Zones of Thought Trilogy

by Vernor Vinge

  Johanna leaned against a smooth rounding of rock. “Just pull over this one and we’re on the next terrace,” Pilgrim’s voice came in her ear. “Hurry, I hear shouting.” He leaned two of himself down, tilting his epaulets toward her hands. She grabbed them, and jumped. For a moment she and the pack teetered over a four-meter fall, and then she was lying on brownish, unburned moss. Pilgrim clustered around her, hiding her. She peeked out between his legs. The outermost walls of Steel’s castle were visible from here. Tinish archers stood boldly on the ramparts, taking advantage of the chaos among Woodcarver’s troops. In fact, the Queen’s force had not lost many packs in the air attack, but even the unwounded were milling around. The Queen’s soldiers were no cowards—Johanna knew that by now—but they had just been confronted by force beyond all defense.

  Overhead the smoke faded into blue. The battlefield ahead of her lay under clear sky. In the years before the High Lab, Johanna and her mother had often gone on nature trips over Bigby Marsh at Straum. With the sensors on their camper packs they’d had no trouble watching the skyggwings there: even if this flier’s automation was not specifically looking for a human on the ground, it should notice her. “Do you see anything?”

  The four adult heads angled back and forth in coordinated pairs. “No. The flier must be very far away or behind the smoke.”

  Nuts. Johanna came off her knees, trotted toward the castle walls. They must be watching there!

  “Woodcarver’s not going to like this.”

  Two of the Queen’s soldiers were already running toward them, attracted by their purposeful movement or the sight of Johanna. Pilgrim waved them back.

  Alone on an open field less than two hundred meters from the castle wall. Even with normal vision, how could they be overlooked? In fact, they were noticed: There was a soft hissing, and a meter-long arrow thunked into the turf on their left. Scarbutt grabbed her shoulder, pulling her to a crouch. The puppies shifted his shields into position: Pilgrim made a barricade of himself on the castle side and started back out of range. Back into the smoke.

  “No! Run parallel! I want to be seen.”

  “Okay, okay.” Soft sounds of death whispered down. Johanna kept one hand on his shoulder as they ran across the field. She felt Scarbutt falter. The arrow had caught him in the thick of his shoulder, centimeters from a tympanum. “I’m okay! Stay down, stay down.”

  The front line of Woodcarver’s force was rallying toward them now, a dozen packs racing across the terrace. Pilgrim bounced up and down, shouting with a voice that punched like physical force. Something about staying back, and danger from the sky. It didn’t stop their advance. “They want you away from the arrows.”

  And suddenly they noticed that the fire from the castle had stopped. Pilgrim scanned the sky, “It’s back! Coming from the east, maybe a kilometer out.”

  She looked in the direction he was pointing. It was a lumpy thing, probably space-based though it had no ultradrive spines. It bobbled and staggered. There was no sign of jets. Some kind of agrav? Nonhumans? The thoughts skittered through her mind, alongside the joy.

  Pale light flickered from a mast on its belly and dirt geysered around the troops who were racing to protect her. Again the stuttering thunder, only now the light was marching right across her friends toward her.

  Amdijefri was on the battlements. Steel hid his glares from the two. There simply was no help for it; Ravna had demanded Jefri be by the radio to guide the strike. The human was not completely stupid. It shouldn’t make any difference. An army looks like an army whether it is foe or friend. Very soon the army beyond these walls would cease to exist.

  “How did the first run go?” Ravna’s voice came clearly from the commset. But it wasn’t Jefri who answered: all eight of Amdiranifani was poking around the battlements, some of him sitting on the crenellations practicing stereo vision, others eyeing Steel and the radio. Telling him to stay back had no effect. Now Amdi answered the question with Jefri’s voice. “Okay. I counted fifteen pulses. Only ten hit anything. I bet I could shoot better than that.”

  “Damn it, that’s the best I can do with this [unknown words].” The voice was not Ravna’s. Steel heard the irritation in it. Everybody can find something to hate in these pups. The thought warmed him.

