CHAPTER 23
!V rationalize terminology: Visitor v ? (you only use Visitor in
!V c24 and c34 as of 10Feb91 )
!V As of 16Feb91, I made Visitor the common term
!V Steel and Flenser use (including in c37). Amdi and the Spacers
!V and Woodcarver's people can use Spacer, but don't use "Visitor"
!ID Large structures in the transcend would not be sun-powered
! habitats -- in fact that might be a distinguishing feature
! This could be a surprise to Pham Nuwen
!ID term: "dayaround" "day'n'night" (see Norsk analog)
!TINES dozen would definitely be a unit used (probably part of a number
! of words for small multiples of four)
!V But elsewhere, you've been big on 10 and 4, so a dozen would
!V be no more fundamental than it is for humans
!Some later scene backgrounds:
! A walk in the forest (strange animals, sonic camouflagers)
! Santa Anas so intense they cause fires
!CHK Look up Santa Ana, scirocco (or sirocco), Mistral
! also föhn (german) and fønvind (norsk) dry thaw wind (see E.Haugen
! dictionary)

Steel had always admired military architecture. Now he was adding a new chapter to the book, building a castle that protected against the sky as well as the land around. By now the boxy "ship" on stilts was known across the continent. Before another summer passed, there would be enemy armies here, trying to take -- or at least destroy -- the prize that had come to him. Far more deadly: the star people would be here. He must be ready. !Maybe Jefri pets Steel ("Yech" -- Steel)

Steel inspected the work almost every day now. The stone replacement for the palisade was in place all across the south perimeter. On the cliffside, overlooking Hidden Island, his new den was almost complete ... had been complete for some time, a part of him grumbled. He really should move over here; the safety of Hidden Island was fast becoming illusion. Starship Hill was already the center of the Movement -- and that wasn't just propaganda. What the Flenser embassies abroad called "the oracle on Starship Hill" was more than a glib liar could dream. Whoever stood nearest that oracle would ultimately rule, no matter how clever Steel might be otherwise. He had already transferred or executed several attendants, packs who seemed just a little too friendly with Amdijefri.
Starship Hill: When the aliens landed, it had been heather and rock. Through the winter, there'd been a palisade and a wooden shelter. But now construction had resumed on the castle, the crown whose jewel was the starship. Soon this hill would be the capital of the continent and the world. And after that.... Steel looked into the blue depths of the sky. How much further his rule extended would depend on saying just the right thing, on building this castle in a very special way. Enough dreaming. Lord Steel pulled himself together and descended from the new wall along fresh-cut stone stairs. The yard within was twelve acres, mostly mud. The muck was cold on his paws, but the snow and slush were confined to dwindling piles away from the work routes. Spring was well-advanced, and the sun was warm in the chill air. He could see for miles, out over Hidden Island all the way to the Ocean, and down the coast along the fjord country. Steel walked the last hundred yards up the hill to the starship. His guards paced him on either side, with Shreck bringing up the rear. There was enough room that the workers didn't have to back away -- and he had given orders that no one was to stop because of his presence. That was partly to maintain the fraud with Amdijefri, and partly because the Movement needed this fortress soon. Just how soon was a question that gnawed. !If you decide to keep this part about warmed earth, you must
! have an explanation somewhere -- DONE in this paragraph
!You know, there should still be juice left in the refugee ship
! V -- not used here
!NÆH: Maybe Tyrathect has actually made some measurements. All very
! contradictory (like Stan's story about Newton's apple)

Steel was still looking in all directions, but his attention was where it should be now, on the construction work. The yard was piled with cut stone and construction timbers. Now that the ground was thawing, the foundations for the inner wall were being dug. Where it was still hard, Steel's engineers were injecting boiling water. Steam rose from the holes, obscuring the windlasses and the diggers below. The place was louder than a battle field: windlasses creaking, blades hacking at dirt, leaders shouting to work teams. It was also as crowded as close combat, though not nearly so chaotic. !jrf mattock?
!V according to my
!V dictionary "mattock" is a "digging and grubbing implement...", or
!V is that you don't think such would be appropriate for this job?
!V of course the handles would be modified
!jrf2 ok

