"Yup."

Gannon and the others continued on their way. Timor watched them for a moment, but only vin Verring turned to give him a little wave. Well, these kids had gotten older than him; he shouldn't be surprised they didn't include him in much. On the other hand, he was the lookout.

He slid along the ledge toward some obvious handholds. Below him, Belle was poking around to find a way up for her bottom three. Oops, there was a pair of sea birds perched above him. He remembered the lectures about birds and nests. "Nests" were a little like autoform creches except without the safety overrides; those birds might come down and peck at him if they thought he was after their replicates.

Fortunately, the birds contented themselves with loud cackling, then one after the other they took off for the swarm that hovered over the water's edge. He noticed that that was in the same direction the kids had been walking. Hei! He was almost at the top of the rock! He maneuvered carefully across the slippery black stone, doing his best to avoid the bird poop.

One of Belle's heads poked up from the edge of the rock. "How about a little help here?"

"Sorry." He lay flat on the rock and reached down to the first one's forelegs. That was her one male, Ihm. By the time Timor had him pulled up, Belle was able to help him with the rest of herself. She clambered to the middle of the rock and sat on her feet, complaining all the while about her frozen paws. He turned awkwardly around and finally got a glimpse of the wreck. The raft was mostly still in the straits, but sliding meter by meter toward the rocks.

Three of Belle hunkered down, listening. The others sat tall on either side of Timor. He guessed those two were watching the wreck. In most ways, Tinish vision was worse than humans', but if they chose to spread out, they had much better depth perception.

Belle said, "Can you hear the timbers breaking on the rocks?" And of course Tinish hearing was lightyears better than the naked human ear.

"Maybe." Timor looked at the front of the raft. Okay, rocks would break wood, right? Especially if the rocks didn't have avoidance systems. And nothing had avoidance on this world. He saw how the timbers had split down the middle. The two halves of the vehicle were sloping separately. Surely that could not be part of its design.

He squinted, trying to make out the details. The raft was piled high with barrels. And now he saw that there were lots of Tines, though they wore brownish rags and were mostly hunkered down between the barrels. Occasionally four or five of them stood together and tried to do something with the rigging. Yes, they were trying desperately to keep their craft off the rocks.

"They're in trouble," he said.

Belle made a hooting sound, a Tinish laugh. "Of course they're in trouble. Can't you hear the ones in the water, screaming?"

Now that she mentioned it, he could see heads here and there in the water. "This is terrible. Shouldn't someone be trying to help?" Timor was quite sure that Gannon and the other kids weren't capable of providing much help.

He felt Belle shrug. "If they hadn't been swept so far north, or if they had come at high tide, there'd be no problem."

"But shouldn't we help those packs in the water?"

One of Belle's heads looked in his direction. "What packs? These are Tropicals. The individual members are probably as smart as any northern singleton, but they just don't make packs except by accident. Look at that raft! Junk made by mindless Tines. Sometimes the idiots get swept away from their jungles and the ocean brings them up here. I say the more of them that die along the way, the better." She grumbled on the way she often did, gossiping and complaining at the same time: "Our own war veterans are bad enough, broken up bits of people. But at least we keep them decently out of sight. These rabble coming in now have no call on us. They'll be idling around town, soiling the alleys, dumbhead singletons and trios. Mangy, smelly, mindless thieves and beggars..."

The rest made even less sense. Belle was one of those packs who spoke almost perfect Samnorsk, but sometimes part of her would rattle on even after her main attention was elsewhere. Timor noticed that the pack was intensely focused on the wreck, her long necks twitching back and forth. She had been even more eager than Timor when Gannon Jorkenrud had invited them to come along. He followed the center of her gaze. There were barrels bobbing in the foaming surf.

"So if the Tropicals are such problem, why are you interested in the wreck?"

"That's the thing, boy. These shipwrecks have been going on since time out of mind; I remember legends of them. Every few years, a crowd of Tropical singletons gets washed ashore. They're always a problem, the ones who live. But the rafts usually have valuable junk on board, stuff we normally don't see, since the Tropics are so filled with disease and choirs that no pack can survive there."

She paused. "Hei, some of the barrels are on the rocks. I can hear them breaking up." Two of her scrambled to the edge of the rock. Her oldest hung back, watching to keep them all oriented. "Okay, Timor, you stay here. I'm going down to have a look." Her two youngest were already sliding and scrambling down, risking cuts and sprains in their eagerness.

