A Fire Upon the Deep

.Delete this paragraph to shift page flush

-=*=-

CHAPTER 32
!V PRB hld raises should be thought about. Seems like the antenna
!V cloud could be driven off the ship's computers.
!V I assume the swarm can be used while they are
!V under way (makes it easier to talk to Jefri and still run; if
!V necessary could write it the other way probably)
!V Killer swarms are said to be more independent, and this may be
!V a problem
!hld Is the antenna swarm still with OOB? Does it fly ultradrive? Could
!hld use large aperture to tighten beam
^ V CHK all your coinages (eg, skrode ) in OED
!V 10000km sounds small compared to what an antenna swarm could provide
!V You may want much larger swarms? INCON PRB FIXED
!
^ V PRB Do you use this "all unnoticed" line before, like
^ V when they decide to stop at RIP?
^ V yes! you did (but with key "all unobserved" c25) probably be
^ V be good to standardize and have someone use it before the fall of
^ V Relay

There was a time when Ravna thought their tiny ship might fly all the way to the Bottom unnoticed. Along with everything else, that had changed. At the moment, Out of Band II might be the most famous star ship known to the Net. A million races watched the chase. In the Middle Beyond there were vast antenna swarms beaming in their direction and listening to the news -- mostly lies -- sent from ships that pursued the OOB. She couldn't hear those lies directly, of course, but the transmissions from beyond were as clear as if they were on a main trunk. !V June 9, 1991 How does she know they agree on this?

Ravna spent part of each day reading the News, trying to find hope, trying to prove to herself that she was doing the right thing. By now, she was pretty sure what was chasing them. No doubt even Pham and Blueshell would have agreed on that. Why they were being chased, and what they might find at the end was now the subject of endless speculation on the Net. As usual, whatever the truth might be was well hidden among the lies. !V March 26, 1991 You may want to inject some doubt into MSG about
!V exactly which ships are which
!V March 26, 1991 in MSG (or somewhere) mention the ad hoc nature of the
!V fleets, even the blighter fleet
!V Get rid of [ ->English ] references

^ [Light gloss]

Crypto: 0 ^ Syntax: 43

As received by: OOB shipboard ad hoc ^ (full-gloss channel)

Language path: Triskweline, SjK units
From: Hanse [No references prior to the fall of Relay. No probable source. This is someone being very cautious.]
Subject: Alliance for the Defense fraudulent?
Distribution:
Threat of the Blight, War Trackers Interest Group, Homo Sapiens Interest Group
Date: 5.80 days since Fall of Sjandra Kei ^ CHRON" Date: 0.501 Msec since Fall of Sjandra Kei
! 2.220 Msec since Fall of Sjandra Kei
! (Clock Slop < 2500 seconds)

Key phrases: Fools' errand, unnecessary genocide

Text of message: !Now there's a grotesqe chapter TITLE: Unnecessary genocide
!PRB wartrackers, wart rackers, war trackers
!QU does it really make sense to show repeated speakers on the net
! Probably in the final version, there should only be a few repeaters
! though somewhere you might make the point that after a while one
! concentrates on certain names. This is part of the general PRB of
! how to deal with so many sources for the discussions that are
! going on.
! ID Vrinimi might be made to be one of the references consistent with
! "The Blabber"
!
!V CHK traffic estimate here
!Should I omit this first paragraph?

Earlier I speculated that there had been no destruction at Sjandra Kei. Apologies. That was based on a catalog identification error. I agree with the messages (13123 as of a few seconds ago) assuring me that the habitations of Sjandra Kei suffered collisional damage within the last six days. !V CHK INCON half
^ V June 9, 1991 CHK sp (capitalization) Homo Sapiens Sapiens

So apparently the "Alliance for the Defense" has taken the military action they claimed earlier. And apparently, they are powerful enough to destroy small civilizations in the Middle Beyond. The question still remains: "Why?" I have already posted arguments showing it unlikely that Homo sapiens is especially controllable by the Blight (though they were stupid enough to create that entity). Even the Alliance's own reports admit that less than half of Sjandra Kei's sophonts were of that race. !V CHK CHRON 1000y
^ V INCON using y and Msec in same posting.
^ V Definitely want somewhere that fragment about date translations.
^ V April 27, 1991 make it clear that it is only a part of the Alliance
^ V fleet at RIP (probably they're just showing the flag in part).
^ V That way the coincidence of their presence isn't strained --
^ V oops, but weren't they already chasing SjK? (see discussion in
^ V that chapter.

