't he know that there would be sentry lines around the
harbor? Even knowing the passwords, they'd be reported as soon as they
passed one. It would be a million-to-one shot. But it had been a flat
impossibility before Scar became part of him.
He studied the creature lying on the travois. So strange, yet real. And
it was more than just the creature, though that was the most spectacular
strangeness. Its bloodied clothes were a finer fabric than the Pilgrim had
ever seen. Tucked in beside the creature's body was a pink pillow with
elaborate stitchery. With a twist of perspective he realized it was alien
art, the face of a long-snouted animal embroidered on the pillow.
So escape through the harbor was a million-to-one shot; some prizes
might be worth such odds.
"...We'll go down a little farther," he said.
Jaqueramaphan pulled the travois. Wickwrackscar strode ahead of him,
trying to look important and officerly. With Scar along, it wasn't hard. The
member was the picture of martial competence; you had to be on the inside to
know the softness.
They were almost down to sea level.
The path was wider now and roughly paved. He knew the harbor fort was
above them, hidden by the trees. The sun was well out of the north, rising
into the eastern sky. Flowers were everywhere, white and red and violet,
their tufts floating thick on the breeze -- the arctic plant life taking
advantage of its long day of summer. Walking on sun-dappled cobblestones,
you might almost forget the ambush on the hilltops.
Very soon, they'd hit a sentry line. Lines and rings are interesting
people; not great minds, but about the largest effective pack you'd find
outside the tropics. There were stories of lines ten miles long, with
thousands of members. The largest Peregrine had ever seen had less than one
hundred: Take a group of ordinary people and train them to string out, not
in packs but as individual members. If each member stayed just a few yards
from its nearest neighbors, they could maintain something like the mentality
of a trio. The group as a whole was scarcely brighter -- you can't have much
in the way of deep thoughts when it takes seconds for an idea to percolate
across your mind. Yet the line had an excellent grasp of what was happening
along itself. And if any members were attacked, the entire line would know
about it with the speed of sound. Peregrine had served on lines before; it
was a strung out existence, but not nearly as dull as ordinary sentry duty.
It's hard to be bored when you're as stupid as a line.
There! A lone member stuck its neck around a tree and challenged them.
Wickwrackscar knew the password of course, and they were past the outer
line. But that passage and their description was known to the entire line
now -- and surely to normal soldiers at the harbor fort.
Hell. There was no cure for it; he would go ahead with the crazy
scheme. He and Scriber and the alien member passed through the two inner
sentries. He could smell the sea now. They came out of the trees onto the
rock-walled harbor. Silver sparkled off the water in a million changing
flecks. A large multiboat bobbed between two piers. Its masts were like a
forest of tilting, leafless trees. Just a mile across the water they could
see Hidden Island. Part of him dismissed the sight as a commonplace; part of
him stumbled in awe. This was the center of it, the worldwide Flenser
movement. Up in those dour towers, the original Flenser had done his
experiments, written his essays ... and schemed to rule the world.
There were a few people on the piers. Most were doing maintenance:
sewing sails, relashing twinhulls. They watched the travois with sharp
curiosity, but none approached. So all we have to do is amble down to the
end of the pier, cut the lashings on an outside twinhull, and take off.
There were probably enough packs on the pier alone to prevent that -- and
their cries would surely draw the troops he saw by the harbor fort. In fact,
it was a little surprising that no one up there had taken serious notice of
them yet.
These boats were cruder than the Southseas version. Part of the
difference was superficial: Flenser doctrine forbade idle decoration on
boats. Part of it was functional: These craft were designed for both winter
and summer seasons, and for troop hauling. But he was sure he could sail
them given the chance. He walked to the end of the pier. Hmm. A bit of luck.
The bow-starboard twinhull, the one right next to him by the pier, looked
fast and well-provisioned. It was probably a long-range scout.
"Ssst. Something's going on up there." Scriber jerked a head toward the
fort.
