A Fire Upon the Deep

by Vernor Vinge

  So what was known of monsters like the thing that had engulfed them? Not much. Third-hand stories in the Ship’s library told of surges perhaps as big as theirs, but the quoted dimensions and propagation rates were not clear. Stories more than a hundred million years old are hard to trust; there are scarcely any intermediate languages. (And even if there were, it wouldn’t have helped. The new, dumb version of the OOB absolutely could not do mechanical translation of natural languages. Dredging the library was pointless.)

  Note 1076

  When Ravna complained about this to Pham, he said, “Things could be worse. What was the Ur-Partition really?”

  Five billion years ago. “No one’s sure.”

  Note 1077

  Pham jerked a thumb at his library display. “Some people think it was a ‘super supersurge’, you know. Something so big it swallowed the races that might have recorded it. Sometimes the biggest disasters aren’t noticed at all — no one’s around to write horror stories.”

  Great.

  “I’m sorry, Ravna. Honestly, if we’re in anything like most past disasters, we’ll come out of it in another day or two. The best thing is to plan for things that way. This is like a ‘time-out’ in the battle. Take advantage of it to have a little peace. Figure out how to get the unperverted parts of Commercial Security to help us.”

  “… Yeah.” Depending on the shape of the surge’s trailing edge the OOB might have lost a good part of its lead…. But I’ll bet the Alliance fleet is completely panicked by all this. Such opportunists would likely run for safety as soon as they’re back in the Beyond.

  Note 1078

  The advice kept her busy for another twenty hours, fighting with the half-witted things that claimed to be strategy planners on the new version of the OOB. Even if the surge passed right this instant, it might be too late. There were players in this game for whom the surge was not a time-out: Jefri Olsndot and his Tinish allies. It had been seventy hours now since their last contact; Ravna had missed three comm sessions with them. If she were panicked, what must be like for Jefri? Even if Steel could hold off his enemies, time — and trust — would be running out at Tines’ world.

  One hundred hours into the surge, Ravna noticed that Blueshell and Pham were doing power tests on the OOB‘s ramscoop drive…. Some time-outs last forever.

  Note 1079

  Note 1080

  Chapter 34

  Note 1081

  The summer hot spell broke for a time; in fact, it was almost chilly. There was still the smoke and the air was still dry, but the winds seemed less driven. Inside their cubby aboard the ship, Amdijefri weren’t taking much notice of the nice weather.

  “They’ve been slow in answering before,” said Amdi. “She’s explained how the ultrawave—”

  Note 1082

  “Ravna’s never been this late!” Not since the winter, anyway. Jefri’s tone hovered between fear and petulance. In fact, there was supposed to be a transmission in the middle of the night, technical data for them to pass on to Mr. Steel. It hadn’t arrived by this morning, and now Ravna had also missed their afternoon session, the time when normally they could just chat for a bit.

  Note 1083

  The two children reviewed all the comm settings. The previous fall, they had laboriously copied those and the first level diagnostics. It all looked the same now … except for something called “carrier detect”. If only they had a dataset, they might have looked up what that meant.

  They had even very carefully reset some of the comm parameters … then nervously set them back when nothing happened. Maybe they hadn’t given the changes enough of a chance to work. Maybe now they had really messed something up.

  They stayed in the command cubby all through the afternoon, their minds cycling trough fear and boredom and frustration. After four hours, boredom had at least a temporary victory. Jefri was napping uneasily in his father’s hammock with two of Amdi curled up in his arms.

  Amdi poked idly around the room, looked at the rocket controls. No … not even his self-confidence was up to playing with those. Another of him jerked at the wall quilting. He could always watch the fungus grow for a while. Things were that slow.

  Actually, the gray stuff had spread a lot further than the last time he looked. Behind the quilt, it was quite thick. He sent a chain of himself squirreling back between the wall and the fabric. It was dark, but some light spilled through the gap at the ceiling. In most places the mold was scarcely an inch thick, but back here it was five or six —wow. Just above his exploring nose, a huge lump of it grew from the wall. This was as big as some of the ornamental moss that decorated castle meeting halls. Slender gray filaments grew down from the fungus. He almost called out to Jefri, but the two of him in the hammock were so comfortable.

