by Vernor Vinge
He leaned back, and his voice turned serious. “But I don’t have much to say about your original question, Hamid. If Ravna&Tines turn out to be decent, you’ll still have to decide for yourself about giving up the Blab. I bet every critter that thinks it thinks—even the transhumans—worry about how to do right for themselves and the ones they love. I—uh, oh damn! Why don’t you ask your pop, why don’t you ask Hussein about these things? The guy has been heartbroken since you left.”
Ham felt his face go red. Pop had never had much good to say about Fujiyama, Who’d have guessed the two would talk about him? If Hamid had known, he’d never have come here today. He felt like standing up, screaming at this old man to mind his own business. Instead, he shook his head and said softly, “It’s kind of personal.”
Larry looked at him, as if wondering whether to push the matter. One word, and Ham knew that all the pain would come pouring out. But after a moment, the old man sighed. He looked around the desk to where the Blab lay, eyeing the heater. “Hey, Blabber. You take good care of this kid.”
The Blab returned his gaze. “Sure, sure,” she said.
HAMID’S APARTMENT WAS on the south side of campus. It was large and cheap, which might seem surprising so near the oldest university around, and just a few kilometers south of the planetary capital. The back door opened on kilometers of forested wilderness. It would be a long time before there was any land development immediately south of here. The original landing zones were just twenty klicks away. In a bad storm there might be a little hot stuff blown north. It might be only fifty percent of natural background radiation, but with a whole world to colonize, why spread towns toward the first landings?
Hamid parked the commons bicycle in the rack out front, and walked quietly around the building. Lights were on upstairs. There were the usual motorbikes of other tenants. Something was standing in back, at the far end of the building. Ah. A Hallowe’en scarecrow.
He and the Blab walked back to his end. It was past twilight and neither moon was in the sky. The tips of his fingers were chilled to numbness. He stuck his hands in his pockets, and paused to look up. The starships of the Caravan were in synch orbit at this longitude. They formed a row of bright dots in the southern sky. Something dark, too regular to be a cloud, hung almost straight overhead. That must be the protection Larry had promised.
“I’m hungry.”
“Just a minute and we’ll go in.”
“Okay.” The Blab leaned companionably against his leg, began humming. She looked fat now, but it was just her fur, all puffed out. These temperatures were probably the most comfortable for her. He stared across the star fields. God, how many hours have I stood like this, wondering what all those stars mean? The Big Square was about an hour from setting. The fifth brightest star in that constellation was Lothlrimarre’s sun. At Lothlrimarre and beyond, faster than light travel was possible—even for twenty-first century Old Earth types. If Middle America were just ten more light years farther out from the galactic center, Hamid would have had all the Beyond as his world.
His gaze swept back across the sky. Most everything he could see there would be in the Slow Zone. It extended four thousand light years inward from here, if the Outsiders were to be believed. Billions of star systems, millions of civilizations—trapped. Most would never know about the outside.
Even the Outsiders had only vague information about the civilizations down here in the Slow Zone. Greatships, ramscoops, they all must be invented here again and again. Colonies spread, knowledge gained, most often lost in the long slow silence. What theories the Slow Zone civilizations must have for why nothing could move faster than light—even in the face of superluminal events seen at cosmic distances. What theories they must have to explain why human-equivalent intelligence was the highest ever found and ever created. Those ones deep inside, they might at times be the happiest of all, their theories assuring them they were at the top of creation. If Middle America were only a hundred light years farther down, Hamid would never know the truth. He would love this world, and the spreading of civilization upon it.
Hamid’s eye followed the Milky Way to the eastern horizon. The glow wasn’t really brighter there than above, but he knew his constellations. He was looking at the galactic center. He smiled wanly. In twentieth-century science fiction, those star clouds were imagined as the homes of “elder races,” godlike intellects…But the Tourists call those regions of the galaxy the Depths. The Unthinking Depths. Not only was ftl impossible there, but so was sentience. So they guessed. They couldn’t know for sure. The fastest round-trip probe to the edge of the Depths took about ten thousand years. Such expeditions were rare, though some were well documented.
