Ravna walked out of the maze of office corridors and down the ad hoc wood stairs to the main floor, where Nevil had left the game stations. Nowadays, this area of the New Meeting Place was almost deserted. The remaining game addicts consisted of a few packs, and of course Timor and Belle. Strange. Timor wasn't at his usual station. She walked around the floor watching the games. Normally, when Timor wandered, it was to give long-winded advice to any game-player who did not shoo him away.

She turned, headed for the ramp to midlevel, where most of the programming stations were located. Those had gained popularity as the limitations of the games had become apparent. In earlier years, the kids had turned up their noses at Slow Zone programming. Now their vision of medical necessity had changed that. It made perfect sense for Children and Tines to gather and work with Oobii in a nearly civilized venue. Some of that was gaming, but most was research that forced them to deal with the available automation. I should have created this place years ago. But at the time, she had been too concerned with the colony's self-sufficiency and establishing the Children's Academy. She would have seen the New Meeting Place as frivolous.

There were plenty of human-sounding voices up ahead, including the polite insistence of Timor Ristling: "But I just want to ask you-"

"Not now, I'm trying to set up the day's projects." That sounded like vin Verring.

The top of the ramp was dark, just another place where the makeshift construction interfered with Nevil's lighting. Ravna hesitated there, watching the scene. vin was facing five or six of the oldest kids, the most intense of the medical researcher wannabes, essentially a group Nevil had whipped up for his coup.

vin was talking to the group even as he fiddled with the interface of the big display, which at the moment was just showing idle status. "What I wanted to show you all was the tutorial I found yesterday. We not only have to-"

"vin, I just want to ask you if-" interrupted Timor.

vin waved the boy away. "Not now, Timor." He continued to work at the interface. He was speaking again to the group: "Oobii's automation is pitiful, but the tutorial I found claims to show how we can solve simple-"

Timor again said, "vin, I was wondering, could I-"

That got Timor a moment of vin's full attention. He glared at the boy and Ravna prepared to rush in. She didn't think vin Verring had ever been one of the kids who had been mean to Timor-but she was damned if he was going to start now.

"Look Timor! Give me a minute, huh? I just want to get this display to show folks the tutorial. Then you can ask me whatever you want."

Timor glanced at the display pedestal, as if noticing it for the first time. "Oh that. You need to-" He reached out, his fingers flicking across the maintenance interface, below where vin had been working. "It's just partly broken," he said, as if that was an explanation.

vin Verring stepped back as the expanding display image formed into what Ravna recognized as a programmer primer environment. Huh, vin had found one she hadn't seen, "Algorithms for Bottom Feeders." His audience was already sucking in notes and playing with the first lesson, "Constrained Search."

vin stared at it for second. "Oh! Yes, that's what-" he glanced down at Timor. "Okay then. What did you want to ask me?"

"Is it okay if I use that workstation? I mean, just for today." The boy waved across the room to the station that Belle Ornrikak was already lolling around, staking out the territory for Timor. It was the only station without an obvious user in residence.

Verring hesitated. "Um, sure. Go ahead."

Timor gave a whoop and hustled across the room to Belle.

Ravna let out her breath and strolled in as if she had just come up the ramp.

"Oh, hei, Ravna." vin came around his audience-which was now thoroughly distracted by the tutorial-and walked over to her. He made a small gesture in the direction of Timor and Belle. "Now that I seem to have lost my workstation ... could we talk for a minute?"

"Sure."

Since Ravna's fall, vin had actually been friendly. Lately, most of the medical wannabes had seemed friendlier.

"As-as a kind of starter project, we want to refurbish more of the coldsleep containers. But the in-casket manuals are useless, and so far we can't get Oobii to refine us a wish list-even though coldsleep is an ancient, simple technology."

Ah. This sounded like something from her speech-the part she hadn't gotten to say. So Nevil had put him up to this? She looked over at vin's team, all working hard to understand the tutorial.