"But wait!" shouted Timor. "We're supposed to stand watch."

"I can do that close up," she said. "You stay up here." Her two youngest were out of sight now, hidden by the edge of the boulder. Two others were helping old Ihm to negotiate the slippery rocks. She emitted a Tinish chord that Timor recognized as evasive mumbling. "You be the overall lookout, okay? Remember, Gannon is depending on you."

"But-"

All of Belle was out of sight now. Of course, she could still hear him, but she could be pretty good at ignoring him too.

Timor settled back on the middle of his rock. This was a good lookout position, though with Belle gone, it would be just his voice to shout directions. As best he could see in the sea haze, there were no rescue boats coming across the straits from Hidden Island. Cliffside harbor to the south was much closer, but the marina was a forest of unmoving spars and masts. It really was up to Gannon and the other kids to help the shipwrecked Tines.

He looked back to where the sea met the rocks. Here and there, he could see Belle's members. She had worked her way through several narrow passages and was almost into the foam. She moved carefully, trying to keep her paws out of the icy water; nevertheless she was within a few meters of Tropicals who had fallen overboard. Could she help them? Tines were wonderfully good swimmers; Ravna said that the Tines had evolved from sea mammals. But watching Belle, Timor guessed that the arctic waters were too cold for them.

Nevertheless, Belle had two of herself partway into the surf. The others were tugging at the cloaks of the furthest out, keeping them from being swept away. Maybe she could rescue a member or two. Then he noticed that she was desperately reaching for a wooden barrel that was jammed between half-submerged rocks. Some kind of green fabric peeked out of breaks in the container.

"Oh, Belle," Timor said to himself. He moved to the south side of his rock, trying to get a better view. There! Gannon and the others had finally reached the water. He could see most of them now. There were also a couple of packs with them, but Gannon's pals didn't have much to do with Tines. These packs looked pretty uncomfortable, huddling close among themselves and complaining loudly enough that Timor could hear them from fifty meters way. The Children didn't look comfortable either. Their pants were soaked; vin and the others were visibly shivering. Gannon had climbed onto a little terrace, was waving to the others to follow him.

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. vin 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.

Meantime, the rest of the packs had dragged in what remained of the raft. The Tropicals on board came streaming off as the shore patrol and local citizens climbed on the junk heaps and began rooting around. Johanna belatedly realized that the main purpose of the "rescue" was to get at the wreck's cargo.

There were no more survivors visible in the straits. Except for Pilgrim, the packs who had been helping with the rescue tosses had joined the other salvage maniacs. Along the flat stretch of beach, the surviving Tropicals were clumped together in shivering groups. The smallest of those was at least twenty Tines. These weren't packs; they were just singletons hunkered together for warmth.

Johanna walked to the edge of the crowd, listening for Interpack speech. There was nothing that she recognized. After all, there were no real packs here. She could feel an occasional buzzing sensation, though; these creatures were not silent in the range that the packs called mindsound-about forty to two hundred fifty kilohertz.

Pilgrim was pacing her progress, but staying fifteen meters or more away from the nearest of the Tropicals. "You're not too popular right now," he said.

"Me?" replied Johanna, keeping her eyes on the strange mob. Scarcely any of them had clothing, but their pelts were just as mangy as the stories had claimed. Some of the creatures were almost hairless except down near their paws. "We saved these fellows."

"Oh, they aren't the ones you're unpopular with," said Pilgrim. Johanna drifted a little nearer the mob. Now there were dozens of heads following her, jaws snapping nervously. Pilgrim continued, "Hei, I didn't say the Tropicals like you either! I'll wager that none of them realize you helped save them."

Necks lunged in her direction, and one or two of the critters tumbled down from atop the others. For a moment, she thought this was an attack, but when the Tines reached the ground, they just looked startled. Johanna backed away a step or two. "Yes, I see what you mean. These are like battle fragments. They're scared and mindless." And they could go into attack mode if something spooked them.

"That's about right," said Pilgrim. "But keep in mind that these fellows are not the remains of packs. Most likely they have never been part of a coherent pack. Their mindsound is just a pointless choir."

Johanna continued along the edge of the mob. There was a certain distance the crowd seemed comfortable with. If she got inside that, they would begin to come at her. Pilgrim was right. These weren't like war casualties. Battle fragments she had known longed to be part of coherent packs. They would react with friendliness toward Pilgrim, trying to entice him close. If they had known humans before they were damaged, they would be quite friendly to her. "So what's going to happen to them?" she said.