  “Please,” said Steel. “Fire again. Again.” He looked over the stonework. The air attack had taken out a band of enemy by the edge of the near terrace. It was spectacular destruction, like enormous cannon blows, or the separate landing of twenty starships. And all from a little craft that fluttered like a falling leaf. The enemy front line was dissolving in panic. Up and down the ramparts, his own troops danced about their stations. Things had been bleak since their cannon were knocked out; they needed something to cheer about. “The archers, Shreck! Shoot upon the survivors.” Then, continuing in Samnorsk: “The front ranks are still coming. They are—they are—”Damn, what’s the word for “confident”?“They will kill us without more help.”

  The human child looked at Steel in puzzlement. If he called that a lie, then… A moment later Ravna said. “I don’t know. They’re well back from your walls, at least all that I can see. I don’t want to butcher…” Rapid fire conversation with the human in the flier, perhaps not even in Samnorsk. The gunner did not sound pleased. “Pham will pull back a few kilometers,” she said. “We can come back instantly if your enemy advances.”

  “Ssssst!” Shreck’s Hightalk hiss was like a physical jab. Steel wheeled, glaring. How dare— But his lieutenant was wide-eyed, pointing toward the center of the battlefield. Of course Steel had had a pair of eyes on that direction, but he hadn’t been paying attention: The other Two-Legs!

  The mantis figure dropped behind an accompanying pack, mercifully before Amdijefri noticed. Thank the Pack of Packs that puppies are near-sighted. Steel swept forward, surrounding some of Amdi, shouting at the others to get off the parapet. Both of Tyrathect ran in close, physically grabbing for the disobedient wretches. “Get below!” Steel screamed in Tinish. For a second all was confusion, as his own mind sounds mixed with the puppies’. Amdi tumbled away from him, thoroughly distracted by the noise and the rough handling. And then in Samnorsk Steel said, “There are more cannons out there. Get below before you’re hurt!”

  Jefri started for the parapet. “But I don’t see—” And fortunately there was nothing special to see. Now. The other Two-Legs was still crouched behind one of Woodcarver’s packs. Shreck took the human child in paw and jaw. He and one of Tyrathect hustled the protesting children down the stairs. As they departed, Tyrathect was already embellishing on Steel’s story, reporting on the troops it could see from below the crest of the hill.

  “Blow up the lesser powder dump,” Steel hissed at the departing Shreck. That dump was near empty, but its destruction might persuade the spacers where words could not.

  After they were gone, Steel stood for an instant, silent and shivering. He had never seen disaster so narrowly avoided. Along the ramparts, his archers were showering arrows upon the enemy pack and the Two-Legs. Damn. They were almost out of range.

  In the castle yard, Shreck detonated the lesser dump. The explosion was a satisfying one, much louder than an artillery hit. One of the inner towers was blown apart. Flying rock showered the yard, the smallest pieces reaching all the way to where Steel stood on the ramparts.

  Ravna’s voice was shouting in swift Samnorsk, too fast for Steel to understand. Now all the planning, all the hopes, all balanced on a knife edge. He must bet everything: Steel leaned a shoulder close to the comm and said, “Sorry. Things go fast here. Many more Woodcarver come up under smoke. Can you kill all on hillside?” Could the mantises see through smoke? That was part of the gamble.

  The gunner’s voice came back, “I can try. Watch this.”

  A third voice, thready and narrow even by human standards: “It will be fifty seconds more, Sir Steel. We’re having trouble turning.”

  Good. Concentrate on your flying and your killing. Don’t
look at your victims too carefully. The archers had driven the human back, part way under the cover of smoke. Other packs were rushing out to protect her. By the time the Visitors circled back, there would be lots of targets, the human lost among them.

  Two of him caught sight of the spacer floating down through the haze. The Visitors would have no clear view of what they were shooting at. Pale light flickered from beneath the craft. A scythe swept across the hillside toward Woodcarver’s troops.

