A Fire Upon the Deep

by Vernor Vinge

  Whatever hit them was big. Ravna saw a vague expanse of plastic rising over her shoulder. The rogue was slowly turning, and it scarcely brushed them — but that was enough. Pham Nuwen was jarred from her grasp. His body was lost in shadow, then suddenly bright lit as the ship’s spotlight tracked after him. Simultaneously the air gusted out of Ravna’s lungs. They were down to three pocket pressure fields now, failing fields; it was not enough. Ravna could feel consciousness slipping away, her vision tunneling. So close.

  Note 512

  The Riders unlatched from each other. She grabbed at the skrode hulls and they drifted, strung out, over the ship’s lock. Blueshell’s skrode jerked against her as the he made fast to the hatch. The jolt twisted her around, whipping Greenstalk upwards. Things were getting dreamy now. Where was panic when you needed it? Hold tight, hold tight, hold tight, sang the little voice, all that was left of consciousness. Bump, jerk. The Riders pushed and pulled at her. Or maybe it was the ship jerking all of them around. They were puppets, dancing off a single string. … Deep in the tunnel of her vision, a Rider grabbed at the tumbling figure of Pham Nuwen.

  * * *

  Note 513

  Ravna wasn’t aware of losing consciousness, but the next she knew she was breathing air and choking on vomit — and was inside the airlock. Solid green walls closed in comfortingly on all sides. Pham Nuwen lay on the far wall, strapped into a first aid canister. His face had a bluish cast.

  Note 514

  She pushed awkwardly across the lock toward Pham Nuwen’s wall. The place was a confused jumble, unlike the passenger and sporting ships she’d been on before. Besides, this was a Rider design. Stickem patches were scattered around the walls; Greenstalk had mounted her skrode on one cluster.

  They were accelerating, maybe a twentieth of a gee. “We’re still going down?”

  “Yes. If we hover or rise, we’ll crash,”into all the junk that still rains from above. “Blueshell is trying to fly us out.” They were falling with the rest, but trying to drift out from under — before they hit Groundside. There was an occasional rattle/ping against the hull. Sometimes the acceleration ceased, or shifted in a new direction. Blueshell was actively avoiding the big pieces.

  … Not with complete success. There was long, rasping sound that ended with a bang, and the room turned slowly around her. “Brrap! Just lost an ultradrive spine,” came Blueshell’s voice. “Two others already damaged. Please strap down, my lady.”

  Note 515

  They touched atmosphere a hundred seconds later. The sound was a barely perceptible humming beyond the hull. It was the sound of death for a ship like this. It could no more aerobrake than a dog could jump over the moon. The noise came louder. Blueshell was actually diving, trying to get deep enough to shed the junk that surrounded the ship. Two more spines broke. Then came a long surge of main axis acceleration. Out of Band II arced out of the Docks’ death shadow, drove out and out, into inertial orbit.

  * * *

  Ravna looked over Blueshell’s fronds at the outside windows. They had just passed Groundside’s terminator, and were flying an inertial orbit. They were in free fall again, but this trajectory curved back on itself without whacking into big hard things — like Groundside.

  Ravna didn’t know much more about space travel than you’d expect of a frequent passenger and an adventure fan. But it was obvious that Blueshell had pulled off a near miracle. When she tried to thank him, the Rider rolled back and forth across the stick- patches, buzzing faintly to himself. Embarrassed? or just Riderly inattentive?

  Note 516

  Greenstalk spoke, sounding a little shy, a little proud: “Far trading is our life, you know. If we are cautious, life will be mostly safe and placid, but there will be close passages. Blueshell practices all the time, programming his skrode with every wit he can imagine. He is a master.” In everyday life, indecision seemed to dominate the Riders. But in a crunch, they didn’t hesitate to bet everything. She wondered how of that was the skrode overriding its rider?

  Note 517

  “Grump,” said Blueshell. “I have simply postponed the close passage. I broke several of our drive spines. What if they do not self-repair? What do we do then? Everything around Groundside is destroyed. There is junk everywhere out to a hundred radii. Not dense like around the Docks, but of much higher velocity.” You can’t inject billions of tonnes of wreckage into buckshot orbits and expect safe navigation. “And any second, the Perversion’s creatures will be here, eating whoever survives.”

