te source of the racket was obvious. Three packs of
whitejackets were putting a team's talker to the question. They had
separated out the verbal member and were beating it with truncheon whips.
This close, the mental screams were almost as loud as the shouting. The rest
of the digger team was coming out of the trench, breaking into functional
packs and attacking the whitejackets with their mattocks. How could things
get so bloody screwed up? He could guess. These inner foundations were to
contain the most secret tunnels of the entire castle, and the even more
secret devices he planned to use against the Two-Legs. Of course, all of the
workers on such sensitive areas would be disposed of after the job was done.
Stupid though they were, maybe they had guessed their fate.
Under other circumstances, Steel might have backed off and simply
watched. Failures like this could be enlightening; they let him identify the
weaknesses in his subordinates, who was too bad (and too good) to continue
in their jobs. This time was different. Amdijefri were aboard the starship.
There was no view through the wooden walls, and surely there was another
whitejackets on guard within, but-- Even as he lunged forward, shouting to
his servants, Steel's back-looking member caught sight of Jefri coming out
of the compound. Two of the pups were on his shoulders, the rest of Amdi
spilling out around him.
"Stay back!" he yelled at them, and in his sparse Samnorsk, "Danger!
Stay back!" Amdi paused, but the Two-Legs kept coming. Two soldier packs
scattered out of his way. They had standing orders: never touch the alien.
Another second and the careful work of a year would be destroyed. Another
second and Steel might lose the world -- all on account of stupidity and bad
luck.
But even as his back members were shouting at the Two Legs, his forward
ones leaped atop a pile of stone. He pointed at the teams coming out of the
trench. "Kill the invaders!"
His personal guards moved close around him as Shreck and several
troopers streamed by. Steel's consciousness sagged in the bloody noise. This
was not the controlled mayhem of experiments beneath Hidden Island. This was
random death flying in all directions: arrows, spears, mattocks. Members of
the digger team ran about, flailing and crying. They never had a chance, but
they killed a number of others in their dying.
Steel backed away from the melee, toward Jefri. The Two-Legs was still
running toward him. Amdi followed, shouting in Samnorsk. A single mindless
team member, a single misaimed arrow, and the Two-Legs would die and all
would be lost. Never in his life had Steel felt such panic for the safety of
another. He raced to the human, surrounding him. The Two-Legs fell to his
knees and grabbed Steel by a neck. Only a lifetime of discipline kept Steel
from slashing back: the alien wasn't attacking, he was hugging.
The digger team was almost all dead now, and Shreck had pushed the
surviving members too far away to be a threat. Steel's guards were securely
around him only five or ten yards away. Amdi was all clumped together,
cowering in the mind noise, but still shouting to Jefri. Steel tried to
untangle himself from the human, but Jefri just grabbed one neck after
another, sometimes two at a time. He was making burbling noises that didn't
sound like Samnorsk. Steel trembled under the assault. Don't show the
revulsion. The human would not recognize it, but Amdi might. Jefri had done
this before, and Steel had taken advantage even though it cost him. The
mantis child needed physical contact; it was the basis for the relationship
between Amdi and Jefri. Similar trust must come from letting this thing
touch him. Steel slid a head and neck across the creature's back the way he
had seen parents do with pups down in the dungeon laboratories. Jefri hugged
him harder, and swept his long articulate paws across Steel's pelt.
Revulsion aside, it was a very strange experience. Ordinarily such close
contact with another intelligent being could only come in battle or in sex
-- and in either case, there wasn't much room for rational thought. But with
this human -- well, the creature responded with obvious intelligence -- but
there wasn't a trace of mind noise. You could think and feel both at the
same time. Steel bit down on a lip, trying to stifle his shivering. It was
... it was like having sex with a corpse.
Finally Jefri stepped back, holding his hand up. He said something very
fast, and Amdi said, "Oh Lord Steel, you're hurt. See the blood." There was
red on the human's paw; Steel looked at himself. Sure enough, one rump had
taken a nick. He hadn't even felt it till now. Steel backed away from the
mantis and said to Amdi, "It's nothing. Are you and Jefri unhurt?"
There was a rattling exchange between the two children, almost
unintelligible to Steel. "We're fine. Thank you for protecting us."
