The Children of the Sky zot-3

by Vernor Steffen Vinge

  “Ah!” One good thing about Scrupilo, he really admired clever surprises. “Well, in that case, I’m pleased to be your personal radio pulse sensor.”

  Ravna grinned back and put through a call to her starship.

  Oobii replied, “Except for known radios, no device echoes detected.”

  Scrupilo stuck out his snouts from both sides of the basket and took a naked eye look at the passing scene. “I say we radio pulse every so often. No way this Tropical would guess your clever trick, Highness. Sooner or later he’ll move where Oobii can detect him.”

  Ravna set up a surveillance plan with Oobii, got some more winds-aloft advice, and also forwarded Scrupilo’s observations through Oobii to Woodcarver. They continued southwards, climbing another hundred meters. They were almost even with the long row of telephone poles that marched off to the south along the Queen’s Road.

  The Eyes Above wasn’t making good time anymore, but it was well ahead of Woodcarver’s search parties. Just a few hundred meters to her left, paralleling the telephone poles, were the “town houses” of older Children and wealthy packs. They might be her most visible achievement of the last ten years. Ravna didn’t know whether to laugh or cry about that. The half-timbered houses were large, each big enough for a married couple, a young child or children on the way, and one or two pack friends. Oobii was able to keep the buildings warm by shining a very low-power beam gun on the hot water towers that stood next to each house. So the town houses were comfortably warm all year round, with hot and cold running water and indoor plumbing. A large part of Oobii’s tech rent had gone into paying for the Children’s town houses. The second-generation kids thought they were heavenly. Their parents regarded the houses as a small step up from purgatory.

  “Ha. I felt another pulse,” said Scrupilo. Ravna called the ship. Still no joy.

  “We’re almost to Cliffside harbor, Scrupilo. I think that’s beyond where the thief could have come.” In any case, the straits between Hidden Island and the mainland was far busier than the polluted water at North End. There seemed little hope of spotting a suspicious boat here.

  “… Yes. I suppose we should turn around and”—Scrupilo had raised his telescopes, pointing them at the highlands ahead.—“but not just yet! The Tropicals may have outsmarted themselves. Something strange is going on near their madhouse. Can you fly there, quietly?”

  The embassy compound was just south of the town houses, a fenced-in collection of ramshackle sheds perched on the edge of the Margrum Valley. “I’ll check.” She gave Oobii a quick call, then turned back to Scrupilo. “In that direction, we have a southbound breeze all the way to the ground.” She ran the propeller for another thirty seconds, long enough to put them on a path that would take them past the compound. They were just a few dozen meters above the heather now. She cut the motor, and they coasting along with the breeze, surrounded by eerie silence. “How’s that?”

  None of Scrupilo looked up from his intent surveillance. “Excellent. The bastards are up to something. They’re in a crowd off to the northwest of the compound.”

  “What, they’re playing with their snow sleighs again?” There’d been heavy snowfall last winter, and the Tropicals had become enamored of large sleighs. Typical of the mob’s long-term planning, they had begged and worked to buy a number of sleighs—getting possession just in time for the spring mud.

  “No!” said Scrupilo. “These fellows are by the fence, near the telephone trunk line. I wonder how close we can get before they see us.”

  Ravna glanced behind her. The northering sun was peeking under the curve of the balloon. “We’re coming at them from out of the sun.” Ahead, she couldn’t actually see their shadow on the ground, but there was a bright spot, a glory shine, in the heather beyond the compound, marking just where their shadow must be. The roundish light had almost reached the edge of the valley. She vented a little hydrogen. As the Eyes Above sank, the bright spot moved into the compound.

  “Brilliant, Milady! Can you keep us in the sun all the way down?”

  “I think so.” When the spot of backscatter brightness drifted beyond the compound, Ravna vented a little more hydrogen. Goodness, this was like having a guide program! She felt a small thrill at finding something so convenient built into the raw nature of the world.

