She would have to come back here again and again until all the Children were revived—but she was grateful to be done with this place for today. Up two flights of stairs and she would be in the castle yard, in the summer sunlight. There would be the Children just leaving class, playing with each other and with their Tinish friends. If she stayed to chat, she would likely be in the new castle all afternoon. It might be the sunny evening before she had to be back in her cabin aboard the Oobii. As she started up the steps, she could imagine feeling light-hearted. She would take some time off, just to play with the Children. Somehow she would make things right for Timor.

She was still in the dark of the stairs when she remembered something else about the dream. She paused, steadying herself with a hand against the cool stonework. The mind in the fleet had said, “Rules change.” Yes, if the Zone shifted and faster-than-light transport became possible again—well, the Blight could arrive very soon indeed. It was a possibility she obsessed upon both awake and in her dreams. She had zonographs aboard the Oobii that monitored the relevant physical laws, had done so since the Battle on Starship Hill. There had never been an alarm.

Still leaning against the wall, Ravna queried Out of Band II, requesting a window on the zonograph. The graphic came up, a stupidly self-formatted plot. Yes, there was the usual noise. Then she noticed the scaling. That couldn’t be right! She slewed her gaze back five hundred seconds, and saw that the trace had spiked. For almost ten milliseconds, Zone physics had shot above the probe’s calibration, so high it might have been Transcendent. Then she noticed the pulsing red border. It was the Zone alarm she had so carefully set—the alarm she should have received at the instant of the spike. Impossible, impossible. This had to be some sort of screw-up.