The Children of the Sky (33 page)

She slipped off the end of Timor’s bed and all of her headed quietly for the stairs. She was mostly on the steps when Timor’s voice came to her, soft and half asleep. “You’re a good person, Belle.”

“Um, yes,” she replied. “G’night.” What did he mean by that?

Now back in the downstairs sitting room, she flicked on the light. The glow lamp came on, but it was so faint she could barely see it. The steam pressure must be near zero. She walked across the room, easily avoiding the knickknacks that she and Timor had collected. There were just too many books, too. She shuffled them out of the way, digging down to the telephone. It was made for both humans and Tines. A foursome could easily manage it. She was still smart enough to voice some righteous indignation on behalf of Timor Ristling. The poor Child could
die
with these terrible housing conditions! One way or another they were going to get the house they deserved.
Just don’t waste your rage on the starship’s call director.
The
Oobii
had a perfect imitation human voice (at least at low frequencies), but it was almost as dumb as a talky singleton. Once she had mistaken the telephone call director for a real human. She’d railed at it for five minutes, uselessly of course. No, she would just say she was Belle Ornrikak, Best Friend to Timor Ristling, with an emergency call to, hmm, Nevil? In any case, save the rant for some real person.

She held down the base and raised the receiver to one of her low-sound ears. There was no wire tone, and none of the little clicks and sputters she had grown used to. She hissed an ultrasonic obscenity. So steam pressure really was necessary for telephone service! Belle stomped around the crowded little room, whacking at whatever was in claw range—but quietly, so it wouldn’t disturb Timor. It would be hours before she could unload her wrath on the incompetents who were running things. A proper politician would use that time to sharpen its rhetoric, but she wasn’t in the mood. And in fact … Belle opened all her mouths and waggled her heads. She could feel the bite of frost on her tongues. It really was getting cold. Without cloaks, even a pack would be uncomfortable.

She hunkered down and tried to think things out. Why would steam pressure go away? Well, because the water wasn’t hot anymore! Maybe
Oobii
had screwed up; maybe it wasn’t targeting the heaters in this area. Since she didn’t hear anyone out in the street, complaining, the failure might be just affecting this one house. She could just go up the street and ask around. Maybe Timor could stay overnight at one of the houses that still had heat.

Belle sat in the dark for several minutes, painfully trying to figure the pros and cons of the scheme. Such an emergency move in the middle of the night would certainly prove how seriously Timor had been abused. But she was very afraid that someone like Ravna or Nevil might use it as an excuse to permanently move Timor in with others.

That thought should have vetoed any plan to get help from the neighbor Children. But now, where Belle was sitting nearest to the window,
she
was chilled.
All this strategy is worthless, if Timor dies.
The thought was strangely terrifying, even worse than the silence of mind she’d felt in Ihm’s last days.

Belle stood up, pulled her cloaks tight around her bodies. As she filed out the house’s back door, she was already plotting just how she should put the situation to the neighbors. They were Children, a married couple. She didn’t remember their names. In fact, she had done her best to keep them out of Timor’s way. Now she would have to be nicey-nice.

She latched the door behind her—and was immediately struck by the quality of the air. This cold might be deadly to an unprotected human, but it wasn’t that bad for a winter night. The clouds blocked out any possibility of aurora or starlight or moonlight, but she could feel a thick fog all around her, the humidity bringing a profound silence to all the upper reaches of sound. There was also a new sound, a hissing, low-pitched and mechanical. She had a moment of prideful insight. Maybe
Oobii
was still sending its ray to the local heater—but there was some leak that was stealing steam before it could get in the house.
I might even be able to fix this!

She walked around the side of their little house, trying to imagine just how a fix might be accomplished. Her negativity was complaining like it always did. She really didn’t know anything about steam technology, much less leak-fixing. But she could easily sound out the leak. Maybe she could just push a proper-sized rock into the hole.

So dark, so silent in the higher sounds. Except for the hiss of the leak there were no sounds but her own breathing and her paws on the ice. Without echo location she was reduced to feeling her away along like some dumb deaf human.

