The Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge

by Vernor Vinge

  “What was that all about?” Mary whispered. I shook my head. This was one conversation I wasn’t going to translate. Horlig’s reaction amazed and pleased me. I almost liked the man after the way he had handled Che#. And unless the incident had been staged for my benefit, it shattered Robert Dahlmann’s theory about Merlyn and Horlig. Could Che# be the one masquerading as a Terran rebel?

  He had just used Terran sabotage as an excuse for genocide.

  Or was Merlyn simply what it appeared to be: a terrorist group created and managed by deranged Terrans? Things were all mixed up.

  Ngagn Che# stalked out of the passage that led to Horlig’s office. He glared murderously at Mary and me as he swept past us toward the door hole.

  I looked back into the pool, and saw the reflection of Horlig’s face looking back out at me. Perhaps it was the ripple distortion from the waterfall, but he seemed just as furious with my eavesdropping as he had been with Che#. If it had been a direct confrontation, I would’ve expected a fight. Then Horlig remembered his privacy field and turned it on, blanking out my view.

  MY LIBRARY PROJECT proceeded rapidly to a conclusion. Everything was taped, and I had 2e7 subjects cross-indexed. The computerized library became my most powerful research tool. Dahlmann hadn’t been kidding when he said that the pre-war civilization was high class. If the North Americans and Asians had managed to avoid war, they probably would have sent an expedition to Miki while we were still developing the fission bomb. Wouldn’t that have been a switch—the Terrans colonizing our lands!

  In the two hundred years since the North World War, the Australians had spent a great deal of effort in developing social science. They hadn’t given up their government mania, but they had modified the concept so that it was much less malevolent than in the past. Australia now supported almost eleven million people, at a fairly high standard of living. In fact, I think there was probably less suffering in Australia than there is in most parts of Miki. Too bad their way of life was doomed. The Terrans were people—they were human. (And that simple conclusion was the answer to the whole problem, though I did not see it then.) In all my readings, I kept in mind the solution I was looking for: some way to save the Terrans from physical destruction, even if it was impossible to save their entire culture.

  As the weeks passed, this problem came to overshadow my official tasks. I even looked up the history of the Cherokee and read about Elias Boudinot and Chief Sequoyah. The story was chillingly similar to the situation that was being played out now by the Mikins and the Terrans. The only way that the Terrans could hope for physical safety was to adopt Mikin institutions. But even then, wouldn’t we eventually wipe them out the same way President Andrew Jackson did the Cherokee? Wouldn’t we eventually covet all the lands of Earth?

  While I tried to come up with a long-term solution, I also kept track of Che#’s activities. Some of his men were pretty straight guys, and I got to know one platoon leader well. Late one evening about ten weeks after my landing, my armsman friend tipped me off that Che# was planning a massacre the next day in Perth.

  I went over to see Horlig that night. From his reaction to Che#’s genocide scheme, I figured he’d squash the massacre plan. The Gloyn was working late. I found him seated behind his stone desk in the center of the AAO rock-nest. He looked up warily as I entered. “What is it, Melmwn?”

  “You’ve got to do something, Horlig. Che# is flying three platoons to Perth. I don’t know exactly what type of mayhem he’s planning, but—”

  “Rockingham.”

  “Huh?”

  “Che# is flying to Rockingham, not Perth.” Horlig watched me carefully.

  “You knew? What’s he going to do—”

  “I know because he’s doing the job at my suggestion. I’ve identified the abos who blew up our ammo warehouse last year. Some of the ringleaders are Rockingham city officials. I’m going to make an example of them.” He paused, then continued grimly, as if daring me to object. “By tomorrow at this time, every tenth inhabitant of Rockingham will be dead.”

  I didn’t say anything for a second. I couldn’t. When I finally got my mouth working again, I said with great originality, “You just can’t do this, Horlig. We’ve had a lot more trouble from the Sudaméricans and the Zulunders than we’ve ever had from the Australians. Killing a bunch of Aussies will just prove to everyone that Mikins don’t want peace. You’ll be encouraging belligerence. If you really have proof that these Rockingham officials are Merlyn’s Men, you should send Che# out to arrest just those men and bring them back here for some sort of Company trial. Your present action is entirely arbitrary.”

