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fine-toothed muzzles anymore. This was one of her usual helpers; she could
almost think of the jaws as hands, deftly pulling the oilskin jacket down
her arms and hanging it near the fire.
Johanna chucked her boots and pants, and accepted the quilted wrap that
the pack "handed" her.
"Dinner. Now," she said to the pack.
"Okay."
Johanna settled on a pillow by the fire pit. In fact the Tines were
more primitive than the humans on Nyjora: The Tines' world was not a fallen
colony. They didn't even have legend to guide them. Sanitation was a
sometime thing. Before Woodcarver, Tinish doctors bled their
patients/victims.... She knew now that she was living in the Tines'
equivalent of a luxury apartment. The deep-polished wood was not a normal
thing. The designs painted on the pillars and walls were the result of many
hours' labor.
Johanna rested her chin on her hands and stared into the flames. She
was vaguely aware of the pack prancing around the pit, hanging pots over the
fire. This one spoke very little Samnorsk; it wasn't in on Woodcarver's
dataset project. Many weeks ago, Scarbutt had asked to move in here -- what
better way to speed the learning process? Johanna shivered at the memory.
She knew the scarred one was just a single member, that the pack that killed
Dad had itself died. Johanna understood, but every time she saw "Peregrine",
she saw her father's murderer sitting fat and happy, thinking to hide itself
behind its three smaller fellows. Johanna smiled into the flames,
remembering the whack she had landed on Scarbutt when he made the
suggestion. She'd lost control, but it had been worth it. No one else
suggested that "friends" should share this house with her. Most evenings
they left her alone. And some nights ... Dad and Mom seemed so near, maybe
just outside, waiting for her to notice. Even though she had seen them die,
something inside her refused to let them go.
Cooking smells slipped past the familiar daydream. Tonight it was meat
and beans, with something like onions. Surprise. The stuff smelled good; if
there had been any variety, she would have enjoyed it. But Johanna hadn't
seen fresh fruit in sixty days. Salted meat and veggies were the only winter
fare. If Jefri were here, he'd throw a fit. It was months past since the
word came from Woodcarver's spies up north: Jefri had died in the ambush....
Johanna was getting over it, she really was. And in some ways, being all
alone made things ... simpler.
The pack put a plate of meat and beans before her, along with a kind of
knife. Oh, well. Johanna grabbed the crooked hilt (bent sideways to be held
by Tinish jaws) and dug in.
She was almost finished when there was a polite scratching at the door.
Her servant gobbled something. The visitor replied, then said in rather good
Samnorsk (and a voice that was eerily like her own), "Hello there, my name
is Scriber. I would like a small talk, okay?"
One of the servant's turned to look at her; the rest were watching the
door. Scriber was the one she thought of as Pompous Clown. He'd been with
Scarbutt at the ambush, but he was such a fool that she scarcely felt
threatened by him.
"Okay," she said, starting toward the door. Her servant (guard) grabbed
crossbows in its jaws, and all five members snaked up the staircase to the
loft; there wasn't space for more than one pack down here.
The cold and wet blew into the room along with her visitor. Johanna
retreated to the other side of the fire while Scriber took off his rain
slickers. The pack members shook themselves the way dogs do, a noisy,
amusing sight -- and you didn't want to be near when it happened.
Finally Scriber sauntered over to the fire pit. Under the slickers he
wore jackets with the usual stirrups and the open spaces behind the
shoulders and at the haunches. But Scriber's appeared to be padded above the
shoulders to make his members look heavier than they really were. One of him
sniffed at her plate, while the other heads looked this way and that ... but
never directly at her.
Johanna looked down at the pack. She still had trouble talking to more
than one face; usually she picked on whichever was looking back at her.
"Well? What did you come to talk about?"
One of the heads finally looked at her. It licked its lips. "Okay. Yes.
I thought to see how do you do? I mean ..." gobble. Her servant answered
from upstairs, probably reporting what kind of mood she was in. Scriber
straightened up. Four of his six heads looked at Johanna. His other two
members paced back and forth, as if contemplating something important. "Look
here. You are the only human I know, but I have always been a big student of
character. I know you are not happy here -- "
Pompous Clown was also master of the obvious.
"-- and I understand. But we do the best to help you. We are not the
bad people who killed your parents and brother."
Johanna put a hand on the low ceiling and leaned forward. You're all
thugs; you just happen to have the same enemies I do. "I know that, and I am
cooperating. You'd still be playing the dataset's kindermode if it weren't
for me. I've shown you the reading courses; if you guys have any brains,
you'll have gunpowder by summer." The Oliphaunt was an heirloom toy, a
huggable favorite thing she should have outgrown years ago. But there was
history in it -- stories of the queens and princesses of the Dark Ages, and
how they had struggled to triumph over the jungles, to rebuild the cities
and then the spaceships. Half-hidden on obscure reference paths there were
also hard numbers, the history of technology. Gunpowder was one of the
easiest things. When the weather cleared up, there would be some prospecting
expeditions; Woodcarver had known about sulfur, but didn't have quantities
in town. Making cannon would be harder. But then.... "Then your enemies will
be killed. Your people are getting what they want from me. So what's your
complaint?"
"Complaint?" Pompous Clown's heads bobbed up and down in alternation.
Such distributed gestures seemed to be the equivalent of facial expressions,
though Johanna hadn't figured many of them out. This one might mean
embarrassment. "I have no complaint. You are helping us, I know. But, but
..." Three of his members were pacing around now. "It's just that I see more
than most people, perhaps a little like Woodcarver did in oldendays. I am a
-- I've seen your word for it -- a 'dilettante'. You know, a person who
studies all things and who is talented at everything. I am only thirty years
old, but I have read almost every book in the world, and -- " the heads
bowed, perhaps in shyness? "-- I'm even planning to write one, perhaps the
true story of your adventure."
Johanna found herself smiling. Most often she saw the Tines as
barbarian strangers, inhuman in spirit as well as form. But if she closed
her eyes, she could almost imagine that Scriber was a fellow Straumer. Mom
had a few friends just as brainless and innocently self-convinced as this
one, men and women with a hundred grandiose projects that would never ever
amount to anything. Back on Straum, they had been boring perils that she
avoided. Now ... well, Scriber's foolishness was almost like being back home
again.
"You're here to study me for your book?"
More alternating nods. "Well, yes. And also, I wanted to talk to you
about my other plans. I've always been something of an inventor, you see. I
know that doesn't mean much now. It seems that everything that can be
invented is already in Dataset. I've seen many of my best ideas there." He
sighed, or made the sound of a sigh. Now he was imitating one of the pop
science voices in the dataset. Sound was the easiest thing for the Tines; it
could be darn confusing.
"In any case, I was just wondering how to improve some of those ideas
-- " four of Scriber's members bellied down on the bench by the fire pit; it
looked like he was settling in for a long conversation. His other two walked
around the pit to give her a stack of paper threaded with brass hoops. While
one on the other side of the fire continued to talk, the two carefully
turned the pages and pointed at where she should look.
Well, he did have plenty of ideas: Tethered birds to hoist flying
boats, giant lenses that would concentrate the sun's light on enemies and
set them afire. From some of the pictures, it appeared he thought the
atmosphere extended beyond the moon. Scriber explained each idea in numbing
detail, pointing at the drawings and patting her hands enthusiastically. "So
you see the possibilities? My unique slant combined with the proven
inventions in Dataset. Who knows where it could lead?"
Johanna giggled, overcome by the vision of Scriber's giant birds
hauling kilometer-wide lenses to the moon. He seemed to take the sound for
approval.
"Yes! It's brilliant, okay? My latest idea, I never would have thought
it except for Dataset. This 'radio', it projects sound very far and fast,
okay? Why not combine it with the power of our Tinish thoughts? A pack could
think as one even spread across hundreds of, um, kilometers."
Now that almost made sense! But if gunpowder took months to make --
even given the exact formula -- how many decades would it be before the
packs had radio? Scriber was an immense fountain of half-baked ideas. She
let his words wash over her for more than an hour. It was insanity, but less
alien than most of what she had endured this last year.
Finally he seemed to run down; there were longer pauses and he asked
her opinion more often. Finally he said, "Well, that was certainly fun,
okay?"
"Unh, yes, fascinating."
"I knew you would like it. You're just like my people, I really think.
You're not all angry, not all the time...."
"Just what do you mean by that?" Johanna pushed a soft muzzle away and
stood. The dogthing rocked back on its haunches to look up at her.
"I, well ... you have much to hate, I know. But you seem so angry at us
all the time, and we're the ones who are trying to help you! After the day
work you stay here, you don't want to talk with people -- though now I see
that was our fault. You wanted us to come here but were too proud to say it.
I have these insights into character, you see. My friend, the one you call
Scarbutt: he is truly a nice fellow. I know I can tell you that honestly,
and that as my new friend you will believe. He would very much like to come
to visit you, too.... urk."
Johanna walked slowly around the fire pit, forcing the two members to
back away from her. All of Scriber was looking up at her now, the necks
arching around one another, the eyes wide.
"I'm not like you. I don't need your talk, or your stupid ideas." She
threw Scriber's notebook into the pit. Scriber leaped to the fire's edge,
desperately reached for the burning notes. He pulled most of them back and
clutched them to his chests.
