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have no trouble managing this rescue."
Even four weeks ago, Ravna wouldn't have dared to ask for more. Now:
"Sir, I have a better idea. Send me with the Skroderiders."
All of Grondr's mouth parts clapped together at once. She'd seen that
much surprise in people like Egravan, but never in the staid Grondr. He was
silent for a moment. "No. We need you here. You are our best sanity check
when it comes to questions about humankind." The newsgroups interested in
the Straumli Perversion carried more than one hundred thousand messages a
day, about a tenth of that human-related. Thousands of messages were old
ideas rehashed, or patent absurdities, or probable lies. Marketing's
automation was fairly good at filtering out the redundancy and some of the
absurdity, but when it came to questions on human nature Ravna was without
equal. About half her time was spent guiding that analysis and handling
queries about humankind at the archives. All that would be next to
impossible if she left with the Skroderiders.
Over the next few days, Ravna kept pushing her boss on the question.
Whoever flew the rescue would need instant rapport with humans -- human
children, in fact. Very likely Jefri Olsndot had never even met a
Skroderider. The point was a good one, and it was gradually driving her to
desperation -- but by itself it would not have changed old Grondr's mind. It
took some outside events to do that: As the weeks passed, the Blight's
expansion slowed. Just as conventional wisdom (and Old One via Pham Nuwen)
claimed, there seemed to be natural limits to how far the Perversion could
extend its interests. The abject panic slowly disappeared from High Beyond
communication traffic. Rumors and refugees from the absorbed volumes
dribbled toward zero. The people in the Blighted spaces were gone, but now
it was more like death in a graveyard than death from contagious rot.
Blight-related newsgroups continued to babble about the catastrophe, but the
level of nonproductive rehashing was steadily increasing. There simply was
very little new going on. Over the next ten years, physical death would
spread through the Blighted region. Colonization would begin again,
cautiously probing through the ruins and informational traps, and residue
races. But all of that was a ways off, and for the moment Relay's Blight
"windfall" was a shrinking affair.
... And Marketing was even more interested in the Straumli refugee
ship. None of the strategy programs -- much less Grondr -- believed the
ship's secret could hurt the Blight, but there was a good chance it might
bring commercial advantage when the Perversion finally got tired of its
Transcendent game. And the Tines pack-minds had caught their interest. It
was very appropriate that a maximum effort be made, that Ravna give up her
Docks job and go to the field.
So, for a wonder, her childhood fantasy of rescue and questing
adventure would actually come true. And even more surprising, I'm only
half-terrified by the prospect!
Target[56]: Im sorry I diddnt anser for a while. I dont feel good a
lot. Mister Steel says I should talk to you. He says I need more friends to
make me feel better. Amdi says so too and hes my best friend of all.... like
packs of dogs but smart and fun. I wish I could send pictures. Mister Steel
will try to get ansers for all your questions. He is doing everything he can
to help, but the bad packs will be back. Amdi and I tried the stuff you said
with the ship. I am sorry, it still doesnt work.... I hate this dumb
keybord....
Org[57]: Hi, Jefri. Amdi and Mr. Steel are right. I always like to
talk, and it will make you feel better.... There are inventions that might
help Mister Steel. We've thought of some improvements for his bows and
flamethrowers. I'm also sending down some fortress design information.
Please tell Mister Steel that we can't tell him how to fly the ship. It
would be dangerous even for an expert pilot to try....
Target[57]: Ya, even Daddy had a hard time landing it.
ikocxljikersw89iou43e5 I think Mister Steel just doesnt understand, and hes
getting sorta disparate.... Isnt there other stuff, though, like they had in
oldendays. You know, bombs and airplanes that we could make?...
Org[58]: There are other inventions, but it would take time for Mister
Steel to make them. Our star ship is leaving Relay soon, Jefri. We'll be
there long before other inventions would help....
Target[58]: Your coming? Your finally coming!!! When do you leave? When
will you get here???
Ordinarily Ravna composed her messages to Jefri on a keyboard -- it
gave her some feeling for the kid's situation. He seemed to be holding up,
though there were still days when he didn't write (it was strange to think
of "mental depression" having any connection with an eight-year-old). Other
times he seemed to have a tantrum at the keyboard, and across twenty-one
thousand light-years she saw evidence of small fists slamming into keys.
Ravna grinned at the display. Today she finally had something more than
nebulous promises for him: she had a positive departure time. Jefri was
going to like message [59]. She typed: "We're scheduled to leave in seven
more days, Jefri. Travel time will be about thirty days." Should she qualify
that? Latest postings on the Zone boundary newsgroups said the Bottom was
unusually active. The Tines World was so close to the Slow Zone ... If the
"storm" worsened, travel time would suffer. There was about a one percent
chance the voyage would take more than sixty days. She leaned back from the
keyboard. Did she really want to say that? Damn. Better be frank; these
dates could affect the locals who were helping Jefri. She explained the
"ifs" and "buts", then went on to describe the ship and the wonderful things
they would bring. The boy usually didn't write at great length (except when
he was relaying information from Steel), but he really seemed to like long
letters from her.
The Out of Band II was undergoing final consistency checks. Its
ultradrive was rebuilt and tested; the Skroderiders had taken it out a
couple of thousand light-years to check the antenna swarm. The swarm worked
great, too. She and Jefri would be able to talk through most of the voyage.
As of yesterday, the ship was stocked with consumables. (That sounded like
something out of medieval adventure. But you had to take some supplies when
you were headed so far down that reality graphics couldn't be trusted.)
Sometime tomorrow, Grondr's people would be loading the ship's hold with
gadgets that might be real handy for a rescue. Should she mention those?
Some of them might sound a bit intimidating to Jefri's local friends.
That evening, she and the Skroderiders had a beach party. That's what
they called it, though it was much more like the human version than an
authentic Rider one. Blueshell and Greenstalk had rolled well back from the
water, to where the sand lay dry and warm. Ravna laid out refreshments on
Blueshell's cargo scarf. They sat on the sand and admired the sunset.
It was mostly a celebration -- that Ravna had gotten permission to go
with the OOB, that the ship was almost ready to depart. But, "Are you really
happy to be going, my lady?" asked Blueshell. "We two will make very good
money, but you -- "
Ravna laughed. "I'll get a travel bonus." She had argued and argued for
permission to go; there wasn't much room left to haggle about the pay. "And
yes. This is what I really want."
"I am glad," said Greenstalk.
"I am laughing," said Blueshell. "My mate is especially pleased that
our passenger will not be surly. We almost lost our love for bipeds after
shipping with the certificants. But there is nothing to be frightened of
now. Have you read Threats Group in the last fifteen hours? The Blight has
stopped growing, and its edges have become sharply defined. The Perversion
is settling into middle age. I'm ready to leave right now."
Blueshell was full of speculations about the Tinish "packs", and
possible schemes for extracting Jefri and any other survivors. Greenstalk
interjected a thought here and there. She was less shy than before, but
still seemed softer, more diffident than her mate. And her confidence was a
bit more realistic. She was glad they weren't leaving for another week.
There were still the final consistency checks to run on the OOB -- and
Grondr had gotten Org financing for a small fleet of decoy ships. Fifty were
complete so far. A hundred would be ready by the end of the week.
The Docks drifted into night. With its shallow atmosphere, twilight was
short, but the colors were spectacular. The beach and the trees glistened in
the horizontal rays. The scent of evening flowers mixed with the tang of sea
salt. On the far side of the sea, all was stark bright and dark, silhouettes
that might have been Vrinimi fancies or functional dock equipage -- Ravna
had never learned which. The sun slid behind the sea. Orange and red spread
along the aft horizon, topped by a wider band of green, probably ionized
oxygen.
The Riders didn't turn their skrodes for a better view -- for all she
knew, they had been looking that way all along -- but they stopped talking.
As the sun set, the breakers shattered it into a thousand images, glints of
green and yellow through the foam. She guessed the two would have preferred
to be out there just now. She had seen them often enough around sunset,
deliberately sitting where the surf was hardest. When the water drew back,
their stalks and fronds were like supplicants' arms, upstretched. At times
like these she could almost understand the Lesser Skroderiders; they spent
their whole lives memorizing such repeated moments. She smiled in the
greenish twilight. There would always be time enough later to worry and
plan.
They must have sat like that for twenty minutes. Along the curving line
of the beach, she saw tiny fires in the gathering dark: office parties.
Somewhere very nearby there was the crunch crunch of feet on sand. She
turned and saw that it was Pham Nuwen. "Over here," she called.
Pham ambled toward them. He'd been very scarce since their last
confrontation; Ravna guessed that some of her jibes had struck deep. This
once, I hope Old One made him forget. Pham Nuwen had the potential to be a
real person; it hadn't been right to hurt him because his principal was
beyond reach.
"Have a seat. Galaxy-rise in a half hour." The Skroderiders rustled, so
deep into the sunset that they were only now noticing the visitor.
Pham Nuwen walked a pace or two beyond Ravna and stood arms akimbo,
staring across the sea. He glanced back at her, and the green twilight gave
his face an eerie fierceness. He flashed his old, lopsided smile. "I think I
owe you an apology."
Old One's gonna let you join the human race after all? But Ravna was
touched. She dropped her eyes from his. "I guess I owe you one too. If Old
One won't help, he won't help; I shouldn't have lost my temper."
Pham Nuwen laughed softly, "Yours was certainly the lesser error. I'm
still trying to figure out where I went wrong, and ... I don't think I have
time now to learn."
