Zones of Thought Trilogy

by Vernor Vinge

  “Decrypt the thing,” Svensndot said shortly. The last weeks had demonstrated that his company was a dismal failure when it came to military intelligence and signals. They might as well get some benefit from that incompetence.

  “Yes sir!” Glimfrelle tapped a single key. Somewhere inside Ølvira‘s signal processor, a long segment of “random” noise was broken into frames and laid precisely down on the “random” noise in the data frames incoming. There was a perceptible pause (damn the Bottom) and then the comm window lit with a flat video picture.

  “—fourth repetition of this message.” The words were Samnorsk, and a dialect of pure Herte i Sjandra. The speaker was … for a heartstopping instant he was seeing Ølvira again, alive. He exhaled slowly, trying to relax. Black-haired, slim, violet-eyed—just like Ølvira. And just like a million other women of Sjandra Kei. The resemblance was there, but so vague he would never have been taken by it before. For an instant he imagined a universe beyond their lost fleet, and goals beyond vengeance. Then he forced his attention back to business, to seeing everything he could in the images in the window.

  The woman was saying, “We’ll repeat three more times. If by then you have still not responded, we will attempt a different target.” She pushed back from the camera pickup, giving them a view of the room behind her. It was low-ceilinged, deep. An ultradrive trace display dominated the background, but Svensndot paid it little attention. There were two Skroderiders in the background. One wore stripes on its skrode that meant a trade history with Sjandra Kei. The other must be a lesser Rider; its skrode was small and wheelless. The pickup turned, centered on the fourth figure. Human? Probably, but of no Nyjoran heritage. In another time, his appearance would have been big news across all human civilizations in the Beyond. Now the point only registered on Svensndot’s mind as another cause for suspicion.

  The woman continued, “You can see that we are human and Rider. We are the entire crew of the Out of Band II. We are not part of the Alliance for the Defense nor agents of the Blight… But we are the reason their fleets are down here. If you can read this, we’re betting that you are of Sjandra Kei. We must talk. Please reply using the tail of the pad that is decrypting this message.” The picture jigged and the woman’s face was back in the foreground. “This is the fifth repetition of this message,” she said. “We’ll repeat two more—”

  Glimfrelle cut the audio. “If she means it, we have about one hundred seconds. What next, Captain?”

  Suddenly the Ølvira was not an irrelevant straggler. “We talk,” said Svensndot.

  Response and counter-response took a matter of seconds. After that … five minutes of conversation with Ravna Bergsndot was enough to convince Kjet that what she had to say must be heard by Fleet Central. His ship would be a mere relay, but at least he had something very important to pass on.

  Fleet Central refused the full video link coming from the Out of Band. Someone on the flagship was dead set on following standard procedures—and using compromised cipher keys stuck in their craw. Even Kjet had to settle for a combat link: The screen showed a color image with high resolution. Looking at it carefully, one realized the thing was a poor evocation… Kjet recognized Owner Limmende and Jan Skrits, her chief of staff, but they looked several years out of style. Ølvira was matching old video with the transmitted animation cues. The actual communication channel was less that four thousand bits per second; Central was taking no chances.

  God only knew what they were seeing as the evocation of Pham Nuwen. The smokey-skinned human had already explained his point several times. He was having as little success as Ravna Bergsndot before him. His cool manner had gradually deserted him. Desperation was beginning to show on his face. “—and I’m telling you, they are both your enemies. Sure, Alliance for the Defense destroyed Sjandra Kei, but the Blight is responsible for the situation that made that possible.”

  The half-cartoonish figure of Jan Skrits glanced at Owner Limmende. Lord, evocations are crappy at the Bottom, Svensndot thought to himself. When Skrits spoke, his voice didn’t even match his lip movements: “We do read Threats, Mr. Nuwen. The threat of the Blight was used as an excuse to destroy our worlds. We will not go on random killing sprees, especially against an organization that is clearly the enemy of our enemy… Or are you claiming the Blight is secretly in league with the Alliance for the Defense?”

