no way OOB could fit, but I think we should play along, tell Jefri
that we can separate from our ultradrive, something like his container ship.
Let Steel concentrate on building harmless traps...."
He hummed one of his strange little "marching" tunes. "About the radio
thing: why don't we compliment the Tines real casually for improving our
design. I wonder what they'd say?"
Pham Nuwen got his answer less than three days later. Jefri Olsndot
said that he had done the optimization. So if you believed the kid, there
was no evidence for hidden computers. Pham was not at all convinced: "So
just by coincidence, we have Isaac Newton on the other end of the line?"
Ravna didn't argue the point. It was an enormous bit of luck, yet.... She
went over the earlier messages. In language and general knowledge, the boy
seemed very ordinary for his age. But occasionally there were situations
involving mathematical insight -- not formal, taught math -- where Jefri
said striking things. Some of those conversations had been under fine
conditions, with turnaround times of less than a minute. It all seemed too
consistent to be the lie Pham Nuwen thought.
Jefri Olsndot, you are someone I want very much to meet.
There was always something: problems with the Tines' developments,
fears that the murderous Woodcarvers might attack Mr. Steel, worries about
the steadily degrading drive spines and Zone turbulence that slowed OOB's
progress even further. Life was by turns and at once frustrating, boring,
frightening. And yet ...
One night about four months into the flight, Ravna woke in the cabin
she had come to share with Pham. Maybe she had been dreaming, but she
couldn't remember anything except that it had been no nightmare. There was
no special noise in the room, nothing to wake her. Beside her, Pham was
sleeping soundly in their hammock net. She eased her arm down his back,
drawing him gently toward her. His breathing changed; he mumbled something
placid and unintelligible. In Ravna's opinion, sex in zero-gee was not the
experience some people bragged it up to be; but really sleeping with someone
... that was much nicer in free fall. An embrace could be light and enduring
and effortless.
Ravna looked around the dimly-lit cabin, trying to imagine what had
woken her. Maybe it had just been the problems of the day -- Powers knew
there had been enough of those. She nestled her face against Pham's
shoulder. Yes, always problems, but ... in a way she more content than she
had been in years. Sure there were problems. Poor Jefri's situation. All the
people lost at Straum and Relay. But she had three friends, and a love.
Alone in a tiny ship bound for the Bottom, she was less lonely than she'd
been since leaving Sjandra Kei. More than ever in her life, maybe she could
do something to help with the problems.
And then she guessed, part in sadness, part in joy, that years from now
she might look back on these months as goldenly happy.
.Delete this paragraph to shift page flush
-=*=-
CHAPTER 26
And finally, almost five months out, it was clear there was no hope of
going on without repairing the drive spines. The OOB was suddenly doing only
a quarter of a light-year per hour in a volume that tested good for two. And
things were getting worse. They would have no trouble making it to
Harmonious Repose, but beyond that ...
Harmonious Repose. An ugly name, thought Ravna. Pham's "light-hearted"
translation was worse: Rest In Peace. In the Beyond, almost everything
habitable was in use. Civilizations were transient and races faded ... but
there were always new people moving up from Below. The result was most often
patchwork, polyspecific systems. Young races just up from the Slowness lived
uneasily with the remnants of older peoples. According to the ship's
library, RIP had been in the Beyond for a long time. It had been
continuously inhabited for at least two hundred million years, time for ten
thousand species to call it home. The most recent notes showed better than
one hundred racial terranes. Even the youngest was the residue of a dozen
emigrations. The place should be peaceful to the point of being moribund.
So be it. They jigged the OOB three light-years spinward. Now they were
flying down the main Net trunk towards RIP: they'd be able to listen to the
News the whole way in.
Harmonious Repose advertised. At least one species valued external
goods, specializing in ship outfitting and repair. An industrious,
hard-footed(?) race, the ads said. Eventually, she saw some video: the
creatures walked on ivory tusks and had a froth of short arms growing from
just below their necks. The ads included Net addresses of satisfied users.
Too bad we can't follow up on those. Instead, Ravna sent a short message in
Triskweline, requesting generic drive replacements, and listing possible
methods of payment.
Meantime, the bad news kept rolling in:
Crypto: 0
As received by: OOB shipboard ad hoc
Language path: Baeloresk->Triskweline, SjK units
From: Alliance for the Defense [Claimed cooperative of five
polyspecific empires in the Beyond below Straumli Realm. No record of
existence before the Fall of the Realm.]
Subject: Call to action
Distribution:
Threat of the Blight, War Trackers Interest Group, Homo Sapiens Interest Group
Date: 158.00 days since Fall of Relay
Key phrases: Action, not talk
Text of message:
Alliance Forces are preparing for action against the tools of the
Perversion. It is time for our friends to declare themselves. At the moment
we do not need your military pledges, but in the very near future we will
need support services including free Net time.
In the coming seconds we will be watching closely to see who supports
our action and who may be enslaved to the Perversion. If you live with the
human infestation, you have a choice: act now with a good possibility of
victory -- or wait, and be destroyed.
Death to vermin.
There were plenty of secondary messages, including speculation about
who Death to Vermin (aka the "Alliance for the Defense") had in mind. There
were also rumors of military movement. This wasn't making the splash the
fall of Relay had, but it did have the attention of several News groups.
Ravna swallowed hard and looked away from the display. "Well, they're still
making big noises," she tried for a light tone, but it didn't come out that
way.
Pham Nuwen touched her shoulder. "Quite true. And real killers
generally don't advertise beforehand." But there was more sympathy than
conviction in his voice. "We still don't know that this is more than a
single loud-mouth. There's no definite word of ship movements. What can they
do after all?"
Ravna pushed herself up from the table. "Not much, I hope. There are
hundreds of civilizations with small human settlements. Surely they've have
taken precautions since this Death to Vermin stuff began.... By the Powers,
I wish I knew Sjandra Kei was safe." It had been more than two years since
she'd seen Lynne and her parents. Sometimes Sjandra Kei seemed something
from another life, but just knowing it was there had been more comfort than
she realized. Now....
On the other side of the command deck, the Skroderiders had been
working on the repair specs. Now Blueshell rolled toward them. "I do fear
for the small settlements, but the humans at Sjandra Kei are the driving
force of that civilization; even the name is a human one. Any attack on them
would be an attack on the entire civilization. Greenstalk and I have traded
there often enough, and with their commercial security forces. Only fools or
bluffers would announce an invasion beforehand."
Ravna thought a moment, brightened. The Dirokimes and Lophers would
stand against any threat to humankind at Sjandra Kei. "Yeah. We're not a
ghetto there." Things might be very bad for isolated humans, but Sjandra Kei
would be okay. "Bluffers. Well it's not called the Net of a Million Lies for
nothing." She pulled her mind back from worries beyond her control. "But one
thing is clear. Stopping at Harmonious Repose, we must be damn sure not to
look like anything human."
And of course, part of not looking human was that there be no sign of
Ravna and Pham. The Riders would do all the "talking". Ravna and the Riders
went through all the ship's exterior programs, weeding out human nuances
that had crept in since they left Relay. And if they were actually boarded?
Well, they would never survive a determined search, but they isolated things
human in a fake jovian hold. The two humans would slip in there if
necessary.
Pham Nuwen checked what they did -- and found more than one slip-up.
For a barbarian programmer, he wasn't bad. But then they were rapidly
reaching the depths where the best computer equipment wasn't that much more
sophisticated than what he had known.
Ironically, there was one thing they could not disguise: that the OOB
was from the Top of the Beyond. True, the ship was a bottom lugger and based
on a Mid Beyond design. But there was an elegance to the refit that screamed
of nearly superhuman competence. "The damn thing has the feel of a hand axe
built in a factory," was how Pham Nuwen put it.
RIPer security was an encouraging thing: a perfunctory velocity check
and no boarding. OOB hopped into the system and finished a rocket burn to
match position/velocity vector with the heart of Harmonious Repose and
"Saint(?) Rihndell's Repair Harbor". (Pham: "If you're a 'saint', you gotta
be honest, right?")
Out of Band was above the ecliptic and some eighty million kilometers
from RIP's single star. Even knowing what to expect, the view was
spectacular: The inner system was as dusty/gassy as a stellar nursery, even
though the primary was a three-billion-year-old G star. That sun was
surrounded by millions of rings, more spectacular than around any planet.
The largest and brightest resolved into myriads more. Even in the natural
view, there was bright color here, threads of green and red and violet.
Warping of the ring plane laid lakes of shadow between colored hillsides,
hillsides a million kilometers across. There were occasional objects --
structures? -- sticking far enough up from the ring plane to cast
needle-like shadows out-system. Infrared and proper motion windows showed
more conventional features: Beyond the rings lay a massive asteroid belt,
and far beyond that a single jovian planet, its own million-klick ring
system a puny afterthought. There were no other planets, either detected or
on file. The largest objects in the main ring system were three hundred
kilometers across ... but there appeared to be thousands of them.
At "Saint Rihndell's" direction they brought the ship down to the ring
plane and matched velocities with the local junk. That last was a big
impulsive burn: three gees for almost five minutes. "Just like old, old
times," Pham Nuwen said.
In free fall again, they looked out upon their harbor: Up close it
looked like planetary ring systems Ravna had known all her life. There were
objects of all sizes down to less than a handspan across, uncounted globs of
icy froth -- gently touching, sticking, separating. The debris hung nearly
motionless all about them; this was chaos that had been tamed long ago. In
the plane of the rings, they couldn't see more than a few hundred meters.
The debris blocked further views. And it wasn't all loose. Greenstalk
pointed to a line of white that seemed to curve from infinity, pass close by
them, and then retreat forever in the other direction. "Looks like a single
structure," she said.
Ravna stepped up the magnification. In planetary ring systems, the
"frothy snowballs" sometimes accreted into strings thousands of klicks
long.... The white thread spread wide beyond the window. The display said it
was almost a kilometer across. This arc was definitely not made of
snowballs. She could see ship locks and communications nodes. Checking with
images from their approach, Ravna could see that the whole thing was better
than forty million kilometers long. There were a number of breaks scattered
along the arc. That figured: the scaled tensile strength of such a structure
could be near zero. Depending on local distortions, it would pull apart
briefly, then gently come together some time later. The whole affair was
vaguely reminiscent of train cars coupling and uncoupling on some old-time
Nyjoran railway.
Over the next hour, they moved carefully in to dock at the ring arc.
