.Delete this paragraph to shift page flush
-=*=-
!IMP ID Peregrine as soliton
! Not quite Peregrine, but maybe the motto of Mr. Tines SEQ
! in "The Blabber": "As long as there is need, I will be"
!
!QU IMP suggestions to improve these Epilogs welcome!
!QU should the novel be split into parts. I'm thinking:
! Part 1, up through the Fall of Relay
! Part 2, up to the arrival at Tines World
! Part 3, at Tines World (the shortest part)
! If I do do this should I number the chapters separately in each
! part. (It looks like there is going to be a total of about 50
! chapters, not counting netnews items.)
!jrf Chapter numbers shouldn't start at 1 in each section; just continue
!jrf from start to finish. Part 2 should end just before Tines' World
!jrf space.
EPILOGS
^ V April 7, 1991 Somewhere (perhaps already done) make comment that
^ V this is sort of what you expect if you mess around with Powers
^ V (though this is a much more extreme case than the average).
^ V June 19, 1991 Slightly alluded too at end of fleet battle.
^ V This could also be related to Ravna's general fear of Powers
!V I think the Tyra/Flenser summing up here does work SOLN, and in fact
!V the pacing of Tyra/Flenser's torment throughout the story
!V is at least okay now (weakest in c37).
!V Downplay how record-hot the summer was.
Peace had come to what had once been Flenser's Domain. At least there was no sign of belligerent forces. Whoever had pulled them back had done it very cleverly. As the days passed, local peasantry showed themselves. Where the people weren't simply dazed, they seemed glad to be rid of the old regime. Life picked up in the farmlands, peasants doing their best to recover from the worst fire season of recent memory, compounded by the most fighting the region had ever known. !RETRO The sound of hammers rang again through the Halls of Hidden Island.
!V Streamsdell instead of the "northern valley"? June 19, 1991 NÆH
^ June 19, 1991 INCON were they really just "whispered about"?
The Queen had sent messengers south to report on the victory, but she seemed in no rush to return to her city. Her troops helped with some of the farm work, and did their best not to be a burden on the locals. But they also scouted through the castle on Starship Hill, and the huge old castle on Hidden Island. Down there were all the horrors that had been whispered about over the years. But still there was no sign of the forces that had escaped. The locals were eager with their own stories, and most were ominously credible: That before Flenser had undertaken his attempt upon the Republic, he had created redoubts further north. There had been reserves there -- though some thought that Steel had long since used them. Peasants from the northern valley had seen the Flenserist troops retreating. Some said they had seen Flenser himself -- or at least a pack wearing the colors of a lord. Even the locals did not believe all the stories, the ones about Flenser being here and there, singletons separated by kilometers, coordinating the pull out.
Ravna and the Queen had reason to believe the story, but not the foolhardiness to check it out. Woodcarver's expeditionary force was not a large one, and the forests and valleys stretched on for more than one hundred kilometers to where the Icefangs curved west to meet the sea. That territory was unknown to Woodcarver. If Flenser had been preparing it for decades -- as was that pack's normal method of operation -- there would be deadly surprises, even for a large army hunting just a few dozens of partisans. Let Flenser be, and hope that his redoubts had been gutted by Lord Steel.
Woodcarver worried that this would be the great peril of the next century.
But things were resolved much sooner than that. It was Flenser who sought them out, and not with a counterattack: About twenty days after the battle, at the end of a day when the sun dipped just behind the northern hills, there was the sound of signal horns. Ravna and Johanna were wakened and shortly found themselves on the castle's parapet, peering into something like a sunset, all orange and gold silhouetting the hills beyond the northern fjord. Woodcarver's aides were gazing from many eyes at the ridgeline. A few had telescopes. ^ V June 19, 1991 Could mention Greenstalk here as having helped with
^ V the kit.
Ravna shared her binocs with Johanna. "Someone's up there." Stark against the sky glow, a pack carried a long banner with separate poles for each member.
Woodcarver was using two telescopes, probably more effective than Ravna's gear, considering the pack's eye separation. "Yes, I see it. That's a truce flag, by the way. And I think I know who's carrying it." She yammered something at Peregrine. "It's been a long time since I've talked to that one."
Johanna was still looking through the binoculars. finally she said, "He ... made Steel, didn't he?"
"Yes, dear."
The girl lowered the binocs. "I ... think I'll pass up meeting him." Her voice was distant.
!V somewhere comment on Woodcarver's bloated number (3f2m+2 puppies).
!V I don't think you have to do anything, there is probably some
!V some natural protection against mind-bloat while the
!V puppies are growing.
They met on the hillside north of the castle just eight hours later. Woodcarver's troops had spent the intervening time scouting the valley. It was only partly a matter of protecting against treachery from the other side: one very special pack of the enemy would be coming, and there were plenty of locals who would like that one dead. !RETROwrite the farmland into the first part of the novel
Woodcarver walked to where the hill fell off in supersteepness toward forest. Ravna and Pilgrim followed behind her at a Tinishly close ten meters. Woodcarver wasn't saying much about this meeting, but Pilgrim had turned out to be a very talkative sort. "This is just the way I came originally, a year ago when the first ship landed. You can see how some of the trees were burned by the torch. Good thing it wasn't as dry that summer as this." !TUF PRB How come Johanna Jefri etc, etc are not here?
The forest was dense, but they were looking down over the treetops. Even in the dryness, there was a sweet, resinous smell in the air. To their left was a tiny waterfall and a path that led to the valley floor -- the path their truce visitor had agreed to take. Farmland, Peregrine called the valley bottom. It was undisciplined chaos to Ravna's eyes. The Tines grew different crops together in the same fields, and she saw no fences, not even to hold back livestock. Here and there were wooden lodges with steep roofs and outward curving walls; what you might expect in a region with snowy winters.
"Quite a mob down there," said Pilgrim.
It didn't look crowded to her: little clumps, each a pack, each well-separated from the others. They clustered around the lodge buildings. More were scattered across the fields. Woodcarver packs were stationed along the little road that crossed the valley.
She felt Pilgrim tense next to her. A head extended past her waist, pointing. "That must be him. All alone, as promised. And --" part of him was looking through a telescope, "now that's a surprise."
A single pack trekked slowly down the road, past Woodcarver's guards. It was pulling a small cart -- containing one of its own members, apparently. A cripple?
The peasants in the fields drifted toward the edge of the field, paralleling the lone pack's course. She heard the gobble of Tinish talk. When they wanted to be loud, they could be very, very loud. The troopers moved to chase back any local who got too close to the road. ^ V June 19, 1991 slightly AWK transition between paragraphs
"I thought they were grateful to us?" This was the closest thing to violence she had seen since the battle of Starship Hill.
"They are. Most of those are shouting death to Flenser." !V TUF: INCON seems like she should know more by now (see time statement
!V above)
Flenser, Skinner, the pack who had rescued Jefri Olsndot. "They can hate one pack so much?" !V You should consider redoing this:
!V Because Rav should already know some of this.
!V Because Flenser had done some good here (and is now presuming
!V to continue to rule here as a "kindler and gentler" person).
!V Because this is kinda repetitive.
!V CHK INCON "more than a century" (it is consistent with CHRON)
"Love and hate and fear, all together. More than a century they've been under his knife. And now he is here, half-crippled, and without his troops. Yet they are still afraid. There are enough cotters down there to overwhelm our guard, but they're not pushing hard. This was Flenser's Domain, and he treated it like a good farmer might treat his yard. Worse, he treated the people and the land like some grand experiment. From reading Dataset, I see he is a monster ahead of his time. There are some out there who might still kill for the Master, and no one is sure who they are...." He paused a second, just watching.
