by Vernor Vinge
Viki stared and stared, lost in the dream. Until now, it had all been a story at a distance. Little Victory read about it, heard her parents talk about it, heard it on the radio. She knew that as much as anything, it was the reason why so many people hated her family. That, and being oophase, were the reasons they weren’t supposed to go out alone. Dad might talk and talk about evolution in action and how important it was for small children to be allowed to take chances, how if that didn’t happen then genius could not develop in the survivors. The trouble was, he didn’t mean it. Every time Viki tried to take on something a little risky, Dad got all paternal and the project became a padded security blanket.
Viki realized she was chuckling low in her chest.
“What?” said Brent.
“Nothing. I was just thinking that today we are getting to see what things are really like—Daddy or no.”
Brent’s aspect shifted into embarrassment. Of all her brothers and sisters, he was the one who took rules the most literally and felt the worst about bending them. “I think we should leave now. There are workers on the surface, getting closer. Besides, how long does the snow last?”
Grumble. Viki backed out and followed her brother through the maze of wonderfully massive things that filled the construction yard. At the moment, even the prospect of snowdrifts was not an irresistible attraction.
The first real surprise of the day came when they finally reached an in-use express stop: Standing a little apart from the crowd were Jirlib and Gokna. No wonder she hadn’t been able to find them this morning. They had snuck off without her! Viki sidled across the plaza toward them, trying to look not the least perturbed. Gokna was grinning her usual one-upness. Jirlib had the grace to look embarrassed. Along with Brent he was the oldest, and should have had the sense to prevent this outing. The four of them drifted a few yards away from the stares and stuck their heads together.
Buzz, mumble. Miss One-Upness: “What took you so long? Had trouble sneaking past Downing’s Detainers?” Viki: “I didn’t think you would even dare try. We’ve done lots already this morning.” Miss One-Upness: “Like what?” Viki: “Like we checked out the New Underground.” Miss One-Upness: “Well—”
Jirlib: “Shut up the both of you. Neither of you should be out here.”
“But we’re radio celebrities, Jirlib.” Gokna preened. “People love us.”
Jirlib moved a little closer and lowered his voice. “Quit it. For every three who like ‘The Children’s Hour,’ there are three that it worries—and four more are trads who still hate your guts.”
The children’s radio hour had been more fun than anything Viki had ever done, but it hadn’t been the same since Honored Pedure. Now that their age was public, it was like they had to prove something. They had even found some other oophases—but so far none were right for the show. Viki and Gokna hadn’t gotten friendly with other cobblies, even the pair that had been their age. They were strange, unfriendly children—almost the stereotype of oophase. Daddy said it was their upbringing, the years in hiding. That was the scariest thing of all, something she only talked about with Gokna, and then only in whispers in the middle of the night. What if the Church was right? Maybe she and Gokna just imagined they had souls.
For a moment, the four of them stood silently, taking Jirlib’s point. Then Brent asked, “So why are you out here, Jirlib?” From anyone else it would have been a challenge, but verbal fighting was outside Brent’s scope. The question was simple curiosity, an honest request for enlightenment.
As such, it poked deeper than any gibe. “Um, yeah. I’m on my way downtown. The Royal Museum has an exhibit about the Distorts of Khelm…I’m not a problem. I look quite old enough to be in-phase.” That last was true. Jirlib wasn’t as big as Brent, but he already had the beginning of paternal fur showing through the slits of his jacket. But Viki wasn’t going to let him off that easily. She jabbed a hand in Gokna’s direction: “So what is this? Your pet tarant?”
Little Miss One-Upness smiled sweetly. Jirlib’s whole aspect was a glare. “You two are walking disaster areas, you know that?” Exactly how had Gokna fooled Jirlib into taking her along? The question sparked real professional interest in Viki. She and Gokna were by far the best manipulators in the whole family. That was why they got along so badly with each other.
“We at least have a valid academic reason for our trip,” said Gokna. “What’s your excuse?”
