cks and
occasionally pinkish eyes, they might as well be huge rats.
And the longer she watched them, the more horrible they seemed. A still
image could never convey that horror; you had to see them in action. She
watched four of them -- the ones on her side of the boat -- play with her
dataset. The Pink Oliphaunt was tied in a net bag near the rear of the boat.
Now the beasts wanted to look it over. At first it looked like a circus act,
the creatures' heads darting this way and that. But every move was so
precise, so coordinated with all the others. They had no hands, but they
could untie knots, each holding a piece of twine in its mouth and
maneuvering its necks around others. At the same time, one's claws held the
loose netting tight against the railing. It was like watching puppets run
off the same control.
In seconds they had it out of the bag. Dogs would have let it slide to
the bottom of the hull, then pushed it around with their noses. Not these
things: two put it onto on a cross bench, while a third steadied it with its
paw. They poked around the edges, concentrating on the plush flanges and
floppy ears. They pushed and nuzzled, but with clear purpose. They were
trying to open it.
Two heads showed over the railing on the other hull. They made the
gobbling, hissing sounds that were a cross between a bird call and someone
throwing up. One of those on her side glanced back and made similar sounds.
The other three continued to play with the dataset's latches.
Finally they pulled the big, floppy ears simultaneously: the dataset
popped open, and the top window went into Johanna's startup routine -- an
anim of herself saying "Shame on you, Jefri. Stay out of my things!" The
four creatures went rigid, their eyes suddenly wide.
Johanna's four turned the set so the others could see. One held it down
while another peered at the top window, and a third fumbled with the key
window. The guys in the other hull went nuts, but none of them tried to get
any closer. The random prodding of the four abruptly cut off her startup
greeting. One of them glanced at the guys in the other hull; another two
watched Johanna. She continued to lie with her eyes almost closed.
"Shame on you, Jefri. Stay out my things!" Johanna's voice came again,
but from one of the animals. It was a perfect playback. Then a girl's voice
was moaning, crying, "Mom, Daddy". It was her own voice again, but more
frightened and childish than she ever wanted it to sound.
They seemed to be waiting for the dataset to respond. When nothing
happened, one of them went back to pushing its nose against the windows.
Everything valuable, and all the dangerous programs, were passworded.
Insults and squawking emerged from the box, all the little surprises she had
planted for her snooping little brother. Oh Jefri, will I ever see you
again?
The sounds and vids kept the monsters amused for several minutes.
Eventually their random fiddlings convinced the dataset that somebody really
young had opened up the box, and it shifted into kindermode.
The creatures knew she was watching. Of the four fooling with her
Oliphaunt, one -- not always the same one -- was always watching her. They
were playing games with her, pretending they didn't know she was pretending.
Johanna opened her eyes wide and glared at the creature. "Damn you!"
She looked in the other direction. And screamed. The mob in the other hull
were clumped together. Their heads rose on sinuous necks from the pile. In
the low sunlight, their eyes glinted red. A pack of rats or snakes, silently
staring at her, and for heaven knew how long.
The heads leaned forward at her cry, and she heard the scream again.
Behind her, her own voice shouted "Damn you!" Somewhere else, she was
calling for "Mom" and "Daddy". Johanna screamed again, and they just echoed
it back. She swallowed her terror and kept silent. The monsters kept it up
for a half minute, the mimicking, the mixing of things she must have said in
her sleep. When they saw they couldn't terrorize her that way any more, the
voices stopped being human. The gobbling went back and forth, as if the two
groups were negotiating or something. Finally the four on her side closed
her dataset and tied it into the net bag.
The six unwrapped themselves from each other. Three jumped to the
outboard side of the hull. They gripped the edge tight in their claws and
leaned into the wind. For once they almost did look like dogs -- big ones
sitting at a car window, sniffing at the airstream. The long necks swept
forward and back. Every few seconds, one of them would dip its head out of
sight, into the water. Drinking? Fishing?
Fishing. A head flipped up, tossing something small and green into the
boat. The other three animals nosed about, grabbing it. She had a glimpse of
tiny legs and a shiny carapace. One of the rats held it at the tip of its
mouth, while the other two pulled it apart. It was all done with their
uncanny precision. The pack seemed like a single creature, and each neck a
heavy tentacle that ended in a pair of jaws. Her gut twisted at the thought,
but there was nothing to barf up.
