A Fire Upon the Deep (43 page)

Ravna sat back, stared at the display for some time. Sandor Arbitration Intelligence was one of the sharpest posters in this newsgroup.... But now even their predictions were just different flavors of doom. And all so damn cool they were, so analytical. She knew that Sandor was polyspecific, with branch offices scattered through the High Beyond. But they were no Power. If the Perversion could knock over Relay and kill Old One, then all of Sandor's resources wouldn't help it if the enemy decided to gobble them up. Their analysis had the tone of the pilot of a crashing ship, intent on understanding the danger, not taking time out for 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.
"Ssurely 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.