Viki waved her eating hands in her sister’s face. “We’re going to see the snow. That’s a learning experience.”
“Hah! You just want to roll in it.”
“Shut up.” Jirlib raised his head, took in the various bystanders back at the express stop. “We should all go home.”
Gokna shifted into persuasion mode: “But Jirlib, that would be worse. It’s a long walk back. Let’s take the bus to the museum—see, it’s coming right now.” The timing was perfect. An express had just turned onto the uphill thoroughfare. Its near-red lights marked it as part of the downtown loop. “By the time we get done there, the snow fanatics should be back in town and there’ll be an express running all the way back home.”
“Hey, I didn’t come down here to see some fake alien magic! I want to see the snow.”
Gokna shrugged. “Too bad, Viki. You can always stick your head in an icebox when we get home.”
“I—” Viki saw that Jirlib had reached the end of his patience, and she didn’t have any real counterargument. A word from him to Brent, and Viki would find herself carried willy-nilly back to the house. “—uh, what a fine day to go to the museum.”
Jirlib gave a sour smile. “Yeah, and when we arrive we’ll probably find Rhapsa and Little Hrunk already there, having sweet-talked security into driving them down direct.” That started Viki and Gokna laughing. The two littlest ones were more than babies now, but they still hung around Dad nearly all the day. The image of them outsmarting Mother’s security team was a bit much.
The four of them maneuvered back to the edge of the crowd, and were the last to board the express…Oh well. Four really was safer than two, and the Royal Museum was in a safe part of town. Even if Dad caught on, the children’s evident planning and caution would excuse them. And for all the rest of her life there would be the snow.
Public expresses were nothing like the cars and airplanes that Viki was used to. Here everyone was packed close. Rope netting—almost like babies’ gymnets—hung in sheets spaced every five feet down the length of the bus. Passengers spread arms and legs ignominiously through the webwork and hung vertically from the ropes. It made it possible to pack more people on board, but it felt pretty silly. Only the driver had a proper perch.
This bus wouldn’t have been crowded—except that the other passengers gave the children a wide berth. Well, they can all shrivel. I don’t care. She stopped watching the other passengers, and studied the cross streets streaming past.
With all the work going on underground, there were places where street repairs had been neglected. Every bump and pothole set the rope netting asway—kind of fun. Then things smoothed out. They were entering the poshest section of the new downtown. She recognized some of the insignias on the towers above them, corporations like Under Power and Regency Radionics. Some of the largest companies in the Accord wouldn’t even exist if it weren’t for her father. It made her proud to see all the people going in and out of those buildings. Dad was important in a good way to many people.
Brent swayed out from the rope netting, his head coming close to hers. “You know, I think we’re being followed.”
Jirlib heard the quiet words too, and stiffened on the ropes. “Huh? Where?”
“Those two Roadmasters. They were parked near the bus stop.”
For a second, Viki felt a little thrill of fear—and then relief. She laughed. “I bet we didn’t fool anyone this morning. Dad let us go, and Captain Downing’s people are following along the way they always like to do.”
Brent said, “These cars don’t look l
ike any of the usual ones.”
TWENTY-EIGHT
The Royal Museum was at the City Center express stop. Viki and her siblings were deposited on the very steps of the place.
For a moment Viki and Gokna were speechless, staring upward at the curving stone arch. They had done a show about this place, but they had never been here. The Royal Museum was only three stories tall, dwarfed by the buildings of modern times. But the smaller building was something more than all the skyscrapers. Except for fortifications, the museum was the oldest intact surface structure in Princeton. In fact, it had been the Royals’ principal museum for the last five cycles of the sun. There had been some rebuilding, and some extensions, but one of the traditions of the place was that it should remain true to King Longarms’s vision. The outside sloped in a curving arch, almost like an inverted section of aircraft wing. The wind-run arch was the invention of architects two generations before the scientific era. The ancient buildings at Lands Command were nothing compared with this; they had the protection of deep valley walls. For a moment, Viki tried to imagine what it must be like here in the days right after the sun came to life: the building hunkered low beneath winds blasting at near sound-speed, the sun blazing hell-bright in all the colors from ultra to farthest red. So why did King Longarms build right on the surface? To dare the Dark and the Sun, of course. To rise above the deep little hidey-holes and rule.
