A Fire Upon the Deep (17 page)

We diverted three missions to perform fly-throughs. Signal reconnaissance revealed wideband communication that was more like neural control than local net traffic. Several new large structures were noted. All our vessels were destroyed before detailed information could be returned. Given the background of these settlements, we conclude that this is
not
the normal aftermath of a transcending.

Date: 61.00 days since the fall of Straumli Realm

Text of message:

Date: 61.12 days since the fall of Straumli Realm

Text of message:

WARNING! The site identifying itself as Arbitration Arts is now controlled by the Straumli Perversion. The Arts' recent advertisement of communications services is a deadly trick. In fact we have good evidence that the Perversion used sapient Net packets to invade and disable the Arts' defenses. Large portions of the Arts now appear to be under direct control of the Straumli Power. Parts of the Arts that were not infected in the initial invasion have been destroyed by the converted portions: Fly-throughs show several stellifications.

What can be done: If during the last thousand seconds, you have received any High Beyond protocol packets from "Arbitration Arts",
discard them at once
. If they have been processed (then chances are it is the Perversion who is reading this message and with a [broad smile]), then the processing site and all locally netted sites must be physically destroyed
at once
. We realize that this means the destruction of solar systems, but consider the alternative. You are under Transcendent attack.

For the longer term: It's obvious that an extraordinarily powerful Class Two Perversion has bloomed in our region of the galaxy. For the next thirteen years or so, all advanced civilizations near us will be in great danger.

If we can identify the background of the current perversion, we may discover its weaknesses and a feasible defense. Class Two Perversions all involve a deformed Power that creates symbiotic structures in the High Beyond -- but there is enormous variety of origins. Some are poorly-formed jokes told by Powers no longer on the scene. Others are weapons built by the newly transcendent and never properly disarmed.

-=*=-

The next day Amdi went on the longest trip of his young life. Bundled in windbreakers, they traveled down wide, cobbled streets to the straits below the castle. Mr. Steel led the way on a chariot-cart drawn by three kherhogs. He looked marvelous in his red-striped jackets. Guards dressed in white fur rolled along on either side, and the dour Tyrathect brought up the rear. The aurora was as brilliant as Amdijefri had ever seen, brighter in sum than the full moon above the northern horizon. Icicles grew down from buildings' eaves, sometimes all the way to the ground: glittering, green-silver pillars in the light.

Then they were on the boats, rowing across the straits. The water swept like chill black stone around the hulls.

When they reached the other side, Starship Hill towered over them, higher than any castle could ever be. Every minute brought new visions, new worlds.

It took half an hour to reach the top of that hill, even though their carts were pulled by Kherhogs, and nobody walked. Amdi looked in all directions, awed by the landscape that spread, aurora-lit, below them. At first Jefri seemed just as excited, but as they reached the hilltop, he stopped looking around and hugged painfully hard at his friend.

Mr. Steel had built a shelter around the starship. Inside, the air was still and a little warmer. Jefri stood at the base of the spidery stairs, looking up at the light that spilled from the ship's open doorway. Amdi felt him shivering.

"Is he frightened of his own flier?" asked Tyrathect.

By now Amdi knew most of Jefri's fears, and understood most of the despair.
How would I feel if Mr. Steel were killed?
"No, not scared. It's the memories of what happened here."

Steel said gently, "Tell him we could come again. He doesn't have to go inside today."

Jefri shook his head at the suggestion, but couldn't answer right away. "I've got to go on. I've got to be brave." He started slowly up the stairs, stopping at each step to make sure that Amdi was still all with him. The puppies were split between concern for Jefri and the desire to rush madly into this wonderful mystery.

Then they were through the hatch, and into Two-Legs strangeness. Bright bluish light, air as warm as in the castle ... and dozens of mysterious shapes. They walked to the far side of the big room, and Mr. Steel stuck some heads in the entrance. His mind sounds echoed loudly around them. "I've quilted the walls, Amdi, but even so, there isn't room for more than one of us in here."

