Zones of Thought Trilogy Read online

  “Anyway, the researchers at the Straumli lab—a few of them at least—were not so incautious as you say. They suspected a perverse runaway, and were determined to sabotage it.”

  This was news, but—“Doesn’t look like they had much success, does it?”

  “I am nodding agreement. They did not prevent it, but they did plan to escape the laboratory planet with two starships. And they did get word of their attempt into channels that ended with my acquaintance at the beach party. And here is the important part: At least one of these ships was to carry away some final elements of the Perversion’s recipe—before they were incorporated into the design.”

  “Surely there were backups—” began Pham Nuwen.

  Ravna waved him silent. There had been enough grade-school explanations for one night. This was incredible. She’d been following the news about Straumli Realm as much as anyone. The Realm was the first High daughter colony of Sjandra Kei; it was horrifying to see it destroyed. But nowhere in Threats had there been even a rumor of this: the Perversion not whole? “If this is true, then the Straumers may have a chance. It all depends on the missing parts of the design document.”

  “Just so. And of course the humans realized this too. They planned to head straight for the Bottom of the Beyond, rendezvous there with their accomplices from Straum.”

  Which—considering the ultimate magnitude of the disaster—would never happen. Ravna leaned back, oblivious of Pham Nuwen for the first time in many hours. Most likely both ships had been destroyed by now. If not—well, the Straumers had been at least half-smart, heading for the Bottom. If they had what Blueshell thought, the Perversion would be very interested in finding them. It was no wonder Blueshell and Greenstalk hadn’t announced this on the news groups. “So you know where they were going to rendezvous?” she said softly.

  “Approximately.”

  Greenstalk burred something at him.

  “Not in ourselves,” he said. “The coordinates are in the safeness at our ship. But there is more. The Straumers had a backup plan if the rendezvous failed. They intended to signal Relay with their ship’s ultrawave.”

  “Now wait. Just how big is this ship?” Ravna was no physical-layer engineer, but she knew that Relay’s backbone transceivers were actually swarms of antenna elements scattered across several light years, each element ten-thousand kilometers across.

  Blueshell rolled forward and back, a quick gesture of agitation. “We don’t know, but it’s nothing exceptional. Unless you’re looking precisely at it with a large antenna, you’d never detect it from here.”

  Greenstalk added, “We think that was part of their plan, though it is desperation on top of desperation. Since we came to Relay, we’ve been talking to the Org—”

  “Discreetly! Quietly!” Blueshell put in abruptly.

  “Yes. We’ve asked the Organization to listen for this ship. I’m afraid we haven’t talked to the right people. No one seems to put much credence in us. After all, the story is ultimately from a Lesser Rider,”Yeah. What could they know that was under a hundred years old?“What we’re asking would normally be a great expense, and apparently prices are especially high right now.”

  Ravna tried to curb her enthusiasm. If she had read this in a newsgroup, it would’ve been just one more interesting rumor. Why should she boggle just because she was getting it face-to-face? By the Powers, what irony. Hundreds of customers from the Top and the Transcend—even Old One—were saturating Relay’s resources with their curiosity about the Straumli debacle. What if the answer had been sitting in front of them, suppressed by the very eagerness of their investigation? “Just who have you been talking to? Never mind, never mind.” Maybe she should just go to Grondr ‘Kalir with the story. “I think you should know that I am a—”very minor!“—employee of the Vrinimi Organization. I may be able to help.”

  She had expected some surprise at this sudden good luck. Instead there was a pause. Apparently Blueshell had lost his place in the conversation. Finally Greenstalk spoke. “I am blushing… You see, we knew that. Blueshell looked you up in the employees’ directory; you are the only human in the Org. You’re not in Customer Contact, but we thought that if we chanced upon you, so to speak, you might give us a kindly hearing.”

  Blueshell’s tendrils rustled together sharply. Irritation? Or had he finally caught up to the conversation? “Yes. Well, since we are all being so frank, I suppose we should confess that this might even benefit us. If the refugee ship can prove that the Perversion is not a full Class Two, then perhaps we can convince our buyers that our cargo has not been compromised. If they only knew, my certificant friends would be groveling at your feet, my lady Ravna.”