Okay. "You're right about the manuals, vin. Down Here, they can't do repairs. On the other hand, Oobii does have an enormous amount of information about coldsleep implementations. If you could devise a search list that uses what you see in the casket manuals and properly feed that to Oobii...."

"You'd really help? Even after...?"

Ravna nodded. "One important decision you have to make is what level of medical risk you will tolerate." Her gaze drifted almost involuntarily to where Timor sat on the other side of the room.

"Oh." Then vin seemed to follow her gaze. "Oh!... I remember risk was one of the reasons you wanted to postpone this kind of work." He watched Timor Ristling for a few moments. Timor had set his workstation display to large, perhaps so it would be easier for Belle to follow what he was doing. That was wasted effort, since the foursome had curled up on the floor around his chair, all eyes closed. At the moment, Timor was oblivious to this. He pounded away enthusiastically. This was no ordinary game. It looked ... much simpler. Ravna could see simple dotmarkers making rows across a plane. Below that was what looked like a synthetic machine language, three-letter abbreviations and numerical operands.

"It looks like he's written a binary counter," vin said softly. "That's so sad. The human mind should not be wasted on tasks so trivial." vin glanced back at Ravna and seemed to think better of making a further comment.

She smiled. "You feel sorry for me, too, hei vin?"

"Actually, I was feeling sorry for me and..." he waved at his friends struggling away at the bottom feeder tutorial. "It's such a waste."

Even without the daylight, the northern winter still had its time markers. There was bright twilight in the hours near noon. On clear nights, away from the twilight, the aurora swept from horizon to horizon, shifting minute by minute. The moon bobbed along the horizon in its tenday cycle. Winter storms came every third or fourth day, some lasting hours, some continuing on with no letup through to the next storm front. Many buildings were reduced to bizarre humps beneath the snow, the smoothness broken only by streets that absolutely must be kept clear.

The lowest parts of Oobii were lapped by the snow. The rest, the arching drive fronds, the curves of the hull-all that glittered green in whatever light there was. The area around the main entrance was tramped down by the constant traffic.

Twice a tenday, Nevil held his public meetings in the New Meeting Place, and every day the Children of vin's team and others were working in the ship, honestly trying to master its automation. One group managed to revive the freight device that had carried the Lander. Nevil had a big party after that-and Ravna had to admit that the orbiter would improve things. It was close to being a dead hulk, but still had enough life in it to act as a remote sensor and radio relay.

The Executive Council no longer met, its members now keeping to their separate factions. Scrupilo's Cold Valley lab had not been directly affected by Nevil's coup, though that was mainly because the necessary simulations had already been done and the experimental equipment was in place. Scrupilo was clearly nervous about the future, but he continued to play along with Nevil and Woodcarver, and radio relay through the orbiter had made the Cold Valley setup much more convenient.

And tenday by tenday, Ravna and Johanna and Pilgrim pursued their little conspiracy from the second floor of their town house.

"It's just a matter of time," said Johanna. "Nevil is losing support every day. That's what Ravna's programs say. And that's what I see when I talk to Scrupilo and Benky and the Larsndots." She looked around at Pilgrim, seemed to detect insufficiently enthusiastic agreement. "So what's your problem?"

"Heh, someone has to balance your mood swings." Pilgrim was perched at various viewpoints of Ravna's grand carpet. Pilgrim loved that carpet. He said it was a Long Lakes masterpiece. Just now, three of his heads were resting on the plush, staring across its interleaved landscapes. "I agree with Ravna's projections, yes. I'm even more pleased that Ravna's able to counterspy on Nevil."

Ravna grinned. "Yes! Abusing Command Privilege is much more fun than I ever imagined."

"I'm also pleased with what an excellent politician one of my friends has turned out to be-not you, Johanna, you're still the Mad Bad Girl."

Johanna frowned. "We're gonna teach that bas-that fellow Nevil a proper lesson in, um, civic leadership. See? I can be suave."

