Vrinimi Classification: Organizational SECRET. Not for distribution beyond Ring 1 of the local net.
Transceiver Relay00 search log:
Beginning 19:40:40 Docks Time, 17/01 of Org year 52090 [128.13 days since the fall of Straumli Realm]
Link layer syntax 14 message loop detected on assigned surveillance bearing. Signal strength and S/N compatible with previously detected beacon signal.
Language path: Samnorsk, SjK:Relay units
From: Jefri Olsndot at I dont know where this is
Subject: Hello. My names Jefri Olsndot. Our ships hurt adnd we need help. pPlease anser.
Summary: Sorry if I get some of this wrong. This keybord is STUPID!!
Key phrases: I dont know
To: Relay anybody
Text of message: [empty]
CHAPTER 15
Two Skroderiders played in the surf.
“Do you think his life is in danger?” asked the one with the slender green stalk.
“Whose life?” said the other, a large rider with a bluish basal shell.
“Jefri Olsndot, the human child.”
Blueshell sighed to himself and consulted his skrode. You come to the beach to forget the cares of the everyday, but Greenstalk would not let them go. He scanned for danger-to-Jefri: “Of course he’s in danger, you twit! Look up the latest messages from him.”
“Oh.” Greenstalk’s tone was embarrassed. “Sorry for the partial remembering,” remembering enough to worry and nothing more. She went silent; after a moment he heard her pleasured humming. The surf crashed endlessly past them.
Blueshell opened to the water, tasting the life that swirled in the power of the waves. It was a beautiful beach. It was probably unique—and that was an extreme thing to say about anything in the Beyond. When the foam swept back from their bodies, they could see indigo sky spread from one side of the Docks to the other, and the glint of starships. When the surf came forward, the two Riders were submerged in the turbid chill, surrounded by the coralesks and intertidal creatures that built their little homes here. And at high “tide” the flexure of the sea floor held steady for an hour or so. Then the water cleared, and if in daylight, they could see patches of glassy sea- bottom… and through them, a thousand kilometers below, the surface of Groundside.
Blueshell tried to clear his mind of care. For every hour of peaceful contemplation, a few more natural memories would accumulate… No good. Just now he could no more banish the worries than could Greenstalk. After a moment, he said, “Sometimes I wish I were a Lesser Rider.” To stand a lifetime in one place, with just a minimum skrode.
“Yes,” said Greenstalk. “But we decided to roam. That means giving up certain things. Sometimes we must remember things that happen only once or twice. Sometimes we have great adventures: I’m glad we took the rescue contract, Blueshell.”
So neither of them were really in the mood for the sea today. Blueshell lowered the skrode’s wheels and rolled a little closer to Greenstalk. He looked deep into his skrode’s mechanical memory, scanning the general databases. There was a lot there about catastrophes. Whoever created the original skrode databases had considered wars and blights and perversion very important. They were exciting things, and they could kill you.
But Blueshell could also see that in relative terms, such disasters were a small part of the civilized experience. Only about once in a millennium was there a massive blight. It was their bad luck to be caught near such a thing. In the last ten weeks a dozen civilizations in the High Beyond had dropped from the Net, absorbed into the symbiotic amalgam that now was called the Straumli Blight. High trade was crippled. Since their ship was refinanced, he and Greenstalk had flown several jobs, but all to the Middle Beyond.
The two of them had been very cautious, but now—as Greenstalk said—greatness might be thrust upon them. Vrinimi Org wanted to commission a secret flight to the Bottom of the Beyond. Since he and Greenstalk were already in on the secret, they were the natural choice for the job. Right now, the Out of Band II was in the Vrinimi yards getting bottom-lugger enhancements and a huge stock of antenna drones. In one stroke the OOB’s value was increased ten-thousand-fold. There had been no need even to bargain!… and that was the scariest thing of all. Every addition was a clear essential for the trip. They would be descending right to the edge of the Slowness. Under the best of circumstances this would be slow and tedious exercise, but the latest surveys reported movement in the zone boundaries. With bad luck, they might actually end up on the wrong side, where light had the ultimate speed. If that should happen, the new ramscoop would be their only hope.
All that was within Blueshell’s range of acceptable business. Before he met Greenstalk, he had shipped on bottom-luggers, even been stranded once or twice. But—'I like adventure as much as you,” said Blueshell, a grumpy edge creeping into his voice. “Traveling to the Bottom, rescuing sophonts from the claws of wildthings: given enough money, it’s all perhaps reasonable. But… what if that Straumer ship is really as important as Ravna thinks? After all this time it seems absurd, but she’s convinced Vrinimi Org of the possibility. If there’s something down there that could harm the Straumli Blight—” If the Blight ever suspected the same, it could have a fleet of ten thousand warships descending on their goal. Down at the Bottom they might be little better than conventional vessels, but he and Greenstalk would be no less dead for that.
Except for a faint daydreamy hum, Greenstalk was silent. Had she had lost track of the conversation? Then her voice came to him through the water, a reassuring caress. “I know, Blueshell, it could be the end of us. But I still want to venture it. If it’s safe, we make enormous profit. If our going could harm the Blight… well, then it’s terribly important. Our help might save dozens of civilizations—a million beaches of Riders, just in passing.”
“Hmpf. You’re following stalk and not skrode.”
“Probably.” They had watched the progress of the Blight since its beginning. The feelings of horror and sympathy had been reinforced every day till they percolated into their natural minds. So Greenstalk (and Blueshell too; he couldn’t deny it) felt stronger about the Blight than about the danger in their new contract. “Probably. My fears of making the rescue are still analytical,” still confined to her skrode. “Yet… I think if we could stand here a year, if we could wait till we truly felt all the issues
… I think we would still choose to go.”
Blueshell rolled irritably back and forth. The grit swirled up and through his fronds. She was right, she was right. But he couldn’t say it aloud; the mission still terrified him.
“And think, mate: If it is this important, then perhaps we can get help. You know the Org is negotiating with the Emissary Device. With any luck we’ll end up with an escort designed by a Transcendental Power.”
The image almost made Blueshell laugh. Two little Skroderiders, journeying to the Bottom of the Beyond— surrounded by help from the Transcend. “I will hope for it.”
The Skroderiders were not the only ones with that wish. Further up the beach, Ravna Bergsndot prowled her office. What gruesome irony that even the greatest disasters can create opportunities for decent people. Her transfer to Marketing had been made permanent with the fall of Arbitration Arts. As the Blight spread and High Beyond markets collapsed, the Org became ever more interested in providing information services about the Straumli Perversion. Her “special” expertise in things human suddenly became extraordinarily valuable—never mind that Straumli Realm itself was only a small part of what was now the Blight. What little the Blight said of itself was often in Samnorsk. Grondr and company continued to be vitally interested in her analysis.
Well, she had done some good. They had picked up the refugee ship’s “I-am-here', and then—ninety days later—a message from a human survivor, Jefri Olsndot. Barely forty messages had they exchanged, but enough to learn about the Tines and Mr. Steel and the evil Woodcarvers. Enough to know that a small human life would be ended if she could not help. Ironic but natural: most times that single life weighed more on her than all the horror of the Perversion, even the fall of Straumli Realm. Thank the Powers that Grondr had endorsed the rescue mission: It was a chance to learn something important about the Straumli Perversion. And the Tinish packs seemed to interest
