Chapter 05
Woodcarver’s Domain stretched along the continent’s northwest coast. The Domain’s northern part, the lands around Starship Hill, had been taken in the conquest of Flenser’s empire. That was two hundred kilometers north of the arctic circle. Tines World was a mellow and beautiful place, very much what Old Earth had been for humankind’s first civilization. Of course “mellow and beautiful” were relative terms. The arctic winters, even on the coast with its warming ocean stream, were frightful things. The islands were lost in the ice, the snow piled deep, and night was unending, usually so stormy that you couldn’t even see the stars.
The summers, however … Ravna Bergsndot had not imagined there could be such contrast in a natural place. The snow mostly went away, or hid in the higher hills and the glaciers above them. This year there had been plenty of spring rain, and bright green spread across the forests and heather and farmers’ fields, across all the world below the tree line. And today, today was beautiful beyond that. The rains had ended, and the sky was clean, with only a few chunky white clouds hanging beyond the seaward islands. Here, on a clear day in summer, the sun was above the horizon for the dayaround. At noon, it climbed almost halfway up the sky and the rest of the day was like an endless afternoon.
It was warm! It was even hot!
More by luck than anything else, Ravna and Johanna chose this day for a visit to the markets on the South End of Hidden Island. They’d taken the funicular down from Starship Hill and then the ferry across the fifteen-hundred-meter inner channel that separated Flenser’s old capital from the mainland. Now they were walking down wide, cobbled streets, just enjoying the sun and the light and the warmth.
Most of the town packs had taken off their jackets and leggings. A work gang of three packs was in a line along one side of the street, digging up the gutter drainage. On a task as simple as ditch digging, the three packs could work with a kind of superpack coordination, the dirt being hoisted from ground to shovel, into buckets and then away, in perfect synchrony.
These weren’t the slaves of the time of Flenser and Steel. When Ravna and Johanna came strolling along, the super-pack seemed to notice and for a moment resumed its three coherent identities, shouting greetings with human voices. Ravna recognized the one in the middle as Flenser-Tyrathect’s city planner.
Johanna chatted with the two who didn’t speak very good Samnorsk. Ravna had a few words with the city planner, learning what these repairs were all about, answering the pack’s question about the tools that had been promised for more than a year. “It’s the power supplies we’re having trouble with, of course. But you’ll see them in time to help with the snow.”
And then the two humans continued on, toward Hidden Island’s very own high street. “Johanna, I think this may be the most beautiful day we’ve ever had.” Beyond low roof lines, the inland hills stood tall. The New Castle on Starship Hill might have been something out of a fairy tale, and downslope from the castle, the hull of Oobii sparkled greenfly bright.
The younger woman was smiling. “It’s a winner, all right.”
Packs walked past them in both directions, avoiding each other as much as they could. Wagons and kherhog traffic were banned in this part of town, leaving just enough room for the packs. There were even a few humans up ahead, the oldest of the refugee children, now adults and working in local businesses. For a moment, Ravna could almost imagine … “It’s almost like something back in civilization.”
Johanna was still smiling, but now her look was puzzled. “The High Lab was nothing like this.” From what Ravna knew, the High Lab had been a grid of barracks on the airless planet of a red dwarf star. “And before that,” Johanna continued, “well, we were mostly on Straum. That was cities and parks. This? I’m more used to it now than anywhere else, but how does it remind you of civilization?”
Ravna had her own opinion of Straumer civilization; she’d had ten years of practice in keeping that opinion to herself. So all she said was, “Some are little things, some are big. There are both humans and aliens here; outside of civilization, that can rarely happen. The streets are clean and quaintly wide. I know the packs need the extra space, but … this place looks almost like some historical city park on a multi-settled world. I can pretend the technology is just hidden away, perhaps in those little shops we’re visiting today. This could be at Sjandra Kei, kind of a happy tourist trap.”
“Well, that’s fine then, because I’ve come to shop for a birthday present!”
Ravna nodded. “Then we have a constructive purpose for this trip.” The Children took their “birthday” parties seriously. However arguable the calendar dates, birthdays gave them a bridge to their past. She hesitated. “So whose birthday are we talking about?”
“Who do you think?” There was something about Jo’s look that made the answer obvious.
“Nevil?”
“Yup. He’s out of town today, checking out trade prospects on the East Streamsdell. Nevil has such a wonderful way with humans; I know he’d like to be just as good with Tines. In any case, we can get him a present without his ever knowing.”
Ravna laughed. She had been so patient with these two, but Jo was twenty-four, and Nevil would be twenty-six as of this birthday. They were the most perfect couple she could imagine among the older Children. “So, what are you thinking to get him?”
“Something princely and charming, of course.” Actually Johanna had several ideas. It turned out she had been down here more often than Ravna, and she’d quizzed both Woodcarver and Pilgrim about the things that might be available from far parts of the world. Hidden Island was not the imperial capital the Old Flenser had planned, but it had come to be the heart of Woodcarver’s Domain—and this side of the Long Lakes, it was the place to go for exotica.
So the two of them visited one after another of the high street shops, as well as the summer markets that occupied the cobblestone plazas. Johanna had a list, not just from Woodcarver and Pilgrim, but also from her friends Rejna and Giske—themselves already married—and partly from Nevil himself. Johanna bought some mosaic fabric that showed landscapes that could be separately viewed by each of the wearer’s members.
“This is not really very human,” said Ravna.
“Ah, but Nevil might like the pointillist staining. It reminds me of Ur-digital.”
