Thank goodness. She and Nevil had planned that he would speak later, when they went to Question and Answer. If only they could go to that now, and bail out of the nightmare her speech had become.

She gave him a jerk of her hand, urging him to come up to the lectern.

Nevil climbed the steps to the platform, but did not come around to take her place. In the audience, Jefri and the others were still standing, but they weren't shouting now. Instead there just a fretful murmur that seem to come from the crowd as a whole.

Nevil turned to them and raised his palms placatingly. After a moment, the protesters settled back on their benches. "This is our New Meeting Place, folks. It's what Ravna has built for us. We should use it to do what's right." The murmuring and angry sounds died away-naturally, as far as Ravna could see-and everyone was watching Nevil, giving his sensible words the attention they deserved.

Ravna looked over her shoulder at the monster display that loomed behind the stage. The camera was still locked on her. Maybe it would switch to Nevil if she moved away from the lectern. She stepped to one side, then descended from the platform. But even when she sat in one of the side seats, there was still her face up there, now frowning down upon them.

The audience could only see Nevil as a human-sized figure, standing beside the lectern. At least his voice was not damped: "That's probably the most important thing about the New Meeting Place. It's where we refugees have our say and our vote." He looked to his left, toward Woodcarver.

Woodcarver gave him a civil nod or two, and her voice was downright conciliatory. "You're quite right, Nevil. It is more than time that the humans and the packs of the Domain have their say."

Nevil looked to his right, at Ravna. "And you, Ravna?"

"Yes, indeed! I-" but he had looked back at the audience, and Ravna let him run with his presentation. It was going better than her rehearsing.

"So then I suppose the question is, what to vote on?" He grinned, and there was even laughter from the crowd. "I think there might be a lot of separate things to vote on. For instance, it's important that when we are given the floor to speak, that our voices always be heard."

Agreement on that was loud and, happily, now unstifled.

"I think the most important issue is medical research. And that's not just to keep us looking young and beautiful." He flashed his smile again, then became very solemn. "You all know Timor Ristling." Nevil waved down toward the front row. Timor still sat there. When Nevil pointed at the child, the tracking camera finally woke up to its higher logic and suddenly Timor's image was towering on the wall behind the stage. This was not just a head and shoulders shot. The unhappy twistedness of his limbs was evident, and the faint tremor in his hands. The boy stared up at the giant image, then clapped in surprised glee.

Nevil smiled back at him, then looked out at the crowd. "How many of you remember Timor as he was back at the High Lab? I do, even though he was scarcely four years old. His mother and father maintained our legacy bootstrap logic-honorable work, and they did it well. They had every reason to believe their son would be just as steady." His voice fell. "But that was not to be. Instead, our situation here has nearly killed him." He paused and looked out again at his audience, and spoke with sober determination. "This is not a burden to be borne, not by Timor, not by anyone." The words brought a cheer.

In the tendays that followed, Ravna Bergsndot played this part of the meeting over and over in her mind, and marveled at the patchwork way the facts breached her preconceptions, and puzzlement yielded to understanding. She remembered standing, waving for Nevil's attention, trying to guide him back where she thought he'd been going, to talk about improved coldsleep facilities.

But Nevil had already moved on, riding the approval that seemed to come from all directions. "So yes, that is something we must surely vote on. But even that is only a symptom of the systematic problem we must cure. For whatever reason, there's been too much secrecy. The Executive Council should not be meeting in private. Perhaps there should be no Executive Council at all. I would give up my place on it."

Several in the audience had stood to speak. Nevil stopped and gestured, "Jefri?"

Jefri stood arms akimbo. His voice was angry, and he never quite looked at Ravna. Amdi had hunkered down around him with only a head visible here and there. "You want the one thing to vote on? It's not whether we have an Executive Council or whether you're on it, Nevil. The real question is whether we're going to have a megalomaniac nut case running us all into the ground!"

For a moment, there was true silence. For a moment, perhaps everyone was as shocked as Ravna. Then Gannon Jorkenrud was on his feet, shouting loud support for Jefri. But others were on their feet, too. Wenda Larsndot and Gannon Jorkenrud were suddenly in an angry shouting match.

Nevil raised his hands again. After some seconds the tumult died. Wenda angrily sat down and then so did Jorkenrud and the others. Nevil let the silence grow for a moment. Then he said, "It's clear we have much to discuss, more than we can vote on in this one meeting. We also have the day-to-day problems of maintaining the Domain. Perhaps there is a safe compromise. For everyday administration, we have a stable, proven resource." He turned and bowed to Woodcarver. "Madame, are you content to continue without the advice of an Executive Council? To administer in those noncontroversial issues of Domain affairs?"

