!V IMP maybe some email where Jefri talks about the thing in the wall
!V No, I think that would undercut the casualness of the scene
!V in c34 with Amdi and the fungus
!ID PRB You should make more use of concensual reality stuff in the
! management of multispecific civilizations
!03Feb90 You should strip redundant frags from this file.
!ID Up in the Transcend, you might illustrate a translator that really
! was human equivalent.
!V human equivalent machines should exist in the High Beyond
!ID Conceivably, you might also bring up the notion of fixed points in
! iterated translations.
^
^
^ Using w.bat and wc.com to do 1500words/day

CHAPTER 25
!norsk melkeveien = the Milky Way
!
!V CHK CHRON
!V March 24, 1991 OBS as of now:
!
The weeks brought lots of news, both good and bad, to the crew
! of the Out of Band II. The good news was sometimes astounding, but
! meant little more than that they had not yet failed. The bad news
! came from all sides, pushing success further and further away.
!
^ V March 25, 1991 probably should try to work in explicitly what great
^ V friends Pham and Blueshell came to be
^ V June 14, 1991 In particular, their working in the machine shop

The voyage of the Out of Band II had begun in catastrophe, where life and death were a difference of hours or minutes. In the first weeks there had been terror and loneliness and the resurrection of Pham. The OOB had fallen quickly toward the galactic plane, away from Relay. Day by day the whorl of stars tilted up to meet them, till it was the single band of light, the Milky Way as seen from the perspective of Nyjora and Old Earth -- and from most all the habitable planets of the Galaxy.
Twenty thousand light-years in three weeks. But that had been on a path through the Middle Beyond. Now in the galactic plane, they were still six thousand light-years from their goal at the Bottom of the Beyond. The Zone interfaces roughly followed surfaces of constant mean density; on a galactic scale, the Bottom was a vaguely lens-shaped surface, surrounding much of the galactic disk. The OOB was moving in the plane of the disk now, more or less toward the galactic center. Every week took them deeper toward the Slowness. Worse, their path, and all variants that made any progress, extended right through a region of massive Zone shifting. The Net News had called it the Great Zone Storm, though of course there was not the slightest physical feeling of turbulence within the volume. But some days their progress was less that eighty percent what they'd expected. !V March 24, 1991 "galactic density" awkward
!V June 14, 1991 changed to "mean density" (still awkward but ...)
!Decide what the density should be numerically and whether it should be
! a gas density or a star density.
!QU What is the "iso-yyy" word that means "surface of constant density"?
!hld isobar (V: I thought that was pressure)
!V isodas (after dasys, Greek)
!V QU mg, Freddy, Hsu what is an isodensity outline of the galaxy
!V mg agrees with my analysis
!V numbers not necessary as of February 16, 1991
!V Still need a number! IMPER My guess from allen is 9.5e-24/cm**3
!V includes stars+gas+dust about 8:1:small p240,252
!V either in H/cc or g/cc
^ V CHK "fractal manifold" Jeff Allen, Dave Lesley,
!V INCON Net news Net News <--
!V INCON REN Tines World <-- the Tines' world or something else
!V CHK your speeds with the distance and the plot requirements
!insert good news analysis here??? No, I did it further down.

Early on they'd known that it was not only the storm that was slowing them. Blueshell had gone outside, looking over the damage that still remained from their escape.
"So it's the ship itself?" Ravna had glared out from the bridge, watching the now imperceptible crawl of near stars across the heavens. The confirmation was no revelation. But what to do? !V PRB INCON have you had this obsessive/compulsive
!V behavior before?

