by Vernor Vinge
Alequere was still screeching, struggling to get out of Jirlib’s grasp. Birbop laughed at her. He was quite happy to be at the center of attention, doing something he normally would have gotten whacked for. Forty feet up. He was slowing. The foot- and handholds were scarce; he was beyond the main ventilator fixtures. A couple of times he almost lost the twine as it slipped from hand to hand. He gathered himself on an impossibly narrow ledge and leaped sidewise up the remaining three feet—and one of his hands snagged the window grille. An instant later, his body was silhouetted in the light.
With only two eyes, and those in front, babies almost had to turn around to see behind themselves. Now for the first time, Birbop looked down. His triumphant laughter choked as he saw just how far he had come, so far that even his baby instincts told him he was at risk. There were reasons parents didn’t let you climb as high as you wanted. Birbop’s arms and legs clamped reflexively to the grillework.
And they couldn’t persuade him that no one could come up to help him, and that he could get down by himself. Viki had never imagined that this would be a problem. On the occasions that Rhapsa or Little Hrunk had escaped to unholy heights, neither had any trouble getting back down.
Just when it seemed that Birbop was in a permanent state of paralysis, his sister stopped crying and began laughing at him. After that, it wasn’t hard to persuade him to thread the twine through the grillework and then use it as a kind of pulley to support his descent.
Most babies came on the idea themselves, sailing downward on play twine; maybe it went back to some animal memories. Birbop started down with five limbs wrapped securely around the descending strand and three others braking the ascending strand. But after he had descended a few feet and it became clear how smoothly the play twine worked, he was holding with just three arms—and then two. He bounced off the walls with his feet, flying downward like some pouncing tarant. Below him, Viki and the others hopped around in a vain effort to keep their makeshift net under him…and then he was down.
And they had a loop of play twine extending from the floor to the window grille and back. It glowed and twitched as it released stretch energy.
Gokna and Viki argued about which of them would do the next step. Viki won that one; she weighed under eighty pounds, the least of any of them. She pulled and swung on it while Brent and Gokna ripped the silk lining out of his jacket. The lining was dyed with red and ultra splotches. Better yet, it was constructed of folded layers; cutting it along the stitching gave them a banner that was light as smoke, but fifteen feet on a side. Surely someone would notice.
Gokna folded the lining down to a neat square and handed it to her. “The twine, you really think it’ll hold?”
“Sure.” Maybe. The stuff was slick and stretchy, like any good play twine—and what would happen when she stretched it all the way?
What Brent said comforted her more than any wishful thinking: “I think it will hold. I like to hang things in my designs. I took this from the mechanics lab.”
Viki took off her own jacket, grabbed the homemade flag in her eating hands, and started up. In her rear view, the others dwindled into an anxious little pattern around the “safety net.” Lot of good that would do if someone as big as her fell. She swayed out and in, bouncing step by step up the wall. Actually, it was easy. Even a full-grown adult wouldn’t have trouble climbing a vertical with two support ropes—as long as the ropes held. As much as she watched the twine and the wall, she watched the doorway down below. Funny how she hadn’t started worrying about interruptions until now. But success was so close. It would all be for nothing if one of the goons chose now to look in on them. Just a few more feet…
She slipped her forehands through the window grille, and hoisted herself close to the open air. There was no room to perch, and the grille bars were too close-set for even a baby to sneak through—but, ah, the view! They were at the top of one of the giant new buildings, at least thirty stories up. The sky had become a tumbling overcast, and the wind swept fiercely past the window. Her view downward was partly blocked by the shoulders of the building, but Princeton spread before her like some beautiful model. She had a straight view down one street, could see buses, automobiles, people. And if they looked in her direction…Viki unwrapped the jacket liner and poked it through the grille. The wind almost pulled it from her grasp. She caught hold more firmly, tearing the fabric with points of her hands. The stuff was so flimsy! Gently, carefully she pulled the ends back, tied them in four separate places. Now the wind spread the colored square out from the side of the building. The fabric snapped in the wind, sometimes rising to cover the window, sometimes falling against the stonework below her view.
