The Children of the Sky

“I don’t know,” said Johanna. She idly petted the scarred one’s head. “Back at the High Lab, Nevil was the most popular guy in school. I loved him even then—well, I had a crush on him. But he comes from a long line of leaders and politicians. His folks were the lab’s directors, the best in Straumli Realm. Both naturally and by training, Nevil is a star.”

“Yes, but my Woodcarver has had centuries to observe sneakiness and breed sneakiness into herself,” said Pilgrim. A smile rippled. “Sharing puppies with her, I’ve inherited some of that myself.” The four on the carpet hunkered down. For a moment an old-time human tune filled around the room, Pilgrim “humming” to himself. “Still, there’s Sht’s influence. Woodcarver honestly believes that Ravna has drifted into power madness.”

Johanna straightened abruptly. “What?”

“Woodcarver studied the decorations in the New Meeting Place, and Ravna’s words and dress.”

“Which were all helpfully put together by Nevil, right?” Jo looked at Ravna, who nodded.

Pilgrim: “Oh, Woodcarver figured that out—but she says, even so, it was a valid reflection of Ravna’s inclinations. She is really angry with you, Ravna. Sorry.”

Ravna bowed her head. “Yeah … I’ve gotten too wrapped up in the Age of Princesses. Nevil didn’t have to exaggerate much to make me look like a nutcase.” The Age of Princesses will never seem beautiful to me again.

“Don’t be that way, Ravna.” Johanna eased the scarred one aside and came around the low table to hold her hand. “Nevil has outsmarted everybody.” She sat on the carpet beside Ravna’s chair, rested her head in their clasped hands. “Everybody. That’s the biggest surprise, you know. So what if we Children have disagreements with you, or complain that you make mistakes? Most of the kids love you, Ravna.”

“Yes, Nevil said something similar to me. He—”

“Okay then. I’ll bet his biggest problem is keeping the Children from connecting that affection with their common sense.” She paused for a long moment, staring at the floor.

“You finally noticed the carpet, eh?” said Pilgrim.

Johanna gave him a weak glare. “Yes.” Her gaze swept along the windows, the carven knicknacks that Bili had set on the wall shelves. “This place is beautiful, Ravna. Nevil has set you up with swankier digs than Woodcarver’s own inner rooms.”

Pilgrim: “And I’ll bet he wants Ravna to work in separate quarters, too.”

Ravna nodded.

Johanna made a grumpy noise. “We already know he’s a great manipulator.” She came to her feet and walked to the windows. There was a break in the overcast way out at the horizon. Aurora light spilled through. After a moment she said. “You know what we need?”

“To finally get some sleep?” said Pilgrim, but Ravna noticed that his eyes were open and all watching Jo.

“True, but I’m thinking further ahead. If Nevil is a great politician, we just have to be better. There must be whole sciences of sneaky. Ravna knows Oobii’s archives. We’re smart; we can learn.” Johanna was looking at her expectantly, and suddenly Ravna realized that the girl thought librarians must be experts at everything.

“Johanna, I could set up a sneakiness research program, but—”

“Oh! You think Nevil knows enough about Oobii to track you on this?”

“Ah,” said Ravna. “I didn’t tell you what happened yesterday,” They had gotten sidetracked by the overwhelming unpleasantness that had come before. “Nevil explained my new situation.”

“Okay?” Suddenly Johanna looked wary.

Ravna described Nevil’s “moderate” position, his plea for her help. “Then, well, he said that since I had lost the vote and agreed to step down, it was only right that I give him system administration authority over Oobii.”

Pilgrim said, “Is that what it sounds like?”

“Ravna, you didn’t!”

“I gave him the sysadmin authority, but—”

Johanna had covered her face with her hands. “So now he can see everything we do? He can block whatever archive access he wants? He can redocument records?”

“Not … exactly. I gave him what he literally asked for. I lucked out; if I’d had to actively lie, I’m sure I would have botched it.”

Johanna peeked from between her fingers. “So … what does sysadmin mean?”

“Literally, bureaucratic control over the Oobii’s automation. The thing that Nevil didn’t understand is that Oobii is a ship. It must have a captain, and the captain’s command must exist independent of administration.”

“Really? I don’t think it was like that on Straumer vessels.”

Ravna remembered back to the near-lethal conflict between Pham Nuwen and the Skroderider Blueshell. “Maybe not, but it’s the case for Oobii.” Straumli Realm always cut corners—but she didn’t say that out loud. “The Out of Band II has a n- partite memory system. Only a minority is accessible through sysadmin. If that deviates from the rest, then the person with Command Privilege has a number of options.”

Johanna had lowered her hands. A look of triumph was spreading across her face. “And … you … have Command Privilege?”

Ravna nodded. “Pham set up a contingent transfer, just before he dropped onto Starship Hill. It, it was one of the last things he did for me.”

Pilgrim: “So you’re like the Goddess on the Bridge!” The pack looked back and forth at itself, embarrassed. “Sorry. That’s one of your Sjandra adventure novels.”

Ravna remembered no such title, but that was no surprise. Most civilizations had more fiction than they did real history. In any case: “I’m deleting such references from what Nevil and company can read.”

“Command Privilege can do that?”

“Oh yes. The places he’s likely to see, anyway. Oobii doesn’t have the compute power to revise its entire archive. The point is, Nevil can go on about his business, messing and snooping—”

“But it’s all in an invisible box!”

“Right. He shouldn’t notice a thing, unless we have bad luck or we cause some external effect.”

Chapter 14

A few days later, Ravna had her very own office aboard Oobii … and the opportunity to begin her research into sneakiness. Oobii’s archives were mostly about technology. Even so, “sneakiness” was far too broad a search concept. Normally in the Beyond, where interactions were almost always positive-sum, “sneakiness” was no more than knowing one’s customer and driving a shrewd deal. It was exactly the peaceful pursuit of her old employers at the Vrinimi Organization. The winners got fabulously wealthy and the losers—well, they only got rich. At the other extreme, in the unhappiest corners of the Slow Zone, there were sometimes true negative-sum games. On those worlds, only a saint could believe in return business, and all advancement depended on diminishing others. Pham Nuwen’s childhood had been in such a place—or so he had remembered.

Alas and thank goodness, neither extreme was appropriate here. The sneakiness Ravna was interested in was nonviolent maneuvering and politics, what had worked so well for Nevil. Oobii’s little social science archive covered hundreds of millions of years, in the Slow Zone and the Beyond, data from a million different races. The ship popped up a query classification template. She filled it out, leaving aside for now the pack nature of the Tines—group minds were so rare that it could easily skew the results. But the rest of the situation, including the presence of exiled spacer travelers, should get lots of matches. The present situation on Tines world was a marginally positive-sum game, teetering on the edge of a takeoff into enlightenment.

She glanced at her command window, which showed all the various snoopers that Nevil was running. Most of them were targeted on her, and all were clumsy, wasteful things. In any case, all they would see of Ravna was the