Vernor Vinge: The Children of the Sky

“Yeah! Woodcarver’s packs are probably down at Cliffside harbor. We’ll be first where stuff really happens.”

Walking down here, they still couldn’t see the wreck, just the water crashing on the rocks. Ahead, a swarm of seabirds towered over one particular spot. Timor felt an odd twinge of nostalgia. It still happened, when there was something about this world that reminded him of before. Those birds were so alien, but at the same time, their clustering was just like construction swarms back home.

The water surged ankle deep now, soaking through Timor’s leather shoes, gripping like icy hands. “Wait up, guys!”

“See, I told you walking in this was bad.” That was Belle, dancing around in discomfort.

Gannon looked back. “What is it now?…” Then he shrugged. “Okay, this is where we put you up on a rock.”

Gannon and some of the other kids came back and boosted Timor to a ledge on the nearest monster boulder. Belle climbed two of herself over the remaining three, and reached the same cleft in the rock.

“You can make it to the top from there, can’t you?” said Gannon.

Timor twisted around, trying to see beyond the slick curve of stone. He really didn’t like to say he couldn’t do something. “Yeah, I can.”

“Okay. We’re gonna go on ahead. Heh. We’ll make friends with the shipwrecked doggies. You crawl on up to the top of this rock. If you see Woodcarver’s packs coming or Ravna Bergsndot, then have your pack give us a shout. Got it?”

“Yup.”

Gannon and the others continued on their way. Timor watched them for a moment, but only Øvin Verring turned to give him a little wave. Well, these kids had gotten older than him; he shouldn’t be surprised they didn’t include him in much. On the other hand, he was the lookout.

He slid along the ledge toward some obvious handholds. Below him, Belle was poking around to find a way up for her bottom three. Oops, there was a pair of sea birds perched above him. He remembered the lectures about birds and nests. “Nests” were a little like autoform crèches except without the safety overrides; those birds might come down and peck at him if they thought he was after their replicates.

Fortunately, the birds contented themselves with loud cackling, then one after the other they took off for the swarm that hovered over the water’s edge. He noticed that that was in the same direction the kids had been walking. Hei! He was almost at the top of the rock! He maneuvered carefully across the slippery black stone, doing his best to avoid the bird poop.

One of Belle’s heads poked up from the edge of the rock. “How about a little help here?”

“Sorry.” He lay flat on the rock and reached down to the first one’s forelegs. That was her one male, Ihm. By the time Timor had him pulled up, Belle was able to help him with the rest of herself. She clambered to the middle of the rock and sat on her feet, complaining all the while about her frozen paws. He turned awkwardly around and finally got a glimpse of the wreck. The raft was mostly still in the straits, but sliding meter by meter toward the rocks.

Three of Belle hunkered down, listening. The others sat tall on either side of Timor. He guessed those two were watching the wreck. In most ways, Tinish vision was worse than humans’, but if they chose to spread out, they had much better depth perception.

Belle said, “Can you hear the timbers breaking on the rocks?” And of course Tinish hearing was lightyears better than the naked human ear.

“Maybe.” Timor looked at the front of the raft. Okay, rocks would break wood, right? Especially if the rocks didn’t have avoidance systems. And nothing had avoidance on this world. He saw how the timbers had split down the middle. The two halves of the vehicle were sloping separately. Surely that could not be part of its design.

He squinted, trying to make out the details. The raft was piled high with barrels. And now he saw that there were lots of Tines, though they wore brownish rags and were mostly hunkered down between the barrels. Occasionally four or five of them stood together and tried to do something with the rigging. Yes, they were trying desperately to keep their craft off the rocks.

“They’re in trouble,” he said.

Belle made a hooting sound, a Tinish laugh. “Of course they’re in trouble. Can’t you hear the ones in the water, screaming?”

Now that she mentioned it, he could see heads here and there in the water. “This is terrible. Shouldn’t someone be trying to help?” Timor was quite sure that Gannon and the other kids weren’t capable of providing much help.

He felt Belle shrug. “If they hadn’t been swept so far north, or if they had come at high tide, there’d be no problem.”

“But shouldn’t we help those packs in the water?”

One of Belle’s heads looked in his direction. “What packs? These are Tropicals. The individual members are probably as smart as any northern singleton, but they just don’t make packs except by accident. Look at that raft! Junk made by mindless Tines. Sometimes the idiots get swept away from their jungles and the ocean brings them up here. I say the more of them that die along the way, the better.” She grumbled on the way she often did, gossiping and complaining at the same time: “Our own war veterans are bad enough, broken up bits of people. But at least we keep them decently out of sight. These rabble coming in now have no call on us. They’ll be idling around town, soiling the alleys, dumbhead singletons and trios. Mangy, smelly, mindless thieves and beggars…”

The rest made even less sense. Belle was one of those packs who spoke almost perfect Samnorsk, but sometimes part of her would rattle on even after her main attention was elsewhere. Timor noticed that the pack was intensely focused on the wreck, her long necks twitching back and forth. She had been even more eager than Timor when Gannon Jorkenrud had invited them to come along. He followed the center of her gaze. There were barrels bobbing in the foaming surf.

“So if the Tropicals are such problem, why are you interested in the wreck?”

“That’s the thing, boy. These shipwrecks have been going on since time out of mind; I remember legends of them. Every few years, a crowd of Tropical singletons gets washed ashore. They’re always a problem, the ones who live. But the rafts usually have valuable junk on board, stuff we normally don’t see, since the Tropics are so filled with disease and choirs that no pack can survive there.”

She paused. “Hei, some of the barrels are on the rocks. I can hear them breaking up.” Two of her scrambled to the edge of the rock. Her oldest hung back, watching to keep them all oriented. “Okay, Timor, you stay here. I’m going down to have a look.” Her two youngest were already sliding and scrambling down, risking cuts and sprains in their eagerness.

“But wait!” shouted Timor. “We’re supposed to stand watch.”

“I can do that close up,” she said. “You stay up here.” Her two youngest were out of sight now, hidden by the edge of the boulder. Two others were helping old Ihm to negotiate the slippery rocks. She emitted a Tinish chord that Timor recognized as evasive mumbling. “You be the overall lookout, okay? Remember, Gannon is depending on you.”

“But—”

All of Belle was out of sight now. Of course, she could still hear him, but she could be pretty good at ignoring him too.

Timor settled back on the middle of his rock. This was a good lookout position, though with Belle gone, it would be just his voice to shout directions. As best he could see in the sea haze, there were no rescue boats coming across the straits from Hidden Island. Cliffside harbor to the south was much closer, but the marina was a forest of unmoving spars and masts. It really was up to Gannon and the other kids to help the shipwrecked Tines.