Zones of Thought Trilogy

by Vernor Vinge

  Johanna trill

  not visible hurts

  sad uncertain squeak.”

  And the traitor murmurred in her ear: “Now he’ll ask if I need medical help, and if he insists … our chat will have an early end.”

  But the only reply Pilgrim made was a chorus of sympathetic worry. “Damn assholes are just sitting down out there,” came Vendacious’s irritated whisper.

  The silence stretched on a moment, and then Peregrine’s human voice, the Joker from Dataset, said in clear Samnorsk. “Don’t do anything foolish, Vendacious, old man.”

  Vendacious made a sound of polite surprise—and tensed around her. His knife jabbed a centimeter deep between Johanna’s ribs, a thorn of pain. She could feel the blade trembling, could feel his member’s breath on her bloody skin.

  Pilgrim’s voice continued, confident and knowing: “I mean we know what you’re up to. Your pack at the hospital has gone completely to pieces, confessed what little he knew to Woodcarver. Do you think your lies can get by her? If Johanna is dead, you’ll be bloody shreds.” He hummed an ominous tune from Dataset. “I know her well, the Queen. She seems such a gracious pack … but where do you think Flenser got his gruesome creativity? Kill Johanna and you’ll find just how far her genius in that exceeds Flenser’s.”

  The knife pulled back. One more of Vendacious leaped to the window slits, and the two by Johanna loosened their grip. He stroked the blade gently across her skin. Thinking? Is Woodcarver really that fearsome? The four at the windows were looking in all directions; no doubt Vendacious was counting guard packs and planning furiously. When he finally replied, it was in Samnorsk: “The threat would be more credible if it were not at second hand.”

  Pilgrim chuckled. “True. But we guessed what would happen if she approached. You’re a cautious fellow; you’d have killed Johanna instantly, and been full of lying explanation before you even heard what the Queen knows. But seeing a poor pilgrim amble over … I know you think me a fool, only one step better than Scriber Jaqueramaphan.” Peregrine stumbled on the name, and for an instant lost his flippant tone. “Anyway, now you know the situation. If you doubt, send your guards beyond the brush; look at what the Queen has surrounding you. Johanna dead only kills you. Speaking of which, I assume this conversation has some point?”

  “Yes. She lives.” Vendacious slipped the gag from Johanna’s mouth. She turned her head, choking. There were tears running down the sides of her face. “Pilgrim, oh Pilgrim!” The words were scarcely more than a whisper. She drew a painful breath, concentrated on making noise. Bright spots danced before her eyes. “Hei Pilgrim!”

  “Hei Johanna. Has he hurt you?”

  “Some, I—”

  “That’s enough. She’s alive, Pilgrim, but that’s easily corrected.” Vendacious didn’t jam the gag back in her mouth. Johanna could see him rubbing heads nervously as he paced round and round the ledge. He trilled something about “stalemated game”.

  Peregrine replied, “Speak Samnorsk, Vendacious. I want Johanna to understand—and you can’t talk quite as slick as in pack talk.”

  “Whatever.” The traitor’s voice was unconcerned, but his members kept up their nervous pacing. “The Queen must realize we have a standoff here. Certainly I’ll kill Johanna if I’m not treated properly. But even then, Woodcarver could not afford to hurt me. Do you realize the trap Steel has set on Margrum Climb? I’m the only one who knows how to avoid it.”

  “Big deal. I never wanted to go up Margrum anyway.”

  “Yes, but you don’t count, Pilgrim. You’re a mongrel patchwork. Woodcarver will understand how dangerous this situation is. Steel’s forces are everything I said they weren’t, and I’ve been sending them every secret I could write down from my investigations of Dataset.”

  “My brother is alive, Pilgrim,” Johanna said.

  “Oh… You’re kind of a record setter for treason aren’t you, Vendacious? Everything to us was a lie, while Steel learned all the truth about us. You figure that means we daren’t kill you now?”

