ght her
breath. In the medical animation, the parts floated into an orderly
arrangement. There was a complete body there, torn up a little in the belly.
Pieces came together, and ... this was no "she". He floated whole and naked,
as if in sleep. Ravna had no doubt of his humanity, but all humankind in the
Beyond was descended from Nyjoran stock. This fellow had none of that
heritage. The skin was smoky gray, not brown. The hair was bright reddish
brown, a color she had only seen in pre-Nyjoran histories. The bones of the
face were subtly different from modern humans. The small differences were
more jarring than the outright alienness of her coworkers.
Now the figure was clothed. Under other circumstances, Ravna would have
smiled. Grondr 'Kalir had picked an absurd costume, something from the
Nyjoran era. The figure bore a sword and slug gun.... A sleeping prince from
the Age of Princesses.
"Behold the Ur-human," said Grondr.
.Delete this paragraph to shift page flush
-=*=-
CHAPTER 7
"Relay" is a common place-name. It has meaning in almost any
environment. Like Newtown and Newhome, it occurs over and over when people
move or colonize or participate in a communication net. You could travel a
billion light-years or a billion years and still find such names among folk
of natural intelligence.
But in the current era there was one instance of "Relay" known above
all others. That instance appeared in the routing list of two percent of all
traffic across the Known Net. Twenty thousand light-years off the galactic
plane, Relay had an unobstructed line of sight on thirty percent of the
Beyond, including many star systems right at the bottom, where starships can
make only one light-year per day. A few metal-bearing solar systems were
equally well-placed, and there was competition. But where other
civilizations lost interest, or colonized into the Transcend, or died in
apocalypse, Vrinimi Organization lasted. After fifty thousand years, there
were several races of the original Org in its membership. None of those were
still leaders -- yet the original viewpoint and policies remained. Position
and durability: Relay was now the main intermediate to the Magellanics, and
one of the few sites with any sort of link to the Beyond in Sculptor.
At Sjandra Kei, Relay's reputation had been fabulous. In her two years
of 'prenticeship, Ravna had come to realize that the truth exceeded the
reputation. Relay was in Middle Beyond; the Organization's only export was
the relay function and access to the local archive. Yet they imported the
finest biologicals and processing equipment from the High Beyond. The Relay
Docks were an extravagance that only the absolutely rich could indulge. They
stretched a thousand kilometers: bays, repair holds, transhipment centers,
parks, and playgrounds. Even at Sjandra Kei there were habitats far larger.
But the Docks were in no orbit. They floated a thousand kilometers above
Groundside on the largest agrav frame Ravna had ever seen. At Sjandra Kei
the annual income of an academician might pay for a square meter of agrav
fabric -- junk that might not last a year. Here there were millions of
hectares of the stuff, supporting billions of tonnes. Just replacements for
dead fabric required more High Beyond commerce than most star clusters could
command.
And now I have my own office here. Working directly for Grondr 'Kalir
had its perks. Ravna kicked back in her chair and stared across the central
sea. At the Docks' altitude, gravity was still about three-quarters of a
gee. Air fountains hung a breathable atmosphere over the middle part of the
platform. The day before, she had taken a sailboat across the clear-bottomed
sea. That was a strange experience indeed: planetary clouds below your keel,
stars and indigo sky above.
She had the surf cranked up this morning -- an easy matter of flexing
the agravs of the basin. It made a regular crashing against her beach. Even
thirty meters from the water there was a tang of salt in the air. Rows of
white tops marched off into the distance.
She eyed the figure that was trudging slowly up the beach toward her.
Just a few weeks ago she would never have dreamed this situation. Just a few
weeks ago she had been out at the archive, absorbed in the upgrade work,
happy to be involved with one of the largest databases on the Known Net. Now
... it was almost as if she had come full circle, back to her childhood
dreams of adventure. the only problem was, sometimes she felt like one of
the bad guys: Pham Nuwen was a living person, not something to be sold.
She stood and walked out to meet her red-haired visitor.
He wasn't carrying the sword and handgun of Grondr's fanciful
animation. Yet his clothes were the braided fabric of ancient adventure, and
he carried himself with lazy confidence. Since her meeting with Grondr, she
had looked up some anthropology from Old Earth. The red hair and the
eyefolds had been known there, though rarely in the same individual.
