A Deepness in the Sky

by Vernor Vinge

  The temp was actually beginning to stink. Ezr and his Emergent assistants took a trip down to the bactry pools at the innermost core of the temp, the place where Apprentice Vinh had spent so many Ksecs…before. He would give anything to be an apprentice forever down here, if only it would bring back Captain Park and the others.

  The stench in the bactry was worse than Ezr had known outside of a failed school exercise. The walls behind the bio-weirs were covered with soft black goo. It swayed like old flesh in the breeze of the ventilators. Ciret and Marli retched, one barfing inside his respirator. Marli gasped out, “Pus! I’m not putting up with this. We’ll be just outside when you’re done.”

  They splashed and spattered their way out, and the door sealed. And Ezr was alone with the smells. He stood for a moment, suddenly realizing that if he ever wanted to be completely alone, this was the place!

  As he started to survey the contamination, a figure in goo-spattered waterproofs and a respirator drifted out from the filth. It raised one hand for silence, and passed a signals unit across Vinh’s body. “Mmph. You’re clean,” came a muffled voice. “Or maybe they just trust you.”

  It was Jimmy Diem. Ezr almost hugged him, bactry shit and all. Against all odds, the conspiracy had found a way to talk to him. But there was no happy relief in Diem’s voice. His eyes were invisible behind goggles, but tension coiled in his posture. “Why are you toadying, Vinh?”

  “I’m not! I’m just playing for time.”

  “That’s what…some of us think. But Nau has laid so many perks on you, and you’re the guy we have to clear every little thing with. Do you really think you own what’s left of us?”

  That was the line that Nau pushed even now. “No! Maybe they think they’ve bought me, but…Lord of Trade, sir, wasn’t I a solid crewmember?”

  A muffled chuckle, and some of the tension seemed to leave Diem’s shoulders. “Yeah. You were a daydreamer who could never quite keep his eye on the ball”—words from familiar critiques, but spoken almost fondly—“but you’re not stupid and you never traded on your Family connections…Okay, Apprentice, welcome aboard.”

  It was the most joyful promotion Ezr Vinh had ever received. He stifled a hundred questions that percolated up; most had answers that he shouldn’t be told. But still, just one, about Trixia—

  Diem was already talking. “I’ve got some code schemes for you to memorize, but we may have to meet face-to-face again. So the stink will get better, but it’s going to continue to be a problem; you’ll have plenty of excuse to visit. A couple of general things for now: We need to get outdoors.”

  Vinh thought of the Far Treasure and the Qeng Ho armsmen in coldsleep there. Or maybe there were weapons caches in secret places aboard the surviving Qeng Ho ships. “Hm. There are several outside repair projects where we’re the experts.”

  “I know. The main thing is to get the right people on the crews, and in the right job slots. We’ll get you some names.”

  “Right.”

  “Another thing: We need to know about the ‘Focused ones.’ Where exactly are they being held? Can they be moved fast?”

  “I’m trying to learn about them,” more than you may know, Crewleader. “Reynolt says they’re alive, that they’ve stopped the progression of the disease.” The mindrot. That chilling term was not from Reynolt, but the slip of tongue he’d heard from an ordinary Emergent. “I’m trying to get permission to see—”

  “Yeah. Trixia Bonsol, right?” Goo-sticky fingers patted Vinh’s arm sympathetically. “Hmm. You’ve got a solid motive to keep after them on this. Be a good boy in every other way, but push hard on this. You know, like it’s the big favor that will keep you in line, if only they’ll grant it…Okay. Get yourself out of here.”

  Diem faded into the shrouds of odiferous glop. Vinh smeared out the fingerprint traces on his sleeve. As he turned back to the hatch, he was scarcely conscious of the smell anymore. He was working with his friends again. And they had a chance.

  Just as the remains of the Qeng Ho expedition had its mock “Fleet Manager,” Ezr Vinh, so Tomas Nau also appointed a “Fleet Management Committee” to advise and aid in its operation. It was typical of Nau’s strategy, coopting innocent people into apparent treason. Their once-per-Msec meetings would have been torture for Vinh, except for one thing: Jimmy Diem was one of the committee members.