Fast thinking was something that Flenser had carved into Steel with
knives: "Yes. But it never should have happened. The Woodcarvers disguised
themselves as workers. I think they've been at this for days waiting for a
chance at you. When we guessed the fraud, it was almost too late.... You
should really have stayed inside when you heard the fighting."
Amdi hung his heads ashamedly, and translated to Jefri. "We're sorry.
We got excited, and t-then we thought you might get hurt."
Steel made comforting noises. At the same time, two of him looked
around at the carnage. Where was the whitejackets that had deserted the
stairs right at the beginning? That pack would pay -- His line of thought
crashed to a halt as he noticed: Tyrathect. The Flenser Fragment was
watching from the meeting hall. Now that he thought about it, he'd been
watching since right after the battle began. To others his posture might
seem impassive, but Steel could see the grim amusement in the Fragment's
expression. He nodded briefly at the other, but inside Steel cringed; he had
been so close to losing everything ... and the Flenser had noticed.
"Well let's get you two back to Hidden Island." He signaled to the
keepers that had come up behind the starship.
"Not yet, Lord Steel!" said Amdi, "We just got here. A reply from Ravna
should arrive very soon."
Teeth grated, but out of sight of the children. "Yes, please do stay.
But we'll all be more careful now, right?"
"Yes, yes!" Amdi explained to the human. Steel stood
forelegs-on-shoulders and patted Jefri on the head.
Steel had Shreck take the children back into the compound. Till they
were out of sight, all his members looked on with an expression of pride and
affection. Then he turned and walked across the pinkish mud. Where was that
stupid whitejackets?
The meeting hall on Starship Hill was a small, temporary thing. It had
been good enough to keep the cold out during the winter, but for a
conference of more than three people it was a real madhouse. Steel stomped
past the Flenser Fragment and collected himself on the loft with the best
view of the construction. After a polite moment, Tyrathect entered and
climbed to the facing loft.
But all the decorum was an act for the groundlings outside; now
Flenser's soft laughter hissed across the air to him, just loud enough for
him to hear. "Dear Steel. Sometimes I wonder if you are truly my student ...
or perhaps some changeling inserted after my departure. Are you trying to
screw us up?"
Steel glared back. He was sure there was no uneasiness in his posture;
all that was held within. "Accidents happen. The incompetents will be
culled."
"Quite so. But that appears to be your response to all problems. If you
hadn't been so bent on silencing the digger teams, they might not have
rioted ... and you would have had one less 'accident'."
"The flaw was in their guessing. Such executions are a necessary part
of military construction."
"Oh? You really think I had to kill all those who built the halls under
Hidden Island?"
"What? You mean you didn't? How -- ?"
The Flenser Fragment smiled the old, fanged smile. "Think on it, Steel.
An exercise."
Steel arranged his notes on the desk and pretended to study them. Then
all of him looked back at the other pack. "Tyrathect. I honor you because of
the Flenser in you. But remember: You survive on my sufferance. You are not
the Flenser-in-Waiting." The news had come late last fall, just before
winter closed the last pass over the Icefangs: The packs bearing the rest of
the Master hadn't made it out of Parliament Bowl. The fullness of Flenser
was gone forever. That had been an indescribable relief to Steel, and for a
time afterward the Fragment had been quite tractable. "Not one of my
lieutenants would blink if I killed all of you -- even the Flenser members."
And I'll do it, if you push me hard enough, I swear I will.
"Of course, dear Steel. You command."
For an instant the other's fear showed through. Remember, Steel thought
to himself, always remember: This is just a fragment of the Master. Most of
it is a little school teacher, not the Great Teacher with a Knife. True, its
two Flenser members totally dominated the pack. The spirit of the Master was
right here in this room, but gentled. Tyrathect could be managed, and the
power of the Master used for Steel's ends.
"Good," Steel said smoothly. "As long as you understand this, you can
be of great use to the Movement. In particular," he riffled through the
papers, "I want to review the Visitor situation with you." I want some
advice.
"Yes."
"We've convinced 'Ravna' that her precious Jefri is in imminent danger.
Amdijefri has told her about all the Woodcarver attacks and how we fear an
overwhelming assault."
