r.  Tyrathect's
only reason for  being  here was  the  oath  she had sworn herself  to bring
Flenser's  Movement down. If  Woodcarver knew what awaited her here,  if she
even knew of the traitors in her own  camp ... there might be a chance. Last
fall, Tyrathect had come close to sending an anonymous message south.  There
were traders  who visited through both  kingdoms. Her Flenser  memories told
her which  were likely  independent. She almost passed one a note,  a single
piece of silkpaper, reporting the starship's landing  and  Jefri's survival.
In  that  she  had  missed death by  less than a day: Steel had shown  her a
report from the South, about the other human and  Woodcarver's progress with
the "dataset". There were things in  the report that could only  be known by
someone at  the top at Woodcarver's. Who? She didn't ask, but she guessed it
was Vendacious;  the Flenser in Tyrathect remembered that sibling pack well.
They'd had ...  dealings. Vendacious  had none  of the raw genius  of  their
joint parent, but there was a broad streak of opportunism in him.
     Steel had shown  her the  report  only to puff himself  up, to prove to
Tyrathect  that  he  had  succeeded  in  something  that  Flenser had  never
attempted. And it  <I>was</I>  a coup. Tyrathect  had complimented Steel  with more
than usual sincerity ... and quietly shelved her  plans  of warning. With  a
spy at the top at Woodcarver's, any message would be pointless suicide.
     Now Tyrathect padded  across the castle's outer  yard.  There was still
plenty of  construction  going  on, but  the  teams were  smaller. Steel was
building timber  lodges all  over  the yard. Many  were empty  shells. Steel
hoped to persuade Ravna to land at a special spot near the inner keep.
     The inner keep. <I>That</I> was the  only thing about this castle built to the
standards of Hidden Island. It was a beautiful structure. It could really be
what Steel told  Amdijefri: a  shrine to honor Jefri's ship and  protect  it
from  Woodcarver attack. The  central dome was a smooth sweep of cantilevers
and  fitted  stone  as  wide as  the  main meeting hall  on  Hidden  Island.
Tyrathect watched  it  with one pair of eyes as she  trotted round it. Steel
intended  to face the dome with the finest pink marble. It  would be visible
for  dozens of miles  into the sky.  The deadfalls built  into its structure
were the centerpiece of Steel's plan,  even  if the rescuers  didn't land in
his other trap.






     Shreck and two other high Servants stood on the steps  of the  castle's
meeting hall. They  came  to  attention as she approached. The three  backed
quickly  away, bellies scraping stone ... but not as  quickly  as last fall.
They knew that  the other Flenser Fragments had been destroyed. As Tyrathect
swept past them,  she  almost smiled. For  all  her  weakness  and  all  her
problems, she knew she could best these ones.
     Steel was already inside,  alone. The most important meetings were  all
like this, just Steel and  herself. She understood the  relationship. In the
beginning, Steel had  been simply  terrified of  her --  the  one  person he
believed  he  could  never  kill.  For  tendays,  he  had  teetered  between
grovelling before her and dismembering her. It was amusing to  see the bonds
Flenser had installed years before still having force. Then had come word of
the   death   of   the    other   Fragments.   Tyrathect   was   no   longer
Flenser-in-Waiting. She had  half expected death to come  then. But in a way
this  made her safer. Now Steel  was less afraid, and his need  for intimate
advice  could  be  satisfied in ways he saw less threatening.  She  was  his
bottled demon: Flenser wisdom without the Flenser threat.
     This afternoon he  seemed almost relaxed, nodding casually to Tyrathect
as she entered. She nodded back. In many ways Steel  was her -- Flenser's --
finest  creation.  So much effort  had been  spent honing  Steel.  How  many
packs-worth of members had been sacrificed to get just the  combination that
was Steel.  She  --  Flenser  -- had  wanted  brilliance,  ruthlessness.  As
Tyrathect she could see  the  truth.  With  all the  flensing,  Flenser  had
created  a poor, sad thing. It was  strange, but  ... sometimes Steel seemed
like Flenser's most pitiable victim.
     "Ready  for the  big test?" Tyrathect said. At long  last,  the  <I>radios</I>
seemed complete.
     "In  a moment.  I wanted to ask  you about timing. My  sources tell  me
Woodcarver's  army  is on its way.  If they make reasonable  progress,  they
should be here in five tendays."
     "That's at least three tendays before Ravna's ship arrives."
     "Quite. We will have your old  enemy disposed of long before we go  for
the high stakes.  But  ... something is strange  about  the Two-Legs' recent
messages. How much do you think they suspect?  Is it possible that Amdijefri
are telling them more than we know?"
     It was an uncertainty Steel would have masked  back  when  she had been
Flenser-in-Waiting. Tyrathect  slid to a  seated position  before  replying.
"You  might  know  the  answer  if  you had bothered  to learn more  of  the
Two-Legs' language, dear Steel, or let me learn more." Through  the  winter,
Tyrathect had  been desperate to talk  to the children alone, to get warning
to  the ship. She  was of  two  minds  about  that now.  Amdijefri  were  so
transparent,  so innocent.  If  they glimpsed anything of Steel's treachery,
they couldn't hide it. And what might the rescuers do  if  they knew Steel's
villainy? Tyrathect had seen  one starship in flight. Just its landing could
be a terrible weapon. Besides ... <I>If Steel's plan succeeds, I won't need the
aliens' goodwill.</I>
     Aloud,  Tyrathect   continued,  "As  long  as  you  can  continue  your
magnificent performance, you have nothing to fear from the child. Can't  you
see that he loves you?"
     For an instant, Steel seemed pleased, and then  the suspicion returned.
"I don't know. Amdi seems always to taunt me, as though he  sees through  my
act."
     Poor Steel.  Amdiranifani was his greatest success, and he  would never
understand  it. In this one thing Steel  had  truly exceeded his Master, had
discovered  and  honed  a technique  that had  once  been  Woodcarver's. The
Fragment  eyed his former student almost hungrily. If  only he could do  him
all over  again;  there must  be a way to combine the fear and  the flensing
with  love  and affection. The  resulting  tool would truly  merit  the name
Steel. Tyrathect shrugged,  "Take  my word for it. <I>If</I>  you can continue your
kindness act,  both  children will  be  faithful. As for  the rest  of  your
question: I  have noticed some change in  Ravna's messages.  She  seems much
more confident of their arrival time, yet something has gone wrong for them.
I don't think they're any more suspicious than before; they seemed to accept
that Jefri was responsible for Amdi's idea about the <I>radios</I>. That  lie was a
good move,  by the  way. It played to their sense of superiority. On a  fair
battlefield, we are probably their betters -- and they <I>must not</I> guess that."
     "But what are they suddenly so tense about?"
     The Fragment shrugged. "Patience, dear Steel. Patience and observation.
Perhaps  Amdijefri have noticed this  too. You might subtly inspire  them to
ask  about it.  My guess is the Two-Legs  have their  own politics to  worry
about." He  stopped and turned all his heads on Steel. "Could  you have your
'source' down at Woodcarver's ferret about with the question?"
     "Perhaps I  will. That Dataset  is  Woodcarver's one great  advantage."
Steel sat  in silence for a moment, nervously chewing at his lips. Abruptly,
he shook  himself all over, as  if to drive off the manifold  threats he saw
encroaching. "Shreck!"
     There was the sound of paws.  The hatch creaked open and Shreck stuck a
head inside. "Sir?"
     "Bring the  <I>radio</I> outfits in here.  Then ask Amdijefri if  he can  come
down to talk to us."






     The  <I>radios</I> were  beautiful things. Ravna claimed that the basic device
could be invented by  civilizations scarcely more  advanced than  Flenser's.
That was  hard to believe. There  were  so many steps in the making, so many
meaningless  detours.  The  final   results:   eight  one-yard  squares   of
night-darkness.  Glints  of gold and silver showed in  the strange material.
That, at least, was no mystery: a part of Flenser's gold and silver had gone
into the construction.
     Amdijefri arrived.  They raced around the  central floor, poked at  the
radios, shouted to Steel  and the Flenser Fragment. Sometimes it was hard to
believe they were not  truly one  pack,  that the Two  Legs was not  another
member: They  clung to each other as a  single pack might. As  often as not,
Amdi answered questions about  Two-Legs before Jefri had a  chance to speak,
using the "I-pack" pronoun to identify both of them.
     Today, however, there seemed to be a disagreement. "Oh, <I>please</I> my lord,
let me be the one to try it!"
     Jefri rattled off something in Samnorsk. When Amdi didn't translate, he
repeated the  words  more slowly, speaking  directly  to  Steel. "No. It  is
[something something] dangerous. Amdi is [something] small.  And also,  time
[something] narrow."
     The Fragment  strained for  the  meaning. <I>Damn.</I>  Sooner or  later their
ignorance of the Two Legs' language was going to cost them.
     Steel listened to the  human, then sighed the  most marvelously patient
sigh.  "Please. Amdi. Jefri. What is problem?" He  spoke in Samnorsk, making
more sense to the Flenser Fragment than the human child had.
     Amdi dithered for a moment. "Jefri thinks the radio jackets are too big
for me. But look,  it  doesn't fit so badly!" Amdi jumped all  around one of
the  night-dark squares, dragging  it heedlessly off its velvet  pallet onto
the floor. He pulled the fabric over  the  back and shoulders of his largest
member.
     Now the  <I>radio</I> was roughly the  shape of  a greatcloak; Steel's tailors
had added clasps at the shoulders and gut. But the thing was vastly outsized
for little Amdi. It stood like a  tent around  one  of  him. "See? See?" The
tiny head  poked out, looking first at Steel and then at Tyrathect,  willing
their belief.
     Jefri said something. The Amdi pack squeaked back angrily. Then, "Jefri
worries about everything, but <I>somebody</I> has to test  the <I>radios</I>. There's this
little problem with speed. <I>Radio</I>  goes much faster  than sound. Jefri's just
afraid it's so fast, it might confuse the pack using it. That's foolish. How
much faster could it  be  than heads-together  thought?"  He  asked it as  a
question. Tyrathect smiled. The  pack of puppies  couldn't quite lie, but he
guessed that Amdi knew the answer to his question  -- and  that  it did  not
support his argument.
     On the other side of the hall,  Steel listened with heads cocked -- the
picture of benign  tolerance. "I'm sorry,  Amdi. It's just too dangerous for
you to be the first."
     "But I am brave! And I want to help."
     "I'm sorry. After we know it's safe -- "
     Amdi gave a shriek of outrage, much higher  than normal interpack talk,
almost in the  range of  thought. He  swarmed around Jefri,  whacking at the
human's  legs with his butt ends. "Hideous traitor!" he cried, and continued
the insults in Samnorsk.
     It took  about  ten minutes to get him  calmed  down to a sulk. He  and
Jefri  sat on the  floor, grumbling  at each other  in  Samnorsk.  Tyrathect
watched  the  two,  and Steel on the other side of the  room. If irony  were
something that made sound, they  would all be  deaf by now. All their lives,
Flenser and Steel had experimented on others -- usually unto death. Now they
had  a  victim who literally begged  to  be victimized  ...  and he  must be
rejected. There was  no question about the rejection. Even if Jefri  had not
raised objections, the Amdi pack was too valuable to be risked. Furthermore,
Amdi  was  an  eightsome.  It  was a  miracle  that such a  large pack could
function at all. Whatever  dangers  there  were with  <I>radio</I>  would  be  much
greater for him.
     So, a  proper victim would be found. A proper wretch. Surely there were
plenty of  those in the dungeons  beneath Hidden Island.  Tyrathect  thought
back  on all  the packs she remembered  killing. How she hated Flenser,  his
calculating cruelty.  <I>I  am  so  much worse than Steel.  I  made Steel.</I>  She
remembered where her thoughts had been the  last hour. This was one  of  the
bad days, one  of the days when Flenser sneaked out from the recesses of her
mind, when she rode  the power of  his  reason  higher and  higher, till  it
became rationalization and she became him. Still, for a few more seconds she
might  be in  control. What  could she  do with it?  A  soul that was strong
enough might deny itself, might  become a different  person ... might at the
very least end itself.
     "I-I  will try  the <I>radio</I>." The  words  were spoken  almost  before  he
thought them. <I>Weak, silly frill.</I>
     "What?" said Steel.
     But the words had been clear, and Steel had heard. The Flenser Fragment
smiled  dryly. "I want  to see what this <I>radio</I> can  do. Let me try  it, dear
Steel."