  He brought a couple more heads close to the strangeness. The wall behind it looked a little odd, too … as though part of its substance had been taken by the mold. And the gray itself: like smoke — he felt the filaments with his nose. They were solid, dry. His nose tickled. Amdi froze in shocked surprise. Watching himself from behind, he saw that two of the filaments had actually passed through his member’s head! And yet there was no pain, just that tickling feeling.

  “What — what?” Jefri had been jostled into wakefulness, as Amdi tensed around him.

  “I found something really strange, behind the quilts. I touched this big hunk of fungus and—”

  As he spoke, Amdi gently backed away from thing on the wall. The touch didn’t hurt, but it made him more nervous than curious. He felt the filaments sliding slowly out.

  “I told you, we aren’t supposed to play with that stuff. It’s dirty. The only good thing is, it doesn’t smell.” Jefri was out of the hammock. He stepped across the cubby and lifted the quilting. Amdi’s tip member lost its balance and jerked away from the fungus. There was a snapping sound, and a sharp pain in his lip.

  “Geez, that thing is big!” Then, hearing Amdi’s pain whistle, “You okay?”

  Amdi backed away from the wall. “I think so.” The tip of one last filament was still stuck in his lip. It didn’t hurt as much as the nettles he’d sampled a few days earlier. Amdijefri looked over the wound. What was left of the smoky spine seemed hard and brittle. Jefri’s fingers gently worked it free. Then the two of them turned to wonder at the thing in the wall.

  “It really has spread. Looks like it’s hurt the wall, too.”

  Amdi dabbed at his bloodied muzzle. “Yeah. I see why your folks told you to stay away from it.”

  “Maybe we should have Mr. Steel scrub it all out.”

  The two spent half an hour crawling around behind all the quilting. The grayness had spread far, but there was only the one marvelous flowering. They came back to stare at it, even sticking articles of clothing into the wisps. Neither risked fingers or noses on further contact.

  Staring at the fungus on the wall was by far the most exciting thing that happened that afternoon; there was no message from the OOB.

  The next day the hot weather was back.

  Two more days passed…. and still there was no word from Ravna.

  * * *

  Lord Steel paced the walls atop Starship Hill. It was near the middle of the night, and the sun hung about fifteen degrees above the northern horizon. Sweat filmed his fur; this was the warmest summer in ten years. The drywind was into its thirtieth dayaround. It was no longer a welcome break in the chill of the northland. The crops were dying in the fields. Smoke from fjord fires was visible as brownish haze both north and south of the castle. At first the reddish color had been a novelty, a welcome change from the unending blue of sky and distance, and the whitish haze of the sea fogs. Only at first. When fire struck East Streamsdell, the entire sky had been dipped in red. Ash had rained all the dayaround, and the only smell had been that of burning. Some said it was worse than the filthy air of the southern cities.

  Note 1084

  The troops on the walls backed far out of his way. This was more th
an courtesy, more than their fear of Steel. His troops were still not used to the cloaked ones, and the cover story Shreck was spreading did nothing to ease their minds: Lord Steel was accompanied by a singleton — in the colors of a Lord. The creature made no mind sounds. It walked incredibly close to its master.

  Steel said to the singleton, “Success is a matter of meeting a schedule. I remember you teaching me that,”cutting it into me, in fact.

  Note 1085

  The member looked back at him, cocked its head. “As I remember, I said that success was a matter of adapting to changes in schedules.” The words were perfectly articulated. There were singletons that could talk that well — but even the most verbal could not carry on intelligent conversation. Shreck had had no trouble convincing the troops that Flenser science had created a race of superpacks, that the cloaked ones were individually as smart as any ordinary pack. It was a good cover for what the cloaks really were. It both inspired fear and obscured the truth.