He looked back at the sea. After a moment, Ravna stood and stepped
toward him. Up close, his stare looked glassy. "What's wrong?" Damn you, Old
One. If you're going to abandon him, don't do it in pieces!
"You're the great expert on Transcendent Powers, eh?"
More sarcasm. "Well -- "
"Do the big boys have wars?"
Ravna shrugged. "You can find rumors of everything. We think there's
conflict, but something too subtle to call war."
"You're pretty much right. There is struggle, but it has more angles
than anything down here. The benefits of cooperation are normally so great
that.... That's part of the reason I didn't take the Perversion seriously.
Besides, the creature is pitiful: a wimpy cur that fouls its own den. Even
if it wanted to kill other Powers, something like that never could. Not in a
billion years...."
Blueshell rolled up beside them. "Who is this, my lady?"
It was the sort of Riderish conversation-stopper that she was only just
getting used to. If Blueshell would just get in synch with his skrode
memory, he'd know. Then the question truly hit her. Who is this? She glanced
at her dataset. It was showing transceiver status, had been ever since Pham
Nuwen arrived. And ... by the Powers, three transceivers had been grabbed by
a single customer!
She took a quick step backwards. "You!"
"Me! Face to face once more, Ravna." The leer was a parody of Pham's
self-assured smile. "Sorry I can't be charming tonight." He slapped his
chest awkwardly. "I'm using this thing's underlying instincts.... I'm too
busy trying to stay alive."
There was drool coming down his chin. Pham's eyes would focus on her
and then drift.
"What are you doing to Pham!"
The Emissary Device stepped toward her, stumbled. "Making room," came
Pham Nuwen's voice.
Ravna spoke Grondr's phone code. There was no response.
The Emissary Device shook its head. "Vrinimi Org is very busy right
now, trying to convince me to get off their equipment, trying to screw up
their courage and force me off. They don't believe what I'm telling them" He
laughed, a quick choking sound. "Doesn't matter. I see now that the attack
here was just a deadly diversion.... How about that, Little Ravna? See, the
Blight is not a Class Two perversion. In the time I have left, I can only
guess what it is.... Something very old, very big. Whatever it is, I'm being
eaten alive."
Blueshell and Greenstalk had rolled close to Ravna. Their fronds made
faint skritching noises. Some thousands of light-years away, well into the
Transcend, a Power was fighting for its life. And all they saw of it was one
man turned into a slobbering lunatic.
"So that's my apology, Little Ravna. Helping you probably wouldn't have
saved me." His voice strangled on itself, and he took a gasping breath. "But
helping you now will be a measure of -- vengeance is a motive you would
understand. I've called your ship down. If you move fast and don't use
agrav, you may survive the next hour."
Blueshell's voice was timid and blustery at the same time. "Survive?
Only a conventional attack could work down here, and there is no sign of
one."
A maniac surrounded by the soft, quiet night. Ravna's dataset showed
nothing strange except for the diversion of bandwidth to Old One.
Pham Nuwen made a coughing laugh. "Oh, it's conventional enough, but
very clever. A few grams of replicant disorder, wafted in over weeks. It's
blossoming now, timed with the attack you see.... The growth will die in a
matter of hours, after it kills all of Relay's precious High automation....
Ravna! Take the ship, or die in the next thousand seconds. Take the ship. If
you survive, go to the Bottom. Get the...." the Emissary Device pulled
itself straighter, and smiled its greenish smile a last time. "And here is
my gift to you, the best help I have left to give."
The smile disappeared. The glassy look was replaced by a wonder ... and
then mounting terror. Pham Nuwen dragged in a great breath, and had time for
one barking scream before he collapsed. He landed face down, twitching and
choking in the sand.
Ravna shouted Grondr's code again, and ran to Pham Nuwen. She pulled
him over on his back and tried to clear his mouth. The fit lasted several
seconds, Pham's limbs flailing randomly about. Ravna collected several solid
hits as she tried to steady him. Then Pham went limp, and she could barely
feel his breath.
Blueshell was saying, "Somehow he's grabbed the OOB. It's four thousand
kilometers out, coming straight for the Docks. Wail. We're ruined."
Unauthorized flight close to the Docks was cause for confiscation.
Somehow Ravna didn't think it mattered anymore. "Is there any sign of
attack?" she said over her shoulder. She eased Pham's head back, made sure
he had a clear breathing passage.
Random rustling between the Skroderiders. Greenstalk: "Something is
strange. We have service suspension on the main transceivers." So Old One is
still transmitting? "The local net is very clogged. Much automation, many
employees being called to special duty."
Ravna rocked back. The sky was night dark, punctuated by a dozen bright
points of light -- ships guiding for the Docks. All very normal. But her own
dataset was showing what Greenstalk reported.
"Ravna, I can't talk right now." Grondr's clickety voice sounded out of
the air beside her. This would be his associate program. "Old One has taken
most of Relay. Watch out for the Emissary Device." A little late, that!
"We've lost contact with the surveillance fence beyond the transceivers. We
are having program and hardware failures. Old One claims we are being
attacked." A five second pause. "We see evidence of fleet action at the
domestic defense boundary." That was just a half light-year out.
"Brap!" From Blueshell. "At the domestic defense boundary! How could
you miss them coming in?" He rolled back and forth, pivoted.
Grondr's associate ignored the question. "Minimum three thousand ships.
Destruction of transceivers immin -- "
"Ravna, are the Skroderiders with you?" It was still Grondr's voice,
but more staccato, more involved. This was the real guy.
"Y-yes."
"The local network is failing. Life support failing. The Docks will
fall. We would be stronger than the attacking fleet, but we're rotting from
the inside.... Relay is dying." His voice sharpened, clattering, "but
Vrinimi will not die, and a contract is a contract! Tell the Riders, we will
pay them ... somehow, someday. We require ... plead ... they fly the mission
we contracted. Ravna?"
"Yes. They hear."
"Then go!" And the voice was gone.
Blueshell said, "OOB will be here in two hundred seconds."
Pham Nuwen had calmed, and his breathing was easier. As the two Riders
chittered back and forth, Ravna looked around -- and suddenly realized that
all the death and destruction had been reports from afar. The beach and the
sky were almost as placid as ever. The last of the sun's rays had left the
waves. The foam was a dim band in the low green light. Here and there,
yellow lights glowed in the trees and the farther towers.
Yet the alarum had clearly spread. She could hear datasets coming on.
Some of the beach fires guttered out, and the figures around them ran into
the trees or drifted upwards, headed for farther offices. Now starships
floated up from their berths across the sea, falling higher and higher till
they glittered in the departed sunlight.
It was Relay's last moment of peace.
A patch of glowing dark spread across the sky. She gasped at light so
twisted it should have gone unseen. It shone more in the back of her head
than in her eyes. Afterwards she couldn't think what made it objectively
different from blackness.
"There's another!" said Blueshell. This one was near the Decks'
horizon, a blot of darkness perhaps a degree across. The edges were an
indistinct bleeding of black into black.
"What is it?" Ravna was no war freak, but she'd read her share of
adventure stories. She knew about antimatter bombs and relativistic KE
slugs. From a distance such weapons were bright spots of light, sometimes an
orchestrated flickering. Or closer: a world-wrecker would glow incandescent
across the curve of a planet, splashing the globe itself like a drop of
water, but slow, slow. Those were the images her reading had prepared her
for. What she saw now was more like a defect in her eyesight than a vision
of war.
Powers only knew what the Skroderiders saw, but: "Your main
transceivers ... vaping out, I think," said Blueshell.
"Those are light-years out! There's no way we could see -- " Another
splotch appeared, not even in her field of view. The color floated,
placeless. Pham Nuwen spasmed again, but weakly. She had no trouble holding
him still, but ... blood dribbled from his mouth. The back of his shirt was
wet with something that stank of decay.
"OOB will be here in one hundred seconds. Plenty of time, there's
plenty of time." Blueshell rolled back and forth around them, talking
reassurance that just showed how nervous he was. "Yes, my lady, light-years
out. And years from now, the flash of their going will light the sky for
anyone still alive here. But only a fraction of the vape-out is making
light. The rest is an ultrawave surge so great that ordinary matter is
affected.... Optic nerves tickled by the overflow.... So much that your own
nervous system becomes a receiver." He spun around. "But don't worry. We're
tough and quick. We've squeezed through close spots before." There was
something absurd about a creature with no short-term memory bragging up its
lightning reflexes. She hoped his skrode was up to this.
Greenstalk's voice buzzed painfully loud. "Look!"
The surf line was drawing back, further than she had ever seen it.
"The sea is falling!" shouted Greenstalk. Water's edge had pulled back
a hundred meters, two hundred. The green-limned horizon was dipping.
"Ship's still fifty seconds out. We'll fly to meet it. Come, Ravna!"
Ravna's own courage died cold that second. Grondr had said the Docks
would fall! The near sky was crowded now as dozens of people raced for
safety. A hundred meters away the sand itself was shifting, an avalanche
tilting toward the abyss. She remembered something Old One had said, and
suddenly she knew the fliers were making a terrible mistake. The thought cut
through her terror. "No! Just head for higher ground."
The night was silent no more. A bell-like moaning came from the sea.
The sound spread. The sunset breeze grew to a gale that twisted the trees
toward the water, sending branches and sand sweeping past them.
Ravna was still on her knees, her hands pressing down on Pham's limp
arms. No breath, no pulse. The eyes stared sightlessly. Old One's gift to
her. Damn all the Powers! She grabbed Pham Nuwen under the shoulders and
rolled him onto her back.
