The Children of the Sky (60 page)

Ravna and Jefri turned and looked up with the others. Full night was an hour old. The dark was starless, the cloud cover complete. Now … even to nearly deaf human ears … there was the sound of the airship’s steam engines.

Powers above, don’t let this be Nevil.

Amdi and the prince continued their proud poses, still grinning at each other. Purity’s guards were buckling up their armor; maybe they weren’t as confident as their boss.

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
It sounded as close as this morning, but there was an undertone that had been missing then. “There’s two of them out there,” Amdi said in his little boy voice.

Sound became substance, looming out of the dark. The aircraft coasted toward them above the south road, descending gently into the plaza. There was plenty of room for Scrupilo’s airships to land here, but the packs on board had extended poles to push the craft sideways to the edge of the open space. Eight members—two packs—tumbled out, carrying mooring lines in their jaws. They raced around, tying the airship to Purity’s heroic statuary.

Amdi was playing with the lamps: multiple spotlights splashed along the airship’s hull. They were looking at it head-on, but what she could see was
Oobii
’s design, adapted from aircraft of myriad terrestrial worlds, optimized for Tines World.

“That’s too small to be—” Amdi started to say, but he was interrupted by the prince’s laughter. A singleton was racing along the edge of the square, toward the airship. For an instant, Ravna thought Ritl had escaped. But this creature was larger than Ritl, and wore a dark cape. It came from the prince’s box. Amdi brought down a spotlight, tracked the running creature till it disappeared among the crewpacks who had dismounted from the flyer. That moment of light was enough for Ravna to notice the golden highlights in the glossy blackness of the cape.

There was only one cloth in the world like that. So the stolen radio cloaks had not been lost, and—

The engines on the grounded flyer hummed down to silence while the buzz of the other continued to grow. She stared into the darkness above the southern road: the second craft was slightly bigger than the first. Its circular cross-section almost filled the space between the buildings. Amdi brought the lamplight to bear on it, diffused to reveal the expanse of what they faced.

Ravna saw that Screwfloss had probably been right this morning, claiming that there were no humans flying above them. Nevil’s gang was most likely two hundred kilometers away, still at Newcastle on Starship Hill. But so was Woodcarver and anyone who could save them. The wash of light from Amdi’s lamp revealed the design painted around the bow windows of the second airship. It was the disk of the world, surrounded by a godlike pack of twelve.

The face-off between Purity and Amdiranifani didn’t end quite as the prince might have wished. Some minutes passed while the airship crews made sure of the tiedowns; the prince’s statues were more fragile than they looked. The radio-cloaked singleton went from one ground crew to the other. The creature didn’t behave like any singleton Ravna had ever seen, not with the bombastic nonsense of Ritl nor the plaintive silence of a less articulate fragment. It seemed to be talking to the packs in a sensible way.

Finally a stairway was dropped from the second airship and one pack, a small-bodied foursome, emerged. Each member carried a pair of sticks that looked like the stocks of crossbows. They were strapped along the back, the metallic tubes extending to just short of the shoulder. They looked a bit silly to Ravna, until she realized they were lightweight guns—very much like the firearms she and Scrupilo had designed. The gun-toting pack approached Prince Purity, the radio-cloaked singleton walking almost shoulder to shoulder with it.

Pack and singleton stopped a few courteous meters away from the prince. When the singleton spoke, Amdi’s voice-over translation sounded in Ravna’s ears: “Well done, my good pack. You delayed the fugitives a fine amount of time.”

Prince Purity gobbled back, Amdi’s voiceover as snotty as ever: “It was at great expense, my lord. We all suffered, setting aside the Great Square for so many hours, pretending to enjoy this monstrous performance. Surely there will be some additional consideration for the unexpected unpleasantness of it all.”

Ravna looked sharply at Amdi. “Quit exaggerating.”

“I swear,” said Amdi, “Purity really said that.”

“Oh yes, Purity is as s-silly as your eightsome says.” The new voice sounded like a frightened little girl, though the sense of the words was sardonic. It was the singleton, speaking Samnorsk.

Amdi rocked back on his haunches, all his eyes on the singleton. “Who are you?”

