… it was almost as if she had come full circle, back to her childhood dreams of adventure. the only problem was, sometimes she felt like one of the bad guys: Pham Nuwen was a living person, not something to be sold.

She stood and walked out to meet her red-haired visitor.

He wasn't carrying the sword and handgun of Grondr's fanciful animation. Yet his clothes were the braided fabric of ancient adventure, and he carried himself with lazy confidence. Since her meeting with Grondr, she had looked up some anthropology from Old Earth. The red hair and the eyefolds had been known there, though rarely in the same individual. Certainly his smoky skin would have been remarkable to an inhabitant of Earth. This fellow was, as much as herself, a product of post-terrestrial evolution.

He stopped an arm's length away and gave her a lopsided grin. "You look pretty human. Ravna Bergsndot?"

She smiled and nodded up at him. "Mr. Pham Nuwen?"

"Yes indeed. We seem both to be excellent guessers." He swept past her into the shade of the inner office. Cocky fellow.

She followed him, unsure about protocol. You'd think with a fellow human there would be no problems…

Actually, the interview went pretty smoothly. It was more than thirty days since Pham Nuwen's resuscitation. Much of that time had been spent in cram language sessions. The fellow must be damned bright; he already spoke Triskweline trade talk with a folksy slickness. He really was rather cute. Ravna had been away from Sjandra Kei for two years, and had another year of her 'prenticeship to go. She'd been doing pretty well. She had many close friends here, Egravan, Sarale. But just chatting with this fellow brought a lot of the loneliness back. In some ways he was more alien than anything at Relay… and in some ways she wanted to just grab him and kiss his confident grin away.

Grondr Vrinimikalir had been telling the truth about Pham Nuwen. The guy was actually enthusiastic about the Org's plans for him! In theory, that meant she could do her job with a clear conscience. In fact…

"Mr. Nuwen, my job is to orient you to your new world. I know you've been exposed to some intense instruction the last few days, but there are limits to how fast such knowledge can sink in."

The redhead smiled. "Call me Pham. Sure, I feel like an over-stuffed bag. My sleep time is full of little voices. I've learned an awful lot without experiencing anything. Worse, I've been a target for all this 'education'. It's a perfect setup if Vrinimi wants to trick me. That's why I'm learning to use the local library. And that's why I insisted they find someone like you." He saw the surprise on her face. "Ha! You didn't know that. See, talking to a real person gives me a chance to see things that aren't all planned ahead. Also, I've always been a pretty good judge of human nature; I think I can read you pretty well." His grin showed he understood just how irritating he was being.

Ravna looked up at the green petals of the beachtrees. Maybe this boob deserved what he was getting into. "So you have great experience dealing with people?"

"Given the limitations of the Slowness, I've been around, Ravna. I've been around. I know I don't look it, but I'm sixty-seven years old subjective. I thank your Organization for a fine job of thawing me out." He tipped a non-existent hat in her direction. "My last voyage was more than a thousand years objective. I was Programmer-at-Arms on a Qeng Ho longshot -" His eyes abruptly widened, and he said something unintelligible. For a moment he almost looked vulnerable.

Ravna reached a hand toward him. "Memory?"

Pham Nuwen nodded. "Damn. This is something I don't thank you people for."

Pham Nuwen had been frozen in the aftermath of violent death, not as a planned suspension. It was a near miracle that Vrinimi Org had been able to bring him back at all — at least with Middle Beyond technology. But memory was the hardest thing. The chemical basis of memory does not survive chaotic freezing well.

The problem was enough to shrink even Pham Nuwen's ego by a size or two. Ravna took pity on him. "It's not likely that anything is completely lost. You just have to find a different angle on some things."

"… Yes. I've been coached about that. Start with other memories; work sideways toward what you can't remember straight on. Well… it beats being dead." Some of his jauntiness returned, but subdued to a really quite charming level. They talked for long while as the redhead worked around the points he couldn't "remember straight on".

And gradually Ravna came to feel something she had never expected in connection with a Slow Zoner: awe. In one lifetime, Pham Nuwen had accomplished virtually everything that was possible for a being in the Slowness. All her life she had pitied the civilizations trapped down there. They could never know the glory; they might never know the truth. Yet by luck and skill and sheer strength of will, this fellow had leaped barrier after barrier. Had Grondr known the truth when he pictured the redhead with sword and slug gun? For Pham Nuwen really was a barbarian. He had been born on a fallen colony world — Canberra he called it. The place sounded much like medieval Nyjora, though not matriarchal. He'd been the youngest child of a king. He'd grown up with swords and poison and intrigue, living in stone castles by a cold, cold sea. No doubt this littlest prince would have ended up murdered — or king of all — if life had continued in the medieval way. But when he was thirteen years old everything changed. A world that had only legends of aircraft and radio was confronted by interstellar traders. In a year of trading, Canberra's feudal politics was turned on its head.

"Qeng Ho had invested three ships in the expedition to Canberra. They were pissed, thought we'd be at a higher level of technology. We couldn't resupply them, so two stayed behind, probably turned my poor world inside out. I left with the third — a crazy hostage deal my father thought he was putting over on them. I was lucky they didn't space me."

Qeng Ho consisted of several hundred ramscoop ships operating in a volume hundreds of light-years across. Their vessels could reach almost a third of the speed of light. They were mostly traders, occasionally rescuers, even more rarely conquerors. When Pham Nuwen last knew them, they had settled thirty worlds and were almost three thousand years old. It was as extravagant a civilization as can ever exist in the Slowness… And of course, until Pham Nuwen was revived, no one in the Beyond had ever heard of it. Qeng Ho was like a million other doomed civilizations, buried thousands of light-years in the Slowness. Only by luck would they ever penetrate into the Beyond, where faster-than-light travel was possible.

But for a thirteen-year-old boy born to swords and chain mail, the Qeng Ho was more change than most living beings ever experience. In a matter of weeks, he went from medieval lordling to starship cabin boy.

"At first they didn't know what to do with me. Figured on popping me into cold storage and dumping me at the next stop. What can you make of a kid who thinks there's one world and it's flat, who has spent his whole life learning to whack about with a sword?" He stopped abruptly, as he did every few minutes, when the stream of recollection ran into damaged territory. Then his glance flicked out at Ravna, and his smile was as cocky as ever. "I was one mean animal. I don't think civilized people realize what it's like to grow up with your own aunts and uncles scheming to murder you, and you training to get them first. In civilization I met bigger villains — guys who'd fry a whole planet and call it 'reconciliation' — but for sheer up-close treachery, you can't beat my childhood."

To hear Pham Nuwen tell it, only dumb luck saved the crew from his scheming. In the years that followed, he learned to fit in, learned civilized skills. Properly tamed, he could be an ideal ship master of the Qeng Ho. And for many years he was. The Qeng Ho volume contained a couple of other races, and a number of human-colonized worlds. At 0.3c, Pham spent decades in coldsleep getting from star to star, then a year or two at each port trying to make a profit with products and information that might be lethally out-of-date. The reputation of the Qeng Ho was some protection. "Politics may come and go, but Greed goes on forever" was the fleet's motto, and they had lasted longer than most of their customers. Even religious fanatics grew a little cautious when they thought about Qeng Ho retribution. But more often it was the skill and deviousness of the shipmaster that saved the day. And few were a match for the little boy in Pham Nuwen.