     They took the radios  out into  the yard,  on the side  of the starship
that was hidden from general view. Here it would just be  Amdijefri,  Steel,
and  <I>whoever  I am  at  the moment</I>.  The Flenser  Fragment  laughed  at  the
upwelling fear. Discipline, she had thought! Perhaps that was best. He stood
in the middle of the  yard and let the human  help  him with the radio gear.
Strange to see another intelligent being so close, and towering over him.
     Jefri's incredibly articulate paws arranged the jackets  loosely on his
backs. The inside material was soft,  deadening. And unlike normal clothing,
the  <I>radios</I> covered the wearer's tympana. The  boy tried to  explain what he
was  doing. "See? This thing," he  pulled  at the corner  of the greatcloak,
"goes  over  your  head. The inside has  [something]  that makes  sound into
<I>radio</I>."
     The Fragment shrugged away as the boy tried to pull  the cover forward.
"No. I can't  think." Only by standing just so, all members  facing  inward,
could the Fragment maintain full consciousness. Already the weaker parts  of
him  were edging toward isolation  panic. The conscience that  was Tyrathect
would learn something today.
     "Oh. I'm sorry." Jefri turned  and spoke to Amdi, something about using
the old design.
     Amdi was heads-together, just thirty feet away. He had been all frowns,
sullen at being  denied,  nervous to  be apart from the Two-Legs. But as the
preparations continued, the frowns eased. The puppies'  eyes grew wide  with
happy fascination.  The Fragment felt a  wave  of  affection for the puppies
that came and went almost too fast to be noticed.
     Now Amdi  edged nearer, taking  advantage of the fact  that the  cloaks
muffled  much  of  the  Fragment's  thought  sounds.  "Jefri says  maybe  we
shouldn't have tried to make  the mind-size  <I>radio</I>," he said. "But this will
be so much better. I know it!  And," he said with transparent slyness,  "you
could still let me test it instead."
     "No,  Amdi. This  is the way  it must be." Steel's  voice was  all soft
sympathy. Only the  Flenser Fragment could see the broad grin on a couple of
the lord's members.
     "Well, okay." The puppies crept a little nearer. "Don't be afraid, Lord
Tyrathect. We've had the <I>radios</I> in  sunlight for some time. They should have
lots of power. To make them work you just pull all the belts tight, even the
ones at your neck."
     "All of them <I>at once</I>?"
     Amdi  fidgeted. "That's probably best. Otherwise, there will  be such a
mismatch of speeds that -- " He said something to the Two Legs.
     Jefri leaned close. "This belt goes here, and this here." He pointed to
the  braid-bone straps  that drew the  head covering close. "Then  just pull
this with your mouth."
     "The harder you pull, the louder the <I>radio</I>," Amdi added.
     "Okay."  The  Fragment drew himself together. He  shrugged the  jackets
into place,  tightening the shoulder  and gut  belts.  <I>Deadly muffling.</I>  The
jackets almost  seemed to  mold  themselves to  his  tympana.  He looked  at
himself, and  grasped desperately for  what was  left of consciousness.  The
jackets were beautiful,  magic darkness yet with a hint of the golden-silver
of a Flenserist Lord. Beautiful instruments  of  torture. Even Steel had not
imagined such twisted revenge. Had he?
     The Fragment grabbed the head straps and pulled.






     Twenty years ago, when Tyrathect was new,  she  had loved to hike  with
her fission parent on the grassy dunes along Lake Kitcherri. That was before
their great falling out, before loneliness drove Tyrathect to the Republic's
Capital and her search for "meaning". Not all of the shore of Lake Kitcherri
was  beaches and dunes. Farther south there was the Rockness, where  streams
cut  through stone  to the water.  Sometimes, especially when  she  and  her
parent had  fought, Tyrathect would walk  up from the  shore  along  streams
bordered by sheer, smooth cliffs. It was  a  sort of  punishment: there were
places where the stone had a glassy  haze and  didn't absorb  sound  at all.
<I>Everything</I>  was echoed, right up to the top  of thought. It  was if she were
surrounded by copies  of herself, and  copies beyond  them, all thinking the
same sounds but out of step.
     Of  course  echoes  are  often a  problem with unquilted  stone  walls,
especially if the size and geometry are wrong. But these cliffs were perfect
reflectors, a quarrier's nightmare. And there were places where the shape of
the Rockness conspired with the sounds....  When Tyrathect walked there, she
couldn't  tell her own thoughts from the echoes. Everything was garbled with
barely offset  resonance. At first  it had been  a great pain  that sent her
running. But she forced herself back again and again, and finally learned to
think even in the worst of the narrows.
     Amdijefri's radio  was just a little  like the Kitcherri cliffs. <I>Enough
to save me, maybe.</I> Tyrathect came to consciousness all piled in  a  heap. At
most seconds had passed since she brought the <I>radios</I> to life; Amdi and Steel
were simply staring at her. The human was rocking one of her bodies, talking
to her. Tyrathect licked the boy's paw, then stood partly up. She heard only
her own thoughts ... but  they  had  some of  the jarring difference of  the
stone echoes.
     She was  back  on her bellies  again. Part  of  her was vomiting in the
dirt. The world shimmered, out of tune. <I>Thought is there.  Grab it! Grab it!</I>
All a  matter  of  coordination, of timing. She remembered Amdijefri talking
about how fast the radio was. In a  way, this was the reverse of the problem
of the screaming cliffs.
     She shook her heads, mastering the weirdness.  "Give me a  moment," she
said,  and her voice  was  almost calm. She  looked around.  Slowly. If  she
concentrated and didn't move fast, she could think.  Suddenly she was  aware
of  the greatcloaks, pressing in  on all  her tympana. She should  have been
deafened, isolated. Yet her thoughts were no muzzier than after a bad sleep.
     She  got to her feet  again and  walked slowly  around  the  open space
between Amdi and Steel. "Can you hear me?" she asked.
     "Yes," said Steel. He edged nervously away from her.
     Of course. The cloaks muffled sound like any heavy  quilt: anything  in
the range of thought  would  be  totally absorbed. But interpack  speech and
Samnorsk were low-pitched sound  --  they  would scarcely be  affected.  She
stopped, holding all  her breath. She could hear  birds  and  the sounds  of
timber being sawn somewhere on the far side of the inner yard. Yet Steel was
only  thirty feet  from  her. His  thought  noise  should have  been  a loud
intrusion, even confusing.  She strained to  hear.... There was  nothing but
her own  thoughts and a <I>stickety</I> buzzing noise  that seemed to come from all
directions.
     "And we thought this  would just give us control in  battle," she said,
wonderingly.  All of her turned  and walked toward Amdi.  He was twenty feet
away, ten feet. Still  no thought noise. Amdi's eyes were wide. The  puppies
held their ground;  in fact all eight of him seemed to lean toward her. "You
knew about this all along, didn't you?" Tyrathect said.
     "I hoped. Oh, I hoped." He stepped closer. Five feet.  The eight of him
looked at the  five of her from  a  distance of inches.  He extended a nose,
brushing  muzzles  with  Tyrathect.  His thought  sounds  came only  faintly
through the cloak, no  louder than if he were fifty feet away. For a  moment
they looked at each other in stark astonishment. Nose to nose, and they both
could still think! Amdi gave a whoop of glee and bounded in among Tyrathect,
rubbing  back  and forth  across  her  legs.  "See, Jefri,"  he  shouted  in
Samnorsk. "It works. It works!"
     Tyrathect wobbled under the assault, almost lost hold of  her thoughts.
What had just happened.... In all  the history of the world  there had never
been such a thing. If  thinking packs could work paw by  jowl.... There were
consequences and consequences, and she got dizzy all over again.
     Steel moved a little  closer  and  suffered  a  flying  hug  from Jefri
Olsndot.  Steel was trying his  best to join the celebration,  but he wasn't
quite  sure  what  had  happened.  He  hadn't lived  the  consequences  like
Tyrathect. "Wonderful progress  for the first try," he said. "But it must be
painful even so." Two of him looked sharply at her. "We should get that gear
off you, and give you a rest."
     "No!"  Tyrathect and  Amdi  said almost  together.  She  smiled back at
Steel.  "We haven't really tested it yet,  have we? The  whole  purpose  was
long-distance communications."  <I>We thought that was  the purpose, anyway.</I> In
fact, even  if it had  no better  range than talk sounds, it was  already  a
towering success in Tyrathect's mind.
     "Oh." Steel smiled weakly at Amdi and glared hidden faces at Tyrathect.
Jefri was  still hanging on two of his necks. Steel was  a picture of barely
concealed anguish. "Well, go slowly then. We don't know what might happen if
you run out of range."
     Tyrathect disentangled two  of herself from Amdi and stepped a few feet
away. Thought was as clear -- and as potentially confusing --  as before. By
now she was beginning to  get  the feel of it  though. She  had  very little
trouble keeping her balance. She walked  the two  another thirty feet, about
the maximum range a  pack could coordinate in the quietest conditions. "It's
like I'm still  heads-together,"  she said wonderingly. Ordinarily at thirty
feet, thoughts were  faint and  the time  lag so bad that  coordination  was
difficult.
     "How far can I go?" She murmured the question to Amdi.
     He made a human giggling  sound and slid a head close to hers. "I'm not
sure. It should be good at least to the outer walls."
     "Well," she said in  a  normal  voice, for Steel,  "let's see if  I can
spread a little bit further."  The two of her walked another ten yards.  She
was more than sixty feet across!
     Steel was wide-eyed. "And now?"
     Tyrathect  laughed. "My thought's  as  crisp as before." She turned her
two and walked away.
     "<I>Wait!</I>" roared  Steel, bounding to his feet.  "<I>That's far --</I> "  then he
remembered his audience, and  his fury became more a  frightened concern for
her welfare. "That's far too dangerous for the first experiment. Come back!"
     From where she sat with Amdi,  Tyrathect smiled brightly. "But Steel, I
never left," she said in Samnorsk.
     Amdijefri laughed and laughed.
     She was one hundred fifty feet  across. Her  two  broke into  a careful
trot -- and she watched Steel  swallow back foam. Her  thought still had the
sharp, abrupt quality of closer than heads-together. <I>How fast</I>  is <I>this radio
thing?</I>
     She  passed close by Shreck and  the  guards posted at the edge of  the
field. "Hey, hey, Shreck! What do you say?" one of her said at his stupefied
faces. Back  with  Amdi and  the rest of  her, Steel was shouting at Shreck,
telling him to follow her.
     Her trot became an easy run.  She split, one going  north of  the inner
yard, the  other south. Shreck and company followed, clumsy with shock.  The
dome of the inner keep was between her, a sweeping hulk  of stone. Her <I>radio</I>
thoughts faded into the <I>stickety</I> buzzing.
     "Can't think," she mumbled to Amdi.
     "Pull on the mouth straps. Make your thoughts louder."
     Tyrathect pulled,  and the buzzing faded.  She regained her balance and
raced around the starship. One of  her  was  in  a  construction  area  now.
Artisans looked up in shock. A  loose  member usually meant a fatal accident
or a pack  run  amok.  In  either case the singleton must be restrained. But
Tyrathect's member was wearing a  greatcloak that sparkled here and there of
gold. And behind her, Shreck and his guards were  shouting  for  everyone to
stand back.
     She turned a head to  Steel, and her  voice was joy. "I <I>soar!</I>" She  ran
through  the cowering workers, ran toward the south and the west walls.  She
was  <I>everywhere</I>, spreading and spreading. These seconds would  make memories
that  would  outlast  her soul, that  would be  legends  in the minds of her
descendants a thousand years from now.
     Steel  hunkered down.  Things were  totally  out of  his  control  now;
Shreck's  people were all  on  the far side of inner  keep.  All that he and
Amdijefri could know came from Tyrathect -- and the clamor of alarums.
     Amdi bounced around her. "Where are you now? Where?"
     "Almost to the outer wall."
     "Don't go beyond that," Steel said quietly.
     Tyrathect scarcely heard.  For  a few more seconds she would drink this
glorious power. She charged up the inside stairs. Guards scuttled back, some
members jumping back into the yard. Shreck still  followed, shouting for her
safety.
     One of her reached the parapet, then the other.
     She gasped.
     "Are you all right?" said Amdi.
     "I -- " Tyrathect looked about her.  From her  places on the south wall
she could see  herselves back in  the  castle yard: a tiny clump of gold and
black that  was  her  three and Amdi. Beyond the northeast  walls  stretched
forest and valleys, the trails up  into  the Icefang mountains. To the  west
was Hidden Island and the misty inner waters. These were things she had seen
a thousand times as Flenser. How he  had loved them, his domain. But now ...
she was seeing as  if in a dream. Her eyes were so far apart. Her  pack  was
almost as wide  as the castle itself. The  parallax view made  Hidden Island
seem  just  a few paces away. Newcastle was like  a model  spread out around
her. Almighty Pack of packs -- this was God's view.
     Shreck's  troopers  were  edging closer. He had sent a couple of  packs
back to get directions.  "A couple of minutes. I'll come down in a couple of
minutes." She spoke  the words to the troopers on the palisade and  to Steel
back in the yard. Then she turned to survey her domain.
     She  had only extended two of herself across  less than  a quarter of a
mile.  But  there  was no  perceptible time  lag;  coordination had the same
abrupt feel it did when she was all together. And there was plenty more pull
in the braid-bone straps. What  if all five of  her spread out,  moved <I>miles</I>
apart? All of the northland would be her private room.
     And  Flenser? Ah, Flenser. Where was he? The memories were still there,
but.... Tyrathect remembered the loss of consciousness right when the <I>radios</I>
began working. It took a special skill  of coordination to think in the face
of such terrible speed. Perhaps Lord Flenser had never  walked between close
cliffs when  he was new. Tyrathect  smiled.  Perhaps only her  mindset could
hold when  using the <I>radios</I>. In that  case.... Tyrathect looked again across
the landscape.  Flenser  had made a great empire. If these new  developments
were  managed  properly, then the coming victories could  make it infinitely
grander.
     He turned to Shreck's troopers. "Very well, I'm ready to return to Lord
Steel."