  Ezr watched the ten troop into his conference room. Nau had furnished the room with polished wood and high-quality windows; everyone in the temp knew about the cushy treatment given the Fleet Manager and his committee. Except for Qiwi, all ten realized how they were being used. Most of them realized that it would be years, if ever, before Tomas Nau released all the surviving Qeng Ho from coldsleep detention. Some, like Jimmy, guessed that in fact the senior officers might occasionally be brought out, secretly, for interrogations and brief service. It was an unending villainy that would give the Emergents the permanent upper hand.

  So, there were no traitors here. They were a discouraging sight nevertheless: five apprentices, three junior officers, a fourteen-year-old, and one doddering incompetent. Okay, to be honest, Pham Trinli didn’t dodder, not physically; for an old man, he was in pretty good shape. Most likely, he’d always been a goofball. It was a testament to his record that he was not being held in coldsleep. Trinli was the only Qeng Ho military man left awake.

  And all this rather makes me the Clown of Clowns. Fleet Manager Vinh called the meeting to order. You’d think that being fraudulent toadies would at least make these meetings quick. But no, they often dragged on for many Ksecs, dribbling off into pickle-headed assignments for individual members. I hope you enjoy eavesdropping on this, Nau scum.

  The first order of business was the putrefaction in the bactry. That was under control. The widespread stench should be flushed by their next meeting time. There remained some out-of-control gene lines in the bactry itself (good!) but they posed no danger to the temp. Vinh avoided looking at Jimmy Diem as he listened to the report. He’d met Diem in the bactry three times now. The conversations had been brief and one-sided. The things Vinh was most curious to know were just what he absolutely must not know: How many Qeng Ho were in on Diem’s operation? Who? Was there any concrete plan to smash the Emergents, to rescue the hostages?

  The second item was more contentious. The Emergents wanted their own time units used in all fleet work. “I don’t understand,” Vinh said to the unhappy looks. “The Emergent second is the same as ours—and for local operations, the rest is just calendar frippery. Our software deals with Customer calendars all the time.” Certainly, there was little problem in casual conversation. The Balacrean day wasn’t far off the 100Ksec shift “day” the Qeng Ho used. And their year was close enough to 30Msec that most of the year-stem words caused no confusion.

  “Sure, we can handle weird calendars, but that’s in front-end applications.” Arlo Dinh had been an apprentice programmer; now he was in charge of software mods. “Our new, um, employers are using Qeng Ho internal tools. ‘There will be side effects.’” Arlo intoned the mantra ominously.

  “Okay, okay. I’ll take—” Ezr paused, experiencing a burst of administrative insight. “Arlo, why don’t you take this up with Reynolt? Explain the problems to her.”

  Ezr looked down at his agenda, avoiding Arlo’s annoyed gaze. “Next item. We’re getting more new tenants. The Podmaster says to expect at least another three hundred Emergents, and after that another fifty Qeng Ho. It looks like life-support can tolerate this. What about our other systems? Gonle?”

  When their ranks had been real, Gonle Fong had been a junior quartermaster on the Invisible Hand. Fong’s mind still hadn’t caught up with the changes. She was of indeterminate age, and if not for the ambush she might have lived out her life a junior quartermaster. Maybe she was one of those people whose career paths had stopped at just the right place, where their abilities precisely matched what was asked of them. But now…

  Fong nodded at his question. “Yeah, I
have some numbers to show you.” She plinked away at the Emergent keyboard in front of her, made some mistakes, tried to correct. On the window across the room, various error messages reported on her flailings. “How do you turn those off?” Fong muttered, swearing to herself. She made another typo and her rage became very public. “Goddamn it to hell, I can’t stand these fucking things!” She grabbed the keyboard and smashed it down onto the polished wood table. The wood veneer cracked, but the keyboard was unharmed. She smashed it again; the error display across the room shimmered in iridescent protest and vanished. Fong half rose from her seat and waved the oddly bent keyboard in Ezr’s face. “Those Emergent fuckers have taken away all the I/O that works. I can’t use voice, I can’t use head-up displays. All we have are windows and these mother-damned things!” She threw the keyboard at the table. It bounced up, spinning into the ceiling.