Steel watched a digger pack at the bottom of one of the trenches. There were thirty members, so close to each other that their shoulders sometimes touched. It was an enormous mob, but there was nothing of an orgy about the association. Even before Woodcarver, construction and factory guilds had been doing this sort of thing: The thirty-member pack below was probably not as bright as a threesome. The front rank of ten swung mattocks in unison, carving steadily into the wall of dirt. When their heads and mattocks were extended high, the ten members behind them darted forward to scoop back the dirt and rocks that had just been freed. Behind them, a third tier of members hauled the dirt from the pit. Making it work was a complicated bit of timing -- the earth was not homogeneous -- but it was well within the mental ability of the pack. They could go on like this for hours, shifting first and second ranks every few minutes. In years past, the guilds jealously guarded the secret of each special melding. After a hard day's work, such a team would split into normally intelligent packs -- each going home very well paid. Steel smiled to himself. Woodcarver had improved on the old guild tricks -- but Flenser had provided an essential refinement (actually a borrowing from the Tropics). Why let the team break up at the end of a work shift? Flenser work teams stayed together indefinitely, housed in barracks so small they could never recover their separate pack minds. It worked well. After a year or two, and with proper culling, the original packs in such teams were dull things that scarcely wanted to break away.
For a moment Steel watched the cut stone being lowered into the new hole and mortared into place. Then he nodded at the whitejackets in charge, and walked on. The foundation holes continued right up to the walls of the starship compound. This was the trickiest construction of all, the part that would turn the castle into a beautiful snare. A little more information via Amdijefri and he would know just what to build.
The door to the starship compound was open just now, and a whitejackets was sitting back to back in the opening. That guard heard the noise an instant before Steel: two of its members broke ranks to look around the side of the compound. Almost inaudibly, there came high screams, then honking attack calls. The whitejackets leaped from the stairs and raced around the building. Steel and his guards weren't far behind. !V Possible INCON if you make a big deal of everyone having to come to
!V attention. On the other hand, I do want the reference to "backsy-
!V frontsy" here -- surveying the novel, I don't think coming to
!V "attention" is so pervasive that it would affect the backsy-frontsy
!V scene here February 16, 1991
!PRB Putting the supervisor to the question right there doesn't seem
! quite the right action if the problem was that the work
! team had guessed their fate. TUF

He skidded to a stop at the foundation trench on the far side of the ship. The immediate source of the racket was obvious. Three packs of whitejackets were putting a team's talker to the question. They had separated out the verbal member and were beating it with truncheon whips. This close, the mental screams were almost as loud as the shouting. The rest of the digger team was coming out of the trench, breaking into functional packs and attacking the whitejackets with their mattocks. How could things get so bloody screwed up? He could guess. These inner foundations were to contain the most secret tunnels of the entire castle, and the even more secret devices he planned to use against the Two-Legs. Of course, all of the workers on such sensitive areas would be disposed of after the job was done. Stupid though they were, maybe they had guessed their fate.
Under other circumstances, Steel might have backed off and simply watched. Failures like this could be enlightening; they let him identify the weaknesses in his subordinates, who was too bad (and too good) to continue in their jobs. This time was different. Amdijefri were aboard the starship. There was no view through the wooden walls, and surely there was another whitejackets on guard within, but-- Even as he lunged forward, shouting to his servants, Steel's back-looking member caught sight of Jefri coming out of the compound. Two of the pups were on his shoulders, the rest of Amdi spilling out around him. !In a way, this fight scene violates "V's<?> Triad": it helps with char
! and background, but does not really advance the plot
!
!Should make it clear somewhere the reasons why people at
! Hidden Island and Steel in particular are not fluent in
! Samnorsk:
! 1. Don't have data set
! 2. The have one excellent translator
! Might have this be a misconception briefly on the
! OOB, thinking that the translator is automatic
! 3. Arrogance instilled by Steel
! 4. Steel's desire to keep Jefri isolated
!
!Get the samnorsk right: NO

"Stay back!" he yelled at them, and in his sparse Samnorsk, "Danger! Stay back!" Amdi paused, but the Two-Legs kept coming. Two soldier packs scattered out of his way. They had standing orders: never touch the alien. Another second and the careful work of a year would be destroyed. Another second and Steel might lose the world -- all on account of stupidity and bad luck. !CHKd mattock