     .Delete this paragraph to shift page flush





     -=*=-



        CHAPTER 31


     It was  high summer  when Woodcarver's army  left  for  the north.  The
preparations had  been frantic, with Vendacious driving himself and everyone
else to the point of exhaustion. There had been cannons to  make -- Scrupilo
cast seventy tubes before getting thirty that would fire reliably. There had
been  cannoneers to train -- and safe methods  of firing to  discover. There
had been wagons to build and kherhogs to buy.
     Surely  word  of  the   preparations  had  long  ago  filtered   north.
Woodcarvers was a port city;  they could  not close down  the commerce  that
moved through it.  Vendacious  warned  them of this in more  than one  inner
council meeting: Steel knew they were coming.  The trick  was in keeping the
Flenserists uncertain as to numbers and  timing and exact purpose. "We  have
one great advantage over the enemy," he said. "We have agents in his highest
councils. We  know what <I>he</I> knows of us." They couldn't disguise the  obvious
from the spies, but the details were a different matter.
     The  army  departed  along  inland routes, a  dozen  wagons here, a few
squads there. In all there were a thousand packs in the expedition, but they
would  never be  together till they reached deep forest. It  would have been
easier to take the first part of the trip by  sea,  but the  Flenserists had
spotters hidden high in the fjordlands. Any  ship movement -- even  deep  in
Woodcarver territory --  would be known  in the north.  So they  traveled on
forest paths, through areas that Vendacious had cleared of enemy agents.
     At first  the  going was very easy, at least for those with the wagons.
Johanna  rode in one of the rear  ones with Woodcarver and Dataset. <I>Even I'm
beginning  to treat the thing like an oracle</I>,  thought Johanna.  Too bad  it
couldn't really predict the future.
     The  weather  was  as beautiful  as Johanna had ever  seen it  on Tines
world,  an endless  afternoon. It was strange  that  such unending  fairness
should make her so nervous,  but she couldn't help it. This was so much like
her first time on this world, when everything had ... gone wrong.
     During  the first dayarounds of  the  journey, while they were still in
home territory,  Woodcarver pointed out every peak  that  came into view and
tried to translate its name into Samnorsk for her.  After six hundred  years
the Queen knew  her  land  well.  Even the patches of snow -- the  ones that
lasted all through the summer  --  were  known to her. She  showed Johanna a
sketchbook  she had brought  along. Each page was from a different year, and
showed  her special snowpatches as they had appeared on the same day of  the
summer.  Riffling  through the leaves,  it  was almost like a crude piece of
animation. Johanna  could see  the patches moving, growing  over a period of
decades, then  retreating. "Most packs  don't  live long enough to feel it,"
said  Woodcarver,  "but  to me,  the patches that  last all  summer are like
living things. See how  they move?  They are like  wolves, held off from our
lands by our fire that  is the sun.  They circle about, grow. Sometimes they
link together and a new glacier starts toward the sea."
     Johanna had laughed a little nervously. "Are they winning?"
     "For the  last  four centuries, no. The summers have often been hot and
windy. In the long run? I don't know. And it doesn't matter quite so much to
me anymore."  She  rocked  her  two little puppies for a  moment and laughed
gently. "Peregrine's little ones  are not even thinking yet, and I'm already
losing my long view!"
     Johanna reached out  to stroke her  neck. "But  they  are your  puppies
too."
     "I know.  Most of my pups have been with other packs, but these are the
first  that  I have  kept  to be me." Her blind  one nuzzled at  one  of the
puppies. It wriggled and made a sound that warbled at the  top  of Johanna's
hearing. Johanna held the  other on her lap. Tine pups looked more like baby
sea'mals  than dogs. Their necks were so long compared  to their bodies. And
they  seemed to develop much  more slowly than  the puppy she and Jefri  had
raised. Even now they seemed to have trouble focusing. She moved her fingers
slowly back and  forth in front of  one puppy's head; its  efforts  to track
were comical.
     And after sixty days, Woodcarver's pups couldn't really walk. The Queen
wore two  special jackets with carrying  pouches  on the  sides. Most of the
waking day,  her little ones stayed  there, suckling through the fur on  her
tummy. In some ways, Woodcarver treated her offspring as a human  would. She
was very  nervous when  they were taken from her sight.  She liked to cuddle
them and  play little  games of coordination with them.  Often she would lay
both of them on their backs  and pat their paws in a sequence of eight, then
abruptly tap the one or the other on the belly. The  two wriggled  furiously
at the attack, their little legs waving in all directions. "I nibble the one
whose paw was last touched. Peregrine is worthy of me. These two are already
thinking a little. See?" She pointed to the puppy that had convulsed into  a
ball, avoiding most of her surprise tickle.
     In  other  ways  Tinish  parenting  was  alien, almost  scary.  Neither
Woodcarver nor  Peregrine  ever talked  to their pups in  audible tones, but
their ultrasonic "thoughts" seemed to be constantly probing the little ones.
Some of it  was so simple and  regular  that  it set sympathetic  vibrations
through  the  walls of the little  wagon. The wood  buzzed  under  Johanna's
hands. It  was like a mother humming a lullaby, but she  could  see  it  had
another purpose.  The little creatures responded to the sounds, twitching in
complicated  rhythms. Peregrine said it would be  another thirty days before
the pups  could contribute  conscious  thought to the  pack,  but  they were
already being trained and exercised for the function.
     They camped part of each dayaround, the troops standing turns as sentry
lines. Even  during the traveling part of the  day,  they  stopped  numerous
times, to clear the trail, or await the return of scouts, or simply to rest.
At  one such stop, Johanna sat with Peregrine in  the shade of a  tree  that
looked like pine but smelled  of honey. Pilgrim  played with his young ones,
helping them to stand up and walk a few steps. She could tell by the buzzing
in her head that he was thinking at the pups.  And suddenly they seemed more
like  marionettes  than children to her.  "Why don't  you let  them  play by
themselves, or with  their -- " <I>Brothers? Sisters? What do you call siblings
born to the other pack?</I> "-- with Woodcarver's pups?"
     Even  more  than Woodcarver,  the  pilgrim  had  tried  to  learn human
customs. He was by far the most flexible pack she knew ... after all, if you
can  accommodate  a  murderer in your own mind, you  <I>must</I>  be  flexible. But
Pilgrim  was  visibly startled  by her  question. The buzzing  in  her  head
stopped abruptly. He laughed weakly. It was a very human laugh, though a bit
theatrical. Peregrine  had spent  hours at interactive comedy on  Dataset --
whether for entertainment or insight, she didn't know. "Play? By themselves?
Yes ... I see how natural that would seem to you.  To us, it would be a kind
of  perversion.... No, <I>worse</I> than that, since perversions  are  at least fun
for some  people some of the time.  But if a pup were raised a singleton, or
even a duo -- it would be making an <I>animal</I> of what could be sturdy member."
     "You mean that pups never have life of their own?"
     Peregrine cocked  his heads and scrunched close  to the ground. One  of
him continued to nose around the puppies, but  Johanna had his attention. He
loved to puzzle over human  exotica. "Well, sometimes there is a tragedy  --
an orphan pup left to itself. Often there is no  cure  for it; the  creature
becomes too independent to  meld with any  pack. In any case, it is  a  very
lonely, empty life. I have personal memories of just how unpleasant."
     "You're missing  a  lot. I know you've  watched  children's stories  on
Dataset. It's sad you can never be young and foolish."
     "Hei! I never  said that. I've been young and foolish lots; it's my way
of life. And most packs are that way when they have several young members by
different parents." As they talked, one of Peregrine's pups had struggled to
the edge of the blanket they sat on. Now it awkwardly extended its neck into
the flowers that grew from the roots of a nearby tree. As it scruffed around
in the green and purple, Johanna felt  the buzzing begin  again.  The  pup's
movement became a  tad more  organized. "Wow!  I can smell  the flowers with
him. I  bet we'll be seeing through each other's eyes well before  we get to
Flenser's Hidden Island." The pup backed up, and the two did a  little dance
on the blanket.  Peregrine's heads  bobbed in  time with the movement. "They
are such bright little  ones!" He grinned. "Oh, we are not so different from
you, Johanna. I know humans are proud of their young  ones.  Both Woodcarver
and I wonder what ours will become. She is so brilliant, and I am -- well, a
bit mad. Will these  two make me a scientific genius? Will Woodcarver's turn
<I>her</I> into an  adventurer?  Heh,  heh. Woodcarver's a  great brood kenner, but
even she's not sure  what our new souls will be like. Oh, I can't wait to be
six again!"