One last look at freedom: Out where the land met the overcast, city hills disappeared in the murk. But Viki could see enough to orient herself. There was a hill, not quite so high as the others, but with a spiraling pattern of streets and buildings. Hill House! She could see all the way home!
Viki sailed down from the window, gleeful out of all proportion. They would win yet! She and the others pulled down the sparkling twine, hid it back in Brent’s jacket. They sat in the gathering dimness, wondering when their jailers would show up again, arguing about what to do when that happened. The afternoon got awfully dark and the rain started. Still, the sound of fabric snapping in the wind was a comfort.
Sometime after midnight, the storm tore the banner free and lost it in the darkness.
THIRTY
The Right of Petition to the Podmaster was a convenient tradition. It even had a basis in historical fact, though Tomas Nau was sure that centuries ago, in the middle of the Plague Times, the only petitions granted were matters of propaganda. In modern times, the manipulation of petitions had been Uncle Alan’s preferred way of maintaining popularity and undermining rival factions.
It was a clever tactic, as long as you avoided Alan’s mistake of allowing assassins as petitioners. In the twenty-four years since their arrival at OnOff, Tomas Nau had passed on about a dozen petitions. This one today was the first that had claimed “time is of the essence.”
Nau looked across the table at the five petitioners. Correction: representatives of Petitioners. They claimed one hundred backers, and on just 8Ksec notice. Nau smiled, waved them to their seats. “Pilot Manager Xin. You are senior, I believe. Please explain your Petition.”
“Yes, Podmaster.” Xin glanced at his girlfriend, Rita Liao. Both were Emergents from the home world, from families that had contributed Focused and Followers for more than three hundred years. Such were the backbone of the Emergent culture, and running them should have been easy. Alas, nothing was easy out here, twenty light-years from civilization. Xin was wordless for a second more. He stole a nervous glance at Kal Omo. Omo’s returning look was very cold, and Nau suddenly wished he’d taken time to be briefed by the podsergeant. With Brughel currently off-Watch, there would be no one to blame if he had to deny the Petition.
“As you know, Podmaster, many of us are working with the ground analysis. Many more have a general interest in the Spiders we watch—”
Nau gave him a gentle smile. “I know. You hang out at Benny’s and listen to the translations.”
“Yes, sir. Um. We very much like ‘The Children’s Hour,’ and some of the story translations. They help us with our analysis. And…” His eyes got a faraway look. “I don’t know. The Spiders have a whole world down there, even if they aren’t human. Compared to us, sometimes they seem more—” Real, Nau was sure he was going to say. “I mean, we’ve come to be fond of some of the Spider children.”
As planned. The live translations were heavily buffered now. They had never discovered precisely what caused the mindrot runaway—or even if it had been connected with the live show. Anne figured that the current risk was no more than that of their other operations. Nau reached to his right, gently touched Qiwi’s hand. She smiled back. The Spider children were important. This was something he might never have understood if not for Qiwi Lisolet. Qi
wi had been so good for so much. Watching her, talking to her, deceiving her—there was so much to learn. Real children would be an impossible drain on L1’s resources, but something had to substitute. Qiwi and her schemes and her dreams had shown him the way. “We’re all fond of the cobblies, Pilot Manager. Your petition has something to do with the kidnapping?”
“Yes, sir. It’s been seventy Ksec since the abduction. The ‘Accord’ Spiders are using their best comm and intelligence gear more intensely than ever before. It’s not doing them any good, but our zipheads are getting a lot from it. The Accord microwave links have been full of intercepted Kindred messages. Most of the Kindred encryption is algorithmic, not one-time pads. The Accord can’t break any of it, but the algorithms, are easy for us. For the last forty Ksec, we—I—have been using our translators and analysts. I think I know where the children are being held. Five analysts give near certainty that—”
“Five analysts, three translators, and part of the snoop array over on the Invisible Hand.” Reynolt’s voice was loud and implacable, overriding Xin’s. “In addition, Manager Xin has been using almost a third of the support hardware.”