The only thing regular about the structure was its linearity. Some of the
modules were clearly designed for linking fore and aft. Others were jumbled
heaps of oddball equipment meshed in dirty ice. The last few kilometers,
they drifted through a forest of ultradrive spines. Two thirds of the berths
were occupied.
Blueshell opened a window on Saint Rihndell's business specs. "Hmm. Hm.
Sir Rihndell seems extraordinarily busy." He angled some fronds back at the
ships in the exterior view.
Pham: "Maybe he's running a junkyard."
Blueshell and Greenstalk went down to the cargo lock to prepare for
their first trip ashore. The Skroderiders had been together for two hundred
years, and Blueshell came from a star trader tradition before that. Yet the
two argued back and forth about the best approach to take with "Saint
Rihndell".
"Of course, Harmonious Repose is typical, dear Blueshell; I would
remember the type even if I'd never ridden a Skrode. But our business here
is not like anything we've done before."
Blueshell grumped wordlessly, and pushed another trade packet under his
cargo scarf. The scarf was more than pretty. The material was tough, elastic
stuff that protected what it covered.
This was the same procedure they had always followed in new ring
systems, and it had worked well before. Finally he replied, "Certainly,
there are differences, mainly that we have very little to trade for the
repairs and no previous commercial contacts. If we don't use hard business
sense we'll get nothing here!" He checked the various sensors strung across
his Skrode, then spoke to the humans. "Do you want me to move any of the
cameras? Do they all have a clear view?" Saint Rihndell was a miser when it
came to renting bandwidth -- or maybe it was simply cautious.
Pham Nuwen's voice came back. "No. They're okay. Can you hear me?" He
was speaking through a microphone inside their skrodes. The link itself was
encrypted.
"Yes."
The Skroderiders passed through OOB's locks into Saint Rihndell's arc
habitat.
From within, transparency arched around them, lines of natural windows
that dwindled into the distance. They looked out upon Saint Rihndell's
current customers and the ring fluff beyond. The sun was dimmed in the view,
but there was a haze of brightness, a super corona. That was a power-sat
swarm, no doubt; ring systems did not naturally make good use of the central
fire. For a moment the Riders stopped in their tracks, taken by the image of
a sea greater than any sea: The light might have been sunset through shallow
surf. And to them, the drifting of thousands of nearby particles looked like
food in a slow tidal surge.
The concourse was crowded. The creatures here had ordinary enough body
plans, though none were of species Greenstalk recognized for certain. The
tusk-leg type that ran Saint Rihndell's was most numerous. After a moment,
one such drifted out from the wall near the OOB's lock. It buzzed something
that came out as Triskweline: "For trading, we go this way." Its ivory legs
moved agilely across netting into an open car. The Skroderiders settled
behind and they accelerated along the arc. Blueshell waggled at Greenstalk,
"The old story, eh; what good are their legs now?" It was the oldest Rider
humor, but it was always worth a laugh: Two legs or four legs -- evolved
from flippers or jaws or whatever -- were all very good for movement on
land. But in space, it scarcely mattered.
The car was making about one hundred meters per second, swaying
slightly whenever they passed from one ring segment to the next. Blueshell
kept up a steady patter of conversation with their guide, the sort of pitch
that Greenstalk knew was one of his great joys in life. "Where are we going?
What are those creatures there? What sort of things are they in search of at
Saint Rihndell's?" All jovial, and almost humanly brisk. Where short-term
memory was failing him, he depended on his skrode.
Tusk-legs spoke only reduced-grammar Triskweline and didn't seem to
understand some of the questions: "We go to the Master Seller.... helper
creatures those are.... allies of big new customer..." Their guide's limited
speech bothered dear Blueshell not at all; he was collecting responses more
than answers. Most races had interests that were obscure to the likes of
Blueshell and Greenstalk. No doubt there were billions of creatures in
Harmonious Repose who were totally inscrutable to Riders or Humans or
Dirokimes. Yet simple dialog often gave insight on the two most important
questions: What do you have that might be useful to me, and how can I
persuade you to part with it? Dear Blueshell's questions were sounding out
the other, trying to find the parameters of personality and interest and
ability.
It was a team game the two Skroderiders played. While Blueshell
chattered, Greenstalk watched everything around them, running her skrode's
recorders on all bands, trying to place this environment in the context of
others they had known. Technology: What would these people need? What could
work? In space this flat, there would be little use for agrav fabric. And
this low in the Beyond, a lot of the most sophisticated imports from above
would spoil almost immediately. Workers outside the long windows wore
articulated pressure suits -- the force-field suits of the High Beyond would
last only a few weeks down here.
They passed trees(?) that twisted and twisted. Some of the trunks
circled the wall of the arc; others trailed along their path for hundreds of
meters. Tusk-leg gardeners floated everywhere about the plants, yet there
was no evidence of agriculture. All this was ornament. In the ring plane
beyond the windows there were occasional towers, structures that sprouted a
thousand kilometers above the plane and cast the pointy shadows they had
seen on their final approach to the system. Ravna's voice and Pham's buzzed
against her stalk, softly asking Greenstalk about the towers, speculating on
their purpose. She stored their theories for later consideration ... but she
doubted them; some would only work in the High Beyond, and others would be
clumsy given this civilization's other accomplishments.
Greenstalk had visited eight ring system civilizations in her life.
They were a common consequence of accidents and wars (and occasionally, of
deliberate habitat design). According to OOB's library, Harmonious Repose
had been a normal planetary system up till ten million years ago. Then
there'd been a real estate dispute: A young race from Below had thought to
colonize and exterminate the moribund inhabitants. The attack had been a
miscalculation, for the moribund could still kill and the system was reduced
to rubble. Perhaps the young race survived. But after ten million years, if
there were any of those young killers left they would now be the most frail
of the systems' elder races. Perhaps a thousand new races had passed through
in that time, and almost every one had done something to tailor the rings
and the gas cloud left from the debacle. What was left was not a ruin at
all, but old ... old. The ship's library claimed that no race had
transcended from Harmonious Repose in a thousand years. That fact was more
important than all the others. The current civilizations were in their
twilight, refining mediocrity. More than anything else, the system had the
feel of an old and beautiful tide pool, groomed and tended, shielded from
the exciting waves that might upset its bansai plumes. Most likely the
tusk-legs were the liveliest species about, perhaps the only one interested
in trade with the outside.
Their car slowed and spiraled into a small tower.
"By the Fleet, what I wouldn't give to be out there with them!" Pham
Nuwen waved at the views coming in from the skrode cameras. Ever since the
Riders left, he'd been at the windows, alternately gaping wide-eyed at the
ringscape and bouncing abstractedly between the command deck's floor and
ceiling. Ravna had never seen him so absorbed, so intense. However
fraudulent his memories of trading days, he truly thought he could make a
difference. And he may be right.
Pham came down from the ceiling, pulled close to the screen. It looked
like serious bargaining was about to begin. The Skroderiders had arrived in
a spherical room perhaps fifty meters across. Apparently they were floating
near the center of it. A forest grew inward from all directions, and the
Riders seemed to float just a few meters from the tree tops. Here and there
between the branches, they could see the ground, a mosaic of flowers.
Saint Rihndell's sales creatures were scattered all about the tallest
trees. They sat(?) with their ivory limbs twined about the tree tops.
Tusk-leg races were a common thing in the galaxy, but these were the first
Ravna had known. The body plan was totally unlike anything from home, and
even now she didn't have a clear idea of their appearance. Sitting in the
trees, their legs had more of the aspect of a skeletal fingers grasping
around the trunk. Their chief rep -- who claimed to be Saint Rihndell itself
-- had scrimshaw covering two-thirds of its ivory. Two of the windows showed
the carving close up; Pham seemed to think that understanding the artwork
might be useful.
Progress was slow. Triskweline was the common language, but good
interpreting devices didn't work this deep in the Beyond, and Saint
Rihndell's folk were only marginally familiar with the trade talk. Ravna was
used to clean translations. Even the Net messages she dealt with were
usually intelligible (though sometimes misleadingly so).
They'd been talking for twenty minutes and had only just established
that Saint Rihndell might have the ability to repair OOB. It was the usual
Riderly driftiness, and something more. The tedium seemed to please Pham
Nuwen, "Rav, this is almost like a Qeng Ho operation, face to face with
critters and scarcely a common language."
"We sent them a description of our repair problem hours ago. Why should
it take so long for a simple yes or no?"
"Because they're haggling," said Pham, his grin broadening. "'Honest'
Saint Rihndell here -- " he waved at the scrimshawed local, "-- wants to
convince us just how hard the job is.... Lord I wish I was out there."
Even Blueshell and Greenstalk seemed a little strange now. Their
Triskweline was stripped down, barely more complex than Saint Rihndell's.
And much of the discussion seemed very round about. Working for Vrinimi,
Ravna had had some experience with sales and trading. But haggling? You had
your pricing data bases and strategy support, and directions from Grondr's
people. You either had a deal or you didn't. What was going on between the
Riders and Saint Rihndell was one of the more alien things Ravna had ever
seen.
"Actually, things are going pretty well ... I think. You saw when we
arrived, the bone legs took away Blueshell's samples. By now they know
precisely what we have. There's something in those samples that they want.
"Yeah?"
"Sure. Saint Rihndell isn't bad-mouthing our stuff for his health."
"Damn it, it's possible we don't have anything on board they could
want. This was never intended to be a trade expedition." Blueshell and
Greenstalk had scavenged "product samples" from the ship's supplies, things
that the OOB could survive without. These included sensoria and some Low
Beyond computer gear. Some of that would be a serious loss. But one way or
another, we need those repairs.
Pham chuckled. "No. There's something there Saint Rihndell wants.
Otherwise he wouldn't still be jawing.... And see how he keeps needling us
about his 'other customers' needs'? Saint Rihndell is a human kind of a
guy."
Something like human song came over the link to the Riders. Ravna
phased Greenstalk's cameras toward the sound. From the forest "floor" on the
far side of Blueshell, three new creatures had appeared.
"Why ... they're beautiful. Butterflies," said Ravna.
"Huh?"
"I mean they look like butterflies. You know? Um. Insects with large
colored wings."
