Nevertheless, with proper design, things might have been better. The automation might have degraded gracefully under the restrictions imposed by their depth. Instead, gear just stopped working; what remained was slow and error-prone. If only the refitting had been completed before the Fall of Relay. And just how many times have I wished for that? She hoped things were as bad aboard the pursuing ships.

So Ravna used the ship to do light culling on the Threats newsgroup. Much of what was left was inane, as from people who see "portents in the weather"- Crypto: 0 Syntax: 43 As received by: OOB shipboard ad hoc Language path: Arbwyth->Trade24->Cherguelen->Triskweline, SjK units From: Twirlip of the Mists [Perhaps an organization of cloud fliers in a single jovian system. Very sparse priors before this thread began. Appears to be seriously out of touch. Program recommendation: delete this poster from presentation.]

Subject: The Blight's goal at the Bottom Distribution:

Threat of the Blight

Great Secrets of Creation

Date: 4.54 days since Fall of Sjandra Kei Key phrases: Zone Instability and the Blight, Hexapodia as the key insight Text of message: Apologies first if I am repeating obvious conclusions. My only gateway onto the Net is very expensive, and I miss many important postings. I think that anyone following both Great Secrets of Creation and Threat of the Blight would see an important pattern. Since the events reported by Harmonious Repose information service, most agree that something important to the Perversion exists at the Bottom of the Beyond in region [...]. I see a possible connection here with the Great Secrets. During the last two hundred and twenty days, there have been increasing reports of zone interface instability in the region below Harmonious Repose. As the Blight threat has grown and its attacks against advanced races and other Powers continued, this instability has increased. Could there not be some connection? I urge all to consult their information on the Great Secrets (or the nearest archive maintained by that group). Events such as this prove once again that the universe is all ronzelle between.

Some of the postings were tantalizing-[Light gloss]

Crypto: 0 Syntax: 43 As received by: OOB shipboard ad hoc Language path: Wobblings->Baeloresk->Triskweline, SjK units From: Cricketsong under the High Willow [Cricketsong is a synthetic race created as a jape/ experiment/instrument by the High Willow upon its Transcendence. Cricketsong has been on the Net for more than ten thousand years. Apparently it is a fanatical studier of paths to Transcendence. For eight thousand years it has been the heaviest poster on "Where are they now" and related groups. There is no evidence that any Cricketsong settlement has itself Transcended. Cricketsong is sufficiently peculiar that there is a large news group for speculation concerning the race itself. Consensus is that Cricketsong was designed by High Willow as a probe back into the Beyond, that the race is somehow incapable of attempting its own Transcendence.]

Subject: The Blight's goal at the Bottom Distribution:

Threat of the Blight

War Trackers Special Interest Group

Where are they now Special Interest Group

Date: 5.12 days since Fall of Sjandra Kei Key phrases: On becoming Transcendent Text of message: Contrary to other postings, there are a number of reasons why a Power might install artifacts at the Bottom of the Beyond. The Abselor's message on this thread cites some: some Powers have documented curiosity about the Slow Zone and, even more, about the Unthinking Depths. In rare cases, expeditions have been dispatched (though any return from the Depths would occur long after the dispatching Power lost interest in all local questions).

However, none of these motives are likely here. To those who are familiar with Fast Burn transcendence, it is clear that the Blight is a creature seeking stasis. Its interest in the Bottom is very sudden, provoked, we think, by the revelations at Harmonious Repose. There is something at the Bottom that is critical to the Perversion's welfare.

Consider the notion of ablative dissonance (see the Where Are They Now group archive): No one knows what set-up procedures the humans of Straumli Realm were using. The Fast Burn may itself have had Transcendent intelligence. What if it became dissatisfied with the direction of the channedring? In that case it might try to hide the jumpoff birthinghel. The Bottom would not be a place where the algorithm itself could normally execute, but avatars might still be created from it and briefly run.

