Johanna started to follow the other into the hall, but then she realized that most of the critters within were not reunited. They really were falling behind. If she stayed more than a minute or two she would start blabbing about what Harmony had in mind … and too many would understand. She stopped at the door, and waved the stonemason through. “I’ll come here another night,” she said.
The pack hesitated a moment. “Okay, then, but you should know. I’m grateful to you. Part of me is very sick, but with her I am much more clever. I can plan better. Every night I come here, and I work better the next day. It’s partly the planning I do when I’m smart. It’s partly what my new puppy learns from my old part. Rich people do this all the time.” All the heads looked up at Johanna. “I think that’s part of how they stay rich. Thank you for suggesting this place to Queen Woodcarver.”
Johanna bobbed her head. “You’re welcome.” Her words came out strangled. She turned and walked stiffly away, into the dark. Damn, damn, damn.
She wandered in the mists for some minutes, long enough for the guilt to boil back into rage. She needed a proper act of creative revenge against Harmony and all of his traditionalist ilk. Something that would kick even Woodcarver in the teeth if she couldn’t see sense.
Eventually she ran into the high fence that surrounded the exercise yard and the able-bodied barracks. She walked along the barrier, trailing her fingers against the wooden slats. So Harmony figured there wasn’t enough room. Yeah, it was crowded. Helping one’s old members was more popular than anyone had predicted. No doubt Harmony was also complaining about the various resources consumed too. That would make more of a difference to Woodcarver. But Woodcarver was rich. If she wasn’t rich enough, Ravna could kick in some of Oobii’s tech rents. This world was so poor, so stupid. In the High Beyond, caring for individual sophonts was one of the smallest costs of operations, handled invisibly for the most part. Wealth went for other things.…
She almost tripped over the creature that was digging under the fence. The Tine pulled its head and paws out of the dirt. Its jaws snapped shut just where Jo’s face had been before she startled back—but there was no further attack. The critter had no backup; it was a singleton. No, wait. There were a couple others, lurking about in the misty moonlight. They were all Tropicals. Glares were exchanged, but then the mangy critters backed down. The three wandered off—and in different directions. You’d never see a pack casually lose itself like that. How many of these troublemakers were lurking around the Fragmentarium? The notion of bundling the Tropicals off to a separate camp wasn’t completely stupid.
Jo continued toward the entrance to the able-bodied barracks. There was plenty of noise from inside the building. Outside, on her side of the fence, she saw occasional shadows move, heard an occasional howl. Harmony must still have his broodkenners playing dogcatcher all over the valley; she was here all by herself. The thought was not frightening, quite the opposite. The Tropicals weren’t especially friendly, but they also seemed to be total scatterbrains. And the fragments in the barracks ahead were Johanna’s friends—at least to the limits of their intelligence.
In fact … being alone here, she was in a position to get that proper revenge she’d been thinking of. She walked faster, purpose informing her direction. The idea was crazy, but it would create plenty of the precious “room” that Harmony was complaining about. It would show that sonsabitches and Woodcarver, too, that the fragments weren’t to be pushed around.
The racket from within the barracks was really loud. Johanna came up here a lot, and in the wintertime her visits were necessarily after dark—but she had never heard this much angry gobbling. Of course, these frags were never as civil as whole packs. They had the moods and whimsies of hundreds of separate animals. Most in this barracks were big and healthy, and desperate to be part of whole packs. That was why the fence and the barred gate were necessary. Most of the time, most of the frags were a little bit frightened of escape—even at the same time they yearned to run out into the wide world and find some likely pack. Over the last two years, Jo had made such matchmaking her business. Carenfret actually called Johanna the “littlest kenner.” Johanna could walk right into the barracks and chat with singletons and duos who knew a little Samnorsk. Even when speech wasn’t possible, the frags enjoyed having something as smart as a pack that they could come near to, that they could pretend with. Any number of times, she had started new packs by pairing duos or getting a singleton together with a duo. At least as often, she had chatted up damaged packs on Hidden Island, or Newcastle town, or Cliffside, and persuaded them that she had an ideal completion for them.
It was that sort of effort, both by her and the decent broodkenners, that made the escape attempts very half-hearted.
Tonight sounded very different.
The wick lamp mounted over the gate showed dozens of fragments milling around just inside the entrance. More were coming by the second, pushing and shoving against the fence.
As she came into view (or hearing, which perhaps was more important for Tines) there were the usual calls of “Hei, Johanna!” “Hei, Johanna!” Those shouts were drowned out by angry gobbling, by howling and yapping that almost sounded like the baying of dogs.
The more articulate actually made sense. The occasional Samnorsk matched what Interpack she could understand: “Let us out. We want to be free!”
Now she saw what might be the explanation for all the incautious wanderlust: the Tropicals that had sneaked inside the fence. She could spot only a couple, but they were in the loudest clusters. Apparently, their attitude had tipped the overall consensus.
She’d never seen so many fragments simultaneously eager to break out. Besides banging the fence, some were digging at the foundations of the barrier. Right at the entrance, a knot of singletons had piled up, trying to reach over the top. If they had been a coordinated pack, wearing jackets with paw straps, they could have boosted some of themselves out. As it was, the pyramid would reach about two meters fifty and then fall back on itself.
“Hei, Johanna! Help us.” The voice came from those piling against the entrance.
“Cheepers!” said Johanna. She recognized the white splash of fur on the back of its head. This was the most fluent of the Samnorsk speakers; sometimes he actually made sense. The poor guy would have been a big plus to almost any pack, but he was from one of Steel’s recycled monster packs. He had memories that eventually repelled whomever he was intimate with. Cheepers himself was gentle and friendly, and as smart as a singleton can be, which made his situation that much sadder to Jo. She went to one knee so she could look at the singleton eye to eye, through the tiny gaps in the fence. “What’s up, Cheepers?”
“Get us out, get us out!”
Johanna rocked back. How could she explain? Nuance was rarely a singleton’s strong point. “I—” she started to make some excuse and then thought, Well, why not? Slowly, she stood up. Yes, she really could have revenge. And it would end the crowding, and it would give Cheepers and his friends what they wanted.
She looked at the gate. It was barred on the outside, but with a simple timber and clasp. It was almost two meters off the ground. An escaped singleton couldn’t reach the bar. She was vaguely aware of the three Tropicals on her side of the fence, watching her. No doubt they were too scatterbrained to figure out the mechanism, but any coherent pack on this side of the fence could have opened the gate easily, just by climbing up on itself. Johanna could open it most easily of all.