  Note 518

  “Urk.” Greenstalk’s tendrils froze in comical disarray. She chittered to herself for a second. “You’re right … I forgot. I thought we had found an open space, but …”

  Open space all right, but in a shooting gallery. Ravna looked back at the command deck windows. They were on the dayside now, perhaps five hundred kilometers above Groundside’s principal ocean. The space above the hazy blue horizon was free of flash and glow. “I don’t see any fighting,” Ravna said hopefully.

  Note 519

  “Sorry.” Blueshell switched the windows to a more significant view. Most of it was navigation and ultratrace information, meaningless to Ravna. Her eye caught on a medstat: Pham Nuwen was breathing again. The ship’s surgeon thought it could save him. But there was also a communication status window; on it, the attack was dreadfully clear. The local net had broken into hundreds of screaming fragments. There were only automatic voices from the planetary surface, and they were calling for medical aid. Grondr had been down there. Somehow she suspected that not even his Marketing ops people had survived. Whatever hit Groundside was even deadlier than the failures at the Docks. In near planetary space, there were a few survivors in ships and fragments of habitats, most on doomed trajectories. Without massive and coordinated help, they would be dead in minutes — hours at the outside. The directors of Vrinimi Org were gone, destroyed before they ever figured out quite what had happened.

  Note 520

  Go, Grondr had said, go.

  Note 521

  Out-system, there was fighting. Ravna saw message traffic from Vrinimi defense units. Even without control or coordination, some still opposed the Perversion’s fleet. The light from their battles would arrive well after the defeat, well after the enemy arrived here in person. How long do we have? Minutes?

  Note 522

  “Brrap. Look at those traces,” said Blueshell. “The Perversion has almost four thousand vessels. They are bypassing the defenders.”

  “But now there is scarcely anyone left out there,” said Greenstalk. “I hope they’re not all dead.”

  Note 523

  “Not all. I see several thousand ships departing, everyone with the means and any sense.” Blueshell rolled back and forth. “Alas! We have the good sense … but look at this repair report.” One window spread large, filled with colored patterns that meant less than zip to Ravna. “Two spines still broken, unrepairable. Three partially repaired. If they don’t heal, we’ll be stuck here. This is unacceptable!” His voder voice buzzed up shrilly. Greenstalk drove close to him, and they rattled their fronds at each other.

  Note 524

  Several minutes passed. When Blueshell spoke Samnorsk again, his voice was quieter. “One spine repaired. Maybe, maybe, maybe….” He opened a natural view. The OOB was coasting across Groundside’s south pole, back into night. Their orbit should take them over the worst of the Docks junk, but the ride was a constant jigging as the ship avoided other debris. The cries of battle horror from out-system dwindled. The Vrinimi Organization was one vast, twitching corpse … and very soon its killer would come snuffling.

  “Two repaired.” Blueshell became very quiet…. “Three! Three are repaired! Fifteen seconds to recalibrate and we can jump!”

  It seemed longer … but then all the windows changed to a natural view. Groundside and its sun were gone. Stars and dark stretched all around.

  * * *

  Note 525

  Three hours later a
nd Relay was a hundred and fifty light- years behind them. The OOB had caught up with the main body of fleeing ships. What with the archives and the tourism, there had been an extraordinary number of interstellar ships at Relay: ten thousand vehicles were spread across the light-years around them. But stars were rare this far off the galactic plane and they were at least a hundred hours flying time from the nearest refuge.

  For Ravna, it was the start of a new battle. She glared across the deck at Blueshell. The Skroderider dithered, its fronds twisting on themselves in a way she had not seen before. “See here, my lady Bergsndot, High Point is a lovely civilization, with some bipedal participants. It is safe. It is nearby. You could adapt.” He paused. Reading my expression is he?“But — but if that is not acceptable, we will take you further. Give us a chance to contract the proper cargo, and — and we’ll take you all the way back to Sjandra Kei. How about that?”