Up to a point, Ravna could almost make sense of it; ablative dissonance was a commonplace of Applied Theology. But then, like one of those dreams where the secret of life is about to be revealed, the posting just drifted into nonsense.

There were postings that were neither asinine nor obscure. As usual, Sandor at the Zoo had a lot of things dead right: Crypto: 0 Syntax: 43 As received by: OOB shipboard ad hoc Language path: Triskweline, SjK units From: Sandor Arbitration Intelligence at the Zoo [A known military corporation of the High Beyond. If this is a masquerade, somebody is living dangerously.]

Subject: The Blight's goal at the Bottom Key phrases: Sudden change in Blight's tactics Distribution:

Threat of the Blight

War Trackers Interest Group

Homo Sapiens Interest Group

Date: 8.15 days since Fall of Sjandra Kei Text of message: In case you don't know, Sandor Intelligence has a number of different Net feeds. We can collect messages on paths that have no intermediate nodes in common. Thus we can be fairly confident that news we receive has not been tampered with en route. (There remain the lies and misunderstandings that were present to begin with, but that's something that makes the intelligence business interesting.) The Blight has been our top priority since its instantiation a year ago. This is not just because of the Blight's obvious strength, the destruction and the deicides it has committed. We fear that all this is the lesser part of the Threat. There have been perversions almost as powerful in the recorded past. What truly distinguishes this one is its stability. We see no evidence of internal evolution; in some ways it is less than a Power. It may never lose interest in controlling the High Beyond. We may be witnessing a massive and permanent change in the nature of things. Imagine: a stable necrosis, where the only sentience in the High Beyond is the Blight.

Thus, studying the Blight has been a matter of life and death for us (even though we are powerful and widely distributed). We've reached a number of conclusions. Some of these may be obvious to you, others may sound like flagrant speculation. All take on a new coloring with the events reported from Harmonious Repose: Almost from the beginning, the Blight has been searching for something. This search has extended far beyond its aggressive physical expansion. Its automatic agents have tried to penetrate virtually every node in the Top of the Beyond; the High Network is in shambles, reduced to protocols scarcely more efficient than those known below. At the same time, the Blight has physically stolen several archives. We have evidence of very large fleets searching for off-Net archives at the Top and in the Low Transcend. At least three Powers have been murdered in this rampage.

And now, suddenly, this assault has ended. The Blight's physical expansion continues, with no end in sight, but it no longer searches the High Beyond. As near as we can tell, the change occurred about two thousand seconds before the escape of the human vessel from Harmonious Repose. Less than six hours later, we saw the beginnings of the silent fleet that so many are now speculating about. That fleet is indeed the creature of the Blight.

In other times, the destruction of Sjandra Kei and the motives of the Alliance for the Defense would all be important issues (and our organization might have interest in doing business with those affected). But all that is dwarfed by the fact of this fleet and the ship it pursues. And we disagree with the analysis [implication?] from Harmonious Repose: it is obvious to us that the Blight did not know of the Out of Band II until its discovery at Harmonious Repose.

That ship is not a tool of the Blight, but it contains or is bound for something of enormous importance to the Blight. And what might that be? Here we begin frank speculation. And since we are speculating, we'll use those powerful pseudo-laws, the Principles of Mediocrity and Minimal Assumption. If the Blight has the potential for taking over all the Top in a permanent stability, then why has this not happened before? Our guess is that the Blight has been instantiated before (with such dire consequence that the event marks the beginning of recorded time), but it has its own peculiar natural enemy.

The order of events even suggests a particular scenario, one familiar from network security. Once upon a time (very long ago), there was another instance of the Blight. A successful defense was mounted, and all known copies of the Blight's recipe were destroyed. Of course, on a wide net, one can never be sure that all copies of a badness are gone. No doubt, the defense was distributed in enormous numbers. But even if a harboring archive were reached by such a distribution, there might be no effect if the Blight were not currently active there.

