“Grump. Mumble.” The tiny speaker on the camera couldn’t do justice to Tycoon’s response, the mix of indignation and concern and envy.
Jo gave the palace another cheery wave and sat herself down on the parapet. In this swelter, her most extensive piece of clothing was her sunhat, and now she plunked it on her head. Black hair and dark skin were all very fine, but she still needed some protection against this sun.
Johanna looked out, but she wasn’t watching the physical scenery. She liked to tell Tycoon that from here she had a clear view of the Choir’s innermost thoughts. Tyco claimed she was spouting superstitious nonsense—but then he tracked the moods that swept across the Tropics like superfast weather fronts. That was marketing information.
Here at the City of the Choir, it all came together, a million times bigger than what Johanna had seen on the rafts. She leaned her elbows onto her knees, and stared off toward the northern horizon. This world was in the Slow Zone, not the Beyond, not the Transcend. Most intelligent life in the galaxy had originated in this primordial ooze. Nothing much smarter than human could survive Down Here. So no way was the Choir a superhuman intellect. Right? It was the sort of question that made Johanna wish she knew more about Slow-Zone limitations. The subject had never been big in the High Lab. The grownups were too busy becoming God to waste their time on the problems of lesser minds.
Very soon the charade with Nevil must be abandoned; the cooperation between Tycoon and Woodcarver was too blatant to disguise. My friends will know I’m alive. I can visit them! Ravna would be able to come down here and see Greenstalk, and see what the Choir was really like. Commset chats were not enough. There were things Ravna didn’t understand—like that promise she’d asked of Johanna, to save the Choir from exploitation. In one sense that was an easy promise to keep. But at the level of individual Tines, of Cheepers—the problem was just the same as Johanna had argued with Harmony Redjackets and even with Pilgrim.…
Johanna drew herself a little further under the shade of her broad hat. It would be great when she could travel back to the Domain, but there were so few humans in the world; she couldn’t imagine finding anyone now. Even Ravna was better off, at least if my stupid little brother will get his act together. From what Johanna could tell, Jef alternated between thinking Rav was too good for him and regarding her as the agent of ultimate evil.
Finally, the sun was too much. Johanna stood and started slowly down from the summit. She often hit an emotional low just as she retreated from the pyramid. Sometimes she thought the Choir’s mood changed too. Maybe the Tines are unhappy to see me go! Hah, absurd of course. And yet, after losing the High Lab, losing her parents, losing the promise of Nevil … after losing it all, she had a fate that was kind of a marvelous thing. She knew that Nevil’s gang had called her the “Dog Lady.” Well, they were right. She had the fragments, the packs, and the Choir. It was a weird trade she had made, and maybe she didn’t care about the rest.
Chapter 45
Today was the longest day of summer. For many Tinish nations, that was a big holiday. Here in Woodcarver’s Domain, the holiday was celebrated, but it came in the middle of almost seven tendays when the sun never set. The dayaround tendays had always been a time for unending, often joyous, activity. There was an unrelenting enthusiasm about the sunlight, something that only total exhaustion could correct. Both Children and Tines worked almost nonstop, slowing down just a little when the sun got lowest, what would be the starry dark in any other season. Even then, there were often parties at low sun, exhausted kids dancing.
On this Longest Day, Ravna took a low-sun break of her own. Coming out from her private entrance to Oobii, she skirted the western edge of the Meadows. The path should have kept her out of sight of where the kids partied. But this time she ended up walking past Children and Tines playing with the gliders that Scrupilo had recently built. She stood in awe for a moment, forgetting why she was outside so late. Øvin Verring was running straight toward the cliff’s edge. He leaped over the dropoff and popped his wings. Ravna felt an instant of stark fear. True, the glider rig was an Oobii synthesis of a thousand civilizations’ history, optimized for exactly these conditions—but there was not a bit of automation aboard the contraption! It could tumble and fall, and she had already seen enough bodies rain from the sky.… But the wings did not tumble. The glider sank smoothly, flying straight. And then Øvin, the mind onboard, took the glider into a shallow bank, searching for updrafts, climbing across them until he was above his launch point, soaring almost as if he had agrav.
A sigh went up from the Children on the ground, maybe remembering heritage lost. Then everyone was cheering, and the packs among them were complaining because there was no way they could participate in the adventure. This is so dangerous, thought Ravna. Someone turned and saw her standing there. A year ago, Ravna would have had to stop this, and the kids would have known that and everybody would have been hurt and embarrassed and irritated. More recently, after her return, it would have been worse; they might have meekly obeyed her! Now when the Children saw her, they waved. And Ravna waved back … and few moments later, another glider sailed out over the abyss. Ravna stayed at the fringes of the crowd, watching the launches. She counted five of the craft in the air, circling back and forth along and above the cliff face. These vehicles would never be of use in real applications. But the pilots may be. It all depended on how fast other tech progressed.
Ravna watched for a few minutes more, then drifted back from the crowd and continued on her walk. The shouts of excitement faded behind her. Ahead, sunlight sparkled blindingly off the north end of the Hidden Island straits. The island itself was set in a kind of silhouette by the brilliance of the surrounding water. Her path led around the northwest face of Starship Hill, toward a very special place.
The Cemetery for Children and Tines. She had been here only once since her return, a memorial for Edvi Verring and the Norasndots. She hadn’t been here by herself since that rainy, treacherous night with Nevil. You’d think that that night would have cured me of my attraction to this place. Okay, the important lesson was that if she ran into anyone up here, she should question the coincidence very seriously.
And truly, this visit wasn’t one of desperation. Things were going well. Come this winter, Scrupilo’s Cold Valley lab would fabricate its first microprocessors. When those made it into Tycoon’s production stream, tech would be everywhere. Something like civilization would be right around the corner.
Even Jefri seemed to be doing okay. He and Amdi were working with the reconstituted Screwfloss to build cargo highways. Both Woodcarver and Flenser were sure that Jef wasn’t acting as Nevil’s agent. More and more, it looked like he would stay with the Domain.
Ravna walked between rows of headstones set in a field of spongy moss. At the memorial, she’d noticed a few new stones, not just those for Edvi and the Norasndots. There’d been flowers on the graves of Belle Ornrikak and Dumpster Peli. The Children, at least some of those who remained with the Domain, were turning to older forms of remembrance. It was something they argued about among themselves.