Страница:
sake of this fantasy." He waved, inarticulate. Something she had never seen
in a Skroderider: his fronds actually changed tone, darkened.
The motion ceased, yet he said nothing more. And then Ravna heard it, a
keening that might have come from a voder. The sound was steadily growing, a
howl that made all Blueshell's sound effects friendly nonsense. It was
Greenstalk.
The scream reached a threshold just below pain, then broke into choppy
Triskweline: "It's true! Oh, by all our trading, Blueshell, it's true...."
and staticky noise came from her voder. Her fronds started shaking, random
turning that must be like a human's eyes wildly staring, like a human's
mouth mumbling hysteria.
Blueshell was already back by the wall, reaching to adjust her new
skrode. Greenstalk's fronds brushed him away, and her voder voice continued,
"I was horror struck, Blueshell. I was horror struck, struck by horror. And
it would not stop...." the voice rattled quiet for just an instant, and this
time Blueshell made no move. "I remember everything up till the last five
minutes. And everything Pham says is true, dear love. Loyal as you are, and
I have seen that loyalty now for two hundred years, you would be turned in
an instant ... just as I was." Now that the dam broke, her words came
quickly, mostly making sense. The horrors she could remember were graven
deep, and she was finally coming out of ghastly shock. "I was right behind
you, remember, Blueshell? You were deep in your trading with the tusk-legs,
so deep you did not really see. I noticed the other Riders coming toward us.
No matter: a friendly meeting, so far from home. Then one touched my Skrode.
I -- " Greenstalk hesitated. Her fronds rattled and she began again, "horror
struck, horror struck ...."
After a moment: "It was like suddenly new memories in the skrode,
Blueshell. New memories, new attitudes. But thousands of years deep. And not
mine. Instantly, instantly. I never even lost consciousness. I thought just
as clearly, I remembered all I had before."
"And when you resisted?" Ravna said softly.
"... Resisted? My Lady Ravna, I did not resist. I was theirs.... No.
Not theirs, for they were owned, too. We were things, our intelligence in
service to another's goal. Dead, and alive to see our death. I would kill
you, I would kill Pham, I would kill Blueshell. You know I tried. And when I
did, I wanted to succeed. You could not imagine, Ravna. You humans speak of
violation. You could never know...." Long pause. "That's not quite right. At
the Top of the Beyond, within the Blight itself -- perhaps there, everyone
lives as I did."
The shuddering did not subside, but her gestures were no longer
aimless. The fronds were saying something in her own language, and brushing
gently against Blueshell.
"Our whole race, dear love. Just as Pham says it."
Blueshell wilted, and Ravna felt the sort of gut-tearing she had when
they learned of Sjandra Kei. That had been her worlds, her family, her life.
Blueshell was hearing worse.
Ravna pushed a little closer, near enough to run her hand up the side
of Greenstalk's fronds. "Pham says it's the greater skrodes that are the
cause." Sabotage hidden billions of years deep.
"Yes, it is mainly the skrodes. The 'great gift' we Riders love so....
It is a design for control, but I fear we were remade for it, too. When they
touched my skrode, I was converted instantly. Instantly, everything I cared
for was meaningless. We are like smart bombs, scattered by the trillions
through space that everyone thinks is safe. We will be used sparingly. We
are the Blight's hidden weapon, especially in the Low Beyond."
Blueshell twitched, and his voice came out jerkily: "And everything
Pham claims is correct."
"No, Blueshell, not everything." Ravna remembered that last chilling
standoff with Pham Nuwen. "He has the facts, but he weighs them wrong. As
long as your skrodes are not perverted, you are the same folk that I trusted
to fly me to the Bottom."
Blueshell angled his look away from her, an angry shrug. Greenstalk's
voice came instead. "As long as the skrode has not been perverted.... But
look how easy it was done, how sudden I became the Blight's."
"Yes, but could it happen except by direct touch? Could you be
'changed' by reading the Net News?" She meant the question as ghastly
sarcasm, but poor Greenstalk took it seriously:
"Not by a News item, nor by standard protocol messages. But accepting a
transmission targeted on skrode utilities might do it."
"Then we are safe here. You, because you no longer ride a greater
skrode, Blueshell because -- "
"Because I was never touched -- but how can you know that?" His anger
was still there deep within shame, but now it was a hopeless anger, directed
at something very far away.
"No, dear love, you have not been touched. I would know."
"Yes, but why should Ravna believe you?"
Everything could be a lie, thought Ravna, ... but I believe Greenstalk.
I believe we four are the only ones in all the Beyond who can hurt the
Blight. If only Pham could see it. And that brought her back to: "You say we
will start losing our lead?"
Blueshell waved an affirmative. "As soon as we are a little lower. They
should have us in a matter of weeks."
And then it won't matter who was perverted and who was not. "I think we
should have a little chat with Pham Nuwen." Godshatter and all.
Beforehand Ravna couldn't imagine how the confrontation would turn out.
Just possibly -- if he'd lost all touch with reality -- Pham might try to
kill them when they appeared on the command deck. More likely there would be
rage and argument and threats, and they would be back to square one.
Instead ... it was almost like the old Pham, from before Harmonious
Repose. He let them enter the command deck, he made no comment when Ravna
set herself carefully between himself and the Riders. He listened without
interruption, while Ravna explained what Greenstalk had said. "These two are
safe, Pham. And without their help we'll not make it to the Bottom."
He nodded, looked away at the windows. Some showed natural starscape;
most were ultratrace displays, the closest thing to a picture of the enemies
that were closing on the OOB. His calm expression broke for just an instant,
and the Pham that loved her seemed to stare out, desperate: "And you really
believe all this, Rav? How?" Then the lid was back on, his expression
distant and neutral. "Never mind. Certainly it's true: without all of us
working together we'll never make it to Tines' World. Blueshell, I accept
your offer. Subject to cautious safeguards, we work together." Till I can
safely dispose of you, Ravna could feel the unsaid words behind his
blandness. Showdown deferred.
.Delete this paragraph to shift page flush
They were less than eight weeks from Tines' World, both Pham and
Blueshell said. If the Zone conditions remained stable. If they were not
overtaken in the meantime.
Less than two months, after the six already voyaged. But the days were
not like before. Every one was a challenge, a standoff sometimes cloaked in
civility, sometimes flaring into threats of sudden death -- as when Pham
retrieved Blueshell's shop equipment.
Pham was living on the command deck now; when he left it, the hatch was
locked on his ID. He had destroyed, or thought he had destroyed, all other
privileged links to the ship's automation. He and Blueshell were in almost
constant collaboration ... but not like before. Every step was slow,
Blueshell explaining everything, allowed to demonstrate nothing. That's
where the arguments came closest to deadly force, when Pham must give in to
one peril or the other. For every day the pursuing fleets were a little bit
closer: two bands of killers, and what was left of Sjandra Kei. Evidently
some of the SjK Commercial Security fleet could still fight, wanted revenge
on the Alliance. Once Ravna suggested to Pham that they contact Commercial
Security, try to persuade them to attack the Blighter fleet. Pham had given
her a blank look. "Not yet, maybe not ever," he said, and turned away. In a
way his answer was a relief: Such a battle would be a suicidal long shot.
Ravna didn't want the last of her kinsfolk dying for her.
So the OOB might arrive at Tines' World before the enemy, but with what
little time to spare! Some days Ravna withdrew in tears and despair. What
brought her back was Jefri and Greenstalk. They both needed her, and for a
few weeks more she could still help.
Mr. Steel's defense plans were proceeding. The Tines were even having
some success with their wideband radio. Steel reported that Woodcarver's
main force was on its way north; there was more than one race against time.
She spent many hours with the OOB's library, devising more gifts for the
Jefri's friends. Some things -- like telescopes -- were easy, but others....
It wasn't wasted effort. Even if the Blight won, its fleet might ignore the
natives, might settle for killing the OOB and winning back the
Countermeasure.
Greenstalk was slowly improving. At first Ravna was afraid the
improvement might be in her own imagination. Ravna was spending a good part
of each day sitting with the Rider, trying to see progress in her responses.
Greenstalk was very "far away", almost like a human with stroke damage and
prosthesis. In fact, she seemed regressed from the articulate horror of her
first conversations. Maybe her recent progress was just a mirror to Ravna's
sensitivity, to the fact that Ravna was with her so much. Blueshell insisted
there was progress, but with that stubborn inflexibility of his. Two weeks,
three -- and there was no doubt: something was healing at the boundary
between Rider and skrodeling. Greenstalk consistently made sense,
consistently committed important rememberings.... Now as often as not it was
she helping Ravna. Greenstalk saw things that Ravna had missed: "Sir Pham
isn't the only one who is afraid of us Skroderiders. Blueshell is frightened
too, and it is tearing him apart. He can't admit it even to me, but he
thinks it's possible that we're infected independently of our skrodes. He
desperately wants to convince Pham that this is not true -- and so to
convince himself." She was silent for a long moment, one frond brushing
against Ravna's arm. Sea sounds surrounded them in the cabin, but ship's
automation could no longer produce surging water. "Sigh. We must pretend the
surf, dear Ravna. Somewhere it will always be, no matter what happened at
Sjandra Kei, no matter what happens here."
