A Fire Upon the Deep zot-1, page 62
part #1 of Zones of Thought Series
Since they descended from the purpling heights and began playing in the cloud tops, Ravna had been looking more and more uncomfortable. After a particularly stomachs-lurching bump and drop, she said, “Will you be able to land okay? Maybe we should have postponed this till—” unh! “— you can fly better.”
“Oh yes, oh yes. We’ll be past this, um, weather front real soon.” He dived beneath the clouds and swerved a few tens of kilometers eastwards. The weather was clear here, and it was actually more on a line with their destination. Secretly chastened, he resolved to do no more joy-riding… on the inbound leg, anyway.
His second passenger spoke up then, only the second time in the two-hour flight. “I liked it,” said Greenstalk. Her voder voice charmed Pilgrim: mostly narrow-band, but with little frets high up, from the squarewaves. “It was… it was like riding just beneath the surf, feeling your fronds moving with the sea.”
Peregrine had tried hard to know the Skroderider. The creature was the only nonhuman alien in the world, and harder to know than the Two-Legs. She seemed to dream most of the time, and forgot all but things that happened again and again to her. It was her primitive skrode that accounted for part of that, Ravna told him. Remembering the run that Greenstalk’s mate had made through the flames, Pilgrim believed. Out among the stars, there were things even stranger than Two-Legs—it made Pilgrim’s imagination ache.
Near the horizon he saw a dark ring—and another, beyond. “We’ll have you in real surf very soon.”
Ravna: “These are the islands?”
Peregrine looked over the map displays as he took a shot on the sun. “Yes, indeed,” though it didn’t really matter. The Western Ocean was over twelve thousand kilometers across, and all through the tropics it was dotted with atolls and island chains. This group was just a bit more isolated than others; the nearest Islander settlement was almost two thousand kilometers away.
They were over the nearest island. Pilgrim took a swing around it, admiring the tropic ferns that clung to the coral. At this tide, their bony roots were exposed. Not any flat land here at all; he flew on to the next, a larger one with a pretty glade just within the ringwall. He floated the boat down in a smooth glide that touched the ground without even the tiniest bump.
Ravna Bergsndot looked at him with something like suspicion. Oh oh. “Hei, I’m getting better, don’t you think?” he said weakly.
An uninhabited little island, surrounded by endless sea. The original memories were blurred now; it had been his Rum member who had been a native of the island kingdoms. Yet what he remembered all fit: the high sun, the intoxicating humidity of the air, the heat soaking through his paws. Paradise. The Rum aspect that still lived within him was most joyous of all. The years seemed to melt away; part of him had come home.
They helped Greenstalk down to the ground. Ravna said her skrode was an inferior imitation, its new wheels an ad hoc addition. Still, Pilgrim was impressed: the four balloon tires each had a separate axle. The Rider was able to make it almost to the crest of the coral without any help from Ravna or himself. But near the top, where the tropic ferns were thickest and their roots grew across every path, there he and Ravna had to help a bit, lifting and pulling.
Then they were on the other side, and they could see the ocean.
Now part of Pilgrim ran ahead, partly to find the easiest descent, partly to get close to the water and smell the salt and the rotting floatweed. The tide was nearly out now, and a million little pools—some no more than stony-walled puddles—lay exposed to the sun. Three of him ran from pool to pool, eyeing the creatures that lay within. The strangest things in the world they had seemed to him when he first came to the islands. Creatures with shells, slugs of all dimensions and colors, animal-plants that would become tropic ferns if they ever got trapped far enough inland.
“Where would you like to sit?” he asked the Skroderider. “If we go all the way out to the surf right now, you’ll be a meter underwater at high tide.”
The Rider didn’t reply. But all her fronds were angled toward the water now. The wheels on her skrode slipped and spun with a strange lack of coordination. “Let’s take her closer,” Ravna said after a moment.
