Zones of Thought Trilogy

by Vernor Vinge

  Target[57]:

  Ya, even Daddy had a hard time landing it. ikocxljikersw89iou43e5 I think Mister Steel just doesnt understand, and hes getting sorta disparate… Isn’t there other stuff, though, like they had in oldendays. You know, bombs and airplanes that we could make?…

  Org[58]:

  There are other inventions, but it would take time for Mister Steel to make them. Our star ship is leaving Relay soon, Jefri. We’ll be there long before other inventions would help…

  Target[58]:

  Your coming? Your finally coming!!! When do you leave? When will you get here???

  Ordinarily Ravna composed her messages to Jefri on a keyboard—it gave her some feeling for the kid’s situation. He seemed to be holding up, though there were still days when he didn’t write (it was strange to think of “mental depression” having any connection with an eight-year-old). Other times he seemed to have a tantrum at the keyboard, and across twenty-one thousand light-years she saw evidence of small fists slamming into keys.

  Ravna grinned at the display. Today she finally had something more than nebulous promises for him: she had a positive departure time. Jefri was going to like message [59]. She typed: “We’re scheduled to leave in seven more days, Jefri. Travel time will be about thirty days.” Should she qualify that? Latest postings on the Zone boundary newsgroups said the Bottom was unusually active. The Tines World was so close to the Slow Zone … If the “storm” worsened, travel time would suffer. There was about a one percent chance the voyage would take more than sixty days. She leaned back from the keyboard. Did she really want to say that? Damn. Better be frank; these dates could affect the locals who were helping Jefri. She explained the “ifs” and “buts”, then went on to describe the ship and the wonderful things they would bring. The boy usually didn’t write at great length (except when he was relaying information from Steel), but he really seemed to like long letters from her.

  The Out of Band II was undergoing final consistency checks. Its ultradrive was rebuilt and tested; the Skroderiders had taken it out a couple of thousand light-years to check the antenna swarm. The swarm worked great, too. She and Jefri would be able to talk through most of the voyage. As of yesterday, the ship was stocked with consumables. (That sounded like something out of medieval adventure. But you had to take some supplies when you were headed so far down that reality graphics couldn’t be trusted.) Sometime tomorrow, Grondr’s people would be loading the ship’s hold with gadgets that might be real handy for a rescue. Should she mention those? Some of them might sound a bit intimidating to Jefri’s local friends.

  That evening, she and the Skroderiders had a beach party. That’s what they called it, though it was much more like the human version than an authentic Rider one. Blueshell and Greenstalk had rolled well back from the water, to where the sand lay dry and warm. Ravna laid out refreshments on Blueshell’s cargo scarf. They sat on the sand and admired the sunset.

  It was mostly a celebration—that Ravna had gotten permission to go with the OOB, that the ship was almost ready to depart. But, “Are you really happy to be going, my lady?” asked Blueshell. “We two will make very good money, but you—”

  Ravna laughed. “I’ll get a travel bonus.” She had argued and argued for permission to go; there wasn’t much room left to haggle about the pay. “And yes. This is what I really want.”

  “I am glad,” said Greenstalk.

  “I am laughing,” said Blueshell. “My mate is especially pleased that our passenger will not be surly. We almost lost our love for bipeds after shipping with the certificants. But there is nothing to be frightened of now. Have you read Threats Group in the last fifteen hours? The Blight has stopped growing, and its edges have become sharply defined. The Perversion is settling into middle age. I’m ready to leave right now.”

  Blueshell was full of speculations about the Tinish “packs”, and possible schemes for extracting Jefri and any other survivors. Greenstalk interjected a thought here and there. She was less shy than before, but still seemed softer, more diffident than her mate. And her confidence was a bit more realistic. She was glad they weren’t leaving for another week. There were still the final consistency checks to run on the OOB—and Grondr had gotten Org financing for a small fleet of decoy ships. Fifty were complete so far. A hundred would be ready by the end of the week.

