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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
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,
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
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,