  Pham was bounced around his perch as Blueshell turned the boat back to the target. They weren’t moving fast; the airstream couldn’t have been more than thirty meters per second. But every second was full of the damnedest jerks and tumbles. At one point Pham’s grip on the gun mount was all that kept him indoors. Forty some hours from now the deadliest thing in the universe is going to arrive, and I’m taking potshots at dogs.

  How to take out the hillside? Steel’s whiney voice still echoed in his ears. And Ravna wasn’t sure what OOB was seeing beneath all the smoke. We might do better without automation than with this bastard mix. At least his beamer had a manual control. Pham embraced the barrel with one arm while he reached with the other. At wide dispersion the beam was useless against armor, but could burst eyes and set skin and hair afire—and the beam width would be dozens of meters across at ground level.

  “Fifteen seconds, Sir Pham,” Blueshell’s voice came in his ear.

  They were low this time. Gaps in the smoke flickered past like stop-action art. Most of the ground was burned-over black, but there were precipices of naked rock and even sooty patches of snow trapped in crannies and shadowed pits… Here and there was a pile of doggy bodies, an occasional gun tube.

  “There’s a crowd of them ahead, Sir Pham. Running near the castle.”

  Pham leaned down and looked forward. The mob was about four hundred meters ahead. They were running parallel to the castle walls, through a field that was a spinehide of arrowshafts. He pressed the firing stud, swept the beam out from below the boat. There was plenty of water under that dried cover; it exploded in steam as the beam passed over it… But further out, the wide dispersion wasn’t doing much. It would be another few seconds before he’d have a good shot at the hapless packs.

  Time for the little suspicions. So how come the enemy had muzzle-loading cannon? Those they must have made themselves—in a world with no evidence of firearms. Steel was the classic medieval manipulator; Pham had spotted the type from a thousand light-years out. They were doing the critter’s dirty work, that was obvious. Shut up. Deal with Steel later.

  Slanting in on the packs, Pham fired again, sweeping through living flesh this time. He fired ahead of them and on the castle side; maybe they wouldn’t all die. He stuck his head further into the slipstream, trying for a better view. Ahead of the packs was a hundred meters of open field, a single pack of four and—a human figure, black-haired and slim, jumping and waving.

  Pham smashed the barrel up against the hull, safing it at the same time. The back flash was a surge of heat that crisped his eyebrows. “Blueshell! Get us down! Get us down!”

  THIRTY-NINE

  “A bad understanding. She was lied to.”

  Ravna tried to read something behind the voice. Steel’s Samnorsk was as creaky as ever, the tones childish and whiney. He sounded no different than before. But his story was stretched very thin by what had just happened. He was either a galaxy master of impudence—or his story was actually true.

  “The human must have been hurt, then lied to by Woodcarver. This explain a lot, Ravna. Without her, Woodcarver could not attack. Without her, all may be safe.”

  Pham’s voice came to Ravna on a private channel. “The girl was unconscious during part of the ambush, Rav. But she practically scratched my eyes out when I suggested she might be wrong about Steel and Woodcarver. And the pack with her is a lot more convincing than Steel.”

  Ravna looked questioningly across the deck at Greenstalk. Pham didn’t know she was here. Tough. Greenstalk was an island of sanity amidst the madness—and she knew the OOB infinitely better than Ravna.

  Steel spoke into her hesitation: “See now, nothing has changed, except for the better. One more human lives. How can you doubt us? Speak to Jefri; he understands. We have done the best for the children in…” a gobbling noise, and (another?) voice said, “coldsleep.”

  “Certainly, we must speak to him again, Steel. He’s our best proof of your good intentions.”

  “Okay. In a few minutes, Ravna. But see, he is also my good protection against treachery from you. I know how powerful you Visitors are. I … fear you. We need to—” gobbling consultation “—accomodate each other in our fears.”

  “Um. We’ll work something out. Just let us speak to Jefri now.”

  “Yes.”

  Ravna switched channels. “What do you think, Pham?”

  “There’s no question in my mind. This Johanna is not a naive kid like Jefri. We’ve always known Steel was a tough critter. We just had some other facts wrong. The landing site is in the middle of his territory. He’s the killer.” Pham’s voice became quieter, almost a whisper. “Hell of it is, this may not change anything. Steel does have the ship. I’ve got to get in there.”