Now the singleton sounded like an adult human, vaguely familiar: “You’ll find out soon enough, my fat friend.”

The radio cloak covered most of the singleton’s pelt pattern, but in any case, it was hard to identify a pack from a single member. Somewhere out there, each wearing its own cloak, was the rest of this pack.
But where did the little-girl voice come from?

Prince Purity was staring at them all, perhaps realizing he was out of his depth. He repeated his demand for money, but more tentatively. The radio-cloaked singleton laughed and pointed its snout at the wheelbarrows of coin already collected.

The humiliation! Purity rose in heroic anger, his puce cloaks fluffed wide. All around the square, his soldiers unlimbered their crossbows. Two more gunpacks descended from the airships, and the local thugs wilted. Apparently they had seen what these firearms could do. Purity’s gaze swept the guards, the crowd. He came down from himself and walked with stiff dignity from the square. No doubt tonight’s story would be recast in his later speeches—but only when the contradicting facts were far away. His packs dragged the loot from the plaza. The crowds were gone, though Ravna could still see commoners, hiding in the shadows, watching with fearful fascination.

Tycoon’s packs left Jef and Amdi and Ravna alone in the center of the square while the radio-cloaked singleton directed a search of the pavilion and the circus wagon. They grabbed both lamp interfaces and all the emitters, even the ones placed on the far side of the plaza. Then they took jaw axes to the beautiful circus wagon.
Strange,
thought Ravna,
I never really thought of the tinted wood and worn filigree as beautiful till now when it’s being hacked apart.
The radio singleton showed no care for the folk art, but it directed the operation with great caution, evidently thinking there might be more magic toys to be found. All they found were the maps.

Meantime, Ritl had been released from the pavilion. She wandered around the demolition of the wagon. She looked mystified and maybe even sad, but soon she was giving advice to the ax-wielding packs. When her blathering was recognized as non-informative, the radio-cloak singleton took her aside. There was a short conversation. Then Ritl gave out a whoop and danced across the square, heading toward the airship with the Tycoon logo. She ran through the center of the square, gobbling even louder than usual. She dodged into Amdi’s personal space and warbled something questioning. Amdi lunged out at her, jaws snapping.

Across the plaza, the radio singleton said something imperative. Ritl backed off, looking at Amdi with her head cocked, very doglike. Then she turned and resumed her run to the airship.

“What did Ritl say, Amdi?”

Amdi had piled into a defensive bunch, glaring in the direction of the departing Ritl. “I don’t want to discuss it,” he said.

The tech trinkets, including the maps, were all put aboard the ship that bore the sign of Tycoon. The radio-cloaked singleton walked back to the center of the square. One of the gunpacks followed, with Screwfloss. The remnant was complaining about something. The chord for “loyalty understanding” kept popping up. The singleton just ignored the remnant. He looked at the two humans and spoke in the adult human voice it had used before. “Such a long chase, but now it has ended happily. Come along.” It started off for the airship that had landed first. Then it stumbled and turned. Its little girl voice spoke: “Correction. The humans go aboard Tycoon’s ship …
squeak rattle gobble
—” That last was some command to the gunpacks.

As one of the gunpacks herded Ravna and Jefri across the square, another moved to stop Amdi and Screwfloss from following. The singleton turned to Amdi: “Not you, my fat friend. You go on
my
airship.”

Jefri wheeled. “Now wait a minute! We all stay together or—” He closed in on the singleton, towering over him. The creature staggered back, its butt striking the cobblestones. One of the gunpack’s members shifted its shoulders and its twin barrels slid forward till the muzzle silencers were well past its head. Another member stepped behind it, sighting between the barrels at Jefri. Ravna noticed that the other member of the gunpack was watching
her
attentively.

The singleton came awkwardly to its feet, but its adult human voice sounded amused. “I think in this case, you will
not
stay together. Fatso and the remnant are coming with me.”

Jefri glanced at the twin barrels facing him. His hands were in fists.

Amdi came around his friend, pulling him back from the confrontation. “We have to, Jefri. Please. I’ll be okay.” But Ravna noticed that Amdi was trembling.

