“Don’t… lecture… me! You are not Flenser. You are a fragment. Shit! You are a fragment of a fragment now. A word and you will be cut up, dead in a thousand pieces.” He tried to suppress the trembling that spread through his members. Why haven’t I killed him before now? I hate Flenser more than anything in the world, and it would be so easy. Yet the fragment was always so indispensable, somehow the only thing between Steel and failure. And he was under Steel’s control.
And the singleton was doing a very good terrified cower. “Sit up, you! Give me your counsel and not your lectures, and you will live… Whatever the reason, it’s impossible for me to carry on the charade with these puppies. Perhaps for a few minutes at a time I can do it, or if there are other packs to keep them away from me, but none of this unending loving. Another hour of that and I-I know I’ll start killing them. So. I want you to talk with Amdijefri. Explain the ‘situation’. Explain—”
“But—” The singleton was looking at him in astonishment.
“I’ll be watching; I’m not giving up those two to your possession. Just handle the close diplomacy.”
The Fragment drooped, the pain in its shoulders undisguised. “If that is your wish, My Lord.”
Steel showed all his teeth. “It is indeed. Just remember, I’ll be present for everything important, especially direct radio communication.” He waved the singleton off the parapet. “Now go and cuddle up to the children; learn something of self-control yourself.”
After the Cloak was gone, he called Shreck up to the parapet. The next few hours were spent in touring the defenses and planning with his staff. Steel was very surprised how much clearing up the puppy problem improved his quality of mind. His advisors seemed to pick up on it, relaxed to the point of offering substantive suggestions. Where the breaches in the walls could not be repaired, they would build deadfalls. The cannon from the northern shops would arrive before the end of the dayaround, and one of Shreck’s people had worked out an alternate plan for food and water resupply. Reports from the far scouts showed steady progress, a withering of the enemy’s rear; they would lose most of their ammunition before they reached Starship Hill. Even now there was scarcely any shot falling on the hill.
As the sun rose into the south, Steel was back on the parapets, scheming on just what to say to the Starfolk.
This was almost like earlier days, when plans went well and success was wondrous yet achievable. And yet… at the back of his mind all the hours since talking with the singleton, there had been the little claws of fear. Steel had the appearance of ruling. The Flenser Fragment gave the appearance of following. But even though it was spread across miles, the pack seemed more together than ever before. Oh, in earlier times, the Fragment often pretended equilibrium, but its internal tension always showed. Lately, it seemed self-satisfied, almost… smug. The Flenser Fragment was responsible for the Domain’s forces south of Starship Hill, and after today—after Steel had forced the responsibility upon him—the Cloaks would be with Amdijefri every day. Never mind that the motivation had come from within Steel. Never mind that the Fragment was in an obvious state of agonized exhaustion. In its full genius, the Great One could have charmed a forest wolf into thinking Flenser its queen. And do I really know what he’s saying to the packs beyond my hearing? Could my spies be feeding me lies about him?
Now that he had a moment away from immediate concerns, these little claws dug deeper. I need him, yes. But the margin for error is smaller now. After a moment, he grated a happy chord, accepting the risk. If necessary, he would use what he had learned with the second set of cloaks, something he had artfully concealed from Flenser Tyrathect. If necessary, the Fragment would find that death can be radio swift.
Even as he flew the velocity match, Pham was working the ultradrive. This would save them hours of fly back time, but it was a chancy game, one the ship had never been designed for. OOB bounced all around the solar system. One really lucky jump was all they needed. (And one really unlucky jump, into the planet, would kill them. A good reason why this game was not normally played.)
After hours of hacking the flight automation, of playing ultradrive roulette, poor Pham’s hands were faintly trembling. Whenever Tines’ World came back into view—often no more than a far point of blue light—he would glare for a second at it. Ravna could see the doubts rising within him: His memories told him he should be good with low-tech automation, yet some of the OOB primitives were almost impenetrable. Or maybe his memories of competence, of the Qeng Ho, were cheap fakes.
