"Unh, yes, fascinating."

"I knew you would like it. You're just like my people, I really think. You're not all angry, not all the time..."

"Just what do you mean by that?" Johanna pushed a soft muzzle away and stood. The dogthing rocked back on its haunches to look up at her.

"I, well ... you have much to hate, I know. But you seem so angry at us all the time, and we're the ones who are trying to help you! After the day work you stay here, you don't want to talk with people-though now I see that was our fault. You wanted us to come here but were too proud to say it. I have these insights into character, you see. My friend, the one you call Scarbutt: he is truly a nice fellow. I know I can tell you that honestly, and that as my new friend you will believe. He would very much like to come to visit you, too ... urk."

Johanna walked slowly around the fire pit, forcing the two members to back away from her. All of Scriber was looking up at her now, the necks arching around one another, the eyes wide.

"I'm not like you. I don't need your talk, or your stupid ideas." She threw Scriber's notebook into the pit. Scriber leaped to the fire's edge, desperately reached for the burning notes. He pulled most of them back and clutched them to his chests.

Johanna kept walking toward him, kicking at his legs. Scriber retreated, backing and sprawling. "Stupid, dirty, butchers. I'm not like you." She slapped her hand on a ceiling beam. "Humans don't like to live like animals. We don't adopt killers. You tell Scarbutt, you tell him. If he ever comes by for a friendly chat, I-I'll smash in his head; I'll smash in all of them!"

Scriber was backed into the wall now. His heads turned wildly this way and that. He was making plenty of noise. Some of it was Samnorsk, but too high-pitched to understand. One of his mouths found the door pole. He pushed open the door, and all six members raced into the twilight, their rain slickers forgotten.

Johanna knelt and stuck her head through the doorway. The air was a wind-driven mist. In an instant, her face was so cold and wet that she couldn't feel the tears. Scriber was six shadows in the darkening grayness, shadows that raced down the hillside, sometimes tumbling in their haste. In a second he was gone. There was nothing but the vague forms of nearby cabins, and the yellow light that spilled out around her from the fire.

Strange. Right after the ambush, she had felt terror. The Tines had been unstoppable killers. Then, on the boat, when she smashed Scarbutt ... it had been so wonderful: the whole pack collapsed, and suddenly she knew that she could fight back, that she could break their bones. She didn't have to be at their mercy... Tonight she had learned something more. Even without touching them, she could hurt them. Some of them, anyway. Her dislike alone had undone Pompous Clown.

Johanna backed into the smoky warmth and shut the door. She should feel triumph.

EIGHTEEN.

Scriber Jaqueramaphan didn't tell anyone about his meeting with the Two-Legs. Of course, Vendacious's guard had overheard everything. The fellow might not speak much Samnorsk, but he had surely gotten the drift of the argument. People would hear about it eventually.

He moped around the castle for a few days, spent a number of hours hunched over the remains of his notebook, trying to recreate the diagrams. It would be a a while before he attended any more sessions with Dataset, especially when Johanna was around. Scriber knew he seemed brash to the outside world, but in fact it had taken a lot of courage to walk in on Johanna like that. He knew his ideas had genius, but all his life unimaginative people had been telling him otherwise.

In most ways Scriber was a very fortunate person. He had been born a fission pack in Rangathir, at the eastern edge of the Republic. His parent had been a wealthy merchant. Jaqueramaphan had some of his parent's traits, but the dull patience necessary for day-to-day business work had been lost to him. His sibling pack more than retained that faculty; the family business grew, and-in the first years-his sib didn't begrudge Scriber his share of the wealth. From his earliest days, Scriber had been an intellectual. He read everything: natural history, biography, brood kenning. In the end he had the largest library in Rangathir, more than two hundred books.