"Y-yes," there were echoes and Steel's mind sounded strangely fierce.

"It's up to you to protect your friend here, and let me know about everything you see." He moved back so that just one head still looked in upon them.

"Yes. Yes! I will." It was the first time anybody except Jefri had really needed him.

Jefri wandered silently about the room full of his sleeping friends. He wasn't crying any more, and he wasn't in the silent funk that often held him. It was as if he couldn't quite believe where he was. He passed his hands lightly across the caskets, looked at the faces within.
So many friends,
thought Amdi,
waiting to be wakened. What will they be like?

"The walls? I don't remember this ..." said Jefri. He touched the heavy quilting that Steel had hung.

"It's to make the place sound better," said Amdi. He pulled at the flaps, wondering what was behind: Green wall, like stone and steel all at once ... and covered with tiny bumps and fingers of gray. "What's this?"

Jefri was looking over his shoulders. "Ug. Mold. It's spread. I'm glad Mr. Steel has covered it up." The human boy drifted away. Amdi stayed a second longer, poked several heads up close to the stuff. Mold and fungus were a constant problem in the castle; people were always cleaning it up -- and perversely so, in Amdi's opinion. He thought fungus was neat, something that could grow on hardest rock. And this stuff was especially strange. Some of the clumps were almost half an inch high, but wispy, like solid smoke.

The back-looking part of him saw that Jefri had drifted off toward the inner cabin. Reluctantly, Amdi followed.

They stayed in the ship only an hour that first time. In the inner cabin Jefri turned on magic windows that looked out in all directions. Amdi sat goggle-eyed; this was a trip to heaven.

For Jefri it was something else. He hunched down in a hammock and stared at the controls. The tension slowly left his face.

"I -- I like it here," said Amdi, tentatively, softly.

Jefri rocked gently in the hammock. "... Yes." He sighed. "I was so afraid ... but being here makes me feel closer to ..." His hands reached out to caress the panel that hung close to the hammock. "My dad landed this thing; he was sitting right here." He twisted around, looked at a glimmering panel of light above him. "And Mom got the ultrawave all set.... They did it all. And now it's only you and me, Amdi. Even Johanna is gone.... It's all up to us."

-=*=-

.Delete this paragraph to shift page flush

Two Skroderiders played in the surf.

"Do you think his life is in danger?" asked the one with the slender green stalk.

"Whose life?" said the other, a large rider with a bluish basal shell.

"Jefri Olsndot, the human child."

Blueshell sighed to himself and consulted his skrode. You come to the beach to forget the cares of the everyday, but Greenstalk would not let them go. He scanned for danger-to-Jefri: "Of course he's in danger, you twit! Look up the latest messages from him."

"Oh." Greenstalk's tone was embarrassed. "Sorry for the partial remembering," remembering enough to worry and nothing more. She went silent; after a moment he heard her pleasured humming. The surf crashed endlessly past them.

Blueshell opened to the water, tasting the life that swirled in the power of the waves. It was a beautiful beach. It was probably unique -- and that was an extreme thing to say about anything in the Beyond. When the foam swept back from their bodies, they could see indigo sky spread from one side of the Docks to the other, and the glint of starships. When the surf came forward, the two Riders were submerged in the turbid chill, surrounded by the coralesks and intertidal creatures that built their little homes here. And at high "tide" the flexure of the sea floor held steady for an hour or so. Then the water cleared, and if in daylight, they could see patches of glassy sea-bottom ... and through them, a thousand kilometers below, the surface of Groundside.

Blueshell tried to clear his mind of care. For every hour of peaceful contemplation, a few more natural memories would accumulate.... No good. Just now he could no more banish the worries than could Greenstalk. After a moment, he said, "Sometimes I wish I were a Lesser Rider." To stand a lifetime in one place, with just a minimum skrode.

