12 Ab Ripper X

Two weeks, three -- and there was no doubt: something was healing at the boundary between Rider and skrodeling. Greenstalk consistently made sense, consistently committed important rememberings.... Now as often as not it was she helping Ravna. Greenstalk saw things that Ravna had missed: "Sir Pham isn't the only one who is afraid of us Skroderiders. Blueshell is frightened too,复件 (37) air max2, and it is tearing him apart. He can't admit it even to me, but he thinks it's possible that we're infected independently of our skrodes. He desperately wants to convince Pham that this is not true -- and so to convince himself." She was silent for a long moment, one frond brushing against Ravna's arm. Sea sounds surrounded them in the cabin, but ship's automation could no longer produce surging water. "Sigh. We must pretend the surf,复件 (95) air max2, dear Ravna. Somewhere it will always be, no matter what happened at Sjandra Kei, no matter what happens here." Blueshell was hearty gentleness around his mate, but alone with Ravna his rage showed through: "No,复件 (13) air max1, no,复件 (13) air max1, I don't object to Sir Pham's navigation, at least not now. Perhaps we could be a little further ahead with me directly at the helm, but the fastest ships behind us would still be closing. It's the other things, my lady. You know how untrustworthy our automation is down here. Pham is hurting it further. He's written his own security overrides. He's turning the ship's environment automation into a system of boobytraps." Ravna had seen evidence of this. The areas around OOB's command deck and ship's workshop looked like military checkpoints. "You know his fears. If this makes him feel safer --" "That's not the point, My Lady. I would do anything to persuade him to accept my help. But what he's doing is deadly dangerous. Our Bottom automation is not reliable, and he's making it actively worse. If we get some sudden stress, the environment programs will likely have a bizarre crash -- atmosphere dump, thermal runaway, anything." "I --" "Doesn't he understand? Pham controls nothing." His voder broke into a nonlinear squawk. "He has the ability to destroy, but that is all. He needs my help. He was my friend. Doesn't he understand?" Pham understood ... oh, Pham understood. He and Ravna still talked. Their arguments were the hardest thing in her life. And sometimes they didn't exactly argue; sometimes it was almost like rational discussion: "I haven't been taken over, Ravna. Not like the Blight takes over Riders, anyway. I still have charge of my soul." He turned away from the console and flashed a wan smile in her direction, acknowledging the flaw in such self-conviction. And from things like that smile, Ravna was convinced that Pham Nuwen still lived, and sometimes spoke. "What about the godshatter state? I see you for hours,复件 (4) 复件 air max2, just staring at the tracking display,12 Ab Ripper X, or mucking around in the library and the News," scanning faster than any human could consciously read. Pham shrugged. "It's studying the ships that are chasing us, trying to figure out just what belongs to whom, just what capabilities each might have. I don't know the details. Self-awareness is on vacation then," when all Pham's mind was turned into a processor for whatever programs Old One had downloaded. A few hours of fugue state might yield an instant of Power-grade thought -- and even that he didn't consciously remember. "But I know this. Whatever the godshatter is, it's a very narrow thing. It's not alive; in some ways it may not even be very smart. For everyday matters like ship piloting, there's just good old Pham Nuwen." "... there's the rest of us, Pham. Blueshell would like to help," Ravna spoke softly.