A Fire Upon the Deep

by Vernor Vinge

  “But—”

  He went through the hatch head first, missing the rest of her objection. She didn’t follow, but a second later her voice was back, in his headset. Some of the tremor was gone from her voice; the old Ravna was there, fighting out from under her other problems. “Okay, I’ll back you … but what can we do ?”

  Pham pulled himself hand over hand down the passageway, accelerating to a speed that would have left a lubber caroming off the walls. Ahead loomed the uncompromising wall of the cargo lock. He swatted a hand gently at the wall and flipped head over heels. He dragged his hands precisely against the wall flanges, slowing just enough so the impact with the hatch did not break his ankles. Inside the lock, the ship had his suit already power up.

  “Pham, you can’t go out.” Evidentally she was watching through the lock’s cameras. “They’ll know we’re a human expedition.”

  Note 850

  His head and shoulders were already in the suit’s top shell. He felt the bottom pushing up around him, the seals fastening. “Not necessarily.”And by now it probably doesn’t matter.“There are plenty of two-arm/two-leg critters around, and I’ve glued some camouflage to this outfit.” He cupped his chin in the helmet controls and reset the displays. The armored pressure suit was a very primitive thing compared to the field suits of Relay. Yet the Qeng Ho would have given a starship for this gear. He’d originally put the thing together to impress the Tines, but it’s going to get some early testing.

  He chinned up the outside view, what Ravna was seeing: his figure was unrelieved black, more than two meters tall. The hands were backed with carapace-claws and every edge of his figure was razor sharp and spined. These most recent additions should break the lines of the strictly human form, and hopefully be intimidating as hell.

  Pham cycled the lock and pushed off, into the wormheads’ terrane. Walls of mud stood all around, misty in humid air and swarms of insects.

  Ravna’s voice was in his ear. “I’ve got a low-level query, probably automatic: ‘Why you send third negotiator?’”

  “Ignore it.”

  Note 851

  “Pham, be careful. These Middle Beyond cultures, the old ones, they keep nasty things in reserve. Otherwise they wouldn’t still be around.”

  “I’ll be a good citizen.”As long as I’m treated nice. He was already halfway to the concourse gate. He chinned up a small window from Blueshell’s camera. All this high-bandwidth comm was courtesy of the local net. Strange that Rihndell was still providing the service. Blueshell seemed to be negotiating still. Maybe there wasn’t a scam … or anyway, not one that Saint Rihndell was in on.

  “Pham, I’ve lost the video from Greenstalk, just as she went into some kind of tunnel. Her location beacon is still clear.”

  Note 852

  The concourse gate made an opening for him, and then Pham was in the crowded, market volume. He heard the raucous hubbub even through his armor. He moved slowly, sticking to the most uncrowded paths, following guide ropes that threaded the space. The mob was no problem. Everyone made way, some with almost panicky haste. Pham didn’t know whether it was his razor spines or the trace of chlorine his suit “leaked”. Maybe that last touch was a bit much. But the whole point was to look nonhuman. He slowed even more, doing his best not to nick anyone. Something awfully like a target- designation laser flickered in his rear window. He ducked quickly around an aquarium as Ravna said, “The terrane just complained to your suit: ‘You are in violation of dress-code’ is how the translation comes out.”

  Is it my chlorine B.O., or have they detected the guns?“What about outside? Any Butterflies in sight?”

  Note 853

  “No. Ship activity hasn’t changed much during the last five hours. No Aprahanti movement or change in comm status.” Long pause. Indirectly from the OOB bridge he could hear Blueshell talking with Ravna, the words indistinct but excited. He jabbed around, trying to find the direct connection. Then Ravna was talking to him again. “Hei! Blueshell says Rihndell has accepted the shipment! He’s onloading the agrav fabric right now. And OOB just got a commit on the repairs!” So they were ready to fly — except that three of them were still ashore, and one of them was missing.

  Pham floated over the top of the aquarium and finally caught direct sight of Blueshell. He tweaked the suit’s gas jets very carefully and settled down beside the Rider.

