CHAPTER 8
Note
^ V June 12, 1991 this is also a place where you might remark on the
^ V accessibility of Relay to starship commerce
The Foreign Quarter was actually about a third of the Docks. It abutted the no-atmosphere periphery -- where ships actually docked -- and extended inwards to a section of the central sea. Vrinimi Org had convinced a significant number of races that this was a wonder of the Middle Beyond. In addition to freight traffic there were tourists -- some of the wealthiest beings in the Beyond.
Note
!TITLE Beyonders' Quest
!TITLE Transcenders' Quest
!TITLE The Blight from the Transcend
!TITLE At the Bottom of the Beyond
!jrf intriguing title |
!PRB get times here so they can be tied up with news item later
!jrf |||||yes
!ID One reason extra for having Old One's ship down here is
! cryptographic
! JLC: Yes!
Pham Nuwen had carte blanche to these amusements. Ravna took him through the more spectacular ones, including an agrav hop over the Docks. The barbarian was more impressed by their pocket space suits than by the Docks. "I've seen structures bigger than that down in the Slowness." Not hovering in a planetary gravity well, you haven't.
Note
!QU is the description of TWC too high tech?
!V June 7, 1991 CHKd "bourse" exchange; a European stock exchange from
!V purse
Pham Nuwen seemed to mellow as the evening progressed. At least his comments became more perceptive, less edged. He wanted to see how real traders lived in the Beyond, and Ravna showed him the bourses and the traders' Local.
Note
!V:
!ID about bar scene and ALIENness: Could make the point that only a small
! fractions of races can actually get together for a bar scene of the
! classic sort. This leads to bars with very limited clientele in any
! one area (but lively), and bars that are scarcely more than sterile
! conference sites -- things would be different at the Top of the Beyond
! where you could meet in the abstract
They ended up in The Wandering Company just after Docks midnight. This was not Organization territory, but it was one of Ravna's favorite places, a private dive that attracted traders from the Top to the Bottom. She wondered how the decor would appeal to Pham Nuwen. The place was modeled as a meeting lodge on some world of the Slow Zone. A three-meter model ramscoop hung in the air over the main service floor. Blue-green drive fields glowed from the ship's every corner and flange, and spread faintly among patrons sitting below.
To Ravna the walls and floors were heavy timber, rough cut. People like Egravan saw stone walls and narrow tunnels -- the sort of broodery his race had maintained on new conquests of long ago. The trickery was optical -- not some mental smudging -- and about the best that could be done in the Middle Beyond.
Note
!QU Decide whether you want to have mentioned in narrative before here
! how alone Ravna has been
Ravna and Pham walked between widely-spaced tables. The owners weren't as successful with sound as with vision: the music was faint and changed from table to table. Smells changed too, and were a little bit harder to take. Air management was working hard to keep everyone healthy, if not completely comfortable. Tonight the place was crowded. At the far end of the service floor, the special-atmosphere nooks were occupied: low pressure, high pressure, high NOx, aquaria. Some customers were vague blurs within turbid atmospheres.
Note
!QU Is the change in character below too jarring (even though it is
! explained later)?
! MG said no
! JLC: no
In some ways it might have been a port bar at Sjandra Kei. Yet ... this was Relay. It attracted High Beyonders who would never come to backwaters like Sjandra Kei. Most of the High Ones didn't look very strange; civilizations at the Top were most often just colonies from below. But the headbands she saw here were not jewelry. Mind-computer links aren't efficient in the Middle Beyond, but most of the High Beyonders would not give them up. Ravna started toward a group of banded tripods and their machines. Let Pham Nuwen talk with creatures who teetered on the edge of transsapience.
Surprisingly, he touched her arm, drawing her back. "Let's walk around a little more." He was looking all around the hall, as if searching for a familiar face. "Let's find some other humans first."
When holes showed in Pham Nuwen's cram-education, they were gapingly wide. Ravna tried to keep her face serious. "Other humans? We're all there is at Relay, Pham."
"But the friends you've been telling me about ... Egravan, Sarale?"
Ravna just shook her head. For a moment the barbarian looked vulnerable.
Pham Nuwen had spent his life crawling at sublight between human-colonized star systems. She knew that in all that life he had seen only three non-human races. Now he was lost in a sea of alienness. She kept her sympathy to herself; this one insight might affect the guy more than all her arguing.
But the instant passed, and he was smiling again. "Even more an adventure." They left the main floor and walked past special-atmosphere nooks. "Lord, but Qeng Ho would love this."
Note
!ID suggest using "in" as preposition for multiplanet regions, and "at"
! for smaller things
! JLC: neat
!PRB INCON? Gotta decide whether you want the Skroderiders to need a
! voder or not. Also, do you want them to be specifically familiar
! with Sjandra Kei (pretty much needed for the use of crypto stuff
! later in the novel)
!V Voder yes January 24, 1991
!V get geometry of their trading path clear. Make consistent with
!V whatever rewrite you do of Straumli Realm location, and Skroderider
!V coincidences
!V ID February 9, 1991 In connection with Rider Secret and its
!V explanation o long coincidences: you could have Pham discussing
!V this during some of the "long time" inserts NO! (except maybe to
!V dismiss it even from his own paranoia)
!INCON with later personality of Blueshell
!PRB long coincidences here
No humans anywhere, and The Wandering Company was the homiest meeting place she knew; many Org customers met only on the Net. She felt her own homesickness welling up. On the second floor, a signet flag caught her eye. She'd known something like it back at Sjandra Kei. She drew Pham Nuwen across the floor, and started up the timbered stairs.
Note
!V INCON ? "by God"?