Even then Scriber had tremendous ideas, insights which-if properly executed-would have made them the wealthiest merchants in all the eastern provinces. Alas, bad luck and his sib's lack of imagination had doomed his early ideas. In the end, his sib bought out the business, and Jaqueramaphan moved to the Capital. It was all for the best. By this time Scriber had fleshed himself out to six members; he needed to see more of the world. Besides ... there were five thousand books in the library there, the experience of all history and all the world! His own notebooks became a library in themselves. Yet still the packs at the university had no time for him. His outline for a summation of natural history was rejected by all the stationers, though he paid to have small parts of it published. It was clear that success in the world of action was necessary before his ideas could get the attention they deserved, hence his spy mission; Parliament itself would thank him when he returned with the secrets of Flenser's Hidden Island.

That was almost a year ago. What had happened since-with the flying house and Johanna and Dataset-went beyond his wildest dreams (and Scriber granted that those dreams were already pretty extreme). The library in Dataset contained millions of books. With Johanna to help him polish his ideas, they would sweep Flenserism from the face of the world. They would regain her flying house. Not even the sky would be a limit.

So to have her throw it all back at him ... it made him wonder about himself. Maybe she was just mad at him for trying to explain Peregrine. She would like Peregrine if she let herself; he was sure of it. But then again ... maybe his ideas just weren't that good, at least by comparison with humans'.

That thought left him pretty low. But he finished redrawing the diagrams, and even got some new ideas. Maybe he should get some more silkpaper.

Peregrine stopped by and persuaded him to go into town.

Jaqueramaphan had made up a dozen explanations why he wasn't participating in the sessions with Johanna anymore. He tried out two or three as he and Peregrine descended Castle Street toward the harbor.

After a minute or two, his friend turned a head back. "It's okay, Scriber. When you feel like it, we'd like to have you back."

Scriber had always been a very good judge of attitude; in particular, he could tell when he was being patronized. He must have scowled a little, because Peregrine went on. "I mean it. Even Woodcarver has been asking about you. She likes your ideas."

Comforting lies or not, Scriber brightened. "Really?" The Woodcarver of today was a sad case, but the Woodcarver of the history books was one of Jaqueramaphan's great heroes. "No one's mad at me?"

"Well, Vendacious is a bit peeved. Being responsible for the Two-Legs' safety makes him very nervous. But you only tried something we've all wanted to do."

"Yeah." Even if there had been no Dataset, even if Johanna Olsndot had not come from the stars, she would still be the most fascinating creature in the world: a pack-equivalent mind in a single body. You could walk right up to her, you could touch her, without the least confusion. It was frightening at first, but all of them quickly felt the attraction. For packs, closeness had always meant mindlessness-whether for sex or battle. Imagine being able to sit by the fire with a friend and carry on an intelligent conversation! Woodcarver had a theory that the Two-Legs' civilization might be innately more effective than any Packish one, that collaboration was so easy for humans that they learned and built much faster than packs could. The only problem with that theory was Johanna Olsndot. If Johanna was a normal human, it is was a surprise that the race could cooperate on anything. Sometimes she was friendly-usually in the sessions with Woodcarver. She seemed to realize that Woodcarver was frail and failing. More often she was patronizing, sarcastic, and seemed to think the best they could do for her insulting... And sometimes she was like last night. "How goes it with Dataset?" he asked after a moment.

Peregrine shrugged. "About like before. Both Woodcarver and I can read Samnorsk pretty well now. Johanna has taught us-me via Woodcarver, I should say-how to use most of Dataset's powers. There's so much there that will change the world. But for now we have to concentrate on making gunpowder and cannons. It's that, the actual doing, that's going slow."

Scriber nodded knowingly. That had been the central problem in his life too.

"Anyway, if we can do all that by midsummer, maybe we can face Flenser's army and recapture the flying house before next winter." Peregrine made a grin that stretched from face to face. "And then, my friend, Johanna can call her people for rescue ... and we'll have all our lives to study the outsiders. I may pilgrimage to worlds around other stars."

