The Children of the Sky

They trudged down the mossy path, keeping a good one meter fifty between them. The rain had increased to a downpour, and the breeze had become a driving wind. The glowbugs had surrendered the night, and she imagined that the path down to Oobii must already be flowing with mud. It was a dark and stormy night! And yet, and yet … Ravna felt more comfort and optimism than she had for a very long time.

Chapter 10

Autumn around Starship Hill was beginning to show its teeth. There was still about half a day of sunlight in every day, but most days were cloudy, with ocean squalls coming and coming, each a little colder than the last. The rain was slush, then it was slush and snow. The only uglier season was the endless mud of late Spring, but that held the promise of greenery and summer. Autumn’s promise was different: the deadly cold of Arctic winter. Winter was a good time for one of Ravna’s favorite projects. In the Northern Icefangs, the tendays of night were dry and clear and less than 185°K. A space-based civilization would count that as so near room temperature as to make no difference, but Oobii had dredged up some metamaterial studies from its archives of bypassed technologies: Given a hectare at those temperatures, you could carve out macroscopic logic and then use a laser interference scheme to fabricate micron-scale semiconductor parts. Their last three attempts had been tantalizing failures. Maybe this winter would be different.…

Of course, the project had been discussed in the Executive Council. Scrupilo was obsessed with the experiment, his Cold Valley lab. And though this third attempt was not a secret, Nevil suggested to Ravna that it was just as well not to make much of it to the Children at large. The ice experiments could be a game changer, moving the world to automation decades ahead of schedule, ending the worst of the kids’ everyday discomforts. On the other hand, this was the third try and Oobii gave it only a modest chance of success.

Ravna obsessed right along with Scrupilo; discovering the Disaster Study Group had made the likelihood of a failure this winter all the more depressing. But now, since that evening with the glowbugs at Pham’s grave, she could settle for knowing that things were on the right path. Every day that passed, Nevil brought some new insight, often things that could not have been brought up in Council, sometimes things she would never have thought of by herself. For Nevil was the perfect complement to Johanna. Before the Oobii landed, Johanna had been alone here, surrounded by the Tines. She had become their hero. She had close friends at the highest Tinish levels, and the lowest. The packs loved her for what she had done in combat and even for the crazy breakout she had fomented at the old Fragmentarium, which had started the private hospital movement. Ravna was constantly surprised at how many Tines claimed to know her personally—even packs that were not veterans.

But though Johanna had plenty of friends among the Children, she—and Jefri—were still somewhat apart from them; both had spent that terrible first year here alone. Nevil, on the other hand, was Ravna’s perfect bridge to the Children. He was a born leader and had known every one of the kids back at the High Lab. Nevil had their pulse; he seemed to know every quirky reason for what they might like or resent or desire.

•  •  •

“How do you like the New Meeting Place?” asked Ravna.

“I love it!” Timor Ristling was fourteen years old now, but he still looked to be only six or seven. He walked with a limp and had a spastic tremor. Ravna was terribly afraid there were mental deficiencies, too; Timor was very good at manual arithmetic, but lagged behind in most other topics. It didn’t help that his Tinish Best Friend was a bad-tempered foursome who regarded the boy as her sinecure. Belle Ornrikak was tagging along behind them, a calculating glint in her eyes.

But just now, Timor’s unhappy history was nearly invisible. He held her hand, all but dragging Ravna along. His tremor could have been taken as part of his joyful excitement for what Nevil’s design suggestions had made of the Oobii’s cargo bay.

The space was forty by thirty by twenty meters. Ravna and Pham had made good use of a tiny part of it in their journey here, smuggling themselves through customs at Harmonious Repose. Now the space was almost empty, its inland side resting at ground level. A half-timbered wall had been built across the cargo hatch, enough to keep out the weather.

Nevil had remodeled the interior, partly with local materials, partly by revising walls into explicit access points and game stations. He’d decorated everything in what he confessed was a poor imitation of the manner of Straum. Timor led Ravna across the gem-tiled floor, showing her wonder after wonder. “And see above?” The boy was staring up, wavering a little with his uncertain balance. “It’s the skyline round Straumli Main. I remember it from just before we left for the High Lab. I had friends in beginning school there.” She knew he had been about four years old when he left Straumli Main, but somehow those memories had survived everything since.

“It’s nice, Timor.”

“No, it’s beautiful! Thank you for building it for us.”

“It wasn’t just me,” said Ravna. In fact, virtually none of the detail design had been her own. Most was from Nevil and his friends, but Nevil thought it best if for now she got as much credit as possible.

Belle slipped around Ravna to stand by Timor. The pack was mostly watching the stations running hunter games, but she sounded bored: “I’ve heard this is nothing like the real Beyond; the Children will get tired of the gimmicks soon enough.”

“No, we won’t!” responded Timor, his voice getting a little loud. “I love it here, and there’s more! I’ll show you.” He turned away, leaving Belle’s gaze still caught with an addict’s intensity on the game displays. Not until Ravna had walked past her did she recover and follow along.

Timor took them away from the game and sports floors and up a ramp. Here, the exciting noises of the gaming area were muted by Oobii’s active acoustics. Ten or twelve of the oldest Children were sitting around a projecting display space. Maybe this was a strategy game, or— Then she noticed Nevil standing a little back from the chairs. It looked as if he had just arrived, too. She started toward him, but Timor was plucking at her sleeve. “Do you see what they’re doing?”

There were intricate models floating in the space between the chairs and the wall. Small windows hung by each of the kids. The models looked like some kind of network thing, but—she shook her head.

“Ovin can explain!” Timor drew her over to where Ovin Verring and Elspa Latterby were sitting together.

Ovin looked up at her appearance. There was a flash of surprise in his face, and perhaps nervousness. “Hello, Ravna!”

“Hei,” said Elspa, and gave a little wave.

Ravna grinned at him. “So what are you all doing?” She looked around at the entire group. Except for Heida Oysler, these were some of the most serious of the Children. “Not a game?”

Elspa shook her head. “Ah, no. We’re trying to learn to, um—”

Heida took over: “Ever wonder why we kids haven’t pushed to use Oobii’s automation?”

“A little.” In fact, most of the Children had resisted learning programming almost as much as they had more primitive skills.

“Two reasons,” said Heida. “You seemed to want it for your projects—but just as important, this starship is as dumb as a rock.”

“It’s the best that can exist here, Heida.”

“I like it a lot!” put in Timor.

Heida grinned. “Okay then, so it’s not a dumb rock; it’s more like one of those whatsits, a flaked stone arrowhead. The point is, it’s worthless for—”

Ovin shook his head. “What Heida is trying to say in her own gracious way is…” He thought for a second, perhaps trying to come up with something less ungracious. “… is that now that we have access beyond our classes, maybe we should learn to change our ways and make the best use of Oobii that we can. So far we’re visualizing the problem. That’s usually the hard part. Let me show you.”