The luckless humans of Straumli Realm chanced on such an archive, no doubt a ruin long off the Net. They instantiated the Blight and incidentally-perhaps a little later-the defense program. Somehow that Blight's enemy escaped destruction. And the Blight has been searching for it ever since-in all the wrong places. In its weakness, the new instance of the defense retreated to depths no Power would think of penetrating, whence it could never return without outside help. Speculation on top of speculation: we can't guess the nature of this defense, except that its retreat is a discouraging sign. And now even that sacrifice has gone for naught, since the Blight has seen through the deception.

The Blight's fleet is clearly an ad hoc thing, hastily thrown together from forces that happened to be closest to the discovery. Without such haste, the quarry might have been lost to it. Thus the chase equipment is probably ill-suited to the depths, and its performance will degrade as the descent progresses. However, we estimate that it will remain stronger than any force that can reach the scene in the near future.

We may learn more after the Blight reaches the Out of Band II's destination. If it destroys that destination immediately, we'll know that something truly dangerous to the Blight existed there (and may exist elsewhere, at least in recipe form). If it does not, then perhaps the Blight was looking for something that will make it even more dangerous than before.

Ravna sat back, stared at the display for some time. Sandor Arbitration Intelligence was one of the sharpest posters in this newsgroup... But now even their predictions were just different flavors of doom. And all so damn cool they were, so analytical. She knew that Sandor was polyspecific, with branch offices scattered through the High Beyond. But they were no Power. If the Perversion could knock over Relay and kill Old One, then all of Sandor's resources wouldn't help it if the enemy decided to gobble them up. Their analysis had the tone of the pilot of a crashing ship, intent on understanding the danger, not taking time out for terror.

Oh Pham, how I wish I could talk to you like before! She curled gently in on herself, the way you can in zero gee. The sobs came softly, but without hope. They had not exchanged a hundred words in the last five days. They lived as if with guns at each others' heads. And that was the literal truth-she had made it so. When she and he and the Skroderiders had been together, at least the danger had been a shared burden. Now they were split apart and their enemies were slowly gaining on them. What good could Pham's godshatter be against a thousand enemy ships and the Blight behind them?

She floated for a timeless while, the sobs fading into despairing silence. And again she wondered if what she'd done could possibly be right. She had threatened Pham's life to protect Blueshell and Greenstalk and their kind. In doing so, she had kept secret what might be the greatest treachery in the history of the Known Net. Can one person make such a decision? Pham had asked her that, and she had answered yes but...

The question toyed with her every day. And every day she tried to see some way out. She wiped her face silently. She didn't doubt what Pham had discovered.

There were some smug posters on the Net who argued that something as vast as the Blight was simply a tragic disaster, and not an evil. Evil, they argued, could only have meaning on smaller scales, in the hurt that one sophont does to another. Before RIP, the argument had seemed a frivolous playing with words. Now she saw that it was meaningful-and dead wrong. The Blight had created the Riders, a marvelous and peaceful race. Their presence on a billion worlds had been a good. And behind it all was the potential for converting the sovereign minds of friends into monsters. When she thought of Blueshell and Greenstalk, and the fear welled up and she knew the poison that was there-even though they were good people-then she knew she'd glimpsed evil on the Transcendent scale.

She had gotten Blueshell and Greenstalk into this mission; they had not asked for it. They were friends and allies, and she would not harm them because of what they could become.

Maybe it was the latest news items. Maybe it was confronting the same impossibilities for the n'th time: Ravna gradually straightened, looking at those last messages. So. She believed Pham about the Skroderider threat. She also believed these two were only enemies in potential. She had thrown away everything to save them and their kind. Maybe it was a mistake, but take what advantage there is in it. If they are to be saved because you think they are allies, then treat them as allies. Treat them as the friends they are. We are all pawns together.

Ravna pushed gently toward her cabin's doorway.