The fishing expedition went on another quarter hour. They got at least
seven of the green things. But they weren't eating them; not all of them,
anyway. The dismembered leavings collected in a small wood bowl.
More gobbling between the two sides. One of the six grabbed the bowl's
edge in its mouth and crawled across the mast platform. The four on
Johanna's side huddled together as if frightened of the visitor. Only after
the bowl was set down and the intruder had returned to its side, did the
four in Johanna's hull poke their heads up again.
One of the rats picked up the bowl. It and another walked toward her.
Johanna swallowed. What torture was this? Her stomach twisted again ... she
was so hungry. She looked at the bowl again and realized that they were
trying to feed her.
The sun had just come out from under northern clouds. The low light was
like some bright fall afternoon, just after rain: dark sky above, yet
everything close by bright and glistening. The creatures' fur was deep and
plush. One held the bowl towards her, while the other stuck its snout in and
withdrew ... something slick and green. It held the tidbit delicately, just
with the tips of its long mouth. It turned and thrust the green thing toward
her.
Johanna shrank back, "No!"
The creature paused. For a moment she thought it was going to echo her.
Then it dropped the lump back into the bowl. The first animal set it on the
bench beside her. It looked up at her for an instant, then released the
jaw-wide flange at the edge of the bowl. She had a glimpse of fine, pointy
teeth.
Johanna stared into the bowl, nausea fighting with hunger. Finally she
worked a hand out of her blanket and reached into it. Heads perked up around
her, and there was an exchange of gobble comments between the two sides of
the boat.
Her fingers closed on something soft and cold. She lifted it into the
sunlight. The body was gray green, its sides glistening in the light. The
guys in the other hull had torn off the little legs and chopped away the
head. What remained was only two or three centimeters long. It looked like
filleted shellfish. Once she had liked such food. But that had been cooked.
She almost dropped the thing when she felt it quiver in her hand.
She brought it close to her mouth, touched it with her tongue. Salty.
On Straum, most shellfish would make you very sick if you ate them raw. How
could she know, all alone without parents or a local commnet? She felt tears
coming. She said a bad word, stuffed the green thing into her mouth, and
tried to chew. Blandness, with the texture of suet and gristle. She gagged,
spat it out ... and tried to eat another. Altogether she got parts of two
down. Maybe that was for the best; she'd wait and see how much she barfed
up. She lay back and saw several pairs of eyes watching. The gobbling with
the other side of the boat picked up. Then one of them sidled toward her,
carrying a leather bag with a spigot. A canteen.
This creature was the biggest of all. The leader? It moved its head
close to hers, putting the spout of the canteen near her mouth. The big one
seemed sly, more cautious about approaching her than the others. Johanna's
eyes traveled back along its flanks. Beyond the edge of its jacket, the pelt
on its rear was mostly white ... and scored deep with a Y-shaped scar. This
is the one that killed Dad.
Johanna's attack was not planned; perhaps that's why it worked so well.
She lunged past the canteen and swung her free arm around the thing's neck.
She rolled over the animal, pinning it against the hull. By itself, it was
smaller than she, and not strong enough to push her off. She felt its claws
raking through the blankets but somehow never quite cutting her. She put all
her weight on the creature's spine, grabbed it where throat met jaw, and
began slamming its head against the wood.
Then the others were on her, muzzles poking under her, jaws grabbing at
her sleeve. She felt rows of needle teeth just poking through the fabric.
Their bodies buzzed with a sound from her dreams, a sound that went straight
through her clothes and rattled her bones.
They pulled her hand from the other's throat, twisting her; she felt
the arrowhead tearing her inside. But there was still one thing she could
do: Johanna push off with her feet, butting her head against the base of the
other's jaw, smashing the top of its head into the hull. The bodies around
her convulsed, and she was flipped onto her back. Pain was the only thing
she could feel now. Neither rage nor fear could move her.
Yet part of her was still aware of the four. She had hurt them. She had
hurt them all. Three wandered drunkenly, making whistling sounds that for
once seemed to come from their mouths. The one with the scarred butt lay on
its side, twitching. She had punched a star-shaped wound in the top of its
head. Blood dripped down past its eyes. Red tears.
