The Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge

by Vernor Vinge

  THREE MINUTES PASSED; he clutched the blanket more tightly to himself as his teeth began to chatter. In the distance he heard the thrum of an approaching vehicle. He stared eagerly in the direction of the sound. Within fifteen seconds, a sixty-ton ore carrier emerged from the fog and lumbered toward him. Norman jumped up and down in a frenzy, waving and shouting. The blanket gave him the appearance of a little Amerind doing a particularly violent rain dance. The huge truck rolled by him at about thirty-five miles per hour. Then when it was some forty yards away, the driver slammed on the brakes and the doughy rollagon tires bit into asphalt.

  Norman ran joyfully toward the cab, not noticing the uncared-for condition of the starboard ore cranes, the unpainted and dented appearance of the cab, or the wheezy putputting of the Wankel rotary engine—all signs of dilapidation which would have been unthinkable four years before.

  He stopped in front of the cab door and was confronted by a pair of cynical, bloodshot eyes peering at him over a three-day growth of beard. “Who…Whash are you?” (The condition of the driver would have been unthinkable four years ago, too.)

  “My name’s Norman—Jones.” Norman slyly selected an alias. He resolved to act dull, too, for he knew that most chimps were somewhat stupid, and couldn’t speak clearly without the special operations he had had. (In spite of his memory and intelligence, Norman had an artificial block against ever completely realizing his uniqueness.) “I want to go to”—he searched his memory—“Marquette.”

  The driver squinted and moved his head from side to side as if to get a better view of Norman. “Say, you’re a monkey.”

  “No,” Norman stated proudly, forgetting his resolution, “I’m a chimpanzee.”

  “A talkin’ monkey,” the driver said almost to himself. “You could be worth plen…wherezhu say you wanna go…Marquette? Sure, hop in. That’s where I’m takin’ this ore.”

  Norman clambered up the entrance ladder into the warm cab. “Oh, thanks a lot.”

  The ore carrier began to pick up speed. The highway had been blasted through greenish bedrock, but it still made turns and had to climb over steep hills.

  The driver was expansive, “Can’t wait to finish this trip. This here is my las’ run, ya know. No more drivin’ ore fer the government an’ its ‘Public Works Projects.’ I know where to get a couple black market fusion packs, see? Start my own trucking line. No one’ll ever guess where I get my power.” He swerved to avoid a natural abutment of greenish rock that appeared out of the mist, and decided that it was time to turn on his fog lights. His mind wandered back to prospects of future success, but along a different line. “Say, you like to talk, Monkey? You could make me a lot of money, ya know: ‘Jim Traly an’ His Talkin’ Monkey.’ Sounds good, eh?”

  With a start, Norman realized that he was listening to a drunk. The driver’s entire demeanor was almost identical to that of the fiend’s henchman in “The Mores of the Morgue.” Norman had no desire to be a “talkin’ monkey” for the likes of Traly, whose picture he now remembered in Social Security Records. The man was listed as an unstable, low competence type who might become violent if frustrated.

  As the ore carrier slowed for a particularly sharp turn, Norman decided that he could endure the cold of the outside for a few more minutes. He edged to the door and began to pull at its handle. “I think I better get off now, Mr. Traly.”

  The ore carrier slowed still more as the driver lunged across the seat and grabbed Norman by one of the purple suspenders that kept his orange Bermuda shorts up. A full grown chimpanzee is a match for most men, but the driver weighed nearly three hundred pounds and Norman was scared stiff. “You’re staying right here, see?” Traly shouted into Norman’s face, almost suffocating the chimpanzee in alcohol vapor. The driver transferred his grip to the scruff of Norman’s neck as he accelerated the carrier back to cruising speed.

  “CRASHED IN A SHALLOW swamp just beyond the Security fence, sir.” The young Army captain held a book up to the viewer. “This copy of Asimov was all that was left in the cabin, but we dredged up some other books and a typewriter from the water. It’s only about five feet deep there.”

  “But where did the chim…the pilot go?” Pederson asked.

