The Children of the Sky (87 page)

On this day, she sneaked out of the House of Tycoon near sunrise, the coolest time of day. Heck, it wasn’t more than 38 degrees Celsius and the rains had magically cleared away. Of course, the main reason for getting out so early was that this was before Tycoon roused himself. Half of him was much too nervous about the danger in her jaunts off the reservation—and the other half was too envious of them. Better to simply avoid the inevitable arguments that caused.

Zek and Ritl ambushed her just as she thought she’d made a clean getaway. Mr. Radio was hard to fool when he had good connectivity … and when the perverse Ritl was onboard.

“Going up on the hill again, aren’t you?” said the twosome, speaking nearly perfect Samnorsk. Most of the pack must be participating.

“Yes. Don’t tell,” said Johanna. They walked through one of the myriad staff entrances and stood in the almost-cool morning. She waved at the sky, now mostly blue, but with cloud tops catching the first rays of the sun. “I think it’s a perfect day for a walk in the Choir.”

“For you, maybe.”

The twosome strolled companionably along with Johanna toward the edge of the reservation, for once not relaying complaints about her possibly unhealthful hobbies. “Actually, I wanted to ask you a favor,” said Mr. Radio. “We lost the video from the northern-looking camera last night.”

“Yes, I know. It got knocked over. I’m pretty sure that was an accident. I’ll reset it while I’m up there.”

“Thanks.” Mr. Radio seemed to realize better than Tycoon how important Johanna’s hobbies might become. He also had his own ideas. This morning, those were about what to do with the coming glut of analog cameras, and how they might process the output without shipping it via Nevil. She looked down at the twosome and tried to hide her smile. Mr. Radio Cloaks was unique. Here, physically, it was just a twosome, what should have been a mental cripple. But Mr. Radio’s real mind was spread across hundreds of kilometers, managing an enterprise as complex as major business ventures in early civilizations. She had no trouble dealing with that; there would be several more such packs if Scrupilo could build safer cloaks. There could be
millions
more once they had digital versions with user multiplexing. But Ritl gave this creature a special strangeness; Ritl was not wearing a radio cloak. To be part of this pack, she had to keep her head very close to Zek’s, or better, Zek had to let her under his cloak. The result was a kind of fragmented communication. It was a small miracle that the pack could tolerate such a frail and sometime marriage. No wonder Ritl was training so hard to use Ut’s cloak.

They were almost to the reservation’s main gate. Like the fence, the gate was a flimsy thing, essentially a symbol. Sometimes the Choir would swarm across the boundary in what looked like a mad attack, an animal tsunami that would end all Tycoon’s grand plans—but the swarmings weren’t really attacks; the Choir had simply forgotten itself, and a wave of its excitement had brushed across the edge of the reservation. Afterwards, Tycoon’s folks would repair the tattered cords and timbers, and all was as before.

Today, the mob looked placid, with only a few Tines coming nearer than five meters to the boundary. Beyond ten meters, the mob surged as thick as ever, but there were no stampedes in sight.

“The Choir is watching us,” said Mr. Radio.

Johanna shrugged and waved to Tycoon’s guards to slide open the gate.

Mr. Radio continued, “This isn’t like when I come down here with Tycoon. This morning, the mob is watching intentionally, almost like a pack.” The twosome stood a little apart from itself; Ritl had slipped partway out from under the cloak. Her tympana were free to listen to the mindsounds from beyond the fence. Mr. Radio continued, “I—I can hear the Choir. It’s making more sense than usual. It’s watching
you
.”

“It’s really okay,” said Johanna. The sounds she could hear were just a cacophony of gobbling and hissing, sounds that animals might make—but she could tell that Mr. Radio was right. This happened whenever she approached the gate. Her gaze swept across the foothills of the fractal pyramid. What looked to the inexperienced eye like disorganized jostle, was repeated on different scales. She had learned to recognize mood and sometimes even intention in those patterns. What she was seeing here was a vast … anticipation.

She walked toward the opening gate, ignoring the way Tycoon’s guard packs hunkered down on themselves. They were always nervous when the gate was open, choosing to imagine that when closed it gave them some protection.

Behind her, Mr. Radio Cloaks emitted an imperative squeak that meant something like “You come back here!”