  “No. You already have a contract, Blueshell. With Vrinimi Organization. The three of us—”and whatever has become of Pham Nuwen“— are going to the Bottom of the Beyond.”

  “I am shaking my head in disbelief! We received a preliminary retainer, true. But now that Vrinimi Org is dead, there is no one to make good on the rest of the agreement. Hence we are free of it also.”

  Note 526

  “Vrinimi is not dead. You heard Grondr ‘Kalir. The Org had —has— branch offices all across the Beyond. The obligation stands.”

  “On a technicality. We both know that those branches could never make the final payment.”

  Ravna didn’t have a good answer to that. “You have an obligation,” she said, but without the proper forcefulness. She had never been good at bluster.

  “My lady, are you truly speaking from Org ethics, or from simple humanity?”

  Note 527

  “I— ” In fact, Ravna had never completely understood Org ethics. That was one reason why she had intended to return to Sjandra Kei after her ‘prenticeship, and one reason the Org had dealt cautiously with the human race. “It doesn’t matter which I speak from! There is a contract. You were happy to honor it when things looked safe. Well, things turned deadly — but that possibility was part of the deal.” Ravna glanced at Greenstalk. She had been silent so far, not even rustling at her mate. Her fronds were tightly held against her central stalk. Maybe — “Listen, there are other reasons besides contract obligation. The Perversion is more powerful than anyone thought. It killed a Power today. And it’s operating in the Middle Beyond…. The Riders have a long history, Blueshell, longer than most races’ entire existence. The Perversion may be strong enough to put an end to all of that.”

  Note 528

  Greenstalk rolled toward her and opened slightly. “You — you really think we might find something on that ship at the Bottom, something that could harm a Power among Powers?”

  Note 529

  Ravna paused. “Yes. And Old One himself thought so, just before he died.”

  Blueshell wrapped even tighter around himself, twisting. In anguish? “My Lady, we are traders. We have lived long and traveled far … and survived by minding our own business. No matter what romantics may think, traders do not go on quests. What you ask … is impossible, mere Beyonders seeking to subvert a Power.”

  Note 530

  Yet that was a risk you signed for. But Ravna didn’t say it aloud. Perhaps Greenstalk did: her fronds rustled, and Blueshell scrinched even more. Greenstalk was silent for a second, then she did something funny with her axles, bumping free of the stickem. Her wheels spun on nothing as she floated through a slow arc, till she was upside down, her fronds reaching down to brush Blueshell’s. They rattled back and forth for almost five minutes. Blueshell slowly untwisted, the fronds relaxing and patting back at his mate.

  Note 531

  Finally he said. “Very well…. One quest. But mark you! Never another.”

  Note 532

  Note 533

  Note 534

  Note 535

  PART II

  Chapter 17

  Spring came wet and cold, and excruciatingly slow. It had been raining the last eight days. How Johanna wished for something else, even the dark of winter back again.

  Note 536

  She slogged across mud that had been moss. It was midday; the gloomy light would last another three hours. Scarbutt claimed that without the overcast, they would be seeing a bit of direct sunlight nowadays. Sometimes she wondered if she would ever see the sun again.

  Note 537

  The castle’s great yard was on a hillside. Mud and sullen snow spread down the hill, piled against the wooden buildings. Last summer there had been a glorious view from here. And in the winter, the aurora had spilled green and blue across the snow, glinted on the frozen harbor, and outlined the far hills against the sky. Now: The rain was a close mist; she couldn’t even see the city beyond the walls. The clouds were a low and ragged ceiling above her head. She knew there were guards on the stone walls of the castle curtain, but today they must be huddled behind watch slits. Not a single animal, not a single pack was visible. The Tines’ world was an empty place compared to Straum — but not like the High Lab either. High Lab was a airless rock orbiting a red dwarf. The Tines’ world was alive, moving; sometimes it looked as beautiful and friendly as a holiday resort on Straum. Indeed, Johanna realized that it was kindlier than most worlds the human race had settled — certainly a gentler world than Nyjora, and perhaps as nice as Old Earth.

