The Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge (38 page)

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Authors: Vernor Vinge

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Sanda’s arms hung numb at her sides. If you
ever
loved me … It was many years before she could live with her inaction of the next few seconds.
Grandma pushed the door back. The drapes parted and there was a wave of heat, like standing near a bonfire. The air was full of popping and cracking, but the drapes that swung into the opening were not yet singed. Gran pulled the cloth away and pushed the door shut. Through the quartz window Sanda saw her moving quickly toward the stairs. She started up them—was almost out of sight—when she looked down, puzzlement on her face.
Sanda saw the fire burning out of the wall beneath her an instant
before the stairs collapsed and Grandmother disappeared. The house groaned and died above her.
“Grand
ma
!” Sanda crashed against the metal door, but it would not open now; ceiling timbers had fallen across it. The scene beyond the quartz was no longer recognizably a home. The fire must have burned behind the walls and up under the stairwell. Now much of the second floor had collapsed onto the first. Everything she could see was a glowing jumble. The heat on her face was like looking through a kiln window. Nothing out there could live.
And still the heat increased. The fallen center of the upstairs left a natural flue through the skylight. For a few moments the heat and rushing winds lived in equilibrium, and the flames steadied to uniform brilliance. Brief stillness in hell.
SHE WOULD HAVE FELT IT SOONER IF SHE HAD BEEN WAITING FOR IT, OR IF its mood hadn’t been so different from all that went on about her: a chime of happiness, clear and warm. The feeling of sudden freedom and escape from cold.
Then she saw it: Its surface was no longer black and gray. It glowed like the ends of the burning timbers, but with overtones of violet that seemed to penetrate its body. And now that it moved, she could see the complete regularity of its shape. The Gemstone was a cross between a four-legged starfish and a very small pillow. It moved nimbly, gracefully through the red jumble beyond the quartz window, and Sanda could feel its exuberance.
Grandfather had been wrong. Grandmother had been wrong. The cold and desolation it had broadcast were not memories of antarctic centuries, but a wordless cry against what
still
was cold and dark to it. How could she have missed it before? Daddy’s dog, Tyrann, did the same thing: locked out on a misty winter night he keened and keened his misery for hours.
Gemstone had been alone and cold much, much longer.
And now—like a dog—it frisked through the brightness, eager and curious. It stopped and Sanda felt its puzzlement. It pushed down into the chaos that had been the stairs. The puzzlement deepened, shaded into hurt. Gemstone climbed back out of the rubble.
It had no head, no eyes, but what she saw in its mind now was clear; it felt her and was trying to find where she was hiding. When it “saw” her it was like a searchlight suddenly fixing on a target; all its attention was on her.
Gemstone scuttled down from its perch and swiftly crossed the ruins. It climbed the wood that jammed shut the door and—from inches
away—seemed to peer at her. It scampered back and forth along the timber, trying to find some way in to her. Its mood was a mix of abject friendliness, enthusiasm, and curiosity that shifted almost as fast as the glowing colors of its body. Before tonight it had taken minutes to change from one mood to another; before, it had been frozen to near unconsciousness. All those centuries before, it had been barely alive.
Sanda saw that it was scarcely more intelligent than she imagined dogs to be. It wanted to touch her and didn’t realize the death that would bring. Gemstone climbed back to the little window and touched a paw to the quartz. The quartz grew cloudy, began to star. Sanda felt fear, and Gemstone immediately pulled back.
It didn’t touch the quartz again, but rubbed back and forth across the surface of the door. Then it settled against the door and let Sanda “pet” it with her mind. This was a little like touching it had been before. But now the memories and emotions were deeper and changed quickly at her wish:
There was Grandmother, alive again. She felt Grandma’s hand resting on her (its) back. Wistful sometimes, happy sometimes, lonely often. Before that there was another, a man. Grandpa. Bluff, inquisitive, stubborn. Before that … Colder than cold, not really conscious, Gemstone sensed light all around the horizon and then dark. Light and darkness. Light and darkness. Antarctic summer and antarctic winter. In its deadened state, the seasons were a flickering that went on for time the little mind in the starfish body could not comprehend.
