A big part of the raft was barely ten meters from the kids. It bobbed out and in, sometimes getting so close to the terrace that Timor feared it would ram the Children. This piece of raft had remnants of sails flying from broken-looking masts. Timor hadn’t taken any sailing classes; those were only for the older kids, the ones who wanted to be explorers and diplomats. But these masts and sails weren’t the tidy, regular things he saw in the Hidden Island harbor or at Cliffside. Unless these parts were regenerating—and the Tines had no such technology—this raft system was totally out of control. It probably had been ever since it ran into some storm.
Belle continued to ignore everything except her barrel of treasure, but Gannon and the other kids were shouting to the mob on the raft. The two packs on the shore were shouting too. Timor couldn’t understand any of it, but the noise from the Tropicals was loud. It didn’t sound much like Interpack. Maybe it was some other Tinish language, or just frightened screeching.
Timor couldn’t imagine what the kids could do to help. He looked again in the direction of Cliffside harbor. Hei! Something was moving along the curve of rocky beach. It looked like four or five packs hauling carts. And way high above them—the antigravity skiff! It didn’t matter that it wasn’t a human design and that it constantly teetered like a falling leaf. It was a little bit of home.
The agrav descended along the cliffs, cautiously tipping around the updrafts. It was coming down well ahead of the approaching packs, but still short of Timor’s position. For a moment, Timor wondered why Pilgrim—the only possible pilot—hadn’t brought it closer. Then the skiff tipped over, scraping the rocks with its canopy. It flipped again and landed with a crash. It crashed a lot lately. Fortunately the hull was stronger than wood and harder than rock. The top hatch popped open and after a second a human head appeared. No surprise, it was Johanna Olsndot; she was almost always the passenger.
Timor turned back to give a shout to Gannon and the others. Help had arrived!
Gannon Jorkenrud was teetering near the edge of his rocky terrace. The big piece of raft had grounded just out of reach. Øvin Verring and some of the kids were hanging back, but Gannon and others were throwing things at the raft. They were shouting, or laughing, and throwing again and again. They were throwing stones at the Tropicals.
Timor stood up and shouted, “Hei, you guys! Stop that!” No doubt his words were lost in the wind, but his windmilling arms caught their attention. Gannon gave him a wave, perhaps thinking Timor was warning of discovery. The stone throwers backed away from the edge of the water. Timor slipped on the rock, landing hard in one of the puddles that pocked the surface.
So he’d probably earned Gannon’s good will. That had been awfully important to him, but it seemed kind of ugly now.
The Year Two shipwreck was the first since the Children had come to Tines World. Johanna Olsndot was just sixteen, yet she managed to establish her Bad Girl reputation in the aftermath of the wreck—a remarkable achievement considering that other kids misbehaved for years without getting so labeled.
Pilgrim Wickllrrackscar had heard there was a shipwreck, and the two of them had flown down to help out. Certainly that was not Bad Girl behavior. They bounced to ground well ahead of Woodcarver’s shore patrol. Johanna was out the hatch and running toward the wreckage even before Pilgrim had the agrav locked down. Behind her, the flyer rose briefly back into the air, and fell again. She paid that scant attention. The Tropicals’ raft had already broken on the rocks.
She saw that other rescuers were already here, an unlikely crowd of Children led by Gannon Jorkenrud. And—well, by damn!—they were throwing rocks at the drowning Tines! Johanna skirted the boulders, splashing through the icy water of the Inner Straits, shouting and swearing at Gannon’s gang.
The group had already retreated from their position on the rocks. They were busy disappearing in the direction of the cliff path. All of them were younger than Johanna and none quite as tall. Besides, Johanna was the one with the reputation for temper and she was the only Child who had actually fought in the Battle on Starship Hill.
Johanna took one long look around the blocky talus, searching for any other wrongdoers. There, one more Child, very small. It was Timor Ristling, awkwardly scrambling down from a rock, helped by Belle Ornrikakihm. Now there was a sneaky pack of beasties. Then Timor and Belle were out of sight, too, and the thought flitted from her mind. Pilgrim had come down from the agrav. All five of him was trying to drag her out of the ankle-deep water.
“Hei, what’s the problem?” protested Johanna. “The water’s still enough.” It was bone-chilling cold, but here behind the rocks, the sea was tamed into a gently swirling pond.
Pilgrim led her along the gravel, a meter or so back from the water. “It’s not all that shallow. There are holes and dropoffs. You get confident, walk about, and things can get very bad, very fast.” For a death-defying pilgrim he could be a wuss. But to be honest … just four or five meters from where they were standing, there was already white foam spinning up from the water. Standing at the level of the sea, the surface of the water was almost indistinct, the churn of sea mist transforming the daylight into murk.
The shore patrol had arrived. The five packs were already working with ropes to slide the biggest parts of the raft away from the grinding rocks.
Out on the wreckage, dozens of Tines were perched on piles of junk. These were the first Tropicals Johanna had ever seen. They were every bit as strange as the locals claimed. The foreigners didn’t cluster into packs. They were like a mob of singletons, doing whatever they pleased. Some of them cooperated to pull on the ropes thrown to them; others cowered in terror. She looked across the misty water. Here and there, she saw a head, or a single Tine lying across a bit of broken timber. Dozens of the creatures had been swept overboard.
Johanna reached out to the nearest of Pilgrim. It was Scarbutt, still the largest of the pack. “Look there! Those ones in the water are going to drown! We should go after them first.”
Pilgrim gave a general nod of agreement. “Not sure that can be helped.”
“Hei, it sure as hell can be helped!” Johanna pointed at the coils of rescue rope that the shore patrol packs had brought. “Grab those ropes! Get the shore patrol to do the important stuff first!”
Pilgrim was normally a very forward fellow. Now he hung back for a second, then ran along behind the shore patrol packs, gobbling loudly. Even after three years of listening to Interpack, Johanna found the language mostly unintelligible. The words got stacked up in chords, some them too high pitched to hear. By the time you got the sounds separated out, you were trying to make sense of the next chord. Just now, Pilgrim was shouting some kind of demand. The sounds of “Woodcarver” popped up several times. Okay, so he was invoking higher authority.
Two of the shore patrol packs left their posts and helped Pilgrim drag unused loops of rope away from the rocks. More packs were running toward them from Cliffside harbor. These didn’t look like shore patrol. Most of them avoided Johanna and Pilgrim. Like the rest, they seemed mostly interested in the raft. Well, there were more lives at stake there, but the ones who needed immediate help were out in the water. In all, only three packs—counting Pilgrim—were now working to save them. Over and over again, the packs would whirl about, tossing floater-tipped ropes out into the sea. The struggling singletons leaped from the water, desperately reaching. They looked almost like seamals when they moved like that. In warmer, quieter water they would have been quite safe. Here, the rescue ropes were essential; when a singleton managed to snatch a throw, it was quickly dragged into a stretch of flat pebbly beach. Johanna and the others managed to save a dozen of the swimmers, but there had been at least thirty heads out there before. The others must have been lost to the cold or been swept further north.