In another shop, they looked at semiprecious gems set in statuary of gold and brass. Ravna was technically royalty, but there were no free gifts, nor even requests to be “officially sponsored” by the co-Queen of the Domain. For a medieval ruler, Woodcarver was something of an economic innovator.
“You could have something made special, maybe out of the mosaic cloth.”
“Yeah!” said Johanna. They turned down Wee Alley. At the back was Larsndot, Needles & Co. The store was a two-story affair, now extended out on tent poles into the street. Wenda Larsndot Jr. was on her knees, pinning velvet around a customer’s new puppies.
“Hei, Johanna! Hei, Ravna!” The seven-year-old was full of cheer, but she didn’t get up. “Can’t talk now. The slavedrivers are riding me hard.” Then she chirped something at her customer, some kind of reassurance.
“But you’ll be at school tomorrow, right?” said Ravna.
The little girl—oldest of all the second generation—rolled her eyes. “Yup, yup. This is my day off. I like tailoring better’n multiplication. Dad’s over there. Mummy’s in back.” Those would be Ben and Wenda Larsndot, Junior’s chief “slavedrivers.”
Ben was even busier than Junior. The place was so crowded that—for packs—it must be mind-numbingly noisy. Was it beautiful days like this that brought on a buying frenzy?
They gave Ben a wave and walked through the tent toward the back. Larsndot, Needles & Co. had Tinish employees. In fact, “Needles” was a mostly young sixsome who had been the original owner. Needles had done quite well by the partnership, for tailoring was one of the “problematical professions.” If standing close to another pack is mind-numbing, then there are only a few things that packs could easily do at such close quarters—chiefly, make war, make love, or just generally blank out. Humans were ideal for close-up work. Each human was as smart as a pack, and each could work mindfully even right next to the customer. It was the perfect combination—though Ravna was afraid the Larsndots had gone too far. Fitting in, being needed by the locals, that was terribly important. At the same time, the humans should be building a tech civilization, not measuring cloth to fit.
Today there was far more business than the humans could help with. The company’s three Tinish tailors sat on thickly padded platforms. On the floor, each of the customers had a single tailor member doing its best with fitting. To human eyes, the process was comical. The isolated members were decked out in flamboyant uniforms studded with big-handled needles, and tailor’s measuring tapes looped from spools on their collars. They were not quite mindless—the rest of their packs were up on the pallets, peeking down, trying to maintain contact without numbing the customers. The groundside members had a lot of practice and significant guidance from above—but physically they were not much more adept than dogs. The lips at the tip of their jaws could squeeze like a pair of weak fingers. Their paws and claws were what you’d expect of dumb animals, though the creatures often wore tools or metal claws—hence the human name for the race: Tines.
These tailors had plenty of experience. Their groundside parts could pull measuring tape from their shoulder spools, could pass it to the customer. With spoken directions from the tailor above, the customer—if not too befuddled by having a foreign snout in its midst—could hold tape properly while the tailor marked the measurement. In other circumstances the customer held the draped fabric and the tailor’s groundside member grabbed a pinhandle in its jaws and carefully inserted it.
Ravna and Johanna passed through an older section of the building that had not been built with humans in mind. They bent low to clear the ceiling and walked awkwardly down a short hallway toward the sewing room. Indoors, in a Tinish building, the whiff of packs was overpowering. Ravna had dealt with many races in the High Beyond—but with good air control. Here there were no such amenities.
She heard Wenda Sr.’s laughter right ahead. Wenda Sr. handled most of the business management, except for the accounting. Like most of the refugees, she was no good at manual arithmetic.
“Hei Johanna! Ravna!” Wenda was standing by one of the sewing tables. Those were lined up below high windows of smoky glass. Sunlight fell on the work tables. Larsndot, Needles & Co. had three seamsters; right now all were busy. Wenda moved back and forth, adjusting the measures, rolling in additional bolts of cloth, some of it the precious Oobii weave, the last functional output of the starship’s reality graphics display.
Wenda’s younger child, Sika, was sitting on the table beside her, evidently “helping to supervise.”
“Hei Wenda! I’m looking for advice.” Johanna laid the mosaic cloth down on a display table. “I want to get something for Nevil. His birthday, you know. Would this look too silly on a human?”
“Sika, you stay put, okay?” said Wenda, Sr. For a wonder, the three-year-old did as requested. Whatever the Tinish seamster was doing fascinated her.
Wenda came over to their table, turning sideways to fit between the heavy wooden stools. She nodded respectfully at Ravna, then lifted Johanna’s fabric sample, turning it in the sunlight. “Ah, this is the real Down Coast stuff, isn’t it, Johanna?”
The two woman chattered about the fabric. Wenda had been sixteen when the kids escaped from the High Lab, and one of the first to be wakened. That made her as old as any of the refugees, as old as Nevil Storherte. She was twenty-six. Her face and her voice were happy, but there was gray in her hair, the beginnings of age in her face. Ravna had read human histories obsessively since their exile began. In a state of nature, untreated humans began to decline almost immediately upon reaching adulthood. Wenda had never complained, but more than most—certainly more than the boys her age—she bore the burden of living Down Here. And yet she was luckier than some. She was old enough that, before the escape, she had almost completed the usual prolongevity treatments. Most of her cohort would last a couple of centuries.
The youngest kids—and certainly the new generation—had not even begun their medical treatments before the escape. They would age quickly, probably not live more than a century. They might not even last long enough for the new technologies to save them. In that case, a return to coldsleep might be their only hope.