     It had taken Scriber and Pilgrim and Johanna  only three days  to  sail
from Flenser's Domain to the harbor at Woodcarver's. It would take this army
almost thirty days to walk  back to where Johanna's  adventure began. On the
map it  had looked a tortuous path, wiggling this  way and that through  the
fjordland. Yet  the first ten days were  amazingly easy. The weather  stayed
dry and  warm. It was  like the day of  the ambush stretched out forever and
ever.  A dry winds summer, Woodcarver  called it. There should be occasional
storms, at least cloudiness.  Instead  the  sun circled  endlessly above the
forest canopy, and when  they broke into the open (never for long,  and then
only  when Vendacious was  sure  that  it was safe), the sky was  clear  and
almost cloudless.
     In fact, there was  already uneasiness  about the weather.  At noon  it
could get downright  hot.  The wind was constant, drying. The forest  itself
was drying out; they must be careful with fire. And  with the sun always  up
and no clouds, they might be seen by lookouts many kilometers away. Scrupilo
was especially bothered.  He  hadn't expected to fire the cannons  en route,
but he had wanted to drill "his" troops more in the open.
     Officially  Strupilo  was  a  council  member  and  the  Queen's  chief
engineer. Since his experiment with the cannon, he had insisted on the title
"Commander of Cannoneers".  To Johanna, the engineer had always  seemed curt
and  impatient.  His  members  were  almost  always moving,  and  with jerky
abruptness. He spent almost as much  time with the Dataset as  the  Queen or
Peregrine Wickwrackscar, yet he  had very little interest in people-oriented
subjects. "He has a blindness for all but machines," Woodcarver once said of
him, "but that's how I made him. He's invented much, even before you came."
     Scrupilo had fallen in love  with the  cannons.  For most packs, firing
the  things was a painful experience.  Since  that  first test, Scrupilo had
fired  the things again and again, trying to improve  the tubes, the powder,
and the explosive rounds. His fur was scored with dozens of powder burns. He
claimed that nearby gun thunder cleared the mind -- but most everybody  else
agreed it made you daft.
     During rest  stops Scrup was  a familiar figure, strutting  up and down
the  line, haranguing his cannoneers. He claimed  even the shortest stop was
an opportunity for training,  since in real combat speed would be essential.
He had  designed special epaulets, based on Nyjoran gunners' ear muffs. They
didn't  cover  his low-sound  ears at  all,  but instead  the  forehead  and
shoulder tympana of  his trigger member. Actually tying the muffs down was a
mind-numbing thing to  do, but for  the moments right around firing  it  was
worth  it.  Scrupilo wore  his  own muffs all  the time, but unsnugged. They
looked like silly little wings sticking out from his head and shoulders.  He
obviously thought the effect was raffish -- and in fact,  his  gunner  crews
also made a big thing of wearing the gear at all times. After a while,  even
Johanna could  see that the drill was paying off. At least, they could swing
the gun tubes around at an instant's notice, stuff them with fake powder and
ball, and shout the Tinish equivalent of "BANG!".






     The army  carried much more gunpowder than food. The packs were to live
off the forest. Johanna had little experience with camping in an atmosphere.
Were forests usually  this  rich?  It  was certainly nothing like  the urban
forests of Straum, where you  needed  a special license  to walk off  marked
paths,  and most of  the  wild life  were  mechanical imitations  of Nyjoran
originals. This place was wilder than even the stories of Nyjora. After all,
that world had been well settled before it fell  to medievalism.  The Tines'
had never been civilized, had never spread cities across continents. Pilgrim
guessed  there were  fewer than thirty million  packs  in all the world. The
Northwest was  only beginning  to be  settled. Game was everywhere. In their
hunting,  the   Tines  were  like  animals.  Troopers   raced   through  the
underforest.  The favorite hunt was  one of sheer  endurance, where the prey
was chased  until it dropped. That was rarely  practical here, but  they got
almost as much pleasure from chasing the unwary into ambushes.
     Johanna didn't like it. Was this a medieval perversion  or a peculiarly
Tinish  one? If  allowed  the time, the  troops  didn't  use  their bows and
knives. The pleasure of the  hunt  included slashing  at throats and bellies
with teeth and claws. Not  that the forest creatures were without  defenses:
for  millions of  years threat  and counterthreat had  evolved here.  Almost
every animal could  generate ultrasonic  screeching that totally drowned the
thought  of any  nearby pack. There  were  parts of  the  forest that seemed
silent to Johanna,  but  through which the army drove at a cautious  gallop,
troops and drivers writhing in agony from the unseen assault.
     Some of the forest animals were more sophisticated....
     Twenty-five days  out, the army was stuck  trying  to  get  across  the
biggest valley yet. In the middle -- mostly hidden  by the forest -- a river
flowed down to the western sea. The walls of these valleys were like nothing
Johanna  had  seen in the  parks of Straum: If you  took a  cross-section at
right angles to the river,  the walls made a "U" shape. They were cliff-like
steep at the high edges, then became slopes and finally a gentle plain where
the river ran.  "That's how the ice gouges it," explained Woodcarver. "There
are places further up where I've actually watched it happen," and she showed
Johanna explanations  in  the  Dataset.  That  was happening  more and more;
Pilgrim and Woodcarver  and sometimes even Scrupilo seemed to know more of a
child's modern education than Johanna.
     They had already been across a number of  smaller valleys. Getting down
the steep  parts was always  tedious,  but  so far the paths had been  good.
Vendacious took them to the edge this latest valley.
     Woodcarver and staff stood  under  the forest  cover  just short of the
dropoff.   Some   meters   back,   Johanna  sat  surrounded   by   Peregrine
Wickwrackscar.  The trees  at this  elevation  reminded Johanna a little  of
pines. The  leaves  were narrow and sharp and lasted all  year. But the bark
was  blistered white and  the wood itself was pale blond.  Strangest  of all
were the flowers. They  sprouted purple and violet from the exposed roots of
the trees.  Tines' world had no  analog of honeybees, but there was constant
motion among the flowers as thumb-sized mammals climbed from plant to plant.
There were  thousands  of them,  but  they  seemed  to  have  no interest in
anything except  the  flowers and the sweetness that oozed  from  them.  She
leaned back among  the flowers and admired the  view while the Queen gobbled
with Vendacious. How many kilometers could you see from here? The air was as
clear  as  she  had even known it on Tines'  world. East and west the valley
seemed  to  stretch  forever.  The  river  was  a  silver  thread  where  it
occasionally showed through the forest of the valley floor.
     Pilgrim nudged her with a nose  and nodded toward the Queen. Woodcarver
was pointing this  way and that  over the dropoff. "Argument is in  the air.
You want a translation?"
     "Yeah."
     "Woodcarver doesn't like  this  path," Pilgrim's voice  changed  to the
tone the Queen used when speaking Samnorsk: "The path is completely exposed.
Anyone on the other side can sit and count our every wagon.  Even from miles
away. [A mile is a fat kilometer.]"
     Vendacious whipped his heads around  in that indignant  way of his.  He
gobbled something that Johanna knew was angry.  Pilgrim chuckled and changed
his  voice to imitate  the security chief's: "Your Majesty! My  scouts  have
scoured the valley and far wall. There is no threat."
     "You've  done  miracles, I  know, but  do you seriously claim  to  have
covered that entire  north face? That's five miles away, and I know  from my
youth  that  there  are  dozens of  cavelets  --  you  have  those  memories
yourself."
     "<I>That</I> stopped him!" said Pilgrim, laughing.
     "C'mon.  Just translate." She was quite  capable of  interpreting  body
language and tone by now. Sometimes even the Tinish chords made sense.
     "Hmph. Okay."
     The Queen  hiked  her  baby packs  around and sat down. Her tone became
conciliatory.  "If  this  weather weren't  so clear, or  if there were night
times,  we might  try it, but -- You  remember  the  old path?  Twenty miles
inland from here? That  should be overgrown by now. And the road coming back
is -- "
     Gobble-hiss  from Vendacious,  angry. "I tell you, this is safe!  We'll
lose  days on the other path. If we arrive late at Flenser's,  all  my  work
will be for nothing. You must go forward here."
     "Oops," Pilgrim  whispered, unable to  resist a little  editorializing,
"Ol' Vendacious may have gone too far with that."  The Queen's  heads arched
back. Pilgrim's  imitation of  her  human  voice  said, "I  understand  your
anxiety, pack  of my blood.  But  we go  forward where  I  say. If  that  is
intolerable to you, I will regretfully accept your resignation."
     "But you need me!"
     "Not <I>that</I> much."
     Johanna suddenly realized that the whole mission could fall apart right
here, without even a shot being fired. <I>Where would we be without Vendacious?</I>
She held her breath and watched the two packs. Parts of Vendacious walked in
quick  circles, stopping for angry instants to stare at  Woodcarver. Finally
all his necks drooped. "Um. My apologies, Your Majesty.  As long as you find
me of use, I beg to continue in your service."
     Now Woodcarver relaxed, too.  She reached to pet her puppies. They  had
responded with her mood, thrashing in their carriers and hissing. "Forgiven.
I want your independent advice, Vendacious. It has been miraculously good."
     Vendacious smiled weakly.
     "I didn't think  the  jerk had it in him,"  Pilgrim said near Johanna's
ear.






     It  took  two dayarounds  to  reach  the  old  path.  As Woodcarver had
predicted, it  was overgrown. More: In places there was no sign of the  path
at all, just young trees growing from  slumped  earth. It would take <I>days</I> to
get down the valley side  this way. If Woodcarver had  any misgivings  about
the decision, she didn't mention them to Johanna. The Queen was six  hundred
years  old;  she  talked  often enough about the  inflexibility of age.  Now
Johanna was getting a clear example of what that meant.
     When  they  came  to  a  washout,  trees  were  cut down and  a  bridge
constructed  on  the  spot.  It  took a day  to get by each such  spot.  But
progress was agonizingly slow even where the path was still in place. No one
rode  in the carts  now. The edge of the path had worn  away,  and the  cart
wheels  sometimes turned on nothingness. On Johanna's right  she  could look
down at tree crowns that were a few meters from her feet.
     They ran  into  the  wolves six days  along  the detour, when they  had
almost  reached the  valley floor.  Wolves. That's what Pilgrim called  them
anyway; what Johanna saw looked like gerbils.
     They had just completed a kilometer stretch of easy  going. Even  under
the trees they could feel the wind, dry and warm and moving ceaselessly down
the valley. The last patches of snow  between the trees were being sucked to
nothingness,  and there was a haze  of smoke beyond  the  north  wall of the
valley.
     Johanna was  walking alongside Woodcarver's cart. Pilgrim was about ten
meters behind, chatting occasionally with them. (The Queen  herself had been
very quiet these  last days.)  Suddenly there was a screech of Tinish  alarm
from above them.
     A second later Vendacious shouted from  a hundred meters ahead. Through
gaps in  the trees, Johanna could see troopers on the next switchback  above
them  unlimbering  crossbows,  firing  into  the  hillside  above  them. The
sunlight came dappled through the forest cover, bringing plenty of light but
in splotches that broke and  moved as the soldiers hustled about. Chaos, but
... there were  things up  there that  weren't Tines!  Small, brown or gray,
they flitted through the shadows and the  splotches  of light. They swept up
the hillside coming upon the soldiers from  the <I>opposite</I> direction that they
were shooting.
     "Turn around! Turn around." Johanna screamed, but her voice was lost in
the turmoil. Besides, who there could understand her?  All of Woodcarver was
peering  up at  the battle. She grabbed Johanna's sleeve. "You see something
up there? Where?"
     Johanna  stuttered an explanation,  but  now Pilgrim had seen something
too. His gobbled  shouting came  loud over the battle. He  raced back up the
trail  to where Scrupilo was  trying to get  a cannon unlimbered.  "Johanna!
Help me."
     Woodcarver hesitated, then said, "Yes.  It may be that  bad. Help  with
the cannon, Johanna."
     It  was  only  fifty meters to the  gun  cart,  but  uphill.  She  ran.
Something heavy smashed into the path just behind her. Part of a soldier! It
twisted and  screamed. Half a  dozen gerbil-sized hunks of fur were attached
to the  body, and  its  pelt was streaked with red. Another member fell past
her. Another. Johanna stumbled but kept running.
     Wickwrackscar was  standing  heads-together,  just a  few  meters  from
Scrupilo. He was  armed  in every adult member --  mouth  knives  and  steel
tines. He waved Johanna down next to him. "We  run on a nest of, of wolves."
His speech  was  awkward, slurred. "Must be  between  here and path above. A
lump, like a l'il castle tower. Gotta kill nest. Can you see?" Evidently  he
could not; he  was looking all over.  Johanna looked back up  the  hillside.
There seemed to be less fighting now, just sounds of Tinish agony.
     Johanna pointed. "You mean there, that dark thing?"
     Pilgrim didn't  answer. His members  were twitching, his  mouth  knives
waving randomly. She leaped away from the flashing metal. He had already cut
himself. <I>Sound attack.</I> She looked back along the path. She'd had more than a
year  to know the  packs, and what she was seeing now  was ... madness. Some
packs were  exploding,  racing in all directions  to distances where thought
couldn't possibly be sustained.  Others -- Woodcarver on her cart -- huddled
in heaps, with scarcely a head showing.
     Just beyond the nearest  uphill  trees she could see  a gray  tide. <I>The
wolves.</I>  Each furry  lump looked innocent  enough. All together ...  Johanna
froze for an instant,  watching them tear  out  the  throat  of  a trooper's
member.
     Johanna was the  only  sane  person left, and  all it would mean is she
would <I>know</I> she was dying.