Giant butterflies, actually. The newcomers had a generally humanoid
body plan. They were about 150 centimeters tall and covered with
soft-looking brown fur. Their wings sprouted from behind their shoulder
blades. At full spread they were almost two meters across, soft blues and
yellows, some more intricately patterned than others. Surely they were
artificial, or a gengineered affectation; they would have been useless for
flying about in any reasonable gravity. But here in zero-gee.... The three
floated at the entrance for just a moment, their huge, soft eyes looking up
at the Riders. Then they swept their wings in measured sweeps, and drifted
gracefully into the air above the forest. The entire effect was like
something out of a children's video. They had pert, button noses, like pet
jorakorns, and eyes as wide and bashful as any human animator ever drew.
Their voices sounded like youngsters singing.
Saint Rihndell and his buddies sidled around their tree tops. The
tallest visitor sang on, its wings gently flexing. After a moment, Ravna
realized it was speaking fluent Trisk with a front end adapted to the
creature's natural speech:
"Saint Rihndell, greetings! Our ships are ready for your repairs. We
have made fair payment, and we are in a great hurry. Your work must begin at
once!" Saint Rihndell's Trisk specialist translated the speech for his boss.
Ravna leaned across Pham's back. "So maybe our friendly repairman
really is overbooked," she said.
"... Yeah."
Saint Rihndell came back around his treetop. His little arms picked at
the green needles as he made a reply. "Honored Customers. You made offer of
payment, not fully accepted. What you ask is in short supply, difficult to
... do."
The cuddly butterfly made a squeaking noise that might have passed for
joyous laughter in a human child. The sense behind its singing was
different: "Times are changing, Rihndell creature! Your people must learn:
We will not be stymied. You know my fleet's sacred mission. We count every
passing hour against you. Think on the fleet you will face if your lack of
cooperation is ever known -- is ever even suspected." There was a sweep of
blue and yellow wings, and the butterfly turned. Its dark, bashful eyes
rested on the Riders. "And these potted plants, they are customers? Dismiss
them. Till we are gone, you have no other customers."
Ravna sucked in a breath. The three had no visible weapons, but she was
suddenly afraid for Blueshell and Greenstalk.
"Well, what do you know," Pham said. "Butterflies in jackboots."
.Delete this paragraph to shift page flush
-=*=-
CHAPTER 27
According to the clock, it took less than half an hour for the
Skroderiders to make it back. It seemed a lot longer to Pham Nuwen, even
though he tried to keep up a casual front with Ravna. Maybe they were both
keeping up a front; he knew she still considered him a fragile case.
But the Riders' cameras showed no more signs of the killer butterflies.
Finally the cargo lock cracked open and Blueshell and Greenstalk were back.
"I was sure the wily tusk-legs was just pretending there was strong
demand," said Blueshell. He seemed as eager to rehash the story as Pham was.
"Yeah, I thought so too. In fact, I still think those butterflies might
just be part of an act. It's all too melodramatic."
Blueshell's fronds rattled in a way that Pham recognized as a kind of
shiver. "I wager not, Sir Pham. Those were Aprahanti. Just the look of them
fills you with dread, does it not? They're rare these days, but a star
trader knows the stories. Still ... this is a little much even for
Aprahanti. Their Hegemony has been on the wane for several centuries." He
rattled something at the ship, and the windows were filled with views of
nearby berths in the repair harbor. There was more Rider rattling, this time
between Greenstalk and Blueshell. "Those other ships are a uniform type, you
know. A High Beyond design like ours, but more, um, ... militant."
Greenstalk moved close to a window. "There are twenty of them. Why
would so many need drive repairs all at once?"
Militant? Pham looked at the ships with a critical eye. He knew the
major features of Beyonder vessels by now. These appeared to have rather
large cargo capacity. Elaborate sensoria too. Hm. "Okay, so the Butterflies
are hard types. How scared is Saint Rihndell and company?"
The Skroderiders were silent for a long moment. Pham couldn't tell if
his question was being given serious consideration or if they had
simultaneously lost track of the conversation. He looked at Ravna. "How
about the local net? I'd like to get some background."
She was already running comm routines. "They weren't accessible
earlier. We couldn't even get the News." That was something Pham could
understand, even if it was damned irritating. The "local net" was a RIP-wide
ultrawave computer and communication network, perhaps a billion times more
complex than anything Pham had known -- but conceptually similar to
organizations in the Slow Zone. And Pham Nuwen had seen what vandals could
do to such structures; Qeng Ho had dealt with at least one obnoxious
civilization by perverting its computer net. Not surprisingly, Saint
Rihndell hadn't provided them with links to the RIP net. And as long as they
were in harbor, the OOB's antenna swarm was necessarily down, so they were
also cut off from the Known Net and the newsgroups.
A grin lit Ravna's face. "Hei! Now we've got read access, maybe more.
Greenstalk. Blueshell. Wake up!"
Rattle. "I wasn't asleep," claimed Blueshell, "just thinking on Sir
Pham's question. Saint Rihndell is obviously afraid."
As usual, Greenstalk didn't make excuses. She rolled around her mate to
get a better look at Ravna's newly opened comm window. There was an
iterated-triangle design with Trisk annotations. It meant nothing to Pham.
"That's interesting," said Greenstalk.
"I am chuckling," said Blueshell. "It is more than interesting. Saint
Rihndell is a hard-trading type. But look, he is making no charge for this
service, not even a percentage of barter. He is afraid, but he still wants
to deal with us."
Hmm, so something from their High Beyond samples was enough to make him
risk Aprahanti violence. Just hope it's not something we really need too.
"Okay. Rav, see if -- "
"Just a second," the woman replied. "I want to check the News." She
started a search program. Her eyes flickered quickly across her console
window ... and after a second she choked, and her face paled. "By the
Powers, no!"
"What is it?"
But Ravna didn't reply, or put the news to a main window. Pham grabbed
the rail in front of her console and pulled himself around so he could see
what she was reading:
Crypto: 0
As received by: Harmonious Repose Communication Synod
Language path: Baeloresk->Triskweline, SjK units
From: Alliance for the Defense [Claimed cooperative of five
polyspecific empires in the Beyond below Straumli Realm. No record of
existence before the Fall of the Realm.]
Subject: Bold victory over the Perversion
Distribution:
Threat of the Blight, War Trackers Interest Group, Homo Sapiens Interest Group
Date: 159.06 days since fall of Relay
Key phrases: Action, not talk; A promising beginning
Text of message:
One hundred seconds ago, Alliance Forces began action against the tools
of the Blight. By the time you read this, the Homo Sapiens worlds known as
Sjandra Kei will have been destroyed.
Note well: for all the talk and theories that have flown about the
Blight, this is the first time anyone has successfully acted. Sjandra Kei
was one of only three systems outside of Straumli Realm known to harbor
humans in any numbers. In one stroke we have destroyed a third of the
Perversion's potential for expansion.
Updates will follow.
Death to vermin.
There was one other message in the window, an update of sorts, but not
from Death to Vermin:
Crypto: 0
Billing: charity/general interest
As received by: Harmonious Repose Communication Synod
Language path: Samnorsk->Triskweline, SjK units
From: Commercial Security, Sjandra Kei [Note from lower protocol layer:
This message was received at Sneerot Down along the Sjandra Kei bearing. The
transmission was very weak, perhaps from a shipboard transmitter]
Subject: Please help
Distribution:
Threats Interest Group
Date: 5.33 hours since disaster at Sjandra Kei
Text of message:
Earlier today, relativistic projectiles struck our main habitations.
Fatalities cannot be less than twenty-five billion. Three billion may still
live, in transit and in smaller habitats.
We are still under attack.
Enemy craft are in the inner system. We see glow bombs. They are
killing everyone.
Please. We need help.
"Nei nei nei!" Ravna drove up against him, her arms tight around him,
her face buried in his shoulder. She sobbed incoherent Samnorsk. Her whole
body shuddered against him. He felt tears coming to his own eyes. So
strange. She had been the strong one, and he the fragile crazy. Now it was
turned all around, and what could he do? "Father, mother, sister -- gone,
gone."
It was the disaster they thought could not happen, and now it had. In
one minute she had lost everything she grew up with, and was suddenly alone
in the universe. For me, that happened long ago, the thought came strangely
dispassionate. He hooked a foot into the deck and gently rocked Ravna back
and forth, trying to comfort her.
The sounds of grief gradually quieted, though he could still feel her
sobs through his chest. She didn't raise her face from the tear-soaked place
on his shirt. Pham looked over her head at Blueshell and Greenstalk. Their
fronds looked strange ... almost wilted.
"Look, I want to take Ravna away for a bit. Learn what you can, and
I'll be back."
"Yes, Sir Pham." And they seemed to droop even more.
It was an hour before Pham returned to the command deck. When he did,
he found the Riders deep in rattling conference with OOB. All the windows
were filled with flickering strangeness. Here and there Pham recognized a
pattern or a printed legend, enough to guess that he was seeing ordinary
ship displays, but optimized to Rider senses.
Blueshell noticed him first; he rolled abruptly toward him and his
voder voice came out a little squeaky. "Is she all right?"
Pham gave a little nod. "She's sleeping now." Sedated, and with the
ship watching her in case I've misjudged her. "Look, she'll be okay. She's
been hit hard ... but she's the toughest one of us all."
Greenstalk's fronds rattled a smile. "I have often thought that."
Blueshell was motionless for an instant. Then, "Well, to business, to
business." He said something to the ship, and the windows reformatted in the
compromise usable by both humans and Riders. "We've learned a lot while you
were gone. Saint Rihndell indeed has something to fear. The Aprahanti ships
are a small fragment of the Death to Vermin extermination fleets. These are
stragglers still on their way to Sjandra Kei!"
All dressed up for a massacre, and no place to go. "So now they want
some action of their own."
"Yes. Apparently Sjandra Kei put up some resistance and there were some
escapes. The commander of this fleetlet thinks he can intercept some of
these -- if he can get prompt repairs."
"What kind of extortion is really possible? Could these twenty ships
destroy RIP?"
"No. It's the reputation of the greater force these ships are part of
-- and the great killing at Sjandra Kei. So Saint Rihndell is very timid
with them, and what they need for repairs is the same class of regrowth
agent that we need. We really are in competition with them for Rihndell's
business." Blueshell's fronds slapped together, the sort of "go get'em"
enthusiasm he displayed when a hot deal was remembered. "But it turns out we
have something Saint Rihndell really, really wants, something he'll even
risk tricking the Aprahanti to get." He paused dramatically.
Pham thought back over the things they had offered the RIPers. Lord,
not the low zone ultrawave gear. "Okay, I'll bite. What do we have to
give'em?"
