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about it. If the mantis pack had not been surprised, if Steel's troops had
been any less aggressive ... it would have been the end of the world.
Steel staggered to the outer hatch, his fears coming louder and louder
off the walls. Even so, he paused a moment in the shadows and the screams.
When his members trooped down the stairs, he moved calmly, every jacket
neatly in place. Soon enough his advisors would know the danger, but they
would never see fear in him. He walked lightly across the steaming turf, out
from under the hull. But even he could not resist a quick look across the
sky. This was one ship, one pack of aliens. It had had the misfortune of
running into the Movement. Even so, its defeat had been partly luck. How
many other ships would land, had already landed? Was there time for him to
learn from this victory?
Steel's mind returned to the present, to his eyrie lookout above the
castle. That first encounter with the ship was many tendays past. There was
still a threat, but now he understood it better, and -- as was true of all
great threats -- it held great promise.
On the rampart, Flenser-in-Waiting slid through the deepening twilight.
Steel's eyes followed the pack as it walked beneath the torches, and one by
one disappeared down stairs. There was an awful lot of the Master in that
fragment; it had understood many things about the alien landing before
anyone else.
Steel took one last look across the darkening hills as he turned and
started down the spiral stair. It was a long, cramped climb; the lookout sat
atop a forty-foot tower. The stair was barely fifteen inches wide, the
ceiling less that thirty inches above the steps. Cold stone pressed in from
all around, so close that there were no echoes to confuse thought -- yet
also so close that the mind was squeezed into a long thread. Climbing the
spiral required a twisting, strung-out posture that left any attacker easy
prey for a defender in the eyrie. Such was military architecture. For Steel,
crawling the cramped dark was pleasant exercise.
The stairs opened onto a public hallway, ten feet across with back-off
nooks every fifty feet. Shreck and a bodyguard were waiting for him.
"I have the latest from Woodcarvers," said Shreck. He was holding
sheets of silkpaper.
Losing the other alien to Woodcarvers had once seemed a major blow.
Only gradually had he realized how well it could work out. He had
Woodcarvers infiltrated. At first he'd intended to have the other alien
killed; it would have been easy to do. But the information that trickled
north was interesting. There were some bright people at Woodcarvers. They
were coming up with insights that had slipped past Steel and the Master --
the fragment of the Master. So. In effect, Woodcarvers had become Steel's
second alien laboratory, and the Movement's enemies were serving him like
any other tool. The irony was irresistible.
"Very good, Shreck. Take it to my den. I'll be there shortly." Steel
waved the whitejackets into a back-up nook and swept past him. Reading the
report over brandy would be a pleasant reward for the day's work. In the
meantime, there were other duties and other pleasures.
The Master had begun building Hidden Island Castle more than a century
earlier; it was growing yet. In the oldest foundations, where an ordinary
ruler might put dungeons, were the Flenser's first laboratories. Many could
be mistaken for dungeons -- and were by their inhabitants.
Steel reviewed all the labs at least once a tenday. Now he swept
through the lowest levels. Crickers fled before the light of his guard's
torches. There was a smell of rotting meat. Steel's paws skidded where
slickness lay upon the stone. Holes were dug in the floor at regular
intervals. Each could hold a single member, its legs jammed tight to its
body. Each was covered by a lid with tiny air holes. It took the average
member about three days to go mad in such isolation. The resulting "raw
material" could be used to build blank packs. Generally, they weren't much
more than vegetables, but then that was all the Movement asked of some. And
sometimes remarkable things came from these pits: Shreck for instance.
Shreck the Colorless, some called him. Shreck the stolid. A pack who was
beyond pain, beyond desire. Shreck's was the loyalty of clockwork, but built
from flesh and blood. He was no genius, but Steel would have given an
eastern province for five more of him. And the promise of more such
successes made Steel use the isolation pits again and again. He had recycled
most of the wrecks from the ambush that way....
Steel climbed back to higher levels, where the really interesting
experiments were undertaken. The world regarded Hidden Island with
fascinated horror. They had heard of the lower levels. But most didn't
realize what a small part those dark spaces played in the Movement's
science. To properly dissect a soul, you need more than benches with blood
gutters. The results from the lower levels were simply the first steps in
Flenser's intellectual quest. There were great questions in the world,
things that had bothered packs for thousands of years. How do we think? Why
do we believe? Why is one pack a genius and another an oaf? Before Flenser,
philosophers argued them endlessly and never got closer to the truth. Even
Woodcarver had pranced around the issues, unwilling to give up her
traditional ethics. Flenser was prepared to get the answers. In these labs,
nature itself was under interrogation.
Steel walked across a chamber one hundred yards wide, with a roof
supported by dozens of stone pillars. On every side there were dark
partitions, slate walls mounted on tiny wheels. The cavern could be blocked
off, maze-like, into any pattern. Flenser had experimented with all the
postures of thought. In the centuries before him, there had been only a few
effective postures: the instinctive heads together, the ring sentry, various
work postures. Flenser had tried dozens more: stars, double rings, grids.
Most were useless and confusing. In the star, only a single member could
hear all the others, and each of those could only hear the one. In effect,
all thought had to pass through the hub member. The hub could contribute
nothing rational, yet all its misconceptions passed uncorrected to the rest.
Drunken foolishness resulted.... Of course, that experiment was reported to
the outside world.
But at least one of the others -- still secret -- worked strangely
well: Flenser posted eight packs around the floor and on temporary
platforms, blocked them from each another with the slate partitions, and
then put members from each pack in connection with their counterparts in
three others. In a sense, he created a pack of eight packs. Steel was still
experimenting with that. If the connectors were sufficiently compatible (and
that was the hard part), the resulting creature was far smarter than a ring
sentry. In most ways it was not as bright as a single heads-together pack,
yet sometimes it had striking insights. Before he left for the Long Lakes,
the Master had developed a plan to rebuild the castle's main hall so council
sessions could be conducted in this posture. Steel hadn't pursued that idea;
it seemed just a bit too risky. Steel's domination of others was not quite
as complete as Flenser's had been.
No matter. There were other, far more significant, projects. The rooms
ahead were the true heart of the Movement. Steel's soul had been born in
these rooms; all of Flenser's greatest creations had begun here. During the
last five years, Steel had continued the tradition ... and improved upon it.
He walked down the hall that linked the separate suites. Each bore its
number in inlaid gold. At each he opened a door and stepped partway through.
His staff left their report on the previous tenday just inside. Steel
quickly read each one, then poked a nose over the balcony to look at the
experiment within. The balconies were well-padded, and screened; it was easy
to observe without being seen.
Flenser's one weakness (in Steel's opinion) was his desire to create
the superior being. The Master's confidence was so immense, he believed that
any such success could be applied to his own soul. Steel had no such
illusions. It was a commonplace that teachers are surpassed by their
creations -- pupils, fission-children, adoptions, whatever. He, Steel, was a
perfect illustration of this, though the Master didn't know it yet.
Steel had determined to create beings that would each be superior in
some single way -- while flawed and malleable in others. In the Master's
absence, he had begun a number of experiments. Steel worked from scratch,
identifying inheritance lines independent of pack membership. His agents
purchased or stole pups that might have potential. Unlike Flenser, who
usually melded pups into existing packs in an approximation of nature, Steel
made his totally newborn. His puppy packs had no memories or fragments of
soul; Steel had total control from the beginning.
Of course, most such constructions quickly died. The pups had to be
parted from their wet nurses before they began to participate in the adult's
consciousness. The resulting pack was taught entirely in speech and written
language. All inputs could be controlled.
Steel stopped before door number thirty-three: Experiment Amdiranifani,
Mathematical Excellence. It was not the only attempt in this direction, but
it was by far the most successful. Steel's agents had searched the Movement
for packs with ability for abstraction. They had gone further: the world's
most famous mathematician lived in the Long Lakes Republic. The pack had
been preparing to fission; she had several puppies by herself and a
mathematically talented lover. Steel had had the pups taken. They matched
his other acquisitions so well that he decided to make an eightsome. If
things worked out, it might be beyond all nature in its intelligence.
Steel motioned his guard to shield the torches. He opened door
thirty-three and soft-toed one member to the edge of the balcony. He looked
down, carefully silencing that member's fore-tympanum. The skylight was dim,
but he could see the pups huddled together ... with its new friend. The
mantis. Serendipity, that was all he could call this, the reward that comes
to a researcher who labors long enough, carefully enough. He had had two
problems. The first had been growing for a year: Amdiranifani was slowly
fading, its members falling into the usual autism of wholly newborn packs.
The second was the captured alien; that was an enormous threat, an enormous
mystery, an enormous opportunity. How to communicate with it? Without
communication, the possibilities for manipulation were very limited.
Yet in a single blind stroke, an incompetent Servant had shown the way
to solve both problems. Now that his eyes were adjusted to the dimness,
Steel could see the alien beneath the pile of puppies. When first he'd heard
that the creature had been put in with an experiment, Steel had been enraged
beyond thought; the Servant who made the mistake had been recycled. But the
days passed. Experiment Amdiranifani began showing more liveliness than any
time since its pups were weaned. It quickly became obvious -- from
dissecting the other aliens, and observing this one -- that mantis folk did
not live in packs. Steel had a complete alien.
