as not me."
Steel almost voiced his awe. The plan was typical of Flenser's
brilliance, and his strength of soul. In assassinations, there was always
the chance that fragments would get away. There were famous stories of
heroes reassembled. In real life such events were rare, usually happening
when the victim's forces could sustain their leader through reintegration.
But Flenser had planned this tactic from the beginning, had envisaged
reassembling himself more than a thousand miles from the Long Lakes.
Still ... Lord Steel looked at the other in calculation. Ignore voice
and manner. Think for power, not for the desires of others, even Flenser.
Steel recognized only two in the other pack. The females and the male with
the white-tipped ears were probably from the sacrificed follower. Very
likely only two of Flenser really faced him. Scarcely a threat ... except in
the very real sense of appearances. "And the other four of you, Sir? When
may we expect your entire presence?"
The Flenser-thing chuckled. Damaged as it was, it still understood
balance-of-power. This was almost like the old days: when two people have a
clear understanding of power and betrayal, then betrayal itself becomes
almost impossible. There is only the ordered flow of events, bringing good
to those who deserve to rule. "The others have equally good ... mounts. I
made detailed plans, three different paths, three different sets of agents.
I arrived on schedule. I have no doubt the others will too, in a few tendays
at most. Until then," he turned all heads toward Steel, "until then, dear
Steel, I do not claim the full role of Flenser. I did so earlier to
establish priorities, to protect this fragment till I am assembled. But this
pack is deliberately weak-minded; I know it wouldn't survive as the ruler of
my earlier creations."
Steel wondered. Half-brained, the creature's schemes were perfect.
Nearly perfect. "So you wish a background role for the next few tendays?
Very well. But you announced yourself as Flenser. How shall I present you?"
The other didn't hesitate. "Tyrathect, Flenser in Waiting."
.Delete this paragraph to shift page flush
Crypto: 0
As received by: Transceiver Relay03 at Relay
Language path: Samnorsk->Triskweline, SjK:Relay units
From: Straumli Main
Subject: Archive opened in the Low Transcend!
Summary: Our links to the Known Net will be down temporarily
Key phrases: transcend, good news, business opportunities, new archive,
communications problems
Distribution:
Where Are They Now Interest Group, Homo Sapiens Interest Group, Motley Hatch Administration Group, Transceiver Relay03 at Relay, Transceiver Windsong at Debley Down, Transceiver Not-for-Long at Shortstop
Date: 11:45:20 Docks Time, 01/09 of Org year 52089
Text of message:
We are proud to announce that a human exploration company from Straumli
Realm has discovered an accessible archive in the Low Transcend. This is not
an announcement of Transcendence or the creation of a new Power. We have in
fact postponed this announcement until we were sure of our property rights
and the safety of the archive. We have installed interfaces which should
make the archive interoperable with standard syntax queries from the Net. In
a few days this access will be made commercially available. (See discussion
of scheduling problems below.)
Because of its safety, intelligibility, and age, this Archive is
remarkable. We believe there is otherwise lost information here about
arbitration management and interrace coordination. We'll send details to the
appropriate news groups. We're very excited about this. Note that no
interaction with the Powers was necessary; no part of Straumli Realm has
transcended.
Now for the bad news: Arbitration and translation schemes have had
unfortunate clenirations[?] with the ridgeway armiphlage[?]. The details
should be amusing to the people in the Communication Threats news group, and
we will report them there later. But for at least the next hundred hours,
all our links (main and minor) to the Known Net will be down. Incoming
messages may be buffered, but no guarantees. No messages can be forwarded.
We regret this inconvenience, and will make up for it very soon!
Physical commerce is in no way affected by these problems. Straumli
Realm continues to welcome tourists and trade.
-=*=-
CHAPTER 6
Looking back, Ravna Bergsndot saw it was inevitable that she become a
librarian. As a child on Sjandra Kei, she had been in love with stories from
the Age of Princesses. There was adventure, a time when a few brave Ladies
had dragged humankind to greatness. She and her sister had spent countless
afternoons pretending to be the Greater Two and rescuing the Countess of the
Lake. Later they understood that Nyjora and its Princesses were lost in the
dim past. Sister Lynne turned to more practical things. But Ravna still
wanted adventure. Through her teens, she had dreamed of emigrating to
Straumli Realm. That was something very real. Imagine: a new and mostly
human colony, right at the Top of the Beyond. And Straum welcomed folk from
the mother world; their enterprise was less than one hundred years old. They
or their children would be the first humans anywhere in the galaxy to
transcend their own humanity. She might end up a god, and richer than a
million Beyonder worlds. It was a dream real enough to provoke constant
arguments with her parents. For where there is heaven, there can also be
hell. Straumli Realm kissed close to the Transcend, and the people there
played with "the tigers that pace beyond the bars." Dad had actually used
that tired image. The disagreement drove them apart for several years. Then,
in her Computer Science and Applied Theology courses, Ravna began to read
about some of the old horrors. Maybe, maybe ... she should be a little more
cautious. Better to look around first. And there was a way to see into
everything that humans in the Beyond could possibly understand: Ravna became
a librarian. "The ultimate dilettante!" Lynne had teased. "It's true and so
what?" Ravna had grumped back, but the dream of far traveling was not quite
dead in her.
Life in Herte University at Sjandra Kei should have been perfect for
someone who had finally figured out what they wanted from life. Things might
have gone on happily for a lifetime there -- except that in her graduation
year, there had been the Vrinimi Organization's Faraway 'Prentice contest.
Three years work-study at the archive by Relay was the prize. Winning was
the chance of a lifetime; she would come back with more experience than any
local academician.
So it was that Ravna Bergsndot ended up more than twenty thousand
light-years from home, at the network hub of a million worlds.
Sunset was an hour past when Ravna drifted across Citypark toward
Grondr Vrinimikalir's residence. She'd been on the planet only a handful of
times since arriving in the Relay system. Most of her work was at the
archives themselves -- a thousand light-hours out. This part of Groundside
was in early autumn, though twilight had faded the tree colors to bands of
gray. From Ravna's altitude, one hundred meters up, the air had the nip of
frosts to come. Between her feet she could see picnic fires and gaming
fields. The Vrinimi Organization didn't spend much on the planet, but the
world was beautiful. As long as she kept her eyes on the darkening ground,
Ravna could almost imagine this was someplace in her home terrane on Sjandra
Kei. Look into the sky though ... and you knew you were far from home:
twenty-thousand light-years away, the galactic whirlpool sprawled up toward
the zenith.
It was just a faint thing in the twilight, and it might not get much
brighter this night: Low in the western sky, a cluster of in-system
factories glowed brighter than any moon. The operation was a brilliant
flickering of stars and rays, sometimes so intense that stark shadows were
cast eastwards from the Citypark mountains. In another half hour, the Docks
would rise. The Docks weren't as bright as the factories, but together they
would outshine anything from the far stars.
She shifted in her agrav harness, drifting lower. The scent of autumn
and picnics came stronger. Suddenly, the click of Kalir laughter was all
around her; she had blundered into an airball game. Ravna spread her arms in
mock humiliation and dodged out of the players' way.
Her stroll through the park was just about over; she could see her
destination ahead. Grondr 'Kalir's residence was a rarity in the Citypark
landscape: a recognizable building. It dated from when the Org bought into
the Relay operation. Seen from just eighty meters up, the house was a blocky
silhouette against the sky. When factory lights flashed, the smooth walls of
the monolith glowed in oily tints. Grondr was her boss's boss's boss. She
had talked to him exactly three times in two years.
No more delay. Nervous and very curious, Ravna floated lower and let
the house electronics guide her across the tree decks toward an entrance.
Grondr Vrinimikalir treated her with standard Organization courtesy,
the common denominator that served between the several races of the Org: The
meeting room had furniture suitable for human and Vrinimi use. There were
refreshments, and questions about her job at the archive.
"Mixed results, sir," Ravna replied honestly. "I've learned a great
deal. The 'prenticeship is everything it's claimed to be. But I'm afraid the
new division is going to require an added index layer." All this was in
reports the old fellow could have seen at the flick of a digit.
Grondr rubbed a hand absently across his eye freckles. "Yes, an
expected disappointment. We're at the limits of information management with
this expansion. Egravan and Derche -- " those were Ravna's boss and boss's
boss "-- are quite happy with your progress. You came well educated, and
learned fast. I think there's a place for humans in the Organization."
"Thank you, sir." Ravna blushed. Grondr's assessment was casually
spoken but very important to her. And it would probably mean the arrival of
more humans, perhaps even before her 'prenticeship was up. So was this the
reason for the interview?
She tried not to stare at the other. She was quite used to the Vrinimi
majority race by now. From a distance the Kalir looked humanoid. Up close,
the differences were substantial. The race was descended from something like
an insect. In upsizing, evolution had necessarily moved reinforcing struts
inside the body, till the outside was a combination of grublike skin and
sheets of pale chitin. At first glance Grondr was an unremarkable exemplar
of the race. But when the fellow moved, even to adjust his jacket or scratch
at his eye freckles, there was a strange precision to him. Egravan said that
he was very, very old.
Grondr changed the subject with the clickety abruptness. "You are aware
of the ... changes at Straumli Realm?"
"You mean the fall of Straum? Yes." Though I'm surprised you are.
Straumli Realm was a significant human civilization, but it accounted for
only an infinitesimal fraction of Relay's message traffic.
"Please accept my sympathy." Despite the cheerful announcements from
Straum, it was clear that absolute disaster had befallen Straumli Realm.
Almost every race eventually dabbled in the Transcend, more often than not
becoming a superintelligence, a Power. But it was clear by now that the
Straumers had created, or awakened, a Power of deadly inclination. Their
fate was as terrible as anything Ravna's father had ever predicted. And
their bad luck was now a disaster that stretched across all that had been
Straumli Realm. Grondr continued: "Will this news affect your work?"
Curiouser and curiouser; she would have sworn the other was coming to
the point. Maybe this was the point? "Uh, no sir. The Straumli affair is a
terrible thing, especially for humankind. But my home is Sjandra Kei.
