by Vernor Vinge
Ravna walked between rows of headstones set in a field of spongy moss. At the memorial, she’d noticed a few new stones, not just those for Edvi and the Norasndots. There’d been flowers on the graves of Belle Ornrikak and Dumpster Peli. The Children, at least some of those who remained with the Domain, were turning to older forms of remembrance. It was something they argued about among themselves.
Today—tonight—she had one particular person she wished to remember. Pham’s rock, the huge irregularly shaped boulder that crowned the promontory, was at the far end of the field. She could sit on the north side for a time, leaning against the sun-warmed rock.
She came around the rock—and was confronted by eight Tinish heads looking back at her.
“Ah! Hello, Amdi.”
“Hei, Ravna! What a coincidence.”
The pack occupied almost every flattish niche on the north side of the rock. Amdi had regained most of his weight, and nowadays he wore rakish eyepatches on two of his heads. He didn’t really seem surprised to see her. Of course, he probably had heard her coming from forty meters away.
Amdi shifted aside to make room for her on a human-butt-sized flat space.
As Ravna sat down, he said, “You up here to talk to Pham?” There was no sarcasm in his question.
Ravna nodded. I was. She looked down at Amdi’s nearest heads. He was already snuggling close. “What are you doing here, Amdi?”
“Oh, I come up here a lot now. You know, to sit and think.” Amdi was into solitary contemplation? Could he be that changed?
He settled a head in her lap and looked up at her. “Really! Well, today I had another reason. I was waiting for someone.”
She brushed her hand across the plush fur. “Am I that predictable?” So not a coincidence at all.
Amdi shrugged. “You’re somebody to depend on.”
“And why were you waiting for me?”
“Well,” he said mischievously, “I didn’t say you were the person I was waiting for.” But he didn’t deny it.
They sat there for a time, warming in the sun, watching its glare reflected off the chop in the straits. There really was peace here, even if it didn’t feel quite the same with Amdi above, below, and beside her. Amdi reached another head up to her. Petting it, she could feel a deep scar under the fur. It ran from the throat to just short of a fore-tympanum. So, more of Vendacious’ work. “Don’t worry,” said Amdi. “It’s all healed, good as new.”
“Okay.” But not his two eyes; those could not be fixed as easily as his other wounds or Ravna’s broken face.
Just now there wasn’t a single boat visible, and the country further north was lost in the glare. Ravna and Amdi might be the only human and pack in the world.
Correction. One of the kids’ gliders had drifted into view from the south. It had caught some marvelous air current and climbed halfway up the sky, angling around the curve of Starship Hill. As it turned to loop back it seemed to hang, motionless, in the sky.
Amdi poked a snout in the direction of the aircraft: “You know, that’s another reason why we need radio cloaks. A single pack member is way smaller than a human. It could fly fine, with all the rest on the ground—or on other gliders!”
Contemplative mood broken, Ravna grinned. “I remember my promise, Amdi; you’ll get your own radio cloaks. Scrupilo is working on that second set, but you know the problems. Vendacious did some very brutal things to create a pack that could use the cloaks.”
“But Flenser used the cloaks straight away,” said Amdi. That had been eleven years ago, at the Battle on Starship Hill. Ever since Amdi had been puppies—even before Ravna had met him—he had been wild about radio cloaks. She remembered his endless whining to be allowed to wear radio. Today he was more mellow: “We’ll figure it out. Just you wait, Ravna. Radio cloaks will make us packs be like gods!”
“Hmm.” Amdi’s problem was his limited experience with real gods.
Amdi was chortling to himself. “And if we don’t do it, Tycoon will. You know, Mr. Radio is now his closest advisor—not counting Johanna.”
“Hei, Johanna is on our side.”
“‘Advisor,’ ‘friend,’ whatever. My point is, it’s Radio who is his closest Tinish advisor. He’s even more enthusiastic about cloaks than I am. He thinks that with clever broodkenning a tensome—maybe even a twelvesome—could have coherent intelligence.”
