A Fire Upon the Deep

by Vernor Vinge

  Ravna stepped carefully between the pack’s lead puppies and pounded on the hull metal. It wasn’t hard-latched; now she could hear the ship’s ventilation. “Pham, what progress?”

  There was a rustling sound and the click of claws. The hatch slid partway back. Bright, flickering light spilled down the ramp. A single doggy head appeared. Ravna could see white all around its eyes. Did that mean anything? “Hi,” it said. “Uh, look. Things are a bit tense just now. Pham — I don’t think Pham should be bothered.”

  Ravna slipped her hand past the gap. “I’m not here to bother him. But I am coming in.”How long we’ve fought for this moment. How many billions have died along the way. And now some talking dog tells me things are a bit tense.

  The Pilgrim looked down at her hand. “Okay.” He slid the hatch far enough open to let her through. The pups were quick around her heels, but they recoiled before the Pilgrim’s glance. Ravna didn’t notice….

  * * *

  Note 1414

  The “ship” was scarcely more than a freight container, a cargo hull. The cargo this time — the coldsleep boxes — had been removed, leaving a mostly level floor, dotted with hundreds of fittings.

  Note 1415

  All this she scarcely noticed. It was the light, the thing that held her. It grew out from the walls and gathered almost too bright to bear at the center of the hold. Its shape changed and changed again, the colors shifting from red to violet to green. Pham sat crosslegged by the apparition, within it. Half his hair was burned away. His hands and arms were shivering, and he mumbled in some language she didn’t recognize. Godshatter. Two times it had been the companion to disaster. A dying Power’s madness … and now it was the only hope. Oh Pham.

  Ravna took a step toward him, felt jaws close on her sleeve. “Please, he mustn’t be disturbed.” The one that was holding her arm was a big dog, battle-scarred. The rest of the pack — Pilgrim — all faced inwards on Pham. The savage stared at her, somehow saw the anger rising in her face. Then the pack said, “Look ma’am, your Pham’s in some sort of fugue state, all the normal personality traded for computation.”

  Note 1416

  Huh? This Pilgrim had the jargon, but probably not much else. Pham must have been talking to him. She made a shushing gesture. “Yes, yes. I understand.” She stared into the light. The changing shape, so hard to look at, was something like the graphics you can generate on most displays, the silly cross-sections of high-dimensional froths. It glowed in purest monochrome, but shifted through the colors. Much of the light must be coherent: interference speckles crawled on every solid surface. In places the interference banded up, stripes of dark and light that slid across the hull as the color changed.

  Note 1417

  She walked slowly closer, staring at Pham and … the Countermeasure. For what else could it be? The scum in the walls, now grown out to meet godshatter. This was not simply data, a message to

  Note 1418

  be relayed. This was a Transcendent machine. Ravna had read of such things: devices made in the Transcend, but for use at the Bottom of the Beyond. There would be nothing sentient about it, nothing that violated the constraints of the Lower Zones — yet it would make the best possible use of nature here, to do whatever its builder had desired: Its builder? The Blight? An enemy of the Blight?

  Note 1419

  She stepped closer. The thing was deep in Pham’s chest, but there was no blood, no torn flesh. She might have thought it all trick holography except that she could see him shudder at its writhing. The fractal arms were feathered by long teeth, twisting at him. She gasped and almost called his name. But Pham wasn’t resisting. He seemed deeper into godshatter than ever before, and more at peace. The hope and fear came suddenly out of hiding: hope that maybe, even now, godshatter could do something about the Blight; and fear, that Pham would die in the process.

  Note 1420

  The artifact’s twisting evolution slowed. The light hung at the pale edge of blue. Pham’s eyes opened. His head turned toward her. “The Riders’ Myth is real, Ravna.” His voice was distant. She heard the whisper of a laugh. “The Riders should know, I guess. They learned the last time. There are Things that don’t like the Blight. Things my Old One only guessed at….”

  Note 1421

  Powers beyond the Powers? Ravna sank to the floor. The display on her wrist glowed up at here. Less than forty-five hours left.

  Pham saw her downward glance, “I know. Nothing has slowed the fleet. It’s a pitiful thing so far down here … but more than powerful enough to destroy this world, this solar system. And that’s what the Blight wants now. The Blight knows I can destroy it … just as it was destroyed before.”

