Note

!V if you move messages out of the preceding chapter, you  may want 
!V to combine this chapter with previous 
!V No. The sizes suggest merging (2808+1284w), but the change in
!V mood is chapter-great

CHAPTER 21

Note

!V PRB INCON sudden change in Ravna's vocabulary ("strong" language);
!V This strong version appears to hold throughout the rest of the novel;
!V Not sure which way to go, but should make consistent.
!V I say go with the softer style of the first 
!V part of the novel [DONE in this chapter, I think] 

Ravna knew that -- under his bluster -- Blueshell was at least as much a worrier as she. Worse, he was a nitpicker. The next time Ravna asked him about their progress, he retreated into technicalities.

Finally Ravna broke in, "Look. The kid is sitting on something that just might blow the Blight sky high, and all he has are bows and arrows. How the long will it be till we get down there, Blueshell?"

Note

!PRB Not quite plausible, the comment about instincts dating from 
! after space travel  
!V Usage: stick-patches, stickem patches 

Blueshell rolled nervously back and forth across the ceiling. The Skroderiders had reaction jets; they could maneuver in free fall more adroitly than most humans. Instead they used stick-patches, and rolled around on the walls. In a way, it was kind of cute. Just now, it was irritating.

Note

!V CHRON CHK how long have they been underway? Should he have a beard? 
!V CHRON 16Jan91 about a week or two?

At least they could talk; she glanced across the bridge to where Pham Nuwen sat facing the bridge's main display. As usual, all his attention was fixed on the slowly moving stars. He was unshaven, his reddish beard bright on his skin; his long hair floated snarled and uncombed. Physically he was cured of his injuries. Ship's surgeon had even replaced the muscle mass that Old One's communication equipment had usurped. Pham could dress and feed himself now, but he still lived in a private dreamworld.

Note

!            Somewhere in there 
!  had to be a person. Every day she talked to him, trying to bring that 
!       person back. Never yet was there a reply. 

The two riders twittered at each other. It was Greenstalk who finally answered her question: "Truly, we're not sure how long. The quality of the Beyond changes as we descend. Each jump is taking us a fraction longer than the one before."

"I know that. We're moving toward the Slow Zone. But the ship is designed for that; it should be an easy matter to extrapolate the slowing."

Blueshell extended a tendril from ceiling to floor. He diddled with the matte corrugations for a second and then his voder made a sound of human embarrassment. "Ordinarily you would be correct, my lady Ravna. But this is a special case.... For one thing, it appears that the zones themselves are in flux."

"What?"

Note

!I guess okay to have riders talked academically, but limit it to them. 
!V Except for the My Lady stuff, don't bother to make the rest archaic: 
!You may want to have them equipped with voders programmed for an 
!   an archaic dialect of Trisk. Note that this would be very old, 
!   since Trisk is a trade language, and rationalized. 

"It's not that unheard of. Small shifts are going on all the time. That's a major purpose for bottom-lugger ships: to track the changes. We're having the bad luck to run through the middle of the uncertainty."

Actually, Ravna had known that interface turbulence was high at the Bottom below here. She just didn't think of it in grandiose terms like "zone shifting"; she also hadn't realized it was serious enough to affect them yet.

Note

!V 13Jun91  mARK
!V IMP INCON yecco. Kinda corollary to the machine sapience problem: 
!V why can't it be argued that stuff in higher zones can be designed 
!V to work (say) in the Bottom as long as it's not transhuman? 
!V Actually, that is reasonable. However, for a local civilization to
!V   build AI's from scratch is not.
!V NÆH:      
!When they finally land some place, you might want to make 
! particular comments about the effects of the interface 
! "storm" on the local civilization.                             
!For now, I'm not trying to incorporate "seconds" stuff in normal 
! speech. This should be considered for next draft.  -- NÆH 
! 
!PRB It's implausible that Ravna would have remained so ignorant of the
! problems. Maybe have some of of them are very recent vintage 
!V YES: 
!V CHRON or maybe this means that I should time this scene as being 
!V early in the flight -- which is consistent with some other things 
!BKG Olden memories could be the rider term for memories acquired by the
! natural means               
! 
!BKG Maybe when they're real upset they hover in zero gee with their 
! jets hissing every so often 
!Probably should try to presage this behavior of Blueshell. Is it 
! indicative of any particular human emotion? This might also be 
! indicative of personality differences between the two Riders 
!V CHK INCON rationalize stated speeds and distances 
!V June 13, 1991 I'd like to assume they are at the disk plane. So
!V   they now have 6100 ly to go (as little as 5Kly if you want to
!V   assume that they've arrived at the disk so as to make a radial
!V   approach -- something I'm not assuming as of June 13, 1991 )
!V   If that were to take 200d, we'd be looking at an average
!V   speed of 30.5 ly/d ( 1.27 ly/hr )
!V   I believe that under the original assumption it was 15d to disk and
!V   another 15d to Tines world. If linear degrade (!), they'd be going
!V   about 4 ly/hr on arrival (though that assumes they knew they'd
!V   be at 30 ly/hr when they reached the disk; 
!V   Guess you better invoke nonlinearities.