One of the seamsters came around the table. Four of it scrambled up on the stools, leaned over to look at the fabric from all directions. The pack was a mostly old fivesome. He understood some Samnorsk, but spoke in careful Interpack. The chords were largely unintelligible to Ravna, but she could tell the fellow was pleased to be chatting with Johanna. This guy was a veteran of Woodcarver’s long march up the coast and the Battle on Starship Hill. Johanna had more Tinish friends than anyone Ravna knew, and among many she was a paramount hero. Maybe that was why Woodcarver had forgiven Jo for running amok back in Year Two.
In the end, Johanna and Wenda and the Tinish seamster came up with a bizarro cape and pants scheme that Wenda claimed would please both fashion and Nevil. It was the best evidence Ravna had ever seen for the absence of a universal esthetic.
“… and I’ll bring you those buckles,” said Johanna.
“Fine, fine,” Wenda was nodding. “Most important, what I need right away, are Nevil’s fitting measurements.”
“Right, I’ll get them. But remember, this is a surprise. He knows there’ll be a party, but—”
“Hah. Taking a tape measure to him will likely make him guess.”
“I’ve got my ways!”
And that got both Wenda and Johanna laughing.
• • •
Back on the street, Johanna was still laughing. “Honest, Ravna, no double meaning.” But when she stopped laughing, she was grinning like a loon.
The afternoon went on forever, the shadows turning and turning without ever lengthening into sunset. They stopped by a couple of silversmiths, but what Johanna wanted might have to be done one-off. Now they were at the north end of the high street. The warren of merchant tents was still as crowded as packs could tolerate, not more than a few meters separating one from another.
“Seems like more foreigners than ever,” commented Ravna. It was partly a question. She could recognize East Home packs by their funny redjackets. Others were distinguished by their scattered posture or their scandalous flirtation. Getting all the details explained was just another reason why she liked to go on these walk-arounds with Johanna Olsndot.
Today Johanna wasn’t quite the perfect tour guide: “I … yeah, I guess you’re right.” She looked around into the tented chaos. “I wasn’t paying proper attention.” She saw the smile on Ravna’s face. “What?”
“You know, today you only stopped to chat with every fourth pack that we came across.”
“Oh, I don’t know everybody—wait, you mean I really haven’t been up to my usual social standard? Well, huh.” They walked on a few paces, out of the tented area. When Johanna looked at her again, the girl’s smile was still there but perhaps it contained a touch of wonder. “You’re right, I haven’t been feeling the same lately. It’s strange. Our lives I mean. Things were so tough for so long.”
When Ravna Bergsndot was feeling most sorry for herself, she tried to imagine what life had been like for Johanna and her little brother. Like all the Children, these two were orphans, but their parents had made it all the way to the ground here. Johanna had witnessed their murder, and then the murder of half her classmates. At just thirteen Johanna had spent a year in this wilderness, often befriended, sometimes betrayed. But she and her little brother had still guided the Oobii through the battle on Starship Hill.
Some of the Children had accepted all this too readily, forgetting civilization. Some others couldn’t make any accommodation with their fall from heaven. It was the ones like Jo that gave Ravna faith that—given time—they might survive the fate coming down upon them all.
They had left the merchants behind, were walking toward the part of town where in recent years public houses had been established. Johanna didn’t seem to notice; she was still far away, smiling that small wondering smile. “Things were tough, and then we unmasked Vendacious and won against Lord Steel. And since then…” surprise rose in her voice “… why, now I’m generally having a great time. There’s so much to do, with the Fragmentarium, with the Children’s Academy, and—”
“You’re wrapped up in making the new world,” said Ravna.
“I know. But now things are even better. Ever since I started dating Nevil, lots of things are more fun. Human-type people seem much more interesting than before. Lately, Nevil and I have been even, um, closer. I want this birthday to be special for him, Ravna.”
Hah! Ravna reached out, touched Johanna’s arm. “So when…”
Johanna laughed. “Ah, Nevil is so traditional. I really think he’s waiting for me to propose.” She looked at Ravna, and now her smile was both merry and sneaky. “Don’t you tell, Ravna, but after the birthday party, that’s exactly what I’m going to do!”
“That’s wonderful! What a wedding that will be!” They stopped and just grinned at each other. “You can be sure Woodcarver will invent new ceremonies for this,” said Ravna.
“Yeah, she uses my reputation unmercifully.”
“Good for her. In fact, this means even more to us than to the Tines. You and Nevil are so popular, he with the Children, you with the Tines. Maybe—” Maybe this is the time.
“What?”
Ravna drew Jo toward the middle of the street as they continued along their way—she didn’t want to be snooped upon by passing packs. “Well, it’s just that I am so tired of being co-Queen.”
“Ravna! It’s worked great for almost ten years now. Woodcarver herself suggested it. There’s precedent in Tinish history and even in ours.”
“Yes,” said Ravna, “on Nyjora.” In the Age of Princesses, there had been the Elder Princess and the Younger, the Techie. The Age of Princesses was the most recent rediscovery of civilization in any known human history—and that civilization was also the ancestor of Ravna’s Sjandra Kei and therefore of Johanna’s Straumli Realm.
The Straumers were not much for looking back, but Ravna had told them about the Age of Princesses. At the Academy, she used that history to make a bridge between humans and the Domain. Johanna smiled. “You should be glad to be co-Queen, Ravna. I bet you played at being one when you were a child.”
