Frond shrug. "Sir Pham has turned out to be a competent ship's master. I'm afraid things will change as we descend. The ship's higher automation will gradually fail. What you call 'manual control' will become very important. OOB was designed for my race, my lady. No matter what Sir Pham thinks of us, at bottom we can fly it better than any. So bit by bit the others will gain — at least those who truly understand their own ships."
It was something she hadn't guessed, certainly something she would never have found reading the Net. Too bad it's also bad news. "S-surely Pham must know this?"
"I think he must. But he is trapped in his own fears. What can he do? If not for you, My Lady Ravna, he might have killed us already. Maybe when the choice comes down to dying in the next hour against trusting us, maybe then there will be a chance."
"By then it will be too late. Look, even if he doesn't trust — even though he believes the worst of Riders — there must still be a way." And it came to her that sometimes you don't have to change the way people think, or even whom they may hate. "Pham wants to get to the Bottom, to recover this Countermeasure. He thinks you may be from the Blight, and after the same thing. But up to a point — " up to a point he can cooperate, postpone the showdown he imagines till perhaps it won't matter.
Even as she started to say it, Blueshell was already shouting back at her. "I'm am not of the Blight! Greenstalk is not! The Rider race is not!" He swept around his mate, rolled across the ceiling till his fronds rattled right before Ravna's face.
"I'm sorry. It's just the potential — "
"Nonsense!" His voder buzzed off scale. "We ran in to an evil few. Every race has such, people who will kill for trade. They forced Greenstalk, substituted data at her voder. Pham Nuwen would kill our billions for the sake of this fantasy." He waved, inarticulate. Something she had never seen in a Skroderider: his fronds actually changed tone, darkened.
The motion ceased, yet he said nothing more. And then Ravna heard it, a keening that might have come from a voder. The sound was steadily growing, a howl that made all Blueshell's sound effects friendly nonsense. It was Greenstalk.
The scream reached a threshold just below pain, then broke into choppy Triskweline: "It's true! Oh, by all our trading, Blueshell, it's true…" and staticky noise came from her voder. Her fronds started shaking, random turning that must be like a human's eyes wildly staring, like a human's mouth mumbling hysteria.
Blueshell was already back by the wall, reaching to adjust her new skrode. Greenstalk's fronds brushed him away, and her voder voice continued, "I was horror struck, Blueshell. I was horror struck, struck by horror. And it would not stop…" the voice rattled quiet for just an instant, and this time Blueshell made no move. "I remember everything up till the last five minutes. And everything Pham says is true, dear love. Loyal as you are, and I have seen that loyalty now for two hundred years, you would be turned in an instant… just as I was." Now that the dam broke, her words came quickly, mostly making sense. The horrors she could remember were graven deep, and she was finally coming out of ghastly shock. "I was right behind you, remember, Blueshell? You were deep in your trading with the tusk-legs, so deep you did not really see. I noticed the other Riders coming toward us. No matter: a friendly meeting, so far from home. Then one touched my Skrode. I — " Greenstalk hesitated. Her fronds rattled and she began again, "horror struck, horror struck…"
After a moment: "It was like suddenly new memories in the skrode, Blueshell. New memories, new attitudes. But thousands of years deep. And not mine. Instantly, instantly. I never even lost consciousness. I thought just as clearly, I remembered all I had before."
"And when you resisted?" Ravna said softly.
"… Resisted? My Lady Ravna, I did not resist. I was theirs… No. Not theirs, for they were owned, too. We were things, our intelligence in service to another's goal. Dead, and alive to see our death. I would kill you, I would kill Pham, I would kill Blueshell. You know I tried. And when I did, I wanted to succeed. You could not imagine, Ravna. You humans speak of violation. You could never know…" Long pause. "That's not quite right. At the Top of the Beyond, within the Blight itself — perhaps there, everyone lives as I did."
The shuddering did not subside, but her gestures were no longer aimless. The fronds were saying something in her own language, and brushing gently against Blueshell.
"Our whole race, dear love. Just as Pham says it."
Blueshell wilted, and Ravna felt the sort of gut-tearing she had when they learned of Sjandra Kei. That had been her worlds, her family, her life. Blueshell was hearing worse.
Ravna pushed a little closer, near enough to run her hand up the side of Greenstalk's fronds. "Pham says it's the greater skrodes that are the cause." Sabotage hidden billions of years deep.
