A Fire Upon the Deep

.Delete this paragraph to shift page flush

^
^ Using w.bat and wc.com to do 1500words/day
!IMP ID QU Ravna as a stay-at-home with an adventurous turn of mind
! (and actually we already have evidence that she is a remarkable
! "stay-at-home" since she left Sjandra Kei to work for three years
! at Relay)
!REN Grondr --> QU It does collide with "the Blabber", just have to
!V decide what to do
!IMP! PRB to work on alienness of aliens
!ID possibility of using "it" pronoun for Powers, but capitalizing
!V looks like what you've done is mainly use "it" except perhaps
!V "he" when speaking of Old One later
!V IMP In first conversation about Old One, part of OOs safety may stem
!V from the fact that they know its parent
!She's doing well with the Org
! Their embarrassment
! Her competence
! Her story is "Secret/Personal" so she can unblock it at a later time
! Refugee stuff is still "Secret/Org" well-guarded
! Trying to make sure they aren't doing business for the Perversion

-=*=-

CHAPTER 15
!Chapter TITLE "The Emissary Device"
!QU IMP again what to do about the gender of the Riders.

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." !CHKd "glassine" <-- unfortunately, this is a type of paper!
!V so used "glassy"

"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. !jrf2 "extreme to say" is awkward
^ V June 20, 1991 but result may not be euphonious

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." !V June 8, 1991 Note the implication that very long term "memory" is
!V also contained in the skrode
!V 12Jun91

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. ^ V CHK INCON "dozen civilizations" see jrf.txt<?>
!V Seems to me like this sort of INCON is tied up with general
!V resolution of location of Straumli Realm
!V grep for [Bb]light ; is the is the first usage?
!V CHKd 02Feb91 It's been ~135 days since Blight's birth
^ V June 13, 1991 hr sec

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. !V June 12, 1991 "Since their ship was refinanced": several CHRON
!V implications here. This refinance could have been as early
!V as 5Aug15988. Since it is now 10Nov15988, that's a maximum of
!V of 95d. Hmm. So even if they flew 3 such flights, and even
!V if they've been in drydock for a while there's still enough time
!V In fact other constraints seem to put the (unstormy) time to disk
!V from Relay at < 20d
!V TITLE Trip to a Target
!jrf2 "They" refers to the Riders or the jobs? Unclear:

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. !jrf2 still finds "light had the ultimate speed" AWK June 20, 1991 TUF
!V CHKd if there was any claim earlier that the ship had a ramscoop
!V No earlier reference as of now, So I am officially
!V assuming OOB did not previously have such
!jrf |Need (short) scene or scenes before
!jrf this showing Ravna finding out about the situation
! on Nameless. This
!jrf here is all out of the blue.
!V I have rearranged some of the things, so maybe this is fixed now?
!V Think more on this when you do your
!V repolish of Countermeasure scenes.
!jrf2 It's better now.

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. !mARK 21Aug89

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."

!V Good data point about depths relevant to PLOT in this paragraph
!V And unfortunately may want to change it, if you move Straumli
!V Realm

The Skroderiders were not the only ones with that wish. Further up the beach, Ravna Bergsndot prowled her office. What gruesome irony that even the greatest disasters can create opportunities for decent people. Her transfer to Marketing had been made permanent with the fall of Arbitration Arts. As the Blight spread and High Beyond markets collapsed, the Org became ever more interested in providing information services about the Straumli Perversion. Her "special" expertise in things human suddenly became extraordinarily valuable -- never mind that Straumli Realm itself was only a small part of what was now the Blight. What little the Blight said of itself was often in Samnorsk. Grondr and company continued to be vitally interested in her analysis. !V CHKd 02Feb91 100 days
!V June 8, 1991 CHKd CHRON 90d

