The Octagonal Raven by L. E. Modesitt

little real moisture to either the lower Hill, or to the valley below.
    Klevyl should have zapped me the revised environmental specs package to go with the first cut that I’d already received, but when I touched the comm plate, the only message that tingled in my head was: You have no new messages . I’d already left fullface messages everywhere Klevyl might access, and there wasn’t much else I could do on his project without the latest parameters. I wasn’t about to guess and then have to redo everything, especially since I’d taken on his work freelance, and in addition to the OneCys contract.
    My lips quirked into a smile as I eased on the headset and my fingers called up the latest edart piece, the unfinished one I’d started after the Holst piece. I hadn’t posted the Holst piece, either. I’d made more revisions, but it still didn’t feel right.
    So I listened to my newest set of words as they scrolled down one side of the projected holo, with the images of hungry and wide-eyed children burning their way across the foreground of the display area.
    When the ancients developed the entire basis of nanotechnology, few if any of them envisioned the world they created. They were too preoccupied with eliminating the evils of the world that surrounded them.
    I nodded at the recreated image of the hollow-eyed children scrabbling toward the smiling woman extending some form of ration packs—a woman flanked by uniformed soldiers in the antiquated mottled green and brown camouflage fatigues with rifles leveled. Then came the scenes of the bombed out cities, and the broken bridges, and then the smoldering ruins of Hylanta.
    To us, those days seem all too raw—barbaric, if you will. People being shot on the streets with projectile weapons…others starving because there was no way to transport food or convert the raw organic material into foodstocks….
    I froze the image, and the words. How could I make the transition? After a moment of indecision, I moved ahead to the next section, letting those words roll past me as the holo image depicted an aerial view of a pleasant town, not Vallura or Cedacy, although it could almost have been either.
    …today…we think of starvation, of wars that pitted nation against nation, or sometimes family against family within the same nation, as something from the remote past, as something before the millennium of chaos, as almost inconceivable…. Yet…has our mindset changed all that much from that terrible past? Or have we merely adopted a different and less obvious set of distinctions which still pit individual against individual?
    The next image set depicted a tall and lithe couple, intelligence radiating from their eyes, poise from their movements as they walked down a set of steps outside the municipal building at Porlan. Then that image shrank into the left half of the projected viewing area, and a second couple appeared, set against the same backdrop. While they were also well-dressed, they were nearly a head shorter, and their movements appeared hesitant by comparison, their eyes duller, their carriage subdued.
    This is Daryn Alwyn…offering observations from the hill.
    I frowned. The idea was good, but it wasn’t even close to being ready, and I wasn’t sure I had the insights yet to finish it. Then, I hadn’t finished the Holst piece, either. Was it because I worried about Elysa…or what she represented? Or the fact that I couldn’t figure out why someone wanted me dead?
    There was also the cost aspect. Commercial posting cost creds, and posting something incomplete or not up to my standards would be costly in more ways than one.
    So I called up the VR that showed Elysa. What Kharl had sent showed her walking in his front entry, talking to him and waiting. She looked like a natural redhead, just like the silver and jade combs in her hair appeared natural, and the deep muted green gown accentuated her color. The image swirled on transitions, but nothing seemed to have