The troops were closing ranks -- a mass salute? Five Servants swept by
the infantry, and bugles sounded from the fort's towers. Scar had seen
things like this, but Peregrine didn't trust the memory. How could --
A banner of red and yellow rose over the fort. On the piers, soldiers
and boatworkers dropped to their bellies. Peregrine dropped and hissed to
the other, "Get down!"
"Wha -- ?"
"That's Flenser's flag ... his personal presence banner!"
"That's impossible." Flenser had been assassinated in the Republic six
tendays earlier. The mob that tore him apart had killed dozens of his top
supporters at the same time.... But it was only the word of the Republican
Political Police that all Flenser's bodies had been recovered.
Up by the fort, a single pack pranced between the ranks of soldiers and
whitejackets. Silver and gold glinted on its shoulders. Scriber edged a
member behind a piling and surreptitiously brought out his eye-tool. After a
moment: "Soul's end ... it's Tyrathect."
"She's no more the Flenser than I am," said Peregrine. They had
traveled together from Eastgate all the way across the Icefangs. She was
obviously a newby, and not well-integrated. She had seemed reserved and
innerlooking, but there had been rages. Peregrine knew there was a deadly
streak in Tyrathect.... Now he guessed whence it came. At least some of
Flenser's members had escaped assassination, and he and Scriber had spent
three tendays in its presence; Peregrine shivered.
At the fort's gate, the pack called Tyrathect turned to face the troops
and Servants. She gestured, and bugles sounded again. The new Peregrine
understood that signal: an Incalling. He suppressed the sudden urge to
follow the others on the pier as they walked belly-low toward the fort, all
their eyes upon The Master. Scriber looked back at him, and Peregrine
nodded. They had needed a miracle, and here was one -- provided by the enemy
itself! Scriber moved slowly toward the end of the pier, pulling the travois
from shadow to shadow.
Still no one looked back. For good reason; Wickwrackscar remembered
what happened to those showing disrespect at an Incalling. "Pull the
creature on the bow-starboard boat," he said to Jaqueramaphan. He leaped off
the pier and scattered across the multiboat. It was great to be back on
swaying decks, each member drifting a different direction! He sniffed among
the bow catapults, listened to the hulls and the creak of the lashings.
But Scar was no sailor, and had no recollection of what might be the
most important thing.
"What are you looking for?" came Scriber's Hightalk hiss.
"Scuttle knockouts." If they were here, they looked nothing like the
Southseas version.
"Oh," said Scriber, "that's easy. These are Northern Skimmers. There
are swingout panels and a thin hull behind." Two of him dropped from sight
for a second and there was a banging sound. The heads reappeared, shaking
water off. He grinned surprise, taken aback by his own success. "Why, it's
just like in the books!" his expression seemed to say.
Wickwrackscar found them now; the panels had looked like crew rests,
but they were easily pulled out and the wood behind was easy to break with a
battle axe. He kept a head out, looking to see if he were attracting
attention, while at the same time he hacked at the knockouts. Peregrine and
Scriber worked their way across the bow ranks of the multiboat; if those
foundered, it would take a while to get the twinhulls behind them free.
Oops. One of the boat workers was looking back this way. Part of the
fellow continued up the hillside, part strained to return to the pier. The
bugles sounded their imperative once more, and the pack followed the call.
But his whining alarums were causing other heads to turn.
No time for stealth. Peregrine hotfooted it back to the bow-starboard
twinhull. Scriber was cutting the braid-bone fasteners that held the
twinhull to the rest of the ship. "You have any sailing experience?"
Peregrine said. Foolish question.
"Well, I've read about it -- "
"Fine!" Peregrine shooed him all into the twinhull's starboard pod.
"Keep the alien safe. Hunker down, and be as quiet as you can." He could
sail the twinhull by himself, but he'd have to be all over to do it; the
fewer confusing thought sounds, the better.
