A Fire Upon the Deep

by Vernor Vinge

  Twenty thousand light-years in three weeks. But that had been on a path through the Middle Beyond. Now in the galactic plane, they were still six thousand light-years from their goal at the Bottom of the Beyond. The Zone interfaces roughly followed surfaces of constant mean density; on a galactic scale, the Bottom was a vaguely lens-shaped surface, surrounding much of the galactic disk. The OOB was moving in the plane of the disk now, more or less toward the galactic center. Every week took them deeper toward the Slowness. Worse, their path, and all variants that made any progress, extended right through a region of massive Zone shifting. The Net News had called it the Great Zone Storm, though of course there was not the slightest physical feeling of turbulence within the volume. But some days their progress was less that eighty percent what they’d expected.

  Note 759

  Early on they’d known that it was not only the storm that was slowing them. Blueshell had gone outside, looking over the damage that still remained from their escape.

  “So it’s the ship itself?” Ravna had glared out from the bridge, watching the now imperceptible crawl of near stars across the heavens. The confirmation was no revelation. But what to do?

  Note 760

  Blueshell trundled back and forth across the ceiling. Every time he reached the far wall, he’d query ship’s management about the pressure seal on the nose lock. Ravna glared at him, “Hey, that was the n’th time you’ve checked status in the last three minutes. If you really think something is wrong, then fix it.”

  The Skroderider’s wheeled progress came to an abrupt halt. Fronds waved uncertainly. “But I was just outside. I want to be sure I shut the port correctly…. Oh, you mean I’ve already checked it?”

  Ravna looked up at him, and tried to get the sting out of her voice. Blueshell wasn’t the proper target for her frustration. “Yup. At least five times.”

  “I’m sorry.” He paused, going into the stillness of complete concentration. “I’ve committed the memory.” Sometimes the habit was cute, and sometimes just irritating: When the Riders tried to think on more than one thing at a time, their Skrodes were sometimes unable to maintain short-term memory. Blueshell especially got trapped into cycles of behavior, repeating an action and immediately forgetting the accomplishment.

  Pham grinned, looking a lot cooler than Ravna felt. “What I don’t see is why you Riders put up with it.”

  “What?”

  Note 761

  “Well, according to the ship’s library, you’ve had these Skrode gadgets since before there was a Net. So how come you haven’t improved the design, gotten rid of the silly wheels, upgraded the memory tracking? I bet that even a Slow Zone combat programmer like me could come up with a better design than the one you’re riding.”

  Note 762

  “It’s really a matter of tradition,” Blueshell said primly, “We’re grateful to Whatever gave us wheels and memory in the first place.”

  “Hmm.”

  Ravna almost smiled. By now she knew Pham well enough to guess what he was thinking — namely that plenty of Riders might have gone on to better things in the Transcend. Those remaining were likely to have self-imposed limitations.

  “Yes. Tradition. Many who once were Riders have changed — even Transcended. But we persist.” Greenstalk paused, and when she continued sounded even more shy than usual. “You’ve heard of the Rider Myth?”

  “No,” said Ravna, distracted in spite of herself. In the time ahead she would know as much about these Riders as about any human friends, but for now there were still surprises.

  Note 763

  “Not many have. Not that it’s a secret; it’s just we don’t make much of it. It comes close to being religion, but one we don’t proselytize. Four or five billion years ago, Someone built the first skrodes and raised the first Riders to sentience. That much is verified fact. The Myth is that something destroyed our Creator and all its works…. A catastrophe so great that from this distance it is not even understood as an act of mind.”

  Note 764

  There were plenty of theories about what the galaxy had been like in the distant past, in the time of the Ur-Partition. But the Net couldn’t be forever. There had to be a beginning. Ravna had never been a big believer in Ancient Wars and Catastrophes.

  “So in a sense,” Greenstalk said, “we Riders are the faithful ones, waiting for What created us to return. The traditional skrode and the traditional interface are a standard. Staying with it has made our patience possible.”