"And you know the greatest reason for fear? That he would come here alone, so far from any help we can conceive." ^ V June 19, 1991 ha. I do have easy mention of Greenstalk in this
^ V paragraph:
So. Ravna shifted Pham's pistol forward on her belt. It was a bulky, blatant thing ... and she was glad to have it. She glanced westward towards Hidden Island. OOB was safely grounded against the battlements of the castle there. Unless Greenstalk could do some basic reprogramming, it would not fly again. And Greenstalk was not optimistic. But she and Ravna had mounted the beam gun in one of its cargo bays, and that remote was dead simple. Flenser might have his surprises, but so did Ravna. !V NÆH:
!V TYRA maybe some comment by someone knowledgeable about what an
!V integrated pack the Flenser is January 20, 1991
!V "I have come to terms with myself"
The fivesome disappeared beneath the steepness. !V June 7, 1991 Following may be unrealistic. (Elsewhere, you talk of
!V 600m drop! Looking at the map, it looks like a climb of at least
!V 200m from the valley floor. I think 100m would be the least that
!V would be consistent with your topography.)
"It will be a while yet," said Pilgrim. One of his pups stood on his shoulders and leaned against Ravna's arm. She grinned: her private information feed. She picked it up and placed it on her shoulder. The rest of Peregrine sat his rumps on the ground and watched expectantly.
Ravna looked at the others of the Queen's party. Woodcarver had posted crossbow packs to her right and left. Flenser would sit directly before her and a little downslope. Ravna thought she could see nervousness in Woodcarver. The members kept licking their lips, the narrow pink tongues slipping in and out with snake-like quickness. The Queen had arranged herself as if for a group portrait, the taller members behind and the two little ones sitting erect in front. Most of her gaze seem focused on the break in the verge, where the path from below reached the terrace they sat upon.
Finally she heard the scritching of claws on stone. One head appeared over the drop off, and then more. Flenser walked out onto the moss, two of his members pulling the wheeled cart. The one in the cart sat erect, its hindquarters covered by a blanket. Except for its white-tipped ears, it seemed unremarkable.
The pack's heads peered in every direction. One stayed disconcertingly focused on Ravna as the pack proceeded up the slope toward the Queen. Skinner -- Flenser -- was the one who had worn the radio cloaks. None were worn now. Through gaps in the jackets Ravna could see scabby splotches, where the fur had been rubbed away. !V 06Jun91 mARK
"Mangy fellow, isn't he?" came the little voice in Ravna's ear. "But cool too. Catch his insolent look." The Queen hadn't moved. She seemed frozen, every member staring at the oncoming pack. Some of her noses were trembling.
Four of Flenser tipped the cart forward, helping the white-tipped one slide to the ground. Now Ravna could see that under the blanket, its hindquarters were unnaturally twisted and still. The five settled themselves rumps together. Their necks arched up and out, almost like the limbs of a single creature. The pack gobbled something that sounded to Ravna like strangling songbirds. !PRB INCON Up till now, I've treated "child" as an unusual word in Tinish.
! But from this conversation, it looks like some sense of the word
! ought to be fairly common. -- see c31
Pilgrim's translation came immediately from the puppy on Ravna's shoulder. The pup spoke in a new voice, a traditional villain voice from children's stories, a dry and sardonic voice. "Greetings ... Parent. It has been many years." ^ slight INCON
Woodcarver said nothing for a moment. Then she gobbled something back, and Pilgrim translated: "You recognize me?"
One of Flenser's heads jabbed out toward Woodcarver. "Not the members of course, but your soul is obvious." ^ V June 7, 1991 Peregrine does not quite make sense in this scene.
Again, silence from the Queen. Peregrine, annotating: "My poor Woodcarver. I never thought she would be this flummoxed." Abruptly he spoke loud, addressing Flenser in Samnorsk. "Well, you are not so obvious to me, O former traveling companion. I remember you as Tyrathect, the timid teacher from the Long Lakes." !V ID could use full names here (taken name + given name)
Several the heads turned toward Peregrine and Ravna. The creature replied in pretty good Samnorsk, but with a childish voice. "Greetings, Peregrine. And greetings, Ravna Bergsndot? Yes. Flenser Tyrathect I am." The heads angled downwards, eyes blinking slowly.
"Sly bugger," Peregrine muttered.
"Is Amdijefri safe?" the Flenser suddenly asked.
"What?" said Ravna, not recognizing the name at first. Then, "Yes, they are fine."
"Good." Now all the heads turned back to the Queen, and the creature continued in Pack talk; "Like a dutiful creation, I have come to make peace with my Parent, dear Woodcarver."
"Does he really talk like that?" Ravna hissed at the puppy on her shoulder.
"Hei, would I exaggerate?"
Woodcarver gobbled back, and Pilgrim picked up the translation, now in the Queen's human voice: "Peace. I doubt it, Flenser. More likely you want breathing space to build again, to try to kill us all again."
"I wish to build again, that is true. But I have changed. The 'timid teacher' has made me a little ... softer. Something you could never do, Parent."
"What?" Pilgrim managed to inject a tone of injured surprise into the word.
"Woodcarver, have you never thought on it? You are the most brilliant pack to live in this part of the world, perhaps the most brilliant of all time. And the packs you made, they are mostly brilliant, too. But have you not wondered on the most successful of them? You created too brilliantly. You ignored inbreeding and [things that I can't translate easily], and you got ... me. With all the ... quirks that have so pained you over the last century." !V What you have already is adequate though:
!V QU it would be nice to have some neat thing that satisfyingly puts
!V an end to the Vendacious thread of the story. Criteria:
!V Must fit with the rest of events (at least not get in the way)
!V Must not echo the fates of the various other characters
"I-I have thought on that mistake, and done better since."
"Yes, as with Vendacious? [Oh, look at my Queen's faces. He really hurt her there.] Never mind, never mind. Vendacious may well have been a different sort of error. The point is, you made me. Before, I thought that your greatest act of genius. Now ... I'm not so sure. I want to make amends. Live in peace." One of the heads jabbed at Ravna, another at the OOB down by Hidden Island. "And there are other things in the universe to point our genius at."
"I hear the arrogance of old. Why should I trust you now?"
"I helped to save the children. I saved the ship."
"And you were always the world's greatest opportunist." !CHK chron
Flenser's flanking heads shifted back. "[That's a kind of dismissing shrug.] You have the advantage, Parent, but some of my power is left in the north. Make peace, or you will have more decades of maneuvering and war."
Woodcarver's response was a piercing shriek. "[And that's a sign of irritation, in case you didn't guess.] Impudence! I can kill you here and now, and have a century of certain peace." !V INCON remember this when you do later epilogs
!V eg, about statecraftly behavior
"I've bet that you won't harm me. You gave me safe passage, separately and in the whole. And one of the strongest things in your soul is your hate for lies." !V June 6, 1991 AWK "might so can I?" FIXED
The back members of Woodcarver's pack hunkered down, and the little ones at the front took several quick steps toward the Flenser. "It's been many decades since we last met, Flenser! If you can change, might not I?"
For an instant every one of Flenser's members was frozen. Then part of him came slowly to its feet, and slowly, slowly edged toward Woodcarver. The crossbow packs on either side of the meeting ground raised their weapons, tracking him. Flenser stopped six or seven meters from Woodcarver. His heads weaved from side to side, all attention on the Queen. Finally, a wondering voice, almost abashed: "Yes, you might. Woodcarver, after all the centuries ... you've given up yourself? These new ones are ..."
"Not all mine. Quite right." For some reason, Pilgrim was chuckling in Ravna's ear.
"Oh. Well...." The Flenser backed to its previous position, "I still want peace."
"[Woodcarver looks surprised.] You sound changed, too. How many of you are really of Flenser?"
A long pause. "Two."
"... Very well. Depending on the terms, there will be peace."