But even as his back members were shouting at the Two Legs, his forward ones leaped atop a pile of stone. He pointed at the teams coming out of the trench. "Kill the invaders!"
His personal guards moved close around him as Shreck and several troopers streamed by. Steel's consciousness sagged in the bloody noise. This was not the controlled mayhem of experiments beneath Hidden Island. This was random death flying in all directions: arrows, spears, mattocks. Members of the digger team ran about, flailing and crying. They never had a chance, but they killed a number of others in their dying. !NÆH: This feeling of panic for another might be the occasion for
! introspection later on the part of Steel.
!Ask if any consultant is thinking that Amdi is in on the Steel fraud
!CHRON PRB Story has to be spaced well enough to allow pregnancy and
! useful puppy-hood for Woodcarver offspring. It would be especially good
! if
! the puppy can come along on the hike from Woodcarvers to Starship Hill
!
!ID at end
! Woodcarver: "student."
! Tyrathect: "teacher."
!
!NÆH: CHK with consultants on their psychoanalysis of Steel
!
!CHK should I have Tyra be close or distant to Amdijefri?
! If she's close to early on, then it would be too easy for
! her to let the cat out of the bag.
!
!?CHK when should Tyra be revealed to the readers?
!
!V comments related to Epilog:
!REN Flenser's Fragment statt Flenser Fragment -- never followed up
! on this
! Actually Tyrathect might have some weird fondness for Steel
! Steel is partly the biological child of Flenser
! Tyra knows how he was abused
! Tyra's reaching this conclusion might be evidence of
! character growth in her, coming to terms with the fact
! that she is mainly Flenser herself.
!V Image at the end:
! The threesome [what's left of Steel] trails naked behind her,
! unhousebroken animals ... piss in a puddle.
!

Steel backed away from the melee, toward Jefri. The Two-Legs was still running toward him. Amdi followed, shouting in Samnorsk. A single mindless team member, a single misaimed arrow, and the Two-Legs would die and all would be lost. Never in his life had Steel felt such panic for the safety of another. He raced to the human, surrounding him. The Two-Legs fell to his knees and grabbed Steel by a neck. Only a lifetime of discipline kept Steel from slashing back: the alien wasn't attacking, he was hugging. !QU How about "fucking a corpse" instead of "having sex with..."?
!jrf ||||||||||||||||bad idea

The digger team was almost all dead now, and Shreck had pushed the surviving members too far away to be a threat. Steel's guards were securely around him only five or ten yards away. Amdi was all clumped together, cowering in the mind noise, but still shouting to Jefri. Steel tried to untangle himself from the human, but Jefri just grabbed one neck after another, sometimes two at a time. He was making burbling noises that didn't sound like Samnorsk. Steel trembled under the assault. Don't show the revulsion. The human would not recognize it, but Amdi might. Jefri had done this before, and Steel had taken advantage even though it cost him. The mantis child needed physical contact; it was the basis for the relationship between Amdi and Jefri. Similar trust must come from letting this thing touch him. Steel slid a head and neck across the creature's back the way he had seen parents do with pups down in the dungeon laboratories. Jefri hugged him harder, and swept his long articulate paws across Steel's pelt. Revulsion aside, it was a very strange experience. Ordinarily such close contact with another intelligent being could only come in battle or in sex -- and in either case, there wasn't much room for rational thought. But with this human -- well, the creature responded with obvious intelligence -- but there wasn't a trace of mind noise. You could think and feel both at the same time. Steel bit down on a lip, trying to stifle his shivering. It was ... it was like having sex with a corpse.
Finally Jefri stepped back, holding his hand up. He said something very fast, and Amdi said, "Oh Lord Steel, you're hurt. See the blood." There was red on the human's paw; Steel looked at himself. Sure enough, one rump had taken a nick. He hadn't even felt it till now. Steel backed away from the mantis and said to Amdi, "It's nothing. Are you and Jefri unhurt?"
There was a rattling exchange between the two children, almost unintelligible to Steel. "We're fine. Thank you for protecting us."
Fast thinking was something that Flenser had carved into Steel with knives: "Yes. But it never should have happened. The Woodcarvers disguised themselves as workers. I think they've been at this for days waiting for a chance at you. When we guessed the fraud, it was almost too late.... You should really have stayed inside when you heard the fighting."
Amdi hung his heads ashamedly, and translated to Jefri. "We're sorry. We got excited, and t-then we thought you might get hurt." !PRB: Do you really want to keep the sex ambiguity about Tyrathect?
!V Use interior view of gender as a measure of whether Tyra or Flenser
!V has the upper hand.
!

