it?—was the one who had cut the arrow out of her. A mangy lot. The five were crouched, ready to run away. They looked almost as surprised as Johanna felt.
“One, two, how do you do?” The voice came again, exactly as before. It might as well have been a recording, except that one of the animals was somehow synthesizing the sound with the buzzing patches of skin on its shoulders, haunches and head. The parrot act was nothing new to her. But this time… the words were almost appropriate. The voice was not hers, but she had heard that chant before. She put hands on hips and stared at the pack. Two of the animals stared back; the others seemed to be admiring the scenery. One licked nervously at its paw.
The two rear ones were carrying her dataset! Suddenly she knew where they’d gotten that singsong question. And she knew what they expected in response. “I am fine and how do you do?” she said.
The pack’s eyes widened almost comically. “I am fine, so then are we all!” It completed the game, then emitted a burst of gobbling. Someone replied from down the hill. There was another pack there, lurking in the bushes. She knew that if she stayed near this one, the other wouldn’t approach.
So the Tines—she always thought of them by those claws on their front feet; those she would never forget —had been playing with the Pink Oliphaunt, and hadn’t been stopped by the booby traps. That was better than Jefri ever managed. It was clear they had fallen into the kindermode language programs. She should have thought of that. When the dataset noted sufficiently asinine responses it would adapt its behavior, first for young children, and—if that didn’t work—for youngsters who didn’t even speak Samnorsk. With just a little cooperation from Johanna, they could learn her language. Did she want that?
The pack walked a little nearer, at least two of them watching her all the time. They didn’t seem quite so ready to bolt as before. The nearest one dropped to its belly and looked up at her. Very cute and helpless, if you didn’t see the claws. “My name is—” Johanna heard a short burst of gobble with an overtone that seemed to buzz right through her head. “What is your name?”
Johanna knew it was all part of the language script. There was no way the creature could understand the individual words it was saying. That “my name, your name” pair was repeated over and over again between the children in the language program. A vegetable would get the point eventually. Still, the Tines pronunciation was so perfect…
“My name is Johanna,” she said.
“Zjohanna,” said the pack, with Johanna’s voice, and splitting the word stream incorrectly.
“Johanna,” corrected Johanna. She wasn’t even going to try saying the Tines name.
“Hello, Johanna. Let’s play the naming game!” And that was from the script too, complete with silly enthusiasm. Johanna sat down. Sure, learning Samnorsk would give the Tines power over her… but it was the only way she could learn about them, the only way she could learn about Jefri. And if they had murdered Jefri, too? Well then, she would learn to hurt them as much as they deserved.
CHAPTER 13
At Woodcarvers and then—a few days later—at Flenser’s Hidden Island, the long daylight of arctic summer ended. At first there was a little twilight just around midnight, when even the highest hill stood in shadow. And then the hours of dark grew quickly. Day fought night, and night was winning. The featherleaf in the low valleys changed to autumn colors. Looking up a fjord in daylight was to see orange red on the lower hills, then the green of heather merging imperceptibly to the grays of lichen and the darker grays of naked rock. The snowpatches waited for their time; it would come soon.
At every sunset, each day a few minutes earlier, Tyrathect toured the ramparts of Flenser’s outer wall. It was a three-mile walk. The lower levels were guarded by linear packs, but up here there were only a few lookouts. When she approached, they stepped aside with military precision. More than military precision; she saw the fear in their look. It was hard to get used to that. For almost as far back as she had clear memories—twenty years - Tyrathect had lived in fear of others, in shame and guilt, in search of someone to follow. Now all that was turned on its head. It was not an improvement. She knew now, from the inside, the evil she had given herself to. She knew why the sentries feared her. To them, she was Flenser.
Of course, she never gave any hint of these thoughts. Her life was only as safe as the success of her fraud. Tyrathect had worked hard to suppress her natural, shy mannerisms. Not once since coming to Hidden Island had she caught herself in the old bashful habit of heads lowering, eyes closing.
Instead, Tyrathect had the Flenser stare—and she used it. Her passage around the top wall was as stark and ominous as Flenser’s had ever been. She looked out over her—his—domain with the same hard gaze as before, all heads front, as if seeing visions beyond the petty minds of the disciples. They must never guess her real reason for these sunset sweeps: for a time, the days and nights were like in the Republic. She could almost imagine she was still back there, before the Movement and the massacre at Parliament Bowl, before they cut her throats and wed pieces of Flenser to the stumps of her soul.
In the gold and russet fields beyond the stone curtains, she could see peasants trimming the fields and the herds. Flenser ruled lands far beyond her view, but he had never imported food. The grain and meat that filled the storehouses were all produced within a two-day march of the straits. The strategic intent was clear; still, it made for a peaceful evening’s view and brought back memories of her home and school.
The sun slid sideways into the mountains; long shadows swept the farm lands. Flenser’s castle was left an island in a sea of shadow. Tyrathect could smell the cold. There would be frost again tonight. Tomorrow the fields would be covered with false snow that would last an hour past sunrise. She pulled the long jackets close around her and walked to the eastern lookout. Across the straits, one of the near hilltops was still in the sun. The alien ship had landed there. It was still there, but now behind wood and stone. Steel began building there right after the landing. The quarries at the north end of Hidden Island were busier now than ever in Flenser’s time. The barges hauling stone to the mainland made a steady traffic across the straits. Even now that the light was not dayround, Steel’s construction went on nonstop. His Incallings and lesser inspections were harsher than Flenser’s had used to be.
Lord Steel was a killer; worse, a manipulator. But since the alien landing, Tyrathect knew that he was something else: deathly afraid. He had good reason. And even though the folk he feared might ultimately kill them all, in her secret soul she wished them well. Steel and his Flenserists had attacked the star people without warning, more out of greed than fear. They had killed dozens of beings. In a way the murders were worse than what the Movement had done to her. Tyrathect had followed the Flenser of her own free will. She had had friends who warned her about the Movement. There had been dark stories about the Flenser, and not all had been government propaganda. But she had so wanted to follow, to give herself to Something Greater… They had used her, literally as their tool. Yet she could have avoided it. The star people had had no such option; Steel simply butchered them.
So now Steel labored out of fear. In the first three days he had covered the flying ship with a roof: a sudden, silly farmhouse had appeared on the hilltop. Before long the alien craft would be hidden behind stone walls. Ultimately, the new fortress might be bigger than the one on Hidden Island. Steel knew that if his villainy did not destroy him, it would make him the most powerful pack in the world.
And that was Tyrathect’s reason for staying, for continuing her masquerade. She couldn’t go on forever. Sooner or later the other fragments would reach Hidden Island; Tyrathect would be destroyed and all of Flenser would live again. Perhaps she wouldn’t survive even that long. Two of Tyrathect were of Flenser. The Master had miscalculated in thinking they could dominate the other three. Instead the conscience of the three had come to own the brilliance of the two. She remembered almost everything the great Flenser had known, all the tricks and all the betrayals. The two had given her an intensity she had never had before. Tyrathect laughed to herself. In a sense, she had gained what she had been so naively seeking in the Movement; and the great Flenser had made exactly the mistake that in his arrogance he thought impossible. As long as she could keep the two under control, she had a chance. When she was all awake, there wasn’t much problem; she still felt herself a “she', still remembered her life in the Republic more clearly than the Flenser memories. It was different when she slept. There were nightmares. The memories of torment inflicted suddenly seemed sweet. Sleep-time sex should soothe; with her it was a battle. She awoke sore and cut, as if she had been fighting a rapist. If the two ever broke free, if she ever awoke a “he'…
