Greenstalk drifted onto the bridge one day, began changing the windows. As usual she spoke to Pham as she did so, chatting almost as if there were a real person here to listen:
"See. The center window is an ultrawave map of the region directly behind us." Greenstalk waved a tendril over the controls. The multicolored pictures appeared on the other walls. "Similarly for the other five points of direction."
The words were noise in Pham's ears, understood but of no interest. The Rider paused, then continued with something like the futile persistence of the Ravna woman.
"When ships make a jump… when they reenter, there's a kind of an ultrawave splash. I'm checking if we're being followed."
Colors on the windows all around, even in front of Pham's eyes. There were smooth gradations, no bright spots, no linear features.
"I know, I know," she said, making up both sides of the conversation. "The ship's analyzers are still massaging the data. But if anyone's pacing us closer than one hundred light-years, we'll see them. And if they're farther than that — well, then they probably can't detect us."
It doesn't matter. Pham almost shut the question out of his mind. But there were no stars to look at; he stared at the glowing colors and actually thought about the problem. Thought. A joke: no one Down Here ever really thought about anything. Perhaps ten thousand starships had escaped the Fall of Relay. Most likely, the Enemy had not cataloged those departures. The attack on Relay had been a minor adjunct to the murder of Old One. Most likely, the OOB had escaped unnoticed. Why should the Enemy care where the last of Old One's memories might be hiding? Why should it care about where their little ship might be bound?
A tremor passed through his body; animal reflex, surely.
Panic was slowly rising in Ravna Bergsndot, every day a little stronger. It was not any particular disaster, just the slow dying of hope. She tried to be near Pham Nuwen part of every day, to talk to him, to hold his hand. He never responded, not even — except perhaps by accident — to look at her. Greenstalk tried too. Alien though Greenstalk was, the Pham of before had seemed truly attracted to the Riders. He was off all medical support now, but he might as well have been a vegetable.
And all the while their descent was slowing, always a little worse than what Blueshell had predicted.
And when she turned to the News… in some ways that was the most horrifying of all. The "death race" theory was getting popular. More and more, there were folk who seemed to think that the human race was spreading the Blight:
Crypto: 0
As received by: OOB shipboard ad hoc
Language path: Baeloresk-»Triskweline, SjK units
From: Alliance for the Defense [Claimed cooperative of five polyspecific empires in the Beyond below Straumli Realm. No record of existence before the Fall of the Realm.]
Subject: Blighter Video thread
Distribution:
Threat of the Blight, War Trackers Interest Group, Homo Sapiens Interest Group Date: 17.95 days since Fall of Relay Text of message:
So far we've processed half a million messages about this creature's video, and read a goodly fraction of them. Most of you are missing the point. The principle of the "Helper's" operation is clear. This is a Transcendent Power using ultralight communication to operate through a race in the Beyond. It would be fairly easy to do in the Transcend — there are a number of stories about thralls of Powers there. But for such communication to be effective within the Beyond, truly extensive design changes must be made in the minds of the controlled race. It could not have happened naturally, and it can not be quickly done to new races — no matter what the Blight says.
We've watched the Homo Sapiens interest group since the first appearance of the Blight. Where is this "Earth" the humans claim to be from? "Half way around the galaxy," they say, and deep in the Slow Zone. Even their proximate origin, Nyjora, is conveniently in the Slowness. We see an alternative theory: Sometime, maybe further back than the last consistent archives, there was a battle between Powers. The blueprint for this "human race" was written, complete with communication interfaces. Long after the original contestants and their stories had vanished, this race happened to get in position where it could Transcend. And that Transcending was tailor-made, too, re-establishing the Power that had set the trap to begin with.
We're not sure of the details, but a scenario such as this is inevitable. What we must do is also clear. Straumli Realm is at the heart of the Blight, obviously beyond all attack. But there are other human colonies. We ask the Net to help in identifying all of them. We ourselves are not a large civilization, but we would be happy to coordinate the information gathering, and the military action that is required to prevent the Blight's spread in the Middle Beyond.