"A set of flamed trellises! Hah hah."
"Huh?" Pham remembered the name from the list of odds and ends the
Skroderiders had scrounged up. "What's a 'flamed trellis'?"
Blueshell poked a frond into his satchel and extended something stubby
and black to Pham: an irregular solid, about forty centimeters by fifteen,
smooth to the touch. For all its size, it didn't mass more than a couple of
grams. An artfully smoothed ... cinder. Pham's curiosity triumphed over
greater concerns: "But what's it good for?"
Blueshell dithered. After a moment, Greenstalk said a little shyly,
"There are theories. It's pure carbon, a fractal polymer. We know it's very
common in Transcendent cargoes. We think it's used as packing material for
some kinds of sentient property."
"Or perhaps the excrement of such property," Blueshell buzz-muttered.
"Ah, but that's not important. What is, is that occasional races in the
Middle Beyond prize them. And why that? Again, we don't know. Saint
Rihndell's folk are certainly not the final user. The Tusk-legs are far too
sensible to be ordinary trellis customers. So. We have three hundred of
these wonderful things ... more than enough to overcome Saint Rihndell's
fears of the Aprahanti."
While Pham had been away with Ravna, Saint Rihndell had come up with a
plan. Applying the regrowth agent would be too obvious in the same harbor
with the Aprahanti ships. Besides, the chief Butterfly had demanded the OOB
move out. Saint Rihndell had a small harbor about sixteen million klicks
around the RIP system. The move was even plausible, for it happened that
there was a Skroderider terrane in the Harmonious Repose system -- and
currently it was just a few hundred kilometers from Rihndell's second
harbor. They would rendezvous with the tusk-legs, exchanging repairs for two
hundred seventeen flamed trellises. And if the trellises were perfectly
matched, Rihndell promised to throw in an agrav refit. After the Fall of
Relay, that would be very welcome.... Hunh. Ol' Blueshell just never stopped
wheeling and dealing.
The OOB slipped free of its moorings and carefully drifted up from the
ring plane. Tiptoe-ing out. Pham kept a close watch on the EM and ultrawave
windows. But there were no target-locking emanations from the Aprahanti
vessels, nothing more than casual radar contact. No one followed. Little OOB
and its "potted plants" were beneath the notice of the great warriors.
One thousand meters above the ring plane. Three. The Skroderiders'
chatter -- both with Pham and between themselves -- dwindled to naught.
Their stalks and fronds angled so the sensing surfaces looked out in all
directions. The sun and its power cloud was a blaze of light on one side of
the deck. They were above the rings, but still so close.... It was like
standing at sunset on a beach of colored sands ... that stretched to an
infinite horizon. The Skroderiders stared into it, their fronds gently
swaying.
Twenty kilometers above the rings. One thousand. They lit the OOB's
main torch and accelerated across the system. The Skroderiders came slowly
out of their trance. Once they arrived at the second harbor, the regrowth
would take about five hours -- assuming Rihndell's agent had not
deteriorated; the Saint claimed it was recently imported from the Top, and
undiluted.
"Okay, so when do we deliver the trellises?"
"On completion of the repairs. We can't depart until Saint Rihndell --
or his customers -- are satisfied that all the pieces are genuine."
Pham drummed his fingers on the comm console. This operation brought
back a lot of memories, some of them hair-raising. "So they get the goods
while we're still in the middle of RIP. I don't like it."
"See here, Sir Pham. Your experience with star trading was in the Slow
Zone, where exchanges were separated by decades or centuries of travel time.
I admire you for that, more than I can say -- but it gives you a twisted
view of things. Up here in the Beyond, the notion of return business is
important. We know very little of Saint Rihndell's inner motivation, but we
do know his repair business has existed for at least forty years. Sharp
dealing we can expect from him, but if he robbed or murdered very many,
trader groups would know, and his little business would starve."
"Hmf." No point in arguing it right now, but Pham guessed that this
situation was special. Rihndell -- and the RIPers in general -- had Death to
Vermin sitting on their doorstep, and stories of major chaos coming from the
direction of Sjandra Kei. With that background they might just lose their
courage once they had the trellises. Some precautions were in order. He
drifted off to the ship's machine shop.
.Delete this paragraph to shift page flush
CHAPTER 28
Ravna came to the cargo deck as Blueshell and Greenstalk were preparing
the trellises for delivery. She moved hesitantly, pushing awkwardly from
point to point. There were dark rings, almost bruises, beneath her eyes. She
returned Pham's hug almost tentatively, but didn't let go. "I want to help.
Is there anything I can do to help?"
The Skroderiders left their trellises and rolled over. Blueshell ran a
frond gently across Ravna's arm, "Nothing for you to do now, my lady Ravna.
We have everything well, ah, in hand. We'll be back in less than an hour,
and then we can be rid of here."
But they let her check their cameras and the cargo strap-downs. Pham
drifted close by her as she inspected the trellises. The twisted carbon
blocks looked stranger than the one alone had. Properly stacked, they fit
perfectly. More than a meter across, the stack looked like a
three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle carved from coal. Counting a separate bag of
loose spares, they totaled less than half a kilogram. Huh. Damn things
should be flammable as hell. Pham resolved to play with the remaining
hundred odd trellises after they were safely back in deep space.
Then the Skroderiders were through the cargo lock with their delivery,
and they could only follow along on their cameras.
This secondary harbor was not really part of the tusk-leg race's
terrane. The inside of the arc was far different from what they had seen on
the Skroderiders' first trip. There were no exterior views. Cramped passages
wound between irregular walls pocked with dark holes. Insects flew
everywhere, often covering parts of the camera balls. To Pham, the place
looked filthy. There was no evidence of the terrane's owners -- unless they
were the pallid worms that sometimes stuck a featureless head(?) up from a
burrow hole. Over his voice link, Blueshell opined that these were very
ancient tenants of the RIP system. After a million years, and a hundred
transcendent emigrations, the residue might still be sentient, but stranger
than anything evolved in the Slow Zone. Such a people would be protected
from physical extinction by ancient automation, but they would also be
inward turning, totally cautious, absorbed in concerns that were inane by
any outside standard. It was the type that most often lusted after trellis
work.
Pham tried to keep an eye on everything. The Riders had to travel
almost four kilometers from the harbor lock to reach the place where the
trellises would be "validated". Pham counted two exterior locks along the
way, and nothing that looked especially threatening -- but then how would he
know what "threatening" looked like here? He had the OOB mount an exterior
watch. A large shepherd satellite floated on the outer side of the ring, but
there were no other ships in this harbor. The EM and ultra-environment
seemed placid, and what could be seen on the local net did not make the
ship's defenses suspicious.
Pham looked up from the reports. Ravna had drifted across the deck to
the outside view. The repair work was visible, though not spectacular. A
pale greenish aura hung around the damaged spines. It was scarcely brighter
than the glow you often see on ship hulls in low planetary orbit. She turned
and said softly, "Is it really getting fixed?"
"As far as we can -- I mean yes." Ship's automation was monitoring the
regrowth, but they wouldn't know for sure till they tried to fly with it.
Pham was never sure why Rihndell had the Skroderiders pass through the
wormheads' terrane; maybe, if the creatures were the ultimate trellis users,
they wanted a look at the sellers. Or maybe it had some connection with the
treachery that ultimately followed. In any case the Riders were soon out of
it, and into a polyspecific concourse as crowded as any low-tech bazaar.
Pham's jaw sagged. Everywhere he looked there was a different class of
sophont. Intelligent life is a rare development in the universe; in all his
life in the Slow Zone, he had known three nonhuman races. But the universe
is a big place, and with ultradrive it was easy to find other life. The
Beyond collected the detritus of countless migrations, an accumulation that
finally made civilization ubiquitous. For a moment he lost track of his
surveillance programs and his general suspicions, drowned in the wonder of
it. Ten species? Twelve? Individuals brushed familiarly by one another. Even
Relay had not been like this. But then Harmonious Repose was a civilization
lost in stagnation. These races had been part of the RIP complex for
thousands of years. The ones that could interact had long since learned to
do so.
And nowhere did he see butterfly wings on creatures with large,
compassionate eyes.
He heard a small sound of surprise from the far side of the deck. Ravna
was standing close by a window that looked out from one of Greenstalk's side
cameras. "What is it, Rav?"
"Skroderiders. See?" She pointed into the mob and zoomed the view. For
a moment the images towered over her. Through the passing chaos he had a
glimpse of hull forms and graceful fronds. Except for cosmetic stripes and
tassles, they looked very familiar indeed.
"Yeah, there's a small colony of them hereabouts." He opened the
channel to Greenstalk and told her about the sighting.
"I know. We ... smelled them. Sigh. I wish we had time to visit them
after this. Finding friends in far places ... always nice." She helped
Blueshell push the trellises around a balloon acquarium. They could see
Rihndell's people just ahead. Six tusk-legs sat on the wall around what
might be test equipment.
Blueshell and Greenstalk pushed their ball of frothy carbon into the
group. The scrimshawed one leaned close to the pile and reached out to
fondle the pieces with its tiny arms. One after another the trellises were
placed in the tester. Blueshell moved in close to watch, and Pham set the
main windows to look through his cameras. Twenty seconds passed. Rihndell's
Trisk interpreter said, "First seven test true, make an interlocked septet."
Only then did Pham realize he had been holding his breath. The next
three "septets" passed, too. Another sixty seconds. He glanced at the ship's
repair status. OOB considered the job done but for sign-off commit from the
local net. Another few minutes and we can kiss this place goodbye!
But there are always problems. Saint Rihndell bitched about the twelfth
and fifteenth sets. Blueshell argued at length, grudgingly produced
replacement pieces from his bag of spares. Pham couldn't tell if the
Skroderider was debating for the fun of it, or if he really was short on
good replacements.
Twenty-five sets okayed.
"Where is Greenstalk going?" said Ravna.
"What?" Pham called up the view from Greenstalk's cameras. She was five
meters from Blueshell and moving away. He panned wildly about. A local
Skroderider was on her left and another floated inverted above her. Its
fronds touched hers in apparently amiable conversation. "Greenstalk!" There
was no reply.
"Blueshell! What's happening?" But that Rider was in gesticulating
argument with the tusk-legs. Still another set of trellises had failed their
examination. "Blueshell!" After a moment the Rider's voice came over their
private channel. He sounded drifty, the way he often did when he was jammed
or overloaded. "Not to bother me now, Sir Pham. I'm down to three perfect
replacements. I must persuade these fellows to settle for what they already
have."