The alien moved in its sleep, and made a low-pitched mouth noise; it
was totally incapable of any other kind of sound. The pups shifted to fit
the new position. They were sleeping too, vaguely thinking among themselves.
The low end of their sounds was a perfect imitation of the alien.... And
that was the greatest coup of all. Experiment Amdiranifani was learning the
alien's speech. To the pack of newborns this was simply another form of
interpack talk, and apparently its mantis friend was more interesting than
the tutors who appeared on these balconies. The Flenser Fragment claimed it
was the physical contact, that the pups were reacting to the alien as a
surrogate parent, thoughtless though the alien was.
It really didn't matter. Steel brought another head to the edge of the
balcony. He stood quietly, neither member thinking directly at the other.
The air smelled faintly of puppies and mantis sweat. These two were the
Movement's greatest treasure: the key to survival and more. By now, Steel
knew the flying ship was not part of an invasion fleet. Their visitors were
more like ill-prepared refugees. There had been no word of other landings,
and the Movement's spies were spread far.
It had been a close thing, winning against the aliens. Their single
weapon had killed most of a regiment. In the proper jaws, such weapons could
defeat armies. He had no doubt the ship contained more powerful killing
machines -- ones that still functioned. Wait and watch, Steel counseled
himself. Let Amdiranifani show the levers that could control this alien. The
entire world would be the prize.
.Delete this paragraph to shift page flush
Sometimes Mom used to say that something was "more fun than a barrel
full of puppies." Jefri Olsndot had never had more than one pet at a time,
and only once had that been a dog. But now he understood what she meant.
From the very first day, even when he had been so tired and scared, he had
been entranced by the eight puppies. And they by him. They were all over
him, pulling at his clothes, unfastening his shoes, sitting on his lap, or
just running around him. Three or four were always staring at him. Their
eyes were completely brown or pink, and seemed large for their heads. From
the beginning the puppies had mimicked him. They were better than Straumli
songbirds; anything he said, they could echo -- or play back later. And when
he cried, often the puppies would cry too, and cuddle around him.
There were other dogs, big ones that wore clothes and entered the room
through doorways high up on the walls. They lowered food into the room,
sometimes making strange noises. But the food tasted awful, and they didn't
respond to Jefri's screaming even by mimicking him.
Two days had passed, then a week. Jefri had investigated everything in
the room. It wasn't really a dungeon; it was too big. And besides, prisoners
don't get pets. He understood that this world was uncivilized, not part of
the Realm, perhaps not even on the Net. If Mom or Dad or Johanna weren't
nearby, it was possible that there was no one here to teach the dogs to
speak Samnorsk! Then it would be up to Jefri Olsndot to teach the dogs and
find his family. Now when the white-jacketed dogs came onto the corner
balconies, Jefri shouted questions at them. It didn't help very much. Even
the one with red stripes didn't respond. But the puppies did! They shouted
right along with Jefri, sometimes echoing his words, sometimes making
nonsense sounds.
It didn't take Jefri long to realize that the puppies were driven by a
single mind. When they ran around him, some would always sit a little way
off, their graceful necks arching this way and that -- and the runners
seemed to know exactly what the others saw. He couldn't hide things behind
his back if there was even one of them to alert the others. For a while he
thought they were somehow talking to each other. But it was more than that:
when he watched them unfasten his shoes or draw a picture -- the heads and
mouths and paws cooperated so perfectly, like the fingers on a person's
hands. Jefri didn't reason things out so explicitly; but over a period of
days he came to think of all the puppies together as a single friend. At the
same time he noticed that the puppies was mixing up his words -- and
sometimes making new meanings.
"You me play." The words came out like a cheap voice splice, but they
generally preceded a mad game of tag all around the furniture.
"You me picture." The slate board covered the lowest meter of the wall,
all around the room. It was a display device like Jefri had never seen in
his life: dirty, imprecise, imperfectly deletable, unstorable. Jefri loved
it. His face and hands, and most of Puppies' lips, got covered with chalk
stains. They drew each other, and themselves. Puppies didn't draw neat
pictures like Jefri's; Puppies' dog figures had big heads and paws, with the
bodies all smudged together. When he drew Jefri, the hands were always big,
each finger carefully drawn.
Jefri drew his family and tried to make Puppies understand.
Day by day, the sunlight circled higher on the walls. Sometimes the
room was dark now. At least once a day, packs came to talk to Puppies. This
was one of the few things which could pull the little ones away from Jefri.
Puppies would sit below the balconies, screeching and croaking at the
adults. It was a school class! They'd lower scrolls for him to look at, and
retrieve ones he had marked.
Jefri sat quietly and watched the lessons. He fidgeted, but he didn't
shout at the teachers anymore. Just a little longer, and he and Puppies
would really be talking. Just a little longer and Puppies could find out for
him where Mom and Dad and Johanna were.
Sometimes terror and pain are not the best levers; deception, when it
works, is the most elegant and the least expensive manipulation of all. Once
Amdiranifani was fluent in the mantis language, Steel had him explain about
the "tragic death" of Jefri's parents and brood-sibling. The Flenser
Fragment had argued against it, but Steel wanted quick and unquestioned
control.
Now it seemed that the Fragment might have been right; at least he
should have held out the hope that the brood-sibling lived. Steel looked
solemnly at the Amdiranifani Experiment. "How can we help?"
The young pack looked up trustingly. "Jefri is so terribly upset about
his parents and sister." Amdiranifani was using mantis words a lot, often
unnecessarily: sister instead of brood-sibling. "He hasn't been eating much.
He doesn't want to play. It makes me very sad."
Steel kept watch on the far balcony. The Flenser Fragment was there. It
was not hiding, though most of its faces were out of the candlelight. So far
its insights had been extraordinary. But the Fragment's stare was like old
times, when a mistake could mean mutilation or worse. So be it. The stakes
were higher now than ever before; if fear at Steel's throats could help him
succeed, he welcomed it. He looked away from the balcony, and brought all
his faces to an expression of tender sympathy for poor Jefri's plight. "You
just have to make it -- him -- understand. No one can bring his parents or
sister back to life. But we know who the murderers are. We're doing
everything we can to defend against them. Tell him how hard this is.
Woodcarvers is an empire that has lasted hundreds of years. In a fight, we
are no match for them. That's why we need all the help he can give us. We
need him to teach us to use his parents' ship."
The puppy pack lowered a head. "Yes. I'll try, but ..." The three
members by Jefri made low-pitched grunting noises at it. The mantis sat head
bowed; it held its tentacled paws across its eyes. The creature had been
like this for several days, and the withdrawal was getting worse. Now it
shook its head violently, made sharp noises a little higher pitched than its
normal register.
"Jefri says he doesn't understand how things work in the ship. He's
just a little ..." the pack searched for a translation. " ... he is really
very young. You know, like me."
Steel nodded understandingly. It was an obvious consequence of the
aliens' singleton nature, but weird even so: Every one of them started out
all a puppy. Every one of them was like Steel's puppy-pack experiments.
Parental knowledge was transmitted by the equivalent of interpack speech.
That made the creature easy to dupe, but it was a damned inconvenience now.
"Still, if there's anything he can help explain."
More grunting from the mantis. Steel should learn that language. The
sounds were easy; these pitiful creatures used their mouths to talk, like a
bird or a forest slug. For now he depended on Amdiranifani. For now that was
okay; the puppy pack trusted him. Another piece of serendipity. With a few
of his recent experiments, Steel had tried love in place of Flenser's
original terror/love combination; there had been a slim chance that it might
be superior. By great good luck Amdiranifani fell into the love group. Even
his instructors had avoided negative reinforcement. The pack would believe
anything he said ... and so, Steel hoped, would the mantis.
Amdiranifani translated: "There is something else; he has asked me
about it before. Jefri knows how to wake the other children -- " the word
literally meant "pack of puppies", "-- on the ship. You look surprised, my
lord Steel?"
Even though he no longer dreamed in terror of monster minds, Steel
would just as soon not have a hundred more aliens running around. "I hadn't
realized they could be wakened so easily.... But we shouldn't do it right
now. We're having trouble finding food that Jefri can eat." That was true;
the creature was an incredibly finicky eater. "I don't think we could feed
any more right now."
More grunting. More sharp cries from Jefri. Finally, "There is one
other thing, my lord. Jefri thinks it may be possible to use the ship's
ultrawave to call for help from others like his parents."
The Flenser Fragment jerked out of the shadows. A pair of heads looked
down at the mantis, while another stared meaningfully at Steel. Steel didn't
react; he could be cooler than any loose pack. "That's something to think
about. Perhaps you and Jefri could talk more about it. I don't want to try
it till we're sure we won't hurt the ship." That was weak. He saw the
Fragment twitch a muzzle in amusement.
As he spoke, Amdiranifani was translating. Jefri responded almost
immediately.
"Oh, that's okay. He meant a special call. Jefri says the ship has been
signaling ... all by itself ... ever since it landed."
