terror.
Oh Pham, how I wish I could talk to you like before! She curled gently
in on herself, the way you can in zero gee. The sobs came softly, but
without hope. They had not exchanged a hundred words in the last five days.
They lived as if with guns at each others' heads. And that was the literal
truth -- she had made it so. When she and he and the Skroderiders had been
together, at least the danger had been a shared burden. Now they were split
apart and their enemies were slowly gaining on them. What good could Pham's
godshatter be against a thousand enemy ships and the Blight behind them?
She floated for a timeless while, the sobs fading into despairing
silence. And again she wondered if what she'd done could possibly be right.
She had threatened Pham's life to protect Blueshell and Greenstalk and their
kind. In doing so, she had kept secret what might be the greatest treachery
in the history of the Known Net. Can one person make such a decision? Pham
had asked her that, and she had answered yes but....
The question toyed with her every day. And every day she tried to see
some way out. She wiped her face silently. She didn't doubt what Pham had
discovered.
There were some smug posters on the Net who argued that something as
vast as the Blight was simply a tragic disaster, and not an evil. Evil, they
argued, could only have meaning on smaller scales, in the hurt that one
sophont does to another. Before RIP, the argument had seemed a frivolous
playing with words. Now she saw that it was meaningful -- and dead wrong.
The Blight had created the Riders, a marvelous and peaceful race. Their
presence on a billion worlds had been a good. And behind it all was the
potential for converting the sovereign minds of friends into monsters. When
she thought of Blueshell and Greenstalk, and the fear welled up and she knew
the poison that was there -- even though they were good people -- then she
knew she'd glimpsed evil on the Transcendent scale.
She had gotten Blueshell and Greenstalk into this mission; they had not
asked for it. They were friends and allies, and she would not harm them
because of what they could become.
Maybe it was the latest news items. Maybe it was confronting the same
impossibilities for the n'th time: Ravna gradually straightened, looking at
those last messages. So. She believed Pham about the Skroderider threat. She
also believed these two were only enemies in potential. She had thrown away
everything to save them and their kind. Maybe it was a mistake, but take
what advantage there is in it. If they are to be saved because you think
they are allies, then treat them as allies. Treat them as the friends they
are. We are all pawns together.
Ravna pushed gently toward her cabin's doorway.
The Skroderiders' cabin was just behind the command deck. Since the
debacle at RIP, the two had not left it. As she drifted down the passage
toward their door, Ravna half-expected to see Pham's handiwork lurking in
the shadows. She knew he was doing his best to "protect himself". Yet there
was nothing unusual. What will he think of my visiting them?
She announced herself. After a moment Blueshell appeared. His skrode
was wiped clean of cosmetic stripes, and the room behind him was a jumble.
He waved her in with quick jerks of his fronds.
"My lady."
"Blueshell," she nodded at him. Half the time she cursed herself for
trusting the Riders; the other half, she was mortally embarrassed for having
left them alone. "H-how is Greenstalk?"
Surprisingly, Blueshell's fronds snapped together in a smile. "You
guessed? This is the first day with her new skrode.... I will show you, if
you'd like."
He threaded around equipment that was scattered in a lattice across the
room. It was similar to the shop equipment Pham had used to build his
powered armor. And if Pham had seen it, he might have lost all self-control.
"I've worked on it every minute since ... Pham locked us in here."
Greenstalk was in the other room. Her stalk and fronds rose from a
silver pot. There were no wheels. It looked nothing like a traditional
skrode. Blueshell rolled across the ceiling and extended a frond down to his
mate. He rustled something at her, and after a moment, she replied.
"The skrodeling is very limited, no mobility, no redundant power
supplies. I copied it off a Lesser Skroderider design, a simple thing
designed by Dirokimes. It's not meant for more than sitting in one place,
facing in one direction. But it provides her with short-term memory support,
and attention focusers.... She is back with me." He fussed around her, some
fronds caressing hers, others pointing to the gadget he had built for her.
"She herself was not badly injured. Sometimes I wonder -- whatever Pham
says, maybe at the last second he could not kill her."
He spoke nervously, as though afraid of what Ravna might say.