  Note 854

  His arrival was about as welcome as finger-mites at a picnic. The scrimshawed one had been chattering away, tapping his articulated artwork on the wall as his helper translated into Trisk. Now the creature drew in his tusks, and the neck arms folded themselves. The others followed suit. All of them sidled up the wall, away from Blueshell and Pham. “Our business is now complete. We don’t know where your friend has gone,” said the Trisk interpreter.

  Blueshell’s fronds extended after them, wavering. “B-but just a little guidance is all we need. Who—” It was no use. Saint Rihndell and his merry crew kept going. Blueshell rattled in abrupt frustration. His fronds angled slightly, turning all attention on Pham Nuwen. “Sir Pham, I am doubting now your expertise as a trader. Saint Rihndell might have helped.”

  “Maybe.” Pham watched the tusk-legs disappear into the crowd, pulling the trellises behind them like a big black balloon. Ugh. Maybe Rihndell was simply an honest trader. “What are the chances that Greenstalk would abandon you in the middle of something like that?”

  Blueshell dithered for a moment. “In an ordinary trade stop, she might have noticed some extraordinary profit opportunity. But here, I—”

  Ravna’s voice interrupted sympathetically, “Maybe she just, uh, forgot the context?”

  “No,” Blueshell was definite. “The skrode would never permit such a failure, not in the middle of a hard trade.”

  Pham shifted windows around inside his helmet, looking in all directions. The crowd was still keeping an open space around them. There was no evidence of cops. Would I know them if I saw them?“Okay,” said Pham. “We have a problem, whether I’d come out or not. I suggest we take a little walk, see if we can find where Greenstalk went.”

  Rattle. “We have little choice now. My lady Ravna, do please try to reach the tusk-legs interpreter. Perhaps he can link us to the local Skroderiders.” He came off the wall, rotated on gas jets. “Come along, Sir Pham.”

  Note 855

  Blueshell led the way across the concourse, vaguely in the direction Greenstalk had gone. Their path was anything but straight, more a drunkard’s walk that once took them almost back to their starting place. “Delicately, delicately,” the Skroderider responded when Pham complained about the pace. The Rider never insisted on passage through clots of critters. If they did not respond to the gentle waving of his fronds, he detoured all around them. And he kept Pham directly behind him so the intimidation factor of the razored armor was of no use. “These people may look very peaceable to you, Sir Pham, easy to push around. But note, this is among themselves. These races have had thousands of years to accomodate to one another, to achieve local commensality. To outsiders they will necessarily be less tolerant, else they would have been overrun long ago.” Pham remembered the “dress-code” warning and decided not to argue.

  The next twenty minutes would have been the experience of a lifetime for a Qeng Ho trader, to be within arm’s reach of a dozen different intelligent species. But when they finally reached the far wall, Pham was grinding his teeth. Twice more he received a dress- code warning. The only bright spot: Saint Rihndell was still extending the courtesy of local net support, and Ravna had more information: “The local Skroderider colony is about a hundred kilometers from the concourse. There’s some kind of transport station beyond the wall you’re at.”

  And the tunnel Greenstalk had entered was just ahead of them. From this angle, they could see the dark of space beyond it. For the first time, there was no problem with crowds; scarcely anyone was entering or leaving the hole.

  Note 856

  Laser
light twinkled on his rear windows. “Dress code violation. Fourth warning. It says to ‘please leave the volume at once’.”

  “We’re going. We’re going.”

  * * *

  Note 857

  Darkness, and Pham boosted the gain on his helmet windows. At first he thought the “transport station” was open to space, that the locals had restraint fields as in the high beyond. then he noticed the pillars merged into transparent walls. they were still indoors in the old-fashioned way, but the view…. they were on the starward side of the arc. the ring particles were like dark fish floating silently a few tens of meters out from him. In the further distance, structures stuck out of the ring plane far enough to get sundazzle. But the brightest object was almost overhead: the blue of ocean, the white of cloud. Its soft light flooded the ground around him. However far the Qeng Ho fared, such a sight had been welcome. Yet this was not quite the real thing. The was only approximately spherical, and its face was bisected by the ring shadow. It was a small object, not more than a few hundred klicks above him, one of the shepherd satellites they had seen on the way in. The shepherd’s haze of atmosphere was crisply bounded by the sides of a vast canopy.

