The Children of the Sky

“I need results on this quickly, Vendacious. As you know, the Ravna two-legs has been saying many harsh things about Nevil. Now is not the time to have her proven right.”

“I agree, sir. I’ll get back to you directly.” In this, he was utterly sincere. “I’ll be out of communication with you for a few minutes.”

“I understand. Use the cloaks network and whatever else is needed.”

Vendacious waved at Ut to stop relaying with Tycoon’s ship. Damnation. Too many problems were suddenly piling up. He should prepare for one of those problems immediately. Vendacious glanced down from his platforms, “Cargomaster!”

“Sir!”

“Bring up our special prisoners. The four goes in its usual cage, but I want Amdiranifani shackled around the bow hatch.”

The Cargomaster cowered slightly, then it hustled immediately off for the prison cells. The pack had been through this procedure before.

As for the more difficult problems: How to get in touch with Nevil? Was that maggot playing some new game? He thought he had Nevil figured out, but the prospect of facing the beam gun made him want to rethink everything. Dekutomon is close to Oobii. I could have him take Fyr and visit the maggot. If there’d been more time, that would’ve been the best approach; let Nevil know that Vendacious’ agents were everywhere, even on Nevil’s doorstep.

Or, he could use an ordinary radio to try to reach Nevil through his heavenly high orbiter. No, that was grovelling, and it hadn’t worked for Tycoon. Besides, ordinary radio might be overheard by the radio sets Tycoon had aboard Pack of Packs.

Vendacious glanced at his dataset. Right now it was displaying a map of his ground track, the ridges on either side of his ship marked with altitudes and proximity. In the early years of his exile, this dataset—Oliphaunt, Johanna had called it—had been his most precious possession, the true reason why he was so esteemed by Tycoon. Since his alliance with Nevil, the dataset had not been nearly so important an informational tool, and at the same time he had come to worry about the possibility that Nevil might be able to corrupt the device. Nevertheless, like his commset, the dataset was galactic technology, putting him on a par with the maggots. And now that Nevil controlled the starship, it was by far the most secret communication path between them.

Vendacious reached out a couple of noses and tapped the sequence of instructions that should change Oliphaunt from an atlas to a commset. Johanna had always been more adept at this than he, but then she had used it all her human life; Vendacious took considerable pride in how adept he had become with the device. There, he was in commset mode and … He noticed the red light blinking at the bottom of the display. That was the special signal he had installed; Nevil was trying to call him!

Vendacious startled into action. The parts of him nearest Ut pulled on cords that dropped heavy quilts on every side of the singleton’s perch. He checked it above and below. Now, properly pitched sounds would not be heard by Ut. Not that the Radio pack would dare to deliberately betray Vendacious, but stretched out as it was across the continent, the individual parts were scarcely more than relays. Vendacious had used that fact to snoop across hundreds of leagues—but he lived in horror that his innermost secrets might inadvertently be revealed to others.

He tapped a snout at the dataset, initiating a call, but with the sounds shifted way up into frequencies so high that they came close to interfering with thought. Such squeaking would never penetrate the quilts that surrounded Ut; no chance that dear Tycoon would be bothered by inadvertent relays.

“Vendacious here,” he said, squeaking soft and super-high himself. Oliphaunt dataset had Tinishly good hearing. Somewhere inside, it transformed Vendacious’ voice into digital (whatever that was) and boosted it out to Nevil. Vendacious’ heads hurt when he tried to imagine all the things the dataset did automatically. Somewhere out among the stars, there were things worth fearing.

Some seconds passed. Was he going to have to leave a message?

Then Nevil’s upshifted voice came from the dataset: “Why in hell are you flying so low, man?”

Vendacious suppressed a snarl. Aloud, he made a noncommittal human noise.

“Never mind,” the maggot continued. “We’ve got a problem. You told me Johanna was out of the picture.”

“Of course. Torn to pieces.” But suddenly Vendacious had a very bad feeling.

“She was on your frigging fleet!”

“But I saw her die. You were listening yourself.”

“Well, I just saw her alive through trusted video. Now we know why we haven’t had contact with the rafts. Powers on High, Vendacious! How could you?”

Vendacious’ jaws snapped. If the maggot had been physically present, he would have lost his one and only throat. “You think I arranged this complication?” he said.