cks and
occasionally pinkish eyes, they might as well be huge rats.
And the longer she watched them, the more horrible they seemed. A still
image could never convey that horror; you had to see them in action. She
watched four of them -- the ones on her side of the boat -- play with her
dataset. The Pink Oliphaunt was tied in a net bag near the rear of the boat.
Now the beasts wanted to look it over. At first it looked like a circus act,
the creatures' heads darting this way and that. But every move was so
precise, so coordinated with all the others. They had no hands, but they
could untie knots, each holding a piece of twine in its mouth and
maneuvering its necks around others. At the same time, one's claws held the
loose netting tight against the railing. It was like watching puppets run
off the same control.
In seconds they had it out of the bag. Dogs would have let it slide to
the bottom of the hull, then pushed it around with their noses. Not these
things: two put it onto on a cross bench, while a third steadied it with its
paw. They poked around the edges, concentrating on the plush flanges and
floppy ears. They pushed and nuzzled, but with clear purpose. They were
trying to open it.
Two heads showed over the railing on the other hull. They made the
gobbling, hissing sounds that were a cross between a bird call and someone
throwing up. One of those on her side glanced back and made similar sounds.
The other three continued to play with the dataset's latches.
Finally they pulled the big, floppy ears simultaneously: the dataset
popped open, and the top window went into Johanna's startup routine -- an
anim of herself saying "Shame on you, Jefri. Stay out of my things!" The
four creatures went rigid, their eyes suddenly wide.
Johanna's four turned the set so the others could see. One held it down
while another peered at the top window, and a third fumbled with the key
window. The guys in the other hull went nuts, but none of them tried to get
any closer. The random prodding of the four abruptly cut off her startup
greeting. One of them glanced at the guys in the other hull; another two
watched Johanna. She continued to lie with her eyes almost closed.
"Shame on you, Jefri. Stay out my things!" Johanna's voice came again,
but from one of the animals. It was a perfect playback. Then a girl's voice
was moaning, crying, "Mom, Daddy". It was her own voice again, but more
frightened and childish than she ever wanted it to sound.
They seemed to be waiting for the dataset to respond. When nothing
happened, one of them went back to pushing its nose against the windows.
Everything valuable, and all the dangerous programs, were passworded.
Insults and squawking emerged from the box, all the little surprises she had
planted for her snooping little brother. Oh Jefri, will I ever see you
again?
The sounds and vids kept the monsters amused for several minutes.
Eventually their random fiddlings convinced the dataset that somebody really
young had opened up the box, and it shifted into kindermode.
The creatures knew she was watching. Of the four fooling with her
Oliphaunt, one -- not always the same one -- was always watching her. They
were playing games with her, pretending they didn't know she was pretending.
Johanna opened her eyes wide and glared at the creature. "Damn you!"
She looked in the other direction. And screamed. The mob in the other hull
were clumped together. Their heads rose on sinuous necks from the pile. In
the low sunlight, their eyes glinted red. A pack of rats or snakes, silently
staring at her, and for heaven knew how long.
The heads leaned forward at her cry, and she heard the scream again.
Behind her, her own voice shouted "Damn you!" Somewhere else, she was
calling for "Mom" and "Daddy". Johanna screamed again, and they just echoed
it back. She swallowed her terror and kept silent. The monsters kept it up
for a half minute, the mimicking, the mixing of things she must have said in
her sleep. When they saw they couldn't terrorize her that way any more, the
voices stopped being human. The gobbling went back and forth, as if the two
groups were negotiating or something. Finally the four on her side closed
her dataset and tied it into the net bag.
The six unwrapped themselves from each other. Three jumped to the
outboard side of the hull. They gripped the edge tight in their claws and
leaned into the wind. For once they almost did look like dogs -- big ones
sitting at a car window, sniffing at the airstream. The long necks swept
forward and back. Every few seconds, one of them would dip its head out of
sight, into the water. Drinking? Fishing?
Fishing. A head flipped up, tossing something small and green into the
boat. The other three animals nosed about, grabbing it. She had a glimpse of
tiny legs and a shiny carapace. One of the rats held it at the tip of its
mouth, while the other two pulled it apart. It was all done with their
uncanny precision. The pack seemed like a single creature, and each neck a
heavy tentacle that ended in a pair of jaws. Her gut twisted at the thought,
but there was nothing to barf up.
The fishing expedition went on another quarter hour. They got at least
seven of the green things. But they weren't eating them; not all of them,
anyway. The dismembered leavings collected in a small wood bowl.
More gobbling between the two sides. One of the six grabbed the bowl's
edge in its mouth and crawled across the mast platform. The four on
Johanna's side huddled together as if frightened of the visitor. Only after
the bowl was set down and the intruder had returned to its side, did the
four in Johanna's hull poke their heads up again.
One of the rats picked up the bowl. It and another walked toward her.
Johanna swallowed. What torture was this? Her stomach twisted again ... she
was so hungry. She looked at the bowl again and realized that they were
trying to feed her.
The sun had just come out from under northern clouds. The low light was
like some bright fall afternoon, just after rain: dark sky above, yet
everything close by bright and glistening. The creatures' fur was deep and
plush. One held the bowl towards her, while the other stuck its snout in and
withdrew ... something slick and green. It held the tidbit delicately, just
with the tips of its long mouth. It turned and thrust the green thing toward
her.
Johanna shrank back, "No!"
The creature paused. For a moment she thought it was going to echo her.
Then it dropped the lump back into the bowl. The first animal set it on the
bench beside her. It looked up at her for an instant, then released the
jaw-wide flange at the edge of the bowl. She had a glimpse of fine, pointy
teeth.
Johanna stared into the bowl, nausea fighting with hunger. Finally she
worked a hand out of her blanket and reached into it. Heads perked up around
her, and there was an exchange of gobble comments between the two sides of
the boat.
Her fingers closed on something soft and cold. She lifted it into the
sunlight. The body was gray green, its sides glistening in the light. The
guys in the other hull had torn off the little legs and chopped away the
head. What remained was only two or three centimeters long. It looked like
filleted shellfish. Once she had liked such food. But that had been cooked.
She almost dropped the thing when she felt it quiver in her hand.
She brought it close to her mouth, touched it with her tongue. Salty.
On Straum, most shellfish would make you very sick if you ate them raw. How
could she know, all alone without parents or a local commnet? She felt tears
coming. She said a bad word, stuffed the green thing into her mouth, and
tried to chew. Blandness, with the texture of suet and gristle. She gagged,
spat it out ... and tried to eat another. Altogether she got parts of two
down. Maybe that was for the best; she'd wait and see how much she barfed
up. She lay back and saw several pairs of eyes watching. The gobbling with
the other side of the boat picked up. Then one of them sidled toward her,
carrying a leather bag with a spigot. A canteen.
This creature was the biggest of all. The leader? It moved its head
close to hers, putting the spout of the canteen near her mouth. The big one
seemed sly, more cautious about approaching her than the others. Johanna's
eyes traveled back along its flanks. Beyond the edge of its jacket, the pelt
on its rear was mostly white ... and scored deep with a Y-shaped scar. This
is the one that killed Dad.
Johanna's attack was not planned; perhaps that's why it worked so well.
She lunged past the canteen and swung her free arm around the thing's neck.
She rolled over the animal, pinning it against the hull. By itself, it was
smaller than she, and not strong enough to push her off. She felt its claws
raking through the blankets but somehow never quite cutting her. She put all
her weight on the creature's spine, grabbed it where throat met jaw, and
began slamming its head against the wood.
Then the others were on her, muzzles poking under her, jaws grabbing at
her sleeve. She felt rows of needle teeth just poking through the fabric.
Their bodies buzzed with a sound from her dreams, a sound that went straight
through her clothes and rattled her bones.
They pulled her hand from the other's throat, twisting her; she felt
the arrowhead tearing her inside. But there was still one thing she could
do: Johanna push off with her feet, butting her head against the base of the
other's jaw, smashing the top of its head into the hull. The bodies around
her convulsed, and she was flipped onto her back. Pain was the only thing
she could feel now. Neither rage nor fear could move her.
Yet part of her was still aware of the four. She had hurt them. She had
hurt them all. Three wandered drunkenly, making whistling sounds that for
once seemed to come from their mouths. The one with the scarred butt lay on
its side, twitching. She had punched a star-shaped wound in the top of its
head. Blood dripped down past its eyes. Red tears.
Minutes passed and the whistling stopped. The four creatures huddled
together and the familiar hissing resumed. The bleeding from her chest had
started again.
They stared at each other for a while. She smiled at her enemies. They
could be hurt. She could hurt them. She felt better than she had since the
landing.
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-=*=-
CHAPTER 11
Before the Flenser Movement, Woodcarvers had been the most famous
city-state west of the Icefangs. Its founder went back six centuries. In
those days, things had been harder in the north; snow covered even the
lowlands through most of the year. The Woodcarver had started alone, a
single pack in a little cabin on an inland bay. The pack was a hunter and a
thinker as much as an artist. There had been no settlements for a hundred
miles around. Only a dozen of the carver's early statues ever left his
cabin, yet those statues had been his first fame. Three were still in
existence. There was a city by the Long Lakes named for the one in its
museum.
With fame had come apprentices. One cabin became ten, scattered across
Woodcarver's fjord. A century or two passed, and of course the Woodcarver
slowly changed. He feared the change, the feeling that his soul was slipping
away. He tried to keep hold of himself; almost everyone does to one extent
or another. In the worst case, the pack falls into perversion, perhaps
becomes soul-hollow. For Woodcarver, the quest was itself the change. He
studied how each member fits within the soul. He studied pups and their
raising, and how you might guess the contributions of a new one. He learned
to shape the soul by training the members.
Of course little of this was new. It was the base of most religions,
and every town had romance advisors and brood kenners. Such knowledge,
whether valid or not, is important to any culture. What Woodcarver did was
to look at it all again, without traditional bias. He gently experimented on
himself and on the other artists in his little colony. He watched the
results, using them to design new experiments. He was guided by what he saw
rather than by what he wanted to believe.