"The first few days I was very worried. But the surgeon is good. It
gave her plenty of time to stand in strong surf. To think slowly. Since I've
added on this skrodeling, she has practiced the calisthenics of memory,
repeating what the surgeon or I say to her. With the skrodeling, she can
hold on to a new memory for almost five hundred seconds. That's usually long
enough for her natural mind to commit a thought to long-term memory."
Ravna drifted close. There were some new creases in Greenstalk's
fronds. Those would be scars healing. Her visual surfaces followed Ravna's
approach. The Rider knew she was here; her whole posture was friendly.
"Can she talk Trisk, Blueshell? Do you have a voder hooked up?"
"What?" Buzz. He was forgetful or nervous, Ravna couldn't tell which.
"Yes, yes. Just give me a minute.... There was no need before. No one wanted
to talk to us." He fiddled with something on the home-made skrode.
After a moment, "Hello, Ravna. I ... recognize you." Her fronds rustled
in time with the words.
"I know you, too. We, I am glad that you are back."
The voder voice was faint, wistful? "Yes. It's hard for me to tell. I
do want to talk, but I'm not sure ... am I'm making sense?"
Out of Greenstalk's sight, Blueshell flicked a long tendril, a gesture:
say yes.
"Yes, I understand you, Greenstalk." And Ravna resolved never again to
get angry with Greenstalk about not remembering.
"Good." Her fronds straightened and she didn't say anything more.
"See?" came Blueshell's voder voice. "I am brightly cheerful. Even now,
Greenstalk is committing this conversation to long-term memory. It goes
slowly for now, but I am improving the skrodeling. I'm sure her slowness is
mainly emotional shock." He continued to brush at Greenstalk's fronds, but
she didn't say anything more. Ravna wondered just how brightly cheerful he
could be.
Behind the Riders were a set of display windows, customized now for the
Rider outlook. "You've been following the News?" Ravna asked.
"Yes, indeed."
"I-I feel so helpless." I feel so foolish, saying that to you.
But Blueshell didn't take offense. He seemed grateful for the change of
topic, preferring the gloom at a distance. "Yes. We certainly are famous
now. Three fleets chasing us down, my lady. Ha ha."
"They don't seem to be gaining very fast."
Frond shrug. "Sir Pham has turned out to be a competent ship's master.
I'm afraid things will change as we descend. The ship's higher automation
will gradually fail. What you call 'manual control' will become very
important. OOB was designed for my race, my lady. No matter what Sir Pham
thinks of us, at bottom we can fly it better than any. So bit by bit the
others will gain -- at least those who truly understand their own ships."
It was something she hadn't guessed, certainly something she would
never have found reading the Net. Too bad it's also bad news. "S-surely Pham
must know this?"
"I think he must. But he is trapped in his own fears. What can he do?
If not for you, My Lady Ravna, he might have killed us already. Maybe when
the choice comes down to dying in the next hour against trusting us, maybe
then there will be a chance."
"By then it will be too late. Look, even if he doesn't trust -- even
though he believes the worst of Riders -- there must still be a way." And it
came to her that sometimes you don't have to change the way people think, or
even whom they may hate. "Pham wants to get to the Bottom, to recover this
Countermeasure. He thinks you may be from the Blight, and after the same
thing. But up to a point -- " up to a point he can cooperate, postpone the
showdown he imagines till perhaps it won't matter.
Even as she started to say it, Blueshell was already shouting back at
her. "I'm am not of the Blight! Greenstalk is not! The Rider race is not!"
He swept around his mate, rolled across the ceiling till his fronds rattled
right before Ravna's face.
"I'm sorry. It's just the potential -- "
"Nonsense!" His voder buzzed off scale. "We ran in to an evil few.
Every race has such, people who will kill for trade. They forced Greenstalk,
substituted data at her voder. Pham Nuwen would kill our billions for the
sake of this fantasy." He waved, inarticulate. Something she had never seen
in a Skroderider: his fronds actually changed tone, darkened.
The motion ceased, yet he said nothing more. And then Ravna heard it, a
keening that might have come from a voder. The sound was steadily growing, a
howl that made all Blueshell's sound effects friendly nonsense. It was
Greenstalk.
The scream reached a threshold just below pain, then broke into choppy
Triskweline: "It's true! Oh, by all our trading, Blueshell, it's true...."
and staticky noise came from her voder. Her fronds started shaking, random
turning that must be like a human's eyes wildly staring, like a human's
mouth mumbling hysteria.