  He dragged his attention down from the view. “Ten to one that’s the Skroderiders’ terrane.”

  “Of course,” Blueshell replied. “It’s typical. The surf in such minigravity can never be what I prefer, but—”

  “Dear Blueshell! Sir Pham! Over here.” It was Greenstalk’s voice. According to Pham’s suit, it was a local connection, not relayed through the OOB.

  Note 858

  Blueshell’s fronds angled in all directions. “Are you all right, Greenstalk?” They rattled back and forth at each other for a few seconds. Then Greenstalk resumed in Trisk: “Sir Pham. Yes, I’m all right. I’m sorry to upset you all so much. But I could tell the deal with Rihndell was going to work out, and then these local Riders stopped by. They are wonderful people, Sir Pham. They have invited us across to their terrane. Just for a day or so. It will be a wonderful rest before we go on our way. And I think they may be able to help us.”

  Like the quest romances he’d found in Ravna’s bedtime library: the weary travelers, partway to their goal, find a friendly haven and some special gift. Pham switched to a private line to Blueshell: “Is that really Greenstalk? Is she under duress?”

  Note 859

  “It’s her, and free, Sir Pham. You heard us speaking. I’ve been with her two hundred years. No one’s twisting her fronds.”

  “Then why the hell did she skip out on us?” Pham surprised himself, almost hissing the words.

  Long pause. “That is strange. My guess: these local Riders somehow know something very important to us. Come, Sir Pham. But carefully.” He rolled away in what seemed a random direction.

  “Rav, what do you—” Pham noticed the red light blinking on his comm status panel, and his irritation chilled. How long had the link to Ravna been down?

  Note 860

  Note 861

  Pham followed Blueshell, floating low behind the other, using his gas jets to pace the Skroderider. This entire area was covered with the stickem that Riders liked for zero-gee rolling. Yet right now the place seemed deserted. Nobody in sight where just a hundred meters away there was light and crowds. The whole thing screamed ambush, yet it didn’t make sense. If Death to Vermin — or their stooges — had spotted them, a simple alarum would have served. Some Rihndell game …? Pham powered up the suit’s beam weapons and enabled countermeasures; midge cameras flitted off in all directions. So much for dress codes.

  Note 862

  The bluish moonlight washed the plain, showing soft mounds and angular arrays of unknown equipment. The surface was pocked with holes (tunnel entrances?). Blueshell said something muddled about the “beautiful night”, how much fun it would be to sit on the seashore a hundred kilometers above them. Pham scanned in all directions, trying to identify fields of fire and killing zones.

  Note 863

  The view from one of his midges showed a forest of leafless fronds — Skroderiders standing silent in the moonlight. They were two hillocks away. Silent, motionless, without any lights … perhaps just enjoying the moonlight. In the midge’s amplified view, Pham had no trouble identifying Greenstalk; she was standing at one end of a line of five Riders, her hull stripes clearly visible. There was a hump on the front of her skrode, and a rod-like projection. Some kind of restraint? He floated a couple of midges near. A weapon. All those Riders were armed.

  “We’re already aboard the transport, Blueshell,” came Greenstalk’s voice. “You’ll see it in a few more meters, just on the other side of a ventilator pile,” apparently referring to the mound that he and the Skroderider were approaching. But Pham knew there was no flier there; Greenstalk and her guns were to the side of their progress. Treachery, very workmanlike but also very low tech. Pham almost shouted out to Blueshell. Then he notice the flat ceramic rectangle mounted in the hill just a few meters behind the Rider. The nearest midge reported it was some kind of explosive, probably a directional mine. A low-resolution camera, barely more than a motion sensor, was mounted beside it. Blueshell had rolled nonchalantly past the thing, all the while chattering with Greenstalk. They let him past. New suspicions rose dark and grim. Pham broke to a stop, backing quickly; never touching ground, the only sounds he made were the quiet hisses of his gas jets. He detached one of his wrist claws and had a midge fly it close past the mine’s sensor….