Peregrine poled their boat forward from the multiboat. The scuttling
wasn't obvious yet, but he could see water in the bow hulls. He reversed his
pole and used its hook to draw the nearest boat into the gap created by
their departure. Another five minutes and there'd be just a row of masts
sticking out of the water. Five minutes. No way they could make it ... if
not for Flenser's Incalling: up by the fort, troopers were turning and
pointing at the harbor. Yet still they must attend on Flenser/Tyrathect. How
long would it be before someone important decided that even an Incalling can
be overridden?
He hoisted canvas.
The wind caught the twinhull's sail and they pulled out from the pier.
Peregrine danced this way and that, the shrouds grasped tightly in his
mouths. Even without Rum, what memories the taste of salt and cordage
brought back! He could feel where tautness and slack meant that the wind was
giving all it could. The twin hulls were sleek and narrow, the mast of
ironwood creaking as the wind pulled on the sail.
The Flenserists were streaming down the hillside now. Archers stopped
and a haze of arrows rose. Peregrine jerked on the shrouds, tipping the boat
into a left turn on one hull. Scriber leaped to shield the alien. To
starboard ahead of them the water puckered, but only a couple of shafts
struck the boat. Peregrine twisted the shrouds again, and they jigged back
in the other direction. Another few seconds and they'd be out of bowshot.
Soldiers raced down to the piers, shrieking as they saw what was left of
their ship. The bow ranks were flooded; the whole front of the anchorage was
a wreck of sunken boats. And the catapults were in the bow.
Peregrine swept his boat back, racing straight south, out of the
harbor. To starboard, he could see they were passing the southern tip of
Hidden Island. The Castle towers hung tall and ominous. He knew there were
heavy catapults there, and some fast boats in the island harbor. A few more
minutes and even that wouldn't matter. He was gradually realizing just how
nimble their boat was. He should have guessed they'd put their best in a
corner bow position. It was probably used for scouting and overtaking.
Jaqueramaphan was piled up at the stern of his hull, staring across the
water at the mainland harbor. Soldiers, workers, whitejackets were crowded
in a mind-numbing jumble at the ends of the piers. Even from here, you could
see the place was a madhouse of rage and frustration. A silly grin spread
across Scriber as he realized they really were going to make it. He
clambered onto the rail and jumped into the air to flip a member at their
enemies. The obscene gesture nearly cast him overboard, but it was seen: the
distant rage brightened for a moment.
They were well south of Hidden Island; even its catapults could not
reach them now. The packs on the mainland shore were lost to view. Flenser's
personal banner still whipped cheerfully in the morning breeze, a dwindling
square of red and yellow against the forest's green.
All Peregrine looked at the narrows, where Whale Island kissed close to
the mainland. His Scar remembered that the choke point was heavily
fortified. Normally that would have been the end of them. But its archers
had been withdrawn to participate in the ambush, and its catapults were
under repair.
... so the miracle had happened. They were alive and free and they had
the greatest find of all his pilgrimage. He shouted joy so loud that
Jaqueramaphan cowered and the sound echoed back from the green and
snow-patched hills.
.Delete this paragraph to shift page flush
-=*=-
CHAPTER 5
Jefri Olsndot had few clear memories of the ambush and saw none of the
violence. There had been the noises outside, and Mom's terrified voice,
screaming for him to stay inside. Then there had been lots of smoke. He
remembered choking, trying to crawl to clear air. He blacked out. When he
woke, he was strapped onto some sort of first-aid cot, with the big dog
creatures all around. They looked so funny with their white jackets and
braid. He remembered wondering where their owners were. They made the
strangest noises: gobbling, buzzing, hissing. Some of it was so high-pitched
he could barely hear it.
For while he was on a boat, then on a wheeled cart. Before this, he had
only seen pictures of castles, but the place they took him was the real
thing, its towers dark and overhanging, its big stone walls sharply angled.
They climbed through shadowed streets that went skumpety skumpety beneath
the cart's wheels. The long-necked dogs hadn't hurt him, but the straps were
awfully tight. He couldn't sit up; he couldn't see to the sides. He asked
about Mom and Dad and Johanna, and he cried a little. A long snout appeared
by his face, the soft nose pushing at his cheek. There was a buzzing sound
he felt all the way down to his bones. He couldn't tell if the gesture was
comfort or threat, but he gasped and tried to stop the tears. They didn't
befit a good Straumer, anyway.