Maps were brought out. Woodcarver demanded the location of Flenser's main troops. She wanted them disarmed, with two or three of her packs assigned to each unit, reporting by heliograph. Flenser would give up the radio cloaks, and submit to observation. Hidden Island and Starship Hill would be ceded to Woodcarver. The two sketched new borders, and wrangled on the oversight the Queen would have in his remaining lands.
The sun reached its noon point in the southern sky. In the fields below, the peasants had long since given up their angry vigil. The only tensely watchful people left were the Queen's crossbow packs.
Finally Flenser stepped back from his end of the maps. "Yes, yes, your folk can watch all my work. No more ... ghastly experiments. I will be a gentle gatherer of knowledge [is this sarcasm?], like yourself."
Woodcarver's heads bobbed in rippling synchrony. "Perhaps so; with the Two-Legs on my side, I'm willing to chance it." !V 06Jun91 mARK
Flenser rose again from his seated posture. He turned to help his crippled member back on the cart. Then he paused. "Ah, one last thing, dear Woodcarver. A detail. I killed two of Steel when he tried to destroy Jefri's starship. [Squashed them like bugs, actually. Now we know how Flenser hurt himself.] Do you have the rest of him?"
"Yes." Ravna had seen what was left of Steel. She and Johanna had visited most of the wounded. It should be possible to adapt OOB first aid for the Tines. But in the case of Steel, there had been a bit of vengeful curiosity; that creature had been responsible for so much unnecessary death. What was left of Steel didn't really need medical attention: There were some bloody scratches (self-inflicted, Johanna guessed), and one twisted leg. But the pack was a pitiable, almost an unnerving, thing. It had cowered at the back of its pen, all shivering in terror, heads shifting this way and that. Every so often the creature's jaws would snap open and shut, or one member would make an aborted run at the fence. A pack of three was not of human intelligence, but this one could talk. When it saw Ravna and Johanna, its eyes went wide, the whites showing all around, and it rattled barely intelligible Samnorsk at them. The speech was a nightmare mix of threats and pleas that they "not cut, not cut!" ^ Page 756, INSERT Q [finishes a paragraph]:
Poor Johanna started crying then. She had spent most of a year hating the pack these were from, yet -- "They seem to be victims, too. It's b-bad to be three, and no one will ever let them be more."
"Well," continued Flenser, "I would like custody of what remains, I --"
"Never! That one was almost as smart as you, even if crazy enough to defeat. You're not going to build him back."
Flenser came together, all eyes staring at the Queen. His "voice" was soft: "Please, Woodcarver. This is a small matter, but I will throw over everything," he jabbed at the maps, "rather than be denied in it." !PRB philosophically that this is too much "my brother's keeper". However,
! if it simply illustrates an alien mind/biology maybe it's okay?
!V RETRO this "[ ]" usage back when Peregrine is translating for Johanna.
!V c24 c31
!V No, I couldn't do it. The previous usages make it explicitly
!V clear who is saying what.
"[Oh, oh.]" The crossbow packs were suddenly at the ready. Woodcarver came partly around the maps, close enough to Flenser that their mind noise must collide. She brought all her heads together in a concerted glare. "If it is so unimportant, why risk everything for it?"
Flenser bumped around for an instant, his members actually staring at one another. It was a gesture Ravna had not seen till now. "That is my affair! I mean ... Steel was my greatest creation. In a way, I am proud of him. But ... I am also responsible for him. Don't you feel the same about Vendacious?" !V SOLN As far as I'm concerned (21Jan91 ), this let's me off
!V the hook about VENDACIOUS
!V Should be something at the end of story, someone very unhappy that
!V Vendacious couldn't be punished more
!V DONE (see island flashback later in this file)
"I've got my plans for Vendacious," the response was grudging. "[In fact, Vendacious is still whole; I fear the Queen made too many promises to do much with him now.]"
"I want to make up to Steel the harm I made him. You understand."
"I understand. I've seen Steel and I understand your methods: the knives, the fear, the pain. You're not going to get another chance at it!" !V IMPER
!V this paragraph and the Steel/Flenser fight scene may give you some
!V notion how to pace Tyrathect's development. Perhaps by having the
!V struggle be more subtle after a certain point
!V IMP ID When Steel lunges forward, it could be with the knowledge
!V that this probably won't work, but it is his best chance
^ V June 7, 1991 Unfortunately use of "name" below conflicts with "taken"
^ V name
It sounded to Ravna like faint music, something from far beyond the valley, an alien blending of chords. But it was Flenser answering back. Pilgrim's translating voice held no hint of sarcasm: "No knives, no cutting. I keep my name because it is for others to rename me when they finally accept that ... in her way, Tyrathect won. Give me this chance, Woodcarver. I am begging."
The two packs stared at each other for more than ten seconds. Ravna looked from one to the other, trying to divine their expressions. No one said anything. There was not even Pilgrim's voice in her ear to speculate on whether this was a lie or the baring of a new soul.
It was Woodcarver who decided: "Very well. You may have him." !jrf2 Why?!!!
!Trying for real alienness here.
!I don't think there is any human parallel for the moral status
!of Flenser Tyrathect (though the success of this point may depend
!on readers buying my claim that now most of the rationality/consciousness
!is Flenser while much of the personality substrate is a completely
!merged Tyrathect). Success in convincing people of that depends on
!how well I did the final battle between Flenser and Steel, and
!Flenser's "conquest" of Tyrathect in the question of murdering Johanna.
^ V June 20, 1991 make preceding a tojrf item
^ NOTE to copyeditor:
^ PRB I want to separate these epilogs by more than a section break and
^ less than a chapter. (Maybe just start each on a new page?)
-=*=-
!hld Won't OOB's agrav fail very quickly in the Slow Zone?
!hld Could Zone bounce be really fast up and down and still kill the
!hld Blight?
!V I intend that the post-Surge boundary be long lasting.
!hld Seems if the Blight were momentarily shutdown it would reboot
!hld without intervention even if it didn't know enough to anticipate
!hld the Zone Surge.
!hld Killing the next one might be real dicey if it is initiated while
!hld the archives remember what happened here.
!
!V June 7, 1991 CHK "legend" v "myth" in your Tines BKG
!V June 19, 1991 Looks to me like "legend" is what I've been using
!V for memories that survive the soul.
Peregrine Wickwrackscar was flying. A pilgrim with legends that went back almost a thousand years -- and not one of them could come near to this! He would have burst into song except that it would pain his passengers. They were already unhappy enough with his rough piloting, even though they thought it was simply his inexperience.
Peregrine stepped across clouds, flew among and through them, danced with an occasional thunderstorm. How many hours of his life had he stared up at the clouds, gauging their depths -- and now he was in them, exploring the caves within caves within caves, the cathedrals of light. !NÆH: INCON naming of oceans BKG
!NÆH: CHK chron, update TINES geography
^ BKG RETRO look at Islands book (books.txt) Menard GB471.M46 1986
!PRB CHK high frequency sound attenuation in water
!V June 19, 1991 See notes on this
!IMP TINES BKG PRB you've had it be that pack races (natural group minds)
! are
! vanishingly rare (I think that is said the most strongly in "Blabber"
! -- CHK). Why should that be? It would be much better if they were
! merely "rare", and quickly transcending. But then, it seems like
! Ravna would not make the underestimate of the Tines that we'll see in
! the scene after this one -- see SOLN below
!V IMP
!V Actually, You could have packoid races be very rare and quickly
!V transcending (so
!V much so that they don't interact with others much). Furthermore,
!V hardly any of the individuals of such races stay behind. (They
!V have few reservations about becoming Transcendent since they
!V already have fluid notions of identity.)
!V Note that this point about rareness is mentioned in c16 c25.
!V SOLN:
!V March 10, 1991 Aha. Just review the Blabber reference. In fact,
!V it looks like what you really needed there was simply that
!V no one guess Blab is fragment. I think that's sufficiently
!V plausible easy even if the
!V notion of group intelligences is not super rare (just fleeting).