She turned to see that Ritl had broken free of Zek and was walking purposefully toward Johanna and the gateway. Except in bloody hospitals, Johanna had rarely seen such impudence in a singleton aspiring to membership. Ritl was one tough customer. Normally that endeared her to Johanna; just now, it made her fear for Ritl. Johanna stopped in the middle of the gateway, ignoring the myriads watching her. She jabbed her hand at the critter, doing her best to imitate a Tinish warning wave. “Stop! You can’t go out there, Ritl. It’s safe for me, but not for you.” At the very least Ritl would never return from the adventure.

The singleton kept coming, ignoring Radio’s gobbling and Johanna’s Samnorsk. Jo would have never thought this particular singleton would be susceptible to the Choir’s siren call. No, Ritl seemed to be forcing herself forward. Mr. Radio hadn’t moved but he sounded very worried. Ritl ignored them both. All her attention was forward, staring into the Choir. She moved slower and slower, as if the mob’s mindsound were physical opposition. Finally she stopped, standing right on the boundary of the reservation. She’d lift a paw as if to take another step, then hesitate, then try again. The creature was shivering with the effort.

Finally Ritl said in very loud, very clear Samnorsk, “Well, crap! Double crap!” She lunged forward and tapped her snout on the ground beyond the gate, very clearly in the territory of the Choir. It reminded Johanna of a human child counting coup. And now that she had her claim to triumph, she scuttled back into the reservation.

Johanna gave the duo a little wave. Then she turned and walked into the open space beyond. Behind her, the guards quickly closed the gate.

Normally it took most of an hour to get to the top of the central peak. The way was a zigzag across the west face, more of a walk than a climb. The pyramid’s surface was everything from undressed granite to cut quartz and jade. There was a hectare of copper and silver and gold plating, but that was scattered across the greater and lesser mounds. Tycoon had studied the pyramid for seven years now (from the air and from his palace below). Except for the recursive nature of the thing, he had not discovered much pattern to it—though it had grown steadily more durable and huge. The original that Remasritlfeer surveyed had been a muddy midden by comparison.

There was much to see as she walked back and forth and up and up. The House of Tycoon and what had been the Vendacious Annex were larger than any palaces of the North, but they were dwarfed by the foothills of the Pyramid. The airfield stretched westward from the palaces. She could see riderlet ponds there, though the full network of ponds did not respect the reservation boundary. The modern Choir was very tolerant of the “talking cuttlefish.” That was fair, considering that the riderlets were the link that had made all this possible.

One of Tycoon’s airships had just taken off, heading north. That was the personnel shuttle that touched down at every one of the far reservations. At the same time, she could see the daily flight from the Wild Principates coming in for landing. Most freight went by sea and river and caravan, but it was radio communications and those airships that kept Tycoon’s markets in synchrony.

Beyond the airstrip stood the long gray rows of Tycoon’s first Tropical factories. Nowadays they covered practically every square meter of the West Side. And beyond the western edge of the reservation she could see the Choir’s wild factories. Those ramshackle structures were continually being ruined and rebuilt. Tendays would go by with no output. Then just when you concluded that the copycat effort had failed, suddenly product would spew out, misshapen or miswoven and barely recognizable. Mostly, such items were junk … but sometimes, as with their mirrors and glasswork, there were real improvements.

Jo was on the third switchback now, more than one hundred meters above the reservation. The crowds here were as thick as ever, Tines swarming over the network of smaller paths that branched from the main path she was on. They kept an open space around her, but it wasn’t a well-respected boundary. Tines brushed against her, going this way and that. The sounds of the Choir pounded her, gobbling and hissing and honking, scraps of Interpack speech mixed with imitations of thunder and rain. Behind all this noise, there was the feeling of something louder, a buzzing in her chest and head—all a human could ever sense of mindsound.

Most of the creatures ignored her, but some gave Jo a squeak or a honk. There were little swirls of coherence, a godsgift that might last just for seconds. “Hei, Johanna!” was all those might say, but sometimes there was more, words that might have been relayed Tine to Tine from far away, even reminiscence of their time on the fleet of rafts. Perhaps one in five of these Tines was a full-pelted Northerner, but as often as not it was a hairless Tropical who claimed to remember Woodcarver’s Fragmentarium.

Sometimes she’d see an unusually large, full-pelted Tines, or a pattern of black and white that reminded her of Pilgrim. Twice she had chased into the mob, careless of whether she bumped those who stood in her way, her only goal to get close to the familiar sight. And both times, when she got close she found only a stranger. Still, parts of Pilgrim could be out there, surviving in singleton form. She’d found little pieces of his attitudes in some Tines of the Choir.