  They were about 500 meters from the compound, and losing attitude. Ravna had to push up from her seat to see over the basket’s bow. The Eyes Above’s shadow was clearly visible now, surrounded by just a halo of backshine. She vented a bit more gas, brought the shadow to just beyond the Tropicals.

  There were a bunch of them down there, standing at the edge of the Queen’s Road, right where it passed closest to the embassy. This crowd plus the ones at the lab would add up to most of the embassy’s total population, though the count was always vague. A number of Tropicals returned south when their wrecks finally slid back to sea. Others had probably been involved in Fragmentarium breakouts over the years.

  Ravna could see their ragged jackets and leggings, the body paint on their exposed heads and tympana. There were probably twenty packs’ worth, all tangled together. Yup, an orgy in the making.

  Now less than two hundred meters away, none of them looked up to see the Eyes Above. Ravna vented a little more hydrogen, keeping their shadow just out of the packs’ eyes.

  Scrupilo had no need for his telescopes now. Five of him had heads stuck over the rim of the basket, staring down. He wriggled his White Head member back to Ravna. “Sst,” whispered White Head. “I can hear them!”

  A few seconds passed—and now Ravna could hear them too. The sounds were clear in the wider silence, growing louder as the Eyes Above swept closer, the gobble and hiss of Tinish excitement. The chords were otherwise nonsense to her, but then she could understand very little of the local language, even when the packs were trying their best to be clear.

  Scrupilo was not so limited. His White Head reached its nose close to Ravna’s face, where its fore-tympanum could whisper even more quietly. “You hear what they’re saying? The get of bitches already know about the theft! That’s solid proof they’re behind it. No way any of their party could be back from the lab this fast!”

  Now the Eyes Above was coasting over them. There was no more point in careful navigation. Ravna left her pilot’s chair and leaned over the edge of the basket. They would pass dead even with the compound’s twisted tower. Directly below, not more than forty meters away, was the mob of Tropicals. These guys did look excited. Then there was a gap in the crowd and she saw the telephone resting on the ground. A thin wire hung down from the nearest telephone pole.

  “Oh,” said Scrupilo. Well, that explained their excitement, and why they were standing here by the road. Memo: never give half a solution to these critters.

  Just then, someone finally noticed the Eyes Above. Heads turned up all across the crowd, and the Tines started running around, making a racket that seemed impossibly loud coming from dog-sized bodies.

  Scrupilo blasted back, and Ravna just hunched down and stuck her fingers in her ears. The battle of the noisemakers continued for several seconds, getting louder on both sides. Were the Tropicals running along beneath them? She was afraid to look and get a direct face full of that tormenting sound.

  The Eyes Above slid out over the Margrum Valley. Behind them, Ravna could see the Tropicals ranged along the edge of the drop, still hopping up and down in apparent outrage. It was like human fist-shaking.

  Scrupilo huffed indignantly: “Mindless prattlers! All they can talk about is how we’ve abused their ambassador, and how they have every right to splice into our phone lines.… Deceit! Deceit! Deceit!” This last, he chanted in time to the chords he was directing toward the enemy.

  Ravna dropped some ballast and kicked on the propeller, bringing the Eyes Above into a long climbing turn that headed back north over the inner channel. By the Powers, it was amazing the range at which Scrupilo and the Tropicals could keep up their long-distance shouting matc
h.

  Chapter 08

  Days passed. The affair of the stolen radio cloaks was not resolved. The search of the ambassador’s party at Scrupilo’s lab turned up nothing. Eventually, the lab and North End and all the accessible anchorages in the near islands and mainside were searched—without success. Ravna marvelled at the elegant way Godsgift managed Tropical indignation. The fellow hadn’t always been so smart. During the last eight years, the thing they called Ambassador had mixed and matched itself. Now he had almost-credible excuses for why his people spliced into the land line: they had expected a phone call from the ambassador to a nearby Domain house. When that homeowner brought no message to the embassy compound, the Tropicals became afraid for their ambassador’s safety and so undertook the splice (rather expertly done, on their very first try) and began raising hell up and down the phone line. Normally, Oobii’s routing advice made the system quite usable—but that depended on users honoring that advice.

