The Children of the Sky

disarming grin. They were on the second floor of her new home. Like all the town houses, this had steam heating and indoor plumbing. These new ones had a second flush toilet on the upper floor.

The upper floor had both a front stairs and a back stairs. There was a living room with wide glass windows. The southwest exposures gave a grand view across the Inner Channel. “This is the first house with the new optical-grade glass sheeting. It’s almost like having a real display, except that the view menu is a bit limited.” He waved at the swirls of frost that encrusted the margins of the glass. “Don’t worry about the ice, That’ll go away once we connect the water. Your heater tower is already registered with Oobii.”

Ravna nodded. Once the ship began heating her water, it wouldn’t matter how much heat was leaking through those windows, except as it was used by Oobii’s sensors as thermostat feedback. Ah, the wonders of central heating and central computing.

After a moment, Bili seemed to realize she wasn’t going to respond further. “Well, I should go down and help the guys get your baggage installed.”

Yngva went downstairs, and she heard him shouting out the front door. In moments there was crashing and banging, the sounds of people doing battle with large objects. Ravna followed him downstairs, but Bili was firm in preventing her from helping out. In fact, the boxes were intimidating, not something that Tines or small humans could do much with. Bili had four helpers, some of the biggest older boys. They didn’t have much to say to Ravna, though every once in a while, Gannon Jorkenrud cast a sneering smile in her direction.

There was so much furniture, crockery, curtains, clothing. None of it was really hers, not her stuff from Oobii. Aboard ship, she’d had a few souvenirs and everything else was ship recycles. What Bili’s crew was bringing in was pack made, though much of it had benefited from Oobii’s technological contributions to the Domain.

The first floor rapidly filled with physical loot. Bili gave her a big grin, acknowledging the scale of the job. “Hei, I know it’s crazy, but you need a lot of stuff to live well in primitive conditions. We’ll get you helpers for the cooking and laundry.”

Servants.

Ravna retreated to the top floor. She walked around the polished parquet floor, stopped at the window to examine the fittings. In the early years, many of the Children had had trouble with raw physicality, with systems so stupid that you had to understand them. She remembered how often the little ones were unnecessarily cold. In the early days, she’d had to remind the kids that they must consciously plan for their comfort. Down Here there was a harsher truth: even planning was not sufficient to avoid physical hardship.

Her new situation crippled her abilities with Oobii, yet it was far more luxurious than what most Children possessed. Nevil’s maneuvering had not ended with his coup. Surely Bili understood all this, even as he smiled and indulged her.

There was noise on the stairs. Yngva’s gang of movers had discovered the second floor. But it wasn’t furniture that came up first. She turned to see an enormous roll of carpeting snaking up, one push-and-heave at a time. Yngva and Jorkenrud and the others finally got the thing across the center of the room. A pack carrying hammers came up the stairs after them. She recognized Screwfloss, sometime bartender and Flenser minion. And a carpet installer, too?

“Hei, Ravna, hei, hei,” said Screwfloss, his heads bobbing at all the humans. He did some ostentatious measuring, then unrolled the carpet, four of him moving to the corners. One watched from the side. The pack edged the carpet into position. “Oops, not quite square.” He tried again … and a third time, finally nailing it down with tacks lipped from one of his panniers. The margins were still not quite right, but no one said Screwfloss was an expert carpet installer. On the other hand, the carpet itself was magnificent. This wasn’t one of those plain, durable items that came out of the weaving mills. She leaned down and felt the plush. This was an art weave, some classic Tinish scene. The multiple anamorphic images were a meaningless jumble to Ravna, but the piece looked extremely expensive, the work of thousands of hours of traditional Tinish labor.

Ravna stood and noticed that Bili seemed faintly impatient at all the adjustments.

“Heh! Looks great, doesn’t it?” said Screwfloss; he was asking her, but two of him were slanting an impudent look at Bili.

“It’s … beautiful,” said Ravna.

“Good!” said Bili. “We want the Technical Advisor to be happy. Let’s get the rest of the furniture up here.”

“It looks like you’ve thought of everything, Bili, but—”

“Yes?” his smile became questioning.

“There’s nothing … nothing to think with.” That was how a Straumer would say it.

Bili nodded. “Oh yes, computation, data access, communication? We’ll install the house telephone tomorrow, Ravna. But remember, this is all any of us have away from Oobii.”

Gannon Jorkenrud made a little noise, and Ravna saw the smirk on his face. Bili’s other guys were blank- faced. Bili Yngva was only one with a friendly smile pasted on his face. “Don’t worry, Ravna, we’re working on special access for you down in the New Meeting Place.”

“There are things I really need to keep up with, Bili. If I’m to be Technical Advisor, I—”

Yngva raised his hands placatingly. “I know, I know! We really need your help. Working out the priorities of that is just about Nevil’s most important job these days. He’ll get back to you with the task list in just a few days. He’s promised me.” He glanced out the windows. It was late afternoon and the sun had already set. “We should finish up here, or you’re going to be cold.”

They were already trooping down the stairs. Only Screwfloss seemed to notice that Ravna was not following. She waved the pack to go ahead, and then it was gone, too. Down below, they were banging around again, but this sounded like plumbing. Were Bili and Gannon and the other boys really this handy? Or was the noise mainly Screwfloss?

She resisted the urge to go downstairs and check on them. Instead she walked across the room to the broad windows. The glass had seemed distortion free earlier, but now there were faint ripples … Oh. Warm air was already rising from the vents.

Ravna gazed out at the neighborhood. There were only a few other town houses visible in this direction, nothing to block the view. Beyond the darkening lands and black sea, the sky was now without color. She could see a handful of the brighter stars. Now that she was stuck on a single planet, the random position of a few bright stars told her of the seasons and the hours and … there, at the edge of a pair of stars settling toward the sea, she was looking at the most important place in all the heavens. It was a nondescript patch of sky, showing only a few faint stars on even the darkest, clearest nights.

Just thirty lightyears out were perhaps one hundred starships. It was the threat that had hung over her for ten years, informing every decision, forcing her to push and persuade and bully both Children and Tines to attempt the impossible: to prevail against the Blight.

Now? Those terrible decisions were no longer hers to make, and she felt the strangest feeling … of peace.

•  •  •

There was no word from Nevil the next day, or the next. A few of the Children visited her at her new house, but they didn’t stay long. The older ones looked around at its glory and seemed to sense invisible walls.

The storms of the previous tenday had moved inland, blocking Johanna and Pilgrim’s return. Their agrav was battened down hundreds kilometers to the east. Not all misfortune was Nevil’s doing.

Ravna visited the Out of Band II every day. Bili Yngva had given her an interim access credential for the New Meeting Place. The cargo bay’s one night of megalomaniac glory was past. Nevil had reverted the place to something like his original design. As Ravna had expected, the popularity of the primitive game stations had waned; what Oobii could create and display was pitifully weak compared to what the older Children remembered. Nowadays, the gamers were mainly packs and the youngest Children—and Timor. The boy was practically camped out by one of the stations, boring even the also-addicted Belle Ornrikak. Sometimes Timor didn’t even notice Ravna, and when he did he was an unending firestorm of gaming esoterica. Ravna’s only sympathizer was now distracted and ecstatically happy.

Other than Timor, the kids seemed reluctant to talk to her. Maybe when they saw her, they remembered only how she had seemed at that terrible meeting. So Ravna sat in the public area and puttered around with an interface, careful not to exceed the powers that came with Nevil’s “interim access credential.” That meant no