  Horlig sat back in his chair. There was a new frankness and a new harshness in his face. “Perhaps I just made it all up. I’ll fabricate some proof too, when necessary.”

  I hadn’t expected this admission. I answered, “%wrlyg’s Second Son himself is coming down from Orbit tomorrow morning. Perhaps you thought he wouldn’t know of your plans until they were executed. I don’t know why you are doing this, but I can tell you that the Second Son is going to hear about it the minute he gets off the landing craft.”

  Horlig smiled pleasantly. “Get out.”

  I TURNED AND STARTED FOR THE DOOR. I admit it: I was going soft in the brain. My only excuse is that I had been associating with the natives too long. They generally say what they think because they have the protection of an impartial and all-powerful police force. This thought occurred to me an instant before I heard the characteristic sound of wrist gun smacking into palm. I dived madly for the floor as the first 0.07 mm dart hit the right boulder of the door hole. The next thing I knew I was lying in the cubbyhole formed by two or three large boulders knocked loose by the blast. My left arm was numb; a rock splinter had cut through it to the bone.

  In the next couple seconds, Horlig fired about twenty darts wildly. The lights went out. Rocks weighing many tons flew about. The rock nest had been designed for stability, but this demolition upset the balance and the whole pile was shifting into a new configuration. It was a miracle I wasn’t crushed. Horlig screamed. The shooting stopped. Was he dead? The man was nuts to fire more than a single dart indoors. He must have wanted me pretty bad.

  As the horrendous echoes faded away, I could hear Horlig swearing. The pile was unrecognizable now. I could see the sky directly between gaps in the rocks. Moonlight came down in silvery shafts through suspended rock dust. Half-human shapes seemed to hurk in the rubble. I realized now that the nest was much bigger than I had thought. To my left an avalanche of boulders had collapsed into some subterranean space. The surface portion of the nest was only a fraction of the total volume. Right now Horlig could be right on the other side of a nearby rock or one hundred meters away—the pile shift had been that violent.

  “You still kicking, Melmwn, old man?” Horlig’s voice came clearly. The sound was from my right, but not too close. Perhaps if I moved quietly enough I could sneak out of the pile to my aircar. Or I could play dead and wait for morning when Horlig’s employees came out. But some of those might be partners in Horlig’s scheme—whatever it was. I decided to try the first plan. I crawled over a nearby boulder, made a detour around an expanse of moonlit rock. My progress was definitely audible—there was too much loose stuff. Behind me, I could hear Horlig following. I stopped. This was no good. Even if I managed to make it out, I would then be visible from the pile, and Horlig could shoot me down. I would have to get rid of my opponent before I could escape. Besides, if he got away safely, Horlig could have Che#’s sentries bar me from the landing field the next day. I stopped and lay quietly in the darkness. My arm really hurt now, and I could feel from the wetness on the ground that I had left a trail of blood.

  “Come, Melmwn, speak up. I know you’re still alive.” I smiled. If Horlig thought I was going to give my position away by talking, he was even crazier than I thought. Every time he spoke, I got a better idea of his position.

  “I’ll trade information for the sound of your voice,
Melmwn.” Maybe he was not quite so nuts after all. He knew my greatest failing: curiosity. If Horlig should die this night, I might never know what his motives were. And I was just as well armed as he. If I could keep him talking I stood to gain just as much as he.

  “All right, Horlig. I’ll trade.” I had said more than I wanted to. The shorter my responses the better. I listened for the sound of movement. But all I heard was Horlig’s voice.

  “You see, Melmwn, I am Merlyn.” I heard a slithering sound as he moved to a new position. He was revealing everything to keep me talking. Now it was my turn to say something.

  “Say on, O Horlig.”

  “I should have killed you before. When you overheard my conversation with Che#. I thought you might have guessed the truth.”

