by Vernor Vinge
Then she scrambled down over the boxes and bags, sliding the remaining stave ahead of her. The pole was an awkward thing for a human to maneuver. The shoulder clasps were useless for a human, and the shaft had an awkward curve in its lower half. Still, it was long and there was something sharp at the end.
Her housemates’ junk was deepest at the bottom of the stairs: tents, equipment, harnesses, boots. Boots. Ravna slipped on Jo’s old boots and peeked out the tiny window on the outside door. She was looking into the field behind the house. Far away up the hill, she could see the scattered lights of Newcastle town. Deep shadows stood nearby, but she saw no sign of the rest of the gang.
Maybe they were all in the house. There was noise enough at the top of the stairs. Someone had axes. Woodchips flew from the shuddering topside door. She saw the glint of a metal blade breaking through.
Ravna turned back to the outside door. It was only one member wide, secured by a cross-timber. She lifted the bar and pushed. Jammed! She crouched down and pushed harder. The door creaked open. Ravna scrambled into the frigid cold. Behind her, the pack had broken through the upper door. Boxes and bags tumbled down ahead of the intruder, all but jamming the doorway.
Precious seconds. She stabbed the shoulder stave into the ice, using the staff to steady herself as she stepped off the stoop. The fresh-frozen ice felt as smooth as glass under Jo’s boots. She poled herself along, skiing more than running. Loud gobbling came from within the house.
If she could get to the road before they did, there might be witnesses, even defenders. Ravna bent her knees and pushed off with her staff. She coasted almost five meters on each push, keeping her balance by lightly raking the ice with her blade. She pushed again, sliding onwards. Should I be screaming for help? She was out of sight of her back door and the windows above. Maybe they didn’t even know where she was!
The Queen’s Road was directly below, empty beneath the glow of a street lamp. She pushed off—and discovered that the water hadn’t frozen into glassy smoothness on the slope. Pain blazed where her hip smashed into the ice. She slid, spinning, down the washboard surface.
Then she was out in the light, right under the streetlamp. She rolled over, came to her knees. Somehow, she had managed to hang on to the bladed staff. Up the road, lights were coming on in the nearest houses. Coming toward her from the other direction—it was Jefri and Amdi! They were actually running. Amdi’s claws glittered with ice, and two of him were steadying Jefri from below. The gang of nine slid to a stop all around her. Jefri reached down for her hand.
“C’mon,” he said. Around her, she felt Amdi helping her up, bracing against Jefri. For just an instant she was aware of the warmth of his arms around her and the penetrating cold everywhere else.
Then she saw at least one pack come tumbling down the front steps of her town house. Another skittered, sprawling, down the alleyway. Amdi squeaked something unintelligible to Jef. Suddenly Jefri’s arms tightened around her, swinging her up and off her feet. “I’ve got her!” he called to them.
The other packs swirled surrounded them, steel tines and crossbows everywhere. She had a glimpse of an enclosed fodder wagon sliding into the lamplight.
“Stop her wiggling!”
Someone grabbed the back of Ravna’s neck and whipped her head against the side of the wagon.
CHAPTER 18
Johanna loved to fly in the anti-gravity skiff, but sometimes, such as right now, it could be a bit too thrilling. She swallowed her heart and glared across the tiny cabin at Pilgrim. “How much altitude do we have left?”
“Not to worry,” was his cheery response. “We still have plenty of clearance.”
Johanna leaned out into the rainy dark. They had flown—or, more accurately, fluttered and flailed—across hundreds of kilometers of Tropicals’ territory. Just before this rain, she’d spotted fires below—for cooking? sacrifices? She hadn’t seen any details, or smelled the fires, so she guessed the skiff was at least a thousand meters up. Maybe it was still jungle down there, but Pilgrim claimed he could hear unending Tinish chatter. If this was a city they were flying over, it must be as big as the urban terranes of Straumli Realm.