Johanna kept walking toward him, kicking at his legs. Scriber
retreated, backing and sprawling. "Stupid, dirty, butchers. I'm not like
you." She slapped her hand on a ceiling beam. "Humans don't like to live
like animals. We don't adopt killers. You tell Scarbutt, you tell him. If he
ever comes by for a friendly chat, I-I'll smash in his head; I'll smash in
all of them!"
Scriber was backed into the wall now. His heads turned wildly this way
and that. He was making plenty of noise. Some of it was Samnorsk, but too
high-pitched to understand. One of his mouths found the door pole. He pushed
open the door, and all six members raced into the twilight, their rain
slickers forgotten.
Johanna knelt and stuck her head through the doorway. The air was a
wind-driven mist. In an instant, her face was so cold and wet that she
couldn't feel the tears. Scriber was six shadows in the darkening grayness,
shadows that raced down the hillside, sometimes tumbling in their haste. In
a second he was gone. There was nothing but the vague forms of nearby
cabins, and the yellow light that spilled out around her from the fire.
Strange. Right after the ambush, she had felt terror. The Tines had
been unstoppable killers. Then, on the boat, when she smashed Scarbutt ...
it had been so wonderful: the whole pack collapsed, and suddenly she knew
that she could fight back, that she could break their bones. She didn't have
to be at their mercy.... Tonight she had learned something more. Even
without touching them, she could hurt them. Some of them, anyway. Her
dislike alone had undone Pompous Clown.
Johanna backed into the smoky warmth and shut the door. She should feel
triumph.
.Delete this paragraph to shift page flush
-=*=-
Scriber Jaqueramaphan didn't tell anyone about his meeting with the
Two-Legs. Of course, Vendacious's guard had overheard everything. The fellow
might not speak much Samnorsk, but he had surely gotten the drift of the
argument. People would hear about it eventually.
He moped around the castle for a few days, spent a number of hours
hunched over the remains of his notebook, trying to recreate the diagrams.
It would be a a while before he attended any more sessions with Dataset,
especially when Johanna was around. Scriber knew he seemed brash to the
outside world, but in fact it had taken a lot of courage to walk in on
Johanna like that. He knew his ideas had genius, but all his life
unimaginative people had been telling him otherwise.
In most ways Scriber was a very fortunate person. He had been born a
fission pack in Rangathir, at the eastern edge of the Republic. His parent
had been a wealthy merchant. Jaqueramaphan had some of his parent's traits,
but the dull patience necessary for day-to-day business work had been lost
to him. His sibling pack more than retained that faculty; the family
business grew, and -- in the first years -- his sib didn't begrudge Scriber
his share of the wealth. From his earliest days, Scriber had been an
intellectual. He read everything: natural history, biography, brood kenning.
In the end he had the largest library in Rangathir, more than two hundred
books.
Even then Scriber had tremendous ideas, insights which -- if properly
executed -- would have made them the wealthiest merchants in all the eastern
provinces. Alas, bad luck and his sib's lack of imagination had doomed his
early ideas. In the end, his sib bought out the business, and Jaqueramaphan
moved to the Capital. It was all for the best. By this time Scriber had
fleshed himself out to six members; he needed to see more of the world.
Besides ... there were five thousand books in the library there, the
experience of all history and all the world! His own notebooks became a
library in themselves. Yet still the packs at the university had no time for
him. His outline for a summation of natural history was rejected by all the
stationers, though he paid to have small parts of it published. It was clear
that success in the world of action was necessary before his ideas could get
the attention they deserved, hence his spy mission; Parliament itself would
thank him when he returned with the secrets of Flenser's Hidden Island.
That was almost a year ago. What had happened since -- with the flying
house and Johanna and Dataset -- went beyond his wildest dreams (and Scriber
granted that those dreams were already pretty extreme). The library in
Dataset contained millions of books. With Johanna to help him polish his
ideas, they would sweep Flenserism from the face of the world. They would
regain her flying house. Not even the sky would be a limit.
So to have her throw it all back at him ... it made him wonder about
himself. Maybe she was just mad at him for trying to explain Peregrine. She
would like Peregrine if she let herself; he was sure of it. But then again
... maybe his ideas just weren't that good, at least by comparison with
humans'.
That thought left him pretty low. But he finished redrawing the
diagrams, and even got some new ideas. Maybe he should get some more
silkpaper.
Peregrine stopped by and persuaded him to go into town.
Jaqueramaphan had made up a dozen explanations why he wasn't
participating in the sessions with Johanna anymore. He tried out two or
three as he and Peregrine descended Castle Street toward the harbor.
After a minute or two, his friend turned a head back. "It's okay,
Scriber. When you feel like it, we'd like to have you back."
Scriber had always been a very good judge of attitude; in particular,
he could tell when he was being patronized. He must have scowled a little,
because Peregrine went on. "I mean it. Even Woodcarver has been asking about
you. She likes your ideas."
Comforting lies or not, Scriber brightened. "Really?" The Woodcarver of
today was a sad case, but the Woodcarver of the history books was one of
Jaqueramaphan's great heroes. "No one's mad at me?"
"Well, Vendacious is a bit peeved. Being responsible for the Two-Legs'
safety makes him very nervous. But you only tried something we've all wanted
to do."
"Yeah." Even if there had been no Dataset, even if Johanna Olsndot had
not come from the stars, she would still be the most fascinating creature in
the world: a pack-equivalent mind in a single body. You could walk right up
to her, you could touch her, without the least confusion. It was frightening
at first, but all of them quickly felt the attraction. For packs, closeness
had always meant mindlessness -- whether for sex or battle. Imagine being
able to sit by the fire with a friend and carry on an intelligent
conversation! Woodcarver had a theory that the Two-Legs' civilization might
be innately more effective than any Packish one, that collaboration was so
easy for humans that they learned and built much faster than packs could.
The only problem with that theory was Johanna Olsndot. If Johanna was a
normal human, it is was a surprise that the race could cooperate on
anything. Sometimes she was friendly -- usually in the sessions with
Woodcarver. She seemed to realize that Woodcarver was frail and failing.
More often she was patronizing, sarcastic, and seemed to think the best they
could do for her insulting.... And sometimes she was like last night. "How
goes it with Dataset?" he asked after a moment.
Peregrine shrugged. "About like before. Both Woodcarver and I can read
Samnorsk pretty well now. Johanna has taught us -- me via Woodcarver, I
should say -- how to use most of Dataset's powers. There's so much there
that will change the world. But for now we have to concentrate on making
gunpowder and cannons. It's that, the actual doing, that's going slow."
Scriber nodded knowingly. That had been the central problem in his life
too.
"Anyway, if we can do all that by midsummer, maybe we can face
Flenser's army and recapture the flying house before next winter." Peregrine
made a grin that stretched from face to face. "And then, my friend, Johanna
can call her people for rescue ... and we'll have all our lives to study the
outsiders. I may pilgrimage to worlds around other stars."
It was an idea they had talked of before. Peregrine had thought of it
even before Scriber.
They turned off Castle Street onto Edgerow. Scriber was feeling more
enthusiastic about visiting the stationer's; there must be some way he could
help. He looked around with an interest that had been lacking the last few
days. Woodcarvers was a fair-sized city, almost as big as Rangathir -- maybe
twenty thousand packs lived within its walls and in the homes immediately
around. This day was a bit colder than the last few, but it wasn't raining.
A cold, clean wind swept the market street, carrying faint smells of mildew
and sewage, of spices and fresh-sawn wood. Dark clouds hung low, misting the
hills around the harbor. Spring was definitely in the air. Scriber kicked
playfully at the slush along the curb.
Peregrine led them to a side street. The place was jammed, strangers
getting as close as seven or eight yards. The stalls at the stationer's were
even worse. The felt dividers weren't that thick, and there seemed to be
more interest in literature at Woodcarvers than any place Scriber had ever
been. He could hardly hear himself think as he haggled with the stationer.
The merchant sat on a raised platform with thick padding; he wasn't much
bothered by the racket. Scriber kept his heads close together, concentrating
on the prices and the product. From his past life, he was pretty good at
this sort of thing.
Eventually he got his paper, and at a decent price.
"Let's go back on Packweal," he said. That was the long way, through
the center of the market. When he was in a good mood, Scriber rather liked
crowds; he was a great student of people. Woodcarvers was not as
cosmopolitan as some cities by the Long Lakes, but there were traders from
all over. He saw several packs wearing the bonnets of a tropic collective.
At one intersection a redjackets from East Home was chatting cozily with a
labormaster.
When packs came this close, and in these numbers, the world seemed to
teeter on the edge of a choir. Each person hung near to himself, trying to
keep his own thoughts intact. It was hard to walk without stumbling over
your own feet. And sometimes the background thought sounds would surge, a
moment where several packs would somehow synchronize. Your consciousness
wavered and for an instant you were one with many, a superpack that might be
a god. Jaqueramaphan shivered. That was the essential attraction of the
Tropics. The crowds there were mobs, vast group minds as stupid as they were
ecstatic. If the stories were true, some of the southern cities were nonstop
orgies.
They had roamed the marketplace almost an hour when it hit him. Scriber
shook his heads abruptly. He turned and walked in lockstep off Packweal, and
up a side street. Peregrine followed, "Is the crowd too much?" he asked.