Straumli Realm is our offspring, but I have no relatives there." Though I
might have been there if it hadn't been for Mother and Dad. Actually, when
Straumli Main dropped off the Net, Sjandra Kei had been unreachable for
almost forty hours. That had bothered her very much, since any rerouting
should have been immediate. Communication was eventually established; the
problem had been screwed-up routing tables on an alternate path. Ravna had
even shot half a year's savings for an over-and-back mailing. Lynne and her
parents were fine; the Straumli debacle was the news of the century for
folks at Sjandra Kei, but it was still a disaster at great remove. Ravna
wondered if parents had ever given better advice than hers!
"Good, good." His mouth parts moved in the analog of a human nod. His
head tilted so only peripheral freckles were looking at her; the guy
actually seemed hesitant! Ravna looked back silently. Grondr 'Kalir might be
the strangest exec in the Org. He was the only one whose principal residence
was Groundside. Officially he was in charge of a division of the archives;
in fact, he ran Vrinimi Marketing (i.e., Intelligence). There were stories
that he had visited the Top of the Beyond; Egravan claimed he had an
artificial immune system. "You see, the Straumli disaster has incidentally
made you one of the Organization's most valuable employees."
"I ... don't understand."
"Ravna, the rumors in the Threats newsgroup are true. The Straumers had
a laboratory in the Low Transcend. They were playing with recipes from some
lost archive, and they created a new Power. It appears to be a Class Two
perversion."
The Known Net recorded a Class Two perversion about once a century.
Such Powers had a normal "lifespan" -- about ten years. But they were
explicitly malevolent, and in ten years could do enormous damage. Poor
Straum.
"So you can see there's enormous potential for profit or loss here. If
the disaster spreads, we will lose network customers. On the other hand,
everyone around Straumli Realm wants to track what is happening. This could
increase our message traffic by several percent."
Grondr put it more cold-bloodedly than she liked, but he had a point.
In fact, the opportunity for profit was directly linked with mitigating the
perversion. If she hadn't been so wrapped up in archive work, she'd have
guessed all this. And now that she did think about it: "There are even more
spectacular opportunities. Historically, these perversions have been of
interest to other Powers. They'll want Net feeds and ... information about
the creating race." Her voice guttered into silence as she finally
understood the reason for this meeting.
Grondr's mouth parts clicked agreement. "Indeed. We at Relay are
well-placed to supply news to the Transcend. And we also have our own human.
In the last three days we've received several dozen queries from
civilizations in the High Beyond, some claiming to represent Powers. This
interest could mean a large increase in Organization income through the next
decade.
"All this you could read in the Threats news group. But there is
another item, something I ask you to keep secret for now: Five days ago, a
ship from the Transcend entered our region. It claims to be directly
controlled by a Power." The wall behind him became a window upon the
visitor. The craft was an irregular collection of spines and limps. A scale
bar claimed the thing was only five meters across.
Ravna felt the hair on her neck prickling. Here in the Middle Beyond
they should be relatively safe from the caprice of the Powers. Still ... the
visit was an unnerving thing. "What does it want?"
"Information about the Straumli perversion. In particular, it is very
interested in your race. It would give a great deal to take back a living
human...."
Ravna's response was abrupt. "I'm not interested."
Grondr spread his pale hands. The light glittered from the chitin on
the back of his fingers. "It would be an enormous opportunity. A
'prenticeship with the gods. This one has promised to establish an oracle
here in return."
"No!" Ravna half rose from her chair. She was one human, more than
twenty thousand light-years from home. That had been a frightening thing in
the first days of her 'prenticeship. Since then she had made friends, had
learned more of Organization ethics, had come to trust these folk almost as
much as people at Sjandra Kei. But ... there was only one halfway trustable
oracle on the Net these days, and it was almost ten years old. This Power
was tempting Vrinimi Org with fabulous treasure.
Grondr clicked embarrassment. He waved her back to her chair. "It was
only a suggestion. We do not abuse our employees. If you will simply serve
as our local expert...."
Ravna nodded.
"Good. Frankly, I had not expected you to accept the offer. We have a
much more likely volunteer, but one who needs coaching."
"A human? Here?" Ravna had a standing query in the local directory for
other humans. During the last two years she had seen three, and they had
just been passing through. "How long has she -- he? -- been here?"
Grondr said something halfway between a smile and a laugh. "A bit more
than a century, though we didn't realize it until a few days ago." The
pictures around him shifted. Ravna recognized Relay's "attic," the junkyard
of abandoned ships and freight devices that floated just a thousand
light-seconds from the archives. "We receive a lot of one-way freight, items
shipped in the hope we'll buy or sell on consignment." The view closed on a
decrepit vessel, perhaps two hundred meters long, wasp-waisted to support a
ramscoop drive. Its ultradrive spines were scarcely more than stubs.
"A bottom-lugger?" said Ravna.
Grondr clicked negation. "A dredge. The ship is about thirty thousand
years old. Most of that time was spent in a deep penetration of the Slow
Zone, plus ten thousand years in the Unthinking Depths."
Up close now, she could see the hull was finely pitted, the result of
millennia of relativistic erosion. Even unpiloted, such expeditions were
rare: a deep penetration could not return to the Beyond within the lifetime
of its builders. Some would not return within the lifetime of the builders'
race. People who launched such missions were just a little weird; People who
recovered them could make a solid profit.
"This one came from very far away, even if it's not quite a jackpot
mission. It didn't see anything interesting in the Unthinking Depths -- not
surprising given that even simple automation fails there. We sold most of
the cargo immediately. The rest we cataloged and forgot ... till the
Straumli affair." The starscape vanished. They were looking at a medical
display, random limbs and body parts. They looked very human. "In a solar
system at the bottom of the Slowness, the dredge found a derelict. The wreck
had no ultradrive capability; it was truly a Slow Zone design. The solar
system was uninhabited. We speculate the ship had a structural failure -- or
perhaps the crew was affected by the Depths. Either way, they ended up in a
frozen mangle."
Tragedy at the bottom of the Slowness, thousands of years ago. Ravna
forced her eyes from the carnage. "You figure on selling this to our
visitor?"
"Even better. Once we started poking around, we discovered a
substantial error in the cataloging. One of the deaders is almost intact. We
patched it up with parts from the others. It was expensive, but we ended up
with a living human." The picture flickered again, and Ravna caught her
breath. In the medical animation, the parts floated into an orderly
arrangement. There was a complete body there, torn up a little in the belly.
Pieces came together, and ... this was no "she". He floated whole and naked,
as if in sleep. Ravna had no doubt of his humanity, but all humankind in the
Beyond was descended from Nyjoran stock. This fellow had none of that
heritage. The skin was smoky gray, not brown. The hair was bright reddish
brown, a color she had only seen in pre-Nyjoran histories. The bones of the
face were subtly different from modern humans. The small differences were
more jarring than the outright alienness of her coworkers.
Now the figure was clothed. Under other circumstances, Ravna would have
smiled. Grondr 'Kalir had picked an absurd costume, something from the
Nyjoran era. The figure bore a sword and slug gun.... A sleeping prince from
the Age of Princesses.
"Behold the Ur-human," said Grondr.
.Delete this paragraph to shift page flush
-=*=-
CHAPTER 7
"Relay" is a common place-name. It has meaning in almost any
environment. Like Newtown and Newhome, it occurs over and over when people
move or colonize or participate in a communication net. You could travel a
billion light-years or a billion years and still find such names among folk
of natural intelligence.
But in the current era there was one instance of "Relay" known above
all others. That instance appeared in the routing list of two percent of all
traffic across the Known Net. Twenty thousand light-years off the galactic
plane, Relay had an unobstructed line of sight on thirty percent of the
Beyond, including many star systems right at the bottom, where starships can
make only one light-year per day. A few metal-bearing solar systems were
equally well-placed, and there was competition. But where other
civilizations lost interest, or colonized into the Transcend, or died in
apocalypse, Vrinimi Organization lasted. After fifty thousand years, there
were several races of the original Org in its membership. None of those were
still leaders -- yet the original viewpoint and policies remained. Position
and durability: Relay was now the main intermediate to the Magellanics, and
one of the few sites with any sort of link to the Beyond in Sculptor.
At Sjandra Kei, Relay's reputation had been fabulous. In her two years
of 'prenticeship, Ravna had come to realize that the truth exceeded the
reputation. Relay was in Middle Beyond; the Organization's only export was
the relay function and access to the local archive. Yet they imported the
finest biologicals and processing equipment from the High Beyond. The Relay
Docks were an extravagance that only the absolutely rich could indulge. They
stretched a thousand kilometers: bays, repair holds, transhipment centers,
parks, and playgrounds. Even at Sjandra Kei there were habitats far larger.
But the Docks were in no orbit. They floated a thousand kilometers above
Groundside on the largest agrav frame Ravna had ever seen. At Sjandra Kei
the annual income of an academician might pay for a square meter of agrav
fabric -- junk that might not last a year. Here there were millions of
hectares of the stuff, supporting billions of tonnes. Just replacements for
dead fabric required more High Beyond commerce than most star clusters could
command.
And now I have my own office here. Working directly for Grondr 'Kalir
had its perks. Ravna kicked back in her chair and stared across the central
sea. At the Docks' altitude, gravity was still about three-quarters of a
gee. Air fountains hung a breathable atmosphere over the middle part of the
platform. The day before, she had taken a sailboat across the clear-bottomed
sea. That was a strange experience indeed: planetary clouds below your keel,
stars and indigo sky above.
She had the surf cranked up this morning -- an easy matter of flexing
the agravs of the basin. It made a regular crashing against her beach. Even
thirty meters from the water there was a tang of salt in the air. Rows of
white tops marched off into the distance.
She eyed the figure that was trudging slowly up the beach toward her.
Just a few weeks ago she would never have dreamed this situation. Just a few
weeks ago she had been out at the archive, absorbed in the upgrade work,
happy to be involved with one of the largest databases on the Known Net. Now
... it was almost as if she had come full circle, back to her childhood
dreams of adventure. the only problem was, sometimes she felt like one of
the bad guys: Pham Nuwen was a living person, not something to be sold.
She stood and walked out to meet her red-haired visitor.
He wasn't carrying the sword and handgun of Grondr's fanciful
animation. Yet his clothes were the braided fabric of ancient adventure, and
he carried himself with lazy confidence. Since her meeting with Grondr, she
had looked up some anthropology from Old Earth. The red hair and the
eyefolds had been known there, though rarely in the same individual.