Well, she had done some good. They had picked up the refugee ship's "I-am-here", and then -- ninety days later -- a message from a human survivor, Jefri Olsndot. Barely forty messages had they exchanged, but enough to learn about the Tines and Mr. Steel and the evil Woodcarvers. Enough to know that a small human life would be ended if she could not help. Ironic but natural: most times that single life weighed more on her than all the horror of the Perversion, even the fall of Straumli Realm. Thank the Powers that Grondr had endorsed the rescue mission: It was a chance to learn something important about the Straumli Perversion. And the Tinish packs seemed to interest him, too; group minds were a fleeting thing in the Beyond. Grondr had kept the whole affair secret, and persuaded his bosses to support the mission. But all his help might not be enough. If the refugee ship was as important as Ravna thought, there could be enormous perils awaiting any rescuers. !PRB INCON this assessment of the Riders seems a little in conflict with
! Ravna's thinking them "just plain folks" in r1 <-- NÆH
!QU misuse of race?
!PRB INCON stalks, tendrils, tentacles, fronds: research differences,
! decide which you want as synonyms, which they don't have, and which
! refer to different aspects of their bodies.
!V Stalk is the central body; the other terms can be used for their
!V manipulators (but may never have used "tentacle").
!MG: PRB Doesn't see wheels as appropriate in the original environment
!jrf What is their original environment?
!V Original environment was intertidal coastal -- like where you
!V can see barnacles and sea urchins on our world.... I think this
!V comes up explicitly later (eg, next paragraph of ms)
!V and I thought was implied by the
!V various scenes of them in the water
! Suggests artificial walkers with anchors instead of wheels
! Suggests that there are different explicit stories
! Doesn't like "left to themselves they had developed intelligence"
!jrf It's ok as is!
! to " a unique nervous
! system
! without short term memory"
! Might spread this discussion through more discussion of their
! antics. The incongruity of their playing and moving, the rooster
! tail.

Ravna looked across the surf. When the waves backed down the sand, she could see the Skroderiders' fronds peeping out of the spray. How she envied them; if tensions annoyed them, they could simply turn them off. The Skroderiders were one of the most common sophonts in the Beyond. There were many varieties, but analysis agreed with legend: very long ago they had been one species. Somewhere in the off-Net past, they had been sessile dwellers of sea shores. Left to themselves, they had developed a form of intelligence almost devoid of short-term memory. They sat in the surf, thinking thoughts that left no imprints on their minds. Only repetition of a stimulus, over a period of time, could do that. But the intelligence and memory that they had was of survival value: it made it possible for them to select the best possible place to cast their pupal seeds, locations that would mean safety and food for the next generation.
Then some unknown race had chanced upon the dreamers and decided to "help" them out. Someone had put them on mobile platforms, the skrodes. With wheels they could move along the seashores, could !jrf |Why??? Altruistically, or to use the skroderiders??
reach and manipulate with their fronds and tendrils. With the skrode's mechanical short-term memory, they could learn fast enough that their new mobility would not kill them. !V QU RETRO write "emissary device" to right after first bedroom scene

Ravna glanced away from the Skroderiders -- someone was floating in over the trees. The Emissary Device. Maybe she should call Greenstalk and Blueshell out of the water. No. Let'em bliss out a little longer. If she couldn't get the special equipment, things would be tough enough for them later.... !QU Does following paragraph make sense? I really don't want to get
! the notion that he might want to trade sex for favors (unless that
! can done in a light way)
!PRB QU Pham Nuwen is really human; I don't want my readers to think he
! is a "mechanical machine"

Besides, I can do without witnesses. She folded her arms across her chest and glared into the sky. The Vrinimi Org had tried to talk to the Old One about this, but nowadays the Power would only work through its Emissary Device ... and he had insisted on a face-to-face meeting.
The Emissary touched down a few meters away, and bowed. His lopsided grin spoiled the effect. "Pham Nuwen, at your service."
Ravna gave a little bow in return, and led him to the shade of her inner office. If he thought that face-to-face would unnerve her, he was right. "Thanks for the meeting, sir. The Vrinimi Organization has an important request of your principal," owner? master? operator?
Pham Nuwen plunked himself down, stretching indolently. He'd stayed out of her way since that night at The Wandering Company. Grondr said Old One had kept him at Relay though, rummaging through the archives for information about humanity and its origins. It made sense now that Old One had been persuaded to restrict Net use: the Emissary could do local processing, i.e., use human intelligence to search and summarize and then upload only the stuff that Old One really needed.
Ravna watched him out of the corner of her eye as she pretended to study her dataset. Pham had his old, lazy smile. She wondered if she would ever have the courage to ask him how much of their ... affair ... had been a human thing. Had Pham Nuwen felt anything for her? Hell, did he even have a good time? !V June 8, 1991 Do you use "waldo" anywhere else? Should you? Should you
!V really be using it here? Yes, in c36