Out of the background murmur, she heard a high-pitched twittering. It wasn't Triskweline, but the words made sense! By the Powers, it was Samnorsk: "I do believe it's a Homo Sap! Over here, my lady." She followed the sound to the table with the signet flag.
"May we sit with you?" she asked, savoring the familiar language.
Note
!REN to avoid image that these are plants, you might want to change
! Greenstalk's name Pinkstalk? QU [too sexual?] Sveltstalk?
! or maybe just Greenshell and Bluestalk (swapping adjectives)
!jrf ||||||||||||||||||||||||use these
!--> V Settled for Blueshell and Greenstalk
! JLC: wants more description of Skroderiders somewhere
!jrf also felt mislead by lack of description. In particular, he thought
!jrf Riders were smaller than they are
!V June 8, 1991 Might actually specify dimensions here
!V June 11, 1991 okay: top is 150 by 120 cm
!V 11Jun91 mARK
"Please do." The twitterer looked like a small ornamental tree sitting in a six-wheeled cart. The cart was marked with cosmetic stripes and tassels; its 150-by-120-centimeter topside was covered with a cargo scarf in the same pattern as the signet flag. The creature was a Greater Skroderider. Its race traded through much of the Middle Beyond, including Sjandra Kei. The Skroderider's high-pitched voice came from its voder. But speaking Samnorsk, it sounded homier than anything she'd heard in a long time. Even granting the mental peculiarities of Skroderiders, she felt a surge of affectionate nostalgia, as if she had run into a old classmate in a far city.
"My name is --" the sound was the rustling of fronds, "but you can easier call me Blueshell. It's nice to see a familiar face, hahaha." Blueshell spoke the laughter as words. Pham Nuwen had sat down with Ravna, but he understood not a word of Samnorsk and so the great reunion was lost on him. The Rider switched to Triskweline and introduced his four companions: another Skroderider, and three humanoids who seemed to like the shadows. None of the humanoids spoke Samnorsk, but no one was more than one translator hop from Triskweline.
Note
!?CHK Homo Sap, etc
!CHKd skrode. Is there such a word? [not in my collegiate]
^ V CHK OED skrode
! Should it be capitalized when used alone? NO
!jrf ||why not?
!V No real good reason, except that it is so common to the
!V Riders that they think of it as a common noun (hand,
! foot).
!V CHK INCON 100y
^ V Could comment that Out of Band is an uninspired name.
^ V Also I really would like somewhere to have the notion of media
^ V freighters (AST's "sneakernet" "station wagon broadband")
^ V 07Jun91 MARK
The Skroderiders were owners/operators of a small interstellar freighter, the Out of Band II. The humanoids were certificants for part of the starship's current cargo. "My mate and I have been in the business almost two hundred years. We have happy feelings for your race, my lady. Our first runs were between Sjandra Kei and Forste Utgrep. Your people are good customers and we scarcely ever have a shipment rot...." He wheeled his skrode back from the table and then drove forward -- the equivalent of a small bow.
All was not sweetness and light, however. One of the humanoids spoke. The sounds could almost have come from a human throat, though they made no sense. A moment passed as the house translator processed his words. Then the broach on his jacket spoke in clear Triskweline: "Blueshell states you are Homo sapiens. Know that you have our animosity. We are bankrupt, near-stranded here by your race's evil creation. The Straumli Perversion." The words sounded emotionless, but Ravna could see the creature's tense posture, its fingers twisting at a drink bulb.
Considering his attitude, it probably wouldn't help to point out that though she was human, Sjandra Kei was thousands of light-years from Straum. "You came here from the Realm?" she asked the Skroderider.
Note
!CHK this size of one-time pad compared to the usage numbers elsewhere
!jrf ||||||||||||?
!V in c33 you say "... terabytes of random bits ..."
!V In any case this should be compared with claims of parsimony in
!V the battle chapter c33,c36
Blueshell didn't answer immediately. That's the way it was with his race; he was probably trying to remember who she was and what they were all talking about. Then: "Yes, yes. Please do excuse my certificants' hostility. Our main cargo is a one-time cryptographic pad. The source is Commercial Security at Sjandra Kei; the destination is the certificants' High colony. It was the usual arrangement: We're carrying a one-third xor of the pad. Independent shippers are carrying the others. At the destination, the three parts would be xor'd together. The result could supply a dozen worlds' crypto needs on the Net for --"
Note
!V June 8, 1991 CHK "link-layer" -- really not clear what such
!V would be June 12, 1991 TUF
^ V The greater problem relates to suspicion and motive in the
^ V Destruction of Relay
Downstairs there was a commotion. Someone was smoking something a bit too strong for the air scrubbers. Ravna caught a whiff, enough to shimmer her vision. It had knocked out several patrons on the main level. Management was counseling the offending customer. Blueshell made an abrupt noise. He backed his skrode from the table and rolled to the railing. "Don't want to be caught unawares. Some people can be so abrupt...." When nothing more came of the incident, he returned. "Uh, where was I?" He was silent a moment, consulting the short-term memory built into his skrode. "Yes, yes.... We would become relatively rich if our plans work out. Unfortunately, we stopped on Straum to drop off some bulk data." He pivoted on his rear four wheels. "Surely that was safe? Straum is more than a hundred light-years from their lab in the Transcend. Yet --"
Note
!QU Is it too confusing that there is some mechanical translation but
! also some effort to learn other languages
! [actually I find this quite reasonable. The mech translators are for
! specific pairs and are not perfect in the Middle Beyond]
!V maybe most consistent would be to say that Relay is High Middle
!V and Sjandra Kei is Low Middle
!V June 8, 1991 Okay, but I think for te most part, I'll call them both
!V "middle"
!V Still the translators in this bar seem to be too good
!QU INCON that Blueshell invited the humans over when he knew it might
! start a fight
! Possible SOLN: He was getting fed up with this collegues
One of the certificants interrupted with loud gabble. The house translator kicked in a moment later: "Yes. It should have been safe. We saw no violence. Ship's recorders show that our safeness was not breached. Yet now there are rumors. Net groups claim that Straumli Realm is owned by perversion. Absurdity. Yet these rumors have crossed the Net to our destination. Our cargo is not trusted, so our cargo is ruined: now it is only a few grams of data medium carrying random --" In the middle of the flat-voiced translation, the humanoid lunged out of the shadows. Ravna had a glimpse of a jaw edged with razor-sharp gums. He threw his drink bulb at the table in front of her.