By the various standards of his age, what he did was heresy or
perversion or simple insanity. In the early years, King Woodcarver was hated
almost as much as Flenser was three centuries later. But the far north was
still going through its time of heavy winters. The nations of the south
could not easily send armies as far as Woodcarvers. Once when they did, they
were thoroughly defeated. And wisely, Woodcarver never attempted to subvert
the south. Not directly. But his settlement grew and grew, and its fame for
art and furniture was small beside its other reputations. Old of heart
traveled to the town, and came back not just younger, but smarter and
happier. Ideas radiated from the town: weaving machines, gearboxes and
windmills, factory postures. Something new had happened in this place. It
wasn't the inventions. It was the people that Woodcarver had midwifed, and
the outlook he had created.
Wickwrackscar and Jaqueramaphan arrived at Woodcarvers late in the
afternoon. It had rained most of the day, but now the clouds had blown away
and the sky was that bright cloudless blue that was all the more beautiful
after a stretch of cloudy days.
Woodcarver's Domain was paradise to Peregrine's eyes. He was tired of
the packless wilderness. He was tired of worrying about the alien.
Twinhulls paced them suspiciously for the last few miles. The boats
were armed, and Peregrine and Scriber were coming from very much the wrong
direction. But they were all alone, clearly harmless. Long callers hooted,
relaying their story ahead. By the time they reached the harbor they were
heroes, two packs who had stolen (unspecified) treasure from the villains of
the north. They sailed around a breakwater that hadn't existed on
Peregrine's last trip, and tied in at the moorage.
The pier was crowded with soldiers and wagons. Townspeople were all
over the road leading up to the city walls. This was as close to a mob scene
as you could get and still have room for sober thought. Scriber bounced out
of the boat and pranced about in obvious delight at the cheers from the
hillside. "Quickly! We must speak with the Woodcarver."
Wickwrackscar picked up the canvas bag that held the alien's picture
box, and climbed carefully out of the boat. He was dizzy from the beating
the alien had given him. Scar's fore-tympanum had been cut in the attack.
For a moment he lost track of himself. The pier was very strange -- stone at
first glance, but walled with a spongy black material he hadn't seen since
the Southseas; it should be brittle here.... Where am I? I should be happy
about something, some victory. He paused to regroup. After a moment both the
pain and his thoughts sharpened; he would be like this for days yet, at
least. Get help for the alien. Get it ashore.
King Woodcarver's Lord Chamberlain was a mostly overweight dandy;
Peregrine had not expected to see such at Woodcarvers. But the fellow became
instantly cooperative when he saw the alien. He brought a doctor down to
look at the Two-Legs (and incidentally, at Peregrine). The alien had gained
strength in the last two days, but there had been no more violence. They got
it ashore without much trouble. It stared at Peregrine out of its flat face,
a look he knew was impotent rage. He touched Scar's head thoughtfully ...
the Two-Legs was just waiting for the best opportunity to do more damage.
Minutes later, the travelers were in kherhog-drawn carriages, rolling
up the cobblestone street toward the city walls. Soldiers cleared the way
through the crowd. Scriber Jaqueramaphan waved this way and that, the
handsome hero. By now Peregrine knew the shy insecurity that lurked within
Scriber. This might be the high point of his whole life till now.
Even if he wanted it, Wickwrackscar could not be so expansive. With one
of Scar's tympana hurt, wild gestures made him lose track of his thoughts.
He hunkered down on the carriage seats and looked out in all directions:
But for the shape of the outer harbor, the place was not at all what he
remembered from fifty years ago. In most parts of the world, not much
changed in fifty years. A pilgrim returning after such an interval might
even be bored by the sameness. But this ... it was almost scary.
The huge breakwater was new. There were twice as many piers, and
multiboats with flags he had never seen on this side of the world. The road
had been here before, but narrow, with only a third as many turnoffs.
Before, the town walls had been more to keep the kherhogs and froghens in
than any invaders out. Now they were ten feet high, the black stone
extending as far as Peregrine could see.... And there had been scarcely any
soldiers last time; now they were everywhere. That was not a good change. He
felt a sinking in the pit of Scar's stomach; soldiers and fighting were not
good.
They rode through the city gates and past a market maze that spread
across acres. The alleys were only fifty feet wide, narrow where bolts of
cloth, furniture displays, and crates of fresh fruit encroached. Smells of
fruit and spice and varnish hung in the air. The place was so crowded that
the haggling was almost an orgy, and dizzy Peregrine almost blacked out.
Then they were on a narrower street that zigzagged through ranks of
half-timbered buildings. Beyond the roofs loomed heavy fortifications. Ten
minutes later they were in the castle yard.
They dismounted and the Lord Chamberlain had the Two-Legs moved to a
litter.
"Woodcarver, he'll see us now?" said Scriber.
The bureaucrat laughed. "She. Woodcarver changed gender more than ten
years ago."
Peregrine's heads twisted about in surprise. Precisely what would that
mean? Most packs change with time, but he had never heard of Woodcarver
being anything but "he". He almost missed what the Lord Chamberlain said
next.
"Even better. Her whole council must see ... what you've brought. Come
inside." He waved the guards away.
They walked down a hall almost wide enough for two packs to pass
abreast. The chamberlain led, followed by the travelers and the doctor with
the alien's litter. The walls were high, padded with silver-crusted
quilting. It was far grander than before ... and again, unsettling. There
was scarcely any statuary, and what there was dated from centuries before.
But there were pictures. He stumbled when he saw the first, and behind
him he heard Scriber gasp. Peregrine had seen art all around the world: The
mobs of the tropics preferred abstract murals, smudges of psychotic color.
The Southseas islanders had never invented perspective; in their
watercolors, distant objects simply floated in the upper half of the
picture. In the Long Lakes Republic, representationism was currently
favored, especially multiptychs that gave a whole-pack view.
But Peregrine had never seen the likes of these. The pictures were
mosaics, each tile a ceramic square about a quarter inch on a side. There
was no color, just four shades of gray. From a few feet away, the graininess
was lost, and ... they were the most perfect landscapes Peregrine had ever
seen. All were views from hilltops around Woodcarvers. Except for the lack
of color, they might have been windows. The bottom of each picture was
bounded by a rectangular frame, but the tops were irregular; the mosaics
simply broke off at the horizon. The hall's quilted wall stood where the
pictures should have shown sky.
"Here now, fellow! I thought you wanted to see Woodcarver." The remark
was directed at Scriber. Jaqueramaphan was strung out along the landscapes,
one of him sitting in front of a different picture all down the hall. He
turned a head to look at the chamberlain. His voice sounded dazed. "Soul's
end! It's like being God, as if I have one member on each hilltop and can
see everything at once." But he scrambled to his feet and trotted to catch
up.
The hall opened on one of the largest indoor meeting rooms Peregrine
had ever seen.
"This is as big as anything in the Republic," Scriber said with
apparent admiration, looking up at the three levels of balconies. They stood
alone with the alien at the bottom.
"Hmf." Besides the chamberlain and the doctor, there were already five
other packs in the room. More showed up as they watched. Most were dressed
like nobles of the Republic, all jewels and furs. A few wore the plain
jackets he remembered from his last trip. Sigh. Woodcarver's little
settlement had grown into a city and now a nation-state. Peregrine wondered
if he -- she -- had any real power now. He trained one head precisely on
Scriber and Hightalked at him. "Don't say anything about the picture box
just yet."
Jaqueramaphan looked puzzled and conspiratorial all at once. He High
Talked back, "Yes ... yes. A bargaining card?"
"Something like that." Peregrine's eyes swept back and forth across the
balconies. Most packs entered with an air of harried self-importance. He
smiled to himself. One glance into the pit was enough to shatter their
smugness. The air above him was filled with buzzing talk. None of the packs
looked like Woodcarver. But then, she'd have few of her members from before;
he could only recognize her by manner and bearing. It shouldn't matter. He
had carried some friendships far longer than any member's lifespan. But with
others the friend had changed in a decade, its viewpoints altering,
affection turning to animosity. He'd been counting on Woodcarver being the
same. Now....
There was a brief sound of trumpets, almost like a call to order. The
pubic doors of a lower balcony slid open and a fivesome entered. Peregrine
felt a twitchy thrill of horror. This was Woodcarver, but so ...
misarranged. One member was so old it had to be helped by the rest. Two were
scarcely more than puppies, and one of those a constant drooler. The largest
member was white-eyed blind. It was the sort of thing you might see in a
waterfront slum, or in the last generation of incest.
She looked down at Peregrine, and smiled almost as if she recognized
him. When she spoke, it was with the blind one. The voice was clear and
firm. "Please carry on, Vendacious."
The chamberlain nodded. "As you wish, Your Majesty." He pointed into
the pit, at the alien. "That is the reason for this hasty meeting."
"We can see monsters at the circus, Vendacious." The voice came from an
overdressed pack on the top balcony. To judge from the shouting that came
from all sides, this was a minority view. One pack on a lower balcony jumped
over the railing and tried to shoo the doctor away from the alien's litter.
The chamberlain raised a head for silence, and glared down at the
fellow who had jumped into the pit. "If you please, Scrupilo, be patient.
Everyone will get a chance to look."
"Scrupilo" made some grumbling hisses, but backed off.
"Good." Vendacious turned all his attention on Peregrine and Scriber.
"Your boat has outrun any news from the north, my friends. No one but I
knows anything of your story -- and what I have is guard codes hooted across
the bay. You say this creature flew down from the sky?"
An invitation to speechify. Peregrine let Scriber Jaqueramaphan do the
talking. Scriber loved it. He told the story of the flying house, of the
ambush and the murders, and the rescue. He showed them his eye-tools and
announced himself as a secret agent of the Long Lakes Republic. Now what
real spy would do that? Every pack on the council had eyes on the alien,
some fearful, some -- like Scrupilo -- crazily curious. Woodcarver watched
with only a couple of heads. The rest might have been asleep. She looked as
tired as Peregrine felt. He rested his own heads on his paws. The pain in
Scar was a pulsing beat; it would be easy enough to set the member asleep,
but then he'd understand very little of what was being said. Hey! maybe that
wasn't such a bad idea. Scar drifted off and the pain receded.
The talk went on for some minutes more, not making a whole lot of sense
to the threesome that was Wickwrack. He understood the tones of voice
though. Scrupilo -- the pack on the floor -- complained several times,
impatiently. Vendacious said something, agreeing with him. The doctor
retreated, and Scrupilo advanced on Wickwrack's alien.