Certainly his smoky skin would have been remarkable to an inhabitant of
Earth. This fellow was, as much as herself, a product of post-terrestrial
evolution.
He stopped an arm's length away and gave her a lopsided grin. "You look
pretty human. Ravna Bergsndot?"
She smiled and nodded up at him. "Mr. Pham Nuwen?"
"Yes indeed. We seem both to be excellent guessers." He swept past her
into the shade of the inner office. Cocky fellow.
She followed him, unsure about protocol. You'd think with a fellow
human there would be no problems....
Actually, the interview went pretty smoothly. It was more than thirty
days since Pham Nuwen's resuscitation. Much of that time had been spent in
cram language sessions. The fellow must be damned bright; he already spoke
Triskweline trade talk with a folksy slickness. He really was rather cute.
Ravna had been away from Sjandra Kei for two years, and had another year of
her 'prenticeship to go. She'd been doing pretty well. She had many close
friends here, Egravan, Sarale. But just chatting with this fellow brought a
lot of the loneliness back. In some ways he was more alien than anything at
Relay ... and in some ways she wanted to just grab him and kiss his
confident grin away.
Grondr Vrinimikalir had been telling the truth about Pham Nuwen. The
guy was actually enthusiastic about the Org's plans for him! In theory, that
meant she could do her job with a clear conscience. In fact....
"Mr. Nuwen, my job is to orient you to your new world. I know you've
been exposed to some intense instruction the last few days, but there are
limits to how fast such knowledge can sink in."
The redhead smiled. "Call me Pham. Sure, I feel like an over-stuffed
bag. My sleep time is full of little voices. I've learned an awful lot
without experiencing anything. Worse, I've been a target for all this
'education'. It's a perfect setup if Vrinimi wants to trick me. That's why
I'm learning to use the local library. And that's why I insisted they find
someone like you." He saw the surprise on her face. "Ha! You didn't know
that. See, talking to a real person gives me a chance to see things that
aren't all planned ahead. Also, I've always been a pretty good judge of
human nature; I think I can read you pretty well." His grin showed he
understood just how irritating he was being.
Ravna looked up at the green petals of the beachtrees. Maybe this boob
deserved what he was getting into. "So you have great experience dealing
with people?"
"Given the limitations of the Slowness, I've been around, Ravna. I've
been around. I know I don't look it, but I'm sixty-seven years old
subjective. I thank your Organization for a fine job of thawing me out." He
tipped a non-existent hat in her direction. "My last voyage was more than a
thousand years objective. I was Programmer-at-Arms on a Qeng Ho longshot --
" His eyes abruptly widened, and he said something unintelligible. For a
moment he almost looked vulnerable.
Ravna reached a hand toward him. "Memory?"
Pham Nuwen nodded. "Damn. This is something I don't thank you people
for."
Pham Nuwen had been frozen in the aftermath of violent death, not as a
planned suspension. It was a near miracle that Vrinimi Org had been able to
bring him back at all -- at least with Middle Beyond technology. But memory
was the hardest thing. The chemical basis of memory does not survive chaotic
freezing well.
The problem was enough to shrink even Pham Nuwen's ego by a size or
two. Ravna took pity on him. "It's not likely that anything is completely
lost. You just have to find a different angle on some things."
"... Yes. I've been coached about that. Start with other memories; work
sideways toward what you can't remember straight on. Well ... it beats being
dead." Some of his jauntiness returned, but subdued to a really quite
charming level. They talked for long while as the redhead worked around the
points he couldn't "remember straight on".
And gradually Ravna came to feel something she had never expected in
connection with a Slow Zoner: awe. In one lifetime, Pham Nuwen had
accomplished virtually everything that was possible for a being in the
Slowness. All her life she had pitied the civilizations trapped down there.
They could never know the glory; they might never know the truth. Yet by
luck and skill and sheer strength of will, this fellow had leaped barrier
after barrier. Had Grondr known the truth when he pictured the redhead with
sword and slug gun? For Pham Nuwen really was a barbarian. He had been born
on a fallen colony world -- Canberra he called it. The place sounded much
like medieval Nyjora, though not matriarchal. He'd been the youngest child
of a king. He'd grown up with swords and poison and intrigue, living in
stone castles by a cold, cold sea. No doubt this littlest prince would have
ended up murdered -- or king of all -- if life had continued in the medieval
way. But when he was thirteen years old everything changed. A world that had
only legends of aircraft and radio was confronted by interstellar traders.