!hld Pack races could be vanishingly rare because it takes so much
!hld processor power
!hld to coordinate the elements. Different wiring and you get singleton
!hld intelligence.
Between scattered clouds, the Great Western Ocean stretched forever. By the sun and the flier's instruments, he knew that they had nearly reached the equator, and were already some eight thousand kilometers southwest of Woodcarver's Domain. There were islands out here, the OOB's pictures from space said so, and so did the Pilgrim's own memories. But it had been long since he ventured here, and he had not expected to see the island kingdoms in the lifetime of his current members.
Now suddenly he was going back. Flying back! ^ V June 19, 1991 again INCON with nature of skrode controls
The OOB's landing boat was a wonderful thing, and not nearly as strange as it had seemed in the midst of battle. True, they had not yet figured out how to program it for automatic flight. Perhaps they never would. In the meantime, this little flier worked with electronics that were barely more than glorified moving parts. The agrav itself required constant adjustment, and the controls were scattered across the bow periphery -- conveniently placed for the fronds of a Skroderider, or the members of a pack. With the Spacers' help and OOB's documentation, it had taken Pilgrim only a few days to get the hang of flying the thing. It was all a matter of spreading one's mind across all the various tasks. The learning had been happy hours, a little bit scary, floating nearly out of control, once in a screwball configuration that accelerated endlessly upward. But in the end, the machine was like an extension of his jaws and paws.
Since they descended from the purpling heights and began playing in the cloud tops, Ravna had been looking more and more uncomfortable. After a particularly stomachs-lurching bump and drop, she said, "Will you be able to land okay? Maybe we should have postponed this till --" unh! "-- you can fly better." !V PRB gotta make it real plausible that he can do so much better than
!V Blueshell.
"Oh yes, oh yes. We'll be past this, um, weather front real soon." He dived beneath the clouds and swerved a few tens of kilometers eastwards. The weather was clear here, and it was actually more on a line with their destination. Secretly chastened, he resolved to do no more joy-riding ... on the inbound leg, anyway. ^ V ID either here or elsewhere, may help INCONs to
^ V remark that she's driftier than usual; it may be a failure of the
^ V new skrode, but then Riders usually are driftiest when there are no
^ V real threats to engage the symbiosis of skrode and Rider.
!
!V Look up the term "fret"; dictionary:"an ornamental network"
His second passenger spoke up then, only the second time in the two-hour flight. "I liked it," said Greenstalk. Her voder voice charmed Pilgrim: mostly narrow-band, but with little frets high up, from the squarewaves. "It was ... it was like riding just beneath the surf, feeling your fronds moving with the sea."
Peregrine had tried hard to know the Skroderider. The creature was the only nonhuman alien in the world, and harder to know than the Two-Legs. She seemed to dream most of the time, and forgot all but things that happened again and again to her. It was her primitive skrode that accounted for part of that, Ravna told him. Remembering the run that Greenstalk's mate had made through the flames, Pilgrim believed. Out among the stars, there were things even stranger than Two-Legs -- it made Pilgrim's imagination ache.
Near the horizon he saw a dark ring -- and another, beyond. "We'll have you in real surf very soon."
Ravna: "These are the islands?"
Peregrine looked over the map displays as he took a shot on the sun. "Yes, indeed," though it didn't really matter. The Western Ocean was over twelve thousand kilometers across, and all through the tropics it was dotted with atolls and island chains. This group was just a bit more isolated than others; the nearest Islander settlement was almost two thousand kilometers away.
They were over the nearest island. Pilgrim took a swing around it, admiring the tropic ferns that clung to the coral. At this tide, their bony roots were exposed. Not any flat land here at all; he flew on to the next, a larger one with a pretty glade just within the ringwall. He floated the boat down in a smooth glide that touched the ground without even the tiniest bump.
Ravna Bergsndot looked at him with something like suspicion. Oh oh. "Hei, I'm getting better, don't you think?" he said weakly.
!RETRO added details to get in some place: humidity, high sun, hot.
! hot ground felt through paws?
An uninhabited little island, surrounded by endless sea. The original memories were blurred now; it had been his Rum member who had been a native of the island kingdoms. Yet what he remembered all fit: the high sun, the intoxicating humidity of the air, the heat soaking through his paws. Paradise. The Rum aspect that still lived within him was most joyous of all. The years seemed to melt away; part of him had come home. !V June 7, 1991 INCON IMP Greenstalk didn't have
! wheels on her skrodeling earlier in the story!
They helped Greenstalk down to the ground. Ravna said her skrode was an inferior imitation, its new wheels an ad hoc addition. Still, Pilgrim was impressed: the four balloon tires each had a separate axle. The Rider was able to make it almost to the crest of the coral without any help from Ravna or himself. But near the top, where the tropic ferns were thickest and their roots grew across every path, there he and Ravna had to help a bit, lifting and pulling.
Then they were on the other side, and they could see the ocean.
Now part of Pilgrim ran ahead, partly to find the easiest descent, partly to get close to the water and smell the salt and the rotting floatweed. The tide was nearly out now, and a million little pools -- some no more than stony-walled puddles -- lay exposed to the sun. Three of him ran from pool to pool, eyeing the creatures that lay within. The strangest things in the world they had seemed to him when he first came to the islands. Creatures with shells, slugs of all dimensions and colors, animal-plants that would become tropic ferns if they ever got trapped far enough inland. ^ V June 7, 1991 BKG CHK 3m high tide to low?
^ V You should be able to get a good measure on this with scaling.
"Where would you like to sit?" he asked the Skroderider. "If we go all the way out to the surf right now, you'll be a meter underwater at high tide."
The Rider didn't reply. But all her fronds were angled toward the water now. The wheels on her skrode slipped and spun with a strange lack of coordination. "Let's take her closer," Ravna said after a moment. !V June 7, 1991 ID hmm, This about the water is rather like a medieval
! version of the Zones!
They reached a fairly level stretch of coral, pocked with holes and gullies not more than a few centimeters deep. "I'll go for a swim, find a good place," Peregrine said. All of him ran down to where the coral broke the water; going for a swim was not something you did by parts. Heh heh. Fact was, damn few mainland packs could swim and think at the same time. Most mainlanders thought that there was a craziness in water. Now Peregrine knew it was simply the great difference in sound speed between air and water. Thinking with all tympana immersed must be a little like using the radio cloaks: it took discipline and practice to do it, and some were never able to learn. But the Island folk had always been great swimmers, using it for meditation. Ravna even thought the Packs might be descended from of whales!
Peregrine came to the edge of the coral and looked down. Suddenly the surf did not seem a completely friendly thing. He would soon find out if Rum's spirit and his own memories of swimming were up to the real thing. He pulled off his jackets. !V Try to rephrase this so consistent with your analysis
!V that the Pack adaptation arose in a marine mammal. (You're very
!V close to having it here already.) SEQ DONE
!V June 19, 1991 mARK
All at once. It's best done all at once. He gathered himself and plopped awkwardly into the water. Confusion, heads out and in. Keep all under. He paddled about, holding all his heads down. Every few seconds, he'd poke a single nose into the air and refresh that member. I still can do it! The six of him slipped through swarms of squidlets, dived separately through arching green fronds. The hiss of the sea was all around, like the mindsound of a vast sleeping pack.
After a few minutes he'd found a nice level spot, sand all about and shielded from the worst fury of the sea. He paddled back to where the sea crashed against stony coral.... and almost broke some legs scrambling out. It was just impossible to exit all at once, and for a few moments it was every member for itself. "Hei, over here!" He shouted to Greenstalk and Ravna. He sat licking at coral cuts as they crossed the white rock. "Found a place, more peaceful than this --" He waved at the crash and spray.
