A Fire Upon the Deep

by Vernor Vinge

  Peregrine settled down around Ravna, only one pair of eyes still watching the Rider’s fronds down in the foam. Best to give some explanation. He cocked a head a Ravna, “Oh, we are medieval, Ravna — even if changing fast, now. We admired Blueshell’s courage in the fire. Such deserves reward. And medieval types are used to courting treachery. So what if the risk is of cosmic size? To us, here, it is no more deadly for that. We poor primitives live with such all the time.”

  “Ha!” Her smile spread at his flippant tone.

  Note 1493

  Peregrine chuckled, heads bobbing. His explanation was the truth, but not all the truth, or even the most important part. He remembered back to the day before, when he and Woodcarver had decided what to do with Greenstalk’s request. Woodcarver had been afraid at first, statecraftly cautious before an evil secret billions of years old. Even leaving such a being in cold sleep was a risk. The statecraftly … the medieval… thing to do, would be to grant the request, leave the Rider ashore on this distant island … and then sneak back a day or two later and kill it.

  Peregrine had settled down by his Queen, closer than any but mates and relations could ever do without losing their train of thought. “You showed more honor to Vendacious,” he had said. Scriber’s murderer still walked the earth, complete, scarcely punished at all.

  Note 1494

  Woodcarver snapped at the empty air; Peregrine knew that sparing Vendacious hurt her too. “…Yes. And these Skroderiders have shown us nothing but courage and honesty. I will not harm Greenstalk. Yet I am afraid. With her, there’s a risk that goes beyond the stars.”

  Peregrine laughed. It might be pilgrim madness but — “and that’s to be expected, My Queen. Great risks for great gains. I like being around the humans; I like touching another creature and still being able to think at the same time.” He darted forward to nuzzle the nearest of Woodcarver, and then retreated to a more rational distance. “Even without their starships and their datasets, they would make our world over. Have you noticed … how easy it is for us to learn what they know? Even now, Ravna can’t seem to accept our fluency. Even now, she doesn’t understand how thoroughly we have studied Dataset. And their ship is easy, my Queen. I don’t mean I understand the physics behind it — few even among star folk do. But the equipment is easy to learn, even with the failures it has suffered. I suspect Ravna will never be able to fly the agrav boat as well as I.”

  “Hmmf. But you can reach all the controls at once.”

  “That’s only part of it. I think we Tines are more flexibly minded than the poor Two-Legs. Can you imagine what it will be like when we make more radio cloaks, when we make our own flying machines?”

  Woodcarver smiled, a little sadly now. “Pilgrim, you dream. This is the Slow Zone. The agrav will wear out in a few years. Whatever we make will be far short of what you play with now.”

  Note 1495

  “So? Look at human history. It took less than two centuries for Nyjora to regain spaceflight after their dark age. And we have better records than their archaeologists. We and the humans are a wonderful team; they have freed us to be everything we can be.” A century till their own spaceships, perhaps another century to start building sub- light-speed starships. And someday they would get out of the Slow Zone. I wonder if packs can be bigger than eight up in the Transcend.

  Note 1496

  The younger parts of Woodcarver were up, pacing around the rest. The Queen was intrigued. “So you think, like Steel seemed to, that we are some kind of special race, something with a happy destiny in the Beyond? Interesting, except for one thing: These humans are all we know from Out There. How do they compare with other races there? Dataset can’t fully answer that.”

  “Ah, and there, Woodcarver, is why Greenstalk is so important. We do need experience of more than one other race. Apparently the Riders are among the most common throughout the Beyond. We need them to talk to. We need to discover if they are as much fun, as useful, as the Two-Legs. Even if the risk was ten times what it seems, I would still want to grant this Rider her wish.”

  Note 1497

  “… Yes. If we are to be all we can be, we need to know more. We need to take a few risks.” She stopped her pacing; all her eyes turned toward Peregrine in a gesture of surprise. Abruptly she laughed.

  “What?”

  “Something we’ve thought before, dear Peregrine, but now I see how true it may be. You’re being a little bit clever and scheming here. A good statesman and planner for the future.”

  “But still for a pilgrimly goal.”