     <I>Kill the nest.</I>
     On  the gun  cart beside her only one  of Scrupilo was  left, old White
Head. Daffy  as ever, it  had  pulled down its gunner's muffs and was nosing
around under the gun tube. <I>Kill the nest.</I> Maybe not so daffy after all!
     Johanna jumped  up on  the  wagon.  It  rolled back toward the dropoff,
banging against a  tree; she scarcely noticed. She pulled up the gun barrel,
just as she had seen in all  the  drills. The white headed one pulled at the
powder  bag,  but  with  just  his one  pair of jaws he couldn't handle  it.
Without the rest of  its pack it had neither hands nor brains. It looked  up
at her, its eyes wide and desperate.
     She  grabbed the  other end of  the bag,  and the two  of them got  the
powder into  the barrel. White Head dived  back  into  the equipment, nosing
around for a cannon ball.  <I>Smarter than a  dog, and  trained.</I> Between  them,
maybe they had a chance!
     Just half a meter beneath her  feet, the wolves were running by. One or
two she could  have fought off herself. But  there  were  dozens down there,
worrying  and  tearing at  random  members. Three of  Pilgrim  were standing
around Scarbutt and the pups, but their defense was unthinking slashing. The
pack had dropped its mouth knives and tines.
     She and  White Head  got  the round down the barrel. White Head whipped
back  to  the  rear, began  playing with the little wick-lighter the gunners
used. It was something that could be  held in a single mouth, since only one
member actually fired the weapon.
     "Wait, you idiot!" Johanna kicked him back. "We gotta aim this thing!"
     White Head looked hurt for an instant. The complaint wasn't  completely
clear to him. He had dropped the  standoff wand, but still held the lighter.
He  flicked  on the flame, and circled determinedly back, tried to worm past
Johanna's  legs. She pushed him back  again,  and  looked uphill.  <I>The  dark
thing. That  must be the nest.</I> She tilted the gun tube on its  mounting  and
sighted down the top. Her face ended up just centimeters from the persistent
White Head  and his flame. His  muffed head darted  forward,  and the  flame
touched the fire-hole.
     The blast  almost knocked Johanna off the cart. For a moment  she could
think of nothing but  the  pain that stabbed into her  ears. She rolled to a
sitting position, coughing in the smoke. She couldn't hear <I>anything</I> beyond a
high-pitched ringing that went on and on. Their little  wagon was teetering,
one wheel hanging over the dropoff. White Head was flopping around under the
butt of the cannon. She pushed it off him and patted the muffed head. He was
bleeding --  or she was. She just sat dazed for  a few seconds, mystified by
the blood, trying to imagine how she had ever ended up here.
     A voice somewhere in the  back of her head was  screaming.  <I>No time, no
time.</I>  She  forced  herself to her knees and looked around,  memories coming
back painfully slow.
     There  were splintered trees  uphill  of  them; the blond  wood glinted
among the leaves. Beyond them, where the  nest had been, she saw a splash of
fresh turned earth. They had "killed" it, but ... the fighting continued.
     There were still wolves on the path, but now they were the ones running
in all directions. As she watched, dozens of them catapulted off the edge of
trail into the trees and rocks below.  And the Tines were  actually fighting
now. Pilgrim had picked up  his  knives. The blades  and his muzzles dripped
red as  he slashed. Something gray  and bleeding  flew over the edge of  the
cart and landed  by Johanna's leg. The "wolf" couldn't have  been more  than
twenty centimeters long, its  hair dirty gray brown. It really did look like
a pet,  but  the tiny  jaws  clicked with  murderous  intent at her  ankles.
Johanna dropped a cannon ball on it.






     During the next  three  days, while Woodcarver's  people  struggled  to
bring  their equipment and themselves back together, Johanna learned quite a
bit about the wolves. What she and Scrupilo's White Head did with cannon had
stopped the attack cold. Without  doubt,  knocking out the nest had  saved a
lot of lives  and  the expedition itself.  The "wolves" were  a type of hive
creature, only a little like the packs. The Tines race used group thought to
reach high intelligence; Johanna had never seen a rational pack of more than
six members. The  wolf nests didn't care about high intelligence. Woodcarver
claimed  that a  nest might have thousands of members  -- certainly  the one
they'd tripped over was huge. Such a mob couldn't be as smart as a human. In
terms of raw reasoning power, it probably wasn't much brighter than a single
pack member.  On the other hand, it  could  be a lot  more  flexible. Wolves
could operate alone at great  distances. When within a hundred meters of the
home nest they were appendages of  the "queen" members of the  nest,  and no
one doubted their canniness then. Pilgrim had  legends of nests with  almost
packish  intelligence, of foresters who made treaties with  nearby nests for
protection  in return  for  food. As long  as the high-powered noises in the
nest lived, the worker wolves could coordinate almost like Tine members. But
kill the  nest, and the creature  fell apart like some cheap,  star-topology
network.
     Certainly this  nest  had done  a number on Woodcarver's  army. It  had
waited  quietly  until  the  troopers  were within  its inner loudness. Then
outlying wolves  had used  synchronized mimicry  to  create  sonic "ghosts",
tricking  the packs into turning from the nest and shooting  uselessly  into
the  trees.  And  when the  ambush  actually  began,  the  nest had screamed
concentrated  confusion down on the  Tines. That attack had been a far  more
powerful thing  than the "stink noise"  they'd encountered in other parts of
the forest. To the Tines, the stinkers had been painfully loud and sometimes
even frightening, but not the mind-destroying chaos of the wolf-nest attack.
     More than one hundred packs had been knocked out  in  the ambush. Some,
mostly  packs  with  pups, had  huddled.  Others,  like Scrupilo,  had  been
"blasted apart". In the hours following the attack,  many of these fragments
straggled  back  and  reassembled.  The  resulting  Tines  were  shaken  but
unharmed.  Intact troops hunted up and  down the forested cliffs for injured
members of  their comrades. There  were  places along the dropoff that  were
more  than twenty meters deep.  Where  their fall  wasn't cushioned by  tree
boughs, members landed on naked rock. Five  dead ones were eventually found,
and  another  twenty  seriously  injured. Two carts had  fallen.  They  were
kindling, and their  kherhogs were too  badly  injured to  survive. By great
good luck, the gunshot had not started a forest fire.
     Three  times  the sun  made  its vast,  tilted  course  around the sky.
Woodcarver's army recovered in a camp in the depths of the valley forest, by
the  river. Vendacious  had posted lookouts with  signaling  mirrors  on the
northern valley wall. This place was about as safe as any they could find so
far north. It  was  certainly one  of the most beautiful. It didn't have the
view of  the  high forest, but there was  the sound of the  river nearby, so
loud it drowned the sighing of  the dry wind.  The lowland trees didn't have
root  flowers, but they were  still different  from what Johanna had  known.
There was no underbrush, just a soft, bluish "moss" that Pilgrim claimed was
actually  part of the trees. It stretched like mown  parkland to the edge of
the river.
     On the last day of their  rest, the Queen  called a  meeting of all the
packs  not  at guard or  lookout.  It was  the largest  collection of  Tines
Johanna had seen in  one place since  her family was killed. Only these ones
weren't fighting. As far as Johanna could see across the bluish  moss, there
were packs, each at  least eight meters from  its  nearest  neighbor. For an
absurd  instant  she  was  reminded  of Settlers Park  at  Overby:  Families
picnicking on the grass,  each  with its own  traditional blanket  and  food
lockers.  But  these "families"  were each  a pack, and this was  a military
formation.  The rows were gently curving arcs all facing toward  the  Queen.
Peregrine Wickwrackscar was  ten meters behind her, in shadow; being Queen's
consort  didn't  count for anything official.  On Woodcarver's  left lay the
living casualties of the ambush, members  with bandages and splints. In some
ways,  such visible damage wasn't the most horrifying.  There were also what
Pilgrim called  the "walking wounded".  These were singletons  and  duos and
trios that were all that was  left  of whole  packs. Some  of these tried to
maintain a posture of  attention,  but  others  mooned  about,  occasionally
breaking into  the Queen's speech with aimless words. It  was  like  Scriber
Jaqueramaphan  all over  again, but  most of  these  would  live. Some  were
already melding, trying  to make new individuals. Some of these  might  even
work out, as  Peregrine Wickwrackscar had done. For most, it would be a long
time before they were fully people again.
     Johanna sat  with Scrupilo in  the first  rank  of  troopers before the
Queen. The Commander of Cannoneers stood at Tinish parade rest: rumps on the
ground,  chest high, most  heads facing  front. Scrup  had  come  through it
without serious damage. His white head had  a few more scorch marks, and one
of the other members had sprained a shoulder falling  off the path. He  wore
his  flying  cannoneer  muffs  as  flamboyantly  as  always, but  there  was
something subdued about him -- maybe it was  just the military formation and
getting a medal for heroism.
     The Queen was wearing  her special jackets. Each  head looked out at  a
different section of her audience. Johanna still couldn't understand Tinish,
and would  certainly never  speak it without mechanical assistance.  But the
sounds  were  mostly within  her  range of  hearing -- the "low" frequencies
carried a lot better than higher ones. Even without memory aides and grammar
generators  she was learning a little. She  could  recognize emotional  tone
easily,  and  things like  the raucous <I>ark  ark ark</I> that passed for applause
around here. As for individual  words --  well,  they were more like <I>chords</I>,
single  syllables  that  had  meaning.  Nowadays,  if  she  listened  really
carefully (and Pilgrim weren't  nearby to give a  running  translation)  she
could even recognize some of those.
     ... Just now, for instance, Woodcarver was saying good things about her
audience. Approving  <I>ark ark</I>'s came from all directions. They sounded like a
bunch of sea'mals. One of the Queen's heads dipped into a bowl, came up with
a small carven  doodad  in its mouth. She spoke a  pack's name, a multichord
<I>tumptititum</I> that if Johanna heard  often enough she might be able to  repeat
as "Jaqueramaphan" -- or even see meaning in, as "Wickwrackscar".
     From the front rank of the audience, <I>a single member</I> trotted toward the
Queen. It stopped practically nose to nose with the Queen's  nearest member.
Woodcarver  said something about bravery, and  then two of her fastened  the
wooden -- broach? -- to the member's jacket. It turned  smartly and returned
to its pack.
     Woodcarver  picked out another decoration, and  called on another pack.
Johanna  leaned   over  toward   Scrupilo.  "What's  going   on?"  she  said
wonderingly. "Why are single members getting medals?" <I>And how can they stand
to get so near another pack?</I>
     Scrupilo had been standing more stiffly  at attention  than most packs,
and was pretty much  ignoring her. Now he turned one  head in her direction.
"Shh!" He  started to turn back,  but she grabbed him by one of his jackets.
"Foolish one," he finally replied. "The  award  is for  the whole  pack. One
member is extended to accept. More would be madness."