She gagged, almost lost her grip. Underneath his shirt she felt
cavities where there should be solid flesh. Something wet and rank dripped
around her sides. She struggled up from her knees, half-carrying and
half-dragging the body.
Blueshell was shouting, "-- take hours to roll anywhere." He drifted
off the ground, driving his agrav against the wind. Skrode and Rider twisted
drunkenly for an instant ... and then he was slammed back to the ground,
tumbled willy-nilly toward the wind's destination, the moaning hole that had
been the sea. Greenstalk raced to his seaward side, blocking his progress
toward destruction. Blueshell righted himself and the two rolled back toward
Ravna. The Rider's voice was faint in the wind: "... agrav ... failing!" And
with it the very structure of the Docks.
They walked and wheeled their way back from the sucking sea. "Find a
place to land the OOB."
The tree line was a jagged range of hills now. The landscape changed
before their eyes and under her feet. The groaning sound was everywhere,
some places so loud it buzzed through Ravna's shoes. They avoided sagging
terrain, the sink holes that opened on all sides. The night was dark no
more. Whether it was emergency lighting or a side-effect of the agrav
failure, blue glowed along the holes. Through those holes they saw the
cloud-decked night of Groundside a thousand kilometers below. The space
between was not empty. There were shimmering phantoms: billions of tonnes of
water and earth ... and hundreds of dying fliers. Vrinimi Org was paying the
price for building their Docks on agrav instead of inertial orbit.
Somehow the three were making progress. Pham Nuwen was almost too heavy
to carry/drag; she staggered left and right almost as much as she moved
forward. Yet he was lighter that she would have guessed. And that was
terrifying in its own way: was even the high ground failing?
Most of the agravs died by failure, but some suffered destructive
runaway: clumps of trees and earth ripped free from the tops of hillocks and
accelerated upwards. The wind shifted back and forth, up and down ... but it
was thinner now, the noise remote. The artificial atmosphere that clothed
the Docks would soon be gone. Ravna's pocket pressure suit worked for a few
minutes, but now it was fading. In a few minutes it would be as dead as her
agravs ... as dead as she would be. She wondered vaguely how the Blight had
managed this. Like the Old One, she would likely die without ever knowing.
She saw torch flares; there were ships. Most had boosted for inertial
orbits or gone directly into ultradrive, but a few hung over the
disintegrating landscape. Blueshell and Greenstalk led the way. The two used
their third axles in ways Ravna had never guessed at, lifting and pushing to
clamber up slopes that she could scarcely negotiate with Pham's weight
dragging from her back.
They were on a hilltop, but not for long. This had been part of the
office forest. Now the trees stuck out in different directions, like hair on
a mangy dog. She felt the ground throbbing beneath her feet. What next? The
Skroderiders rolled from one side of the peak to another. They would be
rescued here or nowhere. She went to her knees, resting most of Pham's
weight on the ground. From here you could see a long ways. The Docks looked
like a slowly flapping flag, and every immense whip of the fabric broke
fragments loose. As long as some consensus remained among the agrav units,
it still had planar aspect. That was disappearing. There were sink holes all
around their little knob of forest. On the horizon, Ravna saw the far edge
of the Docks detach itself and turn slowly sideways: a hundred kilometers
long, ten wide, it swept down on would-be rescue ships.
Blueshell brushed against her left side, Greenstalk against her right.
Ravna twisted, laying some of Pham's weight on the skrode hulls. If all four
merged their pressure suits, there would be a few more moments of
consciousness. "The OOB: I'm flying it down!" he said.
Something was coming down. A ship's torch lit the ground blue white,
with shadows stark and shifting. It's not a healthy thing to be around a
rocket drive hovering in a near-one-gee field. An hour earlier the maneuver
would have been impossible, or a capital offense if accomplished. Now it
didn't matter if the torch punched through the Docks or fried a cargo from
halfway across the galaxy.
Still ... where could Blueshell land the thing? They were surrounded by
sinkholes and moving cliffs. She closed her eyes as the burning light
drifted down before them ... and then dimmed. Blueshell's shout was thin in
their shared atmosphere. "Let's go together!"
She held tight to the Riders, and they crawled/wheeled down from their
little hill. The Out of Band II was hovering in the middle of a sinkhole.
Its torch was hidden from view, but the glare off the sides of the hole put
the ship in sharp silhouette, turned its ultradrive spines into feathery
white arcs. A giant moth with glowing wings ... and just out of reach.
If their suits held, they could make it to the edge of the hole. Then
what? The spines kept the ship from getting closer than a hundred meters. An
able-bodied (and crazy) human might try to grab a spine and crawl down it.
But Skroderiders had their own brand of insanity: Just as the light --
the reflected light -- became too much to bear ... the torch winked out. The
OOB fell through the hole. This didn't stop the Riders' advance. "Faster!"
said Blueshell. And now she guessed what they planned. Quickly for such an
awkward jumble of limbs and wheels, they moved up to the edge of the
darkened hole. Ravna felt the dirt giving way beneath her feet, and then
they were falling.
The Decks were hundreds -- in places, thousands -- of meters thick.
They fell past them now, past dim eerie flickers of internal destruction.
Then they were through, still falling. For a moment the feeling of wild
panic was gone. After all this was simply free fall, a commonplace, and a
damnsight more peaceful than the disintegrating Docks. Now it was easy to
hold onto the Riders and Pham Nuwen, and even their commensal atmosphere
seemed a little thicker than before. There was something to be said for hard
vacuum and free fall. Except for an occasional rogue agrav, everything was
coming down at the same acceleration, ruins peacefully settling. And four or
five minutes from now they would hit Groundside's atmosphere, still falling
almost straight downwards.... Entry velocity only three or four kilometers
per second. Would they burn up? Maybe. Flashes pricked bright above the
cloud-decks.
The junk around them was mostly dark, just shadows against the sky show
above. But the wreckage directly below was large and regular ... the OOB,
bow on! The ship was falling with them. Every few seconds a trim jet fired,
a faint reddish glow. The ship was closing with them. If it had a nose
hatch, they would land right on it.
Its docking lights flicked on, bright upon them. Ten meters separation.
Five. There was a hatch, and open! She could see a very ordinary airlock
within....
Whatever hit them was big. Ravna saw a vague expanse of plastic rising
over her shoulder. The rogue was slowly turning, and it scarcely brushed
them -- but that was enough. Pham Nuwen was jarred from her grasp. His body
was lost in shadow, then suddenly bright lit as the ship's spotlight tracked
after him. Simultaneously the air gusted out of Ravna's lungs. They were
down to three pocket pressure fields now, failing fields; it was not enough.
Ravna could feel consciousness slipping away, her vision tunneling. So
close.
The Riders unlatched from each other. She grabbed at the skrode hulls
and they drifted, strung out, over the ship's lock. Blueshell's skrode
jerked against her as the he made fast to the hatch. The jolt twisted her
around, whipping Greenstalk upwards. Things were getting dreamy now. Where
was panic when you needed it? Hold tight, hold tight, hold tight, sang the
little voice, all that was left of consciousness. Bump, jerk. The Riders
pushed and pulled at her. Or maybe it was the ship jerking all of them
around. They were puppets, dancing off a single string.
... Deep in the tunnel of her vision, a Rider grabbed at the tumbling
figure of Pham Nuwen.
Ravna wasn't aware of losing consciousness, but the next she knew she
was breathing air and choking on vomit -- and was inside the airlock. Solid
green walls closed in comfortingly on all sides. Pham Nuwen lay on the far
wall, strapped into a first aid canister. His face had a bluish cast.
She pushed awkwardly across the lock toward Pham Nuwen's wall. The
place was a confused jumble, unlike the passenger and sporting ships she'd
been on before. Besides, this was a Rider design. Stickem patches were
scattered around the walls; Greenstalk had mounted her skrode on one
cluster.
They were accelerating, maybe a twentieth of a gee. "We're still going
down?"
"Yes. If we hover or rise, we'll crash," into all the junk that still
rains from above. "Blueshell is trying to fly us out." They were falling
with the rest, but trying to drift out from under -- before they hit
Groundside. There was an occasional rattle/ping against the hull. Sometimes
the acceleration ceased, or shifted in a new direction. Blueshell was
actively avoiding the big pieces.
... Not with complete success. There was long, rasping sound that ended
with a bang, and the room turned slowly around her. "Brrap! Just lost an
ultradrive spine," came Blueshell's voice. "Two others already damaged.
Please strap down, my lady."
They touched atmosphere a hundred seconds later. The sound was a barely
perceptible humming beyond the hull. It was the sound of death for a ship
like this. It could no more aerobrake than a dog could jump over the moon.
The noise came louder. Blueshell was actually diving, trying to get deep
enough to shed the junk that surrounded the ship. Two more spines broke.
Then came a long surge of main axis acceleration. Out of Band II arced out
of the Docks' death shadow, drove out and out, into inertial orbit.
Ravna looked over Blueshell's fronds at the outside windows. They had
just passed Groundside's terminator, and were flying an inertial orbit. They
were in free fall again, but this trajectory curved back on itself without
whacking into big hard things -- like Groundside.
Ravna didn't know much more about space travel than you'd expect of a
frequent passenger and an adventure fan. But it was obvious that Blueshell
had pulled off a near miracle. When she tried to thank him, the Rider rolled
back and forth across the stick-patches, buzzing faintly to himself.
Embarrassed? or just Riderly inattentive?
