The Children of the Sky (17 page)

She said, in an aside to Nevil: “Is Johanna close by?”

“Sorry, she’s on the mainland this afternoon.”

“Okay, check out our visitors.”

Nevil nodded, and began to gather a proper crew. Ravna glanced at Godsgift. “We’ll have you out of here very soon, Mr. Ambassador.”

The Tropical leader smiled broadly. “Excellent.” Quite evidently, it had no worries about its guilt being proven here.

Scrupilo was dancing with frustration. His gobbling chords broke into a hissed Samnorsk whisper. “This is all
useless
! I should phone the boat moorage, put out an island-wide alarm, and contact
Oobii
.”

They also needed some aerial surveillance.… She looked up at the airboat that had been the backdrop for this confrontation. “Is the
Eyes Above
flyable?” She pointed at the aircraft. “And does it have a radio on board?”

“What? No radio, but the motor is charged … hmm, grmm! Yes!” He started shouting to his ground crews, chords and Samnorsk all mixed together, in various loudnesses and different directions. What she could understand was: “Phone Woodcarver!”, “Nevil, move your investigation away from the
Eyes Above
! I have use for it.” And a whisper for her ears: “The craft is fully prepped. I wonder if Mr. Crapheads knew that.” He ran to the wicker basket as two of his helpers approached from the other side. They were fiddling with a row of gas valves, arguing with Scrupilo about details.

Nevil’s people and the Tropicals had moved twenty meters off. The suspects were grudgingly removing their panniers and jackets. Huh, the intricate body painting covered much of their bare skin. Some of the Tropicals were watching the airboat curiously, but they didn’t seem the least disconcerted by Scrupilo’s activity.

One of Scrup’s assistants came rushing out with the lab’s loose radio. The nearest of Scrupilo grabbed the box and passed it to himself, up the gangplank. Then he hesitated, looking around as though he had forgotten something critical. “Oh, if only Johanna were here. This will go better with a combo crew.” That is, a pack and a human. “Nevil!” he shouted.

Ravna put a foot on the gangplank. “That’s okay, I can help you as well was anybody here.” That was probably true; she’d been up with Scrupilo a number of times. Besides, she didn’t want to stay here and second-guess Nevil.

Nevil Storherte had started back in their direction. For a second, Ravna thought he was going to object. The boy—no, the man; he was only eight years younger than she—was always going on about her indispensable role in high planning. This time, he seem to realize that he already had a job and that seconds counted. He hesitated, then gave her a little wave. “Okay. Good hunting.”

She waved back, then shooed the rest of Scrupilo up the ramp, into the airboat’s narrow basket.

For once, Scrupilo was not arguing. He scrambled aboard, all the while shouting to his ground crew. The basket did its usual disconcerting wobble as Ravna climbed across into the chair at the stern. She wasn’t quite tied down when the ground crew cut the tethers and the balloon drew them firmly skywards.

This was almost like agrav—but steadier then Pilgrim’s flier. The ground simply fell away. Looking over the edge of the basket, she could see all the Tropicals’ gear laid out. No way that an entire set of radio cloaks could be hidden in that.

Scrupilo powered up the boat’s propeller and turned the rudder. They were over the dark ponds that filled the old mining pits and covered the lab’s tanks of stabilized hydrogen. The placid waters reflected the towering walls of the quarry. If she leaned further out, she’d be able to see the reflection of the airboat.

… But not just now. Ravna tied onto a safety harness and began crawling around the aft end of the basket. There were a number of equipment cabinets, mostly waterproofed wicker, with latches that could be released by hands or paws or jaws. She opened one after another, glancing in each: a heliograph (not enough radios to go around), maps, two telescopes. It suddenly occurred to her that there was something to check before anything else. She set the spyglasses down and turned to the stern cover.

“Highness,” Scrupilo shouted to her. She looked out, saw that they had cleared the top of the quarry. “Please handle the driving. I’m best with the telescopes.” Then he noticed that Ravna was trying to pull up the stern ballast cover. “Highness? The telescopes, please … What are you
doing?
”

“It just occurred to me—what if they stuffed the cloaks in the ballast tanks?”