Omo came on like a chorus, perhaps the first time Nau had ever seen Reynolt and Security in such concert: “And furthermore, it couldn’t happen unless the Pilot Manager and a few other privileged managers were using emergency resource codes.” Sergeant Omo’s glance flickered across the petitioners. They shrank before his gaze, the Emergents more fearfully than Qeng Ho. Abuse of the community’s resources. It was the primal sin. Nau smiled to himself. Brughel would have been still scarier, but Omo would do.
Nau raised his hand, and silence spread across the room. “I understand, Podsergeant. I want a report from you and Director Reynolt as to any lasting damage that might result from this…” He wouldn’t actually use the words. “…activity.” He was silent for a moment more, schooling his expression as if to hide the conflict of a just man trying to reconcile the desires of individuals with the long-term needs of the community. He felt Qiwi squeeze his hand. “Pilot Manager, you understand that we can’t reveal ourselves?”
Xin looked completely cowed. “Yes, Podmaster.”
“You of all people should know how thin we are stretched here. After the fighting, we were short on Focus and staff. After the rotting runaway of a few Watches back, we are even more lacking in Focus. We have no capital equipment, few weapons, and scarcely even an in-system transport capability. We might be able to intimidate a Spider faction or ally ourselves with one, but the risks would be enormous. Our surest course is the one we have pursued ever since the Diem Massacre: We must wait and lurk. We are just a few years short of this world’s Information Age. Eventually, we will establish human automation in the Spiders’ networks. Eventually they will have a civilization that can restore our ships, and one that we can safely manage. Till then…till then, we dare not take any direct action.”
Nau’s gaze took in each of the petitioners: Xin, Liao, Fong. Trinli sat a little apart, as if to show that he had tried to dissuade the others. Ezr Vinh was off-Watch, else he would surely be here. They were all troublemakers by Ritser Brughel’s measure. Every Watch, their tiny pod here at L1 drifted further and further from the norms of an Emergent community. Part of it was their desperate circumstances, part of it was Qeng Ho assimilation. Even in defeat, the Peddler attitudes were corrosive. Yes, by civilized standards, these people were troublemakers—but they were also the people who, along with Qiwi, made the mission possible.
For a moment no one spoke. Tears leaked silently from Rita Liao’s eyes. Hammerfest’s microscopic gravity wasn’t enough to tug them down her cheeks. Jau Xin’s head bowed in submission. “I understand, Podmaster. We withdraw the petition.”
Nau gave a gracious nod. There would be no punishment, and an important point had been made.
Then Qiwi patted his hand. She was grinning! “So why not make this a test for what we will do later? True, we can’t reveal ourselves, but look at what Jau has done. For the first time, we’re really using the Spiders’ own intelligence system. Their automation may be twenty years short of an Information Age, but they are pushing computers even harder than in Earth’s Dawn Age. Eventually, Anne’s translators will be inserting information back into their systems, why not start now? Each year we should do a little more meddling and a little more experimentation.”
Hope shone in Xin’s eyes, but his words were still in retreat. “But are they that far along? These creatures just launched their first satellite last year. They don’t have pervasive localizer nets—or any localizer nets at all. Except for that pitiful link from Princeton to Lands Command, they don’t even have a computer net. How can we get information back into their system?”
Yes, how?
But Qiwi was still smiling. It made her look so young, almost like the first years that he’d had her. “You said that the Accord has intercepted Kindred comm related to the kidnapping?”
“Sure. That’s how we know what’s going on. But Accord Intelligence can’t break the Kindred crypto.”
“Are they trying to break the intercepts?”
“Yes. They have several of their largest computers—big as houses—flailing away at both ends of the Princeton/Lands Command microwave link. It would take them millions of years to come on the right decryption key…Oh.” Xin’s eyes got even wider. “Can we do that without them twigging?”
Nau got the point at almost the same moment. He asked the air: “Background: How are they generating test keys?”