Greenstalk spoke, sounding a little shy, a little proud: "Far trading
is our life, you know. If we are cautious, life will be mostly safe and
placid, but there will be close passages. Blueshell practices all the time,
programming his skrode with every wit he can imagine. He is a master." In
everyday life, indecision seemed to dominate the Riders. But in a crunch,
they didn't hesitate to bet everything. She wondered how of that was the
skrode overriding its rider?
"Grump," said Blueshell. "I have simply postponed the close passage. I
broke several of our drive spines. What if they do not self-repair? What do
we do then? Everything around Groundside is destroyed. There is junk
everywhere out to a hundred radii. Not dense like around the Docks, but of
much higher velocity." You can't inject billions of tonnes of wreckage into
buckshot orbits and expect safe navigation. "And any second, the
Perversion's creatures will be here, eating whoever survives."
"Urk." Greenstalk's tendrils froze in comical disarray. She chittered
to herself for a second. "You're right ... I forgot. I thought we had found
an open space, but ..."
Open space all right, but in a shooting gallery. Ravna looked back at
the command deck windows. They were on the dayside now, perhaps five hundred
kilometers above Groundside's principal ocean. The space above the hazy blue
horizon was free of flash and glow. "I don't see any fighting," Ravna said
hopefully.
"Sorry." Blueshell switched the windows to a more significant view.
Most of it was navigation and ultratrace information, meaningless to Ravna.
Her eye caught on a medstat: Pham Nuwen was breathing again. The ship's
surgeon thought it could save him. But there was also a communication status
window; on it, the attack was dreadfully clear. The local net had broken
into hundreds of screaming fragments. There were only automatic voices from
the planetary surface, and they were calling for medical aid. Grondr had
been down there. Somehow she suspected that not even his Marketing ops
people had survived. Whatever hit Groundside was even deadlier than the
failures at the Docks. In near planetary space, there were a few survivors
in ships and fragments of habitats, most on doomed trajectories. Without
massive and coordinated help, they would be dead in minutes -- hours at the
outside. The directors of Vrinimi Org were gone, destroyed before they ever
figured out quite what had happened.
Go, Grondr had said, go.
Out-system, there was fighting. Ravna saw message traffic from Vrinimi
defense units. Even without control or coordination, some still opposed the
Perversion's fleet. The light from their battles would arrive well after the
defeat, well after the enemy arrived here in person. How long do we have?
Minutes?
"Brrap. Look at those traces," said Blueshell. "The Perversion has
almost four thousand vessels. They are bypassing the defenders."
"But now there is scarcely anyone left out there," said Greenstalk. "I
hope they're not all dead."
"Not all. I see several thousand ships departing, everyone with the
means and any sense." Blueshell rolled back and forth. "Alas! We have the
good sense ... but look at this repair report." One window spread large,
filled with colored patterns that meant less than zip to Ravna. "Two spines
still broken, unrepairable. Three partially repaired. If they don't heal,
we'll be stuck here. This is unacceptable!" His voder voice buzzed up
shrilly. Greenstalk drove close to him, and they rattled their fronds at
each other.
Several minutes passed. When Blueshell spoke Samnorsk again, his voice
was quieter. "One spine repaired. Maybe, maybe, maybe...." He opened a
natural view. The OOB was coasting across Groundside's south pole, back into
night. Their orbit should take them over the worst of the Docks junk, but
the ride was a constant jigging as the ship avoided other debris. The cries
of battle horror from out-system dwindled. The Vrinimi Organization was one
vast, twitching corpse ... and very soon its killer would come snuffling.
"Two repaired." Blueshell became very quiet.... "Three! Three are
repaired! Fifteen seconds to recalibrate and we can jump!"
It seemed longer ... but then all the windows changed to a natural
view. Groundside and its sun were gone. Stars and dark stretched all around.
Three hours later and Relay was a hundred and fifty light-years behind
them. The OOB had caught up with the main body of fleeing ships. What with
the archives and the tourism, there had been an extraordinary number of
interstellar ships at Relay: ten thousand vehicles were spread across the
light-years around them. But stars were rare this far off the galactic plane
and they were at least a hundred hours flying time from the nearest refuge.
For Ravna, it was the start of a new battle. She glared across the deck
at Blueshell. The Skroderider dithered, its fronds twisting on themselves in
a way she had not seen before. "See here, my lady Bergsndot, High Point is a
lovely civilization, with some bipedal participants. It is safe. It is
nearby. You could adapt." He paused. Reading my expression is he? "But --
but if that is not acceptable, we will take you further. Give us a chance to
contract the proper cargo, and -- and we'll take you all the way back to
Sjandra Kei. How about that?"
"No. You already have a contract, Blueshell. With Vrinimi Organization.
The three of us -- " and whatever has become of Pham Nuwen "-- are going to
the Bottom of the Beyond."
"I am shaking my head in disbelief! We received a preliminary retainer,
true. But now that Vrinimi Org is dead, there is no one to make good on the
rest of the agreement. Hence we are free of it also."
"Vrinimi is not dead. You heard Grondr 'Kalir. The Org had -- has --
branch offices all across the Beyond. The obligation stands."
"On a technicality. We both know that those branches could never make
the final payment."
Ravna didn't have a good answer to that. "You have an obligation," she
said, but without the proper forcefulness. She had never been good at
bluster.
"My lady, are you truly speaking from Org ethics, or from simple
humanity?"
"I-- " In fact, Ravna had never completely understood Org ethics. That
was one reason why she had intended to return to Sjandra Kei after her
'prenticeship, and one reason the Org had dealt cautiously with the human
race. "It doesn't matter which I speak from! There is a contract. You were
happy to honor it when things looked safe. Well, things turned deadly -- but
that possibility was part of the deal." Ravna glanced at Greenstalk. She had
been silent so far, not even rustling at her mate. Her fronds were tightly
held against her central stalk. Maybe -- "Listen, there are other reasons
besides contract obligation. The Perversion is more powerful than anyone
thought. It killed a Power today. And it's operating in the Middle
Beyond.... The Riders have a long history, Blueshell, longer than most
races' entire existence. The Perversion may be strong enough to put an end
to all of that."
Greenstalk rolled toward her and opened slightly. "You -- you really
think we might find something on that ship at the Bottom, something that
could harm a Power among Powers?"
Ravna paused. "Yes. And Old One himself thought so, just before he
died."
Blueshell wrapped even tighter around himself, twisting. In anguish?
"My Lady, we are traders. We have lived long and traveled far ... and
survived by minding our own business. No matter what romantics may think,
traders do not go on quests. What you ask ... is impossible, mere Beyonders
seeking to subvert a Power."
Yet that was a risk you signed for. But Ravna didn't say it aloud.
Perhaps Greenstalk did: her fronds rustled, and Blueshell scrinched even
more. Greenstalk was silent for a second, then she did something funny with
her axles, bumping free of the stickem. Her wheels spun on nothing as she
floated through a slow arc, till she was upside down, her fronds reaching
down to brush Blueshell's. They rattled back and forth for almost five
minutes. Blueshell slowly untwisted, the fronds relaxing and patting back at
his mate.
Finally he said. "Very well.... One quest. But mark you! Never
another."
.Delete this paragraph to shift page flush
CHAPTER 17
Spring came wet and cold, and excruciatingly slow. It had been raining
the last eight days. How Johanna wished for something else, even the dark of
winter back again.
She slogged across mud that had been moss. It was midday; the gloomy
light would last another three hours. Scarbutt claimed that without the
overcast, they would be seeing a bit of direct sunlight nowadays. Sometimes
she wondered if she would ever see the sun again.
The castle's great yard was on a hillside. Mud and sullen snow spread
down the hill, piled against the wooden buildings. Last summer there had
been a glorious view from here. And in the winter, the aurora had spilled
green and blue across the snow, glinted on the frozen harbor, and outlined
the far hills against the sky. Now: The rain was a close mist; she couldn't
even see the city beyond the walls. The clouds were a low and ragged ceiling
above her head. She knew there were guards on the stone walls of the castle
curtain, but today they must be huddled behind watch slits. Not a single
animal, not a single pack was visible. The Tines' world was an empty place
compared to Straum -- but not like the High Lab either. High Lab was a
airless rock orbiting a red dwarf. The Tines' world was alive, moving;
sometimes it looked as beautiful and friendly as a holiday resort on Straum.
Indeed, Johanna realized that it was kindlier than most worlds the human
race had settled -- certainly a gentler world than Nyjora, and perhaps as
nice as Old Earth.
Johanna had reached her bungalow. She paused for a second under its
outcurving walls and looked across the courtyard. Yes, it looked a little
like medieval Nyjora. But the stories from the Age of Princesses hadn't
conveyed the implacable power in such a world: The rain went on for as far
as she could see. Without decent technology, even a cold rain could be a
deadly thing. So could the wind. And the sea was not something for an
afternoon's fun sailing; she thought of surging hillocks of coldness,
puckered with rain ... going on and on. Even the forests around the town
were threatening. It was easy to wander into them, but there were no radio
finders, no refresh stalls disguised as tree trunks. Once lost, you would
simply die. Nyjoran fairy tales had a special meaning for her now: no great
imagination was needed to invent the elementals of wind and rain and sea.
This was the pretech experience, that even if you had no enemies the world
itself could kill you.
And she did have plenty of enemies. Johanna pulled open the tiny door
and went inside.