Hamid shivered, and looked back at the ground. Four cats sat silently just beyond the lawn, watching the Blab. “Not tonight, Blab,” he said, and the two of them went indoors.
The place looked undisturbed: the usual mess. He fixed the Blab her dinner and heated some soup for himself.
“Yuck. This stuff tastes like shit!” The Blab rocked back on her haunches and made retching sounds. Few people have their own childhood obnoxiousness come back to haunt them so directly as Hamid Thompson did. He could remember using exactly those words at the dinner table. Mom should have stuffed a sock down his throat.
Hamid glanced at the chicken parts. “Best we can afford, Blab.” He was running his savings down to zero to cover the year of the Tourists. Being a guide was such a plum that no one thought to pay for it.
“Yuck.” But she started nibbling.
As Ham watched her eat, he realized that one of his problems was solved. If Ravna&Tines wouldn’t take him as the Blab’s “trainer,” they could hike back to the Beyond by themselves. Furthermore, he’d want better evidence from the slug—via the ansible he could get assurances directly from Lothlrimarre—that Ravna&Tines could be held to promises. The conversation with Larry had brought home all the nightmare fears, the fears that drove some people to demand total rejection of the Caravan. Who knew what happened to those that left with Outsiders? Almost all Middle American knowledge of the Beyond came from less than thirty starships, less than a thousand strangers. Strange strangers. If it weren’t for the five who came back, there would be zero corroboration. Of those five…well, Hussein Thompson was a mystery even to Hamid: seeming kind, inside a vicious mercenary. Lazy Larry was a mystery, too, a cheerful one who made it clear that you better think twice about what folks tell you. But one thing came clear from all of them: space is deep. There were millions of civilized worlds in the Beyond, thousands of star-spanning empires. In such vastness, there could be no single notion of law and order. Cooperation and enlightened self-interest were common, but…nightmares lurked.
So what if Ravna&Tines turned him down, or couldn’t produce credible assurances? Hamid went into the bedroom and punched up the news, let the color and motion wash over him. Middle America was a beautiful world, still mostly empty. With the agrav plates and the room-temperature fusion electrics that the Caravan had brought, life would be more exciting here than ever before…In twenty or thirty years there would likely be another caravan. If he and the Blab were still restless—well, there was plenty of time to prepare. Larry Fujiyama had been forty years old when he went Out.
Hamid sighed, happy with himself for the first time in days.
THE PHONE RANG just as he finished with the news. The name of the incoming caller danced in red letters across the news display: Ravna. No location or topic. Hamid swallowed hard. He bounced off the bed, turned the phone pickup to look at a chair in an uncluttered corner of the room, and sat down there. Then he accepted the call.
Ravna was human. And female. “Mr. Hamid Thompson, please.”
“T-that’s me.” Curse the stutter.
For an instant there was no reaction. Then a quick smile crossed her face. It was not a friendly smile, more like a sneer at his nervousness. “I call to discuss the animal. The Blabber, you call it. You have heard our offer. I am pre
pared to improve upon it.” As she spoke, the Blab walked into the room and across the phone’s field of view. Her gaze did not waver. Strange. He could see that the VIDEO TRANSMIT light was on next to the screen. The Blab began to hum. A moment passed and then she reacted, a tiny start of surprise.
“What is your improvement?”
Again, a half-second pause. Ravna&Tines were a lot nearer than the Jovians tonight, though apparently still not at Middle America. “We possess devices that allow faster-than-light communication to a world in the…Beyond. Think on what this access means. With this, if you stay on Middle America, you will be the richest man on the planet. If you choose to accept passage Out, you will have the satisfaction of knowing you have moved your world a good step out of the darkness.”
Hamid found himself thinking faster than he ever had outside of a Fujiyama oral exam. There were plenty of clues here. Ravna’s English was more fluent than most Tourists’, but her pronunciation was awful. Human but awful: her vowel stress was strange to the point of rendering her speech unintelligible, and she didn’t voice things properly: “pleess” instead of “pleez,” “chooss” instead of “chooz.”