  “Quite so,” said Blueshell. “And the design itself is very subtle, My Lady, even if the function is simple.” He rolled to the center of the ceiling. “The skrode of tradition imposes a good discipline — concentration on what’s truly important. Just now I was trying to worry about too many things….” Abruptly he returned to the topic at hand: “Two of our drive spines never recovered from the damage at relay. Three more appear to be degrading. We thought this slow progress was just the storm, but now I’ve studied the spines up close. The diagnostic warnings were no false alarm.”

  “… and it’s still getting worse?”

  “Unfortunately so.”

  Note 765

  “So how bad will it get?”

  Blueshell drew all his tendrils together. “My Lady Ravna, we can’t be certain of the extrapolations yet. It may not get much worse than now, or — You know the OOB was not fully ready for departure. There were the final consistency checks still to do. In a way, I worry about that more than anything. We don’t know what bugs may lurk, especially when we reach the Bottom and our normal automation must be retired. We must watch the drives very carefully … and hope.”

  Note 766

  It was the nightmare that haunted travelers, especially at the Bottom of the Beyond: with ultradrive gone, suddenly a light-year was not a matter of minutes but of years. Even if they fired up the ramscoop and went into cold sleep, Jefri Olsndot would be a thousand years dead before they reached him, and the secret of his parents’ ship buried in some medieval midden.

  Note 767

  Pham Nuwen waved at the slowly shifting star fields. “Still, this is the Beyond. Every hour we go farther than the fleet of Qeng Ho could in a decade.” He shrugged. “Surely there’s some place we can get repairs?”

  “Several.”

  So much for “a quick flight, all unobserved”. Ravna sighed. The final fitting at Relay was to include spares and Bottom compatibility software. All that was faraway might-have-beens now. She looked at Greenstalk. “Do you have any ideas?”

  “About what?” Greenstalk said.

  Ravna bit her lip in frustration. Some said the Riders were a race of comedians; they were indeed, but it was mostly unintentional.

  Blueshell rattled at his mate.

  “Oh! You mean where can we get help. Yes, there are several possibilities. Sjandra Kei is thirty-nine hundred lights spinward from here, but outside this storm. We—”

  “Too far,” Blueshell and Ravna spoke almost in chorus.

  Note 768

  “Yes, yes, but remember. The Sjandra Kei worlds are mainly human, your home, my lady Ravna. And Blueshell and I know them well; after all, they were the source of the crypto shipment we brought to Relay. We have friends there and you a family. Even Blueshell agrees that we can get the work done without notice there.”

  “Yes, if we could get there.” Blueshell’s voder voice sounded petulant.

  “Okay, what are the other choices?”

  “They are not so well-known. I’ll make a list.” Her fronds drifted across a console. “Our last chance for choice is rather near our planned course. It’s a single system civilization. The Net name is … it translates as Harmonious Repose.”

  “Rest in Peace, eh?” said Pham.

  But they had agreed to voyage on quietly, always watching the bad drive spines, postponing the decision to stop for help.

  Note 769

  * * *

  The days became weeks, and weeks slowly counted into months.
Four voyagers on a quest toward the Bottom. The drive became worse, but slowly, right on OOB‘s diagnostic projections.

  The Blight continued to spread across the Top of the Beyond, and its attacks on Network archives extended far beyond its direct reach.

  Communication with Jefri was improving. Messages trickled in at the rate of one or two a day. Sometimes, when OOB‘s antenna swarm was tuned just right, he and Ravna would talk almost in real time. Progress was being made on the Tines’ world, faster than she had expected — perhaps fast enough that the boy could save himself.

  It should have been a hard time, locked up in the single ship with just three others, with only a thread of communication to the outside, and that with a lost child.

  Note 770

  In any case, it was rarely boring. Ravna found that each of them had plenty to do. For herself it was managing the ship’s library, coaxing out of it the plans that would help Mr. Steel and Jefri. OOB‘s library was nothing compared to the Archive at Relay, or even the university libraries at Sjandra Kei, but without proper search automation it could be just as unknowable. And as their voyage proceeded, that automation need more and more special care.