It was an idea they had talked of before. Peregrine had thought of it even before Scriber.

They turned off Castle Street onto Edgerow. Scriber was feeling more enthusiastic about visiting the stationer's; there must be some way he could help. He looked around with an interest that had been lacking the last few days. Woodcarvers was a fair-sized city, almost as big as Rangathir-maybe twnety thousand packs lived within its walls and in the homes immediately around. This day was a bit colder than the last few, but it wasn't raining. A cold, clean wind swept the market street, carrying faint smells of mildew and sewage, of spices and fresh-sawn wood. Dark clouds hung low, misting the hills around the harbor. Spring was definitely in the air. Scriber kicked playfully at the slush along the curb.

Peregrine led them to a side street. The place was jammed, strangers getting as close as seven or eight yards. The stalls at the stationer's were even worse. The felt dividers weren't that thick, and there seemed to be more interest in literature at Woodcarvers than any place Scriber had ever been. He could hardly hear himself think as he haggled with the stationer. The merchant sat on a raised platform with thick padding; he wasn't much bothered by the racket. Scriber kept his heads close together, concentrating on the prices and the product. From his past life, he was pretty good at this sort of thing.

Eventually he got his paper, and at a decent price.

"Let's go back on Packweal," he said. That was the long way, through the center of the market. When he was in a good mood, Scriber rather liked crowds; he was a great student of people. Woodcarvers was not as cosmopolitan as some cities by the Long Lakes, but there were traders from all over. He saw several packs wearing the bonnets of a tropic collective. At one intersection a redjackets from East Home was chatting cozily with a labormaster.

When packs came this close, and in these numbers, the world seemed to teeter on the edge of a choir. Each person hung near to himself, trying to keep his own thoughts intact. It was hard to walk without stumbling over your own feet. And sometimes the background thought sounds would surge, a moment where several packs would somehow synchronize. Your consciousness wavered and for an instant you were one with many, a superpack that might be a god. Jaqueramaphan shivered. That was the essential attraction of the Tropics. The crowds there were mobs, vast group minds as stupid as they were ecstatic. If the stories were true, some of the southern cities were nonstop orgies.

They had roamed the marketplace almost an hour when it hit him. Scriber shook his heads abruptly. He turned and walked in lockstep off Packweal, and up a side street. Peregrine followed, "Is the crowd too much?" he asked.

"I just had an idea," said Scriber. That wasn't unusual in a close crowd, but this was a very interesting idea... He said nothing more for several minutes. The side street climbed steeply, then jinked back and forth across Castle Hill. The upslope side was lined with burghers' homes. On the harbor side, they were looking out over the steep tile roofs of houses on the next switchback down. These were large homes, elegant with rosemaling. Only a few had shops on the street.

Scriber slowed down and spread out enough that he wasn't stepping on himself. He saw now that he'd been quite wrong in trying to contribute creative expertise to Johanna. There was simply too much invention in Dataset. But they still needed him, Johanna most of all. The problem was, they didn't know it yet. Finally he said to Peregrine, "Haven't you wondered that the Flenserists haven't attacked the city? You and I embarrassed the Lords of Hidden Island more than ever in their history. We hold the keys to their total defeat."Johanna and Dataset.

Peregrine hesitated. "Hmm. I assumed their army wasn't up to it. I should think if they were, they'd have knocked over Woodcarvers long before."

"Perhaps, but at great cost. Now the cost is worth it." He gave Peregrine a serious look. "No, I think there's another reason... They have the flying house, but they have no idea how to use it. They want Johanna back alive-almost as much as they want to kill all of us."

Peregrine made a bitter sound. "If Steel hadn't been so eager to massacre everything on two legs, he could have had all sorts of help."

"True, and the Flenserists must know that. I'll bet they've always had spies among the townspeople here, but now more than ever. Did you see all the East Home packs?" East Home was a hotbed of Flenser sentiment. Even before the Movement, they had been a hard folk, routinely sacrificing pups that didn't meet their brood standards.

