Somehow Vendacious managed to keep some eyes and ears tracking the fleeing human. The mindsounds wouldn’t stop the mantis, but now she was battered by dozens of Tines, the brute force of the Choir. She was knocked to her knees, and now some of the members had wakened to her otherness and the biting began. Joy spread through every one of Vendacious’ own members. Oh, how long he had waited for this. And he knew just what to expect, thanks to his special diligence. He’d always wondered what the Choir would make of humans, since mental destruction would be impossible. So when one of the first humans he had kidnapped ceased to be useful, he’d arranged that it would “escape” from the Reservation. Just as now, there had been an initial hesitation. And then just as it did with non-Tinish animals of all sizes, the Choir had torn the creature apart, playing with the parts much as they seemed to play with the parts of dismembered packs. But unlike member sacrifices, the Choir valued animal intruders only for their food value. The hapless two-legs had served the eaters well—and served Vendacious far better than it had as a prisoner.
Now he watched as the same pattern played out. Johanna was back on her feet. The noise was so great he couldn’t hear her breath, the whimpering, but the arc light showed blood streaming down one side of her face. She staggered away from the fence, swinging her gear at the mob and shouting, as if she thought the flow would go around her. She got another ten feet, almost to the burrows that edged this side of the Reservation. He knew from observation that there would be no salvation there. Jaws waited. She fell again, and this time didn’t get up. The mob piled upon her, a wave on a lump of flesh. He saw bits and pieces bobbing to the surface, mostly the equipment she’d been carrying.
It took fifteen minutes before the density passed into full rarefaction, an unusually long time. The feeding clump boiled in the arc light, eventually rolling what was left into the burrows. As the mob swept out of the area, there was only the rain and humidity to keep him from hearing the outcome. And even the rain had diminished. He could hear no one moving around in the wreckage. Listening very carefully … no, there was not even the sound of human breathing, just the moaning respiration of a thousand mindless Tines.
“So what happened?” That was Nevil’s voice, from Vendacious’ commset. There was ill-concealed uneasiness in his voice.
Vendacious didn’t answer immediately. He stared out at the piles of soaked, stinking garbage. Somewhere under all that, just fifty feet beyond the fence, lay the corpse of the creature that had ruined his past life and threatened his future. Fifty feet. So near, and yet he could not safely cross that distance to crunch the marrow with his own jaws. He looked slyly at his loyal troops. It would take the threat of painful death to force them across. After watching the Choir, no normal pack could believe the stories about the Choir’s endless joy. The chances of coming back from a fifty-foot sortie—even during a rarefaction—were close to zero. Besides, Vendacious operated this close to the House of Tycoon only when there was the deadliest necessity.
Vendacious thought a moment and realized there was something more he could do. He spoke into his commset, replying to his own pet human: “Where is Johanna’s commset?”
“It’s been stuck about twenty meters from you ever since she started screaming. There’s no motion now. I —I could try to flush her out for you.”
“Yes.”
There was silence from Vendacious’ commset, and then Nevil’s voice came from across the open area. Nevil seemed to be whispering, but the volume was easily loud enough to hear. “
Chapter 19
The second time she went down, Johanna knew she would not be getting up. The first bites had been tasting nibbles. She’d seen that behavior in the members of coherent packs—just before they went into a feeding frenzy with unusual meat. Now her face and arms were slick with blood. Swinging her equipment as a flail only seemed to excite the mob. They butted her behind her knees in a coordinated way that sent her down again. She covered her face with her arms and rolled onto her front, leaving her knapsack covering part of her body. Paws and jaws rolled her over, again and again. They were tearing at her clothes, pulling her gear out of the knapsack.
And yet, the feeding frenzy never came, though the crowd was a crushing mass upon her. It was almost as if they were battling each other just to get a snout down and take a nibble. She tried to keep an airgap between her face and forearm as she wriggled in the direction she guessed would take her out of sight of Vendacious and company. The crushing weight seemed to ease; the nips and jabs were distant pain, like memories.
Huh? She was lying flat on her back, dizzy even so. Everything was dark. She wiggled her hands and felt about her. There was the commset and what was left of her knapsack. The ground was like slick mucous. Nowhere did she touch Tinish fur or skin. Somehow, suddenly, she seemed to be alone. Or maybe she had died.
“
She reached for the commset—then froze and tried to be very very quiet. There are betrayals and Betrayals. Until this moment, her worst suspicion was that Nevil had been used by Vendacious. Until this moment, she had not believed that Nevil was capable of Betrayal. She stared into the dark, in the direction of the commset.
Nevil’s voice came back on Vendacious’ commset. “No reply,” said the two-legs. “What about Pilgrim?”
“Both Pilgrim and the maggot are very dead,” Vendacious replied. In fact, there might still be one or two members of Pilgrim alive, but past experience showed that such did not come back.
Nevil was silent for a moment, and then he sighed. “Well, that simplifies things, at least.”
Vendacious smiled to himself. Though they had rarely met, Vendacious had studied Nevil Storherte thoroughly. Storherte was a young predator. Until recently he had never killed
Aloud, Vendacious said. “Indeed, it does simplify things.”
“Yeah. I’m going to enjoy giving you Ravna Bergsndot.”
Johanna lay still for some minutes, but Nevil had nothing more to say.
All things considered, playing dead was easy. The mob had departed, but their warbling chant was still out there. Maybe that was enough to keep Vendacious’ crew from searching for her corpse. The rain continued its windless heavy fall. Water dripped through the pile above her; what trickled down to her felt oily.
After a time, the Choir noise grew loud again. She could hear ten thousand paws scuffing in her direction. She could hear individual voices that made no sense, but just added to the grand susurrus. Now there were members snuffling all around, so close that their mindsounds, even though far kilohertz above human hearing, still made a buzzing through her body. They crowded over her, much as before, snouts pushing, but this time there were no painful bites, just gentle mouthing with soft forelips. The smells and sounds were overpowering, but after a moment, the swarm was flowing past her and almost no one was touching her.
Okay, so she was not to be eaten. And the mob’s noise would be ideal cover, if only they would let her move. Johanna thought a moment, made sure she was taking nothing with her that might betray her to Nevil.
The mob was a tide of plush and flesh—but the Tines who rammed into her weren’t biting. In fact, they seemed to be struggling to get out of her way. It was the pressure of the myriad bodies behind them that made that impossible. Then suddenly, as if some traffic information had been transmitted upstream, the pressure eased
