Jo was on the third switchback now, more than one hundred meters above the reservation. The crowds here were as thick as ever, Tines swarming over the network of smaller paths that branched from the main path she was on. They kept an open space around her, but it wasn’t a well-respected boundary. Tines brushed against her, going this way and that. The sounds of the Choir pounded her, gobbling and hissing and honking, scraps of Interpack speech mixed with imitations of thunder and rain. Behind all this noise, there was the feeling of something louder, a buzzing in her chest and head—all a human could ever sense of mindsound.
Most of the creatures ignored her, but some gave Jo a squeak or a honk. There were little swirls of coherence, a godsgift that might last just for seconds. “Hei, Johanna!” was all those might say, but sometimes there was more, words that might have been relayed Tine to Tine from far away, even reminiscence of their time on the fleet of rafts. Perhaps one in five of these Tines was a full-pelted Northerner, but as often as not it was a hairless Tropical who claimed to remember Woodcarver’s Fragmentarium.
Sometimes she’d see an unusually large, full-pelted Tines, or a pattern of black and white that reminded her of Pilgrim. Twice she had chased into the mob, careless of whether she bumped those who stood in her way, her only goal to get close to the familiar sight. And both times, when she got close she found only a stranger. Still, parts of Pilgrim could be out there, surviving in singleton form. She’d found little pieces of his attitudes in some Tines of the Choir.
The last switchback was only twenty meters long, but by now the sun and the clear sky had conspired to make the morning broiler hot. Sweat was streaming off her and those last twenty meters felt like a real climb. When she finally reached the summit, she was quite ready to stop and sip from her canteen. She leaned against one of the gilded spikes that bordered the tiny plaza at the top. If there was any logic to the pyramid, this open space would be the most holy of holies. To Johanna it was just a small muddy field—and the Tines on the summit usually avoided it.
The video camera was on the other side of the summit, and indeed it had been knocked over. She crossed the field and retrieved the box. The gadget was purely analog, Oobii’s design. It was so simple that Tycoon’s factories could make it—by the millions, if the Choir was sufficiently enchanted by the gadget, or if somebody else was enchanted by video cameras and had something to trade for them.
She picked up the gadget, wiped the mud off the glass lens. Abruptly the box was talking Samnorsk at her:
“You took long enough.” It was Tycoon’s new voice. He still liked Geri’s voice—said it sounded “pretty”—but he accepted that it tended to give human listeners the wrong impression. “Are you okay?” he continued. “I’ve had to slow some of the harbor operations. Even the Tropicals don’t like these really clear days.”
“I’ll bet those were Tines with too much pale skin. We humans are dark-skinned all over, perfect for hot, sunny weather.”
“Oh. Right. You know, sometimes the Choir isn’t very careful of itself. I wonder…” Tycoon hummed to himself, no doubt coming up with something crazy. Then, slipping back into bossy mode, he said, “That’s really neither here nor there. We need that camera you’re holding. And this time, set it up so it doesn’t get knocked down!”
“Hei, Tyco, if you want it perched at the top of everything, the mob is going to knock it down occasionally.” Johanna reseated the camera and righted the tripod. Actually, the assembly was sturdy and bottom-heavy. It would have taken a bump from a large Tine—or the concerted effort of a group—to knock it over. Well this is the heart of the Choir. Plenty of strange maybe-ceremonies happen here all the time.
She struggled to shift the tripod and camera closer to the edge of the parapet, where it would have an unobstructed view. A dozen Tropicals moved in close to her, but they weren’t objecting. Instead they bumped around among themselves. It was quite unlike the coordination of a real pack, but she could tell they were trying to help her move the equipment. Johanna and the moblet tipped the tripod this way and that, in effect walking the gear out onto the stony parapet.
She shooed them back and did the final placement herself, this time making sure that the tripod was wedged between the golden spikes of the parapet. Maybe Tycoon was watching her through his telescopes and the camera: “Be careful. If they think you’re harming the pyramid—”
Johanna had been watching the Tines as she worked, with just that concern. “Nobody’s complaining. You know I’m special to the Choir.” That was probably true; in any case, she liked to tease Tycoon.
Tycoon made a grumbling response, but in Tinish. Then in Samnorsk: “I don’t mind my employees risking their lives. I just want them to know that’s what they’re doing! Now, since you’re up there, how about pointing the camera so we can get some useful information. I want coverage of the north road.”
“Hei, I’m your advisor, not your employee,” she replied, but she turned the camera toward the northwest horizon. The “road” was really a system of clearings that changed from tenday to tenday, but it extended nearly a thousand kilometers into the deepest jungle of the Fell Basin. At first glance, the Choir was the chaotic saturnalia that Northern packs always claimed, but something more complicated than nonstop joy was going on. The coast needed an enormous hinterland to support itself. With cameras like this—and the remote reservations—Tycoon was beginning to figure it out.
This pattern of Tropical life had existed in some form for centuries, but Tycoon’s reservation had been a revolutionary upgrade—witness the Great Pyramid. Now that revolution was accelerating. Raw materials were flooding in and millions of manufactured items were streaming out. Woodcarver and the Domain saw this as a tidal wave of products. Ravna saw it as advancing her projects by decades in just a year or two. Johanna knew that what Northerners saw was just a fraction of what Tycoon’s factories were producing. Most of that output—and all of the output from the new, far reservations—was being used within the Choir. Just stand at the output end of the factories. Watch the wagonloads of fabric and radios and solar cells being carted off along the North Road and the River Fell. On a really clear day—like today—this camera could follow the road traffic for many kilometers, see it split into tributaries, apparently reaching every nook and cranny of the Choir’s domain.
Something had awakened here, the combination of the Choir and Tycoon and the shortcuts from Oobii. Jo knew it; Tycoon knew it. He never tired of bragging about the size of his “new markets”; sometimes the businesscritter in him literally rubbed its snouts together in glee. This camera and the reports that Mr. Radio made from the new reservations were all part of Tyco’s ceaseless efforts to anticipate his customers.
“Okay,” came the voice from the camera. “Point a little to south. That’s good! Nevil may have his eye in the sky, but I know what’s happening on the ground. And when I get better telescopes mounted on the video…” Tycoon’s voice drifted off, his technical imagination taking over. When he resumed, he was back to worrying about her. “Now that you’ve got the camera set up, you should get yourself back down here. I have a godsgift on a dumb radio from North One. He says there’s been some kinky moodshifting up there. If that propagates to us, there could be a sex riot on the Pyramid.”
Johanna looked down at the House of Tycoon. Tycoon’s audience hall was marked by a row of windows. The new ones were three meters high, but still tiny-looking at this distance. She’d bet Tyco was watching her from there. She gave a little wave. “Don’t worry. I’ve seen that before. No big deal.” That was a little bit of an exaggeration. “Besides,” she continued, “I didn’t come up here just to fix your silly camera. I want to sit and take in the scenery.”