Two of Woodcarver cast a look at Ravna. The others, including her puppy, were looking at Nevil and the audience. The co-Queen's aspect was one of sober attention. But Ravna had worked closely with Woodcarver for ten years. And right now, behind the solemn aspect, Ravna thought she detected amused satisfaction. None of that showed in her voice or words: "Quite content, Mister Storherte. Of course, I would still want everyone's advice."

"Of course," Nevil gave Woodcarver a nod that was almost a bow. And then he turned to Ravna. But he didn't have any similar request for her. Instead, his tone was comforting, conciliatory. "Ravna, we owe you so much. You supported Woodcarver in her war against Steel and the Old Flenser. We all remember your love in the early days of our exile, how you made it possible for Woodcarver and her packs to care for the youngest of us. Even now, we desperately need your expertise with Oobii's archives." He hesitated, as if uncertain about how to continue. "But at the same time ... we ... we think you have become fixated on potential threats that are very far away. We think you have fallen into a kind of mental trap, where your losses and loneliness lead you into a"-he looked up at the magnificent fakery of the Age of Princesses architecture-"into a kind of personal fantasy." His gaze came back to her, compassionate and probing. And now, finally, Ravna fully understood. She could feel the eyes of all the Children and packs upon her. Some might hate her, as Jefri seemed to. But most simply saw the uniform she wore, and this imperial hall-and concluded that her grand plans were madness. She could almost see that conclusion spread in the five or ten seconds of Nevil's silence. Then his voice gently continued: "So that is why I think that that must be our vote here today: That we ask you to stand aside from administration for a time, that you continue to give us the value of your insights and your help with Oobii, but that you let Woodcarver and the votes of this New Meeting Place do the governing. Do you understand the vote I'm suggesting, Ravna?"

For the first time in several minutes, Ravna looked Nevil Storherte straight in the eye. He did not flinch. There was nothing but firm respect in the gaze he showed to her and the world. Ravna opened her mouth to shout denunciations back at him,... but she didn't have the words. Without a minute or two to think, only enraged babble would emerge. But I could stop him. Nevil Storherte might have his petty audio and scene control, everything she had given him to make the New Meeting Place, but Ravna still had overall master control of the starship Out of Band II. She could take control of this room, blow out the Age of Princesses lie and force everyone to listen to ... the ravings of one now proven mad. She noticed that Woodcarver had tensed. She realized that at the level of raw force, Ravna held the whip hand.

But I'm not a mad woman. And so, when she spoke, Ravna said, "I understand, Nevil. I understand very well."

"Thank you, Ravna," Nevil's voice was full of compassion and relief.

Now Nevil was looking back at this audience. "And so I think we have something to vote for. A serious change that gives us all a hand in making a safe and healthy future. Is there debate before we vote?"

Actually there was, but not very much. Jorkenrud had his say, and then Jefri. That was more detailed and pointed and cutting than Jefri's shouted interruptions had been. Ravna almost started crying in the middle of it. As far as she could tell, Nevil was not using the Oobii's acoustics to shut anyone up, but there were very few who had much to say in opposition, and they seemed a bit confused. All around them they had the evidence of Ravna's megalomania, and when she turned a bit to the side, she noticed that the camera was tracking her again. Her scowling glare was monstrous on the wall above.

When it came, the vote was no surprise. The mad woman was safely elevated to the status of technical advisor.

There were cheers, and then the Children were coming into the aisles and moving forward. Around Ravna there seemed to be a bubble of emptiness. Fortunately, the vast display no longer captured her face. Where Ravna sat, there seemed to be only shadows.

Nevil came down from the speaker's platform. The babble grew louder as folks moved in close to shake his hand. Nevil was grinning and waving. He reached down to lift Timor high into the air. "We're doing this for him! We're doing this for us!"

Then he set the boy down, and both were lost in a swirl of well-wishers. After a few seconds, Timor came out from the crush, ignored for the moment. He looked around and then ran awkwardly across the open floor, toward the shadows that hid Ravna.

Up close, she could see that Timor was crying. He looked lost and devastated, not suddenly saved as Nevil proclaimed. He looks like I feel.