Pham Nuwen's hand flashed out, snatching the drink before it hit -- before she had quite realized what was happening. The redhead came slowly to his feet. From the shadows, the two other humanoids came to their feet and moved toward their friend. Pham Nuwen didn't say a word. He set the bulb carefully down and leaned just slightly toward the other, his hands relaxed yet bladelike. Cheap fiction talks about "looks of deadly menace". Ravna had never expected to see the real thing. But the humanoids saw it too. They tugged their friend gently back from the table. The loudmouth did not resist, but once beyond Pham's reach he erupted in a barrage of squeals and hisses that left the house translator speechless. He made a sharp gesture with three fingers, and shut up. The three swept silently down the stairs and away.
Pham Nuwen sat down, his gray eyes calm and untroubled. Maybe he did have something to be arrogant about! Ravna looked across at the two Skroderiders. "I'm sorry your cargo lost value."
Note
!V June 8, 1991 NOT "potted plant" -- I think okay, given the words
!V and dimensions you use in the first encounter
Most of Ravna's past contacts had been with Lesser Skroderiders, whose reflexes were only slightly augmented beyond their sessile heritage. Had these two even noticed the interruption? But Blueshell answered immediately, "Do not apologize. Ever since our arrival, those three have been complaining. Contract partners or not, I'm very tired of them." He lapsed into potted-plant mode.
Note
!ID ironic, Pham is both VSV's foil and Old One's -- and
! for almost the same purpose!
!IDEA The Mandatory-or-Forbidden Crowd: it's very hard to get any real
! progress past them
!IDEA USA variant of Mandatory-or-Forbidden Free-or-Forbidden
! Subsidized-or-Forbidden
After a moment, the other Rider -- Greenstalk, was it? -- spoke. "Besides, our commercial situation may not be a complete failure. I am sure the other thirds of the shipment went nowhere near Straumli Realm." That was the usual procedure anyway: each part of the shipment was carried by a different company, each taking a very different path. If the other thirds could be certified, the crew of the Out of Band might not come away empty-handed. "In -- in fact, there may be a way we can get full certification. True, we were at Straumli Main, but --"
Note
!V at worst (February 9, 1991 ) a small INCON: TUF
!V CHK INCON reference to Straumli Main here; is that just the transceiver
!V or is it the name of a habitation
!V June 8, 1991 CHK CHRON
!V June 12, 1991 usual time units problem: "hours" "sec" etc
!V June 12, 1991 by current CHRON it is now
!V 36 days since Straum fell from the Net
!V Straum is High Beyond, so I say time from there to Relay CHRON
!V really can't be more than 20d (could be as short as 10) CHRON
!V and then there is the time OOB has already been at Relay CHRON
!V that could be 3 to 14d CHRON
!V CHRON so I'll say 15d flight and 12d at Relay = 27d
!V So they left Straum 9d after it fell from Net
!V 27d = 2.332 Msec = 648h. 9d = .7776Msec = 216h = 1.286w
"How long ago did you leave?"
"Six hundred and fifty hours ago. About two hundred hours after they dropped off the Net."
It suddenly dawned on Ravna that she was talking to something like eyewitnesses. After thirty days, the Threats news was still dominated by the events at Straum. The consensus was that a Class Two perversion had been created -- even Vrinimi Org believed that. Yet it was still mainly guesswork.... And here she was talking to beings who had actually been there. "You don't think the Straumers created a perversion?"
Note
!PRB QU Too little indication of why such a takeover is a Very Bad Thing?
! JLC: Yes
!V Connected with the IMPER PRB of where Straumli Realm is
It was Blueshell who replied. "Sigh," he said. "Our certificants deny it, but I see a problem of conscience here. We did witness strangeness on Straum.... Have you ever encountered artificial immune systems? The ones that work in the Middle Beyond are more trouble than they're worth, so perhaps not. I noticed a real change in certain officers of the Crypto Authority right after the Straumli victory. It was as if they were suddenly part of a poorly calibrated automation, as if they were somebody's, um, fingers.... No one can doubt they were playing in the Transcend. They found something up there; a lost archive. But that is not the point." He stopped talking for a long moment; Ravna almost thought he was finished. "You see, just before leaving Straumli Main, we --"
Note
!ID SIDEBAR "first hand" myths from the Transcend
!QU Is there an INCON with Ravna wondering the same thing earlier in
! the story?
!ID In connection with Applied Theology: analogies v simulations
!IDEA Major problems in writing:
! The gimmick that would be already well-known
! Language/communication problems as they really occur
!QU PRB IMP Too talky. Should show these things. Sigh
! JLC: I think it's okay
!jrf |||||||||||||||||I agree; little way around it, except V12 <illeg>
But now Pham Nuwen was talking too. "That's something I've been wondering about. Everybody talks as though this Straumli Realm was doomed the moment they began research in the Transcend. Look. I've played with bugged software and strange weapons. I know you can get killed that way. But it looks like the Straumers were careful to put their lab far away. They were building something that could go very wrong, but apparently it was a previously-tried experiment -- like just about everything Up Here. They could stop the work any time it deviated from the records, right up to the end. So how could they screw up so bad?"