And Steel wondered if he had ever heard a deadly threat uttered in such
sweet innocence.
They began letting Amdi and Jefri outside to play. Beforehand Amdi was
nervous about going out. He was unused to wearing clothes. His whole life --
all four years of it -- had been spent in that one big room. He read about
the outside and was curious about it, yet he was also a little afraid. But
the human boy seemed to want it. Every day he'd been more withdrawn, his
crying softer. Mostly he was crying for his parents or sister, but sometimes
he cried about being locked up so deep away.
So Amdi had talked to Mr. Steel, and now they got out almost every day,
at least to an inner courtyard. At first, Jefri just sat, not really looking
around. But Amdi discovered that he loved the outdoors, and every time he
got his friend to play a little more.
Packs of teachers and guards stood at the corners of the yellowing moss
and watched. Amdi -- and eventually Jefri -- got a big kick out of harassing
them. They hadn't realized it down in the room, where visitors came at the
balconies, but most adults were nervous around Jefri. The boy was half again
as tall as a normally standing pack member. When he came close, the average
pack would clump together and edge away. They didn't like having to look up
at him. It was silly, Amdi thought. Jefri was so tall and skinny, he looked
like he might topple over at any moment. And when he ran it was like he was
wildly trying to recover from a fall and never quite succeeding. So Amdi's
favorite game those first days was tag. Whenever he was the chaser, he
contrived to run Jefri right through the most prim looking whitejackets. If
he and Jefri did it right they could turn the tag into a three-way event,
Amdi chasing Jefri and a whitejackets racing to stay away from both of them.
Sometimes he felt sorry for the guards and whitejackets. They were so
stiff and grownup. Didn't they understand how much fun it was to have a
friend that you walk right next to, that you could actually touch?
It was mostly night now. Daylight hovered for a few hours around noon.
The twilight before and after was bright enough to dim the stars and aurora,
but still too faint to show colors. Though Amdi had spent his life indoors,
he understood the geometry of the situation, and liked to watch the change
of light. Jefri didn't much like the dark of winter ... until the first snow
fell.
Amdi got his first set of jackets. And Mr. Steel had special clothes
made for the human boy, big puffy things that covered his whole body and
kept him warmer than a good pelt would have done.
On one side of the courtyard the snow was just six inches deep, but
elsewhere it piled into drifts higher than Amdi's head. Torches were mounted
in wind shields on the walls; their light glittered golden off the snow.
Amdi knew about snow -- but he'd never seen it before. He loved to splash it
on one of his jackets. He would stare and stare, trying to see the
snowflakes without his breath melting them. The hexagonal pattern was
tantalizing, just at the limit of his vision.
But tag was no fun anymore; the human could run through drifts that
left Amdi swimming in the white stuff. There were other things the human
could do, wonderful things. He could make balls of snow and throw them. The
guards were very upset by this, especially when Jefri plinked a few members.
It was the first time he ever saw them get angry.
Amdi raced around the windswept side of the courtyard, dodging
snowballs and keening frustration. Human hands were such wicked, wicked
things. How he would love to have a pair -- four pairs! He circled round
from three sides and sprinted right at the human. Jefri backed quickly into
deeper snow, but too late. Amdi hit him high and low, tipping the Two-Legs
over into a snowdrift. There was a mock battle, slashing lips and paws
against Jefri's hands and feet. But now Amdi was on top. The human got paid
back for his snowballs with plenty of snow stuffed down the back of his
jacket.
Sometimes they just sat and watched the sky for so long that rumps and
paws went numb. Sitting behind the largest snow drift, they were shaded from
the castle torches and had a clear view of the lights in the sky.
At first Amdi had been entranced by the aurora. Even some of his
teachers were. They said this part of the world was one of the best places
to see the sky glow. Sometimes it was so faint that the torchlight
glimmering off the snow was enough to blot it out. Other times it ran from
horizon to horizon: green light trimmed with hints of pink, twisting as
though ruffled by a slow wind.
He and Jefri could talk very easily now, though always in Jefri's
language. The human couldn't make many of the sounds of interpack speech;
even his pronunciation of Amdi's name was a scarcely recognizable. But Amdi
understood Samnorsk pretty well; it was fun, their own secret language.
Jefri was not especially impressed by the aurora. "We have that lots at
home. It's just light from -- " He said a new word, and glanced at Amdi. It
was funny how the human couldn't look in more than one place at time. His
eyes and head were always moving. "-- you know, places where people make
things. I think the gas and waste leaks out, and then the sun lights it up
or it gets -- " unintelligible.
"Places where people make things?" In the sky? Amdi had a globe; he
knew the size of the world and its orientation. If the aurora were
reflecting sunlight, it must be hundreds of miles above the ground! Amdi
leaned a back against Jefri's jacket and made a very human whistling sound.
His knowledge of geography was not up to his geometry, but, "The packs don't
work in the sky, Jefri. We don't even have flying boats."
"Uh, that's right, you don't.... I don't know what that stuff is then.
But I don't like it. It gets in the way of the stars." Amdi knew all about
the stars; Jefri had told him. Somewhere out there were the friends of
Jefri's parents.
Jefri was silent for several minutes. He wasn't looking at the sky
anymore. Amdi wriggled a little closer, watching the shifting light in the
sky. Behind them the wind-sharpened crest of the drift was edged with yellow
light from the torches. Amdi could imagine what the other was thinking. "The
commsets from the boat, they really aren't good enough to call for help?"
Jefri slapped the ground. "No! I told you. They're just radio. I think
I can make them work, but what's the use? The ultrawave stuff is still on
the boat and it's too big to move. I just don't understand why Mr. Steel
won't let me go aboard.... I'm eight years old, you know. I could figure it
out. Mom had it all set up before, before ..." His words guttered into the
familiar, despairing silence.
Amdi rubbed a head against Jefri's shoulder. He had a theory about Mr.
Steel's reluctance. It was an explanation he hadn't told Jefri before:
"Maybe he's afraid you'll just fly away and leave us."
"That's stupid! I'd never leave you. Besides, that boat is real hard to
fly. It was never meant to land on a world."
Jefri said the strangest things; sometimes Amdi was just
misunderstanding -- but sometimes they were literal truth. Did the humans
really have ships that never came to ground? Where did they go then? Amdi
could almost feel new scales of reference clicking together in his mind. Mr.
Steel's geography globe represented not the world, but something very, very
small in the true scheme of things.
"I know you wouldn't leave us. But you can see how Mr. Steel might be
afraid. He can't even talk to you except through me. We have to show him
that we can be trusted."
"I guess."
"If you and I could get the radios working, that might help. I know my
teachers haven't figured them out. Mr. Steel has one, but I don't think he
understands it either."
"Yeah. If we could get the other one to work..."
That afternoon the guards got a break: their two charges came in from
the cold early. The guards didn't question their good fortune.
Steel's den had originally been the Master's. It was very different
from the castle's meeting halls. Except for choirs, only a single pack would
fit in any room. It was not exactly that the suite was small. There were
five rooms, not counting the bath. But except for the library, none was more
than fifteen feet across. The ceilings were low, less than five feet; there
was no space for visitor balconies. Servants were always on call in the two
hallways that shared a wall with the quarters. The dining room, bedroom, and
bath had servant hatches, just big enough to give orders and to receive food
and drink, or preening oils.
The main entrance was guarded on the outside by three trooper packs. Of
course, the Master would never live in a den with only one exit. Steel had
found eight secret hatches (three in the sleeping quarters). These could
only be opened from within; they led to the maze that Flenser had built
within the solid rock of the castle's walls. No one knew the extent of that
maze, not even the Master. Steel had rearranged parts of it -- in particular
the passages leading from this den -- in the years since Flenser's
departure.
The quarters were nearly impregnable. Even if the castle fell, the
rooms' larder was stocked for half a year; ventilation was provided by a
network of channels almost as extensive as the Master's secret passages. All
in all, Steel felt tolerably safe here. There was always the possibility
that there were more than eight secret entrances, perhaps one that could be
opened from the other side.
And of course choirs were out of the question, here or anywhere. The
only extrapack sex that Steel indulged was with singletons -- and that as
part of his experiments; it was just too dangerous to mix one's self with
others.
After dinner, Steel drifted into the library. He relaxed around his
reading desk. Two of him sipped brandy while another smoked southern herbs.
This was pleasure, but also calculation: Steel knew just what vices, applied
to just which members, would raise his imagination to its keenest pitch.
... And more and more he was coming to see that imagination was at
least as important as raw intelligence in the present game. The desk between
him was covered with maps, reports from the south, internal security memos.
But lying in all the silkpaper, like an ivory slug in its nest, was the
alien radio. They had recovered two from the ship. Steel picked the thing
up, ran a nose along the smooth, curved sides. Only the finest stressed wood
could match its grace -- and that in musical instruments or statuary. Yet
the mantis claimed this could be used to talk across dozens of miles, as
fast as a ray of sunlight. If true ... Steel wondered how many lost battles
might have been won with these, and how many new conquests might be safely
undertaken. And if they could learn to make far-talkers ... the Movement's
subordinates, scattered across the continent, would be as near as the guards
by Steel's den. No force in the world could stand against them.