The skiff flipped forward, nearly tumbling over. It was doing that a lot on this trip. Pilgrim struggled to right the craft. If he failed, they’d be stuck once again with flying upside down. That got old very fast. This time, he succeeded in bringing them back to a normal attitude. They coasted serenely through the dark for several seconds, almost as if this was a proper aircraft.
“Actually,” Pilgrim said, “We’re at 750 meters.” All his eyes were on the flickering displays. Just looking at them gave Johanna a headache, and on this trip they were a constant reminder of larger problems. Over the years, most of the skiff’s onboard sensors had malfunctioned toward silence and arbitrary errors. About the only ground imaging left to them was their own eyeballs looking out open windows and through those parts of the hull that weren’t blocked by agrav repairs.
They should be less than ten kilometers from a more or less safe landing area, where the river swampland faded into the ocean. Normally, their best navigation information came from the orbiter, hanging out at synchronous altitude—and tonight they weren’t using that.
“Are you making up numbers again?” she asked.
A doggy head turned in her direction and a muzzle patted her on the hand. “Hei,” he said, “only the less significant digits.” And of course, when they got really low, Pilgrim could hear the ground. “A little imprecision is worth it,” he continued. “I’ll bet Nevil and Company haven’t even noticed we’re not going to Smeltertop tonight.”
“Yeah.” Tomorrow they’d take just a quick look and then skedaddle back home.
“Not to worry,” said Pilgrim. “We should have done this a long time ago.”
─────
The rain was a steady torrent, but the air was virtually windless, and the skiff was smoothly sliding along at several meters per second. Pilgrim claimed that the controls were benefitting from the water pooling at the bottom of their little cabin.
They were really low. The air stank faintly of sewage and animals. Those particular smells were not surprising; mariners and Tropical fragments told of cities larger and more crowded than anything else in this world, a mindless urbanization that destroyed coherent thought. It wasn’t called the Choir of Choirs for nothing.
“They’re louder than ever,” said Pilgrim. “A mob all singing together. Sounds like they’re having a good time, though.… Heh, maybe there really is nonstop sex.”
They were so low that Johanna could see firelight again, but it was mostly shielded from sight, glints here and there and an occasional suffocating wall of hot smoke. She glanced off to her right and up. “Pilgrim! Is that something flying?”
The skiff fluttered as two of Pilgrim turned to look in the direction she was pointing. “I don’t see anything. There are some really strange noises though.”
Since the orbiter had been revived, there had been attempts at maintaining surveillance over the continent—including the tropical lands, where no packs had ever explored. The problem was that the orbiter’s optics were barely more than light sensors, with something like thousand-meter ground resolution—much worse than Oobii’s on-approach imaging from ten years ago. Right now, their agrav skiff should be overflying the mouth of the River Fell. That was the location of the densest settlements—both in Oobii’s imagery and maritime legend.
The mystery light was gone, but now she realized that, flickering and very faint, there was a constellation of lights on her left. It was something huge and motionless, its shape lost in the steady rain.
“We’re at four hundred meters, right on track for our swampy overnight hideaway. Hei, did I tell you how I—or something almost-I—spent a tenday there a couple hundred years ago? It’s the closest I ever got to the Choir.” He was silent again, listening. “The mob noise has faded. I’ll bet the swamp has spread further inland than we th
ought. We could probably land right here.”
“But don’t, okay?” said Johanna.
“Heh, okay. But tomorrow is going to be fun. Even if Tycoon hasn’t been messing around here, there is so much I’ve been dying to see for years and years—”
There was a loud noise. The skiff did a somersault and headed groundward.
“Pilgrim!”
“Not my fault!” the fivesome shouted back, obviously struggling with the controls. This was worse than anything she remembered, except for times—like his long-ago “accidental” trip to the moon—when Pilgrim was creating the problem himself. “Left side lift is—”
The craft flipped over and was swinging back and forth from a single support point on the right side. That was the good and the bad thing about agrav. The fabric could be like a lawyer, negotiating with the laws of physics. It was even possible that now they had more lift than before.