Peregrine pulled himself to full wakefulness. "Be careful. The creature
is not friendly."
Scrupilo snapped back, "Your friend has already warned me once." He
circled the litter, staring at the alien's brown, furless face. The alien
stared back, impassive. Scrupilo reached forward cautiously and drew back
the alien's quilt. Still no response. "See?" said Scrupilo. "It knows I mean
no harm." Peregrine said nothing to correct him.
"It really walks on those rear paws alone?" said one of the other
advisors. "Can you imagine it, towering over us? One little bump would knock
it down." Laughter. Peregrine remembered how mantis-like the alien had
seemed when upright. These fellows hadn't seen it move.
Scrupilo wrinkled a nose. "The thing is filthy." He was all around her,
a posture that Peregrine knew upset the Two-Legs. "That arrow shaft must be
removed, you know. Most of the bleeding has stopped, but if we expect the
creature to live for long, it needs medical attention." He looked
disdainfully at Scriber and Peregrine, as if they were to blame for not
performing surgery aboard the twinhull. Something caught his eye and his
tone abruptly changed: "By the Pack of Packs! Look at its forepaws." He
loosened the ropes about the creature's front legs. "Two paws like that
would be as good as five pairs of lips. Think what a pack of these creatures
could do!" He moved close to the five-tentacled paw.
"Be -- " careful, Peregrine started to say. The alien abruptly bunched
its tentacles into a club. Its foreleg flicked out at an impossible angle,
ramming its paw into Scrupilo's head. The blow couldn't have been too
strong, but it was precisely placed on the tympanum.
"Ow! Yow! Wow. Wow." Scrupilo danced back.
The alien was shouting, too. It was all mouth noise, thin and
low-pitched. The eldritch sound brought up every head, even Woodcarver's.
Peregrine had heard it many times by now. There was no doubt in his mind --
this was the aliens' interpack speech. After a few seconds, the sound
changed to a regular hacking that gradually faded.
For a long moment no one spoke. Then part of Woodcarver got to her
feet. She looked at Scrupilo. "Are you all right?" It was the first time she
had spoken since the beginning of the meeting.
Scrupilo was licking his forehead. "Yes. It smarts is all."
"Your curiosity will kill you some day."
The other huffed indignantly, but also seemed flattered by the
prediction.
Queen Woodcarver looked at her councillors. "I see an important
question here. Scrupilo thinks one alien member would be as agile as an
entire pack of us. Is that so?" She pointed the question at Peregrine rather
than Scriber.
"Yes, Your Majesty. If those ropes had been tied within its reach, it
could easily have unknotted them." He knew where this was going; he'd had
three days to get there himself. "And the noises it makes sound like
coordinated speech to me."
There was a swell of talk as the others caught on. An articulate member
can often make semi-sensible speech, but usually at the expense of
dexterity.
"Yes ... A creature like nothing on our world, whose boat flew down
from the top of heaven. I wonder at the mind of such a pack, if a single
member is almost as smart as all of one of us?" Her blind one looked around
as it made the words, almost as if it could see. Two others wiped at her
drooler's muzzle. She was not an inspiring sight.
Scrupilo poked a head up. "I hear not a hint of thought sound from this
one. There is no fore-tympanum." He pointed at the torn clothing around the
creature's wound. "And I see no sign of shoulder tympana. Perhaps it is pack
smart even as a singleton ... and perhaps that's all the aliens ever are."
Peregrine smiled to himself; this Scrupilo was a prickly twit, but not one
who held with tradition. For centuries, academics had debated the difference
between people and animals. Some animals had larger brains; some had paws or
lips more agile than a member's. In the savannahs of Easterlee, there were
creatures that even looked like people and ran in groups, but without much
depth of thought. Leaving aside wolf nests and whales, only people were
packs. It was the coordination of thought between members that made them
superior. Scrupilo's theory was a heresy.
Jaqueramaphan said, "But we did hear thought sounds, loud ones, during
the ambush. Perhaps this one is like our unweaned, unable to think -- "
"And yet still almost as smart as a pack," Woodcarver finished
somberly. "If these people are not smarter than we, then we might learn
their devices. No matter how magnificent they are, we could eventually be
their equals. But if this member is just one of a superpack ..." For a
moment there was no talk, just the muted underedge of her councillors'
thoughts. If the aliens were superpacks, and if their envoy had been
murdered -- then there might not be anything they could do to save
themselves.
"So. Our first priority should be to save this creature, to befriend it
and learn its true nature." Her heads lowered, and she seemed lost within
herself -- or perhaps just tired. Abruptly, she turned several heads toward
her chamberlain. "Move the creature to the lodge by mine."
Vendacious started with surprise. "Surely not, Your Majesty! We've seen
that it is hostile. And it needs medical attention."
Woodcarver smiled and her voice turned silky. Peregrine remembered that
tone from before. "Do you forget that I know surgery? Do you forget ... that
I am the Woodcarver?"
Vendacious licked his lips and looked at the other advisors. After a
second he said, "No, Your Majesty. It will be as you wish."
And Peregrine felt like cheering. Perhaps Woodcarver did still run
things.
.Delete this paragraph to shift page flush
-=*=-
CHAPTER 12
Peregrine was sitting back to back on the steps of his quarters when
Woodcarver came to see him next day. She came alone, and wearing the simple
green jackets he remembered from his last visit.
He didn't bow or go out to meet her. She looked at him coolly for a
moment, and sat down just a few yards away.
"How is the Two-Legs?" he asked.
"I took out the arrow and sewed the wound shut. I think it will
survive. My advisors were pleased: the creature didn't act like a reasoning
being. It fought even after it was tied down, as though it had no concept of
surgery.... How is your head?"
"All right, as long as I don't move around." The rest of him -- Scar --
lay behind the doorway in the dark interior of the lodge. "The tympanum is
healing straight, I think. I'll be fine in a few days."
"Good." A wrecked tympanum could mean continuing mental problems, or
the need for a new member and the pain of finding a use for the singleton
that was sent into silence. "I remember you, pilgrim. All the members are
different, but you really are the Peregrine of before. You had some great
stories. I enjoyed your visit."
"And I enjoyed meeting the great Woodcarver. That is the reason I
returned."
She cocked a head wryly. "The great Woodcarver of before, not the wreck
of now?"
He shrugged. "What happened?"
She didn't answer immediately. For a moment, they sat and looked across
the city. It was cloudy this afternoon, with rain coming. The breeze off the
channel was a cool stinging on his lips and eyes. Woodcarver shivered, and
puffed her fur out a bit. Finally she said, "I held my soul six hundred
years -- and that's counting by foreclaws. I should think it's obvious what
has become of me."
"The perversion never hurt you before." Peregrine was not normally so
blunt. Something about her brought out the frankness in him.
"Yes, the average incest degrades to my state in a few centuries, and
is an idiot long before then. My methods were much cleverer. I knew who to
breed with whom, which puppies to keep and which to put on others. So it was
always my flesh bearing my memories, and my soul remained pure. But I didn't
understand enough -- or perhaps I tried the impossible. The choices got
harder and harder, till I was left with choosing between brains and physical
defect." She wiped away the drool, and all but the blind one looked out
across her city. "These are the best days of summer, you know. Life is a
green madness just now, trying to squeeze the last bit of warmth from the
season." And the green did seem to be everywhere it could be: featherleaf
down the hillside and in the town, ferns all over the near hillsides, and
heather struggling toward the gray crowns of the mountains across the
channel. "I love this place."
He never expected to be comforting the Woodcarver of Woodcarvers. "You
made a miracle here. I've heard of it all the way on the other side of the
world.... And I'll bet that half the packs around here are related to you."
"Y-yes, I've been successful beyond a rake's wildest dreams. I've had
no shortage of lovers, even if I couldn't use the pups myself. Sometimes I
think my get has been my greatest experiment. Scrupilo and Vendacious are
mostly my offspring ... but so is Flenser."
Huh! Peregrine hadn't known that last.
"The last few decades, I'd more or less accepted my fate. I couldn't
outwit eternity; sometime soon I would let my soul slip free. I let the
council take over more and more; how could I claim the domain after I was no
longer me? I went back to art -- you saw those monochrome mosaics."
"Yes! They're beautiful."
"I'll show you my picture loom sometime. The procedure is tedious but
almost automatic. It was a nice project for the last years of my soul. But
now -- you and your alien have changed everything. Damn it! If only this had
happened a hundred years ago. What I would have done with it! We've been
playing with your 'picture box', you know. The pictures are finer than any
in our world. They are a bit like my mosaics -- the way the sun is like a
glowbug. Millions of colored dots go to make each picture, the tiles so
small you can't see them without one of Scriber's eye-tools. I've worked for
years to make a few dozen mosaics. The picture box can make unnumbered
thousands, so fast they seem to move. Your aliens make my life less than an
unweaned pup's scratching in its cradle."
The queen of the Woodcarvers was softly crying, but her voice was
angry. "And now the whole world is going to change, but too late for such
wreckage as I!"
Almost without conscious thought, Peregrine extended one of his members
toward the Woodcarver. He walked unseemly close: eight yards, five. Their
thoughts were suddenly fuzzy with interference, but he could feel her
calming.
She laughed blearily. "Thank you.... Strange that you should be
sympathetic. The greatest problem of my life is nothing to a pilgrim.
"You were hurting." It was all he could think to say.
"But you pilgrims change and change and change -- " She eased one of
herself close to him; they were almost touching, and it was even harder to
think.
Peregrine spoke slowly, concentrating on every word, hoping he wouldn't
forget his point. "But I do keep something of a soul. The parts that remain
a pilgrim must have a certain outlook." Sometimes great insight comes in the
noise of battle or intimacy. This was such at time. "And -- and I think the
world itself is due for a change of soul now that we have Two-Legs dropping
from the sky. What better time for Woodcarver to give up the old?"
She smiled, and the confusion became louder, but a pleasant thing. "I
... hadn't ... thought of it that way. Now is the time to change...."
Peregrine walked into her midst. The two packs stood for a moment,
necking, thoughts blending into sweet chaos. Their last clear recollection
was of stumbling up the steps and into his lodge.