  I had received a lot of surprises so far, and this was another. Horlig’s treatment of Che#’s genocide scheme had seemed proof that Horlig couldn’t be Merlyn. “But why, Horlig? What do you gain? What do you want?”

  My opponent laughed. “I’m an altruist, Melmwn. And I’m a Gloyn; maybe the last full-blooded Gloyn. The Terrans are not going to be taken over by you the way you took over my people. The Terrans are people; they are human—and they must be treated as such.”

  I GUESS THE IDEA must have been floating around in my mind for weeks. The Terrans were human, and should be treated as such. Horlig’s statement triggered the whole solution in my mind. I saw the essential error of the Cherokee and of all my previous plans to save the Terrans. Horlig’s motive was a complete surprise, but I could understand it. In a way he seemed to be after the same thing as I—though his methods couldn’t possibly work. Maybe we wouldn’t have to shoot it out.

  “Listen Horlig. There’s a way I can get what you want without bloodshed. The Terrans can be saved.” I outlined my plan. I talked for almost two minutes.

  As I finished, a dart smashed into a boulder thirty meters from my position. Then Horlig spoke. “I will not accept your plan. It is just what I’m fighting against.” He seemed to be talking to himself, repeating a cycle that played endlessly, fanatically in his own brain. “Your plan would make the Terrans carbon-copy Mikins. Their culture would be destroyed as thoroughly as mine was. It is far better to die fighting you monsters than to lie down and let you take over. That’s why I became Merlyn. I give the rebellious Terran elements a backbone, secret information, supplies. In my capacity as a Mikin official, I provoke incidents to convince the spineless ones of the physical threat to their existence. The Australians are the most cowardly of the lot. Apparently their government will accept any indignity. That’s why I must be especially brutal at Rockingham tomorrow.”

  “Your plan’s insane,” I blurted without thinking, “%wrlyg could destroy every living thing on Earth without descending from orbit.”

  “Then that is better than the cultural assassination you intend! We will die fighting.” I think he was crying. “I grew up on the last preserve. I heard the last stories. The stories of the lands and the hunting my people once had, before you came and killed us, drove us away, talked us out of everything of value. If we had stood and fought then, I at least would never have been born into the nightmare that is your world.” There was silence for a second.

  I crept slowly toward the sound of his voice. I tucked my left arm in my shirt to keep it from dragging on the ground. I guessed that Horlig was wounded too, from the slithery sound he made when he moved.

  The man was so involved in his own world that he kept on talking. It’s strange, but now that I had discovered a way to save the Terrans, I felt doubly desperate to get out of the rock-nest alive. “And don’t, Melmwn, be so sure that we will lose to you this time. I intend to provoke no immediate insurrection. I am gathering my forces. A second robot factory was brought in with the Third Fleet. %wrlyg’s Second Son is coming down with it tomorrow. With Che#’s forces on the West Coast it will be an easy matter for Merlyn’s Men to hijack the factory and its floater. I already have a hidden place, in the midst of all the appropriate orefields, to set it up. Over the years, that factory will provide us with all the weapons and vehicles we need. And someday, someday we will rise and kill all the Mikins.”

  Horlig sounded delirious now. He was confusing Gloyn and Terran. But that robofactory scheme was not the invention of a delirious mind—only an insane one. I continued across the boulders—under and around them. The moon was directly overhead and its light illuminated isolated patches of rock. I knew I was quite near him now. I stopped and inspected the area ahead of me. Just five meters away a slender beam of moonlight came down through a chink in the rock overhead.

  “Tomorrow, yes, tomorrow will be Merlyn’s greatest coup.”

  As Horlig spoke I thought I detected a faint agitation in the rock dust that hung in that moonbeam. Of course it might be a thermal effect from a broken utility line, but it could also be Horlig’s breath stirring the tiny particles.