“Uck.” The pack thought a second, no doubt imagining how this chase could wreck what they were trying to recover. It was a long shot, but—”I’ll check the bow and mid tanks.” A pair at a time, Scrupilo’s members released the various controls they had jaws on and poked around in the water tanks that were set along the length of the hull. The main rudder slid free and the propeller slowed till you could see its three blades. The
Eyes Above
slowly turned in the nearly still afternoon air, now pointing toward the outer islands, now at the north channel, now at Starship Hill. They were high enough that she could see the dome of the New Castle.

“There’s nothing in these tanks but water,” he said returning to his controls.

“Same back here.”

“Very well then. Time is wasting.” He angled both horizontal and vertical rudders and spun up the screw.
Eyes Above
’s stern gently bobbed upwards, and the airboat angled down, turning toward the island’s North End boat landings. “Can you circle us around the North End while I take a look?”

“Yes.” Flying was easy in air this placid. The backseat controls included two jaw levers by her chair and another pair set far enough forward that she could use them as foot pedals. Together they provided control of the rudders and propeller. It wasn’t as simple as a point-and-move interface, but Ravna had practiced.

Scrupilo hauled the two telescopes forward. The eyepieces were curved masks that could be rotated to fit either side of a member’s head. Midway down each barrel was a clasp suitable for the usual shoulder strap on Tinish jackets. In a matter of seconds, he had the scopes mounted on two of himself, and two of his other members were looking around for things to spy on. “Okay. Take us a little north.… Hah. Except for my construction barge, the moorage is almost deserted.”

The North End moorage had been mostly taken over by Scrupilo’s
serious
aircraft project, the creation of a rigid airship. The superstructure of the
Eyes Above 2
was already evident in the spars and ribs rising from the construction barge. When completed, in another half year or so, the
EA2
would be more than two hundred meters long, capable of transporting a dozen packs across the continent nonstop.

Most of Scrupilo was maneuvering the two telescopes like binoculars, sweeping across the piers and boat shelters. The rest of him lay together in the bottom of the basket, as if asleep. More likely, they were busy with the others, bringing all that two of them were seeing into a single, analyzed vision.

Scrupilo was humming to himself; at least the chords meant nothing to Ravna. “Ha! I see the pitter-patter of wet paws along the quay. See the gap in the moorage? Some pack was down here recently, departing in one of the single-hulled day fishers. So we know what to look for!” The two telescope bearers stood down. The others spread out to the ballast dumps. “Let’s get upstairs quickly, Your Highness!” He dumped some water. One way or another, they were going up.

Ravna angled them northwest, across the outer straits. The channel islands were numerous, forested, and largely uninhabited. If the thief made it there he could probably get away.

Scrupilo glanced at the gear-driven clock he kept on White Head’s jacket. “Take us to Ridgeline, that’s the only place the thief could have reached in this direction.” He was on his telescopes again, scanning the open water, all the way to where sea mist hung round the furthest islands. “Hmm, a couple of twinhulls, nothing like our fellow.”

They drove along for a few seconds, the propeller pushing them along at about five meters per second. The wicker basket was a cold, shadowed place, but at least the air stream was diverted by the basket’s bow cowling.

Ravna locked down the rudders and rummaged around for the radio that Scrupilo had brought aboard. These radios were one of the stranger of
Oobii
’s reinventions. Of course, the device had no onboard processors; it was totally analog, indiscriminately spewing across the entire radio spectrum. No matter. The starship monitored all aspects of the space around it.

“Ship. Can you see where I am?” Ravna asked into the microphone.

“Ravna. Yes,” acknowledged a pleasant male voice,
something like Pham’s voice perhaps.
But there wasn’t a bit of mind behind this voice.
Oobii
’s automation was simply the best computation that could run in the Slow Zone. By now she was almost used to the interface, and it was the best she could do when she wasn’t wearing the data tiara.

She described the problem situation in terms the starship could work with. “And watch for radio lights near my location.”

“Watching,”
Oobii
replied.

“What transmissions do you see, out to, ah, four thousand meters?”

“I see a number of—”

“Ignore the North End lab.”

“—I see one, your current transmission.”

“Do you see any radio light from Ridgeline Island?”

