The Children of the Sky

Even close up, she didn’t see any blood. None of the Tines were limping, except the one she called Dirty Henrik, and he’d had a bad forepaw ever since the rest of his pack got squished in a rock fall. No, these six just couldn’t decide whether they were staying or going. They milled in and out of the entrance, making nervous noises as they looked out into the dark.

Jo stood by the gate for a moment, feeling just as uncertain as the remaining Tines, and thinking through her reasoning of moments before—before the Tropicals had put everyone on the other side of the question. Finally she said, “You gotta make up your minds, guys, cuz I’m gonna close this gate.”

None of them understood Samnorsk, but when she put her hands on the gate and began to push it shut, they seemed to get the message. All but Dirty Henrik quickly slipped inside. Henrik remained half in and half out, his nose twitching as he smelled the night air. His pack had been a lumberjack; maybe he could do all right in the outside. Dirty Henrik wobbled back and forth, then realized the gate was still closing on him. He gave a little squeak and retreated within.

Jo had to force the gate upwards to overcome the bent hinge, and then it was shut. She left the lock bar on the ground. Hell, if he wanted to badly enough, Henrik could probably push his way out.

And now … Johanna stood in silence for a moment, trying to make sense of what had happened and decide how she should feel about it. Finally she shook her head and started up the steps that led to the admin building. She had some phone calls to make.

•  •  •

The other Children called the events of that night “Jo’s great jailbreak.” Some of them thought it was all very funny. The consequences? Maybe they were as bad as Johanna had imagined, though not quite so obvious and visible. For the next year or so, the back alleys and garbage dumps of villages all around had a surplus of singletons and duos, aimless beggars who importuned and incompetently burgled and robbed. A few came back to the Fragmentarium. A very few found refuge in the new Tropical “embassy,” though the Tropicals seemed much less happy to have recruits than they were to raise hell with the local singletons.

The majority of the runaways simply disappeared into the awesome wilderness. Pilgrim thought that more than a few of the disappeared had survived and made packs of themselves. “I can tell you from personal experience,” he told Jo some tendays later, when he caught her crying, “when times get really tough, you’ll patch up with parts you could never imagine sharing even a single thought with. Hei, look at me.” That turned her sobs into a hiccupping laugh; she knew what he meant better than most humans. Nevertheless, she was sure that the wide, deep silence of the northern forests had swallowed the lives of most of the runaways.

And consequences for Johanna Olsndot herself? Leave aside her most idiot classmates who thought it was all a joke. Her little brother seemed to regard the incident with uneasy awe. She was the sister who corrected his foolishness. In his view, this situation upset the natural order.

Woodcarver actually stopped talking to Jo for a time. Her Majesty knew the odds against singletons in the wild. She had allowed the Fragmentarium from the same good will that she extended to her war veterans—and Harmony’s plans had been an attempt to make room for those healthy singletons to remain in safety. More, she knew that the escape was a slap not just at Harmony Redjackets but at Woodcarver herself.

Maybe it was because of good words from Pilgrim to Woodcarver, but the Fragmentarium remained open. Indeed, one happy consequence was exactly as Johanna had imagined: now there was plenty of room in the institution. Woodcarver did not move to boot the old members out of the place. Mr. Stonemason and the others had a place for their elderly parts, even doomed as they were. That crowding problem was postponed for a while—and Harmony looked like the ineffectual, pompous assholes that he was!

Any time in the first days after the Breakout, Johanna could easily have proclaimed her innocence. After all, the evidence against her was circumstantial, with Harmony the loudest proclaimer of her guilt. The only eyewitnesses were very confused singletons, and some of them apparently thought she had been the one to throw the gate open. She almost told Pilgrim the truth—except that she soon guessed that he already knew. Johanna came even closer to telling Ravna Bergsndot. It hurt to think that Ravna saw her as just a stupid little teenager; the poor lady had to deal with too many of those already. But the days passed, and Johanna’s reputation grew and solidified. Yeah, she was very glad she hadn’t done what people thought she had. But hell, it had happened—and in the future, maybe people like Harmony would think twice before they crossed the Mad Bad Girl of Starship Hill.

Ten years after the