Blueshell was hearty gentleness around his mate, but alone with Ravna
his rage showed through: "No, no, I don't object to Sir Pham's navigation,
at least not now. Perhaps we could be a little further ahead with me
directly at the helm, but the fastest ships behind us would still be
closing. It's the other things, my lady. You know how untrustworthy our
automation is down here. Pham is hurting it further. He's written his own
security overrides. He's turning the ship's environment automation into a
system of boobytraps."
Ravna had seen evidence of this. The areas around OOB's command deck
and ship's workshop looked like military checkpoints. "You know his fears.
If this makes him feel safer -- "
"That's not the point, My Lady. I would do anything to persuade him to
accept my help. But what he's doing is deadly dangerous. Our Bottom
automation is not reliable, and he's making it actively worse. If we get
some sudden stress, the environment programs will likely have a bizarre
crash -- atmosphere dump, thermal runaway, anything."
"I -- "
"Doesn't he understand? Pham controls nothing." His voder broke into a
nonlinear squawk. "He has the ability to destroy, but that is all. He needs
my help. He was my friend. Doesn't he understand?"
Pham understood ... oh, Pham understood. He and Ravna still talked.
Their arguments were the hardest thing in her life. And sometimes they
didn't exactly argue; sometimes it was almost like rational discussion:
"I haven't been taken over, Ravna. Not like the Blight takes over
Riders, anyway. I still have charge of my soul." He turned away from the
console and flashed a wan smile in her direction, acknowledging the flaw in
such self-conviction. And from things like that smile, Ravna was convinced
that Pham Nuwen still lived, and sometimes spoke.
"What about the godshatter state? I see you for hours, just staring at
the tracking display, or mucking around in the library and the News,"
scanning faster than any human could consciously read.
Pham shrugged. "It's studying the ships that are chasing us, trying to
figure out just what belongs to whom, just what capabilities each might
have. I don't know the details. Self-awareness is on vacation then," when
all Pham's mind was turned into a processor for whatever programs Old One
had downloaded. A few hours of fugue state might yield an instant of
Power-grade thought -- and even that he didn't consciously remember. "But I
know this. Whatever the godshatter is, it's a very narrow thing. It's not
alive; in some ways it may not even be very smart. For everyday matters like
ship piloting, there's just good old Pham Nuwen."
"... there's the rest of us, Pham. Blueshell would like to help," Ravna
spoke softly. This was the place where Pham would close into icy silence --
or blow up in rage. This day, he just cocked his head. "Ravna, Ravna. I know
I need him.... And, and I'm glad I need him. That I don't have to kill him."
Yet. Pham's lips quivered for a second, and she thought he might start
crying.
"The godshatter can't know Blueshell -- "
"Not the godshatter. It's not making me act this way -- I'm doing what
any person should do when the stakes are this high." The words were spoken
without anger. Maybe there was a chance. Maybe she could reason:
"Blueshell and Greenstalk are loyal, Pham. Except at Harmonious Repose
-- "
Pham sighed, "Yeah. I've thought about that a lot. They came to Relay
from Straumli Realm. They got Vrinimi looking for the refugee ship. That
smells of setup, but probably unknowing -- maybe even a setup by something
opposing the Blight. In any case they were innocent then, else the Blight
would have known about Tines world right from the beginning. The Blight knew
nothing till RIP, till Greenstalk was converted. And I know Blueshell was
loyal even then. He knew things about my armor -- the remotes, for instance
-- that he could have warned the others about."
Hope came as a surprise to Ravna. He really had thought things out, and
-- "It's just the skrodes, Pham. They're traps waiting to be sprung. But
we're isolated here, and you destroyed the one that Greenstalk -- "
Pham was shaking his head. "It's more than the skrodes. The Blight had
its hand in Rider design, too, at least to some degree. I can't imagine the
takeover of Greenstalk's being so smooth otherwise."
"Y-yes. A risk. A very small risk compared to -- "
Pham didn't move, but something in him seemed to draw away from her,
denying the support she could offer. "A small risk? We don't know. The
stakes are so high. I'm walking a tightrope. If I don't use Blueshell now,
we'll be shot out of space by the Blighter fleet. If I let him do too much,
if I trust him, then he or some part of him could betray us. All I have is
the godshatter, and a bunch of memories that ... that may be the biggest
fakes of all." These last words were nearly inaudible. He looked up at her,
a look that was both cold and terribly lost. "But I'm going to use what I
have, Rav, and whatever it is I am. Somehow I'm going to get us to Tines'
World. Somehow I'm going to get Old One's godshatter to whatever is there."
It was another three weeks before Blueshell's predictions came true.
The OOB had seemed a sturdy beast up in the Middle Beyond; even its
damaged ultradrive had failed gracefully. Now the ship was leaking bugs in
all directions. Much of it had nothing to do with Pham's meddling. Without
those final consistency checks, none of the OOB's Bottom automation was
really trustworthy. But its failures were compounded by Pham's desperate
security hacks.
The ship's library had source code for generic Bottom automation. Pham
spent several days revising it for the OOB. All four of them were on the
command deck during the installation, Blueshell trying to help, Pham
suspiciously examining every suggestion. Thirty minutes into the
installation, there were muffled banging noises down the main corridor.
Ravna might have ignored them, except that she'd never heard the like aboard
the OOB.
Pham and the Riders reacted with near panic; spacers don't like
unexplained bumps in the night. Blueshell raced to the hatch, floated
fronds-first through the hole. "I see nothing, Sir Pham."
Pham was paging quickly through the diagnostic displays, mixed format
things partly from the new setup. "I've got some warning lights here, but --
"
Greenstalk started to say something, but Blueshell was back and talking
fast: "I don't believe it. Anything like this should make pictures, a
detailed report. Something is terribly wrong."
Pham stared at him a second, then returned to his diagnostics. Five
seconds passed. "You're right. Status is just looping through stale
reports." He began grabbing views from cameras all over the OOB's interior.
Barely half of them reported, but what they showed...
The ship's water reservoir was a foggy, icy cavern. That was the
banging sound -- tonnes of water, spaced. A dozen other support services had
gone bizarre, and --
-- the armed checkpoint outside the workshop had slagged down. The
beamers were firing continuously on low power. And for all the destruction,
the diagnostics still showed green or amber or no report. Pham got a camera
in the workshop itself. The place was on fire.
Pham jumped up from his saddle and bounced off the ceiling. For an
instant she thought he might go racing off the bridge. Then he tied himself
down and grimly began trying to put out the fire.
For the next few minutes, the bridge was almost quiet, just Pham
quietly swearing as none of the obvious things worked. "Interlocking
failures," he mumbled the phrase a couple of times. "The firesnuff
automation is down.... I can't dump atmosphere from the shop. My beamers
have melted everything shut."
Ship fire. Ravna had seen pictures of such disasters, but they had
always seemed an improbable thing. In the midst of universal vacuum, how
could a fire survive? And in zero-gee, surely a fire would choke itself even
if the crew couldn't dump atmosphere. The workshop camera had a hazy view on
the real thing: True, the flames ate the oxygen around them. There were
sheets of construction foam that were only lightly scorched, protected for
the moment by dead air. But the fire spread out, moving steadily into
still-fresh air. In places, heat-driven turbulence enriched the mix, and
previously burned areas blazed up.
"It's still got ventilation, Sir Pham."
"I know. I can't shut it. The vents must be melted open."
"It's as likely software." Blueshell was silent for a second. "Try this
-- " the directions were meaningless to Ravna, some low-level workaround.
But Pham nodded, and his fingers danced across the console.
In the workshop, the surface-hugging flames crept farther across the
construction foam. Now they licked at the innards of the armor Pham had
spent so much time on. This latest revision was only half finished. Ravna
remembered he was working on reactive armor now .... There would be
oxidizers there. "Pham, is the armor sealed -- "
The fire was sixty meters aft and behind a dozen bulkheads. The
explosion came as a distant thump, almost innocent. But in the camera view,
the armor dismembered itself, and the fire blazed triumphant.
Seconds later, Pham got Blueshell's suggestion working, and the
workshop's vents closed. The fire in the wrecked armor continued for another
half hour, but did not spread beyond the shop.
It took two days to clean up, to estimate the damage, and have some
confidence that no new disaster was on the way. Most of the workshop was
destroyed. They would have no armor on Tines world. Pham salvaged one of the
beamers that had been guarding the entrance to the shop. Disaster was
scattered all across the ship, the classic random ruin of interlocking
failures: They had lost fifty percent of their water. The ship's landing
boat had lost its higher automation.
OOB's rocket drive was massively degraded. That was unimportant here in
interstellar space, but their final velocity matching would be done at only
0.4 gees. Thank goodness the agrav worked; they would have no trouble
maneuvering in steep gravitational wells -- that is, landing on Tines world.
Ravna knew how close they were to losing the ship, but she watched Pham
with even greater dread. She was so afraid that he would take this as final
evidence of Rider treachery, that this would drive him over the edge.
Strangely, almost the opposite happened. His pain and devastation were
obvious, but he didn't lash out, just doggedly went about gathering up the
pieces. He was talking to Blueshell more now, not letting him modify the
automation, but cautiously accepting more of his advice. Together they
restored the ship to something like its pre-fire state.
She asked Pham about it. "No change of heart," he finally said. "I had
to balance the risks, and I messed up.... And maybe there is no balance.
Maybe the Blight will win."