“The radio frequency energy from Ridgeline Island appears to be normal scattering.”

“Okay,” said Ravna. “Ongoing: report on artificial radio light seen within, um”—Here she really needed a better interface. She settled for something short and crude.—“everything within ten thousand meters of the north end of Hidden Island.”

“Done and ongoing. Do you want the reports streamed now?”

Ravna thought a second. “No. Report anomalies and forwarded transmissions.” There were several radios that might legitimately be in use at this end of the Domain. They were part of the clunky forwarding operation that
Oobii
managed.

“Very good,” replied
Oobii
. “I see nothing unusual at this time.”

“You know, Your Highness, praps you should let me manage the radio interface.” Scrup was almost as clever with voice comms as Woodcarver.

“No, keep your attention on the ground.”

Scrupilo grumped around the basket. Their path had taken them in a low sweep of Ridgeline’s shore, giving his telescopes a view beneath the tall evergreens. “There’s nothing down there, no marks in the sand, and this is about the only place they could have reached land by now. The thief is either holed up on Hidden Island or he’s on the inland channel, heading for the mainland. And now we’ll never catch up! We are useless.”

Scrupilo was like that, getting all frustrated and then giving up for a while. But Ravna was just getting interested in the problem. Given both the
Eyes Above
and the
Oobii
, there were some possibilities. She chatted with
Oobii
. It reported a mainland-trending windstream about five hundred meters up and a few hundred meters south. They dumped a little ballast. She brought the rudders around and drove the propeller as fast as its little electric motor could go. The airboat angled upwards, Ravna steering according to directions from the starship. It was fun as long as she didn’t dwell on the fact that she was reduced to being a mere servomechanism for her starship’s very dumb automation.

They climbed their invisible staircase, turning through 180 degrees as they went. Scrupilo looked out in all directions, then concentrated his attention on the Inner Channel, between the mainland and Hidden Island. Every few seconds he’d comment on the new areas he could see. “Still no sign of … But wow, the ground speed! Milady, your maneuver is worthy of Johanna herself!” The starship reported that the
Eyes Above
was driving along at almost twenty meters per second. “And I can see the whole of the mainland shore. Mark my words, we’ll catch this thief!”

They drilled along, airspeed no greater than before, but the North End lab passed below them and they were already cruising southward along the Inner Channel.
Oobii
reported no new radio emissions. Of course, it had been a long shot that the thief would try to
wear
the radio cloaks. To the Tines, the devices were almost religious icons. Wear them, and you’d most likely fry your mind—but if that didn’t happen then you were transformed into a godlike pack who could stride the world with kilometers between one’s pack members! Somebody like Godsgift might be arrogant enough to wear the cloaks in the middle of trying to steal them, but that was probably not true of his minions.

She looked out at the cliffs of the mainland, the shoulders that Starship Hill rested upon. If somehow the thief got ashore, it would be hiding in the evergreens that grew in the steepness.
Oobii
said there would be a summer rain shower in another few hours. Under cover of that, the thief might make it to whatever rendezvous the Tropicals had planned. She looked at the froth of dying spring leaves that floated in the evergreens’ crowns. In most places, the ground was hidden.
Oobii
had no line of sight on these cliffs. Even so … she gave the starship another call.

Scrupilo’s attention was on his telescopes; apparently he didn’t notice what Ravna was saying to the Starship. He pointed a snout downwards. “There are Woodcarver’s troops coming down to the mainland shore! We should tell them that I’ve covered the shore north of us. Forward a call to them, Your Highness.”

Then her science advisor noticed that she wasn’t making the call. “Your Highness!”

“Just a moment, Scrupilo. We may be able to detect the cloaks, even if they’re not turned on.”

“But we need to make that call to Woodcarver!” Even his telescope members were looking around at her. Then he gave a start and began to sniff at his fur. “Wow! Did you feel that, Your Highness? Like a tiny electric shock, but through all my members, all at once.”

Ravna hadn’t felt a thing; maybe that was because she didn’t have six fur-covered bodies. However, she had an explanation. “
Oobii
just hit us with a very bright pulse. Even if the cloaks are turned off and around a corner, they might give back an echo.”