  “The pilot, sir?” The captain knew what the quarry was but was following the general’s line. “We have a man here from Special Forces who’s a tracker, sir. He says that the pilot left the Cub and waded ashore. From there, he tracked him through the brush to the old Ishpeming-Marquette road. He’s pretty sure that the…um…pilot hitched a ride in the direction of Marquette.” The captain did not mention how surprised the lieutenant from Special Forces had been by the pilot’s tracks. “He probably left the area about half an hour ago, sir.”

  “Very well, Captain. Set up a guard around the plane; if anyone gets nosy, tell them that ORES has asked you to salvage their crashed Cub. Fly everything you found in the cabin and swamp back to Sawyer and have it sent down here to Files Central.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Pederson cut the connection and began issuing detailed instructions to his chief aide over another circuit. Finally he turned back to Dunbar. “That chimp is not going to remain one step ahead of us for very much longer. I’ve alerted all the armed forces in the Upper Peninsula to start a search, with special concentration on Marquette. It’s lucky that we have permission to conduct limited maneuvers there or I might have an awful time just getting permission to station airbornes over the city.

  “And now we can take a little time to consider ways of catching this Norman Simmons, rather than responding spastically to his initiative.”

  Dunbar said quickly, “In the first place, you can cut whatever connection there is between Files and Norman’s computer.”

  Pederson grinned. “Good enough. That was mixed in with the rest of the instructions I’ve given Smith. If I remember right, the two computers were connected by a simple copper cable, part of the general cable net that was installed interweaving with the tunnel system. It should be a simple matter to cut the circuit where the cable enters the Files room.”

  The general thought for a moment, “The object now is to catch the chimp, discover the location of the chimp’s computer, or both. Down here we can’t do anything directly about the chimp. But the computer has to be in contact with Norman Simmons. Could we trace these emanations?”

  Dunbar blinked. “You know that better than I, General. The Signal Corps used our experiment to try a quote entirely new concept in communications unquote. They supplied all the comm equipment, even the surgical imbeds for Norman. And they are playing it pretty cozy with the technique. Whatever it is, it goes through almost anything, does not travel faster than light, and can handle several billion bits per second. It might even be ESP, if what I’ve read about telepathy is true.”

  Pederson looked sheepish. “I do recognize the ‘new concept’ you mention. I just never connected the neutri…this technique with your project. But I should have known; we have only one way to broadcast through solid rock as if it were vacuum. Unfortunately, with the devices we have now, there’s no way of getting a directional bearing on such transmissions. With enough time and as a last resort we might be able to jam them, though.”

  Now it was Dunbar’s turn to make a foolish suggestion. “Maybe if a thorough search of the tunnels were made, we could find the—”

  Pederson grimaced. “Bill, you’ve been here almost three years. Haven’t you realized how complicated the Labyrinth is? The maze is composed of thousands of tunnel segments spread through several cubic miles of bedrock. It’s simply too complex for a blind search—and there’s only one set of blueprints,” he jerked a thumb at the racks of fiberglass. “Even for routine trips, we have to make out tapes to plug into the transport cars down there. If we hadn’t put his quarters close to ground level, so you could take him for walks on the surface, Norman would still be wandering around the Labyrinth, even though he knows what passages to take.

  “About twice a day
I ride over to Continental Air Defense Headquarters. It takes about half an hour and the trip is more tortuous then a swoopride at a carnival. CAD HQ could be just a hundred yards from where we’re sitting, or it could be two miles—in any direction. For that matter, I don’t really know where we are right now. But then,” he added with a sly smile, “neither do the Russki or Han missilemen. I’m sorry, Doctor, but it would take years of random searching to find the computer.”

  And Dunbar realized that he was right. It was general policy in the First Security District to disperse experiments and other installations as far as possible through the tunnel maze. So it had been with Norman’s computer. With its own power source the computer needed no outside assistance to function.