Blueshell trundled back and forth across the ceiling. Every time he reached the far wall, he'd query ship's management about the pressure seal on the nose lock. Ravna glared at him, "Hey, that was the n'th time you've checked status in the last three minutes. If you really think something is wrong, then fix it."
The Skroderider's wheeled progress came to an abrupt halt. Fronds waved uncertainly. "But I was just outside. I want to be sure I shut the port correctly.... Oh, you mean I've already checked it?"
Ravna looked up at him, and tried to get the sting out of her voice. Blueshell wasn't the proper target for her frustration. "Yup. At least five times."
"I'm sorry." He paused, going into the stillness of complete concentration. "I've committed the memory." Sometimes the habit was cute, and sometimes just irritating: When the Riders tried to think on more than one thing at a time, their Skrodes were sometimes unable to maintain short-term memory. Blueshell especially got trapped into cycles of behavior, repeating an action and immediately forgetting the accomplishment.
Pham grinned, looking a lot cooler than Ravna felt. "What I don't see is why you Riders put up with it."
"What?" ^ V June 13, 1991 improve voder

"Well, according to the ship's library, you've had these Skrode gadgets since before there was a Net. So how come you haven't improved the design, gotten rid of the silly wheels, upgraded the memory tracking? I bet that even a Slow Zone combat programmer like me could come up with a better design than the one you're riding." !PRB INCON Cf the representation of Blueshell when he is introduced
! in Part I.
!

"It's really a matter of tradition," Blueshell said primly, "We're grateful to Whatever gave us wheels and memory in the first place."
"Hmm."
Ravna almost smiled. By now she knew Pham well enough to guess what he was thinking -- namely that plenty of Riders might have gone on to better things in the Transcend. Those remaining were likely to have self-imposed limitations.
"Yes. Tradition. Many who once were Riders have changed -- even Transcended. But we persist." Greenstalk paused, and when she continued sounded even more shy than usual. "You've heard of the Rider Myth?"
"No," said Ravna, distracted in spite of herself. In the time ahead she would know as much about these Riders as about any human friends, but for now there were still surprises. !V CHKd dictionary "myth" "legend" and synonyms
!V June 14, 1991 "Myth" is right in this case
!V is this too orthogonal (new) contrasted to the Zones background
!V already built up? (In fact, it is beginning to get into the
!V fundamental dissonance of this novel's plot)

"Not many have. Not that it's a secret; it's just we don't make much of it. It comes close to being religion, but one we don't proselytize. Four or five billion years ago, Someone built the first skrodes and raised the first Riders to sentience. That much is verified fact. The Myth is that something destroyed our Creator and all its works.... A catastrophe so great that from this distance it is not even understood as an act of mind." ^ V June 13, 1991 relate Ur-Partition to the catastrophe in the fifth
^ V aeon (referred to by Pham later in the story, after the "mini" surge)

There were plenty of theories about what the galaxy had been like in the distant past, in the time of the Ur-Partition. But the Net couldn't be forever. There had to be a beginning. Ravna had never been a big believer in Ancient Wars and Catastrophes.
"So in a sense," Greenstalk said, "we Riders are the faithful ones, waiting for What created us to return. The traditional skrode and the traditional interface are a standard. Staying with it has made our patience possible."
"Quite so," said Blueshell. "And the design itself is very subtle, My Lady, even if the function is simple." He rolled to the center of the ceiling. "The skrode of tradition imposes a good discipline -- concentration on what's truly important. Just now I was trying to worry about too many things...." Abruptly he returned to the topic at hand: "Two of our drive spines never recovered from the damage at relay. Three more appear to be degrading. We thought this slow progress was just the storm, but now I've studied the spines up close. The diagnostic warnings were no false alarm."
"... and it's still getting worse?"
"Unfortunately so." !V June 14, 1991 FRAG:
! Most of our problem has nothing to do with
! storm anymore. And according to the latest News, greater pseudospeeds
! ours should be possible in this region."

