Winter Song (26 page)

    
Is
that what you meant? Karl wondered.

    "Not knowing about these things is frustrating," Karl admitted. "But see it from my point of view. I'm surrounded by things I don't understand–"

    "Which you're not used to," Bera said. "Perish the thought that you might have to learn something, that you might have to wait more than a fraction of a second – no, you have to have it now." He made to protest but she waved him silent, and took a breath: "They breed in large numbers, but most of the young are eaten by adults. As they reach medium size they become those same predators of the young, but when they grow to full maturity they then switch to a diet of snawks, rockeaters and other local fauna. Luckily for them – and us – they don't eat sheep."

    "You know that?"

    Bera pulled a face. "How do you prove a negative?"

    "You count sheep, of course," Karl said. "If sheep survive encountering a dragon – other than running off a cliff in fear or something – you can assume that dragons don't usually eat them."

    "Exactly – assume. What about the times when the whole flock vanishes? And there's a dragon around? Or other times? We don't have time to do extensive research, not like your people. We just guess."

    "So the settlers don't treat them as a pest."

    "No. We have enough pests to contend with. And they're actually quite pretty creatures."

    "Hmm," Karl said. "I've yet to be convinced of that."

    "Being caught between one and a flock of havalifugils has that effect." She smiled for a moment, and then realising that she was supposed to be mad at him or something, her face resumed its former stony expression.

    "Thanks, Bera," Karl said softly. "You must feel that I sometimes treat you like a walking version of the Oracle."

    Bera shrugged.

    "But it isn't just impatience: I have to do that in case anything happens," Karl said. "The more I know, the more effectively I can react if we get separated."

    "I know," Bera said, her eyes glistening, and Karl realised what the problem was.

    "But it can't be nice, questions, questions, questions all the time."

    Bera shrugged again, but this time her lower lip trembled.

    "Is there anything you'd like to ask me? Anything at all?" Karl said, reaching out slowly, and when she didn't flinch, letting his open hand rest over her clenched one. Even when she opened hers, his vast mitt dwarfed it. "It may seem like I consider you a walking encyclopaedia, but I never forget that you're a person."

    Most of the time they had ridden in silence, or had a few shouted conversations, but there had been time to talk; he wasn't sure whether she wasn't interested, or didn't know where to begin. Again she didn't ask, so instead he began to talk. "I live in Merlin Tower, on the 109th floor, overlooking the Lake of the Lady Lyonesse. Our city Avalon floats about fifty kilometres above the surface of planet Avalon. Down on the ground the wind is almost supersonic. The pressure will split your skull like a melon, and it's hot enough to melt lead. We go down occasionally when the remote mining goes wrong."

    "You – you live in a flying city?"

    "A floating one," Karl said with a smile, enjoying the stunned look on Bera's face. "The city has vast bags full of helium which are lighter than air, so that together with nullifiers – which provide a sort of limited antigravity – the city sits up in the clouds."

    One of the suns – Gamasol or Deltasol, Karl couldn't be sure which – broke through the clouds, and he turned his face to the rays.

    "You remind me a bit of a lizard yourself," Bera said, and for the first time that morning, she smiled, but it was tinged with sadness. "The way you bask in the sunlight."

    "It's a rare treat for me," Karl said, smiling back. "We don't often get sun like this on Avalon. Delta Pavonis is usually hidden by thick cloud, but when we do, it's like we're turbo-charged – pow!"

    Bera giggled, but again there was that look. "Aren't you cold?" she said.

    "A little today, when the nanophytes' priority is replenishing their numbers, but mostly they regulate my temperature for me. Anyway," he shivered theatrically, "I can stand a little chill."

    They rode on, silent again.

    "Why so sad?" Karl said.

    "I was thinking of how easy it is to think you're just a strange-looking man, desperate to get home…"

    "Which I am."

    "Why? Is there a ceremony, when the baby's born?"