Blueshell was already back by the wall, reaching to adjust her new
skrode. Greenstalk's fronds brushed him away, and her voder voice continued,
"I was horror struck, Blueshell. I was horror struck, struck by horror. And
it would not stop...." the voice rattled quiet for just an instant, and this
time Blueshell made no move. "I remember everything up till the last five
minutes. And everything Pham says is true, dear love. Loyal as you are, and
I have seen that loyalty now for two hundred years, you would be turned in
an instant ... just as I was." Now that the dam broke, her words came
quickly, mostly making sense. The horrors she could remember were graven
deep, and she was finally coming out of ghastly shock. "I was right behind
you, remember, Blueshell? You were deep in your trading with the tusk-legs,
so deep you did not really see. I noticed the other Riders coming toward us.
No matter: a friendly meeting, so far from home. Then one touched my Skrode.
I -- " Greenstalk hesitated. Her fronds rattled and she began again, "horror
struck, horror struck ...."
After a moment: "It was like suddenly new memories in the skrode,
Blueshell. New memories, new attitudes. But thousands of years deep. And not
mine. Instantly, instantly. I never even lost consciousness. I thought just
as clearly, I remembered all I had before."
"And when you resisted?" Ravna said softly.
"... Resisted? My Lady Ravna, I did not resist. I was theirs.... No.
Not theirs, for they were owned, too. We were things, our intelligence in
service to another's goal. Dead, and alive to see our death. I would kill
you, I would kill Pham, I would kill Blueshell. You know I tried. And when I
did, I wanted to succeed. You could not imagine, Ravna. You humans speak of
violation. You could never know...." Long pause. "That's not quite right. At
the Top of the Beyond, within the Blight itself -- perhaps there, everyone
lives as I did."
The shuddering did not subside, but her gestures were no longer
aimless. The fronds were saying something in her own language, and brushing
gently against Blueshell.
"Our whole race, dear love. Just as Pham says it."
Blueshell wilted, and Ravna felt the sort of gut-tearing she had when
they learned of Sjandra Kei. That had been her worlds, her family, her life.
Blueshell was hearing worse.
Ravna pushed a little closer, near enough to run her hand up the side
of Greenstalk's fronds. "Pham says it's the greater skrodes that are the
cause." Sabotage hidden billions of years deep.
"Yes, it is mainly the skrodes. The 'great gift' we Riders love so....
It is a design for control, but I fear we were remade for it, too. When they
touched my skrode, I was converted instantly. Instantly, everything I cared
for was meaningless. We are like smart bombs, scattered by the trillions
through space that everyone thinks is safe. We will be used sparingly. We
are the Blight's hidden weapon, especially in the Low Beyond."
Blueshell twitched, and his voice came out jerkily: "And everything
Pham claims is correct."
"No, Blueshell, not everything." Ravna remembered that last chilling
standoff with Pham Nuwen. "He has the facts, but he weighs them wrong. As
long as your skrodes are not perverted, you are the same folk that I trusted
to fly me to the Bottom."
Blueshell angled his look away from her, an angry shrug. Greenstalk's
voice came instead. "As long as the skrode has not been perverted.... But
look how easy it was done, how sudden I became the Blight's."
"Yes, but could it happen except by direct touch? Could you be
'changed' by reading the Net News?" She meant the question as ghastly
sarcasm, but poor Greenstalk took it seriously:
"Not by a News item, nor by standard protocol messages. But accepting a
transmission targeted on skrode utilities might do it."
"Then we are safe here. You, because you no longer ride a greater
skrode, Blueshell because -- "
"Because I was never touched -- but how can you know that?" His anger
was still there deep within shame, but now it was a hopeless anger, directed
at something very far away.
"No, dear love, you have not been touched. I would know."
"Yes, but why should Ravna believe you?"
Everything could be a lie, thought Ravna, ... but I believe Greenstalk.
I believe we four are the only ones in all the Beyond who can hurt the
Blight. If only Pham could see it. And that brought her back to: "You say we
will start losing our lead?"
Blueshell waved an affirmative. "As soon as we are a little lower. They
should have us in a matter of weeks."
