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language that was totally unlike anything from Nyjora. The tones jumped up
and down, almost like Dirokime twittering. He calmed himself with a visible
effort, but when he continued his Samnorsk was even more heavily accented
than before. "Yes. But I'm telling you. I was at the Fall of Relay. The
Blight is more than the worst horrors you've heard. The murder of Sjandra
Kei was its smallest side-effect. Will you help us against the Blighter
fleet?"
Owner Limmende pushed her massive form back into her chair webbing. She
looked at her chief of staff and the two talked inaudibly. Kjet's gaze
drifted beyond them; the flagship's command deck extended a dozen meters
behind Limmende. Underofficers moved quietly about, some watching the
conversation. The picture was crisp and clear, but when the figures moved it
was with cartoonlike awkwardness. And some of the faces belonged to people
Kjet knew had been transferred before the fall of Sjandra Kei. The
processors here on the Ølvira were taking the narrow-band signal from
Fleet Central, fleshing it out with detailed (and out of date) background
and evoking the image shown. No more evocations after this, Svensndot
promised himself, at least while we're down here.
Owner Limmende looked back at the camera. "Forgive a paranoid old cop,
but I think it's possible that you might be of the Blight." Limmende raised
her hand as if to ward off interruptions, but the redhead just gaped in
surprise. "If we believe you, then we must accept that there is something
useful and dangerous on the star system we're all heading towards.
Furthermore, we must accept that both you and the 'Blighter fleet' are
peculiarly qualified to take advantage of this prize. If we fight them as
you ask, there will likely be few of us alive afterwards. You alone will
have the prize. We fear what you might turn out to be."
For a long moment, Pham Nuwen was silent. The wildness slowly left his
face. "You have a point, Owner Limmende. And a dilemma. Is there any way
out?"
"Skrits and I have been discussing it. No matter what we do, both we
and you must take big chances.... It's only the alternatives that are more
terrible. We are willing to accept your guidance in battle, if you will
first maneuver your ship back toward us and allow us to board."
"Give up the lead in this chase, you mean?"
Limmende nodded.
Pham's mouth opened and closed, but no words emerged. He seemed to be
having trouble breathing. Ravna said, "Then if you don't succeed, everything
is lost. At least now, we have a sixty-hour lead. That might be enough to
get word out about this artifact, even if the Blighter fleet survives."
Skrits' face twisted, a cartoonish smile. "You can't have it both ways.
You want us to risk everything on your assurance of competence. We are
willing to die for this, but not to be pawns in a game of monsters." The
last words had a strange tone, the angry delivery shading away. There had
been no motion in the picture from Fleet Central except for ill-synched lip
movement. Glimfrelle caught Svensndot's eye and pointed at the failure
lights on his comm panel.
Skrits' voice continued, "And Group Captain Svensndot: It's imperative
that all further communications with this unknown vessel be channeled -- "
the image froze, and there were no more words.
Ravna: "What happened?"
Glimfrelle made a twitter-snort. "We're losing the link with Fleet
Central. Our effective bandwidth is down to twenty bits per second, and
dropping. Skrits' last transmission was scarcely a hundred bits," padded out
to apparent legibility by the Ølvira's software.
Kjet waved angrily at the screen. "Cut the damn thing off." At least he
wouldn't have to put up with the evocation any further. And he didn't want
to hear what he guessed was Jan Skrits' last order.
Tirolle said, "Hei, why not leave it on? We might not notice much
difference." Glimfrelle's snickered at his brother's wit, but his
longfingers danced across the comm panel, and the display became a window on
the stars. The two Dirokimes had a thing about bureaucrats.
Svensndot ignored them and looked at the remaining comm window. The
channel to Pham and Ravna was wideband video with scarcely any
interpretation; there would be no perverse subtleties if it went down.
"Sorry about that. The last few days, we've had a lot of problems with comm.
Apparently, this Zone storm is the worst in centuries." In fact, it was
getting still worse: the starboard ultratrace displays were showing random
garbage.
"You've lost contact with your command?" asked Ravna.
"For the moment...." He glanced at Pham. The redhead's eyes were still
a bit glassy. "Look ... I'm even more sorry about how things have turned
out, but Limmende and Skrits are bright people. You can see their point of
view."
"Strange," interrupted Pham. "The pictures were strange," his tone was
drifty.
"You mean our relay from Fleet Central?" Svensndot explained about the
narrow bandwidth and the crummy performance of his ship's processors down
here at the Bottom.
"And so their picture of us must have been equally bad.... I wonder
what they thought I was?"
"Unh ..." Good question. Consider Pham Nuwen: bristly red hair,
smoke-gray skin, singsong voice. If cues such as those were sent, like as
not the display at Fleet Central would show something quite different from
the human Kjet saw. "... wait a minute. That's not how evocations work. I'm
sure they got a pretty clear view of you. See, a few high-resolution pics
would get sent at the beginning of the session. Then those would be used as
the base for the animation."
Pham stared back lumpishly, almost as though he didn't buy it and was
daring Kjet to think things through. Well damn it, the explanation was
correct; there was no doubt that Limmende and Skrits had seen the redhead as
a human. Yet there was something here that bothered Kjet ... Limmende and
Skrits had both looked out of date.
"Glimfrelle! Check the raw stream we got from Central. Did they send us
any sync pictures?"
It took Glimfrelle only seconds. He whistled a sharp tone of surprise.
"No, Boss. And since it was all properly encrypted, our end just made do
with old ad animation." He said something to Tirolle, and the two twittered
rapidly. "Nothing seems to work down here. Maybe this is just another bug."
But Glimfrelle didn't sound very confident of the assertion.
Svensndot turned back to the picture from the Out of Band. "Look. The
channel to Fleet Central was fully encrypted, using one- time schemes I
trust more than what we're talking with now. I can't believe it was a
masquerade." But nausea was creeping up Kjet's guts. This was like the first
minutes of the Battle for Sjandra Kei, when he guessed how thoroughly they
had been outmaneuvered, when he realized that everyone he was trying to
protect would be murdered. "Hei, we'll contact other vessels. We'll verify
Central's location -- "
Pham Nuwen raised an eyebrow. "Maybe it wasn't a masquerade." Before he
could say more, one of the Riders -- the one with the greater skrode -- was
shouting at them. It rolled across the room's apparent ceiling, pushing the
humans aside to get close to the camera. "I have a question!" The voder
speech was burred, nearly unintelligible. The creature's tendrils rattled
dryly against each other, as distressed as Kjet Svensndot had ever heard.
"My question: Are there Skroderiders aboard your fleet's command vessel?"
"Why do you -- "
"Answer the question!"
"How should I know?" Kjet tried to think. "Tirolle. You have friends on
Skrits' staff. Are there any Riders aboard?"
Tirolle stuttered a few bars, "A'a'a'a. Yes. Emergency hires -- rescues
actually -- right after the battle."
"That's the best we can do, friend."
The Skroderider trembled, unspeaking. Then its tendrils seemed to wilt.
"Thank you," it said softly. It rolled back and out of camera range.
Pham Nuwen disappeared from view. Ravna looked wildly around, "Wait
please!" she said to the camera, and Kjet was looking at the abandoned
command deck of the Out of Band. At the limit of the pickup's hearing came
sounds of mumbled conversation, voder and human. Then she was back.
"What was that all about?" Svensndot to Ravna.
"N-Nothing any of us can help anymore.... Captain Svensndot, it looks
to me like your fleet is no longer run by the people you think."
"Maybe." Probably. "It's something I've got to think about."
She nodded. For a moment they looked at each other, unspeaking. So
strange, so far from home and after all the heartbreak ... to see someone so
familiar. "You were truly at Relay?" the question sounded stupid in his
ears. Yet in a way she was a bridge from what he knew and trusted to the
deadly weirdness of the present situation.
Ravna Bergsndot nodded. "Yes ... and it was like everything you've
read. We even had direct contact with a Power.... And yet it was not enough,
Group Captain. The Blight destroyed it all. That part of the News is no
lie."
Tirolle pushed back from his nav station. "Then how can anything you do
down here hurt the Blight?" The words were blunt, but 'Rolle's eyes were
wide and serious. In fact, he was pleading for some sense behind all the
death. Dirokimes had not been the greatest part of the Sjandra Kei
civilization, but they had been by far its oldest member race. A million
years ago they had burst out of the Slow Zone, colonizing the three systems
that humans one day would call Sjandra Kei. Long before the humans arrived,
they were a race of inward dreamers. They protected their star systems with
ancient automation and friendly younger races. Another half million years
and their race might be gone from the Beyond, extinct or evolved into
something else. It was a common pattern, something like death and old age,
but gentler.
There is a common misconception about such senescent races, that their
members are senescent too. In any large population, there will be variation.
There will always be those who want to see the outside world and play there
for a while. Humankind had gotten on very well with the likes of Glimfrelle
and Tirolle.
And Bergsndot seemed to understand. "Have any of you heard of
godshatter?"
Kjet said, "No," then noticed that both Dirokimes had started. They
whistled at each other for several seconds in some kind of surprise dialect.
"Yes," 'Rolle spoke at last in Samnorsk, his voice as close to awe as Kjet
had ever heard. "You know we Dirokimes have been in the Beyond for a long
time. We've sent many colonies into the Transcend; some became Powers....