At the same time, he had to make sense of what she was saying and decide the correct response. Hamid thanked God he already knew about ansibles. “Miss Ravna, I agree. That is an improvement. Nevertheless, my original requirement stands. I must accompany my pet. Only I know her needs.” He cocked his head. “You could do worse than have an expert on call.”
As he spoke, her expression clouded. Rage? She seemed hostile toward him personally. But when he finished, her face was filled with an approximation of a friendly smile. “Of course, we will arrange that also. We had not realized earlier how important this is to you.”
Jeeze. Even I can lie better than that! This Ravna was used to getting her own way without face-to-face lies, or else she had real emotional problems. Either way: “And since you and I are scarcely equals, we also need to work something out with the Lothlrimarre that will put a credible bond on the agreement.”
Her poorly constructed mask slipped. “That is absurd.” She looked at something off camera. “The Lothlrimarre knows nothing of us…I will try to satisfy you. But know this, Hamid Thompson: I am the congenial, uh, humane member of my team. Mr. Tines is very impatient. I try to restrain him, but if he becomes desperate enough…things could happen that would hurt us all. Do you understand me?”
First a lie, and now chainsaw subtlety. He fought back a smile. Careful. You might be mistaking raw insanity for bluff and bluster. “Yes, Miss Ravna, I do understand, and your offer is generous. But…I need to think about this. Can you give me a bit more time?” Enough time to complain to the Tour Director.
“Yes. One hundred hours should be feasible.”
After she rang off, Hamid sat for a long time, staring sightlessly at the dataset. What was Ravna? Through twenty thousand years of colonization, on worlds far stranger than Middle America, the human form had drifted far. Cross-fertility existed between most of Earth’s children, though they differed more from one another than had races on the home planet. Ravna looked more like an Earth human than most of the Tourists. Assuming she was of normal height, she could almost have passed as an American of Middle East descent; sturdy, dark-skinned, black-haired. There were differences. Her eyes had epicanthic folds, and the irises were the most intense violet he had ever seen. Still, all that was trivial compared to her manner.
Why hadn’t she been receiving Hamid’s video? Was she blind? She didn’t seem so otherwise; he remembered her looking at things around her. Perhaps she was some sort of personality simulator. That had been a standard item in American science fiction at the end of the twentieth century; the idea passed out of fashion when computer performance seemed to top out in the early twenty-first. But things like that should be possible in the Beyond, and certainly in Transhuman Space. They wouldn’t work very well down here, of course. Maybe she was just a graphical front end for whatever Mr. Tines was.
Somehow, Hamid thought she was real. She certainly had a human effect on him. Sure, she had a good figure, obvious under soft white shirt and pants. And sure, Hamid had been girl-crazy the last five years. He was so horny most of the time, it felt good just to ogle femikins in downtown Marquette stores. But for all-out sexiness, Ravna wasn’t that spectacular. She had nothing on Gilli Weinberg or Skandr Vrinimi’s wife. Yet, if he had met her at school, he would have tried harder to gain her favor than he had Gilli’s…and that was saying a lot.
Hamid sighed. That probably just showed that he was nuts.
“I wanna go out.” The Blab rubbed her head against his arm. Hamid realized he was sweating even though the room was chill.
“God, not tonight, Blab.” He guessed that there was a lot of bluff in Ravna&Tines. At the same time, it was clear they were the kind who might just grab if they could get away with it.
“I wanna go out!” Her voice came louder. The Blab spent many nights outside, mainly in the forest. That made it easier to keep her quiet when she was indoors. For the Blab, it was a chance to play with her pets: the cats—and sometimes the dogs—in the neighborhood. There had been a war when he and the Blab first arrived here. Pecking orders had been abruptly revised, and two of the most ferocious dogs had just disappeared. What was left was very strange. The cats were fascinated by the Blab. They hung around the yard just for a glimpse of her. When she was here they didn’t even fight among themselves. Nights like tonight were the best. In a couple of hours both Selene and Diana would rise, the silver moon and the gold. On nights like this, when gold and silver lay between deep shadows, Hamid had seen her pacing through the edge of the forest, followed by a dozen faithful retainers.