They reached a fairly level stretch of coral, pocked with holes and gullies not more than a few centimeters deep. “I’ll go for a swim, find a good place,” Peregrine said. All of him ran down to where the coral broke the water; going for a swim was not something you did by parts. Heh heh. Fact was, damn few mainland packs could swim and think at the same time. Most mainlanders thought that there was a craziness in water. Now Peregrine knew it was simply the great difference in sound speed between air and water. Thinking with all tympana immersed must be a little like using the radio cloaks: it took discipline and practice to do it, and some were never able to learn. But the Island folk had always been great swimmers, using it for meditation. Ravna even thought the Packs might be descended from of whales!
Peregrine came to the edge of the coral and looked down. Suddenly the surf did not seem a completely friendly thing. He would soon find out if Rum’s spirit and his own memories of swimming were up to the real thing. He pulled off his jackets.
All at once. It’s best done all at once. He gathered himself and plopped awkwardly into the water. Confusion, heads out and in. Keep all under. He paddled about, holding all his heads down. Every few seconds, he’d poke a single nose into the air and refresh that member. I still can do it! The six of him slipped through swarms of squidlets, dived separately through arching green fronds. The hiss of the sea was all around, like the mindsound of a vast sleeping pack.
After a few minutes he’d found a nice level spot, sand all about and shielded from the worst fury of the sea. He paddled back to where the sea crashed against stony coral… and almost broke some legs scrambling out. It was just impossible to exit all at once, and for a few moments it was every member for itself. “Hei, over here!” He shouted to Greenstalk and Ravna. He sat licking at coral cuts as they crossed the white rock. “Found a place, more peaceful than this—” He waved at the crash and spray.
Greenstalk rolled a little closer to the edge, then hesitated. Her fronds turned back and forth along the curving sweep of the shore. Does she need help? Pilgrim started forward, but Ravna just sat down beside the Rider and leaned against the wheeled platform. After a moment, Pilgrim joined them. They sat for a time, human looking out to the sea, Rider looking he wasn’t sure quite where, and pack looking in most all directions… There was peace here, even with (or because of?) the booming surf and the haze of spray. He felt his hearts slowing, and just lazed in the sunlight. On every pelt the drying sea water was leaving a glittery powder of salt. Grooming himself tasted good at first, but… yech, too much dry salt was one of the bad memories. Greenstalk’s fronds settled lightly across him, too fine and narrow to provide much shade, but a light and gentle comfort.
They sat for a long while—long enough so that later some of Pilgrims noses were blistered, and even darkskinned Ravna was sun burned.
The Rider was humming now, a sort of song that after long minutes came to be speech. “It is a good sea, a good edge. It is what I need now. To sit and think at my own pace for a while.”
And Ravna said, “How long? We will miss you.” That was not just politeness. Everyone would miss her. Even in her mind adrift, Greenstalk was the expert on OOB’s surviving automation.
“Long by your measure, I fear. A few decades…” She watched (?) the waves a few minutes more. “I am eager to get down there. Ha ha. Almost like a human in that… Ravna, you know my memories are muddled now. I had two hundred years with Blueshell. Sometimes he was petty and a little spineful, but he was a great trader. We had many wonderful times. And at the end even you could see his courage.”
Ravna nodded.
“We found a terrible secret on this last journey. I think that hurt him as much as the final… burning. I am grateful to you for protecting us. Now I want to think, to let the surf and the time work with my memories and sort them out. Maybe if this poor imitation skrode is up to it, I’ll even make a chronicle of our quest.”
She touched Peregrine on two of his heads. “One thing, Sir Pilgrim. You trust much to give me freedom of your seas… But you should know, Blueshell and I were pregnant. I have a mist of our common eggs within me. Leave me here and there will be new Riders by this island in future years. Please do not take that as betrayal. I want to remember Blueshell with children—but modestly; our kind has shared ten million worlds and never been bad neighbors… except in a way that, Ravna can tell you, cannot happen here.”