  Note 771

  And … things could never be boring with Pham around. He had a dozen projects, and curiosity about everything. “Voyaging time can be a gift,” he’d say. “Now we have time to catch ourselves up, time to get ready for whatever we find ahead.” He was learning Samnorsk. It went slower than his faked learning on Relay, but the guy had a natural bent for languages, and Ravna gave him plenty of practice.

  He spent several hours each day in the OOB‘s workshop, often with Blueshell. Reality graphics were a new thing to him, but after a few weeks he was beyond toy prototypes. The pressure suits he built had power packs and weapons stores. “We don’t know what things may be like when we arrive; powered armor could be real useful.”

  At the end of each work day they would all meet on the command deck, to compare notes, to consider the latest from Jefri and Mr. Steel, to review the drive status. For Ravna this could be the happiest time of the day … and sometimes the hardest. Pham had rigged the display automation to show castle walls all around. A huge fireplace replaced the normal window on comm status. The sound of it was almost perfect; he had even coaxed a small amount of “fire” heat from that wall. This was a castle hall out of Pham’s memory, from Canberra he said. But it wasn’t that different from the Age of Princesses on Nyjora (though most of those castles had been in tropical swamps, where big fireplaces were rarely used). For some perverse reason, even the Riders seemed to enjoy it; Greenstalk said it reminded her of a trading stop from her first years with Blueshell. Like travelers who have walked through a long day, the four of them rested in the coziness of a phantom lodge. And when the new business was settled, Pham and the Riders would trade stories, often late into the “night”.

  Ravna sat beside him, the least talkative of the four. She joined in the laughter and sometimes the discussion: There was the time Blueshell had a humor fit at Pham’s faith in public key encryption, and Ravna knew some stories of her own to illustrate the Rider’s opinion. But this was also the hardest time for her. Yes, the stories were wonderful. Blueshell and Greenstalk had been so many places, and at heart they were traders. Swindles and bargains and good done were all part of their lives. Pham listened to his friends, almost enraptured … and then told his own stories, of being a prince on Canberra, of being a Slow Zone trader and explorer. And for all the limitations of the Slowness, his life’s adventures surpassed even the Skroderiders’. Ravna smiled and tried to pretend enthusiasm.

  Note 772

  For Pham’s stories were too much. He honestly believed them, but she couldn’t imagine one human seeing so much, doing so much. Back on Relay, she had claimed his memories were synthetic, a little joke of Old One. She had been very angry when she said it, and more than anything she wished she never had … because it was so clearly the truth. Greenstalk and Blueshell never noticed, but sometimes in the middle of a story Pham would stumble on his memories and a look of barely concealed panic would come to his eyes. Somewhere inside, he knew the truth too, and she suddenly wanted to hug him, comfort him. It was like having a terribly wounded friend, with whom you can talk but never mutually admit the scope of the injuries. Instead she pretended the lapses didn’t exist, smiling and laughing at the rest of his story.

  Note 773

  And Old One’s jape was all so unnecessary. Pham didn’t have to be a great hero. He was a decent person, though ebullient and kind of a rule-breaker. He had every bit as much persistance as she, and more courage.

  What craft Old One must have had to make such a person, what … Power. And how she hated Him, for making a joke of such a person.

  * * *

  Of Pham’s godshatter, there was scarcely a sign. For that Ravna was very grateful. Once or twice a month he had a dreamy spell. For a day or two after he would go nuts with some new project, often something he couldn’t clearly explain. But it wasn’t getting worse; he wasn’t drifting away from her.