Ravna said, "You can't mean that I'm the excellent politician! I haven't been able to do any of the clever maneuvers in Oobii's guide. I'd trip on my tongue if I tried, and besides, vin Verring and the others are doing their best. I don't want to fool them."

Pilgrim nodded from all around the carpet. "Yes. And they know that. Since Nevil's coup, you've done your best for them, more than anything Nevil has done."

"They know it, too!" said Johanna.

Nevil had assigned some of the oldest kids to help with the research. These were his special friends, mostly top students at the High Lab. The effort had lasted scarcely a tenday. Nevil's friends had no concept of Oobii's limitations. Gannon Jorkenrud had spent less than a day trying to "negotiate" with Oobii-that was the word Gannon himself used. He had almost punched Timor when the boy tried to give him advice about access methods. In the end, Gannon had departed in a towering rage.

Pilgrim was grinning. "You haven't played the little games, but you are playing the big one. The Children know you're their friend. More and more, they realize that your planning methods can work, but the shortcuts they've undertaken will not."

"Okay, then," said Johanna. "If you agree everything is going so well, what does worry you?"

"A couple of things. My dear Woodcarver has rejected me. No more hanky-panky." Some of the cheeriness had gone out of his voice.

"I'm sorry, Pilgrim," said Ravna, though even after ten years she wasn't quite clear about Interpack romance-there were so many different things it could be.

Pilgrim gave a little shrug. "Nothing lasts forever; we made good puppies for each other. But now-well, that little Sht is something else. Woodcarver is more suspicious and less forgiving than ever. If you really love another pack, if you have members from the other, sometimes secrets can leak across when you get intimate. It's hardly ever more than mood and attitude, but for now ... well, there is only talk going on between us." His heads angled around toward Johanna. "But at least we are still talking."

Jo bowed her head, some of her aggressive optimism evaporating. "Yeah. I still haven't been able to pin down my little brother." Jefri and Amdi were at Smeltertop, about sixty kilometers to the north. That was the base camp for the Cold Valley lab, and also the lab's source of glass templates and high purity carbon. "They have a radio at Smeltertop, but it's very public." She looked at Ravna. "I'll bet he'll stay up there the whole winter; my guess is he's terribly, terribly ashamed."

Ravna gave a nod. Her sharpest, most painful memory of Nevil's coup was the moment when Jefri stood and denounced her. She looked around at Pilgrim, searching for something less uncomfortable to discuss: "What's the other thing bothering you?"

"Oh yes. That's the prospect of our inevitable success. You've focused Oobii's political science research too purely. Politics is good; when it works properly, disagreements get solved without people beating each other up. But when a regime knows its days are numbered, there's always the chance it may use its position to change the rules and make the debate it is losing irrelevant."

Jo's chin came up with a little start. "You mean violence? Between the Children? We kids grew up together, Pilgrim. Nevil is a sneaky rat bastard, but I think he's doing what he thinks is right. At the bottom of it all, Nevil is not evil."

A tenday passed. There was another sea storm, followed by days when the moon skittered along beneath the aurora.

Ravna spent more than fifteen hours a day in the New Meeting Place and her little office. The various programming teams were improving, but it was the younger Children who did best with Oobii. Timor Ristling was the star. He could reach the depths of Oobii's automation; he claimed that he could program without user development tools, though Ravna doubted that. Again and again it was Timor who patched together little fixes for the Children, or explained things in ways that made sense to them.

More Children came and talked to Ravna, some to apologize, some to give a friendly word. Some wanted her okay to demand another election.

Besides working with the kids, she had other ... projects. There was her agriculture assignment; that ran in the space Nevil could see. Oobii's genetic modification capability was extremely simple-minded, but it had been one of the ship's greatest success stories. The modified fodder crops brought in more tech rent than the rest of Oobii's services combined. Tines of Woodcarver's Domain had prospered as hundreds of small farms-scarcely more than private game reserves-had merged into large ranches. Newcastle town itself could never have grown as it had without the livestock herds that were now possible.

