“But we need to make that call to Woodcarver!” Even his telescope members were looking around at her. Then he gave a start and began to sniff at his fur. “Wow! Did you feel that, Your Highness? Like a tiny electric shock, but through all my members, all at once.”
Ravna hadn’t felt a thing; maybe that was because she didn’t have six fur-covered bodies. However, she had an explanation. “Oobii just hit us with a very bright pulse. Even if the cloaks are turned off and around a corner, they might give back an echo.”
“Ah!” One good thing about Scrupilo, he really admired clever surprises. “Well, in that case, I’m pleased to be your personal radio pulse sensor.”
Ravna grinned back and put through a call to her starship.
Oobii replied, “Except for known radios, no device echoes detected.”
Scrupilo stuck out his snouts from both sides of the basket and took a naked eye look at the passing scene. “I say we radio pulse every so often. No way this Tropical would guess your clever trick, Highness. Sooner or later he’ll move where Oobii can detect him.”
Ravna set up a surveillance plan with Oobii, got some more winds-aloft advice, and also forwarded Scrupilo’s observations through Oobii to Woodcarver. They continued southwards, climbing another hundred meters. They were almost even with the long row of telephone poles that marched off to the south along the Queen’s Road.
The Eyes Above wasn’t making good time anymore, but it was well ahead of Woodcarver’s search parties. Just a few hundred meters to her left, paralleling the telephone poles, were the “town houses” of older Children and wealthy packs. They might be her most visible achievement of the last ten years. Ravna didn’t know whether to laugh or cry about that. The half-timbered houses were large, each big enough for a married couple, a young child or children on the way, and one or two pack friends. Oobii was able to keep the buildings warm by shining a very low-power beam gun on the hot water towers that stood next to each house. So the town houses were comfortably warm all year round, with hot and cold running water and indoor plumbing. A large part of Oobii’s tech rent had gone into paying for the Children’s town houses. The second-generation kids thought they were heavenly. Their parents regarded the houses as a small step up from purgatory.
“Ha. I felt another pulse,” said Scrupilo. Ravna called the ship. Still no joy.
“We’re almost to Cliffside harbor, Scrupilo. I think that’s beyond where the thief could have come.” In any case, the straits between Hidden Island and the mainland was far busier than the polluted water at North End. There seemed little hope of spotting a suspicious boat here.
“… Yes. I suppose we should turn around and”—Scrupilo had raised his telescopes, pointing them at the highlands ahead.—“but not just yet! The Tropicals may have outsmarted themselves. Something strange is going on near their madhouse. Can you fly there, quietly?”
The embassy compound was just south of the town houses, a fenced-in collection of ramshackle sheds perched on the edge of the Margrum Valley. “I’ll check.” She gave Oobii a quick call, then turned back to Scrupilo. “In that direction, we have a southbound breeze all the way to the ground.” She ran the propeller for another thirty seconds, long enough to put them on a path that would take them past the compound. They were just a few dozen meters above the heather now. She cut the motor, and they coasting along with the breeze, surrounded by eerie silence. “How’s that?”
None of Scrupilo looked up from his intent surveillance. “Excellent. The bastards are up to something. They’re in a crowd off to the northwest of the compound.”
“What, they’re playing with their snow sleighs again?” There’d been heavy snowfall last winter, and the Tropicals had become enamored of large sleighs. Typical of the mob’s long-term planning, they had begged and worked to buy a number of sleighs—getting possession just in time for the spring mud.
“No!” said Scrupilo. “These fellows are by the fence, near the telephone trunk line. I wonder how close we can get before they see us.”
Ravna glanced behind her. The northering sun was peeking under the curve of the balloon. “We’re coming at them from out of the sun.” Ahead, she couldn’t actually see their shadow on the ground, but there was a bright spot, a glory shine, in the heather beyond the compound, marking just where their shadow must be. The roundish light had almost reached the edge of the valley. She vented a little hydrogen. As the Eyes Above sank, the bright spot moved into the compound.
“Brilliant, Milady! Can you keep us in the sun all the way down?”
“I think so.” When the spot of backscatter brightness drifted beyond the compound, Ravna vented a little more hydrogen. Goodness, this was like having a guide program! She felt a small thrill at finding something so convenient built into the raw nature of the world.
They were about 500 meters from the compound, and losing attitude. Ravna had to push up from her seat to see over the basket’s bow. The Eyes Above’s shadow was clearly visible now, surrounded by just a halo of backshine. She vented a bit more gas, brought the shadow to just beyond the Tropicals.
There were a bunch of them down there, standing at the edge of the Queen’s Road, right where it passed closest to the embassy. This crowd plus the ones at the lab would add up to most of the embassy’s total population, though the count was always vague. A number of Tropicals returned south when their wrecks finally slid back to sea. Others had probably been involved in Fragmentarium breakouts over the years.
Ravna could see their ragged jackets and leggings, the body paint on their exposed heads and tympana. There were probably twenty packs’ worth, all tangled together. Yup, an orgy in the making.
Now less than two hundred meters away, none of them looked up to see the Eyes Above. Ravna vented a little more hydrogen, keeping their shadow just out of the packs’ eyes.
Scrupilo had no need for his telescopes now. Five of him had heads stuck over the rim of the basket, staring down. He wriggled his White Head member back to Ravna. “Sst,” whispered White Head. “I can hear them!”
A few seconds passed—and now Ravna could hear them too. The sounds were clear in the wider silence, growing louder as the Eyes Above swept closer, the gobble and hiss of Tinish excitement. The chords were otherwise nonsense to her, but then she could understand very little of the local language, even when the packs were trying their best to be clear.
Scrupilo was not so limited. His White Head reached its nose close to Ravna’s face, where its fore-tympanum could whisper even more quietly. “You hear what they’re saying? The get of bitches already know about the theft! That’s solid proof they’re behind it. No way any of their party could be back from the lab this fast!”
Now the Eyes Above was coasting over them. There was no more point in careful navigation. Ravna left her pilot’s chair and leaned over the edge of the basket. They would pass dead even with the compound’s twisted tower. Directly below, not more than forty meters away, was the mob of Tropicals. These guys did look excited. Then there was a gap in the crowd and she saw the telephone resting on the ground. A thin wire hung down from the nearest telephone pole.
“Oh,” said Scrupilo. Well, that explained their excitement, and why they were standing here by the road. Memo: never give half a solution to these critters.