  Note 538

  Johanna had reached her bungalow. She paused for a second under its outcurving walls and looked across the courtyard. Yes, it looked a little like medieval Nyjora. But the stories from the Age of Princesses hadn’t conveyed the implacable power in such a world: The rain went on for as far as she could see. Without decent technology, even a cold rain could be a deadly thing. So could the wind. And the sea was not something for an afternoon’s fun sailing; she thought of surging hillocks of coldness, puckered with rain … going on and on. Even the forests around the town were threatening. It was easy to wander into them, but there were no radio finders, no refresh stalls disguised as tree trunks. Once lost, you would simply die. Nyjoran fairy tales had a special meaning for her now: no great imagination was needed to invent the elementals of wind and rain and sea. This was the pretech experience, that even if you had no enemies the world itself could kill you.

  Note 539

  And she did have plenty of enemies. Johanna pulled open the tiny door and went inside.

  * * *

  Note 540

  A pack of Tines was sitting around the fire. It scrambled to its feet and helped Johanna out of her rainjacket. She didn’t shrink from the fine-toothed muzzles anymore. This was one of her usual helpers; she could almost think of the jaws as hands, deftly pulling the oilskin jacket down her arms and hanging it near the fire.

  Johanna chucked her boots and pants, and accepted the quilted wrap that the pack “handed” her.

  “Dinner. Now,” she said to the pack.

  “Okay.”

  Note 541

  Johanna settled on a pillow by the fire pit. In fact the Tines were more primitive than the humans on Nyjora: The Tines’ world was not a fallen colony. They didn’t even have legend to guide them. Sanitation was a sometime thing. Before Woodcarver, Tinish doctors bled their patients/victims…. She knew now that she was living in the Tines’ equivalent of a luxury apartment. The deep-polished wood was not a normal thing. The designs painted on the pillars and walls were the result of many hours’ labor.

  Johanna rested her chin on her hands and stared into the flames. She was vaguely aware of the pack prancing around the pit, hanging pots over the fire. This one spoke very little Samnorsk; it wasn’t in on Woodcarver’s dataset project. Many weeks ago, Scarbutt had asked to move in here — what better way to speed the learning process? Johanna shivered at the memory. She knew the scarred one was just a single member, that the pack that killed Dad had itself died. Johanna understood, but every time she s
aw “Peregrine”, she saw her father’s murderer sitting fat and happy, thinking to hide itself behind its three smaller fellows. Johanna smiled into the flames, remembering the whack she had landed on Scarbutt when he made the suggestion. She’d lost control, but it had been worth it. No one else suggested that “friends” should share this house with her. Most evenings they left her alone. And some nights … Dad and Mom seemed so near, maybe just outside, waiting for her to notice. Even though she had seen them die, something inside her refused to let them go.

  Note 542

  Cooking smells slipped past the familiar daydream. Tonight it was meat and beans, with something like onions. Surprise. The stuff smelled good; if there had been any variety, she would have enjoyed it. But Johanna hadn’t seen fresh fruit in sixty days. Salted meat and veggies were the only winter fare. If Jefri were here, he’d throw a fit. It was months past since the word came from Woodcarver’s spies up north: Jefri had died in the ambush…. Johanna was getting over it, she really was. And in some ways, being all alone made things … simpler.

  Note 543

  The pack put a plate of meat and beans before her, along with a kind of knife. Oh, well. Johanna grabbed the crooked hilt (bent sideways to be held by Tinish jaws) and dug in.

  * * *

  Note 544

  She was almost finished when there was a polite scratching at the door. Her servant gobbled something. The visitor replied, then said in rather good Samnorsk (and a voice that was eerily like her own), “Hello there, my name is Scriber. I would like a small talk, okay?”

  Note 545

  One of the servant’s turned to look at her; the rest were watching the door. Scriber was the one she thought of as Pompous Clown. He’d been with Scarbutt at the ambush, but he was such a fool that she scarcely felt threatened by him.

  Note 546

  “Okay,” she said, starting toward the door. Her servant (guard) grabbed crossbows in its jaws, and all five members snaked up the staircase to the loft; there wasn’t space for more than one pack down here.