More white-jacketed dogs, ones with silly shoulder patches of gold and
silver.
His cot was being dragged again, this time down a torch-lit tunnel.
They stopped by a double door, two meters wide but scarcely one high. A pair
of metal triangles was set in the blond wood. Later Jefri learned they
signified a number -- fifteen or thirty-three, depending on whether you
counted by legs or fore-claws. Much, much later he learned that his keeper
had counted by legs and the builder of the castle by fore-claws. Thus he
ended up in the wrong room. It was a mistake that would change the history
of worlds.
Somehow the dogs opened the doors and dragged Jefri in. They clustered
around the cot, their snouts tugging loose his restraints. He had a glimpse
of rows of needle-sharp teeth. The gobbling and buzzing was very loud. When
Jefri sat up, they backed off. Two of them held the doors as the other four
exited. The doors slammed shut and the circus act was gone.
Jefri stared at the doors for a long moment. He knew it was no circus
act; the dog things must be intelligent. Somehow they had surprised his
parents and sister. Where are they? He almost started to cry again. He
hadn't seen them by the spaceship. They must have been captured, too. They
were all being held prisoner in this castle, but in separate dungeons.
Somehow they must find each other!
He climbed to his feet, swayed dizzily for a moment. Everything still
smelled like smoke. It didn't matter; it was time to start working on
getting out. He walked around the room. It was huge, and not like any
dungeon he'd seen in stories. The ceiling was very high, an arching dome. It
was cut by twelve vertical slots. Sunlight fell in a dust-moted stream from
one of them, splashing off the padded wall. It was the room's only
illumination, but more than enough on this sunny day. Low-railed balconies
stuck out from the four corners of the room just below the dome. He could
see doors in the walls behind them. Heavy scrolls hung by the side of each
balcony. There was writing on them, really big print. He walked to the wall
and felt the stiff fabric. The letters were painted on. The only way you
could change the display was by rubbing it out. Wow. Just like olden times
on Nyjora, before Straumli Realm! The baseboard below the scrolls was black
stone, glossy. Someone had used scraps of chalk to draw on it. The
stick-figure dogs were crude; they reminded Jefri of pictures little kids
draw in kinderschool.
He stopped, remembering all the children they had left aboard the boat,
and on the ground around it. Just a few days ago, he'd been playing with
them at the High Lab school. The last year had been so strange -- boring and
adventurous at the same time. The barracks had been fun with all the
families together, but the grownups hardly ever had time to play. At night
the sky was so different from Straum's. "We're beyond the Beyond," Mom had
said, "making God." When she first said it, she laughed. Later when people
said it, they seemed more and more scared. The last hours had been crazy,
the coldsleep drills finally for real. All his friends were in those
boxes.... He wept into the awful silence. There was no one to hear, no one
to help him.
After a few moments he was thinking again. If the dogs didn't try to
open the boxes, his friends should be okay. If Mom and Dad could make the
dogs understand....
Strange furniture was scattered around the room: low tables and
cabinets, and racks like kids' jungle gyms -- all made from the same blond
wood as the doors. Black pillows lay around the widest table. That one was
littered with scrolls, all full of writing and still drawings. He walked the
length of one wall, ten meters or so. The stone flooring ended. There was a
two-by-two bed of gravel where the walls met. Something smelled even
stronger than smoke here. A bathroom smell. Jefri laughed: they really were
like dogs!
The padded walls soaked up his laughter, echoless. Something ... made
Jefri look up and across the room. He'd just assumed he was alone here; in
fact, there were lots of hiding places in this "dungeon." For a moment, he
held his breath and listened. All was silent ... almost: at the top of his
hearing, up where some machines wheep, and Mom and Dad and even Johanna
couldn't hear -- there was something.