Now a large part of the Alliance fleet is chasing into the Bottom of the Beyond after a single ship. What conceivable damage can the Alliance do to the Blight down there? The Blight is a great threat, perhaps the most novel and threatening in well-recorded history. Nevertheless, Alliance behavior appears destructive and pointless. Now that the Alliance has revealed some of its sponsoring organizations (see messages [id numbers]), I think we know its real motives. I see connections between the Alliance and the old Aprahant Hegemony. A thousand years ago, that group had a similar jihad, grabbing real estate left vacant by recent Transcendences. Stopping the Hegemony was an exciting bit of action in that part of the galaxy. I think these people are back, taking advantage of the general panic attending the Blight (which is admittedly a much greater threat).
My advice: Beware of the Alliance and its claims of heroic efforts.
^ [Light gloss]

Crypto: 0 ^ Syntax: 43

As received by: OOB shipboard ad hoc ^ (full-gloss channel)
!V INCON with fluency seen at RIP?
!V April 27, 1991 I don't see why an inconsistency, given
!V that the translation to Trisk may have occurred at an
!V intermediate node
!V June 8, 1991 Also, Ravna might note the fluency as possible
!V evidence that the poster is not related ot Saint Rihndell
!ID The source should be the organization that gave them Big Trouble
! on RIP June 15, 1991 NO
!V note from January 9, 1991 : You attempt to handle some of these
!V concerns in Ravna's thoughts after reading this item
!V What is the real motive of this message. I assume it is from
!V the perverted Riders (because of inside knowledge they might have
!V gotten from Greenstalk). Do you have to say somewhere how they
!V got the info?
!V This looks like Blight smiles upon Aprahanti fleet and hopes
!V they will have temporary success. This might be consistent with
!V interpretation that Blight now knows the location of Tines world
!V Might just have Ravna comment on some of this to herself at the
!V beginning of this news item.
!V I think it's quite plausible by now that
!V the Blight either knows where Tines world is or can easily
!V find it. It may also suspect that OOB contains something
!V that can trigger Countermeasure
!V Actually, the Ravna commentary after this message
!V looks quite sufficient to ensure plausibility/clarity of this
!V message
!V What about the Communications Synod? INCON

Language path: Schirachene->Rondralip->Triskweline, SjK units
From: Harmonious Repose Communications Synod
Subject: Encounter with agents of the Perversion
Distribution:
Threat of the Blight
Date: 6.37 days since Fall of Sjandra Kei ^ CHRON" Date: 0.550 Msec since Fall of Sjandra Kei
! 3.299 Msec since Fall of Sjandra Kei
! (Clock Slop < 25 seconds)

Key phrases: Hanse fraudulent?

Text of message: !V April 27, 1991 AWK proper number to use with "Alliance" (singular or
!V plural)
!V April 27, 1991 Consider making this poster (or some poster) always
!V writing in first person singular

We have no special inclination toward any of the posters on this thread. Nevertheless, it's remarkable that an entity that has not revealed its location or special interests -- namely "Hanse" -- should be smearing the efforts of the Alliance for the Defense. The Alliance kept its constituents secret only during that period when its forces were being gathered, when a single stroke of the Perversion's power might destroy it entirely. Since that time, it has been quite open in its efforts. !V "The name of the ship should have tipped us off" NÆH

Hanse wonders how a single starship could be worth the Alliance's attention. As Harmonious Repose was the site of the latest turn of events, we are in a position to give some explanation. The ship in question, the Out of Band II, is clearly designed for operations at the Bottom of the Beyond -- and is even capable of limited operations within the Slow Zone. The ship presented itself as a special zonographic flight commissioned to study the recent turbulence at the Bottom. In fact, this ship's mission is a very different one. In the aftermath of its violent departure, we have pieced together some extraordinary facts: !V CHKd other "Down" is Debley. Sneerot is mentioned in c27.

