Consequences, consequences. Some of them she could defend against; others were past repair.
And from somewhere in the back of her mind, an incredibly silly thought crawled out from under the horror and the rage. For eight hours she had been face to face with a Power. It was the sort of experience that made a chapter in textbooks, the sort of thing that was always far away and misreported. And it was the sort of thing no one in all of Sjandra Kei could come near to claiming. Until now.
CHAPTER 10
Johanna was in the boat for a long time. The sun never set, though now it was low behind her, now it was high in front, now all was cloudy and rain plinked off the tarp covering her blankets. She spent the hours in an agonized haze. Things happened that could only have been dreams. There were creatures pulling at her clothes, blood sticking everywhere. Gentle hands and rat snouts dressed her wounds, and forced chill water down her throat. When she thrashed around, Mom rearranged her blankets and comforted her with the strangest sounds. For hours, someone warm lay beside her. Sometimes it was Jefri; more often it was a large dog, a dog that purred.
The rain passed. The sun was on the left side of the boat, but hidden behind a cold, snapping shadow. More and more, the pain became divisible. Part of it was in her chest and shoulder; that stabbed through her whenever the boat wobbled. Part of it was in her gut, an emptiness that was not quite nausea… she was so hungry, so thirsty.
More and more, she was remembering, not dreaming. There were nightmares that would never go away. They had really happened. They were happening now.
The sun peeked in and out of the tumble of clouds. It slid slowly lower across the sky till it was almost behind the boat. She tried to remember what Daddy had been saying just before… everything went bad. They were in this planet’s arctic, in the summer. So the sun’s low point must be north, and their twin-hulled boat was sailing roughly southwards. Wherever they were going, it was minute by minute farther from the spacecraft and any hope of finding Jefri.
Sometimes the water was like open sea, the hills distant or hidden by low clouds. Sometimes they passed through narrows, and swept close to walls of naked rock. She’d had no idea a sailboat could move so fast or be so dangerous. Four of the rat creatures worked desperately to keep them off the rocks. They bounded nimbly from mast platform to railing, sometimes standing on each other’s shoulders to extend their reach. The twin-hulled boat tilted and groaned in water that was suddenly rough. Then they’d be through and the hills would be at a peaceful distance, sliding slowly past.
For a long while, she pretended delirium. She moaned, she twisted. She watched. The boat hulls were long and narrow, almost like canoes. The sail was mounted between them. The shadow in her dreams had been that sail, snapping in the cold, clean wind. The sky was an avalanche of grays, light and dark. There were birds up there. They dipped past the mast, circled again and again. There was twittering and hissing all around her. But the sound did not come from the birds.
It was the monsters. She watched them through lowered lashes. These were the same kind that killed Mom and Dad. They even wore the same funny clothes, gray-green jackets studded with stirrups and pockets. Dogs or wolves she had thought before. That didn’t really describe them. Sure, they had four slender legs and pointy little ears. But with their long necks 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
