The Children of the Sky

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!”