The Children of the Sky

stepped back at his approach. Fortunately, the corpse’s head was turned away from view; it looked like the tree branch had burst through the face. The body was shrouded in a long cloak. As Jefri knelt beside it, Ritl slid forward, peering suspiciously at the body. Jefri waved the singleton away. He reached for the cloak—

Ritl emitted a piercing squawk and darted past him. She tore at the corpse’s throat, screaming in rage.

Jefri didn’t seem to notice. He had fallen to his knees and was staring in blank shock. Magda and Elspa rushed forward to grab Ritl, but the singleton rolled off the corpse and scuttled into the underbrush on the high side of the path. She was making a weird hooting noise. After a moment, Ravna recognized the sound. It was a small part of laughter.

Jefri didn’t look up, but when he spoke, his voice was full of wonder. “This isn’t any part of Amdi.”

And finally, Ravna took a close look at the torn, dead thing. One paw extended beyond the cloak. The claws were painted; what might have been a fetter was made of silver. All else aside, the creature’s grayed muzzle made it older than any of Amdi.

Woodcarver was mingled with the humans around the corpse. She pulled the cloak entirely aside and stared for a long moment at the corpse. Then she stepped away.

“Is this anyone you know?” asked Ravna, but Woodcarver didn’t answer and now the other packs were crowding as close as they could get.

“No one I’ve ever seen,” one said in Samnorsk.

“It could be a recent addition to someone we know.”

“Unlikely. It’s too old.”

Ovin Verring put in: “We’ll have to get to the other deaders before the birds strip them down.” Now that this was simply a whopping mystery, such things were easier to say.

In her hidey-hole at the side of the path, Ritl was still chortling. Now she started gobbling loudly, more like the usual Ritl.

This time, no one ignored her. Heads came sharply around, then turned to stare at one another in consternation. After a moment, even Ravna understood the simple chords:

“Vendacious dead. Vendacious dead. Vendacious dead!”

Chapter 42

There was no word in Samnorsk for the quality of the next twenty-four hours. Woodcarver said there were chords for it in Tinish: a yodel that denoted wrenching change, a time filled with events that might lead to total catastrophe, or survivable disaster, or maybe grand victory. For Ravna it was a nonstop run of problems and decisions, punctuated by short catnaps, food, and Lisl Armin’s help with Oobii’s sickbay equipment. “You’re dehydrated, starved, with half-healed lacerations all over. Food and rest and the sickbay can easily make those things right. Oobii sees evidence of a concussion. That shouldn’t be a problem as long as you don’t get too stressed out, but I’m afraid sickbay isn’t up to truly curing the problem.” Lisl brightened: “On the other hand, I bet I can fix your broken nose and facial bones! I’ll just need a few hours of your time, and then you’ll have to be careful of yourself—”

Ravna shut her off there. There just wasn’t time for cosmetic frills—

The ship woke her from a nap in the mid-afternoon of the next day. She actually felt pretty good! But the first full meeting with the remaining Children was downstairs in just fifteen minutes. As she left the command deck, she was reviewing her personal log and Oobii’s latest news. The starship had tracked Tycoon’s airships to a landing at some outpost east of the Icefangs. For resupply? In any case, the ships rose again and headed south. Closer to home, Scrupilo had taken his little airboat—the Domain’s only surviving aircraft—to overfly Nevil’s caravan.

One of the first things Ravna had done was to sweep Oobii for lossage and vandalism. She had quietly removed the amplifier stage from Pham’s beam gun; the thought of some software glitch slagging Newcastle town was just too scary. On the other hand, she hadn’t wasted time on Nevil’s interior decoration, so when she showed up in the “New Meeting Place,” she found that a lot had changed. Gone was the friendly atmosphere that Nevil had set up when he was peddling democracy. There were none of the game environments, and only one or two computational access points. Nevil had mercilessly stripped the ship to set up the surveillance system that she had noticed the day before. The walls had a new theme, a starscape. The view was in the galactic plane, but very far out, at the edge of the abyss, perhaps in the Low Transcend. The view from the Straumers’ High Lab.

There was a podium set against the intergalactic dark, with a seat for Nevil that was almost as impressive as the throne he had once built for Ravna. Ravna walked tentatively to the podium, but she did not sit down. She saw smiles and greetings, but no joy.

Today, the room held twenty packs and only about seventy Children. It was strange the way the kids would stare at her—and then look away. Repulsed? She knew what a ruin her face was; surely they would get used to it. The packs didn’t seem so affected. She noticed Flenser and Woodcarver in the audience. Ah! And there was Jefri, too, sitting impassively a little apart from everyone else.

Ravna said, “We all need to be talking more than ever now. Given the state of the interfaces”—she waved around the room—”that may be a problem. I wanted to make sure you know what I’ve been doing, what Oobii is seeing. I—I also want to hear what you’ve been up to, what’s worrying you most.”

She noticed that Wenda Larsndot, Sr., was already standing, her hand raised. Giske Gisksndot bounced to her feet. “I want to talk about Nevil! We lost half the human race yesterday.”

“They wanted to go. Good riddance.” That was from someone hidden from Ravna’s view, but the remark was not intended to be anonymous. Around the room, many of the Children were nodding agreement.

“Yes!” shouted Elspa Latterby. “Instead, we need to go after that Tycoon fellow. He stole my little sister!” And Edvi and Timor and Amdi and Jo and Pilgrim and Screwfloss and.… Agreement and argument swirled all around. Suddenly Ravna felt as incompetent as ever with the Children.

She raised her hand, a tentative request for order, and—

Everyone fell silent.

How did I do that? For a moment Ravna was speechless herself. “Look, everybody, I have various pieces of information about some of these problems. But please, let’s take things a step at a time. Wenda, you seemed to be first?”

“Yes, uh, thanks. This is a little off-topic, but I think it’s important. I talked to Johanna yesterday, before she went up to Starship Hill.” Once more, the silence was total. “She told me some things she said we need to know and some other things we are honor-bound to do. First off, there were no ‘Tropical terrorists’ on those rafts. There was no bomb; the killing was done with the beam gun on Oobii.”

“We’ve guessed that,” said Ovin, his voice flat and deadly.

Wilm Linden waved at Ravna. “But you could prove it, right? Oobii must have logs.”

“Yes.” Short of an underlying software failure, she could uncover any attempt Nevil had made to hide his actions. “I’ll get the logs, but I’m afraid Nevil will just say they’re faked.”

Wenda made a dismissive gesture. “Jo’s main point was that we owe these Tropicals. They may not have minds like packs or humans, but she says it was their decision to rescue her and their sacrifice that saved her life. She asked—ah, actually the word she used was ‘demand’—that we treat them well and help them return home if that’s what they seem to want.”

Woodcarver raised several heads, all looking in Ravna’s direction. “If I may?” she said.

“Yes. Please.”

“I’ve already moved most of this mob up to the old embassy. Ten raft crews is more than in any past shipwreck. It’ll be very expensive to adequately enlarge the place.… but I’m willing to do so. That’s partly because they’re innocent parties”—a nod in Wenda’s direction—“and partly because if we mistreat Tycoon’s creatures, we increase the risk to my Pilgrim and all the other poor souls Tycoon is holding.”