At least one of the ship's crew was human. Though they made great efforts to stay out of view and used Skroderider traders as intermediaries, we have recordings. A biosequence of one individual was obtained, and it matches the patterns maintained by two out of three of the Homo sapiens archives. (It's well known that the third archive, on Sneerot Down, is in the control of Human sympathizers.) Some might say this deception was founded in fear. After all, these events happened after the destruction of Sjandra Kei. We think otherwise: The ship's initial contact with us occurred before the Sjandra Kei incident.
We have since made a careful analysis of the repair work our yards performed on this vessel. Ultradrive automation is a deep and complex thing; even the cleverest of cloaking cannot mask all the memories in it. We now know that the Out of Band II was from the Relay system and that it left there after the Perversion's attack. Think what this means. ^ V April 27, 1991 Unfortunately, if you do that "musicians" thing, you
^ V should do it consistently elsewhere. (But this case may also be because
^ V the source language is not well-known)

The crew of the Out of Band II brought weapons into a habitat, kill several local sophonts, and escaped before our musicians [harmonizers? police?] were properly notified. We have good reason to wish them ill.
Yet our misfortune is a small thing compared to the unmasking of this secret mission. We are very grateful that the Alliance is willing to risk so much in following this lead. !V April 27, 1991 Should I delete this following paragraph?

There's more than the usual number of unsubstantiated assertions floating around on this news thread. We hope our facts will wake some people up. In particular, consider what "Hanse" may really be. The Perversion is very visible in the High Beyond, where it has great power and can speak with its own voice. Down here, it is more likely that deception and covert propaganda will be its tools. Think on this when you read postings from unidentified entities such as "Hanse"!

!ID Way back at the beginning (fall of Straumli Realm) there would have
! been a different set of speculations, including the theory that the
! helper
! was just an empire -- that was one of many theories that bit the dust
! when Relay fell.
!ID It would be nice if somewhere you could indicate that news has been
! through multiple hops (might research this a little in reference to
! to USENET) June 15, 1991 I think Sandor does this
!ID IDEA 28Mar89 Enshrine the term jabberwocky (as you have
! tried to do with "evocation") -- mentioned in c16;
!V IMP enshrinement could begin back with the first Net News you show
!V -- hard to do
! Jabberwocky: The semisense in poorly translated text (sometimes the
! translation may be about the best that can be performed by/for human
! caliber minds)
!ID Should have more discussion of illicit news item modification and
! spoofers. It ought to be fairly common that different posters are
! claiming to be the same entity. On the other hand, a lot of this can
! be routinely filtered out (for instance if you have newsfeeds that
! have no common intermediate nodes).
^ V Finally decided just to have one style, the New News messages:
!PRB Unfortunately, there appear to be two style of sidebar, those that
! are integrated with the narrative (and acknowledged by the PoV) and
! those that are not. How can I get along with having both types?
! (One example of the second are random stuff from Johanna's Dataset.)
! ID Might consider having a sidebar PoV!

Ravna gritted her teeth. The hell of it was, the facts in the posting were correct. It was the inferences that were vicious and false. And she couldn't guess if this were some shade of black propaganda or simply Saint Rihndell expressing honest conclusions (though Rihndell had never seemed so trusting of the butterflies). !V CHK INCON 5000 msgs/hr
!V June 15, 1991 Okay, in fact this is the cornerstone for
!V a fair amount of stuff. If 10KB/msg (av), then this implies
!V that OOB can receive at least 15KB/s on a main trunk

One thing all the News seemed to agree on: Much more than the Alliance fleet was chasing the OOB. The swarm of ultradrive traces could be seen by anyone within a thousand light-years. The best guess was that three fleets pursued the OOB. Three! The Alliance for the Defense, still loud and boastful, even though suspected (by some) of being opportunistic genocides. Behind them, Sjandra Kei ... and what was left of Ravna's motherland; in all the universe perhaps the only folk she could trust. And just behind them, the silent fleet. Diverse news posters claimed it was from the High Beyond. That fleet might have problems at the Bottom, but for now it was gaining. Few doubted that it was the Perversion's child. More than anything, it convinced the universe that the OOB or its destination was cosmically important. Just why it was important was the big question. Speculation was drifting in at the rate of five thousand messages per hour. A million different viewpoints were considering the mystery. Some of those viewpoints were so alien that they made Skroderiders and Humans look like the same species. At least five participants on this News thread were gaseous inhabitants of stellar coronas. There were one or two others that Ravna suspected were uncataloged races, beings so shy that this might be their first active use of the Net ever. ^ V April 27, 1991 Above may be repetitive from earlier thoughts she has
^ V about reading the Net News. Furthermore, you should work on making
^ V weirdness in postings consistent (at least in its evolution)
!V IMP this paragraph is a pretty clear statement of your
!V rationale for Zone degradation (though it is still subject to
!V the Austin paradox)
!V Other places for additional commentary:
!V Talking to Old One
!V Net News
!V However you resolve the Austin paradox, remember the ansible in
!V "The Blabber"
^ V March 26, 1991 more of this needs to be RETRO written, seems to
^ V be happening awfully abruptly, since they are only a few days out
^ V from RIP