"One anyway. Talking to a labormaster."

"Right. Who knows what's coming in disguised as special purpose packs? I'd bet my life they're planning to kidnap Johanna. If they guess what we're planning with her, they may just try to kill her. Don't you see? We must alert Woodcarver and Vendacious, organize the people to watch for spies."

"You noticed all this on one walk through Packweal?" There was wonder or disbelief in his voice, Scriber couldn't tell which.

"Well, um, no. The inspiration wasn't anything so direct. But it stands to reason, don't you think?"

They walked in silence for several minutes. Up here the wind was stronger, and the view more spectacular. Where there wasn't the sea, forest spread endless gray and green. Everything was very peaceful ... because this was a game of stealth. Fortunately Scriber had a talent for such games. After all, hadn't it been the very Political Police of the Republic who commissioned him to survey Hidden Island? It had taken him several tendays of patient persuasion, but in the end they had been enthusiastic. Anything you can discover we would be most happy to review. Those were their exact words.

Peregrine waffled around the road, seemingly very taken aback by Scriber's suggestion. Finally he said, "I think there is ... something you should know, something that must remain an absolute secret."

"Upon my soul! Peregrine, I do not blab secrets." Scriber was a little hurt-at the lack of trust, and also that the other might have discovered something he had not. The second should not bother him. He had guessed that Peregrine and Woodcarver were into each other. No telling what she might have confided, or what might have leaked across.

"Okay... You've tripped onto something that should not be noised about. You know Vendacious is in charge of Woodcarvers security?"

"Of course." That was implicit in the office of Lord Chamberlain. "And considering the number of outsiders wandering around, I can't say he's doing a very good job."

"In fact, he's doing a marvelously effective job. Vendacious has agents right at the top at Hidden Island-one step removed from Lord Steel himself."

Scriber felt his eyes widening.

"Yes, you understand what that means. Through Vendacious, Woodcarver knows for a certainty everything their high council plans. With clever misinformation, we can lead the Flenserists around like froghens at a thinning. Next to Johanna herself, this may be Woodcarver's greatest advantage."

"I-"I had no idea."So the incompetent local security is just a cover."

"Not exactly. It's supposed to look solid and intelligent, but with just enough exploitable weakness so the Movement will postpone a frontal attack in favor of espionage." He smiled. "I think Vendacious will be very taken aback to hear your critique."

Scriber gave a weak laugh. He was flattered and boggled at the same time. Vendacious must count as the greatest spymaster of the age-yet he, Scriber Jaqueramaphan, had almost seen through him. Scriber was mostly quiet the rest of the way back to the castle, but his mind was racing. Peregrine was more right than he knew; secrecy was vital. Unnecessary discussion-even between old friends-must be avoided. Yes! He would offer his services to Vendacious. His new role might keep him in the background, but it was where he could make the greatest contribution. And eventually even Johanna would see how helpful he could be.

Down the well of the night. Even when Ravna wasn't looking out the windows, that was the image in her mind. Relay was far off the galactic disk. The OOB was descending toward that disk-and ever deeper into slowness.

But they had escaped. The OOB was crippled, but they had left Relay at almost fifty light-years per hour. Each hour they were lower in the Beyond and the computation time for the microjumps increased, and their pseudovelocity declined. Nevertheless, they were making progress. They were deep into the Middle of the Beyond now. And there was no sign of pursuit, thank goodness. Whatever had brought the Blight to Relay, it had not been specific knowledge of the OOB.

Hope. Ravna felt it growing in her. The ship's medical automation claimed that Pham Nuwen could be saved, that there was brain activity. The terrible wounds in his back had been Old One's implants, organic machinery that had made Pham close-linked to Relay's local network-and thence to the Power above. And when that Power died somehow the gear in Pham became a putrescent ruin. So Pham the person should still exist. Pray he still exists. The surgeon thought it would be three days before his back was healed enough to attempt resuscitation.