Steel picked up the latest report from Woodcarvers. In many ways they
were having more success with their mantis than Steel with his. Apparently
theirs was almost an adult. More important, it had a miraculous library that
could be interrogated almost like a living being. There had been three other
datasets. Steel's whitejackets had found what was left of them in the
burnt-out wreckage around the ship. Jefri thought that the ship's processors
were a little like a dataset, "only stupider" (Amdi's best translation), but
so far the processors had been useless.
But with their dataset, several on Woodcarver's staff had already
learned mantis talk. Each day they discovered more about the aliens'
civilization than Steel's people could in ten. He smiled. They didn't know
that all the important stuff was being faithfully reported to Hidden
Island.... For now he would let them keep their toy, and their mantis; they
had noticed several things that would have slipped by him. Still he damned
the luck.
Steel paged through the report.... Good. The alien at Woodcarvers was
still uncooperative. He felt his smile spreading into laughter: it was a
small thing, the creature's word for the Packs. The report tried to spell
out the word. It didn't matter; the translation was "claws" or "tines". The
mantis had a special horror for the tine attachments that soldiers wore on
their forepaws. Steel licked pensively at the black enamel of his manicured
claws. Interesting. Claws could be threatening things, but they were also
part of being a person. Tines were their mechanical extension, and
potentially more frightening. It was the sort of name you might imagine for
an elite killer force ... but never for all the Packs. After all, the race
of packs included the weak, the poor, the kindly, the naive ... as well as
persons like Steel and Flenser. It said something very interesting about
mantis psychology that the creature picked tines as the characterizing
feature of the Packs.
Steel eased back from his desk and gazed at the landscape painted
around the library's walls. It was a view from the castle towers. Behind the
paint, the walls were lined with patterns of mica and quartz and fiber; the
echoes gave a vague sense of what you might hear looking out across the
stone and emptiness. Combination audiovisuals were rare in the castle, and
this one was especially well-done; Steel could feel himself relaxing as he
stared at it. He drifted for a moment, letting his imagination roam.
Tines. I like it. If that was the alien's image, then it was the right
name for his race. His pitiful advisors -- and sometimes even the Flenser
Fragment -- were still intimidated by the ship from the stars. No question,
there was power in that ship beyond anything in the world. But after the
first panic, Steel understood that the aliens were not supernaturally
gifted. They had simply progressed -- in the sense that Woodcarver made so
much of -- beyond the current state of his world's science. Certainly the
alien civilization was a deadly unknown right now. Indeed, it might be
capable of burning this world to a cinder. Yet the more Steel saw, the more
he realized the intrinsic inferiority of the aliens: What a bizarre abortion
they were, a race of intelligent singletons. Every one of them must be
raised from nothing, like a wholly newborn pack. Memories could only be
passed by voice and writing. Each creature grew and aged and even died as a
whole. Despite himself, Steel shivered.
He had come a long way from the first misconceptions, the first fears.
For more than a thirty days now he'd been scheming to use the star ship to
rule the world. The mantis said that ship was signaling others. That had
reduced some of his Servants to incontinence. So. Sooner or later, more
ships would arrive. Ruling the world was no longer a practical goal.... It
was time to aim higher, at goals even the Master had never imagined. Take
away their technical advantages and the mantis folk were such finite,
fragile beings. They should be easy to conquer. Even they seemed to realize
this. Tines, the creature calls us. So it will be. Some day Tines would pace
between the stars and rule there.
But in the years till then, life would be very dangerous. Like a
newborn pup, all their potential could be destroyed by one small blow. The
Movement's survival -- the world's survival -- would depend upon superior
intelligence, imagination, discipline, and treachery. Fortunately, those had
always been Steel's great strengths.
Steel dreamed in the candlelight and haze.... Intelligence,
imagination, discipline, treachery. Done right ... could the aliens be
persuaded to eliminate all of Steel's enemies ... and then bare their
throats to him? It was daring, almost beyond reason, but there might be a
way. Jefri claimed he could operate the ship's signaler. By himself? Steel
doubted it. The alien was thoroughly duped, but not especially competent.
Amdiranifani was a different story. He was showing all the genius of his
bloodlines. And the principles of loyalty and sacrifice his teachers drilled
into him had taken hold, though he was a bit ... playful. His obedience
didn't have the sharp edge that fear could bring. No matter. As a tool he
was useful beyond all others. Amdiranifani understood Jefri, and seemed to
understand the alien artifacts even better than the mantis did.
The risk must be taken. He would let the two aboard the ship. They
would send his message in place of the automatic distress signal. And what
should that first message be? Word for word, it would be the most important,
most dangerous thing any pack had ever said.
Three hundred yards away, deep in the experiment wing, a boy and a pack
of puppies came across an unexpected piece of good luck: an unlocked door,
and a chance to play with Jefri's commset.
The phone was more complex than some. It was intended for hospital and
field work, for the remote control of devices as well as for voice talk. By
trial and error, the two gradually narrowed the options.
Jefri Olsndot pointed to numbers that had appeared on the side of the
device. "I think that means we're matched with some receiver." He glanced
nervously at the doorway. Something told him they really shouldn't be here.
"That's the same pattern as on the radio Mr. Steel took," said Amdi.
Not even one of his heads was watching the door.
"I bet if we press it here, what we say will come out on his radio. Now
he'll know we can help.... So what should we do?"
Three of Amdi raced around the room, like dogs that couldn't keep their
attention on the conversation. By now, Jefri knew this was the equivalent of
a human looking away and humming as he thought. The angle of his gaze was
another gesture, in this case a spreading and mischievous smile. "I think we
should surprise him. He is always so serious."
"Yeah." Mr. Steel was pretty solemn. But then all the adults were. They
reminded him of the older scientists at the High Lab.
Amdi grabbed the radio and gave him a "just watch this" look. He nosed
on the "talk" switch and sang a long ululation into the mike. It sounded
only vaguely like pack speech. One of Amdi translated, next to Jefri's ear.
The human boy felt giggles stealing up his throat.
In his den, Lord Steel was lost in scheming. His imagination -- loosed
by herbs and brandy -- floated free, playing with the possibilities. He was
settled deep in velvet cushions, comfortable in the den's safety. The
remaining candles shone faintly on the landscape mural, glinting from the
polished furniture. The story he would tell the aliens, he almost had it
now....
The noise on his desk began as a small thing, submerged beneath his
dreaming. It was mostly low-pitched, but there were overtones in the range
of thought, like slices of another mind. It was a presence, growing. Someone
is in my den! The thought tore like Flenser's killing blade. Steel's members
spasmed panic, disoriented by smoke and drink.
There was a voice in the middle of the insanity. It was distorted,
missing tones that any normal speech should have. It howled and quavered at
him, "Lord Steel! Greetings from the Pack of Packs, the Lord God Almighty!"
Part of Steel was already out the main hatch, staring wide-eyed at his
guards in the hallway beyond. The troopers' presence brought a bit of calm,
and icy embarrassment. This is nonsense. He tipped a head to the alien
device on his desk. The echoes were everywhere, but the sounds originated in
the far-talker.... There was no pack speech now, just the high-pitched
slices of sound, mindless warbling in the middle range of thought. Wait.
Behind it all, faint and low ... there were the coughing grunts he
recognized as mantis laughter.
Steel rarely gave way to rage. It should be his tool, not his master.
But listening to the laughter, and remembering the words.... Steel felt
black bloodiness rising in first one member and then another. Almost without
thought, he reached back and smashed the commset. It fell instantly silent.
He glared at the guards ranged at attention in the hallway. Their mind noise
was quiet with stifled fear.
Someone would die for this.
Mr. Steel met with Amdi and Jefri the day after their success with the
radio. They had convinced him. They were moving to the mainland. Jefri would
have his chance to call for rescue!
Steel was even more solemn than usual; he made a big thing about how
important it was to get help, to defend against another attack from the
Woodcarvers. But he didn't seem angry about Amdi's little prank. Jefri
breathed a quiet sigh of relief. Back home, Daddy would have tanned his hide
for something like that. I guess Amdi is right. Mr. Steel was serious
because of all his responsibilities and the dangers they faced. But
underneath he was a very nice person.
-=*=-
Crypto: 0
As received by: Transceiver Relay03 at Relay
Language path: Firetongue->Cloudmark->Triskweline, SjK units
[Firetongue and Cloudmark are High Beyond trade languages. Only core meaning is rendered by this translation.]
From: Arbitration Arts Corporation at Firecloud Nebula [A High Beyond
military[?] organization. Known age ~100 years]
Subject: Reason for concern
Summary: Three single-system civilizations are apparently destroyed
Key phrases: scale interstellar disasters, scale interstellar warfare?,
Straumli Realm Perversion
Distribution:
War Trackers Interest Group, Threats Interest Group, Homo Sapiens Interest Group
Date: 53.57 days since the fall of Straumli Realm
Text of message:
Recently an obscure civilization announced it had created a new Power
in the Transcend. It then dropped "temporarily" off the Known Net. Since
that time, there have been about a million messages in Threats about the
incident -- plenty of speculations that a Class Two Perversion had been born
been any less aggressive ... it would have been the end of the world.