  “To be sure…. And I, now I don’t care so completely about the planning and the safety. We will visit the stars someday.” Her puppies waggled a joyous salute. “I’ve a little of the pilgrim in me now, too.”

  Note 1498

  She went down all on her bellies and crept across the floor toward him. Consciousness slowly dissolved into a haze of loving lust. The last thing Peregrine remembered her saying was, “How wonderful the luck: that I had grown old and had to be new, and that you were just the change we need.”

  Note 1499

  * * *

  Peregrine’s attention drifted back to the present, and Ravna. The human was still grinning at him. She reached a hand across to brush one of his heads. “Medieval minds indeed.”

  Note 1500

  They sat in the fern shade for another couple of hours and watched the tide come in. The sun fell through midafternoon — even then it was as high in the sky as any noontime sun could be at Woodcarver’s. In some ways, the quality of the light and the motion of the sun were the strangest things about the scene. The sun was so high, and came down so straight, with none of the long sliding glide of afternoon in the arctic. He had almost forgotten what it was like in the land of Short Twilight.

  Note 1501

  Now the surf was thirty yards inland of where they had put the Rider. The crescent moon was following the sun toward the horizon; the water wouldn’t rise any further. Ravna stood, shaded her eyes against the lowering sun. “Time for us to go, I think.”

  “You think she’ll be safe?”

  Ravna nodded. “This was long enough for Greenstalk to notice any poisons, and most predators. Besides, she’s armed.”

  Note 1502

  Human and Tines picked their way to the crest of the atoll, past the tallest of the ferns. Peregrine kept a pair of eyes on the sea behind them. The surf was well past Greenstalk now. Her location was still swept by deep waves, but it was beyond the spume and spray. His last sight of her was in the trough behind a crasher: the smoothness of the sea was broken for an instant by two of her tallest fronds, the tips gently swaying.

  * * *

  Note 1503

  Summer took gentle leave of the land around Hidden Island. There was some rain, and no more brush fires. There would even be a harvest, war and drought notwithstanding. Each dayaround the sun hid deeper behind the northern hills, a time of twilight that broadened with the weeks till true night held at midnight. And there were stars.

  It was something of an accident that so many things came together on the last night of summer. Ravna took the kids out skygazing on the fields by Starship Castle.

  No urban haze here, nor even near-space industry. Nothing to fog the view of heaven except a subtle pinkness in the north that might have been vagrant twilight — or aurora. The four of them settled on the frosty moss and looked around. Ravna took a deep breath. There was no hint of ash left in the air, just a clean chill, a promise of winter.

  “The snow will be deep as your shoulders, Ravna,” said Jefri, enthusiastic about the possibility. “You’ll love it.” The pale blotch that was his face seemed to be looking back and forth across the sky.

  “It can be bad,” said Johanna Olsndot. She hadn’t objected to coming up here tonight, but Ravna knew that she would rather have stayed down on Hidden Island to worry about the doings of tomorrow.

  Note 1504

  Jefri picked up on her unease — no, that was A
mdi talking now; they would never cure those two of pretending to be each other. “Don’t worry, Johanna. We’ll help you.”

  Note 1505

  For a moment no one said anything. Ravna looked down the hill. It was too dark to see the six hundred meter drop, too dark to see where fjord and islands lay below. But the torchlight on the ramparts of Hidden Island marked its location. Down there in Steel’s old inner court — where Woodcarver now ruled — were all the working coldboxes from the ship. One hundred and fifty-one children slept there, the last survivors of the Straumer’s flight. Johanna claimed that most could be revived, with best chance of success if it were done soon. The Queen had been enthusiastic about the idea. Large sections of the castle had been set aside, refurbished for human needs. Hidden Island was well sheltered — if not from winter snow, at least from the worst winds. If they could be revived, the children would have no trouble living there. Ravna had come to love Jefri and Johanna and Amdi — But could she handle one hundred and fifty more ? Woodcarver seemed to have no misgivings. She had plans for a school where Tines would learn of humans and the children would learn of this world…. Watching Jefri and Amdi, Ravna was beginning to see what might become of this. Those two were closer than any children she had ever known, and in sum more competent. And that was not just the puppies’ math genius; they were competent in other ways.

