The Countermeasure’s writhing had slowed. Its light flickered bright and then out. Bright and then out. She heard Pham’s breath gasp with every darkness. Countermeasure, a savior that was going to kill a million civilizations. And was killing the man who had triggered it.
Almost unthinking, she dodged past the thing, reaching for Pham. But razors on razors blocked her, raking her arms.
Pham was looking up at her. He was trying to say something more.
Then the light went out for a final time. From the darkness all around came a hissing sound and a growing, bitter smell that Ravna would never forget.
For Pham Nuwen, there was no pain. The last minutes of his life were beyond any description that might be rendered in the Slowness or even in the Beyond.
So try metaphor and simile: It was like… it was like… Pham stood with Old One on a vast and empty beach. Ravna and Tines were tiny creatures at their feet. Planets and stars were the grains of sand. And the sea had drawn briefly back, letting the brightness of thought reach here where before had been darkness. The Transcendence would be brief. At the horizon, the drawn-back sea was building, a dark wall higher than any mountain, rushing back upon them. He looked up at the enormity of it. Pham and godshatter and Countermeasure would not survive that submergence, not even separately. They had triggered catastrophe beyond mind, a vast section of the Galaxy plunged into Slowness, as deep as Old Earth itself, and as permanent.
Arne and Sjana and Straumers and Old One were avenged… and Countermeasure was complete.
And as for Pham Nuwen? A tool made, and used, and now to be discarded. A man who never was.
The surge was upon him then, plunging depths. Down from the Transcendent light. Outside, the Tines’ world sun would be shining bright once more, but inside Pham’s mind everything was closing down, senses returning to what eyes can see and ears can hear. He felt Countermeasure slough toward nonexistence, its task done without ever a conscious thought. Old One’s ghost hung on for a little longer, huddling and retreating as thought’s potential ebbed. But it let Pham’s awareness be. For once it did not push him aside. For once it was gentle, brushing at the surface of Pham’s mind, as a human might pet a loyal dog.
More a brave wolf, you are, Pham Nuwen. There were only seconds left before they were fully in the depths, where the merged bodies of Countermeasure and Pham Nuwen would die forever and all thought cease. Memories shifted. The ghost of Old One stepped aside, revealing certainties it had hidden all along. Yes, I built you from several bodies in the junkyard by Relay. But there was only one mind and one set of memories that I could revive. A strong, brave wolf—so strong I could never control you without first casting you into doubt…
Somewhere barriers slipped aside, the final failing of Old One’s control, or His final gift. It did not matter which now, for whatever the ghost said, the truth was obvious to Pham Nuwen and he would not be denied:
Canberra, Cindi, the centuries avoyaging with Qeng Ho, the final flight of the Wild Goose. It was all real.
He looked up at Ravna. She had done so much. She had put up with so much. And even disbelieving, she had loved. It’s okay. It’s okay. He tried to reach out to her, to tell her. Oh, Ravna, I am real!
Then the full weight of the depths was upon him, and he knew no more.
There was more pounding on the door. She heard Pilgrim walk to the hatch. A crack of light shone in. Ravna heard Jefri’s piping voice: “The sun is back! The sun is back!… Hei, why is it so dark in here?”
Pilgrim: “The artifact—the thing Pham was helping—its light went out.”
“Geez, you mean you left off the main lights?” The hatch slid all the way open, and the boy’s head, along with several puppies’, was silhouetted against the torchlight beyond. He scrambled over the lip of the hatch. The girl was right behind him. “The control is right over here… see?”
And soft white light shone on the curving walls. All was ordinary and human, except… Jefri stood very still, his eyes wide, his hand over his mouth. He turned to hold onto his sister. “What is it? What is it?” his voice said from the opened hatch.
Now Ravna wished she could not see. She dropped back to her knees. “Pham?” she said softly, knowing there would be no answer. What was left of Pham Nuwen lay amid the Countermeasure. The artifact didn’t glow any more. Its tortuous boundaries were blunted and dark. More than anything it looked like rotted wood… but wood that embraced and impaled the man who lay with it. There was no blood, and no charring. Where the artifact had pierced Pham there was an ashy stain, and the flesh and the thing seemed to merge.
Pilgrim was close around her, his noses almost touching the still form. The bitter smell still hung in the air. It was the smell of death, but not the simple rotting of flesh; what had died here was flesh and something else.
She glanced at her wrist. The display had simplified to a few alphanumeric lines. No ultradrives could be detected. OOB status showed problems with attitude control. They were deep in the Slow Zone, out of reach of all help, out of reach of the Blight’s fleet. She looked into Pham’s face. “You did it, Pham. You really did it,” she said the words softly, to herself.
The arches and loops of Countermeasure were a fragile, brittle thing now. The body of Pham Nuwen was part of that. How could they break those arches without breaking…? Pilgrim and Johanna gently urged Ravna out of the cargo hold. She didn’t remember much of the next few minutes, of them bringing out the body. Blueshell and Pham, both gone beyond all retrieval.
They left her after a while. There was no lack of compassion, but disaster and strangeness and emergency were in too abundant a supply. There were the wounded. There was the possibility of counterattack. There was great confusion, and a desperate need for order. It made scarcely any impression on her. She was at the end of her long desperate run, at the end of all her energy.
Ravna must have sat by the ramp for much of the afternoon, so deep in loss as not to think, scarcely aware of the sea song that Greenstalk shared with her through the dataset. Eventually she realized she was not alone. Besides Greenstalk’s comfort… sometime earlier, the little boy had returned. He sat beside her, and around them all the puppies, all silent.
EPILOGS
Peace had come to what had once been Flenser’s Domain. At least there was no sign of belligerent forces. Whoever had pulled them back had done it very cleverly. As the days passed, local peasantry showed themselves. Where the people weren’t simply dazed, they seemed glad to be rid of the old regime. Life picked up in the farmlands, peasants doing their best to recover from the worst fire season of recent memory, compounded by the most fighting the region had ever known.
The Queen had sent messengers south to report on the victory, but she seemed in no rush to return to her city. Her troops helped with some of the farm work, and did their best not to be a burden on the locals. But they also scouted through the castle on Starship Hill, and the huge old castle on Hidden Island. Down there were all the horrors that had been whispered about over the years. But still there was no sign of the forces that had escaped. The locals were eager with their own stories, and most were ominously credible: That before Flenser had undertaken his attempt upon the Republic, he had created redoubts further north. There had been reserves there - though some thought that Steel had long since used them. Peasants from the northern valley had seen the Flenserist troops retreating. Some said they had seen Flenser himself—or at least a pack wearing the colors of a lord. Even the locals did not believe all the stories, the ones about Flenser being here and there, singletons separated by kilometers, coordinating the pull out.
Ravna and the Queen had reason to believe the story, but not the foolhardiness to check it out. Woodcarver’s expeditionary force was not a large one, and the forests and valleys stretched on for more than one hundred kilometers to where the Icefangs curved west to meet the sea. That territory was unknown to Woodcarver. If Flenser had been preparing it for decades—as was that pack’s normal method of operation—there would be deadly surprises, even for a large army hunting just a few dozens of partisans. Let Flenser be, and hope that his redoubts had been gutted by Lord Steel.