Steel made comforting noises. At the same time, two of him looked around at the carnage. Where was the whitejackets that had deserted the stairs right at the beginning? That pack would pay -- His line of thought crashed to a halt as he noticed: Tyrathect. The Flenser Fragment was watching from the meeting hall. Now that he thought about it, he'd been watching since right after the battle began. To others his posture might seem impassive, but Steel could see the grim amusement in the Fragment's expression. He nodded briefly at the other, but inside Steel cringed; he had been so close to losing everything ... and the Flenser had noticed. !V IMP :
!V PRB of where to reveal that there will never be any more Flenser
!V Fragments showing up:
!V Can't really put it on camera in c15 ("oct 15988") and the next scene
! with
!V these two is here in c24 ("apr '89") which seems kinda late to learn.
!V The realistic
!V thing would have been to put it off camera
!
!jdv p384 [c24] need to RETRO why the rest of Flenser hasn't shown up
!jdv here rather than later
!jdv p516 [c30] where finally mention that fragments were destroy
^ jdv p385 creating of children is still obscure

"Well let's get you two back to Hidden Island." He signaled to the keepers that had come up behind the starship.
"Not yet, Lord Steel!" said Amdi, "We just got here. A reply from Ravna should arrive very soon."
Teeth grated, but out of sight of the children. "Yes, please do stay. But we'll all be more careful now, right?"
"Yes, yes!" Amdi explained to the human. Steel stood forelegs-on-shoulders and patted Jefri on the head.
Steel had Shreck take the children back into the compound. Till they were out of sight, all his members looked on with an expression of pride and affection. Then he turned and walked across the pinkish mud. Where was that stupid whitejackets?




!CHAR Could have Tyra comtemplating partial suicide. The coupling is
! both loose and (truly, it may turn out) strong.
!CHAR Considering that Vendacious and Flenser are Woodcarver's
! children, I think it's clear there is the potential for
! deep villainy in her
!
!V: I think this is under control:
!PRB Gotta decide on what sort of watching there is on the kids when
! they are in the ship. Why isn't Steel there all the time???
!V In fact the fact he can't be there all the time, and that's why no
!V one else is permitted to be.
! This also has some impact on the setup for the digger mutiny.
!
!V: Use English
!PRB Reconsider using Samnorsk in Tines speech. In any case, drop the
! Norsk usage for now, just to save time in looking words up and phrasing
! the result properly.
!


The meeting hall on Starship Hill was a small, temporary thing. It had been good enough to keep the cold out during the winter, but for a conference of more than three people it was a real madhouse. Steel stomped past the Flenser Fragment and collected himself on the loft with the best view of the construction. After a polite moment, Tyrathect entered and climbed to the facing loft.
But all the decorum was an act for the groundlings outside; now Flenser's soft laughter hissed across the air to him, just loud enough for him to hear. "Dear Steel. Sometimes I wonder if you are truly my student ... or perhaps some changeling inserted after my departure. Are you trying to screw us up?"
Steel glared back. He was sure there was no uneasiness in his posture; all that was held within. "Accidents happen. The incompetents will be culled."
"Quite so. But that appears to be your response to all problems. If you hadn't been so bent on silencing the digger teams, they might not have rioted ... and you would have had one less 'accident'."
"The flaw was in their guessing. Such executions are a necessary part of military construction."
"Oh? You really think I had to kill all those who built the halls under Hidden Island?"
"What? You mean you didn't? How --?"
The Flenser Fragment smiled the old, fanged smile. "Think on it, Steel. An exercise." !V CHKd sp "sufferance"

Steel arranged his notes on the desk and pretended to study them. Then all of him looked back at the other pack. "Tyrathect. I honor you because of the Flenser in you. But remember: You survive on my sufferance. You are not the Flenser-in-Waiting." The news had come late last fall, just before winter closed the last pass over the Icefangs: The packs bearing the rest of the Master hadn't made it out of Parliament Bowl. The fullness of Flenser was gone forever. That had been an indescribable relief to Steel, and for a time afterward the Fragment had been quite tractable. "Not one of my lieutenants would blink if I killed all of you -- even the Flenser members." And I'll do it, if you push me hard enough, I swear I will.
"Of course, dear Steel. You command." !Seems like this confrontation would have really happened earlier

For an instant the other's fear showed through. Remember, Steel thought to himself, always remember: This is just a fragment of the Master. Most of it is a little school teacher, not the Great Teacher with a Knife. True, its two Flenser members totally dominated the pack. The spirit of the Master was right here in this room, but gentled. Tyrathect could be managed, and the power of the Master used for Steel's ends. !V terminology/usage: "Visitor" v "Spacer" later on
!V grep'ing shows Spacer only used in c37 (by Woodcarver people). So
!V I think I'll leave the Visitor references.

