Zones of Thought Trilogy

by Vernor Vinge

  Johanna. Jefri rushed forward, fell on his knees before the Cloak. Almost without thought, he grabbed the singleton by the throat, shaking it. Teeth snapped at his hands as the other tried to shake free. Amdi rushed forward and pulled hard on his sleeves. After a moment Jefri let go. Centimeters away from his face, the singleton peered back at him, the torchlight glinting in its dark eyes. Amdi was saying: “Human voices are easy to fake—”

  The fragment was disdainful. “Of course. And I’m not claiming that was a direct relay. What you heard is several minutes old. Here’s what Steel and I are planning this very second.” His Samnorsk abruptly stopped, and the hallway was filled with the gobbling chords of Pack talk. Even after a year, Jefri could only extract vague sense from the conversation. It did sound like two packs. One of them wanted the other to do something, bring Amdijefri—that chord was clear—up.

  Amdiranifani went suddenly still, every member straining at the relayed sounds. “Stop it!” he shrilled. And the hallway was as quiet as a tomb. “Mr. Steel, oh Mr. Steel.” All of Amdi huddled against Jefri. “He’s talking about hurting you if Ravna doesn’t obey. He wants to kill the Visitors when they land.” The wide eyes were ringed with tears. “I don’t understand.”

  Jefri jabbed a hand at the Cloak. “Maybe he’s faking that, too.”

  “I don’t know. I could never fake two packs that well.” The tiny bodies shuddered against Jefri, and there was the sound of human weeping, the eerily familiar sound of a small child desolated… “What are we going to do, Jefri?”

  But Jefri was silent, remembering and finally understanding, the first few minutes after Steel’s troops had rescued—captured?—him. Memories suppressed by later kindness crept out from the corners of his mind. Mom, Dad, Johanna. But Johanna still lived, just beyond these walls…

  “Jefri?”

  “I don’t know either. H-hide maybe?”

  For a moment they just stared at each other. Finally the fragment spoke. “You can do better than hide. You already know about the passages through these walls. If you know the entrance points—and I do—you can get to almost anywhere you want. You can even get outside.”

  Johanna.

  Amdi’s crying stopped. Three of him watched Tyrathect front, aft, and sideways. The rest still clung to Jefri. “We still don’t trust you, Tyrathect,” said Jefri.

  “Good, good. I am a pack of various parts. Perhaps not entirely trustable.”

  “Show us all the holes.” Let us decide.

  “There won’t be time—”

  “Okay, but start showing us. And while you do, keep relaying what Mr. Steel is saying.”

  The singleton bobbed its head, and the multiple streams of Pack talk resumed. The Cloak got painfully to its feet and led the two children down a side tunnel, one where the wick torches were mostly burned out. The loudest sound down here was the soft dripping of water. The place was less than a year old, yet—except for the jagged edges of the cut stone—it seemed ancient.

  Puppies was crying again. Jefri stroked the back of the one that clung to his shoulder, “Please Amdi, translate for me.”

  After a moment Amdi’s voice came hesitantly in his ear. “M-Mr. Steel is asking again where we are. Tyrathect says we’re trapped by a ceiling fall in the inner wing.” In fact, they had heard the masonry shift a few minutes before, but it sounded far away. “Mr. Steel just sent the rest of Tyrathect to get Mr. Shreck and dig us out. Mr. Steel sounds so … different.”

  “Maybe it’s not really him,” Jefri whispered back.

  Long silence. “No. It’s him. He just seems so angry, and he’s using strange words.”

  “Big words?”

  “No. Scary ones. About cutting and killing … Ravna and you and me. He … he doesn’t like us, Jefri.”

  The singleton stopped. They were beyond the last wall torch, and it was too dark to see anything but shadowy forms. He pointed to a spot on the wall. Amdi reached forward and pushed at the rock. All the while Mr. Tyrathect continued talking, reporting from the outside.

  “Okay,” said Amdi, “that opens. And it’s big enough for you, Jefri. I think—”

  Tyrathect’s human voice said, “The Spacers are back. I can see their little boat… I got away just in time. Steel is getting suspicious. A few more seconds and he will be searching everywhere.”

  Amdi looked into the dark hole. “I say we go,” he said softly, sadly.