"I just had an idea," said Scriber. That wasn't unusual in a close
crowd, but this was a very interesting idea.... He said nothing more for
several minutes. The side street climbed steeply, then jinked back and forth
across Castle Hill. The upslope side was lined with burghers' homes. On the
harbor side, they were looking out over the steep tile roofs of houses on
the next switchback down. These were large homes, elegant with rosemaling.
Only a few had shops on the street.
Scriber slowed down and spread out enough that he wasn't stepping on
himself. He saw now that he'd been quite wrong in trying to contribute
creative expertise to Johanna. There was simply too much invention in
Dataset. But they still needed him, Johanna most of all. The problem was,
they didn't know it yet. Finally he said to Peregrine, "Haven't you wondered
that the Flenserists haven't attacked the city? You and I embarrassed the
Lords of Hidden Island more than ever in their history. We hold the keys to
their total defeat." Johanna and Dataset.
Peregrine hesitated. "Hmm. I assumed their army wasn't up to it. I
should think if they were, they'd have knocked over Woodcarvers long
before."
"Perhaps, but at great cost. Now the cost is worth it." He gave
Peregrine a serious look. "No, I think there's another reason.... They have
the flying house, but they have no idea how to use it. They want Johanna
back alive -- almost as much as they want to kill all of us."
Peregrine made a bitter sound. "If Steel hadn't been so eager to
massacre everything on two legs, he could have had all sorts of help."
"True, and the Flenserists must know that. I'll bet they've always had
spies among the townspeople here, but now more than ever. Did you see all
the East Home packs?" East Home was a hotbed of Flenser sentiment. Even
before the Movement, they had been a hard folk, routinely sacrificing pups
that didn't meet their brood standards.
"One anyway. Talking to a labormaster."
"Right. Who knows what's coming in disguised as special purpose packs?
I'd bet my life they're planning to kidnap Johanna. If they guess what we're
planning with her, they may just try to kill her. Don't you see? We must
alert Woodcarver and Vendacious, organize the people to watch for spies."
"You noticed all this on one walk through Packweal?" There was wonder
or disbelief in his voice, Scriber couldn't tell which.
"Well, um, no. The inspiration wasn't anything so direct. But it stands
to reason, don't you think?"
They walked in silence for several minutes. Up here the wind was
stronger, and the view more spectacular. Where there wasn't the sea, forest
spread endless gray and green. Everything was very peaceful ... because this
was a game of stealth. Fortunately Scriber had a talent for such games.
After all, hadn't it been the very Political Police of the Republic who
commissioned him to survey Hidden Island? It had taken him several tendays
of patient persuasion, but in the end they had been enthusiastic. Anything
you can discover we would be most happy to review. Those were their exact
words.
Peregrine waffled around the road, seemingly very taken aback by
Scriber's suggestion. Finally he said, "I think there is ... something you
should know, something that must remain an absolute secret."
"Upon my soul! Peregrine, I do not blab secrets." Scriber was a little
hurt -- at the lack of trust, and also that the other might have discovered
something he had not. The second should not bother him. He had guessed that
Peregrine and Woodcarver were into each other. No telling what she might
have confided, or what might have leaked across.
"Okay.... You've tripped onto something that should not be noised
about. You know Vendacious is in charge of Woodcarvers security?"
"Of course." That was implicit in the office of Lord Chamberlain. "And
considering the number of outsiders wandering around, I can't say he's doing
a very good job."
"In fact, he's doing a marvelously effective job. Vendacious has agents
right at the top at Hidden Island -- one step removed from Lord Steel
himself."
Scriber felt his eyes widening.
"Yes, you understand what that means. Through Vendacious, Woodcarver
knows for a certainty everything their high council plans. With clever
misinformation, we can lead the Flenserists around like froghens at a
thinning. Next to Johanna herself, this may be Woodcarver's greatest
advantage."
"I -- " I had no idea. "So the incompetent local security is just a
cover."
"Not exactly. It's supposed to look solid and intelligent, but with
just enough exploitable weakness so the Movement will postpone a frontal
attack in favor of espionage." He smiled. "I think Vendacious will be very
taken aback to hear your critique."
Scriber gave a weak laugh. He was flattered and boggled at the same
time. Vendacious must count as the greatest spymaster of the age -- yet he,
Scriber Jaqueramaphan, had almost seen through him. Scriber was mostly quiet
the rest of the way back to the castle, but his mind was racing. Peregrine
was more right than he knew; secrecy was vital. Unnecessary discussion --
even between old friends -- must be avoided. Yes! He would offer his
services to Vendacious. His new role might keep him in the background, but
it was where he could make the greatest contribution. And eventually even
Johanna would see how helpful he could be.
-=*=-
Down the well of the night. Even when Ravna wasn't looking out the
windows, that was the image in her mind. Relay was far off the galactic
disk. The OOB was descending toward that disk -- and ever deeper into
slowness.
But they had escaped. The OOB was crippled, but they had left Relay at
almost fifty light-years per hour. Each hour they were lower in the Beyond
and the computation time for the microjumps increased, and their
pseudovelocity declined. Nevertheless, they were making progress. They were
deep into the Middle of the Beyond now. And there was no sign of pursuit,
thank goodness. Whatever had brought the Blight to Relay, it had not been
specific knowledge of the OOB.
Hope. Ravna felt it growing in her. The ship's medical automation
claimed that Pham Nuwen could be saved, that there was brain activity. The
terrible wounds in his back had been Old One's implants, organic machinery
that had made Pham close-linked to Relay's local network -- and thence to
the Power above. And when that Power died somehow the gear in Pham became a
putrescent ruin. So Pham the person should still exist. Pray he still
exists. The surgeon thought it would be three days before his back was
healed enough to attempt resuscitation.
In the meantime.... Ravna was learning more about the apocalypse that
had swept over her. Every twenty hours, Greenstalk and Blueshell jigged the
ship sideways a few light-years, into some major trunk line of the Known Net
to soak up the News. It was a common practice on any voyage of more than a
few days; an easy way for merchants and travelers to keep track of events
that might affect their success at voyage's end.
According to the News (that is, according to the vast majority of the
opinions expressed), the fall of Relay was complete. Oh, Grondr. Oh Egravan
and Sarale. Are you dead or owned now?
Parts of the Known Net were temporarily out of contact; some of the
extra-galactic links might not be replaced for years. For the first time in
millennia, a Power was known to have been murdered. There were tens of
thousands of claims about the motive for the attack and tens of thousands of
predictions about what would happen next. Ravna had the ship filter the
avalanche, trying to distill the essence of the speculations.
The one coming from Straumli Realm itself made as much sense as any:
the Perversion's thralls gloated solemnly about the new era, the marriage of
a Transcendent being with races of the Beyond. If Relay could be destroyed
-- if a Power could be murdered -- then nothing could stop the spread of
victory.
Some senders thought that Relay was the ancestral target of whatever
had perverted Straumli Realm. Maybe the attack was just the tail end of some
long ago war, a misbegotten tragedy for the descendants of forgotten races.
If so, then the thralls at Straumli Realm might just wither away and the
original human culture there reappear.
A number of items suggested that the attack had been aimed at stealing
Relay's archives, but only one or two claimed that the Blight sought to
recover an artifact, or prevent the Relayers from recovering one. Those
assertions came from chronic theorizers, the sort of civilizations that get
surcharged by newsgroup automation. Nevertheless, Ravna looked through those
messages carefully. None of them suggested an artifact in the Low Beyond; if
anything, they claimed the Blight was searching for something in the High
Beyond or Low Transcend.
There was network traffic coming out of the Blight. The high protocol
messages were ignored by all but the suicidal, and no one was getting paid
to forward any of it. Yet horror and curiosity spread some of the messages
far. There was the Blighter "video": almost four hundred seconds of
pan-sensual data with no compression. That incredibly expensive message
might be the most-forwarded hog in all Net history. Blueshell held the OOB
on the trunk path for nearly two days to receive the whole thing.
The Perversion's thralls all appeared to be human. About half the news
items coming out of the Realm were video evocations, though none this long;
all showed human speakers. Ravna watched the big one again and again: She
even recognized the speaker. Øvn Nilsndot had been Straumli Realm's
champion trael runner. He had no title now, and probably no name. Nilsndot
spoke from an office that might have been a garden. If Ravna stepped to the
side of the image, she could see over his shoulder to ground level. The city
there looked like the Straumli Main of record. Years ago, Ravna and her
sister had dreamed about that city, the heart of mankind's adventure into
the Transcend. The central square had been a replica of the Field of
Princesses on Nyjora, and the immigration advertising claimed that no matter
how far the Straumers went, the fountain in the Field would always flow,
would always show their loyalty to humankind's beginnings.