"Good," Steel said smoothly. "As long as you understand this, you can be of great use to the Movement. In particular," he riffled through the papers, "I want to review the Visitor situation with you." I want some advice.
"Yes."
"We've convinced 'Ravna' that her precious Jefri is in imminent danger. Amdijefri has told her about all the Woodcarver attacks and how we fear an overwhelming assault."
"And that may really happen." !V IMP CHRON change. If you intend to make the beginning of
!V jumpstarting earlier (~1Jan'89), then you're going to have to change
!V the following discussion
!V Probably could do this as something of a flashback (which would
!V allow you to also say when it all started), but then you need some
!V question that this meeting is leading up to

"Yes. Woodcarver really is planning an attack, and she has her own source of 'magical' help. We have something much better." He tapped the papers; the advice had been coming down since early winter. He remembered when Amdijefri had brought in the first pages, pages of numerical tables, of directions and diagrams, all drawn in neat but childish style. Steel and the Fragment had spent days trying to understand. Some of the references were obvious. The Visitor's recipes required silver and gold in quantities that would otherwise finance a war. But what was this "liquid silver"? Tyrathect had recognized it; the Master had used such a thing in his labs in the Republic. Eventually they acquired the amount specified. But many of the ingredients were given only as methods for creating them. Steel remembered the Fragment musing over those, scheming against nature as if it were just another foe. The recipes of mystics were full of "horn of squid" and "frozen moonlight". The directions from Ravna were sometimes even stranger. There were directions within directions, long detours spent in testing common materials to decide which really fit the greater plan. Building, testing, building. It was like the Master's own method but without the dead ends.
Some of it made sense early on. They would have the explosives and guns that Woodcarver thought were her secret weapons. But so much was still unintelligible -- and it never got easier.
Steel and the Fragment worked through the afternoon, planning how to set up the latest tests, deciding where to search for the new ingredients that Ravna demanded. !V January 20, 1991 just deleted discussion of light speed; be sure
!V that that is explicit at least later when they test the cloaks

Tyrathect leaned back, hissing a wondering sigh. "Stage built upon stage. And soon we'll have our own radios. Old Woodcarver won't have a chance.... You are right, Steel. With this you can rule the world. Imagine knowing instantly what is happening in the Republic's Capital and being able to coordinate armies around that knowledge. The Movement will be the Mind of God." That was an old slogan, and now it could be true. "I salute you, Steel. You have a grasp worthy of the Movement." Was there the Teacher's contempt in his smile? "Radio and guns can give us the world. But clearly these are crumbs from the Visitors' table. When do they arrive?" !V June 4, 1991 CHK CHRON

"Between one hundred and one hundred twenty days from now; Ravna has revised her estimate again. Apparently even the Two-Legs have problems flying between the stars."
"So we have that long to enjoy the Movement's triumph. And then we are nothing, less than savages. It might have been safer to forego the gifts, and persuade the Visitors that there is nothing here worth rescuing." ^ V June 4, 1991 CHK where/if he has done this before:

Steel looked out through the window slits that cut horizontally between timbers. He could see part of the starship compound, and the castle foundations, and beyond that the islands of the fjord country. He was suddenly more confident, more at peace, than he'd been in a long time. It felt right to reveal his dream. "You really don't see it, do you Tyrathect? I wonder if the whole Master would understand, or whether I have exceeded him, too. In the beginning, we had no choice. The Starship was automatically sending some sort of signal to Ravna. We could have destroyed it; maybe Ravna would have lost interest... And maybe not, in which case we would be taken like a fish gilled from a stream. Perhaps I took the greater risk, but if I win, the prize will be far more than you imagine." The Fragment was watching him, heads cocked. "I've studied these humans, Jefri and -- through my spies -- the one down at Woodcarvers. Their race may be older than ours, and the tricks they've learned make them seem all-powerful. But the race is flawed. As singletons, they work with handicaps we can scarcely imagine. If I can use those weaknesses....
"You know the average Tines cares for its pups. We've manipulated parental sentiments often enough. Imagine how it must be for the humans. To them, a single pup is also an entire child. Think of the leverage that gives us."
"You're seriously betting everything on this? Ravna isn't even Jefri's parent." !V SOLN This innocence angle may be the way to explain why they aren't
!V watched when they are on the ship
!V Note that there is reference here (and a couple of paragraphs
!V down) to fact Steel knows there is
!V something about the ship that is important to the Spacers

