the raft. They were shouting, or laughing, and throwing again and again.
Timor stood up and shouted, “Hei, you guys! Stop that!” No doubt his words were lost in the wind, but his windmilling arms caught their attention. Gannon gave him a wave, perhaps thinking Timor was warning of discovery. The stone throwers backed away from the edge of the water. Timor slipped on the rock, landing hard in one of the puddles that pocked the surface.
So he’d probably earned Gannon’s good will. That had been awfully important to him, but it seemed kind of ugly now.
The Year Two shipwreck was the first since the Children had come to Tines World. Johanna Olsndot was just sixteen, yet she managed to establish her Bad Girl reputation in the aftermath of the wreck—a remarkable achievement considering that other kids misbehaved for years without getting so labeled.
Pilgrim Wickllrrackscar had heard there was a shipwreck, and the two of them had flown down to help out. Certainly that was not Bad Girl behavior. They bounced to ground well ahead of Woodcarver’s shore patrol. Johanna was out the hatch and running toward the wreckage even before Pilgrim had the agrav locked down. Behind her, the flyer rose briefly back into the air, and fell again. She paid that scant attention. The Tropicals’ raft had already broken on the rocks.
She saw that other rescuers were already here, an unlikely crowd of Children led by Gannon Jorkenrud. And—well, by damn!—they were throwing rocks at the drowning Tines! Johanna skirted the boulders, splashing through the icy water of the Inner Straits, shouting and swearing at Gannon’s gang.
The group had already retreated from their position on the rocks. They were busy disappearing in the direction of the cliff path. All of them were younger than Johanna and none quite as tall. Besides, Johanna was the one with the reputation for temper and she was the only Child who had actually fought in the Battle on Starship Hill.
Johanna took one long look around the blocky talus, searching for any other wrongdoers. There, one more Child, very small. It was Timor Ristling, awkwardly scrambling down from a rock, helped by Belle Ornrikakihm. Now there was a sneaky pack of beasties. Then Timor and Belle were out of sight, too, and the thought flitted from her mind. Pilgrim had come down from the agrav. All five of him was trying to drag her out of the ankle-deep water.
“Hei, what’s the problem?” protested Johanna. “The water’s still enough.” It was bone-chilling cold, but here behind the rocks, the sea was tamed into a gently swirling pond.
Pilgrim led her along the gravel, a meter or so back from the water. “It’s not all that shallow. There are holes and dropoffs. You get confident, walk about, and things can get very bad, very fast.” For a death-defying pilgrim he could be a wuss. But to be honest … just four or five meters from where they were standing, there was already white foam spinning up from the water. Standing at the level of the sea, the surface of the water was almost indistinct, the churn of sea mist transforming the daylight into murk.
The shore patrol had arrived. The five packs were already working with ropes to slide the biggest parts of the raft away from the grinding rocks.
Out on the wreckage, dozens of Tines were perched on piles of junk. These were the first Tropicals Johanna had ever seen. They were every bit as strange as the locals claimed. The foreigners didn’t cluster into packs. They were like a mob of singletons, doing whatever they pleased. Some of them cooperated to pull on the ropes thrown to them; others cowered in terror. She looked across the misty water. Here and there, she saw a head, or a single Tine lying across a bit of broken timber. Dozens of the creatures had been swept overboard.
Johanna reached out to the nearest of Pilgrim. It was Scarbutt, still the largest of the pack. “Look there! Those ones in the water are going to drown! We should go after them first.”
Pilgrim gave a general nod of agreement. “Not sure that can be helped.”
“Hei, it sure as hell can be helped!” Johanna pointed at the coils of rescue rope that the shore patrol packs had brought. “Grab those ropes! Get the shore patrol to do the important stuff first!”
Pilgrim was normally a very forward fellow. Now he hung back for a second, then ran along behind the shore patrol packs, gobbling loudly. Even after three years of listening to Interpack, Johanna found the language mostly unintelligible. The words got stacked up in chords, some them too high pitched to hear. By the time you got the sounds separated out, you were trying to make sense of the next chord. Just now, Pilgrim was shouting some kind of demand. The sounds of “Woodcarver” popped up several times. Okay, so he was invoking higher authority.
Two of the shore patrol packs left their posts and helped Pilgrim drag unused loops of rope away from the rocks. More packs were running toward them from Cliffside harbor. These didn’t look like shore patrol. Most of them avoided Johanna and Pilgrim. Like the rest, they seemed mostly interested in the raft. Well, there were more lives at stake there, but the ones who needed immediate help were out
Meantime, the rest of the packs had dragged in what remained of the raft. The Tropicals on board came streaming off as the shore patrol and local citizens climbed on the junk heaps and began rooting around. Johanna belatedly realized that the main purpose of the “rescue” was to get at the wreck’s cargo.
There were no more survivors visible in the straits. Except for Pilgrim, the packs who had been helping with the rescue tosses had joined the other salvage maniacs. Along the flat stretch of beach, the surviving Tropicals were clumped together in shivering groups. The smallest of those was at least twenty Tines. These weren’t packs; they were just singletons hunkered together for warmth.
Johanna walked to the edge of the crowd, listening for Interpack speech. There was nothing that she recognized. After all, there were no real packs here. She could feel an occasional buzzing sensation, though; these creatures were not silent in the range that the packs called mindsound—about forty to two hundred fifty kilohertz.
Pilgrim was pacing her progress, but staying fifteen meters or more away from the nearest of the Tropicals. “You’re not too popular right now,” he said.
“Me?” replied Johanna, keeping her eyes on the strange mob. Scarcely any of them had clothing, but their pelts were just as mangy as the stories had claimed. Some of the creatures were almost hairless except down near their paws. “We saved these fellows.”
“Oh, they aren’t the ones you’re unpopular with,” said Pilgrim. Johanna drifted a little nearer the mob. Now there were dozens of heads following her, jaws snapping nervously. Pilgrim continued, “Hei, I didn’t say the Tropicals like you either! I’ll wager that none of them realize you helped save them.”
Necks lunged in her direction, and one or two of the critters tumbled down from atop the others. For a moment, she thought this was an attack, but when the Tines reached the ground, they just looked startled. Johanna backed away a step or two. “Yes, I see what you mean. These are like battle fragments. They’re scared and mindless.” And they could go into attack mode if something spooked them.
“That’s about right,” said Pilgrim. “But keep in mind that these fellows are not the remains of packs. Most likely they have never been part of a coherent pack. Their mindsound is just a pointless choir.”
Johanna continued along the edge of the mob. There was a certain distance the crowd seemed comfortable with. If she got inside that, they would begin to come at her. Pilgrim was right. These weren’t like war casualties. Battle fragments she had known longed to be part of coherent packs. They would react with friendliness toward Pilgrim, trying to entice him close. If they had known humans before they were damaged, they would be quite friendly to her. “So what’s going to happen to them?” she said.
“Ah well, that’s why you’re a bit unpopular with the shore patrol. You know we get a shipwreck like this every few years. The cargo is mostly junk, not the sort of things you’d find if serious trade were intended.”
Johanna looked across the misty beach. There really weren’t enough shore patrol packs to contain the rescuees. The Tropicals wobbled around weakly and most seemed intimidated by the coherent packs, but there was a steady trickle of mangy seafarers who took advantage of the gaps in the shore patrol cordon and ran off along the