Steel staggered to the outer hatch, his fears coming louder and louder
off the walls. Even so, he paused a moment in the shadows and the screams.
When his members trooped down the stairs, he moved calmly, every jacket
neatly in place. Soon enough his advisors would know the danger, but they
would never see fear in him. He walked lightly across the steaming turf, out
from under the hull. But even he could not resist a quick look across the
sky. This was one ship, one pack of aliens. It had had the misfortune of
running into the Movement. Even so, its defeat had been partly luck. How
many other ships would land, had already landed? Was there time for him to
learn from this victory?
Steel's mind returned to the present, to his eyrie lookout above the
castle. That first encounter with the ship was many tendays past. There was
still a threat, but now he understood it better, and -- as was true of all
great threats -- it held great promise.
On the rampart, Flenser-in-Waiting slid through the deepening twilight.
Steel's eyes followed the pack as it walked beneath the torches, and one by
one disappeared down stairs. There was an awful lot of the Master in that
fragment; it had understood many things about the alien landing before
anyone else.
Steel took one last look across the darkening hills as he turned and
started down the spiral stair. It was a long, cramped climb; the lookout sat
atop a forty-foot tower. The stair was barely fifteen inches wide, the
ceiling less that thirty inches above the steps. Cold stone pressed in from
all around, so close that there were no echoes to confuse thought -- yet
also so close that the mind was squeezed into a long thread. Climbing the
spiral required a twisting, strung-out posture that left any attacker easy
prey for a defender in the eyrie. Such was military architecture. For Steel,
crawling the cramped dark was pleasant exercise.
The stairs opened onto a public hallway, ten feet across with back-off
nooks every fifty feet. Shreck and a bodyguard were waiting for him.
"I have the latest from Woodcarvers," said Shreck. He was holding
sheets of silkpaper.
Losing the other alien to Woodcarvers had once seemed a major blow.
Only gradually had he realized how well it could work out. He had
Woodcarvers infiltrated. At first he'd intended to have the other alien
killed; it would have been easy to do. But the information that trickled
north was interesting. There were some bright people at Woodcarvers. They
were coming up with insights that had slipped past Steel and the Master --
the fragment of the Master. So. In effect, Woodcarvers had become Steel's
second alien laboratory, and the Movement's enemies were serving him like
any other tool. The irony was irresistible.
"Very good, Shreck. Take it to my den. I'll be there shortly." Steel
waved the whitejackets into a back-up nook and swept past him. Reading the
report over brandy would be a pleasant reward for the day's work. In the
meantime, there were other duties and other pleasures.
The Master had begun building Hidden Island Castle more than a century
earlier; it was growing yet. In the oldest foundations, where an ordinary
ruler might put dungeons, were the Flenser's first laboratories. Many could
be mistaken for dungeons -- and were by their inhabitants.
Steel reviewed all the labs at least once a tenday. Now he swept
through the lowest levels. Crickers fled before the light of his guard's
torches. There was a smell of rotting meat. Steel's paws skidded where
slickness lay upon the stone. Holes were dug in the floor at regular
intervals. Each could hold a single member, its legs jammed tight to its
body. Each was covered by a lid with tiny air holes. It took the average
member about three days to go mad in such isolation. The resulting "raw
material" could be used to build blank packs. Generally, they weren't much
more than vegetables, but then that was all the Movement asked of some. And
sometimes remarkable things came from these pits: Shreck for instance.
Shreck the Colorless, some called him. Shreck the stolid. A pack who was
beyond pain, beyond desire. Shreck's was the loyalty of clockwork, but built
from flesh and blood. He was no genius, but Steel would have given an
eastern province for five more of him. And the promise of more such
successes made Steel use the isolation pits again and again. He had recycled
most of the wrecks from the ambush that way....
Steel climbed back to higher levels, where the really interesting
experiments were undertaken. The world regarded Hidden Island with
fascinated horror. They had heard of the lower levels. But most didn't
realize what a small part those dark spaces played in the Movement's
science. To properly dissect a soul, you need more than benches with blood
gutters. The results from the lower levels were simply the first steps in
Flenser's intellectual quest. There were great questions in the world,
things that had bothered packs for thousands of years. How do we think? Why
do we believe? Why is one pack a genius and another an oaf? Before Flenser,
philosophers argued them endlessly and never got closer to the truth. Even
Woodcarver had pranced around the issues, unwilling to give up her
traditional ethics. Flenser was prepared to get the answers. In these labs,
nature itself was under interrogation.
Steel walked across a chamber one hundred yards wide, with a roof
supported by dozens of stone pillars. On every side there were dark
partitions, slate walls mounted on tiny wheels. The cavern could be blocked
off, maze-like, into any pattern. Flenser had experimented with all the
postures of thought. In the centuries before him, there had been only a few
effective postures: the instinctive heads together, the ring sentry, various
work postures. Flenser had tried dozens more: stars, double rings, grids.
Most were useless and confusing. In the star, only a single member could
hear all the others, and each of those could only hear the one. In effect,
all thought had to pass through the hub member. The hub could contribute
nothing rational, yet all its misconceptions passed uncorrected to the rest.
Drunken foolishness resulted.... Of course, that experiment was reported to
the outside world.
But at least one of the others -- still secret -- worked strangely
well: Flenser posted eight packs around the floor and on temporary
platforms, blocked them from each another with the slate partitions, and
then put members from each pack in connection with their counterparts in
three others. In a sense, he created a pack of eight packs. Steel was still
experimenting with that. If the connectors were sufficiently compatible (and
that was the hard part), the resulting creature was far smarter than a ring
sentry. In most ways it was not as bright as a single heads-together pack,
yet sometimes it had striking insights. Before he left for the Long Lakes,
the Master had developed a plan to rebuild the castle's main hall so council
sessions could be conducted in this posture. Steel hadn't pursued that idea;
it seemed just a bit too risky. Steel's domination of others was not quite
as complete as Flenser's had been.
No matter. There were other, far more significant, projects. The rooms
ahead were the true heart of the Movement. Steel's soul had been born in
these rooms; all of Flenser's greatest creations had begun here. During the
last five years, Steel had continued the tradition ... and improved upon it.
He walked down the hall that linked the separate suites. Each bore its
number in inlaid gold. At each he opened a door and stepped partway through.
His staff left their report on the previous tenday just inside. Steel
quickly read each one, then poked a nose over the balcony to look at the
experiment within. The balconies were well-padded, and screened; it was easy
to observe without being seen.
Flenser's one weakness (in Steel's opinion) was his desire to create
the superior being. The Master's confidence was so immense, he believed that
any such success could be applied to his own soul. Steel had no such
illusions. It was a commonplace that teachers are surpassed by their
creations -- pupils, fission-children, adoptions, whatever. He, Steel, was a
perfect illustration of this, though the Master didn't know it yet.
Steel had determined to create beings that would each be superior in
some single way -- while flawed and malleable in others. In the Master's
absence, he had begun a number of experiments. Steel worked from scratch,
identifying inheritance lines independent of pack membership. His agents
purchased or stole pups that might have potential. Unlike Flenser, who
usually melded pups into existing packs in an approximation of nature, Steel
made his totally newborn. His puppy packs had no memories or fragments of
soul; Steel had total control from the beginning.
Of course, most such constructions quickly died. The pups had to be
parted from their wet nurses before they began to participate in the adult's
consciousness. The resulting pack was taught entirely in speech and written
language. All inputs could be controlled.
Steel stopped before door number thirty-three: Experiment Amdiranifani,
Mathematical Excellence. It was not the only attempt in this direction, but
it was by far the most successful. Steel's agents had searched the Movement
for packs with ability for abstraction. They had gone further: the world's
most famous mathematician lived in the Long Lakes Republic. The pack had
been preparing to fission; she had several puppies by herself and a
mathematically talented lover. Steel had had the pups taken. They matched
his other acquisitions so well that he decided to make an eightsome. If
things worked out, it might be beyond all nature in its intelligence.
Steel motioned his guard to shield the torches. He opened door
thirty-three and soft-toed one member to the edge of the balcony. He looked
down, carefully silencing that member's fore-tympanum. The skylight was dim,
but he could see the pups huddled together ... with its new friend. The
mantis. Serendipity, that was all he could call this, the reward that comes
to a researcher who labors long enough, carefully enough. He had had two
problems. The first had been growing for a year: Amdiranifani was slowly
fading, its members falling into the usual autism of wholly newborn packs.
The second was the captured alien; that was an enormous threat, an enormous
mystery, an enormous opportunity. How to communicate with it? Without
communication, the possibilities for manipulation were very limited.
Yet in a single blind stroke, an incompetent Servant had shown the way
to solve both problems. Now that his eyes were adjusted to the dimness,
Steel could see the alien beneath the pile of puppies. When first he'd heard
that the creature had been put in with an experiment, Steel had been enraged
beyond thought; the Servant who made the mistake had been recycled. But the
days passed. Experiment Amdiranifani began showing more liveliness than any
time since its pups were weaned. It quickly became obvious -- from
dissecting the other aliens, and observing this one -- that mantis folk did
not live in packs. Steel had a complete alien.