Minutes passed and the whistling stopped. The four creatures huddled
together and the familiar hissing resumed. The bleeding from her chest had
started again.
They stared at each other for a while. She smiled at her enemies. They
could be hurt. She could hurt them. She felt better than she had since the
landing.
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-=*=-
CHAPTER 11
Before the Flenser Movement, Woodcarvers had been the most famous
city-state west of the Icefangs. Its founder went back six centuries. In
those days, things had been harder in the north; snow covered even the
lowlands through most of the year. The Woodcarver had started alone, a
single pack in a little cabin on an inland bay. The pack was a hunter and a
thinker as much as an artist. There had been no settlements for a hundred
miles around. Only a dozen of the carver's early statues ever left his
cabin, yet those statues had been his first fame. Three were still in
existence. There was a city by the Long Lakes named for the one in its
museum.
With fame had come apprentices. One cabin became ten, scattered across
Woodcarver's fjord. A century or two passed, and of course the Woodcarver
slowly changed. He feared the change, the feeling that his soul was slipping
away. He tried to keep hold of himself; almost everyone does to one extent
or another. In the worst case, the pack falls into perversion, perhaps
becomes soul-hollow. For Woodcarver, the quest was itself the change. He
studied how each member fits within the soul. He studied pups and their
raising, and how you might guess the contributions of a new one. He learned
to shape the soul by training the members.
Of course little of this was new. It was the base of most religions,
and every town had romance advisors and brood kenners. Such knowledge,
whether valid or not, is important to any culture. What Woodcarver did was
to look at it all again, without traditional bias. He gently experimented on
himself and on the other artists in his little colony. He watched the
results, using them to design new experiments. He was guided by what he saw
rather than by what he wanted to believe.
By the various standards of his age, what he did was heresy or
perversion or simple insanity. In the early years, King Woodcarver was hated
almost as much as Flenser was three centuries later. But the far north was
still going through its time of heavy winters. The nations of the south
could not easily send armies as far as Woodcarvers. Once when they did, they
were thoroughly defeated. And wisely, Woodcarver never attempted to subvert
the south. Not directly. But his settlement grew and grew, and its fame for
art and furniture was small beside its other reputations. Old of heart
traveled to the town, and came back not just younger, but smarter and
happier. Ideas radiated from the town: weaving machines, gearboxes and
windmills, factory postures. Something new had happened in this place. It
wasn't the inventions. It was the people that Woodcarver had midwifed, and
the outlook he had created.
Wickwrackscar and Jaqueramaphan arrived at Woodcarvers late in the
afternoon. It had rained most of the day, but now the clouds had blown away
and the sky was that bright cloudless blue that was all the more beautiful
after a stretch of cloudy days.
Woodcarver's Domain was paradise to Peregrine's eyes. He was tired of
the packless wilderness. He was tired of worrying about the alien.
Twinhulls paced them suspiciously for the last few miles. The boats
were armed, and Peregrine and Scriber were coming from very much the wrong
direction. But they were all alone, clearly harmless. Long callers hooted,
relaying their story ahead. By the time they reached the harbor they were
heroes, two packs who had stolen (unspecified) treasure from the villains of
the north. They sailed around a breakwater that hadn't existed on
Peregrine's last trip, and tied in at the moorage.
The pier was crowded with soldiers and wagons. Townspeople were all
over the road leading up to the city walls. This was as close to a mob scene
as you could get and still have room for sober thought. Scriber bounced out
of the boat and pranced about in obvious delight at the cheers from the
hillside. "Quickly! We must speak with the Woodcarver."
Wickwrackscar picked up the canvas bag that held the alien's picture
box, and climbed carefully out of the boat. He was dizzy from the beating
the alien had given him. Scar's fore-tympanum had been cut in the attack.
For a moment he lost track of himself. The pier was very strange -- stone at
first glance, but walled with a spongy black material he hadn't seen since
the Southseas; it should be brittle here.... Where am I? I should be happy
about something, some victory. He paused to regroup. After a moment both the
pain and his thoughts sharpened; he would be like this for days yet, at
least. Get help for the alien. Get it ashore.