  They stayed at The Wandering Company until well past midnight. Business picked up at the circadian peak of some of the new arrivals. Floor and table shows were raucous all around. Pham’s eyes flickered this way and that, taking it all in. But above all he seemed fascinated by Blueshell and Greenstalk. The two were starkly nonhuman, in some ways even strange as aliens go. Skroderiders were one of the very few races that had achieved long-term stability in the Beyond. Speciation had long ago occurred, varieties heading outward or becoming extinct. And still there were some who matched their ancient skrodes, a unique balance of outlook and machine interface that was more than a billion years old. But Blueshell and Greenstalk were also traders with much of the outlook that Pham Nuwen had known in the Slowness. And though Pham acted as ignorant as ever, there was new diplomacy in him. Or maybe the awesomeness of the Beyond was finally getting through his thick skull. He couldn’t have asked for better drinking buddies. As a race, the Skroderiders perferred lazy reminiscence to almost any activity. Once delivered of their critical message, the two were quite content to talk of their life in the Beyond, to explain things in whatever detail the barbarian could wish. The razor-jawed certificants stayed well lost.

  Ravna got a mild buzz on, and watched the three talk shop. She smiled to herself. In a way, she was the outsider now, the person who had never done. Blueshell and Greenstalk had been all over, and some of their stories sounded wild even to her. Ravna had a theory (not that widely accepted, actually) that where beings have a common fluency, little else matters. Two of these three might be mistaken for potted trees on hotcarts, and the third was unlike any human in her life. Their fluency was in an artificial language, and two of the “voices” were squawky raspings. Yet … after a few minutes’ listening, their personalities seemed to float in her mind’s eye, more interesting than many of her school chums, but not that different. The two Skroderiders were mates. She hadn’t thought that could count for much; among Riders, sex amounted to scarcely more than being next-door neighbors at the right time of year. Yet there was deep affection here. Greenstalk especially seemed a loving personality. She (he?) was shy yet stubborn, with a kind of honesty that might be a major handicap in a trader. Blueshell made up for that failing. He (she?) could be glib and talkative, quite capable of maneuvering things his way. Underneath, Ravna glimpsed a compulsive personality, uncomfortable with his own sneakiness, ultimately grateful when Greenstalk reined him in.

  And what of Pham Nuwen? Yes, what’s the inner being you see there? In an odd way, he was more of a mystery. The arrogant boob of this afternoon seemed to be mostly invisible tonight. Maybe it had been a cover for insecurity. The fellow had been born in a male-dominated culture, virtually the opposite of the matriarchy that all Beyonder humanity descended from. Underneath the arrogance, a very nice person might be living. Then there was the way he had faced down razor-jaw. And the way he was drawing out the Skroderiders. It occurred to Ravna that after a lifetime of reading romantic fiction, she had run into her first hero.

  It was after 02:30 when they left The Wandering Company. The sun would be rising across the bow horizon in less than five hours. The two Skroderiders came outside to see them off. Blueshell had switched back to Samnorsk to regale Ravna with a story of his last visit to Sjandra Kei—and remind her to ask about t
he refugee ship.

  The Skroderiders dwindled beneath them as Ravna and Pham rose into the thinning air and headed toward the residential towers.

  The two humans didn’t say anything for a couple of minutes. It was even possible that Pham Nuwen was impressed by the view. They were passing over gaps in the brightly lit Docks, places where they could see through the parks and concourses to the surface of Groundside a thousand kilometers below. The clouds there were whorls of dark on dark.

  Ravna’s residence was at the outer edge of the Docks. Here the air fountains were of no use; her apartment tower rose into frank vacuum. They glided down to her balcony, trading their suits’ atmosphere for the apartment’s. Ravna’s mouth was leading a life of its own, explaining how the residence was what she’d been assigned when she worked at the archive, that it is was nothing compared to her new office. Pham Nuwen nodded, quiet-faced. There were none of the smart remarks of their earlier tours.