In a year of trading, Canberra's feudal politics was turned on its head.
"Qeng Ho had invested three ships in the expedition to Canberra. They
were pissed, thought we'd be at a higher level of technology. We couldn't
resupply them, so two stayed behind, probably turned my poor world inside
out. I left with the third -- a crazy hostage deal my father thought he was
putting over on them. I was lucky they didn't space me."
Qeng Ho consisted of several hundred ramscoop ships operating in a
volume hundreds of light-years across. Their vessels could reach almost a
third of the speed of light. They were mostly traders, occasionally
rescuers, even more rarely conquerors. When Pham Nuwen last knew them, they
had settled thirty worlds and were almost three thousand years old. It was
as extravagant a civilization as can ever exist in the Slowness.... And of
course, until Pham Nuwen was revived, no one in the Beyond had ever heard of
it. Qeng Ho was like a million other doomed civilizations, buried thousands
of light-years in the Slowness. Only by luck would they ever penetrate into
the Beyond, where faster-than-light travel was possible.
But for a thirteen-year-old boy born to swords and chain mail, the Qeng
Ho was more change than most living beings ever experience. In a matter of
weeks, he went from medieval lordling to starship cabin boy.
"At first they didn't know what to do with me. Figured on popping me
into cold storage and dumping me at the next stop. What can you make of a
kid who thinks there's one world and it's flat, who has spent his whole life
learning to whack about with a sword?" He stopped abruptly, as he did every
few minutes, when the stream of recollection ran into damaged territory.
Then his glance flicked out at Ravna, and his smile was as cocky as ever. "I
was one mean animal. I don't think civilized people realize what it's like
to grow up with your own aunts and uncles scheming to murder you, and you
training to get them first. In civilization I met bigger villains -- guys
who'd fry a whole planet and call it 'reconciliation' -- but for sheer
up-close treachery, you can't beat my childhood."
To hear Pham Nuwen tell it, only dumb luck saved the crew from his
scheming. In the years that followed, he learned to fit in, learned
civilized skills. Properly tamed, he could be an ideal ship master of the
Qeng Ho. And for many years he was. The Qeng Ho volume contained a couple of
other races, and a number of human-colonized worlds. At 0.3c, Pham spent
decades in coldsleep getting from star to star, then a year or two at each
port trying to make a profit with products and information that might be
lethally out-of-date. The reputation of the Qeng Ho was some protection.
"Politics may come and go, but Greed goes on forever" was the fleet's motto,
and they had lasted longer than most of their customers. Even religious
fanatics grew a little cautious when they thought about Qeng Ho retribution.
But more often it was the skill and deviousness of the shipmaster that saved
the day. And few were a match for the little boy in Pham Nuwen.
"I was almost the perfect skipper. Almost. I always wanted to see what
was beyond the space we had good records on. Every time I got really rich,
so rich I could launch my own subfleet -- I'd take some crazy chance and
lose everything. I was the yo-yo of the Fleet. One run I'd be captain of
five, the next I'd be pulling maintenance programming on some damn container
ship. Given how time stretches out with sublight commerce, there were whole
generations who thought I was a legendary genius -- and others who used my
name as a synonym for goofball."
He paused and his eyes widened in pleased surprise. "Ha! I remember
what I was doing there at the end. I was in the 'goofball' part of my cycle,
but it didn't matter. There was this captain of twenty who was even crazier
than I.... Can't remember her name. Her? Couldn't have been; I'd never serve
under a fem captain." He was almost talking to himself. "Anyway, this guy
was willing to bet everything on the sort of thing normal folks would argue
about over beer. He called his ship the, um, it translates as something like
'wild witless bird' -- that gives you the idea about him. He figured there
must be some really high-tech civilizations somewhere in the universe. The
problem was to find them. In a strange way, he had almost guessed about the
Zones. Only problem was, he wasn't crazy enough; he got one little thing
wrong. Can you guess what?"
Ravna nodded. Considering where Pham's wreck was found, it was obvious.