Steel made an irritated gesture. "You haven't seen all of Amdi's translations." Innocent Amdi, the perfect spy. "But you're right, saving the one child is not the main reason for this Visit. I've tried to find out their real motive. There are one hundred fifty-one children in some kind of deathly stupor, all stacked up in coffins within the ship. The Visitors are desperate to save the children, but there's something else they want. They never quite talk about it ... I think it's in the machinery of the ship itself."
"For all we know the children are a brood force, part of an invasion."
That was an old fear and -- after watching Amdijefri -- Steel saw no chance of it. There could be other traps but, "If the Visitors are lying to us, then there is really nothing we can do to win. We'll be hunted animals; maybe generations from now we'll learn their tricks, but it will be the end of us. On the other hand, we have good reason to believe that the Two-Legs are weak, and whatever their goals, they do not involve us directly. You were there the day of the landing, much closer than I. You saw how easy it was to ambush them, even though their ship is impregnable and their single weapon a match for a small army. It is obvious that they do not consider us a threat. No matter how powerful their tools, their real fears are elsewhere. And in that Starship, we have something they need.
"Look at the foundations of our new castle, Tyrathect. I've told Amdijefri that it is to protect the Starship against Woodcarver. It will do that -- later in the Summer when I shatter Woodcarver upon its ramparts. But see the foundations of the curtain around the Starship. By the time our Visitors arrive, the ship will be envaulted. I've done some quiet tests on its hull. It can be breached; a few dozen tons of stone falling on it would quite nicely crush it. But Ravna is not to worry; this is all for the protection of her prize. And there will be an open courtyard nearby, surrounded by strangely high walls. I've asked Jefri to get Ravna's help on this. The courtyard will be just large enough to enclose Ravna's ship, protecting it too.
"There are many details still to be settled. We must make the tools Ravna describes. We must arrange the demise of Woodcarver, well before the Visitors arrive. I need your help in all those things, and I expect to receive it. In the end, if the Visitors are treacherous, we will make the best stand that can be. And if they are not ... well I think you'll agree that my reach has at least matched my teacher's."
For once, the Flenser Fragment had no reply. !
!CHK if this is a trick you are using too often
! It is a lot like the end of the last Pham/Ravna scene
!V February 16, 1991 I can't find "no reply" or "no response" used
!V anywhere in this manner.
!PRB How come Jefri didn't have his own dataset?
!PRB Isn't it kinda dumb that all the datasets were outside at the
! time of the ambush?
!
!QU How much inconsistency can be tolerated on the number of the
! pronoun associated with Amdijefri?
!
!ID Perhaps an epilog, a news item announcing, or speculating, that
! there has been a network partition
!
!PRB Should you have any comment somewhere about why Amdi doesn't
! seem to be bothered by being inside the ship, although it made
! Steel very uncomfortable? -- I think the wall padding is enough.
!
!ID There could be some neat irony in the some of the jumpstart
! planning when somebody says how this is doing so much that the
! ignorant locals could never figure out (and then Amdi comes
! along and blows them away with some of his improvements)
!
!CHAR Maybe Pham Nuwen has some old weapons ... including a slug gun.
! could be used in fight with Riders if it comes to that NÆH
!QU Are the Johanna and Amdijefri separate misunderstandings laid
! on too thick? Are they too similar?
!






!V June 4, 1991 "realm" v "domain"?
!V I use "realm" in Ravna plotline and "domain" in Tines plotline

The ship's control cabin was Jefri and Amdi's favorite place in all of Lord Steel's domain. Being here could still make Jefri very sad, but now the good memories seemed the stronger ... and here was the best hope for the future. Amdi was still entranced by the window displays -- even if the views were all of wooden walls. By their second visit they had already come to regard the place as their private kingdom, like Jefri's treehouse back on Straum. And in fact the cabin was much too small to hold more than a single pack. Usually a member of their bodyguard would sit just inside the entrance to the main hold, but even that seemed to be uncomfortable duty. This was a place where they were important.
For all their rambunctiousness, Amdi and Jefri realized the trust that Lord Steel and Ravna were placing in them. The two kids might race around out-of-doors, driving their guards to distraction, but the equipment in this command cabin must be treated as cautiously as when Mom and Dad were here. In some ways, there was not much left in the ship. The datasets were destroyed; Jefri's parents had them outside when Woodcarver attacked. During the winter, Mr. Steel had carried out most of the loose items to study. The coldsleep boxes were now safe in cool chambers nearby. Every day Amdijefri inspected the boxes, looked at each familiar face, checked the diag displays. No sleeper had died since the ambush. !V Possible INCON: at the end of the novel, all the sleepers have been
!V taken out of the ship.