  She babbled on, and then they were inside and… She shut up, and they just looked at each other. In a way, she’d wanted this clown ever since Grondr’s silly animation. But it wasn’t till this evening at The Wandering Company that she’d felt right about bringing him home with her. “Well, I, uh…” So. Ravna, the ravening princess. Where is your glib tongue now?

  She settled for reaching out, putting her hand on his. Pham Nuwen smiled back, shy too, by the Powers! “I think you have a nice place,” he said.

  “I’ve decorated it Techno-Primitive. Being stuck at the edge of the Docks has its points: The natural view isn’t messed up by city lights. Here, I’ll show you.” She doused the lights and pulled the curtains aside. The window was a natural transparency, looking out from the edge of the Docks. The view tonight should be terrific. On the ride from The Company, the sky had been awfully dark. The in-system factories must be off line or hidden behind Groundside. Even ship traffic seemed sparse.

  She went back to stand by Pham. The window was a vague rectangle across her vision. “You have to wait a minute for your eyes to adjust. There’s no amplification at all.” The curve of Groundside was clear now, clouds with occasional pricks of light. She slipped her arm across his back, and after a moment felt his across her shoulders.

  She’d guessed right: tonight, the Galaxy owned the sky. It was a sight that Vrinimi old hands happily ignored. For Ravna, it was the most beautiful thing about Relay. Without enhancement, the light was faint. Twenty thousand light-years is a long, long way. At first there was just a suggestion of mist, and an occasional star. As her eyes adapted, the mist took shape, curving arcs, some places brighter, some dimmer. A minute more and … there were knots in the mist … there were streaks of utter black that separated the curving arms … complexity on complexity, twisting toward the pale hub that was the Core. Maelstrom. Whirlpool. Frozen, still, across half the sky.

  She heard Pham’s breath catch in his throat. He said something, sing-song syllables that could not have been Trisk, and certainly not Samnorsk. “All my life I lived in a tiny clump of that. And I thought I was a master of space. I never dreamed to stand and see the whole blessed thing at once.” His hand tightened on her shoulder, then gentled, stroking her neck. “And no matter how long we watch, will we see any sign of the Zones?”

  She shook her head slowly. “But they’re easily imagined.” She gestured with her free hand. In the large, the Zones of Thought followed the mass distribution of the Galaxy: The Mindless Depths extending down to the soft glow of the galactic Core. Farther out, the Great Slowness, where humankind had been born, where ultralight could not exist and civilizations lived and died unknowing and unknown. And the Beyond, the stars about four-fifths out from the center, extending well off-plane to include places like Relay. The Known Net had existed in some form for billions of years in the Beyond. It was not a civilization; few civilizations lasted longer than a million years. But the records of the past were quite complete. Sometimes they were intelligible. More often, reading them involved translations of translations of translations, passed down from one defunct race to another with no one to corroborate—worse than any multihop net message could ever be. Yet some things were quite clear: There had always been the Zones of Thought, though perhaps they were slightly inward-moved now. There had always been wars and peace, and races upwelling from the Great Slowness, and thousands of little empires. There had always been races moving into the Transcend, to become the Powers … or their prey.

  “And the Transcend?” Pham said. “Is that just the far dark?” The dark between the galaxies.

  Ravna laughed softly. “It includes all that but … see the outer reaches of the spirals. They’re in the Transcend.” Most everything farther than forty thousand light-years from the galactic center was.

  Pham Nuwen was silent for a long moment. She felt a tiny shiver pass through him. “After talking to the wheelies, I—I think I understand more of what you were warning me about. There’s a lot of things I don’t know, things that could kill me … or worse.”