The alien moved in its sleep, and made a low-pitched mouth noise; it
was totally incapable of any other kind of sound. The pups shifted to fit
the new position. They were sleeping too, vaguely thinking among themselves.
The low end of their sounds was a perfect imitation of the alien.... And
that was the greatest coup of all. Experiment Amdiranifani was learning the
alien's speech. To the pack of newborns this was simply another form of
interpack talk, and apparently its mantis friend was more interesting than
the tutors who appeared on these balconies. The Flenser Fragment claimed it
was the physical contact, that the pups were reacting to the alien as a
surrogate parent, thoughtless though the alien was.
It really didn't matter. Steel brought another head to the edge of the
balcony. He stood quietly, neither member thinking directly at the other.
The air smelled faintly of puppies and mantis sweat. These two were the
Movement's greatest treasure: the key to survival and more. By now, Steel
knew the flying ship was not part of an invasion fleet. Their visitors were
more like ill-prepared refugees. There had been no word of other landings,
and the Movement's spies were spread far.
It had been a close thing, winning against the aliens. Their single
weapon had killed most of a regiment. In the proper jaws, such weapons could
defeat armies. He had no doubt the ship contained more powerful killing
machines -- ones that still functioned. Wait and watch, Steel counseled
himself. Let Amdiranifani show the levers that could control this alien. The
entire world would be the prize.
.Delete this paragraph to shift page flush
Sometimes Mom used to say that something was "more fun than a barrel
full of puppies." Jefri Olsndot had never had more than one pet at a time,
and only once had that been a dog. But now he understood what she meant.
From the very first day, even when he had been so tired and scared, he had
been entranced by the eight puppies. And they by him. They were all over
him, pulling at his clothes, unfastening his shoes, sitting on his lap, or
just running around him. Three or four were always staring at him. Their
eyes were completely brown or pink, and seemed large for their heads. From
the beginning the puppies had mimicked him. They were better than Straumli
songbirds; anything he said, they could echo -- or play back later. And when
he cried, often the puppies would cry too, and cuddle around him.
There were other dogs, big ones that wore clothes and entered the room
through doorways high up on the walls. They lowered food into the room,
sometimes making strange noises. But the food tasted awful, and they didn't
respond to Jefri's screaming even by mimicking him.
Two days had passed, then a week. Jefri had investigated everything in
the room. It wasn't really a dungeon; it was too big. And besides, prisoners
don't get pets. He understood that this world was uncivilized, not part of
the Realm, perhaps not even on the Net. If Mom or Dad or Johanna weren't
nearby, it was possible that there was no one here to teach the dogs to
speak Samnorsk! Then it would be up to Jefri Olsndot to teach the dogs and
find his family. Now when the white-jacketed dogs came onto the corner
balconies, Jefri shouted questions at them. It didn't help very much. Even
the one with red stripes didn't respond. But the puppies did! They shouted
right along with Jefri, sometimes echoing his words, sometimes making
nonsense sounds.
It didn't take Jefri long to realize that the puppies were driven by a
single mind. When they ran around him, some would always sit a little way
off, their graceful necks arching this way and that -- and the runners
seemed to know exactly what the others saw. He couldn't hide things behind
his back if there was even one of them to alert the others. For a while he
thought they were somehow talking to each other. But it was more than that:
when he watched them unfasten his shoes or draw a picture -- the heads and
mouths and paws cooperated so perfectly, like the fingers on a person's
hands. Jefri didn't reason things out so explicitly; but over a period of
days he came to think of all the puppies together as a single friend. At the
same time he noticed that the puppies was mixing up his words -- and
sometimes making new meanings.
"You me play." The words came out like a cheap voice splice, but they
generally preceded a mad game of tag all around the furniture.
"You me picture." The slate board covered the lowest meter of the wall,
all around the room. It was a display device like Jefri had never seen in
his life: dirty, imprecise, imperfectly deletable, unstorable. Jefri loved
it. His face and hands, and most of Puppies' lips, got covered with chalk
stains. They drew each other, and themselves. Puppies didn't draw neat
pictures like Jefri's; Puppies' dog figures had big heads and paws, with the
bodies all smudged together. When he drew Jefri, the hands were always big,
each finger carefully drawn.
Jefri drew his family and tried to make Puppies understand.
Day by day, the sunlight circled higher on the walls. Sometimes the
room was dark now. At least once a day, packs came to talk to Puppies. This
was one of the few things which could pull the little ones away from Jefri.
Puppies would sit below the balconies, screeching and croaking at the
adults. It was a school class! They'd lower scrolls for him to look at, and
retrieve ones he had marked.
Jefri sat quietly and watched the lessons. He fidgeted, but he didn't
shout at the teachers anymore. Just a little longer, and he and Puppies
would really be talking. Just a little longer and Puppies could find out for
him where Mom and Dad and Johanna were.
Sometimes terror and pain are not the best levers; deception, when it
works, is the most elegant and the least expensive manipulation of all. Once
Amdiranifani was fluent in the mantis language, Steel had him explain about
the "tragic death" of Jefri's parents and brood-sibling. The Flenser
Fragment had argued against it, but Steel wanted quick and unquestioned
control.
Now it seemed that the Fragment might have been right; at least he
should have held out the hope that the brood-sibling lived. Steel looked
solemnly at the Amdiranifani Experiment. "How can we help?"
The young pack looked up trustingly. "Jefri is so terribly upset about
his parents and sister." Amdiranifani was using mantis words a lot, often
unnecessarily: sister instead of brood-sibling. "He hasn't been eating much.
He doesn't want to play. It makes me very sad."
Steel kept watch on the far balcony. The Flenser Fragment was there. It
was not hiding, though most of its faces were out of the candlelight. So far
its insights had been extraordinary. But the Fragment's stare was like old
times, when a mistake could mean mutilation or worse. So be it. The stakes
were higher now than ever before; if fear at Steel's throats could help him
succeed, he welcomed it. He looked away from the balcony, and brought all
his faces to an expression of tender sympathy for poor Jefri's plight. "You
just have to make it -- him -- understand. No one can bring his parents or
sister back to life. But we know who the murderers are. We're doing
everything we can to defend against them. Tell him how hard this is.
Woodcarvers is an empire that has lasted hundreds of years. In a fight, we
are no match for them. That's why we need all the help he can give us. We
need him to teach us to use his parents' ship."
The puppy pack lowered a head. "Yes. I'll try, but ..." The three
members by Jefri made low-pitched grunting noises at it. The mantis sat head
bowed; it held its tentacled paws across its eyes. The creature had been
like this for several days, and the withdrawal was getting worse. Now it
shook its head violently, made sharp noises a little higher pitched than its
normal register.
"Jefri says he doesn't understand how things work in the ship. He's
just a little ..." the pack searched for a translation. " ... he is really
very young. You know, like me."
Steel nodded understandingly. It was an obvious consequence of the
aliens' singleton nature, but weird even so: Every one of them started out
all a puppy. Every one of them was like Steel's puppy-pack experiments.
Parental knowledge was transmitted by the equivalent of interpack speech.
That made the creature easy to dupe, but it was a damned inconvenience now.
"Still, if there's anything he can help explain."
More grunting from the mantis. Steel should learn that language. The
sounds were easy; these pitiful creatures used their mouths to talk, like a
bird or a forest slug. For now he depended on Amdiranifani. For now that was
okay; the puppy pack trusted him. Another piece of serendipity. With a few
of his recent experiments, Steel had tried love in place of Flenser's
original terror/love combination; there had been a slim chance that it might
be superior. By great good luck Amdiranifani fell into the love group. Even
his instructors had avoided negative reinforcement. The pack would believe
anything he said ... and so, Steel hoped, would the mantis.
Amdiranifani translated: "There is something else; he has asked me
about it before. Jefri knows how to wake the other children -- " the word
literally meant "pack of puppies", "-- on the ship. You look surprised, my
lord Steel?"
Even though he no longer dreamed in terror of monster minds, Steel
would just as soon not have a hundred more aliens running around. "I hadn't
realized they could be wakened so easily.... But we shouldn't do it right
now. We're having trouble finding food that Jefri can eat." That was true;
the creature was an incredibly finicky eater. "I don't think we could feed
any more right now."
More grunting. More sharp cries from Jefri. Finally, "There is one
other thing, my lord. Jefri thinks it may be possible to use the ship's
ultrawave to call for help from others like his parents."
The Flenser Fragment jerked out of the shadows. A pair of heads looked
down at the mantis, while another stared meaningfully at Steel. Steel didn't
react; he could be cooler than any loose pack. "That's something to think
about. Perhaps you and Jefri could talk more about it. I don't want to try
it till we're sure we won't hurt the ship." That was weak. He saw the
Fragment twitch a muzzle in amusement.
As he spoke, Amdiranifani was translating. Jefri responded almost
immediately.
"Oh, that's okay. He meant a special call. Jefri says the ship has been
signaling ... all by itself ... ever since it landed."
And Steel wondered if he had ever heard a deadly threat uttered in such
sweet innocence.
