The Children of the Sky

As she settled down in her old room by the command deck, she wondered again at her success in the meeting. Not since the Children were little—and rarely even then—had the kids deferred to her as they had this afternoon. Maybe they saw her as a competent hero who had been to hell and back. Ha. If they only knew how little of that was her doing. It still bothered her the way the kids winced when they looked at her crushed nose and cheek. But what if that wasn’t revulsion? What if the kids saw the injury as proof of tremendous sacrifice? Then sympathy and admiration all worked their magic in her favor. If it had been Nevil in her shoes, he’d squeeze that advantage as hard as he could, as long as he could. She thought about the notion for a moment, struggling to hold back sleep. Maybe she was a fool but, “Ship!”

“Yes, Ravna?”

“Please call Lisl Armin and tell her I’m a go for the face repair.”

And then she slept.

•  •  •

Scrupilo’s overflights didn’t support Giske’s worst-case theory. Ultimately, Nevil might be as crazy as Giske thought, but the Denier caravan was well equipped, and well prepared. Considering all the gear they had stolen, “well equipped” was no surprise. As for being well-prepared—Bili Yngva had something to do with that. The logs showed that Bili had spent a lot of time up here on the command deck, planning. He had recognized some of the gear in the Lander—what Ravna had mistaken for junk—and figured that it might still have limited functionality. That accounted for the strange thefts from the Newcastle catacombs. As for the fire they set in the Lander—Nevil and Bili really did believe in Countermeasure. The details were lost in a chaos of corrupted log files—what looked like a system failure, not encryption. Maybe she could unscramble the mess eventually, but for the moment she concentrated on trying to contact Tycoon and trying to break into the orbiter.

Meantime, Nevil was probing back at Oobii. The Chief Denier—that was her most polite term for him—had most of the commsets, and access to the orbiter. Ravna deliberately left the Denier user accounts in place, but in virtual cages. Nevil was all over them, probing for security holes, posting Nevilish propaganda. The incompetent hacking was very informative—to Ravna.

Woodcarver sent scouts with truce flags after the Deniers. They were peacefully received and allowed to talk to whomever they pleased. They even persuaded six from the caravan to return.

But when Ravna walked the streets of Newcastle town, the empty houses were everywhere, tears in the thin fabric of humanity. Denial had hijacked almost half of the human race, and there was yet a trickle of Children still departing, trying to catch up with the main group.

After five days, Nevil’s exodus reached its destination, a warm-springs cave system more than one hundred kilometers to the northeast. Woodcarver recognized the place. She told Ravna that she’d known about it for about a century and always believed it too dangerous for long-term settlement.

The place was beyond the range of Scrupilo’s little airboat. Three days passed, where the only word was Nevil’s voice reporting and happy messages from various of his followers. He was promising pictures any day now. When it came down through the orbiter, Ravna put the video in the Meeting Place.

Ravna and Woodcarver were present at the first showing, along with almost all the remaining Children and their Friends.

Nevil’s “Best Hope” settlement was near the edge of a hanging valley set in the wall of the Streamsdell river valley. It was in the Icefangs, just beyond Woodcarver’s territorial claims in that direction. Those highlands were not much favored by Tinish hunter-farmers, but Nevil was optimistic. In fact, the first video showed him near the middle of the Streamsdell Valley. “This land is ideal for humans, for independence and growth. Come see this in a year. There will be the green buds of our new hardicore grass, a chartreuse carpet stretching all the way to the edge of the Nordhus glacier.”

“Good luck, asshole!” someone in the audience shouted. “You guys never grew anything when you were here.”

The viewpoint bumpily slewed around, away from the glacier, past the river and then up the north valley wall. Some of the Tines were making wondering noises. Øvin said, “Hei, look! That must be why they picked this place!”

From the camera’s position, they could see something that was probably not visible to travelers taking the usual route along Streamsdell: a vertical slit in the dark rock of the side valley.

“That’s what, twenty meters tall?” someone said.

Nevil’s friendly voice rambled on behind their local commentary: “—apparently the Tines were never aware that the warm springs here supported a cave system. It is a truly human discovery.” He walked back into the field of view. “Fortunately, the team that found it were loyal to the best human values. Jefri Olsndot reported this directly to me.”