by Vernor Vinge
“Hmm,” said Tycoon. His technical curiosity reminded Ravna a little of Scrupilo: nothing was too gross if it had an experiment in it somewhere. “But wouldn’t the two-legs be dealt with as corpses or invading animals?”
“Oh, no, I doubt that would happen.” The godsgift waved breezily. “In fact, I’d wager that no human would ever be harmed at the heart of the Choir.”
Ravna glanced at Vendacious. She saw a smile flicker across the members Tycoon couldn’t see. So Vendacious knew this claim was false. The godsgift and Vendacious were doing a good job of maneuvering herself and Jefri into a front row seat at the Tropical sacrifices. The godsgift didn’t have Vendacious’ air of palpable menace, but maybe that just meant that he was the more dangerous of the two.
The godsgift rattled on enthusiastically, ignorant of or ignoring Vendacious’ sly smile. “I tell you, I almost wish I could be human. You could go to the very top. You could see everything there is to see—and still exist afterwards to remember it! Maybe there is something beyond the sounds of mind there. Either way, you would know!”
Ravna raised a hand. “No. I think we’ll pass.” She noticed Jefri nod emphatically. “Perhaps another time.” When we’re not being held prisoners under threats of torture and death. “In any case, I thought your point was that the Choir was Tycoon’s secret weapon.”
“Oh! You want the crass details.” The pack sounded hurt that it had failed to sell them on a hike up sacrifice hill.
“Enough of this religious talk,” said Tycoon. “The crass details are the important part. Here we’re sitting cool and comfortable in the middle of endless mind death. From the safety of the Reservation, I do business with the Choir. The combination of their multitudes and my genius makes me the greatest power in the world.” He waved at the radio-cloaked Tines that sat silently on a nearby stool. “With my radio network, I am watching across a market domain that is ten times wider than your royal Domain. My factories create more goods than all the other businesses in the world put together. I’ll wager you’ve seen some of them yourselves. My presence simply can’t be disguised anymore. My inventions are changing the entire—”
Ritl had been uncharacteristically quiet. Now she let loose a chittering complaint.
Jefri leaned close to Ravna’s ear. “Ritl says Tycoon brags too much!”
Tycoon gave the singleton a couple of heads of attention, and gobbled a rather mellow form of “Keep quiet.” Ritl grumbled almost the way she used to around the campfire, but settled back on her seat.
For a brief moment, Tycoon looked a little embarrassed. “The whole of that one was a good employee,” he said. He looked back and forth at himself, as if recovering his train of thought “Nevil Storherte understands the situation. In less than a tenday, he and I will reveal our alliance. But even now, if I can convince you of my power, there could be a place for you in the new order of things.”
“I’m eager to be convinced, sir,” said Ravna. Can it be? I actually have some leverage with this guy? Okay, then: “We’ve always been impressed by your successes, even though we had no idea how you managed them.”
The pack actually preened. “Heh. Be prepared to learn then. This afternoon I’ll show you one of my factories. Multiply that by a thousand and you’ll know what you’re up against Today. Multiply by a million and you’ll know for Tomorrow. You could be a valued junior partner.”
“I’m grateful.” She wondered who had provided the job recommendation. “There is a matter of trust, however—”
“You are not in a position to set conditions, human.”
“Nevertheless, there is the matter of the three young humans that you took.”
From across the room, Vendacious said, “Both humans will be returned unharmed.”
Jefri burst out with, “Both? You fucking murderer! And what about the Tines killed in the kidnappings?”
“There were no killings,” Vendacious replied flatly, “not by our packs. Of course, we can’t know all that Nevil Storherte may have done.”
Tycoon’s heads were turning unnecessarily back and forth between Jefri and Vendacious. “Yes,” he said, “humans don’t really care about the lives of packs. Despicable maggots.… Understand: I dislike you two-legs as a race, but I’ve found that business can bring cooperation between anyone.” Heads flicked in Jefri’s direction. “Almost anyone.”