"And that may really happen."
"Yes. Woodcarver really is planning an attack, and she has her own
source of 'magical' help. We have something much better." He tapped the
papers; the advice had been coming down since early winter. He remembered
when Amdijefri had brought in the first pages, pages of numerical tables, of
directions and diagrams, all drawn in neat but childish style. Steel and the
Fragment had spent days trying to understand. Some of the references were
obvious. The Visitor's recipes required silver and gold in quantities that
would otherwise finance a war. But what was this "liquid silver"? Tyrathect
had recognized it; the Master had used such a thing in his labs in the
Republic. Eventually they acquired the amount specified. But many of the
ingredients were given only as methods for creating them. Steel remembered
the Fragment musing over those, scheming against nature as if it were just
another foe. The recipes of mystics were full of "horn of squid" and "frozen
moonlight". The directions from Ravna were sometimes even stranger. There
were directions within directions, long detours spent in testing common
materials to decide which really fit the greater plan. Building, testing,
building. It was like the Master's own method but without the dead ends.
Some of it made sense early on. They would have the explosives and guns
that Woodcarver thought were her secret weapons. But so much was still
unintelligible -- and it never got easier.
Steel and the Fragment worked through the afternoon, planning how to
set up the latest tests, deciding where to search for the new ingredients
that Ravna demanded.
Tyrathect leaned back, hissing a wondering sigh. "Stage built upon
stage. And soon we'll have our own radios. Old Woodcarver won't have a
chance.... You are right, Steel. With this you can rule the world. Imagine
knowing instantly what is happening in the Republic's Capital and being able
to coordinate armies around that knowledge. The Movement will be the Mind of
God." That was an old slogan, and now it could be true. "I salute you,
Steel. You have a grasp worthy of the Movement." Was there the Teacher's
contempt in his smile? "Radio and guns can give us the world. But clearly
these are crumbs from the Visitors' table. When do they arrive?"
"Between one hundred and one hundred twenty days from now; Ravna has
revised her estimate again. Apparently even the Two-Legs have problems
flying between the stars."
"So we have that long to enjoy the Movement's triumph. And then we are
nothing, less than savages. It might have been safer to forego the gifts,
and persuade the Visitors that there is nothing here worth rescuing."
Steel looked out through the window slits that cut horizontally between
timbers. He could see part of the starship compound, and the castle
foundations, and beyond that the islands of the fjord country. He was
suddenly more confident, more at peace, than he'd been in a long time. It
felt right to reveal his dream. "You really don't see it, do you Tyrathect?
I wonder if the whole Master would understand, or whether I have exceeded
him, too. In the beginning, we had no choice. The Starship was automatically
sending some sort of signal to Ravna. We could have destroyed it; maybe
Ravna would have lost interest... And maybe not, in which case we would be
taken like a fish gilled from a stream. Perhaps I took the greater risk, but
if I win, the prize will be far more than you imagine." The Fragment was
watching him, heads cocked. "I've studied these humans, Jefri and -- through
my spies -- the one down at Woodcarvers. Their race may be older than ours,
and the tricks they've learned make them seem all-powerful. But the race is
flawed. As singletons, they work with handicaps we can scarcely imagine. If
I can use those weaknesses....
"You know the average Tines cares for its pups. We've manipulated
parental sentiments often enough. Imagine how it must be for the humans. To
them, a single pup is also an entire child. Think of the leverage that gives
us."
"You're seriously betting everything on this? Ravna isn't even Jefri's
parent."
Steel made an irritated gesture. "You haven't seen all of Amdi's
translations." Innocent Amdi, the perfect spy. "But you're right, saving the
one child is not the main reason for this Visit. I've tried to find out
their real motive. There are one hundred fifty-one children in some kind of
deathly stupor, all stacked up in coffins within the ship. The Visitors are
desperate to save the children, but there's something else they want. They
never quite talk about it ... I think it's in the machinery of the ship
itself."
"For all we know the children are a brood force, part of an invasion."