Note
!V ID Helper video should be a place where you can show some of the
!V horror
!CHK sp alienness
!jrf |||||||||ok
The question stopped the Skroderider in its tracks. You didn't need a doctorate in Applied Theology to know the answer. Even the damn Straumers should have known the answer. But given Pham Nuwen's background, it was a reasonable question. Ravna kept her mouth shut. The Skroderider's very alienness might be more convincing to Pham than another lecture from her.
Note
!FRAG. I'd like to get this idea in somewhere
! Blueshell seem to use the old honorific with all humans; in
! Triskweline, it sounded especially silly
Blueshell dithered for a moment, no doubt using his skrode to help assemble his arguments. When he finally spoke, he didn't seem irritated by the interruption. "I hear several misconceptions, My Lady Pham." He seemed to use the old Nyjoran honorific pretty indiscriminately. "Have you been into the archive at Relay?"
Pham said yes. Ravna guessed he'd never been past the beginners' front end.
"Then you know that an archive is a fundamentally vaster thing than the database on a conventional local net. For practical purposes the big ones can't even be duplicated. The major archives go back millions of years, have been maintained by hundreds of different races -- most now extinct or Transcended into Powers. Even the archive at Relay is a jumble, so huge that indexing systems are laid on top of indexing systems. Only in the Transcend could such a mass be well organized and even then only the Powers could understand it."
"So?"
"There are thousands of archives in the Beyond -- tens of thousands if you count the ones that have fallen into disrepair or dropped off the Net. Along with unending trivia, they contain important secrets and important lies. There are traps and snares." Millions of races played with the advice that filtered unsolicited across the Net. Tens of thousands had been burned thereby. Sometimes the damage was relatively minor, good inventions that weren't quite right for the target environment. Sometimes it was malicious, viruses that would jam a local net so thoroughly that a civilization must restart from scratch. Where-Are-They-Now and Threats carried stories of worse tragedies: planets kneedeep in replicant goo, races turned brainless by badly programmed immune systems.
Pham Nuwen was wearing his skeptical expression. "Just test the stuff at a safe remove. Be prepared for local disasters."
That would have brought most explanations to a stop. Ravna had to admire the Skroderider: he paused, retreated to still more elementary terms. "True, simple caution can prevent many disasters. And if your lab is in the Middle or Low Beyond, such caution is all that is really needed -- no matter how sophisticated the threat. But we all understand the nature of the Zones...." Ravna had virtually no feel for Rider body language, but she would have sworn that Blueshell was watching the barbarian expectantly, trying to gauge the depth of Pham's ignorance.
The human nodded impatiently.
Blueshell continued, "In the Transcend, truly sophisticated equipment can operate, devices substantially smarter than anyone down here. Of course, almost any economic or military competition can be won by the side with superior computing resources. Such can be had at the Top of the Beyond and in the Transcend. Races are always migrating there, hoping to build their utopias. But what do you do when your new creations may be smarter than you are? It happens that there are limitless possibilities for disaster, even if an existing Power does not cause harm. So there are unnumbered recipes for safely taking advantage of the Transcend. Of course they can't be effectively examined except in the Transcend. And run on devices of their own description, the recipes themselves become sentient."
Understanding was beginning to glimmer across Pham Nuwen's face.
Ravna leaned forward, caught the redhead's attention. "There are complex things in the archives. None of them is sentient, but some have the potential, if only some naive young race will believe their promises. We think that's what happened to Straumli Realm. They were tricked by documentation that claimed miracles, tricked into building a transcendent being, a Power -- but one that victimizes sophonts in the Beyond." She didn't mention how rare such perversion was. The Powers were variously malevolent, playful, indifferent -- but virtually all of them had better uses for their time than exterminating cockroaches in the wild.
Pham Nuwen rubbed his jaw thoughtfully. "Okay, I guess I see. But I get the feeling this is common knowledge. If it's this deadly, how did the Straumli bunch get taken in?"
Note
!jdv p114 c08 " bent " Ravna is thinking about what happened to
!jdv Straumli Relam and is talking to Pham
!jdv Should have more vividness of about what is the horror of
!jdv Blight
!V QU shorten because of redundance with the Prolog?
!June 12, 1991 FRAG: Damn, it was so much horror for so little reason.
"Bad luck and criminal incompetence," the words popped out of her with surprising force. She hadn't realized she was so bent by the Straumli thing; somewhere inside, her old feelings for Straumli Realm were still alive. "Look. Operations in the High Beyond and in the Transcend are dangerous. Civilizations up there don't last long, but there will always be people who try. Very few of the threats are actively evil. What happened to the Straumers.... They ran across this recipe advertising wondrous treasure. Quite possibly it had been lying around for millions of years, a little too risky for other folks to try. You're right, the Straumers knew the dangers." But it was a classic situation of balancing risks and choosing wrong. Perhaps a third of Applied Theology was about how to dance near the flame without getting incinerated. No one knew the details of the Straumli debacle, but she could guess them from a hundred similar cases:
"So they set up a base in the Transcend at this lost archive -- if that's what it was. They began implementing the schemes they found. You can be sure they spent most of their time watching it for signs of deception. No doubt the recipe was a series of more or less intelligible steps with a clear takeoff point. The early stages would involve computers and programs more effective than anything in the Beyond -- but apparently well-behaved."
"... Yeah. Even in the Slowness, a big program can be full of surprises."