A pack of Tines was sitting around the fire. It scrambled to its feet
and helped Johanna out of her rainjacket. She didn't shrink from the
Even four weeks ago, Ravna wouldn't have dared to ask for more. Now:
"Sir, I have a better idea. Send me with the Skroderiders."
All of Grondr's mouth parts clapped together at once. She'd seen that
much surprise in people like Egravan, but never in the staid Grondr. He was
silent for a moment. "No. We need you here. You are our best sanity check
when it comes to questions about humankind." The newsgroups interested in
the Straumli Perversion carried more than one hundred thousand messages a
day, about a tenth of that human-related. Thousands of messages were old
ideas rehashed, or patent absurdities, or probable lies. Marketing's
automation was fairly good at filtering out the redundancy and some of the
absurdity, but when it came to questions on human nature Ravna was without
equal. About half her time was spent guiding that analysis and handling
queries about humankind at the archives. All that would be next to
impossible if she left with the Skroderiders.
Over the next few days, Ravna kept pushing her boss on the question.
Whoever flew the rescue would need instant rapport with humans -- human
children, in fact. Very likely Jefri Olsndot had never even met a
Skroderider. The point was a good one, and it was gradually driving her to
desperation -- but by itself it would not have changed old Grondr's mind. It
took some outside events to do that: As the weeks passed, the Blight's
expansion slowed. Just as conventional wisdom (and Old One via Pham Nuwen)
claimed, there seemed to be natural limits to how far the Perversion could
extend its interests. The abject panic slowly disappeared from High Beyond
communication traffic. Rumors and refugees from the absorbed volumes
dribbled toward zero. The people in the Blighted spaces were gone, but now
it was more like death in a graveyard than death from contagious rot.
Blight-related newsgroups continued to babble about the catastrophe, but the
level of nonproductive rehashing was steadily increasing. There simply was
very little new going on. Over the next ten years, physical death would
spread through the Blighted region. Colonization would begin again,
cautiously probing through the ruins and informational traps, and residue
races. But all of that was a ways off, and for the moment Relay's Blight
"windfall" was a shrinking affair.
... And Marketing was even more interested in the Straumli refugee
ship. None of the strategy programs -- much less Grondr -- believed the
ship's secret could hurt the Blight, but there was a good chance it might
bring commercial advantage when the Perversion finally got tired of its
Transcendent game. And the Tines pack-minds had caught their interest. It
was very appropriate that a maximum effort be made, that Ravna give up her
Docks job and go to the field.
So, for a wonder, her childhood fantasy of rescue and questing
adventure would actually come true. And even more surprising, I'm only
half-terrified by the prospect!
Target[56]: Im sorry I diddnt anser for a while. I dont feel good a
lot. Mister Steel says I should talk to you. He says I need more friends to
make me feel better. Amdi says so too and hes my best friend of all.... like
packs of dogs but smart and fun. I wish I could send pictures. Mister Steel
will try to get ansers for all your questions. He is doing everything he can
to help, but the bad packs will be back. Amdi and I tried the stuff you said
with the ship. I am sorry, it still doesnt work.... I hate this dumb
keybord....
Org[57]: Hi, Jefri. Amdi and Mr. Steel are right. I always like to
talk, and it will make you feel better.... There are inventions that might
help Mister Steel. We've thought of some improvements for his bows and
flamethrowers. I'm also sending down some fortress design information.
Please tell Mister Steel that we can't tell him how to fly the ship. It
would be dangerous even for an expert pilot to try....
Target[57]: Ya, even Daddy had a hard time landing it.
ikocxljikersw89iou43e5 I think Mister Steel just doesnt understand, and hes
getting sorta disparate.... Isnt there other stuff, though, like they had in
oldendays. You know, bombs and airplanes that we could make?...
Org[58]: There are other inventions, but it would take time for Mister
Steel to make them. Our star ship is leaving Relay soon, Jefri. We'll be
there long before other inventions would help....
Target[58]: Your coming? Your finally coming!!! When do you leave? When
will you get here???
Ordinarily Ravna composed her messages to Jefri on a keyboard -- it
gave her some feeling for the kid's situation. He seemed to be holding up,
though there were still days when he didn't write (it was strange to think
of "mental depression" having any connection with an eight-year-old). Other
times he seemed to have a tantrum at the keyboard, and across twenty-one
thousand light-years she saw evidence of small fists slamming into keys.
Ravna grinned at the display. Today she finally had something more than
nebulous promises for him: she had a positive departure time. Jefri was
going to like message [59]. She typed: "We're scheduled to leave in seven
more days, Jefri. Travel time will be about thirty days." Should she qualify
that? Latest postings on the Zone boundary newsgroups said the Bottom was
unusually active. The Tines World was so close to the Slow Zone ... If the
"storm" worsened, travel time would suffer. There was about a one percent
chance the voyage would take more than sixty days. She leaned back from the
keyboard. Did she really want to say that? Damn. Better be frank; these
dates could affect the locals who were helping Jefri. She explained the
"ifs" and "buts", then went on to describe the ship and the wonderful things
they would bring. The boy usually didn't write at great length (except when
he was relaying information from Steel), but he really seemed to like long
letters from her.
The Out of Band II was undergoing final consistency checks. Its
ultradrive was rebuilt and tested; the Skroderiders had taken it out a
couple of thousand light-years to check the antenna swarm. The swarm worked
great, too. She and Jefri would be able to talk through most of the voyage.
As of yesterday, the ship was stocked with consumables. (That sounded like
something out of medieval adventure. But you had to take some supplies when
you were headed so far down that reality graphics couldn't be trusted.)
Sometime tomorrow, Grondr's people would be loading the ship's hold with
gadgets that might be real handy for a rescue. Should she mention those?
Some of them might sound a bit intimidating to Jefri's local friends.
That evening, she and the Skroderiders had a beach party. That's what
they called it, though it was much more like the human version than an
authentic Rider one. Blueshell and Greenstalk had rolled well back from the
water, to where the sand lay dry and warm. Ravna laid out refreshments on
Blueshell's cargo scarf. They sat on the sand and admired the sunset.
It was mostly a celebration -- that Ravna had gotten permission to go
with the OOB, that the ship was almost ready to depart. But, "Are you really
happy to be going, my lady?" asked Blueshell. "We two will make very good
money, but you -- "
Ravna laughed. "I'll get a travel bonus." She had argued and argued for
permission to go; there wasn't much room left to haggle about the pay. "And
yes. This is what I really want."
"I am glad," said Greenstalk.
"I am laughing," said Blueshell. "My mate is especially pleased that
our passenger will not be surly. We almost lost our love for bipeds after
shipping with the certificants. But there is nothing to be frightened of
now. Have you read Threats Group in the last fifteen hours? The Blight has
stopped growing, and its edges have become sharply defined. The Perversion
is settling into middle age. I'm ready to leave right now."
Blueshell was full of speculations about the Tinish "packs", and
possible schemes for extracting Jefri and any other survivors. Greenstalk
interjected a thought here and there. She was less shy than before, but
still seemed softer, more diffident than her mate. And her confidence was a
bit more realistic. She was glad they weren't leaving for another week.
There were still the final consistency checks to run on the OOB -- and
Grondr had gotten Org financing for a small fleet of decoy ships. Fifty were
complete so far. A hundred would be ready by the end of the week.
The Docks drifted into night. With its shallow atmosphere, twilight was
short, but the colors were spectacular. The beach and the trees glistened in
the horizontal rays. The scent of evening flowers mixed with the tang of sea
salt. On the far side of the sea, all was stark bright and dark, silhouettes
that might have been Vrinimi fancies or functional dock equipage -- Ravna
had never learned which. The sun slid behind the sea. Orange and red spread
along the aft horizon, topped by a wider band of green, probably ionized
oxygen.
The Riders didn't turn their skrodes for a better view -- for all she
knew, they had been looking that way all along -- but they stopped talking.
As the sun set, the breakers shattered it into a thousand images, glints of
green and yellow through the foam. She guessed the two would have preferred
to be out there just now. She had seen them often enough around sunset,
deliberately sitting where the surf was hardest. When the water drew back,
their stalks and fronds were like supplicants' arms, upstretched. At times
like these she could almost understand the Lesser Skroderiders; they spent
their whole lives memorizing such repeated moments. She smiled in the
greenish twilight. There would always be time enough later to worry and
plan.
They must have sat like that for twenty minutes. Along the curving line
of the beach, she saw tiny fires in the gathering dark: office parties.
Somewhere very nearby there was the crunch crunch of feet on sand. She
turned and saw that it was Pham Nuwen. "Over here," she called.
Pham ambled toward them. He'd been very scarce since their last
confrontation; Ravna guessed that some of her jibes had struck deep. This
once, I hope Old One made him forget. Pham Nuwen had the potential to be a
real person; it hadn't been right to hurt him because his principal was
beyond reach.
"Have a seat. Galaxy-rise in a half hour." The Skroderiders rustled, so
deep into the sunset that they were only now noticing the visitor.
Pham Nuwen walked a pace or two beyond Ravna and stood arms akimbo,
staring across the sea. He glanced back at her, and the green twilight gave
his face an eerie fierceness. He flashed his old, lopsided smile. "I think I
owe you an apology."
Old One's gonna let you join the human race after all? But Ravna was
touched. She dropped her eyes from his. "I guess I owe you one too. If Old
One won't help, he won't help; I shouldn't have lost my temper."
Pham Nuwen laughed softly, "Yours was certainly the lesser error. I'm
still trying to figure out where I went wrong, and ... I don't think I have
time now to learn."
