instruments, he knew that they had nearly reached the equator, and were already some eight thousand kilometers southwest of Woodcarver’s Domain. There were islands out here, the OOB’s pictures from space said so, and so did the Pilgrim’s own memories. But it had been long since he ventured here, and he had not expected to see the island kingdoms in the lifetime of his current members.
Now suddenly he was going back. Flying back!
The OOB’s landing boat was a wonderful thing, and not nearly as strange as it had seemed in the midst of battle. True, they had not yet figured out how to program it for automatic flight. Perhaps they never would. In the meantime, this little flier worked with electronics that were barely more than glorified moving parts. The agrav itself required constant adjustment, and the controls were scattered across the bow periphery—conveniently placed for the fronds of a Skroderider, or the members of a pack. With the Spacers’ help and OOB’s documentation, it had taken Pilgrim only a few days to get the hang of flying the thing. It was all a matter of spreading one’s mind across all the various tasks. The learning had been happy hours, a little bit scary, floating nearly out of control, once in a screwball configuration that accelerated endlessly upward. But in the end, the machine was like an extension of his jaws and paws.
Since they descended from the purpling heights and began playing in the cloud tops, Ravna had been looking more and more uncomfortable. After a particularly stomachs-lurching bump and drop, she said, “Will you be able to land okay? Maybe we should have postponed this till—” unh! “— you can fly better.”
“Oh yes, oh yes. We’ll be past this, um, weather front real soon.” He dived beneath the clouds and swerved a few tens of kilometers eastwards. The weather was clear here, and it was actually more on a line with their destination. Secretly chastened, he resolved to do no more joy-riding… on the inbound leg, anyway.
His second passenger spoke up then, only the second time in the two-hour flight. “I liked it,” said Greenstalk. Her voder voice charmed Pilgrim: mostly narrow-band, but with little frets high up, from the squarewaves. “It was… it was like riding just beneath the surf, feeling your fronds moving with the sea.”
Peregrine had tried hard to know the Skroderider. The creature was the only nonhuman alien in the world, and harder to know than the Two-Legs. She seemed to dream most of the time, and forgot all but things that happened again and again to her. It was her primitive skrode that accounted for part of that, Ravna told him. Remembering the run that Greenstalk’s mate had made through the flames, Pilgrim believed. Out among the stars, there were things even stranger than Two-Legs—it made Pilgrim’s imagination ache.
Near the horizon he saw a dark ring—and another, beyond. “We’ll have you in real surf very soon.”
Ravna: “These are the islands?”
Peregrine looked over the map displays as he took a shot on the sun. “Yes, indeed,” though it didn’t really matter. The Western Ocean was over twelve thousand kilometers across, and all through the tropics it was dotted with atolls and island chains. This group was just a bit more isolated than others; the nearest Islander settlement was almost two thousand kilometers away.
They were over the nearest island. Pilgrim took a swing around it, admiring the tropic ferns that clung to the coral. At this tide, their bony roots were exposed. Not any flat land here at all; he flew on to the next, a larger one with a pretty glade just within the ringwall. He floated the boat down in a smooth glide that touched the ground without even the tiniest bump.
Ravna Bergsndot looked at him with something like suspicion. Oh oh. “Hei, I’m getting better, don’t you think?” he said weakly.
An uninhabited little island, surrounded by endless sea. The original memories were blurred now; it had been his Rum member who had been a native of the island kingdoms. Yet what he remembered all fit: the high sun, the intoxicating humidity of the air, the heat soaking through his paws. Paradise. The Rum aspect that still lived within him was most joyous of all. The years seemed to melt away; part of him had come home.
They helped Greenstalk down to the ground. Ravna said her skrode was an inferior imitation, its new wheels an ad hoc addition. Still, Pilgrim was impressed: the four balloon tires each had a separate axle. The Rider was able to make it almost to the crest of the coral without any help from Ravna or himself. But near the top, where the tropic ferns were thickest and their roots grew across every path, there he and Ravna had to help a bit, lifting and pulling.