From a Transcendent point of view, he might be a simple data concentrator and waldo -- but from her viewpoint he was still too human. "Um, yes. Well ... the Org has continued to monitor the Straumli refugee ship even though your principal has lost interest."
Pham's eyebrows raised in polite interest. "Oh?"
"Ten days ago, the simple 'I-am-here' signal was interrupted by a new message, apparently from a surviving crewmember."
"Congratulations. You managed to keep it a secret, even from me." !QU How jarring is the claim that she has pictures of Jefri's parents
!CHK CHRON cited here. You may want to make first contact to be earlier
! so that there is more time to develop the conclusions you cite in this
! scene
!CHKd couldn't find any reference to Hamid's eye color in "The Blabber"

Ravna didn't rise to the bait. "We're doing our best to keep it secret from everyone, sir. For reasons that you must know." She put the messages to date on the air between them. A handful of calls and responses, scattered across ten days. Translated into Triskweline for Pham, the original spelling and grammar errors were gone, yet the tone remained. Ravna was responsible for the Org side of the conversation. It was like talking to someone in a dark room, someone you have never seen. Much was easy to imagine: a strident, piping voice behind the capitalized words and exclamation marks. She had no video of the child, but through the humankind archive at Sjandra Kei, Marketing had dug up pictures of the boy's parents. They looked like typical Straumers, but with the brown eyes of the Linden clans. Little Jefri would be slim and dark.
Pham Nuwen's gaze flicked down through the text, then seemed to hang on the last few lines:
^ ^ls 1 deleted for now January 26, 1991
!V I think it's okay:
!PRB MG these numbers are too low in the next scene, unless you make it
! clear that this is one per day. Doesn't see the point of numbers.
! Overall should think about the timing more (and the possibility of
! pipelining questions)
!V IMP! big thing is rearranging all the messages
!V Everybody seems to want to move this back to Part I. You may still
!V want something here, though for best effect it should be connected up
!V to things happening on Tines World.

!V From: tag
...
Org[17]: How old are you, Jefri?
Target[18]: I am eight. I mean I am eight years old. I AM OLD ENOUGH BUT I NEED HELP.
Org[18]: We will help. We are coming as fast as we can, Jefri.
Target[19]: Sorry I couldn't talk yesterday. The bad people were on the hill again yesterday. It wasn't safe to go to the ship.
Org[19]: Are the bad ones that close by? !QU How clear it that this "enemy attack" is a Steel fakery?
! JLC: It isn't very clear

Target[20]: Yes yes. I could see them from the island. I'm with Amdi on shipboard now, but walking up here there were dead soldiers all around. Woodcarver raids here often.
Mother is dead. Father is dead. Johanna is dead. Mister Steel will protect me as much as he can. He says that I must be brave.

For a moment, his smile was gone. "Poor kid," he said softly. Then he shrugged and jabbed his hand at one of the messages. "Well, I'm glad Vrinimi is sending a rescue mission. That is generous of you."
"Not really, sir. Look at items six through fourteen. The boy is complaining about the ship's automation."
"Yeah, he makes it sound like something out of a dawn age: keyboards and video, no voice recognition. A completely unfriendly interface. Looks like the crash scragged almost everything, eh?" !V February 24, 1991 Actually, there is also the explanation that
!V it was a freight container. Actually**2, these may not be
!V inconsistent

He was being deliberately obtuse, but Ravna resolved to be infinitely patient. "Perhaps not, considering the vessel's origin." Pham just smiled, so Ravna continued to spell things out. "The processors are likely High Beyond or Transcendent, snuffed down to near brainlessness by the current environment."
Pham Nuwen sighed. "All consistent with the Skroderiders' theory, right? You're still hoping this crate is carrying some tremendous secret that will blow the Blight away." ^ V June 13, 1991 "the Old One" v "Old One"?