“Hey you two! Are you asleep, or what?” Jirlib’s voice jabbed at them. He and Brent were looking back from the entrance. The girls scrambled up the steps, and for once didn’t have any smart reply.
Jirlib continued on, mumbling to himself about daydreaming twits. Brent dropped behind the other three, but followed close.
They passed into the shade of the entryway, and the sounds of the city faded behind. A ceremonial guard of two King’s troopers perched silently in ambush niches on either side of the entrance. Up ahead was the real guardian—the ticket clerk. The ancient walls behind his stand were hung with announcements of the current exhibits. Jirlib was grumbling no more. He jittered around a twelve-color “artist’s conception” of a Distort of Khelm. And now Viki could see how such foolishness had made it into the Royal Museum. It wasn’t just the Distorts. This season’s museum theme was “Crank Science in All Its Aspects.” The posters advertised exhibits on deepness-witching, autocombustion, videomancy, and—ta-da!—the Distorts of Khelm. But Jirlib seemed oblivious of the company his hobby was keeping. It was enough for him that a museum finally honored it.
The current-theme exhibits were in the new wing. Here the ceilings were high, and mirrored pipes showered sunlight in misty cones upon the marble floors. The four of them were almost alone, and the place had an eerie quality of sound about it, not quite echoing, but magnifying. When they weren’t talking, even the tick of their feet seemed loud. It worked better than any “Quiet Please” signs. Viki was awed by all the incredible quackery. Daddy thought such things were amusing—“like religion but not so deadly.” Unfortunately, Jirlib had eyes only for his own quackery. Never mind that Gokna was engrossed by the autocombustion exhibit to the point of active scheming. Never mind that Viki wanted to see the glowing picture tubes in the videomancy hall. Jirlib was going straight to the Distorts exhibit, and he and Brent made sure their sisters stayed right with them.
Ah, well. In truth, Viki had always been intrigued by the Distorts. Jirlib had been stuck on them for as long as she could remember; here, finally, they would get to see the real thing.
The entrance to the hall was a floor-to-ceiling exhibit of diamond foraminifera. How many tons of fuel sludge had been sifted to find such perfect specimens? The different types were carefully labeled according to the best scientific theories, but the tiny crystal skeletons had been artfully positioned in their trays behind magnifying lenses: in the piped sunlight, the forams glittered in crystal constellations like jeweled tiaras and bracelets and backdrapes. It reduced Jirlib’s collection to insignificance. On a central table, a bank of microscopes gave the interested visitor a closer look. Viki stared through the lenses. She had seen this sort of thing often enough before, but these forams were undamaged and the variety was boggling. Most were six-way symmetric, yet there were many that had the little hooks and wands that the living creatures must have used to move around in their microscopic environment. Not a single diamond skeleton creature lived in the world anymore, and none had for more than fifty million years. But in some sedimentary rock, the diamond foram layer was hundreds of feet thick; out east, it was a cheaper fuel than coal. The largest of the critters was barely flea-sized, but there had been a time when they were the most common animal in the world. Then, about fifty million years ago—poof. All that was left was their skeletons. Uncle Hrunkner said that was something to think about when Daddy’s ideas went over the top.
“C’mon, c’mon.” Jirlib could spend hours at a time with his own foram collection. But today, he gave the ranked glitter of the King’s Own Exhibit barely thirty seconds; the signs on the far doors proclaimed the Distorts of Khelm. The four of them ticktoed to the darkened entrance, scarcely whispering to one another now. In the hall beyond, a single cone of piped sunlight shone down on the central tables. The walls were drowned in shadow, lit here and there by lamps of the extreme colors.