And once ... Something came back. It wasn't a Power of course. In fact, it
was more like a mind- crippled Dirokime. But it knew things and did things
that made great changes for us."
"Fentrollar?" Kjet asked wonderingly, suddenly recognizing the story.
It had happened one hundred thousand years before humankind arrived at
Sjandra Kei, yet it was a central contradiction of the Dirokime terranes.
"Yes." Tirolle said. "Even now people don't agree if Fentrollar was a
gift or a curse, but he founded the dream habitats and the Old Religion."
Ravna nodded, "That's the case most familiar to us of Sjandra Kei.
Maybe it's not a happy example considering all its effects...." and she told
them about the fall of Relay, what had happened to Old One, and what had
become of Pham Nuwen. The Dirokimes side chat dwindled to zero and they were
very still.
Finally Kjet said, "So what does Nu-- " he stumbled over the name, as
strange as everything else about this fellow, "Nuwen know about the thing
you seek at the Bottom? What can he do with it?"
"I-I don't know, Group Captain. Pham Nuwen himself doesn't know. A
little bit at a time, the insight comes. I believe, because I was there for
some of it ... but I don't know how to make you believe." She drew a
shuddering breath. Kjet suddenly guessed what a strange, tortured place the
Out of Band must be. Somehow that made the story more credible. Anything
that really could destroy the Blight would be unwholesomely weird. Kjet
wondered how he would do, locked up with such a thing.
"My Lady Ravna," he said, the words stilted and formal. After all, I'm
suggesting treason. "I, uh, I've got a number of friends in the Commercial
Security fleet. I can check on the suspicions you've raised, and ..." say
it! "it's possible we can give you support in spite of my HQ."
"Thank you, sir. Thank you."
Glimfrelle broke the silence. "We're getting a poor signal on the Out
of Band's channel now."
Kjet eyes swept the windows. All the ultratrace displays looked like
random noise. Whatever this storm was, it was bad.
"Looks like we won't be talking much longer, Ravna Bergsndot."
"Yes. We're losing signal.... Group Captain, if none of this works, if
you can't fight for us.... Your people are all that's left of Sjandra Kei.
It's been good to see you and the Dirokimes.... after so long to see
familiar faces, people I really understand. I -- " as she spoke, her image
square-blurred into low-frequency components.
"Huui!" said Glimfrelle. "Bandwidth just dropped through the floor."
There was nothing sophisticated about their link to the Out of Band. Given
communications problems, the ship's processors just switched to low-rate
coding.
"Hello, Out of Band. We've got problems on this channel now. Suggest we
sign off."
The window turned gray, and printed Samnorsk flickered across it:
Yes. It is more than a communicati
Glimfrelle diddled his comm panel. "Zip. Zero," he said. "No detectable
signal."
Tirolle looked up from his navigation tank. "This is a lot more than a
communications problem. Our computers haven't been able to commit on an
ultradrive jump in more than twenty seconds." They had been doing five jumps
a second, and just over a light-year per hour. Now....
Glimfrelle leaned back from his panel. "Hei -- so welcome to the Slow
Zone."
The Slow Zone. Ravna Bergsndot looked across the deck of the Out of
Band II. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she had always had a vision of
the Slowness as a stifling darkness lit at best by torches, the domain of
cretins and mechanical calculators. In fact, things didn't look much
different from before. The ceilings and walls glowed just as before. The
stars still shone through the windows (only now, it might be a very long
time before any of them moved).
It was on the OOB's other displays that the change was most obvious.
The ultratrace tank blinked monotonously, a red legend displaying elapsed
time since the last update. Navigation windows were filled with output from
the diagnostics exercising the drive processors. An audible message in
Triskweline was repeating over and over, "Warning. Transition to Slowness
detected. Execute back jump at once! Warning. Transition to Slowness
detected. Execute...."
"Turn that off!" Ravna grabbed a saddle and strapped herself down. She
was actually feeling dizzy, though that could only be (a very natural)
panic. "Some bottom lugger this is. We run right into the Slow Zone, and all
it can do is spout warnings after the fact!"
Greenstalk drifted closer, "tiptoeing" off the ceiling with her
tendrils. "Even bottom luggers can't avoid things like this, My Lady Ravna"
Pham said something at the ship and most of the displays cleared.
Blueshell: "Even a huge Zone storm doesn't normally extend more than a
few light-years. We were two hundred light-years above the Zone boundary.
What hit us must be a monster surge, the sort of thing you only read about
in archives."
Small consolation. "We knew something like this could happen," Pham
said. "Things have been getting awfully rough the last few weeks." For a
change, he didn't seem too upset.
"Yes," she said. "We expected a slowing maybe, but not The Slowness."
We are trapped. "Where's the nearest habitable system? Ten light-years?
Fifty?" The vision of darkness had a new reality, and the starscape beyond
the ship's walls was no longer a friendly, steadying thing. Surrounded by
unending nothingness, moving at some vanishing fraction of the speed of
light ... entombed. All the courage of Kjet Svensndot and his fleet, for
nothing. Jefri Olsndot, forever unrescued.
Pham's hand touched her shoulder, the first touch in ... days? "We can
still make it to the Tines' world. This is a bottom lugger, remember? We are
not trapped. Hell, the ramscoop on this buggy is better than anything I ever
had in the Qeng Ho. And I thought I was the freest man in the universe back
then."
Decades of travel time, mostly in coldsleep. Such had been the world of
the Qeng Ho, the world of Pham's memories. Ravna let out a shuddering breath
that ended in weak laughter. For Pham, the terrible pressure was abated, at
least temporarily. He could be human.
"What's so funny?" said Pham.
She shook her head. "All of us. Never mind." She took a couple of slow
breaths. "Okay. I think I can make rational conversation. So the Zone has
surged. Something that normally takes a thousand years -- even in a storm --
to move a single light-year, has suddenly shifted two hundred. Hunh!
There'll be people a million years from now reading about this in the
archives. I'm not sure I want the honor.... We knew there was a storm, but I
never expected to be drowned," buried light-years deep beneath the sea.
"The sea storm analogy is not perfect," said Blueshell. The Skroderider
was still on the far side of the deck, where he had retreated after
questioning the Sjandra Kei captain. He still looked upset, though he was
back to sounding precise and picky. Blueshell was studying a nav display,
evidently a recording from right before the surge. He dumped the picture to
a display flat and rolled slowly across the ceiling toward them.
Greenstalk's fronds brushed him gently as he passed.
He sailed the display flat into Ravna's hands, and continued in a
lecturing tone. "Even in a sea storm, the water's surface is never as roiled
as in a big interface disturbance. The most recent News reports showed it as
a fractal surface with dimension close to three.... Like foam and spray."
Even he could not avoid the storm analogy. The starscapes hung serene beyond
crystal walls, and the loudest sound was a faint breeze from the ship's
ventilators. Yet they had been swallowed in a maelstrom. Blueshell waved a
frond at the display flat. "We could be back in the Beyond in a few hours."
"What?"
"See. The plane of the display is determined by the positions of the
supposed Sjandra Kei command vessel, the outflying craft that we contacted
directly, and ourselves." The three formed a narrow triangle, the Limmende
and Svensndot vertices close together. "I've marked the times that contact
was lost with the others. Notice: the link to Commercial Security HQ went
down 150 seconds before we were hit. From the incoming signal and its
requests for protocol changes, I believe that both we and the outflyer were
enveloped and at about the same time."
Pham nodded. "Yeah. The most distant sites losing contact last. That
must mean the surge moved in from the side."
"Exactly!" From his perch on the ceiling, Blueshell reached to tap the
display. "The three ships were like probes in the standard Zone mapping
technique. Replaying the trace displays will no doubt confirm the
conclusion."
Ravna looked at the plot. The long point of the triangle -- tipped by
the OOB -- pointed almost directly toward the heart of the galaxy. "It must
have been a huge, clifflike thing perpendicular to the rest of the surface."
"A monster wave sweeping sideways!" said Greenstalk. "And that's also
why it won't last long."
"Yes. It's the radial changes that are most often long term. This thing
must have a trailing edge. We should pass through it in a few hours -- and
back into the Beyond."
So there was still a race to be won or lost.
The first hours were strange. "A few hours," had been Blueshell's
estimate of when they would be back in the Beyond. They hung around the
bridge, alternately watching the clock and stewing about the strange
conversations just completed. Pham was building himself back to trigger
tension. Any time now, they would be back in the Beyond. What to do then? If
only a few ships were perverted, perhaps Svensndot could still coordinate an
attack. Would that do any good? Pham played the ultratrace recordings over
and over, studying every detectable ship in all the fleets. "But when we get
out, when we get out ... I'll know what to do. Not why I must do it, but
what." And he couldn't explain more.
Any time now.... There was scarcely any reason to do much about
resetting equipment that would need another initialization right away.
But after eight hours: "It really could be longer, even a day." They
had been scrounging around in the historical literature. "Maybe we should do
a little housekeeping." The Out of Band II had been designed for both the
Beyond and the Slowness, but that second environment was regarded as an
unlikely, emergency one. There were special-purpose processors for the Slow
Zone, but they hadn't come up automatically. With Blueshell's advice, Pham
took the high-performance automation off-line; that wasn't too difficult,
except for a couple of voice-actuated independents that were no longer
bright enough to understand the quitting commands.
