The Children of the Sky

One of Belle’s heads poked up from the edge of the rock. “How about a little help here?”

“Sorry.” He lay flat on the rock and reached down to the first one’s forelegs. That was her one male, Ihm. By the time Timor had him pulled up, Belle was able to help him with the rest of herself. She clambered to the middle of the rock and sat on her feet, complaining all the while about her frozen paws. He turned awkwardly around and finally got a glimpse of the wreck. The raft was mostly still in the straits, but sliding meter by meter toward the rocks.

Three of Belle hunkered down, listening. The others sat tall on either side of Timor. He guessed those two were watching the wreck. In most ways, Tinish vision was worse than humans’, but if they chose to spread out, they had much better depth perception.

Belle said, “Can you hear the timbers breaking on the rocks?” And of course Tinish hearing was lightyears better than the naked human ear.

“Maybe.” Timor looked at the front of the raft. Okay, rocks would break wood, right? Especially if the rocks didn’t have avoidance systems. And nothing had avoidance on this world. He saw how the timbers had split down the middle. The two halves of the vehicle were sloping separately. Surely that could not be part of its design.

He squinted, trying to make out the details. The raft was piled high with barrels. And now he saw that there were lots of Tines, though they wore brownish rags and were mostly hunkered down between the barrels. Occasionally four or five of them stood together and tried to do something with the rigging. Yes, they were trying desperately to keep their craft off the rocks.

“They’re in trouble,” he said.

Belle made a hooting sound, a Tinish laugh. “Of course they’re in trouble. Can’t you hear the ones in the water, screaming?”

Now that she mentioned it, he could see heads here and there in the water. “This is terrible. Shouldn’t someone be trying to help?” Timor was quite sure that Gannon and the other kids weren’t capable of providing much help.

He felt Belle shrug. “If they hadn’t been swept so far north, or if they had come at high tide, there’d be no problem.”

“But shouldn’t we help those packs in the water?”

One of Belle’s heads looked in his direction. “What packs? These are Tropicals. The individual members are probably as smart as any northern singleton, but they just don’t make packs except by accident. Look at that raft! Junk made by mindless Tines. Sometimes the idiots get swept away from their jungles and the ocean brings them up here. I say the more of them that die along the way, the better.” She grumbled on the way she often did, gossiping and complaining at the same time: “Our own war veterans are bad enough, broken up bits of people. But at least we keep them decently out of sight. These rabble coming in now have no call on us. They’ll be idling around town, soiling the alleys, dumbhead singletons and trios. Mangy, smelly, mindless thieves and beggars…”

The rest made even less sense. Belle was one of those packs who spoke almost perfect Samnorsk, but sometimes part of her would rattle on even after her main attention was elsewhere. Timor noticed that the pack was intensely focused on the wreck, her long necks twitching back and forth. She had been even more eager than Timor when Gannon Jorkenrud had invited them to come along. He followed the center of her gaze. There were barrels bobbing in the foaming surf.

“So if the Tropicals are such problem, why are you interested in the wreck?”

“That’s the thing, boy. These shipwrecks have been going on since time out of mind; I remember legends of them. Every few years, a crowd of Tropical singletons gets washed ashore. They’re always a problem, the ones who live. But the rafts usually have valuable junk on board, stuff we normally don’t see, since the Tropics are so filled with disease and choirs that no pack can survive there.”

She paused. “Hei, some of the barrels are on the rocks. I can hear them breaking up.” Two of her scrambled to the edge of the rock. Her oldest hung back, watching to keep them all oriented. “Okay, Timor, you stay here. I’m going down to have a look.” Her two youngest were already sliding and scrambling down, risking cuts and sprains in their eagerness.

“But wait!” shouted Timor. “We’re supposed to stand watch.”

