“I think I have another voyage ahead of me,” said Ram Odin. “But with a different destination. How long do you think since these aliens first developed space flight?”

Meanwhile, the original Noxon and Ram Odin had both developed radiation poisoning. Noxon’s facemask helped his body recover. Now there were two copies of him, though one was still in bed, sleeping almost constantly as his body’s cells were rebuilt and cancers were eliminated.

There was only one Ram Odin, though. Only one person in their group who could pilot the starship they had stashed in Antarctic ice in the remote past. This time the mice would be given the freedom of the ship. This time, they would be turned loose on an alien world.

Chapter 26: Tidiness

CHAPTER 26

Tidiness

Param stood in the Tent of Light, bending over the table, studying the maps with Olivenko, Umbo, Loaf, Rigg, Ramex, and Square. Ram Odin sat in the doorway of the tent, looking out over the meadow, either keeping watch or dozing—it was hard to tell which.

Param spoke little at these councils. Her natural disposition coincided exactly with good policy on this—for she had quickly learned that if she even hinted at a preference, Olivenko would start to bend all his ideas and argument to favor the course of action that he guessed she was favoring.

She had had to be careful even of her questions, until she finally said, rather testily, that she could not make any rational decisions unless she was sure she understood the situation, which meant she must ask questions. But how could she ask questions if people reacted by trying to guess what she meant by her question? “I mean—I always mean—that I believe I need to know the answer to my question. Nothing else. I don’t hint. When I’ve come up with a tentative decision, I offer my conclusions for comment. It isn’t subtle, is it? You all understand when I do that?”

They all did—but after that, Param was quite sure that they still tried to guess what her questions meant, which way she was leaning. They simply became more subtle about their responses.

It was annoying that, as Queen-in-the-Tent, at least for this corner of the realm, she had to be so scrupulous about even the slightest utterance. How constraining it was to have authority!

Yet she also remembered Mother’s powerlessness in the pleasant prisons in which Param had grown up. Mother also had had to watch every word she said, but not because others would over-obey her, trying to anticipate her decisions. Mother’s constraints came from fear that the People’s Revolutionary Council would suppose her to be trying to assert royal authority. So Mother, too, had to learn to speak far less than she thought.

It turned Mother into a monster of deception. What is it doing to me?