"I -- I know you're here," Jefri said sharply, his voice squeaking. He
stepped sideways a few paces, trying to see around the furniture without
approaching it. The sound continued, obvious now that he was listening to
it.
A small head with great dark eyes looked around a cabinet. It was much
smaller than the creatures that had brought Jefri here, but the shape of the
muzzle was the same. They stared at each other for a moment, and then Jefri
edged slowly toward it. A puppy? The head withdrew, then came further out.
From the corner of his eye, Jefri saw something move -- another of the black
forms was peering at him from under the table. Jefri froze for a second,
fighting panic. But there was no place to run, and maybe the creatures would
help find Mom. Jefri dropped to one knee and slowly extended his hand. "Here
... here, doggy."
The puppy crawled from beneath the table, its eyes never leaving
Jefri's hand. The fascination was mutual; the puppy was beautiful.
Considering all the thousands of years that dogs have been bred by humans
(and others), this could have been some oddball breed ... but only just. The
hair was short and dense, a deep velour of black and white. The two tones
lay in broad swaths with no intermediate grays. This one's entire head was
black, its haunches split between white and black. The tail was a short,
unimpressive flap covering its rear. There were hairless patches on its
shoulders and head, where Jefri could see black skin. But the strangest
thing was the long, supple neck. It would look more natural in a sea'mal
than a dog.
Jefri wiggled his fingers, and the puppy's eyes widened, revealing an
edge of white around the iris.
Something bumped his elbow, and Jefri almost jumped to this feet. So
many! Two more had crept up to look at his hand. And where he had seen the
first one there were now three, sitting alertly, watching. Seen in the open,
there was nothing unfriendly or scary about them.
One of the puppies put a paw on Jefri's wrist and pressed gently
downward. At the same time, another extended its muzzle and licked Jefri's
fingers. The tongue was pink and raspy, a round narrow thing. The
high-pitched wheeping got stronger; all three moved in, grabbing at his hand
with their mouths.
"Be careful!" Jefri said, jerking back his hand. He remembered the
grownups' teeth. Suddenly the air was full of gobbling and buzzing. Hmp.
They sounded more like goofy birds than dogs. One of the other pups came
forward. It extended a sleek nose toward Jefri. "Be careful!" it said, a
perfect playback of the boy's voice ... yet its mouth was closed. It angled
its neck back ... to be petted? He reached out; the fur was so soft! The
buzzing was very loud now. Jefri could feel it through the fur. But it
wasn't just the one animal who was making it; the sound came from all
directions. The puppy reversed direction, sliding its muzzle across the
boy's hand. This time he let the mouth close on his fingers. He could see
teeth all right, but the puppy carefully kept them from touching Jefri's
skin. The tip of its snout felt like a pair of small fingers closing and
opening around his.
Three slipped under his other arm, like they wanted to be petted too.
He felt noses poking at his back, trying to pull his shirt out of his pants.
The effort was remarkably coordinated, almost as if a two-handed human had
grabbed his shirt. Just how many are there? For a moment he forgot where he
was, forgot to be cautious. He rolled over and began petting the marauders.
A surprised squeaking sound came from all directions. Two crawled beneath
his elbows; at least three jumped on his back and lay with their noses
touching his neck and ears.
And Jefri had what seemed a great insight: The adult aliens had
recognized he was a child; they just didn't know how old. They had put him
in one of their own kinderschools! Mom and Dad were probably talking to them
right now. Things were going to turn out all right after all.
Lord Steel had not taken his name casually: steel, the most modern of
metals; steel, that takes the sharpest edge and never loses it; steel, that
can glow red hot, and yet not fail; steel, the blade that cuts for the
flenser. Steel was a crafted person, Flenser's greatest success.
In some sense, the crafting of souls was nothing new. Brood kenning was
a limited form of it, though mainly concerned with gross physical
characteristics. Even kenners agreed that a pack's mental abilities derived
from its various members in different measures. One pair or triple was
almost always responsible for eloquence, another for spatial intuition. The
virtues and vices were even more complex. No single member was the principal
source of courage, or of conscience.