That was an old fear and -- after watching Amdijefri -- Steel saw no
chance of it. There could be other traps but, "If the Visitors are lying to
us, then there is really nothing we can do to win. We'll be hunted animals;
maybe generations from now we'll learn their tricks, but it will be the end
of us. On the other hand, we have good reason to believe that the Two-Legs
are weak, and whatever their goals, they do not involve us directly. You
were there the day of the landing, much closer than I. You saw how easy it
was to ambush them, even though their ship is impregnable and their single
weapon a match for a small army. It is obvious that they do not consider us
a threat. No matter how powerful their tools, their real fears are
elsewhere. And in that Starship, we have something they need.
"Look at the foundations of our new castle, Tyrathect. I've told
Amdijefri that it is to protect the Starship against Woodcarver. It will do
that -- later in the Summer when I shatter Woodcarver upon its ramparts. But
see the foundations of the curtain around the Starship. By the time our
Visitors arrive, the ship will be envaulted. I've done some quiet tests on
its hull. It can be breached; a few dozen tons of stone falling on it would
quite nicely crush it. But Ravna is not to worry; this is all for the
protection of her prize. And there will be an open courtyard nearby,
surrounded by strangely high walls. I've asked Jefri to get Ravna's help on
this. The courtyard will be just large enough to enclose Ravna's ship,
protecting it too.
"There are many details still to be settled. We must make the tools
Ravna describes. We must arrange the demise of Woodcarver, well before the
Visitors arrive. I need your help in all those things, and I expect to
receive it. In the end, if the Visitors are treacherous, we will make the
best stand that can be. And if they are not ... well I think you'll agree
that my reach has at least matched my teacher's."
For once, the Flenser Fragment had no reply.
The ship's control cabin was Jefri and Amdi's favorite place in all of
Lord Steel's domain. Being here could still make Jefri very sad, but now the
good memories seemed the stronger ... and here was the best hope for the
future. Amdi was still entranced by the window displays -- even if the views
were all of wooden walls. By their second visit they had already come to
regard the place as their private kingdom, like Jefri's treehouse back on
Straum. And in fact the cabin was much too small to hold more than a single
pack. Usually a member of their bodyguard would sit just inside the entrance
to the main hold, but even that seemed to be uncomfortable duty. This was a
place where they were important.
For all their rambunctiousness, Amdi and Jefri realized the trust that
Lord Steel and Ravna were placing in them. The two kids might race around
out-of-doors, driving their guards to distraction, but the equipment in this
command cabin must be treated as cautiously as when Mom and Dad were here.
In some ways, there was not much left in the ship. The datasets were
destroyed; Jefri's parents had them outside when Woodcarver attacked. During
the winter, Mr. Steel had carried out most of the loose items to study. The
coldsleep boxes were now safe in cool chambers nearby. Every day Amdijefri
inspected the boxes, looked at each familiar face, checked the diag
displays. No sleeper had died since the ambush.
What was left on the ship was hard-fastened to the hull. Jefri had
pointed out the control boards and status elements that managed the
container shell's rocket; they stayed strictly away from those.
Mr. Steel's quilting shrouded the walls. Jefri's folks' baggage and
sleeping bags and exercisers were gone, but there were still the acc webbing
and hard-fastened equipment. And over the months, Amdijefri had brought in
paper and pens and blankets and other junk. There was always a light breeze
from the fans sweeping through the cabin.
It was a happy place, strangely carefree even with all the memories it
brought. This was where they would save the Tines and all the sleepers. And
this was the only place in the world where Amdijefri could talk to another
human being. In some ways, the means of talking seemed as medieval as Lord
Steel's castle: They had one flat display -- no depth, no color, no
pictures. All they could coax from it were alphanumerics. But it was
connected to the ship's ultrawave comm, and that was still programmed to
track their rescuers. There was no voice recognition attached to the
display; Jefri had almost panicked before he realized that the lower part of
the screen worked as a keyboard. It was a laborious job typing in every
letter of every word -- though Amdi had gotten pretty good at it, using four
noses to peck at the keys. And nowadays he could read Samnorsk even better
than Jefri.
Amdijefri spent many afternoons here. If there was a message waiting
from the previous day, they would bring it up page by page and Amdi would
copy and translate it. Then they would enter the questions and answers that
Mr. Steel had talked to them about. Then there was a lot of waiting. Even if
Ravna was watching at the other end, it could take several hours to get a
reply. But the link was so much better than during the winter; they could
almost feel Ravna getting closer. The unofficial conversations with her were
often the high point of their day.