Ravna broke in, "But what about Greenstalk? What's happening to her?"
The cameras had lost sight of each other. Greenstalk and her companions
emerged from a dense crowd and floated across the middle of the concourse.
They were using gas jets instead of wheels. Someone was in a hurry.
The seriousness of events finally got through to Blueshell. The view
from his skrode turned wildly as he rolled back and forth around Saint
Rihndell's people. There was the rattle of Rider talk and then his voice
came back on the inside channel, plaintive and confused. "She's gone. She's
gone. I must ... I have to ...." Abruptly he rolled back to the tusk legs
and resumed the argument that had just been interrupted. After a couple of
seconds his voice came back on the inside channel. "What should I do, Sir
Pham? I have a sale here still incomplete, yet my Greenstalk has wandered
off."
Or been kidnapped. "Get us the sale, Blueshell. Greenstalk will be
okay.... OOB: Plan B." He grabbed a headset and pushed off from the console.
Ravna rose with him. "Where are you going?"
He grinned. "Out. I thought Saint Rihndell might lose his halo when the
crunch came -- and I made plans." She followed him as he glided toward the
floor hatch. "Look. I want you to stay on deck. I can only carry so much
snoop equipment; I'll need your coordination."
"But -- "
He went through the hatch head first, missing the rest of her
objection. She didn't follow, but a second later her voice was back, in his
headset. Some of the tremor was gone from her voice; the old Ravna was
there, fighting out from under her other problems. "Okay, I'll back you ...
but what can we do?"
Pham pulled himself hand over hand down the passageway, accelerating to
a speed that would have left a lubber caroming off the walls. Ahead loomed
the uncompromising wall of the cargo lock. He swatted a hand gently at the
wall and flipped head over heels. He dragged his hands precisely against the
wall flanges, slowing just enough so the impact with the hatch did not break
his ankles. Inside the lock, the ship had his suit already power up.
"Pham, you can't go out." Evidently she was watching through the lock's
cameras. "They'll know we're a human expedition."
His head and shoulders were already in the suit's top shell. He felt
the bottom pushing up around him, the seals fastening. "Not necessarily."
And by now it probably doesn't matter. "There are plenty of two-arm/two-leg
critters around, and I've glued some camouflage to this outfit." He cupped
his chin in the helmet controls and reset the displays. The armored pressure
suit was a very primitive thing compared to the field suits of Relay. Yet
the Qeng Ho would have given a starship for this gear. He'd originally put
the thing together to impress the Tines, but it's going to get some early
testing.
He chinned up the outside view, what Ravna was seeing: his figure was
unrelieved black, more than two meters tall. The hands were backed with
carapace-claws and every edge of his figure was razor sharp and spined.
These most recent additions should break the lines of the strictly human
form, and hopefully be intimidating as hell.
Pham cycled the lock and pushed off, into the wormheads' terrane. Walls
of mud stood all around, misty in humid air and swarms of insects.
Ravna's voice was in his ear. "I've got a low-level query, probably
automatic: 'Why you send third negotiator?'"
"Ignore it."
"Pham, be careful. These Middle Beyond cultures, the old ones, they
keep nasty things in reserve. Otherwise they wouldn't still be around."
"I'll be a good citizen." As long as I'm treated nice. He was already
halfway to the concourse gate. He chinned up a small window from Blueshell's
camera. All this high-bandwidth comm was courtesy of the local net. Strange
that Rihndell was still providing the service. Blueshell seemed to be
negotiating still. Maybe there wasn't a scam ... or anyway, not one that
Saint Rihndell was in on.
"Pham, I've lost the video from Greenstalk, just as she went into some
kind of tunnel. Her location beacon is still clear."
The concourse gate made an opening for him, and then Pham was in the
crowded, market volume. He heard the raucous hubbub even through his armor.
He moved slowly, sticking to the most uncrowded paths, following guide ropes
that threaded the space. The mob was no problem. Everyone made way, some
with almost panicky haste. Pham didn't know whether it was his razor spines
or the trace of chlorine his suit "leaked". Maybe that last touch was a bit
much. But the whole point was to look nonhuman. He slowed even more, doing
his best not to nick anyone. Something awfully like a target-designation
laser flickered in his rear window. He ducked quickly around an aquarium as
Ravna said, "The terrane just complained to your suit: 'You are in violation
of dress-code' is how the translation comes out."
Is it my chlorine B.O., or have they detected the guns? "What about
outside? Any Butterflies in sight?"
"No. Ship activity hasn't changed much during the last five hours. No
Aprahanti movement or change in comm status." Long pause. Indirectly from
the OOB bridge he could hear Blueshell talking with Ravna, the words
indistinct but excited. He jabbed around, trying to find the direct
connection. Then Ravna was talking to him again. "Hei! Blueshell says
Rihndell has accepted the shipment! He's onloading the agrav fabric right
now. And OOB just got a commit on the repairs!" So they were ready to fly --
except that three of them were still ashore, and one of them was missing.
Pham floated over the top of the aquarium and finally caught direct
sight of Blueshell. He tweaked the suit's gas jets very carefully and
settled down beside the Rider.
His arrival was about as welcome as finger-mites at a picnic. The
scrimshawed one had been chattering away, tapping his articulated artwork on
the wall as his helper translated into Trisk. Now the creature drew in his
tusks, and the neck arms folded themselves. The others followed suit. All of
them sidled up the wall, away from Blueshell and Pham. "Our business is now
complete. We don't know where your friend has gone," said the Trisk
interpreter.
Blueshell's fronds extended after them, wavering. "B-but just a little
guidance is all we need. Who -- " It was no use. Saint Rihndell and his
merry crew kept going. Blueshell rattled in abrupt frustration. His fronds
angled slightly, turning all attention on Pham Nuwen. "Sir Pham, I am
doubting now your expertise as a trader. Saint Rihndell might have helped."
"Maybe." Pham watched the tusk-legs disappear into the crowd, pulling
the trellises behind them like a big black balloon. Ugh. Maybe Rihndell was
simply an honest trader. "What are the chances that Greenstalk would abandon
you in the middle of something like that?"
Blueshell dithered for a moment. "In an ordinary trade stop, she might
have noticed some extraordinary profit opportunity. But here, I -- "
Ravna's voice interrupted sympathetically, "Maybe she just, uh, forgot
the context?"
"No," Blueshell was definite. "The skrode would never permit such a
failure, not in the middle of a hard trade."
Pham shifted windows around inside his helmet, looking in all
directions. The crowd was still keeping an open space around them. There was
no evidence of cops. Would I know them if I saw them? "Okay," said Pham. "We
have a problem, whether I'd come out or not. I suggest we take a little
walk, see if we can find where Greenstalk went."
Rattle. "We have little choice now. My lady Ravna, do please try to
reach the tusk-legs interpreter. Perhaps he can link us to the local
Skroderiders." He came off the wall, rotated on gas jets. "Come along, Sir
Pham."
Blueshell led the way across the concourse, vaguely in the direction
Greenstalk had gone. Their path was anything but straight, more a drunkard's
walk that once took them almost back to their starting place. "Delicately,
delicately," the Skroderider responded when Pham complained about the pace.
The Rider never insisted on passage through clots of critters. If they did
not respond to the gentle waving of his fronds, he detoured all around them.
And he kept Pham directly behind him so the intimidation factor of the
razored armor was of no use. "These people may look very peaceable to you,
Sir Pham, easy to push around. But note, this is among themselves. These
races have had thousands of years to accommodate to one another, to achieve
local commensality. To outsiders they will necessarily be less tolerant,
else they would have been overrun long ago." Pham remembered the
"dress-code" warning and decided not to argue.
The next twenty minutes would have been the experience of a lifetime
for a Qeng Ho trader, to be within arm's reach of a dozen different
intelligent species. But when they finally reached the far wall, Pham was
grinding his teeth. Twice more he received a dress-code warning. The only
bright spot: Saint Rihndell was still extending the courtesy of local net
support, and Ravna had more information: "The local Skroderider colony is
about a hundred kilometers from the concourse. There's some kind of
transport station beyond the wall you're at."
And the tunnel Greenstalk had entered was just ahead of them. From this
angle, they could see the dark of space beyond it. For the first time, there
was no problem with crowds; scarcely anyone was entering or leaving the
hole.
Laser light twinkled on his rear windows. "Dress code violation. Fourth
warning. It says to 'please leave the volume at once'."
"We're going. We're going."
Darkness, and Pham boosted the gain on his helmet windows. At first he
thought the "transport station" was open to space, that the locals had
restraint fields as in the high beyond. then he noticed the pillars merged
into transparent walls. they were still indoors in the old-fashioned way,
but the view.... they were on the starward side of the arc. the ring
particles were like dark fish floating silently a few tens of meters out
from him. In the further distance, structures stuck out of the ring plane
far enough to get sundazzle. But the brightest object was almost overhead:
the blue of ocean, the white of cloud. Its soft light flooded the ground
around him. However far the Qeng Ho fared, such a sight had been welcome.
Yet this was not quite the real thing. The was only approximately spherical,
and its face was bisected by the ring shadow. It was a small object, not
more than a few hundred klicks above him, one of the shepherd satellites
they had seen on the way in. The shepherd's haze of atmosphere was crisply
bounded by the sides of a vast canopy.
He dragged his attention down from the view. "Ten to one that's the
Skroderiders' terrane."
"Of course," Blueshell replied. "It's typical. The surf in such
minigravity can never be what I prefer, but -- "
"Dear Blueshell! Sir Pham! Over here." It was Greenstalk's voice.
According to Pham's suit, it was a local connection, not relayed through the
OOB.
Blueshell's fronds angled in all directions. "Are you all right,
Greenstalk?" They rattled back and forth at each other for a few seconds.
Then Greenstalk resumed in Trisk: "Sir Pham. Yes, I'm all right. I'm sorry
to upset you all so much. But I could tell the deal with Rihndell was going
to work out, and then these local Riders stopped by. They are wonderful
people, Sir Pham. They have invited us across to their terrane. Just for a
day or so. It will be a wonderful rest before we go on our way. And I think
they may be able to help us."
Like the quest romances he'd found in Ravna's bedtime library: the
weary travelers, partway to their goal, find a friendly haven and some
special gift. Pham switched to a private line to Blueshell: "Is that really
Greenstalk? Is she under duress?"