  Humans and Packs fit, and Old Woodcarver was clever enough to take advantage of it. Ravna liked the Queen, and liked Pilgrim even more, but in the end the Packs would be the great beneficiaries. Woodcarver clearly understood the disabilities of her pack race. Tinish records went back at least ten thousand years. For all their recorded history they had been trapped in cultures not much less advanced than now. A race of sharp intelligence, yet they had a single overwhelming disadvantage: they could not cooperate at close range without losing that intelligence. Their civilizations were made of isolated minds, forced introverts who could never progress beyond certain limits. The eagerness of Pilgrim and Scrupilo and the others for human contact was evidence of this. In the long run, we can move the Tines out of this cul de sac.

  Note 1506

  Amdi and Jefri were giggling about something, the Pack sending runners out almost to the limit of consciousness. These last weeks, Ravna had come to learn that pell-mell activity was the norm for Amdi, that his initial slowness had been part of his hurt over Steel. How … perverse (or how wonderful?) … that a monster like Steel could be the object of such love.

  Jefri shouted, “You watch in all directions, let me know where to look.” Silence. Then Jefri’s voice again: “There!”

  “What are you doing?” Johanna asked with sisterly belligerence.

  “Watching for meteors,” one of the two said. “Yes, I watch in all directions and jab Jefri —there!— where to look when one comes by.”

  Ravna didn’t see anything, but the boy had twisted around abruptly at his friend’s signal.

  Note 1507

  “Neat, neat,” came Jefri’s voice. “That was about forty kilometers up, speed—” the two’s voice murmurred unintelligibly for a second. Even with the pack’s wide vision, how could they know how high it was?

  Ravna sat back in the hollow formed by the hummocky moss. It was a good parka the locals had made for her; she barely felt the chill in the ground. Overhead, the stars. Time to think, get some peace before all the things that would begin tomorrow. Den Mother to one hundred and fifty kids … and I thought I was a librarian.

  Note 1508

  Back home she had loved the night sky; at one glance she could see the other stars of Sjandra Kei, sometimes the other worlds. The places of her home had been in her sky. For a moment the evening chill seemed part of a winter that would never go away. Lynne and her folks and Sjandra Kei. Her whole life till three years ago. It was all gone now. Don’t think on it. Somewhere out there was what was left of Aniara fleet, and what was left of her people. Kjet Svensndot. Tirolle and Glimfrelle. She had only known them for a few hours, but they were of Sjandra Kei — and they had saved more than they would ever know. They would still live. SjK Commercial Security had some ramscoops in its fleet. They could find a world, not here, but nearer the battle site.

  Note 1509

  Ravna tilted her head back, wondering at the sky. Where? Maybe not even above the horizon now. From here the galactic disk was a glow that climbed across the sky almost at right angles to the ecliptic. There was no sense of its true shape or their exact position in it; the greater picture was lost to nearby splendors, the bright knots of open clusters, frozen jewels against the fainter light. But down near the southern horizon, far from the galactic way, there were two splotchy clouds of light. The Magellanics! Suddenly the geometry clicked, and the universe above was not completely unknown. Aniara fleet would be —

  “I — I wonder if we can see Straumli Realm from here,” said Johanna. For more than a year now she had had to play the adult. Come tomorrow, that role would be forever. But her voice just now was wistful, childlike.

  Ravna opened her mouth, about to say how unlikely that must be.

  Note 1510

  “Maybe we can, maybe we can.” It was Amdi. The pack had pulled itself together, snuggled companionably among the humans. The warmth was welcome. “See, I’ve been reading Dataset about where things are, and trying to figure how it matches what we see.” A pair of noses were silhouetted against the sky for instant, like a human waving his hands exhuberantly at the heavens. “The brightest things we see are just kind of local dazzle. They aren’t good guide posts.” He pointed at a couple of open clusters, claimed they matched stuff he’d found in the Dataset. Amdi had also noticed the Magellanic galaxies, and figured out far more than Ravna. “So anyway, Straumli Realm was”— was! you got it kid —“in the High Beyond, but near the galactic disk. So, see that big square of stars?” Noses jabbed. “We call that the Great Square. Anyway, just left of the upper corner and go six thousand light-years, and you’d be at Straumli Realm.”