And before that …
Wonderful warmth, even nicer than now. Being cuddled flesh against flesh. Being valued. There were many friends, personalities strange to Sanda but not unknowable. They all lived in a house that moved, that visited many places—some warm and pleasant, some not. It remembered the coldest. In its curiosity, Gemstone wandered away from the house, got so very cold that when the friends came out to search, they could not find. Gemstone was lost.
And so the long time of light-and-dark, light-and-dark had begun.
THE PURE, EVEN HELL OF THE FIRE LASTED ONLY A FEW MINUTES. GEMSTONE whimpered in her mind as the walls began to fall, and the wind-driven cycle of flame faltered. The hottest places were in the center of what had been the living room, but Gemstone remained propped against Sanda’s door, either for her company or in hopes she could bring back the warm.
Rain was winning against fire. Steam and haze obscured the glowing ruins. There might have been sirens.
She felt Gemstone chill and slowly daze. Its tone was now the nearly mindless dirge of all the weeks before. Sanda slid to the floor. And cried.
“Gemstone” takes place in 1957. I’ve wondered what became of Sanda and her wonderful pet. I suppose there is some room for sequels. One idea sticks in my mind: Sanda ends up an artist, living in Arizona. She specializes in pottery. She is admired for the brushwork she does while the glaze is hot. She has the most marvelous collection of kilns, all connected by narrow tunnels to a large one that is always fired … .
I’ve had only two stories that were collaborations. Ordinarily, collaboration is a good way to work just as hard as ever—but only get paid half as much. (Keith Laumer summed up the problems in the title of his essay for the SFWA
Bulletin
: “How to Collaborate without Getting Your Head Shaved.”) There were these two times though. Once was with my then-wife, Joan D. Vinge: in “The Peddler’s Apprentice,” I wrote the first part, got bogged down, and Joan finished it. The circumstances of the other collaboration were quite different: my friend Bill Rupp and I simply wanted to write an adventure story. We plotted the thing together, using various ideas we had been collecting. For instance, we both admired Poul Anderson’s approach to conflict adventures, the way he acknowledges the right that adheres in some wise to almost any cause. Bill wrote the first draft, and I revised it. John W. Campbell bought it for
Analog
. (Sadly, this was the last sale I ever made to John; he died just a few months later.)
I
n its orbit about Jupiter, an artificial star flickered briefly, its essence oscillating between matter and energy. The complex disturbance generated by those pulsations spread out from the Solar System—in violation of several classical theories of simultaneity—at many times the speed of light.
Nineteen light-years away, a receiver on the second planet of the star delta Pavonis picked the signal out from the universal static of ultrawave radiation and …
Chente felt a slight, though abrupt, lurch as gravity fell to New Canadian normal. That was the only sign that the transmission had been accomplished. The cage’s lights didn’t even flicker.
(“We can’t know, of course, the exact conditions which faced your predecessor. His report is eighteen months overdue, however, so that we must expect the worst.”)
Chente took a deep breath and stood, feeling for the moment exaltation: three times before he had sat in the transmission cage, and each time he had been disappointed.
(“ … believe you are ready, Chente. What can I say to a man about to travel nineteen light-years in an instant? For that matter, what will I say to the man who remains behind?”)
The exit was behind his chair. Chente hit the control plate, and the hatch slid silently into the wall. Beyond was the control cubby of a
ramscoop starship. Chente scrambled through the opening and stood in the small space behind the control saddle. The displays were all computer driven, and rather quaint. Neat lettering above one of the consoles read: INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS MACHINES OF CANADA—the original Canada back on Earth. Chente had spent hundreds of hours working out in a mock-up of this famous control room, but the real thing was subtly different. Here the air felt completely dead, sterile. The mock-up on Earth had been occupied by occasional technicians, whereas no one but Chente’s predecessor had been in this room for more than a century. And it had been more than three centuries since the robot craft had sailed out of the Solar System.
A monument to empires passed,
Chente thought as he slipped onto the saddle.
“Who goes there?” a voice asked in English.
Chente looked at the computer’s video pickup. He had had plenty of practice with a similar think-box on Earth: the mech was barely sentient, but the best mankind could produce in the old days. Chente’s superiors had theorized that after three hundred twenty years such a brain would be more than a little irrational. The human responded carefully, “Vicente Quintero y Jualeiro, agent of the Canadian Hegemony.” He placed his ID before the pickup. Of course it was a fake—the Canadian Hegemony had ceased to exist one hundred years earlier. But the computer probably wouldn’t accept any more recent authority.