“The Blighter fleet. How long?” asked Pham.
Greenstalk was watching the nav window from the Riders’ cabin. It was the fifth time the question had been asked in the last hour, yet her voice came back calm and patient. Maybe the repeated questions even seemed a natural thing. “Range forty-nine light-years. Estimated time of arrival forty-eight hours. Seven more ships have dropped out.” Ravna could subtract: one hundred and fifty-two were still coming.
Blueshell’s voder sounded over his mate’s, “During the last two hundred seconds, they have made slightly better time than before, but I think that is local variance in Bottom conditions. Sir Pham, you are doing well, but I know my ship. We could get a little more time if you only you’d allow me control. Please—”
“Shut up.” Pham’s voice was sharp, but the words were almost automatic. It was a conversation—or the abortion of one—that occurred almost as often as Pham’s demand for status info on the Blighter fleet.
In the early weeks of their journey, she had assumed that godshatter was somehow superhuman. Instead it was parts and pieces, automation loaded in a great panic. Maybe it was working right, or maybe it had run amok and was tearing Pham apart with its errors.
The old cycle of fear and doubt was suddenly broken by soft blue light. Tines’ World! At last, a wondrously accurate jump, almost as good as the shocker of five hours before: Twenty thousand kilometers away hung a vast narrow crescent, the edge of planetary daylight. The rest was a dark blot against the stars, except where the auroral ring hung a faint green glow around the south pole. Jefri Olsndot was on the other side of the world from them, in the arctic day. They wouldn’t have radio communication until they arrived—and she hadn’t figured out how to recalibrate the ultrawave for shortrange transmission.
She turned back from the view. Pham still stared upward into the sky behind her. “… Pham, what good is forty-eight hours? Will we just destroy the Countermeasure?” What of Jefri and Mr. Steel’s folk?
“Maybe. But there are other possibilities. There must be.” That last softly. “I’ve been chased before. I’ve been in bigger jams before.” His eyes avoided hers.
CHAPTER 38
Jefri hadn’t seen the sky for more than an hour in the last two days. He and Amdi were safe enough in the great stone dome that sheltered the refugee ship, but there was no way to see outside. If it weren’t for Amdi, I couldn’t have stood it a minute. In some ways it was worse even than his first days on Hidden Island. The ones who killed Mom and Dad and Johanna were just a few kilometers away. They captured some of Mr. Steel’s guns and the last few days the explosions had gone on for hours, a booming that shook the ground beneath them and sometimes even smashed at the walls of the dome.
Their food was brought in to them, and when they weren’t sitting in the ship’s command cabin, the two wandered outside the ship, to the rooms with the sleeping children. Jefri had kept up with the simple maintenance procedures he remembered, but looking through the chill transp of the coldsleep coffins, he was terribly afraid. Some of them weren’t breathing very much. The inside temperature seemed too high. And he and Amdi didn’t know how to help.
Nothing had changed here, but now there was joy. Ravna’s long silence had ended. Amdijefri and Mr. Steel had actually talked to her in voice! Three more hours and her ship would be here! Even the bombardment had ended, almost as if Woodcarver realized that her time was near to ending.
Three more hours. Left to himself, Jefri would have spent the time in a state of wall-climbing anxiety. After all, he was nine years old now, a grown-up with grown up problems. But then there was Amdi. The pack was much smarter than Jefri in some ways, but he was such a little kid—about five years old, as near as Amdijefri could figure it. Except when he was into heavy thinking, he could not stay still. After the call from Ravna, Jefri wanted to sit down for serious worrying, but Amdi began chasing himself around the pylons. He shouted back and forth in Jefri’s voice and Ravna’s, and bumped into the boy accidentally on purpose. Jefri hopped up and glared at the careening puppies. Just a little kid. And suddenly, happy and so sad all at once: Is this how Johanna saw me? And so he had