He looked back at the sea. After a moment, Ravna stood and stepped
toward him. Up close, his stare looked glassy. "What's wrong?" Damn you, Old
One. If you're going to abandon him, don't do it in pieces!
"You're the great expert on Transcendent Powers, eh?"
More sarcasm. "Well -- "
"Do the big boys have wars?"
Ravna shrugged. "You can find rumors of everything. We think there's
conflict, but something too subtle to call war."
"You're pretty much right. There is struggle, but it has more angles
than anything down here. The benefits of cooperation are normally so great
that.... That's part of the reason I didn't take the Perversion seriously.
Besides, the creature is pitiful: a wimpy cur that fouls its own den. Even
if it wanted to kill other Powers, something like that never could. Not in a
billion years...."
Blueshell rolled up beside them. "Who is this, my lady?"
It was the sort of Riderish conversation-stopper that she was only just
getting used to. If Blueshell would just get in synch with his skrode
memory, he'd know. Then the question truly hit her. Who is this? She glanced
at her dataset. It was showing transceiver status, had been ever since Pham
Nuwen arrived. And ... by the Powers, three transceivers had been grabbed by
a single customer!
She took a quick step backwards. "You!"
"Me! Face to face once more, Ravna." The leer was a parody of Pham's
self-assured smile. "Sorry I can't be charming tonight." He slapped his
chest awkwardly. "I'm using this thing's underlying instincts.... I'm too
busy trying to stay alive."
There was drool coming down his chin. Pham's eyes would focus on her
and then drift.
"What are you doing to Pham!"
The Emissary Device stepped toward her, stumbled. "Making room," came
Pham Nuwen's voice.
Ravna spoke Grondr's phone code. There was no response.
The Emissary Device shook its head. "Vrinimi Org is very busy right
now, trying to convince me to get off their equipment, trying to screw up
their courage and force me off. They don't believe what I'm telling them" He
laughed, a quick choking sound. "Doesn't matter. I see now that the attack
here was just a deadly diversion.... How about that, Little Ravna? See, the
Blight is not a Class Two perversion. In the time I have left, I can only
guess what it is.... Something very old, very big. Whatever it is, I'm being
eaten alive."
Blueshell and Greenstalk had rolled close to Ravna. Their fronds made
faint skritching noises. Some thousands of light-years away, well into the
Transcend, a Power was fighting for its life. And all they saw of it was one
man turned into a slobbering lunatic.
"So that's my apology, Little Ravna. Helping you probably wouldn't have
saved me." His voice strangled on itself, and he took a gasping breath. "But
helping you now will be a measure of -- vengeance is a motive you would
understand. I've called your ship down. If you move fast and don't use
agrav, you may survive the next hour."
Blueshell's voice was timid and blustery at the same time. "Survive?
Only a conventional attack could work down here, and there is no sign of
one."
A maniac surrounded by the soft, quiet night. Ravna's dataset showed
nothing strange except for the diversion of bandwidth to Old One.
Pham Nuwen made a coughing laugh. "Oh, it's conventional enough, but
very clever. A few grams of replicant disorder, wafted in over weeks. It's
blossoming now, timed with the attack you see.... The growth will die in a
matter of hours, after it kills all of Relay's precious High automation....
Ravna! Take the ship, or die in the next thousand seconds. Take the ship. If
you survive, go to the Bottom. Get the...." the Emissary Device pulled
itself straighter, and smiled its greenish smile a last time. "And here is
my gift to you, the best help I have left to give."
The smile disappeared. The glassy look was replaced by a wonder ... and
then mounting terror. Pham Nuwen dragged in a great breath, and had time for
one barking scream before he collapsed. He landed face down, twitching and
choking in the sand.
Ravna shouted Grondr's code again, and ran to Pham Nuwen. She pulled
him over on his back and tried to clear his mouth. The fit lasted several
seconds, Pham's limbs flailing randomly about. Ravna collected several solid
hits as she tried to steady him. Then Pham went limp, and she could barely
feel his breath.
Blueshell was saying, "Somehow he's grabbed the OOB. It's four thousand
kilometers out, coming straight for the Docks. Wail. We're ruined."
Unauthorized flight close to the Docks was cause for confiscation.
Somehow Ravna didn't think it mattered anymore. "Is there any sign of
attack?" she said over her shoulder. She eased Pham's head back, made sure
he had a clear breathing passage.
Random rustling between the Skroderiders. Greenstalk: "Something is
strange. We have service suspension on the main transceivers." So Old One is
still transmitting? "The local net is very clogged. Much automation, many
employees being called to special duty."
Ravna rocked back. The sky was night dark, punctuated by a dozen bright
points of light -- ships guiding for the Docks. All very normal. But her own
dataset was showing what Greenstalk reported.
"Ravna, I can't talk right now." Grondr's clickety voice sounded out of
the air beside her. This would be his associate program. "Old One has taken
most of Relay. Watch out for the Emissary Device." A little late, that!
"We've lost contact with the surveillance fence beyond the transceivers. We
are having program and hardware failures. Old One claims we are being
attacked." A five second pause. "We see evidence of fleet action at the
domestic defense boundary." That was just a half light-year out.
"Brap!" From Blueshell. "At the domestic defense boundary! How could
you miss them coming in?" He rolled back and forth, pivoted.
Grondr's associate ignored the question. "Minimum three thousand ships.
Destruction of transceivers immin -- "
"Ravna, are the Skroderiders with you?" It was still Grondr's voice,
but more staccato, more involved. This was the real guy.
"Y-yes."
"The local network is failing. Life support failing. The Docks will
fall. We would be stronger than the attacking fleet, but we're rotting from
the inside.... Relay is dying." His voice sharpened, clattering, "but
Vrinimi will not die, and a contract is a contract! Tell the Riders, we will
pay them ... somehow, someday. We require ... plead ... they fly the mission
we contracted. Ravna?"
"Yes. They hear."
"Then go!" And the voice was gone.
Blueshell said, "OOB will be here in two hundred seconds."
Pham Nuwen had calmed, and his breathing was easier. As the two Riders
chittered back and forth, Ravna looked around -- and suddenly realized that
all the death and destruction had been reports from afar. The beach and the
sky were almost as placid as ever. The last of the sun's rays had left the
waves. The foam was a dim band in the low green light. Here and there,
yellow lights glowed in the trees and the farther towers.
Yet the alarum had clearly spread. She could hear datasets coming on.
Some of the beach fires guttered out, and the figures around them ran into
the trees or drifted upwards, headed for farther offices. Now starships
floated up from their berths across the sea, falling higher and higher till
they glittered in the departed sunlight.
It was Relay's last moment of peace.
A patch of glowing dark spread across the sky. She gasped at light so
twisted it should have gone unseen. It shone more in the back of her head
than in her eyes. Afterwards she couldn't think what made it objectively
different from blackness.
"There's another!" said Blueshell. This one was near the Decks'
horizon, a blot of darkness perhaps a degree across. The edges were an
indistinct bleeding of black into black.
"What is it?" Ravna was no war freak, but she'd read her share of
adventure stories. She knew about antimatter bombs and relativistic KE
slugs. From a distance such weapons were bright spots of light, sometimes an
orchestrated flickering. Or closer: a world-wrecker would glow incandescent
across the curve of a planet, splashing the globe itself like a drop of
water, but slow, slow. Those were the images her reading had prepared her
for. What she saw now was more like a defect in her eyesight than a vision
of war.
Powers only knew what the Skroderiders saw, but: "Your main
transceivers ... vaping out, I think," said Blueshell.
"Those are light-years out! There's no way we could see -- " Another
splotch appeared, not even in her field of view. The color floated,
placeless. Pham Nuwen spasmed again, but weakly. She had no trouble holding
him still, but ... blood dribbled from his mouth. The back of his shirt was
wet with something that stank of decay.
"OOB will be here in one hundred seconds. Plenty of time, there's
plenty of time." Blueshell rolled back and forth around them, talking
reassurance that just showed how nervous he was. "Yes, my lady, light-years
out. And years from now, the flash of their going will light the sky for
anyone still alive here. But only a fraction of the vape-out is making
light. The rest is an ultrawave surge so great that ordinary matter is
affected.... Optic nerves tickled by the overflow.... So much that your own
nervous system becomes a receiver." He spun around. "But don't worry. We're
tough and quick. We've squeezed through close spots before." There was
something absurd about a creature with no short-term memory bragging up its
lightning reflexes. She hoped his skrode was up to this.
Greenstalk's voice buzzed painfully loud. "Look!"
The surf line was drawing back, further than she had ever seen it.
"The sea is falling!" shouted Greenstalk. Water's edge had pulled back
a hundred meters, two hundred. The green-limned horizon was dipping.
"Ship's still fifty seconds out. We'll fly to meet it. Come, Ravna!"
Ravna's own courage died cold that second. Grondr had said the Docks
would fall! The near sky was crowded now as dozens of people raced for
safety. A hundred meters away the sand itself was shifting, an avalanche
tilting toward the abyss. She remembered something Old One had said, and
suddenly she knew the fliers were making a terrible mistake. The thought cut
through her terror. "No! Just head for higher ground."
The night was silent no more. A bell-like moaning came from the sea.
The sound spread. The sunset breeze grew to a gale that twisted the trees
toward the water, sending branches and sand sweeping past them.
Ravna was still on her knees, her hands pressing down on Pham's limp
arms. No breath, no pulse. The eyes stared sightlessly. Old One's gift to
her. Damn all the Powers! She grabbed Pham Nuwen under the shoulders and
rolled him onto her back.