"So how bad will it get?"
Blueshell drew all his tendrils together. "My Lady Ravna, we can't be certain of the extrapolations yet. It may not get much worse than now, or -- You know the OOB was not fully ready for departure. There were the final consistency checks still to do. In a way, I worry about that more than anything. We don't know what bugs may lurk, especially when we reach the Bottom and our normal automation must be retired. We must watch the drives very carefully ... and hope." !V CHKd "medieval midden"

It was the nightmare that haunted travelers, especially at the Bottom of the Beyond: with ultradrive gone, suddenly a light-year was not a matter of minutes but of years. Even if they fired up the ramscoop and went into cold sleep, Jefri Olsndot would be a thousand years dead before they reached him, and the secret of his parents' ship buried in some medieval midden. !CHAR Pham Nuwen: A man for all Zones
!CHAR Somewhere might make the point that in some sense the Skroderiders
! are smart, but that it's hard to separate that from the memory
! deficit issue
!
!QU Seriously consider using English orthography for the Samnorsk
!V at least for the special letters YES, but not for things like Sj
!NO QU Consider making Sjandra Kei a more obvious Samnorsk name
! eg, Troljem Ned Troljem Godsjanse
!Apparent INCONs QU Why some names in the Beyond have meaning in
! English and others do not (and some names have meaningful syllables)
!V could be nature of different translators
! I do want to keep Samnorsk names untranslated
! Seems to me that meaningful syllables would also be common
!

Pham Nuwen waved at the slowly shifting star fields. "Still, this is the Beyond. Every hour we go farther than the fleet of Qeng Ho could in a decade." He shrugged. "Surely there's some place we can get repairs?"
"Several."
So much for "a quick flight, all unobserved". Ravna sighed. The final fitting at Relay was to include spares and Bottom compatibility software. All that was faraway might-have-beens now. She looked at Greenstalk. "Do you have any ideas?"
"About what?" Greenstalk said.
Ravna bit her lip in frustration. Some said the Riders were a race of comedians; they were indeed, but it was mostly unintentional.
Blueshell rattled at his mate.
"Oh! You mean where can we get help. Yes, there are several possibilities. Sjandra Kei is thirty-nine hundred lights spinward from here, but outside this storm. We --"
"Too far," Blueshell and Ravna spoke almost in chorus. !V June 14, 1991 FRAG
! Blueshell continued, "The drive might be completely dead before we
! got there."

"Yes, yes, but remember. The Sjandra Kei worlds are mainly human, your home, my lady Ravna. And Blueshell and I know them well; after all, they were the source of the crypto shipment we brought to Relay. We have friends there and you a family. Even Blueshell agrees that we can get the work done without notice there."
"Yes, if we could get there." Blueshell's voder voice sounded petulant.
"Okay, what are the other choices?"
"They are not so well-known. I'll make a list." Her fronds drifted across a console. "Our last chance for choice is rather near our planned course. It's a single system civilization. The Net name is ... it translates as Harmonious Repose."
"Rest in Peace, eh?" said Pham.
But they had agreed to voyage on quietly, always watching the bad drive spines, postponing the decision to stop for help. !Need a proper finish to this conversation.







The days became weeks, and weeks slowly counted into months. Four voyagers on a quest toward the Bottom. The drive became worse, but slowly, right on OOB's diagnostic projections.
The Blight continued to spread across the Top of the Beyond, and its attacks on Network archives extended far beyond its direct reach.
Communication with Jefri was improving. Messages trickled in at the rate of one or two a day. Sometimes, when OOB's antenna swarm was tuned just right, he and Ravna would talk almost in real time. Progress was being made on the Tines' world, faster than she had expected -- perhaps fast enough that the boy could save himself.
It should have been a hard time, locked up in the single ship with just three others, with only a thread of communication to the outside, and that with a lost child. !V March 25, 1991 be nice to have some reference here to OOB as like
!V sturdy beast

In any case, it was rarely boring. Ravna found that each of them had plenty to do. For herself it was managing the ship's library, coaxing out of it the plans that would help Mr. Steel and Jefri. OOB's library was nothing compared to the Archive at Relay, or even the university libraries at Sjandra Kei, but without proper search automation it could be just as unknowable. And as their voyage proceeded, that automation need more and more special care. !V mARK 24Mar91