The godshatter had bet too much on Pham's doing it all himself. Now it
was turning down the paranoia a little.
Seven weeks out from Harmonious Repose, less than one week from
whatever waited at Tines' world, Pham went into a multiday fugue. Before he
had been busy, a futile attempt to run handmade checks on all the automation
they might need at Tines' World. Now -- Ravna couldn't even get him to eat:
The nav display showed the three fleets as identified by the News and
Pham's intuition: the Blight's agents, the Alliance for the Defense, and
what was left of Sjandra Kei Commercial Security. Deadly monsters and the
remains of a victim. The Alliance still proclaimed itself with regular
bulletins on the News. SjK Commercial Security had posted a few terse
refutations, but was mostly silent; they were unused to propaganda, or -- as
likely -- uninterested in it. A private revenge was all that remained to
Commercial Security. And the Blighter fleet? The News hadn't heard anything
from them. Piecing together departures and lost ships, War Trackers
Newsgroup concluded they were a wildly ad hoc assembly, whatever the Blight
had controlled down here at the time of the RIP debacle. Ravna knew that the
War Trackers analysis was wrong about one thing: The Blighter fleet was not
silent. Thirty times over the last weeks, they had sent messages at the OOB
... in skrode maintenance format. Pham had had the ship reject the messages
unread -- and then worried about whether the order was really followed.
After all, the OOB was of Rider design.
But now the torment in him was submerged. Pham sat for hours, staring
at the display. Soon Sjandra Kei would close with the Alliance fleet. At
least one set of villains would pay. But the Blighter fleet and at least
part of the Alliance would survive.... Maybe this fugue was just godshatter
getting desperate.
Three days passed; Pham snapped out of it. Except for the new thinness
in his face, he seemed more normal than he had in weeks. He asked Ravna to
bring the Riders up to the bridge.
Pham waved at the ultradrive traces that floated in the window. The
three fleets were spread through a rough cylinder, five light-years deep and
three across. The display captured only the heart of that volume, where the
fastest of the pursuers had clustered. The current position of each ship was
a fleck of light trailing an unending stream of fainter lights -- the
ultradrive trace left by that vehicle's drive. "I've used red, blue, and
green to mark my best guess as to the fleet affiliation of each trace." The
fastest ships were collected in a blob so dense that it looked white at this
scale, but with colored streamers diverging behind. There were other tags,
annotations he had set but which he admitted once to Ravna he didn't
understand.
"The front edge of that mob -- the fastest of the fast -- is still
gaining."
Blueshell said hesitantly. "We might get a little more speed if you
would grant me direct control. Not much, but -- "
Pham's response was civil at least. "No, I'm thinking of something
else, something Ravna suggested a while back. It's always been a possibility
and ... I ... think the time may have come for it."
Ravna moved closer to the display, stared at the green traces. Their
distribution was in near agreement with what the News claimed to be the
remnants of Sjandra Kei Commercial Security. All that's left of my people.
"They've been trying to engage with the Alliance for a hundred hours now."
Pham's glance touched hers. "Yeah," he said softly. "Poor bastards.
They're literally the fleet from Port Despair. If I were them, I'd -- " His
expression smoothed over again. "Any idea how well-armed they are?" That was
surely a rhetorical question, but it put the topic on the table.
"War Trackers thinks that Sjandra Kei had been expecting something
unpleasant ever since the Alliance started talking 'death to vermin'.
Commercial Security was providing deep space defense. Their fleet is
converted freighters armed with locally-designed weapons. War Trackers
claims they weren't really a match for what the other side could field, if
the Alliance was willing to take some heavy casualties. Trouble is, Sjandra
Kei never expected the planet-smasher attack. So when the Alliance fleet
showed up, ours moved out to meet it -- "
"-- and meantime the KE bombs were coming straight in to the heart
spaces of Sjandra Kei."
Into my heart spaces. "Yes. The Alliance must have been running those
bombs for weeks."
Pham Nuwen laughed shortly. "If I were shipping with the Alliance
fleet, I'd be a bit nervous now. They're down in numbers, and those retread
freighters seem about as fast as anything here.... I'll bet every pilot out
of Sjandra Kei is dead set on revenge." The emotion faded. "Hmm. There's no
way they could kill all the Alliance ships or all the Blight's, much less
all of both. It would be pointless to ...
His gaze abruptly focused on her. "So if we leave things as they are,
the Sjandra Kei fleet will eventually match position with the Alliance and
try to blow them out of existence."
Ravna just nodded. "In twelve hours or so, they say."
"And then all that will be left is the Blight's own fleet on our tail.
But if we could talk your people into fighting the right enemies..."
It was Ravna's nightmare scheme. All that was left of Sjandra Kei dying
to save the OOB ... trying to save them. There was little chance the Sjandra
Kei fleet could destroy all the Blighter ships. But they're here to fight.
Why not a vengeance that means something? That was the nightmare's message.
Now somehow it fit godshatter's plans. "There are problems. They don't know
what we're doing or the purpose of the third fleet. Anything we shout back
to them will be overheard." Ultrawave was directional, but most of their
pursuers were closely mingled.
Pham nodded. "Somehow we have to talk to them, and them alone. Somehow
we have to persuade them to fight." Faint smile. "And I think we may have
just the ... equipment ... to do all that. Blueshell: Remember that night on
the High Docks. You told us about your 'rotted cargo' from Sjandra Kei?"
"Indeed, Sir Pham. We carried one third of a cipher generated by SjK
Commercial Security for their long-range communications. It's still in the
ship's safe, though worthless without the other two thirds." Gram for gram,
crypto materials were about the most valuable thing shipped between the
stars -- and once compromised, about the most valueless. Somewhere in Out of
Band's cargo files there was an SjK one-time communications pad. Part of a
pad.
"Worthless? Maybe not. Even one third would provide us with secure
communications."
Blueshell dithered. "I must not mislead you. No competent customer
would accept such. Certainly, it provides secure communication, but the
other side has no verification that you are who you claim."
Pham's glance slid sideways, toward Ravna. There was that smile again.
"If they'll listen, I think we can convince them.... The hard part is, I
only want one of them to hear us." Pham explained what he had in mind. The
Riders' rustled faintly behind Pham's words. After all their time together,
Ravna could almost get some sense of their talk -- or maybe she just
understood their personalities. As usual, Blueshell was worrying about how
impossible the idea was, and Greenstalk was urging him to listen.
But when Pham finished, the large rider did not launch into objections.
"Across seventy light-years, ultrawave comm between ships is practical, even
without our antenna swarm; we could even have live video. But you are right,
the beam spread would include all the ships in the central cluster of
fleets. If we could reliably identify an outlying vessel as belonging to
Sjandra Kei, then what you are asking might be done; that ship could use
internal fleet codes to relay to the others. But in honesty I must warn
you," continued Blueshell, brushing back Greenstalk's gentle remonstrance,
"professional communications folk would not honor your request for talk --
would probably not even recognize it as such."
"Silly." Greenstalk finally spoke, her voder-voice gentle but clear.
"You always say things like that -- except when we are talking to paying
customers."
"Brap. Yes. Desperate times, desperate measures. I want to try it, but
I fear.... I want there to be no accusations of Rider treachery, Sir Pham. I
want you to handle this."
Pham Nuwen smiled back. "My thought exactly."
"The Aniara Fleet." That's what some of the crews of Commercial
Security were calling themselves. Aniara was the ship of an old human myth,
older than Nyjora, perhaps going back to the Tuvo-Norsk cooperatives in the
asteroids of Earth's solar system. In the story, Aniara was a large ship
launched into interstellar depths just before the death of its parent
civilization. The crew watched the death agonies of the home system, and
then over the following years -- as their ship fell out and out into the
endless dark -- died themselves, their life-support systems slowly failing.
The image was a haunting one, which was probably the reason it was known
across millennia. With the destruction of Sjandra Kei and the escape of
Commercial Security, the story seemed suddenly come true.
But we will not play it to the end. Group Captain Kjet Svensndot stared
into the tracking display. This time the death of civilization had been a
murder, and the murderers were almost within vengeance's reach. For days,
fleet HQ had been maneuvering them to close with the Alliance. The display
showed that success was very, very near. The majority of Alliance and
Sjandra Kei ships were bound in a glowing ball of drive traces -- which also
included the third, silent fleet. From that display you might think that
battle was already possible. In fact, opposing ships were passing through
almost the same space -- sometimes less than a billion kilometers apart --
but still separated by milliseconds of time. All the vessels were on
ultradrive, jumping perhaps a dozen times a second. And even here at the
Bottom of the Beyond, that came to a measurable fraction of a light-year on
each jump. To fight an uncooperative enemy meant matching their jumps
perfectly and flooding the common space with weapon drones.
Group Captain Svensndot changed the display to show ships that had
exactly matched their pace with the Alliance. Almost a third of the fleet
was in synch now. Another few hours and.... "Damnation!" He slapped his
display board, sending it spinning across the deck.
His first officer retrieved the display, sent it sailing back. "Is this
a new damnation, or the usual?" Tirolle asked.
"It was the usual. Sorry." And he really was. Tirolle and Glimfrelle
had their own problems. No doubt there were still pockets of humanity in the
Beyond, hidden from the Alliance. But of the Dirokimes, there might be no
more than what was on Commercial Security's fleet. Except for adventurous
souls like Tirolle and Glimfrelle, all that was left of their kind had been
in the dream terranes at Sjandra Kei.