  “And the godshatter may save us in the end,” he would say when she had the courage to ask him about it. “No, I don’t know how.” He tapped his forehead. “It’s still god’s own crowded attic up here. “It’s more than memory. Sometimes it needs all my mind to think with and there’s no room left for self-awareness, and afterwards I can’t explain, but… sometimes I have a glimmer. Whatever Jefri’s parents brought to the Tines’ world: it can hurt the Blight. Call it an antidote — better yet, a countermeasure. Something taken from the Perversion as it was aborning in the Straumli lab. Something the Perversion didn’t even suspect was gone until much later.”

  Ravna sighed. It was hard to imagine good news that was also so frightening. “The Straumers could sneak something like that right out from the Perversion’s heart?”

  Note 774

  “Maybe. Or maybe, Countermeasure used the Straumers to escape the Perversion. To hide inaccessibly deep, and wait to strike. And I think the plan might work, Rav, at least if I — if Old One’s godshatter — can get down there and help it. Look at the News. The Blight is turning the top of the Beyond upside down — hunting for something. Hitting Relay was the least of it, a small by-product of its murdering Old One. But it’s looking in all the wrong places. We’ll have our chance at Countermeasure.”

  Note 775

  She thought of Jefri’s messages. “The rot on the walls of Jefri’s ship. You think that’s what it is?”

  Pham’s eyes went vague. “Yes. It seems completely passive, but he says it was there from the beginning, that his parents kept him away from it. He seems a little disgusted by it…. That’s good, probably keeps his Tinish friends away from it.”

  A thousand questions flitted up. Surely they must in Pham’s mind too. And they could know the answer to none of them now. Yet someday they would stand before that unknown and Old One’s dead hand would act … through Pham. Ravna shivered, and didn’t say anything more for a time.

  * * *

  Note 776

  Month by month, the gunpowder project stayed right on the schedule of the library’s development program. The Tines had been able to make the stuff easily; there had been very little backtracking through the development tree. Alloy testing had been the critical event that slowed things, but they were over the hump there too. The packs of “Hidden Island” had built the first three prototypes: breech-loading cannon that were small enough to be carried by a single pack. Jefri guessed they could begin mass production in another ten days.

  Note 777

  The radio project was the weird one. In one sense it was behind schedule; in another, it had become something more than Ravna had ever imagined. After a long period of normal progress, Jefri had come back with a counterplan. It consisted of a complete reworking of the tables for the acoustic interface.

  “I thought these jokers were first-time medievals,” Pham Nuwen said when he saw Jefri’s message.
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  “That’s right. And in principle, they just reasoned out consequences to what we sent them. The want to support pack-thought across the radio.”

  “Hunh. Yes. We described how the tables specified the transducer grid — all in nontechnical Samnorsk. That included showing how small table changes would make the grid different. But look, our design would give them a three kilohertz band — a nice, voice-grade connection. You’re telling me that implementing this new table would give’em two hundred kilohertz.”

  “Yes. That’s what my dataset says.”

  Note 778

  He grinned his cocky smile. “Ha! And that’s my point. Sure, in principle we gave them enough information to do the mod. It looks to me like making this expanded spec table is equivalent to solving a, hmm,” he counted rows and columns, “a five-hundred-node numerical PDE. And little Jefri claims that all his datasets are destroyed, and that his ship computer is not generally usable.”

  Ravna leaned back from the display. “Sorry. I see what you mean.” You get so used to everyday tools, sometimes you forget what it must be like without them. “You … you think this might be, uh, Countermeasure’s doing?”

  Pham Nuwen hesitated, as if he hadn’t even considered the possibility. Then, “No … no, it’s not that. I think this ‘Mister Steel’ is playing games with our heads. All we have is a byte stream from ‘Jefri’. What do we really know about what’s going on?”

  Note 779

  “Well, I’ll tell you some things I know. We are talking to a young human child who was raised in Straumli Realm. You’ve been reading most of his messages in Trisk translation. That loses a lot of the colloquialisms and the little errors of a child who is a native speaker of Samnorsk. The only way this might be faked is by a group of human adults…. And after twenty plus weeks of knowing Jefri, I’ll tell you even that is unlikely.”