but now more than ever. Did you see all the East Home packs?” East Home was a hotbed of Flenser sentiment. Even before the Movement, they had been a hard folk, routinely sacrificing pups that didn’t meet their brood standards.
“One anyway. Talking to a labormaster.”
“Right. Who knows what’s coming in disguised as special purpose packs? I’d bet my life they’re planning to kidnap Johanna. If they guess what we’re planning with her, they may just try to kill her. Don’t you see? We must alert Woodcarver and Vendacious, organize the people to watch for spies.”
“You noticed all this on one walk through Packweal?” There was wonder or disbelief in his voice, Scriber couldn’t tell which.
“Well, um, no. The inspiration wasn’t anything so direct. But it stands to reason, don’t you think?”
They walked in silence for several minutes. Up here the wind was stronger, and the view more spectacular. Where there wasn’t the sea, forest spread endless gray and green. Everything was very peaceful… because this was a game of stealth. Fortunately Scriber had a talent for such games. After all, hadn’t it been the very Political Police of the Republic who commissioned him to survey Hidden Island? It had taken him several tendays of patient persuasion, but in the end they had been enthusiastic. Anything you can discover we would be most happy to review. Those were their exact words.
Peregrine waffled around the road, seemingly very taken aback by Scriber’s suggestion. Finally he said, “I think there is… something you should know, something that must remain an absolute secret.”
“Upon my soul! Peregrine, I do not blab secrets.” Scriber was a little hurt—at the lack of trust, and also that the other might have discovered something he had not. The second should not bother him. He had guessed that Peregrine and Woodcarver were into each other. No telling what she might have confided, or what might have leaked across.
“Okay… You’ve tripped onto something that should not be noised about. You know Vendacious is in charge of Woodcarvers security?”
“Of course.” That was implicit in the office of Lord Chamberlain. “And considering the number of outsiders wandering around, I can’t say he’s doing a very good job.”
“In fact, he’s doing a marvelously effective job. Vendacious has agents right at the top at Hidden Island—one step removed from Lord Steel himself.”
Scriber felt his eyes widening.
“Yes, you understand what that means. Through Vendacious, Woodcarver knows for a certainty everything their high council plans. With clever misinformation, we can lead the Flenserists around like froghens at a thinning. Next to Johanna herself, this may be Woodcarver’s greatest advantage.”
“I—” I had no idea. “So the incompetent local security is just a cover.”
“Not exactly. It’s supposed to look solid and intelligent, but with just enough exploitable weakness so the Movement will postpone a frontal attack in favor of espionage.” He smiled. “I think Vendacious will be very taken aback to hear your critique.”
Scriber gave a weak laugh. He was flattered and boggled at the same time. Vendacious must count as the greatest spymaster of the age—yet he, Scriber Jaqueramaphan, had almost seen through him. Scriber was mostly quiet the rest of the way back to the castle, but his mind was racing. Peregrine was more right than he knew; secrecy was vital. Unnecessary discussion -even between old friends—must be avoided. Yes! He would offer his services to Vendacious. His new role might keep him in the background, but it was where he could make the greatest contribution. And eventually even Johanna would see how helpful he could be.
— =*=
Down the well of the night. Even when Ravna wasn’t looking out the windows, that was the image in her mind. Relay was far off the galactic disk. The OOB was descending toward that disk—and ever deeper into slowness.
But they had escaped. The OOB was crippled, but they had left Relay at almost fifty light-years per hour. Each hour they were lower in the Beyond and the computation time for the microjumps increased, and their pseudovelocity declined. Nevertheless, they were making progress. They were deep into the Middle of the Beyond now. And there was no sign of pursuit, thank goodness. Whatever had brought the Blight to Relay, it had not been specific knowledge of the OOB.
Hope. Ravna felt it growing in her. The ship’s medical automation claimed that Pham Nuwen could be saved, that there was brain activity. The terrible wounds in his back had been Old One’s implants, organic machinery that had made Pham close-linked to Relay’s local network—and thence to the Power above. And when that Power died somehow the gear in Pham became a putrescent ruin. So Pham the person should still exist. Pray he still exists. The surgeon thought it would be three days before his back was healed enough to attempt resuscitation.
In the meantime… Ravna was learning more about the apocalypse that had swept over her. Every twenty hours, Greenstalk and Blueshell jigged the ship sideways a few light-years, into some major trunk line of the Known Net to soak up the News. It was a common practice on any voyage of more than a few days; an easy way for merchants and travelers to keep track of events that might affect their success at voyage’s end.
According to the News (that is, according to the vast majority of the opinions expressed), the fall of Relay was complete. Oh, Grondr. Oh Egravan and Sarale. Are you dead or owned now?
Parts of the Known Net were temporarily out of contact; some of the extra-galactic links might not be replaced for years. For the first time in millennia, a Power was known to have been murdered. There were tens of thousands of claims about the motive for the attack and tens of thousands of predictions about what would happen next. Ravna had the ship filter the avalanche, trying to distill the essence of the speculations.
The one coming from Straumli Realm itself made as much sense as any: the Perversion’s thralls gloated solemnly about the new era, the marriage of a Transcendent being with races of the Beyond. If Relay could be destroyed—if a Power could be murdered—then nothing could stop the spread of victory.
Some senders thought that Relay was the ancestral target of whatever had perverted Straumli Realm. Maybe the attack was just the tail end of some long ago war, a misbegotten tragedy for the descendants of forgotten races. If so, then the thralls at Straumli Realm might just wither away and the original human culture there reappear.
A number of items suggested that the attack had been aimed at stealing Relay’s archives, but only one or two claimed that the Blight sought to recover an artifact, or prevent the Relayers from recovering one. Those assertions came from chronic theorizers, the sort of civilizations that get surcharged by newsgroup automation. Nevertheless, Ravna looked through those messages carefully. None of them suggested an artifact in the Low Beyond; if anything, they claimed the Blight was searching for something in the High Beyond or Low Transcend.
There was network traffic coming out of the Blight. The high protocol messages were ignored by all but the suicidal, and no one was getting paid to forward any of it. Yet horror and curiosity spread some of the messages far. There was the Blighter “video': almost four hundred seconds of pan-sensual data with no compression. That incredibly expensive message might be the most-forwarded hog in all Net history. Blueshell held the OOB on the trunk path for nearly two days to receive the whole thing.
The Perversion’s thralls all appeared to be human. About half the news items coming out of the Realm were video evocations, though none this long; all showed human speakers. Ravna watched the big one again and again: She even recognized the speaker. Ovn Nilsndot had been Straumli Realm’s champion trael runner. He had no title now, and probably no name. Nilsndot spoke from an office that might have been a garden. If Ravna stepped to the side of the image, she could see over his shoulder to ground level. The city there looked like the Straumli Main of record. Years ago, Ravna and her sister had dreamed about that city, the heart of mankind’s adventure into the Transcend. The central square had been a replica of the Field of Princesses on Nyjora, and the immigration advertising claimed that no matter how far the Straumers went, the fountain in the Field would always flow, would always show their loyalty to humankind’s beginnings.
There was no fountain now, and Ravna felt deadness behind Nilsndot’s gaze. “This one speaks as the Power that Helps,” said the erstwhile hero. “I want all to see what I can do for even a third-rate civilization. Look upon my Helping…” The viewpoint swung skywards. It was sunset, and the ranked agrav structures hung against the light, megameter upon megameter. It was a more grandiose use of the agrav material than Ravna had ever seen, even
