The Tatja Grimm's World

by Vinge, Vernor

  The dorfox continued up the rope. He had panicked completely. Ancho was trying to retreat from all the things that frightened him, and up was the only direction left. Svir debated whether he should follow the sailor, then saw that it would just upset her precarious balance. The wind blew the ladder into a clean catenary form. As the sailor rose higher, she was forced to climb with her back to the ground and the rope above her. Ancho was radiating helpless distress—even down the deck it made Svir faint with fear. For a heart-stopping instant it looked as if she were going to fall. Her feet slipped from the rope and she hung by one hand from beneath the ladder. Then she hooked her leg around the ladder and inched forward. She was no longer climbing. One hundred fifty feet above the deck, the ladder was blown horizontal.

  Finally she reached Ancho. She seemed to coax him. The dorfox clutched at her neck. The two came slowly down the long, curving ladder.

  The girl collapsed at the base of the mast. Ancho released his tight hold on her and scuttled over to Svir.

  Svir held the whimpering animal as he helped the sailor to her feet. She was a bit taller than average, with black hair cut in short bangs. At the moment her face was very pale. “That was a brave thing you did,” said Svir. Without doubt, she had saved the animal’s life. “You really know how to handle those ropes.”

  The girl laughed weakly. “Not me. I’m a translations editor. Llerenito editions mainly.” She spoke in brief, anguished spurts. Her mind knew she was safe now, but her body did not. “That’s the first time I ever climbed them. Oh gods! Every time I looked down, I wanted to throw up. Everything looked so far away and hard.”

  She sat back down on the deck She was shaking as much as Ancho. Svir put his hand on her shoulder.

  “I like to come up here on my free time,” she said. “Your animal came running across the deck like his tail was on fire. He just grabbed the ladder and climbed. I could tell he didn’t want to climb, but he was terrified of whatever chased him. Every few rungs, he’d stop and try to come down. I—I had to do something.”

  As she spoke these words, Tatja arrived. She ran over and inspected Ancho with a careful, expert eye.

  She didn’t say anything for several seconds, though she favored the girl with a long, calculating glance. Could Tatja be jealous? thought Svir, surprised. Finally Tatja turned to Svir and smiled. “Svir Hedrigs, be introduced to Translations Editor Coronadas Ascuasenya. Coronadas Ascuasenya, Astronomer Svir Hedrigs.”

  “Pleased.” The girl smiled hesitantly.

  “Tatja, Coronadas climbed almost to the top of the mast to save Ancho.”

  “Yes, I saw the last of it. That was a brave rescue.” She petted Ancho. “I just hope we haven’t wrecked the dorfox. We were fools to take him along this morning.” She looked up at the sun, which was just past the zenith. “We might as well get some dinner. It’s too late to start any training. We can begin this evening.” Svir wrapped Ancho in his jacket, and they returned to the lower decks.

  EIGHT

  The sun was three hours down before they began. The night was clear and Seraph lit both sea and barge in shades of blue.

  Tatja had used paperboard partitions to simulate a hallway within Benesh’s keep. She had constructed the mock-up on a deck out of the wind and hidden from the view of other ships. “I’ll admit it’s pretty crude, but we don’t need anything elaborate just yet,” she said. “The dimensions are the same as inside the Keep. You can see side passages opening off the main one.”

  Svir walked to the entrance of the maze. It certainly wasn’t very convincing. The ceiling of the passage was purple sky. Company sailors were to simulate the Royal Guards of the Keep. They didn’t seem too certain of just what was expected of them.

  Tatja reached past Svir’s shoulder to pet Ancho. “We want Ancho to make these ‘Guards’ hallucinate. It’s going to take some practice, but I want him to convince whoever he points those pretty ears at that you constitute an authority figure.”

  Svir tried to break the news gently: “I doubt if that’s possible. Dorfoxes aren’t very bright. It seems to me that in order to generate a detailed illusion, Ancho would have to be humanly bright.”

  Tatja shook her pretty head. “Nope. The intelligence of the victim provides all the background detail. I’ve spent some time on Dorfox Island, and I know things like that are possible. C’mon, let’s start, or we’ll still be at it when we pull into Bayfast.”