  Laughter, and Vendacious’s pacing stopped. He sees control coming back to him.“More, you need my full-membered cooperation. See, I exaggerated the number of enemy agents in Woodcarver’s troops, but I do have a few—and maybe Steel has planted others I don’t know about. If you even arrest me, word will get back to the Flenser armies. Much of what I know will be useless—and you’ll face an immediate, overwhelming attack. You see? The Queen needs me.”

  “And how do we know this is not more lies?”

  “That is a problem, isn’t it? Matched only by how I can be guaranteed safety once I’ve saved the expedition. No doubt it’s beyond your mongrel mind. Woodcarver and I must have a talk, someplace mutually safe and unseen. Carry that message back to her. She can’t have this traitor’s hides, but if she cooperates she may be able to save her own!”

  There was silence from outside, punctuated by the squeaking of animals in the nearer trees. Finally, surprisingly, Pilgrim laughed. “Mongrel mind, eh? Well, you have me in one thing, Vendacious. I’ve been all the world round, and I remember back half a thousand years

  —but of all the villains and traitors and geniuses, you take the record for bald impudence!”

  Vendacious gave a Tinish chord, untranslatable but as a sign of smug pleasure. “I’m honored.”

  “Very well, I’ll take your points back to the Queen. I hope the two of you are clever enough to work something out… One thing more: the Queen requires that Johanna come with me.”

  “The Queen requires? That sounds more like your mongrel sentiment to me.”

  “Perhaps. But it will prove you are serious in your confidence. View it as my price for cooperation.”

  Vendacious turned all his heads toward Johanna, silently regarding. Then he scanned out all the windows one last time. “Very well, you may have her.” Two jumped down to the cabin’s hatch while another pair pulled her toward it. His voice was soft and near her ear. “Damn Pilgrim. Alive, you’re just going to cause me trouble with the Queen.” His knife slid across her field of view. “Don’t oppose me with her. I am going to survive this affair still powerful.”

  He lifted back the hatch and daylight spilled blindingly across her face. She squinted; there was a sweep of branches and the side of the hut. Vendacious pushed and pulled her cot onto the forest floor, and the same time gobbling at his guards to keep their positions. He and Peregrine chatted politely, agreeing on when the pilgrim would return.

  One by one, Vendacious trotted back through the cabin’s hatch. Pilgrim advanced and grabbed the handles at the front of the cot. One of his pups reached out from his jacket to nuzzled her face. “You okay?”

  “I’m not sure. I got bashed in the head … and it seems kind of hard to breathe.”

  He loosened the blankets from around her chest as the rest of him dragged the cot away from the hut. The forest shade was peaceful and deep … and Vendacious’s guards were stationed here and there about the area. How many were really in on the treason? Two hours ago, Johanna had looked to them for protection. Now their every glance sent a shiver through her. She rolled back to the center of the cot, dizzy again, and stared up into the branches and leaves and patches of smoke-stained sky. Things like Straumli tree squigglies chased each other back and forth, chittering in seeming debate.

  Funny. Almost a year ago Pilgrim and Scriber were dragging me around, and I was even worse hurt, and terrified of everything—including them. And now … she had never been so glad to see another person. Even Scarbutt was a reassuring strength, walking beside her.

  The waves of terror slowly subsided. What was left was an anger as intense, though more reasoning, than the year before. She knew what had happened here; the players were not strangers, the betrayal was not random murder. After all Vendacious’s treachery, after all his murders, and his planning to kill them all … he was going to go free! Pilgrim and Woodcarver were just going to overlook that, “He killed Scriber, Pilgrim. He killed Scriber…
”He cut Scriber to pieces, then chased down what was left and killed that right out of our arms.“And Woodcarver is going to let him go free? How can she do it? How can you do it?” The tears were coming again.

  “Sh, sh.” Two of Pilgrim’s heads came into view. They looked down at her, then swiveled around almost nervously. She reached out, touching the short plush fur. Pilgrim was shivering! One of him dipped close; his voice didn’t sound jaunty at all. “I don’t know what the Queen will do, Johanna. She doesn’t know about any of this.”

  “Wha—”

  “Sh.” And his voice became scarcely a buzzing through her hand. “His people can still see us. He could still figure things out… Only you and I know, Johanna. I don’t think anyone else suspects.”