Certainly his smoky skin would have been remarkable to an inhabitant of
Earth. This fellow was, as much as herself, a product of post-terrestrial
evolution.
He stopped an arm's length away and gave her a lopsided grin. "You look
pretty human. Ravna Bergsndot?"
She smiled and nodded up at him. "Mr. Pham Nuwen?"
"Yes indeed. We seem both to be excellent guessers." He swept past her
into the shade of the inner office. Cocky fellow.
She followed him, unsure about protocol. You'd think with a fellow
human there would be no problems....
Actually, the interview went pretty smoothly. It was more than thirty
days since Pham Nuwen's resuscitation. Much of that time had been spent in
cram language sessions. The fellow must be damned bright; he already spoke
Triskweline trade talk with a folksy slickness. He really was rather cute.
Ravna had been away from Sjandra Kei for two years, and had another year of
her 'prenticeship to go. She'd been doing pretty well. She had many close
friends here, Egravan, Sarale. But just chatting with this fellow brought a
lot of the loneliness back. In some ways he was more alien than anything at
Relay ... and in some ways she wanted to just grab him and kiss his
confident grin away.
Grondr Vrinimikalir had been telling the truth about Pham Nuwen. The
guy was actually enthusiastic about the Org's plans for him! In theory, that
meant she could do her job with a clear conscience. In fact....
"Mr. Nuwen, my job is to orient you to your new world. I know you've
been exposed to some intense instruction the last few days, but there are
limits to how fast such knowledge can sink in."
The redhead smiled. "Call me Pham. Sure, I feel like an over-stuffed
bag. My sleep time is full of little voices. I've learned an awful lot
without experiencing anything. Worse, I've been a target for all this
'education'. It's a perfect setup if Vrinimi wants to trick me. That's why
I'm learning to use the local library. And that's why I insisted they find
someone like you." He saw the surprise on her face. "Ha! You didn't know
that. See, talking to a real person gives me a chance to see things that
aren't all planned ahead. Also, I've always been a pretty good judge of
human nature; I think I can read you pretty well." His grin showed he
understood just how irritating he was being.
Ravna looked up at the green petals of the beachtrees. Maybe this boob
deserved what he was getting into. "So you have great experience dealing
with people?"
"Given the limitations of the Slowness, I've been around, Ravna. I've
been around. I know I don't look it, but I'm sixty-seven years old
subjective. I thank your Organization for a fine job of thawing me out." He
tipped a non-existent hat in her direction. "My last voyage was more than a
thousand years objective. I was Programmer-at-Arms on a Qeng Ho longshot --
" His eyes abruptly widened, and he said something unintelligible. For a
moment he almost looked vulnerable.
Ravna reached a hand toward him. "Memory?"
Pham Nuwen nodded. "Damn. This is something I don't thank you people
for."
Pham Nuwen had been frozen in the aftermath of violent death, not as a
planned suspension. It was a near miracle that Vrinimi Org had been able to
bring him back at all -- at least with Middle Beyond technology. But memory
was the hardest thing. The chemical basis of memory does not survive chaotic
freezing well.
The problem was enough to shrink even Pham Nuwen's ego by a size or
two. Ravna took pity on him. "It's not likely that anything is completely
lost. You just have to find a different angle on some things."
"... Yes. I've been coached about that. Start with other memories; work
sideways toward what you can't remember straight on. Well ... it beats being
dead." Some of his jauntiness returned, but subdued to a really quite
charming level. They talked for long while as the redhead worked around the
points he couldn't "remember straight on".
And gradually Ravna came to feel something she had never expected in
connection with a Slow Zoner: awe. In one lifetime, Pham Nuwen had
accomplished virtually everything that was possible for a being in the
Slowness. All her life she had pitied the civilizations trapped down there.
They could never know the glory; they might never know the truth. Yet by
luck and skill and sheer strength of will, this fellow had leaped barrier
after barrier. Had Grondr known the truth when he pictured the redhead with
sword and slug gun? For Pham Nuwen really was a barbarian. He had been born
on a fallen colony world -- Canberra he called it. The place sounded much
like medieval Nyjora, though not matriarchal. He'd been the youngest child
of a king. He'd grown up with swords and poison and intrigue, living in
stone castles by a cold, cold sea. No doubt this littlest prince would have
ended up murdered -- or king of all -- if life had continued in the medieval
way. But when he was thirteen years old everything changed. A world that had
only legends of aircraft and radio was confronted by interstellar traders.
In a year of trading, Canberra's feudal politics was turned on its head.
"Qeng Ho had invested three ships in the expedition to Canberra. They
were pissed, thought we'd be at a higher level of technology. We couldn't
resupply them, so two stayed behind, probably turned my poor world inside
out. I left with the third -- a crazy hostage deal my father thought he was
putting over on them. I was lucky they didn't space me."
Qeng Ho consisted of several hundred ramscoop ships operating in a
volume hundreds of light-years across. Their vessels could reach almost a
third of the speed of light. They were mostly traders, occasionally
rescuers, even more rarely conquerors. When Pham Nuwen last knew them, they
had settled thirty worlds and were almost three thousand years old. It was
as extravagant a civilization as can ever exist in the Slowness.... And of
course, until Pham Nuwen was revived, no one in the Beyond had ever heard of
it. Qeng Ho was like a million other doomed civilizations, buried thousands
of light-years in the Slowness. Only by luck would they ever penetrate into
the Beyond, where faster-than-light travel was possible.
But for a thirteen-year-old boy born to swords and chain mail, the Qeng
Ho was more change than most living beings ever experience. In a matter of
weeks, he went from medieval lordling to starship cabin boy.
"At first they didn't know what to do with me. Figured on popping me
into cold storage and dumping me at the next stop. What can you make of a
kid who thinks there's one world and it's flat, who has spent his whole life
learning to whack about with a sword?" He stopped abruptly, as he did every
few minutes, when the stream of recollection ran into damaged territory.
Then his glance flicked out at Ravna, and his smile was as cocky as ever. "I
was one mean animal. I don't think civilized people realize what it's like
to grow up with your own aunts and uncles scheming to murder you, and you
training to get them first. In civilization I met bigger villains -- guys
who'd fry a whole planet and call it 'reconciliation' -- but for sheer
up-close treachery, you can't beat my childhood."
To hear Pham Nuwen tell it, only dumb luck saved the crew from his
scheming. In the years that followed, he learned to fit in, learned
civilized skills. Properly tamed, he could be an ideal ship master of the
Qeng Ho. And for many years he was. The Qeng Ho volume contained a couple of
other races, and a number of human-colonized worlds. At 0.3c, Pham spent
decades in coldsleep getting from star to star, then a year or two at each
port trying to make a profit with products and information that might be
lethally out-of-date. The reputation of the Qeng Ho was some protection.
"Politics may come and go, but Greed goes on forever" was the fleet's motto,
and they had lasted longer than most of their customers. Even religious
fanatics grew a little cautious when they thought about Qeng Ho retribution.
But more often it was the skill and deviousness of the shipmaster that saved
the day. And few were a match for the little boy in Pham Nuwen.
"I was almost the perfect skipper. Almost. I always wanted to see what
was beyond the space we had good records on. Every time I got really rich,
so rich I could launch my own subfleet -- I'd take some crazy chance and
lose everything. I was the yo-yo of the Fleet. One run I'd be captain of
five, the next I'd be pulling maintenance programming on some damn container
ship. Given how time stretches out with sublight commerce, there were whole
generations who thought I was a legendary genius -- and others who used my
name as a synonym for goofball."
He paused and his eyes widened in pleased surprise. "Ha! I remember
what I was doing there at the end. I was in the 'goofball' part of my cycle,
but it didn't matter. There was this captain of twenty who was even crazier
than I.... Can't remember her name. Her? Couldn't have been; I'd never serve
under a fem captain." He was almost talking to himself. "Anyway, this guy
was willing to bet everything on the sort of thing normal folks would argue
about over beer. He called his ship the, um, it translates as something like
'wild witless bird' -- that gives you the idea about him. He figured there
must be some really high-tech civilizations somewhere in the universe. The
problem was to find them. In a strange way, he had almost guessed about the
Zones. Only problem was, he wasn't crazy enough; he got one little thing
wrong. Can you guess what?"
Ravna nodded. Considering where Pham's wreck was found, it was obvious.
"Yeah. I'll bet it's an idea older than spaceflight: the 'elder races'
must be toward the galactic core, where stars are closer and there are black
hole exotica for power. He was taking his entire fleet of twenty. They'd
keep going till they found somebody or had to stop and colonize. This
captain figured success was unlikely in our lifetime. But with proper
planning we could end up in a close-packed region where it would be easy to
found a new Qeng Ho -- and it would proceed even further.
"Anyway, I was lucky to get aboard even as a programmer; this captain
knew all the wrong things about me."
The expedition lasted a thousand years, penetrating two hundred and
fifty light-years galactic inward. The Qeng Ho volume was closer to the
Bottom of the Slowness than Old Earth, and they were proceeding inwards from
there. Even so, it was plain bad luck that they encountered the edge of the
Deeps after only two hundred and fifty light-years. One after another, the
Wild Witless Bird lost contact with the other ships. Sometimes it happened
without warning, other times there was evidence of computer failure or gross
incompetence. The survivors saw a pattern, guessed that common components
were failing. Of course, no one connected the problems with the region of
space they were entering.
"We backed down from ram speeds, found a solar system with a
semi-habitable planet. We'd lost track of everybody else.... Just what we
did then isn't real clear to me." He gave a dry laugh. "We must have been
right at the edge, staggering around at about IQ 60. I remember fooling with
the life support system. That's probably what actually killed us." For a
moment he looked sad and bewildered. He shrugged. "And then I woke up in the
tender clutches of Vrinimi Org, here where faster-than-light travel is
possible ... and I can see the edge of Heaven itself."
Ravna didn't say anything for a moment. She looked across her beach
into the surf. They'd been talking a long time. The sun was peeking under
the tree petals, its light shifting across her office. Did Grondr realize
what he had here? Almost anything from the Slow Zone had collector's value.
People fresh from the Slowness were even more valuable. But Pham Nuwen might
be unique. He had personally experienced more than had some whole
civilizations, and ventured into the Deeps to boot. She understood now why
he looked to the Transcend and called it "Heaven". It wasn't entirely
naïveté, nor a failure in the Organization's education programs. Pham Nuwen
had already been through two transforming experiences, from pre-tech to
star- traveler, and star-traveler to Beyonder. Each was a jump almost beyond
imagination. Now he saw that another step was possible, and was perfectly
willing to sell himself to take it.