Ravna hesitated, embarrassed to admit the truth. “Well maybe; I’ve discovered that the reality is … distracting. It was necessary to begin with, but you kids are established now. I need to concentrate on the external deadline. We only have a few centuries before some really bad guys blow into town.” Ravna hadn’t told the Children of her crazy dream, or the zonograph glitch. There had been no repeat, and the data was less than credible. Instead she worked harder and harder, and did her best not to seem like a madwoman.
Ravna looked away from Johanna. For a few steps, she just watched her own feet trudging along the cobblestones. “It could be less than centuries,” she said. “The Blighters weren’t left with any working ramscoops, but they could probably boost a few kilograms to near-lightspeed. Maybe, when they still had their pipeline to god, maybe they even figured out some way to nail us at lightspeed. I need to spend all my time making sure we’ll be ready.”
Johanna didn’t reply. Ravna was silent for a few more steps, then repeated her main point: “I just mean, I should be spending more time with Oobii. I’m a librarian, after all, and in a situation like this, any other use of me is a waste. I think it would best if maybe you and Nevil could lead, with Woodcarver.”
Johanna stared at Ravna in shock. “Are you crazy?”
Ravna smiled. “We’ve both been accused of that at one time or another.”
“Hah!” said Johanna. She put an arm across Ravna’s shoulders. “If we’re both crazy, it’s in very different ways. Ravna, we need you—”
“Yes, I know. I’m den mother to all that’s left of humanity!”
That old and whimsical complaint should have brought a smile to Johanna; instead her expression became positively fierce. “Ravna, you’re the mother of all that’s left here. Ten years ago we were kids and babies, and to the Tines we were weird animals. Without you to hold us together—to mother us along—most of us would have died in coldsleep, and the few who survived would be freaks in Tinish wilderness!”
“… I, um, okay.” Time to regroup: “I guess I did what had to be done. And now we must prepare for the future. I’m the only one of us trained to manage Oobii’s planning systems. That’s where I need to spend all my time now. You and Nevil and Woodcarver should lead. I’m a librarian, not a leader.”
“You’re both! Librarians and archeologists have always been the ones to bring civilization back.”
“This is different. We don’t have any ruins to search. We have all the answers aboard the Oobii.” Ravna raised her chin in the direction of Starship Hill. “You needed me to begin with, but now Children like you have grown up. My technical planning is needed more than ever, but … but I’m tired of being the leader.”
“Your decisions are popular, Ravna.”
“Some of them. Some of them not, or not for a year or five or ten.” Some might seem obviously wrong for a century—and then suddenly, dreadfully right.
“I hadn’t realized you felt so … alone. We all have you, so I guess we thought you see all of us the same.” Johanna looked down at various bags of fabric samples and birthday trinkets. She gave a little laugh. “Okay, turn it all around. I’ve been so happy with Nevil. He’s made life a bright place. I should think what it would be like without that, without anyone to share it all with. Do you think about Pham very much?”
“Sometimes.” Often. “We had something fine, but there was too much else going on within him. What owned him was scary.”
“Yeah.” Johanna had met Pham Nuwen, just before the end. She had seen how scary scary could be. “There are one hundred and fifty of us, Ravna. We all love you—at least most of the time. Have you ever thought that there might be enough people now that you could find some one person you could—you could be with?”
Up the street, Ravna could see some Children. They were Johanna’s age and older. They were just going into one of the pubs. Ravna gave a nod in their direction. “Are you serious?”
The girl gave an embarrassed smile. “Look, I found someone. I’m just saying, you think of us all as children. Think … well, you’ll live longer than any of us.”
“Don’t say that. You’re ageing now, but that’s only for the present. Someday we’ll have the resources to go back and rebuild a decent medical science. This is just temporary.”
“Right. If you guide us there, we’ll eventually have the technology. And eventually, there’ll be tens of thousands of us. If you can’t find Mister Right in that mob, there’s something wrong with you!”
“I guess you’re right.”
“Of course I am!” said Johanna. “In the meantime, please remember how grateful we are, even when we complain. And Nevil and I will work harder to support you.”
“I want debate.”
“You know what I mean. It’s your voice, up front, that makes the big difference for people like Wenda and Ben.”
“Okay, I’ll lay off you and Nevil, at least for now.”
“Whew!” Johanna’s look of relief was comic exaggeration, but behind it Ravna saw the real thing. “Oh, and Ravna? Please don’t mention this to Nevil. It would just go to his head.”
• • •
The tavern district was near the center of Hidden Island, just south of the Old Castle. In fact, the castle was not really old, though it pre-dated the Children’s arrival by some decades. Flenser’s castle had been a fearsome place, a legend across the continent. Flenser—the unreformed Flenser—had had extraordinary plans for the Tinish race. Before the humans arrived, this world had not even discovered gunpowder, and the printing press was the big new thing. From that, Flenser had been busy building both a totalitarian state and something like the scientific method. There were rumors that his monster packs still lurked in the Old Castle. Ravna knew that wasn’t true, though Flenser-Tyrathect still did have his supporters, spies who shadowed Woodcarver’s own secret agents.
The sun was sliding into the north, the shadows now extending all the way across the street.
The two women walked past the first of the public houses. “Been there just yesterday,” Johanna said of it. “These days the customers are mostly herders from the mainland, celebrating the livestock drive.
Up ahead were the pubs more likely to attract merchants from the Long Lakes and spies from East Home. Those shops were full of gossip and questions and strangeness. She noticed the pack across the street; it looked a lot like the one that had been hanging around behind them in the market.
Johanna saw her glance. “Don’t worry. That’s Borodani, one of Woodcarver’s guys. I recognize his low-sound ears.” She gave the pack a wave, then laughed. “And you say this is really like a city of the Middle Beyond?”