Note
!PRB Nuts. This really ought to be done like D. G. Compton's
! As the Gentle Rain.
Ravna nodded. "And some of these would be near or beyond human complexity. Of course, the Straumers would know this and try to isolate their creations. But given a malign and clever design ... it should be no surprise if the devices leaked onto the lab's local net and distorted the information there. From then on, the Straumer's wouldn't have a chance. The most cautious staffers would be framed as incompetent. Phantom threats would be detected, emergency responses demanded. More sophisticated devices would be built, and with fewer safeguards. Conceivably, the humans were killed or rewritten before the Perversion even achieved transsapience."
Note
!PRB Someplace gotta have them getting drinks or whatever
There was a long silence. Pham Nuwen looked almost chastened. Yeah. There's a lot you don't know, Buddy. Think on what Old One might have planned for you.
Blueshell bent a tendril to taste a brown concoction that smelled like seaweed. "Well told, My Lady Ravna. But there is one difference in the present situation. It may be good fortune, and very important.... You see, just before leaving Straumli Main, we attended a beach party among the Lesser Riders. They had been little affected by events to that point; many hadn't even noticed the destruction of independence at Straum. With luck, they may be the last enslaved." His squeaky voice lowered an octave, trailing into silence. "Where was I? Yes, the party. There was one fellow there, a bit more lively than the average. Somewhere years past, he had bonded with a traveler in a Straumli news service. Now he was acting as a clandestine data drop, so humble that he wasn't even listed in that service's own net....
"Anyway, the researchers at the Straumli lab -- a few of them at least -- were not so incautious as you say. They suspected a perverse runaway, and were determined to sabotage it."
This was news, but -- "Doesn't look like they had much success, does it?"
"I am nodding agreement. They did not prevent it, but they did plan to escape the laboratory planet with two starships. And they did get word of their attempt into channels that ended with my acquaintance at the beach party. And here is the important part: At least one of these ships was to carry away some final elements of the Perversion's recipe -- before they were incorporated into the design."
"Surely there were backups --" began Pham Nuwen.
Note
!V June 8, 1991 CHK that you've presaged this daughter colony thing
^ V June 12, 1991 tojrf: middle of this paragraph redundant?
Ravna waved him silent. There had been enough grade-school explanations for one night. This was incredible. She'd been following the news about Straumli Realm as much as anyone. The Realm was the first High daughter colony of Sjandra Kei; it was horrifying to see it destroyed. But nowhere in Threats had there been even a rumor of this: the Perversion not whole? "If this is true, then the Straumers may have a chance. It all depends on the missing parts of the design document."
"Just so. And of course the humans realized this too. They planned to head straight for the Bottom of the Beyond, rendezvous there with their accomplices from Straum."
Which -- considering the ultimate magnitude of the disaster -- would never happen. Ravna leaned back, oblivious of Pham Nuwen for the first time in many hours. Most likely both ships had been destroyed by now. If not -- well, the Straumers had been at least half-smart, heading for the Bottom. If they had what Blueshell thought, the Perversion would be very interested in finding them. It was no wonder Blueshell and Greenstalk hadn't announced this on the news groups. "So you know where they were going to rendezvous?" she said softly.
Note
!V June 8, 1991 CHK back in c01 that the refugee ship had
! done an ad hoc
!V move. Probably also have to have some explanation for why Tines
!V world. (May be it wasn't Tines world; but the move was only a small
!V one.
"Approximately."
Greenstalk burred something at him.
"Not in ourselves," he said. "The coordinates are in the safeness at our ship. But there is more. The Straumers had a backup plan if the rendezvous failed. They intended to signal Relay with their ship's ultrawave."
Note
!V See c07 notes; I have dropped Fornax from this story
!PRB INCON if you stick with this statement, you can kiss Fornax goodbye
!V NO June 12, 1991 :
! ID Exponential scaling makes the OOB's later ability to talk to Jefri
! more plausible, but it also undermines the economic viability of
! major off-plane sites like Relay
!There exists a FRAG (probably in r2) that talks more about the nature
! of these antennas
^ V June 12, 1991 the ignorance alluded to here may be INCON with
^ V some later instances
"Now wait. Just how big is this ship?" Ravna was no physical-layer engineer, but she knew that Relay's backbone transceivers were actually swarms of antenna elements scattered across several light years, each element ten-thousand kilometers across.
Note
^ V INCON with OOB's antenna swarm (in 2 different ways)
^ V June 12, 1991 Probably not
Blueshell rolled forward and back, a quick gesture of agitation. "We don't know, but it's nothing exceptional. Unless you're looking precisely at it with a large antenna, you'd never detect it from here."
Greenstalk added, "We think that was part of their plan, though it is desperation on top of desperation. Since we came to Relay, we've been talking to the Org --"
"Discreetly! Quietly!" Blueshell put in abruptly.
"Yes. We've asked the Organization to listen for this ship. I'm afraid we haven't talked to the right people. No one seems to put much credence in us. After all, the story is ultimately from a Lesser Rider," Yeah. What could they know that was under a hundred years old? "What we're asking would normally be a great expense, and apparently prices are especially high right now."
Note
^ V I really think "newsgroup" should be one word in this novel.
^ V June 12, 1991 If time, might fix this (~8 instances, v 16
^ V instances of the "newsgroup" usage)
Ravna tried to curb her enthusiasm. If she had read this in a newsgroup, it would've been just one more interesting rumor. Why should she boggle just because she was getting it face-to-face? By the Powers, what irony. Hundreds of customers from the Top and the Transcend -- even Old One -- were saturating Relay's resources with their curiosity about the Straumli debacle. What if the answer had been sitting in front of them, suppressed by the very eagerness of their investigation? "Just who have you been talking to? Never mind, never mind." Maybe she should just go to Grondr 'Kalir with the story. "I think you should know that I am a --" very minor! "-- employee of the Vrinimi Organization. I may be able to help."