And then it won't matter who was perverted and who was not. "I think we
should have a little chat with Pham Nuwen." Godshatter and all.
Beforehand Ravna couldn't imagine how the confrontation would turn out.
Just possibly -- if he'd lost all touch with reality -- Pham might try to
kill them when they appeared on the command deck. More likely there would be
rage and argument and threats, and they would be back to square one.
Instead ... it was almost like the old Pham, from before Harmonious
Repose. He let them enter the command deck, he made no comment when Ravna
set herself carefully between himself and the Riders. He listened without
interruption, while Ravna explained what Greenstalk had said. "These two are
safe, Pham. And without their help we'll not make it to the Bottom."
He nodded, looked away at the windows. Some showed natural starscape;
most were ultratrace displays, the closest thing to a picture of the enemies
that were closing on the OOB. His calm expression broke for just an instant,
and the Pham that loved her seemed to stare out, desperate: "And you really
believe all this, Rav? How?" Then the lid was back on, his expression
distant and neutral. "Never mind. Certainly it's true: without all of us
working together we'll never make it to Tines' World. Blueshell, I accept
your offer. Subject to cautious safeguards, we work together." Till I can
safely dispose of you, Ravna could feel the unsaid words behind his
blandness. Showdown deferred.
.Delete this paragraph to shift page flush
CHAPTER 33
They were less than eight weeks from Tines' World, both Pham and
Blueshell said. If the Zone conditions remained stable. If they were not
overtaken in the meantime.
Less than two months, after the six already voyaged. But the days were
not like before. Every one was a challenge, a standoff sometimes cloaked in
civility, sometimes flaring into threats of sudden death -- as when Pham
retrieved Blueshell's shop equipment.
Pham was living on the command deck now; when he left it, the hatch was
locked on his ID. He had destroyed, or thought he had destroyed, all other
privileged links to the ship's automation. He and Blueshell were in almost
constant collaboration ... but not like before. Every step was slow,
Blueshell explaining everything, allowed to demonstrate nothing. That's
where the arguments came closest to deadly force, when Pham must give in to
one peril or the other. For every day the pursuing fleets were a little bit
closer: two bands of killers, and what was left of Sjandra Kei. Evidently
some of the SjK Commercial Security fleet could still fight, wanted revenge
on the Alliance. Once Ravna suggested to Pham that they contact Commercial
Security, try to persuade them to attack the Blighter fleet. Pham had given
her a blank look. "Not yet, maybe not ever," he said, and turned away. In a
way his answer was a relief: Such a battle would be a suicidal long shot.
Ravna didn't want the last of her kinsfolk dying for her.
So the OOB might arrive at Tines' World before the enemy, but with what
little time to spare! Some days Ravna withdrew in tears and despair. What
brought her back was Jefri and Greenstalk. They both needed her, and for a
few weeks more she could still help.
Mr. Steel's defense plans were proceeding. The Tines were even having
some success with their wideband radio. Steel reported that Woodcarver's
main force was on its way north; there was more than one race against time.
She spent many hours with the OOB's library, devising more gifts for the
Jefri's friends. Some things -- like telescopes -- were easy, but others....
It wasn't wasted effort. Even if the Blight won, its fleet might ignore the
natives, might settle for killing the OOB and winning back the
Countermeasure.
Greenstalk was slowly improving. At first Ravna was afraid the
improvement might be in her own imagination. Ravna was spending a good part
of each day sitting with the Rider, trying to see progress in her responses.
Greenstalk was very "far away", almost like a human with stroke damage and
prosthesis. In fact, she seemed regressed from the articulate horror of her
first conversations. Maybe her recent progress was just a mirror to Ravna's
sensitivity, to the fact that Ravna was with her so much. Blueshell insisted
there was progress, but with that stubborn inflexibility of his. Two weeks,
three -- and there was no doubt: something was healing at the boundary
between Rider and skrodeling. Greenstalk consistently made sense,
consistently committed important rememberings.... Now as often as not it was
she helping Ravna. Greenstalk saw things that Ravna had missed: "Sir Pham
isn't the only one who is afraid of us Skroderiders. Blueshell is frightened
too, and it is tearing him apart. He can't admit it even to me, but he
thinks it's possible that we're infected independently of our skrodes. He
desperately wants to convince Pham that this is not true -- and so to
convince himself." She was silent for a long moment, one frond brushing
against Ravna's arm. Sea sounds surrounded them in the cabin, but ship's
automation could no longer produce surging water. "Sigh. We must pretend the
surf, dear Ravna. Somewhere it will always be, no matter what happened at
Sjandra Kei, no matter what happens here."