  Pham gave an angry shrug. “No. I have no idea how the Blight regards the Alliance. But you should know the evil the Blight has been up to, things on a scale far grander than this ‘Alliance’.”

  “Ah yes. That’s what it says on the Net, Mr. Nuwen. But those events are thousands of light-years away. They’ve been through multiple hops and unknown interpretations before they ever arrive in the Middle Beyond—even if the stories were true to begin with. It is not called the Net of a Million Lies for nothing.”

  The stranger’s face darkened. He said something loud and angry, in a language that was totally unlike anything from Nyjora. The tones jumped up and down, almost like Dirokime twittering. He calmed himself with a visible effort, but when he continued his Samnorsk was even more heavily accented than before. “Yes. But I’m telling you. I was at the Fall of Relay. The Blight is more than the worst horrors you’ve heard. The murder of Sjandra Kei was its smallest side-effect. Will you help us against the Blighter fleet?”

  Owner Limmende pushed her massive form back into her chair webbing. She looked at her chief of staff and the two talked inaudibly. Kjet’s gaze drifted beyond them; the flagship’s command deck extended a dozen meters behind Limmende. Underofficers moved quietly about, some watching the conversation. The picture was crisp and clear, but when the figures moved it was with cartoonlike awkwardness. And some of the faces belonged to people Kjet knew had been transferred before the fall of Sjandra Kei. The processors here on the Ølvira were taking the narrow-band signal from Fleet Central, fleshing it out with detailed (and out of date) background and evoking the image shown. No more evocations after this, Svensndot promised himself, at least while we’re down here.

  Owner Limmende looked back at the camera. “Forgive a paranoid old cop, but I think it’s possible that you might be of the Blight.” Limmende raised her hand as if to ward off interruptions, but the redhead just gaped in surprise. “If we believe you, then we must accept that there is something useful and dangerous on the star system we’re all heading towards. Furthermore, we must accept that both you and the ‘Blighter fleet’ are peculiarly qualified to take advantage of this prize. If we fight them as you ask, there will likely be few of us alive afterwards. You alone will have the prize. We fear what you might turn out to be.”

  For a long moment, Pham Nuwen was silent. The wildness slowly left his face. “You have a point, Owner Limmende. And a dilemma. Is there any way out?”

  “Skrits and I have been discussing it. No matter what we do, both we and you must take big chances… It’s only the alternatives that are more terrible. We are willing to accept your guidance in battle, if you will first maneuver your ship back toward us and allow us to board.”

  “Give up the lead in this chase, you mean?”

  Limmende nodded.

  Pham’s mouth opened and closed, but no words emerged. He seemed to be having trouble breathing. Ravna said, “Then if you don’t succeed, everything is lost. At least now, we have a sixty-hour lead. That might be enough to get word out about this artifact, even if the Blighter fleet survives.”

  Skrits’ face twisted, a cartoonish smile. “You can’t have it both ways. You want us to risk everything on your assurance of competence. We are willing to die for this, but not to be pawns in a game of monsters.” The last words had a strange tone, the angry delivery shading away. There had been no motion in the picture from Fleet Central except for ill-synched lip movement. Glimfrelle caught Svensndot’s eye and pointed at the failure lights on his comm panel.

  Skrits’ voice continued, “And Group Captain Svensndot: It’s imperative that all further communicat
ions with this unknown vessel be channeled—” the image froze, and there were no more words.

  Ravna: “What happened?”

  Glimfrelle made a twitter-snort. “We’re losing the link with Fleet Central. Our effective bandwidth is down to twenty bits per second, and dropping. Skrits’ last transmission was scarcely a hundred bits,”padded out to apparent legibility by the Ølvira‘s software.

  Kjet waved angrily at the screen. “Cut the damn thing off.” At least he wouldn’t have to put up with the evocation any further. And he didn’t want to hear what he guessed was Jan Skrits’ last order.

  Tirolle said, “Hei, why not leave it on? We might not notice much difference.” Glimfrelle’s snickered at his brother’s wit, but his longfingers danced across the comm panel, and the display became a window on the stars. The two Dirokimes had a thing about bureaucrats.

