A Fire Upon the Deep

She touched Peregrine on two of his heads. "One thing, Sir Pilgrim. You trust much to give me freedom of your seas… But you should know, Blueshell and I were pregnant. I have a mist of our common eggs within me. Leave me here and there will be new Riders by this island in future years. Please do not take that as betrayal. I want to remember Blueshell with children — but modestly; our kind has shared ten million worlds and never been bad neighbors… except in a way that, Ravna can tell you, cannot happen here."

In the end, Greenstalk was not at all interested in the protected stretch of water that Peregrine had discovered. She wanted — of all the places here — the one where the ocean crashed most ferociously. It took them more than an hour to find a path down to that violent place, and another half hour to get Rider and skrode safely into the water. Peregrine didn't even try to swim here. The coral rock came in close from all sides, slimy green in patches, razor jagged in others. Five minutes in that meat grinder and he might be too weak to get out. Strange that there was so much green in the water here. It was all but opaque with sea grasses and swarms of foam midges.

Ravna was a little better off; at the water's greatest height, she could still keep feet to ground — at least most of the time. She stood in the foam, bracing herself with feet and an arm, and helped the skrodeling over the lip of rock. Once in, the mechanical crashed firmly to the bottom beside the human.

Ravna looked up at Pilgrim, made an "okay" gesture. Then she huddled down for a moment, holding to the skrode to keep her place. The surf crashed over the two, obscuring all but Greenstalk's tallest standing fronds. When the foam moved back, he could see that the lower fronds draped across the human's back, and hear a voder buzzing that wasn't quite intelligible against all the other noise.

The human stood and slogged through the waist deep-water toward the rocks Peregrine occupied. Peregrine grabbed onto himself, reached down to give Ravna some paws. She scrambled up the slime green and coral white.

He followed the limping Two-Legs toward the crest of tropical ferns. They stopped under the shade, and she sat down, leaned back into the mat of a fern's trunk. Cut and bruised, she looked almost as hurt as Johanna ever had.

"You okay?"

"Yeah," she ran her hands back through disheveled hair. Then she looked at him and laughed. "We both look like casualties."

Um, yes. Sometime soon he needed a fresh-water bath. He looked around and out. From the crest of the atoll ring they had a view of Greenstalk's niche. Ravna was looking down there too, minor injuries forgotten.

"How can she like that spot?" Peregrine said wonderingly. "Imagine being smashed and smashed and smashed."

There was a smile on Ravna's face, but she kept her two eyes on the surf. "There are strange things in the universe, Pilgrim; I'm glad there are some you have not read about yet. Where the surf meets the shore — lots of neat things can happen there. You saw all the life that floated in that madness. Just as plants love the sun, there are creatures that can use the energy differences down at that edge. There they have the sun and the surge and the richness of the suspension… Still, we should keep watch a little longer." Between each insurge of the waves, they could still see Greenstalk's fronds. He already knew that those limbs weren't strong, but he was beginning to realize that they must be very tough. "She'll be okay, though that cheap skrode may not last long. Poor Greenstalk may end up without any automation at all… she and her children, the lowest of all Riders."

Ravna turned to look at the pack. There was still that smile on her face. Wondering, yet pleased? "You know the secret Greenstalk spoke of?"

"Woodcarver told me what you told her."

"I'm glad — surprised — she was willing to let Greenstalk come here. Medieval minds — sorry, most any minds — would want to kill before taking even the faintest risk with something like this."

"Then why did you tell the Queen?" About the skrode's perversion.

"It's your world. I was tired of playing god with the Secret. And Greenstalk agreed. Even if the Queen had refused, Greenstalk could have used a cold box on the OOB." And likely slept forever. "But Woodcarver didn't refuse. Somehow she understood what I was saying: it's the true skrodes that can be perverted, but Greenstalk no longer has one of those. In a decade, this island's shore will be populated with hundreds of young Riders, but they would never colonize beyond this archipelago without permission of the locals. The risk is vanishingly small… but I was still surprised Woodcarver took it."