Greenstalk rolled a little closer to the edge, then hesitated. Her fronds turned back and forth along the curving sweep of the shore. Does she need help? Pilgrim started forward, but Ravna just sat down beside the Rider and leaned against the wheeled platform. After a moment, Pilgrim joined them. They sat for a time, human looking out to the sea, Rider looking he wasn't sure quite where, and pack looking in most all directions.... There was peace here, even with (or because of?) the booming surf and the haze of spray. He felt his hearts slowing, and just lazed in the sunlight. On every pelt the drying sea water was leaving a glittery powder of salt. Grooming himself tasted good at first, but ... yech, too much dry salt was one of the bad memories. Greenstalk's fronds settled lightly across him, too fine and narrow to provide much shade, but a light and gentle comfort. !jrf2 get rid of parentheses in preceding paragraph June 20, 1991 TUF
They sat for a long while -- long enough so that later some of Pilgrims noses were blistered, and even darkskinned Ravna was sun burned.
The Rider was humming now, a sort of song that after long minutes came to be speech. "It is a good sea, a good edge. It is what I need now. To sit and think at my own pace for a while." !V June 8, 1991 "years" instead of "decades"?
And Ravna said, "How long? We will miss you." That was not just politeness. Everyone would miss her. Even in her mind adrift, Greenstalk was the expert on OOB's surviving automation.
"Long by your measure, I fear. A few decades...." She watched (?) the waves a few minutes more. "I am eager to get down there. Ha ha. Almost like a human in that.... Ravna, you know my memories are muddled now. I had two hundred years with Blueshell. Sometimes he was petty and a little spineful, but he was a great trader. We had many wonderful times. And at the end even you could see his courage." !jrf2 "spiteful" instead of "spineful"? NO
Ravna nodded. !jdv p860 parting with Greenstalk,
!jdv ... Ravna nodded. "Secret" not clear
!jdv Make their size clearer earlier on (she thought they
!jdv were about the size of a wastebasket)
!V I think this size thing is fixed now (see c08)
"We found a terrible secret on this last journey. I think that hurt him as much as the final ... burning. I am grateful to you for protecting us. Now I want to think, to let the surf and the time work with my memories and sort them out. Maybe if this poor imitation skrode is up to it, I'll even make a chronicle of our quest." !V June 20, 1991 Actually, more than 10 million (though that may be
!V correct snapshot number).
She touched Peregrine on two of his heads. "One thing, Sir Pilgrim. You trust much to give me freedom of your seas.... But you should know, Blueshell and I were pregnant. I have a mist of our common eggs within me. Leave me here and there will be new Riders by this island in future years. Please do not take that as betrayal. I want to remember Blueshell with children -- but modestly; our kind has shared ten million worlds and never been bad neighbors ... except in a way that, Ravna can tell you, cannot happen here."
In the end, Greenstalk was not at all interested in the protected stretch of water that Peregrine had discovered. She wanted -- of all the places here -- the one where the ocean crashed most ferociously. It took them more than an hour to find a path down to that violent place, and another half hour to get Rider and skrode safely into the water. Peregrine didn't even try to swim here. The coral rock came in close from all sides, slimy green in patches, razor jagged in others. Five minutes in that meat grinder and he might be too weak to get out. Strange that there was so much green in the water here. It was all but opaque with sea grasses and swarms of foam midges.
Ravna was a little better off; at the water's greatest height, she could still keep feet to ground -- at least most of the time. She stood in the foam, bracing herself with feet and an arm, and helped the skrodeling over the lip of rock. Once in, the mechanical crashed firmly to the bottom beside the human.
Ravna looked up at Pilgrim, made an "okay" gesture. Then she huddled down for a moment, holding to the skrode to keep her place. The surf crashed over the two, obscuring all but Greenstalk's tallest standing fronds. When the foam moved back, he could see that the lower fronds draped across the human's back, and hear a voder buzzing that wasn't quite intelligible against all the other noise.
The human stood and slogged through the waist deep-water toward the rocks Peregrine occupied. Peregrine grabbed onto himself, reached down to give Ravna some paws. She scrambled up the slime green and coral white.
He followed the limping Two-Legs toward the crest of tropical ferns. They stopped under the shade, and she sat down, leaned back into the mat of a fern's trunk. Cut and bruised, she looked almost as hurt as Johanna ever had.
"You okay?"
"Yeah," she ran her hands back through disheveled hair. Then she looked at him and laughed. "We both look like casualties." ^ V June 20, 1991 tojrf: general problem of irrelevant adjectives
Um, yes. Sometime soon he needed a fresh-water bath. He looked around and out. From the crest of the atoll ring they had a view of Greenstalk's niche. Ravna was looking down there too, minor injuries forgotten.
"How can she like that spot?" Peregrine said wonderingly. "Imagine being smashed and smashed and smashed." !V "energetic edge" is awkward
There was a smile on Ravna's face, but she kept her two eyes on the surf. "There are strange things in the universe, Pilgrim; I'm glad there are some you have not read about yet. Where the surf meets the shore -- lots of neat things can happen there. You saw all the life that floated in that madness. Just as plants love the sun, there are creatures that can use the energy differences down at that edge. There they have the sun and the surge and the richness of the suspension.... Still, we should keep watch a little longer." Between each insurge of the waves, they could still see Greenstalk's fronds. He already knew that those limbs weren't strong, but he was beginning to realize that they must be very tough. "She'll be okay, though that cheap skrode may not last long. Poor Greenstalk may end up without any automation at all ... she and her children, the lowest of all Riders."
Ravna turned to look at the pack. There was still that smile on her face. Wondering, yet pleased? "You know the secret Greenstalk spoke of?"
"Woodcarver told me what you told her."
"I'm glad -- surprised -- she was willing to let Greenstalk come here. Medieval minds -- sorry, most any minds -- would want to kill before taking even the faintest risk with something like this."
"Then why did you tell the Queen?" About the skrode's perversion. !?jrf2 get ride of second sentence of preceding paragraph.
"It's your world. I was tired of playing god with the Secret. And Greenstalk agreed. Even if the Queen had refused, Greenstalk could have used a cold box on the OOB." And likely slept forever. "But Woodcarver didn't refuse. Somehow she understood what I was saying: it's the true skrodes that can be perverted, but Greenstalk no longer has one of those. In a decade, this island's shore will be populated with hundreds of young Riders, but they would never colonize beyond this archipelago without permission of the locals. The risk is vanishingly small ... but I was still surprised Woodcarver took it."
Peregrine settled down around Ravna, only one pair of eyes still watching the Rider's fronds down in the foam. Best to give some explanation. He cocked a head a Ravna, "Oh, we are medieval, Ravna -- even if changing fast, now. We admired Blueshell's courage in the fire. Such deserves reward. And medieval types are used to courting treachery. So what if the risk is of cosmic size? To us, here, it is no more deadly for that. We poor primitives live with such all the time."
"Ha!" Her smile spread at his flippant tone. !jdv Semi-recommends getting rid of ruthless conversation between
!jdv Pilgrim and Woodcarver about killing Greenstalk;
!jdv Maybe make a milder conversation.
!V I agree; it also undercuts the honor with which she treated
!V Vendacious.
!V ID probably a few words at the end of the preceding paragraph could
!V mellow the ruthlessness angle.
!V FIXed March 10, 1991 (also does a pretty good job of fixing
!V Vendacious windup)
!jrf2 See my suggested cut, next paragraph [which is just to drop
!jrf2 the reference to the possibility of treachery];
! [V: I think I've got this properly fixed.]