Kjet Svensndot had started with Commercial Security twenty-five years
before, back when the company had just been a small fleet of rentacops. He
had spent thousands of hours learning to be the very best combat pilot in
the organization. Only twice had he ever been in a shootout. Some might have
regretted that. Svensndot and his superiors took it as the reward for being
the best. His competence had won him the best fighting equipment in
Commercial Security's fleet, culminating with the ship he commanded now. The
Ølvira was purchased with part of the enormous premium that Sjandra
Kei paid out when the Alliance first started making threatening noises.
Ølvira was not a rebuilt freighter, but a fighting machine from the
keel out. The ship was equipped with the smartest processors, the smartest
ultra drive, that could operate at Sjandra Kei's altitude in the Beyond. It
needed only a three-person crew -- and combat could be managed by the pilot
alone with his AI associates. Its holds contained more than ten thousand
seeker bombs, each smarter than the average freighter's entire drive unit.
Quite a reward for twenty-five years of solid performance. They even let
Svensndot name his new ship.
And now.... Well, the true Ølvira was surely dead. Along with
billions of others they had been hired to protect, she had been at Herte, in
the inner system. Glow bombs leave no survivors.
And his beautiful ship with the same name, it had been a half
light-year out-system, seeking enemies that weren't there. In any honest
battle, Kjet Svensndot and this Ølvira could have done very well.
Instead they were chasing down into the Bottom of the Beyond. Every
light-year took them further from the regions Ølvira was built for.
Every light-year the processors worked a bit more slowly (or not at all).
Down here the converted freighters were almost an optimum design. Clumsy and
stupid, with crews of dozens, but they kept on working. Already
Ølvira was lagging five light-years behind them. It was the
freighters that would make the attack on the Alliance fleet. And once again
Kjet would stand powerless while his friends died.
For the hundredth time, Svensndot glared at the trace display and
contemplated mutiny. There were Alliance stragglers too -- "high
performance" vehicles left behind the central pack. But his orders were to
maintain position, to be a tactical coordinator for the fleet's swifter
combatants. Well, he would do as he was hired ... this one last time. But
when the battle was done, when the fleet was dead, with as many of the
Alliance that they could take with them -- then he would think of his own
revenge. Some of that depended on Tirolle and Glimfrelle. Could he persuade
them to leave the remnants of the Alliance fleet and ascend to the Middle
Beyond, up where the Ølvira was the best of her kind? There was good
evidence now about which star systems were behind the "Alliance for the
Defense". The murderers were boasting to the news. Apparently they thought
that would bring them new support. It might also bring them visitors like
Ølvira. The bombs in her belly could destroy worlds, though not as
swiftly sure as what had been used on Sjandra Kei. And even now Svensndot's
mind shrank from that sort of revenge. No. They would choose their targets
carefully: ships coming to form new Alliance fleets, underprotected convoys.
Ølvira might last a long time if he always struck from ambush and
never left survivors. He stared and stared at the display, and ignored the
wetness that floated at the corners of his eyes. All his life, he had lived
by the law. Often his job had been to stop acts of revenge.... And now
revenge was all that life had left for him.
"I'm getting something peculiar, Kjet." Glimfrelle was monitoring
signals this watch. It was the sort of thing that should have been totally
automated -- and had been in Ølvira's natural environment, but which
was now a boring and exhausting enterprise.
"What? More Net lies?" said Tirolle.
"No. This is on the bearing of that bottom-lugger everyone is chasing.
It can't be anyone else."
Svensndot's eyebrows rose. He turned on the mystery with enormous,
scarcely realized, pleasure. "Characteristics?"
"Ship's signal processor says it's probably a narrow beam. We are its
only likely target. The signal is strong and the bandwidth is at least
enough to support flat video. If our snarfling DSP was working right, I'd
know -- " 'Frelle sang a little song that was impatient humming among his
kind. "-- Iiae! It's encrypted, but at a high layer. This stuff is syntax 45
video. In fact, it claims to be using one third of a cipher the Company made
a year back." For an instant, Svensndot thought 'Frelle was claiming the
message itself was smart; that should be absolutely impossible here at the
Bottom. The second officer must have caught his look: "Just sloppy language,
Boss. I read this out of the frame format...." Something flashed on his
display. "Okay, here's the story on the cipher: the Company made it and its
peers to cover shipping security." Back before the Alliance, that had been
the highest crypto level in the organization. "This is the third that never
got delivered. The whole was assumed compromised, but miracle of miracles,
we still have a copy." Both 'Frelle and 'Rolle were looking at Svensndot
expectantly, their eyes large and dark. Standard policy -- standard orders
-- were that transmissions on compromised keys were to be ignored. If the
Company's signals people had been doing a proper job, the rotted cipher
wouldn't even have been aboard and the policy would have enforced itself.
"Decrypt the thing," Svensndot said shortly. The last weeks had
demonstrated that his company was a dismal failure when it came to military
intelligence and signals. They might as well get some benefit from that
incompetence.
"Yes sir!" Glimfrelle tapped a single key. Somewhere inside
Ølvira's signal processor, a long segment of "random" noise was
broken into frames and laid precisely down on the "random" noise in the data
frames incoming. There was a perceptible pause (damn the Bottom) and then
the comm window lit with a flat video picture.
"-- fourth repetition of this message." The words were Samnorsk, and a
dialect of pure Herte i Sjandra. The speaker was ... for a heartstopping
instant he was seeing Ølvira again, alive. He exhaled slowly, trying
to relax. Black-haired, slim, violet-eyed -- just like Ølvira. And
just like a million other women of Sjandra Kei. The resemblance was there,
but so vague he would never have been taken by it before. For an instant he
imagined a universe beyond their lost fleet, and goals beyond vengeance.
Then he forced his attention back to business, to seeing everything he could
in the images in the window.
The woman was saying, "We'll repeat three more times. If by then you
have still not responded, we will attempt a different target." She pushed
back from the camera pickup, giving them a view of the room behind her. It
was low-ceilinged, deep. An ultradrive trace display dominated the
background, but Svensndot paid it little attention. There were two
Skroderiders in the background. One wore stripes on its skrode that meant a
trade history with Sjandra Kei. The other must be a lesser Rider; its skrode
was small and wheelless. The pickup turned, centered on the fourth figure.
Human? Probably, but of no Nyjoran heritage. In another time, his appearance
would have been big news across all human civilizations in the Beyond. Now
the point only registered on Svensndot's mind as another cause for
suspicion.
The woman continued, "You can see that we are human and Rider. We are
the entire crew of the Out of Band II. We are not part of the Alliance for
the Defense nor agents of the Blight.... But we are the reason their fleets
are down here. If you can read this, we're betting that you are of Sjandra
Kei. We must talk. Please reply using the tail of the pad that is decrypting
this message." The picture jigged and the woman's face was back in the
foreground. "This is the fifth repetition of this message," she said. "We'll
repeat two more -- "
Glimfrelle cut the audio. "If she means it, we have about one hundred
seconds. What next, Captain?"
Suddenly the Ølvira was not an irrelevant straggler. "We talk,"
said Svensndot.
Response and counter-response took a matter of seconds. After that ...
five minutes of conversation with Ravna Bergsndot was enough to convince
Kjet that what she had to say must be heard by Fleet Central. His ship would
be a mere relay, but at least he had something very important to pass on.
Fleet Central refused the full video link coming from the Out of Band.
Someone on the flagship was dead set on following standard procedures -- and
using compromised cipher keys stuck in their craw. Even Kjet had to settle
for a combat link: The screen showed a color image with high resolution.
Looking at it carefully, one realized the thing was a poor evocation....
Kjet recognized Owner Limmende and Jan Skrits, her chief of staff, but they
looked several years out of style. Ølvira was matching old video with
the transmitted animation cues. The actual communication channel was less
that four thousand bits per second; Central was taking no chances.
God only knew what they were seeing as the evocation of Pham Nuwen. The
smokey-skinned human had already explained his point several times. He was
having as little success as Ravna Bergsndot before him. His cool manner had
gradually deserted him. Desperation was beginning to show on his face. "--
and I'm telling you, they are both your enemies. Sure, Alliance for the
Defense destroyed Sjandra Kei, but the Blight is responsible for the
situation that made that possible."
The half-cartoonish figure of Jan Skrits glanced at Owner Limmende.
Lord, evocations are crappy at the Bottom, Svensndot thought to himself.
When Skrits spoke, his voice didn't even match his lip movements: "We do
read Threats, Mr. Nuwen. The threat of the Blight was used as an excuse to
destroy our worlds. We will not go on random killing sprees, especially
against an organization that is clearly the enemy of our enemy.... Or are
you claiming the Blight is secretly in league with the Alliance for the
Defense?"
Pham gave an angry shrug. "No. I have no idea how the Blight regards
the Alliance. But you should know the evil the Blight has been up to, things
on a scale far grander than this 'Alliance'."
"Ah yes. That's what it says on the Net, Mr. Nuwen. But those events
are thousands of light-years away. They've been through multiple hops and
unknown interpretations before they ever arrive in the Middle Beyond -- even
if the stories were true to begin with. It is not called the Net of a
Million Lies for nothing."