So far, this day had been quite different. After the false workers
attacked, Amdijefri had the shakes for about half an hour. Mr. Steel had
been wounded trying to protect them. Maybe there was nowhere that was safe.
They messed with the outside displays, trying to peek through cracks in the
rough planking of the compound's walls.
"If we'd been able to see out, we could have warned Mr. Steel," said
Jefri.
"We should ask him to put some holes in the walls. We could be like
sentries."
They batted the idea around a bit. Then the latest message started
coming in from the rescue ship. Jefri jumped into the acc webbing by the
display. This was his dad's old spot, and there was plenty of room. Two of
Amdi slid in beside him. Another member hopped on the armrest and braced its
paws on Jefri's shoulders. Its slender neck extended toward the screen to
get a good view. The rest scrambled to arrange paper and pens. It was easy
to play back messages, but Amdijefri got a certain thrill out of seeing the
stuff coming down "live".
There was the initial header stuff -- that wasn't so interesting after
about the thousandth time you saw it -- then Ravna's actual words. Only this
time it was just tabular data, something to support the radio design.
"Nuts. It's numbers," said Jefri.
"Numbers!" said Amdi. He climbed a free member onto the boy's lap. It
stuck its nose close to the screen, cross-checking what the one by Jefri's
shoulder was seeing. The four on the floor were busy scratching away,
translating the decimal digits on the screen into the X's and O's and 1's
and deltas of Tines' base four notation. Almost from the beginning Jefri had
realized that Amdi was really good at math. Jefri wasn't envious. Amdi said
that hardly any of the Tines were that good, either; Amdi was a very special
pack. Jefri was proud that he had such a neat friend. Mom and Dad would have
liked Amdi. Still ... Jefri sighed, and relaxed in the webbing. This number
stuff was happening more and more often. Mom had read him a story once,
"Lost in the Slow Zone", about how some marooned explorers brought
civilization to a lost colony. In that, the heroes just collected the right
materials and built what they needed. There had been no talk of precision or
ratios or design.
He looked away from the screen, and petted the two of Amdi that were
sitting beside him. One of them wriggled under his hand. Their whole bodies
hummed back at him. Their eyes were closed. If Jefri didn't know better, he
would have assumed they were asleep. These were the parts of Amdi that
specialized in talking.
"Anything interesting?" Jefri said after a while. The one on his left
opened its eyes and looked at him.
"This is that bandwidth idea Ravna was talking about. If we don't make
things just right, we'll just get clicks and clacks."
"Oh, right." Jefri knew that the initial reinventions of radio were
usually not good for much more than Morse code. Ravna seemed to think they
could jump that stage. "What do you think Ravna is like?"
"What?" The scritching of pens on paper stopped for an instant; he had
all of Amdi's attention, even though they'd talked of this before. "Well,
like you ... only bigger and older?"
"Yeah, but -- " Jefri knew Ravna was from Sjandra Kei. She was a
grownup, somewhere older than Johanna and younger than Mom. What exactly
does she look like? "I mean, she's coming all this way just to rescue us and
finish what Mom and Dad were trying to do. She must really be a great
person."
The scritching stopped again, and the display scrolled heedless on.
They would have to replay it. "Yes," Amdi said after a moment. "She -- she
must be a lot like Mr. Steel. It will be nice to meet someone I can hug, the
way you do Mr. Steel."
Jefri was a little miffed by that. "Well wait, you can hug me!"
The parts of Amdi next to him purred loudly. "I know. But I mean
someone that's a grownup ... like a parent."
"Yeah."
They got the tables translated and checked in about an hour. Then it
was time to send up the latest things that Mr. Steel was asking about. There
were about four pages, all neatly printed in Samnorsk by Amdi. Usually he
liked to do the typing, too, all bunched up over the keyboard and display.
Today he wasn't interested. He lay all over Jefri, but didn't pay any
special attention to checking what was being keyed in. Every so often Jefri
felt a buzzing through his chest, or the screen mounting would make a
strange sound -- all in sympathy to the unhearable sounds that Amdi was
making between his members. Jefri recognized the signs of deep thought.
