A Fire Upon the Deep

by Vernor Vinge

  In seconds they had it out of the bag. Dogs would have let it slide to the bottom of the hull, then pushed it around with their noses. Not these things: two put it onto on a cross bench, while a third steadied it with its paw. They poked around the edges, concentrating on the plush flanges and floppy ears. They pushed and nuzzled, but with clear purpose. They were trying to open it.

  Two heads showed over the railing on the other hull. They made the gobbling, hissing sounds that were a cross between a bird call and someone throwing up. One of those on her side glanced back and made similar sounds. The other three continued to play with the dataset’s latches.

  Finally they pulled the big, floppy ears simultaneously: the dataset popped open, and the top window went into Johanna’s startup routine — an anim of herself saying “Shame on you, Jefri. Stay out of my things!” The four creatures went rigid, their eyes suddenly wide.

  Note 279

  Johanna’s four turned the set so the others could see. One held it down while another peered at the top window, and a third fumbled with the key window. The guys in the other hull went nuts, but none of them tried to get any closer. The random prodding of the four abruptly cut off her startup greeting. One of them glanced at the guys in the other hull; another two watched Johanna. She continued to lie with her eyes almost closed.

  “Shame on you, Jefri. Stay out my things!” Johanna’s voice came again, but from one of the animals. It was a perfect playback. Then a girl’s voice was moaning, crying, “Mom, Daddy”. It was her own voice again, but more frightened and childish than she ever wanted it to sound.

  They seemed to be waiting for the dataset to respond. When nothing happened, one of them went back to pushing its nose against the windows. Everything valuable, and all the dangerous programs, were passworded. Insults and squawking emerged from the box, all the little surprises she had planted for her snooping little brother. Oh Jefri, will I ever see you again?

  Note 280

  The sounds and vids kept the monsters amused for several minutes. Eventually their random fiddlings convinced the dataset that somebody really young had opened up the box, and it shifted into kindermode.

  Note 281

  The creatures knew she was watching. Of the four fooling with her Oliphaunt, one — not always the same one — was always watching her. They were playing games with her, pretending they didn’t know she was pretending.

  Note 282

  Johanna opened her eyes wide and glared at the creature. “Damn you!” She looked in the other direction. And screamed. The mob in the other hull were clumped together. Their heads rose on sinuous necks from the pile. In the low sunlight, their eyes glinted red. A pack of rats or snakes, silently staring at her, and for heaven knew how long.

  The heads leaned forward at her cry, and she heard the scream again. Behind her, her own voice shouted “Damn you!” Somewhere else, she was calling for “Mom” and “Daddy”. Johanna screamed again, and they just echoed it back. She swallowed her terror and kept silent. The monsters kept it up for a half minute, the mimicking, the mixing of things she must have said in her sleep. When they saw they couldn’t terrorize her that way any more, the voices stopped being human. The gobbling went back and forth, as if the two groups were negotiating or something. Finally the four on her side closed her dataset and tied it into the net bag.

  Note 283

  The six unwrapped themselves from each other. Three jumped to the outboard side of the hull. They gripped the edge tight in their claws and leaned into the wind. For once they almost did look like dogs — big ones sitting at a car window, sniffing at the airstream. The long necks swept forward and back. Every few seconds, one of them would dip its head out of sight, into the water. Drinking? Fishing?

  Note 284

  Fishing. A head flipped up, tossing something small and green into the boat. The other three animals nosed about, grabbing it. She had a glimpse of tiny legs and a shiny carapace. One of the rats held it at the tip of its mouth, while the other two pulled it apart. It was all done with their uncanny precision. The pack seemed like a single creature, and each neck a heavy tentacle that ended in a pair of jaws. Her gut twisted at the thought, but there was nothing to barf up.

  The fishing expedition went on another quarter hour. They got at least seven of the green things. But they weren’t eating them; not all of them, anyway. The dismembered leavings collected in a small wood bowl.