King Woodcarver's Lord Chamberlain was a mostly overweight dandy;
Peregrine had not expected to see such at Woodcarvers. But the fellow became
instantly cooperative when he saw the alien. He brought a doctor down to
look at the Two-Legs (and incidentally, at Peregrine). The alien had gained
strength in the last two days, but there had been no more violence. They got
it ashore without much trouble. It stared at Peregrine out of its flat face,
a look he knew was impotent rage. He touched Scar's head thoughtfully ...
the Two-Legs was just waiting for the best opportunity to do more damage.
Minutes later, the travelers were in kherhog-drawn carriages, rolling
up the cobblestone street toward the city walls. Soldiers cleared the way
through the crowd. Scriber Jaqueramaphan waved this way and that, the
handsome hero. By now Peregrine knew the shy insecurity that lurked within
Scriber. This might be the high point of his whole life till now.
Even if he wanted it, Wickwrackscar could not be so expansive. With one
of Scar's tympana hurt, wild gestures made him lose track of his thoughts.
He hunkered down on the carriage seats and looked out in all directions:
But for the shape of the outer harbor, the place was not at all what he
remembered from fifty years ago. In most parts of the world, not much
changed in fifty years. A pilgrim returning after such an interval might
even be bored by the sameness. But this ... it was almost scary.
The huge breakwater was new. There were twice as many piers, and
multiboats with flags he had never seen on this side of the world. The road
had been here before, but narrow, with only a third as many turnoffs.
Before, the town walls had been more to keep the kherhogs and froghens in
than any invaders out. Now they were ten feet high, the black stone
extending as far as Peregrine could see.... And there had been scarcely any
soldiers last time; now they were everywhere. That was not a good change. He
felt a sinking in the pit of Scar's stomach; soldiers and fighting were not
good.
They rode through the city gates and past a market maze that spread
across acres. The alleys were only fifty feet wide, narrow where bolts of
cloth, furniture displays, and crates of fresh fruit encroached. Smells of
fruit and spice and varnish hung in the air. The place was so crowded that
the haggling was almost an orgy, and dizzy Peregrine almost blacked out.
Then they were on a narrower street that zigzagged through ranks of
half-timbered buildings. Beyond the roofs loomed heavy fortifications. Ten
minutes later they were in the castle yard.
They dismounted and the Lord Chamberlain had the Two-Legs moved to a
litter.
"Woodcarver, he'll see us now?" said Scriber.
The bureaucrat laughed. "She. Woodcarver changed gender more than ten
years ago."
Peregrine's heads twisted about in surprise. Precisely what would that
mean? Most packs change with time, but he had never heard of Woodcarver
being anything but "he". He almost missed what the Lord Chamberlain said
next.
"Even better. Her whole council must see ... what you've brought. Come
inside." He waved the guards away.
They walked down a hall almost wide enough for two packs to pass
abreast. The chamberlain led, followed by the travelers and the doctor with
the alien's litter. The walls were high, padded with silver-crusted
quilting. It was far grander than before ... and again, unsettling. There
was scarcely any statuary, and what there was dated from centuries before.
But there were pictures. He stumbled when he saw the first, and behind
him he heard Scriber gasp. Peregrine had seen art all around the world: The
mobs of the tropics preferred abstract murals, smudges of psychotic color.
The Southseas islanders had never invented perspective; in their
watercolors, distant objects simply floated in the upper half of the
picture. In the Long Lakes Republic, representationism was currently
favored, especially multiptychs that gave a whole-pack view.
But Peregrine had never seen the likes of these. The pictures were
mosaics, each tile a ceramic square about a quarter inch on a side. There
was no color, just four shades of gray. From a few feet away, the graininess
was lost, and ... they were the most perfect landscapes Peregrine had ever
seen. All were views from hilltops around Woodcarvers. Except for the lack
of color, they might have been windows. The bottom of each picture was
bounded by a rectangular frame, but the tops were irregular; the mosaics
simply broke off at the horizon. The hall's quilted wall stood where the
pictures should have shown sky.
"Here now, fellow! I thought you wanted to see Woodcarver." The remark
was directed at Scriber. Jaqueramaphan was strung out along the landscapes,
one of him sitting in front of a different picture all down the hall. He
turned a head to look at the chamberlain. His voice sounded dazed. "Soul's
end! It's like being God, as if I have one member on each hilltop and can
see everything at once." But he scrambled to his feet and trotted to catch
up.