The singleton chuckled, started to say something, and then its voice shifted to the tones of the little girl: “Don’t be s-scared. You’ll like m-my ship.”

Jefri unclenched his fists and stepped back. The anger in his face was replaced by wonder. “This thing”—he gestured at the singleton— “isn’t anybody. It’s just a comms network!”

Amdi was nodding. “What a dumb use for radio cloaks. We never guessed they’d be so—”

“Enough!” said the singleton, and the gunpacks pushed and prodded the captives toward their respective flying jails.

At the base of the ship, the air stank of fuel oil. It smelled exactly like Scrupilo’s concoction. But Tycoon’s industrial plagiarism was not complete; the dropdown stairs were pack-wide, grandiose compared to Scrupilo’s design.
I wonder if they got the trick of stabilizing the hydrogen in the lift bags?

Partway up the steps, she turned and looked across the square. There was no sign of Prince Purity, but she could see townsfolk and peasants still watching from the shadows.
We had a great show tonight.
The thought flitted inanely through her mind. Over by the other airship, the radio-cloaked singleton was still on the ground; Screwfloss and most of Amdi had already gone aboard. Two of Amdi’s heads looked their way, and he chirped something encouraging.

Jefri stooped to look out from under the curve of the hull. He waved back at Amdi. Then the pack beside Ravna waggled its gun barrels and Jef continued up the steps, Ravna close behind. To aft, the steam induction engines were buzzing up to speed.

Tycoon’s airship was the collision of Tinish imagination with the engineering realities of
Oobii
’s original design. The passenger carriage had been crudely split into two levels, the resulting interior decorated in a grand East Coast style. The main corridor was polished softwood veneer (easy on the hearing, you know), with frequent padded turnouts; packs could walk past each other with only moderate mental discomfort. The ceilings were mostly one meter thirty high—airy for Tines, but not high enough for a human to stand.

“I wonder what Nevil thinks when he comes visiting?” said Jefri. The two humans had been stuffed in a—well, to be fair, it might be a stateroom. The distance from the door to the outer hull was about two meters. The walls were heavily padded, probably thick enough to make a pack comfortable even though there might be other passengers within centimeters, in the rooms on either side.

“I guess Nevil’s allies have about the same respect for him as he has for Tines,” said Ravna.

A pair of fifteen-centimeter portholes were mounted in the hull, far enough apart to give a pack a good parallax view. The ship had turned and moonlight splashed across the cabin. “There’s some kind of metal lid here in the corner.” She lifted the cover. There was a faint whiff of potty smell, and the engine noise came louder. Ravna laughed. “A stateroom with its own toilet.” The sanitary facilities aboard Tycoon’s flying palace might be adequate—as long as you didn’t care about the folks living in the lands below.

Jefri crawled to the hull and looked out one of the portholes. His face was a pale blur in the moonlight. “We seem to be heading south. I don’t see the other airship.” He stared out for a long moment. “Nothing!” He turned away from the port and continued more quietly, “I’m so afraid for Amdi.”

“I don’t know, Jef. Tycoon seems to be treating us decently.” Her optimism sounded weak even to Ravna herself.

Jefri shook his head. “Only for the moment. There were two packs speaking through the radio cloak. The one who took Amdi had a voice like in Oliphaunt’s tutor programs. I’m betting that was Vendacious.”

Ravna bowed her head. “And the other voice, the little girl—”

“That
was
Tycoon. The monster said as much. And he dared to use the voice of one of his victims to speak the words.”

Tines often favored a human voice based on their first language tutor, but the little girl’s voice had been frightened and shrill, almost unrecognizable.
How long do you have to torture someone to learn their language?
“Geri Latterby,” Ravna said softly.

In the end, their speculation and futile planning fell into uneasy drowsing. Jefri shifted uncomfortably on the cabin’s mat. Of course, neither of them could stand up in the tiny space, but at least it was wide enough for Ravna to lie flat. Jefri was not so fortunate. Even with his feet propped up on the toilet lid, he was still cramped.

The sound of the airship’s engines was a steady buzz, making the floor and walls hum in sympathy. Sleep eventually came.