  At the same time he was complaining and excusing himself, Godsgift refused to allow any search of the embassy compound. Woodcarver responded with a siege. This lasted about a tenday—and ended when Godsgift accepted a year of free telephone access in return for his granting permission to search the building.

  Of course, nothing was found in the Embassy search.

  The oscillation between sneaky and clownish was both effective and suspicious. Scrupilo and Nevil lobbied for booting the Tropicals out of the Domain, strategic materials be damned. Johanna thought the Tropicals had never been mentally together enough for serious theft. Woodcarver figured they were being used by Flenser (natch!) or maybe by the long-missing Vendacious. Flenser denied everything.

  Meantime Ravna concentrated on her main problem. She was doing her best to remove the dissatisfactions that gave support to the Disaster Study Group. She had to make changes, reforms. Unfortunately, even the simplest of the projects could have hidden gotchas. Take the idea of giving the Children more access to Oobii. Ultimately, that might slow the research program slightly, but that was a price she’d have to pay. Ravna had no trouble clearing the ship’s main cargo deck. It opened directly at ground level now, and what gear remained could be safely stored in the New Castle. It was even less of a problem—a simple request to the ship’s automation—to turn the inner walls into displays. Now the vaulting space of the cargo hold was a warm meeting hall. The Children were eager to decorate the space.

  Soon, the inside of the cargo bay was a crude imitation of various places they remembered from before their world fell apart. There was actually an elected committee (democracy rearing its head) for deciding the ambiance of the tenday. The kids and their Best Friend packs showed up in crowds. Since they were effectively inside the starship, Oobii could manipulate the acoustics so packs could sit within a couple of meters without interfering with one another’s mindsounds. That was something magical and new for most packs, and it brought the place even greater popularity.

  So the New Meeting Place was an overwhelming success, with unintended side effects that were themselves a benefit. Right? Not quite. There was a serious gotcha. It first showed up as Ravna was clearing out the cargo hold. When the carts carrying the gear from the hold (much of it Beyonder arcana that might someday be very useful) arrived at the New Castle, Woodcarver’s guards had blocked the cargo for nearly half a day. Woodcarver was Downcoast, Ravna was told, without radio relay—and she hadn’t left clear word about where the cargo should be stored, or if it should be accepted at all! What admin idiocy! Ravna had thought. This was the sort of thing that Scrupilo occasionally pulled, but Woodcarver’s castle chamberlains were normally more sensible. Besides, she had checked out the undercastle space around the Children’s Lander; there was plenty of room.

  Woodcarver had legal say at the castle, just as Ravna was the boss aboard the Oobii. It was part of their co-Queendom arrangement, but Ravna had never before been denied use of the catacombs. And Woodcarver had known of Ravna’s plans for the cargo hold.

  In the end, Ravna got the gear stowed away, but in the days that followed—and for the first time in the ten years that the two had worked together—she felt a distance and a frostiness between herself and Woodcarver.

  Ravna asked Pilgrim about the problem. As both the Queen’s consort and a parent of some of her recent members, he should have some insight!

  “Woodcarver was too shy to say anything about it, Ravna.”

  “Huh?” Ravna replied, remembering Woodcarver’s directness in the past. “Why would Woodcarver be shy about complaining to me?”

  “Um, I think because she knows she’s wrong to be pissed at you.”

  “Y-you two have discussed this?”

  “Yup. Basically, she thinks this new meeting place upsets the balance of reputations between the two of you.” He tapped a couple of noses together and looked a little embarrassed. “I know, that’s—well, childish is the word a human might use. I would have warned you, except I was sure that Woodcarver recognized her foolishness in the matter. She’s not usually like this, but she doesn’t have that new puppy entirely in step with the rest of her.” He brightened. “I’ll talk to her. The three of us could get together and—”

  “No. I’ll talk to her myself. I should have taken more time explaining the idea to her in the beginning. The New Meeting Place doesn’t replace the Thrones Room. It’s just a informal place where everyone can get closer to the world we’re trying to build.”