Flenser's contribution to the field -- as to most others -- had been an
essential ruthlessness, a cutting away of all but the truly important. He
experimented endlessly, discarding all but the most successful results. He
depended on discipline and denial and partial death as much as on clever
member selection. He already had seventy years of experience when he created
Steel.
Before he could take his name, Steel spent years in denial, determining
just what parts of him combined to produce the being desired. That would
have been impossible without Flenser's enforcement. (Example: if you
dismissed a part of yourself essential for tenacity, where could you get the
will to continue the flensing?) For the soul in creation, the process was
mental chaos, a patchwork of horror and amnesia. In two years he had
experienced more change than most people do in two centuries -- and all of
it directed. The turning point came when he and Flenser identified the trio
that weighed him down with both conscience and slowness of intellect. One of
the three bridged the others. Sending it into silence, replacing it with
just the right element, had made the difference. After that, the rest was
easy; Steel was born.
When Flenser had left to convert the Long Lakes Republic, it was only
natural that his most brilliant creation should take over here. For five
years Steel had ruled Flenser's heartland. In that time he had not only
conserved what Flenser built, he extended it beyond the cautious beginnings.
But today, in a single circling of the sun about Hidden Island, he
could lose everything.
Steel stepped into the meeting hall and looked around. Refreshments
were properly set. Sunlight streamed from a ceiling slit onto just the place
he wanted. Part of Shreck, his aide, stood on the far side of the room. He
said to it, "I will speak with the visitor alone." He did not use the name
"Flenser". The whitejackets groveled back and its unseen members pushed open
the far doors.
A fivesome -- three males and two females -- walked through the
doorway, into the splash of sunlight. The individual was unremarkable. But
then Flenser had never had an imposing appearance.
Two heads raised to shade the eyes of the others. The pack looked
across the room, spotting Lord Steel twenty yards away. "Ah-h ... Steel."
The voice was gentle, like a scalpel petting the short hairs of your throat.
Steel had bowed when the other entered, a formal gesture. The voice
caused a sudden cramp in his guts, and he involuntarily brought bellies to
the ground. That was his voice! There was at least a fragment of the
original Flenser in this pack. The gold and silver epaulets, the personal
banner, those could be faked by anyone with suicidal bravado.... But Steel
remembered the manner. He wasn't surprised the other's presence had
destroyed discipline on the mainland this morning.
The pack's heads, where they were in sunlight, were expressionless. Was
a smile playing about the heads in shadow? "Where are the others, Steel?
What happened today is the greatest opportunity of our history."
Steel got off his bellies and stood at the railing. "Sir. There are
some questions first, just between the two of us. Clearly, you are much of
Flenser, but how much -- "
The other was clearly grinning now, the shadowed heads bobbing. "Yes, I
knew my best creation would see that question.... This morning, I claimed to
be the true Flenser, improved with one or two replacements. The truth is ...
harder. You know about the Republic." That had been Flenser's greatest
gamble: to flense an entire nation-state. Millions would die, yet even so
there would be more molding than killing. In the end, there would exist the
first collective outside of the tropics. And the Flenser state would not be
a mindless agglomeration grubbing about in some jungle. The top would be as
brilliant, as ruthless as any packs in history. No people in the world could
stand against such a force.
"It was an awesome risk to take, for an even more awesome goal. But I
took precautions. We had thousands of converts, many of them people with no
understanding of our true ambition, but faithful and self-sacrificing -- as
they should be. I always kept a special group of them nearby. The Political
Police were clever to use mob assassination against me, the last thing I had
expected -- I who made the mobs. No matter, my bodyguards were well trained.
When we were trapped in Parliament Bowl, they killed one or two members of
each of those special packs ... and I simply ceased to exist, dispersed
among three panicky, ordinary people trying to escape the blood swamp."
"But everyone around you was killed; the mob left no one."
The Flenser-thing shrugged. "That was partly Republican propaganda, and
partly my own work: I ordered my guards to hack each other down, along with
everyone who w