He finished typing in the latest message, adding a few small questions
of his own. Things like, "How old are you and Pham? Are you married? What
are Skroderiders like?"
Daylight had faded from the cracks in the walls. Soon the digger teams
would be turning in their hoes and marching off to the barracks over the
edge of the hill. Across the straits, the towers on Hidden Island would be
golden in the mist, like something in a fairy tale. Their whitejackets would
be calling Amdi and Jefri out for supper any minute now.
Two of Amdi jumped off the acc webbing, and began chasing each other
around the chair. "I've been thinking! I've been thinking! Ravna's radio
thing: why is it just for talking? She says all sound is just different
frequencies of the same thing. But sound is all that thought is. If we could
change some of the tables, and make the receivers and transmitters to cover
my tympana, why couldn't I think over the radio?"
"I don't know." Bandwidth was a familiar constraint on many everyday
activities, though Jefri had only a vague notion of exactly what it was. He
looked at the last of the tables, still displayed on the screen. He had a
sudden insight, something that many adults in technical cultures never
attain. "I use these things all the time, but I don't know exactly how they
work. We can follow these directions, but how would we know what to change?"
Amdi was getting all excited now, the way he did when he'd thought of
some great prank. "No, no, no. We don't have to understand everything."
Three more of him jumped to the floor; he waved random sheets of paper up at
Jefri. "Ravna doesn't know for sure how we make sound. The directions
include options for making small changes. I've been thinking. I can see how
the changes relate." He paused and made a high-pitched squealing noise.
"Darn. I can't explain it exactly. But I think we can expand the tables, and
that will change the machine in ob-obvious ways. And then ..." Amdi was
beside himself for a moment, and speechless. "Oh Jefri, I wish you could be
a pack, too! Imagine putting one of yourself each on a different mountain
top, and then using radio to think. We could be as big as the world!"
Just then there was the sound of interpack gobbling from outside the
cabin, and then the Samnorsk: "Dinner time. We go now, Amdijefri. Okay?" It
was Mr. Shreck; he spoke a fair amount of Samnorsk, though not as well as
Mr. Steel. Amdijefri picked up the scattered sheets and carefully slipped
them into the pockets on the back of Amdi's jackets. They powered down the
display equipment and crawled into the main hold.
"Do you think Mr. Steel will let us make the changes?"
"Maybe we should also send them back to Ravna."
The whitejackets' member retreated from the hatch, and Amdijefri
descended. A minute later they were out in the slanting sunlight. The two
kids scarcely noticed; they were both caught up in Amdi's vision.
.Delete this paragraph to shift page flush
CHAPTER 24
For Johanna, lots of things changed in the weeks after Scriber
Jaqueramaphan died. Most were for the better, things that might never have
happened but for the murder ... and that made Johanna very sad.
She let Woodcarver live in her cabin, and take the place of the helper
pack. Apparently Woodcarver had wanted to do this from the beginning, but
had been afraid of the human's anger. Now they kept the dataset in the
cabin. There were never less than four packs of Vendacious' security
surrounding the place, and there was talk of building barracks around it.
She saw the others during the day at meetings, and individually when
they needed help with the dataset. Scrupilo, Vendacious, and Scarbutt -- the
"Pilgrim" -- all spoke fluent Samnorsk now, more than good enough so that
she could see the character behind their inhuman forms: Scrupilo, prissy and
very bright. Vendacious, as pompous as Scriber had ever seemed, but without
the playfulness and imagination. Pilgrim Wickwrackscar. She felt a chill
every time she saw his big, scarred one. It always sat in the back, hunched
down to look unthreatening. Pilgrim obviously knew how the sight affected
her and tried not to offend, but even after Scriber's death she couldn't do
more than tolerate that pack.... And after all, there could be traitors in
the Woodcarver castle. It was only Vendacious' theory that the murder had
been a raid from outside. She kept a suspicious eye on Pilgrim.
