The Children of the Sky (70 page)

Even before Greenstalk got to the edge of the pool, her fronds had slipped across Ravna’s arms, seeing and touching all in one motion. “I have been dreaming long,” buzzing obliterated a word or two as the voder glitched, “and now I’m not where I started. I always wondered what became of you.” More buzzing. “I’ve had so many children, and now children’s children. I’m sorry, Ravna. One thing I do remember is your kindness and my promise about limiting myself. I’m sorry.”

Ravna smiled. “I remember the promise too. But here you’ve been invited. By friends.” She waved at Tycoon standing all around her. “And your children have been protected and lived in greater numbers than you might ever expect.” Ravna looked at Tycoon. “Isn’t that so, sir?”

Tycoon was all crouched down, every eye on this magical, mobile apparition. It was the first time he’d seemed intimidated. Two of him looked up at her. “I’m sorry, what’s the question again?”

“I said that you are a friend, that you’ve invited Greenstalk and her children to live here in their numbers. Isn’t that correct?”

“I, hmm, never thought of it that way. But then I never thought that this, hmm…”

“Greenstalk,” Ravna supplied.

“—that Greenstalk was a person to talk to.” His gaze was equally split between Ravna and Greenstalk. Finally he boomed out with, “Of course! You state the obvious. I am Greenstalk’s friend. I’m delighted she is here, doing as she is doing.”

Greenstalk wisped a frond across Tycoon’s nearest head. “Thank you, sir. I think slowly and dream a lot. My skrode doesn’t make memories easily, but I and mine will be good servants? citizens?”

“Employees,” Tycoon said firmly.

“I am so glad to see Ravna again. It has been—?”

“Years,” said Ravna. “I couldn’t find you.”

“That time doesn’t matter so much to me. These are friends you are among now?”

Ravna looked at Tycoon, at Zek who was surely relaying this conversation back to Vendacious. The truth, right now, could not be spoken and would not be understood. It would have taken tendays for Ravna to explain the situation to Greenstalk, repeating and repeating until the memories sat firm. She turned back to Greenstalk and said, “Tycoon here is my friend.” She gestured around to the eight.

The voder buzzed. It might have been cheerful laughter if the device weren’t so old and under water. “Good. Good. I am glad. Sit and repeat it to me some times.”

Ravna looked to the north, far past Greenstalk’s pond. While they had been talking, Tycoon’s great airship had been dragged clear of the hangar. It floated just clear of the ground, tethered by its landing pylon and dozens of tie-down cables. She glanced at Tycoon. “This will take a little time,” she said.

Tycoon look around at himself and then back at Greenstalk. Finally he said, “So Greenstalk, this Ravna Bergsndot is your friend?”

“She is my dearest friend in all the world.”

The Great Tycoon’s expedition to the Domain was delayed by one day. During much of that time, Ravna and Jefri and Tycoon sat around the cuttlefish pool—the
riderlet
pool—and explained that they were going away for a brief time, but that they would be back, with interesting news and projects. One day of repetition was probably enough. Greenstalk would remember, and would cooperate in ways that already seemed to have Tycoon—both as inventor and businesscritter—vastly intrigued.

At no time did Tycoon state any concessions, even when Ravna spoke to him alone. But when the two airships finally departed, Jefri and Ravna were both aboard Tycoon’s airship.

As a child in the Beyond, Ravna Bergsndot had lumped everything before spaceflight and automatic computation into an amorphous romantic haze of “pre-technology.” Ravna’s years among the Tines were a never-ending discovery of how much the simplest advances could change one’s life. Tycoon’s airship was such a primitive machine, but Ravna had
walked
much of the ground they were now overflying. Land that had taken tendays of painful effort to traverse now passed below her in just a few hours. It would have been glorious, except that they spent the first day and night locked up in that familiar tiny cabin.

On the morning of the second day, their progress slowed. The air was bumpy, and the shadows in the clouds below were pointing in the wrong direction. Sometime in the night, Tycoon had changed the ship’s bearing. In the distance, they could see Vendacious’ craft. It had been behind them, out of sight for most of yesterday.

