The Children of the Sky

its pack gloated at the prospect of torturing her to death.

Pilgrim must have noticed the recognition startle through her. His secret voice said. “That looks like Vendacious, doesn’t it?”

Johanna nodded. She had absolutely no doubt. So it really was Vendacious, pulling the strings. Whose strings exactly?

Pilgrim gave her a tap on the shoulder. “They’re dazzled. Let’s sneak across.” He pointed at the gap in the timbers ahead.

It might not have worked with human pursuers, but the light was turned away from Jo and Pilgrim, and the Tines probably were bedazzled. Vendacious seemed to be complaining about something, maybe that very abuse of the arc light.

Jo slithered across the flagstones. Pilgrim was all around her. He was probably generating sound-damping noise; Pilgrim was more clever than most packs at such synthesis. In a matter of seconds they were out of eyeshot of the searchers. “Quiet and slow,” said Pilgrim. Quietly, slowly, they crawled forward. Llr had no trouble keeping up. The buildings around them were still of the northern style, but the wood was rotted and buckled. In the pale violet light of her handlamp, she could see that some timbers were almost consumed by mossy fungus. Now the water carried a miasma of smells: food, sewage, rot, the body odor of myriad Tines. Was it her imagination or was that chanting ahead?

Pilgrim seemed to sense her unease.

“You can hear something, too,” he said. “They’re making noise all the way down.”

“How can you stand it?”

“The rain and mist is damping mindsound to almost nothing, but we’re moving toward something … enormous.” Johanna had seen Pilgrim react to a starship coming down from the sky. Even that he had taken on with enthusiastic curiosity, but tonight there might be fear in his words. Then he urged her forward and seemed to recover some of his usual spirit: “I can get a lot closer. Closer, I bet, than Vendacious and company can come.”

In fact, their pursuers seemed to have lost them. Johanna saw an occasional flash from the arc light but that was way to her left. She also heard quiet conversations, but those seemed to be on the right. The searchers were moving forward, but not straight toward her and Pilgrim. Were they scared of triggering a response from the Choir? Maybe the biggest mystery was how Vendacious and his pals could survive in this environment at all. What kept the Choir from sweeping across this area and destroying all coherent packs?

Jo swept her violet light across the rubble ahead. This wasn’t the decay of Northern-style buildings. The soaking mess looked like garbage, organized here and there into structures that might have been nests. She had seen a weasel nest once, briefly, when its inhabitants were trying to kill her. “Weasels” were about the size and appearance of gerbils. She quailed at the thought of what such monsters would be like if they were as big as Tines.

She angled her light upwards. The violet drowned in the falling rain, showing nothing but misty backglow beyond a few meters. Right at the limit of her vision, there was something—it looked almost like a long, low spider web.

It was a fence! The “spider threads” were cords hung between wooden posts. Vertical strands dropped from the top cord to tie to each of the cords below. How could this stop anything? Were the cords poisoned? As they got closer, Johanna could see how frayed and ripped the network was, especially near the ground, where it was clear that critters at least the size of small Tines had broken through.

Pilgrim tugged at her sleeves, drawing her down to the ground. A moment later, the arc light swept along the fence.

“Sorry,” she said softly. Then, “Are you okay?”

“Yeah. Let’s see if Vendacious and company dare follow us beyond that fence.”

The ground immediately beyond the fence was flat and open. Even if Vendacious wouldn’t chase them, he could still see—and shoot—them. At the limit of her vision she saw piles of … something, maybe the true form of Tropical buildings. The thrum of Choir voices murmured loudly and yet she saw no Tines.

She and Pilgrim reached the fence. The cords were just woven plant fiber. Tearing a hole would be easy. They crawled along the fence line.…

Their pursuers had spread out. They must know that Pilgrim and Jo were at the fence, even if they didn’t know precisely where.

“They’re going to find us,” she whispered.

“Yeah, yeah,” was all Pilgrim said. He was still searching for the perfect breakthrough point. At least here, the open area beyond the fence was not as wide as before. They skulked another three meters. Abruptly, Pilgrim jabbed a snout upwards, pointing. A sign medallion hung from the top fence rope. The patterned ceramic disks were a style of announcement that dated from long before the humans landed. Day or night, a pack would hear the echoes from it. By the pale light of her handlamp, Johanna could see the design that was painted on the surface: the death symbol, a pentagram of skulls. Someone thought it was a really bad idea to go beyond this fence.

•  •  •

“And I don’t want any shooting.” Vendacious glared around at his trigger-happy minions. “We’re not in my territory anymore.”

The crowd of packs straightened and looked properly obedient. They might be trigger happy, but they weren’t crazy enough to cross him. Normally, these fellows patrolled the west side of the Reservation, making sure that no one crossed the boundary. Of course, no pack would voluntarily walk off the Reservation, but there was a constant dribble of Tropicals coming in. The creatures were dumb singletons. That was the thing about the Choir: it wasn’t a proper tyranny. Its behavior was describable only in the mean. There was always a tiny fraction of outliers who were confused enough or ornery enough do almost anything. Guards like these working for him tonight were supposed to pick up such and take them to the convocation bourse. That was a pain. It was much easier just to shoot disobedient intruders. On the far side of the Reservation, that was easy to do. It was good sport, Vendacious thought. On this side, such shooting would be heard by Tycoon people who would loyally report the behavior, raising all sort of problems for Vendacious. Tonight of all nights, thought Vendacious, I don’t want Tycoon’s guns out here, nosing around.

Having made his point, Vendacious eased off on the homicidal glare. He wanted his people to be at the top of their form this evening. “The two I want are somewhere between us and the fence. Don’t worry about exactly where. Push forward along a broad front. Eventually we’ll flush them out.” Two of the gunpacks broke into uneasy smiles. They had been on similar outings before. Killing dumb singletons was one thing. Forcing a thinking pack into Choir territory was a different matter entirely. “Go quietly. Listen for my signals.” They would have to stay quiet till the next density of the Choir swept through. When that happened, they could probably make as much noise as they wanted.

Vendacious watched as the packs spread out in a ragged skirmish line and started toward the fence. The lamp manager stayed somewhat back, sweeping its light toward likely shapes and sounds.

Vendacious followed his people forward, unlimbering his own small rifle as he did so. At the same time, he reached into one of his pockets and unmuted the commset hidden there, but at such a low volume that even he could scarcely hear it.

He complained into his pocket: “They didn’t come down where you said.” And they survived the crash.

There was the half-second delay and then Nevil’s voice came back. As usual, the human was full of cocky rejoinders: “You’re just lucky I noticed them sneaking down your way. You’re even more lucky I’d prepped their aircraft. I crashed them right where you said.”

Vendacious didn’t reply immediately. He found that silence often provoked Nevil Storherte into informative elaboration. And after a moment Nevil came up with something interesting: “You know the, um, targets took a commset with them when they escaped from the skiff.”

What! Can they hear us talking then? Vendacious stifled the question. He had come to know that the starfolks’ “commsets” were nothing like radio cloaks. Unless Nevil reprogrammed the devices, each would have a separate “channel” through his orbital relay. So aloud, he just said, “That’s interesting. I assume you’re blocking their calls.”

“Of course, though at the moment they’re just carrying the device. The interesting