The Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge

by Vernor Vinge

  That was a nasty conclusion but it fitted the letter of custom. Killing millions of humans would warrant antitrust, but Terrans weren’t human.

  For an instant I thought she was laughing, low and bitter. Then her face seemed to collapse and I knew she was crying. This was an unpleasant turn of events. Awkwardly, I put my arm around her shoulders and tried to comfort her. She no longer seemed to me an abo, but simply a person in pain. “Please, Mary Dahlmann. My people aren’t monsters. We only want to use places on your planet that are uninhabited, that are too dangerous for you. Our presence will actually make Earth safer. When we colonize the North World, we’ll null the radiation poisons and kill the war viruses.”

  That didn’t stop the tears, but she did move closer into my arms. Several seconds passed and she mumbled something like, “History repeats.” We sat like that for almost half an hour.

  It wasn’t until I got back to Base that I remembered that I had been out between Demonsloose and Dawn without so much as a Hexagram.

  I GOT MY EQUIPMENT INSTALLED the next day. I was assigned an office only fifty-four hundred meters from the central supply area. This was all right with me since the site was also quite near the outskirts of Adelaide-west. Though the office was made entirely of local materials, the style was old #imw#. The basement contained my sleeping and security quarters, and the first floor was my office and business machines. The surface construction was all hand-polished hardwood. The roof was tiled with rose marble and furnished with night chairs and a drink mixer. At the center of the roof was a recoilless rifle and a live map of the minefield around the building. It was all just like home—which is what I had specified when I had signed the contract back on Miki. I had expected some chiseling on the specifications once we got out in the boondocks, but %wrlyg’s integrity was a pleasant surprise.

  After I checked out the equipment, I called Horlig and got a copy of his mission log. I wanted to check on Dahlmann’s charges. Horlig was suspiciously unhappy about parting with the information, but when I pointed out that I was without a job until I got background info, he agreed to squirt me a copy. The incidents were more or less as Dahlmann had described them. At Pret, though, the Zulunders attacked the air tanks with some jury-rigged anti-aircraft weapon—so the retaliation seemed justified. There was also one incident that Dahlmann hadn’t mentioned. Just five days before, Che#—on Horlig’s orders—burned the food supplies of the Sudamérican colony at Panamá, thus forcing the Terran explorers to return to the inhabited portions of their continent. I decided to keep a close watch on these developments. There could be something here quite as sinister as Dahlmann claimed.

  Later that day, Horlig briefed me on my first assignment. He wanted me to record and index the Canberra Central Library. The job didn’t appeal at all. It was designed to keep me out of his hair. I spent the next couple weeks getting equipment together. I found Robert Dahlmann especially helpful. He telegraphed his superiors in Canberra and they agreed to let us use Terran clerical help in the recording operation. (I imagine part of the reason was that they were eager to study our equipment.) I never actually flew to Canberra. Horlig had some deputy take the gear out and instruct the natives on how to use it. It turned out Canberra library was huge—almost as big as the Information Services library at home. Just supervising the indexing computers was a full-time job. It was a lot more interesting than I thought it would be. When the job was done I would have many times the source material I could have collected personally.

  A strange thing: As the weeks went by, I saw more and more of Mary Dahlmann. Even at this point I was still telling myself that it was all field work for my study of Terran customs. One day we had a picnic in the badlands north of Adelaide. The next she took me on a tour of the business district of the city—it was amazing how so many people could live so close together day after day. Once we even went on a train ride all the way to Murray Bridge. Railroads are stinking, noisy, and dirty, but they’re fun—and they transport freight almost as cheaply as a floater does. Mary had that spark of intelligence and good humor that made it all the more interesting. Still I claimed it was all in the cause of objective research.

  About six weeks after my landing I invited her to visit the %wrlyg Base. Though Central Supply is only four or five kilometers from Adelaide-west, I took her in by air, so she could see the whole Base at once. I think it was the first time she had ever flown.