She went to one knee to greet him. He threw his arms around her neck. His voice came in her ear, the tone wondering. "Ravna, Ravna. What happened?"

CHAPTER 12.

For Ravna, the days that followed were strangely placid. She was told that Johanna and Pilgrim were en route back from the East Coast, but that no Executive Council meetings were planned. Woodcarver was not available. For the moment, the new "Technical Advisor to the Domain" had few responsibilities. She was asked to leave her apartment aboard the Oobii. That space would be used for the additional medical support that Nevil had promised. Apparently that involved upgrading the coldsleep gear, though Ravna wasn't clear on how that was to be accomplished.

Ravna was assigned one of the newest town houses on the Queen's Road. Bili Yngva showed her around the place and helped her move in. Bili was apparently Nevil's chief lieutenant. Bili was smiling and respectful. "Nevil wanted to show you this place, but I think he's discovered just how much work admin can be," he said, with a disarming grin. They were on the second floor of her new home. Like all the town houses, this had steam heating and indoor plumbing. These new ones had a second flush toilet on the upper floor.

The upper floor had both a front stairs and a back stairs. There was a living room with wide glass windows. The southwest exposures gave a grand view across the Inner Channel. "This is the first house with the new optical-grade glass sheeting. It's almost like having a real display, except that the view menu is a bit limited." He waved at the swirls of frost that encrusted the margins of the glass. "Don't worry about the ice, That'll go away once we connect the water. Your heater tower is already registered with Oobii."

Ravna nodded. Once the ship began heating her water, it wouldn't matter how much heat was leaking through those windows, except as it was used by Oobii's sensors as thermostat feedback. Ah, the wonders of central heating and central computing.

After a moment, Bili seemed to realize she wasn't going to respond further. "Well, I should go down and help the guys get your baggage installed."

Yngva went downstairs, and she heard him shouting out the front door. In moments there was crashing and banging, the sounds of people doing battle with large objects. Ravna followed him downstairs, but Bili was firm in preventing her from helping out. In fact, the boxes were intimidating, not something that Tines or small humans could do much with. Bili had four helpers, some of the biggest older boys. They didn't have much to say to Ravna, though every once in a while, Gannon Jorkenrud cast a sneering smile in her direction.

There was so much furniture, crockery, curtains, clothing. None of it was really hers, not her stuff from Oobii. Aboard ship, she'd had a few souvenirs and everything else was ship recycles. What Bili's crew was bringing in was pack made, though much of it had benefited from Oobii's technological contributions to the Domain.

The first floor rapidly filled with physical loot. Bili gave her a big grin, acknowledging the scale of the job. "Hei, I know it's crazy, but you need a lot of stuff to live well in primitive conditions. We'll get you helpers for the cooking and laundry."

Servants.

Ravna retreated to the top floor. She walked around the polished parquet floor, stopped at the window to examine the fittings. In the early years, many of the Children had had trouble with raw physicality, with systems so stupid that you had to understand them. She remembered how often the little ones were unnecessarily cold. In the early days, she'd had to remind the kids that they must consciously plan for their comfort. Down Here there was a harsher truth: even planning was not sufficient to avoid physical hardship.

Her new situation crippled her abilities with Oobii, yet it was far more luxurious than what most Children possessed. Nevil's maneuvering had not ended with his coup. Surely Bili understood all this, even as he smiled and indulged her.

There was noise on the stairs. Yngva's gang of movers had discovered the second floor. But it wasn't furniture that came up first. She turned to see an enormous roll of carpeting snaking up, one push-and-heave at a time. Yngva and Jorkenrud and the others finally got the thing across the center of the room. A pack carrying hammers came up the stairs after them. She recognized Screwfloss, sometime bartender and Flenser minion. And a carpet installer, too?

"Hei, Ravna, hei, hei," said Screwfloss, his heads bobbing at all the humans. He did some ostentatious measuring, then unrolled the carpet, four of him moving to the corners. One watched from the side. The pack edged the carpet into position. "Oops, not quite square." He tried again ... and a third time, finally nailing it down with tacks lipped from one of his panniers. The margins were still not quite right, but no one said Screwfloss was an expert carpet installer. On the other hand, the carpet itself was magnificent. This wasn't one of those plain, durable items that came out of the weaving mills. She leaned down and felt the plush. This was an art weave, some classic Tinish scene. The multiple anamorphic images were a meaningless jumble to Ravna, but the piece looked extremely expensive, the work of thousands of hours of traditional Tinish labor.