Jef shook his head. “Hei! At least tell us the names of the surviving—”
Tycoon shifted forward, all heads weaving in Jefri’s direction. “You dare make demands of me, Jefri-brother-of-Johanna?” His Geri voice climbed in pitch, stretching into an inhuman hiss. “Jefri-brother-of-Johanna-who-killed-my-brother.”
Jefri came up off the bench, but his anger seemed swept away by shocked understanding. “Brother? Powers above, you’re Scriber Jaqueramaphan’s brother?”
Tycoon swarmed down upon Jefri. Maybe what saved Jef was the fact that godsgift was still sitting close around him. That pack emitted a surprised squeal and exploded in all directions, incidentally getting in the attackers’ way and knocking Jef backwards over his bench.
Ravna dove sideways along the bench, trying to block the surge. She felt two of Tycoon slam into her, then had a glimpse of his members lunging under the bench, claws reaching. At the edge of the fray the gunpack was maneuvering around in confusion—trying for a safe shot?
“Wait! Stop it! Stop!” she shouted, but in fact the madness had ended. It couldn’t have lasted more than a second or two or she wouldn’t have been around to shout. Tycoon was all around her, but his jaws weren’t snapping. Four of him were on the other side of the bench now. They dragged Jefri Olsndot off the floor, set him on the bench behind Ravna’s. Their claws made little spots of blood where their grip sank through his clothes, and two of them had jaws right by Jef’s throat.
For his part, Jefri was sitting very still. Ravna remembered when he was little, how Jef and Amdi would mock fight. Sometimes that would get out of hand, and Jefri had learned the safest thing to do was just become still and submissive. It was certainly the right strategy now.
Tycoon held him tightly for several seconds. The eightsome’s voice boomed around the room, hissing and screaming that certainly wasn’t Samnorsk, and wasn’t Interpack either. Finally he gave Jef a hard push and backed away from him. All eight stared at Jefri for a moment more, then dabbed at the froth that dribbled from various jaws. Finally, he turned a couple of heads toward the uncertain gunpack and gobbled at him. Ravna recognized an imperative and the word “dungeon.”
So maybe no factory tour today.
CHAPTER 34
The “dungeon” was actually a suite of rooms near the audience chamber. It had running water and air conditioning. Was there any closed area in this palace that wasn’t air conditioned? Dinner was delivered—more yams and beer.
Once they were alone, Ravna walked around the high-class accommodations. “I assume these walls have ears pressed against them,” she said.
Jefri shrugged. “The truth is one thing that jackass really needs to hear.” Jefri had a long bloody slash on his face where one of Tycoon’s claws had grazed him. He thought a second and then shouted: “Jo didn’t kill your brother, damn it!”
“But do you think he really is Scriber Jaqueramaphan’s brother?”
Jefri sat back on his chair. The seat actually had a back to it, though not quite what would suit a human. “Once upon a time, I think he was. Now, I think the pack is a rebuild.”
“A what?”
“That’s a word Johanna came up with for something she saw occasionally at the Fragmentarium. Sometimes a pack—usually a rich, foolish pack—tries to recover a prior form of its personality by incorporating several new members.”
“Wouldn’t that just be a merge pack?” These creatures had more reproductive modes than any dozen races she had known in the Beyond.
“Not exactly. Rebuilds are much rarer; the broodkenners find puppies that are likely to contribute such skills and min
d styles as were in their client’s former personality. Then the client tries to mold itself and the puppies into what it was before. You noticed that four of Tycoon are a lot younger than the others?”
Ravna shook her head. “They all looked grown to me.”
“They’re all adults, but—my theory is that the four older ones really were a fission sibling of Johanna’s Scriber. The pack is trying to recover what it was before the split.” Jef’s face twisted into an unhappy smile. “Scriber and Pilgrim were Jo’s first friends here. You know how she always talked about him: Scriber Jaqueramaphan, the mad inventor. He was a fairly recent fission product, and he always seemed a bit unhappy about it—like a human regretting a broken marriage.”