So why should I risk my job to change his mind? But her mouth was
living a life of its own. "Why not postpone the Transcend, Pham? Take some
time to understand what is here in the Beyond. You'd be welcome in almost
any civilization. And on human worlds you'd be the wonder of the age." A
glimpse of non-Nyjoran humanity. The local newsgroups at Sjandra Kei had
thought Ravna radically ambitious to take a 'prenticeship twenty thousand
light-years away. Coming back from it, she would have her pick of Full
Academician jobs on any of a dozen worlds. That was nothing compared to Pham
Nuwen; there were folks so rich they might give him a world if he would just
stay. "You could name your price."
The redhead's lazy smile broadened. "Ah, but you see, I've already
named my price, and I think Vrinimi can meet it."
I really wish I could do something about that smile, thought Ravna.
Pham Nuwen's ticket to the Transcend was based on a Power's sudden interest
in the Straumli perversion. This innocent's ego might end up smeared across
a million death cubes, running a million million simulations of human
nature.
Grondr called less than five minutes after Pham Nuwen's departure.
Ravna knew the Org would be eavesdropping, and she'd already told Grondr her
misgivings about this "selling" of a sophont. Nevertheless, she was a bit
nervous to see him.
"When is he actually going to leave for the Transcend?"
Grondr rubbed at his freckles. He didn't seem angry. "Not for ten or
twenty days. The Power that's negotiating for him is more interested in
looking at our archives and watching what's passing through Relay. Also ...
despite the human's enthusiasm for going, he's really quite cautious."
"Oh?"
"Yes. He's insisting on a library budget, and permission to roam
anywhere in the system. He's been chatting with random employees all over
the Docks. He was especially insistent about talking to you." Grondr's mouth
parts clicked in a smile. "Feel free to speak your mind to him. Basically,
he's tasting around for hidden poison. Hearing the worst from you should
make him trust us."
She was coming to understand Grondr's confidence. Damn but Pham Nuwen
had a thick head. "Yes sir. He's asked me to show him around the Foreign
Quarter tonight." As you well know.
"Fine. I wish the rest of the deal were going as smoothly." Grondr
turned so that only peripheral freckles were looking in her direction. He
was surrounded by status displays of the Org's communication and database
operations. From what she could see, things were remarkably busy. "Maybe I
should not bring this up, but it's just possible you can help.... Business
is very brisk." Grondr did not seem pleased to report the good news. "We
have nine civilizations from the Top of the Beyond that are bidding for wide
band data feeds. That we could handle. But this Power that sent a ship
here...."
Ravna interrupted almost without thinking, a breach that would have
horrified her a few days earlier. "Just who is it, by the way? Any chance
we're entertaining the Straumli Perversion?" The thought of that taking the
redhead was a chill.
"Not unless all the Powers are fooled, too. Marketing calls our current
visitor 'Old One'." He smiled. "That's something of a joke, but true even
so. We've known it for eleven years." No one really knew how long
Transcendent beings lived, but it was a rare Power that stayed communicative
for more than five or ten years. They lost interest, or grew into something
different -- or really did die. There were a million explanations, thousands
that were allegedly from the Powers first hand. Ravna guessed that the true
explanation was the simplest one: intelligence is the handmaiden of
flexibility and change. Dumb animals can change only as fast as natural
evolution. Human equivalent races, once on their technological run-up, hit
the limits of their zone in a matter of a few thousand years. In the
Transcend, superhumanity can happen so fast that its creators are destroyed.
It wasn't surprising then that the Powers themselves were evanescent.
So calling an eleven-year Power "Old One" was almost reasonable.
"We believe that Old One is a variant on the Type 73 pattern. Such are
rarely malicious -- and we know from whom it Transcended. Just now it's
causing us major discomfort, though. For twenty days it has been
monopolizing an enormous and increasing percentage of Relay bandwidth. Since
its ship arrived, it's been all over the archive and our local nets. We've
asked Old One to send noncritical data by starship, but it refuses. This
afternoon was the worst yet. Almost five percent of Relay's capacity was
bound up in its service. And the creature is sending almost as much downlink
as it is receiving uplink."
That was weird, but, "It's still paying for the business, isn't it? If
Old One can pay top price, why do you care?"
"Ravna, we hope our Organization will be around for many years after
the Old One is gone. There is nothing it could offer us that would be good
through all that time." Ravna nodded. Actually, there were certain "magic"
automations that might work down here, but their long-term effectiveness
would be dubious. This was a commercial situation, not some exercise in an
Applied Theology course. "Old One can easily top any bid from the Middle
Beyond. But if we give it all the services it demands, we'll be effectively
nonfunctional to the rest of our customers -- and they are the people we
must depend on in the future."
His image was replaced by an archive access report. Ravna was very
familiar with the format, and Grondr's complaint really hit home. The Known
Net was a vast thing, a hierarchical anarchy that linked hundreds of
millions of worlds. Yet even the main trunks had bandwidths like something
out of Earth's dawn age; a wrist dataset could do better on a local net.
That's why bulk access to the Archive was mostly local -- to media
freighters visiting the Relay system. But now ... during the last hundred
hours, remote access to the Archive, both by volume and by count, had been
higher than local! And ninety percent of those accesses were from a single
account -- Old One's.
Grondr's voice continued from behind the graphics. "We've got one
backbone transceiver dedicated to this Power right now.... Frankly, we can't
tolerate this for more than a few days; the ultimate expense is just too
great."
Grondr's face was back on the display. "Anyway, I think you can see
that the deal for the barbarian is really the least of our problems. The
last twenty days have brought more income than the last two years -- far
more than we can verify and absorb. We're endangered by our own success." He
made an ironic smile-frown.
They talked a few minutes about Pham Nuwen, and then Grondr rang off.
Afterwards, Ravna took a walk along her beach. The sun was well down toward
the aft horizon, and the sand was just pleasantly warm against her feet; the
Docks went round the planet once every twenty hours, circling the pole at
about forty degrees north latitude. She walked close to the surf, where the
sand was flat and wet. The mist off the sea was moist against her skin. The
blue sky just above the white-tops shaded quickly to indigo and black.
Specks of silver moved up there, agrav floaters bringing starships into the
Docks. The whole thing was so fabulously, unnecessarily expensive. Ravna was
by turns grossed out and bedazzled. Yet after two years at Relay, she was
beginning to see the point. Vrinimi Org wanted the Beyond to know that it
had the resources to handle whatever communication and archive demands might
be made on it. And they wanted the Beyond to suspect that there were hidden
gifts from the Transcend here, things that might make it more than a little
dangerous to invaders.
She stared into the spray, feeling it bead on her lashes. So Grondr had
the big problem right now: how do you tell a Power to take a walk? All Ravna
Bergsndot had to worry about was one overconfident twit who seemed hell-bent
on destroying himself. She turned and paralleled the water. Every third wave
it surged over her ankles.
She sighed. Pham Nuwen was beyond doubt a twit ... but what an awesome
one. Intellectually, she had always known that there was no difference in
the possible intelligence of Beyonders and the primitives of the Slowness.
Most automation worked better in the Beyond; ultralight communication was
possible. But you had to go to the Transcend to build truly superhuman
minds. So it shouldn't be surprising that Pham Nuwen was capable. Very
capable. He had picked up Triskweline with incredible ease. She had little
doubt that he was the master skipper he claimed. And to be a trader in the
Slowness, to risk centuries between the stars for a destination that might
have fallen from civilization or become deadly hostile to outsiders ... that
took courage that was hard to imagine. She could understand how he might
think going to the Transcend was just another challenge. He'd had less than
twenty days to absorb a whole new universe. That simply wasn't enough time
to understand that the rules change when the players are more than human.
Well, he still had a few days of grace. She would change his mind. And
after talking to Grondr just now, she wouldn't feel especially guilty about
doing it.
.Delete this paragraph to shift page flush
-=*=-
CHAPTER 8
The Foreign Quarter was actually about a third of the Docks. It abutted
the no-atmosphere periphery -- where ships actually docked -- and extended
inwards to a section of the central sea. Vrinimi Org had convinced a
significant number of races that this was a wonder of the Middle Beyond. In
addition to freight traffic there were tourists -- some of the wealthiest
beings in the Beyond.
Pham Nuwen had carte blanche to these amusements. Ravna took him
through the more spectacular ones, including an agrav hop over the Docks.
The barbarian was more impressed by their pocket space suits than by the
Docks. "I've seen structures bigger than that down in the Slowness." Not
hovering in a planetary gravity well, you haven't.
Pham Nuwen seemed to mellow as the evening progressed. At least his
comments became more perceptive, less edged. He wanted to see how real
traders lived in the Beyond, and Ravna showed him the bourses and the
traders' Local.
They ended up in The Wandering Company just after Docks midnight. This
was not Organization territory, but it was one of Ravna's favorite places, a
private dive that attracted traders from the Top to the Bottom. She wondered
how the decor would appeal to Pham Nuwen. The place was modeled as a meeting
lodge on some world of the Slow Zone. A three-meter model ramscoop hung in
the air over the main service floor. Blue-green drive fields glowed from the
ship's every corner and flange, and spread faintly among patrons sitting
below.
To Ravna the walls and floors were heavy timber, rough cut. People like
Egravan saw stone walls and narrow tunnels -- the sort of broodery his race
had maintained on new conquests of long ago. The trickery was optical -- not
some mental smudging -- and about the best that could be done in the Middle
Beyond.
Ravna and Pham walked between widely-spaced tables. The owners weren't
as successful with sound as with vision: the music was faint and changed
from table to table. Smells changed too, and were a little bit harder to
take. Air management was working hard to keep everyone healthy, if not
completely comfortable. Tonight the place was crowded. At the far end of the
service floor, the special-atmosphere nooks were occupied: low pressure,
high pressure, high NOx, aquaria. Some customers were vague blurs within
turbid atmospheres.