She slid down the gully on the north side of the house. The leak was just a yard or two ahead, almost at ground level. Right here there was faint illumination from a street lamp way up the street. It glinted off something stringy, hanging from the wall above her. It was the house telephone line. Cut.

She took a step or two more before the implications hit her. Then for a second she froze in terror. Living with all this sky magic made you forget the life and death things you learned in your earlier life. Fog masks mindsound. In olden days, fog was weather’s arbitrary contribution to war and treachery. Now all that ambushers need do was puncture a steam pipe and they could have all the fog they wanted.

Belle quivered with the effort to see and hear. What could she do? Killers could be all around. But they hadn’t acted. Maybe if she just ignored the silence they would let her be. Surely they didn’t care about a worthless pack of four.

She turned, casually she hope it looked, though two of her started to turn in the wrong direction, straining to run off to the street below the house. As she returned to the back door, she played a human humming tune, sounds pitched low enough to pass through this fog. She strained for the echoes and at the same time listened way higher up for some telltale of Tinish thought. Now that she was searching, the clues all came together, the echoes of flesh and the faint skirling of mind. She could even see some silhouettes of heads against the dim white fields of the snows uphill. There was one pack nearby, though it might be as small as four. Perhaps one or two more packs lurked at the edge of the snow.

And still they didn’t act. If she turned again, she could walk off into the street. They could get what they wanted.

And what was that? The intruders circled the back of the little house. Timor? They wanted Timor? Why, why, why? But now they had him alone, and all she need do was walk away.

Or she could scream so loud that everyone in the neighborhood would come running. Maybe would come running.

She dithered a second more, slow of thought as always. Then one overriding thought united her.
No one steals my Timor.

She gave out a shriek so loud that it would have pierced the eardrums of any human standing nearby. “
HELP HELP HELP
,” were the Samnorsk words. As the nearest pack charged her, she realized that it was
eight
. The noise of her scream echoed back at her revealing the shapes and gaits of the attacker. It had been ten years, but she recognized the villain!
Chitiratifor.
She would have screamed that name aloud, a single Tinish chord, but something flashed and Orn dissolved in pain. Orn’s head flew down on the rocks. The rest of her was surrounded, awash in blood and noise. Maybe she was two. One.

And could only think to scream, “T
IMOR!
”

That night, Ravna was in her office aboard
Oobii
until very late. To Nevil and his snoop programs, she was working hard on her farm assignment. In fact, she was using
Oobii
to check everything she could imagine about Flenser’s accusations. Even if Nevil had scams that didn’t involve using
Oobii
, she still knew his comings and goings and could monitor all the electromagnetic noise in the area. If he was relaying through the orbiter, there would be correlations. She drummed idly on her desk, watching the analysis for blockages and search decision requests. It was annoying to have the power to grab more computing resources—and not dare to do so. Another hour, though, should be enough. She’d have results to show Jo and Pilgrim. They should be back from the Cold Valley lab this evening with the latest from Scrupilo’s icy fab. Those results rated a big celebration. Instead, the three of them would probably spend the evening worrying about Flenser and Nevil.

A little flag popped up. “Guidance request: Widen relevance window to include local anomalies?” One of the older heating towers up on Starship Hill was failing—at least in
Oobii
’s infrared view. The first-built towers had never been very reliable, and she had told the ship to track their decline. So why was it bothering her now? She brought up an explanation: Okay, no physical danger, but this was going to leave people in the cold unless somebody took action. It was the sort of thing Nevil & Co. should be on top of. Maybe she could handle it, just tell Nevil that the warning message had somehow been misrouted to her. Another flag appeared, reporting telephone failures. Strange. Ravna couldn’t imagine a connection between the two problems—

She heard shouting downstairs; usually the ship suppressed game station noise better than that. Moments later, someone was pounding on her office door. Her displays automatically cut over to the agriculture research she was supposed to be doing.

“Ravna, we need you!” Someone—it sounded like Heida Øysler—was slamming against the wall so hard that the wood fasteners were cracking.

“Ravna!” That
was
Heida, and even louder than usual.