“And it looks like the other half of the fission felt the same way.” Ravna was quiet for a moment; now here was a story for Amdi’s collection of romance novels!
Jefri was nodding. “This would explain a lot: the commercial empire building—that’s from the old entrepreneurial half; the wild inventiveness—that’s what the pack imagines of Scriber; and even the murderous hatred of humans—somehow Vendacious has convinced him that Johanna killed Scriber.”
So perhaps Tycoon was not a villain … not naturally a villain. They sat for a moment in silence. “Okay, then,” said Ravna. “We know what we’re up against. That has to be an improvement. We’ve got to convince this fellow of the truth—”
“—without triggering more violence.” He gave another smile, this one not despairing. “I’ll be my very nicest, no provocations.”
“I’ll be properly respectful, too. We’ve got to find out which children are still alive.”
Jef nodded. “Yeah. I’m afraid for Geri. Tycoon’s Samnorsk vocabulary is adult; he’s obviously been reading. But Geri’s voice, when Tycoon uses it, that’s like a confession of—”
Of torture at least, thought Ravna. She raised a finger to her lips. If there were ears pressed to the walls, there was much that should not be spoken. “Another thing: somehow we have to learn more about Johanna.”
Jefri gave a little nod, and seemed to be choosing his words carefully. “Yes. Tycoon wants her dead—which means he thinks she’s still alive. But he doesn’t seem to know where she is. And no one mentioned Pilgrim, either.”
They stared at each other for a moment. When Pilgrim and Johanna were missing together they were generally off snooping in the agrav skiff. She had told Jefri about their mission to the mouth of the Fell. In the past, Johanna and Pilgrim had hidden for tendays at a time near foreign cities. Hiding within Tycoon’s operation would be much more difficult than any of that, but it was possible that right now the two were—she leaned toward Jefri and traced a circle with a dot on the arm of his chair—right here.
He gave another little nod. “It could be. It’s another thing to watch for.”
─────
The next morning, they were wakened by a pack bringing breakfast. It waited impatiently for them to dress and eat and then hustled them out of their cool “dungeon” and down all the stairs they’d had to climb the day before.
It had been raining, but now the sky above was brilliant blue. Thunderheads still hid both the great pyramid and the sunrise. The air was sopping wet, but this was probably the nicest moment of a tropical day. Considering how much cooler and drier it had been back in the dungeon, Ravna could not fully savor the moment.
She and Jef were piled into one of the rickshaw wagons and rolled across the landing field, accompanied by the usual gunpack. On the north side of the field, two of the hangars were open. Packs were working around the airships, but at this distance it was impossible to tell what they were doing.
Maybe it didn’t matter, because their driver was not taking them toward the hangars. This might be the factory tour Tycoon had advertised. Their course angled to the south, occasionally crossing bridges over the floodways they had seen from above. The morning air was much clearer than on their flight in. What had been lost in cloudy mists was now visible … dozens of the long, barracks-like buildings. But even now, she could not see the most distant of them.
As they neared the first structure, she realized it was at least fifteen meters from floor to ridge and almost forty meters wide. The ground around it was littered with huge piles—of what? Refuse? No. Up close she saw lumber and finished metal stampings, all more or less neatly set on pallets. Lines of Tropicals dragged carriers back and forth, moving the … factory inputs, that’s what they had to be … into the main entrance. Their rickshaw had to angle even further south to avoid that traffic.
They turned again and rolled straight toward one corner of the entrance, out of the way of the haulers. An eightsome was standing under the portico: Tycoon, here to greet them in person. And there was his radio singleton and the godsgift pack. There might have been another gunpack back in the shadows.
“Powers be praised,” Jefri said dryly, “I don’t see Vendacious.” There was only one other pack in the apparent entourage, a small-bodied foursome.
As Ravna climbed down from the rickshaw, she heard a childlike human voice. At first she thought it was Tycoon, but the voice was shouting, “Ravna! Ravna!”
She turned and saw—“Timor!”