Blueshell was hearty gentleness around his mate, but alone with Ravna
his rage showed through: "No, no, I don't object to Sir Pham's navigation,
at least not now. Perhaps we could be a little further ahead with me
directly at the helm, but the fastest ships behind us would still be
closing. It's the other things, my lady. You know how untrustworthy our
automation is down here. Pham is hurting it further. He's written his own
security overrides. He's turning the ship's environment automation into a
system of boobytraps."
Ravna had seen evidence of this. The areas around OOB's command deck
and ship's workshop looked like military checkpoints. "You know his fears.
If this makes him feel safer -- "
"That's not the point, My Lady. I would do anything to persuade him to
accept my help. But what he's doing is deadly dangerous. Our Bottom
automation is not reliable, and he's making it actively worse. If we get
some sudden stress, the environment programs will likely have a bizarre
crash -- atmosphere dump, thermal runaway, anything."
"I -- "
"Doesn't he understand? Pham controls nothing." His voder broke into a
nonlinear squawk. "He has the ability to destroy, but that is all. He needs
my help. He was my friend. Doesn't he understand?"
Pham understood ... oh, Pham understood. He and Ravna still talked.
Their arguments were the hardest thing in her life. And sometimes they
didn't exactly argue; sometimes it was almost like rational discussion:
"I haven't been taken over, Ravna. Not like the Blight takes over
Riders, anyway. I still have charge of my soul." He turned away from the
console and flashed a wan smile in her direction, acknowledging the flaw in
such self-conviction. And from things like that smile, Ravna was convinced
that Pham Nuwen still lived, and sometimes spoke.
"What about the godshatter state? I see you for hours, just staring at
the tracking display, or mucking around in the library and the News,"
scanning faster than any human could consciously read.
Pham shrugged. "It's studying the ships that are chasing us, trying to
figure out just what belongs to whom, just what capabilities each might
have. I don't know the details. Self-awareness is on vacation then," when
all Pham's mind was turned into a processor for whatever programs Old One
had downloaded. A few hours of fugue state might yield an instant of
Power-grade thought -- and even that he didn't consciously remember. "But I
know this. Whatever the godshatter is, it's a very narrow thing. It's not
alive; in some ways it may not even be very smart. For everyday matters like
ship piloting, there's just good old Pham Nuwen."
"... there's the rest of us, Pham. Blueshell would like to help," Ravna
spoke softly. This was the place where Pham would close into icy silence --
or blow up in rage. This day, he just cocked his head. "Ravna, Ravna. I know
I need him.... And, and I'm glad I need him. That I don't have to kill him."
Yet. Pham's lips quivered for a second, and she thought he might start
crying.
"The godshatter can't know Blueshell -- "
"Not the godshatter. It's not making me act this way -- I'm doing what
any person should do when the stakes are this high." The words were spoken
without anger. Maybe there was a chance. Maybe she could reason:
"Blueshell and Greenstalk are loyal, Pham. Except at Harmonious Repose
-- "
Pham sighed, "Yeah. I've thought about that a lot. They came to Relay
from Straumli Realm. They got Vrinimi looking for the refugee ship. That
smells of setup, but probably unknowing -- maybe even a setup by something
opposing the Blight. In any case they were innocent then, else the Blight
would have known about Tines world right from the beginning. The Blight knew
nothing till RIP, till Greenstalk was converted. And I know Blueshell was
loyal even then. He knew things about my armor -- the remotes, for instance
-- that he could have warned the others about."
Hope came as a surprise to Ravna. He really had thought things out, and
-- "It's just the skrodes, Pham. They're traps waiting to be sprung. But
we're isolated here, and you destroyed the one that Greenstalk -- "
Pham was shaking his head. "It's more than the skrodes. The Blight had
its hand in Rider design, too, at least to some degree. I can't imagine the
takeover of Greenstalk's being so smooth otherwise."