The hall opened on one of the largest indoor meeting rooms Peregrine
had ever seen.
"This is as big as anything in the Republic," Scriber said with
apparent admiration, looking up at the three levels of balconies. They stood
alone with the alien at the bottom.
"Hmf." Besides the chamberlain and the doctor, there were already five
other packs in the room. More showed up as they watched. Most were dressed
like nobles of the Republic, all jewels and furs. A few wore the plain
jackets he remembered from his last trip. Sigh. Woodcarver's little
settlement had grown into a city and now a nation-state. Peregrine wondered
if he -- she -- had any real power now. He trained one head precisely on
Scriber and Hightalked at him. "Don't say anything about the picture box
just yet."
Jaqueramaphan looked puzzled and conspiratorial all at once. He High
Talked back, "Yes ... yes. A bargaining card?"
"Something like that." Peregrine's eyes swept back and forth across the
balconies. Most packs entered with an air of harried self-importance. He
smiled to himself. One glance into the pit was enough to shatter their
smugness. The air above him was filled with buzzing talk. None of the packs
looked like Woodcarver. But then, she'd have few of her members from before;
he could only recognize her by manner and bearing. It shouldn't matter. He
had carried some friendships far longer than any member's lifespan. But with
others the friend had changed in a decade, its viewpoints altering,
affection turning to animosity. He'd been counting on Woodcarver being the
same. Now....
There was a brief sound of trumpets, almost like a call to order. The
pubic doors of a lower balcony slid open and a fivesome entered. Peregrine
felt a twitchy thrill of horror. This was Woodcarver, but so ...
misarranged. One member was so old it had to be helped by the rest. Two were
scarcely more than puppies, and one of those a constant drooler. The largest
member was white-eyed blind. It was the sort of thing you might see in a
waterfront slum, or in the last generation of incest.
She looked down at Peregrine, and smiled almost as if she recognized
him. When she spoke, it was with the blind one. The voice was clear and
firm. "Please carry on, Vendacious."
The chamberlain nodded. "As you wish, Your Majesty." He pointed into
the pit, at the alien. "That is the reason for this hasty meeting."
"We can see monsters at the circus, Vendacious." The voice came from an
overdressed pack on the top balcony. To judge from the shouting that came
from all sides, this was a minority view. One pack on a lower balcony jumped
over the railing and tried to shoo the doctor away from the alien's litter.
The chamberlain raised a head for silence, and glared down at the
fellow who had jumped into the pit. "If you please, Scrupilo, be patient.
Everyone will get a chance to look."
"Scrupilo" made some grumbling hisses, but backed off.
"Good." Vendacious turned all his attention on Peregrine and Scriber.
"Your boat has outrun any news from the north, my friends. No one but I
knows anything of your story -- and what I have is guard codes hooted across
the bay. You say this creature flew down from the sky?"
An invitation to speechify. Peregrine let Scriber Jaqueramaphan do the
talking. Scriber loved it. He told the story of the flying house, of the
ambush and the murders, and the rescue. He showed them his eye-tools and
announced himself as a secret agent of the Long Lakes Republic. Now what
real spy would do that? Every pack on the council had eyes on the alien,
some fearful, some -- like Scrupilo -- crazily curious. Woodcarver watched
with only a couple of heads. The rest might have been asleep. She looked as
tired as Peregrine felt. He rested his own heads on his paws. The pain in
Scar was a pulsing beat; it would be easy enough to set the member asleep,
but then he'd understand very little of what was being said. Hey! maybe that
wasn't such a bad idea. Scar drifted off and the pain receded.
The talk went on for some minutes more, not making a whole lot of sense
to the threesome that was Wickwrack. He understood the tones of voice
though. Scrupilo -- the pack on the floor -- complained several times,
impatiently. Vendacious said something, agreeing with him. The doctor
retreated, and Scrupilo advanced on Wickwrack's alien.
Peregrine pulled himself to full wakefulness. "Be careful. The creature
is not friendly."