  Ravna was vaguely aware that Pilgrim had crawled in close on all sides. Every face was fixed on the blue froth and the human enmeshed within. “How, Pham?” Ravna whispered.

  Note 1422

  Silence. Then, “All the zone turbulence … that was Countermeasure trying to act, but without coordination. Now I’m guiding it. I’ve begun … the reverse surge. It’s drawing on local energy sources. Can’t you feel it?”

  Reverse surge? What was Pham talking about? She glanced again at her wrist — and gasped. Enemy speed had jumped to twenty light- years per hour, as fast as might be expected in the Middle Beyond. What had been almost two days of grace was barely two hours. And now the display said twenty-five light-years per hour. Thirty.

  Someone was pounding on the hatch.

  * * *

  Note 1423

  Scrupilo was delinquent. He should be supervising the move up the hillside. He knew that, and really felt quite guilty — but he persevered in his dereliction. Like an addict chewing krima leaves, some things are too delicious to give up.

  Note 1424

  Scrupilo dawdled behind, carrying Dataset carefully between him so that its floppy pink ears would not drag on the ground. In fact, guarding Dataset was certainly more important than hassling his troopers. In any case, he was close enough to give advice. And his lieutenants were more clever than he at every day work.

  Note 1425

  During the last few hours, the coastal winds had taken the smoke clouds inland, and the air was clean and salty. On this part of the hill, not everything was burned. There were even some flowers and fluffy seed pods. Bob-tailed birds sailed up the rising air from the sea valley, their cries a happy music, as if promising that the world would soon be as before.

  Note 1426

  Scrupilo knew it could not be. He turned all his heads to look down the hillside, at Ravna Bergsndot’s starship. He estimated the surviving drive spines as one hundred meters long. The hull itself was more than one hundred and twenty. He hunkered down around Dataset, and popped open its cushioned Oliphaunt face. Dataset knew lots about spacecraft. Actually, this ship was not a human design, but the overall shape was fairly ordinary; he knew that from his previous readings. Twenty to thirty thousand tonnes, equipped with antigravity floats and faster-than-light drive. All very ordinary for the Beyond…. But to see it here, through the eyes of his very own members! Scrupilo couldn’t keep his gaze from the thing. Three of him worked with Dataset while the other two stared at the irridescent green hull. The troopers and guncarts around him faded to insignificance. For all its mass, the ship seemed to rest gently on the hillside. How long will it be before we can build such? Centuries, without outside help, the histories in Dataset claimed. What I wouldn’t give for a dayaround aboard her!

  Note 1427

  Yet this ship was being chased by something mightier. Scrupilo shivered in the summer sun. He had often enough heard Pilgrim’s story of the first landing, and he had seen the human’s beam weapon. He had read much in Dataset about planet-wrecker bombs and the other weapons of the Beyond. While he worked on Woodcarver’s cannon — the best weapons he could bring to be — he had dreamed and wondered. Until he saw the starship floating above, he had never quite felt the reality in his innermost hearts. Now he did. So a fleet of killers lay clos
e behind Ravna Bergsndot. The hours of the world might be few indeed. He tabbed quickly through Dataset’s search paths, looking for articles about space piloting. If there be only hours, at least learn what there is time to learn.

  So Scrupilo was lost in the sound and vision of Dataset. He had three windows open, each on a different aspect of the piloting experience.

  Loud shouts from the hillside. He looked up with one head, more irritated than anything else. It wasn’t a battle alarm they were calling, just a general unease. Strange, the afternoon air seemed pleasantly cool. Two of him looked high, but there was no haze. “Scrupilo! Look, Look!”

  Note 1428

  His gunners were dancing in panic. They were pointing at the sky … at the sun. He folded the pink covers over Dataset’s face, at the same time looking sunward with shaded view. The sun was still high in the south, dazzling bright. Yet the air was cool, and the birds were making the cooing sounds of low-sun nesting. And suddenly he realized that he was looking straight at the sun’s disk, had been for five seconds — without pain or even watering of his eyes. And there was still no haze that he could see. An inner chill spread across his mind.