The OOB's computer was a lot dumber than it had been in the Middle Beyond. She couldn't ask it to sift through the messages looking for nuance and insight. In fact, if an incoming message didn't have a Triskweline text, it was often unreadable. The ship's translator programs still worked fairly well with the major trade languages, but even there the translation was slow and full of alternative meanings and jabberwocky. It was just another sign that they were approaching the Bottom of the Beyond. Effective translation of natural languages comes awfully close to requiring a sentient translator program.
Nevertheless, with proper design, things might have been better. The automation might have degraded gracefully under the restrictions imposed by their depth. Instead, gear just stopped working; what remained was slow and error-prone. If only the refitting had been completed before the Fall of Relay. And just how many times have I wished for that? She hoped things were as bad aboard the pursuing ships.
So Ravna used the ship to do light culling on the Threats newsgroup. Much of what was left was inane, as from people who see "portents in the weather" --

Crypto: 0
Syntax: 43
As received by: OOB shipboard ad hoc
Language path: Arbwyth->Trade24->Cherguelen->Triskweline, SjK units !PRB You've already accused Hanse of being a Helper front before TUF
!V how about Hexapodia as a keyword?
!V SEQ IMP consider having Twirlip fit with your N-novel
!V L.Margulis scheme. In particular, then end of this message
!V (or perhaps the "all one harmony" thing you took out) should be
!V carefully considered)

From: Twirlip of the Mists [Perhaps an organization of cloud fliers in a single jovian system. Very sparse priors before this thread began. Appears to be seriously out of touch. Program recommendation: delete this poster from presentation.]
Subject: The Blight's goal at the Bottom
Distribution:
Threat of the Blight, Great Secrets of Creation ^ V Consider using "engineer" grouping on data
^ V representation: 392Ksec instead of 0.392Msec. NO use what the
^ V receiving automation is set for (like UNIX(tm) locales :-)

Date: 4.54 days since Fall of Sjandra Kei ^ CHRON" Date: 0.392 Msec since Fall of Sjandra Kei
! 3.411 Msec since Fall of Sjandra Kei
! (Clock Slop < 3000 seconds)

Key phrases: Zone Instability and the Blight, Hexapodia as the key insight

Text of message: !V GLOBAL change "Dates:" to "Date:"
!V "his creation site"?
!V could also use this posting to talk of protecting the "stupid part
!V of the universe" June 15, 1991 NÆH
!V INCON "Information Service"? SOLN: lower case

Apologies first if I am repeating obvious conclusions. My only gateway onto the Net is very expensive, and I miss many important postings. I think that anyone following both Great Secrets of Creation and Threat of the Blight would see an important pattern. Since the events reported by Harmonious Repose information service, most agree that something important to the Perversion exists at the Bottom of the Beyond in region [...]. I see a possible connection here with the Great Secrets. During the last two hundred and twenty days, there have been increasing reports of zone interface instability in the region below Harmonious Repose. As the Blight threat has grown and its attacks against advanced races and other Powers continued, this instability has increased. Could there not be some connection? I urge all to consult their information on the Great Secrets (or the nearest archive maintained by that group). Events such as this prove once again that the universe is all ronzelle between. !V May want to delete the preceding sentence

Some of the postings were tantalizing --

[Light gloss]

Crypto: 0
Syntax: 43
As received by: OOB shipboard ad hoc
Language path: Wobblings->Baeloresk->Triskweline, SjK units !QU are these long interpolations acceptably placed?
!V CHK capitalize various forms of "Transcend*"?
!V CHKd is "jape" std English?