Scrupilo snapped back, "Your friend has already warned me once." He
circled the litter, staring at the alien's brown, furless face. The alien
stared back, impassive. Scrupilo reached forward cautiously and drew back
the alien's quilt. Still no response. "See?" said Scrupilo. "It knows I mean
no harm." Peregrine said nothing to correct him.
"It really walks on those rear paws alone?" said one of the other
advisors. "Can you imagine it, towering over us? One little bump would knock
it down." Laughter. Peregrine remembered how mantis-like the alien had
seemed when upright. These fellows hadn't seen it move.
Scrupilo wrinkled a nose. "The thing is filthy." He was all around her,
a posture that Peregrine knew upset the Two-Legs. "That arrow shaft must be
removed, you know. Most of the bleeding has stopped, but if we expect the
creature to live for long, it needs medical attention." He looked
disdainfully at Scriber and Peregrine, as if they were to blame for not
performing surgery aboard the twinhull. Something caught his eye and his
tone abruptly changed: "By the Pack of Packs! Look at its forepaws." He
loosened the ropes about the creature's front legs. "Two paws like that
would be as good as five pairs of lips. Think what a pack of these creatures
could do!" He moved close to the five-tentacled paw.
"Be -- " careful, Peregrine started to say. The alien abruptly bunched
its tentacles into a club. Its foreleg flicked out at an impossible angle,
ramming its paw into Scrupilo's head. The blow couldn't have been too
strong, but it was precisely placed on the tympanum.
"Ow! Yow! Wow. Wow." Scrupilo danced back.
The alien was shouting, too. It was all mouth noise, thin and
low-pitched. The eldritch sound brought up every head, even Woodcarver's.
Peregrine had heard it many times by now. There was no doubt in his mind --
this was the aliens' interpack speech. After a few seconds, the sound
changed to a regular hacking that gradually faded.
For a long moment no one spoke. Then part of Woodcarver got to her
feet. She looked at Scrupilo. "Are you all right?" It was the first time she
had spoken since the beginning of the meeting.
Scrupilo was licking his forehead. "Yes. It smarts is all."
"Your curiosity will kill you some day."
The other huffed indignantly, but also seemed flattered by the
prediction.
Queen Woodcarver looked at her councillors. "I see an important
question here. Scrupilo thinks one alien member would be as agile as an
entire pack of us. Is that so?" She pointed the question at Peregrine rather
than Scriber.
"Yes, Your Majesty. If those ropes had been tied within its reach, it
could easily have unknotted them." He knew where this was going; he'd had
three days to get there himself. "And the noises it makes sound like
coordinated speech to me."
There was a swell of talk as the others caught on. An articulate member
can often make semi-sensible speech, but usually at the expense of
dexterity.
"Yes ... A creature like nothing on our world, whose boat flew down
from the top of heaven. I wonder at the mind of such a pack, if a single
member is almost as smart as all of one of us?" Her blind one looked around
as it made the words, almost as if it could see. Two others wiped at her
drooler's muzzle. She was not an inspiring sight.
Scrupilo poked a head up. "I hear not a hint of thought sound from this
one. There is no fore-tympanum." He pointed at the torn clothing around the
creature's wound. "And I see no sign of shoulder tympana. Perhaps it is pack
smart even as a singleton ... and perhaps that's all the aliens ever are."
Peregrine smiled to himself; this Scrupilo was a prickly twit, but not one
who held with tradition. For centuries, academics had debated the difference
between people and animals. Some animals had larger brains; some had paws or
lips more agile than a member's. In the savannahs of Easterlee, there were
creatures that even looked like people and ran in groups, but without much
depth of thought. Leaving aside wolf nests and whales, only people were
packs. It was the coordination of thought between members that made them
superior. Scrupilo's theory was a heresy.
Jaqueramaphan said, "But we did hear thought sounds, loud ones, during
the ambush. Perhaps this one is like our unweaned, unable to think -- "
"And yet still almost as smart as a pack," Woodcarver finished
somberly. "If these people are not smarter than we, then we might learn
their devices. No matter how magnificent they are, we could eventually be
their equals. But if this member is just one of a superpack ..." For a
moment there was no talk, just the muted underedge of her councillors'
thoughts. If the aliens were superpacks, and if their envoy had been
murdered -- then there might not be anything they could do to save
themselves.
