Just then, someone finally noticed the Eyes Above. Heads turned up all across the crowd, and the Tines started running around, making a racket that seemed impossibly loud coming from dog-sized bodies.
Scrupilo blasted back, and Ravna just hunched down and stuck her fingers in her ears. The battle of the noisemakers continued for several seconds, getting louder on both sides. Were the Tropicals running along beneath them? She was afraid to look and get a direct face full of that tormenting sound.
The Eyes Above slid out over the Margrum Valley. Behind them, Ravna could see the Tropicals ranged along the edge of the drop, still hopping up and down in apparent outrage. It was like human fist-shaking.
Scrupilo huffed indignantly: “Mindless prattlers! All they can talk about is how we’ve abused their ambassador, and how they have every right to splice into our phone lines.… Deceit! Deceit! Deceit!” This last, he chanted in time to the chords he was directing toward the enemy.
Ravna dropped some ballast and kicked on the propeller, bringing the Eyes Above into a long climbing turn that headed back north over the inner channel. By the Powers, it was amazing the range at which Scrupilo and the Tropicals could keep up their long-distance shouting match.
Chapter 08
Days passed. The affair of the stolen radio cloaks was not resolved. The search of the ambassador’s party at Scrupilo’s lab turned up nothing. Eventually, the lab and North End and all the accessible anchorages in the near islands and mainside were searched—without success. Ravna marvelled at the elegant way Godsgift managed Tropical indignation. The fellow hadn’t always been so smart. During the last eight years, the thing they called Ambassador had mixed and matched itself. Now he had almost-credible excuses for why his people spliced into the land line: they had expected a phone call from the ambassador to a nearby Domain house. When that homeowner brought no message to the embassy compound, the Tropicals became afraid for their ambassador’s safety and so undertook the splice (rather expertly done, on their very first try) and began raising hell up and down the phone line. Normally, Oobii’s routing advice made the system quite usable—but that depended on users honoring that advice.
At the same time he was complaining and excusing himself, Godsgift refused to allow any search of the embassy compound. Woodcarver responded with a siege. This lasted about a tenday—and ended when Godsgift accepted a year of free telephone access in return for his granting permission to search the building.
Of course, nothing was found in the Embassy search.
The oscillation between sneaky and clownish was both effective and suspicious. Scrupilo and Nevil lobbied for booting the Tropicals out of the Domain, strategic materials be damned. Johanna thought the Tropicals had never been mentally together enough for serious theft. Woodcarver figured they were being used by Flenser (natch!) or maybe by the long-missing Vendacious. Flenser denied everything.
Meantime Ravna concentrated on her main problem. She was doing her best to remove the dissatisfactions that gave support to the Disaster Study Group. She had to make changes, reforms. Unfortunately, even the simplest of the projects could have hidden gotchas. Take the idea of giving the Children more access to Oobii. Ultimately, that might slow the research program slightly, but that was a price she’d have to pay. Ravna had no trouble clearing the ship’s main cargo deck. It opened directly at ground level now, and what gear remained could be safely stored in the New Castle. It was even less of a problem—a simple request to the ship’s automation—to turn the inner walls into displays. Now the vaulting space of the cargo hold was a warm meeting hall. The Children were eager to decorate the space.
Soon, the inside of the cargo bay was a crude imitation of various places they remembered from before their world fell apart. There was actually an elected committee (democracy rearing its head) for deciding the ambiance of the tenday. The kids and their Best Friend packs showed up in crowds. Since they were effectively inside the starship, Oobii could manipulate the acoustics so packs could sit within a couple of meters without interfering with one another’s mindsounds. That was something magical and new for most packs, and it brought the place even greater popularity.
So the New Meeting Place was an overwhelming success, with unintended side effects that were themselves a benefit. Right? Not quite. There was a serious gotcha. It first showed up as Ravna was clearing out the cargo hold. When the carts carrying the gear from the hold (much of it Beyonder arcana that might someday be very useful) arrived at the New Castle, Woodcarver’s guards had blocked the cargo for nearly half a day. Woodcarver was Downcoast, Ravna was told, without radio relay—and she hadn’t left clear word about where the cargo should be stored, or if it should be accepted at all! What admin idiocy! Ravna had thought. This was the sort of thing that Scrupilo occasionally pulled, but Woodcarver’s castle chamberlains were normally more sensible. Besides, she had checked out the undercastle space around the Children’s Lander; there was plenty of room.
Woodcarver had legal say at the castle, just as Ravna was the boss aboard the Oobii. It was part of their co-Queendom arrangement, but Ravna had never before been denied use of the catacombs. And Woodcarver had known of Ravna’s plans for the cargo hold.
In the end, Ravna got the gear stowed away, but in the days that followed—and for the first time in the ten years that the two had worked together—she felt a distance and a frostiness between herself and Woodcarver.
Ravna asked Pilgrim about the problem. As both the Queen’s consort and a parent of some of her recent members, he should have some insight!
“Woodcarver was too shy to say anything about it, Ravna.”
“Huh?” Ravna replied, remembering Woodcarver’s directness in the past. “Why would Woodcarver be shy about complaining to me?”
“Um, I think because she knows she’s wrong to be pissed at you.”
“Y-you two have discussed this?”
“Yup. Basically, she thinks this new meeting place upsets the balance of reputations between the two of you.” He tapped a couple of noses together and looked a little embarrassed. “I know, that’s—well, childish is the word a human might use. I would have warned you, except I was sure that Woodcarver recognized her foolishness in the matter. She’s not usually like this, but she doesn’t have that new puppy entirely in step with the rest of her.” He brightened. “I’ll talk to her. The three of us could get together and—”
“No. I’ll talk to her myself. I should have taken more time explaining the idea to her in the beginning. The New Meeting Place doesn’t replace the Thrones Room. It’s just a informal place where everyone can get closer to the world we’re trying to build.”
So Ravna made an appointment with her co-Queen, in the Thrones Room atop Starship Hill. Even that was a change. Up till now, she’d felt welcome to drop in almost without notice.
She talked to Woodcarver for some time, pointing out what a smash hit the New Meeting Place had become, how it was bringing both the Children and their packs to understanding and eager participation in what Ravna and Woodcarver were trying to accomplish.
“It’s working better than I ever dreamed, Woodcarver. There are packs unrelated to the Children—some of them traditionalists from Woodcarver City—who’ve come to the New Meeting Place. Ultimately, it could be a kind of diplomatic center.”
Most of Woodcarver was curled up around her radio. She nodded courteously at Ravna’s enthusiastic description. “Rather like a capitol, then?”