  Note 1086

  The member stepped a little closer — nearer to Steel than anyone had been except during murders and rapes and the beatings of the past. Involuntarily, Steel licked his lips and spread out from around the threat. Yet in some ways the dark-cloaked one was like a corpse, without a trace of mind sound. Steel snapped his jaws shut and said, “Yes. The genius is in winning even when the schedules have fallen down the garderobe.” He looked all away from the Flenser member and scanned the red-shrouded southern horizon. “What’s the latest estimate of Woodcarver’s progress?”

  Note 1087

  “She’s still camped about five days southeast of here.”

  “The damned incompetent. It’s hard to believe she’s your parent! Vendacious made things so easy for her; her soldiers and toy cannon should have been here almost a tenday past—”

  “And been well-butchered, on schedule.”

  “Yes! Long before our sky friends arrived. Instead, she wanders inland and then balks.”

  Note 1088

  The Flenser member shrugged in its dark cloak. Steel knew the radio was as heavy as it looked. It consoled him that the other was paying a price for his omniscience. Just think, in heat like this, to have every part of oneself muffled to the tympana. He could imagine the discomfort…. Indoors, he could smell it.

  They walked past one of the wall cannon. The barrel gleamed of layered metal. The thing had thrice the range of Woodcarver’s pitiful invention. While Woodcarver had been working with Dataset and a human child’s intuition, he had had the direct advice of Ravna and company. At first he’d feared their largesse, thinking it meant the Visitors were superior beyond need for care. Now … the more he heard of Ravna and the others, the more clearly he understood their weakness. They could not experiment with themselves, improve themselves. Inflexible, slow-changing dullards. Sometimes they showed a low cunning — Ravna’s coyness about what she wanted from the first starship — but their desperation was loud in all their messages, as was their attachment to the human child.

  Note 1089

  Everything had been going so well till just a few days ago. As they walked out of earshot of the gunner pack, Steel said to the Flenser member, “And still no word from our ‘rescuers’.”

  “Quite so,” That was the other botched schedule, the important one, which they could not control. “Ravna has missed four sessions. Two of me is down with Amdijefri right now.” The singleton jabbed its snout toward the dome of the inner keep. The gesture was an awkward abortion. Without other muzzles and other eyes, body language was a limited thing. We just aren’t built to wander around a piece here, a piece there.“Another few minutes and the space folk will have missed a fifth talk session. The children are getting desperate, you know.”

  The member’s voice sounded sympathetic. Almost unconsciously, Lord Steel sidled a little farther out from around it. Steel remembered that tone from his own early existence. He also remembered the cutting and death that had always followed. “I want them kept happy, Tyrathect. We’re assuming communication will resume; when it does we’ll need them.” Steel bared six pairs of jaws at the surrounded singleton. “None of your old tricks.”

  The member flinched, an almost imperceptible twitch that pleased Steel more than the grovelling of ten thousand. “Of course not. I’m just saying that you should visit them, try to help them with their fear.”

  “You do it.”

  “Ah … they don’t fully trust me. I’ve told you before, Steel; they love you.”

  Note 1090

  “Ha! And they’ve seen through to your meanness, eh?” The situation made Steel proud. He had succeeded where Flenser’s own methods would have failed. He had manipulated without threats or pain. It had been Steel’s craziest experiment, and certainly his most profitable. But “— Look, I don’t have time to wetnurse anyone. It’s a tiresome thing to talk to those two.” And it was very tiresome to hold his temper, to suffer Jefri’s “petting” and Amdi’s pranks. In the beginning, Steel had insisted that no one else have close contact with the children. They were too important to expose to others; the most casual slipup might show them the truth and ruin them. Even now, Tyrathect was the only pack besides himself who had regular contact. But for Steel, every meeting was worse than the last, an ultimate test of his self control. It was hard to think straight in a killing rage, and that’s how almost every conversation with them ended for Steel. How wonderful it would be when the space folk landed. Then he could use the other end of the tool that was Amdijefri. Then there would be no need to have their trust and friendship. Then he would have a lever, something to torture and kill to enforce his demands.