Peregrine chuckled, heads bobbing. His explanation was the truth, but not all the truth, or even the most important part. He remembered back to the day before, when he and Woodcarver had decided what to do with Greenstalk's request. Woodcarver had been afraid at first, statecraftly cautious before an evil secret billions of years old. Even leaving such a being in cold sleep was a risk. The statecraftly ... the medieval ... thing to do, would be to grant the request, leave the Rider ashore on this distant island ... and then sneak back a day or two later and kill it.
Peregrine had settled down by his Queen, closer than any but mates and relations could ever do without losing their train of thought. "You showed more honor to Vendacious," he had said. Scriber's murderer still walked the earth, complete, scarcely punished at all. ^ V June 20, 1991 AWK repetition of "show"
Woodcarver snapped at the empty air; Peregrine knew that sparing Vendacious hurt her too. "...Yes. And these Skroderiders have shown us nothing but courage and honesty. I will not harm Greenstalk. Yet I am afraid. With her, there's a risk that goes beyond the stars."
Peregrine laughed. It might be pilgrim madness but -- "and that's to be expected, My Queen. Great risks for great gains. I like being around the humans; I like touching another creature and still being able to think at the same time." He darted forward to nuzzle the nearest of Woodcarver, and then retreated to a more rational distance. "Even without their starships and their datasets, they would make our world over. Have you noticed ... how easy it is for us to learn what they know? Even now, Ravna can't seem to accept our fluency. Even now, she doesn't understand how thoroughly we have studied Dataset. And their ship is easy, my Queen. I don't mean I understand the physics behind it -- few even among star folk do. But the equipment is easy to learn, even with the failures it has suffered. I suspect Ravna will never be able to fly the agrav boat as well as I."
"Hmmf. But you can reach all the controls at once."
"That's only part of it. I think we Tines are more flexibly minded than the poor Two-Legs. Can you imagine what it will be like when we make more radio cloaks, when we make our own flying machines?"
Woodcarver smiled, a little sadly now. "Pilgrim, you dream. This is the Slow Zone. The agrav will wear out in a few years. Whatever we make will be far short of what you play with now." !V June 6, 1991 Does this time estimate conflict with size of the new
!V Slowness
!V IMP SEQ INCON also does this distance to the Beyond conflict
!V with the CHRON of Blabber?
!V June 20, 1991 FIXED so it doesn't explicitly conflict, but it
!V is a problem
"So? Look at human history. It took less than two centuries for Nyjora to regain spaceflight after their dark age. And we have better records than their archaeologists. We and the humans are a wonderful team; they have freed us to be everything we can be." A century till their own spaceships, perhaps another century to start building sub- light-speed starships. And someday they would get out of the Slow Zone. I wonder if packs can be bigger than eight up in the Transcend. !V June 6, 1991 The phrasing in this paragraph may make it not an INCON
!V that Woodcarver herself earlier had a theory of human superiority.
The younger parts of Woodcarver were up, pacing around the rest. The Queen was intrigued. "So you think, like Steel seemed to, that we are some kind of special race, something with a happy destiny in the Beyond? Interesting, except for one thing: These humans are all we know from Out There. How do they compare with other races there? Dataset can't fully answer that."
"Ah, and there, Woodcarver, is why Greenstalk is so important. We do need experience of more than one other race. Apparently the Riders are among the most common throughout the Beyond. We need them to talk to. We need to discover if they are as much fun, as useful, as the Two-Legs. Even if the risk was ten times what it seems, I would still want to grant this Rider her wish." !jrf2 change "be all we can be" to avoid cliche
^ V June 7, 1991 "all we can be" yecco
"... Yes. If we are to be all we can be, we need to know more. We need to take a few risks." She stopped her pacing; all her eyes turned toward Peregrine in a gesture of surprise. Abruptly she laughed.
"What?"
"Something we've thought before, dear Peregrine, but now I see how true it may be. You're being a little bit clever and scheming here. A good statesman and planner for the future."
"But still for a pilgrimly goal."
"To be sure.... And I, now I don't care so completely about the planning and the safety. We will visit the stars someday." Her puppies waggled a joyous salute. "I've a little of the pilgrim in me now, too." !V TUF March 10, 1991
!PRB "inched" is the only verb that comes to mind, but the normal Tinish
! conversational distance is so great that an inch at a time would take
! forever to get together
!jrf2 How about "creeped" instead of "inched"?
!V Repetition of "slow"
She went down all on her bellies and crept across the floor toward him. Consciousness slowly dissolved into a haze of loving lust. The last thing Peregrine remembered her saying was, "How wonderful the luck: that I had grown old and had to be new, and that you were just the change we need." !V June 7, 1991 CHK whether you used such phrasing as previous sentence
!V during their original romance.
Peregrine's attention drifted back to the present, and Ravna. The human was still grinning at him. She reached a hand across to brush one of his heads. "Medieval minds indeed." !V June 7, 1991 CHK geometry
They sat in the fern shade for another couple of hours and watched the tide come in. The sun fell through midafternoon -- even then it was as high in the sky as any noontime sun could be at Woodcarver's. In some ways, the quality of the light and the motion of the sun were the strangest things about the scene. The sun was so high, and came down so straight, with none of the long sliding glide of afternoon in the arctic. He had almost forgotten what it was like in the land of Short Twilight. !V CHK when tide would be high -- I think this is okay.
^ V But this actually depends on exact nature of moon; also, is there
^ V lag?
Now the surf was thirty yards inland of where they had put the Rider. The crescent moon was following the sun toward the horizon; the water wouldn't rise any further. Ravna stood, shaded her eyes against the lowering sun. "Time for us to go, I think."
"You think she'll be safe?"
Ravna nodded. "This was long enough for Greenstalk to notice any poisons, and most predators. Besides, she's armed." !V June 7, 1991 "behind" or "before"?
Human and Tines picked their way to the crest of the atoll, past the tallest of the ferns. Peregrine kept a pair of eyes on the sea behind them. The surf was well past Greenstalk now. Her location was still swept by deep waves, but it was beyond the spume and spray. His last sight of her was in the trough behind a crasher: the smoothness of the sea was broken for an instant by two of her tallest fronds, the tips gently swaying.
^ bp
!NÆH: QU INCON Should I make something of them being accompanied by
! bodyguards on this stargazing?
!V mARK March 10, 1991
!QU MG: Satellite galaxy of ours that might be as visible as Magellanics,
! but from 180degrees around the galactic disk? If so, what style of name
! might be appropriate? I think the Magellanics would be even
!V more visible from Tines' World than earth (though not by much).
!V see c07 notes
!CHK that this is not too repetitive of an early scene description of
! Tyrathect's.
!CHK get twilight program and check out when you could see the stars
! Or simpler: At equinox, twilight should be easy to figure without any
! program.
! Simply geometry says that at the equinox at midnight, the sun will
! be 90-x degrees below the horizon, where x is the latitude of the point
! in question. Now Hidden Island is at x=69.67deg, so the sun is
! just over 21deg below the horizon (given my assumed axial tilt).
! This is into astronomical night
! I believe, and I think it will hold for several hours.
!QU somewhere, do I need to make more of the surprise of Ravna/Pham
! in learning of the fraud of math genius that Amdijefri have put over?
Summer took gentle leave of the land around Hidden Island. There was some rain, and no more brush fires. There would even be a harvest, war and drought notwithstanding. Each dayaround the sun hid deeper behind the northern hills, a time of twilight that broadened with the weeks till true night held at midnight. And there were stars.
It was something of an accident that so many things came together on the last night of summer. Ravna took the kids out skygazing on the fields by Starship Castle.
No urban haze here, nor even near-space industry. Nothing to fog the view of heaven except a subtle pinkness in the north that might have been vagrant twilight -- or aurora. The four of them settled on the frosty moss and looked around. Ravna took a deep breath. There was no hint of ash left in the air, just a clean chill, a promise of winter.
