A Deepness in the Sky

by Vernor Vinge

  And their ultimate success might be even greater than what he told Ritser. It could be greater than Uncle Alan had imagined. It was a vision that might have eluded Tomas himself, if not for this firsthand meeting with the Peddlers.

  Uncle Alan had had a respect for far threats; he had continued the Balacrean traditions of emission security. But even Uncle Alan never seemed to realize that they were playing tyrant over a laughably tiny pond: Balacrea, Frenk, Gaspr. Nau had just told Ritser Brughel about the founding of Canberra. There were better examples he could have used, but Canberra was a favorite of Tomas Nau’s. While his peers studied Emergency history to death, and added trivial nuances to the strategies, Tomas Nau studied the histories of Human Space. Even a disaster like the Plague Time was a commonplace in the larger scheme of things. The conquerors in the histories dwarfed the Balacrean stage. So Tomas Nau was familiar with a thousand faraway Strategists, from Alexander of Macedon to Tarf Lu…to Pham Nuwen. Of them all, Pham Nuwen was Nau’s central model, the greatest of the Qeng Ho.

  In a sense, Nuwen created the modern Qeng Ho. The Peddler broadcasts described Nuwen’s life in some detail, but they were sugar-coated. There were other versions, contradictory whispers between the stars. Every aspect of his life was worth study. Pham Nuwen had been born on Canberra just before the Qeng Ho landing. The child Nuwen had come into the Qeng Ho from outside…and transformed it. For a few centuries he drove the Peddlers to empire, the greatest empire known. He had been an Alexander to all Human Space. And—as with Alexander—his empire had not lasted.

  The man had been a genius of conquest and organization. He simply did not have all the necessary tools.

  Nau took a last look at the sky-blue beauty of Arachna as it slipped behind Hammerfest’s towers. He had a dream now. So far, it was a dream he admitted only to himself. In a few years he would conquer a nonhuman race, a race that had once flown between the stars. In a few years he would plumb the deepest secrets of the Qeng Ho fleet automation. With all that, he might be the equal of Pham Nuwen. With all that, he might make a star empire. But Tomas Nau’s dream went further, for he already had a tool of empire that Pham Nuwen and Tarf Lu and all the others had lacked. Focus.

  The fulfillment of his dream was half a lifetime away, on the other side of the Exile and deadliness he might not yet imagine. Sometimes he wondered if he was crazy to think he could get there. Ah, but the dream burned so bright in his mind:

  With Focus, Tomas Nau might hold what he could grasp. Tomas Nau’s Emergency would become a single empire across all Human Space. And it would be the one that lasted.

  SEVENTEEN

  Officially, of course, Benny Wen’s booze parlor did not exist. Benny had grabbed some empty utility space between the inner balloons. Working in their free time, he and his father had gradually populated it with furniture, a zero-pool game, video wallpaper. You could still see the utility piping on the walls, but even that was covered with colored tape.

  When his tree had the Watch, Pham Trinli spent most of his free time loafing here. And there had been more free time since he botched the LI stabilization and Qiwi Lisolet took over.

  The aroma of hops and barley hit Pham the moment he got past the door. A cluster of beery droplets drifted close by his ear, then zigged into the cleaning vent by the door.

  “Hey, Pham, where the hell have you been? Grab a seat.” His usual cronies were mostly sitting on the ceiling side of the game room. Pham gave them a wave and glided across the room to take a seat on the outer wall. It meant he was facing sideways from the others, but there wasn’t that much room here.

  Trud Silipan waved across the room at where Benny floated by the bar. “Where’s the beer and frids, Benny boy? Hey, and add on a big one for the military genius here!”

  Everyone laughed, though Pham’s response was more an indignant snort. He’d worked hard to be the bluff blowhard. Want to hear a tale of derring-do? Just listen to Pham Trinli for more than a hundred seconds. Of course, if you had any real-world experience yourself, you’d see the stories were mostly fraud—and where they were not, the heroic parts belonged to somebody else. He looked around the room. As usual, more than half the clientele were Follower-class Emergents, but most of the groups contained one or two Qeng Ho. It was more than six years since Relight, since the “Diem atrocity.” For many of them, that was almost two years of lifetime. The surviving Qeng Ho had learned and adapted. They weren’t exactly assimilated, but like Pham Trinli, they had become an integral part of the Exile.

