by Vernor Vinge
Woodcarver said, “Sigh. Maybe it’s not such a mystery. I’ll bet that after we got you and your friends off the cliffs, Vendacious and Nevil turned this into their private highway.”
Jefri walked past them, oblivious. Magda and Elspa tagged along behind him, scarcely pausing to glance at Øvin’s coin. These three knew what was important.
“C’mon,” Ravna said to the others.
“Hei up there! Are you seeing lots of gold coins?” The question came from some pack on Linden’s team.
“Just one,” Woodcarver boomed in reply.
“We just found a dozen, some on open rock, some wedged into the trees.”
The words set Jefri moving at a trot, barely slowed by Magda and Elspa’s cautions.
“I see yellow, too!” Scrupilo chimed in. “Hei, you on the high path! It’s just a little further on. The birds haven’t found it yet, but there are holes punched in the spring leaves—”
Jefri and company had disappeared around a corner of naked rock. When Ravna and the rest caught up, they found the three stopped, staring: not at a handful of gold coins, but at hundreds of coins and gems, a splash of gold and glitter that swept across the path. It lay in bright, direct sunlight. Indeed the Spring forest canopy had two wide tears in it. Where the light fell, greenish gloom was replaced by uncompromising detail. But Amdi, where are you? Like in the fairy tales, where the dying friend is turned to treasure?
Jefri scrambled up the rock, bracing his feet against tree trunks to lean against the steepness. He swept wildly at the branches. Gold coins scattered from around his hands, unheeded. “Where is he?” Jefri shouted. “Where—” He paused, steadied himself, and pulled. Something large and angular broke loose from where it had been jammed between rocks.
The wreckage bounced and crashed down to the path. It was—had been—a strongbox. Where it hadn’t splintered, the surface glistened with polish.
Ravna felt a touch on her shoulder. She turned. It was Øvin, grim and solemn. He jerked his head upwards. Ravna followed his gaze. Something dark and member-sized was caught in the higher branches. She noticed Ritl pacing beneath it, staring straight up. For once the critter was not spewing commentary.
Ravna swallowed. Then she looked at Jefri, still braced precariously between the cliff face and various tree trunks. “Please come down now, Jef.” She kept her tone even and comforting.
“We have to find him, Rav.”
“We will. I promise.” It took a force of will not to look at the dark, still form that hid in the shadows just beyond Jef’s reach. “But you shouldn’t be way up there. It’s not safe. I want you to come down now.”
He stared back at her, his eyes wide. It was a look she hadn’t seen in years, from long before he had grown and gotten mixed up with the Deniers and betrayed her and rescued her. It was the little boy that Pham had rescued on Murder Meadows.
Jefri gave a sigh. “Okay,” he said and carefully came down to safety. No one spoke, but by the time Jefri reached the ground, almost everyone else had noticed the body in the trees.
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The hardest part of getting the body down was keeping Jefri out of the way.
The body. Think of it as the body, the creature, the member—not as part of Amdiranifani. The creature was dead beyond doubt. The poor fellow had been impaled on one of the thornlike branches at the apex of the tree, where the evergreen needles didn’t grow. The accidental spear had passed through the length of the body, ending where the branch was almost fifteen centimeters wide.
As they began cutting down the body, Woodcarver shouted news of the discovery to Linden’s group.
“Okay!” came the reply. “We’re fighting off a mob of stubborn—yeowr!—seabirds. They’re swarming around something just ahead of us.”
Magda and Elspa were sitting with Jefri on the ground. They finally had him calmed down. Ravna leaned against a large boulder and sent all sorts of surely unnecessary detail back to Oobii. From Scrupilo’s video, the ship had already located seven bodies, all dead for a certainty, though this one and the one by Poul Linden might be the only members they could get to today. So I’ll be free to think on other things. But now her attention was stuck on the impaled body, all the other windows ignored.
