The fleet floats in death, but is not dead itself. Look closer at the clustered ships. Things move. Construction proceeds. The fleet was once the hand of a living god; now it exists to resurrect that god. Even trapped here, in this encystment of pain, it plans and builds, second on second, year on year, working as hard as its living crews can be driven. If necessary, it can do this for centuries, breeding more crew to replace natural losses. This program will eventually produce ramscoop vessels. They will be the best that can exist Down Here, capable of reaching near-lightspeed.
Now perhaps none of that effort is necessary, for the Blight can see Ravna as she sees it, and the encysted god is saying to her: Rules change. I am coming. I am coming. And much sooner than you think.
• • •
Ravna woke with a start, gasping for breath.
She was lying on the floor, her right arm painfully bent. I must have fallen. What a terrible dream. She struggled back into her chair. She wasn’t in her cabin aboard the Out of Band II. The automation aboard Oobii would have turned the floor soft before she ever hit it. She looked around, trying to orient herself, but all she could remember was the dream.
She ran her hand across the side of her chair. It was wood, local Tinish manufacture, as was the table. But the walls had a greenish cast, gently curving into the equally greenish floor. She was inside the Children’s landing craft, under Woodcarver’s new castle. That took long enough to recognize! She leaned her head into her hands, and let the cabin spin around to a stop. When her dizziness had passed, she sat back and tried to think. Except for the last few minutes, everything seemed reasonable:
She had come down to the catacombs to inspect the Children’s caskets. This part of the castle spanned a range of technology from the pre-gunpowder to fallen transcendence, the walls carved with chisels and mallets, the light provided by lamps from Oobii. Two years ago, the coldsleep containers had been removed from the Straumer Lander and laid out with enough space between them to dissipate the waste heat of the refrigeration.