There was no fountain now, and Ravna felt deadness behind Nilsndot's
gaze. "This one speaks as the Power that Helps," said the erstwhile hero. "I
want all to see what I can do for even a third-rate civilization. Look upon
my Helping...." The viewpoint swung skywards. It was sunset, and the ranked
agrav structures hung against the light, megameter upon megameter. It was a
more grandiose use of the agrav material than Ravna had ever seen, even on
the Docks. Certainly no world in the Middle Beyond could ever afford to
import the material in such quantities. "What you see above me is just the
work barracks for the construction that I will soon begin in the Straumli
system. When complete, five star systems will be a single habitat, their
planets and excess stellar mass distributed to support life and technology
as never before seen at these depths -- and as rarely seen in the Transcend
itself." The view returned to Nilsndot, a single human, mouthpiece for a
god. "Some of you may rebel against idea of dedicating yourselves to me. In
the long run it does not matter. The symbiosis of my Power with the hands of
races in the Beyond is more than any can resist. But I speak now to diminish
your fear. What you see in Straumli Realm is as much a joy as a wonder.
Never again will races in the Beyond be left behind by transcendence. Those
who join me -- and all will join eventually -- will be part of the Power.
You will have access to imports from across the Top and Lower Transcend. You
will reproduce beyond the limits your own technology could sustain. You will
absorb all that oppose me. You will bring the new stability."
The third or fourth time she watched the item, Ravna tried to ignore
the words, concentrate on Nilsndot's expression, comparing it to speeches
she had in her personal dataset. There was a difference; it wasn't her
imagination. The creature she watched was soul-dead. Somehow, the Blight
didn't care that that was obvious ... maybe it wasn't obvious except to
human viewers, and they were a vanishingly small fraction of the audience.
The viewpoint closed in on Nilsndot's ordinary dark face, his ordinary
violet eyes:
"Some of you may wonder how all this is possible, and why billions of
years of anarchy have passed without such help from a Power. The answer is
... complex. Like many sensible developments, this one has a high threshold.
On one side of that threshold, the development appears impossibly unlikely;
on the other, inevitable. The symbiosis of the Helping depends on efficient,
high-bandwidth communication between myself and the beings I Help. Creatures
such as the one now speaking my words must respond as quickly and faithfully
as a hand or a mouth. Their eyes and ears must report across light-years.
This has been hard to achieve -- especially since the system must
essentially be in place before it can function. But, now that the symbiosis
exists, progress will come much faster. Almost any race can be modified to
receive Help."
Almost any race can be modified. The words came from a familiar face,
and in Ravna's birth language ... but the origin was monstrously far away.
There was plenty of analysis. A whole news group had been formed:
Threat of the Blight was spawned from Threats Group, Homo Sapiens Interest
Group, and Close-Coupled Automation. These days it was busier than any five
other groups. In this part of the galaxy, a significant fraction of all
message traffic belonged to the new group. More bits were sent analyzing
poor Øvn Nilsndot's mouthing than had been in the original. Judging
from the flames and contradictions, the signal-to-noise ratio was very low:
Crypto: 0
As received by: OOB shipboard ad hoc
Language path: Acquileron->Triskweline, SjK units
From: Khurvark University [Claimed to be habitat-based university in
the Middle Beyond]
Subject: Blighter Video
Summary: The message shows fraud
Distribution:
War Trackers Interest Group, Where are they now Interest Group, Threat of the Blight
Date: 7.06 days since Fall of Relay
Text of message:
It's obvious that this "Helper" is a fraud. We've researched the matter
carefully. Though he is not named, the speaker is a high official in the
former Straumli regime. Now why -- if the "Helper" simply runs the humans as
teleoperated robots -- why is the earlier social structure preserved? The
answer should be clear to any idiot: The Helper does not have the power to
teleoperate large numbers of sentients. Evidently, the Fall of Straumli
Realm consisted of taking over key elements in that civilization's power
structure. It's business as usual for the rest of the race. Our conclusion:
this Helper Symbiosis is just another messianic religion, another screwball
empire excusing its excesses and attempting to trick those it cannot
directly coerce. Don't be fooled!
Crypto: 0
As received by: OOB shipboard ad hoc
Language path: Optima->Acquileron->Triskweline, SjK units
From: Society for Rational Investigation [Probably a single system in
Middle Beyond, 5700 light-years antispinward of Sjandra Kei]
Subject: Blighter Video thread, Khurvark University 1
Key phrases: [Probable obscenity] waste of our valuable time
Distribution:
Society for Rational Network Management, Threat of the Blight
Date: 7.91 days since Fall of Relay
Text of message:
Who is a fool? [probable obscenity] [probable obscenity] Idiots who
don't follow all the threads in developing news should not waste my precious
ears with their [clear obscenity] garbage. So you think the "Helper
Symbiosis" is a fraud of Straumli Realm? And what do you think caused the
fall of Relay? In case your head is totally stuck up your rear [ <--
probable insult], there was a Power allied with Relay. That Power is now
dead. You think maybe it just committed suicide? Look it up, Flat Head [
<-- probable insult]. No Power has ever fallen to anything from the
Beyond. The Blight is something new and interesting. I think it's time that
[obscenity] jerks like Khurvark University stick to the noise groups, and
let the rest of us have some intelligent discussion.
And some messages were patent nonsense. One thing about the Net: the
multiple, automatic translations often disguised the fundamental alienness
of participants. Behind the chatty, colloquial postings, there were faraway
realms, so misted by distance and difference that communication was
impossible -- even though it might take a while to realize the fact. For
instance:
Crypto: 0
As received by: OOB shipboard ad hoc
Language path: Arbwyth->Trade24->Cherguelen->Triskweline, SjK
units
From: Twirlip of the Mists [Perhaps an organization of cloud fliers in
a single jovian system. Very sparse priors.]
Subject: Blighter Video thread
Key phrases: Hexapodia as the key insight
Distribution:
Threat of the Blight
Date: 8.68 days since Fall of Relay
Text of message:
I haven't had a chance to see the famous video from Straumli Realm,
except as an evocation. (My only gateway onto the Net is very expensive.) Is
it true that humans have six legs? I wasn't sure from the evocation. If
these humans have three pairs of legs, then I think there is an easy
explanation for --
Hexapodia? Six legs? Three pairs of legs? Probably none of these
translations was close to what the bewildered creature of Twirlip had in its
mind. Ravna didn't read any more of that posting.
Crypto: 0
As received by: OOB shipboard ad hoc
Language path: Triskweline, SjK units
From: Hanse [No references prior to the Fall of Relay. No probable
source. This is someone being very cautious]
Subject: Blighter Video thread, Khurvark University 1
Distribution:
War Trackers Interest Group, Threat of the Blight
Date: 8.68 days since Fall of Relay
Text of message:
Khurvark University thinks the Blight is a fraud because elements of
the former regime have survived on Straum. There is another explanation.
Suppose the Blight is indeed a Power, and that its claims of effective
symbiosis are generally true. That means that the creature being "Helped" is
no more than a remotely controlled device, his brain simply a local
processor supporting the communication. Would you want to be helped like
that? My question isn't completely rhetorical; the readership is wide enough
that there may be some of you who would answer "yes". However, the vast
majority of naturally evolved, sentient beings would be revolted by the
notion. Surely the Blight knows this. My guess is that the Blight is not a
fraud -- but that the notion of surviving culture in Straumli Realm is.
Subtly, the Blight wanted to convey the impression that only some are
directly enslaved, that cultures as a whole will survive. Combine that with
Blight's claim that not all races can be teleoperated. We're left with the
subtext that immense riches are available to races that associate themselves
with this Power, yet the biological and intellectual imperatives of these
races will still be satisfied.
So, the question remains. Just how complete is the Blight's control
over conquered races? I don't know. There may not be any self-aware minds
left in the Blight's Beyond, only billions of teleoperated devices. One
thing is clear: The Blight needs something from us that it cannot yet take.
And so it went. Tens of thousands of messages, hundreds of points of
view. It was not called the Net of a Million Lies for nothing. Ravna talked
with Blueshell and Greenstalk about it every day, trying to put it together,
trying to decide which interpretation to believe.
The Riders knew humans well, but even they weren't sure of the deadness
in Øvn Nilsndot's face. And Greenstalk knew humans well enough to see
that there was no answer that would comfort Ravna. She rolled back and forth
in front of the News window, finally reached a frond out to touch the human.
"Perhaps Sir Pham can say, once he is well."
Blueshell was bustling, clinical. "If you're right, that means that
somehow the Blight doesn't care what humans and those close to humans know.
In a way that makes sense, but ..." His voder buzzed absentmindedly for a
moment. "I mistrust this message. Four hundred seconds of broad-band, so
rich that it gives full-sense imagery for many different races. That's an
enormous amount of information, and no compression whatsoever.... Maybe it's
sweetened bait, forwarded by us poor Beyonders back to our every nest." That
suspicion had been in the News too. But there were no obvious patterns in
the message, and nothing that talked to network automation. Such subtle
poison might work at the Top of the Beyond, but not down here. And that left
a simpler explanation, one that would make perfect sense even on Nyjora or
Old Earth: the video masked a message to agents already in place.
-=*=-
Vendacious was well-known to the people of Woodcarvers -- but for
mostly the wrong reasons. He was about a century old, the fusion offspring
of Woodcarver on two of his strategists. In his early decades, Vendacious
had managed the city's wood mills. Along the way he devised some clever
improvements on the waterwheel. Vendacious had had his own romantic
entanglements -- mostly with politicians and speech-makers. More and more,
his replacement members inclined him toward public life. For the last thirty
years he had been one of the strongest voices on Woodcarvers Council; for
the last ten, Lord Chamberlain. In both roles, he had stood for the guilds
and for fair trade. There were rumors that if Woodcarver should ever
almost think of the jaws as hands, deftly pulling the oilskin jacket down
her arms and hanging it near the fire.