And ... things could never be boring with Pham around. He had a dozen projects, and curiosity about everything. "Voyaging time can be a gift," he'd say. "Now we have time to catch ourselves up, time to get ready for whatever we find ahead." He was learning Samnorsk. It went slower than his faked learning on Relay, but the guy had a natural bent for languages, and Ravna gave him plenty of practice.
He spent several hours each day in the OOB's workshop, often with Blueshell. Reality graphics were a new thing to him, but after a few weeks he was beyond toy prototypes. The pressure suits he built had power packs and weapons stores. "We don't know what things may be like when we arrive; powered armor could be real useful."
At the end of each work day they would all meet on the command deck, to compare notes, to consider the latest from Jefri and Mr. Steel, to review the drive status. For Ravna this could be the happiest time of the day ... and sometimes the hardest. Pham had rigged the display automation to show castle walls all around. A huge fireplace replaced the normal window on comm status. The sound of it was almost perfect; he had even coaxed a small amount of "fire" heat from that wall. This was a castle hall out of Pham's memory, from Canberra he said. But it wasn't that different from the Age of Princesses on Nyjora (though most of those castles had been in tropical swamps, where big fireplaces were rarely used). For some perverse reason, even the Riders seemed to enjoy it; Greenstalk said it reminded her of a trading stop from her first years with Blueshell. Like travelers who have walked through a long day, the four of them rested in the coziness of a phantom lodge. And when the new business was settled, Pham and the Riders would trade stories, often late into the "night".
Ravna sat beside him, the least talkative of the four. She joined in the laughter and sometimes the discussion: There was the time Blueshell had a humor fit at Pham's faith in public key encryption, and Ravna knew some stories of her own to illustrate the Rider's opinion. But this was also the hardest time for her. Yes, the stories were wonderful. Blueshell and Greenstalk had been so many places, and at heart they were traders. Swindles and bargains and good done were all part of their lives. Pham listened to his friends, almost enraptured ... and then told his own stories, of being a prince on Canberra, of being a Slow Zone trader and explorer. And for all the limitations of the Slowness, his life's adventures surpassed even the Skroderiders'. Ravna smiled and tried to pretend enthusiasm. !V mARK 24Mar91 (actually a couple of lines down)

For Pham's stories were too much. He honestly believed them, but she couldn't imagine one human seeing so much, doing so much. Back on Relay, she had claimed his memories were synthetic, a little joke of Old One. She had been very angry when she said it, and more than anything she wished she never had ... because it was so clearly the truth. Greenstalk and Blueshell never noticed, but sometimes in the middle of a story Pham would stumble on his memories and a look of barely concealed panic would come to his eyes. Somewhere inside, he knew the truth too, and she suddenly wanted to hug him, comfort him. It was like having a terribly wounded friend, with whom you can talk but never mutually admit the scope of the injuries. Instead she pretended the lapses didn't exist, smiling and laughing at the rest of his story. !V April 20, 1991 "ebullient" doesn't quite fit in the sentence

And Old One's jape was all so unnecessary. Pham didn't have to be a great hero. He was a decent person, though ebullient and kind of a rule-breaker. He had every bit as much persistence as she, and more courage.
What craft Old One must have had to make such a person, what ... Power. And how she hated Him, for making a joke of such a person.