  The Docks drifted into night. With its shallow atmosphere, twilight was short, but the colors were spectacular. The beach and the trees glistened in the horizontal rays. The scent of evening flowers mixed with the tang of sea salt. On the far side of the sea, all was stark bright and dark, silhouettes that might have been Vrinimi fancies or functional dock equipage—Ravna had never learned which. The sun slid behind the sea. Orange and red spread along the aft horizon, topped by a wider band of green, probably ionized oxygen.

  The Riders didn’t turn their skrodes for a better view—for all she knew, they had been looking that way all along—but they stopped talking. As the sun set, the breakers shattered it into a thousand images, glints of green and yellow through the foam. She guessed the two would have preferred to be out there just now. She had seen them often enough around sunset, deliberately sitting where the surf was hardest. When the water drew back, their stalks and fronds were like supplicants’ arms, upstretched. At times like these she could almost understand the Lesser Skroderiders; they spent their whole lives memorizing such repeated moments. She smiled in the greenish twilight. There would always be time enough later to worry and plan.

  They must have sat like that for twenty minutes. Along the curving line of the beach, she saw tiny fires in the gathering dark: office parties. Somewhere very nearby there was the crunch crunch of feet on sand. She turned and saw that it was Pham Nuwen. “Over here,” she called.

  Pham ambled toward them. He’d been very scarce since their last confrontation; Ravna guessed that some of her jibes had struck deep. This once, I hope Old One made him forget. Pham Nuwen had the potential to be a real person; it hadn’t been right to hurt him because his principal was beyond reach.

  “Have a seat. Galaxy-rise in a half hour.” The Skroderiders rustled, so deep into the sunset that they were only now noticing the visitor.

  Pham Nuwen walked a pace or two beyond Ravna and stood arms akimbo, staring across the sea. He glanced back at her, and the green twilight gave his face an eerie fierceness. He flashed his old, lopsided smile. “I think I owe you an apology.”

  Old One’s gonna let you join the human race after all? But Ravna was touched. She dropped her eyes from his. “I guess I owe you one too. If Old One won’t help, he won’t help; I shouldn’t have lost my temper.”

  Pham Nuwen laughed softly, “Yours was certainly the lesser error. I’m still trying to figure out where I went wrong, and … I don’t think I have time now to learn.”

  He looked back at the sea. After a moment, Ravna stood and stepped toward him. Up close, his stare looked glassy. “What’s wrong?”Damn you, Old One. If you’re going to abandon him, don’t do it in pieces!

  “You’re the great expert on Transcendent Powers, eh?”

  More sarcasm. “Well—”

  “Do the big boys have wars?”

  Ravna shrugged. “You can find rumors of everything. We think there’s conflict, but something too subtle to call war.”

  “You’re pretty much right. There is struggle, but it has more angles than anything down here. The benefits of cooperation are normally so great that… That’s part of the reason I didn’t take the Perversion seriously. Besides, the creature is pitiful: a wimpy cur that fouls its own den. Even if it wanted to kill other Powers, something like that never could. Not in a billion years…”

  Blueshell rolled up beside them. “Who is this, my lady?”

  It was the sort of Riderish conversation-stopper that she was only just getting used to. If Blueshell would just get in synch with his skrode memory, he’d know. Then the question truly hit her. Who is this? She glanced at her dataset. It was
showing transceiver status, had been ever since Pham Nuwen arrived. And … by the Powers, three transceivers had been grabbed by a single customer!

  She took a quick step backwards. “You!”

  “Me! Face to face once more, Ravna.” The leer was a parody of Pham’s self-assured smile. “Sorry I can’t be charming tonight.” He slapped his chest awkwardly. “I’m using this thing’s underlying instincts… I’m too busy trying to stay alive.”

  There was drool coming down his chin. Pham’s eyes would focus on her and then drift.

  “What are you doing to Pham!”

  The Emissary Device stepped toward her, stumbled. “Making room,” came Pham Nuwen’s voice.

  Ravna spoke Grondr’s phone code. There was no response.

  The Emissary Device shook its head. “Vrinimi Org is very busy right now, trying to convince me to get off their equipment, trying to screw up their courage and force me off. They don’t believe what I’m telling them” He laughed, a quick choking sound. “Doesn’t matter. I see now that the attack here was just a deadly diversion… How about that, Little Ravna? See, the Blight is not a Class Two perversion. In the time I have left, I can only guess what it is… Something very old, very big. Whatever it is, I’m being eaten alive.”