  THE %WRLYG PRIMARY TERRITORY is a rectangular area fifteen by thirty kilometers. It was ceded by the Australian government to the Company in gratitude for our intercession in the Battle of Hawaii, seventeen years before. You might wonder why we didn’t just put all our bases in the Northern Hemisphere, and ignore the Terrans entirely. The most important reason was that the First and Second Fleets hadn’t had the equipment for a large-scale decontamination job. Also, every kilogram of cargo from Miki requires nearly 100,000 megatons of energy for the voyage to Earth: this is expensive by any reckoning. We needed all the labor and materials the locals could provide. Since the Terrans inhabited the Southern Hemisphere only, that’s where our first base had to be.

  By native standards %wrlyg paid extremely good wages. So good that almost thirty thousand Terrans were employed al the Ground Base. Many of these individuals lived in an area just off the Base, which Mary referred to as Clowntown. Its inhabitants were understandably enamored with the advantages of Mikin technology. Though their admiration was commendable, the results were a little ludicrous. Clowntowners tried to imitate the various aspects of Mikin life. They dressed eccentrically—by Terran standards—and adopted a variety of social behaviors. But their city was just as crowded as regular Australian urban areas. And though they had more scraps of our technology than many places in Australia, their city was filthy. Anarchy just isn’t practical in such close quarters. They had absorbed the superficial aspects of our society without ever getting down to the critical matters of Umpires and antitrust. Mary had refused to go with me into Clowntown. Her reason was that police protection ceased to exist in that area. I don’t think that was her real reason.

  Below us, the blue sea and white breakers met the orange and gray-green bluffs of the shore. The great Central Desert extended right up to the ocean. It was difficult to believe that this land had once supported grass and trees. Scattered randomly across the sand and sage were the individual office and workshops of Company employees. Each of these had its own unique appearance. Some were oases set in the desert. Others were squat gray forts. Some even looked like Terran houses. And, of course, a good number were entirely hidden from sight, the property of Obscurantist employees who kept their location secret even from %wrlyg. Taken as a whole, the Base looked like a comfortable Metropolitan area on the A1 W1 peninsula. But, if the Company had originally based in the Northern Hemisphere, none of the amenities would have been possible. We would have had to live in prefab domes.

  I swung the car in a wide arc and headed for the central area. Here was the robot factory that provided us with things like air tanks and drink mixers—things that native labor couldn’t construct. Now we could see the general landing area, and the airy columns of Supply Central. Nearby was housing for groups that believed in living together; the sex club, the Little Brothers. A low annex jutted off from the Little Brothers building—the creche for children born of Non-Affective parents. They even had some half-breed Terran-Human children there. The biologists had been amazed to find that the two species could interbreed—some claimed that this proved the existence of a prehistoric interstellar empire.

  I PARKED THE CAR and we took the lift to the open eating area at the top of Supply Central. The utilitarian cafeteria served the Extroverts on the Company staff. The position afforded an excellent view of the sailing boats and surfers as well as three or four office houses out in the sea.

  We were barely seated when two Terran waiter-servants came over to take our order. One of them favored Mary with a long, cold look, but they took my order courteously enough.

/>   Mary watched them go, then remarked, “They hate my guts, do you know that?”

  “Huh? Why should they hate you?”

  “I’m, uh, ‘consorting’ with the Greenies. That’s you. I knew one of those two in college. A real nice guy. He wanted to study low-energy nuclear reactions: prewar scientists never studied that area thoroughly. His life ended when he discovered that you people know more than he’ll ever discover, unless he starts over from the beginning on your terms. Now he’s practically a slave, waiting on tables.”

  “A slave he’s not, girl. %wrlyg just isn’t that type of organization. That fellow is a trusted and well cared for servant—an employee, if you will. He can pack up and leave anytime. With the wages we pay, we have Terrans begging for jobs.”

  “That’s exactly what I mean,” Mary said opaquely. Then she turned the question around. “Don’t you feel any hostility from your friends, for running around with an ‘Earthie’ girl?”

  I laughed. “In the first place, I’m not running around. I’m using you in my studies. In the second place, I don’t know any of these people well enough yet to have friends. Even the people I came out with were all in deep freeze, remember.