Using the new automation gave Ravna a chill that, in a subtle way, was
almost as frightening as the original loss of the ultradrive. Her image of
the Slowness as darkness and torchlight -- that was just nightmare fantasy.
On the other hand, the Slowness as the domain of cretins and mechanical
calculators, there was something to that. The OOB's performance had degraded
steadily during their voyage to the Bottom, but now ... Gone were the
voice-driven graphics generators; they were just a bit too complex to be
supported by the new OOB, at least in full interpretive mode. Gone were the
intelligent context analyzers that made the ship's library almost as
accessible as one's own memories. Eventually, Ravna even turned off the art
and music units; without mood and context response, they seemed so wooden
... constant reminders that there were no brains behind them. Even the
simplest things were corrupted. Take voice and gesture controls: They no
longer responded consistently to sarcasm and casual slang. It took a certain
discipline to use them effectively. (Pham actually seemed to like this. It
reminded him of the Qeng Ho.)
Twenty hours. Fifty. Everyone was still telling each other there was
nothing to worry about. But now Blueshell said that talk of "hours" had been
unrealistic. Considering the height of the "tsunami" (at least two hundred
light-years), it would likely be several hundred light-years across -- that
in keeping with the scaling laws of historical precedent. There was only one
trouble with this reasoning: they were beyond all precedent. For the most
part, zone boundaries followed galactic mean density. There was virtually no
change from year to year, just the aeons' long shrinkage that might someday
-- after the death of all but the smallest stars -- expose the galactic core
to the Beyond. At any given time, perhaps one billionth of that boundary
might qualify as being in a "storm state". In an ordinary storm, the surface
might move in or out a light-year in a decade or so. Such storms were common
enough to affect the fortunes of many worlds every year.
Much rarer -- perhaps once in a hundred thousand years in the whole
galaxy -- there would be a storm where the boundary became seriously
distorted, and where surges might move at a high multiple of light speed.
These were the transverse surges that Pham and Blueshell made their scale
estimates from. The fastest moved at about a light-year per second, across a
distance of less than three lights; the largest were thirty light-years high
and moved at scarcely a light-year per day.
So what was known of monsters like the thing that had engulfed them?
Not much. Third-hand stories in the Ship's library told of surges perhaps as
big as theirs, but the quoted dimensions and propagation rates were not
clear. Stories more than a hundred million years old are hard to trust;
there are scarcely any intermediate languages. (And even if there were, it
wouldn't have helped. The new, dumb version of the OOB absolutely could not
do mechanical translation of natural languages. Dredging the library was
pointless.)
When Ravna complained about this to Pham, he said, "Things could be
worse. What was the Ur-Partition really?"
Five billion years ago. "No one's sure."
Pham jerked a thumb at his library display. "Some people think it was a
'super supersurge', you know. Something so big it swallowed the races that
might have recorded it. Sometimes the biggest disasters aren't noticed at
all -- no one's around to write horror stories."
Great.
"I'm sorry, Ravna. Honestly, if we're in anything like most past
disasters, we'll come out of it in another day or two. The best thing is to
plan for things that way. This is like a 'time-out' in the battle. Take
advantage of it to have a little peace. Figure out how to get the
unperverted parts of Commercial Security to help us."
"... Yeah." Depending on the shape of the surge's trailing edge the OOB
might have lost a good part of its lead.... But I'll bet the Alliance fleet
is completely panicked by all this. Such opportunists would likely run for
safety as soon as they're back in the Beyond.
The advice kept her busy for another twenty hours, fighting with the
half-witted things that claimed to be strategy planners on the new version
of the OOB. Even if the surge passed right this instant, it might be too
late. There were players in this game for whom the surge was not a time-out:
Jefri Olsndot and his Tinish allies. It had been seventy hours now since
their last contact; Ravna had missed three comm sessions with them. If she
were panicked, what must be like for Jefri? Even if Steel could hold off his
enemies, time -- and trust -- would be running out at Tines' world.
One hundred hours into the surge, Ravna noticed that Blueshell and Pham
were doing power tests on the OOB's ramscoop drive.... Some time-outs last
forever.
.Delete this paragraph to shift page flush
-=*=-
The summer hot spell broke for a time; in fact, it was almost chilly.
There was still the smoke and the air was still dry, but the winds seemed
less driven. Inside their cubby aboard the ship, Amdijefri weren't taking
much notice of the nice weather.
"They've been slow in answering before," said Amdi. "She's explained
how the ultrawave -- "
"Ravna's never been this late!" Not since the winter, anyway. Jefri's
tone hovered between fear and petulance. In fact, there was supposed to be a
transmission in the middle of the night, technical data for them to pass on
to Mr. Steel. It hadn't arrived by this morning, and now Ravna had also
missed their afternoon session, the time when normally they could just chat
for a bit.
The two children reviewed all the comm settings. The previous fall,
they had laboriously copied those and the first level diagnostics. It all
looked the same now ... except for something called "carrier detect". If
only they had a dataset, they might have looked up what that meant.
They had even very carefully reset some of the comm parameters ... then
nervously set them back when nothing happened. Maybe they hadn't given the
changes enough of a chance to work. Maybe now they had really messed
something up.
They stayed in the command cubby all through the afternoon, their minds
cycling trough fear and boredom and frustration. After four hours, boredom
had at least a temporary victory. Jefri was napping uneasily in his father's
hammock with two of Amdi curled up in his arms.
Amdi poked idly around the room, looked at the rocket controls. No ...
not even his self-confidence was up to playing with those. Another of him
jerked at the wall quilting. He could always watch the fungus grow for a
while. Things were that slow.
Actually, the gray stuff had spread a lot further than the last time he
looked. Behind the quilt, it was quite thick. He sent a chain of himself
squirreling back between the wall and the fabric. It was dark, but some
light spilled through the gap at the ceiling. In most places the mold was
scarcely an inch thick, but back here it was five or six -- wow. Just above
his exploring nose, a huge lump of it grew from the wall. This was as big as
some of the ornamental moss that decorated castle meeting halls. Slender
gray filaments grew down from the fungus. He almost called out to Jefri, but
the two of him in the hammock were so comfortable.
He brought a couple more heads close to the strangeness. The wall
behind it looked a little odd, too ... as though part of its substance had
been taken by the mold. And the gray itself: like smoke -- he felt the
filaments with his nose. They were solid, dry. His nose tickled. Amdi froze
in shocked surprise. Watching himself from behind, he saw that two of the
filaments had actually passed through his member's head! And yet there was
no pain, just that tickling feeling.
"What -- what?" Jefri had been jostled into wakefulness, as Amdi tensed
around him.
"I found something really strange, behind the quilts. I touched this
big hunk of fungus and -- "
As he spoke, Amdi gently backed away from thing on the wall. The touch
didn't hurt, but it made him more nervous than curious. He felt the
filaments sliding slowly out.
"I told you, we aren't supposed to play with that stuff. It's dirty.
The only good thing is, it doesn't smell." Jefri was out of the hammock. He
stepped across the cubby and lifted the quilting. Amdi's tip member lost its
balance and jerked away from the fungus. There was a snapping sound, and a
sharp pain in his lip.
"Geez, that thing is big!" Then, hearing Amdi's pain whistle, "You
okay?"
Amdi backed away from the wall. "I think so." The tip of one last
filament was still stuck in his lip. It didn't hurt as much as the nettles
he'd sampled a few days earlier. Amdijefri looked over the wound. What was
left of the smoky spine seemed hard and brittle. Jefri's fingers gently
worked it free. Then the two of them turned to wonder at the thing in the
wall.
"It really has spread. Looks like it's hurt the wall, too."
Amdi dabbed at his bloodied muzzle. "Yeah. I see why your folks told
you to stay away from it."
"Maybe we should have Mr. Steel scrub it all out."
The two spent half an hour crawling around behind all the quilting. The
grayness had spread far, but there was only the one marvelous flowering.
They came back to stare at it, even sticking articles of clothing into the
wisps. Neither risked fingers or noses on further contact.
Staring at the fungus on the wall was by far the most exciting thing
that happened that afternoon; there was no message from the OOB.
The next day the hot weather was back.
Two more days passed.... and still there was no word from Ravna.
Lord Steel paced the walls atop Starship Hill. It was near the middle
of the night, and the sun hung about fifteen degrees above the northern
horizon. Sweat filmed his fur; this was the warmest summer in ten years. The
drywind was into its thirtieth dayaround. It was no longer a welcome break
in the chill of the northland. The crops were dying in the fields. Smoke
from fjord fires was visible as brownish haze both north and south of the
castle. At first the reddish color had been a novelty, a welcome change from
the unending blue of sky and distance, and the whitish haze of the sea fogs.
Only at first. When fire struck East Streamsdell, the entire sky had been
dipped in red. Ash had rained all the dayaround, and the only smell had been
that of burning. Some said it was worse than the filthy air of the southern
cities.
The troops on the walls backed far out of his way. This was more than
courtesy, more than their fear of Steel. His troops were still not used to
the cloaked ones, and the cover story Shreck was spreading did nothing to
ease their minds: Lord Steel was accompanied by a singleton -- in the colors
of a Lord. The creature made no mind sounds. It walked incredibly close to
its master.
Steel said to the singleton, "Success is a matter of meeting a
schedule. I remember you teaching me that," cutting it into me, in fact.