  “Yeah.” Jefri reached down to touch one of Amdi’s shoulders. The member led him to a hole cut in sharp-edged stone. If he scrunched his shoulders there would be enough room to crawl in. One of Amdi entered just ahead of him. The rest would follow. “I hope it doesn’t get any narrower than this.”

  Tyrathect: “It shouldn’t. All these passages are designed for packs in light armor. The important thing: keep to upward curving passages. Keep moving and you’ll eventually get outside. Pham’s flying craft is less than, uh, five hundred meters from the walls.

  Jefri couldn’t even look over his shoulder to talk to the Cloak. “What if Mr. Steel chases us into the walls?”

  There was a brief silence. “He probably won’t do that, if he doesn’t know where you entered. It would take too long to find you. But,” the voice was suddenly gentler, “but there are openings on the top of the walls. In case enemy soldiers tried to sneak in from the outside, there has to be some way to kill them in the tunnels. He could pour oil down the tunnels.”

  The possibility did not frighten Jefri. At the moment it just sounded bizarre. “We’ve got to hurry then.”

  Jefri scrabbled forward as the rest of Amdi crawled in behind him. He was already several meters deep in stone when he heard Amdi’s voice back at the entrance, the last one to enter: “Will you be okay, Mr. Tyrathect?”

  Or is this all another lie? thought Jefri.

  The other’s voice had its usual, cynical tone. “I expect to land on my feet. Please do remember that I helped you.”

  And then the hatch was shut and they scrambled forward, into the dark.

  Negotiations, shit. It was obvious to Pham that Steel’s idea of “mutually safe meeting” was a cover for mayhem. Even Ravna wasn’t fooled by the pack’s new proposals. At least it meant that Steel was ad libbing now—that he was beyond all the scripts and schemes. The trouble was, he still wasn’t giving them any openings. Pham would have cheerfully died for a few undisturbed hours with the Countermeasure, but Steel’s setup would have them dead before they ever saw the inside of the refugee ship.

  “Keep moving around, Blueshell. I want Steel to have us weighing on his mind, without being a good target.”

  The Rider waved a frond in agreement and the boat bounced briefly up from the moss, drifted a hundred meters parallel to the castle walls, and descended again. They were in the no-man’s land between the forces of Woodcarver and Steel.

  Johanna Olsndot twisted around to look at him. The boat was a very crowded place now, Blueshell stretched across the Riderish controls at the bow, Pham and Johanna jammed into the seats behind him—and a pack called Pilgrim in every empty space in between. “Even if you can locate the commset, don’t fire. Jefri could be close by.” For twenty minutes Steel had been promising the momentary reappearance of Jefri Olsndot.

  Pham eyed her smudged face. “Yeah, we won’t fire unless we can see exactly what we’ll hit.” The girl nodded shortly. She couldn’t have been more than fourteen, but she was a good trooper. Half the people he had known in Qeng Ho would have been in limp hysterics after this pickup. And of the rest, few could have given a better status report than Johanna and her friend.

  He glanced at the pack. It would take a while to get used to these critters. At first he’d thought that two of the dogs were sprouting extra heads—then he noticed the small ones were just puppies carried in jacket pockets. The “Pilgrim” was all over the boat; just what part of him should he talk to? He picked the head that was looking in his direction. “Any theories how to deal with Steel?”

  The pac
k’s Samnorsk was better than Pham’s: “Steel and Flenser are as tricky as anything I’ve seen in Johanna’s dataset. And Flenser is cool.”

  “Flenser? Hadn’t realized there was a person with that name… There was a ‘Mr. Skinner’ we talked to. Some kind of assistant to Steel.”

  “Hmm. He’s tricky enough to play flunky … wish we could drop back and chat with Woodcarver about this.” The request was artfully contained in his intonation. Pham wondered briefly what percentage of Packfolk were so flexible. They might be one hell of a trading race if they ever reached space.

  “Sorry, we don’t have time for that. In fact, if we can’t get in right away, we’ve lost everything. I just hope Steel doesn’t guess that.”

  The heads subtly rearranged themselves. The biggest member, the one with a broken arrow shaft sticking up from its jacket, moved closer to the girl. “Well, if Steel is in charge, there’s a chance. He’s very smart, but we think he runs amok when things get tough. Your finding Johanna has probably put him to chasing his tails. Keep him off balance, and you can expect some big mistakes.”