"It's her, and free, Sir Pham. You heard us speaking. I've been with
her two hundred years. No one's twisting her fronds."
"Then why the hell did she skip out on us?" Pham surprised himself,
almost hissing the words.
Long pause. "That is strange. My guess: these local Riders somehow know
something very important to us. Come, Sir Pham. But carefully." He rolled
away in what seemed a random direction.
"Rav, what do you -- " Pham noticed the red light blinking on his comm
status panel, and his irritation chilled. How long had the link to Ravna
been down?
Pham followed Blueshell, floating low behind the other, using his gas
jets to pace the Skroderider. This entire area was covered with the stickem
that Riders liked for zero-gee rolling. Yet right now the place seemed
deserted. Nobody in sight where just a hundred meters away there was light
and crowds. The whole thing screamed ambush, yet it didn't make sense. If
Death to Vermin -- or their stooges -- had spotted them, a simple alarum
would have served. Some Rihndell game ...? Pham powered up the suit's beam
weapons and enabled countermeasures; midge cameras flitted off in all
directions. So much for dress codes.
The bluish moonlight washed the plain, showing soft mounds and angular
arrays of unknown equipment. The surface was pocked with holes (tunnel
entrances?). Blueshell said something muddled about the "beautiful night",
how much fun it would be to sit on the seashore a hundred kilometers above
them. Pham scanned in all directions, trying to identify fields of fire and
killing zones.
The view from one of his midges showed a forest of leafless fronds --
Skroderiders standing silent in the moonlight. They were two hillocks away.
Silent, motionless, without any lights ... perhaps just enjoying the
moonlight. In the midge's amplified view, Pham had no trouble identifying
Greenstalk; she was standing at one end of a line of five Riders, her hull
stripes clearly visible. There was a hump on the front of her skrode, and a
rod-like projection. Some kind of restraint? He floated a couple of midges
near. A weapon. All those Riders were armed.
"We're already aboard the transport, Blueshell," came Greenstalk's
voice. "You'll see it in a few more meters, just on the other side of a
ventilator pile," apparently referring to the mound that he and the
Skroderider were approaching. But Pham knew there was no flier there;
Greenstalk and her guns were to the side of their progress. Treachery, very
workmanlike but also very low tech. Pham almost shouted out to Blueshell.
Then he notice the flat ceramic rectangle mounted in the hill just a few
meters behind the Rider. The nearest midge reported it was some kind of
explosive, probably a directional mine. A low-resolution camera, barely more
than a motion sensor, was mounted beside it. Blueshell had rolled
nonchalantly past the thing, all the while chattering with Greenstalk. They
let him past. New suspicions rose dark and grim. Pham broke to a stop,
backing quickly; never touching ground, the only sounds he made were the
quiet hisses of his gas jets. He detached one of his wrist claws and had a
midge fly it close past the mine's sensor....
There was a flash of pale fire and a loud noise. Even five meters to
the side, the shock wave pushed him back. He had a glimpse of Blueshell
thrown frond over wheels on the far side of the mine. Edged metal knickered
about, but mindlessly: nothing came back to attack again. Several midges
were destroyed by the blast.
Pham took advantage of the racket to accelerate hard, scooting up a
nearby "hill" and into a shallow valley (alley?) that looked down on the
Skroderiders. The ambushers rolled forward around the hill, rattling happily
at one another. Pham held his fire, curious. After a moment, Blueshell
floated into the air a hundred meters away. "Pham?" he said plaintively,
"Pham?"
The ambushers ignored Blueshell. Three of them disappeared around the
hill. Pham's midges saw them stop in consternation, fronds erect -- they had
suddenly realized he'd gotten away. The five spread out, searching the area,
hunting him down. There was no persuasive talk from Greenstalk anymore.
There was a sharp cracking sound and blaster fire glowed from behind a
hill. Somebody was a little nervous on the trigger.
Above it all floated Blueshell, the perfect target, yet still
untouched. His speech was a combination of Trisk and Rider rattle now, and
where Pham could understand it, he heard fear. "Why are you shooting? What
is the problem? Greenstalk, please!"
The paranoid in Pham Nuwen was not deceived. I don't want you up there
looking down. He sighted his main beam gun on the Rider, then shifted his
aim and fired. The blast was not in visible wavelengths, but there were
gigajoules in the pulse. Plasma coruscated along the beam, missing Blueshell
by less than five meters. Well above the Skroderider, the beam struck hull
crystal. The explosion was spectacular, an actinic glare that sent glowing
fragments in a thousand rays.
Pham flew sideways even as the ceiling flared. He saw Blueshell
spinning off, regain control -- and move precipitously for cover. Where
Pham's beam had hit, a corona of light was dimming from blue through orange
and red, its light still brighter than the shepherd moon overhead.
His warning shot had been like a great finger pointing back toward his
location. In the next fifteen seconds, four of the ambushers fired on the
place Pham had been. There was silence, then faint rustling. In a game of
stealth, the five might think themselves easy winners. They still hadn't
realized how well-equipped he was. Pham smiled at the pictures coming in
from his midges. He had every one of them in sight, and Blueshell too.
If it were just these four (five?), there would be no problem. But
surely reinforcements, or at least complications, were on the way. The wound
in the ceiling had cooled to darkness, but there was a hole there now, half
a meter across. The sound of hissing wind came from it, a sound that brought
reflex fear to Pham even in his armor. It might take a while before the leak
affected the Skroderiders, but it was an emergency nevertheless. It would
attract notice. He stared at the hole. Down here it was stirring a breeze,
but in the few meters right below the hole there was a miniature tornado of
dust and loose junk, hurtling up and out....
And beyond the transparent hull, in space:
A gap of dark and then a glittering plume, where the debris emerged
from the arc's shadow into the sunlight. A neat idea struggled for his
attention.
Oops. The five Riders had roughly encircled him. Now one blundered into
view, saw him, and snapped a shot. Pham returned fire and the other exploded
in a cloud of superheated water and charred flesh. Its undamaged skrode
sailed across the space between the hills, collecting panicky fire from the
others. Pham changed position again, moving in the direction he knew was
farthest from his enemies' positions.
A few more minutes of peace. He looked up at the crystal plume. There
was something ... yes. If reinforcements should come, why not for him? He
sighted on the plume and shunted his voice line through the gun's trigger
circuit. He almost started talking, then thought ... Better lower the power
on this one. Details. He aimed again, fired continuously, and said, "Ravna,
I sure as hell hope you have your eyes open. I need help ..." and briefly
described the crazy events of the last ten minutes.
This time his beam was putting out less than ten thousand joules per
second, not enough to glow the air. But reflecting off the plume beyond the
hull, the modulation should be visible for thousands of klicks, in
particular to the OOB on the other side of the habitat.
The Skroderiders were closing in again. Damn. No way he could leave
this message on automatic send; he needed the "transmitter" for more
important things. Pham flew from valley to valley, maneuvering behind the
Rider that was farthest from the others. One against three (four?). He had
superior firepower and information, but one piece of bad luck and he was
dead. He floated up on his next target. Quietly, carefully ...
A sear of light brushed his arm, flaring the armor incandescent. White
hot drops of metal sprayed as he twisted out of the way. He boosted straight
across the space between three hillocks, firing down on the Rider there.
Lights crisscrossed around him, and then he was under cover again. They were
fast, almost as if they had automatic aiming gear. Maybe they did: their
skrodes.
Then the pain hit. Pham folded on himself, gasping. If this were like
wounds he remembered, there would be char to the bone. Tears floated in his
eyes, and consciousness disappeared in a nauseated faint. He came to. It
could only be a second or two later -- else he'd never have wakened. The
others were a lot closer now, but the one he'd fired on was just a glowing
crater and random skrode fragments. His suit's automation brought the
damaged armor in close to his side. He felt the chill of local anesthetic,
and the pain dimmed. Pham eased around the hill, trying to keep all three of
his antagonists simultaneously out of sight. They had caught on to his
midges; every few seconds a glow erupted or a hill top turned to glowing
slag. It was overkill, but the midges were dying ... and he was losing his
greatest advantage.
Where is Blueshell? Pham cycled through the views from his remaining
midges, then his own. The bastard was back in the air, high above the combat
-- untouched by his fellow Riders. Reporting everything I do. Pham rolled
over, awkwardly bringing his gun to bear on the tiny figure. He hesitated.
You're getting soft, Nuwen. Blueshell abruptly accelerated downwards, his
cargo scarf billowing out behind him. Evidently he was using his gas jets'
full power. Against the background noise of bubbling metal and blast beam
thunder, his fall was totally silent. He was driving straight for the
nearest of the attackers.
Thirty meters up, the Rider released something large and angular. The
two separated, Blueshell braking and diving to the side. He disappeared
behind the hills. At the same time, much nearer, came a solid thud/crunch.
Pham spent his next to last midge for a peek around the hillside. He had a
glimpse of a skrode, and fronds splayed all about a squashed stalk; there
was a flash of light, and the midge was gone.
Only two ambushers left. One was Greenstalk.
For ten seconds there was no more firing. Yet things were not
completely silent. The slumped, glowing metal of his arm popped and
sputtered as it cooled. High above, there was the susurrus of air escaping
the hull. Fitful breezes whispered around ground level, making it impossible
to keep position without constant tweaking at his jets. He paused, letting
the current carry him silently out of his little valley. There. A ghostly
hiss that was not his own. Another. The two were closing in on him from
different directions. They might not know his exact position, but they could
obviously coordinate their own.
The pain faded in and out, along with consciousness. Short pulses of
agony and darkness. He dared not fool with more anesthetic. Pham saw frond
tips peeping over a nearby hill. He halted, watched the fronds. Most likely,
there was just enough vision area in the tips to sense motion.... Two
seconds passed. Pham's last midge showed the other attacker floating
silently in from the side. Any second now, the two would pop up. At that
instant, Pham would have given anything for an armed midge. In all his
stupid hacking, he'd never gotten around to that. No help for it. He waited
for a moment of clear consciousness, long enough to boost over the enemy and
shoot.
There was a rattle of fronds, loud self-announcement. Pham's midge
caught sight of Blueshell rolling behind slatted walls a hundred meters
away. The Skroderider rushed from protection to protection, but always
closer to Greenstalk's position. And the rattling? Was it a pleading? Even
after five months with the Riders, Pham had only the vaguest sense of their
rattle-talk. Greenstalk -- the Greenstalk who had always been the shy one,
the compulsively honest one -- rattled nothing back. She swung her beamer
around, raking the slats with fire. The third Rider popped up just far
enough to shoot at the slats. His angle would have been just right to fry
Blueshell where he stood -- except that the movement took him directly in
front of Pham Nuwen's gun.