Twelve. Like Tycoon’s pack-of-packs logo. “Down Here there are other limits on mind, Amdi. You’re not going to get much above the most brilliant human genius, except in the Transcend.”
“Yes, okay, right. But the way radio packs can use their smarts will be amazing. Mr. Radio is already pretty smart. He’s back to eight. You know he found a replacement for Ut?”
This question was delivered with shy, almost embarrassed, sidewise looks.
“Ritl?” said Ravna. “She’s able to use Ut’s cloak?”
Amdi gave a nod. He was smiling in a wobbly way.
“Well, good! I mean, I know she caused you problems, Amdi. But the critter was desperate. She didn’t mean to do you harm.”
“Oh, she meant to do me harm all right! She tried to break me up. I was terrified of her. But yes, she was in a desperate situation. Part of me misses her, but all of me is relieved she’s gone. You know, she’s turned out to be the keystone member of Mr. Radio. She makes him smarter and a lot more articulate. I talk to Mr. Radio when he reaches up here. Now that Ritl is not on the make … well, Mr. Radio is really a nice fellow. The story of Ritl and Radio would make a nice Tinish romance novel … if I were into writing romance fiction, I mean. Which of course I’m not.”
Ravna looked around at him. Maybe he really had come up here to make peace with himself. “What about your own problems, Amdi?”
“I’ve … made progress. Being all puppies made me too human. I don’t know how you two-legs can deal with death. The version that packs suffer is bad enough.” Amdi was silent for a moment, mostly looking down. “Ritl made me see that I can’t stay me forever.” He look back up at her. “I learned from Vendacious, too. I learned that death can be the least of your problems. Fooling him wasn’t that hard, but after he started poking out my eyes … finding the courage to continue with my scheme, that was harder than anything I had ever imagined.”
He spoke the words softly, solemnly. Ravna noticed that every one of him was looking at her. It was as though a curtain had been drawn aside. Amdi had been to hell and back. That could happen to anyone with enough bad luck and then enough good luck—but Amdi had engineered his return. During his terrible time with Vendacious, the child in him had become something deep and quiet and strong.
Ravna nodded and gave him a pat. “So what’s next for you, Amdiranifani?”
Amdi looked away, and she sensed that his moment of stark openness had passed. He squirmed around for a moment, then said, “You and me and Jef had some good times, didn’t we?”
Okay, Amdi, and she replied in a like tone: “You mean when we weren’t running for our lives, and when Jefri and I weren’t playing at being enemies?”
“Yes. I would never be your enemy, and Jefri … well, you know Jefri loves you, don’t you?”
“You both loved me when you were little, Amdi.”
“I mean now, Ravna.”
That was what I was afraid you meant. Now it was her turn to look down at the ground, embarrassed. “Oh, Amdi, I—”
Amdi tightened up all around her. The one of him closest to her face tapped her cheek gently. “Shh,” Amdi’s voice whispered. “I hear someone coming.”
Of course Ravna heard no such thing. No one was visible on the hillside below them. Even the glider had flown out of sight, leaving the sky to the birds and the low sun. She gave Amdi an acknowledging pat and leaned back against the rock.
Yes, there was someone coming up the south path, out of sight behind them. The squish-crunch of boots on moss sounded like a single human.
Ravna and Amdi sat silently for another thirty seco
nds. The footsteps came along the west side of Pham’s rock—but the visitor wasn’t headed here.
It was Jefri Olsndot; he took the path down to the two headstones that sat nearest the end of the promontory. He and Johanna had picked that place for their parents. As much as Pham Nuwen, Sjana and Arne Olsndot had fought the Blight. So Jefri, what do you believe and what do you deny?
Jefri knelt between the headstones. He put one hand on each, and stared out over the glittering sea. After a long moment, he shook himself, like a man waking or remembering an appointment. He stood and turned—and saw Amdi and Ravna watching him from Pham’s rock.