In the end, Greenstalk was not at all interested in the protected stretch of water that Peregrine had discovered. She wanted—of all the places here—the one where the ocean crashed most ferociously. It took them more than an hour to find a path down to that violent place, and another half hour to get Rider and skrode safely into the water. Peregrine didn’t even try to swim here. The coral rock came in close from all sides, slimy green in patches, razor jagged in others. Five minutes in that meat grinder and he might be too weak to get out. Strange that there was so much green in the water here. It was all but opaque with sea grasses and swarms of foam midges.
Ravna was a little better off; at the water’s greatest height, she could still keep feet to ground—at least most of the time. She stood in the foam, bracing herself with feet and an arm, and helped the skrodeling over the lip of rock. Once in, the mechanical crashed firmly to the bottom beside the human.
Ravna looked up at Pilgrim, made an “okay” gesture. Then she huddled down for a moment, holding to the skrode to keep her place. The surf crashed over the two, obscuring all but Greenstalk’s tallest standing fronds. When the foam moved back, he could see that the lower fronds draped across the human’s back, and hear a voder buzzing that wasn’t quite intelligible against all the other noise.
The human stood and slogged through the waist deep-water toward the rocks Peregrine occupied. Peregrine grabbed onto himself, reached down to give Ravna some paws. She scrambled up the slime green and coral white.
He followed the limping Two-Legs toward the crest of tropical ferns. They stopped under the shade, and she sat down, leaned back into the mat of a fern’s trunk. Cut and bruised, she looked almost as hurt as Johanna ever had.
“You okay?”
“Yeah,” she ran her hands back through disheveled hair. Then she looked at him and laughed. “We both look like casualties.”
Um, yes. Sometime soon he needed a fresh-water bath. He looked around and out. From the crest of the atoll ring they had a view of Greenstalk’s niche. Ravna was looking down there too, minor injuries forgotten.
“How can she like that spot?” Peregrine said wonderingly. “Imagine being smashed and smashed and smashed.”
There was a smile on Ravna’s face, but she kept her two eyes on the surf. “There are strange things in the universe, Pilgrim; I’m glad there are some you have not read about yet. Where the surf meets the shore—lots of neat things can happen there. You saw all the life that floated in that madness. Just as plants love the sun, there are creatures that can use the energy differences down at that edge. There they have the sun and the surge and the richness of the suspension… Still, we should keep watch a little longer.” Between each insurge of the waves, they could still see Greenstalk’s fronds. He already knew that those limbs weren’t strong, but he was beginning to realize that they must be very tough. “She’ll be okay, though that cheap skrode may not last long. Poor Greenstalk may end up without any automation at all… she and her children, the lowest of all Riders.”
Ravna turned to look at the pack. There was still that smile on her face. Wondering, yet pleased? “You know the secret Greenstalk spoke of?”
“Woodcarver told me what you told her.”
“I’m glad—surprised—she was willing to let Greenstalk come here. Medieval minds—sorry, most any minds—would want to kill before taking even the faintest risk with something like this.”
“Then why did you tell the Queen?” About the skrode’s perversion.
“It’s your world. I was tired of playing god with the Secret. And Greenstalk agreed. Even if the Queen had refused, Greenstalk could have used a cold box on the OOB.” And likely slept forever. “But Woodcarver didn’t refuse. Somehow she understood what I was saying: it’s the true skrodes that can be perverted, but Greenstalk no longer has one of those. In a decade, this island’s shore will be populated with hundreds of young Riders, but they would never colonize beyond this archipelago without permission of the locals. The risk is vanishingly small… but I was still surprised Woodcarver took it.”
Peregrine settled down around Ravna, only one pair of eyes still watching the Rider’s fronds down in the foam. Best to give some explanation. He cocked a head a Ravna, “Oh, we are medieval, Ravna—even if changing fast, now. We admired Blueshell’s courage in the fire. Such deserves reward. And medieval types are used to courting treachery. So what if the risk is of cosmic size? To us, here, it is no more deadly for that. We poor primitives live with such all the time.”