Late that afternoon, Woodcarver brought the picture box to Scrupilo's
laboratory. When she arrived Scrupilo and Vendacious were already present.
Scriber Jaqueramaphan was there too, but standing farther from the others
than courtesy might demand. She had interrupted some kind of argument. A few
days before, such squabbling would have just depressed her. Now -- she
dragged her limper into the room and looked at the others through her
drooler's eyes -- and smiled. Woodcarver felt the best she had in years. She
had made her decision and acted on it, and now there were new adventures to
be had.
Scriber brightened at her entrance. "Did you check on Peregrine? How is
he?"
"He is fine, fine, just fine." Oops, no need to show them how fine he
really is! "I mean, there'll be a full recovery."
"Your Majesty, I'm very grateful to you and your doctors. Wickwrackscar
is a good pack, and I ... I mean, even a pilgrim can't change members every
day, like suits of clothes."
Woodcarver waved an offhand acknowledgment. She walked to the middle of
the room, and set the alien's picture box on the table there. It looked like
nothing so much as a big pink pillow -- with floppy ears and a weird animal
design sewed in its cover. After playing with it for a day and a half, she
was getting pretty good ... at opening the thing up. As always, the
Two-Legs's face appeared, making mouth noises. As always, Woodcarver felt an
instant of awe at seeing the moving mosaic. A million colored "tiles" had to
flip and shift in absolute synchrony to create the illusion. Yet it happened
exactly the same each time. She turned the screen so Scrupilo and Vendacious
could see.
Jaqueramaphan edged toward the others, and craned a pair of heads to
look. "You still think the box is an animal?" he said to Vendacious.
"Perhaps you could feed it sweets and it would tell us its secrets, eh?"
Woodcarver smiled to herself. Scriber was no pilgrim; pilgrims depend on
goodwill too much to go around giving the needle to the powerful.
Vendacious just ignored him. All his eyes were on her. "Your Majesty,
please do not take offense. I -- we of the Council -- must ask you again.
This picture box is too important to be left in the mouths of a single pack,
even one so great as you. Please. Leave it to the rest of us, at least when
you sleep."
"No offense taken. If you insist, you may participate in my
investigations. Beyond that, I will not go." She gave him an innocent look.
Vendacious was a superb spymaster, a mediocre administrator, and an
incompetent scientist. A century ago she would have the likes of him out
tending the crops, if he chose to stay at all. A century ago there had been
no need for spymasters and one administrator had been enough. How things had
changed. She absentmindedly nuzzled the picture box; perhaps things would
change again.
Scrupilo took Scriber's question seriously. "I see three possibilities,
sir. First, that it is magic." Vendacious winced away from him. "Indeed, the
box may be so far beyond our understanding, that it is magic. But that is
the one heresy the Woodcarver has never accepted, and so I courteously omit
it." He flicked a sardonic smile at Woodcarver. "Second, that it is an
animal. A few on the Council thought so when Scriber first made it talk. But
it looks like a stuffed pillow, even down to the amusing figure stitched on
its side. More importantly, it responds to stimuli with perfect
repeatability. That is something I do recognize. That is the behavior of a
machine."
"That's your third possibility?" said Scriber. "But to be a machine
means to have moving parts, and except for -- "
Woodcarver shrugged a tail at them. Scrupilo could go on like this for
hours, and she saw that Scriber was the same type. "I say, let's learn more
and then speculate." She tapped the corner of the box, just as Scriber had
in his original demonstration. The alien's face vanished from the picture,
replaced by a dizzying pattern of color. There was a splatter of sound, then
nothing but the mid-pitch hum the box always made when the top was open.
They knew the box could hear low-pitched sounds, and it could feel through
the square pad on its base. But that pad was itself a kind of picture
screen: certain commands transformed the grid of touch spots into entirely
new shapes. The first time they did that, the box refused any further
commands. Vendacious had been sure they had "killed the little alien". But
they had closed the box and reopened it -- and it was back to its original
behavior. Woodcarver was almost certain that nothing they could do by
talking to it or touching it would hurt the thing.
Woodcarver retried the known signals in the usual order. The results
were spectacular, and identical to before. But change that order in any way
and the effects would be different. She wasn't sure if she agreed with
Scrupilo: The box behaved with the repeatability of a machine ... yet the
variety of its responses was much more like an animal's.
Behind her, Scriber and Scrupilo edged members across the floor. Their
heads were stuck high in the air as they strained for a clear look at the
screen. The buzz of their thoughts came louder and louder. Woodcarver tried
to remember what she'd been planning next. Finally, the noise was just too
much. "Will you two please back off! I can't hear myself think." This isn't
a choir, you know.
"Sorry ... this okay?" They moved back about fifteen feet. Woodcarver
nodded. The two members were less than twenty feet from each other. Scrupilo
and Scriber must be really eager to see the screen. Vendacious had kept a
proper distance, and a look of alert enthusiasm.
"I have a suggestion," said Scriber. His voice was slurred from the
effort of concentrating over Scrupilo's thoughts. "When you touch the
four/three square and say -- " he made the alien sounds; they were all very
easy to do "-- the screen shows a collection of pictures. They seem to match
the squares. I think we ... we are being given choices."
Hm. "The box could end up training us." If this is a machine, we need
some new definitions. "... Very well, let's play with it."
Three hours passed. Toward the end, even Vendacious had moved a member
nearer the screen; the noise in the room verged on mindless chaos. And
everybody had suggestions; "say that", "press this", "last time it said
that, we did thus and so". There were intricate colored designs, sprinkled
with things that must have been written language. Tiny, two-legged figures
scampered across the screen, shifting the symbols, opening little
windows.... Scriber Jaqueramaphan's idea was quite right. The first pictures
were choices. But some of those led to further pictures of choices. The
options spread out -- tree-like, Scriber said. He wasn't quite right;
sometimes they came back to an earlier point; it was a metaphorical network
of streets. Four times they ended in cul de sacs, and had to shut the box
and begin again. Vendacious was madly drawing maps of the paths. That would
help; there were places they would want to see again. But even he realized
there were unnumbered other paths, places that blind exploration would never
find.
And Woodcarver would have given a good part of her soul for the
pictures she had already seen. There were starscapes. There were moons that
shone blue and green, or banded orange. There were moving pictures of alien
cities, of thousands of aliens so close that they were actually touching. If
they ran in packs, those packs were bigger than anything in the world, even
in the tropics.... And maybe the question was irrelevant; the cities were
beyond anything she ever imagined.
Finally Jaqueramaphan backed off. He huddled together. There was a
shiver in his voice. "T-there's a whole universe in there. We could follow
it forever, and never know...."
She looked at the other two. For once, Vendacious had lost his
smugness. There were ink stains on all his lips. The writing benches around
him were littered with dozens of sketches, some clearer than others. He
dropped the pen, and gasped. "I say we take what we have and study it." He
began gathering the sketches, piling them into a neat stack. "Tomorrow,
after a good sleep, our heads will be clear and -- "
Scrupilo dropped back and stretched. His eyes had excited red rims.
"Fine. But leave the sketches, friend Vendacious." He jabbed at the
drawings. "See that one and that? It's clear that our blundering gets us
plenty of empty results. Sometimes the picture box just locks us out, but
much more often we get that picture: No options, just a couple of aliens
dancing in a forest and making rhythm sounds. Then if we say -- " and he
repeated part of the sequence, "-- we get that picture of piles of sticks.
The first with one, the second with two, and so on."
Woodcarver saw it too. "Yes. And a figure comes out and points to each
of the piles and says a short noise by each." She and Scrupilo stared at
each other, seeing the same gleam in each others' eyes. The excitement of
learning, of finding order where there had seemed only chaos. It had been a
hundred years since she last felt this way. "Whatever this thing is ... it's
trying to teach us the Two-Legs' language."
In the days that followed, Johanna Olsndot had lots of time to think.
The pain in her chest and shoulder gradually eased; if she moved carefully,
it was only a pulsing soreness. They had taken the arrow out and sewed the
wound closed. She had feared the worst when they had tied her down, when she
saw the knives in their mouths and the steel on their claws. Then they began
cutting; she had not known there could be such pain.
She still shuddered with remembered agony. But she didn't have
nightmares about it, the way she did about....
Mother and Dad were dead; she had seen them die with her own eyes. And
Jefri? Jefri might still be alive. Sometimes Johanna could go a whole
afternoon full of hope. She had seen the coldsleepers burning on the ground
below the ship, but those inside might have survived. Then she would
remember the indiscriminate way the attackers had flamed and slashed,
killing everything around the ship.
She was a prisoner. But for now, the murderers wanted her well. The
guards were not armed -- beyond their teeth and tines. They kept well away
from her when they could. They knew she could hurt them.
They kept her inside a big dark cabin. When she was alone she paced the
floor. The dogthings were barbarians. The surgery without anesthetics was
probably not even intended as torture. She hadn't seen any aircraft, or any
sign of electricity. The toilet was a slot carved in a marble slab. The hole
went so deep you could scarcely hear the plop hit bottom. But it still
smelled bad. These creatures were as backward as people in the darkest ages
on Nyjora. They had never had technology, or they had thoroughly forgotten
it. Johanna almost smiled. Mom had liked novels about shipwrecks and
heroines marooned on lost colonies. The big deal was usually to reinvent
technology and repair the spacecraft. Mom was ... had been ... so into the
history of science; she loved the details of those stories.
Well, Johanna was living it now. But with important differences. She
wanted rescue, but she also wanted revenge. These creatures were nothing
like human. In fact, she couldn't remember reading of anything quite like
them. She'd have looked for them in her dataset, except they had taken that.
Ha. Let them play with it. They'd quickly run into her booby traps and find
themselves totally locked out.
At first there were only blankets to keep warm. Then they'd given her
clothes cut like her jump suit but made of puffy quilting. They were warm
and sturdy, the stitching neater than anything she imagined a nonmachine
could do. Now she could comfortably walk around outside. The garden beyond
her cabin was the best thing about the place. It was about a hundred meters
square, and followed the slope of a hillside. There were lots of flowers,
and trees with long, feathery leaves. Flagstoned walks curved back and forth
through mossy turf. It was a peaceful place if she let it be, a little like
their backyard on Straum.