  More gobbling between the two sides. One of the six grabbed the bowl’s edge in its mouth and crawled across the mast platform. The four on Johanna’s side huddled together as if frightened of the visitor. Only after the bowl was set down and the intruder had returned to its side, did the four in Johanna’s hull poke their heads up again.

  One of the rats picked up the bowl. It and another walked toward her. Johanna swallowed. What torture was this? Her stomach twisted again … she was so hungry. She looked at the bowl again and realized that they were trying to feed her.

  The sun had just come out from under northern clouds. The low light was like some bright fall afternoon, just after rain: dark sky above, yet everything close by bright and glistening. The creatures’ fur was deep and plush. One held the bowl towards her, while the other stuck its snout in and withdrew … something slick and green. It held the tidbit delicately, just with the tips of its long mouth. It turned and thrust the green thing toward her.

  Johanna shrank back, “No!”

  The creature paused. For a moment she thought it was going to echo her. Then it dropped the lump back into the bowl. The first animal set it on the bench beside her. It looked up at her for an instant, then released the jaw-wide flange at the edge of the bowl. She had a glimpse of fine, pointy teeth.

  Johanna stared into the bowl, nausea fighting with hunger. Finally she worked a hand out of her blanket and reached into it. Heads perked up around her, and there was an exchange of gobble comments between the two sides of the boat.

  Note 285

  Her fingers closed on something soft and cold. She lifted it into the sunlight. The body was gray green, its sides glistening in the light. The guys in the other hull had torn off the little legs and chopped away the head. What remained was only two or three centimeters long. It looked like filleted shellfish. Once she had liked such food. But that had been cooked. She almost dropped the thing when she felt it quiver in her hand.

  She brought it close to her mouth, touched it with her tongue. Salty. On Straum, most shellfish would make you very sick if you ate them raw. How could she know, all alone without parents or a local commnet? She felt tears coming. She said a bad word, stuffed the green thing into her mouth, and tried to chew. Blandness, with the texture of suet and gristle. She gagged, spat it out … and tried to eat another. Altogether she got parts of two down. Maybe that was for the best; she’d wait and see how much she barfed up. She lay back and saw several pairs of eyes watching. The gobbling with the other side of the boat picked up. Then one of them sidled toward her, carrying a leather bag with a spigot. A canteen.

  Note 286

  This creature was the biggest of all. The leader? It moved its head close to hers, putting the spout of the canteen near her mouth. The big one seemed sly, more cautious about approaching her than the others. Johanna’s eyes traveled back along its flanks. Beyond the edge of its jacket, the pelt on its rear was mostly white … and scored deep with a Y-shaped scar. This is the one that killed Dad.

  Johanna’s attack was not planned; perhaps that’s why it worked so well. She lunged past the canteen and swung her free arm around the thing’s neck. She rolled over the animal, pinning it against the hull. By itself, it was smaller than she, and not strong enough to push her off. She felt its claws raking through the blankets but somehow never quite cutting her. She put all her weight on the creature’s spine, grabbed it where throat met jaw, and began slamming its head against the wood.

  Then the others were on her, muzzles poking under her, jaws grabbing at her sleeve. She felt rows of needle tee
th just poking through the fabric. Their bodies buzzed with a sound from her dreams, a sound that went straight through her clothes and rattled her bones.

  Note 287

  They pulled her hand from the other’s throat, twisting her; she felt the arrowhead tearing her inside. But there was still one thing she could do: Johanna push off with her feet, butting her head against the base of the other’s jaw, smashing the top of its head into the hull. The bodies around her convulsed, and she was flipped onto her back. Pain was the only thing she could feel now. Neither rage nor fear could move her.

  Note 288

  Yet part of her was still aware of the four. She had hurt them. She had hurt them all. Three wandered drunkenly, making whistling sounds that for once seemed to come from their mouths. The one with the scarred butt lay on its side, twitching. She had punched a star- shaped wound in the top of its head. Blood dripped down past its eyes. Red tears.

  Minutes passed and the whistling stopped. The four creatures huddled together and the familiar hissing resumed. The bleeding from her chest had started again.