They began letting Amdi and Jefri outside to play. Beforehand Amdi was
nervous about going out. He was unused to wearing clothes. His whole life --
all four years of it -- had been spent in that one big room. He read about
the outside and was curious about it, yet he was also a little afraid. But
the human boy seemed to want it. Every day he'd been more withdrawn, his
crying softer. Mostly he was crying for his parents or sister, but sometimes
he cried about being locked up so deep away.
So Amdi had talked to Mr. Steel, and now they got out almost every day,
at least to an inner courtyard. At first, Jefri just sat, not really looking
around. But Amdi discovered that he loved the outdoors, and every time he
got his friend to play a little more.
Packs of teachers and guards stood at the corners of the yellowing moss
and watched. Amdi -- and eventually Jefri -- got a big kick out of harassing
them. They hadn't realized it down in the room, where visitors came at the
balconies, but most adults were nervous around Jefri. The boy was half again
as tall as a normally standing pack member. When he came close, the average
pack would clump together and edge away. They didn't like having to look up
at him. It was silly, Amdi thought. Jefri was so tall and skinny, he looked
like he might topple over at any moment. And when he ran it was like he was
wildly trying to recover from a fall and never quite succeeding. So Amdi's
favorite game those first days was tag. Whenever he was the chaser, he
contrived to run Jefri right through the most prim looking whitejackets. If
he and Jefri did it right they could turn the tag into a three-way event,
Amdi chasing Jefri and a whitejackets racing to stay away from both of them.
Sometimes he felt sorry for the guards and whitejackets. They were so
stiff and grownup. Didn't they understand how much fun it was to have a
friend that you walk right next to, that you could actually touch?
It was mostly night now. Daylight hovered for a few hours around noon.
The twilight before and after was bright enough to dim the stars and aurora,
but still too faint to show colors. Though Amdi had spent his life indoors,
he understood the geometry of the situation, and liked to watch the change
of light. Jefri didn't much like the dark of winter ... until the first snow
fell.
Amdi got his first set of jackets. And Mr. Steel had special clothes
made for the human boy, big puffy things that covered his whole body and
kept him warmer than a good pelt would have done.
On one side of the courtyard the snow was just six inches deep, but
elsewhere it piled into drifts higher than Amdi's head. Torches were mounted
in wind shields on the walls; their light glittered golden off the snow.
Amdi knew about snow -- but he'd never seen it before. He loved to splash it
on one of his jackets. He would stare and stare, trying to see the
snowflakes without his breath melting them. The hexagonal pattern was
tantalizing, just at the limit of his vision.
But tag was no fun anymore; the human could run through drifts that
left Amdi swimming in the white stuff. There were other things the human
could do, wonderful things. He could make balls of snow and throw them. The
guards were very upset by this, especially when Jefri plinked a few members.
It was the first time he ever saw them get angry.
Amdi raced around the windswept side of the courtyard, dodging
snowballs and keening frustration. Human hands were such wicked, wicked
things. How he would love to have a pair -- four pairs! He circled round
from three sides and sprinted right at the human. Jefri backed quickly into
deeper snow, but too late. Amdi hit him high and low, tipping the Two-Legs
over into a snowdrift. There was a mock battle, slashing lips and paws
against Jefri's hands and feet. But now Amdi was on top. The human got paid
back for his snowballs with plenty of snow stuffed down the back of his
jacket.
Sometimes they just sat and watched the sky for so long that rumps and
paws went numb. Sitting behind the largest snow drift, they were shaded from
the castle torches and had a clear view of the lights in the sky.
At first Amdi had been entranced by the aurora. Even some of his
teachers were. They said this part of the world was one of the best places
to see the sky glow. Sometimes it was so faint that the torchlight
glimmering off the snow was enough to blot it out. Other times it ran from
horizon to horizon: green light trimmed with hints of pink, twisting as
though ruffled by a slow wind.
He and Jefri could talk very easily now, though always in Jefri's
language. The human couldn't make many of the sounds of interpack speech;
even his pronunciation of Amdi's name was a scarcely recognizable. But Amdi
understood Samnorsk pretty well; it was fun, their own secret language.
Jefri was not especially impressed by the aurora. "We have that lots at
home. It's just light from -- " He said a new word, and glanced at Amdi. It
was funny how the human couldn't look in more than one place at time. His
eyes and head were always moving. "-- you know, places where people make
things. I think the gas and waste leaks out, and then the sun lights it up
or it gets -- " unintelligible.
"Places where people make things?" In the sky? Amdi had a globe; he
knew the size of the world and its orientation. If the aurora were
reflecting sunlight, it must be hundreds of miles above the ground! Amdi
leaned a back against Jefri's jacket and made a very human whistling sound.
His knowledge of geography was not up to his geometry, but, "The packs don't
work in the sky, Jefri. We don't even have flying boats."
"Uh, that's right, you don't.... I don't know what that stuff is then.
But I don't like it. It gets in the way of the stars." Amdi knew all about
the stars; Jefri had told him. Somewhere out there were the friends of
Jefri's parents.
Jefri was silent for several minutes. He wasn't looking at the sky
anymore. Amdi wriggled a little closer, watching the shifting light in the
sky. Behind them the wind-sharpened crest of the drift was edged with yellow
light from the torches. Amdi could imagine what the other was thinking. "The
commsets from the boat, they really aren't good enough to call for help?"
Jefri slapped the ground. "No! I told you. They're just radio. I think
I can make them work, but what's the use? The ultrawave stuff is still on
the boat and it's too big to move. I just don't understand why Mr. Steel
won't let me go aboard.... I'm eight years old, you know. I could figure it
out. Mom had it all set up before, before ..." His words guttered into the
familiar, despairing silence.
Amdi rubbed a head against Jefri's shoulder. He had a theory about Mr.
Steel's reluctance. It was an explanation he hadn't told Jefri before:
"Maybe he's afraid you'll just fly away and leave us."
"That's stupid! I'd never leave you. Besides, that boat is real hard to
fly. It was never meant to land on a world."
Jefri said the strangest things; sometimes Amdi was just
misunderstanding -- but sometimes they were literal truth. Did the humans
really have ships that never came to ground? Where did they go then? Amdi
could almost feel new scales of reference clicking together in his mind. Mr.
Steel's geography globe represented not the world, but something very, very
small in the true scheme of things.
"I know you wouldn't leave us. But you can see how Mr. Steel might be
afraid. He can't even talk to you except through me. We have to show him
that we can be trusted."
"I guess."
"If you and I could get the radios working, that might help. I know my
teachers haven't figured them out. Mr. Steel has one, but I don't think he
understands it either."
"Yeah. If we could get the other one to work..."
That afternoon the guards got a break: their two charges came in from
the cold early. The guards didn't question their good fortune.
Steel's den had originally been the Master's. It was very different
from the castle's meeting halls. Except for choirs, only a single pack would
fit in any room. It was not exactly that the suite was small. There were
five rooms, not counting the bath. But except for the library, none was more
than fifteen feet across. The ceilings were low, less than five feet; there
was no space for visitor balconies. Servants were always on call in the two
hallways that shared a wall with the quarters. The dining room, bedroom, and
bath had servant hatches, just big enough to give orders and to receive food
and drink, or preening oils.
The main entrance was guarded on the outside by three trooper packs. Of
course, the Master would never live in a den with only one exit. Steel had
found eight secret hatches (three in the sleeping quarters). These could
only be opened from within; they led to the maze that Flenser had built
within the solid rock of the castle's walls. No one knew the extent of that
maze, not even the Master. Steel had rearranged parts of it -- in particular
the passages leading from this den -- in the years since Flenser's
departure.
The quarters were nearly impregnable. Even if the castle fell, the
rooms' larder was stocked for half a year; ventilation was provided by a
network of channels almost as extensive as the Master's secret passages. All
in all, Steel felt tolerably safe here. There was always the possibility
that there were more than eight secret entrances, perhaps one that could be
opened from the other side.
And of course choirs were out of the question, here or anywhere. The
only extrapack sex that Steel indulged was with singletons -- and that as
part of his experiments; it was just too dangerous to mix one's self with
others.
After dinner, Steel drifted into the library. He relaxed around his
reading desk. Two of him sipped brandy while another smoked southern herbs.
This was pleasure, but also calculation: Steel knew just what vices, applied
to just which members, would raise his imagination to its keenest pitch.
... And more and more he was coming to see that imagination was at
least as important as raw intelligence in the present game. The desk between
him was covered with maps, reports from the south, internal security memos.
But lying in all the silkpaper, like an ivory slug in its nest, was the
alien radio. They had recovered two from the ship. Steel picked the thing
up, ran a nose along the smooth, curved sides. Only the finest stressed wood
could match its grace -- and that in musical instruments or statuary. Yet
the mantis claimed this could be used to talk across dozens of miles, as
fast as a ray of sunlight. If true ... Steel wondered how many lost battles
might have been won with these, and how many new conquests might be safely
undertaken. And if they could learn to make far-talkers ... the Movement's
subordinates, scattered across the continent, would be as near as the guards
by Steel's den. No force in the world could stand against them.