From: Cricketsong under the High Willow [Cricketsong is a synthetic race created as a jape/ experiment/instrument by the High Willow upon its Transcendence. Cricketsong has been on the Net for more than ten thousand years. Apparently it is a fanatical studier of paths to Transcendence. For eight thousand years it has been the heaviest poster on "Where are they now" and related groups. There is no evidence that any Cricketsong settlement has itself Transcended. Cricketsong is sufficiently peculiar that there is a large news group for speculation concerning the race itself. Consensus is that Cricketsong was designed by High Willow as a probe back into the Beyond, that the race is somehow incapable of attempting its own Transcendence.]
Subject: The Blight's goal at the Bottom
Distribution:
Threat of the Blight, War Trackers Special Interest Group, Where are they now Special Interest Group !V April 27, 1991 CHKd <I think, yesterday>

Date: 5.12 days since Fall of Sjandra Kei ^ CHRON" Date: 0.442 Msec since Fall of Sjandra Kei
! 3.411 Msec since Fall of Sjandra Kei
! (Clock Slop > 133000 seconds)

Key phrases: On becoming Transcendent

Text of message: !V Consider trying to make this fit more with the story?
!V IMP Both this and the next posting must be redone with an eye to your
!V Prolog and Countermeasure stuff
!jrf2 Critique of following phrase from next paragraph:
!jrf2 Take longer than what?
!jrf2 How do you mean this about "taking much longer"?
!jrf2 (though any information from the Depths would likely take much longer
!jrf2 than the average Power's attention span).
!V I think I've clarified the paragraph now:

Contrary to other postings, there are a number of reasons why a Power might install artifacts at the Bottom of the Beyond. The Abselor's message on this thread cites some: some Powers have documented curiosity about the Slow Zone and, even more, about the Unthinking Depths. In rare cases, expeditions have been dispatched (though any return from the Depths would occur long after the dispatching Power lost interest in all local questions).
However, none of these motives are likely here. To those who are familiar with Fast Burn transcendence, it is clear that the Blight is a creature seeking stasis. Its interest in the Bottom is very sudden, provoked, we think, by the revelations at Harmonious Repose. There is something at the Bottom that is critical to the Perversion's welfare.
Consider the notion of ablative dissonance (see the Where Are They Now group archive): No one knows what set-up procedures the humans of Straumli Realm were using. The Fast Burn may itself have had Transcendent intelligence. What if it became dissatisfied with the direction of the channedring? In that case it might try to hide the jumpoff birthinghel. The Bottom would not be a place where the algorithm itself could normally execute, but avatars might still be created from it and briefly run.

!V CHK capitalize "Applied Theology"? YES
!V This might be a place to bring up the deceptiveness
!V of translations (and/or jabberwocky) NO
!V Actually, the preceding posting doesn't seem to add
!V that much. Might consider making it a vehicle for something else
!V -- virtual partition discussion. In fact, you might remark that
!V Twirlip is getting in because of "open-mindedness" options in the
!V newsreader automation (a weak attempt to avoid virtual
!V partitioning).
!V IMP Come up with a better term than "virtual partition"
!V since this is a notion that will become important on our Earthly
!V nets in the near future. IMP ID could even use the notion to
!V explicitly explain some plot PRB (not just implicit excuse for
!V an idiot plot)

Up to a point, Ravna could almost make sense of it; ablative dissonance was a commonplace of Applied Theology. But then, like one of those dreams where the secret of life is about to be revealed, the posting just drifted into nonsense.
There were postings that were neither asinine nor obscure. As usual, Sandor at the Zoo had a lot of things dead right:

^ [Light gloss]

Crypto: 0 ^ Syntax: 43

As received by: OOB shipboard ad hoc ^ (full-gloss channel)

Language path: Triskweline, SjK units
From: Sandor Arbitration Intelligence at the Zoo [A known military corporation of the High Beyond. If this is a masquerade, somebody is living dangerously.]
Subject: The Blight's goal at the Bottom
Key phrases: Sudden change in Blight's tactics
Distribution:
Threat of the Blight, War Trackers Interest Group, Homo Sapiens Interest Group
Date: 8.15 days since Fall of Sjandra Kei ^ CHRON" Date: 0.704 Msec since Fall of Sjandra Kei
! 3.468 Msec since Fall of Sjandra Kei
! (Clock Slop < 500 seconds)