The Skroderiders' cabin was just behind the command deck. Since the debacle at RIP, the two had not left it. As she drifted down the passage toward their door, Ravna half-expected to see Pham's handiwork lurking in the shadows. She knew he was doing his best to "protect himself". Yet there was nothing unusual. What will he think of my visiting them?

She announced herself. After a moment Blueshell appeared. His skrode was wiped clean of cosmetic stripes, and the room behind him was a jumble. He waved her in with quick jerks of his fronds.

"My lady."

"Blueshell," she nodded at him. Half the time she cursed herself for trusting the Riders; the other half, she was mortally embarrassed for having left them alone. "H-how is Greenstalk?"

Surprisingly, Blueshell's fronds snapped together in a smile. "You guessed? This is the first day with her new skrode... I will show you, if you'd like."

He threaded around equipment that was scattered in a lattice across the room. It was similar to the shop equipment Pham had used to build his powered armor. And if Pham had seen it, he might have lost all self-control.

"I've worked on it every minute since ... Pham locked us in here."

Greenstalk was in the other room. Her stalk and fronds rose from a silver pot. There were no wheels. It looked nothing like a traditional skrode. Blueshell rolled across the ceiling and extended a frond down to his mate. He rustled something at her, and after a moment, she replied.

"The skrodeling is very limited, no mobility, no redundant power supplies. I copied it off a Lesser Skroderider design, a simple thing designed by Dirokimes. It's not meant for more than sitting in one place, facing in one direction. But it provides her with short-term memory support, and attention focussers... She is back with me." He fussed around her, some fronds caressing hers, others pointing to the gadget he had built for her. "She herself was not badly injured. Sometimes I wonder-whatever Pham says, maybe at the last second he could not kill her."

He spoke nervously, as though afraid of what Ravna might say.

"The first few days I was very worried. But the surgeon is good. It gave her plenty of time to stand in strong surf. To think slowly. Since I've added on this skrodeling, she has practiced the calesthenics of memory, repeating what the surgeon or I say to her. With the skrodeling, she can hold on to a new memory for almost five hundred seconds. That's usually long enough for her natural mind to commit a thought to long-term memory."

Ravna drifted close. There were some new creases in Greenstalk's fronds. Those would be scars healing. Her visual surfaces followed Ravna's approach. The Rider knew she was here; her whole posture was friendly.

"Can she talk Trisk, Blueshell? Do you have a voder hooked up?"

"What?" Buzz. He was forgetful or nervous, Ravna couldn't tell which. "Yes, yes. Just give me a minute... There was no need before. No one wanted to talk to us." He fiddled with something on the home-made skrode.

After a moment, "Hello, Ravna. I ... recognize you." Her fronds rustled in time with the words.

"I know you, too. We, I am glad that you are back."

The voder voice was faint, wistful? "Yes. It's hard for me to tell. I do want to talk, but I'm not sure ... am I'm making sense?"

Out of Greenstalk's sight, Blueshell flicked a long tendril, a gesture: say yes.

"Yes, I understand you, Greenstalk." And Ravna resolved never again to get angry with Greenstalk about not remembering.

"Good." Her fronds straightened and she didn't say anything more.

"See?" came Blueshell's voder voice. "I am brightly cheerful. Even now, Greenstalk is committing this conversation to long-term memory. It goes slowly for now, but I am improving the skrodeling. I'm sure her slowness is mainly emotional shock." He continued to brush at Greenstalk's fronds, but she didn't say anything more. Ravna wondered just how brightly cheerful he could be.

Behind the Riders were a set of display windows, customized now for the Rider outlook. "You've been following the News?" Ravna asked.

"Yes, indeed."

"I-I feel so helpless."I feel so foolish, saying that to you.

But Blueshell didn't take offense. He seemed grateful for the change of topic, preferring the gloom at a distance. "Yes. We certainly are famous now. Three fleets chasing us down, my lady. Ha ha."

"They don't seem to be gaining very fast."