  Svensndot ignored them and looked at the remaining comm window. The channel to Pham and Ravna was wideband video with scarcely any interpretation; there would be no perverse subtleties if it went down. “Sorry about that. The last few days, we’ve had a lot of problems with comm. Apparently, this Zone storm is the worst in centuries.” In fact, it was getting still worse: the starboard ultratrace displays were showing random garbage.

  “You’ve lost contact with your command?” asked Ravna.

  “For the moment…” He glanced at Pham. The redhead’s eyes were still a bit glassy. “Look … I’m even more sorry about how things have turned out, but Limmende and Skrits are bright people. You can see their point of view.”

  “Strange,” interrupted Pham. “The pictures were strange,” his tone was drifty.

  “You mean our relay from Fleet Central?” Svensndot explained about the narrow bandwidth and the crummy performance of his ship’s processors down here at the Bottom.

  “And so their picture of us must have been equally bad… I wonder what they thought I was?”

  “Unh…” Good question. Consider Pham Nuwen: bristly red hair, smoke-gray skin, singsong voice. If cues such as those were sent, like as not the display at Fleet Central would show something quite different from the human Kjet saw. “…wait a minute. That’s not how evocations work. I’m sure they got a pretty clear view of you. See, a few high-resolution pics would get sent at the beginning of the session. Then those would be used as the base for the animation.”

  Pham stared back lumpishly, almost as though he didn’t buy it and was daring Kjet to think things through. Well damn it, the explanation was correct; there was no doubt that Limmende and Skrits had seen the redhead as a human. Yet there was something here that bothered Kjet … Limmende and Skrits had both looked out of date.

  “Glimfrelle! Check the raw stream we got from Central. Did they send us any sync pictures?”

  It took Glimfrelle only seconds. He whistled a sharp tone of surprise. “No, Boss. And since it was all properly encrypted, our end just made do with old ad animation.” He said something to Tirolle, and the two twittered rapidly. “Nothing seems to work down here. Maybe this is just another bug.” But Glimfrelle didn’t sound very confident of the assertion.

  Svensndot turned back to the picture from the Out of Band. “Look. The channel to Fleet Central was fully encrypted, using one-time schemes I trust more than what we’re talking with now. I can’t believe it was a masquerade.” But nausea was creeping up Kjet’s guts. This was like the first minutes of the Battle for Sjandra Kei, when he guessed how thoroughly they had been outmaneuvered, when he realized that everyone he was trying to protect would be murdered. “Hei, we’ll contact other vessels. We’ll verify Central’s location—“

  Pham Nuwen raised an eyebrow. “Maybe it wasn’t a masquerade.” Before he could say more, one of the Riders—the one with the greater skrode—was shouting at them. It rolled across the room’s apparent ceiling, pushing the humans aside to get close to the camera. “I have a question!” The voder speech was burred, nearly unintelligible. The creature’s tendrils rattled dryly against each other, as distressed as Kjet Svensndot had ever heard. “My question: Are there Skroderiders aboard your fleet’s command vessel?”

  “Why do you—”

  “Answer the question!”

  “How should I know?” Kjet tried to think. “Tirolle. You have friends on Skrits’ staff. Are there any Riders aboard?”

  Tirolle stuttered a few bars, “A’a’a’a. Yes. Emergency hires—rescues actually—right after the battle.”

  “That’s the best we can do, friend.”

  The Skroderider trembled, unspeaking. Then its tendrils seemed to wilt. “Thank you,” it said softly. It rolled back and out of camera range.

  Pham Nuwen disappeared from view. Ravna looked wildly around, “Wait please!” she said to the camera, and Kjet was looking at the abandoned command deck of the Out of Band. At the limit of the pickup’s hearing came sounds of mumbled conversation, voder and human. Then she was back.

  “What was that all about?” Svensndot to Ravna.

  “N-Nothing any of us can help anymore… Captain Svensndot, it looks to me like your fleet is no longer run by the people you think.”

  “Maybe.”Probably.“It’s something I’ve got to think about.”