There were walls, but from the high end of the garden, she could see
over them. The walls angled this way and that, and in places she could see
their other side. The windows slits were like something out of her history
lessons: they let you shoot arrows or bullets without making a target of
yourself.
When the sun was out, Johanna liked to sit where the smell of the
feather leaves was strongest, and look over the lower walls at the bay. She
still wasn't sure just what she was seeing. There was a harbor; the forest
of spars was almost like the marinas on Straum. The town had wide streets,
but they zigged and zagged and the buildings along them were all askew. In
places there were open-roofed mazes of stone; from up here, she could see
the pattern. And there was another wall, a rambling thing that ran for as
far as she could see. The hills beyond were crowned with gray rock and
patches of snow.
She could see the dogthings down in the town. Individually, you could
almost mistake them for dogs (snake-necked, rat-headed ones). But watch them
from a distance and you saw their true nature. They always moved in small
groups, never more than six. Within the pack they touched, cooperated with
clever grace. But she never saw one group come closer than about ten meters
to another. From her distant viewpoint, the members of a pack seemed to
merge ... and she could imagine she was seeing one multilimbed beast ambling
cautiously along, careful not to come too close to a similar monster. By
now, the conclusion was inescapable: one pack, one mind. Minds so evil they
could not bear to be close to one another.
Her fifth time in the garden was the prettiest yet, a coercion toward
joy. The flowers had sprayed downy seeds into the air. The lowering sunlight
sparkled off them as they floated by the thousands on the slow breeze, clots
in an invisible syrup. She imagined what Jefri would do here: first pretend
grownup dignity, then bounce from one foot to the other. Finally he would
race down the hillside, trying to capture as many of the flying tufts as he
could. Laughing and laughing --
"One, two, how do you do?" It was a child's voice, behind her.
Johanna jumped up so fast she almost tore her stitches. Sure enough,
there was a pack behind her. They -- it? -- was the one who had cut the
arrow out of her. A mangy lot. The five were crouched, ready to run away.
They looked almost as surprised as Johanna felt.
"One, two, how do you do?" The voice came again, exactly as before. It
might as well have been a recording, except that one of the animals was
somehow synthesizing the sound with the buzzing patches of skin on its
shoulders, haunches and head. The parrot act was nothing new to her. But
this time ... the words were almost appropriate. The voice was not hers, but
she had heard that chant before. She put hands on hips and stared at the
pack. Two of the animals stared back; the others seemed to be admiring the
scenery. One licked nervously at its paw.
The two rear ones were carrying her dataset! Suddenly she knew where
they'd gotten that singsong question. And she knew what they expected in
response. "I am fine and how do you do?" she said.
The pack's eyes widened almost comically. "I am fine, so then are we
all!" It completed the game, then emitted a burst of gobbling. Someone
replied from down the hill. There was another pack there, lurking in the
bushes. She knew that if she stayed near this one, the other wouldn't
approach.
So the Tines -- she always thought of them by those claws on their
front feet; those she would never forget -- had been playing with the Pink
Oliphaunt, and hadn't been stopped by the booby traps. That was better than
Jefri ever managed. It was clear they had fallen into the kindermode
language programs. She should have thought of that. When the dataset noted
sufficiently asinine responses it would adapt its behavior, first for young
children, and -- if that didn't work -- for youngsters who didn't even speak
Samnorsk. With just a little cooperation from Johanna, they could learn her
language. Did she want that?
The pack walked a little nearer, at least two of them watching her all
the time. They didn't seem quite so ready to bolt as before. The nearest one
dropped to its belly and looked up at her. Very cute and helpless, if you
didn't see the claws. "My name is -- " Johanna heard a short burst of gobble
with an overtone that seemed to buzz right through her head. "What is your
name?"
Johanna knew it was all part of the language script. There was no way
the creature could understand the individual words it was saying. That "my
name, your name" pair was repeated over and over again between the children
in the language program. A vegetable would get the point eventually. Still,
the Tines pronunciation was so perfect....
"My name is Johanna," she said.
"Zjohanna," said the pack, with Johanna's voice, and splitting the word
stream incorrectly.
"Johanna," corrected Johanna. She wasn't even going to try saying the
Tines name.
"Hello, Johanna. Let's play the naming game!" And that was from the
script too, complete with silly enthusiasm. Johanna sat down. Sure, learning
Samnorsk would give the Tines power over her ... but it was the only way she
could learn about them, the only way she could learn about Jefri. And if
they had murdered Jefri, too? Well then, she would learn to hurt them as
much as they deserved.
.Delete this paragraph to shift page flush
-=*=-
CHAPTER 13
At Woodcarvers and then -- a few days later -- at Flenser's Hidden
Island, the long daylight of arctic summer ended. At first there was a
little twilight just around midnight, when even the highest hill stood in
shadow. And then the hours of dark grew quickly. Day fought night, and night
was winning. The featherleaf in the low valleys changed to autumn colors.
Looking up a fjord in daylight was to see orange red on the lower hills,
then the green of heather merging imperceptibly to the grays of lichen and
the darker grays of naked rock. The snowpatches waited for their time; it
would come soon.
At every sunset, each day a few minutes earlier, Tyrathect toured the
ramparts of Flenser's outer wall. It was a three-mile walk. The lower levels
were guarded by linear packs, but up here there were only a few lookouts.
When she approached, they stepped aside with military precision. More than
military precision; she saw the fear in their look. It was hard to get used
to that. For almost as far back as she had clear memories -- twenty years --
Tyrathect had lived in fear of others, in shame and guilt, in search of
someone to follow. Now all that was turned on its head. It was not an
improvement. She knew now, from the inside, the evil she had given herself
to. She knew why the sentries feared her. To them, she was Flenser.
Of course, she never gave any hint of these thoughts. Her life was only
as safe as the success of her fraud. Tyrathect had worked hard to suppress
her natural, shy mannerisms. Not once since coming to Hidden Island had she
caught herself in the old bashful habit of heads lowering, eyes closing.
Instead, Tyrathect had the Flenser stare -- and she used it. Her
passage around the top wall was as stark and ominous as Flenser's had ever
been. She looked out over her -- his -- domain with the same hard gaze as
before, all heads front, as if seeing visions beyond the petty minds of the
disciples. They must never guess her real reason for these sunset sweeps:
for a time, the days and nights were like in the Republic. She could almost
imagine she was still back there, before the Movement and the massacre at
Parliament Bowl, before they cut her throats and wed pieces of Flenser to
the stumps of her soul.
In the gold and russet fields beyond the stone curtains, she could see
peasants trimming the fields and the herds. Flenser ruled lands far beyond
her view, but he had never imported food. The grain and meat that filled the
storehouses were all produced within a two-day march of the straits. The
strategic intent was clear; still, it made for a peaceful evening's view and
brought back memories of her home and school.
The sun slid sideways into the mountains; long shadows swept the farm
lands. Flenser's castle was left an island in a sea of shadow. Tyrathect
could smell the cold. There would be frost again tonight. Tomorrow the
fields would be covered with false snow that would last an hour past
sunrise. She pulled the long jackets close around her and walked to the
eastern lookout. Across the straits, one of the near hilltops was still in
the sun. The alien ship had landed there. It was still there, but now behind
wood and stone. Steel began building there right after the landing. The
quarries at the north end of Hidden Island were busier now than ever in
Flenser's time. The barges hauling stone to the mainland made a steady
traffic across the straits. Even now that the light was not dayround,
Steel's construction went on nonstop. His Incallings and lesser inspections
were harsher than Flenser's had used to be.
Lord Steel was a killer; worse, a manipulator. But since the alien
landing, Tyrathect knew that he was something else: deathly afraid. He had
good reason. And even though the folk he feared might ultimately kill them
all, in her secret soul she wished them well. Steel and his Flenserists had
attacked the star people without warning, more out of greed than fear. They
had killed dozens of beings. In a way the murders were worse than what the
Movement had done to her. Tyrathect had followed the Flenser of her own free
will. She had had friends who warned her about the Movement. There had been
dark stories about the Flenser, and not all had been government propaganda.
But she had so wanted to follow, to give herself to Something Greater....
They had used her, literally as their tool. Yet she could have avoided it.
The star people had had no such option; Steel simply butchered them.
So now Steel labored out of fear. In the first three days he had
covered the flying ship with a roof: a sudden, silly farmhouse had appeared
on the hilltop. Before long the alien craft would be hidden behind stone
walls. Ultimately, the new fortress might be bigger than the one on Hidden
Island. Steel knew that if his villainy did not destroy him, it would make
him the most powerful pack in the world.
And that was Tyrathect's reason for staying, for continuing her
masquerade. She couldn't go on forever. Sooner or later the other fragments
would reach Hidden Island; Tyrathect would be destroyed and all of Flenser
would live again. Perhaps she wouldn't survive even that long. Two of
Tyrathect were of Flenser. The Master had miscalculated in thinking they
could dominate the other three. Instead the conscience of the three had come
to own the brilliance of the two. She remembered almost everything the great
Flenser had known, all the tricks and all the betrayals. The two had given
her an intensity she had never had before. Tyrathect laughed to herself. In
a sense, she had gained what she had been so naively seeking in the
Movement; and the great Flenser had made exactly the mistake that in his
arrogance he thought impossible. As long as she could keep the two under
control, she had a chance. When she was all awake, there wasn't much
problem; she still felt herself a "she", still remembered her life in the
Republic more clearly than the Flenser memories. It was different when she
slept. There were nightmares. The memories of torment inflicted suddenly
seemed sweet. Sleep-time sex should soothe; with her it was a battle. She
awoke sore and cut, as if she had been fighting a rapist. If the two ever
broke free, if she ever awoke a "he".... It would take only a few seconds
for the two to denounce the masquerade, only a little longer to kill the
three and put the Flenser members aboard a more manageable pack.
Yet she stayed. Steel meant to use the aliens and their ship to spread
Flenser's nightmare worldwide. But his plan was fragile, with risks on every
side. If there was anything she could do to destroy it and the Flenser
Movement, she would.