"Yeah. I'll bet it's an idea older than spaceflight: the 'elder races'
must be toward the galactic core, where stars are closer and there are black
hole exotica for power. He was taking his entire fleet of twenty. They'd
keep going till they found somebody or had to stop and colonize. This
captain figured success was unlikely in our lifetime. But with proper
planning we could end up in a close-packed region where it would be easy to
found a new Qeng Ho -- and it would proceed even further.
"Anyway, I was lucky to get aboard even as a programmer; this captain
knew all the wrong things about me."
The expedition lasted a thousand years, penetrating two hundred and
fifty light-years galactic inward. The Qeng Ho volume was closer to the
Bottom of the Slowness than Old Earth, and they were proceeding inwards from
there. Even so, it was plain bad luck that they encountered the edge of the
Deeps after only two hundred and fifty light-years. One after another, the
Wild Witless Bird lost contact with the other ships. Sometimes it happened
without warning, other times there was evidence of computer failure or gross
incompetence. The survivors saw a pattern, guessed that common components
were failing. Of course, no one connected the problems with the region of
space they were entering.
"We backed down from ram speeds, found a solar system with a
semi-habitable planet. We'd lost track of everybody else.... Just what we
did then isn't real clear to me." He gave a dry laugh. "We must have been
right at the edge, staggering around at about IQ 60. I remember fooling with
the life support system. That's probably what actually killed us." For a
moment he looked sad and bewildered. He shrugged. "And then I woke up in the
tender clutches of Vrinimi Org, here where faster-than-light travel is
possible ... and I can see the edge of Heaven itself."
Ravna didn't say anything for a moment. She looked across her beach
into the surf. They'd been talking a long time. The sun was peeking under
the tree petals, its light shifting across her office. Did Grondr realize
what he had here? Almost anything from the Slow Zone had collector's value.
People fresh from the Slowness were even more valuable. But Pham Nuwen might
be unique. He had personally experienced more than had some whole
civilizations, and ventured into the Deeps to boot. She understood now why
he looked to the Transcend and called it "Heaven". It wasn't entirely
naïveté, nor a failure in the Organization's education programs. Pham Nuwen
had already been through two transforming experiences, from pre-tech to
star- traveler, and star-traveler to Beyonder. Each was a jump almost beyond
imagination. Now he saw that another step was possible, and was perfectly
willing to sell himself to take it.
So why should I risk my job to change his mind? But her mouth was
living a life of its own. "Why not postpone the Transcend, Pham? Take some
time to understand what is here in the Beyond. You'd be welcome in almost
any civilization. And on human worlds you'd be the wonder of the age." A
glimpse of non-Nyjoran humanity. The local newsgroups at Sjandra Kei had
thought Ravna radically ambitious to take a 'prenticeship twenty thousand
light-years away. Coming back from it, she would have her pick of Full
Academician jobs on any of a dozen worlds. That was nothing compared to Pham
Nuwen; there were folks so rich they might give him a world if he would just
stay. "You could name your price."
The redhead's lazy smile broadened. "Ah, but you see, I've already
named my price, and I think Vrinimi can meet it."
I really wish I could do something about that smile, thought Ravna.
Pham Nuwen's ticket to the Transcend was based on a Power's sudden interest
in the Straumli perversion. This innocent's ego might end up smeared across
a million death cubes, running a million million simulations of human
nature.
Grondr called less than five minutes after Pham Nuwen's departure.
Ravna knew the Org would be eavesdropping, and she'd already told Grondr her
misgivings about this "selling" of a sophont. Nevertheless, she was a bit
nervous to see him.
"When is he actually going to leave for the Transcend?"
Grondr rubbed at his freckles. He didn't seem angry. "Not for ten or
twenty days. The Power that's negotiating for him is more interested in
looking at our archives and watching what's passing through Relay. Also ...
despite the human's enthusiasm for going, he's really quite cautious."
"Oh?"
"Yes. He's insisting on a library budget, and permission to roam
anywhere in the system. He's been chatting with random employees all over
the Docks. He was especially insistent about talking to you." Grondr's mouth
parts clicked in a smile. "Feel free to speak your mind to him. Basically,
he's tasting around for hidden poison. Hearing the worst from you should
make him trust us."