In the meantime... Ravna was learning more about the apocalypse that had swept over her. Every twenty hours, Greenstalk and Blueshell jigged the ship sideways a few light-years, into some major trunk line of the Known Net to soak up the News. It was a common practice on any voyage of more than a few days; an easy way for merchants and travelers to keep track of events that might affect their success at voyage's end.

According to the News (that is, according to the vast majority of the opinions expressed), the fall of Relay was complete. Oh, Grondr. Oh Egravan and Sarale. Are you dead or owned now?

Parts of the Known Net were temporarily out of contact; some of the extra-galactic links might not be replaced for years. For the first time in millennia, a Power was known to have been murdered. There were tens of thousands of claims about the motive for the attack and tens of thousands of predictions about what would happen next. Ravna had the ship filter the avalanche, trying to distill the essence of the speculations.

The one coming from Straumli Realm itself made as much sense as any: the Perversion's thralls gloated solemnly about the new era, the marriage of a Transcendent being with races of the Beyond. If Relay could be destroyed-if a Power could be murdered-then nothing could stop the spread of victory.

Some senders thought that Relay was the ancestral target of whatever had perverted Straumli Realm. Maybe the attack was just the tail end of some long ago war, a misbegotten tragedy for the descendents of forgotten races. If so, then the thralls at Straumli Realm might just wither away and the original human culture there reappear.

A number of items suggested that the attack had been aimed at stealing Relay's archives, but only one or two claimed that the Blight sought to recover an artifact, or prevent the Relayers from recovering one. Those assertions came from chronic theorizers, the sort of civilizations that get surcharged by newsgroup automation. Nevertheless, Ravna looked through those messages carefully. None of them suggested an artifact in the Low Beyond; if anything, they claimed the Blight was searching for something in the High Beyond or Low Transcend.

There was network traffic coming out of the Blight. The high protocol messages were ignored by all but the suicidal, and no one was getting paid to forward any of it. Yet horror and curiosity spread some of the messages far. There was the Blighter "video": almost four hundred seconds of pan-sensual data with no compression. That incredibly expensive message might be the most-forwarded hog in all Net history. Blueshell held the OOB on the trunk path for nearly two days to receive the whole thing.

The Perversion's thralls all appeared to be human. About half the news items coming out of the Realm were video evocations, though none this long; all showed human speakers. Ravna watched the big one again and again: She even recognized the speaker. vn Nilsndot had been Straumli Realm's champion trael runner. He had no title now, and probably no name. Nilsndot spoke from an office that might have been a garden. If Ravna stepped to the side of the image, she could see over his shoulder to ground level. The city there looked like the Straumli Main of record. Years ago, Ravna and her sister had dreamed about that city, the heart of mankind's adventure into the Transcend. The central square had been a replica of the Field of Princesses on Nyjora, and the immigration advertising claimed that no matter how far the Straumers went, the fountain in the Field would always flow, would always show their loyalty to humankind's beginnings.

There was no fountain now, and Ravna felt deadness behind Nilsndot's gaze. "This one speaks as the Power that Helps," said the erstwhile hero. "I want all to see what I can do for even a third-rate civilization. Look upon my Helping..." The viewpoint swung skywards. It was sunset, and the ranked agrav structures hung against the light, megameter upon megameter. It was a more grandiose use of the agrav material than Ravna had ever seen, even on the Docks. Certainly no world in the Middle Beyond could ever afford to import the material in such quantities. "What you see above me is just the work barracks for the construction that I will soon begin in the Straumli system. When complete, five star systems will be a single habitat, their planets and excess stellar mass distributed to support life and technology as never before seen at these depths-and as rarely seen in the Transcend itself." The view returned to Nilsndot, a single human, mouthpiece for a god. "Some of you may rebel against idea of dedicating yourselves to me. In the long run it does not matter. The symbiosis of my Power with the hands of races in the Beyond is more than any can resist. But I speak now to diminish your fear. What you see in Straumli Realm is as much a joy as a wonder. Never again will races in the Beyond be left behind by transcendence. Those who join me-and all will join eventually-will be part of the Power. You will have access to imports from across the Top and Lower Transcend. You will reproduce beyond the limits your own technology could sustain. You will absorb all that oppose me. You will bring the new stability."