"Okay. How bad can it get then? How much can it slow us?"

"Oh my." Blueshell rolled to the far wall; he was standing on starry sky now. "It would be nice to be a Low Skroderider. So many problems my high calling brings me. I wish I could be deep in surf right now, thinking on olden memories." Of other days in the surf.

Greenstalk carried on for him: "It's not 'the tide, how high can it rise?' It's 'this storm, how bad can it get?' Right now it is worse than anything in this region during the last thousand years. However, we have been following the local news; most agree that the storm has peaked. If our other problem gets no worse, we should arrive in about one hundred and twenty days."

Note

!CHK INCON CHRON 120 days. I think this is approximately correct.
!CHAR IMP get consistent characterizations of Blueshell and Greenstalk 
! One should be more stern, conservative, pessimistic -- Blueshell? 
!V CHK INCON damaged spine count  2 were unrepairable at the end of 
!V c17   

Our other problem. Ravna drifted to the center of the bridge and strapped onto a saddle. "You're talking about the damage we took getting out of Relay. The ultradrive spines, right? How are they holding up?"

"Quite well, apparently. We've not tried to jump faster than eighty percent of design max. On the other hand, we lack good diagnostics. It's conceivable that serious degradation might happen rather suddenly."

Note

!NÆH: V ID "boy at the bottom" in place of "boy in the well"? 

"Conceivable, but unlikely," put in Greenstalk.

Note

!
! There must be some way we can protect 
! him even before we arrive.
!

Ravna nodded. Considering all their other problems, there was no point in contemplating possibilities beyond their control. Back on Relay, this had looked like a thirty or forty day trip. Now ... the boy in the well might have to be brave for a long time yet, no matter how much she wished otherwise. Hmm. Time for Plan B then. Time for what someone like Pham Nuwen might suggest. She pushed off the floor and settled by Greenstalk. "Okay, so the best we can plan on is one hundred and twenty days. If the Zone surge gets worse or if we have to get repairs..." Get repairs where? That might be only a delay, not an impossibility. The rebuilt OOB was supposed to be to repairable even in the Low Beyond. "Maybe even two hundred days." She glanced at Blueshell, but he didn't interrupt with his usual amendments and qualifications. "You've both read the messages we're getting from the boy. He says the locals are going to be overrun, probably in less than one hundred days. Somehow, we have to help him ... before we actually arrive there."

Greenstalk rattled her fronds in a way Ravna took for puzzlement.

She looked across the deck at Pham, and raised her voice a trifle. Hey you, you should be an expert on this! "You Skroderiders may not recognize it, but this is a problem that's been seen a million times in the Slow Zone: civilizations are separated by years -- centuries -- of travel time. They fall into dark ages. They become just as primitive as the pack creatures, these 'Tines'. Then they get visited from outside. In a short time, they have technology back again." Pham's head did not turn; he just looked out across the starscape.

Note

!V April 20, 1991 I think this is much improved, but the Jefri dialog,
!V   and the preceding chapter's end, and this should probably be
!V   reread to see if it isn't too much of an idiot plot.
!V April 20, 1991 casual reading just now doesn't look too bad.

The Skroderiders rattled at each other, then:

"But how can that help us? Doesn't rebuilding a civilization take dozens of years?"

"And besides, there's nothing to rebuild on the Tines' world. According to the child, this is a race without antecedents. How long does it take to found a civilization?"

Ravna waved a hand at the objections. Don't stop me, I'm on a roll. "That's not the point. We are in communication with them. We have a good general library on board. Original inventors don't know where they're going; they're groping in the dark. Even the archaeologist/engineers of Nyjora had to reinvent much. But we know everything about making airplanes and such; we know hundreds of ways of going at it." Now faced with necessity, Ravna was suddenly sure they could do it. "We can study all the development paths, eliminate the dead ends. Even more, we can find the quickest way to go from medieval to specific inventions, things that can beat whatever barbarians are attacking Jefri's friends."

Ravna's speech tumbled to a stop. She stared, grinning, first at Greenstalk and then at Blueshell. But a silent Skroderider is one of the universe's more impassive audiences. It was hard even to tell if they were looking at her. After a moment Greenstalk said, "Yes, I see. And rediscovery being so common in the Slow Zone, most of this may already be worked out in the ship's library."

That's when it happened: Pham turned from the window. He looked across the deck at Ravna and the Riders. For the first time since Relay, he spoke. Even more, the words weren't nonsense, though it took her a moment to understand. "Guns and radios," he said.

"Ah ... yes." She looked back at him. Think of something to make him say more. "Why those in particular?"

Pham Nuwen shrugged. "It worked on Canberra."

Then damn Blueshell started talking, something about doing a library search. Pham stared at them for moment, his face expressionless. He turned back to watch the stars, and the moment was lost.

Note

!CHAR what's the name of Pham Nuwen's home world? 
!What name should Amdijefri use for Tines? Same question for Ravna. 
!jrf              |||||||||Amdi and Jefri?? 
!V              Yes. This is a Tinish usage 
!V Tines 
!CHAR Skroderiders reproduction is a little like octopi. There is an 
! immature, motile stage