The Children of the Sky zot-3

by Vernor Steffen Vinge

  She silently leaned against the rock for a time.

  And then she heard footsteps crunching on the main path. She turned away from Pham’s stone, suddenly very glad that she hadn’t been sobbing. She wiped her face and slipped the hood of her jacket a little forward.

  The approaching figure blocked an occasional light from up in New Castle town. She thought for a moment that this was Jefri Olsndot. Then the glowbugs pulsed together, a lavender haze that swept out around her and revealed the other. Not Jefri. Nevil Storherte was not quite Jefri’s height, and in all frankness, he was not as pretty-boy handsome.

  “Nevil!”

  “Ravna? I—I didn’t mean to surprise you.”

  “That’s okay.” She didn’t know whether to be embarrassed or just pleased to see a sympathetic face suddenly pop out of the void. “Whatever are you doing up here?”

  Nevil’s hands were fumbling nervously with each other. He glanced over her head at the huge boulder. Then the light dimmed and there was just his voice. “I lost my best friends on Murder Meadows. Leda and Josj. I should care about all my classmates, but they were special.… I come up sometimes to, you know, to see them.”

  Sometimes Ravna had to tell herself that the Children weren’t all children anymore. Sometimes they told her that themselves.

  “I understand, Nevil. When things get bad, I like to come up here, too.”

  “Things are going badly? I know there’s lots to worry about, but your idea with the ship’s cargo bay has been a wonder.”

  Of course, he wouldn’t know about Woodcarver’s anger, much less about the terrible screw-up with her own special surveillance of Flenser.

  Nevil’s voice continued, puzzled. “You shouldn’t keep to yourself if there are problems, Ravna. That’s what we have the Executive Council for.”

  “I know. But I’m afraid that on this…” I’ve messed up so badly that certain Council members are the last people I can talk to. The glowbugs pulsed again and she saw Nevil’s intelligent, questioning gaze. Since Johanna and Nevil had been together—which was also since Nevil had been on the Council—she had rarely chatted with the fellow except when the two young people were together. Somewhere deep down she’d been afraid that Johanna might take the interest wrong. Tonight, that thought almost made her laugh. My problems are so much worse than all I used to worry about. “There are things that can’t really be brought up in the full Council.”

  She couldn’t see his face now. Would he condemn her for plotting out of the Council’s sight? But his voice was sympathetic. “I think I understand. It’s a very hard job you have. I can wait to hear—”

  “That’s not what I meant. Do you have a minute, Nevil? I’d like to … I’d really like to get some advice.”

  “Why sure.” A diffident laugh. “Though I’m not sure how much my advice is really worth.”

  Pulse of lights. It was as if they were suddenly standing in a field of lavender flowers, surely the most beautiful glowbug show she’d ever seen, so bright it lit the huge boulder almost to the top. Ravna scrambled up to a perch she had discovered years ago, and waved Nevil to a spot almost as comfortable. He nodded, clambered up in the dying light. The boy—the man—was sure-footed. He settled on the rock, half a meter down from her and almost a meter away. Good. Any crying on his shoulder would be safely metaphorical.

  They sat silently for a moment. Then Nevil said, “It’s about the Disaster Study Group, isn’t it?”

  “It started with the Disaster Study Group. That’s where I first realized how totally I was messing up.”

  “That was my mess-up, and Johanna’s. We should be your objective pipeline to what our people are—”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know Johanna has beaten herself up about that. But the DSG was only the beginning.” And then Ravna found herself letting go about the problems that had been weighing her down. It felt so good, and after a few minutes she realized this wasn’t just because it gave her a chance to say what she had said to no one previously. In fact, Nevil actually had intelligent questions, and insights that came close to being workable advice. He understood instantly why Woodcarver was so upset about the converting the cargo bay into a meeting place.

  “The New Meeting Place is the best thing that has happened in years, Ravna. But I can see what you’re saying. The effect on Woodcarver is a negative, but that just makes it that much more important—not to retreat on the New Meeting Place—but to make it something that Woodcarver wants to buy into.”

