The Children of the Sky

Then it stumbled and turned. Its little girl voice spoke: “Correction. The humans go aboard Tycoon’s ship … squeak rattle gobble—” That last was some command to the gunpacks.

As one of the gunpacks herded Ravna and Jefri across the square, another moved to stop Amdi and Screwfloss from following. The singleton turned to Amdi: “Not you, my fat friend. You go on my airship.”

Jefri wheeled. “Now wait a minute! We all stay together or—” He closed in on the singleton, towering over him. The creature staggered back, its butt striking the cobblestones. One of the gunpack’s members shifted its shoulders and its twin barrels slid forward till the muzzle silencers were well past its head. Another member stepped behind it, sighting between the barrels at Jefri. Ravna noticed that the other member of the gunpack was watching her attentively.

The singleton came awkwardly to its feet, but its adult human voice sounded amused. “I think in this case, you will not stay together. Fatso and the remnant are coming with me.”

Jefri glanced at the twin barrels facing him. His hands were in fists.

Amdi came around his friend, pulling him back from the confrontation. “We have to, Jefri. Please. I’ll be okay.” But Ravna noticed that Amdi was trembling.

The singleton chuckled, started to say something, and then its voice shifted to the tones of the little girl: “Don’t be s-scared. You’ll like m-my ship.”

Jefri unclenched his fists and stepped back. The anger in his face was replaced by wonder. “This thing”—he gestured at the singleton— “isn’t anybody. It’s just a comms network!”

Amdi was nodding. “What a dumb use for radio cloaks. We never guessed they’d be so—”

“Enough!” said the singleton, and the gunpacks pushed and prodded the captives toward their respective flying jails.

At the base of the ship, the air stank of fuel oil. It smelled exactly like Scrupilo’s concoction. But Tycoon’s industrial plagiarism was not complete; the dropdown stairs were pack-wide, grandiose compared to Scrupilo’s design. I wonder if they got the trick of stabilizing the hydrogen in the lift bags?

Partway up the steps, she turned and looked across the square. There was no sign of Prince Purity, but she could see townsfolk and peasants still watching from the shadows. We had a great show tonight. The thought flitted inanely through her mind. Over by the other airship, the radio-cloaked singleton was still on the ground; Screwfloss and most of Amdi had already gone aboard. Two of Amdi’s heads looked their way, and he chirped something encouraging.

Jefri stooped to look out from under the curve of the hull. He waved back at Amdi. Then the pack beside Ravna waggled its gun barrels and Jef continued up the steps, Ravna close behind. To aft, the steam induction engines were buzzing up to speed.

•  •  •

Tycoon’s airship was the collision of Tinish imagination with the engineering realities of Oobii’s original design. The passenger carriage had been crudely split into two levels, the resulting interior decorated in a grand East Coast style. The main corridor was polished softwood veneer (easy on the hearing, you know), with frequent padded turnouts; packs could walk past each other with only moderate mental discomfort. The ceilings were mostly one meter thirty high—airy for Tines, but not high enough for a human to stand.

“I wonder what Nevil thinks when he comes visiting?” said Jefri. The two humans had been stuffed in a— well, to be fair, it might be a stateroom. The distance from the door to the outer hull was about two meters. The walls were heavily padded, probably thick enough to make a pack comfortable even though there might be other passengers within centimeters, in the rooms on either side.

“I guess Nevil’s allies have about the same respect for him as he has for Tines,” said Ravna.

A pair of fifteen-centimeter portholes were mounted in the hull, far enough apart to give a pack a good parallax view. The ship had turned and moonlight splashed across the cabin. “There’s some kind of metal lid here in the corner.” She lifted the cover. There was a faint whiff of potty smell, and the engine noise came louder. Ravna laughed. “A stateroom with its own toilet.” The sanitary facilities aboard Tycoon’s flying palace might be adequate—as long as you didn’t care about the folks living in the lands below.

Jefri crawled to the hull and looked out one of the portholes. His face was a pale blur in the moonlight. “We seem to be heading south. I don’t see the other airship.” He stared out for a long moment. “Nothing!” He turned away from the port and continued more quietly, “I’m so afraid for Amdi.”

“I don’t know, Jef. Tycoon seems to be treating us decently.” Her optimism sounded weak even to Ravna herself.

Jefri shook his head. “Only for the moment. There were two packs speaking through the radio cloak. The one who took Amdi had a voice like in Oliphaunt’s tutor programs. I’m betting that was Vendacious.”

Ravna bowed her head. “And the other voice, the little girl—”

“That was Tycoon. The monster said as much. And he dared to use the voice of one of his victims to speak the words.”

Tines often favored a human voice based on their first language tutor, but the little girl’s voice had been frightened and shrill, almost unrecognizable. How long do you have to torture someone to learn their language? “Geri Latterby,” Ravna said softly.

•  •  •

In the end, their speculation and futile planning fell into uneasy drowsing. Jefri shifted uncomfortably on the cabin’s mat. Of course, neither of them could stand up in the tiny space, but at least it was wide enough for Ravna to lie flat. Jefri was not so fortunate. Even with his feet propped up on the toilet lid, he was still cramped.

The sound of the airship’s engines was a steady buzz, making the floor and walls hum in sympathy. Sleep eventually came.

•  •  •

Dawn was brilliantly bright. Ravna awoke thoroughly disoriented. Where could she be to see sunlight on embroidered pillows? Then she felt the buzz of the engines. She looked around. Jefri was watching her silently from the other side of their tiny cabin. The sunlight was from the twin portholes. The “pillows” were the room’s acoustic quilting; their soft fabric was decorated with elegant landscapes.… And somehow she had annexed most of the floor space.

“Oops, sorry,” she said, moving back to her side. “I didn’t mean to thrash around.”

Jefri just shrugged, but she noticed that he was quick to use the freed space to get close to a porthole. After a moment, he spoke: “It’s all clouds down there, but we’re still heading south. So much for the theory that Tycoon’s headquarters is on the East Coast. I think—”

He was interrupted by the sound of something rolling down the main corridor. A moment later the door bolt lifted—but the door itself remained shut. Whoever was in the corridor tapped politely, emitting chords that Ravna recognized as a cheerful request to enter.

Jefri turned on his knees, crawled to the door, and slid it open. Outside stood a small-bodied foursome, dressed all in blue capes, surely a uniform. The creature stepped back a little fearfully, but then—perhaps because Jefri’s eyes were at its own level, or perhaps because it was putting on a brave front—two of it pushed forward with a tray of food. “Twenty-three minutes. Twenty-three minutes, okay?” The words were spoken with Geri Latterby’s voice, but they sounded like rote repetition. This creature scarcely seemed a torturer.

The food came in soft wooden bowls and consisted of overcooked vegetables and curd soup. Ravna guessed that it had been carefully chosen by someone with a secondhand knowledge of human diet. It tasted so good. Strange that in the clutches of Tycoon she was eating better than in all the time since the kidnapping. She lost herself in the food for a moment. When she looked up she noticed the Jefri had already finished and was watching her intently. Had he said something to her?

“Um. So what do you think is going to happen in twenty-three minutes?” said Ravna. They take us off to interrogation? They come back for the dirty plates?

“Dunno. But till then, let’s check out the view.” He returned to his porthole. Ravna downed the rest of her breakfast, then went to the other window. The sun was out of her face now. She could see clear sky above unending, brilliant clouds. Many kilometers away, a thunderhead broke the horizon. Details were lost in the distorted window glass, another example of what happened when Tycoon customized Oobii’s design.