    Karl shook his head. "This is such a rare event, who would want to miss it? We've waited years for this. And I miss them all. They're my family. I would have thought you of all people would understand that."

    Bera said, "I do. And that's why it's so easy to think that you're like us. But then you say or do something so different that it rams home that you really are alien. You're probably so used to people from other worlds you don't think twice about it, but for us it's different."

    "And now you're realising that you've trusted your life to a man who could say or do anything, no matter how strange," Karl said.

    She shot him a look. "You're doing that mind-reading thing again."

    "Naw." Karl smiled. "It would make life much easier if I did. No, but I've had all morning to think about things, like how tactless I was. For which, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to cause offence by implying that your people are murderous savages." Even if I think that they are, he thought. Shouldn't be so judgemental. These were Norsemen, quick to anger and feuding. Maybe something had gone wrong at the beginning, or maybe the trolls were so devolved that they were no longer properly human. Maybe, maybe, maybe…

    Bera smiled. "It seemed like next that you'd say the snolfurs are intelligent, or the rock-eaters."

    "I didn't actually say that the trolls are intelligent." Karl tried to remember what he had said. "Only that they might be."

    "But you're not going to finish this journey without finding out, are you?" Bera said, again with that sad smile. "You're like a man probing at a tooth with his tongue." She said in a sing-song voice, "Why is the sky grey? Why do the trolls make those noises? " She smiled to make it a joke, but Karl knew she was wrapping serious points in a sugar-coat of humour.

    "You've found me out," Karl said.

    "Say they are intelligent?" Bera said. "What then?"

    "It depends on a lot of things."

    Bera blatted. "I've been around Ragnar long enough to smell bullshit non-answers. What does it depend on?"

    Karl picked his words carefully. "One is whether we even manage to send a mayday from the W
inter Song.
Which in turn depends on whether it exists. And who answers our message."

    Bera gazed at Karl for a full thirty seconds. "How does it depend on who answers?"

    Karl said, "See, I'm not the only one who asks questions."

    Bera wasn't distracted, but repeated, "How does it depend on who answers?"

    "Humanity being what it is," Karl said, "we've splintered into countless factions. Most of them disagree with all the others about something, and occasionally it escalates into open conflict. The Terraformers and the Pantropists fundamentally disagree about colonisation. But they often agree about other things with their opponents, while disagreeing with their own people."

    "So sometimes Terraformers and Pantropists fight among themselves?" Bera said.

    "Sometimes," Karl agreed, thinking of the attack on Ship that had stranded him here.

    "We have a third major faction that aren't – strictly speaking – possibly even human any longer."

    "Oh, for Vili's sake," Bera groaned. "Could you make it any more confusing?"

    "You want me to explain it or not?" Karl said. "Or do you want to just stick with 'it depends' as an answer?"

    "Go on," Bera said.

    Karl continued, "Artificial Intelligences are like your Oracle, but it's like comparing Alphasol with a bedside lamp. The Ayes, as we call them, are the inevitable result of ever-increasing computer power. They went off to odd bits of the galaxy and now do whatever odd things they do, but get blamed for everything, from supernovas to disappearing ships." Karl laughed, but without humour; "To be honest, their presence is probably the one unifying thing that stops humanity from exterminating itself."

    "So they're among the good guys?" Bera said.

    Karl made a non-committal gesture.

    "Among both sides, you have the Radicals. They still use Ayes, but those models are of limited power, and anyone who uses them is viewed by suspicion by every other faction, including less extreme Radicals. Both sides are less clearly cut than their opponents and their own politicians claim.

    "At the extreme end of the Radicals are the Ultras who are so enhanced they're almost cyborgs; the less extreme Traditionals use nanotech and Rejuve to extend their lives to four, even five centuries. Still, they're superficially indistinguishable from either more mainstream or even the most fanatical Traditionals – the Mayflies, who've outlawed any kind of body-mod including Rejuve, birth control, anything."

    "Which group do you belong to?"