The member looked back at him, cocked its head. "As I remember, I said
that success was a matter of adapting to changes in schedules." The words
were perfectly articulated. There were singletons that could talk that well
-- but even the most verbal could not carry on intelligent conversation.
Shreck had had no trouble convincing the troops that Flenser science had
created a race of superpacks, that the cloaked ones were individually as
smart as any ordinary pack. It was a good cover for what the cloaks really
were. It both inspired fear and obscured the truth.
The member stepped a little closer -- nearer to Steel than anyone had
been except during murders and rapes and the beatings of the past.
Involuntarily, Steel licked his lips and spread out from around the threat.
Yet in some ways the dark-cloaked one was like a corpse, without a trace of
mind sound. Steel snapped his jaws shut and said, "Yes. The genius is in
winning even when the schedules have fallen down the garderobe." He looked
all away from the Flenser member and scanned the red-shrouded southern
horizon. "What's the latest estimate of Woodcarver's progress?"
"She's still camped about five days southeast of here."
"The damned incompetent. It's hard to believe she's your parent!
Vendacious made things so easy for her; her soldiers and toy cannon should
have been here almost a tenday past -- "
"And been well-butchered, on schedule."
"Yes! Long before our sky friends arrived. Instead, she wanders inland
and then balks."
The Flenser member shrugged in its dark cloak. Steel knew the radio was
as heavy as it looked. It consoled him that the other was paying a price for
his omniscience. Just think, in heat like this, to have every part of
oneself muffled to the tympana. He could imagine the discomfort.... Indoors,
he could smell it.
They walked past one of the wall cannon. The barrel gleamed of layered
metal. The thing had thrice the range of Woodcarver's pitiful invention.
While Woodcarver had been working with Dataset and a human child's
intuition, he had had the direct advice of Ravna and company. At first he'd
feared their largesse, thinking it meant the Visitors were superior beyond
need for care. Now ... the more he heard of Ravna and the others, the more
clearly he understood their weakness. They could not experiment with
themselves, improve themselves. Inflexible, slow-changing dullards.
Sometimes they showed a low cunning -- Ravna's coyness about what she wanted
from the first starship -- but their desperation was loud in all their
messages, as was their attachment to the human child.
Everything had been going so well till just a few days ago. As they
walked out of earshot of the gunner pack, Steel said to the Flenser member,
"And still no word from our 'rescuers'."
"Quite so," That was the other botched schedule, the important one,
which they could not control. "Ravna has missed four sessions. Two of me is
down with Amdijefri right now." The singleton jabbed its snout toward the
dome of the inner keep. The gesture was an awkward abortion. Without other
muzzles and other eyes, body language was a limited thing. We just aren't
built to wander around a piece here, a piece there. "Another few minutes and
the space folk will have missed a fifth talk session. The children are
getting desperate, you know."
The member's voice sounded sympathetic. Almost unconsciously, Lord
Steel sidled a little farther out from around it. Steel remembered that tone
from his own early existence. He also remembered the cutting and death that
had always followed. "I want them kept happy, Tyrathect. We're assuming
communication will resume; when it does we'll need them." Steel bared six
pairs of jaws at the surrounded singleton. "None of your old tricks."
The member flinched, an almost imperceptible twitch that pleased Steel
more than the grovelling of ten thousand. "Of course not. I'm just saying
that you should visit them, try to help them with their fear."
"You do it."
"Ah ... they don't fully trust me. I've told you before, Steel; they
love you."
"Ha! And they've seen through to your meanness, eh?" The situation made
Steel proud. He had succeeded where Flenser's own methods would have failed.
He had manipulated without threats or pain. It had been Steel's craziest
experiment, and certainly his most profitable. But "-- Look, I don't have
time to wetnurse anyone. It's a tiresome thing to talk to those two." And it
was very tiresome to hold his temper, to suffer Jefri's "petting" and Amdi's
pranks. In the beginning, Steel had insisted that no one else have close
contact with the children. They were too important to expose to others; the
most casual slipup might show them the truth and ruin them. Even now,
Tyrathect was the only pack besides himself who had regular contact. But for
Steel, every meeting was worse than the last, an ultimate test of his self
control. It was hard to think straight in a killing rage, and that's how
almost every conversation with them ended for Steel. How wonderful it would
be when the space folk landed. Then he could use the other end of the tool
that was Amdijefri. Then there would be no need to have their trust and
friendship. Then he would have a lever, something to torture and kill to
enforce his demands.
Of course, if the aliens never landed, or if.... "We must do something!
I will not be flotsam on the wave of the future." Steel lashed at the
scaffolding that ran along the inner side of the parapet, shredding the wood
with his gleaming tines. "We can't do anything about the aliens, so let's
deal with Woodcarver. Yes!" He smiled at the Flenser member. "Ironic, isn't
it? For a hundred years, you sought her destruction. Now I can succeed. What
would have been your great triumph is for me just an annoying detour,
undertaken because greater projects are temporarily delayed."
The cloaked one did not look impressed. "There is a little matter of
gifts falling out of the sky."
"Yes, into my open jaws. And that is my good fortune, isn't it?" He
walked on several paces, chuckling to himself. "Yes. It's time to have
Vendacious bring his trusting Queen in for the slaughter. Maybe it will
interfere with other events, but.... I know, we'll have the battle east of
here."
"The Margrum Climb?"
"Correct. Woodcarver's forces should be well concentrated coming up the
defile. We'll move our cannon over there, set them behind the ridgeline at
the top of the Climb. It will be easy to destroy all her people. And it's
far enough from Starship Hill; even if the space folk arrive at the same
time, we can keep the two projects separate." The singleton didn't say
anything, and after a moment Steel glared at him. "Yes dear teacher, I know
there is a risk. I know it splits our forces. But we've got an army sitting
on our doorstep. They've arrived inconveniently late, but even Vendacious
can't make them turn around and go home. And if he tries to stall things,
the Queen might... Can you predict just what she would do?"
"... No. She has always had a way with the unexpected."
"She might even see through Vendacious' fraud. So. We take a small
chance, and destroy her now. You are with Farscout Rangolith?"
"Yes. Two of me."
"Tell him to get word to Vendacious. He is to have the Queen's army
coming up Margrum Climb not less than two days from now. Feel free to
elaborate; you know the region better than I. We'll work out final details
when both sides are in position." It was a wonderful thing to be the
effective commander of both sides in a battle! "One more thing. It's
important and Vendacious must see to it within the dayaround: I want
Woodcarver's human dead."
"What harm can she do?"
"That's a stupid question," especially coming from you. "We don't know
when Ravna and Pham may reach us. Till we have them safe in our jaws, the
Johanna creature is a dangerous thing to have nearby. Tell Vendacious to
make it look like an accident, but I want that Two-Legs dead."
Flenser was everywhere. It was a form of godhood he'd dreamed of since
he'd been Woodcarver's newby. While one of him talked to Steel, two others
lounged about the Starship with Amdijefri, and two more padded through light
forest just north of Woodcarver's encampment.
Paradise can also be an agony, and each day the torment was a little
harder to bear. In the first place, this summer was as insufferably hot as
any in the North. And the radio cloaks were not merely hot and heavy. They
necessarily covered his members' tympana. And unlike other uncomfortable
costumes, the price of taking these off for even a moment was mindlessness.
His first trials had lasted just an hour or two. Then had come a five-day
expedition with Farscout Rangolith, providing Steel with instant information
and instant command of the country around Starhip Hill. It had taken a
couple of dayarounds to recover from the sores and aches of the radio
cloaks.
This latest exercise in omniscience had lasted twelve days. Wearing the
cloaks all the time was impossible. Every day in a rotation, one of his
members threw off its radio, was bathed, and had its cloak's liner changed.
It was Flenser's hour of daily madness, when sometimes the weak-willed
Tyrathect would come back to mind, vainly trying to reestablish her
dominance. It didn't matter. With one of his members disconnected, the
remaining pack was only four. There are foursomes of normal intelligence,
but none existed in Flenser/Tyrathect. The bathing and recloaking were all
done in a confused haze.
And of course, even though Flenser was "everywhere at once", he wasn't
any smarter than before. After the first jarring experiments, he got the
hang of seeing/hearing scenes that were radically different -- but it was as
difficult as ever to carry on multiple conversations. When he was bantering
with Steel, his other members had very little to say to Amdijefri or to
Rangolith's scouts.
Lord Steel was done with him. Flenser walked along the parapets with
his former student, but if Steel had said anything to him it would have
taken him away from his current conversation. Flenser smiled (carefully so
the one with Steel would not show it). Steel thought he was talking to
Farscout Rangolith just now. Oh, he would do that ... in a few minutes. One
advantage of his situation was that no one could know for sure everything
Flenser was up to. If he was careful, he would eventually rule here again.
It was a dangerous game, and the cloaks were themselves dangerous devices.
Keep a cloak out of sunlight for a few hours and it lost power, and the
member wearing it was cut off from the pack. Worse was the problem of static
-- that was a mantis word. The second set of cloaks had killed its user, and
the Spacers weren't sure of the cause, except that it was some sort of
"interference" problem.