  Johanna spoke abruptly, “He might kill Jefri.”

  Or blow up the starship.“Ravna, any luck with Steel?”

  Her voice came back over the comm: “No. The threats are a bit more transparent now, and his Samnorsk is getting harder to understand. He’s trying to bring cannon in from north of the Castle; I don’t think he knows how much I can see… He still hasn’t brought Jefri back to the radio.”

  The girl paled, but she didn’t say anything. Her hand stole up to grasp one of Pilgrim’s paws.

  Blueshell had been very quiet all through the rescue, first because he had his fronds full with flying, then because the girl and the Pack had so much to say. Pham had noticed that part of Pilgrim had been politely nosing around the Rider. Blueshell hadn’t seemed upset by the attention; his race had plenty of experience with others.

  But now the Rider made a brap for attention, “Sir Pham, there is action in front of the castle.”

  Pilgrim was on it at almost the same instant, one head helping another look through a telescope. “Yes. That’s the main sally port that’s coming open. But why would Steel send packs out now? Woodcarver will chew them up.” The enemy was indeed fielding infantry. The packs spewed out the wide hole in a headlong dash, much like troops of Pham’s recollection. But once they cleared the entrance they broke of into clumps of four to six dogs each and spread across the castle perimeter.

  Pham leaned forward, trying to see as far along the walls as possible. “Maybe not. These guys aren’t advancing. They’re staying in range of the archers on the walls.”

  “Yeah. But we still have cannons.” Pilgrim’s perfect imitation of humanity broke for a second, and a Tinish chord filled the cockpit. “Something is really strange. It’s like they’re trying to keep someone from getting out.”

  “Are there other entrances?”

  “Probably. And lots of little tunnels, just one member wide.”

  “Ravna?”

  “Steel’s not talking at all now. He said something about traitors infifltrating the castle. Now all I’m getting is Tinish gobble.” From embrasure to embrasure along the battlements, Pham could see enemy soldiers moving above those on the ground. Something had upset the rats’ nest.

  Johanna Olsndot was a vision of horrified concentration, her free hand gathered into a fist, her lips faintly trembling. “All this time I thought he was dead. If they kill him now, I…” Her voice suddenly scaled up: “What are they doing?” Cast iron kettles had been dragged to the top of the walls.

  Pham could guess. Siege fighting on Canberra had involved similar things. He looked at the girl, and kept his mouth shut. There’s nothing we can do.

  The Pilgrim pack was not so kind—or not so patronizing: “It’s oil, Johanna. They want to kill someone in the walls. But if he can get out… Blueshell, I’ve read about loudspeakers. Can I use one? If Jefri is in the walls, Woodcarver can safely scrape Steel’s troops off the field and battlements.”

  Pham opened his mouth to object, but the Rider had already opened a channel. Pilgrim’s Tinish voice echoed across the hillside. Along the castle walls heads turned. To them, the voice must have sounded like a god’s. The chords and trills continued a moment longer, then ceased.

  Ravna’s voice was on the line an instant later, “Whatever you did just now, it pushed Steel over the edge. I can barely understand him; He seems to be describing how he’ll torture Jefri if we don’t pull the Woodcarvers back.”

  Pham grunted. “Okay then. Get us in the air, Blueshell.” It felt good to kiss subtlety goodbye.

  Blueshell wobbled the boat aloft. They moved forward, scarcely faster than a man can run. Behind them more of Woodcarver’s troops were coming over the military crest of the hill. Those fellows had been pulled well back after Pham’s strafing run: things might be decided before they got to the castle… But Woodcarver’s reach was still long and deadly: splashes of smoke and fire appeared along the battlements, followed by sharp popping noises. Killing Jefri Olsndot was going to be a very expensive proposition for Steel.

  “Can you use the beamer to clear Steel’s troops away from the wall?” asked Johanna.

  Pham started to nod, then noticed what was happening by the castle. “See the oil.” Dark pools were growing between the enemy packs and the walls they guarded. Until they knew where the kid was coming out, it would be best not to start fires.