“I have already received Vicente Quintero y Jualeiro.”
It really is senile,
thought Chente. “That is so. But another copy of Quintero remains on Earth, and was used for this latest transmission.”
A long pause. “Very well, sir, I am at your disposal. I so rarely receive visitors, I—You require a situation report, of course.” The vocoder’s pleasant baritone assumed a sing-song tone, as if repeating some long-considered excuse. “After my successful landing on delta Pavonis II, I sent Earth a favorable report on the planet—Sir, most pertinent criteria were favorable. I see now my mistake … but it would have taken a new program to avoid making it. Shortly thereafter I received an initial transmission of fifteen hundred colonists together with enough ova and sperm to breed a colony. By 2220, the New Canada colony had a population of 8,250,000.
“Then … then the great planetary disturbance occurred.”
Chente held up his hand. “Please. The Hegemony received your reports through 2240. We’ve reestablished contact to find out what’s happened since then.”
“Yes, sir. But I must report all the truth first. I wish no one to say that I have failed. I warned of the core collapse several weeks before it
occurred. Yet still, most of the colony was destroyed. The disruption was so great, in fact, that the very continental outlines were changed.
“Sir, I have done my best to help the survivors, but their descendants have regressed terribly, have even formed warring nation-states. These groups covet every fragment of surviving technology. They stole my communication bombs so that I could no longer report to Earth. They have even attacked my own person, and attempted to cannibalize me. Fortunately my defenses are—” The computer broke off, and remained silent.
“WHAT’S THE MATTER?”
“A small party is now climbing the hill I stand upon.”
“Do they look hostile?”
“They are always hostile toward me, but this group is not armed. I suspect they saw the coronal discharge that accompanied your arrival. They probably drove here from Freetown.”
“A city?” said Chente.
“Yes, a city-state which has remained neutral in the current warfare. It’s built over the ruins of First-landing, the settlement I helped to found. Would you like to see our visitors?”
Chente leaned forward. “Of course!”
A large screen lit up to show a grass-covered slope. Coming up the hill toward the ship were twelve men and a woman. Beyond them, beyond the hill, the ocean stretched away unbroken to the horizon.
“
¡Madre de Dios!
” Chente gasped. On the old maps this hilltop was 3,500 kilometers inland. The continental outlines certainly had been changed by the catastrophe.
“Say again, sir?” said the computer.
“Never mind.” Chente ignored the view and concentrated on the people who would soon be questioning him.
THEY MADE AN INTERESTING STUDY IN CONTRASTS. To THE LEFT, A MAN AND woman walked almost in lock step, though they remained discreetly apart. The man was dressed in simple black trousers and a short coat. His hat was stiff and wide-brimmed. The woman wore a long black dress that revealed nothing of her from below the neck. Her reddish hair was drawn back and tied with a black ribbon, and her grim face showed no sign of makeup. The two short men in the center wore jumpsuits, apparently modeled after the original colonists’ dress. To the right, eight nearly naked men bent beneath an elaborate litter carrying a young male. As the group stopped, the litter was lowered, and he stepped jauntily to earth. The fellow’s upper body was heavily oiled. He wore
skin-tight breeches with an enormous codpiece. The grimly dressed couple on the left looked straight ahead, trying to avoid the sight of their companion on the far right.
“You see the cultural fragmentation that has occurred here on New Canada,” the computer remarked.
“How far are they now?”
“Twenty meters.”
“I may as well meet them. Off load the equipment that came through with me.”
“Yes, sir.” A hatch slid open and he entered the air lock beyond. Seconds later he was standing ankle-deep in turquoise grass, beneath a pale, pale blue sky. A slow breeze pushed with remarkable force against his jumpsuit: sea level air pressure on New Canada was almost twice Earth’s. He was about to greet his visitors when the somber woman spoke, her voice tense with surprise.
“Chente!”
Chente bowed. “You have the advantage of me, ma’am. I take it you know my predecessor.”
“The past tense would be more appropriate, Freeman Quintero. Your twin was murdered more than a year ago,” the fellow in the skin-tight pants said, and smiled at the woman. Chente saw that in spite of his athletic build and flamboyant dress, the man was in his forties. The woman, on the other hand, seemed much younger than she had at a distance. Now she kept silent, but her companion said, “It was one of
your
ships he died on, you slave-holding animal.” The shirtless dandy just shrugged.