One forester sawed at the tree as the other sailed restraining ropes around the upper branches. Ritl circled underneath, acting more like a real dog than Ravna had ever seen among Tines, even singletons. Ritl wasn’t saying much. She just looked curious and mystified and—for once—as stupid as she probably was. But the dogs Ravna remembered were plenty smart enough to realize when their betters were upset—and surely Ritl remembered Amdi. She had caused poor Amdiranifani enough problems. Ravna hoped the little beast couldn’t be hurt as much as Jefri and Amdi’s other friends.
As they lowered the body to the ground, Jefri shook himself free of Magda and Elspa. Everyone but Ritl stepped back at his approach. Fortunately, the corpse’s head was turned away from view; it looked like the tree branch had burst through the face. The body was shrouded in a long cloak. As Jefri knelt beside it, Ritl slid forward, peering suspiciously at the body. Jefri waved the singleton away. He reached for the cloak—
Ritl emitted a piercing squawk and darted past him. She tore at the corpse’s throat, screaming in rage.
Jefri didn’t seem to notice. He had fallen to his knees and was staring in blank shock. Magda and Elspa rushed forward to grab Ritl, but the singleton rolled off the corpse and scuttled into the underbrush on the high side of the path. She was making a weird hooting noise. After a moment, Ravna recognized the sound. It was a small part of laughter.
Jefri didn’t look up, but when he spoke, his voice was full of wonder. “This isn’t any part of Amdi.”
And finally, Ravna took a close look at the torn, dead thing. One paw extended beyond the cloak. The claws were painted; what might have been a fetter was made of silver. All else aside, the creature’s grayed muzzle made it older than any of Amdi.
Woodcarver was mingled with the humans around the corpse. She pulled the cloak entirely aside and stared for a long moment at the corpse. Then she stepped away.
“Is this anyone you know?” asked Ravna, but Woodcarver didn’t answer and now the other packs were crowding as close as they could get.
“No one I’ve ever seen,” one said in Samnorsk.
“It could be a recent addition to someone we know.”
“Unlikely. It’s too old.”
Øvin Verring put in: “We’ll have to get to the other deaders before the birds strip them down.” Now that this was simply a whopping mystery, such things were easier to say.
In her hidey-hole at the side of the path, Ritl was still chortling. Now she started gobbling loudly, more like the usual Ritl.
This time, no one ignored her. Heads came sharply around, then turned to stare at one another in consternation. After a moment, even Ravna understood the simple chords:
“Vendacious dead. Vendacious dead. Vendacious dead!”
CHAPTER 42
There was no word in Samnorsk for the quality of the next twenty-four hours. Woodcarver said there were chords for it in Tinish: a yodel that denoted wrenching change, a time filled with events that might lead to total catastrophe, or survivable disaster, or maybe grand victory. For Ravna it was a nonstop run of problems and decisions, punctuated by short catnaps, food, and Lisl Armin’s help with Oobii’s sickbay equipment. “You’re dehydrated, starved, with half-healed lacerations all over. Food and rest and the sickbay can easily make those things right. Oobii sees evidence of a concussion. That shouldn’t be a problem as long as you don’t get too stressed out, but I’m afraid sickbay isn’t up to truly curing the problem.” Lisl brightened: “On the other hand, I bet I can fix your broken nose and facial bones! I’ll just need a few hours of your time, and then you’ll have to be careful of yourself—”
Ravna shut her off there. There just wasn’t time for cosmetic frills—
The ship woke h
er from a nap in the mid-afternoon of the next day. She actually felt pretty good! But the first full meeting with the remaining Children was downstairs in just fifteen minutes. As she left the command deck, she was reviewing her personal log and Oobii’s latest news. The starship had tracked Tycoon’s airships to a landing at some outpost east of the Icefangs. For resupply? In any case, the ships rose again and headed south. Closer to home, Scrupilo had taken his little airboat—the Domain’s only surviving aircraft—to overfly Nevil’s caravan.
One of the first things Ravna had done was to sweep Oobii for lossage and vandalism. She had quietly removed the amplifier stage from Pham’s beam gun; the thought of some software glitch slagging Newcastle town was just too scary. On the other hand, she hadn’t wasted time on Nevil’s interior decoration, so when she showed up in the “New Meeting Place,” she found that a lot had changed. Gone was the friendly atmosphere that Nevil had set up when he was peddling democracy. There were none of the game environments, and only one or two computational access points. Nevil had mercilessly stripped the ship to set up the surveillance system that she had noticed the day before. The walls had a new theme, a starscape. The view was in the galactic plane, but very far out, at the edge of the abyss, perhaps in the Low Transcend. The view from the Straumers’ High Lab.