  “But the pack that confessed …?”

  “Bluff, all bluff. I’ve done some crazy things in my life but next to following Scriber down to your starship, this takes the prize… After Vendacious took you away, I began to think. You weren’t that badly injured. It was all too much like what happened to Jaqueramaphan, but I had no proof.”

  “And you haven’t told anyone?”

  “No. Foolish as poor Scriber, aren’t I?” His heads looked in all directions. “If I was right, he’d be silly not to kill you immediately. I was so afraid I was already too late…”

  You would have been, if Vendacious weren’t quite the monster I know he is.

  “Anyway, I learned the truth just like poor Scriber—almost by accident. But if we can get another seventy meters away, we won’t die like him. And everything I claimed to Vendacious will be true.”

  She patted his nearest shoulder, and looked back. The tiny cabin and its ring of guards disappeared behind the forest brush.

  …and Jefri lives!

  Crypto: 0 [95 encrypted packets have been discarded]

  Syntax: 43

  As received by: Ølvira shipboard ad hoc

  Language path: Tredeschk->Triskweline, SjK units

  From: Zonograph Eidolon

  [Co-op (or religious order) in Middle Beyond maintained by subscription of several thousand Low Beyond civilizations, in particular those threatened by immersion]

  Subject: Surge Bulletin Update and Ping

  Distribution:

  Zonograph Eidolon Subscribers

  Zonometric Interest Group

  Threats Interest Group, subgroup: navigational

  Ping participants

  Date: 1087892301 seconds since Calibration Event 239011, Eidolon Frame [66.91 days since Fall of Sjandra Kei]

  Key phrases: galactic scale event, superluminal, charitable emergency announcement

  Text of message:

  (Please include accurate local time in any ping responses.)

  If you receive this, you know that the monster surge has receded. The new zone surface appears to be a stable froth of low dimensionality (between 2.1 and 2.3). At least five civilizations are trapped in the new configuration. Thirty virgin solar systems have achieved the Beyond. (Subscribers may find specifics in the encrypted data that follow this bulletin.)

  The change corresponds to what is seen in a normal period of two years across the whole galaxy’s Slow Zone surface. Yet this surge happened in less than a two hundred hours and less than one thousandth of that surface.

  Even these numbers do not show the scale of the event. (The following can only be estimates, since so many sites were destroyed, and no instruments were calibrated for this size event.) At its maximum, the surge reached 1000 light-years above Zone Surface Standard. Surge rates of more than thirty million times lightspeed (about one light-year per second) were sustained for periods of more than 100 seconds. Reports from subscribers show more than ten billion normalized sophont deaths directly attributable to the Surge (local network failures, failures leading to environment collapse, medical collapse, vehicle crashes, security failures). Posted economic damage is much greater.

  The important question now is what can we expect in aftersurges. Our predictions are based on instrumented sites and zonometric surveys, combined with historical data from our archives. Except for long-term trends, predicting zone changes has never been a science, but we have served our subscribers well in advising of aftersurges and in identifying available new worlds. The present situation makes all previous work almost useless. We have precise documentation going back ten million years. Faster than light surges happen about every twenty thousand years (usually with speeds under 7.0c). Nothing like this monster is on file. The surge just seen is the kind described at third-hand in old and glutted databases: Sculptor had one this size fifty million years ago. The [Perseus Arm] in our galaxy probably suffered something like this half a billion years ago.

  This uncertainty makes our Mission nearly impossible, and is an important reason for this public message to the Zonometry newsgroup and others: Everyone interested in zonometry and navigation must pool resources on this problem. Ideas, archive access, algorithms—all these things could help. We pledge significant contributions to non-subscribers, and one-for-one trades to those with important information. Note: We are also addressing this message to the Swndwp oracle, and direct beaming it to points in the Transcend thought to be inhabited. Surely an event such as this must be of interest even there? We appeal to the Powers Above: Let us send you what we know. Give us some hint if you have ideas about this event.