    "Depends who you ask," Karl said. "People often think that they belong to one group, their opponents say another. I think I'm a Traditional, but many Traditionals would claim I'm a Radical."

    Bera groaned and held her head theatrically. "It's so complicated!"

    Karl shrugged. "It's a big place, space. Why do you think I was reluctant to answer?"

    "And the point is?"

    "That depending on whether they're Terraformers or Pantropists will determine how they respond, but not how far they're prepared to go," Karl said.

    "Would they bomb us?"

    Karl thought of the genetically tailored plagues that had sterilised Atheling's World but said only, "They're unlikely to do anything to damage the planet in any way, Bera."

    It seemed to satisfy her.

    Karl said, "It would help if we could establish whether the trolls are sentient, or I've jumped to conclusions."

    "You'll probably get a chance before too long," Bera said. "This area is thick with them since we drove them away from human settlements."

    Within an hour she was proven right, when they stumbled across another troll.

    The horses were maintaining the same steady trot that they had kept up since stopping for a noon-day rest, albeit slower than the first few days after leaving Skorradalur.

    Karl was wool-gathering, distracted by Loki's searching Ship's downloads for the lost Pantropist ship; records were hazy, many of them lost in the Long Night. One mentioned that the ship may have been a colony-ship from Terra's Central Asia region, that there were several hundred people on board and genetic material for a new colony. It was no more conclusive than any other information.

    He was startled out of it by Bera's shout of, "Karl! Look out!" Before he could react, a short, hairy form reared up in front of Grainur, which startled, jumped back.

    So did the troll, which broke into a run.

    "Hey! Hold on!" Karl called. He spurred Grainur on and set off in pursuit, swiftly overhauling the troll, which limped badly. Karl sub-voiced, Search your memories for languages that would have been used on those colonies first settled from Central Asia. Find me anything. Absolutely anything!

    The troll turned and ducked down a horizontal chimney. Shrieks and yowls rattled in Karl's ears, and when he felt something like the tickling of tiny fingers on his chest, almost on instinct, he slid his hearing up several frequencies into the ultrasonic.

    Immediately the troll's yowls took on a more structured format, and he heard the sound pinging off his chest.

    
Sonar
, Loki said to Karl.
Ideal for finding one's way in a
blizzard. Perfectly adapted to local conditions.

    "Just give me words for 'friend'," Karl muttered. He was aware of Bera and Teitur behind him at a safe distance, but still blocking any chance of the troll escaping – except for the mouth of the chimney it was hemmed in all sides by high, sheer walls. Karl dismounted. He had a blade that was longer than a knife but too short to dignify with the name of sword tucked into his belt, but he held his hands open. "Come on!" Karl urged.

    Loki replied with one word, then another, a third and fourth, all separated by a second or two. Karl faithfully repeated each word slowly and clearly, also leaving a couple of seconds for a response. He couldn't pitch his voice any higher than normal hearing, so he hoped that the troll would understand.

    The troll didn't answer. Instead it leaped at Karl with opened hands and bared fangs.

    Karl managed to get hold of one hand from which claws had unsheathed, noticing almost without thinking that the troll's breath was sweet, with a minty undertone.

    The troll's free hand swiped at him and despite his swaying back, its claws raked Karl's cheek with a glancing blow. Cursing, he released the troll's wrist and jumped back.

    It advanced on him with windmilling arms – trying to claw him again – so Karl had to step back. The troll lunged again, gabbling and hissing and shrieking.

    In turn, as he slowly gave ground, Karl ran through Loki's Kyrgyz, Tatar and Uygur vocabulary, whatever the download could provide him with. None of the words for "friend" elicited any reaction from the troll. Maybe it's so mad that it's not listening, he thought.

    "Draw your sword!" Bera screamed. "Thor's sake, Karl, don't get yourself killed! Stick the damned thing if need be, and we'll find another one for you to dance with!"

    The troll kept advancing, and Karl reluctantly drew his sword. He held it to the troll's throat and for one awful moment thought that it was simply going to march onto the blade.