  Jefri came to his knees and stared silently for a second. “But so far away, is there anything to see?”

  Note 1511

  “Not the Straumli stars, but just forty light-years from Straum there’s a blue-white giant—”

  “Yeah,” whispered Johanna. “Storlys. It was so bright you could see shadows at night.”

  “Well that’s the fourth brightest star up from the corner; see, they almost make a straight line. I can see it, so I know you can.”

  Note 1512

  Johanna and Jefri were silent for a long time, just staring up at that patch of sky. Ravna’s lips compressed in anger. These were good kids; they had been through hell. And their parents had fought to prevent that hell; they had escaped the Blight with the means of its destruction. But … how many million races had lived in the Beyond, had probed the Transcend and made bargains with devils? How many more had destroyed themselves There? Ah, but that had not been enough for Straumli Realm. They had gone into the Transcend and wakened Something that could take over a galaxy.

  “Do you think anybody’s left there?” said Jefri. “Do you think we’re all that’s left?”

  His sister put an arm around him. “Maybe, maybe not Straumli Realm. But the rest of the universe — look, it’s still there.” Weak laughter. “Daddy and Mom, Ravna and Pham. They stopped the Blight.” She waved a hand against the sky. “They saved most all of it.”

  “Yes,” said Ravna. “We’re saved and safe, Jefri. To begin again.” And as far as it went, that comfort was probably true. The ship’s zone probes were still working. Of course, a single measure point is of no use for precise zonography, but she could tell that they were deep in the new volume of the Slowness, the volume created by Pham’s Revenge. And — much more significant — the OOB detected no variation in zonal intensity. Gone was the continuous trembling of the months before. This new status had the feeling of mountain roots, to be moved only by the passage of the ages.

  Note 1513

  Fift
y degrees along the galactic river was another unremarkable space of sky. She didn’t point it out to the kids, but what was of interest there was much nearer, just under thirty light-years out: the Blighter Fleet. Flies trapped in amber. At normal jump rates for the Low Beyond, they had been just hours away when Pham created the Great Surge. And now …? If they had been bottom luggers, ships with ramscoops, they could close the gap in less than fifty years. But Aniara Fleet had made their sacrifice; they had followed Pham’s godshattered advice. And though they didn’t know it, they had broken the Blight. There wasn’t a single Slow Zone capable vessel in the approaching fleet. Perhaps they had some in-system capability — a few thousand klicks per second. But no more, not Down Here, where new construction was not a matter of waving a magic wand. The Blight’s extermination force would sweep past Tines World in … a few thousand years. Time enough.

  Note 1514

  Ravna leaned back against one of Amdi’s shoulders. He nestled comfortably around her neck. The puppies had grown these last two months; apparently Steel had kept them on some sort of stunting drugs. Her gaze lost itself in the dark and glow: far upon far that were all the Zones above her. And where are the boundaries now? How awesome was Pham’s Revenge. Maybe she should call it Old One’s Revenge. No, it was far more even than that. “Old One” was just a recent victim of the Blight. Even Old One was no more than midwife to this revenge. The first cause must be as old as the original Blight and more powerful than the Powers.

  Note 1515

  But whatever caused it, the Surge had done more than revenge. Ravna had studied the ship’s measurement of zone intensity. It could only be an estimate, but she knew they were trapped between one thousand and thirty thousand light-years deep in the new Slowness. Powers only knew how far the Surge had pushed the Slowness…. And maybe even some of the Powers were destroyed by it. This was like some vision of planetary armegeddon — the type of thing that primitive civilizations nightmared about — but blown up to a galactic scale. A huge hunk of the Milky Way galaxy had been gobbled up by the Slowness, all in a single afternoon. Not just the Blighter Fleet were flies trapped in amber. Why, the whole vault of heaven — excepting the Magellanics faint and far away — might now be a tomb of Slowness. Many must still be alive out there, but how many millions of starships had been trapped between the stars? How many automated systems had failed, killing the civilizations that depended on them? Heaven was truly silent now. In some ways the Revenge was a worse thing than the Blight itself.