"Y-yes. A risk. A very small risk compared to -- "
Pham didn't move, but something in him seemed to draw away from her,
denying the support she could offer. "A small risk? We don't know. The
stakes are so high. I'm walking a tightrope. If I don't use Blueshell now,
we'll be shot out of space by the Blighter fleet. If I let him do too much,
if I trust him, then he or some part of him could betray us. All I have is
the godshatter, and a bunch of memories that ... that may be the biggest
fakes of all." These last words were nearly inaudible. He looked up at her,
a look that was both cold and terribly lost. "But I'm going to use what I
have, Rav, and whatever it is I am. Somehow I'm going to get us to Tines'
World. Somehow I'm going to get Old One's godshatter to whatever is there."
It was another three weeks before Blueshell's predictions came true.
The OOB had seemed a sturdy beast up in the Middle Beyond; even its
damaged ultradrive had failed gracefully. Now the ship was leaking bugs in
all directions. Much of it had nothing to do with Pham's meddling. Without
those final consistency checks, none of the OOB's Bottom automation was
really trustworthy. But its failures were compounded by Pham's desperate
security hacks.
The ship's library had source code for generic Bottom automation. Pham
spent several days revising it for the OOB. All four of them were on the
command deck during the installation, Blueshell trying to help, Pham
suspiciously examining every suggestion. Thirty minutes into the
installation, there were muffled banging noises down the main corridor.
Ravna might have ignored them, except that she'd never heard the like aboard
the OOB.
Pham and the Riders reacted with near panic; spacers don't like
unexplained bumps in the night. Blueshell raced to the hatch, floated
fronds-first through the hole. "I see nothing, Sir Pham."
Pham was paging quickly through the diagnostic displays, mixed format
things partly from the new setup. "I've got some warning lights here, but --
"
Greenstalk started to say something, but Blueshell was back and talking
fast: "I don't believe it. Anything like this should make pictures, a
detailed report. Something is terribly wrong."
Pham stared at him a second, then returned to his diagnostics. Five
seconds passed. "You're right. Status is just looping through stale
reports." He began grabbing views from cameras all over the OOB's interior.
Barely half of them reported, but what they showed...
The ship's water reservoir was a foggy, icy cavern. That was the
banging sound -- tonnes of water, spaced. A dozen other support services had
gone bizarre, and --
-- the armed checkpoint outside the workshop had slagged down. The
beamers were firing continuously on low power. And for all the destruction,
the diagnostics still showed green or amber or no report. Pham got a camera
in the workshop itself. The place was on fire.
Pham jumped up from his saddle and bounced off the ceiling. For an
instant she thought he might go racing off the bridge. Then he tied himself
down and grimly began trying to put out the fire.
For the next few minutes, the bridge was almost quiet, just Pham
quietly swearing as none of the obvious things worked. "Interlocking
failures," he mumbled the phrase a couple of times. "The firesnuff
automation is down.... I can't dump atmosphere from the shop. My beamers
have melted everything shut."
Ship fire. Ravna had seen pictures of such disasters, but they had
always seemed an improbable thing. In the midst of universal vacuum, how
could a fire survive? And in zero-gee, surely a fire would choke itself even
if the crew couldn't dump atmosphere. The workshop camera had a hazy view on
the real thing: True, the flames ate the oxygen around them. There were
sheets of construction foam that were only lightly scorched, protected for
the moment by dead air. But the fire spread out, moving steadily into
still-fresh air. In places, heat-driven turbulence enriched the mix, and
previously burned areas blazed up.
"It's still got ventilation, Sir Pham."
"I know. I can't shut it. The vents must be melted open."
"It's as likely software." Blueshell was silent for a second. "Try this
-- " the directions were meaningless to Ravna, some low-level workaround.
But Pham nodded, and his fingers danced across the console.
In the workshop, the surface-hugging flames crept farther across the
construction foam. Now they licked at the innards of the armor Pham had
spent so much time on. This latest revision was only half finished. Ravna
remembered he was working on reactive armor now .... There would be
oxidizers there. "Pham, is the armor sealed -- "
The fire was sixty meters aft and behind a dozen bulkheads. The
explosion came as a distant thump, almost innocent. But in the camera view,
the armor dismembered itself, and the fire blazed triumphant.