But Nevil wanted a more direct payoff, some new and tasty food for humans. That was tricky, since Oobii didn't have the computational power to avoid ecological disasters with modified plants that were fully human-compatible. In the end, Ravna made a minor tweak in natural hardicore grass-well within natural selection bounds-and then enabled another of the epigenetic triggers that most humans had carried since their earliest stargoing civilizations. The Children who used the trigger would be able to eat and enjoy the new hardicore grass. The combination mod should be safe for both humans and Tines World, though Ravna wouldn't have done it she had still been in charge: every new human compatibility carried a small risk of making the user more susceptible to local diseases.

Eventually, her project was complete except for minor window-dressing. So now, when she was alone in her office, she had plenty of time to review her spy programs. These were not the high-tech magic she had used on Flenser-but at least they worked. Pham Nuwen was the sneakiest good person she had ever known, and a Slow Zone programmer to boot. During his most paranoid time aboard Oobii, Pham had set up an elaborate system of booby traps and internal security. That had contributed to the hellish atmosphere of that terrible time; undoing the traps had cured some of Oobii's worst glitches. But now she found that the security programs gave her a kind of protection that she could have never managed by herself. Pham's last gift, unrecognized till now.

So Ravna could check directly on Pilgrim's fear of Nevilish villainy. Using Command Privilege and Pham's programs, she could see inside every one of Nevil's Oobii operations, could read every mail and every conversation. She could even see much of what was happening in the orbiter.

Yes, Nevil and Bili and their inner circle were getting desperate. They had stepped up their snooping, and even planted supporters in the groups who were going to demand new elections. But there was no talk of violence, just spin and nasty tricks. Both Oobii's guide and Pilgrim were recommending that Ravna begin to talk compromise with Nevil's people, something mellow enough that no one would regard the outcome of the elections as unendurable disgrace.

It all kept Ravna shipside more and more, with her catching little naps and working all the way through till twilight of the next day. Up north, Scrupilo was ready to fabricate his adders! Unfortunately, that meant he needed new results from Oobii.

Ravna juggled that problem all through one night, hoping that the kids' programs would give the system some slack. She could have used her command privileges to invisibly override the Children's priority. But that might be noticed ... and in any case, it would've felt like a betrayal. In the end, she let the Children's priority stand. Finally, she straggled out of the ship via the private corridors behind the cargo bay, too tired to talk to anyone in the New Meeting Place.

Outside, the brightest of the midday twilight had faded. To Tinish eyes, this might qualify as full night. To human vision, the landscape was gray on gray, lighter sweeps of the recent snowfall piled up around the arching spines of her starship, falling away to the darker grays of steep, naked rock, thence to snows that covered the sea ice far below.

Ravna trudged uphill toward Newcastle town. It was just beginning to snow, per Oobii's predictions. But this was a soft, windless fall. It would be a big problem by the time it ended, but for now it just brought a nearly inaudible sighing to the air. She lit her handlamp and continued on. Earlier snows had narrowed the way, but there were only a few humans and fewer packs abroad.

She knew that until humans arrived, the winters in the Domain had brought life nearly to a halt. Even in recent years, with indoor light and heat, most businesses slowed in the dark and cold. But up ahead, in the heart of town, the Academy classes would be in session. Almost all the youngest Children, both first and second generation, would be there. They were the least affected by winter depression. The youngest humans had so much energy that if you gave them light and food and warmth, they got along fine. Before the New Meeting Place, the Academy had been the center of social life in winter. There would still be dozens of packs up there, dazzled by the warmth and the energy. She wondered if Nevil realized that the Academy still gave Ravna leverage.

Her lamp light reflected off sheets of snowflakes coming down ever more densely around her. She had reached the outskirts of Newcastle town. Ten years ago, this had been where she first set foot on Tines World. There had been no town here, and the castle was still being built. This ground had been a battlefield. Now it was a medieval city. No, not medieval. The buildings were stone and wood and wattle, but they had pipes climbing their walls, and hot water towers sticking high above the rooftops. No one threw garbage out the windows overlooking this street, and even at the height of summer, there was no sewage floating down the gutters. In building Newcastle town, Scrupilo had used Oobii's design archives to plan his understreet sewer pipes-and Oobii's beam gun to keep water flowing year-round. Such tiny changes had created a place that might be safer and friendlier than any other in the world.