Note
!PRB Gotta make it clear someplace that the certificants were not in
! on the secret of the refugee ship -- I think I've implied this at
! the end of this scene SOLN?
!PRB Somewhere around here should say something to make it less
! improbable that there were children at the Lab. For instance, it
! might have been strongly isolated and for a long time.
She had expected some surprise at this sudden good luck. Instead there was a pause. Apparently Blueshell had lost his place in the conversation. Finally Greenstalk spoke. "I am blushing.... You see, we knew that. Blueshell looked you up in the employees' directory; you are the only human in the Org. You're not in Customer Contact, but we thought that if we chanced upon you, so to speak, you might give us a kindly hearing."
Note
!QU "My Lady Ravna" instead of "My Lady Bergsndot"
Blueshell's tendrils rustled together sharply. Irritation? Or had he finally caught up to the conversation? "Yes. Well, since we are all being so frank, I suppose we should confess that this might even benefit us. If the refugee ship can prove that the Perversion is not a full Class Two, then perhaps we can convince our buyers that our cargo has not been compromised. If they only knew, my certificant friends would be groveling at your feet, my lady Ravna."
Note
^ ?INCON with earlier statement about sound shielding between tables
^ ?PRB with 6'th sentence
!JLC What is Ravna's age? June 12, 1991 GUESS 30y
They stayed at The Wandering Company until well past midnight. Business picked up at the circadian peak of some of the new arrivals. Floor and table shows were raucous all around. Pham's eyes flickered this way and that, taking it all in. But above all he seemed fascinated by Blueshell and Greenstalk. The two were starkly nonhuman, in some ways even strange as aliens go. Skroderiders were one of the very few races that had achieved long- term stability in the Beyond. Speciation had long ago occurred, varieties heading outward or becoming extinct. And still there were some who matched their ancient skrodes, a unique balance of outlook and machine interface that was more than a billion years old. But Blueshell and Greenstalk were also traders with much of the outlook that Pham Nuwen had known in the Slowness. And though Pham acted as ignorant as ever, there was new diplomacy in him. Or maybe the awesomeness of the Beyond was finally getting through his thick skull. He couldn't have asked for better drinking buddies. As a race, the Skroderiders preferred lazy reminiscence to almost any activity. Once delivered of their critical message, the two were quite content to talk of their life in the Beyond, to explain things in whatever detail the barbarian could wish. The razor-jawed certificants stayed well lost.
Note
!QU Things like Skroderiders in previous sf literature?
!jrf2 Like them in what way?
!V CHK INCON whether you have used gender previous in connection with
!V Blueshell and Greenstalk -- yes, you do, but I don't think it's too
!V bad
!V June 8, 1991 CHK for repetition with the Lost Time 1 stuff:
Ravna got a mild buzz on, and watched the three talk shop. She smiled to herself. In a way, she was the outsider now, the person who had never done. Blueshell and Greenstalk had been all over, and some of their stories sounded wild even to her. Ravna had a theory (not that widely accepted, actually) that where beings have a common fluency, little else matters. Two of these three might be mistaken for potted trees on hotcarts, and the third was unlike any human in her life. Their fluency was in an artificial language, and two of the "voices" were squawky raspings. Yet ... after a few minutes' listening, their personalities seemed to float in her mind's eye, more interesting than many of her school chums, but not that different. The two Skroderiders were mates. She hadn't thought that could count for much; among Riders, sex amounted to scarcely more than being next-door neighbors at the right time of year. Yet there was deep affection here. Greenstalk especially seemed a loving personality. She (he?) was shy yet stubborn, with a kind of honesty that might be a major handicap in a trader. Blueshell made up for that failing. He (she?) could be glib and talkative, quite capable of maneuvering things his way. Underneath, Ravna glimpsed a compulsive personality, uncomfortable with his own sneakiness, ultimately grateful when Greenstalk reined him in.
And what of Pham Nuwen? Yes, what's the inner being you see there? In an odd way, he was more of a mystery. The arrogant boob of this afternoon seemed to be mostly invisible tonight. Maybe it had been a cover for insecurity. The fellow had been born in a male-dominated culture, virtually the opposite of the matriarchy that all Beyonder humanity descended from. Underneath the arrogance, a very nice person might be living. Then there was the way he had faced down razor-jaw. And the way he was drawing out the Skroderiders. It occurred to Ravna that after a lifetime of reading romantic fiction, she had run into her first hero.
Note
!CHKd 1000km from surface to Docks?
It was after 02:30 when they left The Wandering Company. The sun would be rising across the bow horizon in less than five hours. The two Skroderiders came outside to see them off. Blueshell had switched back to Samnorsk to regale Ravna with a story of his last visit to Sjandra Kei -- and remind her to ask about the refugee ship.
Note
^ V June 8, 1991 Lots of AWK in next two paragraphs
The Skroderiders dwindled beneath them as Ravna and Pham rose into the thinning air and headed toward the residential towers.
The two humans didn't say anything for a couple of minutes. It was even possible that Pham Nuwen was impressed by the view. They were passing over gaps in the brightly lit Docks, places where they could see through the parks and concourses to the surface of Groundside a thousand kilometers below. The clouds there were whorls of dark on dark.
Ravna's residence was at the outer edge of the Docks. Here the air fountains were of no use; her apartment tower rose into frank vacuum. They glided down to her balcony, trading their suits' atmosphere for the apartment's. Ravna's mouth was leading a life of its own, explaining how the residence was what she'd been assigned when she worked at the archive, that it is was nothing compared to her new office. Pham Nuwen nodded, quiet-faced. There were none of the smart remarks of their earlier tours.