  Ancho was usually sluggish at night, but he perked up noticeably when Tatja had a large bowl of rehydrated klig leaves brought on deck. He strained to push his nose past the bowl’s cover, but it was securely fastened. The dorfox would have to earn his treats. Svir’s father had often played games like this with Ancho, and had managed to teach him a number of tricks.

  Svir stepped back from the klig leaves and put Ancho on his shoulder. The “Royal Guards” had assumed their posts in the passageway. He saw Cor Ascuasenya standing at the far end of the mock-up.

  Tatja stood behind Svir. In this position she could watch what happened with relative impunity, since Ancho was not likely to turn around and broadcast in her direction. “All right, Svir, give it a try. Let’s see if Ancho will give us a demonstration.”

  Svir walked slowly through the mock-up. Everything seemed quite normal. But then, Ancho rarely aimed his illusions at his master … .

  When he was through, Tatja asked the first sailor what he had seen.

  The fellow looked at her a little blankly. “What do you mean? When are you going to start the test?” The others were similarly confused. None of them had been conscious of Svir or Ancho as they walked down the hall. Tatja unfastened the lid on the klig bowl.

  “That was a good performance,” she said. “Ancho managed to scan every person as you walked past. Now we have to make him try other effects, till he produces exactly what we’re looking for.” She fed Ancho two leaves. The little mammal sucked on them greedily, momentarily enraptured. When he was done he reached out for more, but Tatja had already relocked the basket.

  Svir petted Ancho, who appeared to enjoy the game. “You know, Tatja, Ancho is really dependable with that I’m-not-here signal. And he can scan a lot of people at once. Why can’t you settle for that?”

  “Being invisible isn’t enough. You’ll be going all the way to the center of the Keep—to the vault where the most precious sacrifices are kept. With Ancho’s I’m-not-here, you probably could steal the Guards’ keys. But what if some of the doors have combination locks? You need more than the Guards’ passive acceptance. They must actively help you. And there are more than five thousand volumes in the Fantasie collection. That comes to at least two tons. You’ll need help getting them out.” She picked up her noteboard and pen. “Let’s try it again.”

  And again. And again.

  Ancho soon learned that anything he tried would earn him some reward, but that if he repeated a previous performance, the prize was smaller. So he tried to come up with a new effect on each try. They soon exhausted the natural dorfox responses, the projections which served so well on the dorfox’s native island. Some of these could drive away predators or dull their senses. Others attracted insects and lulled their suspicions.

  Ancho also tried the tricks he had been taught since arriving in civilization. On one pass all the crewmen in the passage broke into fits of hysterical laughter. Cor Ascuasenya had the giggles for fifteen minutes after Ancho came by. What they saw was hilariously funny, though they couldn’t explain to Tatja and Svir just why.

  Each trial was a little different than the last. Tatja had innumerable variations to suggest. But after the first half hour, the project was awfully boring. For the sailors it was also uncomfortable. Ancho had put them through an emotional wringer. In one twenty-minute period he made them laugh and cry. He had responded eagerly to all the attention showered upon him, but now was beginning to lose interest. And he had yet to display any behavior Svir had not seen previously. What Tatja was asking of Ancho was quite unrealistic. A h
alf-guilty feeling of relief grew in Hedrigs. He really wanted to help Tarulle Company with the rescue. Even more, he wanted to help Tatja. But it was beginning to look as though he would not have to risk his life, after all. He wasn’t exactly eager to stick his nose into the business of Tar Benesh.

  For the hundredth time, Svir started down the mock passageway. He was still surprised by the respect and obedience these sailors showed Tatja. She must have more authority on the barge than her title indicated. When she made a suggestion in her low, pleasant voice, people hustled. It was evidence of how the best people rose to the top in any organization. What had he done to deserve her?

  “Damn it, man, stand up straight when you walk!” It took Svir an astonished second to realize that Tatja was speaking to him. “Come back and start over. How can you expect the dorfox to cast an illusion of authority if you drag about like an addled tri-form student?”

