The Children of the Sky

The lash of anger numbed Remasritlfeer’s mind, but he saw and remembered what happened next: The mob surged in like some monstrous wave, five and ten Tines deep. They came in from all directions, the open space vanishing in less than two seconds. Somewhere under the mob was the trade basket. Myriad voices screamed. The frenzy lasted almost a minute, so that for a time the attackers were piling up on themselves. Finally the mob retreated, leaving something like the agreed-upon open space. By some miracle, the Sea Breeze’s tiedown line remained in place, but the trade basket was reduced to splinters.

“What happened? Where are they now? What happened?” came the voices of the rest of the cuttlefish in their bannerwood kettle.

“I … I’m sorry, guys.” The trading space was almost restored, those who remained in the space were limping back toward their fellows. He could see no signs of cuttlefish in the churned-up mud.

Chitiratifor gave out a satisfied laugh. “An excellent test. It’s exactly as I predicted. Okay, fellow. It’s time to drop the tiedown line and get ourselves back to sanity.”

•  •  •

Four hours later, Remasritlfeer, the surviving cuttlefish, and Chitiratifor were safely back on Tycoon’s steamship. Three of those hours had been spent fighting through the worst afternoon storm Remasritlfeer had seen so far. Even now, the wind was lashing across the deck of the Pack of Packs, making the balloon recovery job almost impossible. Hell, the landing crew had better cut it loose before the lightning finally set its remaining lift gas afire.

Remasritlfeer had his heads down, pushing the bannerwood kettle across the deck toward shelter. The rain had long ago soaked him; it was amazing he could think at all.

The cuttlefish were still complaining: “Why-why-why didn’t you let us try again? again?”

“You shut up!” Remasritlfeer hissed back. Multiple tries had been part of Tycoon’s orders. Before the storm came up, at least four of Remasritlfeer would have sacrificed the rest of these suicidal maniacs; the fifth of him had some weird maternal sympathy for the cuttlefish. Between that and the storm and Chitiratifor, they had not done quite all Tycoon planned. Leaving early had probably saved all their lives.

He tied down the kettle and sprinkled the water with fish food. Behind him, he could see most of Chitiratifor clustered at the railing, barfing into the sea. Far beyond the railing the swamplands of the coast were a dark shadow behind the rain. These last few tendays, Remasritlfeer had accomplished more than any explorer in the history of the Tropics, but now he knew he would never stand on the ground there. No pack would, not and live to tell the tale.

Remasritlfeer shook himself. Now to get cleaned up, dried off. There remained the toughest job of the day—to convince Tycoon that no matter how big the market, no matter how great the desire, there were some dreams that were just not going to come true.

Chapter   05

Woodcarver’s Domain stretched along the continent’s northwest coast. The Domain’s northern part, the lands around Starship Hill, had been taken in the conquest of Flenser’s empire. That was two hundred kilometers north of the arctic circle. Tines World was a mellow and beautiful place, very much what Old Earth had been for humankind’s first civilization. Of course “mellow and beautiful” were relative terms. The arctic winters, even on the coast with its warming ocean stream, were frightful things. The islands were lost in the ice, the snow piled deep, and night was unending, usually so stormy that you couldn’t even see the stars.

The summers, however … Ravna Bergsndot had not imagined there could be such contrast in a natural place. The snow mostly went away, or hid in the higher hills and the glaciers above them. This year there had been plenty of spring rain, and bright green spread across the forests and heather and farmers’ fields, across all the world below the tree line. And today, today was beautiful beyond that. The rains had ended, and the sky was clean, with only a few chunky white clouds hanging beyond the seaward islands. Here, on a clear day in summer, the sun was above the horizon for the dayaround. At noon, it climbed almost halfway up the sky and the rest of the day was like an endless afternoon.

It was warm! It was even hot!

More by luck than anything else, Ravna and Johanna chose this day for a visit to the markets on the South End of Hidden Island. They’d taken the funicular down from Starship Hill and then the ferry across the fifteen-hundred-meter inner channel that separated Flenser’s old capital from the mainland. Now they were walking down wide, cobbled streets, just enjoying the sun and the light and the warmth.