She was coming to understand Grondr's confidence. Damn but Pham Nuwen
had a thick head. "Yes sir. He's asked me to show him around the Foreign
Quarter tonight." As you well know.
"Fine. I wish the rest of the deal were going as smoothly." Grondr
turned so that only peripheral freckles were looking in her direction. He
was surrounded by status displays of the Org's communication and database
operations. From what she could see, things were remarkably busy. "Maybe I
should not bring this up, but it's just possible you can help.... Business
is very brisk." Grondr did not seem pleased to report the good news. "We
have nine civilizations from the Top of the Beyond that are bidding for wide
band data feeds. That we could handle. But this Power that sent a ship
here...."
Ravna interrupted almost without thinking, a breach that would have
horrified her a few days earlier. "Just who is it, by the way? Any chance
we're entertaining the Straumli Perversion?" The thought of that taking the
redhead was a chill.
"Not unless all the Powers are fooled, too. Marketing calls our current
visitor 'Old One'." He smiled. "That's something of a joke, but true even
so. We've known it for eleven years." No one really knew how long
Transcendent beings lived, but it was a rare Power that stayed communicative
for more than five or ten years. They lost interest, or grew into something
different -- or really did die. There were a million explanations, thousands
that were allegedly from the Powers first hand. Ravna guessed that the true
explanation was the simplest one: intelligence is the handmaiden of
flexibility and change. Dumb animals can change only as fast as natural
evolution. Human equivalent races, once on their technological run-up, hit
the limits of their zone in a matter of a few thousand years. In the
Transcend, superhumanity can happen so fast that its creators are destroyed.
It wasn't surprising then that the Powers themselves were evanescent.
So calling an eleven-year Power "Old One" was almost reasonable.
"We believe that Old One is a variant on the Type 73 pattern. Such are
rarely malicious -- and we know from whom it Transcended. Just now it's
causing us major discomfort, though. For twenty days it has been
monopolizing an enormous and increasing percentage of Relay bandwidth. Since
its ship arrived, it's been all over the archive and our local nets. We've
asked Old One to send noncritical data by starship, but it refuses. This
afternoon was the worst yet. Almost five percent of Relay's capacity was
bound up in its service. And the creature is sending almost as much downlink
as it is receiving uplink."
That was weird, but, "It's still paying for the business, isn't it? If
Old One can pay top price, why do you care?"
"Ravna, we hope our Organization will be around for many years after
the Old One is gone. There is nothing it could offer us that would be good
through all that time." Ravna nodded. Actually, there were certain "magic"
automations that might work down here, but their long-term effectiveness
would be dubious. This was a commercial situation, not some exercise in an
Applied Theology course. "Old One can easily top any bid from the Middle
Beyond. But if we give it all the services it demands, we'll be effectively
nonfunctional to the rest of our customers -- and they are the people we
must depend on in the future."
His image was replaced by an archive access report. Ravna was very
familiar with the format, and Grondr's complaint really hit home. The Known
Net was a vast thing, a hierarchical anarchy that linked hundreds of
millions of worlds. Yet even the main trunks had bandwidths like something
out of Earth's dawn age; a wrist dataset could do better on a local net.
That's why bulk access to the Archive was mostly local -- to media
freighters visiting the Relay system. But now ... during the last hundred
hours, remote access to the Archive, both by volume and by count, had been
higher than local! And ninety percent of those accesses were from a single
account -- Old One's.
Grondr's voice continued from behind the graphics. "We've got one
backbone transceiver dedicated to this Power right now.... Frankly, we can't
tolerate this for more than a few days; the ultimate expense is just too
great."
Grondr's face was back on the display. "Anyway, I think you can see
that the deal for the barbarian is really the least of our problems. The
last twenty days have brought more income than the last two years -- far
more than we can verify and absorb. We're endangered by our own success." He
made an ironic smile-frown.
They talked a few minutes about Pham Nuwen, and then Grondr rang off.
Afterwards, Ravna took a walk along her beach. The sun was well down toward
the aft horizon, and the sand was just pleasantly warm against her feet; the
Docks went round the planet once every twenty hours, circling the pole at
about forty degrees north latitude. She walked close to the surf, where the
sand was flat and wet. The mist off the sea was moist against her skin. The
blue sky just above the white-tops shaded quickly to indigo and black.