Johanna chucked her boots and pants, and accepted the quilted wrap that
the pack "handed" her.
"Dinner. Now," she said to the pack.
"Okay."
Johanna settled on a pillow by the fire pit. In fact the Tines were
more primitive than the humans on Nyjora: The Tines' world was not a fallen
colony. They didn't even have legend to guide them. Sanitation was a
sometime thing. Before Woodcarver, Tinish doctors bled their
patients/victims.... She knew now that she was living in the Tines'
equivalent of a luxury apartment. The deep-polished wood was not a normal
thing. The designs painted on the pillars and walls were the result of many
hours' labor.
Johanna rested her chin on her hands and stared into the flames. She
was vaguely aware of the pack prancing around the pit, hanging pots over the
fire. This one spoke very little Samnorsk; it wasn't in on Woodcarver's
dataset project. Many weeks ago, Scarbutt had asked to move in here -- what
better way to speed the learning process? Johanna shivered at the memory.
She knew the scarred one was just a single member, that the pack that killed
Dad had itself died. Johanna understood, but every time she saw "Peregrine",
she saw her father's murderer sitting fat and happy, thinking to hide itself
behind its three smaller fellows. Johanna smiled into the flames,
remembering the whack she had landed on Scarbutt when he made the
suggestion. She'd lost control, but it had been worth it. No one else
suggested that "friends" should share this house with her. Most evenings
they left her alone. And some nights ... Dad and Mom seemed so near, maybe
just outside, waiting for her to notice. Even though she had seen them die,
something inside her refused to let them go.
Cooking smells slipped past the familiar daydream. Tonight it was meat
and beans, with something like onions. Surprise. The stuff smelled good; if
there had been any variety, she would have enjoyed it. But Johanna hadn't
seen fresh fruit in sixty days. Salted meat and veggies were the only winter
fare. If Jefri were here, he'd throw a fit. It was months past since the
word came from Woodcarver's spies up north: Jefri had died in the ambush....
Johanna was getting over it, she really was. And in some ways, being all
alone made things ... simpler.
The pack put a plate of meat and beans before her, along with a kind of
knife. Oh, well. Johanna grabbed the crooked hilt (bent sideways to be held
by Tinish jaws) and dug in.
She was almost finished when there was a polite scratching at the door.
Her servant gobbled something. The visitor replied, then said in rather good
Samnorsk (and a voice that was eerily like her own), "Hello there, my name
is Scriber. I would like a small talk, okay?"
One of the servant's turned to look at her; the rest were watching the
door. Scriber was the one she thought of as Pompous Clown. He'd been with
Scarbutt at the ambush, but he was such a fool that she scarcely felt
threatened by him.
"Okay," she said, starting toward the door. Her servant (guard) grabbed
crossbows in its jaws, and all five members snaked up the staircase to the
loft; there wasn't space for more than one pack down here.
The cold and wet blew into the room along with her visitor. Johanna
retreated to the other side of the fire while Scriber took off his rain
slickers. The pack members shook themselves the way dogs do, a noisy,
amusing sight -- and you didn't want to be near when it happened.
Finally Scriber sauntered over to the fire pit. Under the slickers he
wore jackets with the usual stirrups and the open spaces behind the
shoulders and at the haunches. But Scriber's appeared to be padded above the
shoulders to make his members look heavier than they really were. One of him
sniffed at her plate, while the other heads looked this way and that ... but
never directly at her.
Johanna looked down at the pack. She still had trouble talking to more
than one face; usually she picked on whichever was looking back at her.
"Well? What did you come to talk about?"
One of the heads finally looked at her. It licked its lips. "Okay. Yes.
I thought to see how do you do? I mean ..." gobble. Her servant answered
from upstairs, probably reporting what kind of mood she was in. Scriber
straightened up. Four of his six heads looked at Johanna. His other two
members paced back and forth, as if contemplating something important. "Look
here. You are the only human I know, but I have always been a big student of
character. I know you are not happy here -- "
Pompous Clown was also master of the obvious.
"-- and I understand. But we do the best to help you. We are not the
bad people who killed your parents and brother."
Johanna put a hand on the low ceiling and leaned forward. You're all
thugs; you just happen to have the same enemies I do. "I know that, and I am
cooperating. You'd still be playing the dataset's kindermode if it weren't
for me. I've shown you the reading courses; if you guys have any brains,
you'll have gunpowder by summer." The Oliphaunt was an heirloom toy, a
huggable favorite thing she should have outgrown years ago. But there was
history in it -- stories of the queens and princesses of the Dark Ages, and
how they had struggled to triumph over the jungles, to rebuild the cities
and then the spaceships. Half-hidden on obscure reference paths there were
also hard numbers, the history of technology. Gunpowder was one of the
easiest things. When the weather cleared up, there would be some prospecting
expeditions; Woodcarver had known about sulfur, but didn't have quantities
in town. Making cannon would be harder. But then.... "Then your enemies will
be killed. Your people are getting what they want from me. So what's your
complaint?"
"Complaint?" Pompous Clown's heads bobbed up and down in alternation.
Such distributed gestures seemed to be the equivalent of facial expressions,
though Johanna hadn't figured many of them out. This one might mean
embarrassment. "I have no complaint. You are helping us, I know. But, but
..." Three of his members were pacing around now. "It's just that I see more
than most people, perhaps a little like Woodcarver did in oldendays. I am a
-- I've seen your word for it -- a 'dilettante'. You know, a person who
studies all things and who is talented at everything. I am only thirty years
old, but I have read almost every book in the world, and -- " the heads
bowed, perhaps in shyness? "-- I'm even planning to write one, perhaps the
true story of your adventure."
Johanna found herself smiling. Most often she saw the Tines as
barbarian strangers, inhuman in spirit as well as form. But if she closed
her eyes, she could almost imagine that Scriber was a fellow Straumer. Mom
had a few friends just as brainless and innocently self-convinced as this
one, men and women with a hundred grandiose projects that would never ever
amount to anything. Back on Straum, they had been boring perils that she
avoided. Now ... well, Scriber's foolishness was almost like being back home
again.
"You're here to study me for your book?"
More alternating nods. "Well, yes. And also, I wanted to talk to you
about my other plans. I've always been something of an inventor, you see. I
know that doesn't mean much now. It seems that everything that can be
invented is already in Dataset. I've seen many of my best ideas there." He
sighed, or made the sound of a sigh. Now he was imitating one of the pop
science voices in the dataset. Sound was the easiest thing for the Tines; it
could be darn confusing.
"In any case, I was just wondering how to improve some of those ideas
-- " four of Scriber's members bellied down on the bench by the fire pit; it
looked like he was settling in for a long conversation. His other two walked
around the pit to give her a stack of paper threaded with brass hoops. While
one on the other side of the fire continued to talk, the two carefully
turned the pages and pointed at where she should look.
Well, he did have plenty of ideas: Tethered birds to hoist flying
boats, giant lenses that would concentrate the sun's light on enemies and
set them afire. From some of the pictures, it appeared he thought the
atmosphere extended beyond the moon. Scriber explained each idea in numbing
detail, pointing at the drawings and patting her hands enthusiastically. "So
you see the possibilities? My unique slant combined with the proven
inventions in Dataset. Who knows where it could lead?"
Johanna giggled, overcome by the vision of Scriber's giant birds
hauling kilometer-wide lenses to the moon. He seemed to take the sound for
approval.
"Yes! It's brilliant, okay? My latest idea, I never would have thought
it except for Dataset. This 'radio', it projects sound very far and fast,
okay? Why not combine it with the power of our Tinish thoughts? A pack could
think as one even spread across hundreds of, um, kilometers."
Now that almost made sense! But if gunpowder took months to make --
even given the exact formula -- how many decades would it be before the
packs had radio? Scriber was an immense fountain of half-baked ideas. She
let his words wash over her for more than an hour. It was insanity, but less
alien than most of what she had endured this last year.
Finally he seemed to run down; there were longer pauses and he asked
her opinion more often. Finally he said, "Well, that was certainly fun,
okay?"
"Unh, yes, fascinating."
"I knew you would like it. You're just like my people, I really think.
You're not all angry, not all the time...."
"Just what do you mean by that?" Johanna pushed a soft muzzle away and
stood. The dogthing rocked back on its haunches to look up at her.
"I, well ... you have much to hate, I know. But you seem so angry at us
all the time, and we're the ones who are trying to help you! After the day
work you stay here, you don't want to talk with people -- though now I see
that was our fault. You wanted us to come here but were too proud to say it.
I have these insights into character, you see. My friend, the one you call
Scarbutt: he is truly a nice fellow. I know I can tell you that honestly,
and that as my new friend you will believe. He would very much like to come
to visit you, too.... urk."
Johanna walked slowly around the fire pit, forcing the two members to
back away from her. All of Scriber was looking up at her now, the necks
arching around one another, the eyes wide.
"I'm not like you. I don't need your talk, or your stupid ideas." She
threw Scriber's notebook into the pit. Scriber leaped to the fire's edge,
desperately reached for the burning notes. He pulled most of them back and
clutched them to his chests.