  “Some Mikins actually support fraternization with the natives—the Little Brothers for instance. Every chance they get, they tell us to go out and make love—or is that verb just plain ‘love’?—to the natives. I think there are some Company people who are definitely hostile toward you people—Horlig and Che#, for example. But I didn’t ask their permission, and, if they want to stop me, they’ll have to contend with this.” I tapped the dart gun on my wrist.

  “Oh?” I think she was going to say something more when the servants came out and placed the food on our table. It was good, and we didn’t say anything for several minutes. When we were done we sat and watched the surfers. A couple on a powered board were racing a dolphin across the bay. Their olive skins glistened pleasantly against the blue water.

  Finally she spoke. “I’ve always been puzzled by that Horlig. He’s odd even for a Mikin—no offense. He seems to regard Terrans as foolish and ignorant cowards. Yet as a person, he looks a lot more like a Terran than a Mikin.”

  “Actually, he’s a different subspecies from the rest of us. It’s like the difference between you and Zulunders. His bone structure is a little different and his skin is pale gray instead of olive green. His ancestors lived on a different continent than mine. They never developed beyond a neolithic culture there. About four hundred years ago, my race colonized his continent. We already had firearms then. Horlig’s people just shriveled away. Whenever they fought us, we killed them; and whenever they didn’t, we set them away in preserves. The last preserve Gloyn died about fifty years ago, I think. The rest interbred with the mainstream. Horlig is the nearest thing to a full-blooded Gloyn I’ve seen. Maybe that’s why he affects primitiveness.”

  Mary said, “If he weren’t out to get us Terrans, I think I could feel sorry for him.”

  I couldn’t understand that comment. Horlig’s race may have been mistreated in the past, but he was a lot better off than his ancestors ever were.

  THREE TABLES AWAY, another couple was engaged in an intense conversation. Gradually it assumed the proportions of an argument. The man snapped an insult and the woman returned it with interest. Without warning, a knife appeared in her hand, flashed at the other’s chest. But the man jumped backward, knocking over his chair. Mary gasped, as the man brought his knife in a grazing slash across the woman’s middle. Red instantly appeared on green. They danced around the tables, feinting and slashing.

  “Ron, do something! He’s going to kill her.”

  They were fighting in a meal area, which is against Company regs, but on the other hand, neither was using power weapons. “I’m not going to do anything Mary. This is a lovers’ quarrel.”

  Mary’s jaw dropped. “A lovers’ quarrel? What—”

  “Yeah,” I said, “they both want the same woman.” Mary looked sick. As soon as the fight began, a Little Brother at the other end of the roof got up and sprinted toward the combatants. Now he stood to one side, pleading with them to respect the holiness of life, and to settle their differences peacefully. But the two weren’t much for religion. The man hissed at the Little Brother to get lost before he got spitted. The woman took advantage of her opponent’s momentary inattention to pink his arm. Just then a Company officer arrived on the roof and informed the two just how big a fine they would be subject to if they continued to fight in a restricted area. That stopped them. They backed away from each other, cursing. The Little Brother followed them to the lift as he tried to work out some sort of reconciliation.

  Mary seemed upset. “You people lead sex lives that make free love look like monogamy.”

  “No, you’re wrong, Mary. It’s just that every person has a different outlook. It’s as if all Earth’s sex customs coexisted. Most people subscribe to some one type.” I decided not to try explaining the sex club.

  “Don’t you have marriage?”

  “That’s just what I’m saying. A large proportion of us do. We even have a word analogous to your missus—a. For instance, Mrs. Smith is aSmith. I would say that nearly fifteen percent of all Mikins are monogamous in the sense you mean it. And a far greater percentage never engage in the activities you regard as perversions.”

  She shook her head. “Do you know—if your group had appeared without a superior technology, you would have been locked up in an insane asylum? I like you personally, but most Mikins are so awfully weird.”

  I was beginning to get irritated. “You’re the one that’s nuts. The %wrlyg employees here on Earth were deliberately chosen for their intelligence and compatibility. Even the mildly exotic types were left at home.”