Flenser had experienced nothing so extreme. But sometimes on his
farthest hikes with Rangolith, or when a cloak's power faded ... there was
an incredible shrieking in his mind, like a dozen packs crowding close,
sounds that scaled between sex madness and killing frenzy. Tyrathect seemed
to like times like that; she'd come bounding out of the confusion, swamping
and down, almost like Dirokime twittering. He calmed himself with a visible
effort, but when he continued his Samnorsk was even more heavily accented
than before. "Yes. But I'm telling you. I was at the Fall of Relay. The
Blight is more than the worst horrors you've heard. The murder of Sjandra
Kei was its smallest side-effect. Will you help us against the Blighter
fleet?"
Owner Limmende pushed her massive form back into her chair webbing. She
looked at her chief of staff and the two talked inaudibly. Kjet's gaze
drifted beyond them; the flagship's command deck extended a dozen meters
behind Limmende. Underofficers moved quietly about, some watching the
conversation. The picture was crisp and clear, but when the figures moved it
was with cartoonlike awkwardness. And some of the faces belonged to people
Kjet knew had been transferred before the fall of Sjandra Kei. The
processors here on the Ølvira were taking the narrow-band signal from
Fleet Central, fleshing it out with detailed (and out of date) background
and evoking the image shown. No more evocations after this, Svensndot
promised himself, at least while we're down here.
Owner Limmende looked back at the camera. "Forgive a paranoid old cop,
but I think it's possible that you might be of the Blight." Limmende raised
her hand as if to ward off interruptions, but the redhead just gaped in
surprise. "If we believe you, then we must accept that there is something
useful and dangerous on the star system we're all heading towards.
Furthermore, we must accept that both you and the 'Blighter fleet' are
peculiarly qualified to take advantage of this prize. If we fight them as
you ask, there will likely be few of us alive afterwards. You alone will
have the prize. We fear what you might turn out to be."
For a long moment, Pham Nuwen was silent. The wildness slowly left his
face. "You have a point, Owner Limmende. And a dilemma. Is there any way
out?"
"Skrits and I have been discussing it. No matter what we do, both we
and you must take big chances.... It's only the alternatives that are more
terrible. We are willing to accept your guidance in battle, if you will
first maneuver your ship back toward us and allow us to board."
"Give up the lead in this chase, you mean?"
Limmende nodded.
Pham's mouth opened and closed, but no words emerged. He seemed to be
having trouble breathing. Ravna said, "Then if you don't succeed, everything
is lost. At least now, we have a sixty-hour lead. That might be enough to
get word out about this artifact, even if the Blighter fleet survives."
Skrits' face twisted, a cartoonish smile. "You can't have it both ways.
You want us to risk everything on your assurance of competence. We are
willing to die for this, but not to be pawns in a game of monsters." The
last words had a strange tone, the angry delivery shading away. There had
been no motion in the picture from Fleet Central except for ill-synched lip
movement. Glimfrelle caught Svensndot's eye and pointed at the failure
lights on his comm panel.
Skrits' voice continued, "And Group Captain Svensndot: It's imperative
that all further communications with this unknown vessel be channeled -- "
the image froze, and there were no more words.
Ravna: "What happened?"
Glimfrelle made a twitter-snort. "We're losing the link with Fleet
Central. Our effective bandwidth is down to twenty bits per second, and
dropping. Skrits' last transmission was scarcely a hundred bits," padded out
to apparent legibility by the Ølvira's software.
Kjet waved angrily at the screen. "Cut the damn thing off." At least he
wouldn't have to put up with the evocation any further. And he didn't want
to hear what he guessed was Jan Skrits' last order.
Tirolle said, "Hei, why not leave it on? We might not notice much
difference." Glimfrelle's snickered at his brother's wit, but his
longfingers danced across the comm panel, and the display became a window on
the stars. The two Dirokimes had a thing about bureaucrats.
Svensndot ignored them and looked at the remaining comm window. The
channel to Pham and Ravna was wideband video with scarcely any
interpretation; there would be no perverse subtleties if it went down.
"Sorry about that. The last few days, we've had a lot of problems with comm.
Apparently, this Zone storm is the worst in centuries." In fact, it was
getting still worse: the starboard ultratrace displays were showing random
garbage.
"You've lost contact with your command?" asked Ravna.
"For the moment...." He glanced at Pham. The redhead's eyes were still
a bit glassy. "Look ... I'm even more sorry about how things have turned
out, but Limmende and Skrits are bright people. You can see their point of
view."
"Strange," interrupted Pham. "The pictures were strange," his tone was
drifty.
"You mean our relay from Fleet Central?" Svensndot explained about the
narrow bandwidth and the crummy performance of his ship's processors down
here at the Bottom.
"And so their picture of us must have been equally bad.... I wonder
what they thought I was?"
"Unh ..." Good question. Consider Pham Nuwen: bristly red hair,
smoke-gray skin, singsong voice. If cues such as those were sent, like as
not the display at Fleet Central would show something quite different from
the human Kjet saw. "... wait a minute. That's not how evocations work. I'm
sure they got a pretty clear view of you. See, a few high-resolution pics
would get sent at the beginning of the session. Then those would be used as
the base for the animation."
Pham stared back lumpishly, almost as though he didn't buy it and was
daring Kjet to think things through. Well damn it, the explanation was
correct; there was no doubt that Limmende and Skrits had seen the redhead as
a human. Yet there was something here that bothered Kjet ... Limmende and
Skrits had both looked out of date.
"Glimfrelle! Check the raw stream we got from Central. Did they send us
any sync pictures?"
It took Glimfrelle only seconds. He whistled a sharp tone of surprise.
"No, Boss. And since it was all properly encrypted, our end just made do
with old ad animation." He said something to Tirolle, and the two twittered
rapidly. "Nothing seems to work down here. Maybe this is just another bug."
But Glimfrelle didn't sound very confident of the assertion.
Svensndot turned back to the picture from the Out of Band. "Look. The
channel to Fleet Central was fully encrypted, using one- time schemes I
trust more than what we're talking with now. I can't believe it was a
masquerade." But nausea was creeping up Kjet's guts. This was like the first
minutes of the Battle for Sjandra Kei, when he guessed how thoroughly they
had been outmaneuvered, when he realized that everyone he was trying to
protect would be murdered. "Hei, we'll contact other vessels. We'll verify
Central's location -- "
Pham Nuwen raised an eyebrow. "Maybe it wasn't a masquerade." Before he
could say more, one of the Riders -- the one with the greater skrode -- was
shouting at them. It rolled across the room's apparent ceiling, pushing the
humans aside to get close to the camera. "I have a question!" The voder
speech was burred, nearly unintelligible. The creature's tendrils rattled
dryly against each other, as distressed as Kjet Svensndot had ever heard.
"My question: Are there Skroderiders aboard your fleet's command vessel?"
"Why do you -- "
"Answer the question!"
"How should I know?" Kjet tried to think. "Tirolle. You have friends on
Skrits' staff. Are there any Riders aboard?"
Tirolle stuttered a few bars, "A'a'a'a. Yes. Emergency hires -- rescues
actually -- right after the battle."
"That's the best we can do, friend."
The Skroderider trembled, unspeaking. Then its tendrils seemed to wilt.
"Thank you," it said softly. It rolled back and out of camera range.
Pham Nuwen disappeared from view. Ravna looked wildly around, "Wait
please!" she said to the camera, and Kjet was looking at the abandoned
command deck of the Out of Band. At the limit of the pickup's hearing came
sounds of mumbled conversation, voder and human. Then she was back.
"What was that all about?" Svensndot to Ravna.
"N-Nothing any of us can help anymore.... Captain Svensndot, it looks
to me like your fleet is no longer run by the people you think."
"Maybe." Probably. "It's something I've got to think about."
She nodded. For a moment they looked at each other, unspeaking. So
strange, so far from home and after all the heartbreak ... to see someone so
familiar. "You were truly at Relay?" the question sounded stupid in his
ears. Yet in a way she was a bridge from what he knew and trusted to the
deadly weirdness of the present situation.
Ravna Bergsndot nodded. "Yes ... and it was like everything you've
read. We even had direct contact with a Power.... And yet it was not enough,
Group Captain. The Blight destroyed it all. That part of the News is no
lie."
Tirolle pushed back from his nav station. "Then how can anything you do
down here hurt the Blight?" The words were blunt, but 'Rolle's eyes were
wide and serious. In fact, he was pleading for some sense behind all the
death. Dirokimes had not been the greatest part of the Sjandra Kei
civilization, but they had been by far its oldest member race. A million
years ago they had burst out of the Slow Zone, colonizing the three systems
that humans one day would call Sjandra Kei. Long before the humans arrived,
they were a race of inward dreamers. They protected their star systems with
ancient automation and friendly younger races. Another half million years
and their race might be gone from the Beyond, extinct or evolved into
something else. It was a common pattern, something like death and old age,
but gentler.
There is a common misconception about such senescent races, that their
members are senescent too. In any large population, there will be variation.
There will always be those who want to see the outside world and play there
for a while. Humankind had gotten on very well with the likes of Glimfrelle
and Tirolle.
And Bergsndot seemed to understand. "Have any of you heard of
godshatter?"
Kjet said, "No," then noticed that both Dirokimes had started. They
whistled at each other for several seconds in some kind of surprise dialect.
"Yes," 'Rolle spoke at last in Samnorsk, his voice as close to awe as Kjet
had ever heard. "You know we Dirokimes have been in the Beyond for a long
time. We've sent many colonies into the Transcend; some became Powers....
And once ... Something came back. It wasn't a Power of course. In fact, it
was more like a mind- crippled Dirokime. But it knew things and did things
that made great changes for us."