"So. Our first priority should be to save this creature, to befriend it
and learn its true nature." Her heads lowered, and she seemed lost within
herself -- or perhaps just tired. Abruptly, she turned several heads toward
her chamberlain. "Move the creature to the lodge by mine."
Vendacious started with surprise. "Surely not, Your Majesty! We've seen
that it is hostile. And it needs medical attention."
Woodcarver smiled and her voice turned silky. Peregrine remembered that
tone from before. "Do you forget that I know surgery? Do you forget ... that
I am the Woodcarver?"
Vendacious licked his lips and looked at the other advisors. After a
second he said, "No, Your Majesty. It will be as you wish."
And Peregrine felt like cheering. Perhaps Woodcarver did still run
things.
.Delete this paragraph to shift page flush
-=*=-
CHAPTER 12
Peregrine was sitting back to back on the steps of his quarters when
Woodcarver came to see him next day. She came alone, and wearing the simple
green jackets he remembered from his last visit.
He didn't bow or go out to meet her. She looked at him coolly for a
moment, and sat down just a few yards away.
"How is the Two-Legs?" he asked.
"I took out the arrow and sewed the wound shut. I think it will
survive. My advisors were pleased: the creature didn't act like a reasoning
being. It fought even after it was tied down, as though it had no concept of
surgery.... How is your head?"
"All right, as long as I don't move around." The rest of him -- Scar --
lay behind the doorway in the dark interior of the lodge. "The tympanum is
healing straight, I think. I'll be fine in a few days."
"Good." A wrecked tympanum could mean continuing mental problems, or
the need for a new member and the pain of finding a use for the singleton
that was sent into silence. "I remember you, pilgrim. All the members are
different, but you really are the Peregrine of before. You had some great
stories. I enjoyed your visit."
"And I enjoyed meeting the great Woodcarver. That is the reason I
returned."
She cocked a head wryly. "The great Woodcarver of before, not the wreck
of now?"
He shrugged. "What happened?"
She didn't answer immediately. For a moment, they sat and looked across
the city. It was cloudy this afternoon, with rain coming. The breeze off the
channel was a cool stinging on his lips and eyes. Woodcarver shivered, and
puffed her fur out a bit. Finally she said, "I held my soul six hundred
years -- and that's counting by foreclaws. I should think it's obvious what
has become of me."
"The perversion never hurt you before." Peregrine was not normally so
blunt. Something about her brought out the frankness in him.
"Yes, the average incest degrades to my state in a few centuries, and
is an idiot long before then. My methods were much cleverer. I knew who to
breed with whom, which puppies to keep and which to put on others. So it was
always my flesh bearing my memories, and my soul remained pure. But I didn't
understand enough -- or perhaps I tried the impossible. The choices got
harder and harder, till I was left with choosing between brains and physical
defect." She wiped away the drool, and all but the blind one looked out
across her city. "These are the best days of summer, you know. Life is a
green madness just now, trying to squeeze the last bit of warmth from the
season." And the green did seem to be everywhere it could be: featherleaf
down the hillside and in the town, ferns all over the near hillsides, and
heather struggling toward the gray crowns of the mountains across the
channel. "I love this place."
He never expected to be comforting the Woodcarver of Woodcarvers. "You
made a miracle here. I've heard of it all the way on the other side of the
world.... And I'll bet that half the packs around here are related to you."
"Y-yes, I've been successful beyond a rake's wildest dreams. I've had
no shortage of lovers, even if I couldn't use the pups myself. Sometimes I
think my get has been my greatest experiment. Scrupilo and Vendacious are
mostly my offspring ... but so is Flenser."
Huh! Peregrine hadn't known that last.
"The last few decades, I'd more or less accepted my fate. I couldn't
outwit eternity; sometime soon I would let my soul slip free. I let the
council take over more and more; how could I claim the domain after I was no
longer me? I went back to art -- you saw those monochrome mosaics."
"Yes! They're beautiful."