  Svir bit back a sharp reply. He walked to the beginning and started over. He almost swaggered down the passageway, imitating the gait of a Crownesse bureaucrat he had once seen at a university dinner in Krirsarque. The effect was subtle. Suddenly he was no longer pretending. He actually felt important and powerful, the way he had always imagined politicians and generals must feel. It seemed only natural that the sailors should snap to attention as he passed them. He returned their brace with an informal salute. The feeling of power disappeared when he came to the end of the passage.

  Tatja smiled. “Wow! Cor, what did you see when Svir walked by you?”

  Ascuasenya looked confused. She glanced from Tatja. to Svir and back again. “When I first looked at him coming down the hall, I could swear it was my father—but my family is in the Llerenito Archipelagate! Closer, I saw that it was Captain Maccioso. I mean, I knew it was Svir—it had to be. But it was Ked Maccioso at the same time. Even now when I look at him, I see Maccioso—and yet I see Svir, too.” Svir glanced at Ancho’s ears. They weren’t pointing at Cor. The illusion persisted even after the dorfox stopped radiating.

  Tatja didn’t say anything for a second. She made a note in her book and looked up. “Can you see Ancho sitting on Svir’s shoulder?”

  Cor squinted. “No. All I see is that queer double image I just described.”

  The others had similar reactions. About half saw Svir as Tatja. These people were especially confused, since they were seeing two Tatja Grimms. Every one of them realized that Ancho’s trickery was involved, and all but two could see Svir behind the illusion.

  Svir was amazed. Even Gran’ther Betrog had never mentioned anything like this. But what practical use was it? A half-basked illusion that wasn’t even uniform. It would never fool the Royal Guards.

  But Tatja seemed to feel otherwise. She finished writing in the notebook and looked up, smiling. “Well, we’ve done it. The illusion is one of the strongest I’ve ever seen. It persists even in the face of contradiction-to-fact situations. See, Svir, all you have to do is act confident. Ancho knows you and will radiate the same thing. I really didn’t mean to jump on you.”

  Svir nodded, still blushing from the unexpected attack. Her technique worked, but it was shocking.

  Tatja continued, “We’d better knock off now. Ancho’s losing interest; by now he’s crammed full of klig leaves. And most of you look pretty dragged out. Let’s have another session after lunch.”

  During the rest of the voyage they had three hours of practice in every wake period. Toward the end, Ancho was able to broadcast the authority signal even better than he could the I’m-nothere. He also grew fat on the klig leaves, assuming an almost spherical form. Tatja had him perform his new trick under every conceivable condition—even in the dark, down in one of the holds. They found that if a single authority figure were suggested to all the “victims,” then they all saw that same person. It took Ancho only a fraction of a second to set up the illusion in the human mind, and it persisted without booster treatment for almost ten minutes. Ancho could detect people hiding behind bulkheads, and could even project the illusion through many feet of stone.

  One experiment was a mystery to Svir. Tatja produced a flat balsir box and strapped it to Ancho’s back. He didn’t seem to mind; the box was light and apparently the straps didn’t chafe. The contraption looked vaguely like an oversize cookie cutter—its profile was an irregular set of semicircles and lines. Stubby cylinders of glass and wood projected from either side of the box. On top was a little hole, like the keyhole in a clock. And the device clicked almost like a clock when it was mounted on Ancho’s back.

  Tatja refused to reveal the purpose of the contraption. She said it was a last precaution, one whose usefulness would be impaired if Svir knew its purpose. He couldn’t imagine what sort of precaution would have such properties, but he accepted her explanation. Perhaps it was empty—a placebo to give him the false confidence necessary to trigger Ancho’s authority signal.

  The drag kept Tatja busy—even busier than the general run of the crew. Outside of their practice sessions, Svir was with her only two or three hours in every wake period. He actually saw more of the translations editor, Coronadas Ascuasenya. It was surprising how often he found her eating at the same time and in the same meal hall as he. He came to enjoy those meals more and more. Ascuasenya was older than she looked. She’d been with Tarulle almost seven years. She’d actually worked with Rey Guille, and had met most of the authors who had shaped Svir’s world view. She was no competition for Tatja—how could anyone be?—but Cor was pretty and intelligent and very nice to be with.