There was a podium set against the intergalactic dark, with a seat for Nevil that was almost as impressive as the throne he had once built for Ravna. Ravna walked tentatively to the podium, but she did not sit down. She saw smiles and greetings, but no joy.
Today, the room held twenty packs and only about seventy Children. It was strange the way the kids would stare at her—and then look away. Repulsed? She knew what a ruin her face was; surely they would get used to it. The packs didn’t seem so affected. She noticed Flenser and Woodcarver in the audience. Ah! And there was Jefri, too, sitting impassively a little apart from everyone else.
Ravna said, “We all need to be talking more than ever now. Given the state of the interfaces”—she waved around the room—”that may be a problem. I wanted to make sure you know what I’ve been doing, what Oobii is seeing. I—I also want to hear what you’ve been up to, what’s worrying you most.”
She noticed that Wenda Larsndot, Sr., was already standing, her hand raised. Giske Gisksndot bounced to her feet. “I want to talk about Nevil! We lost half the human race yesterday.”
“They wanted to go. Good riddance.” That was from someone hidden from Ravna’s view, but the remark was not intended to be anonymous. Around the room, many of the Children were nodding agreement.
“Yes!” shouted Elspa Latterby. “Instead, we need to go after that Tycoon fellow. He stole my little sister!” And Edvi and Timor and Amdi and Jo and Pilgrim and Screwfloss and.… Agreement and argument swirled all around. Suddenly Ravna felt as incompetent as ever with the Children.
She raised her hand, a tentative request for order, and—
Everyone fell silent.
How did I do that? For a moment Ravna was speechless herself. “Look, everybody, I have various pieces of information about some of these problems. But please, let’s take things a step at a time. Wenda, you seemed to be first?”
“Yes, uh, thanks. This is a little off-topic, but I think it’s important. I talked to Johanna yesterday, before she went up to Starship Hill.” Once more, the silence was total. “She told me some things she said we need to know and some other things we are honor-bound to do. First off, there were no ‘Tropical terrorists’ on those rafts. There was no bomb; the killing was done with the beam gun on Oobii.”
“We’ve guessed that,” said Øvin, his voice flat and deadly.
Wilm Linden waved at Ravna. “But you could prove it, right? Oobii must have logs.”
“Yes.” Short of an underlying software failure, she could uncover any attempt Nevil had made to hide his actions. “I’ll get the logs, but I’m afraid Nevil will just say they’re faked.”
Wenda made a dismissive gesture. “Jo’s main point was that we owe these Tropicals. They may not have minds like packs or humans, but she says it was their decision to rescue her and their sacrifice that saved her life. She asked—ah, actually the word she used was ‘demand’—that we treat them well and help them return home if that’s what they seem to want.”
Woodcarver raised several heads, all looking in Ravna’s direction. “If I may?” she said.
“Yes. Please.”
“I’ve already moved most of this mob up to the old embassy. Ten raft crews is more than in any past shipwreck. It’ll be very expensive to adequately enlarge the place.… but I’m willing to do so. That’s partly because they’re innocent parties”—a nod in Wenda’s direction—“and partly because if we mistreat Tycoon’s creatures, we increase the risk to my Pilgrim and all the other poor souls Tycoon is holding.”
Ravna nodded. “Thank you, Woodcarver. Was there anything else, Wenda?”
“Oh! Yes. We have a little inventory problem down at the South End. One thing Nevil wasn’t lying about was the rafts’ main cargo.”
“Oh yeah,” someone said, “the peace offering from Tycoon.”
“Well, whatever you call it, this cargo is not junk. There’s about fifteen tonnes of fabric.” Wenda rolled her eyes in distress. “It’s as good as anything we currently make. There are other things; we’re still going through the containers. So far we count nine hundred and five voice-band radios.”