Text of message: !V April 28, 1991 "instantiation" if used, should be elsewhere

In case you don't know, Sandor Intelligence has a number of different Net feeds. We can collect messages on paths that have no intermediate nodes in common. Thus we can be fairly confident that news we receive has not been tampered with en route. (There remain the lies and misunderstandings that were present to begin with, but that's something that makes the intelligence business interesting.)
The Blight has been our top priority since its instantiation a year ago. This is not just because of the Blight's obvious strength, the destruction and the deicides it has committed. We fear that all this is the lesser part of the Threat. There have been perversions almost as powerful in the recorded past. What truly distinguishes this one is its stability. We see no evidence of internal evolution; in some ways it is less than a Power. It may never lose interest in controlling the High Beyond. We may be witnessing a massive and permanent change in the nature of things. Imagine: a stable necrosis, where the only sentience in the High Beyond is the Blight.
Thus, studying the Blight has been a matter of life and death for us (even though we are powerful and widely distributed). We've reached a number of conclusions. Some of these may be obvious to you, others may sound like flagrant speculation. All take on a new coloring with the events reported from Harmonious Repose:
Almost from the beginning, the Blight has been searching for something. This search has extended far beyond its aggressive physical expansion. Its automatic agents have tried to penetrate virtually every node in the Top of the Beyond; the High Network is in shambles, reduced to protocols scarcely more efficient than those known below. At the same time, the Blight has physically stolen several archives. We have evidence of very large fleets searching for off-Net archives at the Top and in the Low Transcend. At least three Powers have been murdered in this rampage.
And now, suddenly, this assault has ended. The Blight's physical expansion continues, with no end in sight, but it no longer searches the High Beyond. As near as we can tell, the change occurred about two thousand seconds before the escape of the human vessel from Harmonious Repose. Less than six hours later, we saw the beginnings of the silent fleet that so many are now speculating about. That fleet is indeed the creature of the Blight.
In other times, the destruction of Sjandra Kei and the motives of the Alliance for the Defense would all be important issues (and our organization might have interest in doing business with those affected). But all that is dwarfed by the fact of this fleet and the ship it pursues. And we disagree with the analysis [implication?] from Harmonious Repose: it is obvious to us that the Blight did not know of the Out of Band II until its discovery at Harmonious Repose.
That ship is not a tool of the Blight, but it contains or is bound for something of enormous importance to the Blight. And what might that be? Here we begin frank speculation. And since we are speculating, we'll use those powerful pseudo-laws, the Principles of Mediocrity and Minimal Assumption. If the Blight has the potential for taking over all the Top in a permanent stability, then why has this not happened before? Our guess is that the Blight has been instantiated before (with such dire consequence that the event marks the beginning of recorded time), but it has its own peculiar natural enemy.
The order of events even suggests a particular scenario, one familiar from network security. Once upon a time (very long ago), there was another instance of the Blight. A successful defense was mounted, and all known copies of the Blight's recipe were destroyed. Of course, on a wide net, one can never be sure that all copies of a badness are gone. No doubt, the defense was distributed in enormous numbers. But even if a harboring archive were reached by such a distribution, there might be no effect if the Blight were not currently active there.
The luckless humans of Straumli Realm chanced on such an archive, no doubt a ruin long off the Net. They instantiated the Blight and incidentally -- perhaps a little later -- the defense program. Somehow that Blight's enemy escaped destruction. And the Blight has been searching for it ever since -- in all the wrong places. In its weakness, the new instance of the defense retreated to depths no Power would think of penetrating, whence it could never return without outside help. Speculation on top of speculation: we can't guess the nature of this defense, except that its retreat is a discouraging sign. And now even that sacrifice has gone for naught, since the Blight has seen through the deception.
The Blight's fleet is clearly an ad hoc thing, hastily thrown together from forces that happened to be closest to the discovery. Without such haste, the quarry might have been lost to it. Thus the chase equipment is probably ill-suited to the depths, and its performance will degrade as the descent progresses. However, we estimate that it will remain stronger than any force that can reach the scene in the near future.
We may learn more after the Blight reaches the Out of Band II's destination. If it destroys that destination immediately, we'll know that something truly dangerous to the Blight existed there (and may exist elsewhere, at least in recipe form). If it does not, then perhaps the Blight was looking for something that will make it even more dangerous than before.

!V PRB This complaint about Sandor's coolness is
!V necessary to the
!V segue, but I don't think it really follows from what Sandor says.
!V In view of Sandor's final posting, you might say here
!V that they were almost a Power

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. !V solicit suggestions about tightening up net news
!V somewhere in here more reference to her SjK background
!QU Do you want to use the term "flaming"? NO
!V CHK INCON 1000 ships

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? !V June 7, 1991 "could possibly be wrong" instead?

