Vernor Vinge - A Fire Upon the Deep

Sometimes he felt sorry for the guards and whitejackets. They were so stiff and grownup. Didn't they understand how much fun it was to have a friend that you walk right next to, that you could actually touch?

It was mostly night now. Daylight hovered for a few hours around noon. The twilight before and after was bright enough to dim the stars and aurora, but still too faint to show colors. Though Amdi had spent his life indoors, he understood the geometry of the situation, and liked to watch the change of light. Jefri didn't much like the dark of winter… until the first snow fell.

Amdi got his first set of jackets. And Mr. Steel had special clothes made for the human boy, big puffy things that covered his whole body and kept him warmer than a good pelt would have done.

On one side of the courtyard the snow was just six inches deep, but elsewhere it piled into drifts higher than Amdi's head. Torches were mounted in wind shields on the walls; their light glittered golden off the snow. Amdi knew about snow — but he'd never seen it before. He loved to splash it on one of his jackets. He would stare and stare, trying to see the snowflakes without his breath melting them. The hexagonal pattern was tantalizing, just at the limit of his vision.

But tag was no fun anymore; the human could run through drifts that left Amdi swimming in the white stuff. There were other things the human could do, wonderful things. He could make balls of snow and throw them. The guards were very upset by this, especially when Jefri plinked a few members. It was the first time he ever saw them get angry.

Amdi raced around the windswept side of the courtyard, dodging snowballs and keening frustration. Human hands were such wicked, wicked things. How he would love to have a pair — four pairs! He circled round from three sides and sprinted right at the human. Jefri backed quickly into deeper snow, but too late. Amdi hit him high and low, tipping the Two-Legs over into a snowdrift. There was a mock battle, slashing lips and paws against Jefri's hands and feet. But now Amdi was on top. The human got paid back for his snowballs with plenty of snow stuffed down the back of his jacket.

Sometimes they just sat and watched the sky for so long that rumps and paws went numb. Sitting behind the largest snow drift, they were shaded from the castle torches and had a clear view of the lights in the sky.

At first Amdi had been entranced by the aurora. Even some of his teachers were. They said this part of the world was one of the best places to see the sky glow. Sometimes it was so faint that the torchlight glimmering off the snow was enough to blot it out. Other times it ran from horizon to horizon: green light trimmed with hints of pink, twisting as though ruffled by a slow wind.

He and Jefri could talk very easily now, though always in Jefri's language. The human couldn't make many of the sounds of interpack speech; even his pronunciation of Amdi's name was a scarcely recognizable. But Amdi understood Samnorsk pretty well; it was fun, their own secret language.

Jefri was not especially impressed by the aurora. "We have that lots at home. It's just light from — " He said a new word, and glanced at Amdi. It was funny how the human couldn't look in more than one place at time. His eyes and head were always moving. "— you know, places where people make things. I think the gas and waste leaks out, and then the sun lights it up or it gets — " unintelligible.

"Places where people make things?" In the sky? Amdi had a globe; he knew the size of the world and its orientation. If the aurora were reflecting sunlight, it must be hundreds of miles above the ground! Amdi leaned a back against Jefri's jacket and made a very human whistling sound. His knowledge of geography was not up to his geometry, but, "The packs don't work in the sky, Jefri. We don't even have flying boats."

"Uh, that's right, you don't… I don't know what that stuff is then. But I don't like it. It gets in the way of the stars." Amdi knew all about the stars; Jefri had told him. Somewhere out there were the friends of Jefri's parents.

Jefri was silent for several minutes. He wasn't looking at the sky anymore. Amdi wriggled a little closer, watching the shifting light in the sky. Behind them the wind-sharpened crest of the drift was edged with yellow light from the torches. Amdi could imagine what the other was thinking. "The commsets from the boat, they really aren't good enough to call for help?"

Jefri slapped the ground. "No! I told you. They're just radio. I think I can make them work, but what's the use? The ultrawave stuff is still on the boat and it's too big to move. I just don't understand why Mr. Steel won't let me go aboard… I'm eight years old, you know. I could figure it out. Mom had it all set up before, before…" His words guttered into the familiar, despairing silence.

Amdi rubbed a head against Jefri's shoulder. He had a theory about Mr. Steel's reluctance. It was an explanation he hadn't told Jefri before: "Maybe he's afraid you'll just fly away and leave us."

"That's stupid! I'd never leave you. Besides, that boat is real hard to fly. It was never meant to land on a world."

Jefri said the strangest things; sometimes Amdi was just misunderstanding — but sometimes they were literal truth. Did the humans really have ships that never came to ground? Where did they go then? Amdi could almost feel new scales of reference clicking together in his mind. Mr. Steel's geography globe represented not the world, but something very, very small in the true scheme of things.

"I know you wouldn't leave us. But you can see how Mr. Steel might be afraid. He can't even talk to you except through me. We have to show him that we can be trusted."

"I guess."

"If you and I could get the radios working, that might help. I know my teachers haven't figured them out. Mr. Steel has one, but I don't think he understands it either."

"Yeah. If we could get the other one to work…"

That afternoon the guards got a break: their two charges came in from the cold early. The guards didn't question their good fortune.

Steel's den had originally been the Master's. It was very different from the castle's meeting halls. Except for choirs, only a single pack would fit in any room. It was not exactly that the suite was small. There were five rooms, not counting the bath. But except for the library, none was more than fifteen feet across. The ceilings were low, less than five feet; there was no space for visitor balconies. Servants were always on call in the two hallways that shared a wall with the quarters. The dining room, bedroom, and bath had servant hatches, just big enough to give orders and to receive food and drink, or preening oils.

The main entrance was guarded on the outside by three trooper packs. Of course, the Master would never live in a den with only one exit. Steel had found eight secret hatches (three in the sleeping quarters). These could only be opened from within; they led to the maze that Flenser had built within the solid rock of the castle's walls. No one knew the extent of that maze, not even the Master. Steel had rearranged parts of it — in particular the passages leading from this den — in the years since Flenser's departure.

The quarters were nearly impregnable. Even if the castle fell, the rooms' larder was stocked for half a year; ventilation was provided by a network of channels almost as extensive as the Master's secret passages. All in all, Steel felt tolerably safe here. There was always the possibility that there were more than eight secret entrances, perhaps one that could be opened from the other side.

And of course choirs were out of the question, here or anywhere. The only extrapack sex that Steel indulged was with singletons — and that as part of his experiments; it was just too dangerous to mix one's self with others.