  Hunte Wen drifted across the room from the bar. He towed a net full of drink bulbs, and the snack food that was the most he and Benny risked importing to the parlor. Talk lulled for a moment as he passed the goods around, picked up favor scrip in return.

  Pham snagged a bulb of the brew. The container was new plastic. Benny had some kind of in with the crews that ran surface operations on the rockpile. The little volatiles plant gulped in airsnow and water ice and ground diamond…and out came raw stocks, including the plastics for drinking bulbs, furniture, the zero-gee pool game. Even the parlor’s chief attraction was the product of the rockpile—touched by the magic of the temp’s bactry.

  This bulb had a colored drawing on the side: DIAMOND AND ICE BREWERY, it said, and there was a picture of the rockpile being dissolved into suds. The picture was an intricate thing, evidently from a hand-drawn original. Pham stared at the clever drawing for a moment. He swallowed his wondering questions. In any case, others would ask them…in their own way.

  There was a flurry of laughter as Trud and his friends noticed the pictures. “Hey, Hunte, did you do this?”

  The elder Wen smiled shyly and nodded.

  “Hey, it’s kinda cute. Not like what a Focused artist could do, of course.”

  “I thought you were some kind of physicist, before you got your freedom?”

  “An astrophysicist. I—I don’t remember much of that anymore. I’m trying new things.”

  The Emergents chatted with Wen for several minutes. Most were friendly, and—except for Trud Silipan—seemed genuinely sympathetic. Pham had vague recollections of Hunte Wen before the ambush, impressions of an outspoken, good-natured academic. Well, the good nature remained. The fellow smiled a lot, but a bit too apologetically. His personality was like a ceramic vessel, once shattered, now painstakingly reassembled, functional but fragile.

  Wen picked up the last of the payment scrip and drifted back across the room. He stopped halfway to the bar. He drifted close to the wallpaper, and looked out upon the rockpile and the sun. He seemed to have forgotten all of them, was caught once more by the mysteries of the OnOff star. Trud Silipan chuckled and leaned across the table toward Trinli. “Driftier than hell, isn’t he? Most de-zips aren’t that bad.”

  Benny Wen came from the bar and drew his father out of sight. Benny had been one of the firebreathers. He was probably the most obvious of Diem’s conspirators to survive.

  Talk returned to the important issues of the day. Jau Xin wanted to find someone in Watch tree A who was willing to trade into B; his lady was stuck on the other Watch. It was the sort of swap that had to be cleared by the Podmasters, but if everyone was willing…Someone else pointed out that some Qeng Ho woman down in Quartermaster was brokering such deals, in return for other favors. “Damn Peddlers put a price on everything,” Silipan muttered.

  And Trinli regaled them with a story—true actually, but with enough absurdities that they would know it false—about a Long Watch mission be allegedly commanded. “Fifty years we spent with only four Watch groups. In the end I had to break the rules, allow children In Flight. But by that time, we had a market advantage—”

  Pham was coming down on the punch line when Trud Silipan jabbed him in the ribs. “Hsst! My Qeng Ho Lord, your nemesis has arrived.” That got a round of chuckles. Pham glared at Silipan, then turned to look.

  Qiwi Lin Lisolet had just sailed through the parlor’s doorway. She twisted in midair, and touched down by Benny Wen. There wa
s a lull in the room noise and her voice carried to Trinli’s group up by the ceiling. “Benny! Have you got those swap forms? Gonle can cover—” Her words faded as the two moved to the far side of the bar and other conversations resumed. Qiwi was clearly in full haggle, twisting Benny’s arm about some new deal.

  “Is it true she’s still in charge of stabilizing the rockpile? I thought that was your job, Pham.”

  Jau Xin grimaced. “Give it a rest, Trud.”

  Pham raised a hand, the image of an irritated old man trying to look important. “I told you before, I got promoted. Lisolet handles the field details, and I supervise the whole operation for Podmaster Nau.” He looked in Qiwi’s direction, tried to put just the right truculence into his gaze. I wonder what she’s up to now. The child was amazing.