Note
!QU INCON? Is it too implausible they didn't remark the Galaxy when they
! were on the skiff?
She babbled on, and then they were inside and.... She shut up, and they just looked at each other. In a way, she'd wanted this clown ever since Grondr's silly animation. But it wasn't till this evening at The Wandering Company that she'd felt right about bringing him home with her. "Well, I, uh ..." So. Ravna, the ravening princess. Where is your glib tongue now?
She settled for reaching out, putting her hand on his. Pham Nuwen smiled back, shy too, by the Powers! "I think you have a nice place," he said.
"I've decorated it Techno-Primitive. Being stuck at the edge of the Docks has its points: The natural view isn't messed up by city lights. Here, I'll show you." She doused the lights and pulled the curtains aside. The window was a natural transparency, looking out from the edge of the Docks. The view tonight should be terrific. On the ride from The Company, the sky had been awfully dark. The in-system factories must be off line or hidden behind Groundside. Even ship traffic seemed sparse.
Note
!PRB probably should have them both move up to the window
!V June 8, 1991 Conflicts with the fact that they were just outside.
She went back to stand by Pham. The window was a vague rectangle across her vision. "You have to wait a minute for your eyes to adjust. There's no amplification at all." The curve of Groundside was clear now, clouds with occasional pricks of light. She slipped her arm across his back, and after a moment felt his across her shoulders.
She'd guessed right: tonight, the Galaxy owned the sky. It was a sight that Vrinimi old hands happily ignored. For Ravna, it was the most beautiful thing about Relay. Without enhancement, the light was faint. Twenty thousand light-years is a long, long way. At first there was just a suggestion of mist, and an occasional star. As her eyes adapted, the mist took shape, curving arcs, some places brighter, some dimmer. A minute more and ... there were knots in the mist ... there were streaks of utter black that separated the curving arms ... complexity on complexity, twisting toward the pale hub that was the Core. Maelstrom. Whirlpool. Frozen, still, across half the sky.
She heard Pham's breath catch in his throat. He said something, sing-song syllables that could not have been Trisk, and certainly not Samnorsk. "All my life I lived in a tiny clump of that. And I thought I was a master of space. I never dreamed to stand and see the whole blessed thing at once." His hand tightened on her shoulder, then gentled, stroking her neck. "And no matter how long we watch, will we see any sign of the Zones?"
Note
!TITLE The Zones of Thought -- more a series title actually, or the
! name of this whole fictional universe
!TITLE How about Among the Tines, Book I of The Zones of Thought
!V <longev> see notes in c07
!V June 8, 1991 do you really mean "quite complete"?
She shook her head slowly. "But they're easily imagined." She gestured with her free hand. In the large, the Zones of Thought followed the mass distribution of the Galaxy: The Mindless Depths extending down to the soft glow of the galactic Core. Farther out, the Great Slowness, where humankind had been born, where ultralight could not exist and civilizations lived and died unknowing and unknown. And the Beyond, the stars about four-fifths out from the center, extending well off-plane to include places like Relay. The Known Net had existed in some form for billions of years in the Beyond. It was not a civilization; few civilizations lasted longer than a million years. But the records of the past were quite complete. Sometimes they were intelligible. More often, reading them involved translations of translations of translations, passed down from one defunct race to another with no one to corroborate -- worse than any multihop net message could ever be. Yet some things were quite clear: There had always been the Zones of Thought, though perhaps they were slightly inward-moved now. There had always been wars and peace, and races upwelling from the Great Slowness, and thousands of little empires. There had always been races moving into the Transcend, to become the Powers ... or their prey.
Note
!PRB somewhere I want to get in the possibility of just a good copy
! being made of Pham and then having him returned. QU doesn't really
! seem like there is space to do it here? -- never mind June 12, 1991
!PROwrite, probably as a news item. Analysis of Old One, in terms of
! close coupling and size -- NÆH June 12, 1991
! Instead this might be done when Ravna is trying to get Pham out of
! his funk, on the OOB
!TITLE (or part of a speculative news item): The Slow Zone, cradle of
! thought
!Chapter TITLE "Gray Code" (though I have no idea what its significance
! could be in this context)
"And the Transcend?" Pham said. "Is that just the far dark?" The dark between the galaxies.
Ravna laughed softly. "It includes all that but ... see the outer reaches of the spirals. They're in the Transcend." Most everything farther than forty thousand light-years from the galactic center was.
Pham Nuwen was silent for a long moment. She felt a tiny shiver pass through him. "After talking to the wheelies, I -- I think I understand more of what you were warning me about. There's a lot of things I don't know, things that could kill me ... or worse."
Note
!V IMP note in this paragraph mention of sapient devices
!V June 12, 1991 minor: Might try to use "wheelies" elswhere, though
!V actually it looks like an ad hocism on Pham's part, to be dropped
!V once he is really familiar with the Riders
Common sense triumphs at last. "True," she said quietly. "But it's not just you, or the brief time you've been here. You could study your whole life, and not know. How long must a fish study to understand human motivation? It's not a good analogy, but it's the only safe one; we are like dumb animals to the Powers of the Transcend. Think of all the different things people do to animals -- ingenious, sadistic, charitable, genocidal -- each has a million elaborations in the Transcend. The Zones are a natural protection; without them, human-equivalent intelligence would probably not exist." She waved at the misty star swarms. "The Beyond and below are like a deep of ocean, and we the creatures that swim in the abyss. We're so far down that the beings on the surface -- superior though they are -- can't effectively reach us. Oh, they fish, and they sometimes blight the upper levels with poisons we don't even understand. But the abyss remains a relatively safe place." She paused. There was more to the analogy. "And just as with an ocean, there is a constant drift of flotsam from the top. There are things that can only be made at the Top, that need close-to-sentient factories -- but which can still work down here. Blueshell mentioned some of those when he was talking to you: the agrav fabrics, the sapient devices. Such things are the greatest physical wealth of the Beyond, since we can't make them. And getting them is a deadly risky endeavor."