  They stared at each other for a while. She smiled at her enemies. They could be hurt. She could hurt them. She felt better than she had since the landing.

  Note 289

  Chapter 11

  Note 290

  Before the Flenser Movement, Woodcarvers had been the most famous city-state west of the Icefangs. Its founder went back six centuries. In those days, things had been harder in the north; snow covered even the lowlands through most of the year. The Woodcarver had started alone, a single pack in a little cabin on an inland bay. The pack was a hunter and a thinker as much as an artist. There had been no settlements for a hundred miles around. Only a dozen of the carver’s early statues ever left his cabin, yet those statues had been his first fame. Three were still in existence. There was a city by the Long Lakes named for the one in its museum.

  Note 291

  With fame had come apprentices. One cabin became ten, scattered across Woodcarver’s fjord. A century or two passed, and of course the Woodcarver slowly changed. He feared the change, the feeling that his soul was slipping away. He tried to keep hold of himself; almost everyone does to one extent or another. In the worst case, the pack falls into perversion, perhaps becomes soul-hollow. For Woodcarver, the quest was itself the change. He studied how each member fits within the soul. He studied pups and their raising, and how you might guess the contributions of a new one. He learned to shape the soul by training the members.

  Note 292

  Of course little of this was new. It was the base of most religions, and every town had romance advisors and brood kenners. Such knowledge, whether valid or not, is important to any culture. What Woodcarver did was to look at it all again, without traditional bias. He gently experimented on himself and on the other artists in his little colony. He watched the results, using them to design new experiments. He was guided by what he saw rather than by what he wanted to believe.

  Note 293

  By the various standards of his age, what he did was heresy or perversion or simple insanity. In the early years, King Woodcarver was hated almost as much as Flenser was three centuries later. But the far north was still going through its time of heavy winters. The nations of the south could not easily send armies as far as Woodcarvers. Once when they did, they were thoroughly defeated. And wisely, Woodcarver never attempted to subvert the south. Not directly. But his settlement grew and grew, and its fame for art and furniture was small beside its other reputations. Old of heart traveled to the town, and came back not just younger, but smarter and happier. Ideas radiated from the town: weaving machines, gearboxes and windmills, factory postures. Something new had happened in this place. It wasn’t the inventions. It was the people that Woodcarver had midwifed, and the outlook he had created.

  * * *

  Note 294

  Wickwrackscar and Jaqueramaphan arrived at Woodcarvers late in the afternoon. It had rained most of the day, but now the clouds had blown away and the sky was that bright cloudless blue that was all the more beautiful after a stretch of cloudy days.

  Woodcarver’s Domain was paradise to Peregrine’s eyes. He was tired of the packless wilderness. He was tired of worrying about the alien.

  Twinhulls paced them suspiciously for the last few miles. The boats were armed, and Peregrine and Scriber were coming from very much the wrong direction. But they were all alone, clearly harmless. Long callers hooted, relaying their story ahead. By the time they reached the harbor they were heros, two packs who had stolen (unspecified) treasure from the villains of the north. They sailed around a breakwater that hadn’t existed on Peregrine’s last trip, and tied in at the moorage.

  The pier was crowded with soldiers and wagons. Townspeople were all over the road leading up to the city walls. This was as close to a mob scene as you could get and still have room for sober thought. Scriber bounced out of the boat and pranced about in obvious delight at the cheers from the hillside. “Quickly! We must speak with the Woodcarver.”

  Note 295

  Wickwrackscar picked up the canvas bag that held the alien’s picture box, and climbed carefully out of the boat. He was dizzy from the beating the alien had given him. Scar’s fore-tympanum had been cut in the attack. For a moment he lost track of himself. The pier was very strange — stone at first glance, but walled with a spongy black material he hadn’t seen since the Southseas; it should be brittle here…. Where am I? I should be happy about something, some victory. He paused to regroup. After a moment both the pain and his thoughts sharpened; he would be like this for days yet, at least. Get help for the alien. Get it ashore.