  Common sense triumphs at last.“True,” she said quietly. “But it’s not just you, or the brief time you’ve been here. You could study your whole life, and not know. How long must a fish study to understand human motivation? It’s not a good analogy, but it’s the only safe one; we are like dumb animals to the Powers of the Transcend. Think of all the different things people do to animals—ingenious, sadistic, charitable, genocidal—each has a million elaborations in the Transcend. The Zones are a natural protection; without them, human-equivalent intelligence would probably not exist.” She waved at the misty star swarms. “The Beyond and below are like a deep of ocean, and we the creatures that swim in the abyss. We’re so far down that the beings on the surface—superior though they are—can’t effectively reach us. Oh, they fish, and they sometimes blight the upper levels with poisons we don’t even understand. But the abyss remains a relatively safe place.” She paused. There was more to the analogy. “And just as with an ocean, there is a constant drift of flotsam from the top. There are things that can only be made at the Top, that need close-to-sentient factories—but which can still work down here. Blueshell mentioned some of those when he was talking to you: the agrav fabrics, the sapient devices. Such things are the greatest physical wealth of the Beyond, since we can’t make them. And getting them is a deadly risky endeavor.”

  Pham turned toward her, away from window and the stars. “So there are always ‘fish’ edging close to the surface.” For an instant she thought she had lost him, that he was caught by the romance of the Transcendent deathwish. “Little fish risking everything for a piece of godhood … and not knowing heaven from hell, even when they find it.” She felt him shiver and then his arms were around her. She tilted her head up and found his lips waiting.

  It had been two years since Ravna Bergsndot left Sjandra Kei. In some ways the time had gone fast. Just now her body was telling her what a long, long time it had really been. Every touch was so vivid, waking desires carefully suppressed. Suddenly her skin was tingling all over. It took marvelous restraint to undress without tearing anything.

  Ravna was out of practice. And of course she had nothing recent to compare to… But Pham Nuwen was very, very good.

  Crypto: 0

  Syntax: 43

  As received by: Transceiver Relay01 at Relay

  Language path: Acquileron->Triskweline, SjK:Relay units

  From: Net Administrator for Transceiver Windsong at Debley Down

  Subject: Complaints about Relay, a suggestion

  Summary: It’s getting worse; try us instead

  Key phrases: communications problems, Relay unreliability, Transcend

  Distribution:

  Communication Costs Special Interest Group

  Motley Hatch Administration Group

  Transceiver Relay01 at Relay

  Transceiver Not-for-Long at Shortstop

  Follow-ups to: Windsong Expansion Interest Group

  Date: 07:21:21 Docks Time, 36/09 of Org year 5208
9

  Text of message:

  During the last five hundred hours, Comm Costs shows 9,834 transceiver-layer congestion complaints against the Vrinimi operation at Relay. Each of these complaints involves services to tens of thousand of planets. Vrinimi has promised again and again that the congestion is a purely temporary increase of Transcendent usage.

  As Relay’s chief competitor in this region, we of Windsong have benefited modestly from the overflow; however, until now we thought it inappropriate to propose a coordinated response to the problem.

  The events of the last seven hours compel us to change this policy. Those reading this item already know about the incident; most of you are the victims of it. Beginning at [00:00:27 Docks Time], Vrinimi Org began taking transceivers off-line, an unscheduled outage. R01 went out at 00:00:27, R02 at 02:50:32, R03 and R04 at 03:12:01. Vrinimi stated that a Transcendent customer was urgently requesting bandwidth. (R00 had been previously dedicated to that Power’s use.) The customer required use of both up- and down-link bandwidth. By the Org’s own admission, the unscheduled usage exceeded sixty percent of their entire capacity. Note that the excesses of the preceding five hundred hours—excesses which caused entirely justified complaint—were never more than five percent of Org capacity.

  Friends, we of Windsong are in the long-haul communication business. We know how difficult it is to maintain transceiver elements that mass as much as a planet. We know that hard contract commitments simply cannot be made by suppliers in our line of work. But at the same time, the behavior of Vrinimi Org is unacceptable. It’s true that in the last three hours the Org has returned R01 through R04 to general service, and promised to pass on the Power’s surpayment to all those who were “inconvenienced”. But only Vrinimi knows how large these surpayments really are. And no one (not even Vrinimi!) knows whether this is the end of the outages.