What was left on the ship was hard-fastened to the hull. Jefri had pointed out the control boards and status elements that managed the container shell's rocket; they stayed strictly away from those. ^ V June 10, 1991 "month" problem hr sec

Mr. Steel's quilting shrouded the walls. Jefri's folks' baggage and sleeping bags and exercisers were gone, but there were still the acc webbing and hard-fastened equipment. And over the months, Amdijefri had brought in paper and pens and blankets and other junk. There was always a light breeze from the fans sweeping through the cabin.
It was a happy place, strangely carefree even with all the memories it brought. This was where they would save the Tines and all the sleepers. And this was the only place in the world where Amdijefri could talk to another human being. In some ways, the means of talking seemed as medieval as Lord Steel's castle: They had one flat display -- no depth, no color, no pictures. All they could coax from it were alphanumerics. But it was connected to the ship's ultrawave comm, and that was still programmed to track their rescuers. There was no voice recognition attached to the display; Jefri had almost panicked before he realized that the lower part of the screen worked as a keyboard. It was a laborious job typing in every letter of every word -- though Amdi had gotten pretty good at it, using four noses to peck at the keys. And nowadays he could read Samnorsk even better than Jefri.
Amdijefri spent many afternoons here. If there was a message waiting from the previous day, they would bring it up page by page and Amdi would copy and translate it. Then they would enter the questions and answers that Mr. Steel had talked to them about. Then there was a lot of waiting. Even if Ravna was watching at the other end, it could take several hours to get a reply. But the link was so much better than during the winter; they could almost feel Ravna getting closer. The unofficial conversations with her were often the high point of their day. !V PRB "Lord Steel" v "Mr. Steel"
!V INCON possible: The view out the windows shouldn't show anything
!V far away; isn't the place mostly enclosed now?

So far, this day had been quite different. After the false workers attacked, Amdijefri had the shakes for about half an hour. Mr. Steel had been wounded trying to protect them. Maybe there was nowhere that was safe. They messed with the outside displays, trying to peek through cracks in the rough planking of the compound's walls.
"If we'd been able to see out, we could have warned Mr. Steel," said Jefri.
"We should ask him to put some holes in the walls. We could be like sentries."
They batted the idea around a bit. Then the latest message started coming in from the rescue ship. Jefri jumped into the acc webbing by the display. This was his dad's old spot, and there was plenty of room. Two of Amdi slid in beside him. Another member hopped on the armrest and braced its paws on Jefri's shoulders. Its slender neck extended toward the screen to get a good view. The rest scrambled to arrange paper and pens. It was easy to play back messages, but Amdijefri got a certain thrill out of seeing the stuff coming down "live".
There was the initial header stuff -- that wasn't so interesting after about the thousandth time you saw it -- then Ravna's actual words. Only this time it was just tabular data, something to support the radio design.
"Nuts. It's numbers," said Jefri.
"Numbers!" said Amdi. He climbed a free member onto the boy's lap. It stuck its nose close to the screen, cross-checking what the one by Jefri's shoulder was seeing. The four on the floor were busy scratching away, translating the decimal digits on the screen into the X's and O's and 1's and deltas of Tines' base four notation. Almost from the beginning Jefri had realized that Amdi was really good at math. Jefri wasn't envious. Amdi said that hardly any of the Tines were that good, either; Amdi was a very special pack. Jefri was proud that he had such a neat friend. Mom and Dad would have liked Amdi. Still ... Jefri sighed, and relaxed in the webbing. This number stuff was happening more and more often. Mom had read him a story once, "Lost in the Slow Zone", about how some marooned explorers brought civilization to a lost colony. In that, the heroes just collected the right materials and built what they needed. There had been no talk of precision or ratios or design.
He looked away from the screen, and petted the two of Amdi that were sitting beside him. One of them wriggled under his hand. Their whole bodies hummed back at him. Their eyes were closed. If Jefri didn't know better, he would have assumed they were asleep. These were the parts of Amdi that specialized in talking.
"Anything interesting?" Jefri said after a while. The one on his left opened its eyes and looked at him.
"This is that bandwidth idea Ravna was talking about. If we don't make things just right, we'll just get clicks and clacks."
"Oh, right." Jefri knew that the initial reinventions of radio were usually not good for much more than Morse code. Ravna seemed to think they could jump that stage. "What do you think Ravna is like?"
"What?" The scritching of pens on paper stopped for an instant; he had all of Amdi's attention, even though they'd talked of this before. "Well, like you ... only bigger and older?" !V IMP once you figure out the relationship between Sjandra Kei and
!V Straumli Realm, it should be reflected here