"Yes!.... Look. At one time, the Old One was very curious about all this. Why the total disinterest now? Is there some reason why the ship can't be the key to fighting the Perversion?" That was Grondr's explanation for the Old One's recent lack of interest. All her life Ravna Bergsndot had heard tales of the Powers, and always from a great remove. Here, she was awfully close to questioning one directly. It was a very strange feeling.
After a moment Pham said, "No. It's unlikely, but you could be right."
Ravna let out a breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding. "Good. Then what we're asking is reasonable. Suppose the downed ship contains something the Perversion needs, or something it fears. Then it's likely the Perversion knows of its existence -- and may even be monitoring ultradrive traffic in that part of the Bottom. A rescue expedition could lead the Perversion right to it. In that case, the mission will be suicide for its crew -- and could increase the Blight's overall power."
"So?" ^ V June 13, 1991 AWK

Ravna slapped her dataset, resolutions of patience dissolving. "So, Vrinimi Org is asking Old One's help to build an expedition the Blight can't knock over!" !V ID PRB actually this is a place where artificially sapient creatures
!V for the Low Beyond would probably be appropriate.
!V June 13, 1991 In a way, this is what the godshatter turns out to
!V be

Pham Nuwen just shook his head. "Ravna, Ravna. You're talking about an expedition to the Bottom of the Beyond. There's no way a Power can hold your hand down there. Even an Emissary Device would be mostly on its own there." !jrf Not clear exactly what the Old One is. It could, for all we can see
!jrf be part of the Perversion.
!IMPER INCON PRB Seems like there are a lot of things
! that the Powers could perform without Beyonder help. For instance,
! why didn't Old One just build his own relay equipment and lower it
! into the Beyond. Hmm, that particular example has a solution, I think --
! namely that he was using the connections available there and the
! extant archive there.
! There are a number of possible explanations, but they introduce other
! problems (like conflicting with the aid that Ravna is asking for in
! this scene)
!V I have tried to make some changes in the
!V following paragraphs to ease the (global) problem

"Don't act like more of a jerk than you are, Pham Nuwen. Down there, the Perversion will be at just as much a disadvantage. What we're asking for is equipment of Transcendent manufacture, designed for those depths, and provided in substantial quantities."
"Jerk?" Pham Nuwen drew himself up, but there was still the ghost of smile on his face. "Is that how you normally address a Power?" !MG PRB: It's not a pipeline so much as sometimes he is god.

Before this year, I would have died rather than address a Power in any manner. She leaned back, giving him her own version of an indolent smile. "You have a pipeline to god, Mister, but let me tell you a little secret: I can tell whether it's open or closed."
Polite curiosity: "Oh? How is that?" !PRB make it clear in this scene that Pham still depends on his Qeng Ho
! background even though it is synthetic
!PRB I need something sense oriented in this scene (not sex). It seems to
! be interminable dialogue. QU How dull is it coming across.

"Pham Nuwen -- left on his own -- is a bright, egotistical guy, and about as subtle as a kick in the head." She thought back to their time together. "I don't really start worrying until the arrogance and smart remarks go away."
"Um. Your logic is a little weak. If the Old One were running me direct, he could just as easily play a jerk as," he cocked his head, "as the man of your dreams." !NÆH: ID It would be nice if somewhere you could contrast the factions in
! Applied Theology, the Bean Counters versus the Analogists
!NÆH: ID Might RETROwrite Analogism into the scenes where she's trying to
! explain the Powers to Pham Nuwen in r1
!IDEA fragment: "data [or idea] scrubbers", I wonder what they would be?
!PRB QU Do I have to bring up explicitly an explanation for why the Org
! can't just use some of the allegedly fantastic wealth the Old One
! paid them earlier in comm fees?
!V See Pham's comments a few paragraphs on SOLN?
!V see also hld comment on this earlier
!V Maybe it's already been spent
!jrf Yes, you have one ie: while giving big fees, the cash flow probably
!jrf isn't instant, ie it is spread out over a term. They need help with
!jrf this now; also the Power has better access <illeg> tool
!RETRO PRO "possessed" for "tele-operated"
^ FRAG:
^ The jackass had a point: there was a
^ fundamental paradox in analyzing a mind greater than your own. It was
^ the paradox that underlay all Applied Theology, and split the field
^ into Bean Counter and Analogist factions.
^ But I never thought it would have such a personal meaning!