     <I>Hmm.</I>  One after another, three more  packs  "extended a member" to take
their decorations. Some  were  full  of  precision,  like  human soldiers in
stories. Others started out smartly, then became  timid and confused as they
approached Woodcarver.
     Finally Johanna said, "Ssst. Scrupilo! When do we get ours?"
     This  time he  didn't  even look  at her; all  his  heads faced rigidly
toward  the  Queen. "Last,  of course. You and I killed  the nest, and saved
Woodcarver  herself." His  bodies were almost shaking with the  intensity of
their  brace.  <I>He's  scared  witless.</I>  And  suddenly  Johanna  guessed  why.
Apparently  Woodcarver had no problem maintaining  her mind with one outside
member nearby. But the reverse would  not be  true. Sending one  of yourself
into another  pack meant losing some consciousness and placing trust in that
other  pack. Looking at  it  that  way ... well, it reminded Johanna of  the
historical novels she used to  play. On Nyjora during  the Dark Age,  ladies
traditionally  gave their sword to  their  queen when granted  audience, and
then knelt. It  was  a way  to  swear  loyalty. Same thing here, except that
looking at  Scrupilo, Johanna realized  that  even  as a matter of form, the
ceremony might be damn frightening.
     Three more medals bestowed, and then Woodcarver gobbled the chords that
were  Scrupilo's  name. The Commander of Cannoneers went  absolutely  rigid,
made  faint whistling noises  through his  mouths. "Johanna  Olsndot,"  said
Woodcarver, then more Tinish, something about coming forward.
     Johanna stood up, but not one of Scrupilo moved.
     The  Queen made a human  laugh. She was  holding two polished broaches.
"I'll explain all in Samnorsk later, Johanna.  Just come forward with one of
Scrupilo. Scrupilo?"
     Suddenly they  were  the center of  attention,  with thousands of  eyes
watching.  There  was no more <I>ark</I>ing or background  chatter. Johanna  hadn't
felt  so exposed  since she played  First Colonist in her  school's  Landing
Play. She leaned down so that her head was close to one of Scrupilo's. "Come
<I>on</I>, guy. We're the big heroes."
     The eyes that looked back at her  were  wide. "I can't." The words were
almost inaudible. For all his jaunty cannoneer muffs and standoffish manner,
Scrupilo was terrified. But for him it wasn't stage fright. "I can't tear me
apart so soon. I <I>can't</I>."
     There was murmured gobbling in  the ranks  behind them, Scrupilo's  own
cannoneers. By all the Powers, would they hold this against him? Welcome  to
the middle ages. <I>Stupid people. Even cut to pieces, Scrupilo had saved their
behinds, and now --</I>
     She put her hands  on two of his shoulders.  "We did it before, you and
I. Remember?"
     The heads nodded. "Some. That one part of me alone ... could never have
done it."
     "Right. And neither could I. But together we killed a wolf-nest."
     Scrupilo stared  at her a second, eyes wavering.  "Yes, we really did."
He  came  to his feet,  frisked  his heads  so  the cannoneer muffs flapped.
"Yes!" And he moved his white-headed one closer to her.
     Johanna straightened.  She  and  White  Head walked  out  into the open
space. Four meters. Six. She  kept the fingertips of one hand lightly on his
neck.  When they were  about twelve meters  from the rest of Scrupilo, White
Head's pace faltered. He looked sideways, up at Johanna, then continued more
slowly.
     Johanna didn't remember much of the ceremony, so  much of her attention
was  on  White Head.  Woodcarver  said  something  long and  unintelligible.
Somehow  they both  ended up  with  intricately carven  decorations on their
collars, and were headed  back toward the rest  of  Scrupilo.  <I>Then</I> she  was
aware of the  crowd once more. They  stretched as far as she could see under
the  forest canopy -- and every one of them  seemed to be cheering,  Scrup's
cannoneers loudest of all.






     Midnight. Here  at the bottom of the valley  there were  three  or four
hours  of the dayaround when the  sun dipped behind the high north  wall. It
didn't much feel  like night, or even  twilight. The smoke from the fires to
the north seemed to getting worse. She could smell it now.
     Johanna  walked back  from  the cannoneers section toward the center of
camp, and Woodcarver's tent.  It was  quiet; she could hear little creatures
scritching in the root bushes. The celebrating might  have  gone  on longer,
except that everyone knew  that in another few hours they would be preparing
for the climb up the valley's  north wall. So now there was only  occasional
laughter, an  occasional pack walking  about.  Johanna  walked barefoot, her
shoes  slung  over  her shoulders. Even in  the  dry weather, the  moss  was
wonderfully soft between her toes. Above her the forest canopy  was shifting
green and patches of hazy sky. She could almost forget what had gone before,
and what lay ahead.
     The  guards around  Woodcarver's tent didn't challenge her, just called
softly ahead. After all, there  weren't that many humans running around. The
Queen stuck out a head, "Come inside, Johanna."
     Inside, she was sitting in her usual circle,  the puppies  protected in
the middle. It  was quite dark, the only light being what  came through  the
entrance. Johanna flopped down on the pillows  where she usually slept. Ever
since this afternoon,  the big award thing,  she had been  planning to  give
Woodcarver a piece of her mind. Now ... well the party at the cannoneers had
been a happy thing. It seemed kind of a shame to break the mood.
     Woodcarver  cocked a head  at  her.  Simultaneously,  the  two  puppies
duplicated the gesture. "I saw you at the party. You  are a sober  one.  You
eat most of our foods now, but none of the beer."
     Johanna shrugged.  <I>Yes,  why?</I>  "Kids aren't  supposed  to drink  before
they're eighteen years old." That was the custom, and her parents had agreed
with it. Johanna had turned fourteen a couple of  months  ago;  Dataset  had
reminded her  of the exact hour. She wondered. If none of this had happened,
if  she were  still back at  the  High Lab  or Straumli Realm:  would she be
sneaking out with friends to try such forbidden things?  Probably. Yet here,
where  she was entirely on her own, where she was  currently a big hero, she
hadn't tried a drop.... Maybe it was because Mom and Dad <I>weren't</I>  here,  and
following their wishes seemed to keep them closer. She felt tears  coming to
her eyes.
     "Hmm."  Woodcarver didn't seem to notice. "That's what Pilgrim said was
the reason." She tapped at  her puppies and smiled. "I guess it makes sense.
These two don't get beer  till they're older --  though I know they got some
second-hand  partying from  <I>me</I> tonight." There was  a hint of beer breath in
the tent.
     Johanna  wiped  roughly  at  her face. She  really did not want to talk
about  being a teenager just now. "You  know, that was kind of a mean  trick
you pulled on Scrupilo this afternoon."
     "I -- Yes.  I talked to him about it beforehand. He didn't want it, but
I thought he was just being ... is stiff-necked the word? If I had known how
upset he was, well -- "
     "He  practically fell  apart  out there  in  front  of everybody.  If I
understand how things work, that would have been his disgrace, right?"
     "... Yes. Exchanging  honor  for  loyalty in front  of  peers,  it's an
important thing. At least the way  I run things; I'm sure Pilgrim or Dataset
can  say a dozen  other ways to lead. Look Johanna, I  needed that Exchange,
and I needed you and Scrupilo to be there."
     "Yeah, I know. 'We two saved the day.'"
     "Silence!" Her voice  was  suddenly edged, and  Johanna remembered that
this  was a medieval  queen. "We are two hundred miles  north of my borders,
almost to  the  heart of the Flenser Domain. In  a few days we will meet the
enemy, and more of us will die for we-know-not-quite-what."
     The bottom dropped out of Johanna's stomach. If she  couldn't get  back
to  the  ship, couldn't  finish  what  Mom and  Dad  had started... "<I>Please,</I>
Woodcarver! It <I>is</I> worth it!"
     "I know that.  Pilgrim  knows it. The  majority of  my  council agrees,
though  grudgingly.  But we  of the council have talked with  Dataset. We've
seen your worlds and what your science can do. On the other hand, most of my
people  here," she waved a head  at the camp  beyond  the tent, "are here on
faith, and out of loyalty to me. For  <I>them</I>, the situation is deadly and  the
goal  is  vague."  She  paused,  though  her  two  pups  continued gesturing
forcefully for a second. "Now I don't know how you would persuade  your kind
to take such risks. Dataset talks of military conscription."
     "That was Nyjora, long ago."
     "Never mind. The point is, my troops are here out of loyalty, mostly to
me personally. For six hundred years, I have protected my people well; their
memories and legends are clear on it. More than once, I was the only one who
saw a peril, and  it was my advice  that saved all those who heeded it. <I>That</I>
is what keeps most of the  soldiers,  most of  the cannoneers going. Each of
them is free  to  turn  back.  So. What  should they  think when  our  first
'combat'  is to  fall like ignorant ... tourists ... onto a nest  of wolves?
Without  the great good luck of you and part of  Scrupilo being at the right
place and alert,  I would have been killed.  Pilgrim would have been killed.
Perhaps a third of the soldiers would have died."
     "If not us, perhaps someone else," Johanna said in a small voice.
     "Perhaps.  I don't think anyone else came close  to firing on the nest.
You see  the effect on my people? 'If bad luck in the  forest  can  kill our
Queen and destroy our marvelous weapons, what will it be like when we face a
<I>thinking</I>  enemy?' That was the question in many minds. Unless I could answer
it, we'd never make it out of this valley -- at least not going northward."
     "So you gave the medals. Loyalty for honor."
     "Yes. You  missed the sense  of  it, not understanding Tinish. I made a
big thing  of how  well they had done. I gave silverwood  accolades to packs
who showed any competence during the ambush. That helped some. I repeated my
reasons for this expedition -- the wonders that  Dataset  describes and  how
much  we  lose if Steel gets his way. But they've heard all that before, and
it points  to  far away things they can scarcely  imagine.  The  <I>new</I> thing I
showed them today was you and Scrupilo."
     "<I>Us?</I>"
     "I praised  you beyond  the  skies.  Singletons often  do brave things.
Sometimes they are halfway clever, or  talk as though they are.  But  alone,
Scrupilo's fragment wouldn't be much more than a good knife fighter. He knew
about using the cannon, but he didn't have the paws or mouths to do anything
with it. And by himself, he would never have  figured out where to shoot it.
You, on the  other hand, are a Two Legs.  In many ways you are helpless. The
<I>only</I> way you can think is by yourself, but you can do it without interfering
with those around you.  Together you did what no pack could do in the middle
of a wolf-nest  attack. So I  told my army what  a team our two  races could
become, how each makes up for the age-long failings of  the other. Together,
we are one step closer to being the Pack of Packs. How is Scrupilo?"
     Johanna smiled faintly. "Things  turned out okay. Once he  was  able to
get out there and accept his medal," she fingered the broach that was pinned
to  her own collar;  it was a beautiful thing, a  landscape of  Woodcarver's
city, "once he'd done that, he was totally changed. You should have seen him
with the cannoneers afterwards.  They did their own loyalty/honor thing, and
then they drank a lot  of beer. Scrupilo was  telling them all about what we
were doing. He even had me help  demonstrate....  You  really think the army
bought what you said about humans and Tines?"
     "I think so.  In my own language,  I  can  be  very eloquent. I've bred
myself  to be." Woodcarver was silent for  a  moment. Her puppies  scrambled
across the carpet, and patted their muzzles at Johanna's hands. "Besides ...
it may even be true. Pilgrim  is sure of it. You can sleep in this same tent
with me and still think. That's something that he and I can't do; in our own
ways, we've each lived a long time and I think we are each at least as smart
as the  humans  and other creatures that Dataset talks about in the  Beyond.
But  you singleton creatures  can stand next to  each other,  and think  and
build. Compared  to us, I'll bet singleton races developed the sciences very
fast. But now, with your  help, maybe things will  change fast for us, too."
The two puppies retreated,  and  Woodcarver  lowered heads  to paws. "That's
what I told my people, anyway.... You should try to get some sleep now."
     On the ground beyond the tent's entrance there were already splashes of
sunlight.  "Okay." Johanna slipped  off her  outer clothes. She lay down and
dragged  a  light quilt across herself.  Most of  Woodcarver  already looked
asleep. As usual, one or two pairs of eyes were open, but their intelligence
would be limited -- and just now,  even they looked tired. Funny, Woodcarver
had worked with Dataset so much, her human voice had come to capture emotion
as well as pronunciation. Just now she had sounded so tired, so sad.
     Johanna  reached  out  from  under  her  quilt  to  brush  the  neck of
Woodcarver's  nearest,  the  blind  one.  "Do  <I>you</I>  believe  what  you  told
everyone?" she said softly.
     One of the "sentry" heads  looked at her, and a  very human sigh seemed
to come from all directions. Woodcarver's voice was very faint. "Yes ... but
I am very afraid that it doesn't matter any  more.  For six hundred years, I
have  had  proper  confidence in myself. But what happened on the south wall
... should not have happened. It  would not if  I had  followed Vendacious's
advice, and come down on the New Road."
     "But we might have been seen -- "
     "Yes. A failure  either  way,  don't  you  see? Vendacious  has precise
information  from the highest councils of the Flenser. But he's something of
a  careless fool  in  everyday matters. I  knew  that, and thought  I  could
compensate. But  the Old Road was in far worse  condition than I remembered;
the wolf-nest  could never  have settled by it if there had been any traffic
during the last few years. If Vendacious had managed  his  patrols properly,
or if I had been managing <I>him</I> properly, we would  never have been surprised.
Instead we were nearly overrun ... and  my only remaining talent  appears to
be in fooling those who trust me into thinking I still know what I'm doing."
She opened another pair of eyes  and  made the  smile gesture.  "Strange.  I
haven't  said these things even to Pilgrim. Is  this another 'advantage'  of
human relations?"
     Johanna patted the blind one's neck. "Maybe."
     "Anyway, I  believe what  I said about things that <I>could</I> be, but I fear
the my  soul may not be strong enough to make them so. Perhaps I should turn
things over  to Pilgrim or  Vendacious; that's something  I must think  on."
Woodcarver <I>shh</I>ed Johanna's surprised protests.
     "Now sleep please."