  It was the sort of thing that Ravna had thought, but hearing him say the words was heartwarming. She caught a glimpse of his face as he finished the sentence. Nevil Storherte had always had a kind of brash diffidence, and now she realized what that contradiction amounted to. Nevil Storherte had charisma. Even untrained and unplanned, it fairly oozed from him.

  “Your mother was the chief administrator at the High Lab, wasn’t she?”

  “Actually, it was my dad. Mom was the vice chief, or chief of vice when she was feeling mischievous.”

  Ravna had her low opinion of the Straumers’ High Lab. At best it was good intentions gone cosmically wrong. But the Lab had been the pinnacle of the Straumer civilization. It had been mind-boggling hubris, but it had also enlisted the best and the brightest of their entire civilization. Very likely there had been other heroes besides the parents of Johanna and Jefri. “Your Dad must have been a management superstar.” A more talented leader than anyone on this poor world.

  Nevil gave an embarrassed laugh. “If you go by the selection process, he was. I remember how it dragged on through most of my grade school years, all the hoops my folks had to jump through. But Dad said it didn’t matter, that there were so many geniuses at the Lab that ‘administration’ was more like herding cats.… You know? You had cats at Sjandra Kei, didn’t you?”

  Ravna smiled in the darkness. “Oh, yes. Cats go back a lot farther than Sjandra Kei.”

  Nevil Storherte might have only childhood recollections to go by, but he’d grown up among real leaders. And obviously, he had the magic touch himself. And stupid me, all self-pitying, ignoring resources that were here all the time. She took a deep breath and launched into something more than the shallow confidences of a minute before: “You know, Nevil, the most important thing in the world—maybe in this part of the Galaxy—is our raising a civilization here in time to face the Blighter fleet.”

  “I agree.”

  “But the DSG thing has made me realize how much our long-term goal distracted me from what’s happening in the here and now. I fear I’ve screwed up so badly that we may lose the main game before it ever begins.”

  Silence, but then in a moment of pale light she saw that it was a thoughtful, attentive silence, and she continued: “Nevil, I’m trying to correct my mistakes, but what I’ve tried so far has had unhappy side-effects.”

  “Woodcarver’s reaction to the New Meeting Place?”

  “That’s just one.”

  “Maybe I can help on that. I don’t have a private channel to Woodcarver, but Johanna certainly does. And I’ll bet my friends can think of changes to the New Meeting Place that will convince Woodcarver that it honors the whole of the Domain.”

  “Yes! That would be great.” Thank you. “Let me fly the other changes by you. Most are a lot scarier to me than the New Meeting Place seemed.” Maybe you can show me which is dead wrong and which can somehow be made to work. One by one she described her ideas for reforms, and for every one Nevil’s reaction was like warm sunlight, sometimes agreeing, sometimes not, but always illuminating.

  About instituting formal democracy: Nevil was in favor. “Yes, that’s something we must do, and fairly soon now that so many of us are adults. But I think it’s something that has to grow up naturally, not imposed from above.”

  “But the only traditions the Children—I mean you all—have experienced are embedded in heavy automation and large marketplaces. How can the idea come from within?”

  Nevil chuckled. “Yeah, lo
ts of nonsense can emerge too. But … I trust my classmates. They have good hearts. I’ll talk this around. Maybe we can use the New Meeting Place to model how things were handled in the most successful of the Slow Zone democracies. And figure out how to do it without offending Woodcarver!”

  About Ravna moving out of Oobii: Surprisingly, Nevil was almost as uneasy about this suggestion as she was. “We need you aboard Oobii, Ravna. Anybody who thinks about the question knows that you’re the only person who knows how to use the planning tools there. If we’re going to raise civilization before we die of old age, we need you there.” He was silent for a moment. “On the other hand, you’re right in fearing that this angers people who don’t think things through—and it’s an irritant for everyone sitting out in the cold. We Children were born into a comfortable civilization. Now that’s been lost—except where we see it sitting, gleaming green on Starship Hill. So maybe it makes sense for you to move out for a while. But choose the time, some turning point where it gains the greatest good will. If you stay out, our highest priority will have to be getting you proper communications back with Oobii.”