Ravna gritted her teeth. "That's true, but I've got a little help from my boss. He's cleared me to monitor transceiver usage." She looked at her dataset. "Right now, your Old One is getting less than ten kilobits per second from all of Relay... which means, my friend, that you are not being tele-operated. Any crass behavior I see today is the true Pham Nuwen." !V INCON usual bandwidth CHK needed here
!V June 11, 1991 must match this properly with what Old One is
!V apparently using just before the Fall of Relay

The redhead chuckled, faint embarrassment evident. "You got me. I'm on detached duty, have been ever since the Org persuaded Old One to back off. But I want you to know that all those ten Kbps are dedicated to this charming conversation." He paused as if listening, then waved his hand. "Old One says 'hi'." !V Here is a good place to sharpen [rationalize] what Power can do
!V in the lower Zones:

Ravna laughed despite herself; there was something absurd about the gesture, and the notion that a Power would indulge such trivial humor. "Okay. I'm glad he can, um, sit in. Look, Pham, we're not asking for much by Transcendent standards, and it could save whole civilizations. Give us a few thousand ships; robot oneshots would be fine."
"Old One could make that many, but they wouldn't be much better that what's built down here. Tricking --" he paused, looking surprised by his own choice of words, "tricking the Zones is subtle work."
"Fine. Quality or quantity. We'll settle for whichever the Old One thinks --"
"No." !QU Is this comment about "single wild evening" clear? plausible?
! appropriate?
! JLC: Yes.

"Pham! We're talking about a few days work for the Old One. It's already paid more to study the Blight." Their single wild evening might have cost as much -- but she didn't say that.
"Yes, and Vrinimi has spent most of it."
"Paying off the customers you stepped on! ... Pham, can't you at least tell us why?"
The lazy smile faded from his face. She took a quick glance at her dataset. No, Pham Nuwen was not possessed. She remembered the look on his face when he read the mail from Jefri Olsndot; there was a decent human being lurking behind all the arrogance. "I'll give it a try. Keep in mind -- even though I've been part of Old One -- I'm remembering and explaining with human limitations. !jrf Why?
!V Just that he seems affected by serious hurt/problems in others.
!jrf2 Okay.

"You're right, the Perversion is chewing up the Top of the Beyond. Maybe fifty civilizations will die before this Power gets tired of screwing around -- and for a couple of thousand years after that there'll be 'echoes' of the disaster, poisoned star systems, artificial races with bloody-minded ideas. But -- I hate to say it this way -- so what? Old One has been thinking about this problem, off and on, for more than a hundred days. That's a long time for a Power, especially Old One. He's existed for more than ten years now; his minds are drifting fast toward ... changes ... that will put him beyond all communication. Why should he give a damn about this?"
It was a standard topic in school, but Ravna couldn't help herself. This time it was for real. "But history is full of incidents where Powers helped Beyonder races, sometimes even individuals." She had already looked up the Beyonder race that created Old One. They were gasbag creatures. Their netmail was mostly jabberwocky even after Relay's best interpretation. Apparently they had no special leverage with Old One. The direct appeal was about all she had. "Look. Turn the thing around: Even ordinary humans don't need special explanation to help animals that are hurting." !V cf discussion of "automation" in the Prolog. Pham is using the term
!V in an even more extended way.

Pham's smile was beginning to come back. "You're so big on analogies. Remember that no analogy is perfect, and the more complex the automation the more complex the possible motivations. But ... okay, how about this for an analogy: Old One is a basically decent guy, with a nice home in a good part of town. One day he notices he has a new neighbor, a scruffy fellow whose homestead is awhiff with toxic sludge. If you were Old One, you'd be concerned, right? You might probe around beneath your properties. You'd also chat with the new fellow and check on where he came from, try to figure out what's going on. The Vrinimi Org saw part of that investigation.
"So you discover the new neighbor is unwholesome. Basically his lifestyle involves poisoning swamp land and eating the sludge produced. That's an annoyance: it smells and it hurts a lot of harmless animals. But, after investigating, it's clear the damage will not affect your own property, and you get the neighbor to take measures to reduce the stink. In any case, eating toxic sludge is a self-defeating lifestyle." He paused. "As analogies go, I think this one's pretty good. After some initial mystery, Old One has determined that this Perversion is one of the common patterns, so petty and banal that even creatures like you and I can see it's evil. In one form or another, it's been drifting up from Beyonder archives for a hundred million years."
"Damn it! I'd get my neighbors together, and run the pervert out of town."
"That's been talked about, but it would be expensive ... and real people might get hurt." Pham Nuwen came smoothly to his feet, and smiled dismissingly at her. "Well, that's about all we had to say to you." He walk out from under the trees. Ravna hopped up to pursue.
"My personal advice: don't take this so hard, Ravna. I've seen it all, you know. From the Bottom of the Slowness to the inside of a Transcendent Power, each Zone has its own special unpleasantness. The whole basis of the Perversion -- thermodynamic, economic, however you want to picture it -- is the high quality of thought and communication at the Top of the Beyond. The Perversion hasn't touched a single civilization in the Middle Beyond. Down here, the comm lags and expense are too great, and even the best equipment is mindless. To run things here you'd need standing navies, secret police, clumsy transceivers -- it would be almost as awkward as any other Beyonder empire, and of no profit to a Power." He turned and saw her dark expression. "Hey, I'm saying your pretty ass is safe." He reached down to pat her rear. !QU are these characters/dialogue too sappy? stupid?
!QU Maybe should rephrase to make what she had been thinking of doing less
! likely of success. Thus, she doesn't seem so childish for allowing
! herself
! to be swept away by temper
!ID QU Might earlier have her thinking to herself, wondering why Pham
! gets her so blinking mad (and hopefully do this without considering the
! possibility that she is in love with him)