  I scrambled over the last boulder to get a clear shot that would not start an avalanche. My guess was right. Horlig sprang to his feet, and for an instant was outlined by the moonlight. His eyes were wide and staring. He was a Gloyn warrior in shin boards and breech-clout, standing in the middle of his wrecked home and determined to protect his way of life from the alien monsters. He was only four hundred years too late. He fired an instant before I did. Horlig missed. I did not. The last Gloyn disappeared in an incandescent flash.

  I was in bad shape by the time I got out to my car and called a medic. The next couple hours seem like someone else’s memories. I woke the Ump at 0230. He wasn’t disturbed by the hour; Umpires can take anything in stride. I gave him the whole story and my solution, I don’t think I was very eloquent, so either the plan was sharp or the Ump was especially good. He accepted the whole plan, even the ruling against %wrlyg. To be frank, I think it was a solution that he would have come to on his own, given time—but he had come down from the Orbital Base the week before, and had just begun his study of the natives. He told me he’d reach an official decision later in the day and tell me about it.

  I flew back to my office, set all the protection devices on auto, and blacked out. I didn’t wake until fifteen hours later, when Ghuri Kym—the Ump—called and asked me to come with him to Adelaide.

  Just twenty-four hours after my encounter with Horlig, we were standing in Robert Dahlmann’s den. I made the introductions. “Umpire Kym can read Australian but he hasn’t had any practice with speaking, so he’s asked me to interpret. Scholar Dahlmann, you were right about Herul Horlig—but for the wrong reasons.” I explained Horlig’s true motives. I could see Dahlmann was surprised. “And Che#’s punitive expedition to the West Coast has been called off, so you don’t have to worry about Rockingham.” I paused, then plunged into the more important topic, “I think I’ve come up with a way to save your species from extinction. Ghuri Kym agrees.”

  Kym laid the document on Dahlmann’s desk and spoke the ritual words. “What’s this?” asked Dahlmann, pointing at the Mikin printing.

  “The English is on the other side. As the representative of the Australian government, you have just been served with an antitrust ruling. Among other things, it directs your people to split into no fewer than one hundred thousand autonomous organizations. Ngagn Che# is delivering similar documents to the Sudamérican and Zulunder governments. You have one year to effect the change. You may be interested to know that %wrlyg has also been served and must split into at least four competitive groups.”

  %wrlyg had been served with the antitrust ruling that morning. My employers were very unhappy with my plan. Kym told me that the Second Son had threatened to have me shot if I ever showed up on Company property again. I was going to have to lay low for a while, but I knew that %wrlyg needed all the men they could get. Ultimately, I would be forgiven. I wasn’t worried: the risk-taking was worth while if it saved the Terrans from exploitation.

  I had expected an enthusiastic endorsement from Dahlmann, but he took the plan glumly. Kym and I spen
t the next hour explaining the details of the ruling to him. I felt distinctly deflated when we left. From the Terran’s reaction you’d think I had ordered the execution of his race.

  MARY WAS SITTING on the porch swing. As we left the house, I asked Kym to return to the Base without me. If her father hadn’t been appreciative, I thought that at least Mary would be. She was, after all, the one who had given me the problem. In a way I had done it all for her.

  I sat down on the swing beside her.

  “Your arm! What happened?” She passed her hand gently over the plastic web dressing. I told her about Horlig. It was just like the end of a melodrama. There was admiration in her eyes, and her arms were around me—boy gets girl, et cetera.

  “And,” I continued, “I found a way to save all of you from the fate of the Cherokee.”

  “That’s wonderful, Ron. I knew you would.” She kissed me.

  “The fatal flaw in the Cherokee’s plan was that they segregated themselves from the white community, while they occupied lands that the whites wanted. If they had been citizens of the United States of America, it would not have been legal to confiscate their lands and kill them. Of course we Mikins don’t even have a word for ‘citizen,’ but Umpire law extends to all humans. I got the Umpire to declare that Terrans are a human species. I know it sounds obvious, but it just never occurred to us before.

  “Genocide is now specifically barred, because it would be monopolistic. An antitrust ruling has already been served on Australia and the other Earth governments.”

  Mary’s enthusiasm seemed to evaporate somewhat. “Then our governments will be abolished?”