"Ah well, that's why you're a bit unpopular with the shore patrol. You know we get a shipwreck like this every few years. The cargo is mostly junk, not the sort of things you'd find if serious trade were intended."

Johanna looked across the misty beach. There really weren't enough shore patrol packs to contain the rescuees. The Tropicals wobbled around weakly and most seemed intimidated by the coherent packs, but there was a steady trickle of mangy seafarers who took advantage of the gaps in the shore patrol cordon and ran off along the beach. When a pack pursued, then there was a concerted rush by five or ten of the other refugees. Not everyone could be corralled and brought back. She looked at Pilgrim, "So the patrol would prefer that more of them had drowned?"

Pilgrim cocked a couple of heads at Johanna. "Just so." He might be consort to a Queen of the Realm, but he was not the least bit diplomatic. "Woodcarver has enough trouble with local fragments. These will just be trouble."

Inside herself, Johanna felt something colder than the water. The packs' treatment of fragments was her most unfavorite thing about Tines World. "So what happens to them, then? If anyone tries to force them back into the sea-" Her voice rose, along with her temper. Ravna Bergsndot would not put up with that, Johanna was sure. Not if Johanna got to her in time. She turned and began walking quickly back to the agrav flier.

All of Pilgrim turned about and trotted along beside her. "No, don't worry about that happening. In fact, Woodcarver has a longstanding decree that any survivors be allowed the run of Cliffside village. These patrol packs are waiting for reinforcements, to chivvy the mob into town."

About a third of the seafarers had already disappeared, trotting off as singletons and duos. They might do better than the fragments Johanna was used to. Frags of coherent packs were generally anxious mental cripples; many starved to death even if they were basically healthy. Elderly singletons, the castoffs, lasted only a short time. Johanna didn't slow down. An idea was percolating up....

"You're planning something crazy, aren't you?" said Pilgrim. Sometimes he claimed he stayed with her because in a year she did as many weird things as he would see in ten anywhere else. Pilgrim really was a pilgrim, so that was an extreme claim indeed. His memories went back centuries, hazing off into unreliable history and myth. Few packs had traveled their world so much, or seen so much. The price of the adventuring was that Pilgrim was more a surviving point of view than an enduring mind. It was Johanna's great good fortune that that point of view was currently embodied in someone whose attitudes were so basically decent. Of all the Tines in the world, Pilgrim and Scriber had been the first she'd known. That bit of luck had saved her. Ultimately, it had saved all the remaining Children.

"You're not going to tell me your plan, eh?" said Pilgrim. "But I bet you want me to fly you someplace." That was not a difficult thing to guess, considering that Johanna was still walking toward the flier, which was parked-crashed-at the base of a cliff so steep and smooth that no pack or unaided human could hope to climb it.

Pilgrim ran around in front of her, now leading the way. "Okay, then. But keep in mind. The Tropicals can't live here very well. The packs they make are loose, even when they try to form them."

"So you've lived in the Tropical Choir?" That was something that Pilgrim had never quite claimed.

Pilgrim hesitated. "Well, for a time I lived on the fringes-you know, in the Tropical collectives. The true Choir of the deep jungles would be very quickly fatal for a coherent pack. Can you imagine being surround by such mobs, no one caring to keep a decent distance? Thought is impossible ... though I suppose if the stories of nonstop orgies are true, it might be a happy way to dissolve oneself. No, I just meant that these shipwrecks have happened before. We'll have a year or two of nuisance, far more singletons wandering around than normal old age and accidents would account for-more even than after the war with Steel and Flenser. But eventually the problem will take care of itself."

"I'll bet." They were walking between house-sized boulders now, scrambling over lesser rocks that had fallen in between. This was not the safest place to promenade. All those rocks had come from somewhere above them. Sometimes after a spring thaw you'd see the rocky avalanches adding to the talus. At the moment, that was just a passing thought in the back of Johanna's mind, another reason to fly away from here. "So after a year or two, these poor animals are mostly dead and Woodcarver's folk have solved the problem?"

"Oh no, nothing like that. Or almost nothing like that. Over the centuries, Woodcarver and her people learned that if they waited till a good chill autumn and a surface current that was mainly southerly, you could get rid of most of the survivors in an almost friendly way: just repair their rafts or make new ones. After all, it's not that hard to make junkwork like that out of the flotsam that is always rolling in."

