The Children of the Sky

steep stairway led from there up to where she now stood. But she heard no Interpack gobbling. “Hear what?” she said.

“Mindsounds! From all up and down the row. The factory is a-roar with them.” He jabbed a snout in the direction of the silent little foursome who had accompanied them along the walkway. “Have you wondered who this fellow is?”

“Well…” The question seemed a complete non-sequitur.

The foursome squeaked something in Interpack, but almost inaudibly high-pitched.

From the radio singleton, Vendacious gave out a sigh, “Yes, my lord, I’m told you are pointing at Aritarmo. I admit my weakness. I’ve never been able to come to the factories in person. The radio provides me voice and ears to accompany my lord Tycoon. My assistant Aritarmo sends descriptions of what it sees, what the radio might have missed noticing.” He gobbled something more in Interpack.

Tycoon laughed. “Quite right, Vendacious. But my point was simply that this factory hall is a mild form of the Choir. Not all packs can tolerate it.”

Godsgift had been silent to this point—at least where humans could hear. The pack had crowded close the railing and all of it was looking down. “In fact, my lord Tycoon,” it said, “this is Choir territory, not part of your Reservation.”

“Ah, um. Quite so.” Then almost to himself: “It’s beyond me how a mob of millions can remember fine print that some godsgift saw seven years ago.”

More of Tycoon came to the railing, stuck some heads over, then retreated. “It takes real strength of character to face that roar. A bracing test of discipline.… My point is that these factories are fundamentally different from those of the north. These are factories that know their goals, and can manage the flow of raw material coming in and finished product rolling out. There are waves of attention and decision crashing back and forth the length of the hall. My assistants provide the overall design, the basic product models, but it is the mob that makes the details work. See down there, that room with five Choir members all heads together? I’ll wager there’s some local bottleneck in production, something that requires coherent attention. Those five are a form of godsgift.”

“A very temporary form,” said the godsgift standing by the railing.

“How flexible can they be?” asked Ravna. “You say this factory’s current run goes only four more days, but how long does it take for a factory to retarget on something entirely different?”

“Entirely different? That depends,” said Tycoon. “What the Choir can’t do is the original design and invention, however much a godsgift may brag. It’s been my genius that has lifted the Choir out of its eternal misery.”

Where is Ritl when we need her? thought Ravna.

“The Choir was not miserable,” objected the godsgift.

“We could argue about that, my friend. I remember how you lived when I first negotiated the Reservation. Physically at least, what you have now is a paradise.”

“Well, physically, of course.” The godsgift waved dismissively. “The Choir would never cooperate with you if that much were not true.”

“Whatever,” said Tycoon and gave his heads a little roll of exasperation. “The hardest part of any new product is convincing the Choir that the effort is needed. That takes a combination of market research and animal handling. I’ve become very, very good at it. Once I have a new invention properly working and a factory and shipping plan, it takes one to ten tendays for the Choir to build and start a new factory. Do you understand now why I couldn’t hide from the Domain anymore, even if I wanted to?”

All of Tycoon was staring at Ravna now, as if he thought what he said had impressed her. And it certainly does, she thought. Tycoon’s bragging amounted to massive understatement. Without a shred of real automation, he had recapitulated the power of an early technological civilization.… And done almost everything she’d been attempting the last ten years.

•  •  •

That night, back in their air-conditioned, perhaps snooped-upon dungeon:

“In fact, Tycoon does have automation,” said Jefri. “He’s persuaded the Choir to be his personal automation. Powers! This is more than the Old Flenser ever dreamed of doing.”

“This pack is no Flenser. Tycoon is a…” Ravna looked around at the walls, thought better of saying naive buffoon.

Jefri laughed. “You don’t have to spell that one out. Yeah, Tycoon isn’t Flenser, either Old or New. But he’s accomplished far more.” He glanced at Ravna. “What I’d like to know is how he wedged a snout into the Choir in the first place. Packs have been trying to penetrate the Tropics for—well, for centuries. Explorers went in, frags and singletons and small mobs dribbled out. Their stories were full of madness and member sacrifice and ecstasy—but never a hint of reason. The closest thing to trade was the occasional wreckage that drifted into the Domain. Maybe we shouldn’t be surprised that the Choir can manage complex procedures when it is convinced of future payoffs— but how did Tycoon get close enough to do the convincing in the first place?”

“A human could have done it.”

“Hah. No human we know, not if this operation is as old as Tycoon claims.”

Ravna hesitated, wondering whether to voice her suspicions about the “cuttlefish.” Finally she gave a shrug. “Okay, there are still mysteries. I may just ask him straight out. I think that despite all his”— bragging—“all his pride and confidence, Tycoon really does value human technical knowledge.”

“Yes! And your expertise in particular!” Jef grinned. “You can thank Timor for some of that.”

Ravna sighed. “Timor has done better than any of us. You talked to him more today than I did.” The boy had been whisked away at the end of the afternoon, an ugly finish to a very strange day. “Do you think he’s okay?”

“Yeah, I really do. He was less upset than you when Tycoon dragged him off. I think he wanted to get back to Geri.… I don’t think she is doing nearly so well.”

“We have to see her,” said Ravna. She hesitated, did her best not to look at the walls. I hope this doesn’t sound like a planned statement: “You know Jefri, after what I’ve seen today, I think I could work with Tycoon. What he’s achieved here—well, if we could use it to assemble the output of Scrupilo’s Cold Valley lab, the combination would give us one hundred years of progress in ten. On the other hand, if we can’t see Geri, if we can’t return all the stolen kids, then I’m not sure that it makes sense to hire on with Tycoon and, um,”—a tip of the hat to the main monster, in case he was listening too—“Vendacious.”

The terrifying thing about her little speech was that it was mostly true.

•  •  •

The factory they visited the next day was almost ten kilometers away. This time their wagon was drawn by kherhogs, the first large animals they had seen in the Tropics. They rolled past the airfield, past the south end of dozens of factory halls, and through one morning rainstorm. Immediately to the left of their path, the ground was an urban marsh, much like what they’d seen on their flight in. In the east, behind them, the palaces and hangars were lost to sight. The great pyramid stood above the mists like a distant mountain.

When they finally disembarked, they found Tycoon and company already waiting for them. The eightsome was talking even while Ravna was still greeting Timor: “You think this was a far ride, do you? Maybe a year or two ago it was, but the factory count is still doubling. I have smaller reservations a hundred kilometers from here. We’d have to take an airship to get them. Come along now, stop fussing with Timor. I have so much to show you.”

He dragged them through another rain shower to look at a coal-fired power plant. This rank of factory halls needed no steam engines. The equipment inside was entirely driven by electrical gear of various sorts. The factory next to where they had stopped seemed to be running some sort of drop forge. Tycoon claimed the one on the other side was for electroplating. Ravna thought all this must be the reason for the long trip—until she got indoors and discovered what this particular factory made:

Radios.

The devices were stacked at the output end of the factory. Tycoon snagged one from a departing pallet, then stood on his shoulders to put it in Ravna’s hands. Ravna turned the boxy contraption around, not immediately recognizing it. Perhaps that was because it seemed to be gold plated, a mirror-perfect job. She turned it over, saw the dark glossiness of an ordinary solar cell, the same as on radios built up north. Okay. Leaving aside the useless gold plating, this was the analog radio design she had created from Oobii’s archives. Scrupilo must have made dozens of the devices over the last few years. Ah. She looked past Tycoon. The bin he was standing in front of could easily contain a thousand radios.