The steward foursome came tapping at their door, but not with breakfast. “This way, this way,” it said. Ravna crawled through the hatch. To her right, the steward was already a meter or two forward, walking along with only an occasional look back in her direction. Their gunpack was to Ravna’s left. Aboard the airship, it carried short-barreled weapons, all the barrels tucked downwards.

“Beware the guns,” she said back to Jefri.

“Hei, guy,” Jef gave the gunpack a little wave as he came into the corridor.

Sandwiched between the steward ahead and the gunpack behind, the humans’ progress was slow. There were hatches at regular intervals along the corridor: more staterooms. The mantle lamp by each turnout was lit. Not for the first time, she gave a little prayer:
I really hope these guys also stole the tech to stabilize hydrogen.

The corridor extended the length of the carriage, gently curving along the belly of the ship. They were heading for the bow. Where else would Tycoon hold court?

The ship’s passenger carriage did finally come to an end. The passageway opened onto a cross-corridor that ran the width of the carriage. There were the usual fifteen-centimeter portholes on either side, the sunlight trumping the light from the mantle lamps. In the middle of the open space was a Tinish version of spiral stairs, a fan-like helix of rungs, quite suitable for Tines ascending single file. The steward pack sent a member up the steps. Ravna heard it gobbling, announcing the humans’ arrival. After a moment it came scooting back down. “Go up now, please to go.”

Ravna started up, winding herself around like some comedian in a cross-habitat comedy, but she didn’t quite get stuck. Finally she climbed out onto the carpet of the upper level and looked into bright daylight.

Powers.
With the most primitive technology, Tycoon had achieved a visual effect that would have done credit to a designer in the Low Beyond.
This guy is a megalomaniac, but he has an imagination to match.

Tycoon’s bowpoint audience chamber extended almost ten meters from port to starboard. Its ceiling followed the dirigible’s hull, curving upward so that parts of it were high enough for a human to stand upright. No portholes of dirty glass here. Tycoon hadn’t yet plagiarized the making of large sheets of clean glass, but he’d used the very best of his tiny portholes. Hundreds of them. The glass was fitted in a fine metallic mesh that surrounded the bow side of the room. Not surprisingly, Tycoon was perched on thrones, giving him the best view. Two of him might be looking in her direction. The rest were looking outward, into daylight so bright that they were just stark silhouettes.

She was distracted from awe by Jefri’s unhappy swearing. Jef was halfway up the stairs, fully wound around the first turn, and just a little too big to get through.

She reached down, grabbed both Jefri’s hands, and braced her feet on the far side of the stairwell. She pulled and Jefri pushed, rocking him upwards a centimeter at a time. With the sound of snapping metal, Jefri was freed. He sprawled onto the upper deck’s carpet and rolled into a sitting position.

Someone spoke, with Vendacious’ voice. “Is that the big human tearing up your stairs? When I told you these humans would wreck whatever they touch, I didn’t expect such literal proof.”

Someone else gobbled something dismissive. Ravna looked around. Ah, there was Zek, on a separate perch, draped in his radio cloak. So there were others listening in, offering advice. Was there anyone else physically present? Behind her, she noticed a head or two of the gunpack, sticking up from the stairwell. Wait. There was one more, not a pack or a Radio Cloak member: It was Ritl. The singleton was sitting in the sunlight, on the bow side of Tycoon’s thrones. There was something self-satisfied about her; she had gotten away with something.

Ravna gestured at the singleton. “I thought you were leaving Ritl back in the Tropics?” she said to Tycoon.

Tycoon made an irritated noise. “Yes. The creature popped out of a storage cabinet last night. Remasritlfeer was an excellent employee, but perhaps I’m honoring his memory too much.” He gave his employee’s remnant a speculative glare. Ritl wriggled insouciantly on her velvet perch and let loose with chords that sounded sassy even to Ravna.

Tycoon ignored the comments. He waved grandly ahead. “We’re approaching the Domain.”

From where she was sitting, all Ravna could see was sky. She came to her knees, and looked down over the edge of the bow windows. She saw painfully bright snow, patches of shade and dark stone. The glaciers and peaks of the Icefang Mountains spread out before them. She remembered the maps, Amdi planning their final run over these mountains. The valley below led to one of the Domain’s southern border posts.

“I see you still have some hills to climb,” said Jefri.