Or maybe not: something snapped and they were falling again. Pilgrim scrambled around her. Two of him leaned out, jaws snapping, into the rain. Somehow he didn’t lose anyone. A moment later he was back, gripping taut fabric. “Here!” he said. “Don’t let go!”
She was holding the edge of the remaining agrav fabric. It wriggled in her hands, like something alive, trying to pull free. Pilgrim grabbed the rest of it with all his jaws. He jerked it this way and that, trying to keep them airborne, but now without any automatic control whatsoever.
“We’re not going to make it!” he shouted. But they weren’t really falling anymore, just going down much faster than was healthy.
Something whacked them from the right, then the left and the right … down to a stunning impact from below. Maybe she blacked out. She remembered Pilgrim’s voice right by her ear: “You sound alive. True?”
Oh, not a memory after all. “Yes,” she finally replied.
“Ha. Another perfect landing.”
“Are you okay, Pilgrim?”
The pack didn’t answer instantly. Members could take more bouncing around than adult humans, but a whole pack had more opportunity for individual bad luck. “Mostly,” he finally answered. “I think my Llr banged a foreleg.” Another hesitation. “Never mind that. We are safely down and well away from Choir sound.”
“But we didn’t make it to the swamps.”
“True.” He chuckled. “Even you could probably hear the difference. We’ve come down between rocky obstacles. We gotta get out and look around.” Some of him was already on the ground outside.
“Yeah.” Something was still holding her down. She thought muzzily for a second. Oh. She unclipped her restraints and crawled out into the rain. Pilgrim was right, they’d come down on something hard. Her hands felt around. There were shallow puddles, no mud. This might have been glacier-scoured rock or—her fingers found regular cracks—or flagstones. She stood up, the blood-warm rain soaking her.
She felt the pack clustering close around her shins. Pilgrim’s big one, Scarbutt, leaned comfortingly against her.
“Let’s see what’s left of the skiff.” A light came on, faintly silhouetting one of Pilgrim’s heads. The lamp was turned down and he held it in his jaws so the gleam was in one direction. Pilgrim swept the glow across the skiff while two of him nosed around in the wreckage, doubtless probing with sound. “Oh my,” he said, “flying this will be a challenge.”
The skiff had never been a beautiful thing, and over the years, Pilgrim’s repairs had made it motley. But now, the hull itself was cracked. The remaining agrav fabric strained upwards in ragged shreds.
Pilgrim abruptly doused his light. “I hear packs talking.” His voice was a focused whisper in her ear. She felt him press the light into her hand. “Use it just bright enough for your eyes.”
Johanna nodded. She made the light violet and so dim that she could barely see the ground below it. It should be invisible to whatever packs were out there. All of Pilgrim except Scar had crawled back into the skiff and was bringing out the emergency supply panniers. They had lived off that gear for tendays in the past.
Pilgrim’s voice again: “I think the packs I hear are searching for us. We must have made quite a racket coming down.”
Johanna replied with a nearly subvocal whisper. Scar, with his head at the level of her waist, would pick it up fine. “Are these normal packs?”
“Yes, indeedy. We should be in the middle of mindless Choir chaos, but what I’m hearing is East Coast Interpack.” So even if they discovered nothing more, they had answered the big question behind this trip. Now the problem was how to get the news back to Ravna and Woodcarver. It might be nice to survive the mission, too.
“You have the commset?” she asked.
“Got it.” Pilgrim was urging her along, away from the crash site. Her pale violet light hinted that they were walking between high walls of stone. Walls of brick actually, with nice right angles and waterfalls every few meters. This was an alley, and somewhere above them were roofs with rainspouts.
“The end of this path is open—and there are no voices beyond that. There are some real advantages to this situation, you know.”
Pilgrim was jollying her along. He did that when things were … tense. Well, he had a couple of centuries of fairly successful survival experience. She played along: “You mean because we’re still breathing?”