The stranger's face darkened. He said something loud and angry, in a
in a Skroderider: his fronds actually changed tone, darkened.
The motion ceased, yet he said nothing more. And then Ravna heard it, a
keening that might have come from a voder. The sound was steadily growing, a
howl that made all Blueshell's sound effects friendly nonsense. It was
Greenstalk.
The scream reached a threshold just below pain, then broke into choppy
Triskweline: "It's true! Oh, by all our trading, Blueshell, it's true...."
and staticky noise came from her voder. Her fronds started shaking, random
turning that must be like a human's eyes wildly staring, like a human's
mouth mumbling hysteria.
Blueshell was already back by the wall, reaching to adjust her new
skrode. Greenstalk's fronds brushed him away, and her voder voice continued,
"I was horror struck, Blueshell. I was horror struck, struck by horror. And
it would not stop...." the voice rattled quiet for just an instant, and this
time Blueshell made no move. "I remember everything up till the last five
minutes. And everything Pham says is true, dear love. Loyal as you are, and
I have seen that loyalty now for two hundred years, you would be turned in
an instant ... just as I was." Now that the dam broke, her words came
quickly, mostly making sense. The horrors she could remember were graven
deep, and she was finally coming out of ghastly shock. "I was right behind
you, remember, Blueshell? You were deep in your trading with the tusk-legs,
so deep you did not really see. I noticed the other Riders coming toward us.
No matter: a friendly meeting, so far from home. Then one touched my Skrode.
I -- " Greenstalk hesitated. Her fronds rattled and she began again, "horror
struck, horror struck ...."
After a moment: "It was like suddenly new memories in the skrode,
Blueshell. New memories, new attitudes. But thousands of years deep. And not
mine. Instantly, instantly. I never even lost consciousness. I thought just
as clearly, I remembered all I had before."
"And when you resisted?" Ravna said softly.
"... Resisted? My Lady Ravna, I did not resist. I was theirs.... No.
Not theirs, for they were owned, too. We were things, our intelligence in
service to another's goal. Dead, and alive to see our death. I would kill
you, I would kill Pham, I would kill Blueshell. You know I tried. And when I
did, I wanted to succeed. You could not imagine, Ravna. You humans speak of
violation. You could never know...." Long pause. "That's not quite right. At
the Top of the Beyond, within the Blight itself -- perhaps there, everyone
lives as I did."
The shuddering did not subside, but her gestures were no longer
aimless. The fronds were saying something in her own language, and brushing
gently against Blueshell.
"Our whole race, dear love. Just as Pham says it."
Blueshell wilted, and Ravna felt the sort of gut-tearing she had when
they learned of Sjandra Kei. That had been her worlds, her family, her life.
Blueshell was hearing worse.
Ravna pushed a little closer, near enough to run her hand up the side
of Greenstalk's fronds. "Pham says it's the greater skrodes that are the
cause." Sabotage hidden billions of years deep.
"Yes, it is mainly the skrodes. The 'great gift' we Riders love so....
It is a design for control, but I fear we were remade for it, too. When they
touched my skrode, I was converted instantly. Instantly, everything I cared
for was meaningless. We are like smart bombs, scattered by the trillions
through space that everyone thinks is safe. We will be used sparingly. We
are the Blight's hidden weapon, especially in the Low Beyond."
Blueshell twitched, and his voice came out jerkily: "And everything
Pham claims is correct."
"No, Blueshell, not everything." Ravna remembered that last chilling
standoff with Pham Nuwen. "He has the facts, but he weighs them wrong. As
long as your skrodes are not perverted, you are the same folk that I trusted
to fly me to the Bottom."
Blueshell angled his look away from her, an angry shrug. Greenstalk's
voice came instead. "As long as the skrode has not been perverted.... But
look how easy it was done, how sudden I became the Blight's."
"Yes, but could it happen except by direct touch? Could you be
'changed' by reading the Net News?" She meant the question as ghastly
sarcasm, but poor Greenstalk took it seriously:
"Not by a News item, nor by standard protocol messages. But accepting a
transmission targeted on skrode utilities might do it."
"Then we are safe here. You, because you no longer ride a greater
skrode, Blueshell because -- "
"Because I was never touched -- but how can you know that?" His anger
was still there deep within shame, but now it was a hopeless anger, directed
at something very far away.
"No, dear love, you have not been touched. I would know."
"Yes, but why should Ravna believe you?"
Everything could be a lie, thought Ravna, ... but I believe Greenstalk.
I believe we four are the only ones in all the Beyond who can hurt the
Blight. If only Pham could see it. And that brought her back to: "You say we
will start losing our lead?"
Blueshell waved an affirmative. "As soon as we are a little lower. They
should have us in a matter of weeks."
And then it won't matter who was perverted and who was not. "I think we
should have a little chat with Pham Nuwen." Godshatter and all.
Beforehand Ravna couldn't imagine how the confrontation would turn out.
Just possibly -- if he'd lost all touch with reality -- Pham might try to
kill them when they appeared on the command deck. More likely there would be
rage and argument and threats, and they would be back to square one.
Instead ... it was almost like the old Pham, from before Harmonious
Repose. He let them enter the command deck, he made no comment when Ravna
set herself carefully between himself and the Riders. He listened without
interruption, while Ravna explained what Greenstalk had said. "These two are
safe, Pham. And without their help we'll not make it to the Bottom."
He nodded, looked away at the windows. Some showed natural starscape;
most were ultratrace displays, the closest thing to a picture of the enemies
that were closing on the OOB. His calm expression broke for just an instant,
and the Pham that loved her seemed to stare out, desperate: "And you really
believe all this, Rav? How?" Then the lid was back on, his expression
distant and neutral. "Never mind. Certainly it's true: without all of us
working together we'll never make it to Tines' World. Blueshell, I accept
your offer. Subject to cautious safeguards, we work together." Till I can
safely dispose of you, Ravna could feel the unsaid words behind his
blandness. Showdown deferred.
.Delete this paragraph to shift page flush
They were less than eight weeks from Tines' World, both Pham and
Blueshell said. If the Zone conditions remained stable. If they were not
overtaken in the meantime.
Less than two months, after the six already voyaged. But the days were
not like before. Every one was a challenge, a standoff sometimes cloaked in
civility, sometimes flaring into threats of sudden death -- as when Pham
retrieved Blueshell's shop equipment.
Pham was living on the command deck now; when he left it, the hatch was
locked on his ID. He had destroyed, or thought he had destroyed, all other
privileged links to the ship's automation. He and Blueshell were in almost
constant collaboration ... but not like before. Every step was slow,
Blueshell explaining everything, allowed to demonstrate nothing. That's
where the arguments came closest to deadly force, when Pham must give in to
one peril or the other. For every day the pursuing fleets were a little bit
closer: two bands of killers, and what was left of Sjandra Kei. Evidently
some of the SjK Commercial Security fleet could still fight, wanted revenge
on the Alliance. Once Ravna suggested to Pham that they contact Commercial
Security, try to persuade them to attack the Blighter fleet. Pham had given
her a blank look. "Not yet, maybe not ever," he said, and turned away. In a
way his answer was a relief: Such a battle would be a suicidal long shot.
Ravna didn't want the last of her kinsfolk dying for her.
So the OOB might arrive at Tines' World before the enemy, but with what
little time to spare! Some days Ravna withdrew in tears and despair. What
brought her back was Jefri and Greenstalk. They both needed her, and for a
few weeks more she could still help.
Mr. Steel's defense plans were proceeding. The Tines were even having
some success with their wideband radio. Steel reported that Woodcarver's
main force was on its way north; there was more than one race against time.
She spent many hours with the OOB's library, devising more gifts for the
Jefri's friends. Some things -- like telescopes -- were easy, but others....
It wasn't wasted effort. Even if the Blight won, its fleet might ignore the
natives, might settle for killing the OOB and winning back the
Countermeasure.
Greenstalk was slowly improving. At first Ravna was afraid the
improvement might be in her own imagination. Ravna was spending a good part
of each day sitting with the Rider, trying to see progress in her responses.
Greenstalk was very "far away", almost like a human with stroke damage and
prosthesis. In fact, she seemed regressed from the articulate horror of her
first conversations. Maybe her recent progress was just a mirror to Ravna's
sensitivity, to the fact that Ravna was with her so much. Blueshell insisted
there was progress, but with that stubborn inflexibility of his. Two weeks,
three -- and there was no doubt: something was healing at the boundary
between Rider and skrodeling. Greenstalk consistently made sense,
consistently committed important rememberings.... Now as often as not it was
she helping Ravna. Greenstalk saw things that Ravna had missed: "Sir Pham
isn't the only one who is afraid of us Skroderiders. Blueshell is frightened
too, and it is tearing him apart. He can't admit it even to me, but he
thinks it's possible that we're infected independently of our skrodes. He
desperately wants to convince Pham that this is not true -- and so to
convince himself." She was silent for a long moment, one frond brushing
against Ravna's arm. Sea sounds surrounded them in the cabin, but ship's
automation could no longer produce surging water. "Sigh. We must pretend the
surf, dear Ravna. Somewhere it will always be, no matter what happened at
Sjandra Kei, no matter what happens here."