Pham turned toward her, away from window and the stars. "So there are always 'fish' edging close to the surface." For an instant she thought she had lost him, that he was caught by the romance of the Transcendent deathwish. "Little fish risking everything for a piece of godhood ... and not knowing heaven from hell, even when they find it." She felt him shiver and then his arms were around her. She tilted her head up and found his lips waiting.
Note
!jrf A terrible "pick-up" line (middle of paragraph) <? -- V>
It had been two years since Ravna Bergsndot left Sjandra Kei. In some ways the time had gone fast. Just now her body was telling her what a long, long time it had really been. Every touch was so vivid, waking desires carefully suppressed. Suddenly her skin was tingling all over. It took marvelous restraint to undress without tearing anything.
Ravna was out of practice. And of course she had nothing recent to compare to.... But Pham Nuwen was very, very good.
-=*=-
Note
^
^ ^ls 1 deleted for now January 26, 1991
^ WARNING. Sidebars should be 1space indented to avoid autoindent problems
^ Even then it's wise to work with them with autoindent turned off
^ |
^ V
Crypto: 0
Note
^ Syntax: 43
As received by: Transceiver Relay01 at Relay
Language path: Acquileron->Triskweline, SjK:Relay units
Note
!JLC neat name!
From: Net Administrator for Transceiver Windsong at Debley Down
Subject: Complaints about Relay, a suggestion
Summary: It's getting worse; try us instead
Key phrases: communications problems, Relay unreliability, Transcend
Distribution: Communication Costs Special Interest Group, Motley Hatch Administration Group, Transceiver Relay01 at Relay, Transceiver Not-for-Long at Shortstop,
Follow-ups to: Windsong Expansion Interest Group
Note
!CHK consistency of times
^ V June 12, 1991 minor: wish it didn't look so sextigesimal
Date: 07:21:21 Docks Time, 36/09 of Org year 52089
Note
^ 07:21:29 Docks Time, 27/09 of Org year 52089
^ (Clock Slop < 15 seconds)
Text of message:
Note
^ [light gloss]:
Note
^ V INCON rethink this number along with other traffic stats
^ V elsewhere in the story
^ V June 12, 1991 Nuts. The times below may be too pointed (pointing
^ V the reader unnecessarily at the threat of Death Cubes)
!V April 14, 1991 I think 500h and 7h are okay
!V June 12, 1991 implication between this time and the Straum
!V posting in c06 that the Relay "day" is 35/36 as long as mine
!V
During the last five hundred hours, Comm Costs shows 9,834 transceiver-layer congestion complaints against the Vrinimi operation at Relay. Each of these complaints involves services to tens of thousand of planets. Vrinimi has promised again and again that the congestion is a purely temporary increase of Transcendent usage.
As Relay's chief competitor in this region, we of Windsong have benefited modestly from the overflow; however, until now we thought it inappropriate to propose a coordinated response to the problem.
Note
^ CHK these numbers and percentages (and in comparison with the number
^ of available backbone transceivers)
The events of the last seven hours compel us to change this policy. Those reading this item already know about the incident; most of you are the victims of it. Beginning at [00:00:27 Docks Time], Vrinimi Org began taking transceivers off-line, an unscheduled outage. R01 went out at 00:00:27, R02 at 02:50:32, R03 and R04 at 03:12:01. Vrinimi stated that a Transcendent customer was urgently requesting bandwidth. (R00 had been previously dedicated to that Power's use.) The customer required use of both up- and down-link bandwidth. By the Org's own admission, the unscheduled usage exceeded sixty percent of their entire capacity. Note that the excesses of the preceding five hundred hours -- excesses which caused entirely justified complaint -- were never more than five percent of Org capacity.
Friends, we of Windsong are in the long-haul communication business. We know how difficult it is to maintain transceiver elements that mass as much as a planet. We know that hard contract commitments simply cannot be made by suppliers in our line of work. But at the same time, the behavior of Vrinimi Org is unacceptable. It's true that in the last three hours the Org has returned R01 through R04 to general service, and promised to pass on the Power's surpayment to all those who were "inconvenienced". But only Vrinimi knows how large these surpayments really are. And no one (not even Vrinimi!) knows whether this is the end of the outages.
What is to Vrinimi a sudden, incredible cash glut, is to the rest of you an unaccountable disaster.
Therefore Windsong at Debley Down is considering a major -- and permanent -- expansion of our service: the construction of five additional backbone transceivers. Obviously this will be immensely expensive. Transceivers are never cheap, and Debley Down does not have quite the geometry enjoyed by Relay. We expect the cost must be amortized over many decades of good business. We can't undertake it without clear customer commitment. In order to determine this demand, and to ensure that we build what is really needed, we are creating a temporary newsgroup, Windsong Expansion Interest Group, moderated and archived at Windsong. Send/Receive charges to transceiver-layer customers on this group will be only ten percent our usual. We urge you, our transceiver-layer customers, to use this service to talk to each other, to decide what you can safely expect from Vrinimi Org in the future and how you feel about our proposals.
Note
!ID I bet it hurt to relay this message!
We are waiting to hear from you.
Note
!V June 12, 1991 Quite possibly the biggest Peep of all time