The Children of the Sky

entrance was tramped down by the constant traffic.

Twice a tenday, Nevil held his public meetings in the New Meeting Place, and every day the Children of Ovin’s team and others were working in the ship, honestly trying to master its automation. One group managed to revive the freight device that had carried the Lander. Nevil had a big party after that—and Ravna had to admit that the orbiter would improve things. It was close to being a dead hulk, but still had enough life in it to act as a remote sensor and radio relay.

The Executive Council no longer met, its members now keeping to their separate factions. Scrupilo’s Cold Valley lab had not been directly affected by Nevil’s coup, though that was mainly because the necessary simulations had already been done and the experimental equipment was in place. Scrupilo was clearly nervous about the future, but he continued to play along with Nevil and Woodcarver, and radio relay through the orbiter had made the Cold Valley setup much more convenient.

And tenday by tenday, Ravna and Johanna and Pilgrim pursued their little conspiracy from the second floor of their town house.

“It’s just a matter of time,” said Johanna. “Nevil is losing support every day. That’s what Ravna’s programs say. And that’s what I see when I talk to Scrupilo and Benky and the Larsndots.” She looked around at Pilgrim, seemed to detect insufficiently enthusiastic agreement. “So what’s your problem?”

“Heh, someone has to balance your mood swings.” Pilgrim was perched at various viewpoints of Ravna’s grand carpet. Pilgrim loved that carpet. He said it was a Long Lakes masterpiece. Just now, three of his heads were resting on the plush, staring across its interleaved landscapes. “I agree with Ravna’s projections, yes. I’m even more pleased that Ravna’s able to counterspy on Nevil.”

Ravna grinned. “Yes! Abusing Command Privilege is much more fun than I ever imagined.”

“I’m also pleased with what an excellent politician one of my friends has turned out to be—not you, Johanna, you’re still the Mad Bad Girl.”

Johanna frowned. “We’re gonna teach that bas—that fellow Nevil a proper lesson in, um, civic leadership. See? I can be suave.”

Ravna said, “You can’t mean that I’m the excellent politician! I haven’t been able to do any of the clever maneuvers in Oobii’s guide. I’d trip on my tongue if I tried, and besides, Ovin Verring and the others are doing their best. I don’t want to fool them.”

Pilgrim nodded from all around the carpet. “Yes. And they know that. Since Nevil’s coup, you’ve done your best for them, more than anything Nevil has done.”

“They know it, too!” said Johanna.

Nevil had assigned some of the oldest kids to help with the research. These were his special friends, mostly top students at the High Lab. The effort had lasted scarcely a tenday. Nevil’s friends had no concept of Oobii’s limitations. Gannon Jorkenrud had spent less than a day trying to “negotiate” with Oobii—that was the word Gannon himself used. He had almost punched Timor when the boy tried to give him advice about access methods. In the end, Gannon had departed in a towering rage.

Pilgrim was grinning. “You haven’t played the little games, but you are playing the big one. The Children know you’re their friend. More and more, they realize that your planning methods can work, but the shortcuts they’ve undertaken will not.”

“Okay, then,” said Johanna. “If you agree everything is going so well, what does worry you?”

“A couple of things. My dear Woodcarver has rejected me. No more hanky-panky.” Some of the cheeriness had gone out of his voice.

“I’m sorry, Pilgrim,” said Ravna, though even after ten years she wasn’t quite clear about Interpack romance—there were so many different things it could be.

Pilgrim gave a little shrug. “Nothing lasts forever; we made good puppies for each other. But now—well, that little Sht is something else. Woodcarver is more suspicious and less forgiving than ever. If you really love another pack, if you have members from the other, sometimes secrets can leak across when you get intimate. It’s hardly ever more than mood and attitude, but for now … well, there is only talk going on between us.” His heads angled around toward Johanna. “But at least we are still talking.”

Jo bowed her head, some of her aggressive optimism evaporating. “Yeah. I still haven’t been able to pin down my little brother.” Jefri and Amdi were at Smeltertop, about sixty kilometers to the north. That was the base camp for the Cold Valley lab, and also the lab’s source of glass templates and high purity carbon. “They have a radio at Smeltertop, but it’s very public.” She looked at Ravna. “I’ll bet he’ll stay up there the whole winter; my guess is he’s terribly, terribly ashamed.”

Ravna gave a nod. Her sharpest, most painful memory of Nevil’s coup was the moment when Jefri stood and denounced her. She looked around at Pilgrim, searching for something less uncomfortable to discuss: “What’s the other thing bothering you?”

“Oh yes. That’s the prospect of our inevitable success. You’ve focused Oobii’s political science research too purely. Politics is good; when it works properly, disagreements get solved without people beating each other up. But when a regime knows its days are numbered, there’s always the chance it may use its position to change the rules and make the debate it is losing irrelevant.”

Jo’s chin came up with a little start. “You mean violence? Between the Children? We kids grew up together, Pilgrim. Nevil is a sneaky rat bastard, but I think he’s doing what he thinks is right. At the bottom of it all, Nevil is not evil.”

•  •  •

A tenday passed. There was another sea storm, followed by days when the moon skittered along beneath the aurora.

Ravna spent more than fifteen hours a day in the New Meeting Place and her little office. The various programming teams were improving, but it was the younger Children who did best with Oobii. Timor Ristling was the star. He could reach the depths of Oobii’s automation; he claimed that he could program without user development tools, though Ravna doubted that. Again and again it was Timor who patched together little fixes for the Children, or explained things in ways that made sense to them.

More Children came and talked to Ravna, some to apologize, some to give a friendly word. Some wanted her okay to demand another election.

Besides working with the kids, she had other … projects. There was her agriculture assignment; that ran in the space Nevil could see. Oobii’s genetic modification capability was extremely simple- minded, but it had been one of the ship’s greatest success stories. The modified fodder crops brought in more tech rent than the rest of Oobii’s services combined. Tines of Woodcarver’s Domain had prospered as hundreds of small farms—scarcely more than private game reserves—had merged into large ranches. Newcastle town itself could never have grown as it had without the livestock herds that were now possible.

But Nevil wanted a more direct payoff, some new and tasty food for humans. That was tricky, since Oobii didn’t have the computational power to avoid ecological disasters with modified plants that were fully human-compatible. In the end, Ravna made a minor tweak in natural hardicore grass—well within natural selection bounds—and then enabled another of the epigenetic triggers that most humans had carried since their earliest stargoing civilizations. The Children who used the trigger would be able to eat and enjoy the new hardicore grass. The combination mod should be safe for both humans and Tines World, though Ravna wouldn’t have done it she had still been in charge: every new human compatibility carried a small risk of making the user more susceptible to local diseases.

Eventually, her project was complete except for minor window-dressing. So now, when she was alone in her office, she had plenty of time to review her spy programs. These were not the high-tech magic she had used on Flenser—but at least they worked. Pham Nuwen was the sneakiest good person she had ever known, and a Slow Zone programmer to boot. During his most paranoid time aboard Oobii, Pham had set up an elaborate system of booby traps and internal security. That had contributed to the hellish atmosphere of that terrible time; undoing the traps had cured some of Oobii’s worst glitches. But now she found that the security programs gave her a kind of protection that she could have never managed by herself. Pham’s last gift, unrecognized till now.

So Ravna could check directly on Pilgrim’s fear of Nevilish villainy. Using Command Privilege and Pham’s programs, she could see inside every one of Nevil’s Oobii operations, could read every