Seconds later, Pham got Blueshell's suggestion working, and the
workshop's vents closed. The fire in the wrecked armor continued for another
half hour, but did not spread beyond the shop.
It took two days to clean up, to estimate the damage, and have some
confidence that no new disaster was on the way. Most of the workshop was
destroyed. They would have no armor on Tines world. Pham salvaged one of the
beamers that had been guarding the entrance to the shop. Disaster was
scattered all across the ship, the classic random ruin of interlocking
failures: They had lost fifty percent of their water. The ship's landing
boat had lost its higher automation.
OOB's rocket drive was massively degraded. That was unimportant here in
interstellar space, but their final velocity matching would be done at only
0.4 gees. Thank goodness the agrav worked; they would have no trouble
maneuvering in steep gravitational wells -- that is, landing on Tines world.
Ravna knew how close they were to losing the ship, but she watched Pham
with even greater dread. She was so afraid that he would take this as final
evidence of Rider treachery, that this would drive him over the edge.
Strangely, almost the opposite happened. His pain and devastation were
obvious, but he didn't lash out, just doggedly went about gathering up the
pieces. He was talking to Blueshell more now, not letting him modify the
automation, but cautiously accepting more of his advice. Together they
restored the ship to something like its pre-fire state.
She asked Pham about it. "No change of heart," he finally said. "I had
to balance the risks, and I messed up.... And maybe there is no balance.
Maybe the Blight will win."
The godshatter had bet too much on Pham's doing it all himself. Now it
was turning down the paranoia a little.
Seven weeks out from Harmonious Repose, less than one week from
whatever waited at Tines' world, Pham went into a multiday fugue. Before he
had been busy, a futile attempt to run handmade checks on all the automation
they might need at Tines' World. Now -- Ravna couldn't even get him to eat:
The nav display showed the three fleets as identified by the News and
Pham's intuition: the Blight's agents, the Alliance for the Defense, and
what was left of Sjandra Kei Commercial Security. Deadly monsters and the
remains of a victim. The Alliance still proclaimed itself with regular
bulletins on the News. SjK Commercial Security had posted a few terse
refutations, but was mostly silent; they were unused to propaganda, or -- as
likely -- uninterested in it. A private revenge was all that remained to
Commercial Security. And the Blighter fleet? The News hadn't heard anything
from them. Piecing together departures and lost ships, War Trackers
Newsgroup concluded they were a wildly ad hoc assembly, whatever the Blight
had controlled down here at the time of the RIP debacle. Ravna knew that the
War Trackers analysis was wrong about one thing: The Blighter fleet was not
silent. Thirty times over the last weeks, they had sent messages at the OOB
... in skrode maintenance format. Pham had had the ship reject the messages
unread -- and then worried about whether the order was really followed.
After all, the OOB was of Rider design.
But now the torment in him was submerged. Pham sat for hours, staring
at the display. Soon Sjandra Kei would close with the Alliance fleet. At
least one set of villains would pay. But the Blighter fleet and at least
part of the Alliance would survive.... Maybe this fugue was just godshatter
getting desperate.
Three days passed; Pham snapped out of it. Except for the new thinness
in his face, he seemed more normal than he had in weeks. He asked Ravna to
bring the Riders up to the bridge.
Pham waved at the ultradrive traces that floated in the window. The
three fleets were spread through a rough cylinder, five light-years deep and
three across. The display captured only the heart of that volume, where the
fastest of the pursuers had clustered. The current position of each ship was
a fleck of light trailing an unending stream of fainter lights -- the
ultradrive trace left by that vehicle's drive. "I've used red, blue, and
green to mark my best guess as to the fleet affiliation of each trace." The
fastest ships were collected in a blob so dense that it looked white at this
scale, but with colored streamers diverging behind. There were other tags,
annotations he had set but which he admitted once to Ravna he didn't
understand.
"The front edge of that mob -- the fastest of the fast -- is still
gaining."
Blueshell said hesitantly. "We might get a little more speed if you
would grant me direct control. Not much, but -- "
Pham's response was civil at least. "No, I'm thinking of something
else, something Ravna suggested a while back. It's always been a possibility
and ... I ... think the time may have come for it."
Ravna moved closer to the display, stared at the green traces. Their
distribution was in near agreement with what the News claimed to be the
remnants of Sjandra Kei Commercial Security. All that's left of my people.