  Note 296

  * * *

  Note 297

  King Woodcarver’s Lord Chamberlain was a mostly overweight dandy; Peregrine had not expected to see such at Woodcarvers. But the fellow became instantly cooperative when he saw the alien. He brought a doctor down to look at the Two-Legs (and incidentally, at Peregrine). The alien had gained strength in the last two days, but there had been no more violence. They got it ashore without much trouble. It stared at Peregrine out of its flat face, a look he knew was impotent rage. He touched Scar’s head thoughtfully … the Two- Legs was just waiting for the best opportunity to do more damage.

  Minutes later, the travelers were in kherhog-drawn carriages, rolling up the cobblestone street toward the city walls. Soldiers cleared the way through the crowd. Scriber Jaqueramaphan waved this way and that, the handsome hero. By now Peregrine knew the shy insecurity that lurked within Scriber. This might be the high point of his whole life till now.

  Note 298

  Even if he wanted it, Wickwrackscar could not be so expansive. With one of Scar’s tympana hurt, wild gestures made him lose track of his thoughts. He hunkered down on the carriage seats and looked out in all directions:

  But for the shape of the outer harbor, the place was not at all what he remembered from fifty years ago. In most parts of the world, not much changed in fifty years. A pilgrim returning after such an interval might even be bored by the sameness. But this … it was almost scary.

  Note 299

  The huge breakwater was new. There were twice as many piers, and multiboats with flags he had never seen on this side of the world. The road had been here before, but narrow, with only a third as many turnoffs. Before, the town walls had been more to keep the kherhogs and froghens in than any invaders out. Now they were ten feet high, the black stone extending as far as Peregrine could see…. And there had been scarcely any soldiers last time; now they were everywhere. That was not a good change. He felt a sinking in the pit of Scar’s stomach; soldiers and fighting were not good.

  Note 300

  They rode through the city gates and past a market maze that spread across acres. The alleys were only fifty feet wide, narrow where bolts of cloth, furniture displays, and crates of fresh fruit encroached. Smells of fruit and spice and varnish hung in the air. The place was so crowded that the haggling was almost an
orgy, and dizzy Peregrine almost blacked out. Then they were on a narrower street that zigzagged through ranks of half-timbered buildings. Beyond the roofs loomed heavy fortifications. Ten minutes later they were in the castle yard.

  They dismounted and the Lord Chamberlain had the Two-Legs moved to a litter.

  “Woodcarver, he’ll see us now?” said Scriber.

  The bureaucrat laughed. “She. Woodcarver changed gender more than ten years ago.”

  Peregrine’s heads twisted about in surprise. Precisely what would that mean? Most packs change with time, but he had never heard of Woodcarver being anything but “he”. He almost missed what the Lord Chamberlain said next.

  “Even better. Her whole council must see … what you’ve brought. Come inside.” He waved the guards away.

  They walked down a hall almost wide enough for two packs to pass abreast. The chamberlain led, followed by the travelers and the doctor with the alien’s litter. The walls were high, padded with silver-crusted quilting. It was far grander than before … and again, unsettling. There was scarcely any statuary, and what there was dated from centuries before.

  Note 301

  But there were pictures. He stumbled when he saw the first, and behind him he heard Scriber gasp. Peregrine had seen art all around the world: The mobs of the tropics preferred abstract murals, smudges of psychotic color. The Southseas islanders had never invented perspective; in their watercolors, distant objects simply floated in the upper half of the picture. In the Long Lakes Republic, representationism was currently favored, especially multiptychs that gave a whole-pack view.

  Note 302

  But Peregrine had never seen the likes of these. The pictures were mosaics, each tile a ceramic square about a quarter inch on a side. There was no color, just four shades of gray. From a few feet away, the graininess was lost, and … they were the most perfect landscapes Peregrine had ever seen. All were views from hilltops around Woodcarvers. Except for the lack of color, they might have been windows. The bottom of each picture was bounded by a rectangular frame, but the tops were irregular; the mosaics simply broke off at the horizon. The hall’s quilted wall stood where the pictures should have shown sky.