“Ha!” Her smile spread at his flippant tone.
Peregrine chuckled, heads bobbing. His explanation was the truth, but not all the truth, or even the most important part. He remembered back to the day before, when he and Woodcarver had decided what to do with Greenstalk’s request. Woodcarver had been afraid at first, statecraftly cautious before an evil secret billions of years old. Even leaving such a being in cold sleep was a risk. The statecraftly… the medieval… thing to do, would be to grant the request, leave the Rider ashore on this distant island… and then sneak back a day or two later and kill it.
Peregrine had settled down by his Queen, closer than any but mates and relations could ever do without losing their train of thought. “You showed more honor to Vendacious,” he had said. Scriber’s murderer still walked the earth, complete, scarcely punished at all.
Woodcarver snapped at the empty air; Peregrine knew that sparing Vendacious hurt her too. “…Yes. And these Skroderiders have shown us nothing but courage and honesty. I will not harm Greenstalk. Yet I am afraid. With her, there’s a risk that goes beyond the stars.”
Peregrine laughed. It might be pilgrim madness but—"and that’s to be expected, My Queen. Great risks for great gains. I like being around the humans; I like touching another creature and still being able to think at the same time.” He darted forward to nuzzle the nearest of Woodcarver, and then retreated to a more rational distance. “Even without their starships and their datasets, they would make our world over. Have you noticed… how easy it is for us to learn what they know? Even now, Ravna can’t seem to accept our fluency. Even now, she doesn’t understand how thoroughly we have studied Dataset. And their ship is easy, my Queen. I don’t mean I understand the physics behind it—few even among star folk do. But the equipment is easy to learn, even with the failures it has suffered. I suspect Ravna will never be able to fly the agrav boat as well as I.”
“Hmmf. But you can reach all the controls at once.”
“That’s only part of it. I think we Tines are more flexibly minded than the poor Two-Legs. Can you imagine what it will be like when we make more radio cloaks, when we make our own flying machines?”
Woodcarver smiled, a little sadly now. “Pilgrim, you dream. This is the Slow Zone. The agrav will wear out in a few years. Whatever we make will be far short of what you play with now.”
“So? Look at human history. It took less than two centuries for Nyjora to regain spaceflight after their dark age. And we have better records than their archaeologists. We and the humans are a wonderful team; they have freed us to be everything we can be.” A century till their own spaceships, perhaps another century to start building sub— light-speed starships. And someday they would get out of the Slow Zone. I wonder if packs can be bigger than eight up in the Transcend.
The younger parts of Woodcarver were up, pacing around the rest. The Queen was intrigued. “So you think, like Steel seemed to, that we are some kind of special race, something with a happy destiny in the Beyond? Interesting, except for one thing: These humans are all we know from Out There. How do they compare with other races there? Dataset can’t fully answer that.”
“Ah, and there, Woodcarver, is why Greenstalk is so important. We do need experience of more than one other race. Apparently the Riders are among the most common throughout the Beyond. We need them to talk to. We need to discover if they are as much fun, as useful, as the Two-Legs. Even if the risk was ten times what it seems, I would still want to grant this Rider her wish.”
“… Yes. If we are to be all we can be, we need to know more. We need to take a few risks.” She stopped her pacing; all her eyes turned toward Peregrine in a gesture of surprise. Abruptly she laughed.
“What?”
“Something we’ve thought before, dear Peregrine, but now I see how true it may be. You’re being a little bit clever and scheming here. A good statesman and planner for the future.”
“But still for a pilgrimly goal.”
“To be sure… And I, now I don’t care so completely about the planning and the safety. We will visit the stars someday.” Her puppies waggled a joyous salute. “I’ve a little of the pilgrim in me now, too.”
She went down all on her bellies and crept across the floor toward him. Consciousness slowly dissolved into a haze of loving lust. The last thing Peregrine remembered her saying was, “How wonderful the luck: that I had grown old and had to be new, and that you were just the change we need.”