In some ways it might have been a port bar at Sjandra Kei. Yet ... this
was Relay. It attracted High Beyonders who would never come to backwaters
like Sjandra Kei. Most of the High Ones didn't look very strange;
civilizations at the Top were most often just colonies from below. But the
headbands she saw here were not jewelry. Mind-computer links aren't
efficient in the Middle Beyond, but most of the High Beyonders would not
give them up. Ravna started toward a group of banded tripods and their
machines. Let Pham Nuwen talk with creatures who teetered on the edge of
transsapience.
Surprisingly, he touched her arm, drawing her back. "Let's walk around
a little more." He was looking all around the hall, as if searching for a
familiar face. "Let's find some other humans first."
When holes showed in Pham Nuwen's cram-education, they were gapingly
wide. Ravna tried to keep her face serious. "Other humans? We're all there
is at Relay, Pham."
"But the friends you've been telling me about ... Egravan, Sarale?"
Ravna just shook her head. For a moment the barbarian looked
vulnerable.
Pham Nuwen had spent his life crawling at sublight between
human-colonized star systems. She knew that in all that life he had seen
only three non-human races. Now he was lost in a sea of alienness. She kept
her sympathy to herself; this one insight might affect the guy more than all
her arguing.
But the instant passed, and he was smiling again. "Even more an
adventure." They left the main floor and walked past special-atmosphere
nooks. "Lord, but Qeng Ho would love this."
No humans anywhere, and The Wandering Company was the homiest meeting
place she knew; many Org customers met only on the Net. She felt her own
homesickness welling up. On the second floor, a signet flag caught her eye.
She'd known something like it back at Sjandra Kei. She drew Pham Nuwen
across the floor, and started up the timbered stairs.
Out of the background murmur, she heard a high-pitched twittering. It
wasn't Triskweline, but the words made sense! By the Powers, it was
Samnorsk: "I do believe it's a Homo Sap! Over here, my lady." She followed
the sound to the table with the signet flag.
"May we sit with you?" she asked, savoring the familiar language.
"Please do." The twitterer looked like a small ornamental tree sitting
in a six-wheeled cart. The cart was marked with cosmetic stripes and
tassels; its 150-by-120-centimeter topside was covered with a cargo scarf in
the same pattern as the signet flag. The creature was a Greater Skroderider.
Its race traded through much of the Middle Beyond, including Sjandra Kei.
The Skroderider's high-pitched voice came from its voder. But speaking
Samnorsk, it sounded homier than anything she'd heard in a long time. Even
granting the mental peculiarities of Skroderiders, she felt a surge of
affectionate nostalgia, as if she had run into a old classmate in a far
city.
"My name is -- " the sound was the rustling of fronds, "but you can
easier call me Blueshell. It's nice to see a familiar face, hahaha."
Blueshell spoke the laughter as words. Pham Nuwen had sat down with Ravna,
but he understood not a word of Samnorsk and so the great reunion was lost
on him. The Rider switched to Triskweline and introduced his four
companions: another Skroderider, and three humanoids who seemed to like the
shadows. None of the humanoids spoke Samnorsk, but no one was more than one
translator hop from Triskweline.
The Skroderiders were owners/operators of a small interstellar
freighter, the Out of Band II. The humanoids were certificants for part of
the starship's current cargo. "My mate and I have been in the business
almost two hundred years. We have happy feelings for your race, my lady. Our
first runs were between Sjandra Kei and Forste Utgrep. Your people are good
customers and we scarcely ever have a shipment rot...." He wheeled his
skrode back from the table and then drove forward -- the equivalent of a
small bow.
All was not sweetness and light, however. One of the humanoids spoke.
The sounds could almost have come from a human throat, though they made no
sense. A moment passed as the house translator processed his words. Then the
broach on his jacket spoke in clear Triskweline: "Blueshell states you are
Homo sapiens. Know that you have our animosity. We are bankrupt,
near-stranded here by your race's evil creation. The Straumli Perversion."
The words sounded emotionless, but Ravna could see the creature's tense
posture, its fingers twisting at a drink bulb.
Considering his attitude, it probably wouldn't help to point out that
though she was human, Sjandra Kei was thousands of light-years from Straum.
"You came here from the Realm?" she asked the Skroderider.
Blueshell didn't answer immediately. That's the way it was with his
race; he was probably trying to remember who she was and what they were all
talking about. Then: "Yes, yes. Please do excuse my certificants' hostility.
Our main cargo is a one-time cryptographic pad. The source is Commercial
Security at Sjandra Kei; the destination is the certificants' High colony.
It was the usual arrangement: We're carrying a one-third xor of the pad.
Independent shippers are carrying the others. At the destination, the three
parts would be xor'd together. The result could supply a dozen worlds'
crypto needs on the Net for -- "
Downstairs there was a commotion. Someone was smoking something a bit
too strong for the air scrubbers. Ravna caught a whiff, enough to shimmer
her vision. It had knocked out several patrons on the main level. Management
was counseling the offending customer. Blueshell made an abrupt noise. He
backed his skrode from the table and rolled to the railing. "Don't want to
be caught unawares. Some people can be so abrupt...." When nothing more came
of the incident, he returned. "Uh, where was I?" He was silent a moment,
consulting the short-term memory built into his skrode. "Yes, yes.... We
would become relatively rich if our plans work out. Unfortunately, we
stopped on Straum to drop off some bulk data." He pivoted on his rear four
wheels. "Surely that was safe? Straum is more than a hundred light-years
from their lab in the Transcend. Yet -- "
One of the certificants interrupted with loud gabble. The house
translator kicked in a moment later: "Yes. It should have been safe. We saw
no violence. Ship's recorders show that our safeness was not breached. Yet
now there are rumors. Net groups claim that Straumli Realm is owned by
perversion. Absurdity. Yet these rumors have crossed the Net to our
destination. Our cargo is not trusted, so our cargo is ruined: now it is
only a few grams of data medium carrying random -- " In the middle of the
flat-voiced translation, the humanoid lunged out of the shadows. Ravna had a
glimpse of a jaw edged with razor-sharp gums. He threw his drink bulb at the
table in front of her.
Pham Nuwen's hand flashed out, snatching the drink before it hit --
before she had quite realized what was happening. The redhead came slowly to
his feet. From the shadows, the two other humanoids came to their feet and
moved toward their friend. Pham Nuwen didn't say a word. He set the bulb
carefully down and leaned just slightly toward the other, his hands relaxed
yet bladelike. Cheap fiction talks about "looks of deadly menace". Ravna had
never expected to see the real thing. But the humanoids saw it too. They
tugged their friend gently back from the table. The loudmouth did not
resist, but once beyond Pham's reach he erupted in a barrage of squeals and
hisses that left the house translator speechless. He made a sharp gesture
with three fingers, and shut up. The three swept silently down the stairs
and away.
Pham Nuwen sat down, his gray eyes calm and untroubled. Maybe he did
have something to be arrogant about! Ravna looked across at the two
Skroderiders. "I'm sorry your cargo lost value."
Most of Ravna's past contacts had been with Lesser Skroderiders, whose
reflexes were only slightly augmented beyond their sessile heritage. Had
these two even noticed the interruption? But Blueshell answered immediately,
"Do not apologize. Ever since our arrival, those three have been
complaining. Contract partners or not, I'm very tired of them." He lapsed
into potted-plant mode.
After a moment, the other Rider -- Greenstalk, was it? -- spoke.
"Besides, our commercial situation may not be a complete failure. I am sure
the other thirds of the shipment went nowhere near Straumli Realm." That was
the usual procedure anyway: each part of the shipment was carried by a
different company, each taking a very different path. If the other thirds
could be certified, the crew of the Out of Band might not come away
empty-handed. "In -- in fact, there may be a way we can get full
certification. True, we were at Straumli Main, but -- "
"How long ago did you leave?"
"Six hundred and fifty hours ago. About two hundred hours after they
dropped off the Net."
It suddenly dawned on Ravna that she was talking to something like
eyewitnesses. After thirty days, the Threats news was still dominated by the
events at Straum. The consensus was that a Class Two perversion had been
created -- even Vrinimi Org believed that. Yet it was still mainly
guesswork.... And here she was talking to beings who had actually been
there. "You don't think the Straumers created a perversion?"
It was Blueshell who replied. "Sigh," he said. "Our certificants deny
it, but I see a problem of conscience here. We did witness strangeness on
Straum.... Have you ever encountered artificial immune systems? The ones
that work in the Middle Beyond are more trouble than they're worth, so
perhaps not. I noticed a real change in certain officers of the Crypto
Authority right after the Straumli victory. It was as if they were suddenly
part of a poorly calibrated automation, as if they were somebody's, um,
fingers.... No one can doubt they were playing in the Transcend. They found
something up there; a lost archive. But that is not the point." He stopped
talking for a long moment; Ravna almost thought he was finished. "You see,
just before leaving Straumli Main, we -- "
But now Pham Nuwen was talking too. "That's something I've been
wondering about. Everybody talks as though this Straumli Realm was doomed
the moment they began research in the Transcend. Look. I've played with
bugged software and strange weapons. I know you can get killed that way. But
it looks like the Straumers were careful to put their lab far away. They
were building something that could go very wrong, but apparently it was a
previously-tried experiment -- like just about everything Up Here. They
could stop the work any time it deviated from the records, right up to the
end. So how could they screw up so bad?"
The question stopped the Skroderider in its tracks. You didn't need a
doctorate in Applied Theology to know the answer. Even the damn Straumers
should have known the answer. But given Pham Nuwen's background, it was a
reasonable question. Ravna kept her mouth shut. The Skroderider's very
alienness might be more convincing to Pham than another lecture from her.
Blueshell dithered for a moment, no doubt using his skrode to help
assemble his arguments. When he finally spoke, he didn't seem irritated by
the interruption. "I hear several misconceptions, My Lady Pham." He seemed
to use the old Nyjoran honorific pretty indiscriminately. "Have you been
into the archive at Relay?"
Pham said yes. Ravna guessed he'd never been past the beginners' front
end.
"Then you know that an archive is a fundamentally vaster thing than the
database on a conventional local net. For practical purposes the big ones
can't even be duplicated. The major archives go back millions of years, have
been maintained by hundreds of different races -- most now extinct or
Transcended into Powers. Even the archive at Relay is a jumble, so huge that
indexing systems are laid on top of indexing systems. Only in the Transcend
could such a mass be well organized and even then only the Powers could
understand it."
"So?"
