The Children of the Sky Read Online Free PDF

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