“A little. I could fool myself for minutes at a time. Sjandra Kei had half a dozen major races, though nothing like packs. We humans were only the third most numerous. But we were popular. There were tourist towns that imitated olden human times—and they attracted at least two of the other races as much as us humans.”
“So folks would promenade, right? We could almost imagine we’re out looking for action in some high-priced dive?”
“You had such romances in Straumli Realm?”
“Well, yes. I was a precocious tot, you know. But you actually lived it, right?”
“Um, yes. A few times,” as a shy college girl, before she graduated and shipped out to the Vrinimi Organization. At Vrinimi, the socializing had been exclusively nonhuman—at least till Pham came along.
“So are these taverns much like the bars you remember back in civilization?”
“Hmpf. Not too much. The ‘bars’ in Sjandra Kei were very crowded—choir-crowded, by Tinish standards. For the humans and some of the other races, it was a bit of a courtship thing. Here—”
“Here, every human has known every other since they were little, and there aren’t enough of us all together to fill these public houses. Still, it’s fun to imagine. For instance, this place up ahead.”
That would be the Sign of the Mantis. The words were chiseled in Tinish runes below a one-meter-high carving of an odd insect that walked on two legs. Ravna had never seen the real thing, but she’d heard that the critters were a ubiquitous pest in downcoast towns. Of course, the largest of the real mantises were less than five centimeters tall. Whenever the story of the human landing was told, there was always the question of what the strange new aliens looked like. And since there were no videos to show around, just a pack talking to credulous listeners—also packs—the humans were often likened to “huge, huge mantises.” The Sign of the Mantis sign—the wooden sign itself—had actually been imported from a bar in the Long Lakes. Here it was a great joke, since this particular pub was indeed a human favorite.
Music came from within.
“See? Just like a nightclub back in civilization?” said Johanna.
It was human music, human voices and the sounds of a dozen instruments—or one synth. Inside, there would be no synth, no instruments and maybe not even any singing humans. The words were some children’s rhyme, and the music … not quite a child’s melody. A single pack was probably the source of all the sounds. No doubt it was embellishing on something from Oobii. Human culture was being re-created from the ground up on the Tines World, from machine memories and the distortions of a race of medieval pack critters.
A set of neatly painted wooden stairs wrapped back and forth up to the overhang of the main floor. Johanna bounced up the shallow steps with Ravna just behind. They were about halfway to the entrance when the door above opened and a group of teenaged humans came out onto the top landing.
One of them leaned back into the bar and said something like. “Yeah, just think about that. It makes more sense than…”
Ravna had scooched out of the way when she saw the crowding above. These steps were intended to be one-way for a pack; they were just a bit wider than a single member. The boys hadn’t seen her, but when they saw Johanna, suddenly their voices cut short. As they came down the steps, she heard one of them say, “It’s your sister, Jef.”
Johanna’s voice sounded a little sharp. “Hei now, so what are you doing?”
The lead boy—it sounded like Gannon Jorkenrud—replied, “Just telling people the truth, little missy.” Yes, that was Gannon. The boy saw Ravna and the sneer left his face. For a wonder, he actually looked furtive! He carefully edged past her without quite making eye contact.
The three boys who followed were younger, two seventeen, one nineteen, all fairly large pains in the neck. And today, all looked similarly sneaky, passing by her silently, then proceeding a little too quickly down the steps. Something else about them: they wore those short pants and silly low-cut shoes that had come into fashion at the beginning of the summer. Given a cool, rainy day, they’d have freezing shins and soaked feet.
Further up on the stairs, Johanna was saying, “So Jefri. What’s up?” The words were lightly spoken, but Ravna saw that the girl had stepped into the middle of the stairway. And there indeed, at the top of the stairs, were Jefri and Amdi. Both human and pack were a study in unhappy surprise. The pack—Amdiranifani—was the more obviously upset; even Ravna could see it in his aspect. Jefri was a bit smoother. “Hei, Sis. Hei, Ravna. Been a while.”
Amdi came down the stairs, butted one head softly against Johanna and two more against Ravna. “It’s good to see you!” said the pack, using its little-boy voice. Amdiranifani was an eightsome, about as numerous as a clear-thinking pack could be. When Ravna had first met him, he’d been entirely puppies. They were so small you could carry half of him in your arms, while the other half tumbled around your ankles, asking questions and showing off. He and little Jefri had been so close that some Tines thought of them as a single pack, and gave them the name Amdijefri. No packs called them that anymore. Now, each of Amdi’s members had grown to be large and a little overweight. At first glance, he was physically intimidating. At second glance and after casual conversation, you’d realize Amdi was too shy to menace anybody. And at third glance—if you really got to know him or if he wanted to show off—you’d realize that Amdi was about the smartest creature you could ever meet Down Here.
Ravna patted the nearest head, and smiled at the pack and then at Jefri. “Yes, it is good to see you.”
“And about time,” Johanna inserted, not buying her brother’s casual manner.
Ravna waved a kind of “it’s okay” at Johanna. Civility had been in very short supply from Jefri; she had no desire for a return to his rebellious years.
Johanna didn’t seem to notice. “So, Brother?”
There was a shadow of a glower from the boy. “So. You know. I’ve been the whole spring downcoast with Meri Lyssndot’s team, surveying the special metals that Oobii thought—”
“I know that, Jef. And I know you’ve been screwing Meri and every other girl you can lay your hands on. But you’ve been back how many days and not a word from you?”
Now the glower was on full. “Lay off, Jo. You don’t own me.”