Johanna kept walking toward him, kicking at his legs. Scriber
retreated, backing and sprawling. "Stupid, dirty, butchers. I'm not like
you." She slapped her hand on a ceiling beam. "Humans don't like to live
like animals. We don't adopt killers. You tell Scarbutt, you tell him. If he
ever comes by for a friendly chat, I-I'll smash in his head; I'll smash in
all of them!"
Scriber was backed into the wall now. His heads turned wildly this way
and that. He was making plenty of noise. Some of it was Samnorsk, but too
high-pitched to understand. One of his mouths found the door pole. He pushed
open the door, and all six members raced into the twilight, their rain
slickers forgotten.
Johanna knelt and stuck her head through the doorway. The air was a
wind-driven mist. In an instant, her face was so cold and wet that she
couldn't feel the tears. Scriber was six shadows in the darkening grayness,
shadows that raced down the hillside, sometimes tumbling in their haste. In
a second he was gone. There was nothing but the vague forms of nearby
cabins, and the yellow light that spilled out around her from the fire.
Strange. Right after the ambush, she had felt terror. The Tines had
been unstoppable killers. Then, on the boat, when she smashed Scarbutt ...
it had been so wonderful: the whole pack collapsed, and suddenly she knew
that she could fight back, that she could break their bones. She didn't have
to be at their mercy.... Tonight she had learned something more. Even
without touching them, she could hurt them. Some of them, anyway. Her
dislike alone had undone Pompous Clown.
Johanna backed into the smoky warmth and shut the door. She should feel
triumph.
.Delete this paragraph to shift page flush
-=*=-
Scriber Jaqueramaphan didn't tell anyone about his meeting with the
Two-Legs. Of course, Vendacious's guard had overheard everything. The fellow
might not speak much Samnorsk, but he had surely gotten the drift of the
argument. People would hear about it eventually.
He moped around the castle for a few days, spent a number of hours
hunched over the remains of his notebook, trying to recreate the diagrams.
It would be a a while before he attended any more sessions with Dataset,
especially when Johanna was around. Scriber knew he seemed brash to the
outside world, but in fact it had taken a lot of courage to walk in on
Johanna like that. He knew his ideas had genius, but all his life
unimaginative people had been telling him otherwise.
In most ways Scriber was a very fortunate person. He had been born a
fission pack in Rangathir, at the eastern edge of the Republic. His parent
had been a wealthy merchant. Jaqueramaphan had some of his parent's traits,
but the dull patience necessary for day-to-day business work had been lost
to him. His sibling pack more than retained that faculty; the family
business grew, and -- in the first years -- his sib didn't begrudge Scriber
his share of the wealth. From his earliest days, Scriber had been an
intellectual. He read everything: natural history, biography, brood kenning.
In the end he had the largest library in Rangathir, more than two hundred
books.
Even then Scriber had tremendous ideas, insights which -- if properly
executed -- would have made them the wealthiest merchants in all the eastern
provinces. Alas, bad luck and his sib's lack of imagination had doomed his
early ideas. In the end, his sib bought out the business, and Jaqueramaphan
moved to the Capital. It was all for the best. By this time Scriber had
fleshed himself out to six members; he needed to see more of the world.
Besides ... there were five thousand books in the library there, the
experience of all history and all the world! His own notebooks became a
library in themselves. Yet still the packs at the university had no time for
him. His outline for a summation of natural history was rejected by all the
stationers, though he paid to have small parts of it published. It was clear
that success in the world of action was necessary before his ideas could get
the attention they deserved, hence his spy mission; Parliament itself would
thank him when he returned with the secrets of Flenser's Hidden Island.
That was almost a year ago. What had happened since -- with the flying
house and Johanna and Dataset -- went beyond his wildest dreams (and Scriber
granted that those dreams were already pretty extreme). The library in
Dataset contained millions of books. With Johanna to help him polish his
ideas, they would sweep Flenserism from the face of the world. They would
regain her flying house. Not even the sky would be a limit.
So to have her throw it all back at him ... it made him wonder about
himself. Maybe she was just mad at him for trying to explain Peregrine. She
would like Peregrine if she let herself; he was sure of it. But then again
... maybe his ideas just weren't that good, at least by comparison with
humans'.
That thought left him pretty low. But he finished redrawing the
diagrams, and even got some new ideas. Maybe he should get some more
silkpaper.
Peregrine stopped by and persuaded him to go into town.
Jaqueramaphan had made up a dozen explanations why he wasn't
participating in the sessions with Johanna anymore. He tried out two or
three as he and Peregrine descended Castle Street toward the harbor.
After a minute or two, his friend turned a head back. "It's okay,
Scriber. When you feel like it, we'd like to have you back."
Scriber had always been a very good judge of attitude; in particular,
he could tell when he was being patronized. He must have scowled a little,
because Peregrine went on. "I mean it. Even Woodcarver has been asking about
you. She likes your ideas."
Comforting lies or not, Scriber brightened. "Really?" The Woodcarver of
today was a sad case, but the Woodcarver of the history books was one of
Jaqueramaphan's great heroes. "No one's mad at me?"
"Well, Vendacious is a bit peeved. Being responsible for the Two-Legs'
safety makes him very nervous. But you only tried something we've all wanted
to do."
"Yeah." Even if there had been no Dataset, even if Johanna Olsndot had
not come from the stars, she would still be the most fascinating creature in
the world: a pack-equivalent mind in a single body. You could walk right up
to her, you could touch her, without the least confusion. It was frightening
at first, but all of them quickly felt the attraction. For packs, closeness
had always meant mindlessness -- whether for sex or battle. Imagine being
able to sit by the fire with a friend and carry on an intelligent
conversation! Woodcarver had a theory that the Two-Legs' civilization might
be innately more effective than any Packish one, that collaboration was so
easy for humans that they learned and built much faster than packs could.
The only problem with that theory was Johanna Olsndot. If Johanna was a
normal human, it is was a surprise that the race could cooperate on
anything. Sometimes she was friendly -- usually in the sessions with
Woodcarver. She seemed to realize that Woodcarver was frail and failing.
More often she was patronizing, sarcastic, and seemed to think the best they
could do for her insulting.... And sometimes she was like last night. "How
goes it with Dataset?" he asked after a moment.
Peregrine shrugged. "About like before. Both Woodcarver and I can read
Samnorsk pretty well now. Johanna has taught us -- me via Woodcarver, I
should say -- how to use most of Dataset's powers. There's so much there
that will change the world. But for now we have to concentrate on making
gunpowder and cannons. It's that, the actual doing, that's going slow."
Scriber nodded knowingly. That had been the central problem in his life
too.
"Anyway, if we can do all that by midsummer, maybe we can face
Flenser's army and recapture the flying house before next winter." Peregrine
made a grin that stretched from face to face. "And then, my friend, Johanna
can call her people for rescue ... and we'll have all our lives to study the
outsiders. I may pilgrimage to worlds around other stars."
It was an idea they had talked of before. Peregrine had thought of it
even before Scriber.
They turned off Castle Street onto Edgerow. Scriber was feeling more
enthusiastic about visiting the stationer's; there must be some way he could
help. He looked around with an interest that had been lacking the last few
days. Woodcarvers was a fair-sized city, almost as big as Rangathir -- maybe
twenty thousand packs lived within its walls and in the homes immediately
around. This day was a bit colder than the last few, but it wasn't raining.
A cold, clean wind swept the market street, carrying faint smells of mildew
and sewage, of spices and fresh-sawn wood. Dark clouds hung low, misting the
hills around the harbor. Spring was definitely in the air. Scriber kicked
playfully at the slush along the curb.
Peregrine led them to a side street. The place was jammed, strangers
getting as close as seven or eight yards. The stalls at the stationer's were
even worse. The felt dividers weren't that thick, and there seemed to be
more interest in literature at Woodcarvers than any place Scriber had ever
been. He could hardly hear himself think as he haggled with the stationer.
The merchant sat on a raised platform with thick padding; he wasn't much
bothered by the racket. Scriber kept his heads close together, concentrating
on the prices and the product. From his past life, he was pretty good at
this sort of thing.
Eventually he got his paper, and at a decent price.
"Let's go back on Packweal," he said. That was the long way, through
the center of the market. When he was in a good mood, Scriber rather liked
crowds; he was a great student of people. Woodcarvers was not as
cosmopolitan as some cities by the Long Lakes, but there were traders from
all over. He saw several packs wearing the bonnets of a tropic collective.
At one intersection a redjackets from East Home was chatting cozily with a
labormaster.
When packs came this close, and in these numbers, the world seemed to
teeter on the edge of a choir. Each person hung near to himself, trying to
keep his own thoughts intact. It was hard to walk without stumbling over
your own feet. And sometimes the background thought sounds would surge, a
moment where several packs would somehow synchronize. Your consciousness
wavered and for an instant you were one with many, a superpack that might be
a god. Jaqueramaphan shivered. That was the essential attraction of the
Tropics. The crowds there were mobs, vast group minds as stupid as they were
ecstatic. If the stories were true, some of the southern cities were nonstop
orgies.
They had roamed the marketplace almost an hour when it hit him. Scriber
shook his heads abruptly. He turned and walked in lockstep off Packweal, and
up a side street. Peregrine followed, "Is the crowd too much?" he asked.