At night Woodcarver chased the other packs away. She huddled around the
firepit, and asked the dataset questions that had no conceivable connection
with fighting the Flenserists. Johanna sat with her and tried to explain
things that Woodcarver didn't understand. It was strange. Woodcarver was
something very like the Queen of these people. She had this enormous
(primitive, uncomfortable, ugly -- yet still enormous) castle. She had
dozens of servants. Yet she spent most of each night in this little wood
cabin with Johanna, and helped with the fire and the food at least as much
as the pack who had been here before.
So it was that Woodcarver became Johanna's second friend among the
Tines. (Scriber was the first, though she hadn't known it till after he was
dead.) Woodcarver was very smart and very strange. In some ways she was the
smartest person Johanna had ever known, though that conclusion came slowly.
She hadn't really been surprised when the Tines mastered Samnorsk quickly --
that's the way it was in most adventures, and more to the point, they had
the language learning programs in the dataset. But night after night Johanna
watched Woodcarver play with the set. The pack showed no interest in the
military tactics and chemistry that preoccupied them all during the day.
Instead she read about the Slow Zone and the Beyond and the history of
Straumli Realm. She had mastered nonlinear reading faster than any of the
others. Sometimes Johanna would just sit and stare over her shoulders. The
screen was split into windows, the main one scrolling much faster than
Johanna could follow. A dozen times a minute, Woodcarver might come upon
words she didn't recognize. Most were just unfamiliar Samnorsk: she'd tap a
nose on the offending word and the definition would flicker briefly in a
dictionary window. Other things were conceptual, and the new windows would
lead the pack off into other fields, sometimes for just a few seconds,
sometimes for many minutes -- and sometimes the detour would become her new
main path. In a way, she was everything that Scriber had wanted to be.
Many times she had questions the dataset couldn't really answer. She
and Johanna would talk late into the night. What was a human family like?
What had Straumli Realm thought to make at the High Lab? Johanna no longer
thought of most packs as gangs of snake-necked rats. Deep past midnight, the
dataset's screen was brighter than the gray light from the firepit. It
painted the backs of Woodcarver in cheerful colors. The pack gathered round
her, looking up, almost like small children listening to a teacher.
But Woodcarver was no child. Almost from the first, she had seemed old.
Those late night talks were beginning to teach Johanna about the Tines, too.
The pack said things she never did during the day. They were mostly things
that must be obvious to other Tines, but never talked about. The human girl
wondered if Woodcarver the Queen had anyone to confide in.
Only one of Woodcarver's members was physically old; two were scarcely
more than puppies. It was the pattern of the pack that was half a thousand
years old. And that showed. Woodcarver's soul was held together by little
more than willpower. The price of immortality had been inbreeding. The
original stock had been healthy, but after six hundred years.... One of her
youngest members couldn't stop drooling; it was constantly patting a
kerchief to its muzzle. Another had milky white in its eyes where there
should have been deep brown. Woodcarver said it was stone blind, but healthy
and her best talker. Her oldest member was visibly feeble; it was panting
all the time. Unfortunately, Woodcarver said it was the most alert and
creative of all. When it died....
Once she started looking for it, Johanna could see weakness in all of
Woodcarver. Even the two healthiest members, strong and with plush fur,
walked a little strangely compared to normal pack members. Was that due to
spinal deformities? The two were also gaining weight, which wasn't helping
the problem.
Johanna didn't learn this all at once. Woodcarver had told her about
various Tinish affairs, and gradually her own story came out, too. She
seemed glad to have someone to confide in, but Johanna saw little self-pity
in her. Woodcarver had chosen this path -- apparently it was perversion to
some -- and had beaten the odds for longer than any other pack in recorded
history. She was more wistful than anything else, that her luck had finally
run out.
Tines architecture tended to extremes -- grotesquely oversized, or too
cramped for human use. Woodcarvers council chamber was at the large extreme;
it was not a cozy place. You could get three hundred humans into the
bowl-shaped cavity with room to spare. The separated balconies that ran
around its upper circumference could have held another hundred more.
Johanna had been here often enough before; this was where most work was
done with the dataset. Usually there was herself and Woodcarver and whoever
else needed information. Today was different, not a day to consult the
dataset at all: This was Johanna's first council meeting. There were twelve
packs in the High Council, and they were all here. Every balcony contained a
pack, and there were three on the floor. Johanna knew enough about Tines now
to see that for all the empty space, the place was hideously crowded. There
was the mind noise of fifteen packs. Even with all the padded tapestries,
she felt an occasional buzzing in her head or through her hands from the
railing.