Frond shrug. "Sir Pham has turned out to be a competent ship's master. I'm afraid things will change as we descend. The ship's higher automation will gradually fail. What you call 'manual control' will become very important. OOB was designed for my race, my lady. No matter what Sir Pham thinks of us, at bottom we can fly it better than any. So bit by bit the others will gain-at least those who truly understand their own ships."

It was something she hadn't guessed, certainly something she would never have found reading the Net. Too bad it's also bad news."S-surely Pham must know this?"

"I think he must. But he is trapped in his own fears. What can he do? If not for you, My Lady Ravna, he might have killed us already. Maybe when the choice comes down to dying in the next hour against trusting us, maybe then there will be a chance."

"By then it will be too late. Look, even if he doesn't trust-even though he believes the worst of Riders-there must still be a way." And it came to her that sometimes you don't have to change the way people think, or even whom they may hate. "Pham wants to get to the Bottom, to recover this Countermeasure. He thinks you may be from the Blight, and after the same thing. But up to a point-" up to a point he can cooperate, postpone the showdown he imagines till perhaps it won't matter.

Even as she started to say it, Blueshell was already shouting back at her. "I'm am not of the Blight! Greenstalk is not! The Rider race is not!" He swept around his mate, rolled across the ceiling till his fronds rattled right before Ravna's face.

"I'm sorry. It's just the potential-"

"Nonsense!" His voder buzzed off scale. "We ran in to an evil few. Every race has such, people who will kill for trade. They forced Greenstalk, substituted data at her voder. Pham Nuwen would kill our billions for the sake of this fantasy." He waved, inarticulate. Something she had never seen in a Skroderider: his fronds actually changed tone, darkened.

The motion ceased, yet he said nothing more. And then Ravna heard it, a keening that might have come from a voder. The sound was steadily growing, a howl that made all Blueshell's sound effects friendly nonsense. It was Greenstalk.

The scream reached a threshold just below pain, then broke into choppy Triskweline: "It's true! Oh, by all our trading, Blueshell, it's true..." and staticky noise came from her voder. Her fronds started shaking, random turning that must be like a human's eyes wildly staring, like a human's mouth mumbling hysteria.

Blueshell was already back by the wall, reaching to adjust her new skrode. Greenstalk's fronds brushed him away, and her voder voice continued, "I was horror struck, Blueshell. I was horror struck, struck by horror. And it would not stop..." the voice rattled quiet for just an instant, and this time Blueshell made no move. "I remember everything up till the last five minutes. And everything Pham says is true, dear love. Loyal as you are, and I have seen that loyalty now for two hundred years, you would be turned in an instant ... just as I was." Now that the dam broke, her words came quickly, mostly making sense. The horrors she could remember were graven deep, and she was finally coming out of ghastly shock. "I was right behind you, remember, Blueshell? You were deep in your trading with the tusk-legs, so deep you did not really see. I noticed the other Riders coming toward us. No matter: a friendly meeting, so far from home. Then one touched my Skrode. I-" Greenstalk hesitated. Her fronds rattled and she began again, "horror struck, horror struck..."

After a moment: "It was like suddenly new memories in the skrode, Blueshell. New memories, new attitudes. But thousands of years deep. And not mine. Instantly, instantly. I never even lost consciousness. I thought just as clearly, I remembered all I had before."

"And when you resisted?" Ravna said softly.

"...Resisted? My Lady Ravna, I did not resist. I was theirs... No. Not theirs, for they were owned, too. We were things, our intelligence in service to another's goal. Dead, and alive to see our death. I would kill you, I would kill Pham, I would kill Blueshell. You know I tried. And when I did, I wanted to succeed. You could not imagine, Ravna. You humans speak of violation. You could never know..." Long pause. "That's not quite right. At the Top of the Beyond, within the Blight itself-perhaps there, everyone lives as I did."

The shuddering did not subside, but her gestures were no longer aimless. The fronds were saying something in her own language, and brushing gently against Blueshell.