“I’m your sister! I…” Indignation choked off her words.
Ravna noticed that Amdi had snuck back and seemed to be trying to hide behind Jefri. She cast about for something that might deflect the oncoming debacle. Things had been going so well with Jefri this past year. Ah: “It’s okay, Jefri. I’ve seen the survey report. Good work.” Or maybe that was laying it on too thick. “I’m more interested in what was going on with those three…” She waved down the stairs. Should I call them your friends? I hope they’re not. “What was this ‘truth’ that Gannon was talking about?”
“Um, nothing.”
“Yup, nothing,” said Amdi, nodding all his heads.
“Well then.” Ravna came up the stairs. Jefri was nineteen, an adult by the human standards of Sjandra Kei and Straumli Realm. It didn’t matter any more that Jef had been the nicest child, brave and well-meaning. It shouldn’t matter that in later years he was often the most rebellious of the pimply mob. Thank goodness that Johanna had pointed Nevil at him. Where even Johanna had not managed to talk sense into him, the level-headed, diplomatic Nevil had succeeded. With any luck, his current problem was just a temporary backsliding. “We just want to see how people are doing,” said Ravna. She waved at the entrance just beyond Jefri and Amdi. “The three of us can talk another time if you want.”
Jefri dithered a second, and then her mild words seemed to bring him around. “That’s okay. Let’s talk. The whole thing is, um, a bit strange.” He turned and held the pub’s door open for Ravna and his sister.
• • •
Inside the pub it was warm, a reminder that even the summer-day shadows could be cold. There was the smell of smoke and spice and the usual pack body odor. Jefri eased past Jo and Ravna, leading them along a low, narrow corridor, where the smoke was even thicker. Health and fire-safety regulations were still in this world’s future.
Ravna just followed along silently, bemused by the crazy carvings that lined the walls—Tines’ ideas about what life in the Beyond had been like—and wondering at the changes that even ten years had made in her Children. Funny. She had always thought of Johanna as being tall, even when she was only thirteen. But that was Johanna’s personality. Even now, Johanna was only one meter seventy, scarcely taller than Ravna. And Jefri? He had always seemed so small to her. He had been short, when Pham had landed and saved him from Lord Steel. She remembered the little orphan raising his arms to her. But now she noticed how much he had to scrunch down to clear the ceiling. The guy was nearly two meters tall when he stood straight.
The music was loudest straight ahead. There was a flickering colored light that must be one of those crazy mood candelabras. Jefri stepped through the opening, Ravna and Johanna and Amdi right behind.
The Mantis tavern had a vaulted ceiling, and space for padded alcoves all around the upper walls. Today, the clientele was mainly human. There were two or three packs up in the lofts, but the bartender pack was the only one on the main floor. All the music was—no surprise—coming from the bartender.
“Back so soon?” someone shouted at Amdi and Jefri. Then they caught sight of Ravna and Johanna, and there was nervous laughter. “Wow, we can’t talk treason for more than five minutes and the secret police show up.”
“I ran into them on the steps,” said Jefri.
“Just shows you should use the exit stairs, like decent folk do.” That was Heida Øysler. She was still laughing about her secret police crack. Some of the others seemed a bit pained by it, but then Heida’s sense of humor was her greatest enemy. At least here there were none of the closed expressions Ravna had seen on the stairs. Heida pulled over extra chairs and waved them to sit down.
As they did so, the bartender’s roving member was already bringing out more beer. Ravna glanced around the table, taking in just who was here. Ten kids—no. Ten adults. Jefri and Heida might be the youngest here. None of these were parents yet, though there was one recently married couple.
Johanna snagged a beer. She raised it to Heida in a mock salute. “So now that the secret police are here, consider yourselves under interrogation. What are you miscreants up to?”
“Oh, the usual mayhem.” But then Heida was out of clever responses. That could be a blessing. When Heida babbled, things could get marvelously embarrassing. There had been that mock adultery claim about Tami and Wilm—which then turned out to be essentially true. “We were just, you know, speculating about the Disaster Study Group.”
“Ah.” Johanna settled her beer back on the table.
“What’s that?” said Ravna. “It sounds terribly official. And I thought I was into all the terribly official things around here.”
“Well, that’s only because—” began Heida, but one of the other girls, Elspa Latterby, stepped on her wit:
“It’s just three big words covering up a lot of wishful thinking.” No one else said anything. After a moment, Elspa shrugged and continued, “You see, Ma’am—”
“Please, Elspa, call me Ravna.” Oops, I always say that, and some, like Elspa, always forget.
“Sure, Ravna. Y’see, the thing is, well, you and the Tines have done your best to stand in for our parents. I know how much Woodcarver and Flenser-Tyrathect have spent on our academy. And now we’re doing our best to make something of ourselves—in this world. Some of us, the very youngest, are quite happy.” A smile flickered on her face. “My little sister has Beasly and human playmates. She has me—and she doesn’t remember our folks very well. To Geri, this seems like a wonderful place.”
Ravna nodded. “But for the older ones, life here is just the epilogue to a holocaust, right?” Certainly, that was often how Ravna saw it.
Elspa nodded, “It’s wrongheaded maybe. But there it is. Not all us feel this way, but we remember our parents, and civilization. It’s not surprising that some of us feel just a little bitter to have lost so much. Disasters have that effect even when no one living is responsible.”
Jefri hadn’t bothered with a human chair. He had set himself on one of the high perches normally used by the Tines. From there he looked down gloomily. “So it’s not surprising such people might call themselves the Disaster Study Group,” he said.
