living human.” The picture flickered again, and Ravna caught her breath. In the medical animation, the parts floated into an orderly arrangement. There was a complete body there, torn up a little in the belly. Pieces came together, and… this was no “she'. He floated whole and naked, as if in sleep. Ravna had no doubt of his humanity, but all humankind in the Beyond was descended from Nyjoran stock. This fellow had none of that heritage. The skin was smoky gray, not brown. The hair was bright reddish brown, a color she had only seen in pre-Nyjoran histories. The bones of the face were subtly different from modern humans. The small differences were more jarring than the outright alienness of her coworkers.
Now the figure was clothed. Under other circumstances, Ravna would have smiled. Grondr ’Kalir had picked an absurd costume, something from the Nyjoran era. The figure bore a sword and slug gun… A sleeping prince from the Age of Princesses.
“Behold the Ur-human,” said Grondr.
CHAPTER 7
“Relay” is a common place-name. It has meaning in almost any environment. Like Newtown and Newhome, it occurs over and over when people move or colonize or participate in a communication net. You could travel a billion light-years or a billion years and still find such names among folk of natural intelligence.
But in the current era there was one instance of “Relay” known above all others. That instance appeared in the routing list of two percent of all traffic across the Known Net. Twenty thousand light-years off the galactic plane, Relay had an unobstructed line of sight on thirty percent of the Beyond, including many star systems right at the bottom, where starships can make only one light-year per day. A few metal-bearing solar systems were equally well-placed, and there was competition. But where other civilizations lost interest, or colonized into the Transcend, or died in apocalypse, Vrinimi Organization lasted. After fifty thousand years, there were several races of the original Org in its membership. None of those were still leaders—yet the original viewpoint and policies remained. Position and durability: Relay was now the main intermediate to the Magellanics, and one of the few sites with any sort of link to the Beyond in Sculptor.
At Sjandra Kei, Relay’s reputation had been fabulous. In her two years of ’prenticeship, Ravna had come to realize that the truth exceeded the reputation. Relay was in Middle Beyond; the Organization’s only export was the relay function and access to the local archive. Yet they imported the finest biologicals and processing equipment from the High Beyond. The Relay Docks were an extravagance that only the absolutely rich could indulge. They stretched a thousand kilometers: bays, repair holds, transhipment centers, parks, and playgrounds. Even at Sjandra Kei there were habitats far larger. But the Docks were in no orbit. They floated a thousand kilometers above Groundside on the largest agrav frame Ravna had ever seen. At Sjandra Kei the annual income of an academician might pay for a square meter of agrav fabric—junk that might not last a year. Here there were millions of hectares of the stuff, supporting billions of tonnes. Just replacements for dead fabric required more High Beyond commerce than most star clusters could command.
And now I have my own office here. Working directly for Grondr ’Kalir had its perks. Ravna kicked back in her chair and stared across the central sea. At the Docks’ altitude, gravity was still about three-quarters of a gee. Air fountains hung a breathable atmosphere over the middle part of the platform. The day before, she had taken a sailboat across the clear-bottomed sea. That was a strange experience indeed: planetary clouds below your keel, stars and indigo sky above.
She had the surf cranked up this morning—an easy matter of flexing the agravs of the basin. It made a regular crashing against her beach. Even thirty meters from the water there was a tang of salt in the air. Rows of white tops marched off into the distance.
She eyed the figure that was trudging slowly up the beach toward her. Just a few weeks ago she would never have dreamed this situation. Just a few weeks ago she had been out at the archive, absorbed in the upgrade work, happy to be involved with one of the largest databases on the Known Net. Now
… it was almost as if she had come full circle, back to her childhood dreams of adventure. the only problem was, sometimes she felt like one of the bad guys: Pham Nuwen was a living person, not something to be sold.
She stood and walked out to meet her red-haired visitor.
He wasn’t carrying the sword and handgun of Grondr’s fanciful animation. Yet his clothes were the braided fabric of ancient adventure, and he carried himself with lazy confidence. Since her meeting with Grondr, she had looked up some anthropology from Old Earth. The red hair and the eyefolds had been known there, though rarely in the same individual. Certainly his smoky skin would have been remarkable to an inhabitant of Earth. This fellow was, as much as herself, a product of post-terrestrial evolution.
He stopped an arm’s length away and gave her a lopsided grin. “You look pretty human. Ravna Bergsndot?”
She smiled and nodded up at him. “Mr. Pham Nuwen?”
“Yes indeed. We seem both to be excellent guessers.” He swept past her into the shade of the inner office. Cocky fellow.
She followed him, unsure about protocol. You’d think with a fellow human there would be no problems…
Actually, the interview went pretty smoothly. It was more than thirty days since Pham Nuwen’s resuscitation. Much of that time had been spent in cram language sessions. The fellow must be damned bright; he already spoke Triskweline trade talk with a folksy slickness. He really was rather cute. Ravna had been away from Sjandra Kei for two years, and had another year of her ’prenticeship to go. She’d been doing pretty well. She had many close friends here, Egravan, Sarale. But just chatting with this fellow brought a lot of the loneliness back. In some ways he was more alien than anything at Relay… and in some ways she wanted to just grab him and kiss his confident grin away.
Grondr Vrinimikalir had been telling the truth about Pham Nuwen. The guy was actually enthusiastic about the Org’s plans for him! In theory, that meant she could do her job with a clear conscience. In fact…
“Mr. Nuwen, my job is to orient you to your new world. I know you’ve been exposed to some intense instruction the last few days, but there are limits to how fast such knowledge can sink in.”
The redhead smiled. “Call me Pham. Sure, I feel like an over-stuffed bag. My sleep time is full of little voices. I’ve learned an awful lot without experiencing anything. Worse, I’ve been a target for all this ‘education’. It’s a perfect setup if Vrinimi wants to trick me. That’s why I’m learning to use the local library. And that’s why I insisted they find someone like you.” He saw the surprise on her face. “Ha! You didn’t know that. See, talking to a real person gives me a chance to see things that aren’t all planned ahead. Also, I’ve always been a pretty good judge of human nature; I think I can read you pretty well.” His grin showed he understood just how irritating he was being.
Ravna looked up at the green petals of the beachtrees. Maybe this boob deserved what he was getting into. “So you have great experience dealing with people?”
“Given the limitations of the Slowness, I’ve been around, Ravna. I’ve been around. I know I don’t look it, but I’m sixty-seven years old subjective. I thank your Organization for a fine job of thawing me out.” He tipped a non- existent hat in her direction. “My last voyage was more than a thousand years objective. I was Programmer-at- Arms on a Qeng Ho longshot -” His eyes abruptly widened, and he said something unintelligible. For a moment he almost looked vulnerable.
Ravna reached a hand toward him. “Memory?”
Pham Nuwen nodded. “Damn. This is something I don’t thank you people for.”
Pham Nuwen had been frozen in the aftermath of violent death, not as a planned suspension. It was a near miracle that Vrinimi Org had been able to bring him back at all—at least with Middle Beyond technology. But memory was the hardest thing. The chemical basis of memory does not survive chaotic freezing well.
The problem was enough to shrink even Pham Nuwen’s ego by a size or two. Ravna took pity on him. “It’s not likely that anything is completely lost. You just have to find a different angle on some things.”
“… Yes. I’ve been coached about that. Start with other memories; work sideways toward what you can’t remember straight on. Well… it beats being dead.” Some of his jauntiness returned, but subdued to a really quite charming level. They talked for long while as the redhead worked around the points he couldn’t “remember straight