Ravna stood and noticed that Bili seemed faintly impatient at all the adjustments.

"Heh! Looks great, doesn't it?" said Screwfloss; he was asking her, but two of him were slanting an impudent look at Bili.

"It's ... beautiful," said Ravna.

"Good!" said Bili. "We want the Technical Advisor to be happy. Let's get the rest of the furniture up here."

"It looks like you've thought of everything, Bili, but-"

"Yes?" his smile became questioning.

"There's nothing ... nothing to think with." That was how a Straumer would say it.

Bili nodded. "Oh yes, computation, data access, communication? We'll install the house telephone tomorrow, Ravna. But remember, this is all any of us have away from Oobii."

Gannon Jorkenrud made a little noise, and Ravna saw the smirk on his face. Bili's other guys were blank-faced. Bili Yngva was only one with a friendly smile pasted on his face. "Don't worry, Ravna, we're working on special access for you down in the New Meeting Place."

"There are things I really need to keep up with, Bili. If I'm to be Technical Advisor, I-"

Yngva raised his hands placatingly. "I know, I know! We really need your help. Working out the priorities of that is just about Nevil's most important job these days. He'll get back to you with the task list in just a few days. He's promised me." He glanced out the windows. It was late afternoon and the sun had already set. "We should finish up here, or you're going to be cold."

They were already trooping down the stairs. Only Screwfloss seemed to notice that Ravna was not following. She waved the pack to go ahead, and then it was gone, too. Down below, they were banging around again, but this sounded like plumbing. Were Bili and Gannon and the other boys really this handy? Or was the noise mainly Screwfloss?

She resisted the urge to go downstairs and check on them. Instead she walked across the room to the broad windows. The glass had seemed distortion free earlier, but now there were faint ripples ... Oh. Warm air was already rising from the vents.

Ravna gazed out at the neighborhood. There were only a few other town houses visible in this direction, nothing to block the view. Beyond the darkening lands and black sea, the sky was now without color. She could see a handful of the brighter stars. Now that she was stuck on a single planet, the random position of a few bright stars told her of the seasons and the hours and ... there, at the edge of a pair of stars settling toward the sea, she was looking at the most important place in all the heavens. It was a nondescript patch of sky, showing only a few faint stars on even the darkest, clearest nights.

Just thirty lightyears out were perhaps one hundred starships. It was the threat that had hung over her for ten years, informing every decision, forcing her to push and persuade and bully both Children and Tines to attempt the impossible: to prevail against the Blight.

Now? Those terrible decisions were no longer hers to make, and she felt the strangest feeling ... of peace.

There was no word from Nevil the next day, or the next. A few of the Children visited her at her new house, but they didn't stay long. The older ones looked around at its glory and seemed to sense invisible walls.

The storms of the previous tenday had moved inland, blocking Johanna and Pilgrim's return. Their agrav was battened down hundreds kilometers to the east. Not all misfortune was Nevil's doing.

Ravna visited the Out of Band II every day. Bili Yngva had given her an interim access credential for the New Meeting Place. The cargo bay's one night of megalomaniac glory was past. Nevil had reverted the place to something like his original design. As Ravna had expected, the popularity of the primitive game stations had waned; what Oobii could create and display was pitifully weak compared to what the older Children remembered. Nowadays, the gamers were mainly packs and the youngest Children-and Timor. The boy was practically camped out by one of the stations, boring even the also-addicted Belle Ornrikak. Sometimes Timor didn't even notice Ravna, and when he did he was an unending firestorm of gaming esoterica. Ravna's only sympathizer was now distracted and ecstatically happy.

Other than Timor, the kids seemed reluctant to talk to her. Maybe when they saw her, they remembered only how she had seemed at that terrible meeting. So Ravna sat in the public area and puttered around with an interface, careful not to exceed the powers that came with Nevil's "interim access credential." That meant no sysadmin activity of course. The compute-and-search allowance was minimal, and some of the archives were not visible.

On her third visit, Wenda Larsndot came over and asked for help. "Needles is in love with the idea of mass production. So I've been trying to see what Oobii says. There's tonnes of stuff about numerical control tailoring, but I need something easy and low tech."