... And just now, here on the Queen's Road, she was close to being lost! She could see only a meter or two, and her stupid handlamp was perhaps worse than useless. The new snow had already covered all but the deeper wheel tracks-and even her own footprints. Looking up, Ravna could see a blurry bluish glow: probably a light in a high window. Huh. In a rainstorm, even a blinding drencher in the middle of the night, she could have walked over to the nearest building and proceeded along with one hand on the wall, recognizing locations as she went. Here, this afternoon, the snow shoveled up from previous storms blocked her from touching anything familiar.

She proceeded, assuming that the main axis of the street was simply where it was easiest to walk. The occasional window lamps were her stars. There ought to be a fountain square every hundred meters or so.

"Sssssss." The sound was barely louder than the sound of the falling snow, and matched its timbre precisely. Either her ears were playing tricks on her, or a pack was quietly trying to attract her attention. She drifted away from her guess about the road's center, toward the sound. There was a gap in the snow pile, a notch that would mark an alley or side street. She pointed her lamp onto the space.

The strange hissing stopped. At the center of her lamplight she saw a pack hunkered down in the snow. The creature gave her a little wave. "Screwfloss here." The voice was a whisper, and she suspected it was focused on her head alone, inaudible anywhere else. "I wonder if we might have a brief chat?"

Ravna stepped forward and took a good look at the pack. Yes, this was Screwfloss; she recognized two of him by the white blazes running from muzzle to crown. "What do you want?" she said.

Screwfloss was backing away from her, angling his heads for her to follow. "Not so loud," he said. "One of Bili Yngva's boys is about, um"-his heads bobbed a measuring gesture-"about thirty meters behind you. I'd just as soon he doesn't know you took a detour." He was already sweeping snow over her tracks.

Oh! She hadn't realized anyone was following her; damn, the new Ravna should have assumed that was case. She brought her light down to a dim point, just enough to keep her footing and see the nearest of Screwfloss. The pack led her down the alley and around two turns. It moved all together with itself. Ravna knew that the snow damped mindsounds down to just a couple of meters; the pack would probably lose its mind if it didn't bunch up. Looking up, she saw no more bluish lights. This must be one of the windowless, single-pack-wide streets. They were ubiquitous down on Hidden Island; the new town had some, too.

"Okay," said Screwfloss. "This should be private enough. The human will just follow the main road. He could get to the castle before he ever figures out he lost you." The pack gave a crafty chuckle; this critter watched too much human drama. "It's just a little further, My boss is waiting to talk to you."

Ask him straight out: "Flenser, right?"

"That's supposed to be a secret." He sounded insulted.

A proper caution was finally catching up with her-now that she was deep into the windowless alley. She had decided Oobii's later surveillance of Flenser was essentially noise-but this was much more of a test of her theories than was sensible. She trudged along after Screwfloss, but now she was watching for turnoffs. The snow was deep-piled and untrodden. In such fluffiness, maybe she could outrun him. Finally Screwfloss hesitated. "The Boss is a few meters on, my lady." In her dimmed lamp light she had the impression of his heads bowing her graciously forward.

There was no help for it, so: "Thank you, Screwfloss." She gave his nearest head a patronizing pat and strolled forward.

Shadows and flickering sheets of falling snow. So how could Flenser get to the top of Starship Hill unnoticed? This wasn't Hidden Island, with its old maze of secret passages.

She brightened her lamp and swept it quickly around her. She saw snow up to shoulder height and windowless, half-timbered walls above that. This was not a cul-de-sac. It was more like a T-intersection-and another pack sat in a clump beside one of the exits. It was a fivesome. One of the members was perched in a wheelbarrow.