Specks of silver moved up there, agrav floaters bringing starships into the
Docks. The whole thing was so fabulously, unnecessarily expensive. Ravna was
by turns grossed out and bedazzled. Yet after two years at Relay, she was
beginning to see the point. Vrinimi Org wanted the Beyond to know that it
had the resources to handle whatever communication and archive demands might
be made on it. And they wanted the Beyond to suspect that there were hidden
gifts from the Transcend here, things that might make it more than a little
dangerous to invaders.
She stared into the spray, feeling it bead on her lashes. So Grondr had
the big problem right now: how do you tell a Power to take a walk? All Ravna
Bergsndot had to worry about was one overconfident twit who seemed hell-bent
on destroying himself. She turned and paralleled the water. Every third wave
it surged over her ankles.
She sighed. Pham Nuwen was beyond doubt a twit ... but what an awesome
one. Intellectually, she had always known that there was no difference in
the possible intelligence of Beyonders and the primitives of the Slowness.
Most automation worked better in the Beyond; ultralight communication was
possible. But you had to go to the Transcend to build truly superhuman
minds. So it shouldn't be surprising that Pham Nuwen was capable. Very
capable. He had picked up Triskweline with incredible ease. She had little
doubt that he was the master skipper he claimed. And to be a trader in the
Slowness, to risk centuries between the stars for a destination that might
have fallen from civilization or become deadly hostile to outsiders ... that
took courage that was hard to imagine. She could understand how he might
think going to the Transcend was just another challenge. He'd had less than
twenty days to absorb a whole new universe. That simply wasn't enough time
to understand that the rules change when the players are more than human.
Well, he still had a few days of grace. She would change his mind. And
after talking to Grondr just now, she wouldn't feel especially guilty about
doing it.
.Delete this paragraph to shift page flush
-=*=-
CHAPTER 8
The Foreign Quarter was actually about a third of the Docks. It abutted
the no-atmosphere periphery -- where ships actually docked -- and extended
inwards to a section of the central sea. Vrinimi Org had convinced a
significant number of races that this was a wonder of the Middle Beyond. In
addition to freight traffic there were tourists -- some of the wealthiest
beings in the Beyond.
Pham Nuwen had carte blanche to these amusements. Ravna took him
through the more spectacular ones, including an agrav hop over the Docks.
The barbarian was more impressed by their pocket space suits than by the
Docks. "I've seen structures bigger than that down in the Slowness." Not
hovering in a planetary gravity well, you haven't.
Pham Nuwen seemed to mellow as the evening progressed. At least his
comments became more perceptive, less edged. He wanted to see how real
traders lived in the Beyond, and Ravna showed him the bourses and the
traders' Local.
They ended up in The Wandering Company just after Docks midnight. This
was not Organization territory, but it was one of Ravna's favorite places, a
private dive that attracted traders from the Top to the Bottom. She wondered
how the decor would appeal to Pham Nuwen. The place was modeled as a meeting
lodge on some world of the Slow Zone. A three-meter model ramscoop hung in
the air over the main service floor. Blue-green drive fields glowed from the
ship's every corner and flange, and spread faintly among patrons sitting
below.
To Ravna the walls and floors were heavy timber, rough cut. People like
Egravan saw stone walls and narrow tunnels -- the sort of broodery his race
had maintained on new conquests of long ago. The trickery was optical -- not
some mental smudging -- and about the best that could be done in the Middle
Beyond.
Ravna and Pham walked between widely-spaced tables. The owners weren't
as successful with sound as with vision: the music was faint and changed
from table to table. Smells changed too, and were a little bit harder to
take. Air management was working hard to keep everyone healthy, if not
completely comfortable. Tonight the place was crowded. At the far end of the
service floor, the special-atmosphere nooks were occupied: low pressure,
high pressure, high NOx, aquaria. Some customers were vague blurs within
turbid atmospheres.
In some ways it might have been a port bar at Sjandra Kei. Yet ... this
was Relay. It attracted High Beyonders who would never come to backwaters
like Sjandra Kei. Most of the High Ones didn't look very strange;
civilizations at the Top were most often just colonies from below. But the
headbands she saw here were not jewelry. Mind-computer links aren't
efficient in the Middle Beyond, but most of the High Beyonders would not
give them up. Ravna started toward a group of banded tripods and their
machines. Let Pham Nuwen talk with creatures who teetered on the edge of
transsapience.