Blueshell was hearty gentleness around his mate, but alone with Ravna
his rage showed through: "No, no, I don't object to Sir Pham's navigation,
at least not now. Perhaps we could be a little further ahead with me
directly at the helm, but the fastest ships behind us would still be
closing. It's the other things, my lady. You know how untrustworthy our
automation is down here. Pham is hurting it further. He's written his own
security overrides. He's turning the ship's environment automation into a
system of boobytraps."
Ravna had seen evidence of this. The areas around OOB's command deck
and ship's workshop looked like military checkpoints. "You know his fears.
If this makes him feel safer -- "
"That's not the point, My Lady. I would do anything to persuade him to
accept my help. But what he's doing is deadly dangerous. Our Bottom
automation is not reliable, and he's making it actively worse. If we get
some sudden stress, the environment programs will likely have a bizarre
crash -- atmosphere dump, thermal runaway, anything."
"I -- "
"Doesn't he understand? Pham controls nothing." His voder broke into a
nonlinear squawk. "He has the ability to destroy, but that is all. He needs
my help. He was my friend. Doesn't he understand?"
Pham understood ... oh, Pham understood. He and Ravna still talked.
Their arguments were the hardest thing in her life. And sometimes they
didn't exactly argue; sometimes it was almost like rational discussion:
"I haven't been taken over, Ravna. Not like the Blight takes over
Riders, anyway. I still have charge of my soul." He turned away from the
console and flashed a wan smile in her direction, acknowledging the flaw in
such self-conviction. And from things like that smile, Ravna was convinced
that Pham Nuwen still lived, and sometimes spoke.
"What about the godshatter state? I see you for hours, just staring at
the tracking display, or mucking around in the library and the News,"
scanning faster than any human could consciously read.
Pham shrugged. "It's studying the ships that are chasing us, trying to
figure out just what belongs to whom, just what capabilities each might
have. I don't know the details. Self-awareness is on vacation then," when
all Pham's mind was turned into a processor for whatever programs Old One
had downloaded. A few hours of fugue state might yield an instant of
Power-grade thought -- and even that he didn't consciously remember. "But I
know this. Whatever the godshatter is, it's a very narrow thing. It's not
alive; in some ways it may not even be very smart. For everyday matters like
ship piloting, there's just good old Pham Nuwen."
"... there's the rest of us, Pham. Blueshell would like to help," Ravna
spoke softly. This was the place where Pham would close into icy silence --
or blow up in rage. This day, he just cocked his head. "Ravna, Ravna. I know
I need him.... And, and I'm glad I need him. That I don't have to kill him."
Yet. Pham's lips quivered for a second, and she thought he might start
crying.
"The godshatter can't know Blueshell -- "
"Not the godshatter. It's not making me act this way -- I'm doing what
any person should do when the stakes are this high." The words were spoken
without anger. Maybe there was a chance. Maybe she could reason:
"Blueshell and Greenstalk are loyal, Pham. Except at Harmonious Repose
-- "
Pham sighed, "Yeah. I've thought about that a lot. They came to Relay
from Straumli Realm. They got Vrinimi looking for the refugee ship. That
smells of setup, but probably unknowing -- maybe even a setup by something
opposing the Blight. In any case they were innocent then, else the Blight
would have known about Tines world right from the beginning. The Blight knew
nothing till RIP, till Greenstalk was converted. And I know Blueshell was
loyal even then. He knew things about my armor -- the remotes, for instance
-- that he could have warned the others about."
Hope came as a surprise to Ravna. He really had thought things out, and
-- "It's just the skrodes, Pham. They're traps waiting to be sprung. But
we're isolated here, and you destroyed the one that Greenstalk -- "
Pham was shaking his head. "It's more than the skrodes. The Blight had
its hand in Rider design, too, at least to some degree. I can't imagine the
takeover of Greenstalk's being so smooth otherwise."
"Y-yes. A risk. A very small risk compared to -- "
Pham didn't move, but something in him seemed to draw away from her,
denying the support she could offer. "A small risk? We don't know. The
stakes are so high. I'm walking a tightrope. If I don't use Blueshell now,
we'll be shot out of space by the Blighter fleet. If I let him do too much,
if I trust him, then he or some part of him could betray us. All I have is
the godshatter, and a bunch of memories that ... that may be the biggest
fakes of all." These last words were nearly inaudible. He looked up at her,
a look that was both cold and terribly lost. "But I'm going to use what I
have, Rav, and whatever it is I am. Somehow I'm going to get us to Tines'
World. Somehow I'm going to get Old One's godshatter to whatever is there."
It was another three weeks before Blueshell's predictions came true.
The OOB had seemed a sturdy beast up in the Middle Beyond; even its
damaged ultradrive had failed gracefully. Now the ship was leaking bugs in
all directions. Much of it had nothing to do with Pham's meddling. Without
those final consistency checks, none of the OOB's Bottom automation was
really trustworthy. But its failures were compounded by Pham's desperate
security hacks.
The ship's library had source code for generic Bottom automation. Pham
spent several days revising it for the OOB. All four of them were on the
command deck during the installation, Blueshell trying to help, Pham
suspiciously examining every suggestion. Thirty minutes into the
installation, there were muffled banging noises down the main corridor.
Ravna might have ignored them, except that she'd never heard the like aboard
the OOB.
Pham and the Riders reacted with near panic; spacers don't like
unexplained bumps in the night. Blueshell raced to the hatch, floated
fronds-first through the hole. "I see nothing, Sir Pham."
Pham was paging quickly through the diagnostic displays, mixed format
things partly from the new setup. "I've got some warning lights here, but --
"
Greenstalk started to say something, but Blueshell was back and talking
fast: "I don't believe it. Anything like this should make pictures, a
detailed report. Something is terribly wrong."
Pham stared at him a second, then returned to his diagnostics. Five
seconds passed. "You're right. Status is just looping through stale
reports." He began grabbing views from cameras all over the OOB's interior.
Barely half of them reported, but what they showed...
The ship's water reservoir was a foggy, icy cavern. That was the
banging sound -- tonnes of water, spaced. A dozen other support services had
gone bizarre, and --
-- the armed checkpoint outside the workshop had slagged down. The
beamers were firing continuously on low power. And for all the destruction,
the diagnostics still showed green or amber or no report. Pham got a camera
in the workshop itself. The place was on fire.
Pham jumped up from his saddle and bounced off the ceiling. For an
instant she thought he might go racing off the bridge. Then he tied himself
down and grimly began trying to put out the fire.
For the next few minutes, the bridge was almost quiet, just Pham
quietly swearing as none of the obvious things worked. "Interlocking
failures," he mumbled the phrase a couple of times. "The firesnuff
automation is down.... I can't dump atmosphere from the shop. My beamers
have melted everything shut."
Ship fire. Ravna had seen pictures of such disasters, but they had
always seemed an improbable thing. In the midst of universal vacuum, how
could a fire survive? And in zero-gee, surely a fire would choke itself even
if the crew couldn't dump atmosphere. The workshop camera had a hazy view on
the real thing: True, the flames ate the oxygen around them. There were
sheets of construction foam that were only lightly scorched, protected for
the moment by dead air. But the fire spread out, moving steadily into
still-fresh air. In places, heat-driven turbulence enriched the mix, and
previously burned areas blazed up.
"It's still got ventilation, Sir Pham."
"I know. I can't shut it. The vents must be melted open."
"It's as likely software." Blueshell was silent for a second. "Try this
-- " the directions were meaningless to Ravna, some low-level workaround.
But Pham nodded, and his fingers danced across the console.
In the workshop, the surface-hugging flames crept farther across the
construction foam. Now they licked at the innards of the armor Pham had
spent so much time on. This latest revision was only half finished. Ravna
remembered he was working on reactive armor now .... There would be
oxidizers there. "Pham, is the armor sealed -- "
The fire was sixty meters aft and behind a dozen bulkheads. The
explosion came as a distant thump, almost innocent. But in the camera view,
the armor dismembered itself, and the fire blazed triumphant.
Seconds later, Pham got Blueshell's suggestion working, and the
workshop's vents closed. The fire in the wrecked armor continued for another
half hour, but did not spread beyond the shop.
It took two days to clean up, to estimate the damage, and have some
confidence that no new disaster was on the way. Most of the workshop was
destroyed. They would have no armor on Tines world. Pham salvaged one of the
beamers that had been guarding the entrance to the shop. Disaster was
scattered all across the ship, the classic random ruin of interlocking
failures: They had lost fifty percent of their water. The ship's landing
boat had lost its higher automation.
OOB's rocket drive was massively degraded. That was unimportant here in
interstellar space, but their final velocity matching would be done at only
0.4 gees. Thank goodness the agrav worked; they would have no trouble
maneuvering in steep gravitational wells -- that is, landing on Tines world.
Ravna knew how close they were to losing the ship, but she watched Pham
with even greater dread. She was so afraid that he would take this as final
evidence of Rider treachery, that this would drive him over the edge.
Strangely, almost the opposite happened. His pain and devastation were
obvious, but he didn't lash out, just doggedly went about gathering up the
pieces. He was talking to Blueshell more now, not letting him modify the
automation, but cautiously accepting more of his advice. Together they
restored the ship to something like its pre-fire state.
She asked Pham about it. "No change of heart," he finally said. "I had
to balance the risks, and I messed up.... And maybe there is no balance.
Maybe the Blight will win."