So Ravna gave her a tour of the hybrid planning tools that she'd built on top of the ship's archives. It was the sort of thing she'd pushed at the Children for years, even though it was awfully dull-at least by Straumer standards. There were millions of dead ends in such searches, and Oobii couldn't prune them all away. But solving this problem might be easy! In her mad race to head off the Blight, Ravna had chosen to skip over mechanical automation.... It turned out that most pretechnical civilizations invented mechanical readers for pattern-driven looms. So Wenda's real problem was simply to find one such that could easily fit the weaving equipment the Tines already had. Once Ravna had properly set up the Tinish constraints, it didn't take long. Oobii dredged up some insect race whose ancient history included a gadget for driving a near perfect match for a Tinish loom.

"Wow," said Wenda as she looked at the first-pass designs. "So now we can just hire a good artist, and turn out thousand-hour capes in less than a day!"

Ravna grinned back at her. "It still might not work. There are lots of small moving parts, and our weaving mills aren't exactly the same as this. Oobii is weak on doing final coordination." She waved at the design uncertainty flags that floated over the gears and cams. "You might have to ask Scrupilo to make a special purpose mill."

"Oh, we'll make this work." Wenda was already lost in consideration of the options and parts lists. Somehow it made her look twenty again.

Ravna glanced up and noticed that Edvi Verring and some still-younger kids were clustered about. Edvi gave her a nervous smile, "I was wondering, Ravna, we've been having some trouble with a game..."

It had been so long since she'd had time for this. And helping the Children with games was fun. These games didn't have the intransigence of reality. Ravna didn't need the good luck she'd had with Wenda. When something didn't work right, she could often just step back and tweak the game parameters. Sometimes, librarians-even with just an interim access credential-could have godlike powers.

"Ravna?" That was an adult voice, bringing her back from the depths of Edvi Verring's game craft.

She looked up and saw Bili Yngva standing beside her. How long have I been playing around? Wenda was still here, working on the weaving mill gadget.

"Sorry to bother you, Ravna, but-"

Then she noticed various mail flags. "Oops, I didn't notice."

"No problem. I just got word from Nevil. He'd like to chat with you, if you can drag yourself away from the important business here." He grinned at Wenda and the gamers.

About half of the New Meeting Place had been converted to offices. Yngva led her down tiny corridors. The construction was local timber and the lightweight plastic sheeting that Oobii could still extrude.

Ravna found herself lagging behind Bili. She could feel outrage thrusting up through her numbness. Sooner or later she and Nevil would have to talk, but she couldn't imagine how he could face her, what he could say....

Bili looked back at where Ravna had slowed to a halt. "It's just a little further, Ravna."

... so why am I the one who can't face this meeting?

After a moment, Ravna nodded and followed along. Indeed, Nevil's office was just around the corner. It looked no different from the others except that the display function showed his name in businesslike Samnorsk script.

Inside, Nevil Storherte looked unchanged, as handsome and calm as ever. He was seated at a plain workplace, surrounded by plain gray walls. "Come in, come in," he said, waving Ravna to one of the chairs beyond his desk. He glanced at Bili. "This will be about ten minutes. Can you come back then?"

"Sure thing." Bili departed.

And for the first time since The Day, Nevil and Ravna were alone, face to face. Ravna folded her arms and gave Nevil a long stare. Words wouldn't quite come.

Nevil stared back mildly, and after a moment raised an eyebrow. "So you're looking for an explanation, an apology?"

"The truth, before all else." But she couldn't help the strangled way her words came out.

"Okay, the truth." Nevil looked away from her for a moment. "The truth is that you brought this on yourself, Ravna. In the early years, you did enormous good. You're still the most important human being in the world. That's why everyone let you run loose for so long, that and the fact that anyone who thinks about it knows how much we owe you. That's also what makes your ... quirks ... so tragic."

"You really don't believe in the Blight?"

Nevil shrugged irritably. "I believe that we're not in a position to know exactly what happened Up There. Our presence here is good evidence that a deadly accident happened at the High Lab. Your presence here, and what's visible in Oobii's files-those are good evidence that your home worlds and probably mine have been destroyed. The silence across the sky is proof that some terrible catastrophe has been visited upon the Beyond. But your obsession with the 'Blight' goes beyond reasonable logic."

"What's left of their fleet is just thirty lightyears out, Nevil."

Storherte shook his head. "Thirty lightyears. Yes. Perhaps a hundred ships, moving at just a few kilometers per second on no coherent bearing and without ramscoop drives-all this by your own telling! Thousands of years from now, they may make planetfall, somewhere. When that eventually happens, whatever the facts behind all this uncertainty will be ancient history. Meantime-"