Then they were on the other side, and they could see the ocean.
Now part of Pilgrim ran ahead, partly to find the easiest descent, partly to get close to the water and smell the salt and the rotting floatweed. The tide was nearly out now, and a million little pools—some no more than stony-walled puddles—lay exposed to the sun. Three of him ran from pool to pool, eyeing the creatures that lay within. The strangest things in the world they had seemed to him when he first came to the islands. Creatures with shells, slugs of all dimensions and colors, animal-plants that would become tropic ferns if they ever got trapped far enough inland.
“Where would you like to sit?” he asked the Skroderider. “If we go all the way out to the surf right now, you’ll be a meter underwater at high tide.”
The Rider didn’t reply. But all her fronds were angled toward the water now. The wheels on her skrode slipped and spun with a strange lack of coordination. “Let’s take her closer,” Ravna said after a moment.
They reached a fairly level stretch of coral, pocked with holes and gullies not more than a few centimeters deep. “I’ll go for a swim, find a good place,” Peregrine said. All of him ran down to where the coral broke the water; going for a swim was not something you did by parts. Heh heh. Fact was, damn few mainland packs could swim and think at the same time. Most mainlanders thought that there was a craziness in water. Now Peregrine knew it was simply the great difference in sound speed between air and water. Thinking with all tympana immersed must be a little like using the radio cloaks: it took discipline and practice to do it, and some were never able to learn. But the Island folk had always been great swimmers, using it for meditation. Ravna even thought the Packs might be descended from of whales!
Peregrine came to the edge of the coral and looked down. Suddenly the surf did not seem a completely friendly thing. He would soon find out if Rum’s spirit and his own memories of swimming were up to the real thing. He pulled off his jackets.
All at once. It’s best done all at once. He gathered himself and plopped awkwardly into the water. Confusion, heads out and in. Keep all under. He paddled about, holding all his heads down. Every few seconds, he’d poke a single nose into the air and refresh that member. I still can do it! The six of him slipped through swarms of squidlets, dived separately through arching green fronds. The hiss of the sea was all around, like the mindsound of a vast sleeping pack.
After a few minutes he’d found a nice level spot, sand all about and shielded from the worst fury of the sea. He paddled back to where the sea crashed against stony coral… and almost broke some legs scrambling out. It was just impossible to exit all at once, and for a few moments it was every member for itself. “Hei, over here!” He shouted to Greenstalk and Ravna. He sat licking at coral cuts as they crossed the white rock. “Found a place, more peaceful than this—” He waved at the crash and spray.
Greenstalk rolled a little closer to the edge, then hesitated. Her fronds turned back and forth along the curving sweep of the shore. Does she need help? Pilgrim started forward, but Ravna just sat down beside the Rider and leaned against the wheeled platform. After a moment, Pilgrim joined them. They sat for a time, human looking out to the sea, Rider looking he wasn’t sure quite where, and pack looking in most all directions… There was peace here, even with (or because of?) the booming surf and the haze of spray. He felt his hearts slowing, and just lazed in the sunlight. On every pelt the drying sea water was leaving a glittery powder of salt. Grooming himself tasted good at first, but… yech, too much dry salt was one of the bad memories. Greenstalk’s fronds settled lightly across him, too fine and narrow to provide much shade, but a light and gentle comfort.
They sat for a long while—long enough so that later some of Pilgrims noses were blistered, and even darkskinned Ravna was sun burned.
The Rider was humming now, a sort of song that after long minutes came to be speech. “It is a good sea, a good edge. It is what I need now. To sit and think at my own pace for a while.”
And Ravna said, “How long? We will miss you.” That was not just politeness. Everyone would miss her. Even in her mind adrift, Greenstalk was the expert on OOB’s surviving automation.
“Long by your measure, I fear. A few decades…” She watched (?) the waves a few minutes more. “I am eager to get down there. Ha ha. Almost like a human in that… Ravna, you know my memories are muddled now. I
