Vernor Vinge: The Children of the Sky

“Really! Even the Ravna?”

“Yes! They can’t do the simplest arithmetic, what any street haggler can do. Their memory for sounds—even the speech sounds they can hear—is almost nonexistent. Like insect mantises, their way of life is parasitic and thieving.”

All eight of Tycoon sat very still. Vendacious could hear the edges of his mind, a mix of calculation, wonder, and uncertainty.

“It doesn’t make sense,” Tycoon finally said. “From my own investigations, I already know some of what you say. But the mantises are superlative inventors. I’ve tested their exploding black powder. I’ve heard of the catapults powered by that powder. And they have other inventions I can’t yet reproduce. They can fly ! Their Oobii may now be crashed to earth, but they have a smaller flyer, barely the size of a boat. Last year it was seen by reliable packs just north of town.”

Vendacious and Chitiratifor traded a glance. That was bad news. Aloud, Vendacious said, “Your point is well taken, my lord, but there is no paradox. The mantis folk simply stole the things that give them their advantage. I have … sources … that prove they’ve been doing that for a very long time. Finally, their victims tired of them and chased them out of their original place in the sky. Much of what they have, they do not understand and cannot re-create. Those devices will eventually wear out. The antigravity flier you mention is an example. Furthermore, the creatures have stolen—and are continuing to steal—our own inventions. For instance, that exploding black powder you mentioned? It might well have been invented by some creative pack, perhaps the same one who truly invented the cannon catapults.”

Tycoon didn’t reply immediately; he looked stunned. Ever since Vendacious had heard of Tycoon, he’d suspected that this pack had a special secret, something that could make him a faithful supporter of Vendacious’ cause. That was still just a theory, but—

Finally, Tycoon found his voice: “I wondered.… The blasting powder and the catapults … I remember…” He drifted off for a moment, splitting into the old and the young. The puppies scrabbled around, whining like some forlorn fragment. Then Tycoon gathered himself together. “I, I was once an inventor.”

Vendacious waved at the mechanisms that filled the room. “I can see that you still are, my lord.”

Tycoon didn’t seem to hear. “But then I split up. My fission sibling eventually left for the West Coast. He had so many ideas. Do you suppose—?”

Yes! But aloud, Vendacious was much more cautious: “I still have my sources, sir. Perhaps I can help with that question, too.”

Chapter 01

So many impossible things. Ravna is dreaming. She knows that, but there is no waking. She can only watch and absorb and choke on horror. The Blight’s fleet hangs all around her, ships clustered here and there like bugs stuck in slime. Originally, the fleet was a hundred fifty starships, and clouds of drones. The drones have been cannibalized. Many ships are gone, some cannibalized. Where it serves the Blight, crews have been cannibalized, too, or simply cast out. Her dreaming eyes can see hundreds of corpses, humans, dirokimes, even skrodeless riders.

The Blight’s prey is almost thirty lightyears away, an ordinary solar system … where Ravna and the Children have fled. And that is part of the reason this vision must be a dream. Thirty lightyears is impossibly far in this part of the universe, where nothing goes faster than light. There is no way she can know what is happening in the enemy fleet.

The fleet floats in death, but is not dead itself. Look closer at the clustered ships. Things move. Construction proceeds. The fleet was once the hand of a living god; now it exists to resurrect that god. Even trapped here, in this encystment of pain, it plans and builds, second on second, year on year, working as hard as its living crews can be driven. If necessary, it can do this for centuries, breeding more crew to replace natural losses. This program will eventually produce ramscoop vessels. They will be the best that can exist Down Here, capable of reaching near-lightspeed.

Now perhaps none of that effort is necessary, for the Blight can see Ravna as she sees it, and the encysted god is saying to her: Rules change. I am coming. I am coming. And much sooner than you think.

• • •

Ravna woke with a start, gasping for breath.

She was lying on the floor, her right arm painfully bent. I must have fallen. What a terrible dream. She struggled back into her chair. She wasn’t in her cabin aboard the Out of Band II . The automation aboard Oobii would have turned the floor soft before she ever hit it. She looked around, trying to orient herself, but all she could remember was the dream.

She ran her hand across the side of her chair. It was wood, local Tinish manufacture, as was the table. But the walls had a greenish cast, gently curving into the equally greenish floor. She was inside the Children’s landing craft, under Woodcarver’s new castle. That took long enough to recognize! She leaned her head into her hands, and let the cabin spin around to a stop. When her dizziness had passed, she sat back and tried to think. Except for the last few minutes, everything seemed reasonable:

She had come down to the catacombs to inspect the Children’s caskets. This part of the castle spanned a range of technology from the pre-gunpowder to fallen transcendence, the walls carved with chisels and mallets, the light provided by lamps from Oobii . Two years ago, the coldsleep containers had been removed from the Straumer Lander and laid out with enough space between them to dissipate the waste heat of the refrigeration.

Half the caskets were empty now, their passengers awakened. That included almost all the oldest Children. Nowadays, the kids lived in or near the new castle; some were in school classes here. If she listened carefully, she could hear occasional shrieks of laughter mixed with the gobble of Tinish packs.

So why did I enter the Lander? Oh yes. She’d spent a only few minutes outside, looking through the casket windows at the faces of little ones who still slept, who waited unknowing for there to be enough grownup caregivers. Most of those revivals would be routine, but some of the caskets tested as borderline defective. How could she save the kids in those withered caskets? That had been the reason for today’s visit, to review the results on Timor Ristling, her first attempt with the withered caskets.

The Lander was originally Top-of-the-Beyond technology. Much of that could not function down here in the Slow Zone; she’d never been able to transfer the Lander’s maintenance records to the stable technology of her own ship. She had to come onboard to access those records. Her gaze slid uneasily around the Lander’s freight cabin. Too much had happened in this green-walled room. The Lander wasn’t just Top of the Beyond. It had been at the High Lab, in the Low Transcend, and it had been … modified. If she looked up she would see some of that, the fungus hanging from the ceiling. The magical Countermeasure. Nowadays, it seemed to be as dead as a dusty cobweb, but Countermeasure had dimmed the sun, and killed her dearest love, and maybe saved the galaxy. The remains of the fungus bothered even the Straumer Children.

This was not a surprising place to have a really bad dream.

But now she remembered what she had been doing just before the crazy dream overtook her. The last two days had been a nonstop guilt trip, with far too little sleep. It was clear that she had screwed up Timor’s chances. Not deliberately, not through incompetence. But I did pick him for the first damaged-casket revival. The problem wasn’t the boy’s twisted leg, it wasn’t the fact that he might not be quite as brilliant as the other children. The problem was that in the tendays since his revival, Timor had not grown.