"Fentrollar?" Kjet asked wonderingly, suddenly recognizing the story.
It had happened one hundred thousand years before humankind arrived at
Sjandra Kei, yet it was a central contradiction of the Dirokime terranes.
"Yes." Tirolle said. "Even now people don't agree if Fentrollar was a
gift or a curse, but he founded the dream habitats and the Old Religion."
Ravna nodded, "That's the case most familiar to us of Sjandra Kei.
Maybe it's not a happy example considering all its effects...." and she told
them about the fall of Relay, what had happened to Old One, and what had
become of Pham Nuwen. The Dirokimes side chat dwindled to zero and they were
very still.
Finally Kjet said, "So what does Nu-- " he stumbled over the name, as
strange as everything else about this fellow, "Nuwen know about the thing
you seek at the Bottom? What can he do with it?"
"I-I don't know, Group Captain. Pham Nuwen himself doesn't know. A
little bit at a time, the insight comes. I believe, because I was there for
some of it ... but I don't know how to make you believe." She drew a
shuddering breath. Kjet suddenly guessed what a strange, tortured place the
Out of Band must be. Somehow that made the story more credible. Anything
that really could destroy the Blight would be unwholesomely weird. Kjet
wondered how he would do, locked up with such a thing.
"My Lady Ravna," he said, the words stilted and formal. After all, I'm
suggesting treason. "I, uh, I've got a number of friends in the Commercial
Security fleet. I can check on the suspicions you've raised, and ..." say
it! "it's possible we can give you support in spite of my HQ."
"Thank you, sir. Thank you."
Glimfrelle broke the silence. "We're getting a poor signal on the Out
of Band's channel now."
Kjet eyes swept the windows. All the ultratrace displays looked like
random noise. Whatever this storm was, it was bad.
"Looks like we won't be talking much longer, Ravna Bergsndot."
"Yes. We're losing signal.... Group Captain, if none of this works, if
you can't fight for us.... Your people are all that's left of Sjandra Kei.
It's been good to see you and the Dirokimes.... after so long to see
familiar faces, people I really understand. I -- " as she spoke, her image
square-blurred into low-frequency components.
"Huui!" said Glimfrelle. "Bandwidth just dropped through the floor."
There was nothing sophisticated about their link to the Out of Band. Given
communications problems, the ship's processors just switched to low-rate
coding.
"Hello, Out of Band. We've got problems on this channel now. Suggest we
sign off."
The window turned gray, and printed Samnorsk flickered across it:
Yes. It is more than a communicati
Glimfrelle diddled his comm panel. "Zip. Zero," he said. "No detectable
signal."
Tirolle looked up from his navigation tank. "This is a lot more than a
communications problem. Our computers haven't been able to commit on an
ultradrive jump in more than twenty seconds." They had been doing five jumps
a second, and just over a light-year per hour. Now....
Glimfrelle leaned back from his panel. "Hei -- so welcome to the Slow
Zone."
The Slow Zone. Ravna Bergsndot looked across the deck of the Out of
Band II. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she had always had a vision of
the Slowness as a stifling darkness lit at best by torches, the domain of
cretins and mechanical calculators. In fact, things didn't look much
different from before. The ceilings and walls glowed just as before. The
stars still shone through the windows (only now, it might be a very long
time before any of them moved).
It was on the OOB's other displays that the change was most obvious.
The ultratrace tank blinked monotonously, a red legend displaying elapsed
time since the last update. Navigation windows were filled with output from
the diagnostics exercising the drive processors. An audible message in
Triskweline was repeating over and over, "Warning. Transition to Slowness
detected. Execute back jump at once! Warning. Transition to Slowness
detected. Execute...."
"Turn that off!" Ravna grabbed a saddle and strapped herself down. She
was actually feeling dizzy, though that could only be (a very natural)
panic. "Some bottom lugger this is. We run right into the Slow Zone, and all
it can do is spout warnings after the fact!"
Greenstalk drifted closer, "tiptoeing" off the ceiling with her
tendrils. "Even bottom luggers can't avoid things like this, My Lady Ravna"
Pham said something at the ship and most of the displays cleared.
Blueshell: "Even a huge Zone storm doesn't normally extend more than a
few light-years. We were two hundred light-years above the Zone boundary.
What hit us must be a monster surge, the sort of thing you only read about
in archives."
Small consolation. "We knew something like this could happen," Pham
said. "Things have been getting awfully rough the last few weeks." For a
change, he didn't seem too upset.
"Yes," she said. "We expected a slowing maybe, but not The Slowness."
We are trapped. "Where's the nearest habitable system? Ten light-years?
Fifty?" The vision of darkness had a new reality, and the starscape beyond
the ship's walls was no longer a friendly, steadying thing. Surrounded by
unending nothingness, moving at some vanishing fraction of the speed of
light ... entombed. All the courage of Kjet Svensndot and his fleet, for
nothing. Jefri Olsndot, forever unrescued.
Pham's hand touched her shoulder, the first touch in ... days? "We can
still make it to the Tines' world. This is a bottom lugger, remember? We are
not trapped. Hell, the ramscoop on this buggy is better than anything I ever
had in the Qeng Ho. And I thought I was the freest man in the universe back
then."
Decades of travel time, mostly in coldsleep. Such had been the world of
the Qeng Ho, the world of Pham's memories. Ravna let out a shuddering breath
that ended in weak laughter. For Pham, the terrible pressure was abated, at
least temporarily. He could be human.
"What's so funny?" said Pham.
She shook her head. "All of us. Never mind." She took a couple of slow
breaths. "Okay. I think I can make rational conversation. So the Zone has
surged. Something that normally takes a thousand years -- even in a storm --
to move a single light-year, has suddenly shifted two hundred. Hunh!
There'll be people a million years from now reading about this in the
archives. I'm not sure I want the honor.... We knew there was a storm, but I
never expected to be drowned," buried light-years deep beneath the sea.
"The sea storm analogy is not perfect," said Blueshell. The Skroderider
was still on the far side of the deck, where he had retreated after
questioning the Sjandra Kei captain. He still looked upset, though he was
back to sounding precise and picky. Blueshell was studying a nav display,
evidently a recording from right before the surge. He dumped the picture to
a display flat and rolled slowly across the ceiling toward them.
Greenstalk's fronds brushed him gently as he passed.
He sailed the display flat into Ravna's hands, and continued in a
lecturing tone. "Even in a sea storm, the water's surface is never as roiled
as in a big interface disturbance. The most recent News reports showed it as
a fractal surface with dimension close to three.... Like foam and spray."
Even he could not avoid the storm analogy. The starscapes hung serene beyond
crystal walls, and the loudest sound was a faint breeze from the ship's
ventilators. Yet they had been swallowed in a maelstrom. Blueshell waved a
frond at the display flat. "We could be back in the Beyond in a few hours."
"What?"
"See. The plane of the display is determined by the positions of the
supposed Sjandra Kei command vessel, the outflying craft that we contacted
directly, and ourselves." The three formed a narrow triangle, the Limmende
and Svensndot vertices close together. "I've marked the times that contact
was lost with the others. Notice: the link to Commercial Security HQ went
down 150 seconds before we were hit. From the incoming signal and its
requests for protocol changes, I believe that both we and the outflyer were
enveloped and at about the same time."
Pham nodded. "Yeah. The most distant sites losing contact last. That
must mean the surge moved in from the side."
"Exactly!" From his perch on the ceiling, Blueshell reached to tap the
display. "The three ships were like probes in the standard Zone mapping
technique. Replaying the trace displays will no doubt confirm the
conclusion."
Ravna looked at the plot. The long point of the triangle -- tipped by
the OOB -- pointed almost directly toward the heart of the galaxy. "It must
have been a huge, clifflike thing perpendicular to the rest of the surface."
"A monster wave sweeping sideways!" said Greenstalk. "And that's also
why it won't last long."
"Yes. It's the radial changes that are most often long term. This thing
must have a trailing edge. We should pass through it in a few hours -- and
back into the Beyond."
So there was still a race to be won or lost.
The first hours were strange. "A few hours," had been Blueshell's
estimate of when they would be back in the Beyond. They hung around the
bridge, alternately watching the clock and stewing about the strange
conversations just completed. Pham was building himself back to trigger
tension. Any time now, they would be back in the Beyond. What to do then? If
only a few ships were perverted, perhaps Svensndot could still coordinate an
attack. Would that do any good? Pham played the ultratrace recordings over
and over, studying every detectable ship in all the fleets. "But when we get
out, when we get out ... I'll know what to do. Not why I must do it, but
what." And he couldn't explain more.
Any time now.... There was scarcely any reason to do much about
resetting equipment that would need another initialization right away.
But after eight hours: "It really could be longer, even a day." They
had been scrounging around in the historical literature. "Maybe we should do
a little housekeeping." The Out of Band II had been designed for both the
Beyond and the Slowness, but that second environment was regarded as an
unlikely, emergency one. There were special-purpose processors for the Slow
Zone, but they hadn't come up automatically. With Blueshell's advice, Pham
took the high-performance automation off-line; that wasn't too difficult,
except for a couple of voice-actuated independents that were no longer
bright enough to understand the quitting commands.