  Mary’s voice wavered slightly as she answered. “I…I guess I know that. You’re all just so terribly different. And soon all the ways I know will be destroyed, and my people will all be dead or like you—more probably dead. No, don’t deny it. More than once in our history we’ve had episodes like the colonization of Gloyn. Six hundred years ago, the Europeans took over North America from the stone-age Indians. One group of Indians—a tribe called the Cherokee—saw that they could never overcome the invaders. They reasoned that the only way to survive was to adopt European ways—no matter how offensive those ways appeared. The Cherokee built schools and towns; they even printed newspapers in their own language. But this did not satisfy the Europeans. They coveted the Cherokee lands. Eventually they evicted the Indians and forced-marched the tribe halfway across the continent into a desert preserve. For all their willingness to adapt, the Cherokee suffered the same fate that your Gloyn did.

  “Ron, are you any different from the Europeans—or from your Mikin ancestors? Will my people be massacred? Will the rare survivor be just another Mikin with all your aw…all your alien customs? Isn’t there any way you can save us from yourselves?” She reached out and grasped my hand. I could see she was fighting back tears.

  There was no rationalizing it: I had fallen for her. I silently cursed my moralistic Little Brother upbringing. At that moment, if she had asked it, I would have run right down to the beach and started swimming for Antarctica. The feel of her hand against mine and the look in her eyes would have admitted to no other response. For a moment, I wondered if she was aware of the awful power she had. Then I said, “I’ll do everything I can, Mary. I don’t think you have to worry. We’ve advanced a long way since Gloyn. Only a few of us wish you harm. But I’ll do anything to protect your people from massacre and exploitation. Is that enough of a commitment?”

  She squeezed my hand. “Yes. It’s a greater commitment than has been made in all the past.”

  “Fine,” I said, standing up. I wanted to get off this painful subject as fast as possible. “Let me show you some of our equipment.”

  I took her over the Abo Affairs Office. The AAO wasn’t a private residence-office, but it did bear Horlig’s stamp. Even close up, it looke
d like a Gloyn rock-nest—a huge pile of boulders set in a marshy—and artificial—jungle. It was difficult, even for me, to spot the location of the recoilless rifles and machine guns. Inside, the neolithic motif was maintained. The computing equipment and TV screens were hidden behind woven curtains, and lighting came indirectly through chinks in the boulders. Horlig refused to employ Terrans, and his Mikin clerks and techs hadn’t returned from lunch.

  At the far end of the “room” a tiny waterfall gushed tinkling into a pool. Beyond the pool was Horlig’s office, blocked from direct view by a rock partition. I noticed that the pool gave us an odd, ripply view into his office. That’s the trouble with these “open” architectural forms: they have no real rooms, or privacy. In the water I could see the upside-down images of Horlig and Che#. I motioned Mary to be quiet, and knelt down to watch. Their voices were barely audible above the sound of falling water.

  Che# was saying—in Mikin, of course: “You’ve been sensible enough in the past, Horlig. My suggestion is just a logical extension of previous policy. Once he’s committed I’m sure that %wrlyg won’t have any objections. The Terrans have provided us with almost all the materials we needed from them. Their usefulness is over. They’re vermin. It’s costing the Company two thousand man-hours a month to provide security against their attacks and general insolence.” He waved a sheaf of papers at Horlig. “My plan is simple. Retreat from Ground Base for a couple weeks and send orbital radiation bombs over the three inhabited areas. Then drop some lethal viruses to knock off the survivors. I figure it would cost one hundred thousand man-hours total, but we’d be permanently rid of this nuisance. And our ground installations would be undamaged. All you have to do is camouflage some of our initial moves so that the Company officers on the Orbital Base don’t catch—”

  “Enough!” Horlig exploded. He grabbed Che# by the scruff of his cape and pulled him up from his chair. “You putrid bag of schemings. I’m reporting you to Orbit. And if you ever even think of that plan again, I personally will kill you—if %wrlyg doesn’t do it first!” He shoved the Vice President for Violence to the floor. Che# got up, ready to draw and fire, but Horlig’s wrist gun pointed directly at the other’s middle. Che# spat on the floor and backed out of the room.