  From the corner of his eye, Pham saw Silipan shrug apologetically at Jau Xin. They all figured Pham was a fraud, but he was well liked. His tales might be tall, but they were very entertaining. The trouble with Trud Silipan was he didn’t know when to stop goading. Now the fellow was probably trying to think of some way to make amends.

  “Yes,” said Silipan, “there aren’t many of us who report directly to the Podmaster. And I’ll tell you something about Qiwi Lin Lisolet.” He looked around to see just who else was in the parlor. “You know I manage the zipheads for Reynolt—well, we provide support for Ritser Brughel’s snoops. I talked to the boys over there. Our Miss Lisolet is on their hot list. She’s involved in more scams than you can imagine.” He gestured at the furniture. “Where do you think this plastic comes from? Now that she’s got Pham’s old job, she’s down on the rockpile all the time. She’s diverting production to people like Benny.”

  One of the others waggled a Diamonds and Ice drink bulb at Silipan. “You seem to be enjoying your share, Trud.”

  “You know that’s not the point. Look. These are community resources that she and the likes of Benny Wen are messing with.” There were solemn nods from around the table. “Whatever accidental good it does, it’s still theft from the common weal.” His eyes went hard. “In the Plague Time there weren’t many greater sins.”

  “Yes, but the Podmasters know about it. It’s not doing any great harm.”

  Silipan nodded. “True. They are tolerating it for now.” His smile turned sly. “For maybe as long as she’s sleeping with Podmaster Nau.” That was another rumor that had been going around.

  “Look, Pham. You’re Qeng Ho. But basically you’re a military man. That’s an honorable profession, and it sets you high, no matter what your origin. You see, there are moral levels to society.” Silipan was clearly lecturing from the received wisdom. “At the top are the Podmasters, statesmen I guess you’d call them. Below that are the military leaders, and underneath the leaders are the staff planners, the technicians, and the armsmen. Underneath that…are vermin of different categories: fallen members of the useful categories, persons with a chance of fitting back in the system. And below them are the factory workers and farmers. And at the very bottom—combining the worst aspects of all the scum—are the peddlers.” Silipan smiled at Pham. Evidently he felt he was being flattering, that he had set Pham Trinli among the naturally noble. “Traders are the eaters of dead and dying, too cowardly to steal by force.”

  Even Trinli’s cover persona should choke on this analysis. Pham blustered, “I’ll have you know the Qeng Ho has been in its present form for thousands of years, Silipan. That’s hardly the mark of failure.”

  Silipan smiled with cordial sympathy. “I know it’s hard to accept this, Trinli. You’re a good man, and it’s right to be loyal. But I think you’re coming to understand. The peddlers will always be with us, whether they’re selling unlicensed food in an alley or lurking between the stars. The stargoing ones call themselves a civilization, but they’re just the rabble that hangs around the edges of true civilizations.”

  Pham grunted. “I don’t think I’ve ever been flattered and insulted so much all at the same time.”

  They all laughed, and Trud Silipan seemed to think his lecture had somehow cheered Trinli. Pham finished his little story without further interruption. Talk drifted on to speculation about Arachna’s spider creatures. Ordinarily, Pham would soak up these stories with well-concealed enthusiasm. Today, his lack of attention was not an act. His gaze drifted back to the parlor’s bar table. Benny and Qiwi were half out of sight now, arguing about some deal. Mixed in with all the Emergent insanity, Trud Silipan did have a few things right. Over the last couple of years, an underground had bloomed here. It wasn’t the violent subversion of Jimmy Diem’s conspiracy. In the minds of the Qeng Ho participants it wasn’t a conspiracy at all, merely getting on with business. Benny and his father and dozens of others were routinely bending and even violating Podmaster dicta. So far Nau hadn’t retaliated; so far, the Qeng Ho underground had improved the situation for almost everyone. Pham had seen this sort of thing happen once or twice before—when Qeng Ho couldn’t trade as free human beings, and couldn’t run, and couldn’t fight.

  Little Qiwi Lin Lisolet was at the center of it all. Pham’s gaze rested on her wonderingly. For a moment, he forgot to glower. Qiwi had lost so much. By some standards of honor, she had sold out. Yet here she was, awake Watch on Watch, in a position to do deals in all directions. Pham bit back the fond smile he felt growing on his lips, and frowned at her. If Trud Silipan or Jau Xin ever knew how he really felt about Qiwi Lisolet, they would think him stark raving mad. If someone as clever as Tomas Nau ever understood, he might put two and two together—and that would be the end of Pham Trinli.