"There are thousands of archives in the Beyond -- tens of thousands if
you count the ones that have fallen into disrepair or dropped off the Net.
Along with unending trivia, they contain important secrets and important
lies. There are traps and snares." Millions of races played with the advice
that filtered unsolicited across the Net. Tens of thousands had been burned
thereby. Sometimes the damage was relatively minor, good inventions that
weren't quite right for the target environment. Sometimes it was malicious,
viruses that would jam a local net so thoroughly that a civilization must
restart from scratch. Where-Are-They-Now and Threats carried stories of
worse tragedies: planets kneedeep in replicant goo, races turned brainless
by badly programmed immune systems.
Pham Nuwen was wearing his skeptical expression. "Just test the stuff
at a safe remove. Be prepared for local disasters."
That would have brought most explanations to a stop. Ravna had to
admire the Skroderider: he paused, retreated to still more elementary terms.
"True, simple caution can prevent many disasters. And if your lab is in the
Middle or Low Beyond, such caution is all that is really needed -- no matter
how sophisticated the threat. But we all understand the nature of the
Zones...." Ravna had virtually no feel for Rider body language, but she
would have sworn that Blueshell was watching the barbarian expectantly,
trying to gauge the depth of Pham's ignorance.
The human nodded impatiently.
Blueshell continued, "In the Transcend, truly sophisticated equipment
can operate, devices substantially smarter than anyone down here. Of course,
almost any economic or military competition can be won by the side with
superior computing resources. Such can be had at the Top of the Beyond and
in the Transcend. Races are always migrating there, hoping to build their
utopias. But what do you do when your new creations may be smarter than you
are? It happens that there are limitless possibilities for disaster, even if
an existing Power does not cause harm. So there are unnumbered recipes for
safely taking advantage of the Transcend. Of course they can't be
effectively examined except in the Transcend. And run on devices of their
own description, the recipes themselves become sentient."
Understanding was beginning to glimmer across Pham Nuwen's face.
Ravna leaned forward, caught the redhead's attention. "There are
complex things in the archives. None of them is sentient, but some have the
potential, if only some naive young race will believe their promises. We
think that's what happened to Straumli Realm. They were tricked by
documentation that claimed miracles, tricked into building a transcendent
being, a Power -- but one that victimizes sophonts in the Beyond." She
didn't mention how rare such perversion was. The Powers were variously
malevolent, playful, indifferent -- but virtually all of them had better
uses for their time than exterminating cockroaches in the wild.
Pham Nuwen rubbed his jaw thoughtfully. "Okay, I guess I see. But I get
the feeling this is common knowledge. If it's this deadly, how did the
Straumli bunch get taken in?"
"Bad luck and criminal incompetence," the words popped out of her with
surprising force. She hadn't realized she was so bent by the Straumli thing;
somewhere inside, her old feelings for Straumli Realm were still alive.
"Look. Operations in the High Beyond and in the Transcend are dangerous.
Civilizations up there don't last long, but there will always be people who
try. Very few of the threats are actively evil. What happened to the
Straumers.... They ran across this recipe advertising wondrous treasure.
Quite possibly it had been lying around for millions of years, a little too
risky for other folks to try. You're right, the Straumers knew the dangers."
But it was a classic situation of balancing risks and choosing wrong.
Perhaps a third of Applied Theology was about how to dance near the flame
without getting incinerated. No one knew the details of the Straumli
debacle, but she could guess them from a hundred similar cases:
"So they set up a base in the Transcend at this lost archive -- if
that's what it was. They began implementing the schemes they found. You can
be sure they spent most of their time watching it for signs of deception. No
doubt the recipe was a series of more or less intelligible steps with a
clear takeoff point. The early stages would involve computers and programs
more effective than anything in the Beyond -- but apparently well-behaved."
"... Yeah. Even in the Slowness, a big program can be full of
surprises."
Ravna nodded. "And some of these would be near or beyond human
complexity. Of course, the Straumers would know this and try to isolate
their creations. But given a malign and clever design ... it should be no
surprise if the devices leaked onto the lab's local net and distorted the
information there. From then on, the Straumer's wouldn't have a chance. The
most cautious staffers would be framed as incompetent. Phantom threats would
be detected, emergency responses demanded. More sophisticated devices would
be built, and with fewer safeguards. Conceivably, the humans were killed or
rewritten before the Perversion even achieved transsapience."
There was a long silence. Pham Nuwen looked almost chastened. Yeah.
There's a lot you don't know, Buddy. Think on what Old One might have
planned for you.
Blueshell bent a tendril to taste a brown concoction that smelled like
seaweed. "Well told, My Lady Ravna. But there is one difference in the
present situation. It may be good fortune, and very important.... You see,
just before leaving Straumli Main, we attended a beach party among the
Lesser Riders. They had been little affected by events to that point; many
hadn't even noticed the destruction of independence at Straum. With luck,
they may be the last enslaved." His squeaky voice lowered an octave,
trailing into silence. "Where was I? Yes, the party. There was one fellow
there, a bit more lively than the average. Somewhere years past, he had
bonded with a traveler in a Straumli news service. Now he was acting as a
clandestine data drop, so humble that he wasn't even listed in that
service's own net....
"Anyway, the researchers at the Straumli lab -- a few of them at least
-- were not so incautious as you say. They suspected a perverse runaway, and
were determined to sabotage it."
This was news, but -- "Doesn't look like they had much success, does
it?"
"I am nodding agreement. They did not prevent it, but they did plan to
escape the laboratory planet with two starships. And they did get word of
their attempt into channels that ended with my acquaintance at the beach
party. And here is the important part: At least one of these ships was to
carry away some final elements of the Perversion's recipe -- before they
were incorporated into the design."
"Surely there were backups -- " began Pham Nuwen.
Ravna waved him silent. There had been enough grade-school explanations
for one night. This was incredible. She'd been following the news about
Straumli Realm as much as anyone. The Realm was the first High daughter
colony of Sjandra Kei; it was horrifying to see it destroyed. But nowhere in
Threats had there been even a rumor of this: the Perversion not whole? "If
this is true, then the Straumers may have a chance. It all depends on the
missing parts of the design document."
"Just so. And of course the humans realized this too. They planned to
head straight for the Bottom of the Beyond, rendezvous there with their
accomplices from Straum."
Which -- considering the ultimate magnitude of the disaster -- would
never happen. Ravna leaned back, oblivious of Pham Nuwen for the first time
in many hours. Most likely both ships had been destroyed by now. If not --
well, the Straumers had been at least half-smart, heading for the Bottom. If
they had what Blueshell thought, the Perversion would be very interested in
finding them. It was no wonder Blueshell and Greenstalk hadn't announced
this on the news groups. "So you know where they were going to rendezvous?"
she said softly.
"Approximately."
Greenstalk burred something at him.
"Not in ourselves," he said. "The coordinates are in the safeness at
our ship. But there is more. The Straumers had a backup plan if the
rendezvous failed. They intended to signal Relay with their ship's
ultrawave."
"Now wait. Just how big is this ship?" Ravna was no physical-layer
engineer, but she knew that Relay's backbone transceivers were actually
swarms of antenna elements scattered across several light years, each
element ten-thousand kilometers across.
Blueshell rolled forward and back, a quick gesture of agitation. "We
don't know, but it's nothing exceptional. Unless you're looking precisely at
it with a large antenna, you'd never detect it from here."
Greenstalk added, "We think that was part of their plan, though it is
desperation on top of desperation. Since we came to Relay, we've been
talking to the Org -- "
"Discreetly! Quietly!" Blueshell put in abruptly.
"Yes. We've asked the Organization to listen for this ship. I'm afraid
we haven't talked to the right people. No one seems to put much credence in
us. After all, the story is ultimately from a Lesser Rider," Yeah. What
could they know that was under a hundred years old? "What we're asking would
normally be a great expense, and apparently prices are especially high right
now."
Ravna tried to curb her enthusiasm. If she had read this in a
newsgroup, it would've been just one more interesting rumor. Why should she
boggle just because she was getting it face-to-face? By the Powers, what
irony. Hundreds of customers from the Top and the Transcend -- even Old One
-- were saturating Relay's resources with their curiosity about the Straumli
debacle. What if the answer had been sitting in front of them, suppressed by
the very eagerness of their investigation? "Just who have you been talking
to? Never mind, never mind." Maybe she should just go to Grondr 'Kalir with
the story. "I think you should know that I am a -- " very minor! "--
employee of the Vrinimi Organization. I may be able to help."
She had expected some surprise at this sudden good luck. Instead there
was a pause. Apparently Blueshell had lost his place in the conversation.
Finally Greenstalk spoke. "I am blushing.... You see, we knew that.
Blueshell looked you up in the employees' directory; you are the only human
in the Org. You're not in Customer Contact, but we thought that if we
chanced upon you, so to speak, you might give us a kindly hearing."
Blueshell's tendrils rustled together sharply. Irritation? Or had he
finally caught up to the conversation? "Yes. Well, since we are all being so
frank, I suppose we should confess that this might even benefit us. If the
refugee ship can prove that the Perversion is not a full Class Two, then
perhaps we can convince our buyers that our cargo has not been compromised.
If they only knew, my certificant friends would be groveling at your feet,
my lady Ravna."
They stayed at The Wandering Company until well past midnight. Business
picked up at the circadian peak of some of the new arrivals. Floor and table
shows were raucous all around. Pham's eyes flickered this way and that,
taking it all in. But above all he seemed fascinated by Blueshell and
Greenstalk. The two were starkly nonhuman, in some ways even strange as
aliens go. Skroderiders were one of the very few races that had achieved
long- term stability in the Beyond. Speciation had long ago occurred,
varieties heading outward or becoming extinct. And still there were some who
matched their ancient skrodes, a unique balance of outlook and machine
interface that was more than a billion years old. But Blueshell and
Greenstalk were also traders with much of the outlook that Pham Nuwen had
known in the Slowness. And though Pham acted as ignorant as ever, there was
new diplomacy in him. Or maybe the awesomeness of the Beyond was finally
getting through his thick skull. He couldn't have asked for better drinking
buddies. As a race, the Skroderiders preferred lazy reminiscence to almost
any activity. Once delivered of their critical message, the two were quite
content to talk of their life in the Beyond, to explain things in whatever
detail the barbarian could wish. The razor-jawed certificants stayed well
lost.