     .Delete this paragraph to shift page flush





     -=*=-



        CHAPTER 32


     There was a time  when Ravna  thought their tiny ship might fly all the
way  to  the Bottom unnoticed. Along with everything else, that had changed.
At the moment, <I>Out of Band II</I> might be the  most famous  star ship  known to
the Net.  A million races watched the chase. In the Middle Beyond there were
vast antenna swarms beaming in their direction and listening  to the news --
mostly lies -- sent from ships that pursued the <I>OOB</I>. She couldn't hear those
lies directly, of course, but the transmissions from beyond were as clear as
if they were on a main trunk.
     Ravna  spent part  of  each day reading the  News, trying to find hope,
trying to prove to herself  that she was doing  the right thing. By now, she
was  pretty sure what was chasing  them.  No  doubt even Pham  and Blueshell
would have agreed on that. <I>Why</I>  they were being chased, and <I>what</I>  they might
find at the end was now the subject of  endless speculation on  the Net.  As
usual, whatever the truth might be was well hidden among the lies.





     Crypto: 0
     As received by: <I>OOB</I> shipboard ad hoc
     Language path: Triskweline, SjK units
     From: Hanse  [No  references prior  to  the  fall of Relay. No probable
source. This is someone being very cautious.]
     Subject: Alliance for the Defense fraudulent?
     Distribution:
 Threat of the Blight, War Trackers Interest Group, Homo Sapiens Interest Group
     Date: 5.80 days since Fall of Sjandra Kei
     Key phrases: Fools' errand, unnecessary genocide


     Text of message:
     Earlier I speculated that there had been no destruction at Sjandra Kei.
Apologies.  That was based on  a catalog identification error.  I agree with
the  messages  (13123  as  of  a few  seconds  ago)  assuring  me  that  the
habitations of  Sjandra Kei suffered  collisional damage within the last six
days.
     So apparently  the "Alliance for the Defense" has  taken  the  military
action  they claimed earlier.  And apparently, they are powerful  enough  to
destroy  small  civilizations  in  the  Middle  Beyond. The  question  still
remains: "Why?" I have already  posted  arguments  showing  it unlikely that
Homo  sapiens  is especially  controllable  by the  Blight (though they were
<I>stupid</I> enough to create that entity). Even the Alliance's  own reports admit
that less than half of Sjandra Kei's sophonts were of that race.
     Now a  large part of  the Alliance fleet  is chasing into the Bottom of
the Beyond after <I>a  single ship</I>. What conceivable damage can the Alliance do
to the Blight  down there?  The Blight is a  great threat, perhaps the  most
novel  and  threatening  in  well-recorded history.  Nevertheless,  Alliance
behavior appears  destructive  and  pointless.  Now  that  the  Alliance has
revealed some of its sponsoring organizations (see messages [id numbers]), I
think we  know its real motives. I see connections  between the Alliance and
the old  Aprahant  Hegemony. A thousand years ago, that group had a  similar
jihad, grabbing  real estate  left vacant by recent Transcendences. Stopping
the  Hegemony was an exciting  bit of  action in that part  of the galaxy. I
think these people are back, taking advantage of the general panic attending
the Blight (which is admittedly a much greater threat).
     My advice: Beware of the Alliance and its claims of heroic efforts.





     Crypto: 0
     As received by: <I>OOB</I> shipboard ad hoc
     Language path: Schirachene-&gt;Rondralip-&gt;Triskweline, SjK units
     From: Harmonious Repose Communications Synod
     Subject: Encounter with agents of the Perversion
     Distribution:
 Threat of the Blight
     Date: 6.37 days since Fall of Sjandra Kei
     Key phrases: Hanse fraudulent?


     Text of message:
     We have no  special inclination  toward  any of  the  posters  on  this
thread. Nevertheless, it's remarkable  that an entity  that has not revealed
its  location or  special interests -- namely "Hanse" -- should  be smearing
the  efforts  of  the  Alliance  for  the Defense.  The  Alliance  kept  its
constituents secret only  during  that period when  its  forces  were  being
gathered, when a single stroke of the  Perversion's  power might  destroy it
entirely. Since that time, it has been quite open in its efforts.
     Hanse  wonders how a  single  starship  could be  worth  the Alliance's
attention. As Harmonious Repose was  the site of the latest turn  of events,
we are in a position to give some explanation. The ship in question, the <I>Out
of Band II</I>, is  clearly designed for operations at the Bottom of  the Beyond
-- and is even capable of limited operations within  the Slow Zone. The ship
presented itself as a special zonographic  flight commissioned to study  the
recent  turbulence at  the  Bottom. In  fact,  this ship's mission is a very
different one. In the aftermath of  its  violent  departure, we  have pieced
together some extraordinary facts:
     At  least  one  of the ship's crew was human. Though  they  made  great
efforts to stay out of view  and used Skroderider traders as intermediaries,
we  have recordings. A biosequence of one  individual was  obtained,  and it
matches  the patterns  maintained by two out of three  of  the Homo  sapiens
archives. (It's well known that  the third archive, on Sneerot Down,  is  in
the  control  of Human  sympathizers.)  Some  might  say  this deception was
founded in fear. After all,  these events  happened after the destruction of
Sjandra Kei. We think otherwise: The ship's initial contact with us occurred
before the Sjandra Kei incident.
     We have  since made a  careful  analysis of  the  repair work our yards
performed on this vessel. Ultradrive automation is a deep and complex thing;
even  the cleverest of  cloaking cannot mask all the memories  in it. We now
know that  the  <I>Out  of Band II</I> was  from the Relay system  and that it left
there <I>after</I> the Perversion's attack. Think what this means.
     The crew of  the <I>Out of  Band II</I> brought weapons into  a  habitat, kill
several  local  sophonts,  and escaped  before our  musicians  [harmonizers?
police?] were properly notified. We have good reason to wish them ill.
     Yet  our misfortune is a small thing compared to  the unmasking of this
secret mission. We are very grateful that the Alliance is willing to risk so
much in following this lead.
     There's  more  than  the  usual  number  of unsubstantiated  assertions
floating around on this news thread. We hope our facts will wake some people
up. In  particular,  consider what "Hanse" may  really be. The Perversion is
very visible in the High Beyond, where it has great power and can speak with
its own voice.  Down  here,  it is  more likely that  deception  and  covert
propaganda  will  be  its tools. Think on this when  you read postings  from
unidentified entities such as "Hanse"!




