The Children of the Sky

herself. “You see that?” she said to Pilgrim.

“Of course I see.” Pilgrim had three snouts pressed close to one clear spot or another. He had no trouble seeing in multiple directions. “What’s to see?”

“The Children. They were throwing stones at drowning Tines.” She checked off the names in her mind, vowing to remember. “Ovin Verring. I never dreamed he would do something like that.” Ovin had been exactly her age. They’d been evenly matched at school, and friends in a non-romantic way.

The skiff performed a tooth-rattling dip and bounce. Johanna had learned to keep her tongue from between her teeth when she rode this gadget. Nowadays she barely noticed the acrobatics, except when they were close to hard objects.

Pilgrim recovered control; he didn’t seem to notice the bouncing either. “To be honest, Jo, I don’t think Verring was throwing stones. He was hanging back.”

“So? He should have stopped the others…” They passed over another Child, this one smaller, falling behind the others. A fivesome was walking with the boy. It was one of only three packs that seemed mixed up with these delinquents. “See? Even little Timor Ristling was down there messing around. He was acting as lookout for the others!” Timor was a cripple now. He had been healthy enough at the High Lab, but even then she had pitied him. He’d been about her brother’s age, but he came from a family of low-level integrators, far beneath the brilliant scientists and archeologists who were reanimating the old archive. The closest analogy on Tines World would be to say Timor’s folks were janitors, sweeping up the glittering trash that more gifted folks left behind. The boy had never done well in his school classes; he just didn’t have a mind for technological thinking. You’d think all that bad fortune would make him more kindly disposed to those poor souls on the shipwreck. Hmm. “I’ll bet it’s that pack he’s hanging out with.” The pale fivesome was clustered around him. Belle Ornrikakihm was a grifting wannabe politician out of Woodcarver’s pre-human empire. It was a shame she’d gotten her claws into Timor. The boy deserved a better Best Friend, but he was old enough to refuse mentoring.

Their agrav skiff had pulled ahead of the cluster of humans. She could see back now, almost into the faces of the kids at the front. Yeah, there was Gannon Jorkenrud, waving and joking to his pals. Jerkwad. Back at the High Lab, Gannon had been one year older than Johanna. He’d skipped grades, had been at the point of graduating from their little school. Gannon was a flaming genius, even more talented than Jo’s little brother. At age fourteen, Gannon was as much a master of anguille borkning as any of the research staff. Everybody agreed that someday he would be the best borkner in all Straumli Realm. Down Here, Jerkwad’s talent was good for nothing.

The agrav wobbled higher, flying a little faster. Below them were more shore patrol packs and ordinary citizens, walking north from Cliffside village, probably headed for the shipwreck. There were even a few humans. One of them was running.

“Hei, that’s Nevil down there,” Johanna said.

“He was throwing rocks?” Pilgrim sounded surprised.

“No, no, he’s coming from Cliffside.” Nevil Storherte was the oldest of the Children. Certainly he was the most sensible. At the High Lab, Johanna had had such a crush on him, but necessarily from a distance. He probably didn’t even know she existed back then. She’d been barely a teenager and he’d been almost ready to graduate. A year or two more and he might have been one of the Straumer researchers. His parents had been the Lab’s chief administrators, and Nevil—even when so young—had had a natural aptitude for diplomacy.

Somehow he had learned that Gannon and the others were coming down here. He hadn’t been in time to stop them, but she could see that he wasn’t running to be first to the shipwreck. He had turned inland, heading for the cluster of Children. As he approached he slowed to a walk, waving to Gannon and the others, no doubt giving them a proper chewing out. She leaned down further, trying for a clear view. The sea mists had been driven inland and the kids were almost out of sight, but she could see that Nevil had stopped all the miscreants and was even waiting for Timor and Belle to catch up. He looked up and waved to her. Thanks, Nevil. She wouldn’t have to feel bad that she hadn’t hung around herself.

Johanna leaned back and looked out the south-facing side of the flier. Though they were half hidden by sea mists, she could see Cliffside village and its little harbor, right down at the mouth of the Margrum River. The agrav climbed into a cloudless day of late summer, and she could see forever. The “U” of the glacier-carved Margrum Valley stretched inland, green lowlands rising to stony bluffs and the patches of high snow that lasted all the way through the summer. Historically, the Margrum had separated Flenser’s domain from Woodcarver’s. The Battle on Starship Hill had changed all that.

Woodcarver’s Fragmentarium was ahead, just above the mists. The Fragmentarium had started out as a temporary war hospital, Woodcarver’s effort to honor the packs who’d suffered in support of her. The place had grown into something much more. Pilgrim claimed there had never been such a thing in this part of the world before. Certainly, there were plenty of packs who still did not understand its purpose.

The buildings sat on a small tableland in the side of the valley. Fences followed along the edge of the flat space, taller than any Tinish farmer would ever build. The buildings within were crammed together, leaving as much open space as possible for exercise and play. Woodcarver joked that it was actually to give enough space for Pilgrim to make a safe landing. Considering how often Johanna and Pilgrim came here, that was a good thing.

As they came fluttering downwards, she noticed that among the Tines drifting around the exercise yard there were some who looked suspiciously mangy. How had they gotten past the fence? She realized that she might not be the first person bringing word of the shipwreck. She began revising her sales pitch accordingly.

Three years after the Battle on Starship Hill

Chapter 03

Usually, Johanna was mobbed by whatever singletons were out in the exercise area. Today a few of the more articulate called out to her, but most of the patients seemed more interested in the Tropical visitors. None of the place’s keepers—the broodkenners—were in evidence.

Johanna and Pilgrim left the exercise field and walked past buildings that Ravna Bergsndot called the “old folks’ home.” Pack members rarely lived longer than forty years. These buildings housed Tines that were too aged to live and work with their packs. The rest of theirselves would visit, in some cases stay for days at a time, especially if the old ones had been some special intellectual or emotional part of the pack. For Johanna, it was the saddest part of the Fragmentarium, since without decent technology none of these fragments would get any better. The rest of theirselves would visit more and more rarely, eventually incorporating younger members, and not coming at all.

Here and there a head raised to watch her. Some of the visiting packs—the ones who valued their old selves enough to be united—honked greetings and even whole sentences of Samnorsk. There were grateful folk here, but all in all it was too much like the dark ages of human prehistory, like what we Children ourselves must face Down Here.

The broodkenners’ office was at the upslope end of the encampment, beyond the exercise field and the barracks for able-bodied fragments. There was one more shortcut they could take, but Johanna and Pilgrim stayed well away from the war criminals’ compound. That was an institution that many Tinish kingdoms supported, though usually it was a public pillory where partially executed enemies of the state could be put on display. Woodcarver had never been such a sadist. Pilgrim often assured Jo that the Children were fortunate to have fallen in with the kindliest despot in the world. Since Flenser was rehabilitated and Vendacious had escaped, there was only one war criminal left in the Domain, and that was Flenser’s monster, Lord Steel. The original Steel had been cut down to three members. His remnant had a prison cell with its own little exercise yard. She hadn’t seen that fragment in two years. She knew her brother came here occasionally to talk to the threesome, but then Jefri and Amdi had personal issues with Steel. She hoped the visits were not meant to taunt the creature. Steel was thoroughly mad, surviving in a weird tug of war between Woodcarver’s caution and Flenser’s demand that