  To demonstrate our good faith, here are the estimates we have currently. These are based on naive scale-up of well-documented surges in this region. Details are in the non-crypted appendix to this sending. Over the next year there will be five or six aftersurges, of diminishing speed and range. During this time at least two more civilizations (see risk list) will likely be permanently immersed. Zone storm conditions will prevail even when aftersurges are not in progress. Navigation in the the volume [coordinate specification] will be extremely dangerous during this period; we recommend that shipping in the volume be suspended. The time line is probably too short to admit feasible rescue plans for the civilizations at risk. Our long-range prediction (probably the least uncertain of all): The million-year-scale secular shrinkage will not be affected at all. The next hundred thousand years will however show a retardation in the shrinkage of the Slow Zone boundary in this portion of the galaxy.

  Finally, a philosophical note. We of Zonographic Eidolon watch the zone boundary and the orbits of border stars. For the most part, the zone changes are very slow: 700 meters per second in the case of the long-term secular shrinkage. Yet these changes together with orbital motion affect billions of lives each year. Just as the glaciers and droughts of a pretechnical world must affect a people, so must we accept these long-term changes. Storms and surges are obvious tragedies, near-instant death for some civilizations. Yet these are as far beyond our control as the slower movements. Over the last few weeks, some newsgroups have been full of tales of war and battle fleets, of billions dying in the clash of species. To all such—and those living more peaceably around them—we say: Look out on the universe. It does not care, and even with all our science there are some disasters that we can not avert. All evil and good is petty before Nature. Personally, we take comfort from this, that there is a universe to admire that can not be twisted to villainy or good, but which simply is.

  Crypto: 0

  Syntax: 43

  As received by: Ølvira shipboard ad hoc

  Language path: Arbwyth->Trade24->Cherguelen->Triskweline, SjK units

  From: Twirlip of the Mists [Who knows what this is, though probably not a propaganda voice. Very sparse priors.]

  Subject: The cause of the recent Great Surge

  Distribution:

  Threat of the Blight

  Great Secrets of Creation

  Zonometric Interest Group

  Date: 66.47 days since Fall of Sjandra Kei

  Key phrases: Zone Instability and the Blight, Hexapodia as the key insight

  Text of message:

  Apologies if I am repeating obvious conclusions. My o
nly gateway onto the Net is very expensive, and I miss many important postings. The Great Surge now in progress appears by all accounts to be an event of cosmic scope and rarity. Furthermore, the other posters put its epicenter less than 6,000 light-years from recent warfare related to the Blight. Can this be mere coincidence? As has long been theorized [citations from various sources, three known to Ølvira; the theories cited are of long standing and nondisprovable] the Zones themselves may be an artifact, perhaps created by something beyond Transcendance for the protection of lesser forms, or [hypothetical] sentient gas clouds in galactic cores.

  Now for the first time in Net history we have a Transcendent form, the Blight, that can effectively dominate the Beyond. Many on the Net [cites Hanse and Sandor at the Zoo] believe that it is searching for an artifact near the Bottom. Is it no wonder that this could upset the Natural Balance and provoke the recent Event?

  Please write to me and tell me what you think. I don’t get much mail.

  Crypto: 0

  Syntax: 43

  As received by: Ølvira shipboard ad hoc

  Language path: Baeloresk->Triskweline, SjK units

  From: Alliance for the Defense [Claimed union of five empires below Straumli Realm. No references prior to the Fall of the Straumli Realm. Numerous counter claims (including from Out of Band II ) that this Alliance is a front for the old Aprahant Hegemony. Cf, Butterfly Terror.]

  Subject: Courageous Mission Accomplished

  Distribution:

  Threat of the Blight

  War Trackers Interest Group

  Homo Sapiens Interest Group

  Date: 67.07 days since Fall of Sjandra Kei

  Key phrases: Action, not talk

  Text of message:

  Subsequent to our action against the human nest at [Sjandra Kei] a part of our fleet pursued human and other Blight-controlled forces toward the Bottom of the Beyond. Evidently, the Perversion hoped to protect these forces by putting them in an environment too dangerous to challenge. That thinking did not count on the courage of Alliance commanders and crews. We can now report the substantial destruction of those escaping forces.