“I can do that close up,” she said. “You stay up here.” Her two youngest were out of sight now, hidden by the edge of the boulder. Two others were helping old Ihm to negotiate the slippery rocks. She emitted a Tinish chord that Timor recognized as evasive mumbling. “You be the overall lookout, okay? Remember, Gannon is depending on you.”

“But—”

All of Belle was out of sight now. Of course, she could still hear him, but she could be pretty good at ignoring him too.

Timor settled back on the middle of his rock. This was a good lookout position, though with Belle gone, it would be just his voice to shout directions. As best he could see in the sea haze, there were no rescue boats coming across the straits from Hidden Island. Cliffside harbor to the south was much closer, but the marina was a forest of unmoving spars and masts. It really was up to Gannon and the other kids to help the shipwrecked Tines.

He looked back to where the sea met the rocks. Here and there, he could see Belle’s members. She had worked her way through several narrow passages and was almost into the foam. She moved carefully, trying to keep her paws out of the icy water; nevertheless she was within a few meters of Tropicals who had fallen overboard. Could she help them? Tines were wonderfully good swimmers; Ravna said that the Tines had evolved from sea mammals. But watching Belle, Timor guessed that the arctic waters were too cold for them.

Nevertheless, Belle had two of herself partway into the surf. The others were tugging at the cloaks of the furthest out, keeping them from being swept away. Maybe she could rescue a member or two. Then he noticed that she was desperately reaching for a wooden barrel that was jammed between half-submerged rocks. Some kind of green fabric peeked out of breaks in the container.

“Oh, Belle,” Timor said to himself. He moved to the south side of his rock, trying to get a better view. There! Gannon and the others had finally reached the water. He could see most of them now. There were also a couple of packs with them, but Gannon’s pals didn’t have much to do with Tines. These packs looked pretty uncomfortable, huddling close among themselves and complaining loudly enough that Timor could hear them from fifty meters way. The Children didn’t look comfortable either. Their pants were soaked; Ovin and the others were visibly shivering. Gannon had climbed onto a little terrace, was waving to the others to follow him.

A big part of the raft was barely ten meters from the kids. It bobbed out and in, sometimes getting so close to the terrace that Timor feared it would ram the Children. This piece of raft had remnants of sails flying from broken-looking masts. Timor hadn’t taken any sailing classes; those were only for the older kids, the ones who wanted to be explorers and diplomats. But these masts and sails weren’t the tidy, regular things he saw in the Hidden Island harbor or at Cliffside. Unless these parts were regenerating—and the Tines had no such technology— this raft system was totally out of control. It probably had been ever since it ran into some storm.

Belle continued to ignore everything except her barrel of treasure, but Gannon and the other kids were shouting to the mob on the raft. The two packs on the shore were shouting too. Timor couldn’t understand any of it, but the noise from the Tropicals was loud. It didn’t sound much like Interpack. Maybe it was some other Tinish language, or just frightened screeching.

Timor couldn’t imagine what the kids could do to help. He looked again in the direction of Cliffside harbor. Hei! Something was moving along the curve of rocky beach. It looked like four or five packs hauling carts. And way high above them—the antigravity skiff! It didn’t matter that it wasn’t a human design and that it constantly teetered like a falling leaf. It was a little bit of home.

The agrav descended along the cliffs, cautiously tipping around the updrafts. It was coming down well ahead of the approaching packs, but still short of Timor’s position. For a moment, Timor wondered why Pilgrim—the only possible pilot—hadn’t brought it closer. Then the skiff tipped over, scraping the rocks with its canopy. It flipped again and landed with a crash. It crashed a lot lately. Fortunately the hull was stronger than wood and harder than rock. The top hatch popped open and after a second a human head appeared. No surprise, it was Johanna Olsndot; she was almost always the passenger.

Timor turned back to give a shout to Gannon and the others. Help had arrived!

Gannon Jorkenrud was teetering near the edge of his rocky terrace. The big piece of raft had grounded just out of reach. Ovin Verring and some of the kids were hanging back, but Gannon and others were throwing things at