"Yes," said Greenstalk. "But we decided to roam. That means giving up certain things. Sometimes we must remember things that happen only once or twice. Sometimes we have great adventures: I'm glad we took the rescue contract, Blueshell."

So neither of them were really in the mood for the sea today. Blueshell lowered the skrode's wheels and rolled a little closer to Greenstalk. He looked deep into his skrode's mechanical memory, scanning the general databases. There was a lot there about catastrophes. Whoever created the original skrode databases had considered wars and blights and perversion very important. They were exciting things, and they could kill you.

But Blueshell could also see that in relative terms, such disasters were a small part of the civilized experience. Only about once in a millennium was there a massive blight. It was their bad luck to be caught near such a thing. In the last ten weeks a dozen civilizations in the High Beyond had dropped from the Net, absorbed into the symbiotic amalgam that now was called the Straumli Blight. High trade was crippled. Since their ship was refinanced, he and Greenstalk had flown several jobs, but all to the Middle Beyond.

The two of them had been very cautious, but now -- as Greenstalk said -- greatness might be thrust upon them. Vrinimi Org wanted to commission a secret flight to the Bottom of the Beyond. Since he and Greenstalk were already in on the secret, they were the natural choice for the job. Right now, the
Out of Band II
was in the Vrinimi yards getting bottom-lugger enhancements and a huge stock of antenna drones. In one stroke the
OOB
's value was increased ten-thousand-fold. There had been no need even to bargain!... and that was the scariest thing of all. Every addition was a clear essential for the trip. They would be descending right to the edge of the Slowness. Under the best of circumstances this would be slow and tedious exercise, but the latest surveys reported movement in the zone boundaries. With bad luck, they might actually end up on the wrong side, where light had the ultimate speed. If that should happen, the new ramscoop would be their only hope.

All that was within Blueshell's range of acceptable business. Before he met Greenstalk, he had shipped on bottom-luggers, even been stranded once or twice. But -- "I like adventure as much as you," said Blueshell, a grumpy edge creeping into his voice. "Traveling to the Bottom, rescuing sophonts from the claws of wildthings: given enough money, it's all perhaps reasonable. But ... what if that Straumer ship is really as important as Ravna thinks? After all this time it seems absurd, but she's convinced Vrinimi Org of the possibility. If there's something down there that could harm the Straumli Blight --" If the Blight ever suspected the same, it could have a fleet of ten thousand warships descending on their goal. Down at the Bottom they might be little better than conventional vessels, but he and Greenstalk would be no less dead for that.

Except for a faint daydreamy hum, Greenstalk was silent. Had she had lost track of the conversation? Then her voice came to him through the water, a reassuring caress. "I know, Blueshell, it could be the end of us. But I still want to venture it. If it's safe, we make enormous profit. If our going could harm the Blight ... well, then it's terribly important. Our help might save dozens of civilizations -- a million beaches of Riders, just in passing."

"Hmpf. You're following stalk and not skrode."

"Probably." They had watched the progress of the Blight since its beginning. The feelings of horror and sympathy had been reinforced every day till they percolated into their natural minds. So Greenstalk (and Blueshell too; he couldn't deny it) felt stronger about the Blight than about the danger in their new contract. "Probably. My fears of making the rescue are still analytical," still confined to her skrode. "Yet ... I think if we could stand here a year, if we could wait till we truly felt all the issues ... I think we would still choose to go."

Blueshell rolled irritably back and forth. The grit swirled up and through his fronds. She was right, she was right. But he couldn't say it aloud; the mission still terrified him.

"And think, mate: If it is this important, then perhaps we can get help. You know the Org is negotiating with the Emissary Device. With any luck we'll end up with an escort designed by a Transcendental Power."

The image almost made Blueshell laugh. Two little Skroderiders, journeying to the Bottom of the Beyond -- surrounded by help from the Transcend. "I will hope for it."