"I was almost the perfect skipper. Almost. I always wanted to see what was beyond the space we had good records on. Every time I got really rich, so rich I could launch my own subfleet — I'd take some crazy chance and lose everything. I was the yo-yo of the Fleet. One run I'd be captain of five, the next I'd be pulling maintenance programming on some damn container ship. Given how time stretches out with sublight commerce, there were whole generations who thought I was a legendary genius — and others who used my name as a synonym for goofball."

He paused and his eyes widened in pleased surprise. "Ha! I remember what I was doing there at the end. I was in the 'goofball' part of my cycle, but it didn't matter. There was this captain of twenty who was even crazier than I… Can't remember her name. Her? Couldn't have been; I'd never serve under a fem captain." He was almost talking to himself. "Anyway, this guy was willing to bet everything on the sort of thing normal folks would argue about over beer. He called his ship the, um, it translates as something like 'wild witless bird' — that gives you the idea about him. He figured there must be some really high-tech civilizations somewhere in the universe. The problem was to find them. In a strange way, he had almost guessed about the Zones. Only problem was, he wasn't crazy enough; he got one little thing wrong. Can you guess what?"

Ravna nodded. Considering where Pham's wreck was found, it was obvious.

"Yeah. I'll bet it's an idea older than spaceflight: the 'elder races' must be toward the galactic core, where stars are closer and there are black hole exotica for power. He was taking his entire fleet of twenty. They'd keep going till they found somebody or had to stop and colonize. This captain figured success was unlikely in our lifetime. But with proper planning we could end up in a close-packed region where it would be easy to found a new Qeng Ho — and it would proceed even further.

"Anyway, I was lucky to get aboard even as a programmer; this captain knew all the wrong things about me."

The expedition lasted a thousand years, penetrating two hundred and fifty light-years galactic inward. The Qeng Ho volume was closer to the Bottom of the Slowness than Old Earth, and they were proceeding inwards from there. Even so, it was plain bad luck that they encountered the edge of the Deeps after only two hundred and fifty light-years. One after another, the Wild Witless Bird lost contact with the other ships. Sometimes it happened without warning, other times there was evidence of computer failure or gross incompetence. The survivors saw a pattern, guessed that common components were failing. Of course, no one connected the problems with the region of space they were entering.

"We backed down from ram speeds, found a solar system with a semi-habitable planet. We'd lost track of everybody else… Just what we did then isn't real clear to me." He gave a dry laugh. "We must have been right at the edge, staggering around at about IQ 60. I remember fooling with the life support system. That's probably what actually killed us." For a moment he looked sad and bewildered. He shrugged. "And then I woke up in the tender clutches of Vrinimi Org, here where faster-than-light travel is possible… and I can see the edge of Heaven itself."

Ravna didn't say anything for a moment. She looked across her beach into the surf. They'd been talking a long time. The sun was peeking under the tree petals, its light shifting across her office. Did Grondr realize what he had here? Almost anything from the Slow Zone had collector's value. People fresh from the Slowness were even more valuable. But Pham Nuwen might be unique. He had personally experienced more than had some whole civilizations, and ventured into the Deeps to boot. She understood now why he looked to the Transcend and called it "Heaven". It wasn't entirely naivete, nor a failure in the Organization's education programs. Pham Nuwen had already been through two transforming experiences, from pre-tech to star— traveler, and star-traveler to Beyonder. Each was a jump almost beyond imagination. Now he saw that another step was possible, and was perfectly willing to sell himself to take it.

So why should I risk my job to change his mind? But her mouth was living a life of its own. "Why not postpone the Transcend, Pham? Take some time to understand what is here in the Beyond. You'd be welcome in almost any civilization. And on human worlds you'd be the wonder of the age." A glimpse of non-Nyjoran humanity. The local newsgroups at Sjandra Kei had thought Ravna radically ambitious to take a 'prenticeship twenty thousand light-years away. Coming back from it, she would have her pick of Full Academician jobs on any of a dozen worlds. That was nothing compared to Pham Nuwen; there were folks so rich they might give him a world if he would just stay. "You could name your price."

The redhead's lazy smile broadened. "Ah, but you see, I've already named my price, and I think Vrinimi can meet it."

I really wish I could do something about that smile, thought Ravna. Pham Nuwen's ticket to the Transcend was based on a Power's sudden interest in the Straumli perversion. This innocent's ego might end up smeared across a million death cubes, running a million million simulations of human nature.

Grondr called less than five minutes after Pham Nuwen's departure. Ravna knew the Org would be eavesdropping, and she'd already told Grondr her misgivings about this "selling" of a sophont. Nevertheless, she was a bit nervous to see him.

"When is he actually going to leave for the Transcend?"

Grondr rubbed at his freckles. He didn't seem angry. "Not for ten or twenty days. The Power that's negotiating for him is more interested in looking at our archives and watching what's passing through Relay. Also… despite the human's enthusiasm for going, he's really quite cautious."

"Oh?"

"Yes. He's insisting on a library budget, and permission to roam anywhere in the system. He's been chatting with random employees all over the Docks. He was especially insistent about talking to you." Grondr's mouth parts clicked in a smile. "Feel free to speak your mind to him. Basically, he's tasting around for hidden poison. Hearing the worst from you should make him trust us."

She was coming to understand Grondr's confidence. Damn but Pham Nuwen had a thick head. "Yes sir. He's asked me to show him around the Foreign Quarter tonight." As you well know.

"Fine. I wish the rest of the deal were going as smoothly." Grondr turned so that only peripheral freckles were looking in her direction. He was surrounded by status displays of the Org's communication and database operations. From what she could see, things were remarkably busy. "Maybe I should not bring this up, but it's just possible you can help… Business is very brisk." Grondr did not seem pleased to report the good news. "We have nine civilizations from the Top of the Beyond that are bidding for wide band data feeds. That we could handle. But this Power that sent a ship here…"

Ravna interrupted almost without thinking, a breach that would have horrified her a few days earlier. "Just who is it, by the way? Any chance we're entertaining the Straumli Perversion?" The thought of that taking the redhead was a chill.

"Not unless all the Powers are fooled, too. Marketing calls our current visitor 'Old One'." He smiled. "That's something of a joke, but true even so. We've known it for eleven years." No one really knew how long Transcendent beings lived, but it was a rare Power that stayed communicative for more than five or ten years. They lost interest, or grew into something different — or really did die. There were a million explanations, thousands that were allegedly from the Powers first hand. Ravna guessed that the true explanation was the simplest one: intelligence is the handmaiden of flexibility and change. Dumb animals can change only as fast as natural evolution. Human equivalent races, once on their technological run-up, hit the limits of their zone in a matter of a few thousand years. In the Transcend, superhumanity can happen so fast that its creators are destroyed. It wasn't surprising then that the Powers themselves were evanescent.