"The snow will be deep as your shoulders, Ravna," said Jefri, enthusiastic about the possibility. "You'll love it." The pale blotch that was his face seemed to be looking back and forth across the sky.
"It can be bad," said Johanna Olsndot. She hadn't objected to coming up here tonight, but Ravna knew that she would rather have stayed down on Hidden Island to worry about the doings of tomorrow. !V CHKd 151 children; see c24
!V Note reference to Pham here [delete it]
Jefri picked up on her unease -- no, that was Amdi talking now; they would never cure those two of pretending to be each other. "Don't worry, Johanna. We'll help you." ^ V May 26, 1991 Don't like the implication here that Pham might be
^ V sometime revivable
^ V June 20, 1991 might be nice to have something that shows
^ V how the kids have saved her from mental bogglement
^ V and this might be a good place (tag: "love"):
For a moment no one said anything. Ravna looked down the hill. It was too dark to see the six hundred meter drop, too dark to see where fjord and islands lay below. But the torchlight on the ramparts of Hidden Island marked its location. Down there in Steel's old inner court -- where Woodcarver now ruled -- were all the working coldboxes from the ship. One hundred and fifty-one children slept there, the last survivors of the Straumer's flight. Johanna claimed that most could be revived, with best chance of success if it were done soon. The Queen had been enthusiastic about the idea. Large sections of the castle had been set aside, refurbished for human needs. Hidden Island was well sheltered -- if not from winter snow, at least from the worst winds. If they could be revived, the children would have no trouble living there. Ravna had come to love Jefri and Johanna and Amdi -- But could she handle one hundred and fifty more? Woodcarver seemed to have no misgivings. She had plans for a school where Tines would learn of humans and the children would learn of this world.... Watching Jefri and Amdi, Ravna was beginning to see what might become of this. Those two were closer than any children she had ever known, and in sum more competent. And that was not just the puppies' math genius; they were competent in other ways.
Humans and Packs fit, and Old Woodcarver was clever enough to take advantage of it. Ravna liked the Queen, and liked Pilgrim even more, but in the end the Packs would be the great beneficiaries. Woodcarver clearly understood the disabilities of her pack race. Tinish records went back at least ten thousand years. For all their recorded history they had been trapped in cultures not much less advanced than now. A race of sharp intelligence, yet they had a single overwhelming disadvantage: they could not cooperate at close range without losing that intelligence. Their civilizations were made of isolated minds, forced introverts who could never progress beyond certain limits. The eagerness of Pilgrim and Scrupilo and the others for human contact was evidence of this. In the long run, we can move the Tines out of this cul de sac. !V Following image not quite right:
!FRAG:
! The coming of humans was almost like the invention of hands
! by the handless.
Amdi and Jefri were giggling about something, the Pack sending runners out almost to the limit of consciousness. These last weeks, Ravna had come to learn that pell-mell activity was the norm for Amdi, that his initial slowness had been part of his hurt over Steel. How ... perverse (or how wonderful?) ... that a monster like Steel could be the object of such love.
Jefri shouted, "You watch in all directions, let me know where to look." Silence. Then Jefri's voice again: "There!"
"What are you doing?" Johanna asked with sisterly belligerence.
"Watching for meteors," one of the two said. "Yes, I watch in all directions and jab Jefri -- there! -- where to look when one comes by."
Ravna didn't see anything, but the boy had twisted around abruptly at his friend's signal. !V May 26, 1991 CHK with binoc vision estimates in the first part
!V of novel.
!V June 20, 1991 direct binocular vision, even with 30m dispersal
!V would only range to about 4300m
"Neat, neat," came Jefri's voice. "That was about forty kilometers up, speed --" the two's voice murmured unintelligibly for a second. Even with the pack's wide vision, how could they know how high it was?
Ravna sat back in the hollow formed by the hummocky moss. It was a good parka the locals had made for her; she barely felt the chill in the ground. Overhead, the stars. Time to think, get some peace before all the things that would begin tomorrow. Den Mother to one hundred and fifty kids ... and I thought I was a librarian. !CHKd CHRON "till three years ago" -- some might argue I should say
!V 2.5 years ago.
!V Probably could do more here, hearkening back to Lynne and how this
!V quest has ended something like the true Nyjoran adventures began.
!jrf2 Yes. Excellent idea.
!V awkward 2'th sentence
Back home she had loved the night sky; at one glance she could see the other stars of Sjandra Kei, sometimes the other worlds. The places of her home had been in her sky. For a moment the evening chill seemed part of a winter that would never go away. Lynne and her folks and Sjandra Kei. Her whole life till three years ago. It was all gone now. Don't think on it. Somewhere out there was what was left of Aniara fleet, and what was left of her people. Kjet Svensndot. Tirolle and Glimfrelle. She had only known them for a few hours, but they were of Sjandra Kei -- and they had saved more than they would ever know. They would still live. SjK Commercial Security had some ramscoops in its fleet. They could find a world, not here, but nearer the battle site. !jrf2 "Tirolle and Glimfrelle" Am I missing something, or didn't you
!jrf2 ever really describe them physically?
!jdv p871 mentioning possibility of Ramscoops. Make this clearer
!jdv earlier on! <actually, just correct the reference here>
Ravna tilted her head back, wondering at the sky. Where? Maybe not even above the horizon now. From here the galactic disk was a glow that climbed across the sky almost at right angles to the ecliptic. There was no sense of its true shape or their exact position in it; the greater picture was lost to nearby splendors, the bright knots of open clusters, frozen jewels against the fainter light. But down near the southern horizon, far from the galactic way, there were two splotchy clouds of light. The Magellanics! Suddenly the geometry clicked, and the universe above was not completely unknown. Aniara fleet would be --
"I -- I wonder if we can see Straumli Realm from here," said Johanna. For more than a year now she had had to play the adult. Come tomorrow, that role would be forever. But her voice just now was wistful, childlike.
Ravna opened her mouth, about to say how unlikely that must be. !V June 7, 1991 Note that Straumli Realm would be in the galactic plane
!V June 20, 1991 CHKd geometry, distances. But not all this
!V impacts SEQ BKG
"Maybe we can, maybe we can." It was Amdi. The pack had pulled itself together, snuggled companionably among the humans. The warmth was welcome. "See, I've been reading Dataset about where things are, and trying to figure how it matches what we see." A pair of noses were silhouetted against the sky for instant, like a human waving his hands exuberantly at the heavens. "The brightest things we see are just kind of local dazzle. They aren't good guide posts." He pointed at a couple of open clusters, claimed they matched stuff he'd found in the Dataset. Amdi had also noticed the Magellanic galaxies, and figured out far more than Ravna. "So anyway, Straumli Realm was" -- was! you got it kid -- "in the High Beyond, but near the galactic disk. So, see that big square of stars?" Noses jabbed. "We call that the Great Square. Anyway, just left of the upper corner and go six thousand light-years, and you'd be at Straumli Realm."
Jefri came to his knees and stared silently for a second. "But so far away, is there anything to see?" ^ V QU MG does blue-white giant make sense?
!V May 26, 1991 Also check that a star could be that bright
!V June 20, 1991 If model after Naos zeta Pup: O5, -7.3 abs mag
!V I estimate it would be mag -3.3 at Straum and about mag 3.3 at
!V Tines' World. It really should be mag 5 or 6 to justify
!V Amdi's comment ( ==> -2.3 or -1.3 from Straum) Ug, I think Venus
!V can get to be -4 so that's what I should shoot at here
!V Say -5 from Straum and 6 from Tines World. Ie about 25000 times
!V difference in luminosity or 158 factor difference in distance
!V which would put it 38 light-years from Straum
^ V June 20, 1991 slight INCON that Storlys would not be lost in the
^ V other bright stars of the disk.
"Not the Straumli stars, but just forty light-years from Straum there's a blue-white giant --"
"Yeah," whispered Johanna. "Storlys. It was so bright you could see shadows at night."