  The sunlight was fading. He could see black dots on its disk. Sunspots. He had seen them often enough with Scriber’s telescopes. But that had been through heavy filters. Something stood between him and the sun, something that sucked away its light and warmth.

  The packs on the hillside moaned. It was a frightened sound Scrupilo had never heard in battle, the sound of someone confronted by unknowable terror.

  Note 1429

  Blue faded from the sky. The air was suddenly cold as deep dark night. And the sun’s color was a gray luminescence, like a faded moon. Less. Scrupilo hunkered bellies to ground. Some of him was whistling deep in the throat. Weapons, weapons. But Dataset never spoke of this.

  The stars were the brightest light on the hillside.

  Note 1430

  * * *

  Note 1431

  “Pham, Pham. They’ll be here in an hour. What have you done?” A miracle, but of ill?

  Note 1432

  Pham Nuwen swayed in Countermeasure’s bright embrace. His voice was almost normal, the godshatter receding. “What have I done? Not much. And more than any Power. Even Old One only guessed, Ravna. The thing the Straumers brought here is the Rider Myth. We — I, it —just moved the Zone boundary back. A local change, but intense. We’re in the equivalent of the High Beyond now, maybe even the Low Transcend locally. That’s why the Blighter fleet can move so fast.”

  “But—”

  Pilgrim was back from the hatch. He interrupted Ravna’s incoherent panic with a matter-of-fact, “The sun just went out.” His heads bobbed in an expression she couldn’t fathom.

  Pham answered, “That’s temporary. Something has to power this maneuver.”

  “W-why, Pham?” Even if the Blight was sure to win, why help it?

  The man’s face went blank, Pham Nuwen almost disappearing behind the other programs at work in his mind. Then, “I’m … focussing Countermeasure. I see now, Countermeasure, what it is…. It was designed by something beyond the Powers. Maybe there are Cloud People, maybe this is signalling them. Or maybe what it’s just done is like an insect bite, something that will cause a much greater reaction. The Bottom of the Beyond has just receded, like the waterline before a tsunami.” The Countermeasure glared red-orange, its arcs and barbs embracing Pham more tightly than before. “And now that we’ve bootstrapped to a decent Zone … things can really happen. Oh, the ghost of Old One is amused. Seeing beyond the Powers was almost worth dying for.”

  The fleet stats flowed across Ravna’s wrist. The Blight was coming on even faster than before. “Five minutes, Pham.” Even though they were still thirty light-years out.

  Note 1433

  Laughter. “Oh, the Blight knows, too. I see this is what it feared all along. This is what killed it those aeons ago. It’s racing forward now, but it’s too late.” The glow brightened; the mask of light that was Pham’s face seemed to relax. “Something very … far … away has heard me, Rav. It’s coming.”

  “What? What’s coming?”

  “The Surge. So big. It makes what hit us before seem a gentle wave. This is the one nobody believes, because no one’s left to record it. The Bottom will be blown out beyond the fleet.

  Sudden understanding. Sudden wild hope. “… And they’ll be trapped out there, won’t they?” So Kjet Svensndot had not fought in vain, and Pham’s advice had notOA been nonsense: Now there wasn’t a single ramscoop in the Blighter fleet.

  Note 1434

  “Yes. They’re thirty-light years out. We killed all the speed-capable ones. They’ll be a thousand years getting here….” The artifact abruptly contracted, and Pham moaned. “Not much time. We’re at maximum recession. When the surge comes, it will—” Again a sound of pain. “I can see it! By the Powers, Ravna, it will sweep high and last long.”

  “How high, Pham?” Ravna said softly. She thought of all the civilizations above them. There were the Butterflies and the treacherous types who supported the pogrom at Sjandra Kei…. And there were trillions who lived in peace and made their own way toward the heights.

  Note 1435

  “A thousand light-years? Ten thousand? I’m not sure. The ghosts in Countermeasure — Arne and Sjana thought it might rise so high it would punch into the Transcend, encyst the Blight right where it sits…. That must be what happened Before.”

  Arne and Sjana?

  Note 1436

  The Countermeasure’s writhing had slowed. Its light flickered bright and then out. Bright and then out. She heard Pham’s breath gasp with every darkness. Countermeasure, a savior that was going to kill a million civilizations. And was killing the man who had triggered it.

