Jaws snapped close, lunging, tipping toward a killing flood. But the crowd coming up behind the first wave wasn’t pushing inward. Here and there, thoughtful clusters tried to form. Just now there was too much anger and chaos for that to work: the almost-packs lasted for bare seconds before they were shouted down, before they shouted each other down.
Johanna leaned back against the cracked cargo box. She hoped the gesture might seem protective of it. In fact, some of the most threatening heads moved back a bit, and the roar of humanly audible sound diminished. She looked around, trying to spot any grouping she might use as an intermediary. No, they were still all mobbed together. Okay. She had talked to the whole mob before: “Please listen to my words,” Johanna said. “We go North. True?”
The mob’s effort to comprehend was so strong she could feel the buzz. Finally a single word of Samnorsk sounded. “Yes,” and then a dribble of other words, like echoes: “To Domain.” “To home.” “To old home.”
Johanna bobbed her head, a singleton form of a nod. “I can help. But I need to know more.”
The mob continued to dither, the buzz of mindsound growing stronger and stronger. This was a situation where a godsgift would really be one. But the mob didn’t make the space. Instead it swayed back and forth, its Tines shuffling about. After some seconds, another bit of Samnorsk floated in the air: “Trusting you.”
So Johanna got a peek into the damaged cargo box, maybe a big insight into Vendacious’ master plan. As the mob watched, all quiet and nervous looking, she split open the wood covering, pulled back the tarry waterproofing goo … and a cascade of yellow play balls bounced onto the deck. The crowd forgot itself as it variously grabbed and bounced the balls, sending most of them right back in Jo’s direction.
Okay! A fix for the incipient shortage of play balls! Behind the yellow balls was a wall of tidy bricks. But they were soft to her touch. She used her prybar to lever the tightly wedged objects free, then pushed the loose mass out into the open. When she recognized the cargo, she stepped quickly out of the way and gave a loud whistle. The crowd continued to play with the balls for a few seconds, but Jo could see a ripple of understanding pass around it. The cargo box was mostly full of heavy jacket-cloaks. In another second, the yellow balls were forgotten as the mob swarmed down on the promise of warmth.
The box didn’t contain enough cloaks for everybody. There was much pushing and shoving all around the crate, but nobody got killed. Very quickly, the notion of breaking into more of Tycoon’s cargo outweighed the taboo against such activity. Johanna led the way with her steel prybar. They found many more cloaks, another box that was mostly play balls, and a very well-sealed store of smoked meat. At this point, the mob was totally preoccupied with the plunder. Johanna decided not to risk spoilage with more exploration. She wrapped herself in a couple of cloaks and retreated to her usual cubbyhole to think about what had been discovered: So the top layers of cargo were just supplies, set by planners who expected this to be a long voyage. Was Tycoon’s deliverable cargo further down? Or maybe she’d stolen the fleet before both its proper crew and main cargo had been put aboard.
All over the raft, Tines were playing with their new clothes, trying them on, making little tents out of them. At the same time, they were passing around the smoked meat. She’d never seen such Tinish enthusiasm for cold, dead flesh; well, it wasn’t fish.
Very loud gangs of Tines had gathered at the edges of the raft, flaunting their warm cloaks at the rest of the fleet. Their shouting was mainly Interpack but she heard her name in it.
Johanna watched the Tines on the other rafts. At first, they responded with bogus counter-brags, but there was also much clueless cocking of heads.
Finally the mob on the nearest raft—the one with the snoopy Tine who had ratted on Johanna—seemed to get the idea. The mob swarmed their top cargo boxes, slashing at them with claws and jaws, pounding them with weighted ropes. This went on for five or ten minutes with no success; the Tycoon boxes were proof against unaided Tines. What the mob needed was Johanna’s prybar—or someone of human or pack intelligence.
The futile assault subsided as the mob backed off and hunkered down. Any second now, its unity of purpose would dribble away.… But no: The mob spread out, creating a kind of belly-down mesh across their raft. They were chanting, rhythmic whoops that swept up through Johanna’s hearing into silence, and then started low again. After several minutes, the chanting ended; the Tines hesitated, silent. Abruptly, they scrambled to their feet and began
Now the sea around the raft was crowded with boxes and pieces of boxes. She could see heads in the water and Tines hanging on to the main wreck. It was much like the raft disasters she remembered in the Domain— except that in this case no one was being smashed into a rocky shore. Tines paddled out from what remained of their raft in some kind of salvage and rescue operation. As the sun slid down to the sea, it looked like most everybody had managed to return to the surviving part of their raft.
That evening, the sounds from the other rafts seemed generally happy. Each had succeeded with its own “shakedown” demolition—though the Choir on the half-wrecked raft sounded more boastful than any. The gobbling and honking only got louder as the wind picked up. Johanna sat in her usual place, but well-fed and wrapped up toasty warm. What wonderful things were Tinish storm jackets—even if they were narrow and short, and the tympana cutouts so terribly drafty.
She watched as the moon rose higher and the festivities became wilder. It was the usual mix of chanting and orgy and mad rushing around. And yet, tonight there was a difference. Every few minutes a singleton or a duo or trio would shyly approach her. Almost every group brought her some gift, an extra cloak, a block of smoked meat. In some ways, this reminded Johanna of the Fragmentarium. There, too, she had wistful, friendly relations with creatures who could not quite understand what was going on—but who were grateful for her help. For all the hard times of this voyage, the rafts were a happier place than the Fragmentarium. Here her friends weren’t haunted by the fear that they would never become people again. Choirs didn’t look at these issues the way broodkenners did!
The celebration peaked around midnight with a serious attempt at synchrony between all the rafts. The screeching pounded a rhythm that beat against similar sounds from across the water. For a brief time, the combination warbled like a single voice, a huge, slow, coherence.
Johanna drowsed. She was vaguely aware that even though the celebration had quieted, individual Tines were still snouting around. They weren’t going to get into any more cargo boxes without her prybar.
Some unknown time later: “What’s this? What’s this? What’s this?” A snout was poking her shoulder.
“Whuh?” Johanna struggled back to wakefulness. It wasn’t morning. Not at all. The moon was only halfway down the sky. By its light she could see the crowd surrounding her. A trio that included Cheepers stood closest.
“What’s this?” Cheepers said again, and another of the trio stepped toward her, giving her a small box that glittered like dark glass in the moonlight.
“What’s this?” Cheepers—the whole crowd, really—continued to ask.
Johanna looked up. “It’s a radio.” At best, its peer-to-peer range would be a few kilometers, but with the orbiter relaying, it could reach across the world—all the way to Vendacious and Nevil.
“Where did you find it?” she said.
The Cheepers trio gestured toward the pile of junk around the masts. Ah, up where she had found the prybar, maybe. This radio must have been intended for the proper crew.
From somewhere in the crowd, someone else said, “Heard it.”