Tycoon would have been pleased by the stupefied expressions that Ravna saw around the room. Wenda shrugged. “Okay, that’s all my news.” And she sat down.
One by one, everyone had their say. Most of the kids seemed to realize that Tycoon was both out of reach and a new kind of problem. The concern about the Denier exodus was different. Giske said, “There have always been Deniers, but Nevil made the idiocy deadly. My Rolf was such a good person. I’d never have married him otherwise. But he bought into everything Nevil was peddling. We argued about it every night, especially after Ravna disappeared. Now he has my kids, and I want them back!”
There was a muttering of agreement, not just about Giske’s family, but about everyone’s experience.
Ravna glanced at Jefri. Jef was also a good person. That wasn’t sufficient to solve the problem.
“In the end, they’ll come crawling back,” said Wenda Larsndot, sounding much less gentle-minded than usual. “Most Deniers never bothered to learn how to live here. The idea of them living in the wild is a joke!”
“That’s not the point!” said Giske, her voice rising, “So far no one has overestimated Nevil’s capacity for evil. Maybe he’s one of those nutso-freakos who loses big time and then takes his followers into a corner and murders them! I want my children back! Now!”
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The meeting went on for another half hour and then there were separate chats with Woodcarver and various Children. But not with Jefri; he left right at the end of the meeting.
Scrupilo’s radio had failed, but Oobii could see that both the airboat and Scrupilo were well enough. He would be back in an hour. Maybe he could add something pro or con to Giske’s unpleasant theory. Ravna straggled off for a short nap.
As she settled down in her old room by the command deck, she wondered again at her success in the meeting. Not since the Children were little—and rarely even then—had the kids deferred to her as they had this afternoon. Maybe they saw her as a competent hero who had been to hell and back. Ha. If they only knew how little of that was her doing. It still bothered her the way the kids winced when they looked at her crushed nose and cheek. But what if that wasn’t revulsion? What if the kids saw the injury as proof of tremendous sacrifice? Then sympathy and admiration all worked their magic in her favor. If it had been Nevil in her shoes, he’d squeeze that advantage as hard as he could, as long as he could. She thought about the notion for a moment, struggling to hold back sleep. Maybe she was a fool but, “Ship!”
“Yes, Ravna?”
“Please call Lisl Ar
min and tell her I’m a go for the face repair.”
And then she slept.
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Scrupilo’s overflights didn’t support Giske’s worst-case theory. Ultimately, Nevil might be as crazy as Giske thought, but the Denier caravan was well equipped, and well prepared. Considering all the gear they had stolen, “well equipped” was no surprise. As for being well-prepared—Bili Yngva had something to do with that. The logs showed that Bili had spent a lot of time up here on the command deck, planning. He had recognized some of the gear in the Lander—what Ravna had mistaken for junk—and figured that it might still have limited functionality. That accounted for the strange thefts from the Newcastle catacombs. As for the fire they set in the Lander—Nevil and Bili really did believe in Countermeasure. The details were lost in a chaos of corrupted log files—what looked like a system failure, not encryption. Maybe she could unscramble the mess eventually, but for the moment she concentrated on trying to contact Tycoon and trying to break into the orbiter.
Meantime, Nevil was probing back at Oobii. The Chief Denier—that was her most polite term for him—had most of the commsets, and access to the orbiter. Ravna deliberately left the Denier user accounts in place, but in virtual cages. Nevil was all over them, probing for security holes, posting Nevilish propaganda. The incompetent hacking was very informative—to Ravna.
Woodcarver sent scouts with truce flags after the Deniers. They were peacefully received and allowed to talk to whomever they pleased. They even persuaded six from the caravan to return.
But when Ravna walked the streets of Newcastle town, the empty houses were everywhere, tears in the thin fabric of humanity. Denial had hijacked almost half of the human race, and there was yet a trickle of Children still departing, trying to catch up with the main group.
After five days, Nevil’s exodus reached its destination, a warm-springs cave system more than one hundred kilometers to the northeast. Woodcarver recognized the place. She told Ravna that she’d known about it for about a century and always believed it too dangerous for long-term settlement.