  Note 1437

  Almost unthinking, she dodged past the thing, reaching for Pham. But razors on razors blocked her, raking her arms.

  Note 1438

  Pham was looking up at her. He was trying to say something more.

  Then the light went out for a final time. From the darkness all around came a hissing sound and a growing, bitter smell that Ravna would never forget.

  * * *

  For Pham Nuwen, there was no pain. The last minutes of his life were beyond any description that might be rendered in the Slowness or even in the Beyond.

  So try metaphor and simile: It was like … it was like … Pham stood with Old One on a vast and empty beach. Ravna and Tines were tiny creatures at their feet. Planets and stars were the grains of sand. And the sea had drawn briefly back, letting the brightness of thought reach here where before had been darkness. The Transcendence would be brief. At the horizon, the drawn-back sea was building, a dark wall higher than any mountain, rushing back upon them. He looked up at the enormity of it. Pham and godshatter and Countermeasure would not survive that submergence, not even separately. They had triggered catastrophe beyond mind, a vast section of the Galaxy plunged into Slowness, as deep as Old Earth itself, and as permanent.

  Arne and Sjana and Straumers and Old One were avenged … and Countermeasure was complete.

  And as for Pham Nuwen? A tool made, and used, and now to be discarded. A man who never was.

  The surge was upon him then, plunging depths. Down from the Transcendent light. Outside, the Tines’ world sun would be shining bright once more, but inside Pham’s mind everything was closing down, senses returning to what eyes can see and ears can hear. He felt Countermeasure slough toward nonexistence, its task done without ever a conscious thought. Old One’s ghost hung on for a little longer, huddling and retreating as thought’s potential ebbed. But it let Pham’s awareness be. For once it did not push him aside. For once it was gentle, brushing at the surface of Pham’s mind, as a human might pet a loyal dog.

  More a brave wolf, you are, Pham Nuwen. There were only seconds left before they were fully in the depths, where the merged bodies of Countermeasure and Pham Nuwen would die forever and all
thought cease. Memories shifted. The ghost of Old One stepped aside, revealing certainties it had hidden all along. Yes, I built you from several bodies in the junkyard by Relay. But there was only one mind and one set of memories that I could revive. A strong, brave wolf —so strong I could never control you without first casting you into doubt….

  Somewhere barriers slipped aside, the final failing of Old One’s control, or His final gift. It did not matter which now, for whatever the ghost said, the truth was obvious to Pham Nuwen and he would not be denied:

  Note 1439

  Canberra, Cindi, the centuries avoyaging with Qeng Ho, the final flight of the Wild Goose. It was all real.

  He looked up at Ravna. She had done so much. She had put up with so much. And even disbelieving, she had loved. It’s okay. It’s okay. He tried to reach out to her, to tell her. Oh, Ravna, I am real!

  Then the full weight of the depths was upon him, and he knew no more.

  * * *

  There was more pounding on the door. She heard Pilgrim walk to the hatch. A crack of light shone in. Ravna heard Jefri’s piping voice: “The sun is back! The sun is back!… Hei, why is it so dark in here?”

  Pilgrim: “The artifact — the thing Pham was helping — its light went out.”

  “Geez, you mean you left off the main lights?” The hatch slid all the way open, and the boy’s head, along with several puppies’, was sihlouetted against the torchlight beyond. He scrambled over the lip of the hatch. The girl was right behind him. “The control is right over here … see?”

  And soft white light shone on the curving walls. All was ordinary and human, except…. Jefri stood very still, his eyes wide, his hand over his mouth. He turned to hold onto his sister. “What is it? What is it?” his voice said from the opened hatch.

  Now Ravna wished she could not see. She dropped back to her knees. “Pham?” she said softly, knowing there would be no answer. What was left of Pham Nuwen lay amid the Countermeasure. The artifact didn’t glow any more. Its tortuous boundaries were blunted and dark. More than anything it looked like rotted wood…. but wood that embraced and impaled the man who lay with it. There was no blood, and no charring. Where the artifact had pierced Pham there was an ashy stain, and the flesh and the thing seemed to merge.