Ravna got a mild buzz on, and watched the three talk shop. She smiled
to herself. In a way, she was the outsider now, the person who had never
done. Blueshell and Greenstalk had been all over, and some of their stories
sounded wild even to her. Ravna had a theory (not that widely accepted,
actually) that where beings have a common fluency, little else matters. Two
of these three might be mistaken for potted trees on hotcarts, and the third
was unlike any human in her life. Their fluency was in an artificial
language, and two of the "voices" were squawky raspings. Yet ... after a few
minutes' listening, their personalities seemed to float in her mind's eye,
more interesting than many of her school chums, but not that different. The
two Skroderiders were mates. She hadn't thought that could count for much;
among Riders, sex amounted to scarcely more than being next-door neighbors
at the right time of year. Yet there was deep affection here. Greenstalk
especially seemed a loving personality. She (he?) was shy yet stubborn, with
a kind of honesty that might be a major handicap in a trader. Blueshell made
up for that failing. He (she?) could be glib and talkative, quite capable of
maneuvering things his way. Underneath, Ravna glimpsed a compulsive
personality, uncomfortable with his own sneakiness, ultimately grateful when
Greenstalk reined him in.
And what of Pham Nuwen? Yes, what's the inner being you see there? In
an odd way, he was more of a mystery. The arrogant boob of this afternoon
seemed to be mostly invisible tonight. Maybe it had been a cover for
insecurity. The fellow had been born in a male-dominated culture, virtually
the opposite of the matriarchy that all Beyonder humanity descended from.
Underneath the arrogance, a very nice person might be living. Then there was
the way he had faced down razor-jaw. And the way he was drawing out the
Skroderiders. It occurred to Ravna that after a lifetime of reading romantic
fiction, she had run into her first hero.
It was after 02:30 when they left The Wandering Company. The sun would
be rising across the bow horizon in less than five hours. The two
Skroderiders came outside to see them off. Blueshell had switched back to
Samnorsk to regale Ravna with a story of his last visit to Sjandra Kei --
and remind her to ask about the refugee ship.
The Skroderiders dwindled beneath them as Ravna and Pham rose into the
thinning air and headed toward the residential towers.
The two humans didn't say anything for a couple of minutes. It was even
possible that Pham Nuwen was impressed by the view. They were passing over
gaps in the brightly lit Docks, places where they could see through the
parks and concourses to the surface of Groundside a thousand kilometers
below. The clouds there were whorls of dark on dark.
Ravna's residence was at the outer edge of the Docks. Here the air
fountains were of no use; her apartment tower rose into frank vacuum. They
glided down to her balcony, trading their suits' atmosphere for the
apartment's. Ravna's mouth was leading a life of its own, explaining how the
residence was what she'd been assigned when she worked at the archive, that
it is was nothing compared to her new office. Pham Nuwen nodded,
quiet-faced. There were none of the smart remarks of their earlier tours.
She babbled on, and then they were inside and.... She shut up, and they
just looked at each other. In a way, she'd wanted this clown ever since
Grondr's silly animation. But it wasn't till this evening at The Wandering
Company that she'd felt right about bringing him home with her. "Well, I, uh
..." So. Ravna, the ravening princess. Where is your glib tongue now?
She settled for reaching out, putting her hand on his. Pham Nuwen
smiled back, shy too, by the Powers! "I think you have a nice place," he
said.
"I've decorated it Techno-Primitive. Being stuck at the edge of the
Docks has its points: The natural view isn't messed up by city lights. Here,
I'll show you." She doused the lights and pulled the curtains aside. The
window was a natural transparency, looking out from the edge of the Docks.
The view tonight should be terrific. On the ride from The Company, the sky
had been awfully dark. The in-system factories must be off line or hidden
behind Groundside. Even ship traffic seemed sparse.
She went back to stand by Pham. The window was a vague rectangle across
her vision. "You have to wait a minute for your eyes to adjust. There's no
amplification at all." The curve of Groundside was clear now, clouds with
occasional pricks of light. She slipped her arm across his back, and after a
moment felt his across her shoulders.
She'd guessed right: tonight, the Galaxy owned the sky. It was a sight
that Vrinimi old hands happily ignored. For Ravna, it was the most beautiful
thing about Relay. Without enhancement, the light was faint. Twenty thousand
light-years is a long, long way. At first there was just a suggestion of
mist, and an occasional star. As her eyes adapted, the mist took shape,
curving arcs, some places brighter, some dimmer. A minute more and ... there
were knots in the mist ... there were streaks of utter black that separated
the curving arms ... complexity on complexity, twisting toward the pale hub
that was the Core. Maelstrom. Whirlpool. Frozen, still, across half the sky.
She heard Pham's breath catch in his throat. He said something,
sing-song syllables that could not have been Trisk, and certainly not
Samnorsk. "All my life I lived in a tiny clump of that. And I thought I was
a master of space. I never dreamed to stand and see the whole blessed thing
at once." His hand tightened on her shoulder, then gentled, stroking her
neck. "And no matter how long we watch, will we see any sign of the Zones?"
She shook her head slowly. "But they're easily imagined." She gestured
with her free hand. In the large, the Zones of Thought followed the mass
distribution of the Galaxy: The Mindless Depths extending down to the soft
glow of the galactic Core. Farther out, the Great Slowness, where humankind
had been born, where ultralight could not exist and civilizations lived and
died unknowing and unknown. And the Beyond, the stars about four-fifths out
from the center, extending well off-plane to include places like Relay. The
Known Net had existed in some form for billions of years in the Beyond. It
was not a civilization; few civilizations lasted longer than a million
years. But the records of the past were quite complete. Sometimes they were
intelligible. More often, reading them involved translations of translations
of translations, passed down from one defunct race to another with no one to
corroborate -- worse than any multihop net message could ever be. Yet some
things were quite clear: There had always been the Zones of Thought, though
perhaps they were slightly inward-moved now. There had always been wars and
peace, and races upwelling from the Great Slowness, and thousands of little
empires. There had always been races moving into the Transcend, to become
the Powers ... or their prey.
"And the Transcend?" Pham said. "Is that just the far dark?" The dark
between the galaxies.
Ravna laughed softly. "It includes all that but ... see the outer
reaches of the spirals. They're in the Transcend." Most everything farther
than forty thousand light-years from the galactic center was.
Pham Nuwen was silent for a long moment. She felt a tiny shiver pass
through him. "After talking to the wheelies, I -- I think I understand more
of what you were warning me about. There's a lot of things I don't know,
things that could kill me ... or worse."
Common sense triumphs at last. "True," she said quietly. "But it's not
just you, or the brief time you've been here. You could study your whole
life, and not know. How long must a fish study to understand human
motivation? It's not a good analogy, but it's the only safe one; we are like
dumb animals to the Powers of the Transcend. Think of all the different
things people do to animals -- ingenious, sadistic, charitable, genocidal --
each has a million elaborations in the Transcend. The Zones are a natural
protection; without them, human-equivalent intelligence would probably not
exist." She waved at the misty star swarms. "The Beyond and below are like a
deep of ocean, and we the creatures that swim in the abyss. We're so far
down that the beings on the surface -- superior though they are -- can't
effectively reach us. Oh, they fish, and they sometimes blight the upper
levels with poisons we don't even understand. But the abyss remains a
relatively safe place." She paused. There was more to the analogy. "And just
as with an ocean, there is a constant drift of flotsam from the top. There
are things that can only be made at the Top, that need close-to-sentient
factories -- but which can still work down here. Blueshell mentioned some of
those when he was talking to you: the agrav fabrics, the sapient devices.
Such things are the greatest physical wealth of the Beyond, since we can't
make them. And getting them is a deadly risky endeavor."
Pham turned toward her, away from window and the stars. "So there are
always 'fish' edging close to the surface." For an instant she thought she
had lost him, that he was caught by the romance of the Transcendent
deathwish. "Little fish risking everything for a piece of godhood ... and
not knowing heaven from hell, even when they find it." She felt him shiver
and then his arms were around her. She tilted her head up and found his lips
waiting.
It had been two years since Ravna Bergsndot left Sjandra Kei. In some
ways the time had gone fast. Just now her body was telling her what a long,
long time it had really been. Every touch was so vivid, waking desires
carefully suppressed. Suddenly her skin was tingling all over. It took
marvelous restraint to undress without tearing anything.
Ravna was out of practice. And of course she had nothing recent to
compare to.... But Pham Nuwen was very, very good.
-=*=-
Crypto: 0
As received by: Transceiver Relay01 at Relay
Language path: Acquileron->Triskweline, SjK:Relay units
From: Net Administrator for Transceiver Windsong at Debley Down
Subject: Complaints about Relay, a suggestion
Summary: It's getting worse; try us instead
Key phrases: communications problems, Relay unreliability, Transcend
Distribution:
Communication Costs Special Interest Group, Motley Hatch Administration Group, Transceiver Relay01 at Relay, Transceiver Not-for-Long at Shortstop,
Follow-ups to: Windsong Expansion Interest Group
Date: 07:21:21 Docks Time, 36/09 of Org year 52089
Text of message:
During the last five hundred hours, Comm Costs shows 9,834
transceiver-layer congestion complaints against the Vrinimi operation at
Relay. Each of these complaints involves services to tens of thousand of
planets. Vrinimi has promised again and again that the congestion is a
purely temporary increase of Transcendent usage.
As Relay's chief competitor in this region, we of Windsong have
benefited modestly from the overflow; however, until now we thought it
inappropriate to propose a coordinated response to the problem.
The events of the last seven hours compel us to change this policy.
Those reading this item already know about the incident; most of you are the
victims of it. Beginning at [00:00:27 Docks Time], Vrinimi Org began taking
transceivers off-line, an unscheduled outage. R01 went out at 00:00:27, R02
at 02:50:32, R03 and R04 at 03:12:01. Vrinimi stated that a Transcendent
customer was urgently requesting bandwidth. (R00 had been previously
dedicated to that Power's use.) The customer required use of both up- and
down-link bandwidth. By the Org's own admission, the unscheduled usage
exceeded sixty percent of their entire capacity. Note that the excesses of
the preceding five hundred hours -- excesses which caused entirely justified
complaint -- were never more than five percent of Org capacity.