Ravna brushed the hand away and stepped back. She'd been working on some clever argument that might set the guy to thinking; there were cases where Emissary Devices had changed their principal's decision. Now the half-formed ideas were blown away, and all she could think to say was -- "So how safe is your own tail, hmm? You say Old One is about ready to pack it in, go wherever overage Powers wander off to. Is he going to take you along, or maybe just put you away, a pet that's now inconvenient?"
It was a silly shot, and Pham Nuwen just laughed. "More analogies? No ... most likely he'll just leave me behind. You know, like a robot probe flying free after its last use." Another analogy, but one to his liking. "In fact, if it happens soon enough, I might even be willing to take on this rescue expedition. It looks like Jefri Olsndot is in a medieval civlization. I'll wager there's no one in the Org who understands such a place better than I. And down at the Bottom, your crew could scarcely ask for a better mate than an old Qeng Ho type." He spoke breezily, as though courage and experience were givens for him -- even if other people were cowardly scuts. !QU Delete clause "when his whole existence was a fraud."?
!V QU should I foreshadow here that the idea expressed here is to cause
!V mucho grief for a long time <-- probably NÆH

"Oh, yeah?" Ravna's arms went akimbo, and she cocked her head to one side. It was just a bit too much, when his whole existence was a fraud. "You're the little prince who grew up with intrigue and assassination, and then flew away to the stars with the Qeng Ho.... Do you ever really think about that past, Pham Nuwen? Or is that something Old One tactfully blocks you from doing? After our charming evening at The Wandering Company, I did think about it. You know what? There's only a few things you can know for sure: You really were a Slow Zone spacer -- probably two or three spacers, since none of the corpses was complete. Somehow you and your buddies got yourselves killed down at the nether end of the Slowness. What else? Well, your ship had no recoverable memory. The only hardcopy we found seemed to be written in some Earth Asian language. That's all, all, that Old One had to go on when he put together the fraud." !V IMPER If you go with internal PoV for Pham's
!V death, it might be a real good idea to have it assumed through
!V most of the story that he is a fraud

Pham's smile seemed a little frozen. Ravna went on before he could speak. "But don't blame Old One. He was a little rushed, right? He had to convince Vrinimi and me that you were real. He rummaged around in the archives, slapped together a mishmash reality for you. Maybe it took him an afternoon -- are you grateful for the effort? A snip from here and a snip from there. There really was a Qeng Ho, you know. On Earth, a thousand years before space flight. And there must have been Asia-descended colonies, though that's an obvious extrapolation on his part. Old One really has a nice sense of humor. He made your whole life a fantastic romance, right down to the last tragic expedition. That should have tipped me off, by the way. It's a combination of several pre-Nyjoran legends." !ID QU ALIENness (but presented indirectly as in As the Gentle Rain:
! have there be evidence that Ravna is manipulated by the Org?
! Hmm, I really don't like the idea; I like stories where I have some
! characters who feel responsible for their own actions --and that should
! be the case for humans at least up to the Middle Beyond
!CHK how much could really be said on one breath

She caught her breath and rushed on. "I feel sorry for you, Pham Nuwen. As long as you don't think about yourself too hard, you can be the most confident fellow in space. But all the skill, all the achievement -- do you ever look at it up close? I'll bet not. Being a great warrior or an expert pilot -- those involve a million subskills, all the way down to kinesthetic things below the level of conscious thought. The Old One's fraud needed just the top level recollections, and a brash personality. Look under the surface, Pham. I think you'll find a whole lot of nothing." A dream of competence, too closely confronted. !jrf too baldfaced
!V Not sure which you mean here.
!V What do you recommend I change/delete so
! not to be baldfaced here?
!jrf2 I mean her insult, which is very harsh and not, ultimately,
!jrf2 accurate, is too vicious for a response to his insult to her.
!jrf2 She doesn't seem like the vindictive type; I'd think she'd
!jrf2 stop short of such a detailed, deep analysis of his personality
!jrf2 and memories. Is she so sure? Maybe she can say this, but
!jrf2 then second guess herself.