Across the castle, only the western tower still hung in sunlight. No
faces showed at the window slits, but eyes looked out: Steel watched the
Flenser Fragment -- the Flenser-in-Waiting as it styled itself -- on the
ramparts below. The fragment was accepted by all the commanders. In fact,
they accorded it almost the awe they had given to the full Flenser. In a
sense, Flenser had made them all, so it wasn't surprising they felt a chill
in the Master's presence. Even Steel felt it. In his shaping, Flenser had
forced the aborning Steel to try to kill him; each time Steel had been
caught and his weakest members tortured. Steel knew the conditioning that
was there, and that helped him fight it. If anything, he told himself, the
Flenser Frag was in greater danger because of it: in trying to counter the
fear, Steel might just miscalculate, and act more violently than was
appropriate.
Sooner or later Steel had to decide. If he didn't kill it before the
other fragments reached Hidden Island, then all of Flenser would be here
again. If two members could dominate Steel's regime, then six would totally
erase it. Did he want the Master dead? And if he did, was there any surely
safe way...? Steel's mind flickered lightly all around the issue as he
watched the black-frocked pack.
Steel was used to playing for high stakes. He had been born playing for
them. Fear and death and winning were his whole life. But never had the
stakes been as high as now. Flenser had come close to subverting the largest
nation on the continent, and had had dreams of ruling the world.... Lord
Steel looked to the hillside across the straits, at the new castle he was
building. In his present game, world conquest would follow easily on
victory, and the destruction of the world was a conceivable consequence of
failure.
Steel had visited the flying ship shortly after the ambush. The ground
was still steaming. Every hour it seemed to grow hotter. The mainland
peasants talked of demons wakened in the earth; Steel's advisors could not
do much better. The whitejackets needed padded boots to get close. Steel had
ignored the steam, donned the boots, and walked beneath the curving hull.
The bottom was vaguely like a boat's hull, if you ignored the stilts. Near
the center was a teat-like projection; the ground directly underneath
burbled with molten rock. The burned-out coffins were on the uphill side of
the ship. Several of the corpses had been removed for dissection. In the
first hours his advisors had been full of fanciful theories: the mantis folk
were warriors fleeing a battle, come to bury their dead....
So far no one had been able to take a careful look inside the craft.
The gray stairs were made of something as strong as steel yet feather
light. But they were recognizably stairs, even if the risers were high for
the average member. Steel scrambled up the steps, leaving Shreck and his
other advisors outside.
He stuck a head through the hatch -- and winced back abruptly. The
acoustics were deadly. He understood what the whitejackets were complaining
about. How could the aliens bear it? One by one he forced himself through
the opening.
Echoes screamed at him -- worse than from unpadded quartz. He quieted
himself, as he had so often done in the Master's presence. The echoes
diminished, but they were still a horde raging in the walls all around. Not
even his best whitejackets could tolerate more than five minutes here. The
thought made Steel stand straighter. Discipline. Quiet does not always mean
submission; it can mean hunting. He looked around, ignoring the howling
murmurs.
Light came from bluish strips in the ceiling. As his eyes adjusted, he
could see what his people had described to him: the interior was just two
rooms. He was standing in the larger one -- a cargo hold? There was a hatch
in the far wall and then the second room. The walls were seamless. They met
in angles that did not match the outer hull; there would be dead spaces. A
breeze moved fitfully about the room, but the air was much warmer than
outside. He had never been in a place that felt more of power and evil.
Surely it was only a trick of acoustics. They would bring in some absorbent
quilts, some side reflectors, and the feeling would go away. Still....
The room was filled with coffins, these unburned. The place stank with
the aliens' body odor. Mold grew in the darker corners. In a way that was
comforting: the aliens breathed and sweated as other living things, and for
all their marvelous invention, they could not keep their own den clean.
Steel wandered among the coffins. The boxes were mounted on railed racks.
When the ones outside had been here, the room must have been crammed full.
Undamaged, the coffins were marvels of fine workmanship. Warm air exited
slots along the sides. He sniffed at it: complex, faintly nauseating, but
not the smell of death. And not the source of the overpowering stench of
mantis sweat that hung everywhere.
Each coffin had a window mounted on its top side. What effort to honor
the remains of single members! Steel hopped onto one and looked down. The
corpse was perfectly preserved; in fact, the blue light made everything look
frozen. He cocked a second head over the edge of the box, got a double view
on the creature within. It was far smaller than the two they had killed
under the ship. It was even smaller than the one they had captured. Some of
Steel's advisors thought the small ones were pups, perhaps unweaned. It made
sense; their prisoner never made thought sounds.
Partly as an act of discipline, he stared for a long while at the
alien's queer, flat face. The echo of his mind was a continuing pain, eating
at his attention, demanding that he leave. Let the pain continue. He had
withstood worse before, and the packs outside must know that Steel was
stronger than any of them. He could master the pain and have the greater
insight.... And then he would work their butts off, quilting these rooms and
studying the contents.
So Steel stared, almost thoughtless, into the face. The screaming in
the walls seemed to fade a little. The face was so ugly. How could the
creature eat? He had looked at the charred corpses outside, noticed their
small jaws and randomly misshapen teeth.
A few minutes passed; the noise and ugliness mixed together,
dream-like.... And out of his trance, Steel new a nightmare horror: The face
moved. The change was small, and it happened very, very slowly. But over a
period of minutes, the face had changed.
Steel's fell from the coffin; the walls screamed back terror. For a few
seconds, he thought the noise would kill him. Then he regained himself with
quiet thought. He crawled back onto the box. All his eyes stared through the
crystal, waiting like a pack on hunt.... The change was regular. The alien
in the box was breathing, but fifty times more slowly than any normal
member. He moved to another box, watched the creature in it. Somehow, they
were all alive. Inside those boxes, their lives were simply slowed.
He looked up from the boxes, almost in a daze. That the room reeked of
evil was an illusion of sound ... and also the absolute truth.
The mantis alien had landed far from the tropics, away from the
collectives; perhaps it thought the Arctic Northwest a backward wilderness.
It had come in a ship jammed with hundreds of mantis pups. These boxes were
like larval casings: the pack would land, raise the small ones to adulthood
-- out of sight of civilization. Steel felt his pelts puff up as he thought
about it. If the mantis pack had not been surprised, if Steel's troops had
been any less aggressive ... it would have been the end of the world.
Steel staggered to the outer hatch, his fears coming louder and louder
off the walls. Even so, he paused a moment in the shadows and the screams.
When his members trooped down the stairs, he moved calmly, every jacket
neatly in place. Soon enough his advisors would know the danger, but they
would never see fear in him. He walked lightly across the steaming turf, out
from under the hull. But even he could not resist a quick look across the
sky. This was one ship, one pack of aliens. It had had the misfortune of
running into the Movement. Even so, its defeat had been partly luck. How
many other ships would land, had already landed? Was there time for him to
learn from this victory?
Steel's mind returned to the present, to his eyrie lookout above the
castle. That first encounter with the ship was many tendays past. There was
still a threat, but now he understood it better, and -- as was true of all
great threats -- it held great promise.
On the rampart, Flenser-in-Waiting slid through the deepening twilight.
Steel's eyes followed the pack as it walked beneath the torches, and one by
one disappeared down stairs. There was an awful lot of the Master in that
fragment; it had understood many things about the alien landing before
anyone else.
Steel took one last look across the darkening hills as he turned and
started down the spiral stair. It was a long, cramped climb; the lookout sat
atop a forty-foot tower. The stair was barely fifteen inches wide, the
ceiling less that thirty inches above the steps. Cold stone pressed in from
all around, so close that there were no echoes to confuse thought -- yet
also so close that the mind was squeezed into a long thread. Climbing the
spiral required a twisting, strung-out posture that left any attacker easy
prey for a defender in the eyrie. Such was military architecture. For Steel,
crawling the cramped dark was pleasant exercise.
The stairs opened onto a public hallway, ten feet across with back-off
nooks every fifty feet. Shreck and a bodyguard were waiting for him.
"I have the latest from Woodcarvers," said Shreck. He was holding
sheets of silkpaper.
Losing the other alien to Woodcarvers had once seemed a major blow.
Only gradually had he realized how well it could work out. He had
Woodcarvers infiltrated. At first he'd intended to have the other alien
killed; it would have been easy to do. But the information that trickled
north was interesting. There were some bright people at Woodcarvers. They
were coming up with insights that had slipped past Steel and the Master --
the fragment of the Master. So. In effect, Woodcarvers had become Steel's
second alien laboratory, and the Movement's enemies were serving him like
any other tool. The irony was irresistible.
"Very good, Shreck. Take it to my den. I'll be there shortly." Steel
waved the whitejackets into a back-up nook and swept past him. Reading the
report over brandy would be a pleasant reward for the day's work. In the
meantime, there were other duties and other pleasures.
The Master had begun building Hidden Island Castle more than a century
earlier; it was growing yet. In the oldest foundations, where an ordinary
ruler might put dungeons, were the Flenser's first laboratories. Many could
be mistaken for dungeons -- and were by their inhabitants.
Steel reviewed all the labs at least once a tenday. Now he swept
through the lowest levels. Crickers fled before the light of his guard's
torches. There was a smell of rotting meat. Steel's paws skidded where
slickness lay upon the stone. Holes were dug in the floor at regular
intervals. Each could hold a single member, its legs jammed tight to its
body. Each was covered by a lid with tiny air holes. It took the average
member about three days to go mad in such isolation. The resulting "raw
material" could be used to build blank packs. Generally, they weren't much
more than vegetables, but then that was all the Movement asked of some. And
sometimes remarkable things came from these pits: Shreck for instance.
Shreck the Colorless, some called him. Shreck the stolid. A pack who was
beyond pain, beyond desire. Shreck's was the loyalty of clockwork, but built
from flesh and blood. He was no genius, but Steel would have given an
eastern province for five more of him. And the promise of more such
successes made Steel use the isolation pits again and again. He had recycled
most of the wrecks from the ambush that way....
Steel climbed back to higher levels, where the really interesting
experiments were undertaken. The world regarded Hidden Island with
fascinated horror. They had heard of the lower levels. But most didn't
realize what a small part those dark spaces played in the Movement's
science. To properly dissect a soul, you need more than benches with blood
gutters. The results from the lower levels were simply the first steps in
Flenser's intellectual quest. There were great questions in the world,
things that had bothered packs for thousands of years. How do we think? Why
do we believe? Why is one pack a genius and another an oaf? Before Flenser,
philosophers argued them endlessly and never got closer to the truth. Even
Woodcarver had pranced around the issues, unwilling to give up her
traditional ethics. Flenser was prepared to get the answers. In these labs,
nature itself was under interrogation.