But, “Not tonight, Blab!” There followed a major argument, the Blabber blasting rock music and kiddie shows at high volume. The noise wasn’t the loudest she could make. That would have been physically painful to Ham. No, this was more like a cheap music player set way high. Eventually it would bring complaints from all over the apartment building. Fortunately for Hamid, the nearest rooms were unoccupied just now.
After twenty minutes of din, Hamid twisted the fight into a “game of humans.” Like many pets, the Blab thought of herself as a human being. But unlike a cat or a dog or even a parrot, she could do a passable job of imitating one. The trouble was, she couldn’t always find people with the patience to play along.
They sat across from each other at the dinette table, the Blab’s forelegs splayed awkwardly across its surface. Hamid would start with some question—it didn’t matter the topic. The Blab would nod wisely, ponder a reply. With most abstractions, anything she had to say was nonsense, meaningful only to tea-leaf readers or wishful thinkers. Never mind that. In the game, Hamid would respond with a comment, or laugh if the Blab seemed to be in a joke-telling behavior. The pacing, the intonation—they were all perfect for real human dialog. If you didn’t understand English, the game would have sounded like two friends having a good time.
“How about an imitation, Blab? Joe Ortega. President Ortega. Can you do that?”
“Heh, heh.” That was Lazy Larry’s cackle. “Don’t rush me. I’m thinking. I’m thinking!” There were several types of imitation games. For instance, she could speak back Hamid’s words instantly, but with the voice of some other human. Using that trick on a voice-only phone was probably her favorite game of all, since her audience really believed she was a person. What he was asking for now was almost as much fun, if the Blab would play up to it.
She rubbed her jaw with a talon. “Ah yes.” She sat back pompously, almost slid onto the floor before she caught herself. “We must all work together in these exciting times.” That was from a recent Ortega speech, a simple playback. But even when she got going, responding to Hamid’s questions, ad-libbing things, she was still a perfect match for the President of Middle America. Hamid laughed and laughed. Ortega was one of the five who came back, not a very bright man but self-important and ambitious. It
said something that even his small knowledge of the Outside was enough to propel him to the top of the world state. The five were very big fish in a very small pond—that was how Larry Fujiyama put it.
The Blab was an enormous show-off, and was quickly carried away by her own wit. She began waving her forelegs around, lost her balance and fell off the chair. “Oops!” She hopped back on the chair, looked at Hamid—and began laughing herself. The two were in stitches for almost half a minute. This had happened before; Hamid was sure the Blah could not appreciate humor above the level of pratfalls. Her laughter was imitation for the sake of congeniality, for the sake of being a person, “Oh, God!” She flopped onto the table, “choking” with mirth, her forelegs across the back of her neck as if to restrain herself.
The laughter died away to occasional snorts, and then a companionable silence. Hamid reached across to rub the bristly fur that covered the Blab’s forehead tympanum. “You’re a good kid, Blab.”
The dark eyes opened, turned up at him. Something like a sigh escaped her, buzzing the fur under his palm. “Sure, sure,” she said.
HAMID LEFT THE DRAPES partly pulled, and a window pane cranked open where the Blab could sit and look out. He lay in the darkened bedroom and watched her silhouette against the silver and gold moonlight. She had her nose pressed up to the screen. Her long neck was arched to give both her head and shoulder tympana a good line on the outside. Every so often her head would jerk a few millimeters, as if something very interesting had just happened outside.
The loudest sound in the night was faint roach racket, out by the forest. The Blab was being very quiet—in the range Hamid could hear—and he was grateful. She really was a good kid.
He sighed and pulled the covers up to his nose. It had been a long day, one where life’s problems had come out ahead.
He’d be very careful the next few days; no trips away from Marquette and Ann Arbor, no leaving the Blab unattended. At least the slug’s protection looked solid. I better tell Larry about the second ansible, though. If Ravna&Tines just went direct to the government with it…that might be the most dangerous move of all. For all their pious talk and restrictions on private sales, the Feds would sell their own grandmothers if they thought it would benefit the Planetary Interest. Thank God they already had an ansible—or almost had one.