  Blueshell and Greenstalk had rolled close to Ravna. Their fronds made faint skritching noises. Some thousands of light-years away, well into the Transcend, a Power was fighting for its life. And all they saw of it was one man turned into a slobbering lunatic.

  “So that’s my apology, Little Ravna. Helping you probably wouldn’t have saved me.” His voice strangled on itself, and he took a gasping breath. “But helping you now will be a measure of—vengeance is a motive you would understand. I’ve called your ship down. If you move fast and don’t use agrav, you may survive the next hour.”

  Blueshell’s voice was timid and blustery at the same time. “Survive? Only a conventional attack could work down here, and there is no sign of one.”

  A maniac surrounded by the soft, quiet night. Ravna’s dataset showed nothing strange except for the diversion of bandwidth to Old One.

  Pham Nuwen made a coughing laugh. “Oh, it’s conventional enough, but very clever. A few grams of replicant disorder, wafted in over weeks. It’s blossoming now, timed with the attack you see… The growth will die in a matter of hours, after it kills all of Relay’s precious High automation… Ravna! Take the ship, or die in the next thousand seconds. Take the ship. If you survive, go to the Bottom. Get the…” the Emissary Device pulled itself straighter, and smiled its greenish smile a last time. “And here is my gift to you, the best help I have left to give.”

  The smile disappeared. The glassy look was replaced by a wonder … and then mounting terror. Pham Nuwen dragged in a great breath, and had time for one barking scream before he collapsed. He landed face down, twitching and choking in the sand.

  Ravna shouted Grondr’s code again, and ran to Pham Nuwen. She pulled him over on his back and tried to clear his mouth. The fit lasted several seconds, Pham’s limbs flailing randomly about. Ravna collected several solid hits as she tried to steady him. Then Pham went limp, and she could barely feel his breath.

  Blueshell was saying, “Somehow he’s grabbed the OOB. It’s four thousand kilometers out, coming straight for the Docks. Wail. We’re ruined.” Unauthorized flight close to the Docks was cause for confiscation.

  Somehow Ravna didn’t think it mattered anymore. “Is there any sign of attack?” she said over her shoulder. She eased Pham’s head back, made sure he had a clear breathing passage.

  Random rustling between the Skroderiders. Greenstalk: “Something is strange. We have service suspension on the main transceivers.”So Old One is still transmitting?“The local net is very clogged. Much automation, many employees being called to special duty.”

  Ravna rocked back. The sky was night dark, punctuated by a dozen bright points of light—ships guiding for the Docks. All very normal. But her own dataset was showing what Greenstalk reported.

  “Ravna, I can’t talk right now.” Grondr’s clickety voice sounded out of the air beside her. This would be his associate program. “Old One has taken most of Relay. Watch out for the Emissary Device.”A little late, that!“We’ve lost contact with the surveillance fence beyond the transceivers. We are having program and hardware failures. Old One claims we are being attacked.” A five second pause. “We see evidence of fleet action at the domestic defense boundary.” That was just a half light-year out.

  “Brap!” From Blueshell. “At the domestic defense boundary! How could you miss them coming in?” He rolled back and forth, pivoted.

  Grondr’s associate ignored the question. “Minimum three thousand ships. Destruction of transceivers immin—”

  “Ravna, are the Skroderiders with you?” It was still Grondr’s voice, but more staccato, more involved. This was the real guy.

  “Y-yes.”

  “The local network is failing. Life support failing. The Docks will fall. We would be stronger than the attacking fleet, but we’re rotting from the inside… Relay is dying.” His voice sharpened, clattering, “but Vrinimi will not die, and a contract is a contract! Tell the Riders, we will pay them … somehow, someday. We require… plead … they fly the mission we contracted. Ravna?”

  “Yes. They hear.”

  “Then go!” And the voice was gone.

  Blueshell said, “OOB will be here in two hundred seconds.”

  Pham Nuwen had calmed, and his breathing was easier. As the two Riders chittered back and forth, Ravna looked around—and suddenly realized that all the death and destruction had been reports from afar. The beach and the sky were almost as placid as ever. The last of the sun’s rays had left the waves. The foam was a dim band in the low green light. Here and there, yellow lights glowed in the trees and the farther towers.