The redhead had crossed his arms and was tapping his sleeve with a finger. When she finally ran out of words, his smile grew broad and patronizing. "Ah, silly Ravna. Even now you don't understand how far superior the Powers are. Old One is not some Middle Beyond tyranny, brainwashing its victims with superficial memories. Even a Transcendent fraud has more depth than the image of reality in a human mind. And how can you know this really is a fraud? So you looked through the Relay archives, and didn't find my Qeng Ho." My Qeng Ho. He paused. Remembering? Trying to remember? For an instant Ravna saw a gleam of panic on his face. Then it was gone, and there was just the lazy smile. "Can any of us imagine the archives of the Transcend, all the things Old One must know about humanity? Vrinimi Org should be grateful to Old One for explaining my origins; they could never have learned that by themselves.
"Look. I am truly sorry I can't help. Even if it's otherwise a fool's errand, I'd like to see those kids rescued. But don't worry about the Blight. It's near maximum expansion now. Even if you could destroy it, you wouldn't make things better for the poor wights who've been absorbed." He laughed, a little too loudly. "Well, I have to go; Old One has some other errands for me this afternoon. He wasn't happy about this being face-to-face, but I insisted. The perks of detached duty, y'know. You and I ... you and I had some good times, and I thought it would be nice to chat. I didn't mean to make you mad."
Pham cut in his agrav and floated off the sand. He waved a laconic salute. Staring up, Ravna lifted her hand to wave back. His figure dwindled, acquired a faint nimbus as he left the Docks' breathable atmosphere and his space suit cut in.
Ravna watched a few moments more, till the figure became one more commuter in the indigo sky. Damn. Damn. Damn.
Behind her there was the sound of wheels crunching across sand. Blueshell and Greenstalk had rolled out of the water. Wetness glistened on the sides of their skrodes, transforming their cosmetic stripes into jagged rainbows. Ravna walked down to meet them. How do I tell them there's no help coming?
With someone like Pham Nuwen fronting for it, Old One had seemed so different from what she imagined in her classes back at Sjandra Kei. She'd almost thought she could make a difference just by talking. What a joke. She had caught a glimpse just now, behind the front: of a being who could play with souls the way a programmer plays with a clever graphic, a being so far beyond her that only its indifference could protect her. Be happy, little Ravna moth. You were only dazzled by the flame. !
!ID QU A couple of SIDEbars. One showing that Pan Commodities has finally
! fallen (or maybe that the expansion has slowed?), and the other an
! off the wall speculation that maybe the Blight is
! not Class 2 but something
! unknown. <-- this might respond to jdv's complaint that things are
!V too untense at beginning of the picnic scene
!
!IDEA Computers as the cutting edge of truth. Collisions with objective
! fact happen at a higher rate for me with computers than in any other
! endeavor.
!
!?ID for R3. "Don't give me that hall of mirrors routine"
^ jrf2 Big question in re Old One: As one not of the Beyond, and until
^ jrf2 I read the whole book not knowing everything, I found Old One
^ jrf2 confusing for a long time. The problem was that the
^ jrf2 Perversion and Pham appear at their respective times very
^ jrf2 close to each other.
^ jrf2 (And the huge surge used by Old One is very threatening and
^ jrf2 in some ways sounds like a potential Perversion ploy.)
^ jrf2 In hindsight I realize that Pham was
^ jrf2 Old One's response to the Perversion, and Old One is
^ jrf2 basically, a good god (as it were). But for a long time it's
^ jrf2 very tempting to think Old One is an Aspect (if you will)
^ jrf2 of the Perversion. Can you drop hints before now that this
^ jrf2 is not the case, ie, establish Old One's credentials and
^ jrf2 credibility sooner. It's a distraction now.