  The scientist remembered its strange appearance, resting like a huge jewel in a vacant tunnel—where? It was a far different sight from the appearance of Files. Norman’s computer had the facets of a cut gem, although this had been a functional rather than an aesthetic necessity. Dunbar remembered the multi-color glows that appeared near its surface; further in, the infinite reflections and subtle refractions of microcomponent flaws in the glass blended into a mysterious flickering, hinting at the cheerful though immature intelligence that was Norman Simmons. This was the object which had to be found.

  DUNBAR BROKE OUT of his reverie. He started on a different tack. “Really, General, I don’t quite see how this situation can be quite as desperate as you say. Norman isn’t going to sell secrets to the Reds; he’s as loyal as a human child could be—which is a good deal more than most adults, because he can’t rationalize disloyalty so easily. Besides, you know that we were eventually going to provide him with large masses of data, anyway. The goal of this whole project is to test the possibility of giving humans an encyclopedic mental grasp. He just saw how much the information could help him, and how much easier it could be obtained than by study, and he pushed the experiment into its next phase. He shouldn’t be punished or hurt because of that. This situation is really no one’s fault.”

  Pederson snapped back, “Of course, it’s no one’s fault; that’s just the hell of it. When no one is to blame for something, it means that the situation is fundamentally beyond human control. To me, your whole project is taking control away from people and giving it to others. Here an experimental animal, a chimpanzee, has taken the initiative away from the U.S. Government—don’t laugh, or so help me—” The general made a warning gesture. “Your chimp is more than a co-ordinator of information; he’s also smarter than he was before. What’re the humans we try this on going to be like?”

  Pederson calmed himself with a deliberate effort. “Never mind that now. The important thing is to find Simmons, since he appears to be the only one who,” Pederson groaned, “knows where his brains are. So let’s get practical. Just what can we expect from him? How easy is it for him to correlate information in his memory?”

  Dunbar considered. “I guess the closest analogy between his mind and a normal one is to say that he has an eidetic memory—and a very large one. I imagine that when he first began using the information he was just swamped with data. Everything he saw stimulated a deluge of related memories. As his subconscious became practiced, he probably remembered only information that was pertinent to a problem. Say that he saw a car, and wondered what year and make it was. His subconscious would hunt through his copy of Files—at very high speed—and within a tenth of a second Norman would ‘remember’ the information he had just wondered about.

  “However, if for some reason he suddenly wondered what differential equations were, it would be a different matter, because he couldn’t understand the information presented, and so would have to wade through the same preliminary material that every child must in order to arrive at high-school math. But he could do it very much faster, because of the ease with which he could pick different explanations from different texts. I imagine he could get well into calculus from where he is now in algebra with a couple hours of study.”

  “In other words, the longer he has this information, the more dangerous he’ll be.”

  “Uh, yes. However, there are a couple things on our side. First, it’s mighty cold and damp on the surface, for Norman at least. He is likely to be very sick in a few hours. Second, if he travels far enough away from the First Security District, he will become mentally disoriented. Although Norman doesn’t know it—unless he has specifically considered the question—he could never get much farther than fifteen miles away and remain sane. Norman’s mind is a very delicate balance between his organic brain and the hidden computer. The coordination is just as subtle as that of different nerve paths in the human brain. The information link between the two has to transmit more than a billion bits of information per second. If Norman gets beyond a certain point, the time lapse involved in transmission between him and the computer will upset the coordination. It’s something like talking by radio with a spacecraft; beyond a certain distance it is difficult or impossible to maintain a meaningful conversation. When Norman goes beyond a certain point it will be impossible for him to think coherently.”

  Dunbar was struck by an unrelated idea. He added, “Say, I can see one reason why this could get sticky. What if Norman got picked up by foreign agents? That would be the biggest espionage coup in the history of man.”

  Pederson smiled briefly. “Ah, the light dawns. Yes, some of the information this Simmons has could mean the death of almost everyone on Earth, if it were known to the wrong people. Other secrets would merely destroy the United States.

  “Fortunately, we’re fairly sure that the Reds’ domestic collapse has reduced their overseas enterprises to about nil. As I remember it, there are only one or two agents in all of Michigan. Thank God for small favors.”