  “Okay. So we should begin planning for just when to make the move. Can you—”

  “Yes. I’ll check around, but very quietly. I suggest you don’t discuss this with others. I’ll bet that it’s the sort of thing that once suggested becomes a popular imperative.”

  And then there was the hardest, scariest item: the priority for medical research. And here, Nevil’s reaction was the most surprising and comforting of all. “You mean shift resources from the general technology program, Ravna? In the long run, wouldn’t that slow everything, including bioscience?”

  Ravna nodded. “Y-yes. Basically, we need to build our own computers for process control and create the networks between them. Then all the rest of technology will take off; prolongevity will be easy. But in the meantime, you kids will age. Pre-technological ageing is just dying, withering, year by year. I can already see it in some of the oldest Children. I look younger than some of them. It’s a little like the problem of my living the good life in Oobii—but it looks much uglier.”

  “I—” Nevil seemed to be struggling with himself. “Yeah, you’re right. I’ve been doing okay, but then I probably have a naturally healthy body type. I think this is a very serious future problem. The good news is that among the kids I know well—which is most everybody—this is not currently a major source of complaint.”

  “Really? I had been so afraid—” I’ve been seeing monsters everywhere since the DSG raised its ugly head.

  “I suggest you continue with your best long-term research plan. But think about having a general meeting soon, where you explain the changes and your development schedule.”

  “Okay.” Ravna nodded. “Right. Right.” These were her reforms, but with a big dose of constructive common sense. “We could do it in the New Meeting Place after you get it properly rebuilt.”

  “Yes. I should have something by early winter. Whenever after that you feel—”

  “Good,” she said. “The sooner the better.” This was progress on almost all fronts. Somehow that brought her back to the debacle that had made this night so desolate. She hesitated for just a second. Her special surveillance of Flenser had always been the secret beyond telling. Now? Now she finally had someone to share it with.

  “There’s one other thing, Nevil.” She explained about Flenser and her spy infestation.

  He gave a low whistle. “I had no idea that Beyonder surveillance tech could work here.”

  “Well, it turns out that in the long run it was a disaster,” she said, and then described the latest session, under Flenser’s castle. She heard her voice rising. This part felt as bad as ever. “And confessing to Woodcarver on top of everything else—I just can’t do it!”

  The breeze had risen ever so slightly, and the glowbugs had fallen out of synch. Now they were only isolated spots of light. There was the occasional tap of raindrops on her hood, the beginnings of the shower Oobii had predicted.

  Nevil was quiet for a long moment. Finally he said. “Yeah, that’s a problem. But the surveillance itself—I think that was the right thing. Johanna has always been very suspicious of that pack. And from what you said, you got years of valid intel.”

  “Some unknown number of years.”

  “True. But my Dad used say that there’s no way to be a successful leader without taking considered risks. And that means occasionally doing things that fail miserably. The point is to make what you can of the successes—then revisit the failures. When Woodcarver is happy about things, then come back to her with this.”

  Ravna looked up into darkness, got a couple big raindrops in the face for her trouble. She licked at the cold water and suddenly was laughing. “Meantime, the weather is telling us to adjourn this summit meeting.”

  She reached out to pat Nevil’s shoulder, and his hand found hers. Surely both hands were chilled, but his was the warmer. It felt so comforting. “Thank you, Nevil,” she said softly.

  He held her hand for a second more. “It’s just the support you deserve. We all need you.” Then he withdrew his hand with an embarrassed laugh. “And you’re right about the weather!” He stood and slid down from his perch on the rock, then shined a dim light on the rock to help her down. Thankfully, he did not give her a hand with the descent.

  They trudged down the mossy path, keeping a good one meter fifty between them. The rain had increased to a downpour, and the breeze had become a driving wind. The glowbugs had surrendered the night, and she imagined that the path down to Oobii must already be flowing with mud. It was a dark and stormy night! And yet, and yet … Ravna felt more comfort and optimism than she had for a very long time.