  Pilgrim: “Oops.” Then he was shouting something more on the loudspeakers. Woodcarver’s artillery ceased.

  “Okay,” said Pham, “for now, all eyes on the castle wall. Circle the perimeter, Blueshell. If we can see the kid before Steel’s guys, we may have a chance.”

  Ravna: “They’re spread evenly around every side except the North, Pham. I don’t think Steel has any idea were the boy is.”

  When you challenge Heaven, the stakes are high. And I could have won. If he had not betrayed me, I could have won. But now the masks were down, and the enemy’s brute physical power was all that counted. Steel brought himself down from the hysterical blackout of the last few minutes. If I can not have Heaven, at least I can still take them to Hell. Kill Amdijefri, destroy the ship the Visitors wanted so … most of all, destroy his traitorous teacher.

  “My lord?” It was Shreck.

  Steel turned a head in Shreck’s direction. The time for hysteria was past. “How goes the flooding?” he said mildly. He wouldn’t ask about Tyrathect again.

  “All but complete. The oil is pooling beyond the castle walls.” The two packs crouched as one of Woodcarver’s bombs exploded just beyond the battlement. Her troops were already halfway back across the field—and Steel’s archers were preoccupied with flooding the tunnels and watching the exits. “We may have flushed out the traitors, my lord. Just before Woodcarver resumed fire, we heard something by the southeast wall. But I fear the spacers will see whatever we do there.” His heads bobbed spastically.

  Strange to see Shreck coming apart, Steel thought vaguely. Shreck’s was the loyalty of clockwork, but now his orderly world was failing and there was nothing left to support him. The madness he was born from was all that was left.

  If Shreck was close to breaking, then the siege of Starship Hill was nearly at an end. Just a little longer, that is all I ask now. Steel forced a confident expression upon his members. “I understand. You have done well, Shreck. We may still win. I know how these mantises think. If you can kill the child, especially before their eyes, it will break their spirit—just as puppies can be broken by the right terrors.”

  “Yes, sir.” There was dull incredulity in Shreck’s eyes, but this would hold him, a plausible excuse to continue the charade.

  “Light the oil beyond the walls. Move the troops in front of where you think Amdijefri will exit. The Visitors must see this if it is to have proper effect. And—”and blow up the refugee ship! The words almost slipped out, but he caught himself in time. The explosives built
into the Jaws and the Starship dome would bring down everything interior to the outerwalls and would kill most of the packs within. Ordering Shreck do that would make Steel’s real goal all too clear. “—And move quickly before Woodcarver’s troops can close. This is the Movement’s last hope, Shreck.”

  The pack bowed its way back down the steps. Steel maintained an expansive posture, boldly looking across the battlefield until the other was out of sight. Then he reached across the battlements and slammed the radio into the stone walkway. This one didn’t break, and now the Ravna mantis’s voice came querulously from it. Steel bounded down the stairs. “You get nothing,” he shrieked back at her in Tines’ talk. “Everything you want will die!”

  And then he was down the stairs and running across the courtyard. He ducked out of sight, into the hallway that circled the Jaws of Welcome. He could blow those easily, but very likely the main dome and the ship within would survive. No, he must go to the

  heart. Kill the ship and all the sleeping mantises. He stepped into a secret room, picked up two crossbows—and the extra radio cloak he had prepared. Inside that cloak was a small bomb. He had tested the idea with the second set of radios; the receiving pack had died instantly.

  Down another set of stairs, into a supply corridor. The sounds of battle were lost behind him. His own tines’ clatter was the loudest noise. Around him loomed bins of gunpowder, food supplies, fresh timber. The fuses and set charges were only fifty yards further on. And Steel slowed to a walk, curled his paws so the metal on them made no noise. Listening. Looking in every direction. Somehow he knew the other would be here. The Flenser Fragment. Flenser had haunted him from the beginning of his existence, had haunted even after Flenser had mostly died. But not until this clear treason had Steel

  been able to free his hate. Most likely the Master thought to escape with the children, but there was a chance that Flenser schemed to win everything. There was a chance that he had returned. Steel knew his own death would come soon. And yet there might still be triumph. If, by his own jaws and claws, he could kill the Master… Please, please be here, dear Master. Be here thinking you can trick me one more time.