"You mean the surviving Tropicals can just be led aboard and put out to sea?"

"Not quite, though sometimes that's enough. What the Old Woodcarver learned was that the Tropicals are like jaybirds. They like shiny things. They like firemakers-which doesn't make sense since those go bad so fast in humid weather. They like all sorts of silly things. And long ago, folks around here figured what those things were. So pile the trinkets up on the rafts. Put some food aboard-and if the tide is right you can coax the remaining Tropicals aboard. Then just push them out into the southerly stream. Hei, problem solved!"

Johanna reached for the smooth silvery metal of the agrav flier. Her touch caused the side hatch to flip upwards, and a ramp to slide out. The craft had been designed for wheeled creatures. Entrance was easy for the likes of humans or Tines. She climbed aboard and settled into her usual slot (which was not so well designed for the human form).

Pilgrim came scrambling over the rocks, and one after another padded up the ramp. "It's not as if they are whole people, Johanna. You know that."

"You of all people don't really believe that, do you, Pilgrim?"

The fivesome was busy seating himself all around the flight cabin. The agrav's user interface might have been flexible in the Beyond, but down here in the Slow Zone, it defaulted to the form most fit for its original owners. Those had been Skroderiders. There might not be a single one alive on the whole planet. Too bad, since that default user interface had the flight controls scattered around the periphery of the cabin. Maybe a human crew could have flown the agrav-if that crew had trained their whole lives for the instabilities of the flight system. A pack, on the other hand, if it were as practiced and crazy as Pilgrim, could fly the thing, but just barely.

As the door closed and Pilgrim busied himself resetting the boat's agrav fabric, part of him looked around at her, considering her last question. He made his human voice a little bit sad sounding, "No, they're more than animals, Johanna. My love Woodcarver might say that they're also less, but you know I don't believe that. I've been in pieces often enough myself." He pushed at one of the dozens of control holes set in the console. The agrav lifted up on the left side, then on the right. They slid sideways, smacking into the cliff face. He corrected, and the boat sagged left, coasting away from the cliff but bouncing against the largest of the rocks below. By then Pilgrim had the rhythm, and the boat fluttered upward, only occasionally scraping the cliff. Two years ago, after it became apparent that someone like Pilgrim was needed to fly the boat, Pilgrim had made a hobby of scaring the pee out of his passengers. Partly that was pilgrim humor and partly it was to give him an excuse to fly wherever he pleased. Johanna had been on to his game even if Ravna was fooled. She had called him out on the issue, and she was pretty sure that nowadays when the boat behaved insanely it wasn't Pilgrim messing around. The problem was that the agrav fabric was weakening and becoming less rational. More and more, the best performing parts of the fabric were salvage from Oobii. Pilgrim was forced to constantly relearn the boat's flight characteristics. He didn't have time for his old hoaxing around.

The skiff slid down five meters, but well away from the cliff. It was twenty meters above the rocks now, with enough clearance all around so that its wobbling was not a concern. This was really not a bad takeoff at all.

As they drifted generally upward, most of Pilgrim turned to look at her. "I forgot to ask. Where is it you want to go?"

"We're going to get these sailors a decent home," Johanna replied.

Woodcarver's Fragmentarium was perched in the lower walls of the Margrum Valley, not far above Cliffside harbor, where the Tropicals were being herded. Pilgrim's flight path was more or less straight toward the Fragmentarium. That is, it wobbled in all directions, but the average was straight. At higher altitudes he could have risked supersonic speeds, but for short little hops like this, a running pack might outpace him.

Though the boat looked like silver metal from the outside, Pilgrim kept the hull transparent for those within. The view remained surprisingly bad. The scavenged agrav fabric was stubbornly opaque, a patchwork of russet scraps. In some places the repair work was so extensive that it looked like a Tinish muffling quilt sewn together by a crazypack. It was that pattern of obstacles that determined Johanna's favorite perch. Her seat really wasn't a seat-she had to lean forward to clear the ceiling-and the safety harness was ad hoc. On the other hand, she had a good view straight down.

They were just passing over the Children she had seen down by the shipwreck. Five boys and two girls. From this altitude she could recognize every one. Yeah, these were the ones. Johanna shook her head, muttering to herself. "You see that?" she said to Pilgrim.

"Of course I see." Pilgrim had three snouts pressed close to one clear spot or another. He had no trouble seeing in multiple directions. "What's to see?"