Even as Pham fired, he was boosting out of his hole. Now was his only
chance. If he could turn, fire back on Greenstalk before she was done with
Blueshell --
The maneuver was an easy head-over-heels that should have left him
upside down and facing back upon Greenstalk. But nothing was easy for him
now, and Pham came around spinning too fast, the landscape dwindling beneath
him. But there was Greenstalk all right, swinging her weapon back toward
him.
And there was Blueshell, racing from between pillars that glowed white
in the heat of Greenstalk's fire. His voice was loud in Pham's ear: "I beg,
don't kill her. Don't kill -- "
Greenstalk hesitated, then turned the weapon back on the advancing
Blueshell. Pham triggered his gun, letting his spin drag the beam across the
ground. Consciousness ebbed. Aim! Aim right! He furrowed the land below with
a glowing, molten arrow, that ended at something dark and slumped.
Blueshell's tiny figure was still rolling across the wreckage, trying to
reach her. Then Pham had turned too far and could not remember how to change
the view. The sky swung slowly past his eyes:
A bluish moon with a sharp shadow 'cross its middle. A ship floating
close, with feathery spines, like some giant bug. What in the Qeng Ho ...
where am I? ... and consciousness fled.
.Delete this paragraph to shift page flush
-=*=-
CHAPTER 29
There were dreams. He'd lost a captaincy once again, been busted down
to tending potted plants in the ship's greenhouse. Sigh. Pham's job was to
water them and make them bloom. But then he noticed the pots had wheels and
moved behind his back, waiting, softly rattling. What had been beautiful was
now sinister. Pham had been willing to water and weed the creatures; he had
always admired them.
Now he was the only one who knew they were the enemy of life.
More than once in his life, Pham Nuwen had wakened inside medical
automation. He was almost used to coffin-close tanks, plain green walls,
wires and tubes. This was different, and it took him a while to realize just
where he was. Willowy trees bent close around him, swaying just a little in
the warm breeze. He seemed to be lying on the softest moss, in a tiny glade
above a pond. Summer haze hung in the air above the water. It was all very
nice, except that the leaves were furry, and not quite the green of anything
he had ever seen. This was someone else's notion of home. He reached up
toward the nearest branch, and his hand hit something unyielding just fifty
centimeters above his face. A curved wall. For all the trick pictures, this
was about the same size as the surgeons he remembered.
Something clicked behind his head; the idyll slid past him, taking its
warm breeze with it. Somebody -- Ravna -- floated just beyond the cylinder.
"Hi, Pham." She reached past the surgeon's hull to squeeze his hand. Her
kiss was tremulous, and she looked haunted, as if she'd been crying a lot.
"Hi, yourself," he said. Memory came back in jagged pieces. He tried to
push off the bed, and found another similarity between this surgeon and ones
of the Qeng Ho: he was securely plugged in.
Ravna laughed a little weakly. "Surgeon. Disconnect." After a moment,
Pham drifted free.
"It's still holding my arm."
"No, that's the sling. Your left arm is going to take a while to
regrow. It almost got burned off, Pham."
"Oh." He looked down at the white cocoon that meshed his arm against
his side. He remembered the gunfight now.... and realized that parts of his
dream were deadly real. "How long have I been out?" The anxiety spilled into
his voice.
"About thirty hours. We're more than sixty light-years out from
Harmonious Repose. We're doing okay, except that now everyone in creation
seems to be chasing us."
The dream. His free hand clamped hard on Ravna's arm. "The
Skroderiders, where are they?" Not on board, pray the Fleet.
"W-what's left of Greenstalk is in the other surgeon. Blueshell is -- "
Why has he let me live? Pham's eyes roved the room. They were in a
utility cabin. Any weapons were at least twenty meters away. Hm. More
important than guns: get command console privileges with the OOB ... if it
was not already too late. He pushed out of the surgeon and drifted out of
the room.
Ravna followed. "Take it easy, Pham. You just came out of a surgeon."
"What have they said about the shoot-out?"
"Poor Greenstalk's not in a position to say anything, Pham. Blueshell
says pretty much what you did: Greenstalk was grabbed by the rogue Riders,
forced to lure you two into a trap."
"Hmhm, hmhm," Pham strove for a noncommittal tone. So maybe there was a
chance; maybe Blueshell was not yet perverted. He continued his one-handed
progress up the ship's axis corridor. A minute later he was on the bridge,
Ravna tagging behind.
"Pham. What's the matter? There's a lot we have to decide, but -- "
How right you are. He dived onto the command deck, and made for the
command console. "Ship. Do you recognize my voice?"
Ravna began, "Pham, What's this -- "
"Yes, sir."
" -- all about?"
"Command privileges," he said. Capabilities granted while the Riders
were ashore. Would they still be in place?
"Granted."
The Skroderiders had had thirty hours to plan their defense. This was
all too easy, too easy. "Suspend command privileges for the Skroderiders.
Isolate them."
"Yes, sir," came the ship's reply. Liar! But what more could he do? The
sweep toward panic crested, and suddenly he felt very cool. He was Qeng Ho
... and he was also godshatter.
Both Riders were in the same cabin, Greenstalk in the other copy of the
ship's surgeon. Pham opened a window on the room. Blueshell sat on a wall
beside the surgeon. He looked wilted, as when they heard about Sjandra Kei.
He angled his fronds at the video pickup. "Sir Pham. The ship tells me
you've suspended our privileges?"
"What is going on, Pham?" Ravna had dug a foot into the floor, and
stood glaring at him.
Pham ignored both questions. "How is Greenstalk doing?" he said.
The fronds turned away, seemed to become even more limp. "She lives....
I thank you, Sir Pham. It took great skill to do what you did. Considering
everything, I could not have asked for more."
What did I do? He remembered firing on Greenstalk. Had he pulled his
aim? He looked inside the surgeon. This was quite different from the human
configuration: This one was mostly water-filled, with turbulent aeration
along the patient's fronds. Asleep (?), Greenstalk looked frailer than he
remembered, her fronds waving randomly in the water. Some were nicked, but
her body seemed whole. His eyes traveled downwards toward the base of the
stalk, where a Rider is normally attached to its skrode. The stump ended in
a cloud of surgical tubing. And Pham remembered the last instant of the
firefight, blasting the skrode out from under Greenstalk. What is a Rider
like without anything to ride?
He pulled his eyes away from the wreckage. "I've deleted your command
privileges because I don't trust you." My former friend, tool of my enemy.
Blueshell didn't answer. After a moment Ravna spoke. "Pham. Without
Blueshell, I'd never have gotten you out of that habitat. Even then -- we
were stuck in the middle of the RIP system. The shepherd satellite was
screaming for our blood; they had figured out we were human. The Aprahanti
were trying to break harbor and come down on us. Without Blueshell, we'd
never have convinced local security to let us go ultra -- we'd probably have
been blown away the second we cleared the ring plane. We'd all be dead now,
Pham."
"Don't you know what happened down there?"
Some of the indignation left Ravna's face. "Yes. But understand about
skrodes. They are a mechanical contrivance. It's easy enough to disconnect
the cyber part from the mechanical linkages. These guys were controlling the
wheels, and aiming the gun."
Hmm. On the window behind Ravna, he could see Blueshell standing with
his fronds motionless, not rushing to agree. Triumphant? "That doesn't
explain Greenstalk's sucking us in to the trap." He raised a hand. "Yeah, I
know, she was bludgeoned into doing it. Only problem, Ravna, she had no
hesitation. She was enthusiastic, bubbly." He stared over the woman's
shoulder. "She was under no compulsion, didn't you tell me that, Blueshell."
A long pause. Finally, "Yes, Sir Pham."
Ravna turned, drifting back so she could see both of them. "But, but
... it's still absurd. Greenstalk has been with us from the beginning. A
thousand times she could have destroyed the ship -- or gotten word to the
outside. Why chance this stupid ambush?"
"Yes. Why didn't they betray us before...." Up until she asked the
question, Pham had not known. He knew the facts, but had no coherent theory
to hang them on. Now it all came together: the ambush, his dreams in the
surgeon, even the paradoxes. "Maybe she wasn't a traitor, before. We really
did escape from Relay without pursuit, without anyone knowing of us, much
less our exact destination. Certainly no one expected humans to show up at
Harmonious Repose." He paused, trying to get it all together. The ambush,
"The ambush, it wasn't stupid -- but it was completely ad hoc. The enemy had
no back up. Their weapons were dumb, simple things -- " insight "-- why,
I'll bet if you look at the wreckage of Greenstalk's skrode you'll find her
beam gun was some sort of cutter tool. And the only sensor on the claymore
mine was a motion detector: it had some civil use. All the gadgets were
pulled together on very short notice by people who had not been expecting a
fight. No, our enemy was very surprised by our appearance."
"You think the Aprahanti could -- "
"Not the Aprahanti. From what you said, they didn't break moorage till
after the gunfight, when the Rider moon started screaming about us.
Whoever's behind this is independent of the Butterflies, and must be spread
in very small numbers across many star systems -- a vast set of tripwires,
listening for things of interest. They noticed us, and weak as their outpost
was they tried to grab our ship. Only when we were getting away did they
advertise us. One way or another, they didn't want us to get away." He
jerked a hand at the ultratrace window. "If I read that right, we've got
more than five hundred ships on our tail."
Ravna's eyes flicked to the display and back. Her voice was abstracted,
"Yes. That's part of the main Aprahanti fleet and ... "
"There will be lots more, only they won't all be Butterflies."
"... what are you saying then? Why would Skroderiders wish us ill? A
conspiracy is senseless. They've never had a nation state, much less an
interstellar empire."
Pham nodded. "Just peaceful settlements -- like that shepherd moon --
in polyspecific civilizations all across the Beyond." His voice softened.
"No, Rav, the Skroderiders are not the real enemy here ... it's the thing
behind them. The Straumli Perversion."
Incredulous silence, but he noticed how tightly Blueshell held his
fronds now. That one knew.
"It's the only explanation, Ravna. Greenstalk really was our friend,
and loyal. My guess is that only a small minority of the Riders are under
the Perversion's control. When Greenstalk fell in with them she was
converted too."