  There was a chorus of agreement, though not quite so manic. “You can’t do everything through a keyboard. We need huds…We’re crippled even when the underlying systems are okay.”

  Ezr held up his hands, waiting for the mutiny to die down. “You all know the reason for this. The Emergents simply don’t trust our systems; they feel they need to control the periphery.”

  “Sure! They want spies on every interaction. I wouldn’t trust captured automation either. But this is impossible! I’ll use their I/O, but make ’em give us head-up displays and eye-pointers and—”

  “I’ll tell you, there are some people who are just going on using their old gear,” said Gonle Fong.

  “Stop!” This was the part of being a toady that hurt the most. Ezr did his best to glare at Fong. “Understand what you are saying, Miss Fong. Yes. This is a major inconvenience, but Podmaster Nau regards disobedience on this point as treason. It’s something the Emergents see as a direct threat.” So keep your old I/O gear but understand the risk. He didn’t say that out loud.

  Fong was hunched down over the table. She looked up at him and nodded grimly.

  “Look,” Ezr continued, “I’ve asked Nau and Reynolt for other devices. We may get a few. But remember, we’re stuck light-years from the nearest industrial civilization. Any new gadgets have to be made with just what the Emergents have here at L1.” Ezr doubted that very much would be forthcoming. “It is deadly important for you to make the I/O ban clear to your people. For their own safety.”

  He looked from face to face. Almost everyone glared back at him. But Vinh saw their secret sense of relief. When they went back to their friends, the committee members would have Ezr Vinh to point at as the spineless fellow who was ramrodding the Emergent demands—and their own unpopular position would be a little easier.

  Ezr sat silent a moment more, feeling impotent. Please let this be what Crewleader Diem wants of me. But Jimmy’s eyes were as blank and hard as the others. Outside of the bactry, he played his role well. Finally, Ezr leaned forward and said quietly to Fong, “You were going to tell me about the newcomers. What are the problems?”

  Fong grunted, remembering what they’d been discussing before she blew up. But surprisingly, she said, “Ah, forget the numbers. The short answer is, we can handle more people. Hell, if we could control our automation properly we could house three thousand in this balloon. As for the people themselves?” She shrugged, but without any great anger. “They’re typical Chumps. The sort I’ve seen in a lot of tyrannies. They call themselves ‘managers,’ but they’re peons. The fact is, behind some bluster they’re kind of nervous about us.” A sneaky smile spread across her heavy features. “We got people who know how to handle Customers like these. Some of us are making friends. There’s lots they’re not supposed to talk about—like how bad this ‘mindrot’ crap really is. But I’ll tell you, if their big bosses don’t come clean soon, we’ll find out for ourselves.”

  Ezr didn’t smile back. Are you listening, Podmaster Nau? Whatever your desires, soon we will know the truth. And what they discovered, Jimmy Diem could use. Coming in to this meeting, Ezr had been totally wrapped up in one item, the last on the agenda. Now he was beginning to see that everything fit together. And maybe he wasn’t doing such a bad job after all.

  That last agenda item was the upcoming explosion of the sun. And Jimmy had a fool—surely an unknowing fool—to front for them on this: Pham Trinli. The armsman made a big show of moving to the front of the table. “Yes, yes,” he said. “I’ve got the pictures here. Just a second.” A dozen engineering graphics appeared on the windows around the room. Trinli launched himself to the podium, and lectured them on Lagrange stability points. Funny, the man actually had a voice and style that bespoke command, but the ideas that came out were tendentious commonplaces.

  Vinh let him ramble for a hundred seconds. Then, “I believe your agenda item is ‘Preparations for Relight,’ Mr. Trinli. What is it the Emergents are asking us to do?”

  The old man fixed Ezr with a stare as intimidating as any crewleader’s: “That’s Armsman Trinli, if you please, Fleet Manager.” The stare continued a second longer. “Very well, to the heart of the matter. Here we have some five billion tonnes of diamond.” A red pointer lit on the window behind him, pointing at the slowly turning pile of rocks, all the loose material that Captain Park had found in this solar system. The ice and ore that had been lifted from Arachna were smaller mountains wedged in the corners and creases of the asteroidal blocks. “The rocks are in a classic contact jumble. At the present time, our fleets are moored to this jumble or in orbit around it. Now, as I was trying to explain a few seconds ago, the Emergents want us to emplace and manage a system of electric jets on the core blocks of the jumble.”