She gagged, almost lost her grip. Underneath his shirt she felt
cavities where there should be solid flesh. Something wet and rank dripped
around her sides. She struggled up from her knees, half-carrying and
half-dragging the body.
Blueshell was shouting, "-- take hours to roll anywhere." He drifted
off the ground, driving his agrav against the wind. Skrode and Rider twisted
drunkenly for an instant ... and then he was slammed back to the ground,
tumbled willy-nilly toward the wind's destination, the moaning hole that had
been the sea. Greenstalk raced to his seaward side, blocking his progress
toward destruction. Blueshell righted himself and the two rolled back toward
Ravna. The Rider's voice was faint in the wind: "... agrav ... failing!" And
with it the very structure of the Docks.
They walked and wheeled their way back from the sucking sea. "Find a
place to land the OOB."
The tree line was a jagged range of hills now. The landscape changed
before their eyes and under her feet. The groaning sound was everywhere,
some places so loud it buzzed through Ravna's shoes. They avoided sagging
terrain, the sink holes that opened on all sides. The night was dark no
more. Whether it was emergency lighting or a side-effect of the agrav
failure, blue glowed along the holes. Through those holes they saw the
cloud-decked night of Groundside a thousand kilometers below. The space
between was not empty. There were shimmering phantoms: billions of tonnes of
water and earth ... and hundreds of dying fliers. Vrinimi Org was paying the
price for building their Docks on agrav instead of inertial orbit.
Somehow the three were making progress. Pham Nuwen was almost too heavy
to carry/drag; she staggered left and right almost as much as she moved
forward. Yet he was lighter that she would have guessed. And that was
terrifying in its own way: was even the high ground failing?
Most of the agravs died by failure, but some suffered destructive
runaway: clumps of trees and earth ripped free from the tops of hillocks and
accelerated upwards. The wind shifted back and forth, up and down ... but it
was thinner now, the noise remote. The artificial atmosphere that clothed
the Docks would soon be gone. Ravna's pocket pressure suit worked for a few
minutes, but now it was fading. In a few minutes it would be as dead as her
agravs ... as dead as she would be. She wondered vaguely how the Blight had
managed this. Like the Old One, she would likely die without ever knowing.
She saw torch flares; there were ships. Most had boosted for inertial
orbits or gone directly into ultradrive, but a few hung over the
disintegrating landscape. Blueshell and Greenstalk led the way. The two used
their third axles in ways Ravna had never guessed at, lifting and pushing to
clamber up slopes that she could scarcely negotiate with Pham's weight
dragging from her back.
They were on a hilltop, but not for long. This had been part of the
office forest. Now the trees stuck out in different directions, like hair on
a mangy dog. She felt the ground throbbing beneath her feet. What next? The
Skroderiders rolled from one side of the peak to another. They would be
rescued here or nowhere. She went to her knees, resting most of Pham's
weight on the ground. From here you could see a long ways. The Docks looked
like a slowly flapping flag, and every immense whip of the fabric broke
fragments loose. As long as some consensus remained among the agrav units,
it still had planar aspect. That was disappearing. There were sink holes all
around their little knob of forest. On the horizon, Ravna saw the far edge
of the Docks detach itself and turn slowly sideways: a hundred kilometers
long, ten wide, it swept down on would-be rescue ships.
Blueshell brushed against her left side, Greenstalk against her right.
Ravna twisted, laying some of Pham's weight on the skrode hulls. If all four
merged their pressure suits, there would be a few more moments of
consciousness. "The OOB: I'm flying it down!" he said.
Something was coming down. A ship's torch lit the ground blue white,
with shadows stark and shifting. It's not a healthy thing to be around a
rocket drive hovering in a near-one-gee field. An hour earlier the maneuver
would have been impossible, or a capital offense if accomplished. Now it
didn't matter if the torch punched through the Docks or fried a cargo from
halfway across the galaxy.
Still ... where could Blueshell land the thing? They were surrounded by
sinkholes and moving cliffs. She closed her eyes as the burning light
drifted down before them ... and then dimmed. Blueshell's shout was thin in
their shared atmosphere. "Let's go together!"
She held tight to the Riders, and they crawled/wheeled down from their
little hill. The Out of Band II was hovering in the middle of a sinkhole.
Its torch was hidden from view, but the glare off the sides of the hole put
the ship in sharp silhouette, turned its ultradrive spines into feathery
white arcs. A giant moth with glowing wings ... and just out of reach.
If their suits held, they could make it to the edge of the hole. Then
what? The spines kept the ship from getting closer than a hundred meters. An
able-bodied (and crazy) human might try to grab a spine and crawl down it.
But Skroderiders had their own brand of insanity: Just as the light --
the reflected light -- became too much to bear ... the torch winked out. The
OOB fell through the hole. This didn't stop the Riders' advance. "Faster!"
said Blueshell. And now she guessed what they planned. Quickly for such an
awkward jumble of limbs and wheels, they moved up to the edge of the
darkened hole. Ravna felt the dirt giving way beneath her feet, and then
they were falling.
The Decks were hundreds -- in places, thousands -- of meters thick.
They fell past them now, past dim eerie flickers of internal destruction.
Then they were through, still falling. For a moment the feeling of wild
panic was gone. After all this was simply free fall, a commonplace, and a
damnsight more peaceful than the disintegrating Docks. Now it was easy to
hold onto the Riders and Pham Nuwen, and even their commensal atmosphere
seemed a little thicker than before. There was something to be said for hard
vacuum and free fall. Except for an occasional rogue agrav, everything was
coming down at the same acceleration, ruins peacefully settling. And four or
five minutes from now they would hit Groundside's atmosphere, still falling
almost straight downwards.... Entry velocity only three or four kilometers
per second. Would they burn up? Maybe. Flashes pricked bright above the
cloud-decks.
The junk around them was mostly dark, just shadows against the sky show
above. But the wreckage directly below was large and regular ... the OOB,
bow on! The ship was falling with them. Every few seconds a trim jet fired,
a faint reddish glow. The ship was closing with them. If it had a nose
hatch, they would land right on it.
Its docking lights flicked on, bright upon them. Ten meters separation.
Five. There was a hatch, and open! She could see a very ordinary airlock
within....
Whatever hit them was big. Ravna saw a vague expanse of plastic rising
over her shoulder. The rogue was slowly turning, and it scarcely brushed
them -- but that was enough. Pham Nuwen was jarred from her grasp. His body
was lost in shadow, then suddenly bright lit as the ship's spotlight tracked
after him. Simultaneously the air gusted out of Ravna's lungs. They were
down to three pocket pressure fields now, failing fields; it was not enough.
Ravna could feel consciousness slipping away, her vision tunneling. So
close.
The Riders unlatched from each other. She grabbed at the skrode hulls
and they drifted, strung out, over the ship's lock. Blueshell's skrode
jerked against her as the he made fast to the hatch. The jolt twisted her
around, whipping Greenstalk upwards. Things were getting dreamy now. Where
was panic when you needed it? Hold tight, hold tight, hold tight, sang the
little voice, all that was left of consciousness. Bump, jerk. The Riders
pushed and pulled at her. Or maybe it was the ship jerking all of them
around. They were puppets, dancing off a single string.
... Deep in the tunnel of her vision, a Rider grabbed at the tumbling
figure of Pham Nuwen.
Ravna wasn't aware of losing consciousness, but the next she knew she
was breathing air and choking on vomit -- and was inside the airlock. Solid
green walls closed in comfortingly on all sides. Pham Nuwen lay on the far
wall, strapped into a first aid canister. His face had a bluish cast.
She pushed awkwardly across the lock toward Pham Nuwen's wall. The
place was a confused jumble, unlike the passenger and sporting ships she'd
been on before. Besides, this was a Rider design. Stickem patches were
scattered around the walls; Greenstalk had mounted her skrode on one
cluster.
They were accelerating, maybe a twentieth of a gee. "We're still going
down?"
"Yes. If we hover or rise, we'll crash," into all the junk that still
rains from above. "Blueshell is trying to fly us out." They were falling
with the rest, but trying to drift out from under -- before they hit
Groundside. There was an occasional rattle/ping against the hull. Sometimes
the acceleration ceased, or shifted in a new direction. Blueshell was
actively avoiding the big pieces.
... Not with complete success. There was long, rasping sound that ended
with a bang, and the room turned slowly around her. "Brrap! Just lost an
ultradrive spine," came Blueshell's voice. "Two others already damaged.
Please strap down, my lady."
They touched atmosphere a hundred seconds later. The sound was a barely
perceptible humming beyond the hull. It was the sound of death for a ship
like this. It could no more aerobrake than a dog could jump over the moon.
The noise came louder. Blueshell was actually diving, trying to get deep
enough to shed the junk that surrounded the ship. Two more spines broke.
Then came a long surge of main axis acceleration. Out of Band II arced out
of the Docks' death shadow, drove out and out, into inertial orbit.
Ravna looked over Blueshell's fronds at the outside windows. They had
just passed Groundside's terminator, and were flying an inertial orbit. They
were in free fall again, but this trajectory curved back on itself without
whacking into big hard things -- like Groundside.
Ravna didn't know much more about space travel than you'd expect of a
frequent passenger and an adventure fan. But it was obvious that Blueshell
had pulled off a near miracle. When she tried to thank him, the Rider rolled
back and forth across the stick-patches, buzzing faintly to himself.
Embarrassed? or just Riderly inattentive?