"The Children. They were throwing stones at drowning Tines." She checked off the names in her mind, vowing to remember. "vin Verring. I never dreamed he would do something like that." vin had been exactly her age. They'd been evenly matched at school, and friends in a non-romantic way.

The skiff performed a tooth-rattling dip and bounce. Johanna had learned to keep her tongue from between her teeth when she rode this gadget. Nowadays she barely noticed the acrobatics, except when they were close to hard objects.

Pilgrim recovered control; he didn't seem to notice the bouncing either. "To be honest, Jo, I don't think Verring was throwing stones. He was hanging back."

"So? He should have stopped the others..." They passed over another Child, this one smaller, falling behind the others. A fivesome was walking with the boy. It was one of only three packs that seemed mixed up with these delinquents. "See? Even little Timor Ristling was down there messing around. He was acting as lookout for the others!" Timor was a cripple now. He had been healthy enough at the High Lab, but even then she had pitied him. He'd been about her brother's age, but he came from a family of low-level integrators, far beneath the brilliant scientists and archeologists who were reanimating the old archive. The closest analogy on Tines World would be to say Timor's folks were janitors, sweeping up the glittering trash that more gifted folks left behind. The boy had never done well in his school classes; he just didn't have a mind for technological thinking. You'd think all that bad fortune would make him more kindly disposed to those poor souls on the shipwreck. Hmm. "I'll bet it's that pack he's hanging out with." The pale fivesome was clustered around him. Belle Ornrikakihm was a grifting wannabe politician out of Woodcarver's pre-human empire. It was a shame she'd gotten her claws into Timor. The boy deserved a better Best Friend, but he was old enough to refuse mentoring.

Their agrav skiff had pulled ahead of the cluster of humans. She could see back now, almost into the faces of the kids at the front. Yeah, there was Gannon Jorkenrud, waving and joking to his pals. Jerkwad. Back at the High Lab, Gannon had been one year older than Johanna. He'd skipped grades, had been at the point of graduating from their little school. Gannon was a flaming genius, even more talented than Jo's little brother. At age fourteen, Gannon was as much a master of anguille borkning as any of the research staff. Everybody agreed that someday he would be the best borkner in all Straumli Realm. Down Here, Jerkwad's talent was good for nothing.

The agrav wobbled higher, flying a little faster. Below them were more shore patrol packs and ordinary citizens, walking north from Cliffside village, probably headed for the shipwreck. There were even a few humans. One of them was running.

"Hei, that's Nevil down there," Johanna said.

"He was throwing rocks?" Pilgrim sounded surprised.

"No, no, he's coming from Cliffside." Nevil Storherte was the oldest of the Children. Certainly he was the most sensible. At the High Lab, Johanna had had such a crush on him, but necessarily from a distance. He probably didn't even know she existed back then. She'd been barely a teenager and he'd been almost ready to graduate. A year or two more and he might have been one of the Straumer researchers. His parents had been the Lab's chief administrators, and Nevil-even when so young-had had a natural aptitude for diplomacy.

Somehow he had learned that Gannon and the others were coming down here. He hadn't been in time to stop them, but she could see that he wasn't running to be first to the shipwreck. He had turned inland, heading for the cluster of Children. As he approached he slowed to a walk, waving to Gannon and the others, no doubt giving them a proper chewing out. She leaned down further, trying for a clear view. The sea mists had been driven inland and the kids were almost out of sight, but she could see that Nevil had stopped all the miscreants and was even waiting for Timor and Belle to catch up. He looked up and waved to her. Thanks, Nevil. She wouldn't have to feel bad that she hadn't hung around herself.

Johanna leaned back and looked out the south-facing side of the flier. Though they were half hidden by sea mists, she could see Cliffside village and its little harbor, right down at the mouth of the Margrum River. The agrav climbed into a cloudless day of late summer, and she could see forever. The "U" of the glacier-carved Margrum Valley stretched inland, green lowlands rising to stony bluffs and the patches of high snow that lasted all the way through the summer. Historically, the Margrum had separated Flenser's domain from Woodcarver's. The Battle on Starship Hill had changed all that.

Woodcarver's Fragmentarium was ahead, just above the mists. The Fragmentarium had started out as a temporary war hospital, Woodcarver's effort to honor the packs who'd suffered in support of her. The place had grown into something much more. Pilgrim claimed there had never been such a thing in this part of the world before. Certainly, there were plenty of packs who still did not understand its purpose.