The boy had come through Tycoon and was limping toward her as fast as he could go, his arms outstretched. Ravna ran across the concrete toward him, Jefri right behind her. They met just a few meters short of the waiting packs. Ravna knelt, hugging him as she might a child as young as Timor looked. Today, he didn’t object. “I am so glad to see you!”
“I’m so glad to see you!”
When she set him down and let go, Ravna saw the tears streaming down Timor’s face. He was laughing or crying, maybe both. After a moment, he looked away from Ravna and took a step toward Jefri.
“Hei, Timor,” Jefri said solemnly and stretched out his hand. “How are you?”
Timor reached out, shook his hand. “I’m fine. Are you helping Ravna now?”
“I—” Jef glanced at Ravna. “Yes, Timor, I am.” He hesitated, then nodded. “I really am.”
“Have you seen Geri and Edvi, Timor?” said Ravna. “Are they okay?”
“Geri is getting better. We’re both in dungeons up on the main spire.” He gave a little wave toward the palace. “Edvi, I’m afraid Edvi is—”
“Edvi Verring succumbed to one of the bloating diseases. I did my best for him, but alas—”
Ravna looked up at the interruption and saw that all of Tycoon was watching them intently. But the voice, that had been the one Vendacious normally used, and a radio-cloaked singleton was standing near Tycoon. She couldn’t help but glare at the poor innocent. “So then, Vendacious,” she said. “You had custody of Edvi? Has anyone looked at the body, verified your diagnosis?”
As she spoke, Timor slipped his hand around her fingers. She felt a warning squeeze.
But Vendacious did not seem upset by the question. His voice came breezily, “The diagnosis was obvious. I’ve preserved the remains, however. You are welcome to inspect.”
Timor’s hold was still tight.
“There’s no immediate need,” she replied.
Tycoon made an impatient noise. “That’s good.” He said, “You are not the boss of us, Ravna Bergsndot. I’ve brought you here to discover if you can work for me.” Some of him was staring over her shoulder at Jefri.
─────
It was a bumpy start to their factory tour, but Tycoon’s mood seemed to shift as often and as fast as sunlight and clouds. They went into the hall and climbed up to a long platform that ran the length of a production line. Tycoon insisted that Ravna walk with him, at the front of the group. Now the eightsome sounded very much like Scrupilo, the proud engineer, pointing out this detail and that, full of opinions about everything. His snouts swept the length of the hall. “This is twelve hundred meters long, with two thousand Tines working at full shift. This is one of the older halls, so it is not wired for electricity. All the main power still c
omes from steam engines. And yet, I’ll wager you have nothing so grand as this single factory up in your Domain.”
Okay, he was even more a braggart than Scrupilo. Still, this was preferable to some of Tycoon’s other moods. “You’re quite right, sir,” she said, and that was the truth. The far end of the hall was almost lost to sight. All of Scrupilo’s North End operation would have fit in this one building. She could see no coherent packs on the floor below, but Tines were crowded almost shoulder to shoulder at work points long the line. The activity was rapid and intricate, unceasing, like the sweatshops that the Princesses had overturned. She tried to think of something nicer than that to say—perhaps an admiring question. Wait. There was one part of this picture that didn’t fit any of the ancient file images. A water stream flowed just this side of the production line, almost directly under the elevated walkway. This channel was like the ones out on the airfield, and seemed to run the length of the hall. Where the skylights let the sun fall upon the water, she could see tiny squid-like beasties flitting about. “What are those creatures in the water, sir?” she asked.
From behind them, Timor piped up, “They’re cuttlefish!”
Tycoon shrugged. “In Interpack they’re called—” and he gobbled a simple chord. “It means small swimmers with eyes on the sides and grabbers streaming from one end. This particular variety can remember and repeat simple phrases. I use them to carry short messages, when no packs are at the destination.”
Ravna leaned a little further out and looked straight down. Yes, the critters had enormous glassy eyes. Their tentacles were long and moving all the time. And Tycoon didn’t seem to have anything more to brag about them! Interesting. She brought her gaze back to the assembly line itself. “What are you making in this factory?”