Surprisingly, he touched her arm, drawing her back. "Let's walk around
a little more." He was looking all around the hall, as if searching for a
familiar face. "Let's find some other humans first."
When holes showed in Pham Nuwen's cram-education, they were gapingly
wide. Ravna tried to keep her face serious. "Other humans? We're all there
is at Relay, Pham."
"But the friends you've been telling me about ... Egravan, Sarale?"
Ravna just shook her head. For a moment the barbarian looked
vulnerable.
Pham Nuwen had spent his life crawling at sublight between
human-colonized star systems. She knew that in all that life he had seen
only three non-human races. Now he was lost in a sea of alienness. She kept
her sympathy to herself; this one insight might affect the guy more than all
her arguing.
But the instant passed, and he was smiling again. "Even more an
adventure." They left the main floor and walked past special-atmosphere
nooks. "Lord, but Qeng Ho would love this."
No humans anywhere, and The Wandering Company was the homiest meeting
place she knew; many Org customers met only on the Net. She felt her own
homesickness welling up. On the second floor, a signet flag caught her eye.
She'd known something like it back at Sjandra Kei. She drew Pham Nuwen
across the floor, and started up the timbered stairs.
Out of the background murmur, she heard a high-pitched twittering. It
wasn't Triskweline, but the words made sense! By the Powers, it was
Samnorsk: "I do believe it's a Homo Sap! Over here, my lady." She followed
the sound to the table with the signet flag.
"May we sit with you?" she asked, savoring the familiar language.
"Please do." The twitterer looked like a small ornamental tree sitting
in a six-wheeled cart. The cart was marked with cosmetic stripes and
tassels; its 150-by-120-centimeter topside was covered with a cargo scarf in
the same pattern as the signet flag. The creature was a Greater Skroderider.
Its race traded through much of the Middle Beyond, including Sjandra Kei.
The Skroderider's high-pitched voice came from its voder. But speaking
Samnorsk, it sounded homier than anything she'd heard in a long time. Even
granting the mental peculiarities of Skroderiders, she felt a surge of
affectionate nostalgia, as if she had run into a old classmate in a far
city.
"My name is -- " the sound was the rustling of fronds, "but you can
easier call me Blueshell. It's nice to see a familiar face, hahaha."
Blueshell spoke the laughter as words. Pham Nuwen had sat down with Ravna,
but he understood not a word of Samnorsk and so the great reunion was lost
on him. The Rider switched to Triskweline and introduced his four
companions: another Skroderider, and three humanoids who seemed to like the
shadows. None of the humanoids spoke Samnorsk, but no one was more than one
translator hop from Triskweline.
The Skroderiders were owners/operators of a small interstellar
freighter, the Out of Band II. The humanoids were certificants for part of
the starship's current cargo. "My mate and I have been in the business
almost two hundred years. We have happy feelings for your race, my lady. Our
first runs were between Sjandra Kei and Forste Utgrep. Your people are good
customers and we scarcely ever have a shipment rot...." He wheeled his
skrode back from the table and then drove forward -- the equivalent of a
small bow.
All was not sweetness and light, however. One of the humanoids spoke.
The sounds could almost have come from a human throat, though they made no
sense. A moment passed as the house translator processed his words. Then the
broach on his jacket spoke in clear Triskweline: "Blueshell states you are
Homo sapiens. Know that you have our animosity. We are bankrupt,
near-stranded here by your race's evil creation. The Straumli Perversion."
The words sounded emotionless, but Ravna could see the creature's tense
posture, its fingers twisting at a drink bulb.
Considering his attitude, it probably wouldn't help to point out that
though she was human, Sjandra Kei was thousands of light-years from Straum.
"You came here from the Realm?" she asked the Skroderider.
Blueshell didn't answer immediately. That's the way it was with his
race; he was probably trying to remember who she was and what they were all
talking about. Then: "Yes, yes. Please do excuse my certificants' hostility.