Johanna stood with Woodcarver on the largest balcony. When they
arrived, Vendacious was already down on the main floor, arranging diagrams.
As the packs of the council came to their feet, he looked up and said
something to Woodcarver. The Queen replied in Samnorsk: "I know it will slow
things down, but perhaps that's a good thing." She made a human laughing
sound.
Peregrine Wickwrackscar was standing on the next balcony over, just
like some council pack. Strange. Johanna had not yet figured out why, but
Scarbutt seemed to be one of Woodcarver's favorites. "Pilgrim, would you
translate for Johanna?"
Pilgrim bobbed several heads. "Is, is that okay, Johanna?"
The girl hesitated an instant, then nodded back. It made sense. Next to
Woodcarver, Pilgrim spoke better Samnorsk than any of them. As Woodcarver
sat down, she took the dataset from Johanna and popped it open. Johanna
glanced at the figures on the screen. She's made notes. Her surprise didn't
have a chance to register, before the Queen was talking again -- this time
in the gobble sounds of interpack talk. After a second, Pilgrim began
translating:
"Everyone please sit. Hunker down. This meeting is crowded enough as it
is." Johanna almost smiled. Pilgrim Wickwrackscar was pretty good. He was
imitating Woodcarver's human voice perfectly. His translation even captured
the wry authority of her speech.
After some shuffling around, only one or two heads were visible
sticking up from each balcony. Most stray thought noise should now be caught
in the padding around the balcony or absorbed by the quilted canopy that
hung over the room. "Vendacious, you may proceed."
On the main floor, Vendacious stood and looked up in all directions. He
started talking. "Thank you," came the translation, now imitating the
security chief's tones. "The Woodcarver asked me to call this meeting
because of urgent developments in the North. Our sources there report that
Steel is fortifying the region around Johanna's starship."
Gobble gobble interruption. Scrupilo? "That's not news. That's what our
cannon and gunpowder are for."
Vendacious: "Yes, we've known of the plans for some time. Nevertheless
the completion date has been advanced, and the final version will have walls
a good deal thicker than we had figured. It also appears that once the
enclosure is complete, Steel intends to break apart the starship and
distribute its cargo through his various laboratories."
For Johanna the words came like a kick in the stomach. Before there had
been a chance: If they fought hard enough, they might recapture the ship.
She might finish her parents' mission, perhaps even get rescued.
Pilgrim said something on his own account, translating: "So what's the
new deadline?"
"They're confident of having the main walls complete in just under ten
tendays."
Woodcarver bent a pair of noses to the keyboard, tapped in a note. At
the same time she stuck a head over the railing and looked down at the
security chief. "I've noticed before that Steel tends to be a bit
over-optimistic. Do you have an objective estimate?"
"Yes. The walls will be complete between eight and eleven tendays from
now."
Woodcarver: "We had been counting on at least fifteen. Is this a
response to our plans?"
On the floor below, Vendacious drew himself together. "That was our
first suspicion, Your Majesty. But ... as you know, we have a number of very
special sources of information ... sources we shouldn't discuss even here."
"What a braggart. Sometimes I wonder if he knows anything. I've never
seen him stick his asses out in the field." Huh? It took Johanna a second to
realize that this was Pilgrim, editorializing. She glanced across the
railing. Three of Pilgrim's heads were visible, two looking her way. They
bore an expression she recognized as a silly smile. No one else seemed to
react to his comment; apparently he could focus his translation on Johanna
alone. She glared at him, and after a moment he resumed his businesslike
translation:
"Steel knows we plan to attack, but he does not know about our special
weapons. This change in schedule appears to be a matter of random suspicion.
Unfortunately we are the worse for it."
Three or four Councillors began talking at once. "Much loud
unhappiness," came Pilgrim's voice, summing up. "They're full of 'I knew
this plan would never work' and 'Why did we ever agree to attack the
Flenserists in the first place'."
Right next to Johanna, Woodcarver emitted a shrill whistle. The
recriminations dribbled to