Vernor Vinge - A Fire Upon the Deep

Wickwrackrum crept out of the forest, keeping close together and making as little noise as possible. He climbed carefully around the rocks, slipping from hummock to heather hummock, till he was just short of the valley crest and some fifty yards from Jaqueramaphan. He could hear the other thinking to himself. Any closer, and Scriber would hear him, even bunched up and quiet as he was.

"Ssst!" said Wickwrackrum.

The buzzing and muttering stopped in an instant of shocked surprise. Jaqueramaphan stuffed the mysterious seeing tool into a backpack and pulled himself together, thinking very quietly. They stared at each other for a moment, then Scriber made silly squirling gestures at his shoulder tympana. Listen up. "Can you talk like this?" His voice came very high-pitched, up where some people can't make voluntary conversation, where low-sound ears are deaf. Hightalk could be confusing, but it was very directional and faded quickly with distance; no one else would hear them. Peregrine nodded, "Hightalk is no problem." The trick was to use tones pure enough not to confuse.

"Take a look over the hill crest, friend pilgrim. There is something new under the sun."

Peregrine moved up another thirty yards, keeping a lookout in all directions. He could see the straits now, gleaming rough silver in the afternoon sunlight. Behind him, the north side of the valley was lost in shadow. He sent one member ahead, skittering between the hummocks to look down on the plain where the star had landed.

God's Choir, he thought to himself (but quietly). He brought up another member to get a parallax view. The thing looked like a huge adobe hut mounted on stilts… But this was the fallen star: the ground beneath it glowed dull red. Curtains of mist rose from the moist heather all around. The torn earth had been thrown in long lines that radiated from a spot beneath it.

He nodded at Jaqueramaphan. "Where is Tyrathect?"

Scriber shrugged. "A couple of miles back, I'll bet. I'm keeping an eye out for her… Do you see the others though, the troopers from Flenser's Castle?"

"No!" Peregrine looked west from the landing site. There. They were almost a mile away, in camouflage jackets, belly crawling across the hummocky terrain. He could see at least three troopers. They were big guys, six each. "How could they get here so fast?" He glanced at the sun. "It can't be more than half an hour since all this started."

"Their good luck." Jaqueramaphan returned to the crest and looked over. "I'll bet they were already on the mainland when the star came down. This is all Flenser territory; they must have patrols." He hunkered down so just two pairs of eyes would be visible to those below. "That's an ambush formation, you know."

"You don't seem very happy to see them. These are your friends, remember? The people you've come to see."

Scriber cocked his heads sarcastically. "Yeah, yeah. Don't rub it in. I think you've known from the beginning that I'm not all for Flenser."

"I guessed."

"Well, the game is over now. Whatever came down this afternoon is worth more to… uh, my friends than anything I could have learned on Hidden Island."

"What about Tyrathect?"

"Heh, heh. Our esteemed companion is more than genuine, I fear. I'd bet she's a Flenser Lord, not the low-rank Servant she seems at first glance. I expect that many of her kind are leaking back over the mountains these days, happy to get out of the Long Lakes Republic. Hide your behinds, fellow. If she spots us, those troopers will get us sure."

Peregrine moved deeper into the hollows and burrows that pocked the heather. He had an excellent view back along the valley. If Tyrathect were not already on the scene, he'd see her long before she would him.

"Peregrine?"

"Yes?"

"You're a pilgrim. You've traveled the world… since the beginning of time, you'd have us believe. How far do your memories really go back?"

Given the situation, Wickwrackrum was inclined to honesty. "Like you'd expect: a few hundred years. Then we're talking about legends, recollections of things that probably happened, but with the details all mixed and muddled."

"Well, I haven't traveled much, and I'm fairly new. But I do read. A lot. There's never been anything like this before. That is a made thing down there. It came from higher than I can measure. You've read Aramstriquesa or Astrologer Belelele? You know what this could be?"

Wickwrackrum didn't recognize the names. But he was a pilgrim. There were lands so far away that no one spoke any language he knew. In the Southseas he met folk who thought there was no world beyond their islands and who ran from his boats when he came ashore. Even more, one part of him had been an islander and had watched that coming ashore.

He stuck a head into the open and looked again at the fallen star, the visitor from farther than he had ever been… and he wondered where this pilgrimage might end.

— =*=

It took five hours for the ground to cool enough for Dad to slide the ladder-ramp to ground. He and Johanna climbed carefully down, hopped across the steaming earth to stand on relatively undamaged turf. It would be a long time before this ground cooled completely; the jet's exhaust was very "clean", scarcely interacting with normal matter — all of which meant that some very hot rock extended down thousands of meters beneath their boat.

Mom sat in the hatchway, watching the land beyond them. She had Dad's old pistol.

"Anything?" Dad shouted to her.

"No. And Jefri doesn't see anything through the windows."

Dad walked around the cargo shell, inspecting the misused docking pylons. Every ten meters they stopped and set up an sound projector. That had been Johanna's idea. Besides Dad's gun, they really had no weapons. The projectors were accidental cargo, stuff from the infirmary. With a little programming, they could put out wild screeching all up and down the audio spectrum. It might be enough to scare off the local animals. Johanna followed her father, her eyes on the landscape, her nervousness giving way to awe. It was so beautiful, so cool. They were standing on a broad field, high in hills. Westward the hills fell toward straits and islands. To the north the ground ended abruptly at the edge of a wide valley; she could see waterfalls on the other side. The ground felt spongy beneath her feet. Their landing field was puckered into thousands of little hillocks, like waves caught in a still picture. Snow lay in timid patches across the higher hills. Johanna squinted north, into the sun. North?

"What time is it, Daddy?"

Olsndot laughed, still looking at the underside of the cargo shell. "Local midnight."

Johanna had been brought up in the middle latitudes of Straum. Most of her school field trips had been to space, where odd sun geometries were no big deal. Somehow she had never thought of such things happening on the ground… I mean, seeing the sun right over the top of the world.

The first order of business was to get half the coldsleep boxes out into the open, and rearrange those left aboard. Mom figured that the temperature problems would just about disappear then, even for the boxes left on board: "Having separate power supplies and venting will be an advantage now. The kids will all be safe. Johanna, you check Jefri's work on the ones inside, okay?…"

The second order of business would be to start a tracking program on the Relay system, and to set up ultralight communication. Johanna was a little afraid of that step. What would they learn? They already knew the High Lab had gone wicked and the disaster Mom predicted had begun.

How much of Straumli Realm was dead now? Everyone at the High Lab had thought they were doing so much good, and now… Don't think about it. Maybe the Relayers could help. Somewhere there must be people who could use what her folks had taken from the Lab.