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. ^ V June 9, 1991 "scale" ambiguous word in your first usage in this
^ V paragraph

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. !FRAG: see D:N7/MS/FRAGIMP.32 for what this was before

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.

!V IMP INCON How did Ravna insert deadly fixes after Pham got
!V console privileges?
!V SOLN she got privileges after he gave up the console. Actually,
!V though this is a solution that sounds weak to anyone who has
!V managed even a small system in a social environment PRB. One thing
!V that helps a little is that the humans could plausibly have been
!V given some privileges for the stop at RIP -- and I do assert this
!V in c29

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. !V INCON after the way you ballyhooed the skrodes of the Greater Riders
!V this seems just a little implausible
!V possible SOLN In Pham's statement earlier about the skrodes, he
!V could make the point that in fact the skrode functionality would not
!V be that hard to make using known techniques <INCON: still collides
!V a little with your notions of functionality in Zones, or maybe you
!V IMP could have Greenstalk be driftier at the end in the Slow Zone IMP
! >
!V TUF, though you could degrade Greenstalk's skrode-related performance
!V wherever possible and mention this in the epilog

"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." ^ V June 7, 1991 "friendly" is not quite the right word

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. !?V Now sometime later, you can have Greenstalk comment to Ravna about
!V recognizing in her face that she is truthful

"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." !V March 26, 1991 Place to mention calibration problems and the missing
!V final tests of the OOB.

Frond shrug. "Sir Pham has turned out to be a competent ship's master. I'm afraid things will change as we descend. The ship's higher automation will gradually fail. What you call 'manual control' will become very important. OOB was designed for my race, my lady. No matter what Sir Pham thinks of us, at bottom we can fly it better than any. So bit by bit the others will gain -- at least those who truly understand their own ships."
It was something she hadn't guessed, certainly something she would never have found reading the Net. Too bad it's also bad news. "S-surely Pham must know this?"
"I think he must. But he is trapped in his own fears. What can he do? If not for you, My Lady Ravna, he might have killed us already. Maybe when the choice comes down to dying in the next hour against trusting us, maybe then there will be a chance."
"By then it will be too late. Look, even if he doesn't trust -- even though he believes the worst of Riders -- there must still be a way." And it came to her that sometimes you don't have to change the way people think, or even whom they may hate. "Pham wants to get to the Bottom, to recover this Countermeasure. He thinks you may be from the Blight, and after the same thing. But up to a point --" up to a point he can cooperate, postpone the showdown he imagines till perhaps it won't matter.
Even as she started to say it, Blueshell was already shouting back at her. "I'm am not of the Blight! Greenstalk is not! The Rider race is not!" He swept around his mate, rolled across the ceiling till his fronds rattled right before Ravna's face.
"I'm sorry. It's just the potential --"
"Nonsense!" His voder buzzed off scale. "We ran in to an evil few. Every race has such, people who will kill for trade. They forced Greenstalk, substituted data at her voder. Pham Nuwen would kill our billions for the sake of this fantasy." He waved, inarticulate. Something she had never seen in a Skroderider: his fronds actually changed tone, darkened.
The motion ceased, yet he said nothing more. And then Ravna heard it, a keening that might have come from a voder. The sound was steadily growing, a howl that made all Blueshell's sound effects friendly nonsense. It was Greenstalk.
The scream reached a threshold just below pain, then broke into choppy Triskweline: "It's true! Oh, by all our trading, Blueshell, it's true...." and staticky noise came from her voder. Her fronds started shaking, random turning that must be like a human's eyes wildly staring, like a human's mouth mumbling hysteria.
Blueshell was already back by the wall, reaching to adjust her new skrode. Greenstalk's fronds brushed him away, and her voder voice continued, "I was horror struck, Blueshell. I was horror struck, struck by horror. And it would not stop...." the voice rattled quiet for just an instant, and this time Blueshell made no move. "I remember everything up till the last five minutes. And everything Pham says is true, dear love. Loyal as you are, and I have seen that loyalty now for two hundred years, you would be turned in an instant ... just as I was." Now that the dam broke, her words came quickly, mostly making sense. The horrors she could remember were graven deep, and she was finally coming out of ghastly shock. "I was right behind you, remember, Blueshell? You were deep in your trading with the tusk-legs, so deep you did not really see. I noticed the other Riders coming toward us. No matter: a friendly meeting, so far from home. Then one touched my Skrode. I --" Greenstalk hesitated. Her fronds rattled and she began again, "horror struck, horror struck ...."
After a moment: "It was like suddenly new memories in the skrode, Blueshell. New memories, new attitudes. But thousands of years deep. And not mine. Instantly, instantly. I never even lost consciousness. I thought just as clearly, I remembered all I had before."
"And when you resisted?" Ravna said softly. !V INCON QU the actual attempt on Blueshell would have been in the
! memory
!V blackout period -- FIXed by some awkward phrasing
!V Still doesn't quite fit with Sandor's analysis (though he does talk
!V about "bulky comm equipment" )