Ravna gave them all a smile. “I guess we’ve all been members of that club at one time or another—all of us who seriously look at the recent history.”
Now that the bartender’s member had retreated, Amdi had surfaced all around the two tables, a head here, a head there, some of him perched on the high stools. He liked to watch from all directions—and there were enough of him to do a good job of it. The two on the stools cocked their heads, but his voice seemed to come from everywhere. “So then it’s a little bit like me and some of Lord Steel’s other experiments. A lot of killing went into our making. I came out very well, maybe, but others are still a mess. Sometimes we get together and just moan and groan about how we’ve been abused. But it’s not like we can do anything about it.”
Elspa nodded. “You’re right, Amdi, but at least you have a specific monster to dump the hate on.”
“Well,” said Ravna, “we have the Blight. It was monstrous beyond the mind of any in the Beyond. We know that in the end, fighting that evil killed your parents and Straumli Realm, and indirectly killed Sjandra Kei. Stopping the Blight destroyed civilization in much of the galaxy.”
They were shaking their heads. One of the boys, Øvin Verring, said, “We can’t know all that.”
“Okay, we can’t be sure of that last; the destruction was so vast that it destroyed our ability to measure it. But—”
“No, I mean there’s very little we can know of any of it. Look. Our parents were scientists. They were doing research in the Low Transcend, a dangerous place. They were playing with the unknown.”
You got it, kiddo, thought Ravna.
“But millions of other races have done that,” Øvin continued. “It’s the most common way that new Powers are born. My father figured that Straum itself would eventually colonize some vacated brown dwarf system in the Low Transcend, that we would transcend. He said we Straumers have always had an outward reach, we are risk takers.” Øvin must have noticed the look coming into Ravna’s face. He hurried on: “And then something went terribly wrong. That has also happened to thousands of races. Expeditions like our High Lab sometimes get consumed by what lives Up There, or are simply destroyed. Sometimes, the originating star system is destroyed, too. But what happened to us—what has forced us Down Here—that just doesn’t square with what we personally know about the situation.”
“I—” Ravna began, then hesitated. How can I say this? Your parents were greedy and careless and exceptionally unlucky. She loved these kids—well, most of them, and she would do almost anything to protect all of them—but when she looked at them, sometimes all she could think of was the destruction their parents’ greed had brought down. She glanced at Johanna. Help me.
As often happened when the going got tough, Johanna came through: “I have a little more personal memory than most of us, Øvin. I remember my parents preparing our escape. The High Lab was no ordinary attempt at Transcendence. We had an abandoned archive. We were doing archeology on the Powers themselves.”
“I know that, Johanna,” Øvin said, a little sharply.
“So the archive woke. My parents knew there was the possibility that we were being led around by the nose. Okay, I guess all the grownups knew that. But in the end, my folks realized that the risks were much greater than was obvious. We had dug up something that could be a threat to the Powers Themselves.”
“They told you that?”
“Not at the time. In fact, I’m not sure quite how Daddy and Mom pulled off the preparations. There were originally three hundred of us Children. Somehow, coldsleep units were smuggled out of medical storage, put aboard the container ship. Somehow we were all checked out of our classes—you all remember that.”
Heads nodded.
“If a Power were coming awake, surely it would have noticed what your parents were up to.”
“I—” Johanna hesitated. “You’re right. They should have been caught. There must have been others working with them to set up our escape.”
“I didn’t notice anything,” said Heida.
“No,” said someone else.
“Me neither,” said Øvin. “Remember how we were living, the temporary pressurized habs, the lack of privacy? I could tell my folks were getting edgy—okay, frightened—but there wasn’t room to do things on the sly. It seems reasonable—and this is one of the Disaster Study Group’s points—that our escape was just a move in Something’s game.”
Ravna said, “We talked about Countermeasure at the Academy, Øvin. You children did get special help. Ultimately, Countermeasure—” with Pham and Old One—“was what stopped the Blight.”
“Yes, Ma’am,” said Øvin. “But all this illustrates how little we know about the good guys and the bad guys. We’re stuck Down Here. We older kids feel that we have lost everything. But the official history could just as well have the good guys and the bad guys switched.”
“Huh? Who is peddling such crap?” Ravna couldn’t help herself; the words just popped out. So much for gracious leadership.
Øvin seemed to shrink back on himself. “It’s not anybody in particular.”
“Oh? What about those three I passed on the stairs?”
Jefri shifted on his high stool. “You ran into me on the stairs, too, Ravna. Those three are just gossips. You might as well be blaming all of us.”
“If it’s ‘just everybody’ then where did a name like Disaster Study Group come from? Somebody must be behind this, and I want to—”
A hand pressed lightly on Ravna’s sleeve. Johanna held the touch for an instant, long enough to shut down her spew of angry words. Then the girl said, “Something like this doubting has always been around.”
“You mean doubts about the Blighter threat?”
Johanna nodded. “Yes, in varying degrees. You yourself have doubts on that, I know. For instance, now that the Blighter fleet has been stopped by Countermeasure, will it have any further interest in harming Tines World?”
“We have no choice but to believe that what remains wants to destroy us.” My dream—
“Okay, but even then there’s the question of just how deadly they can be. The fleet is thirty lightyears out, probably not capable of travelling more than a lightyear per century. We have millennia to prepare, even if they do wish us ill.”
“Parts of the fleet could be faster.”
“So we have ‘only’ a few centuries. Tech civilizations have been built in less.”