Of Pham's godshatter, there was scarcely a sign. For that Ravna was very grateful. Once or twice a month he had a dreamy spell. For a day or two after he would go nuts with some new project, often something he couldn't clearly explain. But it wasn't getting worse; he wasn't drifting away from her.
"And the godshatter may save us in the end," he would say when she had the courage to ask him about it. "No, I don't know how." He tapped his forehead. "It's still god's own crowded attic up here. "It's more than memory. Sometimes it needs all my mind to think with and there's no room left for self-awareness, and afterwards I can't explain, but... sometimes I have a glimmer. Whatever Jefri's parents brought to the Tines' world: it can hurt the Blight. Call it an antidote -- better yet, a countermeasure. Something taken from the Perversion as it was aborning in the Straumli lab. Something the Perversion didn't even suspect was gone until much later."
Ravna sighed. It was hard to imagine good news that was also so frightening. "The Straumers could sneak something like that right out from the Perversion's heart?" !V March 25, 1991 Be nice if somewhere before RIP, Pham could give
!V an analysis of Old One's attack on Relay that does not implicate
!V the Skroderiders [done a little, but awkwardly, in this
!V paragraph, and also a little in Sandor's message in c21]

"Maybe. Or maybe, Countermeasure used the Straumers to escape the Perversion. To hide inaccessibly deep, and wait to strike. And I think the plan might work, Rav, at least if I -- if Old One's godshatter -- can get down there and help it. Look at the News. The Blight is turning the top of the Beyond upside down -- hunting for something. Hitting Relay was the least of it, a small by-product of its murdering Old One. But it's looking in all the wrong places. We'll have our chance at Countermeasure." !V You may want to look back at the preceding paragraph
!V when they are being chased. You may also want to delete earlier
!V heavy speculation (on Pham's part?) that they may already be being
!V pursued
!V So why aren't they asking Jefri much more
!V explicitly about the nature of Countermeasure

She thought of Jefri's messages. "The rot on the walls of Jefri's ship. You think that's what it is?"
Pham's eyes went vague. "Yes. It seems completely passive, but he says it was there from the beginning, that his parents kept him away from it. He seems a little disgusted by it.... That's good, probably keeps his Tinish friends away from it."
A thousand questions flitted up. Surely they must in Pham's mind too. And they could know the answer to none of them now. Yet someday they would stand before that unknown and Old One's dead hand would act ... through Pham. Ravna shivered, and didn't say anything more for a time.





^ V June 14, 1991 hr sec

Month by month, the gunpowder project stayed right on the schedule of the library's development program. The Tines had been able to make the stuff easily; there had been very little backtracking through the development tree. Alloy testing had been the critical event that slowed things, but they were over the hump there too. The packs of "Hidden Island" had built the first three prototypes: breech-loading cannon that were small enough to be carried by a single pack. Jefri guessed they could begin mass production in another ten days. !V June 14, 1991 NO TIME:
!V March 25, 1991 Maybe you should try to work in lots of other
!V developments
!V in order to make it more plausible that Ravna can keep busy;
!V the problem is incorporating such into the groundside plot

The radio project was the weird one. In one sense it was behind schedule; in another, it had become something more than Ravna had ever imagined. After a long period of normal progress, Jefri had come back with a counterplan. It consisted of a complete reworking of the tables for the acoustic interface.
"I thought these jokers were first-time medievals," Pham Nuwen said when he saw Jefri's message.
"That's right. And in principle, they just reasoned out consequences to what we sent them. The want to support pack-thought across the radio."
"Hunh. Yes. We described how the tables specified the transducer grid -- all in nontechnical Samnorsk. That included showing how small table changes would make the grid different. But look, our design would give them a three kilohertz band -- a nice, voice-grade connection. You're telling me that implementing this new table would give'em two hundred kilohertz."
"Yes. That's what my dataset says." !hld By the way is "500 node numerical PDE" a legitimate description?
!hld I usually associate "nodes" with FEA mesh.
^ V June 14, 1991 Proper usage would be "500 node network for the
^ V numerical solution of a PDE"