"I'll show you my picture loom sometime. The procedure is tedious but
almost automatic. It was a nice project for the last years of my soul. But
now -- you and your alien have changed everything. Damn it! If only this had
happened a hundred years ago. What I would have done with it! We've been
playing with your 'picture box', you know. The pictures are finer than any
in our world. They are a bit like my mosaics -- the way the sun is like a
glowbug. Millions of colored dots go to make each picture, the tiles so
small you can't see them without one of Scriber's eye-tools. I've worked for
years to make a few dozen mosaics. The picture box can make unnumbered
thousands, so fast they seem to move. Your aliens make my life less than an
unweaned pup's scratching in its cradle."
The queen of the Woodcarvers was softly crying, but her voice was
angry. "And now the whole world is going to change, but too late for such
wreckage as I!"
Almost without conscious thought, Peregrine extended one of his members
toward the Woodcarver. He walked unseemly close: eight yards, five. Their
thoughts were suddenly fuzzy with interference, but he could feel her
calming.
She laughed blearily. "Thank you.... Strange that you should be
sympathetic. The greatest problem of my life is nothing to a pilgrim.
"You were hurting." It was all he could think to say.
"But you pilgrims change and change and change -- " She eased one of
herself close to him; they were almost touching, and it was even harder to
think.
Peregrine spoke slowly, concentrating on every word, hoping he wouldn't
forget his point. "But I do keep something of a soul. The parts that remain
a pilgrim must have a certain outlook." Sometimes great insight comes in the
noise of battle or intimacy. This was such at time. "And -- and I think the
world itself is due for a change of soul now that we have Two-Legs dropping
from the sky. What better time for Woodcarver to give up the old?"
She smiled, and the confusion became louder, but a pleasant thing. "I
... hadn't ... thought of it that way. Now is the time to change...."
Peregrine walked into her midst. The two packs stood for a moment,
necking, thoughts blending into sweet chaos. Their last clear recollection
was of stumbling up the steps and into his lodge.
Late that afternoon, Woodcarver brought the picture box to Scrupilo's
laboratory. When she arrived Scrupilo and Vendacious were already present.
Scriber Jaqueramaphan was there too, but standing farther from the others
than courtesy might demand. She had interrupted some kind of argument. A few
days before, such squabbling would have just depressed her. Now -- she
dragged her limper into the room and looked at the others through her
drooler's eyes -- and smiled. Woodcarver felt the best she had in years. She
had made her decision and acted on it, and now there were new adventures to
be had.
Scriber brightened at her entrance. "Did you check on Peregrine? How is
he?"
"He is fine, fine, just fine." Oops, no need to show them how fine he
really is! "I mean, there'll be a full recovery."
"Your Majesty, I'm very grateful to you and your doctors. Wickwrackscar
is a good pack, and I ... I mean, even a pilgrim can't change members every
day, like suits of clothes."
Woodcarver waved an offhand acknowledgment. She walked to the middle of
the room, and set the alien's picture box on the table there. It looked like
nothing so much as a big pink pillow -- with floppy ears and a weird animal
design sewed in its cover. After playing with it for a day and a half, she
was getting pretty good ... at opening the thing up. As always, the
Two-Legs's face appeared, making mouth noises. As always, Woodcarver felt an
instant of awe at seeing the moving mosaic. A million colored "tiles" had to
flip and shift in absolute synchrony to create the illusion. Yet it happened
exactly the same each time. She turned the screen so Scrupilo and Vendacious
could see.
Jaqueramaphan edged toward the others, and craned a pair of heads to
look. "You still think the box is an animal?" he said to Vendacious.
"Perhaps you could feed it sweets and it would tell us its secrets, eh?"
Woodcarver smiled to herself. Scriber was no pilgrim; pilgrims depend on
goodwill too much to go around giving the needle to the powerful.
Vendacious just ignored him. All his eyes were on her. "Your Majesty,
please do not take offense. I -- we of the Council -- must ask you again.
This picture box is too important to be left in the mouths of a single pack,
even one so great as you. Please. Leave it to the rest of us, at least when
you sleep."
"No offense taken. If you insist, you may participate in my
investigations. Beyond that, I will not go." She gave him an innocent look.
Vendacious was a superb spymaster, a mediocre administrator, and an
incompetent scientist. A century ago she would have the likes of him out
tending the crops, if he chose to stay at all. A century ago there had been
no need for spymasters and one administrator had been enough. How things had
changed. She absentmindedly nuzzled the picture box; perhaps things would
change again.
Scrupilo took Scriber's question seriously. "I