  She nodded. For a moment they looked at each other, unspeaking. So strange, so far from home and after all the heartbreak … to see someone so familiar. “You were truly at Relay?” the question sounded stupid in his ears. Yet in a way she was a bridge from what he knew and trusted to the deadly weirdness of the present situation.

  Ravna Bergsndot nodded. “Yes … and it was like everything you’ve read. We even had direct contact with a Power… And yet it was not enough, Group Captain. The Blight destroyed it all. That part of the News is no lie.”

  Tirolle pushed back from his nav station. “Then how can anything you do down here hurt the Blight?” The words were blunt, but ‘Rolle’s eyes were wide and serious. In fact, he was pleading for some sense behind all the death. Dirokimes had not been the greatest part of the Sjandra Kei civilization, but they had been by far its oldest member race. A million years ago they had burst out of the Slow Zone, colonizing the three systems that humans one day would call Sjandra Kei. Long before the humans arrived, they were a race of inward dreamers. They protected their star systems with ancient automation and friendly younger races. Another half million years and their race might be gone from the Beyond, extinct or evolved into something else. It was a common pattern, something like death and old age, but gentler.

  There is a common misconception about such senescent races, that their members are senescent too. In any large population, there will be variation. There will always be those who want to see the outside world and play there for a while. Humankind had gotten on very well with the likes of Glimfrelle and Tirolle.

  And Bergsndot seemed to understand. “Have any of you heard of godshatter?”

  Kjet said, “No,” then noticed that both Dirokimes had started. They whistled at each other for several seconds in some kind of surprise dialect. “Yes,” ‘Rolle spoke at last in Samnorsk, his voice as close to awe as Kjet had ever heard. “You know we Dirokimes have been in the Beyond for a long time. We’ve sent many colonies into the Transcend; some became Powers… And once… Something came back. It wasn’t a Power of course. In fact, it was more like a mind-crippled Dirokime. But it knew things and did things that made great changes for us.”

  “Fentrollar?” Kjet asked wonderingly, suddenly recognizing the story. It had happened one hundred thousand years before humankind arrived at Sjandra Kei, yet it was a central contradiction of the Dirokime terranes.

  “Yes.” Tirolle said. “Even now people don’t agree if Fentrollar was a gift or a curse, but he founded the dream habitats and the Old Religion.”

  Ravna nodded, “That’s the case most familiar to us of Sjandra Kei. Maybe it’s not a happy example considering all its effects…” and she told them about the fall of Relay, what had happened to Old One, and what had become of Pham Nuwen. The
Dirokimes side chat dwindled to zero and they were very still.

  Finally Kjet said, “So what does Nu—” he stumbled over the name, as strange as everything else about this fellow, “Nuwen know about the thing you seek at the Bottom? What can he do with it?”

  “I-I don’t know, Group Captain. Pham Nuwen himself doesn’t know. A little bit at a time, the insight comes. I believe, because I was there for some of it … but I don’t know how to make you believe.” She drew a shuddering breath. Kjet suddenly guessed what a strange, tortured place the Out of Band must be. Somehow that made the story more credible. Anything that really could destroy the Blight would be unwholesomely weird. Kjet wondered how he would do, locked up with such a thing.

  “My Lady Ravna,” he said, the words stilted and formal. After all, I’m suggesting treason.“I, uh, I’ve got a number of friends in the Commercial Security fleet. I can check on the suspicions you’ve raised, and…” say it! “it’s possible we can give you support in spite of my HQ.”

  “Thank you, sir. Thank you.”

  Glimfrelle broke the silence. “We’re getting a poor signal on the Out of Band‘s channel now.”

  Kjet eyes swept the windows. All the ultratrace displays looked like random noise. Whatever this storm was, it was bad.

  “Looks like we won’t be talking much longer, Ravna Bergsndot.”

  “Yes. We’re losing signal… Group Captain, if none of this works, if you can’t fight for us… Your people are all that’s left of Sjandra Kei. It’s been good to see you and the Dirokimes … after so long to see familiar faces, people I really understand. I—” as she spoke, her image square-blurred into low-frequency components.