Using the new automation gave Ravna a chill that, in a subtle way, was
almost as frightening as the original loss of the ultradrive. Her image of
the Slowness as darkness and torchlight -- that was just nightmare fantasy.
On the other hand, the Slowness as the domain of cretins and mechanical
calculators, there was something to that. The OOB's performance had degraded
steadily during their voyage to the Bottom, but now ... Gone were the
voice-driven graphics generators; they were just a bit too complex to be
supported by the new OOB, at least in full interpretive mode. Gone were the
intelligent context analyzers that made the ship's library almost as
accessible as one's own memories. Eventually, Ravna even turned off the art
and music units; without mood and context response, they seemed so wooden
... constant reminders that there were no brains behind them. Even the
simplest things were corrupted. Take voice and gesture controls: They no
longer responded consistently to sarcasm and casual slang. It took a certain
discipline to use them effectively. (Pham actually seemed to like this. It
reminded him of the Qeng Ho.)
Twenty hours. Fifty. Everyone was still telling each other there was
nothing to worry about. But now Blueshell said that talk of "hours" had been
unrealistic. Considering the height of the "tsunami" (at least two hundred
light-years), it would likely be several hundred light-years across -- that
in keeping with the scaling laws of historical precedent. There was only one
trouble with this reasoning: they were beyond all precedent. For the most
part, zone boundaries followed galactic mean density. There was virtually no
change from year to year, just the aeons' long shrinkage that might someday
-- after the death of all but the smallest stars -- expose the galactic core
to the Beyond. At any given time, perhaps one billionth of that boundary
might qualify as being in a "storm state". In an ordinary storm, the surface
might move in or out a light-year in a decade or so. Such storms were common
enough to affect the fortunes of many worlds every year.
Much rarer -- perhaps once in a hundred thousand years in the whole
galaxy -- there would be a storm where the boundary became seriously
distorted, and where surges might move at a high multiple of light speed.
These were the transverse surges that Pham and Blueshell made their scale
estimates from. The fastest moved at about a light-year per second, across a
distance of less than three lights; the largest were thirty light-years high
and moved at scarcely a light-year per day.
So what was known of monsters like the thing that had engulfed them?
Not much. Third-hand stories in the Ship's library told of surges perhaps as
big as theirs, but the quoted dimensions and propagation rates were not
clear. Stories more than a hundred million years old are hard to trust;
there are scarcely any intermediate languages. (And even if there were, it
wouldn't have helped. The new, dumb version of the OOB absolutely could not
do mechanical translation of natural languages. Dredging the library was
pointless.)
When Ravna complained about this to Pham, he said, "Things could be
worse. What was the Ur-Partition really?"
Five billion years ago. "No one's sure."
Pham jerked a thumb at his library display. "Some people think it was a
'super supersurge', you know. Something so big it swallowed the races that
might have recorded it. Sometimes the biggest disasters aren't noticed at
all -- no one's around to write horror stories."
Great.
"I'm sorry, Ravna. Honestly, if we're in anything like most past
disasters, we'll come out of it in another day or two. The best thing is to
plan for things that way. This is like a 'time-out' in the battle. Take
advantage of it to have a little peace. Figure out how to get the
unperverted parts of Commercial Security to help us."
"... Yeah." Depending on the shape of the surge's trailing edge the OOB
might have lost a good part of its lead.... But I'll bet the Alliance fleet
is completely panicked by all this. Such opportunists would likely run for
safety as soon as they're back in the Beyond.
The advice kept her busy for another twenty hours, fighting with the
half-witted things that claimed to be strategy planners on the new version
of the OOB. Even if the surge passed right this instant, it might be too
late. There were players in this game for whom the surge was not a time-out:
Jefri Olsndot and his Tinish allies. It had been seventy hours now since
their last contact; Ravna had missed three comm sessions with them. If she
were panicked, what must be like for Jefri? Even if Steel could hold off his
enemies, time -- and trust -- would be running out at Tines' world.
One hundred hours into the surge, Ravna noticed that Blueshell and Pham
were doing power tests on the OOB's ramscoop drive.... Some time-outs last
forever.
.Delete this paragraph to shift page flush
-=*=-
The summer hot spell broke for a time; in fact, it was almost chilly.
There was still the smoke and the air was still dry, but the winds seemed
less driven. Inside their cubby aboard the ship, Amdijefri weren't taking
much notice of the nice weather.
"They've been slow in answering before," said Amdi. "She's explained
how the ultrawave -- "
"Ravna's never been this late!" Not since the winter, anyway. Jefri's
tone hovered between fear and petulance. In fact, there was supposed to be a
transmission in the middle of the night, technical data for them to pass on
to Mr. Steel. It hadn't arrived by this morning, and now Ravna had also
missed their afternoon session, the time when normally they could just chat
for a bit.
The two children reviewed all the comm settings. The previous fall,
they had laboriously copied those and the first level diagnostics. It all
looked the same now ... except for something called "carrier detect". If
only they had a dataset, they might have looked up what that meant.
They had even very carefully reset some of the comm parameters ... then
nervously set them back when nothing happened. Maybe they hadn't given the
changes enough of a chance to work. Maybe now they had really messed
something up.
They stayed in the command cubby all through the afternoon, their minds
cycling trough fear and boredom and frustration. After four hours, boredom
had at least a temporary victory. Jefri was napping uneasily in his father's
hammock with two of Amdi curled up in his arms.
Amdi poked idly around the room, looked at the rocket controls. No ...
not even his self-confidence was up to playing with those. Another of him
jerked at the wall quilting. He could always watch the fungus grow for a
while. Things were that slow.
Actually, the gray stuff had spread a lot further than the last time he
looked. Behind the quilt, it was quite thick. He sent a chain of himself
squirreling back between the wall and the fabric. It was dark, but some
light spilled through the gap at the ceiling. In most places the mold was
scarcely an inch thick, but back here it was five or six -- wow. Just above
his exploring nose, a huge lump of it grew from the wall. This was as big as
some of the ornamental moss that decorated castle meeting halls. Slender
gray filaments grew down from the fungus. He almost called out to Jefri, but
the two of him in the hammock were so comfortable.
He brought a couple more heads close to the strangeness. The wall
behind it looked a little odd, too ... as though part of its substance had
been taken by the mold. And the gray itself: like smoke -- he felt the
filaments with his nose. They were solid, dry. His nose tickled. Amdi froze
in shocked surprise. Watching himself from behind, he saw that two of the
filaments had actually passed through his member's head! And yet there was
no pain, just that tickling feeling.
"What -- what?" Jefri had been jostled into wakefulness, as Amdi tensed
around him.
"I found something really strange, behind the quilts. I touched this
big hunk of fungus and -- "
As he spoke, Amdi gently backed away from thing on the wall. The touch
didn't hurt, but it made him more nervous than curious. He felt the
filaments sliding slowly out.
"I told you, we aren't supposed to play with that stuff. It's dirty.
The only good thing is, it doesn't smell." Jefri was out of the hammock. He
stepped across the cubby and lifted the quilting. Amdi's tip member lost its
balance and jerked away from the fungus. There was a snapping sound, and a
sharp pain in his lip.
"Geez, that thing is big!" Then, hearing Amdi's pain whistle, "You
okay?"
Amdi backed away from the wall. "I think so." The tip of one last
filament was still stuck in his lip. It didn't hurt as much as the nettles
he'd sampled a few days earlier. Amdijefri looked over the wound. What was
left of the smoky spine seemed hard and brittle. Jefri's fingers gently
worked it free. Then the two of them turned to wonder at the thing in the
wall.
"It really has spread. Looks like it's hurt the wall, too."
Amdi dabbed at his bloodied muzzle. "Yeah. I see why your folks told
you to stay away from it."
"Maybe we should have Mr. Steel scrub it all out."
The two spent half an hour crawling around behind all the quilting. The
grayness had spread far, but there was only the one marvelous flowering.
They came back to stare at it, even sticking articles of clothing into the
wisps. Neither risked fingers or noses on further contact.
Staring at the fungus on the wall was by far the most exciting thing
that happened that afternoon; there was no message from the OOB.
The next day the hot weather was back.
Two more days passed.... and still there was no word from Ravna.
Lord Steel paced the walls atop Starship Hill. It was near the middle
of the night, and the sun hung about fifteen degrees above the northern
horizon. Sweat filmed his fur; this was the warmest summer in ten years. The
drywind was into its thirtieth dayaround. It was no longer a welcome break
in the chill of the northland. The crops were dying in the fields. Smoke
from fjord fires was visible as brownish haze both north and south of the
castle. At first the reddish color had been a novelty, a welcome change from
the unending blue of sky and distance, and the whitish haze of the sea fogs.
Only at first. When fire struck East Streamsdell, the entire sky had been
dipped in red. Ash had rained all the dayaround, and the only smell had been
that of burning. Some said it was worse than the filthy air of the southern
cities.
The troops on the walls backed far out of his way. This was more than
courtesy, more than their fear of Steel. His troops were still not used to
the cloaked ones, and the cover story Shreck was spreading did nothing to
ease their minds: Lord Steel was accompanied by a singleton -- in the colors
of a Lord. The creature made no mind sounds. It walked incredibly close to
its master.
Steel said to the singleton, "Success is a matter of meeting a
schedule. I remember you teaching me that," cutting it into me, in fact.