     Ravna gritted  her teeth. The hell of  it was, the facts in the posting
were  correct. It was the inferences that  were vicious and  false. And  she
couldn't guess if this were some shade of black  propaganda  or simply Saint
Rihndell  expressing honest conclusions (though Rihndell had never seemed so
trusting of the butterflies).
     One thing all the News seemed to agree on:  Much more than the Alliance
fleet was chasing the <I>OOB</I>. The  swarm of ultradrive traces  could be seen by
anyone within a thousand light-years.  The best  guess was that three fleets
pursued  the  <I>OOB</I>.  Three!  The Alliance  for the  Defense,  still loud  and
boastful, even though suspected (by some) of being  opportunistic genocides.
Behind them, Sjandra Kei ... and what was left of Ravna's motherland; in all
the universe perhaps  the  only folk she could trust. And just  behind them,
the silent fleet. Diverse news posters claimed it was  from the High Beyond.
That fleet might  have problems at  the Bottom, but for  now it was gaining.
Few  doubted  that it  was the Perversion's  child. More  than anything,  it
convinced  the universe  that the  <I>OOB</I>  or  its  destination  was cosmically
important. Just  why it was important was  the big question. Speculation was
drifting in at  the  rate  of five  thousand messages  per hour.  A  million
different viewpoints were considering the  mystery. Some of those viewpoints
were  so alien that they made  Skroderiders  and  Humans look  like the same
species.  At  least  five  participants  on  this News  thread were  gaseous
inhabitants of stellar  coronas. There were one  or two  others  that  Ravna
suspected  were uncataloged races,  beings so shy  that  this might be their
first active use of the Net ever.
     The <I>OOB</I>'s  computer was  a lot  dumber than it had  been in  the Middle
Beyond. She couldn't ask it  to sift through the messages looking for nuance
and insight. In fact, if an incoming message didn't have a Triskweline text,
it was often unreadable. The ship's translator  programs still worked fairly
well with the major trade languages, but even there the translation was slow
and full of alternative meanings and jabberwocky.  It  was just another sign
that they were  approaching the Bottom  of the Beyond. Effective translation
of natural languages comes awfully close to requiring a sentient  translator
program.
     Nevertheless, with  proper design,  things might have been better.  The
automation might have degraded gracefully under the restrictions imposed  by
their depth. Instead, gear just stopped working; what  remained was slow and
error-prone.  If  only the refitting  had been  completed before the Fall of
Relay. <I>And just how many times have I wished for that?</I> She hoped things were
as bad aboard the pursuing ships.
     So  Ravna  used the  ship to do light culling on the Threats newsgroup.
Much  of what was left was inane, as  from people who see  "portents in  the
weather" --




     Crypto: 0
     Syntax: 43
     As received by: <I>OOB</I> shipboard ad hoc
     Language path:  Arbwyth-&gt;Trade24-&gt;Cherguelen-&gt;Triskweline, SjK
units
     From: Twirlip of the Mists [Perhaps an  organization of cloud fliers in
a single jovian system. Very sparse priors before this thread began. Appears
to be seriously out  of  touch.  Program recommendation: delete this  poster
from presentation.]
     Subject: The Blight's goal at the Bottom
     Distribution:
 Threat of the Blight, Great Secrets of Creation
     Date: 4.54 days since Fall of Sjandra Kei
     Key phrases:  Zone Instability  and the  Blight, Hexapodia as  the  key
insight


     Text of message:
     Apologies  first if I am repeating obvious conclusions. My only gateway
onto the Net is very expensive, and I miss many important postings. I  think
that  anyone following  both Great Secrets  of  Creation and  Threat of  the
Blight  would  see  an  important  pattern. Since  the  events  reported  by
Harmonious Repose  information service, most  agree that something important
to the Perversion exists at the Bottom of the Beyond in region [...].  I see
a possible connection  here with the  Great  Secrets.  During  the last  two
hundred  and  twenty  days,  there  have  been  increasing reports  of  zone
interface instability in the region below  Harmonious  Repose. As the Blight
threat  has grown and  its attacks against  advanced races  and other Powers
continued,  this   instability  has  increased.  Could  there  not  be  some
connection? I urge all to consult their information on the Great Secrets (or
the  nearest archive maintained by  that  group).  Events such as this prove
once again that the universe is all ronzelle between.



     Some of the postings were tantalizing --

     [Light gloss]



     Crypto: 0
     Syntax: 43
     As received by: <I>OOB</I> shipboard ad hoc
     Language path: Wobblings-&gt;Baeloresk-&gt;Triskweline, SjK units
     From: Cricketsong under the  High Willow  [Cricketsong is  a  synthetic
race created as a jape/ experiment/instrument by  the High  Willow upon  its
Transcendence. Cricketsong has been on  the Net for  more than ten  thousand
years. Apparently it  is a fanatical studier of paths to  Transcendence. For
eight thousand years it has been the heaviest poster on "Where are they now"
and related groups. There is no evidence that any Cricketsong settlement has
itself Transcended.  Cricketsong  is sufficiently  peculiar that there  is a
large news group for speculation concerning  the race  itself. Consensus  is
that  Cricketsong  was  designed by High  Willow as  a probe back  into  the
Beyond,  that  the  race  is  somehow   incapable   of  attempting  its  own
Transcendence.]
     Subject: The Blight's goal at the Bottom
     Distribution:
 Threat of the Blight, War Trackers Special Interest Group, Where are they now Special Interest Group
     Date: 5.12 days since Fall of Sjandra Kei
     Key phrases: On becoming Transcendent


     Text of message:
     Contrary  to other postings, there  are a number of reasons why a Power
might install artifacts at the Bottom  of the Beyond. The  Abselor's message
on this thread cites some: some Powers have documented curiosity  about  the
Slow  Zone  and,  even  more,  about  the Unthinking Depths.  In rare cases,
expeditions have been dispatched (though  any return from  the  Depths would
occur  long  after  the  dispatching  Power  lost  interest  in   all  local
questions).
     However,  none of these  motives are likely  here.  To  those  who  are
familiar  with  Fast Burn transcendence,  it is  clear that the  Blight is a
creature  seeking  stasis.  Its  interest in  the  Bottom  is  very  sudden,
provoked,  we  think,  by  the  revelations  at  Harmonious Repose. There is
something at the Bottom that is critical to the Perversion's welfare.
     Consider the notion of ablative  dissonance (see the Where Are They Now
group archive): No one  knows what set-up procedures  the humans of Straumli
Realm  were  using.  The  Fast  Burn   may  itself  have   had  Transcendent
intelligence. What  if  <I>it</I>  became  dissatisfied with  the  direction of the
channedring? In that case it might try to hide the jumpoff  birthinghel. The
Bottom would  not  be a place  where  the algorithm  itself  could  normally
execute, but avatars might still be created from it and briefly run.



     Up to a point, Ravna could almost make sense of it; ablative dissonance
was a commonplace  of  Applied Theology. But then, like  one of those dreams
where the  secret of life  is about to be revealed, the posting just drifted
into nonsense.
     There were postings that were neither asinine  nor  obscure. As  usual,
Sandor at the Zoo had a lot of things dead right:






     Crypto: 0
     As received by: <I>OOB</I> shipboard ad hoc
     Language path: Triskweline, SjK units
     From: Sandor Arbitration  Intelligence at  the  Zoo  [A  known military
corporation of the High Beyond. If this is  a masquerade, somebody is living
dangerously.]
     Subject: The Blight's goal at the Bottom
     Key phrases: Sudden change in Blight's tactics
     Distribution:
 Threat of the Blight, War Trackers Interest Group, Homo Sapiens Interest Group

     Date: 8.15 days since Fall of Sjandra Kei
     Text of message:
     In case you don't  know, Sandor Intelligence has  a number of different
Net feeds. We can  collect messages on paths that have no intermediate nodes
in common. Thus we can be fairly confident that news we receive has not been
tampered with en route. (There remain the  lies  and  misunderstandings that
were present to begin with, but that's something that makes the intelligence
business interesting.)
     The Blight  has  been  our top  priority since its instantiation a year
ago.  This  is  not  just  because of  the  Blight's  obvious strength,  the
destruction and the deicides it has committed. We fear that all  this is the
lesser part of the Threat. There have been perversions almost as powerful in
the  recorded past. What truly distinguishes this one  is  its stability. We
see no evidence of internal evolution; in some ways it is <I>less</I> than a Power.
It may  never  lose  interest in controlling the  High  Beyond.  We  may  be
witnessing a massive and permanent change in the  nature of things. Imagine:
a stable  necrosis,  where  the only sentience  in the High  Beyond  is  the
Blight.
     Thus, studying the Blight has  been a  matter of  life and death for us
(even though we are powerful and widely distributed). We've reached a number
of  conclusions. Some of these may be obvious to  you, others may sound like
flagrant speculation. All take on  a  new  coloring with the events reported
from Harmonious Repose:
     Almost from the beginning, the Blight has been searching for something.
This search  has extended far beyond  its aggressive physical expansion. Its
automatic agents have tried to penetrate virtually  every node in the Top of
the Beyond; the High Network is  in shambles, reduced to  protocols scarcely
more  efficient than those  known below.  At the same time,  the  Blight has
physically stolen several archives.  We have evidence  of very large  fleets
searching for off-Net archives at the Top and in the Low Transcend. At least
three Powers have been murdered in this rampage.
     And  now,  suddenly,  this  assault has ended.  The  Blight's  physical
expansion  continues, with no  end  in  sight, but it no longer searches the
High Beyond. As near as we can  tell, the change occurred about two thousand
seconds before the escape  of the human vessel  from Harmonious Repose. Less
than six hours later, we saw the beginnings of the silent fleet that so many
are now speculating about. That fleet is indeed the creature of the Blight.
     In other times, the destruction  of Sjandra Kei and the  motives of the
Alliance for the Defense would all be important issues (and our organization
might have interest  in doing business with those affected). But all that is
dwarfed by the  fact of this fleet and the ship it pursues. And  we disagree
with the analysis [implication?] from Harmonious Repose: it is obvious to us
that  the Blight  did not know  of the <I>Out of Band II</I> until its discovery at
Harmonious Repose.
     That ship is not a tool of  the Blight, but it contains or is bound for
something of enormous importance <I>to</I> the Blight. And what might that be? Here
we  begin  frank speculation. And since we  are speculating, we'll use those
powerful  pseudo-laws, the  Principles of Mediocrity and Minimal Assumption.
If the Blight  has the potential for taking over all the Top in a  permanent
stability,  then why has this  not happened  before? Our guess is  that  the
Blight  has been instantiated before (with  such  dire  consequence that the
event  marks the beginning of recorded  time),  but  it has its own peculiar
natural enemy.
     The order of  events even suggests a  particular scenario, one familiar
from network security. Once upon a time (very long  ago), there  was another
instance of the  Blight.  A successful defense was mounted,  and  all  known
copies of the Blight's recipe were destroyed. Of course, on a  wide net, one
can never  be sure that  <I>all</I> copies  of a badness  are gone.  No  doubt, the
defense was distributed in enormous numbers. But even if a harboring archive
were reached by such a distribution, there  might be no effect if the Blight
were not currently active there.
     The  luckless humans of  Straumli Realm chanced  on such an archive, no
doubt a ruin long off the Net. They instantiated the Blight and incidentally
--  perhaps a little  later  -- the  defense program. Somehow  that Blight's
enemy  escaped destruction. And  the Blight has  been searching for it  ever
since -- <I>in all the wrong places.</I> In its weakness, the new  instance of  the
defense retreated to depths no Power would  think of penetrating,  whence it
could never return without outside help. Speculation on top of  speculation:
we  can't  guess  the nature of  this defense, except that  its retreat is a
discouraging  sign. And  now  even that sacrifice has gone for naught, since
the Blight has seen through the deception.
     The Blight's fleet is clearly an ad hoc thing,  hastily thrown together
from  forces  that  happened  to  be closest  to the discovery. Without such
haste, the  quarry  might have been lost to it.  Thus the chase equipment is
probably ill-suited  to the depths, and its performance will degrade  as the
descent  progresses.  However, we estimate that it will remain stronger than
any force that can reach the scene in the near future.
     We may  learn  more  after the Blight  reaches  the  <I>Out  of  Band II</I>'s
destination.  If it destroys that  destination immediately, we'll know  that
something  truly  dangerous  to  the  Blight existed  there  (and  may exist
elsewhere, at least in recipe form). If it does not, then perhaps the Blight
was looking for something that will make it even more dangerous than before.





     Ravna sat back, stared at the display for some time. Sandor Arbitration
Intelligence was one  of  the sharpest posters in this newsgroup.... But now
even their predictions were just different flavors  of doom. And all so damn
cool they were, so  analytical. She knew  that Sandor was polyspecific, with
branch offices scattered through the High Beyond. But they were no Power. If
the Perversion could knock over Relay and kill Old One, then all of Sandor's
resources wouldn't  help it if the enemy decided  to gobble  them  up. Their
analysis  had  the  tone  of  the  pilot  of  a  crashing  ship,  intent  on
understanding the danger, not taking time out for