"T-that's impossible! This is the Middle of the Beyond, Pham.
Greenstalk had courage, stubbornness. No brainwashing could have changed her
so quickly." A frightened desperation had come into her eyes. One
explanation or another, some terrible thing must be true.
And I'm still here, alive and talking. A datum for godshatter; maybe
there was yet a chance! He spoke almost as the understanding hit him.
"Greenstalk was loyal, yet she was totally converted in seconds. It wasn't
just a perversion of her skrode, or some drug. It was as if both Rider and
skrode had been designed from the beginning to respond." He looked across at
Blueshell, trying to gauge his reaction to what he would say next. "The
Riders have awaited their creator a long time. Their race is very old, far
older than anyone except the senescent. They're everywhere, but in small
numbers, always practical and peaceful. And somewhere in the beginning -- a
few billion years ago -- their precursors were trapped in an evolutionary
cul-de-sac. Their creator built the first skrodes, and made the first
Riders. Now I think we know the who and the why.
"Yes, yes. I know there have been other upliftings. What's marvelous
about this one is how stable it turned out to be. The greater skrodes are
'tradition' Blueshell says, but that's a word I apply to cultures and to
much shorter time scales. The greater skrodes of today are identical to ones
a billion years ago. And they are devices that can be made anywhere in the
Beyond ... yet the design is clearly High Beyond or Transcendent." That had
been one of his earliest humiliations about the Beyond. He had looked at the
design diagram -- dissections really -- of skrodes. On the outside, the
thing was a mechanical device, with moving parts even. And the text claimed
that the whole thing would be made with the simplest of factories, scarcely
more than what existed in some places in the Slow Zone. And yet the
electronics was a seemingly random mass of components, without any trace of
hierarchical design or modularity. It worked, and far more efficiently than
something designed by human-equivalent minds, but repair and debugging -- of
the cyber component -- was out of the question. "No one in the Beyond
understands all the potentials of skrodes, much less the adaptations forced
on their Riders. Isn't that so, Blueshell?"
The Rider clapped his fronds hard against his central stalk. Again a
furious rattling. It was something Pham had never seen before. Rage? Terror?
Blueshell's voder voice was distorted with nonlinearities: "You ask? You
ask? It's monstrous to ask me to help you in this -- " the voice skeetered
into high frequencies and he stood mute, his body shivering.
Pham of the Qeng Ho felt a stab of shame. The other knew and understood
... and deserved better than this. The Riders must be destroyed, but they
should not have to listen to his judging. His hand swept toward the
communications cutoff, stopped. No. This is your last chance to observe the
Perversion's ... work.
Ravna's glance snapped back and forth between human and Skroderider,
and he could tell that she understood. Her face had the same stricken look
as when she learned about Sjandra Kei. "You're saying the Perversion made
the original skrodes."
"And modified the Riders too. It was long ago, and certainly not the
same instance of the Perversion that the Straumers created, but...."
The "Blight", that was the other common name for the Perversion, and
closer to Old One's view. For all the Perversion's transcendence, its life
style was more similar to a disease than anything else. Maybe that had
helped to fool Old One. But now Pham could see: the Blight lived in pieces,
across extraordinary reaches of time. It hid in archives, waiting for ideal
conditions. And it had created helpers for its blooming....
He looked at Ravna, and suddenly realized a little more. "You've had
thirty hours to think about this, Rav. You saw the record from my suit.
Surely you must have guessed some of this."
Her gaze dropped from his. "A little," she finally said. At least she
was no longer denying.
"You know what we have to do," he said softly. Now that he understood
what must be done, the godshatter eased its grip. Its will would be done.
"What is that?" said Ravna, as if she didn't know.
"Two things: Post this to the Net."
"Who would believe?" The Net of a Million Lies.
"Enough would. Once they look, most folk will be able to see the truth
here ... and take the proper action."
Ravna shook her head. "No," barely audible.
"The Net must be told, Ravna. We've discovered something that could
save a thousand worlds. This is the Blight's hidden edge," at least in the
Middle and Low Beyond.
She just shook her head again. "But screaming this truth would itself
kill billions."
"In honest defense!" He bounced slowly toward the ceiling, pushed
himself back toward the deck.
There were tears in her eyes now. "These are exactly the arguments used
to kill m-my family, my worlds.... A-and I will not be part of it."
"But the claims are true this time!"
"I've had enough of pogroms, Pham."
Gentle toughness ... and almost unbelievable. "You would make this
decision yourself, Rav? We know something that others -- leaders wiser than
either of us -- should be free to decide upon. You would keep them from
making that choice?"
She hesitated, and for an instant Pham thought the civilized
rule-follower in her would bring her around. But then her chin came up,
"Yes, Pham. I would deny them the choice."
He made a noncommittal noise and drifted back toward the command
console. No point in talking to her about what else must be done.
"And Pham, we will not kill Blueshell and Greenstalk."
"There's no choice, Rav." His hands played with the touch controls.
"Greenstalk was perverted; we have no idea how much of that survived the
destruction of her skrode, or how long it will be before Blueshell goes bad.
We can't take them along, or let them go free."
Ravna drifted sideways, her eyes fixed on his hands. "B-Be careful who
you kill, Pham," she said softly. "As you say, I've had thirty hours to
think about my decisions, thirty hours to think about yours."
"So." Pham raised his hands from the controls. Rage (godshatter?)
chased briefly through this mind. Ravna, Ravna, Ravna, a voice saying
goodbye inside his head. Then all became very cold. He had been so afraid
that the Riders had perverted the ship. Instead, this stupid fool had acted
for them, voluntarily. He drifted slowly toward her. Almost unthinking, he
held his arm and hand at combat ready. "How do you intend to prevent me from
doing what has to be done?" But he already guessed.
She didn't back away, even when his hand was centimeters from her
throat. Her face held courage and tears. "W-what do you think, Pham? While
you were in the surgeon ... I rearranged things. Hurt me, and you will be
hurt worse." Her eyes swept the walls behind him. "Kill the Riders, and ...
and you will die."
They stared at each other for a long moment, measuring. Maybe there
weren't weapons buried in the walls. He probably could kill her before she
could defend. But then there were a thousand ways the ship could have been
programmed to kill him. And all that would be left would be the Riders ...
flying down to the Bottom, to their prize. "So what do we do, then?" He
finally said.
"As b-before, we go to rescue Jefri. We go to recover the
Countermeasure. I'm willing to put some restrictions on the Riders."
A truce with monsters, mediated by a fool.
He pushed off and sailed around her, back down the axis corridor.
Behind him, he heard a sob.
They stayed well clear of each other the next few days. Pham was
allowed shallow access to ship controls. He found suicide programs threaded
through the application layers. But a strange thing, and reason for chagrin
if he had been capable of it: The changes dated from hours after his
confrontation with Ravna. She'd had nothing when she stood against him.
Thank the Powers, I didn't know. The thought was forgotten almost before he
formed it.
So. The charade would proceed right to the end, a continuing game of
lie and subterfuge. Grimly, he set himself to winning that game. Fleets
behind them, traitors surrounding him. By the Qeng Ho and his own
godshatter, the Perversion would lose. The Skroderiders would lose. And for
all her courage and goodness, Ravna Bergsndot would lose.
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CHAPTER 30
Tyrathect was losing the battle within herself. Oh, it wasn't near
ended; better perhaps to say that the tide had turned. In the beginning
there had been little triumphs, as when she let Amdijefri play alone with
the commset without even the children guessing she was responsible. But such
were many tendays past, and now.... Some days she would be entirely in
control of herself. Others -- and these often seemed the happiest -- would
begin with her seeming in control.
It was not yet clear the sort of day today would be.
Tyrathect paced along the hoardings that topped the new castle's walls.
The place was certainly new, but hardly yet a castle. Steel had built in
panicky haste. The south and west walls were very thick, with embedded
tunnels. But there were spots on the north side that were simply palisades
backed by stony rubble. Nothing more could be done in the time that Steel
had been given. She stopped for a moment, smelling fresh-sawn timber. The
view down Starship Hill was as beautiful as she had ever seen it. The days
were getting longer. Now there was only twilight between the setting and the
rising of the sun. The local snow had retreated to its summer patches,
leaving heather to turn green in the warmth. From here she could see miles,
to where bluish sea haze clamped down on the offshore islands.
By the conventional wisdom, it would be suicide to attack the new
castle -- even in its present ramshackle state -- with less than a horde.
Tyrathect smiled bitterly to herself. Of course, Woodcarver would ignore
that wisdom. Old Woodcarver thought she had a secret weapon that would
breach these walls from hundreds of feet away. Even now Steel's spies were
reporting that the Woodcarvers had taken the bait, that their small army and
their crude cannon had begun the overland trek up the coast.
She descended the wall stairs to the yard. She heard faint thunder.
Somewhere north of Streamsdell, Steel's own cannoneers were beginning their
morning practice. When the air was just right, you could hear it. There was
to be no testing near the farmlands, and none but high Servants and isolated
workers knew of the weapons. But by now Steel had thirty of the devices and
gunpowder to match. The greatest lack was gunners. Up close the noise of
firing was hellish. Sustained firing could deafen. Ah, but the weapons
themselves: They had a range of almost eight miles, three times as great as
Woodcarver's. They could deliver gunpowder "bombs" that exploded on impact.
There were places beyond the northern hills where the forest was gouged bare
and slumping landslides showed naked rock -- all from sustained barrages of
gunfire.
And soon -- perhaps today -- the Flenserists would have radio, too.
God damn you, Woodcarver! Of course Tyrathect had never met the
Woodcarver, but Flenser had known that pack well: Flenser was mostly
Woodcarver's offspring. The "Gentle Woodcarver" had borne him and raised him
to power. It had been Woodcarver who taught him about freedom of thought and
experiment. Woodcarver should have known the pride that lived in Flenser,
should have known that he would go to extremes his parent never dared. And
when the new one's monstrous nature became clear, when his first
"experiments" were discovered, Woodcarver should have had him killed -- or
at the very least, fragmented. Instead, Flenser had been allowed to take
exile ... to create things like Steel, and they to create their own
monsters, ultimately to build this hierarchy of madness.
And now, a century overdue, Woodcarver was coming to correct her
mistake. She came with her toy guns, as overconfident and idealistic as
ever. She came into a trap of steel and fire that none of her people would
survive. If only there were some way to warn the Woodcarve