He grinned his cocky smile. "Ha! And that's my point. Sure, in principle we gave them enough information to do the mod. It looks to me like making this expanded spec table is equivalent to solving a, hmm," he counted rows and columns, "a five-hundred-node numerical PDE. And little Jefri claims that all his datasets are destroyed, and that his ship computer is not generally usable."
Ravna leaned back from the display. "Sorry. I see what you mean." You get so used to everyday tools, sometimes you forget what it must be like without them. "You ... you think this might be, uh, Countermeasure's doing?"
Pham Nuwen hesitated, as if he hadn't even considered the possibility. Then, "No ... no, it's not that. I think this 'Mister Steel' is playing games with our heads. All we have is a byte stream from 'Jefri'. What do we really know about what's going on?" !V according to current (June 14, 1991 ) CHRON, it's been 5.5months

"Well, I'll tell you some things I know. We are talking to a young human child who was raised in Straumli Realm. You've been reading most of his messages in Trisk translation. That loses a lot of the colloquialisms and the little errors of a child who is a native speaker of Samnorsk. The only way this might be faked is by a group of human adults.... And after twenty plus weeks of knowing Jefri, I'll tell you even that is unlikely."
"Okay. So suppose Jefri is for real. We have this eight-year-old kid down on the Tines' world. He's telling us what he considers to be the truth. I'm saying it looks like someone is lying to him. Maybe we can trust what he sees with his own eyes. He says these creatures aren't sapient except in groups of five or so. Okay. We'll believe that." Pham rolled his eyes. Apparently his reading had shown how rare group intelligences were this side of the Transcend. "The kid says they didn't see anything but small towns from space, and that everything on the ground is medieval. Okay, we'll buy that. But. What are the chances that this race is smart enough to do PDE's in their heads, and do them from just the implications in your message?"
"Well, there have been some humans that smart." She could name one case in Nyjoran history, another couple from Old Earth. If such abilities were common among the packs, they were smarter than any natural race she had heard of. "So this isn't first-time medievalism?"
"Right. I bet this is some colony fallen on hard times -- like your Nyjora and my Canberra, except that they have the good luck of being in the Beyond. These dog packs have a working computer somewhere. Maybe it's under control of their priest class; maybe they don't have much else. But they're holding out on us."
"But why? We'd be helping them in any case. And Jefri has told us how this group saved him."
Pham started to smile again, the old supercilious smile. Then he sobered. He was really trying to break that habit. "You've been on a dozen different worlds, Ravna. And I know you've read about thousands more, at least in survey. You probably know of varieties of medievalism I've never guessed. But remember, I've actually been there.... I think." The last was a nervous mutter.
"I've read about the Age of Princesses," Ravna said mildly.
"Yes.... and I'm sorry for belittling that. In any medieval politics, the blade and the thought are closely connected. But they become much more closely bound for someone who's lived through it. Look, even if we believe everything that Jefri says he has seen, this Hidden Island Kingdom is a sinister thing."
"You mean the names?" !QU Through this scene I want to be creating the knowledge in the
! reader that the Tines may be something very special compared to
! the abilities of other races. Does that come through (cf my notes
! in TINES)
!PRB QU Maybe you shouldn't call it Samnorsk, since most of the time
! you seem to be using the BokmÅl version. Might ask Johannes about
! this.
!NÆH: QU Someplace should Steel actually use the term "high crusade"?
!
!V Should have more about Ravna feeling Jefri out
!V about the nature
!V of the Countermeasure (but she can't be too frank) IMP