Our main cargo is a one-time cryptographic pad. The source is Commercial
Security at Sjandra Kei; the destination is the certificants' High colony.
It was the usual arrangement: We're carrying a one-third xor of the pad.
Independent shippers are carrying the others. At the destination, the three
parts would be xor'd together. The result could supply a dozen worlds'
crypto needs on the Net for -- "
Downstairs there was a commotion. Someone was smoking something a bit
too strong for the air scrubbers. Ravna caught a whiff, enough to shimmer
her vision. It had knocked out several patrons on the main level. Management
was counseling the offending customer. Blueshell made an abrupt noise. He
backed his skrode from the table and rolled to the railing. "Don't want to
be caught unawares. Some people can be so abrupt...." When nothing more came
of the incident, he returned. "Uh, where was I?" He was silent a moment,
consulting the short-term memory built into his skrode. "Yes, yes.... We
would become relatively rich if our plans work out. Unfortunately, we
stopped on Straum to drop off some bulk data." He pivoted on his rear four
wheels. "Surely that was safe? Straum is more than a hundred light-years
from their lab in the Transcend. Yet -- "
One of the certificants interrupted with loud gabble. The house
translator kicked in a moment later: "Yes. It should have been safe. We saw
no violence. Ship's recorders show that our safeness was not breached. Yet
now there are rumors. Net groups claim that Straumli Realm is owned by
perversion. Absurdity. Yet these rumors have crossed the Net to our
destination. Our cargo is not trusted, so our cargo is ruined: now it is
only a few grams of data medium carrying random -- " In the middle of the
flat-voiced translation, the humanoid lunged out of the shadows. Ravna had a
glimpse of a jaw edged with razor-sharp gums. He threw his drink bulb at the
table in front of her.
Pham Nuwen's hand flashed out, snatching the drink before it hit --
before she had quite realized what was happening. The redhead came slowly to
his feet. From the shadows, the two other humanoids came to their feet and
moved toward their friend. Pham Nuwen didn't say a word. He set the bulb
carefully down and leaned just slightly toward the other, his hands relaxed
yet bladelike. Cheap fiction talks about "looks of deadly menace". Ravna had
never expected to see the real thing. But the humanoids saw it too. They
tugged their friend gently back from the table. The loudmouth did not
resist, but once beyond Pham's reach he erupted in a barrage of squeals and
hisses that left the house translator speechless. He made a sharp gesture
with three fingers, and shut up. The three swept silently down the stairs
and away.
Pham Nuwen sat down, his gray eyes calm and untroubled. Maybe he did
have something to be arrogant about! Ravna looked across at the two
Skroderiders. "I'm sorry your cargo lost value."
Most of Ravna's past contacts had been with Lesser Skroderiders, whose
reflexes were only slightly augmented beyond their sessile heritage. Had
these two even noticed the interruption? But Blueshell answered immediately,
"Do not apologize. Ever since our arrival, those three have been
complaining. Contract partners or not, I'm very tired of them." He lapsed
into potted-plant mode.
After a moment, the other Rider -- Greenstalk, was it? -- spoke.
"Besides, our commercial situation may not be a complete failure. I am sure
the other thirds of the shipment went nowhere near Straumli Realm." That was
the usual procedure anyway: each part of the shipment was carried by a
different company, each taking a very different path. If the other thirds
could be certified, the crew of the Out of Band might not come away
empty-handed. "In -- in fact, there may be a way we can get full
certification. True, we were at Straumli Main, but -- "
"How long ago did you leave?"
"Six hundred and fifty hours ago. About two hundred hours after they
dropped off the Net."
It suddenly dawned on Ravna that she was talking to something like
eyewitnesses. After thirty days, the Threats news was still dominated by the
events at Straum. The consensus was that a Class Two perversion had been
created -- even Vrinimi Org believed that. Yet it was still mainly
guesswork.... And here she was talking to beings who had actually been
there. "You don't think the Straumers created a perversion?"
It was Blueshell who replied. "Sigh," he said. "Our certificants deny
it, but I see a problem of conscience here. We did witness strangeness on
Straum.... Have you ever encountered artificial immune systems? The ones
that work in the Middle Beyond are more trouble than they're worth, so
perhaps not. I noticed a real change in certain officers of the Crypto
Authority right after the Straumli vi