The godshatter had bet too much on Pham's doing it all himself. Now it
was turning down the paranoia a little.
Seven weeks out from Harmonious Repose, less than one week from
whatever waited at Tines' world, Pham went into a multiday fugue. Before he
had been busy, a futile attempt to run handmade checks on all the automation
they might need at Tines' World. Now -- Ravna couldn't even get him to eat:
The nav display showed the three fleets as identified by the News and
Pham's intuition: the Blight's agents, the Alliance for the Defense, and
what was left of Sjandra Kei Commercial Security. Deadly monsters and the
remains of a victim. The Alliance still proclaimed itself with regular
bulletins on the News. SjK Commercial Security had posted a few terse
refutations, but was mostly silent; they were unused to propaganda, or -- as
likely -- uninterested in it. A private revenge was all that remained to
Commercial Security. And the Blighter fleet? The News hadn't heard anything
from them. Piecing together departures and lost ships, War Trackers
Newsgroup concluded they were a wildly ad hoc assembly, whatever the Blight
had controlled down here at the time of the RIP debacle. Ravna knew that the
War Trackers analysis was wrong about one thing: The Blighter fleet was not
silent. Thirty times over the last weeks, they had sent messages at the OOB
... in skrode maintenance format. Pham had had the ship reject the messages
unread -- and then worried about whether the order was really followed.
After all, the OOB was of Rider design.
But now the torment in him was submerged. Pham sat for hours, staring
at the display. Soon Sjandra Kei would close with the Alliance fleet. At
least one set of villains would pay. But the Blighter fleet and at least
part of the Alliance would survive.... Maybe this fugue was just godshatter
getting desperate.
Three days passed; Pham snapped out of it. Except for the new thinness
in his face, he seemed more normal than he had in weeks. He asked Ravna to
bring the Riders up to the bridge.
Pham waved at the ultradrive traces that floated in the window. The
three fleets were spread through a rough cylinder, five light-years deep and
three across. The display captured only the heart of that volume, where the
fastest of the pursuers had clustered. The current position of each ship was
a fleck of light trailing an unending stream of fainter lights -- the
ultradrive trace left by that vehicle's drive. "I've used red, blue, and
green to mark my best guess as to the fleet affiliation of each trace." The
fastest ships were collected in a blob so dense that it looked white at this
scale, but with colored streamers diverging behind. There were other tags,
annotations he had set but which he admitted once to Ravna he didn't
understand.
"The front edge of that mob -- the fastest of the fast -- is still
gaining."
Blueshell said hesitantly. "We might get a little more speed if you
would grant me direct control. Not much, but -- "
Pham's response was civil at least. "No, I'm thinking of something
else, something Ravna suggested a while back. It's always been a possibility
and ... I ... think the time may have come for it."
Ravna moved closer to the display, stared at the green traces. Their
distribution was in near agreement with what the News claimed to be the
remnants of Sjandra Kei Commercial Security. All that's left of my people.
"They've been trying to engage with the Alliance for a hundred hours now."
Pham's glance touched hers. "Yeah," he said softly. "Poor bastards.
They're literally the fleet from Port Despair. If I were them, I'd -- " His
expression smoothed over again. "Any idea how well-armed they are?" That was
surely a rhetorical question, but it put the topic on the table.
"War Trackers thinks that Sjandra Kei had been expecting something
unpleasant ever since the Alliance started talking 'death to vermin'.
Commercial Security was providing deep space defense. Their fleet is
converted freighters armed with locally-designed weapons. War Trackers
claims they weren't really a match for what the other side could field, if
the Alliance was willing to take some heavy casualties. Trouble is, Sjandra
Kei never expected the planet-smasher attack. So when the Alliance fleet
showed up, ours moved out to meet it -- "
"-- and meantime the KE bombs were coming straight in to the heart
spaces of Sjandra Kei."
Into my heart spaces. "Yes. The Alliance must have been running those
bombs for weeks."
Pham Nuwen laughed shortly. "If I were shipping with the Alliance
fleet, I'd be a bit nervous now. They're down in numbers, and those retread
freighters seem about as fast as anything here.... I'll bet every pilot out
of Sjandra Kei is dead set on revenge." The emotion faded. "Hmm. There's no
way they could kill all the Alliance ships or all the Blight's, much less
all of both. It would be pointless to ...
His gaze abruptly focused on her. "So if we leave things as they are,
the Sjandra Kei fleet will eventually match position with the Alliance and
try to blow them out of existence."
Ravna just nodded. "In twelve hours or so, they say."
"And then all that will be left is the Blight's own fleet on our tail.
But if we could talk your people into fighting the right enemies..."
It was Ravna's nightmare scheme. All that was left of Sjandra Kei dying
to save the OOB ... trying to save them. There was little chance the Sjandra
Kei fleet could destroy all the Blighter ships. But they're here to fight.
Why not a vengeance that means something? That was the nightmare's message.
Now somehow it fit godshatter's plans. "There are problems. They don't know
what we're doing or the purpose of the third fleet. Anything we shout back
to them will be overheard." Ultrawave was directional, but most of their
pursuers were closely mingled.
Pham nodded. "Somehow we have to talk to them, and them alone. Somehow
we have to persuade them to fight." Faint smile. "And I think we may have
just the ... equipment ... to do all that. Blueshell: Remember that night on
the High Docks. You told us about your 'rotted cargo' from Sjandra Kei?"
"Indeed, Sir Pham. We carried one third of a cipher generated by SjK
Commercial Security for their long-range communications. It's still in the
ship's safe, though worthless without the other two thirds." Gram for gram,
crypto materials were about the most valuable thing shipped between the
stars -- and once compromised, about the most valueless. Somewhere in Out of
Band's cargo files there was an SjK one-time communications pad. Part of a
pad.
"Worthless? Maybe not. Even one third would provide us with secure
communications."
Blueshell dithered. "I must not mislead you. No competent customer
would accept such. Certainly, it provides secure communication, but the
other side has no verification that you are who you claim."
Pham's glance slid sideways, toward Ravna. There was that smile again.
"If they'll listen, I think we can convince them.... The hard part is, I
only want one of them to hear us." Pham explained what he had in mind. The
Riders' rustled faintly behind Pham's words. After all their time together,
Ravna could almost get some sense of their talk -- or maybe she just
understood their personalities. As usual, Blueshell was worrying about how
impossible the idea was, and Greenstalk was urging him to listen.
But when Pham finished, the large rider did not launch into objections.
"Across seventy light-years, ultrawave comm between ships is practical, even
without our antenna swarm; we could even have live video. But you are right,
the beam spread would include all the ships in the central cluster of
fleets. If we could reliably identify an outlying vessel as belonging to
Sjandra Kei, then what you are asking might be done; that ship could use
internal fleet codes to relay to the others. But in honesty I must warn
you," continued Blueshell, brushing back Greenstalk's gentle remonstrance,
"professional communications folk would not honor your request for talk --
would probably not even recognize it as such."
"Silly." Greenstalk finally spoke, her voder-voice gentle but clear.
"You always say things like that -- except when we are talking to paying
customers."
"Brap. Yes. Desperate times, desperate measures. I want to try it, but
I fear.... I want there to be no accusations of Rider treachery, Sir Pham. I
want you to handle this."
Pham Nuwen smiled back. "My thought exactly."
"The Aniara Fleet." That's what some of the crews of Commercial
Security were calling themselves. Aniara was the ship of an old human myth,
older than Nyjora, perhaps going back to the Tuvo-Norsk cooperatives in the
asteroids of Earth's solar system. In the story, Aniara was a large ship
launched into interstellar depths just before the death of its parent
civilization. The crew watched the death agonies of the home system, and
then over the following years -- as their ship fell out and out into the
endless dark -- died themselves, their life-support systems slowly failing.
The image was a haunting one, which was probably the reason it was known
across millennia. With the destruction of Sjandra Kei and the escape of
Commercial Security, the story seemed suddenly come true.
But we will not play it to the end. Group Captain Kjet Svensndot stared
into the tracking display. This time the death of civilization had been a
murder, and the murderers were almost within vengeance's reach. For days,
fleet HQ had been maneuvering them to close with the Alliance. The display
showed that success was very, very near. The majority of Alliance and
Sjandra Kei ships were bound in a glowing ball of drive traces -- which also
included the third, silent fleet. From that display you might think that
battle was already possible. In fact, opposing ships were passing through
almost the same space -- sometimes less than a billion kilometers apart --
but still separated by milliseconds of time. All the vessels were on
ultradrive, jumping perhaps a dozen times a second. And even here at the
Bottom of the Beyond, that came to a measurable fraction of a light-year on
each jump. To fight an uncooperative enemy meant matching their jumps
perfectly and flooding the common space with weapon drones.
Group Captain Svensndot changed the display to show ships that had
exactly matched their pace with the Alliance. Almost a third of the fleet
was in synch now. Another few hours and.... "Damnation!" He slapped his
display board, sending it spinning across the deck.
His first officer retrieved the display, sent it sailing back. "Is this
a new damnation, or the usual?" Tirolle asked.
"It was the usual. Sorry." And he really was. Tirolle and Glimfrelle
had their own problems. No doubt there were still pockets of humanity in the
Beyond, hidden from the Alliance. But of the Dirokimes, there might be no
more than what was on Commercial Security's fleet. Except for adventurous
souls like Tirolle and Glimfrelle, all that was left of their kind had been
in the dream terranes at Sjandra Kei.
