Vernor Vinge - A Fire Upon the Deep

A voice somewhere in the back of her head was screaming. No time, no time. She forced herself to her knees and looked around, memories coming back painfully slow.

There were splintered trees uphill of them; the blond wood glinted among the leaves. Beyond them, where the nest had been, she saw a splash of fresh turned earth. They had "killed" it, but… the fighting continued.

There were still wolves on the path, but now they were the ones running in all directions. As she watched, dozens of them catapulted off the edge of trail into the trees and rocks below. And the Tines were actually fighting now. Pilgrim had picked up his knives. The blades and his muzzles dripped red as he slashed. Something gray and bleeding flew over the edge of the cart and landed by Johanna's leg. The "wolf" couldn't have been more than twenty centimeters long, its hair dirty gray brown. It really did look like a pet, but the tiny jaws clicked with murderous intent at her ankles. Johanna dropped a cannon ball on it.

During the next three days, while Woodcarver's people struggled to bring their equipment and themselves back together, Johanna learned quite a bit about the wolves. What she and Scrupilo's White Head did with cannon had stopped the attack cold. Without doubt, knocking out the nest had saved a lot of lives and the expedition itself. The "wolves" were a type of hive creature, only a little like the packs. The Tines race used group thought to reach high intelligence; Johanna had never seen a rational pack of more than six members. The wolf nests didn't care about high intelligence. Woodcarver claimed that a nest might have thousands of members — certainly the one they'd tripped over was huge. Such a mob couldn't be as smart as a human. In terms of raw reasoning power, it probably wasn't much brighter than a single pack member. On the other hand, it could be a lot more flexible. Wolves could operate alone at great distances. When within a hundred meters of the home nest they were appendages of the "queen" members of the nest, and no one doubted their canniness then. Pilgrim had legends of nests with almost packish intelligence, of foresters who made treaties with nearby nests for protection in return for food. As long as the high-powered noises in the nest lived, the worker wolves could coordinate almost like Tine members. But kill the nest, and the creature fell apart like some cheap, star-topology network.

Certainly this nest had done a number on Woodcarver's army. It had waited quietly until the troopers were within its inner loudness. Then outlying wolves had used synchronized mimicry to create sonic "ghosts", tricking the packs into turning from the nest and shooting uselessly into the trees. And when the ambush actually began, the nest had screamed concentrated confusion down on the Tines. That attack had been a far more powerful thing than the "stink noise" they'd encountered in other parts of the forest. To the Tines, the stinkers had been painfully loud and sometimes even frightening, but not the mind-destroying chaos of the wolf-nest attack.

More than one hundred packs had been knocked out in the ambush. Some, mostly packs with pups, had huddled. Others, like Scrupilo, had been "blasted apart". In the hours following the attack, many of these fragments straggled back and reassembled. The resulting Tines were shaken but unharmed. Intact troops hunted up and down the forested cliffs for injured members of their comrades. There were places along the dropoff that were more than twenty meters deep. Where their fall wasn't cushioned by tree boughs, members landed on naked rock. Five dead ones were eventually found, and another twenty seriously injured. Two carts had fallen. They were kindling, and their kherhogs were too badly injured to survive. By great good luck, the gunshot had not started a forest fire.

Three times the sun made its vast, tilted course around the sky. Woodcarver's army recovered in a camp in the depths of the valley forest, by the river. Vendacious had posted lookouts with signaling mirrors on the northern valley wall. This place was about as safe as any they could find so far north. It was certainly one of the most beautiful. It didn't have the view of the high forest, but there was the sound of the river nearby, so loud it drowned the sighing of the dry wind. The lowland trees didn't have root flowers, but they were still different from what Johanna had known. There was no underbrush, just a soft, bluish "moss" that Pilgrim claimed was actually part of the trees. It stretched like mown parkland to the edge of the river.

On the last day of their rest, the Queen called a meeting of all the packs not at guard or lookout. It was the largest collection of Tines Johanna had seen in one place since her family was killed. Only these ones weren't fighting. As far as Johanna could see across the bluish moss, there were packs, each at least eight meters from its nearest neighbor. For an absurd instant she was reminded of Settlers Park at Overby: Families picnicking on the grass, each with its own traditional blanket and food lockers. But these "families" were each a pack, and this was a military formation. The rows were gently curving arcs all facing toward the Queen. Peregrine Wickwrackscar was ten meters behind her, in shadow; being Queen's consort didn't count for anything official. On Woodcarver's left lay the living casualties of the ambush, members with bandages and splints. In some ways, such visible damage wasn't the most horrifying. There were also what Pilgrim called the "walking wounded". These were singletons and duos and trios that were all that was left of whole packs. Some of these tried to maintain a posture of attention, but others mooned about, occasionally breaking into the Queen's speech with aimless words. It was like Scriber Jaqueramaphan all over again, but most of these would live. Some were already melding, trying to make new individuals. Some of these might even work out, as Peregrine Wickwrackscar had done. For most, it would be a long time before they were fully people again.

Johanna sat with Scrupilo in the first rank of troopers before the Queen. The Commander of Cannoneers stood at Tinish parade rest: rumps on the ground, chest high, most heads facing front. Scrup had come through it without serious damage. His white head had a few more scorch marks, and one of the other members had sprained a shoulder falling off the path. He wore his flying cannoneer muffs as flamboyantly as always, but there was something subdued about him — maybe it was just the military formation and getting a medal for heroism.

The Queen was wearing her special jackets. Each head looked out at a different section of her audience. Johanna still couldn't understand Tinish, and would certainly never speak it without mechanical assistance. But the sounds were mostly within her range of hearing — the "low" frequencies carried a lot better than higher ones. Even without memory aides and grammar generators she was learning a little. She could recognize emotional tone easily, and things like the raucous ark ark ark that passed for applause around here. As for individual words — well, they were more like chords, single syllables that had meaning. Nowadays, if she listened really carefully (and Pilgrim weren't nearby to give a running translation) she could even recognize some of those.

… Just now, for instance, Woodcarver was saying good things about her audience. Approving ark ark's came from all directions. They sounded like a bunch of sea'mals. One of the Queen's heads dipped into a bowl, came up with a small carven doodad in its mouth. She spoke a pack's name, a multichord tumptititum that if Johanna heard often enough she might be able to repeat as "Jaqueramaphan" — or even see meaning in, as "Wickwrackscar".

From the front rank of the audience, a single member trotted toward the Queen. It stopped practically nose to nose with the Queen's nearest member. Woodcarver said something about bravery, and then two of her fastened the wooden — broach? — to the member's jacket. It turned smartly and returned to its pack.