"Yeah, but --" Jefri knew Ravna was from Sjandra Kei. She was a grownup, somewhere older than Johanna and younger than Mom. What exactly does she look like? "I mean, she's coming all this way just to rescue us and finish what Mom and Dad were trying to do. She must really be a great person."
The scritching stopped again, and the display scrolled heedless on. They would have to replay it. "Yes," Amdi said after a moment. "She -- she must be a lot like Mr. Steel. It will be nice to meet someone I can hug, the way you do Mr. Steel."
Jefri was a little miffed by that. "Well wait, you can hug me!"
The parts of Amdi next to him purred loudly. "I know. But I mean someone that's a grownup ... like a parent."
"Yeah."






They got the tables translated and checked in about an hour. Then it was time to send up the latest things that Mr. Steel was asking about. There were about four pages, all neatly printed in Samnorsk by Amdi. Usually he liked to do the typing, too, all bunched up over the keyboard and display. Today he wasn't interested. He lay all over Jefri, but didn't pay any special attention to checking what was being keyed in. Every so often Jefri felt a buzzing through his chest, or the screen mounting would make a strange sound -- all in sympathy to the unhearable sounds that Amdi was making between his members. Jefri recognized the signs of deep thought. !V QU INCON kinda an inapproriate question for so late in
!V their acquaintance?

He finished typing in the latest message, adding a few small questions of his own. Things like, "How old are you and Pham? Are you married? What are Skroderiders like?" !PRB The apparent inconsistency of stopping work when it gets dark -- and
! this being an arctic region.
!PRB If Ravna et al already know about nature of the packs, how come
! they
! don't suggest the change that Amdi does?
!

Daylight had faded from the cracks in the walls. Soon the digger teams would be turning in their hoes and marching off to the barracks over the edge of the hill. Across the straits, the towers on Hidden Island would be golden in the mist, like something in a fairy tale. Their whitejackets would be calling Amdi and Jefri out for supper any minute now.
Two of Amdi jumped off the acc webbing, and began chasing each other around the chair. "I've been thinking! I've been thinking! Ravna's radio thing: why is it just for talking? She says all sound is just different frequencies of the same thing. But sound is all that thought is. If we could change some of the tables, and make the receivers and transmitters to cover my tympana, why couldn't I think over the radio?"
"I don't know." Bandwidth was a familiar constraint on many everyday activities, though Jefri had only a vague notion of exactly what it was. He looked at the last of the tables, still displayed on the screen. He had a sudden insight, something that many adults in technical cultures never attain. "I use these things all the time, but I don't know exactly how they work. We can follow these directions, but how would we know what to change?"
Amdi was getting all excited now, the way he did when he'd thought of some great prank. "No, no, no. We don't have to understand everything." Three more of him jumped to the floor; he waved random sheets of paper up at Jefri. "Ravna doesn't know for sure how we make sound. The directions include options for making small changes. I've been thinking. I can see how the changes relate." He paused and made a high-pitched squealing noise. "Darn. I can't explain it exactly. But I think we can expand the tables, and that will change the machine in ob-obvious ways. And then ..." Amdi was beside himself for a moment, and speechless. "Oh Jefri, I wish you could be a pack, too! Imagine putting one of yourself each on a different mountain top, and then using radio to think. We could be as big as the world!"
Just then there was the sound of interpack gobbling from outside the cabin, and then the Samnorsk: "Dinner time. We go now, Amdijefri. Okay?" It was Mr. Shreck; he spoke a fair amount of Samnorsk, though not as well as Mr. Steel. Amdijefri picked up the scattered sheets and carefully slipped them into the pockets on the back of Amdi's jackets. They powered down the display equipment and crawled into the main hold.
"Do you think Mr. Steel will let us make the changes?"
"Maybe we should also send them back to Ravna." ^ V CHK INCON that the ship is properly enclosed at the proper times

The whitejackets' member retreated from the hatch, and Amdijefri descended. A minute later they were out in the slanting sunlight. The two kids scarcely noticed; they were both caught up in Amdi's vision. !
!PRB IMP To have an ending that is satisfying in itself (not like
! "ending in the middle of a sentence")
!
!What next, Lieutenant?
! Johanna scene
! Learn of pregnancy
! Vendacious plan for a well-timed attack
! Woodcarver's growing knowledgeability