"... 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?" !V PRB Logical flaw in this analysis ||||||||||||
!V Ug. There is a logical flaw in this analysis, since if Greenstalk
!V is still perverted she could just be lying
!V QU Okay now?
!jrf2 analysis of ... lying:
!jrf2 But if you confirm between Blueshell, Greenstalk, Ravna, and Pham
!jrf2 that:
!jrf2 a) It's the skrode that's perverted, and
!jrf2 b) it has to be something like what you describe to "turn" a
!jrf2 rider, and
!jrf2 c) a rider can be "unperverted" by getting a new skrode;
!V June 9, 1991 But how to prove point (c)? Seems to me that I
!V can only use relative risks.
!jrf2 then Greenstalk is clearly not lying, right?
!jrf2 You're almost there now (ie, almost credible).

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." !V Because of the previous paragraph, you may have to have some
!V comment about them doing a little better than expected.

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. !V Following relates to Lost Time
!V somewhere there should be hearkening back to Pham/Ravna earlier
!V conversation about drifting apart
!
!V FRAG Doesn't Pham realize that he
! controls nothing here. This ship is ours, a Rider design. I've
! known it for a hundred years. If we were the traitors he thinks,
! he would be dead weeks since, no matter what the traps and deadfalls
! he thinks he has planted.
!jrf2 Very Good section!

!jrf2 "lost all point" -- huh? FIXED

Beforehand Ravna couldn't imagine how the confrontation would turn out. Just possibly -- if he'd lost all touch with reality -- Pham might try to kill them when they appeared on the command deck. More likely there would be rage and argument and threats, and they would be back to square one.
Instead ... it was almost like the old Pham, from before Harmonious Repose. He let them enter the command deck, he made no comment when Ravna set herself carefully between himself and the Riders. He listened without interruption, while Ravna explained what Greenstalk had said. "These two are safe, Pham. And without their help we'll not make it to the Bottom."
He nodded, looked away at the windows. Some showed natural starscape; most were ultratrace displays, the closest thing to a picture of the enemies that were closing on the OOB. His calm expression broke for just an instant, and the Pham that loved her seemed to stare out, desperate: "And you really believe all this, Rav? How?" Then the lid was back on, his expression distant and neutral. "Never mind. Certainly it's true: without all of us working together we'll never make it to Tines' World. Blueshell, I accept your offer. Subject to cautious safeguards, we work together." Till I can safely dispose of you, Ravna could feel the unsaid words behind his blandness. Showdown deferred. !June 9, 1991 FRAG
!^ &^ V March 26, 1991 Should I delete the remaining 3 paragraphs?
!^ !! V |||||||||||||||||almost the same phrasing as
! in her thoughts in
!^ !! V the previous chapter. -- yes, but I think it's okay
!
It wasn't clear if the Riders understood that. Blueshell stood
! very close to Greenstalk. When she needed steadying, he brushed
! against her or caught her fronds and gave her a gentle pull. Now he
! came a little forward. "Thank you, Sir Pham. We will prove you can
! trust us. There is much we can do already. Our jump rate will decline
! over the next thirty hours if the processors aren't downstepped
! correctly."
!^ !! V PRB I think overall this truce makes sense, except
!^ !! V that if I were
!^ !! V Pham, I would still fear short-term treachery
!^ !! based on the fact there
!^ !! V is a Blighter fleet immediately behind them.
!
Pham nodded again, "I'd guessed that was so. But how do --" and
! he was off into shipmaster questions, full of jargon.
!
She and Greenstalk were silent, watching the two. Blueshell was
! almost back to his old argumentative, vociferous self. And Pham, well
! he seemed more subdued than usual, but at least the crazy light in
! him was dimmed. For now, for now, it might work.
!
!^ ^