Steel walked across a chamber one hundred yards wide, with a roof
supported by dozens of stone pillars. On every side there were dark
partitions, slate walls mounted on tiny wheels. The cavern could be blocked
off, maze-like, into any pattern. Flenser had experimented with all the
postures of thought. In the centuries before him, there had been only a few
effective postures: the instinctive heads together, the ring sentry, various
work postures. Flenser had tried dozens more: stars, double rings, grids.
Most were useless and confusing. In the star, only a single member could
hear all the others, and each of those could only hear the one. In effect,
all thought had to pass through the hub member. The hub could contribute
nothing rational, yet all its misconceptions passed uncorrected to the rest.
Drunken foolishness resulted.... Of course, that experiment was reported to
the outside world.
But at least one of the others -- still secret -- worked strangely
well: Flenser posted eight packs around the floor and on temporary
platforms, blocked them from each another with the slate partitions, and
then put members from each pack in connection with their counterparts in
three others. In a sense, he created a pack of eight packs. Steel was still
experimenting with that. If the connectors were sufficiently compatible (and
that was the hard part), the resulting creature was far smarter than a ring
sentry. In most ways it was not as bright as a single heads-together pack,
yet sometimes it had striking insights. Before he left for the Long Lakes,
the Master had developed a plan to rebuild the castle's main hall so council
sessions could be conducted in this posture. Steel hadn't pursued that idea;
it seemed just a bit too risky. Steel's domination of others was not quite
as complete as Flenser's had been.
No matter. There were other, far more significant, projects. The rooms
ahead were the true heart of the Movement. Steel's soul had been born in
these rooms; all of Flenser's greatest creations had begun here. During the
last five years, Steel had continued the tradition ... and improved upon it.
He walked down the hall that linked the separate suites. Each bore its
number in inlaid gold. At each he opened a door and stepped partway through.
His staff left their report on the previous tenday just inside. Steel
quickly read each one, then poked a nose over the balcony to look at the
experiment within. The balconies were well-padded, and screened; it was easy
to observe without being seen.
Flenser's one weakness (in Steel's opinion) was his desire to create
the superior being. The Master's confidence was so immense, he believed that
any such success could be applied to his own soul. Steel had no such
illusions. It was a commonplace that teachers are surpassed by their
creations -- pupils, fission-children, adoptions, whatever. He, Steel, was a
perfect illustration of this, though the Master didn't know it yet.
Steel had determined to create beings that would each be superior in
some single way -- while flawed and malleable in others. In the Master's
absence, he had begun a number of experiments. Steel worked from scratch,
identifying inheritance lines independent of pack membership. His agents
purchased or stole pups that might have potential. Unlike Flenser, who
usually melded pups into existing packs in an approximation of nature, Steel
made his totally newborn. His puppy packs had no memories or fragments of
soul; Steel had total control from the beginning.
Of course, most such constructions quickly died. The pups had to be
parted from their wet nurses before they began to participate in the adult's
consciousness. The resulting pack was taught entirely in speech and written
language. All inputs could be controlled.
Steel stopped before door number thirty-three: Experiment Amdiranifani,
Mathematical Excellence. It was not the only attempt in this direction, but
it was by far the most successful. Steel's agents had searched the Movement
for packs with ability for abstraction. They had gone further: the world's
most famous mathematician lived in the Long Lakes Republic. The pack had
been preparing to fission; she had several puppies by herself and a
mathematically talented lover. Steel had had the pups taken. They matched
his other acquisitions so well that he decided to make an eightsome. If
things worked out, it might be beyond all nature in its intelligence.
Steel motioned his guard to shield the torches. He opened door
thirty-three and soft-toed one member to the edge of the balcony. He looked
down, carefully silencing that member's fore-tympanum. The skylight was dim,
but he could see the pups huddled together ... with its new friend. The
mantis. Serendipity, that was all he could call this, the reward that comes
to a researcher who labors long enough, carefully enough. He had had two
problems. The first had been growing for a year: Amdiranifani was slowly
fading, its members falling into the usual autism of wholly newborn packs.
The second was the captured alien; that was an enormous threat, an enormous
mystery, an enormous opportunity. How to communicate with it? Without
communication, the possibilities for manipulation were very limited.
Yet in a single blind stroke, an incompetent Servant had shown the way
to solve both problems. Now that his eyes were adjusted to the dimness,
Steel could see the alien beneath the pile of puppies. When first he'd heard
that the creature had been put in with an experiment, Steel had been enraged
beyond thought; the Servant who made the mistake had been recycled. But the
days passed. Experiment Amdiranifani began showing more liveliness than any
time since its pups were weaned. It quickly became obvious -- from
dissecting the other aliens, and observing this one -- that mantis folk did
not live in packs. Steel had a complete alien.
The alien moved in its sleep, and made a low-pitched mouth noise; it
was totally incapable of any other kind of sound. The pups shifted to fit
the new position. They were sleeping too, vaguely thinking among themselves.
The low end of their sounds was a perfect imitation of the alien.... And
that was the greatest coup of all. Experiment Amdiranifani was learning the
alien's speech. To the pack of newborns this was simply another form of
interpack talk, and apparently its mantis friend was more interesting than
the tutors who appeared on these balconies. The Flenser Fragment claimed it
was the physical contact, that the pups were reacting to the alien as a
surrogate parent, thoughtless though the alien was.
It really didn't matter. Steel brought another head to the edge of the
balcony. He stood quietly, neither member thinking directly at the other.
The air smelled faintly of puppies and mantis sweat. These two were the
Movement's greatest treasure: the key to survival and more. By now, Steel
knew the flying ship was not part of an invasion fleet. Their visitors were
more like ill-prepared refugees. There had been no word of other landings,
and the Movement's spies were spread far.
It had been a close thing, winning against the aliens. Their single
weapon had killed most of a regiment. In the proper jaws, such weapons could
defeat armies. He had no doubt the ship contained more powerful killing
machines -- ones that still functioned. Wait and watch, Steel counseled
himself. Let Amdiranifani show the levers that could control this alien. The
entire world would be the prize.
.Delete this paragraph to shift page flush
CHAPTER 14
Sometimes Mom used to say that something was "more fun than a barrel
full of puppies." Jefri Olsndot had never had more than one pet at a time,
and only once had that been a dog. But now he understood what she meant.
From the very first day, even when he had been so tired and scared, he had
been entranced by the eight puppies. And they by him. They were all over
him, pulling at his clothes, unfastening his shoes, sitting on his lap, or
just running around him. Three or four were always staring at him. Their
eyes were completely brown or pink, and seemed large for their heads. From
the beginning the puppies had mimicked him. They were better than Straumli
songbirds; anything he said, they could echo -- or play back later. And when
he cried, often the puppies would cry too, and cuddle around him.
There were other dogs, big ones that wore clothes and entered the room
through doorways high up on the walls. They lowered food into the room,
sometimes making strange noises. But the food tasted awful, and they didn't
respond to Jefri's screaming even by mimicking him.
Two days had passed, then a week. Jefri had investigated everything in
the room. It wasn't really a dungeon; it was too big. And besides, prisoners
don't get pets. He understood that this world was uncivilized, not part of
the Realm, perhaps not even on the Net. If Mom or Dad or Johanna weren't
nearby, it was possible that there was no one here to teach the dogs to
speak Samnorsk! Then it would be up to Jefri Olsndot to teach the dogs and
find his family. Now when the white-jacketed dogs came onto the corner
balconies, Jefri shouted questions at them. It didn't help very much. Even
the one with red stripes didn't respond. But the puppies did! They shouted
right along with Jefri, sometimes echoing his words, sometimes making
nonsense sounds.
It didn't take Jefri long to realize that the puppies were driven by a
single mind. When they ran around him, some would always sit a little way
off, their graceful necks arching this way and that -- and the runners
seemed to know exactly what the others saw. He couldn't hide things behind
his back if there was even one of them to alert the others. For a while he
thought they were somehow talking to each other. But it was more than that:
when he watched them unfasten his shoes or draw a picture -- the heads and
mouths and paws cooperated so perfectly, like the fingers on a person's
hands. Jefri didn't reason things out so explicitly; but over a period of
days he came to think of all the puppies together as a single friend. At the
same time he noticed that the puppies was mixing up his words -- and
sometimes making new meanings.
"You me play." The words came out like a cheap voice splice, but they
generally preceded a mad game of tag all around the furniture.
"You me picture." The slate board covered the lowest meter of the wall,
all around the room. It was a display device like Jefri had never seen in
his life: dirty, imprecise, imperfectly deletable, unstorable. Jefri loved
it. His face and hands, and most of Puppies' lips, got covered with chalk
stains. They drew each other, and themselves. Puppies didn't draw neat
pictures like Jefri's; Puppies' dog figures had big heads and paws, with the
bodies all smudged together. When he drew Jefri, the hands were always big,
each finger carefully drawn.
Jefri drew his family and tried to make Puppies understand.
Day by day, the sunlight circled higher on the walls. Sometimes the
room was dark now. At least once a day, packs came to talk to Puppies. This
was one of the few things which could pull the little ones away from Jefri.
Puppies would sit below the balconies, screeching and croaking at the
adults. It was a school class! They'd lower scrolls for him to look at, and
retrieve ones he had marked.
Jefri sat quietly and watched the lessons. He fidgeted, but he didn't
shout at the teachers anymore. Just a little longer, and he and Puppies
would really be talking. Just a little longer and Puppies could find out for
him where Mom and Dad and Johanna were.
Sometimes terror and pain are not the best levers; deception, when it
works, is the most elegant and the least expensive manipulation of all. Once
Amdiranifani was fluent in the mantis language, Steel had him explain about
the "tragic death" of Jefri's parents and brood-sibling. The Flenser
Fragment had argued against it, but Steel wanted quick and unquestioned
control.