After a second, a voice replied, “A pseudo-random walk, modified by what their mathematicians know about the Kindred’s algorithms.”
Qiwi was reading something in her huds. “Apparently the Accord is experimenting with distributed computation across the link. That’s frivolous, since there are less than ten computers on their entire net. But we have a dozen snoopersats that pass across the lines of sight of their microwave link. It would be easy to mung up what’s going between their relays—that’s how we were going to do our first inserts, anyway. In this case, we’ll just make small changes when they are sending trial keys. It might be as few as a hundred bits, even counting the framing.”
Reynolt: “Okay. Even if they investigate later, it would be a plausible glitch. Do it for more than one key, and I say it’s too dangerous.”
“One key would be enough, if it’s for the right session.”
Qiwi looked at Nau. “Tomas, it could work. It’s low-risk, and we should be experimenting with active measures anyway. You know the Spiders are more and more interested in space activities. We may be forced to meddle a lot, fairly soon.” She patted his shoulder, cajoling more publicly than ever before. No matter how cheerful she seemed, Qiwi had her own emotional stake in this.
But she’s right. This could be the ideal first sending for Anne’s zipheads. Time to be grandly generous. Nau smiled back. “Very well, ladies and gentlemen. You have convinced me. Anne, arrange to reveal one key. I think Manager Xin can show you the critical session. Give this operation first transient priority for the next forty Ksec—and retroactively for the last forty.” So Xin and Liao and the others were officially off the hook.
They didn’t cheer, but Nau sensed enthusiasm and abject gratitude as the petitioners stood and floated out of the room.
Qiwi started to follow them, then turned quickly back and kissed Nau on the forehead. “Thanks, Tomas.” And then she was gone with the others.
He turned to the only remaining visitor, Kal Omo. “Keep an eye on them, Sergeant. I’m afraid things will be more complicated from now on.”
During the Great War, there had been times when Hrunkner Unnerby had gone without sleep for days at a time, under fire all the while. This single night was worse. God only knew how bad it was for the General and Sherkaner. Once the phone lines were in place, Unnerby spent most of his time in the joint command post, just down the hall from the Accord-secure room. He worked with the local cops and Underville’s comm
team, trying to track the rumors around town. The General had been in and out, the picture of composed intensity. But Unnerby could tell that his old boss was over the edge. She was managing too much, involving herself at low levels and high. Hell, she’d been gone now for three hours, off with one of the field teams.
Once, he went out to check on Underhill. Sherk was holed up in the signals lab, right below the top of the hill. Guilt lay like a blight on him, dimming the happy spirit of genius he used to bring to every problem. But the cobber was trying, substituting obsession for buoyant enthusiasm. He was pounding away with his computers, coopting everything he could. Whatever he was doing, it looked like nonsense to Unnerby.
“It’s math, not engineering, Hrunk.”
“Yeah, number theory.” This from the scruffy-looking postdoc whose lab this was. “We’re listening for…” He leaned forward, apparently lost in the mysteries of his own programming. “We’re trying to break the crypto intercepts.”
Apparently he was talking about the signal fragments that had been detected coming out of the Princeton area just after the abduction. Unnerby said, “But we don’t even know if that’s from the kidnappers.” And if I were the Kindred, I’d be using one-time code words, not some keyed encryption.
Jaybert what’s-his-name just shrugged and continued with his work. Sherkaner didn’t say anything either, but his aspect was desolate. This was the best he could do.
So Unnerby had fled back to the joint command post, where there was at least the illusion of progress.
Smith was back about an hour after sunrise. She looked through the negative reports quickly, a nervous edge to her movements. “I left Belga downtown with the local cops. Damnation, her comm isn’t much better than the locals’.”
Unnerby rubbed his eyes, trying vainly to put a polish there that only a good sleep could accomplish. “I fear Colonel Underville doesn’t really like all this fancy equipment.” In any other generation, Belga would have been fine. In this one—well, Belga Underville was not the only person having trouble with the grand new era.