  Note 1091

  Of course, if the aliens never landed, or if…. “We must do something! I will not be flotsam on the wave of the future.” Steel lashed at the scaffolding that ran along the inner side of the parapet, shredding the wood with his gleaming tines. “We can’t do anything about the aliens, so let’s deal with Woodcarver. Yes!” He smiled at the Flenser member. “Ironic, isn’t it? For a hundred years, you sought her destruction. Now I can succeed. What would have been your great triumph is for me just an annoying detour, undertaken because greater projects are temporarily delayed.”

  The cloaked one did not look impressed. “There is a little matter of gifts falling out of the sky.”

  “Yes, into my open jaws. And that is my good fortune, isn’t it?” He walked on several paces, chuckling to himself. “Yes. It’s time to have Vendacious bring his trusting Queen in for the slaughter. Maybe it will interfere with other events, but…. I know, we’ll have the battle east of here.”

  “The Margrum Climb?”

  Note 1092

  “Correct. Woodcarver’s forces should be well concentrated coming up the defile. We’ll move our cannon over there, set them behind the ridgeline at the top of the Climb. It will be easy to destroy all her people. And it’s far enough from Starship Hill; even if the space folk arrive at the same time, we can keep the two projects separate.” The singleton didn’t say anything, and after a moment Steel glared at him. “Yes dear teacher, I know there is a risk. I know it splits our forces. But we’ve got an army sitting on our doorstep. They’ve arrived inconveniently late, but even Vendacious can’t make them turn around and go home. And if he tries to stall things, the Queen might… Can you predict just what she would do?”

  “… No. She has always had a way with the unexpected.”

  “She might even see through Vendacious’ fraud. So. We take a small chance, and destroy her now. You are with Farscout Rangolith?”

  “Yes. Two of me.”

  “Tell him to get word to Vendacious. He is to have the Queen’s army coming up Margrum Climb not less than two days from now. Feel free to elaborate; you know the region better than I. We’ll work out final details when both sides are in position.” It was a wonderful thing to be the effective commander of both sides in a battle! “One more thing. It’s important and Vendacious must see to it within the dayaround: I want Wood
carver’s human dead.”

  “What harm can she do?”

  “That’s a stupid question,”especially coming from you.“We don’t know when Ravna and Pham may reach us. Till we have them safe in our jaws, the Johanna creature is a dangerous thing to have nearby. Tell Vendacious to make it look like an accident, but I want that Two-Legs dead.”

  * * *

  Flenser was everywhere. It was a form of godhood he’d dreamed of since he’d been Woodcarver’s newby. While one of him talked to Steel, two others lounged about the Starship with Amdijefri, and two more padded through light forest just north of Woodcarver’s encampment.

  Note 1093

  Paradise can also be an agony, and each day the torment was a little harder to bear. In the first place, this summer was as insufferably hot as any in the North. And the radio cloaks were not merely hot and heavy. They necessarily covered his members’ tympana. And unlike other uncomfortable costumes, the price of taking these off for even a moment was mindlessness. His first trials had lasted just an hour or two. Then had come a five-day expedition with Farscout Rangolith, providing Steel with instant information and instant command of the country around Starhip Hill. It had taken a couple of dayarounds to recover from the sores and aches of the radio cloaks.

  This latest exercise in omniscience had lasted twelve days. Wearing the cloaks all the time was impossible. Every day in a rotation, one of his members threw off its radio, was bathed, and had its cloak’s liner changed. It was Flenser’s hour of daily madness, when sometimes the weak-willed Tyrathect would come back to mind, vainly trying to reestablish her dominance. It didn’t matter. With one of his members disconnected, the remaining pack was only four. There are foursomes of normal intelligence, but none existed in Flenser/Tyrathect. The bathing and recloaking were all done in a confused haze.