The Children of the Sky

written speech she would be lost. It was her life raft.

This was where all the rehearsing would come to her rescue. She could looked through the misty words, speak them even as her gaze moved from face to face.

“Thank you, um, Woodcarver.” Hei, an ad lib!

She essayed a sympathetic smile. “Thank you all for coming here this morning despite the weather.” That wasn’t really an ad lib, since Oobii had been confident of this morning’s storm front.

“We humans have been here on the Tines World for a little more than ten years. The packs rescued us and became some of our best friends. But we must remember, both humans and packs, that our coming was part of a vast and tragic debacle.” Here she made the proper gesture, dramatically pointing at the heavens beyond the crystal dome. “The evil that chased the humans to Tines World, still waits—even though diminished—in the near interstellar space.” And Ravna went on to describe Oobii’s best estimate of the status of the Blighter fleet, thirty light years out. She didn’t bring up the possibility of further Zone shifts; a real shift would be a game ender, and she had no hint of such beyond the weird glitch Oobii had reported years before. No, the story she told was pretty much what she’d been telling the Children from the day they came out of coldsleep. Nevil had told her that many of the kids had lost sight of that big picture. Telling them one more time, in this awesome setting, could make it clear why their present sacrifices were so necessary.

“In just twenty years, the first light from the Blighter fleet will arrive at Tines World. Will that by itself be a danger? Perhaps, though I have my doubts. But in the decades after that, it’s possible that very small payloads, just milligrams, may arrive—all that the Blighters can accelerate to near-light speeds. With sufficiently high technology, even such tiny payloads could conceivably harm Tines World.” That was speculation from the nebulous end of Oobii’s weapons archive, extrapolating as best it could from their last information on the Blighters and the most exotic weapon systems that had ever been fielded in the Slow Zone.

“What’s sure is that if the Blighters still wish us harm, then over the next century, certainly over the next thousand years, they can kill everyone in the world, unless—” here she paused dramatically just exactly as in all her rehearsals, and swept a steely look across her audience “— unless we, both humans and packs, quickly raise this world to the highest technology the Slow Zone can sustain. It’s our best hope, perhaps our only hope. It is worth hard sacrifices.”

As she spoke, she continued to look back and forth across her audience, occasionally sending a nod in the direction of her co-Queen. Ravna wasn’t running any analysis tools, but she had the speech so well rehearsed that there was time to notice the listeners’ reactions. Her eyes caught on those she most respected. Nevil—not really a good test case, but a comforting one—was nodding his head at the right times, even though this all was something he’d heard over and over again during the last few days. Others: Ovin Verring and Elspa Latterby, they were paying close attention, but every so often they would look at each other with a shake of their heads. The tailors, Ben and Wenda Larsndot, they were sitting far in the back with their kids. They had given up listening early on, were spending their time keeping their children quiet. They acted as though they had heard all this before. Which they have, in a dozen dozen conversations with me over the years. Some, the likes of Gannon Jorkenrud, were mugging her words.

I have to move on. If only she and Nevil could have foreseen this reaction when they were planning the speech—or if she were clever enough to amend it on the fly—she would skip forward with some clever segue and keep everyone’s attention on the overall message.

The thought made her stumble on the words, almost lose her place. No. Her only hope was to plow ahead. These words might not sing, but she knew they made logical sense.

“So what is the greatest sacrifice that we must make for ultimate survival? It’s a sacrifice I see each of us making every day. It’s a very hard thing, though I want to convince you that the alternatives aren’t really workable. That sacrifice is the relatively low priority that we’re putting on biomedical products.” That seemed to get everyone’s attention. Even the packs perked up heads here and there.

Start with the bad news, build up to the good—but it was taking so long to get there! Okay, she was almost to her ideas for repairing more of the coldsleep caskets and creating an emergency medical committee. “For now we can treat only minor injuries. We have only basic epigenetic triggers. Ultimately, all that will change. In the meantime, how are we to deal with ageing? It’s what our ancestors accepted for thousands of years…” Ravna never got to the “but.”

“We are not your fucking ancestors!” It was Jefri Olsndot. He was halfway back in the crowd; she hadn’t seen him before this moment. But now he was on his feet, enraged.

Jefri? Amdi was clustered all round him, his heads extended in an expression Ravna could not parse.

Jefri was shouting at the top of his lungs. “How dare you dictate to us, you so safe and smug? We refuse to die for you, Ravna! We—” he was still shouting and gesturing, but the sound was gone. Oobii’s acoustics had damped his voice.

Now Gannon Jorkenrud and another fellow were on their feet. “We will not die for you, Queenie! We will not die for—” and then their voices slipped away, too.

Then there were Tami Ansndot and others, all shouting yet silent. Ravna cast about for sound controls, but they were bundled in the meeting place’s general automation. I don’t mean to shut people up!

Her eyes focused back on the words of her speech. She had paragraphs to go! She felt a moment of helpless terror. Then she saw that, down in the first row, Nevil had come to his feet.

Thank goodness. She and Nevil had planned that he would speak later, when they went to Question and Answer. If only they could go to that now, and bail out of the nightmare her speech had become.

She gave him a jerk of her hand, urging him to come up to the lectern.

Nevil climbed the steps to the platform, but did not come around to take her place. In the audience, Jefri and the others were still standing, but they weren’t shouting now. Instead there just a fretful murmur that seem to come from the crowd as a whole.

Nevil turned to them and raised his palms placatingly. After a moment, the protesters settled back on their benches. “This is our New Meeting Place, folks. It’s what Ravna has built for us. We should use it to do what’s right.” The murmuring and angry sounds died away—naturally, as far as Ravna could see—and everyone was watching Nevil, giving his sensible words the attention they deserved.

Ravna looked over her shoulder at the monster display that loomed behind the stage. The camera was still locked on her. Maybe it would switch to Nevil if she moved away from the lectern. She stepped to one side, then descended from the platform. But even when she sat in one of the side seats, there was still her face up there, now frowning down upon them.

The audience could only see Nevil as a human-sized figure, standing beside the lectern. At least his voice was not damped:

“That’s probably the most important thing about the New Meeting Place. It’s where we refugees have our say and our vote.” He looked to his left, toward Woodcarver.

Woodcarver gave him a civil nod or two, and her voice was downright conciliatory. “You’re quite right, Nevil. It is more than time that the humans and the packs of the Domain have their say.”

Nevil looked to his right, at Ravna. “And you, Ravna?”

“Yes, indeed! I—” but he had looked back at the audience, and Ravna let him run with his presentation. It was going better than her rehearsing.

“So then I suppose the question is, what to vote on?” He grinned, and there was even laughter from the crowd. “I think there might be a lot of separate things to vote on. For instance, it’s important that when we are given the floor to speak, that our voices always be heard.”

Agreement on that was loud and, happily, now unstifled.

“I think the most important issue is medical research. And that’s not just to keep us looking young and beautiful.” He flashed his smile again, then became very solemn. “You all know Timor Ristling.” Nevil waved down toward the front row. Timor still sat there. When Nevil pointed at the child, the tracking camera finally woke up to its higher logic and suddenly Timor’s image was towering on the wall behind the stage. This was not just a head