  Svir spent the rest of his free time in the barge library, where Tatja’s influence had opened some otherwise locked doors. Only fifteen or twenty people out of the thousand on board were allowed in the library, but once inside there was no restriction on use of materials. Here Tarulle kept copies of all available issues of magazines published by the company. That amounted to about twenty thousand volumes. Jespen Tarulle was in the publishing business to make money, but he had a sense of history and the barge library was the most luxurious part of the craft that Svir had yet seen. Here was none of the cramped stuffiness of the lower decks. Virtually none of the sea or ship noises were audible through the thick glass windows. Deep carpets covered the floor. During the night wake periods, well-tended algae pots supplemented Seraph’s light. The librarian was a strange old bat. He was helpful enough, showing Svir how to find just what he wanted in the stacks. But he treated the magazines with an awe that went beyond Svir’s. You’d think he was a priest in a temple. Wherever Svir went in the stacks, the gangling librarian was sure to follow, lurking in wait for some desecration.

  Maybe the guy wasn’t nuts. To a confirmed Fantasie addict, the library was halfway to heaven. The Tarulle collection was nearly three quarters complete—more than four thousand issues. That was better than any library on the Chainpearls. There were several copies of the first issue, printed just forty years after the invention of movable type. In those years the magazine was sold in yard-square sheets, folded into quarters. Only rarely was a story illustrated, and then with crude woodcuts. But that was part of the enchantment. On a single barge—the predecessor of the present compound vessel—they had printed such works as Delennor’s Doom and Search for the Last Kingdom, novels that after seven hundred years were still studied by poets and read with enjoyment by near illiterates. And here he could see the originals, genius seen direct across the centuries.

  That first barge had been owned by an ambitious trading family distantly related to the present publisher. In the beginning, the barge carried general trade between the islands of the Osterlai group, at the same time providing regular and vital communication between those islands. As the publishing sideline became more profitable, the family gave up their other trading operations and visited islands further and further asea. The lands beyond the horizon provided ever more enchanting themes and original authors. Fantasie readers were the first, and for a long time the only, cosmopolitans on the planet.

  The magazine’s succes
s was not without repercussions. The effects of the first interplanetary fantasy were shattering both for the magazine and for the rulers of the Tsanart Archipelagate. Ti Liso’s Migration foreshadowed the rise of contrivance fiction. Liso’s hero discovered a species of flying fish, which during the winter season in the northern hemisphere migrated to the southern hemisphere of Seraph. The hero captured several of the vicious creatures and taught them to pull his sailing boat. After an eight-day flight the fish deposited him, half-starved, on the south polar continent of Seraph. The story went on to describe the civilization he found there. It was an unfortunate coincidence that Liso’s Seraphian government was an absurd dictatorship founded on Tu-worship—for the tyrannical government of the Tsanarts was just such a farce in reverse. In plain fact the story had not been intended as satire. It had been written as straight adventure. Liso, a native of the Osterlais, had honestly conceived the most ridiculous autarchy imaginable. The Seraphiles of the Tsanarts did not take it as a joke, and for the next fifty years, until the fall of their religion, Tsanart waters were forbidden to the barge. This was an especial hardship, since the technique for sailing to the windward was not fully developed at that time. Avoiding the Tsanarts cost many tens of days sailing time.

  Each day brought Svir closer to the coast of the Continent, closer to Bayfast. Back in Krirsarque, the prospect of invading the Crownesse Keep had seemed a faraway adventure. But now he was coming to realize that it was a reality which he personally would have to face. More and more he spent his time in the library, in retreat from the nightmare that approached. He had always found refuge in Fantasie, and now he dived into the more recent stories with a vengeance. Sometimes he could avoid thinking of his own problems for hours at a time. Despite the literary past, he enjoyed the recent stories most. The straight fantasy themes had been handled in every conceivable way in the past seven hundred years. It was only in the last two hundred that the idea of physical progress had emerged; the idea that there could be mechanical means of achieving fantastic ends. In the last fifteen years nearly half of Fantasie’s output had been c-f.