“Hei there, Jefri!” said Amdi. He waggled some noses in a tentative wave.
Jefri approached with measured tread. He stopped three meters from the rock and glared at both human and pack. “What is she doing here, Amdi?” His words were flat and angry.
“Just a coincidence?” The pack looked at Ravna for confirmation.
“That’s what you told me, Amdi.” She glanced at heads that were looking everywhere else. Just now, Amdi reminded her of a way-too-smart teenager. Well, literally, he was a way-too-smart teenager.
There was no good humor in Jefri’s reaction. He closed in on those of Amdi who were farthest from Ravna. “You suggested meeting here. You picked the time. I show up half an hour early, and I find you—and, and her—” a look in Ravna’s direction, “waiting for me.”
“I’m sorry, Jefri!” Amdi’s voice rose, childlike. “I just couldn’t stand the idea that you, I mean that we—” He dithered a second, then his voice took off on a new tangent. Now he sounded a little like the salesman he had learned to be in the circus. “We should talk about this. We really should.” The one on the ledge above Ravna moved aside, and the one that had been resting its head on Ravna’s lap climbed up to fill the gap. At the same time, another patted the space beside Ravna that had just been vacated. “Here, why don’t you sit down and we can all explain this to each other.”
This chatter lost some of its audio fidelity about at the word “explain,” when Jefri grabbed the one who had been patting the open space and shoved him against Ravna.
“Oops, sorry,” Amdi said in an aside to Ravna.
She had seen these two play this roughly, even since their return from the Tropics, but there was no playfulness in Jefri right now. He’d have been taking a chance with his life if he used this kind of force against a stranger pack as big and heavyset as Amdiranifani had become.
“Okay, we’ll have our talk.” Jefri sat down.
Now one of Amdi was sandwiched between him and Ravna. The rest of the pack surrounded them. Altogether, Amdi seemed a bit disconcerted. He looked back and forth at himself for a moment, then patted Jefri gingerly and crept in close to his old friend. When Jef didn’t respond, Amdi continued in his showman voice, the volume turned down to an intimate purr: “Okay, I confess. Though this was a coincidence, I gave it some help. I was pretty sure Ravna would come up here at low sun. If she hadn’t, I would have thought of something else to get us together. We three have been through so much, don’t you know? I didn’t want it to seem to Ravna that Jef and I were sneaking off—”
“What?” said Ravna.
“Amdi, I swear, you have no right—”
“You two are leaving, Jef? I thought, I thought you were staying with the Domain.”
Jefri didn’t look her in the eye. Maybe he was too busy glaring at first one of Amdi and then another. “We aren’t sneaking off. Amdi is just jerking you around.”
“I am not!”
Jefri finally looked at Ravna. “This may seem like another betrayal, but I’ve talked to Woodcarver and Flenser about it, ah, just this afternoon. You and Johanna would have learned soon enough, but I really didn’t want to argue about it with either of you.” And as an aside to Amdi he said, “How could you do this to me?”
“You’re going to Best Hope?” she said. Powers, how I hate that name.
Jef nodded. “But it’s not what you think. I’m not doing any good around here. No one really trusts me. You—”
“I trust you,” said Ravna. As long as you stayed, I could hope. “Why are you going, Jefri?”
Jef hesitated, then: “Okay. You remember when we were on the road, you suggested I look for testable evidence about the Blight. But what could I find, Down Here, ten years later? Now … I think I have a chance. Bili stole equipment from the Lander, equipment that idiot-me never recognized. I know Bili. By now, I even know Nevil. Watching them, watching what they do with this gear—one way or another, I’ll figure out what I have to do.”
“That’s—” insane. “That’s not reasonable, Jefri. After you saved my life, Nevil has less reason to trust you than almost anyone.”
“I’ve been working on that. Vendacious is gone. Chitiratifor and company are gone. No one on the other side knows what went on with you and me except Tycoon’s people. And Tycoon is perfectly happy to feed Nevil a story that will suit me.”