"I just had an idea," said Scriber. That wasn't unusual in a close
crowd, but this was a very interesting idea.... He said nothing more for
several minutes. The side street climbed steeply, then jinked back and forth
across Castle Hill. The upslope side was lined with burghers' homes. On the
harbor side, they were looking out over the steep tile roofs of houses on
the next switchback down. These were large homes, elegant with rosemaling.
Only a few had shops on the street.
Scriber slowed down and spread out enough that he wasn't stepping on
himself. He saw now that he'd been quite wrong in trying to contribute
creative expertise to Johanna. There was simply too much invention in
Dataset. But they still needed him, Johanna most of all. The problem was,
they didn't know it yet. Finally he said to Peregrine, "Haven't you wondered
that the Flenserists haven't attacked the city? You and I embarrassed the
Lords of Hidden Island more than ever in their history. We hold the keys to
their total defeat." Johanna and Dataset.
Peregrine hesitated. "Hmm. I assumed their army wasn't up to it. I
should think if they were, they'd have knocked over Woodcarvers long
before."
"Perhaps, but at great cost. Now the cost is worth it." He gave
Peregrine a serious look. "No, I think there's another reason.... They have
the flying house, but they have no idea how to use it. They want Johanna
back alive -- almost as much as they want to kill all of us."
Peregrine made a bitter sound. "If Steel hadn't been so eager to
massacre everything on two legs, he could have had all sorts of help."
"True, and the Flenserists must know that. I'll bet they've always had
spies among the townspeople here, but now more than ever. Did you see all
the East Home packs?" East Home was a hotbed of Flenser sentiment. Even
before the Movement, they had been a hard folk, routinely sacrificing pups
that didn't meet their brood standards.
"One anyway. Talking to a labormaster."
"Right. Who knows what's coming in disguised as special purpose packs?
I'd bet my life they're planning to kidnap Johanna. If they guess what we're
planning with her, they may just try to kill her. Don't you see? We must
alert Woodcarver and Vendacious, organize the people to watch for spies."
"You noticed all this on one walk through Packweal?" There was wonder
or disbelief in his voice, Scriber couldn't tell which.
"Well, um, no. The inspiration wasn't anything so direct. But it stands
to reason, don't you think?"
They walked in silence for several minutes. Up here the wind was
stronger, and the view more spectacular. Where there wasn't the sea, forest
spread endless gray and green. Everything was very peaceful ... because this
was a game of stealth. Fortunately Scriber had a talent for such games.
After all, hadn't it been the very Political Police of the Republic who
commissioned him to survey Hidden Island? It had taken him several tendays
of patient persuasion, but in the end they had been enthusiastic. Anything
you can discover we would be most happy to review. Those were their exact
words.
Peregrine waffled around the road, seemingly very taken aback by
Scriber's suggestion. Finally he said, "I think there is ... something you
should know, something that must remain an absolute secret."
"Upon my soul! Peregrine, I do not blab secrets." Scriber was a little
hurt -- at the lack of trust, and also that the other might have discovered
something he had not. The second should not bother him. He had guessed that
Peregrine and Woodcarver were into each other. No telling what she might
have confided, or what might have leaked across.
"Okay.... You've tripped onto something that should not be noised
about. You know Vendacious is in charge of Woodcarvers security?"
"Of course." That was implicit in the office of Lord Chamberlain. "And
considering the number of outsiders wandering around, I can't say he's doing
a very good job."
"In fact, he's doing a marvelously effective job. Vendacious has agents
right at the top at Hidden Island -- one step removed from Lord Steel
himself."
Scriber felt his eyes widening.
"Yes, you understand what that means. Through Vendacious, Woodcarver
knows for a certainty everything their high council plans. With clever
misinformation, we can lead the Flenserists around like froghens at a
thinning. Next to Johanna herself, this may be Woodcarver's greatest
advantage."
"I -- " I had no idea. "So the incompetent local security is just a
cover."
"Not exactly. It's supposed to look solid and intelligent, but with
just enough exploitable weakness so the Movement will postpone a frontal
attack in favor of espionage." He smiled. "I think Vendacious will be very
taken aback to hear your critique."
Scriber gave a weak laugh. He was flattered and boggled at the same
time. Vendacious must count as the greatest spymaster of the age -- yet he,
Scriber Jaqueramaphan, had almost seen through him. Scriber was mostly quiet
the rest of the way back to the castle, but his mind was racing. Peregrine
was more right than he knew; secrecy was vital. Unnecessary discussion --
even between old friends -- must be avoided. Yes! He would offer his
services to Vendacious. His new role might keep him in the background, but
it was where he could make the greatest contribution. And eventually even
Johanna would see how helpful he could be.
-=*=-
Down the well of the night. Even when Ravna wasn't looking out the
windows, that was the image in her mind. Relay was far off the galactic
disk. The OOB was descending toward that disk -- and ever deeper into
slowness.
But they had escaped. The OOB was crippled, but they had left Relay at
almost fifty light-years per hour. Each hour they were lower in the Beyond
and the computation time for the microjumps increased, and their
pseudovelocity declined. Nevertheless, they were making progress. They were
deep into the Middle of the Beyond now. And there was no sign of pursuit,
thank goodness. Whatever had brought the Blight to Relay, it had not been
specific knowledge of the OOB.
Hope. Ravna felt it growing in her. The ship's medical automation
claimed that Pham Nuwen could be saved, that there was brain activity. The
terrible wounds in his back had been Old One's implants, organic machinery
that had made Pham close-linked to Relay's local network -- and thence to
the Power above. And when that Power died somehow the gear in Pham became a
putrescent ruin. So Pham the person should still exist. Pray he still
exists. The surgeon thought it would be three days before his back was
healed enough to attempt resuscitation.
In the meantime.... Ravna was learning more about the apocalypse that
had swept over her. Every twenty hours, Greenstalk and Blueshell jigged the
ship sideways a few light-years, into some major trunk line of the Known Net
to soak up the News. It was a common practice on any voyage of more than a
few days; an easy way for merchants and travelers to keep track of events
that might affect their success at voyage's end.
According to the News (that is, according to the vast majority of the
opinions expressed), the fall of Relay was complete. Oh, Grondr. Oh Egravan
and Sarale. Are you dead or owned now?
Parts of the Known Net were temporarily out of contact; some of the
extra-galactic links might not be replaced for years. For the first time in
millennia, a Power was known to have been murdered. There were tens of
thousands of claims about the motive for the attack and tens of thousands of
predictions about what would happen next. Ravna had the ship filter the
avalanche, trying to distill the essence of the speculations.
The one coming from Straumli Realm itself made as much sense as any:
the Perversion's thralls gloated solemnly about the new era, the marriage of
a Transcendent being with races of the Beyond. If Relay could be destroyed
-- if a Power could be murdered -- then nothing could stop the spread of
victory.
Some senders thought that Relay was the ancestral target of whatever
had perverted Straumli Realm. Maybe the attack was just the tail end of some
long ago war, a misbegotten tragedy for the descendants of forgotten races.
If so, then the thralls at Straumli Realm might just wither away and the
original human culture there reappear.
A number of items suggested that the attack had been aimed at stealing
Relay's archives, but only one or two claimed that the Blight sought to
recover an artifact, or prevent the Relayers from recovering one. Those
assertions came from chronic theorizers, the sort of civilizations that get
surcharged by newsgroup automation. Nevertheless, Ravna looked through those
messages carefully. None of them suggested an artifact in the Low Beyond; if
anything, they claimed the Blight was searching for something in the High
Beyond or Low Transcend.
There was network traffic coming out of the Blight. The high protocol
messages were ignored by all but the suicidal, and no one was getting paid
to forward any of it. Yet horror and curiosity spread some of the messages
far. There was the Blighter "video": almost four hundred seconds of
pan-sensual data with no compression. That incredibly expensive message
might be the most-forwarded hog in all Net history. Blueshell held the OOB
on the trunk path for nearly two days to receive the whole thing.
The Perversion's thralls all appeared to be human. About half the news
items coming out of the Realm were video evocations, though none this long;
all showed human speakers. Ravna watched the big one again and again: She
even recognized the speaker. Øvn Nilsndot had been Straumli Realm's
champion trael runner. He had no title now, and probably no name. Nilsndot
spoke from an office that might have been a garden. If Ravna stepped to the
side of the image, she could see over his shoulder to ground level. The city
there looked like the Straumli Main of record. Years ago, Ravna and her
sister had dreamed about that city, the heart of mankind's adventure into
the Transcend. The central square had been a replica of the Field of
Princesses on Nyjora, and the immigration advertising claimed that no matter
how far the Straumers went, the fountain in the Field would always flow,
would always show their loyalty to humankind's beginnings.
There was no fountain now, and Ravna felt deadness behind Nilsndot's
gaze. "This one speaks as the Power that Helps," said the erstwhile hero. "I
want all to see what I can do for even a third-rate civilization. Look upon
my Helping...." The viewpoint swung skywards. It was sunset, and the ranked
agrav structures hung against the light, megameter upon megameter. It was a
more grandiose use of the agrav material than Ravna had ever seen, even on
the Docks. Certainly no world in the Middle Beyond could ever afford to
import the material in such quantities. "What you see above me is just the
work barracks for the construction that I will soon begin in the Straumli
system. When complete, five star systems will be a single habitat, their
planets and excess stellar mass distributed to support life and technology
as never before seen at these depths -- and as rarely seen in the Transcend
itself." The view returned to Nilsndot, a single human, mouthpiece for a
god. "Some of you may rebel against idea of dedicating yourselves to me. In
the long run it does not matter. The symbiosis of my Power with the hands of
races in the Beyond is more than any can resist. But I speak now to diminish
your fear. What you see in Straumli Realm is as much a joy as a wonder.