The third or fourth time she watched the item, Ravna tried to ignore the words, concentrate on Nilsndot's expression, comparing it to speeches she had in her personal dataset. There was a difference; it wasn't her imagination. The creature she watched was soul-dead. Somehow, the Blight didn't care that that was obvious ... maybe it wasn't obvious except to human viewers, and they were a vanishingly small fraction of the audience. The viewpoint closed in on Nilsndot's ordinary dark face, his ordinary violet eyes: "Some of you may wonder how all this is possible, and why billions of years of anarchy have passed without such help from a Power. The answer is ... complex. Like many sensible developments, this one has a high threshold. On one side of that threshold, the development appears impossibly unlikely; on the other, inevitable. The symbiosis of the Helping depends on efficient, high-bandwidth communication between myself and the beings I Help. Creatures such as the one now speaking my words must respond as quickly and faithfully as a hand or a mouth. Their eyes and ears must report across light-years. This has been hard to achieve-especially since the system must essentially be in place before it can function. But, now that the symbiosis exists, progress will come much faster. Almost any race can be modified to receive Help."

Almost any race can be modified. The words came from a familiar face, and in Ravna's birth language ... but the origin was monstrously far away.

There was plenty of analysis. A whole news group had been formed: Threat of the Blight was spawned from Threats Group, Homo Sapiens Interest Group, and Close-Coupled Automation. These days it was busier than any five other groups. In this part of the galaxy, a significant fraction of all message traffic belonged to the new group. More bits were sent analyzing poor vn Nilsndot's mouthing than had been in the original. Judging from the flames and contradictions, the signal-to-noise ratio was very low: Crypto: 0 Syntax: 43 As received by: OOB shipboard ad hoc Language path: Acquileron->Triskweline, SjK units From: Khurvark University [Claimed to be habitat-based university in the Middle Beyond]

Subject: Blighter Video Summary: The message shows fraud Distribution:

War Trackers Interest Group

Where are they now Interest Group

Threat of the Blight

Date: 7.06 days since Fall of Relay Text of message: It's obvious that this "Helper" is a fraud. We've researched the matter carefully. Though he is not named, the speaker is a high official in the former Straumli regime. Now why-if the "Helper" simply runs the humans as teleoperated robots-why is the earlier social structure preserved? The answer should be clear to any idiot: The Helper does not have the power to teleoperate large numbers of sentients. Evidently, the Fall of Straumli Realm consisted of taking over key elements in that civilization's power structure. It's business as usual for the rest of the race. Our conclusion: this Helper Symbiosis is just another messianic religion, another screwball empire excusing its excesses and attempting to trick those it cannot directly coerce. Don't be fooled!

Crypto: 0 Syntax: 43 As received by: OOB shipboard ad hoc Language path: Optima->Acquileron->Triskweline, SjK units From: Society for Rational Investigation [Probably a single system in Middle Beyond, 5700 light-years antispinward of Sjandra Kei]

Subject: Blighter Video thread, Khurvark University 1 Key phrases: [Probable obscenity] waste of our valuable time Distribution:

Society for Rational Network Management

Threat of the Blight

Date: 7.91 days since Fall of Relay Text of message: Who is a fool? [probable obscenity] [probable obscenity] Idiots who don't follow all the threads in developing news should not waste my precious ears with their [clear obscenity] garbage. So you think the "Helper Symbiosis" is a fraud of Straumli Realm? And what do you think caused the fall of Relay? In case your head is totally stuck up your rear [