“Huh?”
“I had Amdi work out all the details the last time Mr. Radio was up here.”
Amdi shrank down a fraction. Now he had Ravna glaring at him. “It’ll be okay, Ravna,” he said.
Jefri nodded, deeply into his crazy spy plan. “Nevil won’t trust us, but we’ll be good propaganda for his cause—I-I’ll speak out in his favor. He’ll want to keep us around. And we’ve got a snoop-proof way to report. Amdi has a set of Scrupilo’s new prototype radio cloaks; he’s been practicing with them. Amdi will be Woodcarver’s ambassador to the Deniers.”
Ha! She glanced around at Amdi. “What do you really think of Jefri’s plan?”
Amdi’s gaze—all his gaze—was steady. “I think it’s the best we can do, and it’s our plan,” he said.
“Oh.” She wasn’t going to be able to stop this. She sat back, remembering their endless, futile arguments. Her suggestion had turned into an incredibly dangerous long shot or—her gaze snapped up to Jef’s face as she remembered the promises he’d made about Nevil and the Disaster Study Group. “Oh, Jefri—”
Jefri shook his head. “You see why there was no point in this meeting?”
Amdi was watching them from all sides. The one between Ravna and Jefri had its snout stuck up toward them, its gaze twitching back and forth. Now it wriggled free and hopped to the ground. The ones behind Ravna were nudging her like a gentle hand, toward Jefri. One of those above gave Jef a sharp tap on the head. “Say what you never say!” demanded Amdi, his voice adult and imperative. And then suddenly, the pack was scarce.
Jef gave his head an angry shake; he looked as surprised as Ravna felt. He was silent for almost ten seconds, his eyes averted. Finally he turned back to Ravna. When he spoke, his voice was stiff: “You still think I’m eight years old, don’t you?”
“Huh?”
“An incompetent little boy with deadly, false beliefs.”
“Jefri! I—”
He gave her a jagged smile. “Well, I’m not little anymore, and my beliefs are under review, but”—The smile went away, and his gaze was direct and angry.—“I was a terrible fool, and my shitheadedness almost got you killed.”
Ravna was too shocked to speak. She gave him a vague shake of her head.
Jefri rolled right on: “I watched you for seven tendays, up close, in terrible circumstances. I’ve learned things about you I never knew, things you don’t know either. See, whether you’re right or wrong about the Blight, you’re every bit the kind of princess you used to talk about … and compared to that, I am an incompetent child.”
Jefri paused and looked away. Somehow, Ravna didn’t think that he was waiting to hear her response—which was good, because she couldn’t think of a thing to say.
His gaze turned back upon her. “But you know, I am Sjana and Arne’s son. And as Tycoon endlessly reminded us, I am Johanna’s brother. There will come a time when you think more of me.”
And then Jefri ended their discussion in a new way. His arms swept around he
r, drawing her into a thorough and uncompromising kiss.
─────
Ravna remained on the rock after Jefri and Amdi departed. After all, she had come up here to consider the most important things: The next thousand years. And now, the last five minutes.
The sky gleamed too bright to see any star except the lowering sun. No matter. When Ravna was on Oobii’s bridge, she kept one special spot marked. Even here, even without her tiara, she could point toward that spot, just thirty lightyears out, the best estimate of the Blighter fleet’s location. So far, there had been only that one Zone temblor, back in year two. Pray I have Jefri and the Tines and the time to prepare. Down Here, we have the edge.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Vernor Vinge is the author of the Hugo Award-winning novels A Fire Upon the Deep, A Deepness in the Sky, and Rainbows End. His other novels include The Peace War and Marooned in Realtime. He also wrote the seminal short novel True Names. He has won two Hugo Awards for shorter works, and two Prometheus Awards for Best Libertarian Fiction. A mathematician and computer scientist noted as a visionary proponent of the Technological Singularity, he lives in San Diego, California.