Ravna rolled her eyes. “They’ve been rebuilt in less. And we may not have that much time. Maybe the fleet can build small ramscoops. Maybe the Zones will slip again—” She took a breath and proceeded a little more calmly: “The point is, the point of everything we’re teaching in the Academy is, we have to get ready as fast as we possibly can. We must make sacrifices.”
A little boy’s voice spoke from all around them. Amdi. “I think that’s what the Disaster Study Group disputes. They deny that the Blight was ever a threat to humans or Tines. And if it is, they say, Countermeasure made it so.”
Silence. Even the background music from the bartender had faded away. Apparently Ravna was the last to realize the monstrous issue under discussion. Finally she said, softly, “You can’t mean that, Amdi.”
An expression rippled across Amdi: embarrassed contrition. Each of his members was fourteen years old, each an adult animal, but his mind was younger than any pack she knew. For all his genius, Amdi was a shy and childlike creature.
Across the table, Jefri patted one of Amdi comfortingly. “Of course he doesn’t mean he believes it, Ravna. But he’s telling you the truth. The DSG starts from the position that we can’t know exactly what happened at the High Lab and how we managed to escape. Reasoning from what we do know, they argue that we could have the good and the bad reversed. In which case, Countermeasure’s actions of ten years ago were a galactic-scale atrocity—and there are no terrible monsters bearing down on us.”
“Do you believe that?”
Jefri raised his hands in exasperation. “… No. Of course not! I’m just spelling out what some people are too, ah, diplomatic to say. And before you ask, I wager none of us here believe it, either. But among the kids as a whole—”
“Especially some of the older ones,” said Øvin.
“—it’s a very attractive way of looking at things.” Jefri glowered at her for a moment, challenging. “It’s attractive because it means that what our parents created was not a monstrous ‘blight.’ Our parents were not silly fools. And it’s also attractive because it means that the sacrifices we’re making now are … unnecessary.”
Ravna struggled to keep her voice steady: “What sacrifices in particular? Learning low-tech programming? Learning manual arithmetic?”
Heida chipped in with, “Oh, part of it is just having other people tell us what to do!”
These kids probably didn’t even know the names of pre-tech consensus-building methods. Skipping that stage had just been one of the simplifications Ravna had chosen. She had hoped that trust and affection and common goals would suffice until they had more tech and more people.
“Getting bossed around may be part of it,” said Øvin, “but for some, the medical situation is a bigger issue.” He looked directly at Ravna. “The years pass and you rule and you still look young, just as young as Johanna does now.”
“Øvin! I’m thirty-five years old.” That was human-standard thirty-megasecond years, the same as Straumers used. “It should be no surprise I look young. Back in Sjandra Kei, I’d still be a very junior specialist.”
“Yes, and a thousand years from now, you’ll still look that young. All of us—even the older children—will be dead in a few hundred years. Some of us already look decayed—you know, losing our hair like we’ve suffered rad damage. Getting fat. The youngest of us have scarcely had any prolongevity treatment. And our children will die like flies, decades before us.”
Ravna thought of Wenda Larsndot’s graying hair. But that doesn’t mean I’m wrong! “Look, Øvin. We’ll get the medical research ramped up eventually. It just doesn’t make sense to put it first. I can show you the progress charts that Oobii generates. Effective medicine has a million gotchas. Which cure is going to be hard—and hard for which child—that’s something we can’t know ahead of time. A crash medical program would just be a morass of delay. We’ve got at least twenty coldsleep caskets that are still in working order. I’m sure we can generate the consumables for them eventually. If necessary, we can freeze anyone who gets mortally old. No one need die.”
Øvin Verring raised his hand. “I understand, ma’am. I think all of us here do—even Screwfloss, Benky, and Catchip—who are so quietly listening in.” There was some embarrassed shifting around in the tavern’s lofts. From across the room, the bartender said, “Heh, this is all between you two-legs.”
Heida couldn’t resist: “You packs just don’t die properly!”
Øvin gave a little smile but waved for Heida to pipe down. “Nevertheless, you see the attraction of the Disaster Study Group. They deny that our parents messed up. They deny that there’s a need for sacrifice. We refugees can’t really know what happened or who was to blame in getting us Down Here. The extremists—and I don’t think any of us have knowingly talked to such; the extremists are always referred to at third hand—they say since we know the goodness of our own parents, then the right bet is that the Blight is no monster at all, and all this preparation and sacrifice may be in service to … well, maybe to something evil.”
Johanna gave her head a sharp little shake. “Huh? Øvin, that logic is a jumble.”
“Maybe that’s why we can’t find anyone who says it for themselves, Jo.”
Ravna listened to the back and forth. What can I say to this that I haven’t said before? But she could not keep silent: “When these deniers say ‘we can’t really know,’ that is a lie. I know. I was at Relay, working for Vrinimi Org. The Blight was doing evil almost half a year before Oobii took flight. It spread out from your High Lab, probably within a few hours of your escape. It took over the Top of the Beyond. I could read about it in the news. With Vrinimi’s resources I could follow the destruction in detail, the Blight killing whomever it pleased. The thing took over Straumli Realm. It destroyed Relay. It chased Pham and me and the Skroderiders down here, and the wake of that pursuit killed Sjandra Kei and most of the humans in the Beyond.” These were things she had told them again and again and again. “The defense against the Blight wasn’t undertaken until we arrived here. Yes, what Pham and Countermeasure did was horrendous—more so than we can measure. Countermeasure did strand us. But it stopped the Blight and it left us with a chance. Those are facts that are being denied. They are not something beyond knowing. I was there.”
And all around the table, these Children now grown up were nodding respectfully.