Never again will races in the Beyond be left behind by transcendence. Those
who join me -- and all will join eventually -- will be part of the Power.
You will have access to imports from across the Top and Lower Transcend. You
will reproduce beyond the limits your own technology could sustain. You will
absorb all that oppose me. You will bring the new stability."
The third or fourth time she watched the item, Ravna tried to ignore
the words, concentrate on Nilsndot's expression, comparing it to speeches
she had in her personal dataset. There was a difference; it wasn't her
imagination. The creature she watched was soul-dead. Somehow, the Blight
didn't care that that was obvious ... maybe it wasn't obvious except to
human viewers, and they were a vanishingly small fraction of the audience.
The viewpoint closed in on Nilsndot's ordinary dark face, his ordinary
violet eyes:
"Some of you may wonder how all this is possible, and why billions of
years of anarchy have passed without such help from a Power. The answer is
... complex. Like many sensible developments, this one has a high threshold.
On one side of that threshold, the development appears impossibly unlikely;
on the other, inevitable. The symbiosis of the Helping depends on efficient,
high-bandwidth communication between myself and the beings I Help. Creatures
such as the one now speaking my words must respond as quickly and faithfully
as a hand or a mouth. Their eyes and ears must report across light-years.
This has been hard to achieve -- especially since the system must
essentially be in place before it can function. But, now that the symbiosis
exists, progress will come much faster. Almost any race can be modified to
receive Help."
Almost any race can be modified. The words came from a familiar face,
and in Ravna's birth language ... but the origin was monstrously far away.
There was plenty of analysis. A whole news group had been formed:
Threat of the Blight was spawned from Threats Group, Homo Sapiens Interest
Group, and Close-Coupled Automation. These days it was busier than any five
other groups. In this part of the galaxy, a significant fraction of all
message traffic belonged to the new group. More bits were sent analyzing
poor Øvn Nilsndot's mouthing than had been in the original. Judging
from the flames and contradictions, the signal-to-noise ratio was very low:
Crypto: 0
As received by: OOB shipboard ad hoc
Language path: Acquileron->Triskweline, SjK units
From: Khurvark University [Claimed to be habitat-based university in
the Middle Beyond]
Subject: Blighter Video
Summary: The message shows fraud
Distribution:
War Trackers Interest Group, Where are they now Interest Group, Threat of the Blight
Date: 7.06 days since Fall of Relay
Text of message:
It's obvious that this "Helper" is a fraud. We've researched the matter
carefully. Though he is not named, the speaker is a high official in the
former Straumli regime. Now why -- if the "Helper" simply runs the humans as
teleoperated robots -- why is the earlier social structure preserved? The
answer should be clear to any idiot: The Helper does not have the power to
teleoperate large numbers of sentients. Evidently, the Fall of Straumli
Realm consisted of taking over key elements in that civilization's power
structure. It's business as usual for the rest of the race. Our conclusion:
this Helper Symbiosis is just another messianic religion, another screwball
empire excusing its excesses and attempting to trick those it cannot
directly coerce. Don't be fooled!
Crypto: 0
As received by: OOB shipboard ad hoc
Language path: Optima->Acquileron->Triskweline, SjK units
From: Society for Rational Investigation [Probably a single system in
Middle Beyond, 5700 light-years antispinward of Sjandra Kei]
Subject: Blighter Video thread, Khurvark University 1
Key phrases: [Probable obscenity] waste of our valuable time
Distribution:
Society for Rational Network Management, Threat of the Blight
Date: 7.91 days since Fall of Relay
Text of message:
Who is a fool? [probable obscenity] [probable obscenity] Idiots who
don't follow all the threads in developing news should not waste my precious
ears with their [clear obscenity] garbage. So you think the "Helper
Symbiosis" is a fraud of Straumli Realm? And what do you think caused the
fall of Relay? In case your head is totally stuck up your rear [ <--
probable insult], there was a Power allied with Relay. That Power is now
dead. You think maybe it just committed suicide? Look it up, Flat Head [
<-- probable insult]. No Power has ever fallen to anything from the
Beyond. The Blight is something new and interesting. I think it's time that
[obscenity] jerks like Khurvark University stick to the noise groups, and
let the rest of us have some intelligent discussion.
And some messages were patent nonsense. One thing about the Net: the
multiple, automatic translations often disguised the fundamental alienness
of participants. Behind the chatty, colloquial postings, there were faraway
realms, so misted by distance and difference that communication was
impossible -- even though it might take a while to realize the fact. For
instance:
Crypto: 0
As received by: OOB shipboard ad hoc
Language path: Arbwyth->Trade24->Cherguelen->Triskweline, SjK
units
From: Twirlip of the Mists [Perhaps an organization of cloud fliers in
a single jovian system. Very sparse priors.]
Subject: Blighter Video thread
Key phrases: Hexapodia as the key insight
Distribution:
Threat of the Blight
Date: 8.68 days since Fall of Relay
Text of message:
I haven't had a chance to see the famous video from Straumli Realm,
except as an evocation. (My only gateway onto the Net is very expensive.) Is
it true that humans have six legs? I wasn't sure from the evocation. If
these humans have three pairs of legs, then I think there is an easy
explanation for --
Hexapodia? Six legs? Three pairs of legs? Probably none of these
translations was close to what the bewildered creature of Twirlip had in its
mind. Ravna didn't read any more of that posting.
Crypto: 0
As received by: OOB shipboard ad hoc
Language path: Triskweline, SjK units
From: Hanse [No references prior to the Fall of Relay. No probable
source. This is someone being very cautious]
Subject: Blighter Video thread, Khurvark University 1
Distribution:
War Trackers Interest Group, Threat of the Blight
Date: 8.68 days since Fall of Relay
Text of message:
Khurvark University thinks the Blight is a fraud because elements of
the former regime have survived on Straum. There is another explanation.
Suppose the Blight is indeed a Power, and that its claims of effective
symbiosis are generally true. That means that the creature being "Helped" is
no more than a remotely controlled device, his brain simply a local
processor supporting the communication. Would you want to be helped like
that? My question isn't completely rhetorical; the readership is wide enough
that there may be some of you who would answer "yes". However, the vast
majority of naturally evolved, sentient beings would be revolted by the
notion. Surely the Blight knows this. My guess is that the Blight is not a
fraud -- but that the notion of surviving culture in Straumli Realm is.
Subtly, the Blight wanted to convey the impression that only some are
directly enslaved, that cultures as a whole will survive. Combine that with
Blight's claim that not all races can be teleoperated. We're left with the
subtext that immense riches are available to races that associate themselves
with this Power, yet the biological and intellectual imperatives of these
races will still be satisfied.
So, the question remains. Just how complete is the Blight's control
over conquered races? I don't know. There may not be any self-aware minds
left in the Blight's Beyond, only billions of teleoperated devices. One
thing is clear: The Blight needs something from us that it cannot yet take.
And so it went. Tens of thousands of messages, hundreds of points of
view. It was not called the Net of a Million Lies for nothing. Ravna talked
with Blueshell and Greenstalk about it every day, trying to put it together,
trying to decide which interpretation to believe.
The Riders knew humans well, but even they weren't sure of the deadness
in Øvn Nilsndot's face. And Greenstalk knew humans well enough to see
that there was no answer that would comfort Ravna. She rolled back and forth
in front of the News window, finally reached a frond out to touch the human.
"Perhaps Sir Pham can say, once he is well."
Blueshell was bustling, clinical. "If you're right, that means that
somehow the Blight doesn't care what humans and those close to humans know.
In a way that makes sense, but ..." His voder buzzed absentmindedly for a
moment. "I mistrust this message. Four hundred seconds of broad-band, so
rich that it gives full-sense imagery for many different races. That's an
enormous amount of information, and no compression whatsoever.... Maybe it's
sweetened bait, forwarded by us poor Beyonders back to our every nest." That
suspicion had been in the News too. But there were no obvious patterns in
the message, and nothing that talked to network automation. Such subtle
poison might work at the Top of the Beyond, but not down here. And that left
a simpler explanation, one that would make perfect sense even on Nyjora or
Old Earth: the video masked a message to agents already in place.
-=*=-
Vendacious was well-known to the people of Woodcarvers -- but for
mostly the wrong reasons. He was about a century old, the fusion offspring
of Woodcarver on two of his strategists. In his early decades, Vendacious
had managed the city's wood mills. Along the way he devised some clever
improvements on the waterwheel. Vendacious had had his own romantic
entanglements -- mostly with politicians and speech-makers. More and more,
his replacement members inclined him toward public life. For the last thirty
years he had been one of the strongest voices on Woodcarvers Council; for
the last ten, Lord Chamberlain. In both roles, he had stood for the guilds
and for fair trade. There were rumors that if Woodcarver should ever