The member looked back at him, cocked its head. "As I remember, I said
that success was a matter of adapting to changes in schedules." The words
were perfectly articulated. There were singletons that could talk that well
-- but even the most verbal could not carry on intelligent conversation.
Shreck had had no trouble convincing the troops that Flenser science had
created a race of superpacks, that the cloaked ones were individually as
smart as any ordinary pack. It was a good cover for what the cloaks really
were. It both inspired fear and obscured the truth.
The member stepped a little closer -- nearer to Steel than anyone had
been except during murders and rapes and the beatings of the past.
Involuntarily, Steel licked his lips and spread out from around the threat.
Yet in some ways the dark-cloaked one was like a corpse, without a trace of
mind sound. Steel snapped his jaws shut and said, "Yes. The genius is in
winning even when the schedules have fallen down the garderobe." He looked
all away from the Flenser member and scanned the red-shrouded southern
horizon. "What's the latest estimate of Woodcarver's progress?"
"She's still camped about five days southeast of here."
"The damned incompetent. It's hard to believe she's your parent!
Vendacious made things so easy for her; her soldiers and toy cannon should
have been here almost a tenday past -- "
"And been well-butchered, on schedule."
"Yes! Long before our sky friends arrived. Instead, she wanders inland
and then balks."
The Flenser member shrugged in its dark cloak. Steel knew the radio was
as heavy as it looked. It consoled him that the other was paying a price for
his omniscience. Just think, in heat like this, to have every part of
oneself muffled to the tympana. He could imagine the discomfort.... Indoors,
he could smell it.
They walked past one of the wall cannon. The barrel gleamed of layered
metal. The thing had thrice the range of Woodcarver's pitiful invention.
While Woodcarver had been working with Dataset and a human child's
intuition, he had had the direct advice of Ravna and company. At first he'd
feared their largesse, thinking it meant the Visitors were superior beyond
need for care. Now ... the more he heard of Ravna and the others, the more
clearly he understood their weakness. They could not experiment with
themselves, improve themselves. Inflexible, slow-changing dullards.
Sometimes they showed a low cunning -- Ravna's coyness about what she wanted
from the first starship -- but their desperation was loud in all their
messages, as was their attachment to the human child.
Everything had been going so well till just a few days ago. As they
walked out of earshot of the gunner pack, Steel said to the Flenser member,
"And still no word from our 'rescuers'."
"Quite so," That was the other botched schedule, the important one,
which they could not control. "Ravna has missed four sessions. Two of me is
down with Amdijefri right now." The singleton jabbed its snout toward the
dome of the inner keep. The gesture was an awkward abortion. Without other
muzzles and other eyes, body language was a limited thing. We just aren't
built to wander around a piece here, a piece there. "Another few minutes and
the space folk will have missed a fifth talk session. The children are
getting desperate, you know."
The member's voice sounded sympathetic. Almost unconsciously, Lord
Steel sidled a little farther out from around it. Steel remembered that tone
from his own early existence. He also remembered the cutting and death that
had always followed. "I want them kept happy, Tyrathect. We're assuming
communication will resume; when it does we'll need them." Steel bared six
pairs of jaws at the surrounded singleton. "None of your old tricks."
The member flinched, an almost imperceptible twitch that pleased Steel
more than the grovelling of ten thousand. "Of course not. I'm just saying
that you should visit them, try to help them with their fear."
"You do it."
"Ah ... they don't fully trust me. I've told you before, Steel; they
love you."
"Ha! And they've seen through to your meanness, eh?" The situation made
Steel proud. He had succeeded where Flenser's own methods would have failed.
He had manipulated without threats or pain. It had been Steel's craziest
experiment, and certainly his most profitable. But "-- Look, I don't have
time to wetnurse anyone. It's a tiresome thing to talk to those two." And it
was very tiresome to hold his temper, to suffer Jefri's "petting" and Amdi's
pranks. In the beginning, Steel had insisted that no one else have close
contact with the children. They were too important to expose to others; the
most casual slipup might show them the truth and ruin them. Even now,
Tyrathect was the only pack besides himself who had regular contact. But for
Steel, every meeting was worse than the last, an ultimate test of his self
control. It was hard to think straight in a killing rage, and that's how
almost every conversation with them ended for Steel. How wonderful it would
be when the space folk landed. Then he could use the other end of the tool
that was Amdijefri. Then there would be no need to have their trust and
friendship. Then he would have a lever, something to torture and kill to
enforce his demands.
Of course, if the aliens never landed, or if.... "We must do something!
I will not be flotsam on the wave of the future." Steel lashed at the
scaffolding that ran along the inner side of the parapet, shredding the wood
with his gleaming tines. "We can't do anything about the aliens, so let's
deal with Woodcarver. Yes!" He smiled at the Flenser member. "Ironic, isn't
it? For a hundred years, you sought her destruction. Now I can succeed. What
would have been your great triumph is for me just an annoying detour,
undertaken because greater projects are temporarily delayed."
The cloaked one did not look impressed. "There is a little matter of
gifts falling out of the sky."
"Yes, into my open jaws. And that is my good fortune, isn't it?" He
walked on several paces, chuckling to himself. "Yes. It's time to have
Vendacious bring his trusting Queen in for the slaughter. Maybe it will
interfere with other events, but.... I know, we'll have the battle east of
here."
"The Margrum Climb?"
"Correct. Woodcarver's forces should be well concentrated coming up the
defile. We'll move our cannon over there, set them behind the ridgeline at
the top of the Climb. It will be easy to destroy all her people. And it's
far enough from Starship Hill; even if the space folk arrive at the same
time, we can keep the two projects separate." The singleton didn't say
anything, and after a moment Steel glared at him. "Yes dear teacher, I know
there is a risk. I know it splits our forces. But we've got an army sitting
on our doorstep. They've arrived inconveniently late, but even Vendacious
can't make them turn around and go home. And if he tries to stall things,
the Queen might... Can you predict just what she would do?"
"... No. She has always had a way with the unexpected."
"She might even see through Vendacious' fraud. So. We take a small
chance, and destroy her now. You are with Farscout Rangolith?"
"Yes. Two of me."
"Tell him to get word to Vendacious. He is to have the Queen's army
coming up Margrum Climb not less than two days from now. Feel free to
elaborate; you know the region better than I. We'll work out final details
when both sides are in position." It was a wonderful thing to be the
effective commander of both sides in a battle! "One more thing. It's
important and Vendacious must see to it within the dayaround: I want
Woodcarver's human dead."
"What harm can she do?"
"That's a stupid question," especially coming from you. "We don't know
when Ravna and Pham may reach us. Till we have them safe in our jaws, the
Johanna creature is a dangerous thing to have nearby. Tell Vendacious to
make it look like an accident, but I want that Two-Legs dead."
Flenser was everywhere. It was a form of godhood he'd dreamed of since
he'd been Woodcarver's newby. While one of him talked to Steel, two others
lounged about the Starship with Amdijefri, and two more padded through light
forest just north of Woodcarver's encampment.
Paradise can also be an agony, and each day the torment was a little
harder to bear. In the first place, this summer was as insufferably hot as
any in the North. And the radio cloaks were not merely hot and heavy. They
necessarily covered his members' tympana. And unlike other uncomfortable
costumes, the price of taking these off for even a moment was mindlessness.
His first trials had lasted just an hour or two. Then had come a five-day
expedition with Farscout Rangolith, providing Steel with instant information
and instant command of the country around Starhip Hill. It had taken a
couple of dayarounds to recover from the sores and aches of the radio
cloaks.
This latest exercise in omniscience had lasted twelve days. Wearing the
cloaks all the time was impossible. Every day in a rotation, one of his
members threw off its radio, was bathed, and had its cloak's liner changed.
It was Flenser's hour of daily madness, when sometimes the weak-willed
Tyrathect would come back to mind, vainly trying to reestablish her
dominance. It didn't matter. With one of his members disconnected, the
remaining pack was only four. There are foursomes of normal intelligence,
but none existed in Flenser/Tyrathect. The bathing and recloaking were all
done in a confused haze.
And of course, even though Flenser was "everywhere at once", he wasn't
any smarter than before. After the first jarring experiments, he got the
hang of seeing/hearing scenes that were radically different -- but it was as
difficult as ever to carry on multiple conversations. When he was bantering
with Steel, his other members had very little to say to Amdijefri or to
Rangolith's scouts.
Lord Steel was done with him. Flenser walked along the parapets with
his former student, but if Steel had said anything to him it would have
taken him away from his current conversation. Flenser smiled (carefully so
the one with Steel would not show it). Steel thought he was talking to
Farscout Rangolith just now. Oh, he would do that ... in a few minutes. One
advantage of his situation was that no one could know for sure everything
Flenser was up to. If he was careful, he would eventually rule here again.
It was a dangerous game, and the cloaks were themselves dangerous devices.
Keep a cloak out of sunlight for a few hours and it lost power, and the
member wearing it was cut off from the pack. Worse was the problem of static
-- that was a mantis word. The second set of cloaks had killed its user, and
the Spacers weren't sure of the cause, except that it was some sort of
"interference" problem.
Flenser had experienced nothing so extreme. But sometimes on his
farthest hikes with Rangolith, or when a cloak's power faded ... there was
an incredible shrieking in his mind, like a dozen packs crowding close,
sounds that scaled between sex madness and killing frenzy. Tyrathect seemed
to like times like that; she'd come bounding out of the confusion, swamping