Now it seemed that the Fragment might have been right; at least he
should have held out the hope that the brood-sibling lived. Steel looked
solemnly at the Amdiranifani Experiment. "How can we help?"
The young pack looked up trustingly. "Jefri is so terribly upset about
his parents and sister." Amdiranifani was using mantis words a lot, often
unnecessarily: sister instead of brood-sibling. "He hasn't been eating much.
He doesn't want to play. It makes me very sad."
Steel kept watch on the far balcony. The Flenser Fragment was there. It
was not hiding, though most of its faces were out of the candlelight. So far
its insights had been extraordinary. But the Fragment's stare was like old
times, when a mistake could mean mutilation or worse. So be it. The stakes
were higher now than ever before; if fear at Steel's throats could help him
succeed, he welcomed it. He looked away from the balcony, and brought all
his faces to an expression of tender sympathy for poor Jefri's plight. "You
just have to make it -- him -- understand. No one can bring his parents or
sister back to life. But we know who the murderers are. We're doing
everything we can to defend against them. Tell him how hard this is.
Woodcarvers is an empire that has lasted hundreds of years. In a fight, we
are no match for them. That's why we need all the help he can give us. We
need him to teach us to use his parents' ship."
The puppy pack lowered a head. "Yes. I'll try, but ..." The three
members by Jefri made low-pitched grunting noises at it. The mantis sat head
bowed; it held its tentacled paws across its eyes. The creature had been
like this for several days, and the withdrawal was getting worse. Now it
shook its head violently, made sharp noises a little higher pitched than its
normal register.
"Jefri says he doesn't understand how things work in the ship. He's
just a little ..." the pack searched for a translation. " ... he is really
very young. You know, like me."
Steel nodded understandingly. It was an obvious consequence of the
aliens' singleton nature, but weird even so: Every one of them started out
all a puppy. Every one of them was like Steel's puppy-pack experiments.
Parental knowledge was transmitted by the equivalent of interpack speech.
That made the creature easy to dupe, but it was a damned inconvenience now.
"Still, if there's anything he can help explain."
More grunting from the mantis. Steel should learn that language. The
sounds were easy; these pitiful creatures used their mouths to talk, like a
bird or a forest slug. For now he depended on Amdiranifani. For now that was
okay; the puppy pack trusted him. Another piece of serendipity. With a few
of his recent experiments, Steel had tried love in place of Flenser's
original terror/love combination; there had been a slim chance that it might
be superior. By great good luck Amdiranifani fell into the love group. Even
his instructors had avoided negative reinforcement. The pack would believe
anything he said ... and so, Steel hoped, would the mantis.
Amdiranifani translated: "There is something else; he has asked me
about it before. Jefri knows how to wake the other children -- " the word
literally meant "pack of puppies", "-- on the ship. You look surprised, my
lord Steel?"
Even though he no longer dreamed in terror of monster minds, Steel
would just as soon not have a hundred more aliens running around. "I hadn't
realized they could be wakened so easily.... But we shouldn't do it right
now. We're having trouble finding food that Jefri can eat." That was true;
the creature was an incredibly finicky eater. "I don't think we could feed
any more right now."
More grunting. More sharp cries from Jefri. Finally, "There is one
other thing, my lord. Jefri thinks it may be possible to use the ship's
ultrawave to call for help from others like his parents."
The Flenser Fragment jerked out of the shadows. A pair of heads looked
down at the mantis, while another stared meaningfully at Steel. Steel didn't
react; he could be cooler than any loose pack. "That's something to think
about. Perhaps you and Jefri could talk more about it. I don't want to try
it till we're sure we won't hurt the ship." That was weak. He saw the
Fragment twitch a muzzle in amusement.
As he spoke, Amdiranifani was translating. Jefri responded almost
immediately.
"Oh, that's okay. He meant a special call. Jefri says the ship has been
signaling ... all by itself ... ever since it landed."
And Steel wondered if he had ever heard a deadly threat uttered in such
sweet innocence.
They began letting Amdi and Jefri outside to play. Beforehand Amdi was
nervous about going out. He was unused to wearing clothes. His whole life --
all four years of it -- had been spent in that one big room. He read about
the outside and was curious about it, yet he was also a little afraid. But
the human boy seemed to want it. Every day he'd been more withdrawn, his
crying softer. Mostly he was crying for his parents or sister, but sometimes
he cried about being locked up so deep away.
So Amdi had talked to Mr. Steel, and now they got out almost every day,
at least to an inner courtyard. At first, Jefri just sat, not really looking
around. But Amdi discovered that he loved the outdoors, and every time he
got his friend to play a little more.
Packs of teachers and guards stood at the corners of the yellowing moss
and watched. Amdi -- and eventually Jefri -- got a big kick out of harassing
them. They hadn't realized it down in the room, where visitors came at the
balconies, but most adults were nervous around Jefri. The boy was half again
as tall as a normally standing pack member. When he came close, the average
pack would clump together and edge away. They didn't like having to look up
at him. It was silly, Amdi thought. Jefri was so tall and skinny, he looked
like he might topple over at any moment. And when he ran it was like he was
wildly trying to recover from a fall and never quite succeeding. So Amdi's
favorite game those first days was tag. Whenever he was the chaser, he
contrived to run Jefri right through the most prim looking whitejackets. If
he and Jefri did it right they could turn the tag into a three-way event,
Amdi chasing Jefri and a whitejackets racing to stay away from both of them.
Sometimes he felt sorry for the guards and whitejackets. They were so
stiff and grownup. Didn't they understand how much fun it was to have a
friend that you walk right next to, that you could actually touch?
It was mostly night now. Daylight hovered for a few hours around noon.
The twilight before and after was bright enough to dim the stars and aurora,
but still too faint to show colors. Though Amdi had spent his life indoors,
he understood the geometry of the situation, and liked to watch the change
of light. Jefri didn't much like the dark of winter ... until the first snow
fell.
Amdi got his first set of jackets. And Mr. Steel had special clothes
made for the human boy, big puffy things that covered his whole body and
kept him warmer than a good pelt would have done.
On one side of the courtyard the snow was just six inches deep, but
elsewhere it piled into drifts higher than Amdi's head. Torches were mounted
in wind shields on the walls; their light glittered golden off the snow.
Amdi knew about snow -- but he'd never seen it before. He loved to splash it
on one of his jackets. He would stare and stare, trying to see the
snowflakes without his breath melting them. The hexagonal pattern was
tantalizing, just at the limit of his vision.
But tag was no fun anymore; the human could run through drifts that
left Amdi swimming in the white stuff. There were other things the human
could do, wonderful things. He could make balls of snow and throw them. The
guards were very upset by this, especially when Jefri plinked a few members.
It was the first time he ever saw them get angry.
Amdi raced around the windswept side of the courtyard, dodging
snowballs and keening frustration. Human hands were such wicked, wicked
things. How he would love to have a pair -- four pairs! He circled round
from three sides and sprinted right at the human. Jefri backed quickly into
deeper snow, but too late. Amdi hit him high and low, tipping the Two-Legs
over into a snowdrift. There was a mock battle, slashing lips and paws
against Jefri's hands and feet. But now Amdi was on top. The human got paid
back for his snowballs with plenty of snow stuffed down the back of his
jacket.
Sometimes they just sat and watched the sky for so long that rumps and
paws went numb. Sitting behind the largest snow drift, they were shaded from
the castle torches and had a clear view of the lights in the sky.
At first Amdi had been entranced by the aurora. Even some of his
teachers were. They said this part of the world was one of the best places
to see the sky glow. Sometimes it was so faint that the torchlight
glimmering off the snow was enough to blot it out. Other times it ran from
horizon to horizon: green light trimmed with hints of pink, twisting as
though ruffled by a slow wind.
He and Jefri could talk very easily now, though always in Jefri's
language. The human couldn't make many of the sounds of interpack speech;
even his pronunciation of Amdi's name was a scarcely recognizable. But Amdi
understood Samnorsk pretty well; it was fun, their own secret language.
Jefri was not especially impressed by the aurora. "We have that lots at
home. It's just light from -- " He said a new word, and glanced at Amdi. It
was funny how the human couldn't look in more than one place at time. His
eyes and head were always moving. "-- you know, places where people make
things. I think the gas and waste leaks out, and then the sun lights it up
or it gets -- " unintelligible.
"Places where people make things?" In the sky? Amdi had a globe; he
knew the size of the world and its orientation. If the aurora were
reflecting sunlight, it must be hundreds of miles above the ground! Amdi
leaned a back against Jefri's jacket and made a very human whistling sound.
His knowledge of geography was not up to his geometry, but, "The packs don't
work in the sky, Jefri. We don't even have flying boats."
"Uh, that's right, you don't.... I don't know what that stuff is then.
But I don't like it. It gets in the way of the stars." Amdi knew all about
the stars; Jefri had told him. Somewhere out there were the friends of
Jefri's parents.
Jefri was silent for several minutes. He wasn't looking at the sky
anymore. Amdi wriggled a little closer, watching the shifting light in the
sky. Behind them the wind-sharpened crest of the drift was edged with yellow
light from the torches. Amdi could imagine what the other was thinking. "The
commsets from the boat, they really aren't good enough to call for help?"
Jefri slapped the ground. "No! I told you. They're just radio. I think
I can make them work, but what's the use? The ultrawave stuff is still on
the boat and it's too big to move. I just don't understand why Mr. Steel
won't let me go aboard.... I'm eight years old, you know. I could figure it
out. Mom had it all set up before, before ..." His words guttered into the
familiar, despairing silence.
Amdi rubbed a head against Jefri's shoulder. He had a theory about Mr.
Steel's reluctance. It was an explanation he hadn't told Jefri before:
"Maybe he's afraid you'll just fly away and leave us."
"That's stupid! I'd never leave you. Besides, that boat is real hard to
fly. It was never meant to land on a world."
Jefri said the strangest things; sometimes Amdi was just
misunderstanding -- but sometimes they were literal truth. Did the humans
really have ships that never came to ground? Where did they go then? Amdi
could almost feel new scales of reference clicking together in his mind. Mr.
Steel's geography globe represented not the world, but something very, very
small in the true scheme of things.
"I know you wouldn't leave us. But you can see how Mr. Steel might be
afraid. He can't even talk to you