Friends, we of Windsong are in the long-haul communication business. We
know how difficult it is to maintain transceiver elements that mass as much
as a planet. We know that hard contract commitments simply cannot be made by
suppliers in our line of work. But at the same time, the behavior of Vrinimi
Org is unacceptable. It's true that in the last three hours the Org has
returned R01 through R04 to general service, and promised to pass on the
Power's surpayment to all those who were "inconvenienced". But only Vrinimi
knows how large these surpayments really are. And no one (not even Vrinimi!)
knows whether this is the end of the outages.
What is to Vrinimi a sudden, incredible cash glut, is to the rest of
you an unaccountable disaster.
Therefore Windsong at Debley Down is considering a major -- and
permanent -- expansion of our service: the construction of five additional
backbone transceivers. Obviously this will be immensely expensive.
Transceivers are never cheap, and Debley Down does not have quite the
geometry enjoyed by Relay. We expect the cost must be amortized over many
decades of good business. We can't undertake it without clear customer
commitment. In order to determine this demand, and to ensure that we build
what is really needed, we are creating a temporary newsgroup, Windsong
Expansion Interest Group, moderated and archived at Windsong. Send/Receive
charges to transceiver-layer customers on this group will be only ten
percent our usual. We urge you, our transceiver-layer customers, to use this
service to talk to each other, to decide what you can safely expect from
Vrinimi Org in the future and how you feel about our proposals.
We are waiting to hear from you.
.Delete this paragraph to shift page flush
-=*=-
CHAPTER 9
Afterwards, Ravna slept well. It was halfway through the morning when
she drifted back toward wakefulness. The ring of her phone was monotonously
insistent, loud enough to reach through the most pleasant dreams. She opened
her eyes, disoriented and happy. She was lying with her arms wrapped tightly
around ... a large pillow. Damn. He'd already left. She lay back for a
second, remembering. These last two years she had been lonely; till last
night she hadn't realized how lonely. Happiness so unexpected, so intense
... what a strange thing.
The phone just kept ringing. Finally she rolled out of bed and walked
unsteadily across the room; there should be limits to this Techno Primitive
nonsense. "Yes?"
It was a Skroderider. Greenstalk? "I'm sorry to bother you, Ravna, but
-- are you all right?" The Rider interrupted herself.
Ravna suddenly realized that she might be looking a little strange:
sappy smile spread from ear to ear, hair sticking out in all directions. She
rubbed her hand across her mouth, cutting back laughter. "Yes, I'm fine."
Fine! "What's up?"
"We want to thank you for your help. We had never dreamed that you were
so highly placed. We'd been trying for hundreds of hours to persuade the Org
to listen for the refugees. But less than an hour after talking to you, we
were told the survey is being undertaken immediately."
"Um." Say what? "That's wonderful, but I'm not sure I -- who's paying
for it, anyway?"
"I don't know, but it is expensive. We were told they're dedicating a
backbone transceiver to the search. If there's anyone transmitting, we
should know in a matter of hours."
They chatted for a few more minutes, Ravna gradually becoming more
coherent as she parceled the various aspects of the last ten hours into
business and pleasure. She had half expected the Org to bug her at The
Wandering Company. Maybe Grondr just heard the story there -- and gave it
full credit. But just yesterday, he'd been wimping about transceiver
saturation. Either way, this was good news -- perhaps extraordinarily good.
If the Riders' wild story were true, the Straumli Perversion might be less
than Transcendent. And if the refugee ships had some clues on how to bring
it down, Straumli Realm might even be saved.
After Greenstalk rang off, Ravna wandered about the apartment, getting
herself in shape, playing the various possibilities against each other. Her
actions became more purposeful, almost up to their usual speed. There were a
lot of things she wanted to check into.
Then the phone was ringing again. This time she previewed the caller.
Oops! It was Grondr Vrinimikalir. She combed her hand back through her hair;
it still looked like crap, and this phone was not up to deception. Suddenly
she noticed that Grondr didn't look so hot either. His facial chitin was
smudged, even across some of his freckles. She accepted the call.
"Ah!" His voice actually squeaked, then returned to its normal level.
"Thank you for answering. I would have called earlier, except things have
been very ... chaotic." Just where had his cool distance gone? "I just want
you to know that the Org had nothing to do with this. We were totally taken
in until just a couple of hours ago." He launched into a disjointed
description of massive demand swamping the Org's resources.
As he rambled, Ravna punched up a summary of recent Relay business. By
the Powers that Be: Sixty percent diversion? Excerpts from Comm Costs: She
scanned quickly down the item from Windsong. The gasbags were as pompous as
ever, but their offer to replace Relay was probably for real. It was just
the sort of thing Grondr had been afraid might happen.
"-- Old One just kept asking for more and more. When we finally figured
things out, and confronted him.... Well, we came close to threatening
violence. We have the resources to destroy his emissary vessel. No telling
what his revenge might be, but we told Old One his demands were already
destroying us. Thank the Powers, he just seemed amused; he backed off. He's
restricted to a single transceiver now, and that's on a signal search that
has nothing to do with us."
Hmm. One mystery solved. Old One must have been snooping around The
Wandering Company and overheard the Skroderiders' story. "Maybe things will
be okay, then. But it's important to be just as tough if Old One tries to
abuse us again." The words were already out of her mouth before she
considered who she was giving advice to.
Grondr didn't seem to notice. If anything, he was the one scrambling to
agree: "Yes, yes. I'll tell you, if Old One were any ordinary customer, we'd
blacklist him forever for this deception.... But then if he were ordinary,
he could never have fooled us."
Grondr wiped pudgy white fingers across his face. "No mere Beyonder
could have altered our record of the dredge expedition. Not even one from
the Top could have broken into the junkyard and manipulated the remains
without our even suspecting."
Dredge? Remains? Ravna began to see that she and Grondr were not
talking about the same thing. "Just what did Old One do?"
"The details? We're pretty sure of them now. Since the Fall of Straum,
Old One has been very interested in humans. Unfortunately, there were no
willing ones available here. It began manipulating us, rewriting our
junkyard records. We've recovered a clean backup from a branch office: The
dredge really did encounter the wreck of a human ship; there were human body
parts in it -- but nothing that we could have revived. Old One must have
mixed and matched what it found there. Perhaps it fabricated memories by
extrapolating from human cultural data in the archives. With hindsight, we
can match its early requests with the invasion of our junkyard."
Grondr rattled on, but Ravna wasn't listening. Her eyes stared blindly
through the phone's display. We are little fish in the abyss, protected by
the deep from the fishers above. But even if they can't live down here, the
clever fisherfolk still have their lures and deadly tricks. And so Pham --
"Pham Nuwen is just a robot, then," she said softly.
"Not precisely. He is human, and with his fake memories he can operate
autonomously. But when Old One buys full bandwidth, the creature is fully an
emissary device." The hand and eye of a Power.
Grondr's mouthparts clattered in abject embarrassment. "Ravna, we don't
know all that happened last night; there was no reason to have you under
close surveillance. But Old One assures us that its need for direct
investigation is over. In any case, we'll never give him the bandwidth to
try again."
Ravna barely nodded. Her face suddenly felt cold. She had never felt
such anger and such fright at the same time. She stood in a wave of
dizziness and walked away from the phone, ignoring Grondr's worried cries.
The stories from grad school came tumbling through her mind, and the myths
of a dozen human religions. Consequences, consequences. Some of them she
could defend against; others were past repair.
And from somewhere in the back of her mind, an incredibly silly thought
crawled out from under the horror and the rage. For eight hours she had been
face to face with a Power. It was the sort of experience that made a chapter
in textbooks, the sort of thing that was always far away and misreported.
And it was the sort of thing no one in all of Sjandra Kei could come near to
claiming. Until now.
.Delete this paragraph to shift page flush
CHAPTER 10
Johanna was in the boat for a long time. The sun never set, though now
it was low behind her, now it was high in front, now all was cloudy and rain
plinked off the tarp covering her blankets. She spent the hours in an
agonized haze. Things happened that could only have been dreams. There were
creatures pulling at her clothes, blood sticking everywhere. Gentle hands
and rat snouts dressed her wounds, and forced chill water down her throat.
When she thrashed around, Mom rearranged her blankets and comforted her with
the strangest sounds. For hours, someone warm lay beside her. Sometimes it
was Jefri; more often it was a large dog, a dog that purred.
The rain passed. The sun was on the left side of the boat, but hidden
behind a cold, snapping shadow. More and more, the pain became divisible.
Part of it was in her chest and shoulder; that stabbed through her whenever
the boat wobbled. Part of it was in her gut, an emptiness that was not quite
nausea ... she was so hungry, so thirsty.
More and more, she was remembering, not dreaming. There were nightmares
that would never go away. They had really happened. They were happening now.
The sun peeked in and out of the tumble of clouds. It slid slowly lower
across the sky till it was almost behind the boat. She tried to remember
what Daddy had been saying just before ... everything went bad. They were in
this planet's arctic, in the summer. So the sun's low point must be north,
and their twin-hulled boat was sailing roughly southwards. Wherever they
were going, it was minute by minute farther from the spacecraft and any hope
of finding Jefri.
Sometimes the water was like open sea, the hills distant or hidden by
low clouds. Sometimes they passed through narrows, and swept close to walls
of naked rock. She'd had no idea a sailboat could move so fast or be so
dangerous. Four of the rat creatures worked desperately to keep them off the
rocks. They bounded nimbly from mast platform to railing, sometimes standing
on each other's shoulders to extend their reach. The twin-hulled boat tilted
and groaned in water that was suddenly rough. Then they'd be through and the
hills would be at a peaceful distance, sliding slowly past.
For a long while, she pretended delirium. She moaned, she twisted. She
watched. The boat hulls were long and narrow, almost like canoes. The sail
was mounted between them. The shadow in her dreams had been that sail,
snapping in the cold, clean wind. The sky was an avalanche of grays, light
and dark. There were birds up there. They dipped past the mast, circled
again and again. There was twittering and hissing all around her. But the
sound did not come from the birds.
It was the monsters. She watched them through lowered lashes. These
were the same kind that killed Mom and Dad. They even wore the same funny
clothes, gray-green jackets studded with stirrups and pockets. Dogs or
wolves she had thought before. That didn't really describe them. Sure, they
had four slender legs and pointy little ears. But with their long ne