  BORIS KUCHENKO SCRATCHED and was miserable. A few minutes before, he had been happily looking forward to receiving his weekly unemployment check and then spending the afternoon clipping articles out of the NATO Armed Forces Digest for transmission back to Moscow. And now this old coot with his imperious manner was trying to upset everything. Kuchenko turned to his antagonist and tried to put on a brave front. “I am sorry, Comrade, but I have my orders. As the ranking Soviet agent in the Upper Peninsu—”

  The other snapped back, “Ranking agent, nothing! You were never supposed to know this, Kuchenko, but you are a cipher, a stupid dummy used to convince U.S. Intelligence that the USSR has given up massive espionage. If only I had some decent agents here in Marquette, I wouldn’t have to use idiots like you.”

  Ivan Sliv was an honest-to-God, effective Russian spy. Behind his inconspicuous middle-aged face, lurked a subtle mind. Sliv spoke five languages and had an excellent grasp of engineering, mathematics, geography, and history—real history, not State-sponsored fairy tales. He could make brilliantly persuasive conversation at a cocktail party or commit a political murder with equal facility. Sliv was the one really in charge of espionage in the militarily sensitive U.P. area. He and other equally talented agents concentrated on collecting information from Sawyer AFB and from the elusive First Security District.

  The introduction of Bender’s fusion pack had produced world-wide depression, and the bureaucracies of Russia had responded to this challenge with all the resiliency of a waterlogged pretzel. The Soviet economic collapse had been worse than that of any other major country. While the U.S. was virtually recovered from the economic depression caused by the availability of unlimited power, counter-revolutionary armies were approaching Moscow from the West and the East. Only five or ten ICBM bases remained in Party hands. But the Comrades had been smart in one respect. If you can’t win by brute force, it is better to be subtle. Thus the planetary spy operations were stepped up, as was a very secret project housed in a system of caves under the Urals. Sliv’s mind shied away from that project—he was one of the few to know of it, and that knowledge must never be hinted at.

  Sliv glared at Kuchenko. “Listen, you fat slob: I’m going to explain things once more, if possible i
n words of one syllable. I just got news from Sawyer that some Amie superproject has backfired. An experimental animal has escaped from their tunnel network and half the soldiers in the U.P. are searching for it. They think it’s here in Marquette.”

  Kuchenko paled, “A war virus test? Comrade, this could be—” the fat Soviet agent boggled at the possibilities.

  Sliv swore. “No, no, no! The Army’s orders are to capture, not destroy the thing. We are the only agents that are in Marquette now, or have a chance to get in past the cordon that’s sure to be dropped around the city. We’ll split up and—” He stopped and took conscious notice of the buzzing sound that had been building up over the last several minutes. He walked quickly across the small room and pushed open a badly cracked window. Cold air seemed to ooze into the room. Below, the lake waters splashed against the pilings of the huge automated pier which incidentally contained this apartment. Sliv pointed into the sky and snapped at the bedraggled Kuchenko. “See? The Amie airbornes have been over the city for the last five minutes, at least. We’ve got to get going, man!”

  But Boris Kuchenko was a man who liked his security. He miserably inspected his dirty fingernails, and began, “I really don’t know if this is the right thing, Comrade. We—”

  THE FOG HAD DISAPPEARED, only to be replaced by a cold drizzle. Jim Traly guided the ore carrier through Marquette to the waterfront. Even though drunk, he maintained a firm grip on Norman’s neck. The carrier turned onto another street, and Norman got his first look at Lake Superior. It was so gray and cold; beyond the breakwater the lake seemed to blend with the sullen hue of the sky. The carrier turned again. They were now moving parallel to the water along a row of loading piers. In spite of the rollagons, the carrier dipped and sagged as they drove over large potholes in the substandard paving material. The rain had collected in these depressions and splashed as they drove along. Traly apparently recognized his destination. He slowed the carrier and moved it to the side of the street.