"Well that's the fourth brightest star up from the corner; see, they almost make a straight line. I can see it, so I know you can." ^ V tojrf: This anger is a little out of place; even so, might tie it up
^ V with some unrelated low opinion that SjK has for Straumers.
^ V This comment also applies to the sarcastic you got it, kid
^ V a little before this point.
^ V -- June 20, 1991 mellowed it a little.
^ V June 20, 1991 One thing is probably to decide exactly what
^ V Ravna's attitude is toward Straum now.
Johanna and Jefri were silent for a long time, just staring up at that patch of sky. Ravna's lips compressed in anger. These were good kids; they had been through hell. And their parents had fought to prevent that hell; they had escaped the Blight with the means of its destruction. But ... how many million races had lived in the Beyond, had probed the Transcend and made bargains with devils? How many more had destroyed themselves There? Ah, but that had not been enough for Straumli Realm. They had gone into the Transcend and wakened Something that could take over a galaxy.
"Do you think anybody's left there?" said Jefri. "Do you think we're all that's left?"
His sister put an arm around him. "Maybe, maybe not Straumli Realm. But the rest of the universe -- look, it's still there." Weak laughter. "Daddy and Mom, Ravna and Pham. They stopped the Blight." She waved a hand against the sky. "They saved most all of it."
"Yes," said Ravna. "We're saved and safe, Jefri. To begin again." And as far as it went, that comfort was probably true. The ship's zone probes were still working. Of course, a single measure point is of no use for precise zonography, but she could tell that they were deep in the new volume of the Slowness, the volume created by Pham's Revenge. And -- much more significant -- the OOB detected no variation in zonal intensity. Gone was the continuous trembling of the months before. This new status had the feeling of mountain roots, to be moved only by the passage of the ages. !V June 20, 1991 see c38 for final Blight stats
!V and from c37, about 152 ships left.
!V June 20, 1991 BKG SEQ implication that Beyonder/Transcend built
!V ramscoops can get to at least 0.6c
Fifty degrees along the galactic river was another unremarkable space of sky. She didn't point it out to the kids, but what was of interest there was much nearer, just under thirty light-years out: the Blighter Fleet. Flies trapped in amber. At normal jump rates for the Low Beyond, they had been just hours away when Pham created the Great Surge. And now ...? If they had been bottom luggers, ships with ramscoops, they could close the gap in less than fifty years. But Aniara Fleet had made their sacrifice; they had followed Pham's godshattered advice. And though they didn't know it, they had broken the Blight. There wasn't a single Slow Zone capable vessel in the approaching fleet. Perhaps they had some in-system capability -- a few thousand klicks per second. But no more, not Down Here, where new construction was not a matter of waving a magic wand. The Blight's extermination force would sweep past Tines World in ... a few thousand years. Time enough. !V May 26, 1991 IMP the "stunting drugs" reference in the next paragraph
!V which are a SOLN for some earlier PRB notes.
Ravna leaned back against one of Amdi's shoulders. He nestled comfortably around her neck. The puppies had grown these last two months; apparently Steel had kept them on some sort of stunting drugs. Her gaze lost itself in the dark and glow: far upon far that were all the Zones above her. And where are the boundaries now? How awesome was Pham's Revenge. Maybe she should call it Old One's Revenge. No, it was far more even than that. "Old One" was just a recent victim of the Blight. Even Old One was no more than midwife to this revenge. The first cause must be as old as the original Blight and more powerful than the Powers. ^ V May 26, 1991 Previous sentence awkward
But whatever caused it, the Surge had done more than revenge. Ravna had studied the ship's measurement of zone intensity. It could only be an estimate, but she knew they were trapped between one thousand and thirty thousand light-years deep in the new Slowness. Powers only knew how far the Surge had pushed the Slowness.... And maybe even some of the Powers were destroyed by it. This was like some vision of planetary armageddon -- the type of thing that primitive civilizations nightmared about -- but blown up to a galactic scale. A huge hunk of the Milky Way galaxy had been gobbled up by the Slowness, all in a single afternoon. Not just the Blighter Fleet were flies trapped in amber. Why, the whole vault of heaven -- excepting the Magellanics faint and far away -- might now be a tomb of Slowness. Many must still be alive out there, but how many millions of starships had been trapped between the stars? How many automated systems had failed, killing the civilizations that depended on them? Heaven was truly silent now. In some ways the Revenge was a worse thing than the Blight itself. !V May 26, 1991 Does this drag? June 20, 1991 probably okay but TUF
And what of the Blight -- not the fleet that chased the OOB, but the Blight itself? That was a creature of the Top and the Transcend. At a very far remove, it covered much of the sky they could see this night. Could Pham's revenge have really toppled it? If there was a point to all the sacrifice, then surely so. A surge so great that it pushed the Slowness up thousands of light-years, through the Low and Mid Beyond, past the great civilizations at the Top ... and into the Transcend. No wonder it was so eager to stop us. A Power immersed in the Slowness would be a Power no more, would likely be a living thing no more. If, if, if. If Pham's Surge could climb so high. !V May 26, 1991 Middle of previous paragraph is awkward
And that is something I will never know.
!V seems to me this stargazing goes on too long, and you are also
!V missing some thoughts of Pham. These two problems can probably
!V be used to solve each other. June 20, 1991 NÆH
-=*=-
^ The following, final, "epilog" should also be on a separate page.
^ However, the page should be facing the epilog just finished, so the
^ reader will not accidentally miss its existence.
!
!IMP The point of this last email is
! To get back at this jackass flamer (purely a writerly humor), and
! to make it clear that the Blight almost certainly was destroyed.
! I don't want to give the impression that we are seeing a disaster
! that
! is still spreading. This guy is simply seeing the result of Pham's
! Surge.
Crypto: 0 ^ Syntax: 43
^ V May 4, 1991 What is the proper way to say the next line?
^ V June 20, 1991 light-hearted question for jrf mg hld jlc
As received by:
Language path: Optima
From: Society for Rational Investigation
Subject: Ping
Key phrases: Help me!
Summary: Has there been a network partition, or what?
Distribution:
Threat of the Blight, Society for Rational Network Management, War Trackers Interest Group ^ V May 4, 1991 CHKd
Date: 0.412 Msec since loss of contacts
Text of message:
I have still not recovered contact with any network site known to be spinward of me. Apparently, I am right at the edge of a catastrophe.
If you receive this ping, please respond! Am I in danger?
For your information, I have no trouble reaching sites that are antispinward. I understand an effort is being made to hop messages the long way around the galaxy. At least that would give us an idea how big the loss is. Nothing has come back as yet -- not surprising, I guess, considering the great number of hops and the expense.
In the meantime, I am sending out pings such as this. I am expending enormous resources to do this, let me tell you -- but it is that important. I've beamed direct at all the hub sites that are in range to the spinward of me. No replies.
More ominous: I have tried to transmit "over the top", that is by using known sites in the Transcend that are above the catastrophe. Most such would not normally respond, Powers being what they are. But I received no replies. A silence like the Depths is there. It appears that a portion of the Transcend itself has been engulfed.
Again: If you receive this message, please respond! !
!V QU IMP How about a final epilog bringing us full circle back to the
!V heart of the Blight? NÆH June 20, 1991
THE END ^ 26Aug1990 02:39:58pm [2:44]
^ I'm done! Ha Ha, I'M DONE!!! hahahahahahahahahah Hooray, I'm done I'm
^ done, I'm done, I'm done. Heheheheheheheheh ha argle gobble gobblelskd adj
^ kjkjoiqu.joij!
^ V 20Jun91 03:54:04pm [3:56]
^ V Let me second the sentiments expressed so eloquently above (even
^ V though I still won't have this thing in the mail till 22Jun91)