"They've been trying to engage with the Alliance for a hundred hours now."
Pham's glance touched hers. "Yeah," he said softly. "Poor bastards.
They're literally the fleet from Port Despair. If I were them, I'd -- " His
expression smoothed over again. "Any idea how well-armed they are?" That was
surely a rhetorical question, but it put the topic on the table.
"War Trackers thinks that Sjandra Kei had been expecting something
unpleasant ever since the Alliance started talking 'death to vermin'.
Commercial Security was providing deep space defense. Their fleet is
converted freighters armed with locally-designed weapons. War Trackers
claims they weren't really a match for what the other side could field, if
the Alliance was willing to take some heavy casualties. Trouble is, Sjandra
Kei never expected the planet-smasher attack. So when the Alliance fleet
showed up, ours moved out to meet it -- "
"-- and meantime the KE bombs were coming straight in to the heart
spaces of Sjandra Kei."
Into my heart spaces. "Yes. The Alliance must have been running those
bombs for weeks."
Pham Nuwen laughed shortly. "If I were shipping with the Alliance
fleet, I'd be a bit nervous now. They're down in numbers, and those retread
freighters seem about as fast as anything here.... I'll bet every pilot out
of Sjandra Kei is dead set on revenge." The emotion faded. "Hmm. There's no
way they could kill all the Alliance ships or all the Blight's, much less
all of both. It would be pointless to ...
His gaze abruptly focused on her. "So if we leave things as they are,
the Sjandra Kei fleet will eventually match position with the Alliance and
try to blow them out of existence."
Ravna just nodded. "In twelve hours or so, they say."
"And then all that will be left is the Blight's own fleet on our tail.
But if we could talk your people into fighting the right enemies..."
It was Ravna's nightmare scheme. All that was left of Sjandra Kei dying
to save the OOB ... trying to save them. There was little chance the Sjandra
Kei fleet could destroy all the Blighter ships. But they're here to fight.
Why not a vengeance that means something? That was the nightmare's message.
Now somehow it fit godshatter's plans. "There are problems. They don't know
what we're doing or the purpose of the third fleet. Anything we shout back
to them will be overheard." Ultrawave was directional, but most of their
pursuers were closely mingled.
Pham nodded. "Somehow we have to talk to them, and them alone. Somehow
we have to persuade them to fight." Faint smile. "And I think we may have
just the ... equipment ... to do all that. Blueshell: Remember that night on
the High Docks. You told us about your 'rotted cargo' from Sjandra Kei?"
"Indeed, Sir Pham. We carried one third of a cipher generated by SjK
Commercial Security for their long-range communications. It's still in the
ship's safe, though worthless without the other two thirds." Gram for gram,
crypto materials were about the most valuable thing shipped between the
stars -- and once compromised, about the most valueless. Somewhere in Out of
Band's cargo files there was an SjK one-time communications pad. Part of a
pad.
"Worthless? Maybe not. Even one third would provide us with secure
communications."
Blueshell dithered. "I must not mislead you. No competent customer
would accept such. Certainly, it provides secure communication, but the
other side has no verification that you are who you claim."
Pham's glance slid sideways, toward Ravna. There was that smile again.
"If they'll listen, I think we can convince them.... The hard part is, I
only want one of them to hear us." Pham explained what he had in mind. The
Riders' rustled faintly behind Pham's words. After all their time together,
Ravna could almost get some sense of their talk -- or maybe she just
understood their personalities. As usual, Blueshell was worrying about how
impossible the idea was, and Greenstalk was urging him to listen.
But when Pham finished, the large rider did not launch into objections.
"Across seventy light-years, ultrawave comm between ships is practical, even
without our antenna swarm; we could even have live video. But you are right,
the beam spread would include all the ships in the central cluster of
fleets. If we could reliably identify an outlying vessel as belonging to
Sjandra Kei, then what you are asking might be done; that ship could use
internal fleet codes to relay to the others. But in honesty I must warn
you," continued Blueshell, brushing back Greenstalk's gentle remonstrance,
"professional communications folk would not honor your request for talk --
would probably not even recognize it as such."
"Silly." Greenstalk finally spoke, her voder-voice gentle but clear.
"You always say things like that -- except when we are talking to paying
customers."
"Bra