Steel picked up the latest report from Woodcarvers. In many ways they
were having more success with their mantis than Steel with his. Apparently
theirs was almost an adult. More important, it had a miraculous library that
could be interrogated almost like a living being. There had been three other
datasets. Steel's whitejackets had found what was left of them in the
burnt-out wreckage around the ship. Jefri thought that the ship's processors
were a little like a dataset, "only stupider" (Amdi's best translation), but
so far the processors had been useless.
But with their dataset, several on Woodcarver's staff had already
learned mantis talk. Each day they discovered more about the aliens'
civilization than Steel's people could in ten. He smiled. They didn't know
that all the important stuff was being faithfully reported to Hidden
Island.... For now he would let them keep their toy, and their mantis; they
had noticed several things that would have slipped by him. Still he damned
the luck.
Steel paged through the report.... Good. The alien at Woodcarvers was
still uncooperative. He felt his smile spreading into laughter: it was a
small thing, the creature's word for the Packs. The report tried to spell
out the word. It didn't matter; the translation was "claws" or "tines". The
mantis had a special horror for the tine attachments that soldiers wore on
their forepaws. Steel licked pensively at the black enamel of his manicured
claws. Interesting. Claws could be threatening things, but they were also
part of being a person. Tines were their mechanical extension, and
potentially more frightening. It was the sort of name you might imagine for
an elite killer force ... but never for all the Packs. After all, the race
of packs included the weak, the poor, the kindly, the naive ... as well as
persons like Steel and Flenser. It said something very interesting about
mantis psychology that the creature picked tines as the characterizing
feature of the Packs.
Steel eased back from his desk and gazed at the landscape painted
around the library's walls. It was a view from the castle towers. Behind the
paint, the walls were lined with patterns of mica and quartz and fiber; the
echoes gave a vague sense of what you might hear looking out across the
stone and emptiness. Combination audiovisuals were rare in the castle, and
this one was especially well-done; Steel could feel himself relaxing as he
stared at it. He drifted for a moment, letting his imagination roam.
Tines. I like it. If that was the alien's image, then it was the right
name for his race. His pitiful advisors -- and sometimes even the Flenser
Fragment -- were still intimidated by the ship from the stars. No question,
there was power in that ship beyond anything in the world. But after the
first panic, Steel understood that the aliens were not supernaturally
gifted. They had simply progressed -- in the sense that Woodcarver made so
much of -- beyond the current state of his world's science. Certainly the
alien civilization was a deadly unknown right now. Indeed, it might be
capable of burning this world to a cinder. Yet the more Steel saw, the more
he realized the intrinsic inferiority of the aliens: What a bizarre abortion
they were, a race of intelligent singletons. Every one of them must be
raised from nothing, like a wholly newborn pack. Memories could only be
passed by voice and writing. Each creature grew and aged and even died as a
whole. Despite himself, Steel shivered.
He had come a long way from the first misconceptions, the first fears.
For more than a thirty days now he'd been scheming to use the star ship to
rule the world. The mantis said that ship was signaling others. That had
reduced some of his Servants to incontinence. So. Sooner or later, more
ships would arrive. Ruling the world was no longer a practical goal.... It
was time to aim higher, at goals even the Master had never imagined. Take
away their technical advantages and the mantis folk were such finite,
fragile beings. They should be easy to conquer. Even they seemed to realize
this. Tines, the creature calls us. So it will be. Some day Tines would pace
between the stars and rule there.
But in the years till then, life would be very dangerous. Like a
newborn pup, all their potential could be destroyed by one small blow. The
Movement's survival -- the world's survival -- would depend upon superior
intelligence, imagination, discipline, and treachery. Fortunately, those had
always been Steel's great strengths.
Steel dreamed in the candlelight and haze.... Intelligence,
imagination, discipline, treachery. Done right ... could the aliens be
persuaded to eliminate all of Steel's enemies ... and then bare their
throats to him? It was daring, almost beyond reason, but there might be a
way. Jefri claimed he could operate the ship's signaler. By himself? Steel
doubted it. The alien was thoroughly duped, but not especially competent.
Amdiranifani was a different story. He was showing all the genius of his
bloodlines. And the principles of loyalty and sacrifice his teachers drilled
into him had taken hold, though he was a bit ... playful. His obedience
didn't have the sharp edge that fear could bring. No matter. As a tool he
was useful beyond all others. Amdiranifani understood Jefri, and seemed to
understand the alien artifacts even better than the mantis did.
The risk must be taken. He would let the two aboard the ship. They
would send his message in place of the automatic distress signal. And what
should that first message be? Word for word, it would be the most important,
most dangerous thing any pack had ever said.
Three hundred yards away, deep in the experiment wing, a boy and a pack
of puppies came across an unexpected piece of good luck: an unlocked door,
and a chance to play with Jefri's commset.
The phone was more complex than some. It was intended for hospital and
field work, for the remote control of devices as well as for voice talk. By
trial and error, the two gradually narrowed the options.
Jefri Olsndot pointed to numbers that had appeared on the side of the
device. "I think that means we're matched with some receiver." He glanced
nervously at the doorway. Something told him they really shouldn't be here.
"That's the same pattern as on the radio Mr. Steel took," said Amdi.
Not even one of his heads was watching the door.
"I bet if we press it here, what we say will come out on his radio. Now
he'll know we can help.... So what should we do?"
Three of Amdi raced around the room, like dogs that couldn't keep their
attention on the conversation. By now, Jefri knew this was the equivalent of
a human looking away and humming as he thought. The angle of his gaze was
another gesture, in this case a spreading and mischievous smile. "I think we
should surprise him. He is always so serious."
"Yeah." Mr. Steel was pretty solemn. But then all the adults were. They
reminded him of the older scientists at the High Lab.
Amdi grabbed the radio and gave him a "just watch this" look. He nosed
on the "talk" switch and sang a long ululation into the mike. It sounded
only vaguely like pack speech. One of Amdi translated, next to Jefri's ear.
The human boy felt giggles stealing up his throat.
In his den, Lord Steel was lost in scheming. His imagination -- loosed
by herbs and brandy -- floated free, playing with the possibilities. He was
settled deep in velvet cushions, comfortable in the den's safety. The
remaining candles shone faintly on the landscape mural, glinting from the
polished furniture. The story he would tell the aliens, he almost had it
now....
The noise on his desk began as a small thing, submerged beneath his
dreaming. It was mostly low-pitched, but there were overtones in the range
of thought, like slices of another mind. It was a presence, growing. Someone
is in my den! The thought tore like Flenser's killing blade. Steel's members
spasmed panic, disoriented by smoke and drink.
There was a voice in the middle of the insanity. It was distorted,
missing tones that any normal speech should have. It howled and quavered at
him, "Lord Steel! Greetings from the Pack of Packs, the Lord God Almighty!"
Part of Steel was already out the main hatch, staring wide-eyed at his
guards in the hallway beyond. The troopers' presence brought a bit of calm,
and icy embarrassment. This is nonsense. He tipped a head to the alien
device on his desk. The echoes were everywhere, but the sounds originated in
the far-talker.... There was no pack speech now, just the high-pitched
slices of sound, mindless warbling in the middle range of thought. Wait.
Behind it all, faint and low ... there were the coughing grunts he
recognized as mantis laughter.
Steel rarely gave way to rage. It should be his tool, not his master.
But listening to the laughter, and remembering the words.... Steel felt
black bloodiness rising in first one member and then another. Almost without
thought, he reached back and smashed the commset. It fell instantly silent.
He glared at the guards ranged at attention in the hallway. Their mind noise
was quiet with stifled fear.
Someone would die for this.
Mr. Steel met with Amdi and Jefri the day after their success with the
radio. They had convinced him. They were moving to the mainland. Jefri would
have his chance to call for rescue!
Steel was even more solemn than usual; he made a big thing about how
important it was to get help, to defend against another attack from the
Woodcarvers. But he didn't seem angry about Amdi's little prank. Jefri
breathed a quiet sigh of relief. Back home, Daddy would have tanned his hide
for something like that. I guess Amdi is right. Mr. Steel was serious
because of all his responsibilities and the dangers they faced. But
underneath he was a very nice person.
-=*=-
Crypto: 0
As received by: Transceiver Relay03 at Relay
Language path: Firetongue->Cloudmark->Triskweline, SjK units
[Firetongue and Cloudmark are High Beyond trade languages. Only core meaning is rendered by this translation.]
From: Arbitration Arts Corporation at Firecloud Nebula [A High Beyond
military[?] organization. Known age ~100 years]
Subject: Reason for concern
Summary: Three single-system civilizations are apparently destroyed
Key phrases: scale interstellar disasters, scale interstellar warfare?,
Straumli Realm Perversion
Distribution:
War Trackers Interest Group, Threats Interest Group, Homo Sapiens Interest Group
Date: 53.57 days since the fall of Straumli Realm
Text of message:
Recently an obscure civilization announced it had created a new Power
in the Transcend. It then dropped "temporarily" off the Known Net. Since
that time, there have been about a million messages in Threats about the
incident -- plenty of speculations that a Class Two Perversion had been born