“Please, gentlemen.” The fat man in the center spoke up. “Recall that the condition of your presence here requires a certain mutual cordiality”—glares flickered back and forth between Shirtless and the puritans—”or at least courtesy. Mr. Quintero, I am Bretaign Flaggon, mayor of Freetown and governor of Wundlich Island. Welcome.
“The lady is Citizeness Martha Blount, ambassadress to Wundlich from the Commonwealth of New Providence, and,” he rushed on as if trying to make both the introductions at once, “this gentleman is Bossman Pier Balquirth, Ambassador to Wundlich from the Ontarian Confederacy.”
The woman seemed to have recovered from her initial surprise. Now she spoke with solemn formality. “New Providence regards you as our honored guest and citizen. Our nation awaits your—”
“Not so fast, Mistress Blount,” Bossman Pier interrupted. “You aren’t the only people brimming over with hospitality. I believe Freeman Quintero would be much more comfortable in a society which does not condemn dancing and music as a crime against nature.”
“
Please!
” Flaggon repeated, “let’s not have propaganda spoil the arrival of a visitor from the Mother World. As mayor, I wish to offer you any assistance you require, Mr. Quintero. I, uh …
Ah
! I will hold a banquet in your honor tonight. Of course, we will invite guests from both New Providence and Ontario.” He sighed unhappily, recognizing the inevitable. “You can settle things then.”
A faint hissing announced the opening of the freight port in the ship’s hull. A lift slid down the ancient metal surface with Chente’s “luggage.”
“Mr. Quintero y Jualeiro,” the computer’s vocoder boomed from a hidden speaker, “have you further orders at this time?”
“No. I will keep in touch.”
“Beyond this hill I cannot protect you, sir.”
“I’ll survive.”
“Yes, sir,” doubtfully.
“Damned machine,” Bossman Pier said softly. His perpetual grin had vanished. “It should be helping us. Instead it shoots at anyone trying to make entrance. We had to leave most of our boys at the base of the hill or we couldn’t have got this close. Can I help you with that equipment?”
Chente stepped between Balquirth’s servants and the freight lift.
“No thanks. I can carry it myself.”
The Ontarian smiled knowingly. “Perhaps you will survive, after all.”
As they walked down the hillside, Vicente kept silent.
So I died here
, he thought. Well, that was no great surprise. But that he had been killed by the very colonists he had been sent to help made his mission seem doubly difficult. What had happened on New Canada these last one hundred thirty years?
The lush grass on the hilltop thrived everywhere. He was no botanist, but it looked like some terrestrial type brought by the first colonists. Other vegetation was less familiar. Large ferns and broad-leafed plants stood in scattered clumps. The trees looked like giant flowers: their trunks rose straight and tall, with purple foliage sprouting from the top. Except for the grass, the land had a strong Jurassic aspect. Chente half expected a large reptile to pop out of the bushes.
They had reached the base of the hill when his expectation materialized. A meter-wide
something
flew low over their heads, then circled above a nearby ridge.
“A gretch,” Bretaign Flaggon said. “They’re really quite common around here. That poor little fellow must have lost his mother.”
The “poor little fellow” looked like a cross between a reptile and a buzzard. Chente grimaced. A nice place for a lifelong vacation. He’d never cared for paleontology.
At the base of the hill they stopped by a large three-wheeled vehicle and a group of armed men with bicycles. The powered tricycle was
driven from a bench above and behind the passenger compartment. A brass tank and a piston cylinder sat below the driver’s seat.
“Steamer?” Vicente asked, as he climbed into the cab.
“Quite right,” Balquirth said. He swung up onto his slave-powered litter and looked down at Quintero. “If you’re wise, you’ll use something time-tested.” He patted the satin pillows.
Flaggon and his driver climbed onto the upper bench, while Martha Blount and her aide got in with Chente. The armed bicyclists started down the road, and the auto got off with a jerk and a jump. The deep cushions could not disguise the absence of an adequate suspension, and acrid black smoke drifted from the fire box into the passenger compartment. Behind them, Bossman Pier’s bearers were having no trouble keeping pace.

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