  Yet the alarum had clearly spread. She could hear datasets coming on. Some of the beach fires guttered out, and the figures around them ran into the trees or drifted upwards, headed for farther offices. Now starships floated up from their berths across the sea, falling higher and higher till they glittered in the departed sunlight.

  It was Relay’s last moment of peace.

  A patch of glowing dark spread across the sky. She gasped at light so twisted it should have gone unseen. It shone more in the back of her head than in her eyes. Afterwards she couldn’t think what made it objectively different from blackness.

  “There’s another!” said Blueshell. This one was near the Decks’ horizon, a blot of darkness perhaps a degree across. The edges were an indistinct bleeding of black into black.

  “What is it?” Ravna was no war freak, but she’d read her share of adventure stories. She knew about antimatter bombs and relativistic KE slugs. From a distance such weapons were bright spots of light, sometimes an orchestrated flickering. Or closer: a world-wrecker would glow incandescent across the curve of a planet, splashing the globe itself like a drop of water, but slow, slow. Those were the images her reading had prepared her for. What she saw now was more like a defect in her eyesight than a vision of war.

  Powers only knew what the Skroderiders saw, but: “Your main transceivers … vaping out, I think,” said Blueshell.

  “Those are light-years out! There’s no way we could see—” Another splotch appeared, not even in her field of view. The color floated, placeless. Pham Nuwen spasmed again, but weakly. She had no trouble holding him still, but … blood dribbled from his mouth. The back of his shirt was wet with something that stank of decay.

  “OOB will be here in one hundred seconds. Plenty of time, there’s plenty of time.” Blueshell rolled back and forth around them, talking reassurance that just showed how nervous he was. “Yes, my lady, light-years out. And years from now, the flash of their going will light the sky for anyone still alive here. But only a fraction of the vape-out is making light. The rest is an ultrawave surge so great that ordinary matter is affected… Optic nerves tickled by the over
flow… So much that your own nervous system becomes a receiver.” He spun around. “But don’t worry. We’re tough and quick. We’ve squeezed through close spots before.” There was something absurd about a creature with no short-term memory bragging up its lightning reflexes. She hoped his skrode was up to this.

  Greenstalk’s voice buzzed painfully loud. “Look!”

  The surf line was drawing back, further than she had ever seen it.

  “The sea is falling!” shouted Greenstalk. Water’s edge had pulled back a hundred meters, two hundred. The green-limned horizon was dipping.

  “Ship’s still fifty seconds out. We’ll fly to meet it. Come, Ravna!”

  Ravna’s own courage died cold that second. Grondr had said the Docks would fall! The near sky was crowded now as dozens of people raced for safety. A hundred meters away the sand itself was shifting, an avalanche tilting toward the abyss. She remembered something Old One had said, and suddenly she knew the fliers were making a terrible mistake. The thought cut through her terror. “No! Just head for higher ground.”

  The night was silent no more. A bell-like moaning came from the sea. The sound spread. The sunset breeze grew to a gale that twisted the trees toward the water, sending branches and sand sweeping past them.

  Ravna was still on her knees, her hands pressing down on Pham’s limp arms. No breath, no pulse. The eyes stared sightlessly. Old One’s gift to her. Damn all the Powers! She grabbed Pham Nuwen under the shoulders and rolled him onto her back.

  She gagged, almost lost her grip. Underneath his shirt she felt cavities where there should be solid flesh. Something wet and rank dripped around her sides. She struggled up from her knees, half-carrying and half-dragging the body.

  Blueshell was shouting, “—take hours to roll anywhere.” He drifted off the ground, driving his agrav against the wind. Skrode and Rider twisted drunkenly for an instant … and then he was slammed back to the ground, tumbled willy-nilly toward the wind’s destination, the moaning hole that had been the sea. Greenstalk raced to his seaward side, blocking his progress toward destruction. Blueshell righted himself and the two rolled back toward Ravna. The Rider’s voice was faint in the wind: “…agrav … failing!” And with it the very structure of the Docks.