  There was a flash of pale fire and a loud noise. Even five meters to the side, the shock wave pushed him back. He had a glimpse of Blueshell thrown frond over wheels on the far side of the mine. Edged metal knickered about, but mindlessly: nothing came back to attack again. Several midges were destroyed by the blast.

  Note 864

  Pham took advantage of the racket to accelerate hard, scooting up a nearby “hill” and into a shallow valley (alley?) that looked down on the Skroderiders. The ambushers rolled forward around the hill, rattling happily at one another. Pham held his fire, curious. After a moment, Blueshell floated into the air a hundred meters away. “Pham?” he said plaintively, “Pham?”

  The ambushers ignored Blueshell. Three of them disappeared around the hill. Pham’s midges saw them stop in consternation, fronds erect — they had suddenly realized he’d gotten away. The five spread out, searching the area, hunting him down. There was no persuasive talk from Greenstalk anymore.

  There was a sharp cracking sound and blaster fire glowed from behind a hill. Somebody was a little nervous on the trigger.

  Above it all floated Blueshell, the perfect target, yet still untouched. His speech was a combination of Trisk and Rider rattle now, and where Pham could understand it, he heard fear. “Why are you shooting? What is the problem? Greenstalk, please!”

  Note 865

  The paranoid in Pham Nuwen was not deceived. I don’t want you up there looking down. He sighted his main beam gun on the Rider, then shifted his aim and fired. The blast was not in visible wavelengths, but there were gigajoules in the pulse. Plasma coruscated along the beam, missing Blueshell by less than five meters. Well above the Skroderider, the beam struck hull crystal. The explosion was spectacular, an actinic glare that sent glowing fragments in a thousand rays.

  Pham flew sideways even as the ceiling flared. He saw Blueshell spinning off, regain control — and move precipitously for cover. Where Pham’s beam had hit, a corona of light was dimming from blue through orange and red, its light still brighter than the shepherd moon overhead.

  His warning shot had been like a great finger pointing back toward his location. In the next fifteen seconds, four of the ambushers fired on the place Pham had been. There was silence, then faint rustling. In a game of stealth, the five might think themselves easy winners. They still hadn’t realized how well-equipped he was. Pham smiled at the pictures coming in from his midges. He had every one of them in sight, and Blueshell too.

  Note 866

  If it w
ere just these four (five?), there would be no problem. But surely reinforcements, or at least complications, were on the way. The wound in the ceiling had cooled to darkness, but there was a hole there now, half a meter across. The sound of hissing wind came from it, a sound that brought reflex fear to Pham even in his armor. It might take a while before the leak affected the Skroderiders, but it was an emergency nevertheless. It would attract notice. He stared at the hole. Down here it was stirring a breeze, but in the few meters right below the hole there was a miniature tornado of dust and loose junk, hurtling up and out….

  And beyond the transparent hull, in space:

  A gap of dark and then a glittering plume, where the debris emerged from the arc’s shadow into the sunlight. A neat idea struggled for his attention.

  Oops. The five Riders had roughly encircled him. Now one blundered into view, saw him, and snapped a shot. Pham returned fire and the other exploded in a cloud of superheated water and charred flesh. Its undamaged skrode sailed across the space between the hills, collecting panicky fire from the others. Pham changed position again, moving in the direction he knew was farthest from his enemies’ positions.

  Note 867

  A few more minutes of peace. He looked up at the crystal plume. There was something … yes. If reinforcements should come, why not for him? He sighted on the plume and shunted his voice line through the gun’s trigger circuit. He almost started talking, then thought … Better lower the power on this one. Details. He aimed again, fired continuously, and said, “Ravna, I sure as hell hope you have your eyes open. I need help …” and briefly described the crazy events of the last ten minutes.

  This time his beam was putting out less than ten thousand joules per second, not enough to glow the air. But reflecting off the plume beyond the hull, the modulation should be visible for thousands of klicks, in particular to the OOB on the other side of the habitat.