The Children of the Sky

While she was imagining impossible revenge, her feet had carried her halfway back to the Fragmentarium. Maybe her feet were smarter than her head. Harmony complained about not having floorspace, and Woodcarver agreed. Well, there were ways of making floorspace. There were ways of making everyone look up and listen! Her pace picked up. Now both head and feet were cooperating—what a Tinish thing to say—as she realized how much change she could make all by herself. Somewhere in the back of her mind a little voice was saying that what she could do might be worse than not doing anything at all. But for the moment that voice was easy to ignore.

She came around the last turn before the Fragmentarium. The top of the cloud layer had just submerged the buildings, so all she could see were a few dim lights, probably from the old-members barracks. Admin would be hidden around on the other side of the compound. The Queens’s Road continued on its winding path down to Cliffside village, but the turnoff to the Fragmentarium was just another fifty meters or so. She walked forward, into the fog.

“Hei, Johanna.” The voice came from a little way ahead.

Jo gave a squeak of surprise, her mind cycling through variations on fight, flight, or make friendly social conversation. She peered into the mist. Aha. Friendly conversation was in order. It was a pack of four. No, five if you counted the puppy in a pannier.

“Hello,” Johanna said. “Do I know you?”

The four adult members brought their heads together. Even a meter or two of fog was enough to soak mindsound into silence; the pack was trying to think clearly. After a moment the voice replied: “Not understand, Johanna. Sorry.”

Jo made little sweep of her hand. Most packs seemed to take that motion to be like the Tinish head gesture for “That’s okay.” Of course, it might be too dark for the pack to see.

After a moment, they all continued along the path. As usual the fog was playing little tricks with sound. There was a buzzing sound that might have been some beat frequency of mindsounds. Or maybe it was just humming nervously. “I, hmmm,” it said—trying to think of the Samnorsk words? “I … am,” there was a Tinish chord that might have been familiar, “I … work … New Castle, um … work stone.”

“You’re a mason at the New Castle?”

“Yes! Right word. Right word.”

Before the humans came, before the Children’s Academy, stonemason work was a fairly high-standing tech profession; it was still quite respectable. They walked together in silence, divided by a difficult language barrier. Now she realized that they were not alone; there was a pack pacing along behind them, and maybe another behind that. Certainly Mr. Stonemason had heard them, so it seemed more mysterious than sinister to Johanna.

“Turn. I turn … here,” said the stonemason. They were at the turnoff to the Fragmentarium. Johanna followed the pack down the flagstoned path. They passed a wick lamp and she got a look at the other two packs. One was just a threesome. The other was four but two of its members were scarcely more than puppies. So, mystery explained.

As they came near the old-members barracks, the other two packs both started gobbling. Various voices responded from within, and the packs were both racing off toward the building. The stonemason stayed with Johanna. As they came near the entrance, it spoke again: “You don’t remember me, but except for my puppy, I was with you and Pham Nuwen when you entered the New Castle. You know, the day Pham made the sun go dark.”

Johanna turned to the pack, struck by its sudden fluency. An old, balding member had limped out of the shadows. The stonemason had flowed around it, and now all heads were pressed close together. The pack must have been one of Woodcarver’s guards at the Battle on Starship Hill.

Jo smiled. She didn’t remember this particular pack, but—“I do remember the day. You were outside? You actually saw the sun go out?” Almost any technology could overawe a pre-tech civilization such as on Tines World, but what Pham had done, twisting the laws of nature across hundreds of lightyears … that was something that awed even the Children. It was no surprise that the act had sucked up all the output of the sun.

The five—even the little puppy—were nodding agreement. “A thousand years from now, it may only be a myth in the mind of the pack of me, but it will be the greatest myth of all. When I looked up at the dark of the sun, I felt the Pack of Packs.”

The stonemason, now including the halt member who lived in the Fragmentarium, was silent for a moment. Then it gave a shiver. “It’s too cold out here for some of me. Why don’t you come inside? There are several whole packs tonight. They don’t speak Samnorsk, but I can translate for them.”