Vernor Vinge - A Fire Upon the Deep

"I-I will try the radio." The words were spoken almost before he thought them. Weak, silly frill.

"What?" said Steel.

But the words had been clear, and Steel had heard. The Flenser Fragment smiled dryly. "I want to see what this radio can do. Let me try it, dear Steel."

They took the radios out into the yard, on the side of the starship that was hidden from general view. Here it would just be Amdijefri, Steel, and whoever I am at the moment. The Flenser Fragment laughed at the upwelling fear. Discipline, she had thought! Perhaps that was best. He stood in the middle of the yard and let the human help him with the radio gear. Strange to see another intelligent being so close, and towering over him.

Jefri's incredibly articulate paws arranged the jackets loosely on his backs. The inside material was soft, deadening. And unlike normal clothing, the radios covered the wearer's tympana. The boy tried to explain what he was doing. "See? This thing," he pulled at the corner of the greatcloak, "goes over your head. The inside has [something] that makes sound into radio."

The Fragment shrugged away as the boy tried to pull the cover forward. "No. I can't think." Only by standing just so, all members facing inward, could the Fragment maintain full consciousness. Already the weaker parts of him were edging toward isolation panic. The conscience that was Tyrathect would learn something today.

"Oh. I'm sorry." Jefri turned and spoke to Amdi, something about using the old design.

Amdi was heads-together, just thirty feet away. He had been all frowns, sullen at being denied, nervous to be apart from the Two-Legs. But as the preparations continued, the frowns eased. The puppies' eyes grew wide with happy fascination. The Fragment felt a wave of affection for the puppies that came and went almost too fast to be noticed.

Now Amdi edged nearer, taking advantage of the fact that the cloaks muffled much of the Fragment's thought sounds. "Jefri says maybe we shouldn't have tried to make the mind-size radio," he said. "But this will be so much better. I know it! And," he said with transparent slyness, "you could still let me test it instead."

"No, Amdi. This is the way it must be." Steel's voice was all soft sympathy. Only the Flenser Fragment could see the broad grin on a couple of the lord's members.

"Well, okay." The puppies crept a little nearer. "Don't be afraid, Lord Tyrathect. We've had the radios in sunlight for some time. They should have lots of power. To make them work you just pull all the belts tight, even the ones at your neck."

"All of them at once?"

Amdi fidgeted. "That's probably best. Otherwise, there will be such a mismatch of speeds that — " He said something to the Two Legs.

Jefri leaned close. "This belt goes here, and this here." He pointed to the braid-bone straps that drew the head covering close. "Then just pull this with your mouth."

"The harder you pull, the louder the radio," Amdi added.

"Okay." The Fragment drew himself together. He shrugged the jackets into place, tightening the shoulder and gut belts. Deadly muffling. The jackets almost seemed to mold themselves to his tympana. He looked at himself, and grasped desperately for what was left of consciousness. The jackets were beautiful, magic darkness yet with a hint of the golden-silver of a Flenserist Lord. Beautiful instruments of torture. Even Steel had not imagined such twisted revenge. Had he?

The Fragment grabbed the head straps and pulled.

Twenty years ago, when Tyrathect was new, she had loved to hike with her fission parent on the grassy dunes along Lake Kitcherri. That was before their great falling out, before loneliness drove Tyrathect to the Republic's Capital and her search for "meaning". Not all of the shore of Lake Kitcherri was beaches and dunes. Farther south there was the Rockness, where streams cut through stone to the water. Sometimes, especially when she and her parent had fought, Tyrathect would walk up from the shore along streams bordered by sheer, smooth cliffs. It was a sort of punishment: there were places where the stone had a glassy haze and didn't absorb sound at all. Everything was echoed, right up to the top of thought. It was if she were surrounded by copies of herself, and copies beyond them, all thinking the same sounds but out of step.

Of course echoes are often a problem with unquilted stone walls, especially if the size and geometry are wrong. But these cliffs were perfect reflectors, a quarrier's nightmare. And there were places where the shape of the Rockness conspired with the sounds… When Tyrathect walked there, she couldn't tell her own thoughts from the echoes. Everything was garbled with barely offset resonance. At first it had been a great pain that sent her running. But she forced herself back again and again, and finally learned to think even in the worst of the narrows.

Amdijefri's radio was just a little like the Kitcherri cliffs. Enough to save me, maybe. Tyrathect came to consciousness all piled in a heap. At most seconds had passed since she brought the radios to life; Amdi and Steel were simply staring at her. The human was rocking one of her bodies, talking to her. Tyrathect licked the boy's paw, then stood partly up. She heard only her own thoughts… but they had some of the jarring difference of the stone echoes.

She was back on her bellies again. Part of her was vomiting in the dirt. The world shimmered, out of tune. Thought is there. Grab it! Grab it! All a matter of coordination, of timing. She remembered Amdijefri talking about how fast the radio was. In a way, this was the reverse of the problem of the screaming cliffs.

She shook her heads, mastering the weirdness. "Give me a moment," she said, and her voice was almost calm. She looked around. Slowly. If she concentrated and didn't move fast, she could think. Suddenly she was aware of the greatcloaks, pressing in on all her tympana. She should have been deafened, isolated. Yet her thoughts were no muzzier than after a bad sleep.

She got to her feet again and walked slowly around the open space between Amdi and Steel. "Can you hear me?" she asked.

"Yes," said Steel. He edged nervously away from her.

Of course. The cloaks muffled sound like any heavy quilt: anything in the range of thought would be totally absorbed. But interpack speech and Samnorsk were low-pitched sound — they would scarcely be affected. She stopped, holding all her breath. She could hear birds and the sounds of timber being sawn somewhere on the far side of the inner yard. Yet Steel was only thirty feet from her. His thought noise should have been a loud intrusion, even confusing. She strained to hear… There was nothing but her own thoughts and a stickety buzzing noise that seemed to come from all directions.

"And we thought this would just give us control in battle," she said, wonderingly. All of her turned and walked toward Amdi. He was twenty feet away, ten feet. Still no thought noise. Amdi's eyes were wide. The puppies held their ground; in fact all eight of him seemed to lean toward her. "You knew about this all along, didn't you?" Tyrathect said.

"I hoped. Oh, I hoped." He stepped closer. Five feet. The eight of him looked at the five of her from a distance of inches. He extended a nose, brushing muzzles with Tyrathect. His thought sounds came only faintly through the cloak, no louder than if he were fifty feet away. For a moment they looked at each other in stark astonishment. Nose to nose, and they both could still think! Amdi gave a whoop of glee and bounded in among Tyrathect, rubbing back and forth across her legs. "See, Jefri," he shouted in Samnorsk. "It works. It works!"

Tyrathect wobbled under the assault, almost lost hold of her thoughts. What had just happened… In all the history of the world there had never been such a thing. If thinking packs could work paw by jowl… There were consequences and consequences, and she got dizzy all over again.