Greenstalk spoke, sounding a little shy, a little proud: "Far trading
is our life, you know. If we are cautious, life will be mostly safe and
placid, but there will be close passages. Blueshell practices all the time,
programming his skrode with every wit he can imagine. He is a master." In
everyday life, indecision seemed to dominate the Riders. But in a crunch,
they didn't hesitate to bet everything. She wondered how of that was the
skrode overriding its rider?
"Grump," said Blueshell. "I have simply postponed the close passage. I
broke several of our drive spines. What if they do not self-repair? What do
we do then? Everything around Groundside is destroyed. There is junk
everywhere out to a hundred radii. Not dense like around the Docks, but of
much higher velocity." You can't inject billions of tonnes of wreckage into
buckshot orbits and expect safe navigation. "And any second, the
Perversion's creatures will be here, eating whoever survives."
"Urk." Greenstalk's tendrils froze in comical disarray. She chittered
to herself for a second. "You're right ... I forgot. I thought we had found
an open space, but ..."
Open space all right, but in a shooting gallery. Ravna looked back at
the command deck windows. They were on the dayside now, perhaps five hundred
kilometers above Groundside's principal ocean. The space above the hazy blue
horizon was free of flash and glow. "I don't see any fighting," Ravna said
hopefully.
"Sorry." Blueshell switched the windows to a more significant view.
Most of it was navigation and ultratrace information, meaningless to Ravna.
Her eye caught on a medstat: Pham Nuwen was breathing again. The ship's
surgeon thought it could save him. But there was also a communication status
window; on it, the attack was dreadfully clear. The local net had broken
into hundreds of screaming fragments. There were only automatic voices from
the planetary surface, and they were calling for medical aid. Grondr had
been down there. Somehow she suspected that not even his Marketing ops
people had survived. Whatever hit Groundside was even deadlier than the
failures at the Docks. In near planetary space, there were a few survivors
in ships and fragments of habitats, most on doomed trajectories. Without
massive and coordinated help, they would be dead in minutes -- hours at the
outside. The directors of Vrinimi Org were gone, destroyed before they ever
figured out quite what had happened.
Go, Grondr had said, go.
Out-system, there was fighting. Ravna saw message traffic from Vrinimi
defense units. Even without control or coordination, some still opposed the
Perversion's fleet. The light from their battles would arrive well after the
defeat, well after the enemy arrived here in person. How long do we have?
Minutes?
"Brrap. Look at those traces," said Blueshell. "The Perversion has
almost four thousand vessels. They are bypassing the defenders."
"But now there is scarcely anyone left out there," said Greenstalk. "I
hope they're not all dead."
"Not all. I see several thousand ships departing, everyone with the
means and any sense." Blueshell rolled back and forth. "Alas! We have the
good sense ... but look at this repair report." One window spread large,
filled with colored patterns that meant less than zip to Ravna. "Two spines
still broken, unrepairable. Three partially repaired. If they don't heal,
we'll be stuck here. This is unacceptable!" His voder voice buzzed up
shrilly. Greenstalk drove close to him, and they rattled their fronds at
each other.
Several minutes passed. When Blueshell spoke Samnorsk again, his voice
was quieter. "One spine repaired. Maybe, maybe, maybe...." He opened a
natural view. The OOB was coasting across Groundside's south pole, back into
night. Their orbit should take them over the worst of the Docks junk, but
the ride was a constant jigging as the ship avoided other debris. The cries
of battle horror from out-system dwindled. The Vrinimi Organization was one
vast, twitching corpse ... and very soon its killer would come snuffling.
"Two repaired." Blueshell became very quiet.... "Three! Three are
repaired! Fifteen seconds to recalibrate and we can jump!"
It seemed longer ... but then all the windows changed to a natural
view. Groundside and its sun were gone. Stars and dark stretched all around.
Three hours later and Relay was a hundred and fifty light-years behind
them. The OOB had caught up with the main body of fleeing ships. What with
the archives and the tourism, there had been an extraordinary number of
interstellar ships at Relay: ten thousand vehicles were spread across the
light-years around them. But stars were rare this far off the galactic plane
and they were at least a hundred hours flying time from the nearest refuge.
For Ravna, it was the start of a new battle. She glared across the deck
at Blueshell. The Skroderider dithered, its fronds twisting on themselves in
a way she had not seen before. "See here, my lady Bergsndot, High Point is a
lovely civilization, with some bipedal participants. It is safe. It is
nearby. You could adapt." He paused. Reading my expression is he? "But --
but if that is not acceptable, we will take you further. Give us a chance to
contract the proper cargo, and -- and we'll take you all the way back to
Sjandra Kei. How about that?"
"No. You already have a contract, Blueshell. With Vrinimi Organization.
The three of us -- " and whatever has become of Pham Nuwen "-- are going to
the Bottom of the Beyond."
"I am shaking my head in disbelief! We received a preliminary retainer,
true. But now that Vrinimi Org is dead, there is no one to make good on the
rest of the agreement. Hence we are free of it also."
"Vrinimi is not dead. You heard Grondr 'Kalir. The Org had -- has --
branch offices all across the Beyond. The obligation stands."
"On a technicality. We both know that those branches could never make
the final payment."
Ravna didn't have a good answer to that. "You have an obligation," she
said, but without the proper forcefulness. She had never been good at
bluster.
"My lady, are you truly speaking from Org ethics, or from simple
humanity?"
"I-- " In fact, Ravna had never completely understood Org ethics. That
was one reason why she had intended to return to Sjandra Kei after her
'prenticeship, and one reason the Org had dealt cautiously with the human
race. "It doesn't matter which I speak from! There is a contract. You were
happy to honor it when things looked safe. Well, things turned deadly -- but
that possibility was part of the deal." Ravna glanced at Greenstalk. She had
been silent so far, not even rustling at her mate. Her fronds were tightly
held against her central stalk. Maybe -- "Listen, there are other reasons
besides contract obligation. The Perversion is more powerful than anyone
thought. It killed a Power today. And it's operating in the Middle
Beyond.... The Riders have a long history, Blueshell, longer than most
races' entire existence. The Perversion may be strong enough to put an end
to all of that."
Greenstalk rolled toward her and opened slightly. "You -- you really
think we might find something on that ship at the Bottom, something that
could harm a Power among Powers?"
Ravna paused. "Yes. And Old One himself thought so, just before he
died."
Blueshell wrapped even tighter around himself, twisting. In anguish?
"My Lady, we are traders. We have lived long and traveled far ... and
survived by minding our own business. No matter what romantics may think,
traders do not go on quests. What you ask ... is impossible, mere Beyonders
seeking to subvert a Power."
Yet that was a risk you signed for. But Ravna didn't say it aloud.
Perhaps Greenstalk did: her fronds rustled, and Blueshell scrinched even
more. Greenstalk was silent for a second, then she did something funny with
her axles, bumping free of the stickem. Her wheels spun on nothing as she
floated through a slow arc, till she was upside down, her fronds reaching
down to brush Blueshell's. They rattled back and forth for almost five
minutes. Blueshell slowly untwisted, the fronds relaxing and patting back at
his mate.
Finally he said. "Very well.... One quest. But mark you! Never
another."
.Delete this paragraph to shift page flush
CHAPTER 17
Spring came wet and cold, and excruciatingly slow. It had been raining
the last eight days. How Johanna wished for something else, even the dark of
winter back again.
She slogged across mud that had been moss. It was midday; the gloomy
light would last another three hours. Scarbutt claimed that without the
overcast, they would be seeing a bit of direct sunlight nowadays. Sometimes
she wondered if she would ever see the sun again.
The castle's great yard was on a hillside. Mud and sullen snow spread
down the hill, piled against the wooden buildings. Last summer there had
been a glorious view from here. And in the winter, the aurora had spilled
green and blue across the snow, glinted on the frozen harbor, and outlined
the far hills against the sky. Now: The rain was a close mist; she couldn't
even see the city beyond the walls. The clouds were a low and ragged ceiling
above her head. She knew there were guards on the stone walls of the castle
curtain, but today they must be huddled behind watch slits. Not a single
animal, not a single pack was visible. The Tines' world was an empty place
compared to Straum -- but not like the High Lab either. High Lab was a
airless rock orbiting a red dwarf. The Tines' world was alive, moving;
sometimes it looked as beautiful and friendly as a holiday resort on Straum.
Indeed, Johanna realized that it was kindlier than most worlds the human
race had settled -- certainly a gentler world than Nyjora, and perhaps as
nice as Old Earth.
Johanna had reached her bungalow. She paused for a second under its
outcurving walls and looked across the courtyard. Yes, it looked a little
like medieval Nyjora. But the stories from the Age of Princesses hadn't
conveyed the implacable power in such a world: The rain went on for as far
as she could see. Without decent technology, even a cold rain could be a
deadly thing. So could the wind. And the sea was not something for an
afternoon's fun sailing; she thought of surging hillocks of coldness,
puckered with rain ... going on and on. Even the forests around the town
were threatening. It was easy to wander into them, but there were no radio
finders, no refresh stalls disguised as tree trunks. Once lost, you would
simply die. Nyjoran fairy tales had a special meaning for her now: no great
imagination was needed to invent the elementals of wind and rain and sea.
This was the pretech experience, that even if you had no enemies the world
itself could kill you.
And she did have plenty of enemies. Johanna pulled open the tiny door
and went inside.
A pack of Tines was sitting around the fire. It scrambled to its feet
and helped Johanna out of her rainjacket. She didn't shrink from the