It wasn’t till hours later that she remembered the perfection of Tinish mimicry; this was Heida
or
some pack. In the here and now, she simply popped open the door.

It really was Heida. She grabbed Ravna’s arm and dragged her into the hallway.

“You gotta help us. Right
now!
”

“What? What?” said Ravna as Heida pulled her toward the stairs.

“Geri Latterby, she’s gone!” said Heida.

Down on the main floor now. The few kids present were clustered around someone bundled in outdoor clothing, sitting at one of the desks. Øvin Verring turned, saw Ravna. “You got her!”

Now Ravna recognized the seated figure. It was Elspa Latterby. The kids parted before Ravna, letting her near. The girl’s head was bent forward. She had vomited all over the desk.

Ravna touched her shoulder. “Elspa?”

The girl looked up. The left side of her face was scraped and she was bleeding from near her eye. It looked like she had fallen on her face. “Geri … we were almost home. Bunch o’ raggedy Tines jumped us. They took Geri. Beasly ’n’ I chased ’em … I couldn’t keep up.”

Ravna brushed her hand gently across Elspa’s hair. “We’ll get her back, Elspa.” She looked around at the angry, frightened faces. Run-ins with fragments were an occasional problem. There had even been a robbery three years ago. But an
abduction
? Okay then. “Lisl? You’re our favorite medic. Please help Elspa.”

The young woman had been hovering in the background, too shy to push her way forward. But Lisl Armin was one of the few who had really believed Ravna’s rants about the importance of first aid. With Lisl, and
Oobii
’s diagnostics, Elspa should be okay. As for Geri, “Øvin, start phoning around. There should be an auto list at the top of Emergency Procedures. We can set up a search—”

“The landlines, they’re down.” Øvin was wall-eyed.

Of course.
“You’ve radioed Woodcarver and Nevil?”

“Y-yes,” he said, “Woodcarver is sending out the city troops. Nevil is—”

“Hei! Everybody!” It was Bili Yngva, standing at the outer entrance to the Meeting Place. He waved a radio at them. “I’m coordinating with Nevil. He’s spotted the Tropicals; they’re running south!”

The Children swarmed toward the exit.

You can’t be two places at once. Ravna took a chance, and left the
Oobii
to accompany the Children.

Queen’s Road ran parallel to the cliffs, gently descending toward the top of Margrum Climb. There were town houses along the road, their pole lamps bright circles of light. A trickle of Children joined their group, and soon they were overtaken by packs of Woodcarver’s city troops.

The Children were full of rumors, stories of attacks all over town.

Bili and his radio had something closer to hard facts—but not very many of them. “Yes, there’ve been several attacks on Children and city packs,” he said.

“Who?” that was the shout from several corners of the crowd.

“We don’t know yet! Geri and Elspa, but Elspa is okay. Edvi Verring and his Best Friend.”

Up ahead, Øvin Verring stumbled. Edvi was his cousin. Øvin twisted around and pushed his way close to Bili. “Are they okay?”

Bili lowered his voice. “We don’t know, Øvin. Both Edvi and Geri are missing. Parts of Dumpster and Beasly are dead or missing.”

“Sons of bitches!” said someone. “Best Friend” packs ranged from opportunists to groupies—to truly best friends, very much like Pilgrim. Ravna remembered Beasly and Dumpster. They had been ideal companions for the youngest.

“Look,” Bili shouted. “All the witnesses agree the attackers were Tropical nutcases. We’re on this. Nevil is almost down to the embassy.” The same direction the rest of them—and the Tinish troops around them—were going.

They were leaving the area of newest construction. The last lamppost marked the south end of Ravna’s own house. There were no lights in the windows, and the agrav was missing from its customary place behind the house.

Ravna stepped across the frozen ruts. “Let me borrow the radio for a moment, Bili.”

Yngva stared down at the gadget clutched in his hand. “I have to keep in touch with Nevil.”

She held out her hand. “Just for a moment.”

The conversation had not slowed Bili down, but he looked around at the nearby Children. He was not as smooth as Nevil, but he could recognize an audience when he saw one. “Okay, but please keep it brief.”