The last switchback was only twenty meters long, but by now the sun and the clear sky had conspired to make the morning broiler hot. Sweat was streaming off her and those last twenty meters felt like a real climb. When she finally reached the summit, she was quite ready to stop and sip from her canteen. She leaned against one of the gilded spikes that bordered the tiny plaza at the top. If there was any logic to the pyramid, this open space would be the most holy of holies. To Johanna it was just a small muddy field—and the Tines on the summit usually avoided it.

The video camera was on the other side of the summit, and indeed it had been knocked over. She crossed the field and retrieved the box. The gadget was purely analog,
Oobii
’s design. It was so simple that Tycoon’s factories could make it—by the millions, if the Choir was sufficiently enchanted by the gadget, or if somebody else was enchanted by video cameras and had something to trade for them.

She picked up the gadget, wiped the mud off the glass lens. Abruptly the box was talking Samnorsk at her:

“You took long enough.” It was Tycoon’s new voice. He still liked Geri’s voice—said it sounded “pretty”—but he accepted that it tended to give human listeners the wrong impression. “Are you okay?” he continued. “I’ve had to slow some of the harbor operations. Even the Tropicals don’t like these really clear days.”

“I’ll bet those were Tines with too much pale skin. We humans are dark-skinned all over, perfect for hot, sunny weather.”

“Oh. Right. You know, sometimes the Choir isn’t very careful of itself. I wonder…” Tycoon hummed to himself, no doubt coming up with something crazy. Then, slipping back into bossy mode, he said, “That’s really neither here nor there. We need that camera you’re holding. And
this
time, set it up so it doesn’t get knocked down!”

“Hei, Tyco, if you want it perched at the top of everything, the mob is going to knock it down occasionally.” Johanna reseated the camera and righted the tripod. Actually, the assembly was sturdy and bottom-heavy. It would have taken a bump from a large Tine—or the concerted effort of a group—to knock it over.
Well this is the heart of the Choir. Plenty of strange maybe-ceremonies happen here all the time.

She struggled to shift the tripod and camera closer to the edge of the parapet, where it would have an unobstructed view. A dozen Tropicals moved in close to her, but they weren’t objecting. Instead they bumped around among themselves. It was quite unlike the coordination of a real pack, but she could tell they were trying to help her move the equipment. Johanna and the moblet tipped the tripod this way and that, in effect walking the gear out onto the stony parapet.

She shooed them back and did the final placement herself, this time making sure that the tripod was wedged between the golden spikes of the parapet. Maybe Tycoon was watching her through his telescopes
and
the camera: “Be careful. If they think you’re harming the pyramid—”

Johanna had been watching the Tines as she worked, with just that concern. “Nobody’s complaining. You know I’m special to the Choir.” That was probably true; in any case, she liked to tease Tycoon.

Tycoon made a grumbling response, but in Tinish. Then in Samnorsk: “I don’t mind my employees risking their lives. I just want them to know that’s what they’re doing! Now, since you’re up there, how about pointing the camera so we can get some useful information. I want coverage of the north road.”

“Hei, I’m your advisor, not your employee,” she replied, but she turned the camera toward the northwest horizon. The “road” was really a system of clearings that changed from tenday to tenday, but it extended nearly a thousand kilometers into the deepest jungle of the Fell Basin. At first glance, the Choir was the chaotic saturnalia that Northern packs always claimed, but something more complicated than nonstop joy was going on. The coast needed an enormous hinterland to support itself. With cameras like this—and the remote reservations—Tycoon was beginning to figure it out.

This pattern of Tropical life had existed in some form for centuries, but Tycoon’s reservation had been a revolutionary upgrade—witness the Great Pyramid. Now that revolution was accelerating. Raw materials were flooding in and millions of manufactured items were streaming out. Woodcarver and the Domain saw this as a tidal wave of products. Ravna saw it as advancing her projects by decades in just a year or two. Johanna knew that what Northerners saw was just a fraction of what Tycoon’s factories were producing. Most of that output—and all of the output from the new, far reservations—was being used
within
the Choir. Just stand at the output end of the factories. Watch the wagonloads of fabric and radios and solar cells being carted off along the North Road and the River Fell. On a really clear day—like today—this camera could follow the road traffic for many kilometers, see it split into tributaries, apparently reaching every nook and cranny of the Choir’s domain.