  Chapter 10

  Autumn around Starship Hill was beginning to show its teeth. There was still about half a day of sunlight in every day, but most days were cloudy, with ocean squalls coming and coming, each a little colder than the last. The rain was slush, then it was slush and snow. The only uglier season was the endless mud of late Spring, but that held the promise of greenery and summer. Autumn’s promise was different: the deadly cold of Arctic winter. Winter was a good time for one of Ravna’s favorite projects. In the Northern Icefangs, the tendays of night were dry and clear and less than 185°K. A space-based civilization would count that as so near room temperature as to make no difference, but Oobii had dredged up some metamaterial studies from its archives of bypassed technologies: Given a hectare at those temperatures, you could carve out macroscopic logic and then use a laser interference scheme to fabricate micron-scale semiconductor parts. Their last three attempts had been tantalizing failures. Maybe this winter would be different.…

  Of course, the project had been discussed in the Executive Council. Scrupilo was obsessed with the experiment, his Cold Valley lab. And though this third attempt was not a secret, Nevil suggested to Ravna that it was just as well not to make much of it to the Children at large. The ice experiments could be a game changer, moving the world to automation decades ahead of schedule, ending the worst of the kids’ everyday discomforts. On the other hand, this was the third try and Oobii gave it only a modest chance of success.

  Ravna obsessed right along with Scrupilo; discovering the Disaster Study Group had made the likelihood of a failure this winter all the more depressing. But now, since that evening with the glowbugs at Pham’s grave, she could settle for knowing that things were on the right path. Every day that passed, Nevil brought some new insight, often things that could not have been brought up in Council, sometimes things she would never have thought of by herself. For Nevil was the perfect complement to Johanna. Before the Oobii landed, Johanna had been alone here, surrounded by the Tines. She had become their hero. She had close friends at the highest Tinish levels, and the lowest. The packs loved her for what she had done in combat and even for the crazy breakout she had fomented at the old Fragmentarium, which had started the private hospital movement. Ravna was constantl
y surprised at how many Tines claimed to know her personally—even packs that were not veterans.

  But though Johanna had plenty of friends among the Children, she—and Jefri—were still somewhat apart from them; both had spent that terrible first year here alone. Nevil, on the other hand, was Ravna’s perfect bridge to the Children. He was a born leader and had known every one of the kids back at the High Lab. Nevil had their pulse; he seemed to know every quirky reason for what they might like or resent or desire.

  • • •

  “How do you like the New Meeting Place?” asked Ravna.

  “I love it!” Timor Ristling was fourteen years old now, but he still looked to be only six or seven. He walked with a limp and had a spastic tremor. Ravna was terribly afraid there were mental deficiencies, too; Timor was very good at manual arithmetic, but lagged behind in most other topics. It didn’t help that his Tinish Best Friend was a bad-tempered foursome who regarded the boy as her sinecure. Belle Ornrikak was tagging along behind them, a calculating glint in her eyes.

  But just now, Timor’s unhappy history was nearly invisible. He held her hand, all but dragging Ravna along. His tremor could have been taken as part of his joyful excitement for what Nevil’s design suggestions had made of the Oobii’s cargo bay.

  The space was forty by thirty by twenty meters. Ravna and Pham had made good use of a tiny part of it in their journey here, smuggling themselves through customs at Harmonious Repose. Now the space was almost empty, its inland side resting at ground level. A half-timbered wall had been built across the cargo hatch, enough to keep out the weather.

  Nevil had remodeled the interior, partly with local materials, partly by revising walls into explicit access points and game stations. He’d decorated everything in what he confessed was a poor imitation of the manner of Straum. Timor led Ravna across the gem-tiled floor, showing her wonder after wonder. “And see above?” The boy was staring up, wavering a little with his uncertain balance. “It’s the skyline round Straumli Main. I remember it from just before we left for the High Lab. I had friends in beginning school there.” She knew he had been about four years old when he left Straumli Main, but somehow those memories had survived everything since.