  “It will be another ambush.”

  “…I know. But does it matter? If we can get me time with the Countermeasure, it could be—it will be—worth it.” What matter a suicide mission within a suicide mission?

  “I’m not sure, Pham. If we give him everything, he’ll kill us before we ever get near the ship.”

  “He’ll try. Look, just keep him talking. Maybe we can get a directional on his radio, blow the bastard away.” He did not sound optimistic.

  Tyrathect didn’t take them back to the ship, or to their rooms. They descended stairs within the outer walls, part of Amdi first, then Jefri with the rest of Amdi, then the singleton from Tyrathect.

  Amdi was still complaining. “I don’t understand, I don’t understand. We can help.”

  Jefri: “I didn’t see any enemy cannons.”

  The singleton was full of explanations, though it sounded even more preoccupied than usual. “I saw them from one of my other members, out in the valley. We’re pulling in all our soldiers. We must make a stand, or none of us will be alive to be rescued. For now, this is the best place for you to be.”

  “How do you know?” said Jefri. “Can you talk to Steel right now?”

  “Yes, one of me is still up there with him.”

  “Well, tell him we have to help. We can talk better Samnorsk even than you.”

  “I’ll tell him right now,” was the Cloak’s quick reply.

  There were no more window slots cut in the walls. The only light came from wick torches set every ten meters along the tunnel. The air was cool and musty; wetness glistened on unquilted stone. The tiny doors were not of polished wood. Instead there were bars, and darkness beyond. Where are we going? Jefri was suddenly reminded of the dungeons in stories, the treachery that befell the Greater Two and the Countess of the Lake. Amdi didn’t seem to feel it. For all his mischievous nature, Puppies was basically trusting; he had always depended on Mr. Steel. But Jefri’s parents had never acted quite like this, even during the escape from High Lab. Mr. Steel suddenly seemed so different, as if he couldn’t be bothered pretending to be nice anymore. And Jefri had never really trusted the sullen Tyrathect; now that one was acting downright sneaky.

  There had been no new threat on the hillside.

  Fear and stubbornness and suspicion all came together: Jefri spun around, confronting the Cloak. “We’re not going any farther. This isn’t where we’re supposed to go. We want to talk to Ravna and Mr. Steel.” A sudden, liberating realization: “And you’re not big enough to stop us!”

  The singleton backed up abruptly, then sat down. It lowered its head, blinked. “So you don’t trust me? You are right not to. There is no one here but yourselves that you can trust.” Its gaze drifted from Jefri to the ranks of Amdi, and then
down the hall. “Steel doesn’t know I’ve brought you here.”

  The confession was so quick, so easily made. Jefri swallowed hard. “You brought us down here to k-kill us.” All of Amdi was staring at him and Tyrathect, every eye wide with shock.

  The singleton bobbed its head in part of a smile. “You think I am traitor? After all this time, some healthy suspicion. I am proud of you.” Mr. Tyrathect continued smoothly, “You are surrounded by traitors, Amdijefri. But I am not one of them. I am here to help you.”

  “I know that.” Amdi reached forward to touch a muzzle to the singleton’s. “You’re no traitor. You’re the only person besides Jefri that I can touch. We’ve always wanted to like you, but—”

  “Ah, but you should be suspicious. You will all die if you aren’t.” Tyrathect looked over the puppies, at the frowning Jefri. “Your sister is alive, Jefri. She’s out there now, and Steel has known all along. He killed your parents; he did almost everything he said Woodcarver did.” Amdi backed away, shaking himself in frightened negations. “You don’t believe me? That’s funny. Once upon a time I was such a good liar; I could talk the fish right into my mouths. But now, when only the truth will work, I can’t convince you… Listen:”

  Suddenly it was Steel’s human-speaking voice that came from the the singleton, Steel talking with Ravna about Johanna being alive, excusing the attack he had just ordered on her.