“That, and I’m still thinking. No Choir-driven mental destruction. If we can find a hiding place, we can operate almost like on our other trips. Except for the flying, I mean.”
“Yeah, okay. And we can report back.”
“Right. This may be the best possible place to go snooping. We may actually be able to learn if these guys are manipulating your boyfriend.”
“He’s not my boyfriend!” she almost said that in full voice.
“Whatever,” said Pilgrim. “In any case—” The voice in her ear hesitated. “Wait up a second.”
Johanna swung her lamp around. Llr had fallen behind. The member had a clear limp and her pannier had slipped partway off her back. Johanna reached down and unclipped the pannier.
“Thanks—”
But Jo wasn’t done. She slipped her hands behind Llr’s forelegs and raised the creature into her own arms.
“Hei wait!” said Pilgrim. “I don’t need that much help.”
Johanna didn’t reply, just proceeded along with the pannier slung over her shoulder and Llr struggling in her arms like a big, fussy baby. After a moment, she heard Pilgrim give a resigned sigh. Llr relaxed in her arms, then reached up and nipped Johanna’s ear—but only with the soft tips of her mouth.
They followed the alley for another thirty meters, moving at a better pace than before. That was good, since now even Johanna could hear Interpack gobbling somewhere behind them. Pilgrim said there was also a “spiky hissing” noise, probably not part of their speech. Directly ahead something hulked a little brighter than the violet backglow of the rain. A stone wall.
“I thought you said this end of the alley was open?” said Johanna.
“There’s a turn,” came Pilgrim’s whisper, “to the right.”
Now Johanna could hear the strange noise Pilgrim had reported. Something bright lit up behind them. “Come on!” she said to Pilgrim. They ran for the end of the alley. Just as they made the turn, the noise sharpened and a brilliant light shone through the veil of rain, lighting up the walls behind them.
They had escaped the light, but—there was a chord that meant “After them!” and she heard the clatter of metal tines.
Johanna and Pilgrim kept running, with Llr passing Jo directions about which way to go.
High ahead of her, she saw occasional flashes of light as the pursuers swept their hissing spotlight back and forth. It must be some kind of electric arc. Scrupilo had wanted to make such things, till Ravna found a low-power design that was actually easier to make. Such arcs were bright, surely bright enough for Tines—if they pointed them accurately and didn’t blind themselves.
Pilgrim was leading her in a flat run al
ong a stone way just a little higher than the puddles. By the light reflected from the enemy’s crazy arc lamp, she glimpsed brickwork and half-timbered walls—very much like northern buildings except for the mossy fungus that grew all over them. Maybe the northern style didn’t last long here. They ducked behind wooden sheds, out of sight of the probing light.
Jo felt Llr’s claws tighten, cautioning. Slowdown. Now that they couldn’t be spotted, it was best to be as quiet as possible.
“But we need to get further away,” said Johanna.
Pilgrim’s Llr gave her a little pat on the shoulder, agreeing. But now their progress consisted of the pack moving a meter or two, testing for things that might cause noise, then signalling Jo how to bring herself and Llr forward. Behind them, the noise of the chase was slightly diminished. It sounded like several packs were pacing around, talking quietly to one another, almost as though they were embarrassed by all the noise they had made.
Meter by meter, Pilgrim edged away from the Easterners. Then light flared on a wall ahead of them, right where they would be in another minute or so. The light swept away, came back briefly a second later, then was gone again.
Johanna sat on the stone way, putting some of Llr’s weight on her knees. “Maybe we should just hide here for a while.”
She only mouthed the words, but that was enough sound for Pilgrim. He shook a head or two, then said: “See how tumbled down everything is in that direction?” Some of the structures were barely more than mounds of rotting timber. “I can hear Choir noise ahead. We seem to be moving out of whatever safety zone is protecting these East Coast bozos. Maybe we can go far enough to lose them, but not so far that the Choir destroys my mind.”