Ravna walked up to the pack, and gave a shallow bow. "Flenser-Tyrathect," she said, using the full name. A feeble attempt to remind you of your better three-fifths.

As usual, the pack sounded sly and coy: "And greetings to you, Ravna Bergsndot. I had hoped for a private conversation, and now the elements have cooperated to make it even more so."

Ravna tried to sound nonchalant: "You can get the ship's weather predictions just like everyone else."

"Um, yes. Still, I didn't want to postpone this meeting much longer. Will you walk with me?" Snouts gestured toward the path behind him. "This alley intersects the Queen's Road a bit further on. With any luck, Nevil's boy spy will never even guess you strayed."

"Lead on, then."

Flenser came to his feet, and struggled to turn the wheelbarrow around. Ravna reached out to help. "No, no, I'm quite good at this." Flenser's voice might have been frosty; in any case, it lacked some of its slithery quality. Most of the pack was healthy, but navigating the wheelbarrow that held his maimed member-that raised in Ravna's imagination the vision of an elderly medieval human, hobbling through his last years. Many broodkenners would have advised the discarding of such a weakened member.

Then the pack was underway, a lurching progress, but still as fast as a slowly walking human. Somehow this cripple had popped up all undetected in the middle of a blizzard in the heart of Woodcarver's most secure city. Ravna couldn't resist: "How did you manage this, Flenser? I thought you were down on Hidden Island-"

She heard the characteristic sly laugh. "And I was, all tidily bundled up in the Old Castle, with Woodcarver's police watching the entrances three packs deep, and her secret cameras watching my 'innermost' haunts. Yes, I know about those cameras. Ha ha. And I know Woodcarver knows. But she can't see me when I'm in other rooms or down in the catacombs. I have ways out of my castle, and I still have a few truly loyal retainers. With the Inner Channel frozen, it was easy to sneak me across to the mainland."

Ravna knew that Flenser had used that trick in the past, to visit Steel's remnant on the mainland. She hadn't told Woodcarver, partly because the visits seemed innocent, and partly because it would have revealed Ravna's "magical" surveillance system. "So sneaking over the ice got you to the mainland. That's still six hundred meters down from where we're standing now. How did you get yourself up here all unseen?"

"I would have been noticed on the funicular, that's for sure." He gave her a sly look. "Who knows, Ravna? I'm a master of disguise; perhaps I came up separately." He let her chew on that for a moment. "But I'll let you in on the secret: call it evidence of my good faith." Or evidence of the well-known vanity of all Woodcarver's creations. "You see, while you and Woodcarver and Scrupilo were congratulating yourselves about Newcastle town's water and sewage system, I was more interested in the fault map that Oobii devised. Using that map, it was an easy matter-well, years of labor, actually, since doing it under Woodcarver's snouts was a nightmare-to dig a stairway. It's a narrow thing, almost as narrow as my member tunnels of old. You remember those?"

"Yes," Ravna said shortly. Amdi and nine-year-old Jefri had come close to being burned alive in something similar-though that had been on Steel's orders. "You couldn't get the wheelbarrow through one of those tunnels."

"True. On the stairs, I use a special sling for my White Tips"-the maimed one-"but even so, the climb is excruciating. Isn't that so, Screwfloss?"

"Yeah, Boss." The voice came from immediately behind her. She flinched and turned: Screwfloss was practically treading on her heels-which put him barely two meters behind Flenser. That was amazingly close for packs. Okay, the snowfall attenuated mindsounds considerably-but perhaps Screwfloss was one of the old White Jackets, a Flenser lord. Those had been trained to give up hunks of identity when their master demanded it.

Screwfloss continued. "I had to drag White Tips up 151 stairsteps. It will be worse going back down. We won't get home till after tomorrow noon twilight."

She turned back to Flenser and tried for nonchalance. "Okay, you've shared a real secret with me. What do you want?"

"Simply to help, my lady. It's as I've always told you and your co-Queen, from the very first day that you and she met the New Me."

"But you're not sharing this with Woodcarver?"