  So Ravna made an appointment with her co-Queen, in the Thrones Room atop Starship Hill. Even that was a change. Up till now, she’d felt welcome to drop in almost without notice.

  She talked to Woodcarver for some time, pointing out what a smash hit the New Meeting Place had become, how it was bringing both the Children and their packs to understanding and eager participation in what Ravna and Woodcarver were trying to accomplish.

  “It’s working better than I ever dreamed, Woodcarver. There are packs unrelated to the Children—some of them traditionalists from Woodcarver City—who’ve come to the New Meeting Place. Ultimately, it could be a kind of diplomatic center.”

  Most of Woodcarver was curled up around her radio. She nodded courteously at Ravna’s enthusiastic description. “Rather like a capitol, then?”

  “Yes—I mean, no, not a center of power. Woodcarver, packs and Children have always had data access at the ship.” Ravna managed a weak laugh. “That’s why so many Tines are great experts on everything human and Beyonder! The New Meeting Place just makes that access easier.”

  Woodcarver’s heads gave a gentle shake. “But your starship is the center of power, no matter what you or I might say. When I look out from New Castle’s parapets, I see the telephone mainlines all leading to your starship.”

  “But we’re using Oobii for switching and access logic.”

  Woodcarver’s voice rolled on: “And, invisibly, your starship manages radio access and relay—without it, our little radios would be a short-range muddle.”

  “That’s only until we get past torsion antennas.” Actually, Ravna was hoping Tines World would not have to detour through the era of analog frequency management. Central management should work fine until the Tines had digital signal processing.

  “And we Tines have developed almost none of the energy schemes we see described in your archives. Your ship’s beam gun warms our water and our homes.”

  Ravna raised her hands. “Without Oobii’s shortcuts it would be decades before we had anything like these services.”

  Woodcarver said, “I know that. But nowadays, when I look out and see Oobii with its beam gun so artfully positioned to cover the heartland of the Domain…”

  Ravna sat in shocked silence. After the Battle on Starship Hill, Woodcarver had chosen Flenser’s Old Castle as her seat of office, and Ravna had moved Oobii down to Hidden Island. In that first year, the queen had come to realize that however hastily it was built, the New Castle up on Starship Hill was the proper center for a great empire. She had moved herself up
here, and asked Ravna to follow, putting Oobii back on the hill, guardian of all Woodcarver could see. Moving Oobii had not been easy; Ravna could not imagine that the ship would ever fly again. And now…?

  Woodcarver exchanged looks with herself. Conflicted? “I’m sorry. I know, I asked for Oobii’s help. I know you have removed the beam gun’s amplifier stage. I would never regard your stewardship of Oobii as a threat. It’s just that lately I’m seeing the risks with new insight.

  “Our dependence on your ship for all things makes it a single point of failure—I think that’s your technical term for it—which of course I learned from texts in Oobii’s archive. Isn’t it unwise to bet everything on the proper operation of a single part?”

  For Ravna, the answer to that question had always been obvious. Ravna had a deadline. It might be less than a century away. She bowed her head. “I understand. But haven’t we discussed all this before? I thought we were agreed. We’re using Oobii to support Scrupilo’s research and move us as fast as possible.”

  Woodcarver sighed. “Yes. In any case, we are too far down this path to change.”

  Thank the Powers! Ravna suddenly realized that a disaster had been avoided. This was so much worse than what Pilgrim had said. “W-Woodcarver, if on balance you regard Oobii’s meeting place as a negative thing, just tell me clearly, and I’ll take it down.”

  “No, I accept your reasoning, Ravna. I’m content with your new meeting place.”

  “Our New Meeting Place, Woodcarver. Thank you.” Ravna cast around for some different topic of conversation. “S-so how are the border inspections going?” Since the cloaks’ disappearance, Woodcarver had attempted to enforce something like nation-state control on the various mountain passes leading over the Icefangs.