The Children of the Sky

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?”