they looked tired. Funny, Woodcarver had worked with Dataset so much, her human voice had come to capture emotion as well as pronunciation. Just now she had sounded so tired, so sad.
Johanna reached out from under her quilt to brush the neck of Woodcarver’s nearest, the blind one. “Do you believe what you told everyone?” she said softly.
One of the “sentry” heads looked at her, and a very human sigh seemed to come from all directions. Woodcarver’s voice was very faint. “Yes… but I am very afraid that it doesn’t matter any more. For six hundred years, I have had proper confidence in myself. But what happened on the south wall
… should not have happened. It would not if I had followed Vendacious’s advice, and come down on the New Road.”
“But we might have been seen—”
“Yes. A failure either way, don’t you see? Vendacious has precise information from the highest councils of the Flenser. But he’s something of a careless fool in everyday matters. I knew that, and thought I could compensate. But the Old Road was in far worse condition than I remembered; the wolf-nest could never have settled by it if there had been any traffic during the last few years. If Vendacious had managed his patrols properly, or if I had been managing him properly, we would never have been surprised. Instead we were nearly overrun… and my only remaining talent appears to be in fooling those who trust me into thinking I still know what I’m doing.” She opened another pair of eyes and made the smile gesture. “Strange. I haven’t said these things even to Pilgrim. Is this another ‘advantage’ of human relations?”
Johanna patted the blind one’s neck. “Maybe.”
“Anyway, I believe what I said about things that could be, but I fear the my soul may not be strong enough to make them so. Perhaps I should turn things over to Pilgrim or Vendacious; that’s something I must think on.” Woodcarver shhed Johanna’s surprised protests.
“Now sleep please.”
CHAPTER 32
There was a time when Ravna thought their tiny ship might fly all the way to the Bottom unnoticed. Along with everything else, that had changed. At the moment, Out of Band II might be the most famous star ship known to the Net. A million races watched the chase. In the Middle Beyond there were vast antenna swarms beaming in their direction and listening to the news—mostly lies—sent from ships that pursued the OOB. She couldn’t hear those lies directly, of course, but the transmissions from beyond were as clear as if they were on a main trunk.
Ravna spent part of each day reading the News, trying to find hope, trying to prove to herself that she was doing the right thing. By now, she was pretty sure what was chasing them. No doubt even Pham and Blueshell would have agreed on that. Why they were being chased, and what they might find at the end was now the subject of endless speculation on the Net. As usual, whatever the truth might be was well hidden among the lies.
Crypto: 0
As received by: OOB shipboard ad hoc
Language path: Triskweline, SjK units
From: Hanse [No references prior to the fall of Relay. No probable source. This is someone being very cautious.]
Subject: Alliance for the Defense fraudulent?
Distribution:
Threat of the Blight, War Trackers Interest Group, Homo Sapiens Interest Group
Date: 5.80 days since Fall of Sjandra Kei
Key phrases: Fools’ errand, unnecessary genocide
Text of message:
Earlier I speculated that there had been no destruction at Sjandra Kei. Apologies. That was based on a catalog identification error. I agree with the messages (13123 as of a few seconds ago) assuring me that the habitations of Sjandra Kei suffered collisional damage within the last six days.
So apparently the “Alliance for the Defense” has taken the military action they claimed earlier. And apparently, they are powerful enough to destroy small civilizations in the Middle Beyond. The question still remains: “Why?” I have already posted arguments showing it unlikely that Homo sapiens is especially controllable by the Blight (though they were stupid enough to create that entity). Even the Alliance’s own reports admit that less than half of Sjandra Kei’s sophonts were of that race.
Now a large part of the Alliance fleet is chasing into the Bottom of the Beyond after a single ship. What conceivable damage can the Alliance do to the Blight down there? The Blight is a great threat, perhaps the most novel and threatening in well-recorded history. Nevertheless, Alliance behavior appears destructive and pointless. Now that the Alliance has revealed some of its sponsoring organizations (see messages [id numbers]), I think we know its real motives. I see connections between the Alliance and the old Aprahant Hegemony. A thousand years ago, that group had a similar jihad, grabbing real estate left vacant by recent Transcendences. Stopping the Hegemony was an exciting bit of action in that part of the galaxy. I think these people are back, taking advantage of the general panic attending the Blight (which is admittedly a much greater threat).
My advice: Beware of the Alliance and its claims of heroic efforts.
Crypto: 0
As received by: OOB shipboard ad hoc
Language path: Schirachene-»Rondralip-»Triskweline, SjK units
From: Harmonious Repose Communications Synod
Subject: Encounter with agents of the Perversion
Distribution:
Threat of the Blight
Date: 6.37 days since Fall of Sjandra Kei
Key phrases: Hanse fraudulent?
Text of message:
We have no special inclination toward any of the posters on this thread. Nevertheless, it’s remarkable that an entity that has not revealed its location or special interests—namely “Hanse'—should be smearing the efforts of the Alliance for the Defense. The Alliance kept its constituents secret only during that period when its forces were being gathered, when a single stroke of the Perversion’s power might destroy it entirely. Since that time, it has been quite open in its efforts.
Hanse wonders how a single starship could be worth the Alliance’s attention. As Harmonious Repose was the site of the latest turn of events, we are in a position to give some explanation. The ship in question, the Out of Band II, is clearly designed for operations at the Bottom of the Beyond—and is even capable of limited operations within the Slow Zone. The ship presented itself as a special zonographic flight commissioned to study the recent turbulence at the Bottom. In fact, this ship’s mission is a very different one. In the aftermath of its violent departure, we have pieced together some extraordinary facts:
At least one of the ship’s crew was human. Though they made great efforts to stay out of view and used Skroderider traders as intermediaries, we have recordings. A biosequence of one individual was obtained, and it matches the patterns maintained by two out of three of the Homo sapiens archives. (It’s well known that the third archive, on Sneerot Down, is in the control of Human sympathizers.) Some might say this deception was founded in fear. After all, these events happened after the destruction of Sjandra Kei. We think otherwise: The ship’s initial contact with us occurred before the Sjandra Kei incident.
We have since made a careful analysis of the repair work our yards performed on this vessel. Ultradrive automation is a deep and complex thing; even the cleverest of cloaking cannot mask all the memories in it. We now know that the Out of Band II was from the Relay system and that it left there after the Perversion’s attack. Think