  When Pham looked at Qiwi Lin Lisolet, he saw—more than he ever had before in his life—himself. True, Qiwi was female, and sexism was one of Trinli’s peculiarities that was not an act. But the similarities between them went deeper than gender. Qiwi had been—what, eight years old?—when she had started on this voyage. She had lived almost half her childhood in the dark between the stars, alone but for the fleet’s maintenance Watches. And now she was plunged into a totally different culture. And still she survived, and faced up to every new challenge. And she was winning.

  Pham’s mind turned inward. He wasn’t listening to his drinking buddies anymore. He wasn’t even watching Qiwi Lin Lisolet. He was remembering a time more than three thousand years ago, across three centuries of his own lifetime.

  Canberra. Pham had been thirteen, the youngest son of Tran Nuwen, King and Lord of all the Northland. Pham had grown up with swords and poison and intrigue, living in stone castles by a cold, cold sea. No doubt he would have ended up murdered—or king of all—if life had continued in the medieval way. But when he was thirteen everything changed. A world that had only legends of aircraft and radio was confronted by interstellar traders, the Qeng Ho. Pham still remembered the scorch their pinnaces had made of the Great Swamp south of the castle. In a single year, Canberra’s feudal politics was turned on its head.

  The Qeng Ho had invested three ships in the expedition to Canberra. They had seriously miscalculated, thinking the locals would be at a much higher level of technology by the time of their arrival. But even Tran Nuwen’s realm couldn’t resupply them. Two of the ships stayed behind. Young Pham left with the third—a crazy hostage deal his father thought he was putting over on the star folk.

  Pham’s last day on Canberra was cold and foggy. The trip from the castle walls down to the fen took most of the morning. It was the first time he had been allowed to see the visitors’ great ships close up, and little Pham Nuwen was on a crest of joy. There might never be a moment in Pham’s life when he had so many things wrong and backwards: The starships that loomed out of the mists were simply landing pinnaces. The tall, strange captain who greeted Pham’s father was in fact a second officer. Three subordinate steps behind him walked a young woman, her face twisted with barely concealed discomfort—a concubine? a handmaiden? The real captain, it turned out.

  Pham’s father the King gave a hand signal. The boy’s tutor and his dour servants m
arched him across the mud, toward the star folk. The hands on his shoulders were holding tight, but Pham didn’t notice. He looked up, wondering, his eyes devouring the “starships,” trying to follow the sweeping curves of glistening maybe-metal. In a painting or a small piece of jewelry he had seen such perfection—but this was dream incarnate.

  They might have gotten him aboard the pinnace before he really understood the betrayal, if it hadn’t been for Cindi. Cindi Ducanh, lesser daughter of Tran’s cousin. Her family was important enough to live at court, but not important enough to matter. Cindi was fifteen, the strangest, wildest person Pham had ever known, so strange that he didn’t even have a word for what she was—though “friend” would have sufficed.

  Suddenly she was there, standing between them and the star folk. “No! It’s not right. It does no good. Don’t—” She held her hands up, as if to stop them. From the side, Pham could hear a woman shouting. It was Cindi’s mother, screaming at her daughter.

  It was such a silly, stupid, hopeless gesture. Pham’s party didn’t even slow down. His tutor swung his quarterstaff in a low arc across Cindi’s legs. She went down.

  Pham turned, tried to reach out to her, but now hard hands lifted him, trapped his arms and legs. His last glimpse of Cindi was her struggling up from the mud, still looking in his direction, oblivious of the axemen running toward her. Pham Nuwen never learned how much it had cost the one person who had stood up to protect him. Centuries later, he had returned to Canberra, rich enough to buy the planet even in its newly civilized state. He had probed the old libraries, the fragmented digital records of the Qeng Ho who had stayed behind. There had been nothing about the aftermath of Cindi’s action, nothing certain in the birth records of Cindi’s family forward from her time. She and what she had done and what it had cost were simply insignificant in the eyes of time.