"Like Flensers, Steel, Tines? Harsh names aren't necessarily meaningful." Pham laughed. "I mean, when I was eight years old, one of my titles was already 'Lord Master Disemboweler'." He saw the look on Ravna's face and hurriedly added, "And at that age, I hadn't even witnessed more than a couple of executions! No, the names are only a small part of it. I'm thinking of the kid's description of the castle -- which seems to be close by the ship -- and this ambush he thinks he was rescued from. It doesn't add up. You asked 'what could they gain from betraying us'. I can see that question from their point of view. If they are a fallen colony, they have a clear idea what they've lost. They probably have some remnant technology, and are paranoid as hell. If I were them, I'd seriously consider ambushing the rescuers if those rescuers seemed weak or careless. And even if we come on strong ... look at the questions Jefri asks for Steel. The guy is fishing, trying to figure out what we really value: the refugee ship, Jefri and the coldsleepers, or something on the ship. By the time we arrive, Steel will probably have wiped the local opposition -- thanks to us. My guess is we're in for some heavy blackmail when we get to Tines' world."
I thought we were talking about the good news. Ravna paged back through recent messages. Pham was right. The boy was telling the truth as he knew it, but.... "I don't see how we can play things any differently. If we don't help Steel against the Woodcarvers --"
"Yeah. We don't know enough to do much else. Whatever else is true, the Woodcarvers seem a valid threat to Jefri and the ship. I'm just saying we should be thinking about all the possibilities. One thing we absolutely mustn't do is show interest in Countermeasure. If the locals know how desperate we are for that, we don't have a chance. !V First two spacer references to "Flenser" appear to be in this scene
!V there is some INCON between this and the later ignorance that
!V Pham demonstrates about the name (Mr. Skinner v Flenser at the
!V climax)
!V No it's a reference to Flensers (plural) here and Mr. Skinner later

"And it may be time to start planting a few lies of our own. Steel's been talking about building a landing place for us -- within his castle. There's no way OOB could fit, but I think we should play along, tell Jefri that we can separate from our ultradrive, something like his container ship. Let Steel concentrate on building harmless traps...."
He hummed one of his strange little "marching" tunes. "About the radio thing: why don't we compliment the Tines real casually for improving our design. I wonder what they'd say?" ^ V June 14, 1991 do the kids ever comment on this trick they played on
^ V Ravna and Pham?

Pham Nuwen got his answer less than three days later. Jefri Olsndot said that he had done the optimization. So if you believed the kid, there was no evidence for hidden computers. Pham was not at all convinced: "So just by coincidence, we have Isaac Newton on the other end of the line?" Ravna didn't argue the point. It was an enormous bit of luck, yet.... She went over the earlier messages. In language and general knowledge, the boy seemed very ordinary for his age. But occasionally there were situations involving mathematical insight -- not formal, taught math -- where Jefri said striking things. Some of those conversations had been under fine conditions, with turnaround times of less than a minute. It all seemed too consistent to be the lie Pham Nuwen thought.
Jefri Olsndot, you are someone I want very much to meet.





^ V June 14, 1991 AWK

There was always something: problems with the Tines' developments, fears that the murderous Woodcarvers might attack Mr. Steel, worries about the steadily degrading drive spines and Zone turbulence that slowed OOB's progress even further. Life was by turns and at once frustrating, boring, frightening. And yet ... !V June 14, 1991 this is actually before the preceding scene if
!V you say four months

One night about four months into the flight, Ravna woke in the cabin she had come to share with Pham. Maybe she had been dreaming, but she couldn't remember anything except that it had been no nightmare. There was no special noise in the room, nothing to wake her. Beside her, Pham was sleeping soundly in their hammock net. She eased her arm down his back, drawing him gently toward her. His breathing changed; he mumbled something placid and unintelligible. In Ravna's opinion, sex in zero-gee was not the experience some people bragged it up to be; but really sleeping with someone ... that was much nicer in free fall. An embrace could be light and enduring and effortless.
Ravna looked around the dimly-lit cabin, trying to imagine what had woken her. Maybe it had just been the problems of the day -- Powers knew there had been enough of those. She nestled her face against Pham's shoulder. Yes, always problems, but ... in a way she more content than she had been in years. Sure there were problems. Poor Jefri's situation. All the people lost at Straum and Relay. But she had three friends, and a love. Alone in a tiny ship bound for the Bottom, she was less lonely than she'd been since leaving Sjandra Kei. More than ever in her life, maybe she could do something to help with the problems.
And then she guessed, part in sadness, part in joy, that years from now she might look back on these months as goldenly happy.