  Diem: “Before the Relight?”

  “Indeed.”

  “They want to maintain contact stability during the Relight?”

  “That’s exactly right.”

  Uneasy looks passed around the table. Stationkeeping was a common and ancient practice. If done properly, an orbit about L1 cost very little fuel. They would be less than a million and a half kilometers from Arachna, and almost directly between the planet and its sun. In the coming bright years, they would be effectively hidden in its glare. But the Emergents didn’t think small; they already had built various structures, including their “Hammerfest,” down on the rockpile. So now they wanted the stationkeeping jets in place before Relight. OnOff would shine at fifty to one hundred sols before it settled down. The Chumps wanted to use the stationkeeping jets to keep the big rocks from shifting around during that time. It was dangerous foolishness, but the Emergents were boss. And this will give Jimmy access to the out-of-doors.

  “Actually, I don’t think there will be serious problems.” Qiwi Lisolet rose from her seat. She coasted over to Pham Trinli’s maps, preempting whatever more Trinli had to say. “I did a number of exercises like this while we were in transit. My mother wants me to be an engineer and she thought stationkeeping might be an important part of this mission.” Qiwi sounded more adultly serious than usual. This was also the first time he’d seen her dressed in Lisolet-greens. She floated in front of the windows for a moment, reading the details. Her ladylike dignity faltered. “Lord, they are asking a lot! That rockpile is so loose. Even if we get the math right, there’s no way we can know all the stresses inside the pile. And if the volatiles get into sunlight, there’ll be a whole new problem.” She whistled, and her smile was one of childlike relish. “We may have to move the jets during the Relight. I—”

  Pham Trinli glowered at the girl. No doubt she had just trashed a thousand seconds of his presentation. “Yes, it will be quite a job. We have only a hundred electric jets for the whole thing. We’ll need crews down on the jumble the whole time.”

  “No, no, that’s not true. About the jets, I mean. We have lots more ejets over on the Brisgo Gap. This job isn’t more than a hundred times bigger than ones I practiced—” Qiwi was wholely caught up in her enthusiasm, and for once it wasn’t Ezr Vinh who was on the other side of her arguing.

  Not everyone accepted the
situation quietly. The junior officers, including Diem, demanded that the rockpile be dispersed during the Relight, the volatiles piled on the shadowside of the biggest diamond. Nau be damned, this was just too risky. Trinli bristled, shouted back that he had already made these points to the Emergents.

  Ezr slapped the table, then again, louder. “Order please. This is the job we’ve been assigned. The best way we can help our people is by behaving responsibly with what we’ve got. I think we can get added help from the Emergents on this, but we have to approach them properly.”

  The argument rolled on around him. How many of them are in on the conspiracy, he wondered. Surely not Qiwi? After some seconds of further argument, they were left where they began: with no choice but to truckle. Jimmy Diem shifted back, and sighed. “All right, we do as we’re told. But at least we know they need us. Let’s put the squeeze on Nau, get him to release some senior specialists.”

  There was mumbled agreement. Vinh’s gaze locked with Jimmy’s, and then he looked away. Maybe they could get some hostages released for this; more likely not. But suddenly Ezr knew when the conspiracy would strike.

  ELEVEN

  The OnOff star might better have been called “old faithful.” Its catastrophic variability had first been noticed by the Dawn Age astronomers of Old Earth. In less than eight hundred seconds, a star catalogued as “singleton brown dwarf [peculiar]” had gone from magnitude 26 to magnitude 4. Over a span of thirty-five years the object had faded back to virtual invisibility—and generated dozens of graduate research degrees in the process. Since then the star had been watched carefully, and the mystery had become grander. The initial spike varied by as much as thirty percent, but as a whole the light curve was incredibly regular. On, off, on, off…a cycle some 250 years long, with onset predictable to within one second.

  In the millennia since the Dawn, human civilizations had spread steadily outward from Earth’s solar system. The observations of OnOff became ever more accurate, and from smaller and smaller distances.