Kjet Svensndot had started with Commercial Security twenty-five years
before, back when the company had just been a small fleet of rentacops. He
had spent thousands of hours learning to be the very best combat pilot in
the organization. Only twice had he ever been in a shootout. Some might have
regretted that. Svensndot and his superiors took it as the reward for being
the best. His competence had won him the best fighting equipment in
Commercial Security's fleet, culminating with the ship he commanded now. The
Ølvira was purchased with part of the enormous premium that Sjandra
Kei paid out when the Alliance first started making threatening noises.
Ølvira was not a rebuilt freighter, but a fighting machine from the
keel out. The ship was equipped with the smartest processors, the smartest
ultra drive, that could operate at Sjandra Kei's altitude in the Beyond. It
needed only a three-person crew -- and combat could be managed by the pilot
alone with his AI associates. Its holds contained more than ten thousand
seeker bombs, each smarter than the average freighter's entire drive unit.
Quite a reward for twenty-five years of solid performance. They even let
Svensndot name his new ship.
And now.... Well, the true Ølvira was surely dead. Along with
billions of others they had been hired to protect, she had been at Herte, in
the inner system. Glow bombs leave no survivors.
And his beautiful ship with the same name, it had been a half
light-year out-system, seeking enemies that weren't there. In any honest
battle, Kjet Svensndot and this Ølvira could have done very well.
Instead they were chasing down into the Bottom of the Beyond. Every
light-year took them further from the regions Ølvira was built for.
Every light-year the processors worked a bit more slowly (or not at all).
Down here the converted freighters were almost an optimum design. Clumsy and
stupid, with crews of dozens, but they kept on working. Already
Ølvira was lagging five light-years behind them. It was the
freighters that would make the attack on the Alliance fleet. And once again
Kjet would stand powerless while his friends died.
For the hundredth time, Svensndot glared at the trace display and
contemplated mutiny. There were Alliance stragglers too -- "high
performance" vehicles left behind the central pack. But his orders were to
maintain position, to be a tactical coordinator for the fleet's swifter
combatants. Well, he would do as he was hired ... this one last time. But
when the battle was done, when the fleet was dead, with as many of the
Alliance that they could take with them -- then he would think of his own
revenge. Some of that depended on Tirolle and Glimfrelle. Could he persuade
them to leave the remnants of the Alliance fleet and ascend to the Middle
Beyond, up where the Ølvira was the best of her kind? There was good
evidence now about which star systems were behind the "Alliance for the
Defense". The murderers were boasting to the news. Apparently they thought
that would bring them new support. It might also bring them visitors like
Ølvira. The bombs in her belly could destroy worlds, though not as
swiftly sure as what had been used on Sjandra Kei. And even now Svensndot's
mind shrank from that sort of revenge. No. They would choose their targets
carefully: ships coming to form new Alliance fleets, underprotected convoys.
Ølvira might last a long time if he always struck from ambush and
never left survivors. He stared and stared at the display, and ignored the
wetness that floated at the corners of his eyes. All his life, he had lived
by the law. Often his job had been to stop acts of revenge.... And now
revenge was all that life had left for him.
"I'm getting something peculiar, Kjet." Glimfrelle was monitoring
signals this watch. It was the sort of thing that should have been totally
automated -- and had been in Ølvira's natural environment, but which
was now a boring and exhausting enterprise.
"What? More Net lies?" said Tirolle.
"No. This is on the bearing of that bottom-lugger everyone is chasing.
It can't be anyone else."
Svensndot's eyebrows rose. He turned on the mystery with enormous,
scarcely realized, pleasure. "Characteristics?"
"Ship's signal processor says it's probably a narrow beam. We are its
only likely target. The signal is strong and the bandwidth is at least
enough to support flat video. If our snarfling DSP was working right, I'd
know -- " 'Frelle sang a little song that was impatient humming among his
kind. "-- Iiae! It's encrypted, but at a high layer. This stuff is syntax 45
video. In fact, it claims to be using one third of a cipher the Company made
a year back." For an instant, Svensndot thought 'Frelle was claiming the
message itself was smart; that should be absolutely impossible here at the
Bottom. The second officer must have caught his look: "Just sloppy language,
Boss. I read this out of the frame format...." Something flashed on his
display. "Okay, here's the story on the cipher: the Company made it and its
peers to cover shipping security." Back before the Alliance, that had been
the highest crypto level in the organization. "This is the third that never
got delivered. The whole was assumed compromised, but miracle of miracles,
we still have a copy." Both 'Frelle and 'Rolle were looking at Svensndot
expectantly, their eyes large and dark. Standard policy -- standard orders
-- were that transmissions on compromised keys were to be ignored. If the
Company's signals people had been doing a proper job, the rotted cipher
wouldn't even have been aboard and the policy would have enforced itself.
"Decrypt the thing," Svensndot said shortly. The last weeks had
demonstrated that his company was a dismal failure when it came to military
intelligence and signals. They might as well get some benefit from that
incompetence.
"Yes sir!" Glimfrelle tapped a single key. Somewhere inside
Ølvira's signal processor, a long segment of "random" noise was
broken into frames and laid precisely down on the "random" noise in the data
frames incoming. There was a perceptible pause (damn the Bottom) and then
the comm window lit with a flat video picture.
"-- fourth repetition of this message." The words were Samnorsk, and a
dialect of pure Herte i Sjandra. The speaker was ... for a heartstopping
instant he was seeing Ølvira again, alive. He exhaled slowly, trying
to relax. Black-haired, slim, violet-eyed -- just like Ølvira. And
just like a million other women of Sjandra Kei. The resemblance was there,
but so vague he would never have been taken by it before. For an instant he
imagined a universe beyond their lost fleet, and goals beyond vengeance.
Then he forced his attention back to business, to seeing everything he could
in the images in the window.
The woman was saying, "We'll repeat three more times. If by then you
have still not responded, we will attempt a different target." She pushed
back from the camera pickup, giving them a view of the room behind her. It
was low-ceilinged, deep. An ultradrive trace display dominated the
background, but Svensndot paid it little attention. There were two
Skroderiders in the background. One wore stripes on its skrode that meant a
trade history with Sjandra Kei. The other must be a lesser Rider; its skrode
was small and wheelless. The pickup turned, centered on the fourth figure.
Human? Probably, but of no Nyjoran heritage. In another time, his appearance
would have been big news across all human civilizations in the Beyond. Now
the point only registered on Svensndot's mind as another cause for
suspicion.
The woman continued, "You can see that we are human and Rider. We are
the entire crew of the Out of Band II. We are not part of the Alliance for
the Defense nor agents of the Blight.... But we are the reason their fleets
are down here. If you can read this, we're betting that you are of Sjandra
Kei. We must talk. Please reply using the tail of the pad that is decrypting
this message." The picture jigged and the woman's face was back in the
foreground. "This is the fifth repetition of this message," she said. "We'll
repeat two more -- "
Glimfrelle cut the audio. "If she means it, we have about one hundred
seconds. What next, Captain?"
Suddenly the Ølvira was not an irrelevant straggler. "We talk,"
said Svensndot.
Response and counter-response took a matter of seconds. After that ...
five minutes of conversation with Ravna Bergsndot was enough to convince
Kjet that what she had to say must be heard by Fleet Central. His ship would
be a mere relay, but at least he had something very important to pass on.
Fleet Central refused the full video link coming from the Out of Band.
Someone on the flagship was dead set on following standard procedures -- and
using compromised cipher keys stuck in their craw. Even Kjet had to settle
for a combat link: The screen showed a color image with high resolution.
Looking at it carefully, one realized the thing was a poor evocation....
Kjet recognized Owner Limmende and Jan Skrits, her chief of staff, but they
looked several years out of style. Ølvira was matching old video with
the transmitted animation cues. The actual communication channel was less
that four thousand bits per second; Central was taking no chances.
God only knew what they were seeing as the evocation of Pham Nuwen. The
smokey-skinned human had already explained his point several times. He was
having as little success as Ravna Bergsndot before him. His cool manner had
gradually deserted him. Desperation was beginning to show on his face. "--
and I'm telling you, they are both your enemies. Sure, Alliance for the
Defense destroyed Sjandra Kei, but the Blight is responsible for the
situation that made that possible."
The half-cartoonish figure of Jan Skrits glanced at Owner Limmende.
Lord, evocations are crappy at the Bottom, Svensndot thought to himself.
When Skrits spoke, his voice didn't even match his lip movements: "We do
read Threats, Mr. Nuwen. The threat of the Blight was used as an excuse to
destroy our worlds. We will not go on random killing sprees, especially
against an organization that is clearly the enemy of our enemy.... Or are
you claiming the Blight is secretly in league with the Alliance for the
Defense?"
Pham gave an angry shrug. "No. I have no idea how the Blight regards
the Alliance. But you should know the evil the Blight has been up to, things
on a scale far grander than this 'Alliance'."
"Ah yes. That's what it says on the Net, Mr. Nuwen. But those events
are thousands of light-years away. They've been through multiple hops and
unknown interpretations before they ever arrive in the Middle Beyond -- even
if the stories were true to begin with. It is not called the Net of a
Million Lies for nothing."
The stranger's face darkened. He said something loud and angry, in a