The four eased quietly into the room. Gokna gave a little squeak of surprise. There were figures in the dark…and they were taller than the average adult was long. They wavered on three spindly legs and their forelegs and arms rose almost like the branches of a Reaching Frondeur. It was everything Chundra Khelm had ever claimed for his Distorts—and in the dark, it promised more detail to anyone who would come closer.
Viki read the words that glowed beneath the figures, and smiled to herself. “Hot stuff, huh?” she said to her sister.
“Yeah—I never imagined—” Then she read the description, too. “Oh, more crapping fakes.”
“Not a fake,” said Jirlib, “an admitted reconstruction.” But she could hear the disappointment in his voice. They walked slowly down the darkened hall, peering at ambiguous glimmers. And for a few minutes, the shapes were a tantalizing mystery that floated just beyond their grasp. There were all fifty of the racial types that Khelm described. But these were crude models, probably from some masquerade supplier. Jirlib seemed to wilt as he walked from display to display, and read the writeup under each. The descriptions were expansive: “The elder races that preceded ours…the creatures who haunted the Arachnans of ancient times…Darkest deepnesses may still contain their spawn, waiting to take back their world.” This last sign was beside a reconstruction that looked a lot like a monster tarant, poised to bite off the viewer’s head. It was all tripe, and even Viki’s little brother and sister would have known it. Chundra Khelm admitted that his “lost site” was beneath foram strata. If the Distorts were anything, they had been extinct at least fifty million years—extinct millions of years before even the earliest proto-Arachnan ever lived.
“I think they’re just making fun of it, Jirl,” said Viki. For once she didn’t tease about it. She didn’t like it when outsiders mocked her family, even unknowingly.
Jirlib shrugged agreement. “Yeah, you’re right. The farther we walk, the funnier they get. Ha. Ha.” He stopped by the last display. “They even admit it! Here’s the last description: ‘If you have reached here, you understand how foolish are the claims of Chundra Khelm. But what are the Distorts then? Fakery from a conveniently misplaced digging site? Or some rare natural feature of metamorphic rock? You be the judge…’” His voice trailed off as his attention shifted to the brightly lit pile of rocks in the center of the room, hidden from earlier view by a partition.
Jirlib did a rolling hop, bounding to the bright-lit exhibit. He was practically jittering with excitement as he peered down into the pile. Each rock was separately displayed. Each rock was clearly visible in all the colors of the sunlight. They looked like nothing more than unpolished marble. Jirlib sighed, but in awe. “These a
re real Distorts, the best that anyone besides Chundra Khelm has ever found.”
If they had been polished, some of the rocks would have been kind of pretty. There were swirls that were more the color of elemental carbon than marble. If you used your imagination, they looked a little bit like regular shapes that had been stretched and twisted. They still didn’t look like anything that had ever been alive. On the far side of the pile was one rock that had been carefully sliced into tenth-inch sheets, so thin that the sunlight glowed right through. The stack of one hundred slices was mounted on a steel frame, with a gap between each slice. If you got really close and moved your head up and down, you had sort of a three-dimensional view of how the pattern was spread through the rock. There was a glittering swirl of diamond dust, almost like forams, but all smudged out. And around the diamond, a sort of webbery of dark-filled cracks. It was beautiful. Jirlib just stood there, his head pressed closed to the steel frame, tilting back and forth to see the light through all the slices. “This was alive once. I know it, I know it,” he said. “A million times bigger than any foram, but based on the same principles. If we could just see what it was like before it got all smeared apart.” It was the old, Khelmic refrain—but this thing was real. Even Gokna seemed to be entranced by it; it was going to be a little while before Viki got a closer look. She walked slowly around the central pile, looked at some of the microscopic views, read the rest of the explanations. Leave aside the laughs, the junk statues—this was supposed to be the best example of Distorts around. In a way, that should discourage poor Jirlib as much as anything. Even if these had once been living things, there was certainly no evidence of intelligence. If the Distorts were what Jirlib really wanted, their creations should have been awesome. So where were their machines, their cities?