Vendacious said via Zek: “Enjoy the delay, humans. Nevil will take you soon enough.”

Tycoon said something peremptory, and then in Samnorsk: “
I
will decide that, not Nevil.”

“Sorry, sir,” said Vendacious. “Of course, Nevil has no authority in this.”

Some of the eight were looking at Jefri. Even against the glare of the day, you could see that it was not a friendly stare. “We’ll get over these mountains by tomorrow at latest. The winds can change much faster than the tides.”

The great Tycoon was silent for a moment. All eight of him resumed their contemplation of the gleaming snowfields and jagged black rock. Knowing Tycoon, this was an heroic pose, mainly for their benefit. Maybe Ritl thought so, too: She emitted some belittling remark. Tycoon laughed and shrugged it off.

From way aft, the muffled buzz of the engines came slightly louder. Tycoon’s flight crew—presumably in the airship’s control gondola—was changing direction again. Ravna wondered what starting a day late would do to Tycoon’s plans and Nevil’s.
And I wonder how often his crews have been over these mountains?
It hadn’t happened before she was kidnapped;
Oobii
would have spotted the intruders instantly.

Partway through the long, slow turn, the deck dropped from beneath Ravna, then bounced back, knocking her across the deck. Jefri grabbed her under the shoulders, and they managed to ride out about thirty seconds of turbulence.

The Tines had it easier. They didn’t use tiedowns here, but those perches had rows of wooden bars, and every paw she could see had its claws securely wrapped around a grab hold.

Tycoon gobbled something at Zek.

Jefri translated: “He’s talking to Vendacious about the turbulence.”

Zek squawked something back. His radio cloak had slipped sideways, off-center from his tympana. The poor guy shrugged this way and that, finally got the cloak on properly. He slowly spoke seven separate sounds; they sounded like member names.
Checking connectivity with the rest of himself?

Then Vendacious was back on line: “We’re fine, but the air is still bumpy. Tell the humans that their pack of puppies is feeling a bit under the weather…”
Okay, a threat.
Maybe Vendacious thought there were things she might say that could turn Tycoon.

Tycoon nodded soberly—missing the meaning that Ravna heard. “We must track back and forth across the front of these mountains. I am sure there are passes in the air, just like there are mountain passes for travellers on the ground. The difference is that the air passageways must be guessed at and they change from hour to hour. I say again, we’ll be over these mountains in the morning.” He spoke with the assurance of someone who is never contradicted.

They reversed course twice more, a long slow scan across the Icefangs. Except for fast and contrary windflows, they found nothing, certainly no airway over the mountains. Tycoon passed the time by unleashing his geeky side to pick Ravna’s brains about the “high spaces.”

“I used to wonder about the spaces beyond the sky,” he said, “but it never brought an ounce of profit and then I expelled that unproductive part of my imagination. Now I wish I had been more understanding. You humans give us new insights at the same time you do monstrous things. Someday we will visit the highest spaces, and not just scrabble over mountains.”

“Yes, sir,” said Ravna, “the stars are not too high.”

Talking about what that meant got them through another turn. He regarded her claims about the Zones and speed-of-light limitations as naive negativism—and he had even less interest when she tried to explain the Blight.

“No more religious nuttery!” he said. “I want humans of a practical mind, who are open to new concepts. We could do so much with my ideas, and your machine skills, and Nevil’s whatever—”

“And without Woodcarver’s interference,” put in Vendacious.

“Yes, of course,” said Tycoon. A head or two looked out at the mountains. The afternoon shadows were stretching deep across rock and glaciers. “This is insufferable!” he said. “There will be moonlight tonight, but I can’t risk as close flying as during the day.”

Ritl gobbled something.

“You be quiet!” Tycoon replied. The eight were not nearly so tolerant of Ritl as earlier in the day. He jabbed a snout in Zek’s direction. “What are the consequences of another day’s delay?”

Vendacious replied, but sounding more tentative than usual. “I’m afraid that Nevil Storherte is rather, um, insistent. He says that he’s set up a public meeting, and used various intrigues and coercion to persuade Woodcarver to attend. If we don’t arrive by tomorrow afternoon he’s afraid there’ll be catastrophe.”

“Damn that two-legs. I should talk to him directly!”