The Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge (57 page)

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Authors: Vernor Vinge

BOOK: The Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge
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The Tourists were long gone. The Lothlrimarre was a dot at the top of the sky. All the other agravs had passed by. He and the Blab were alone in the burning clouds.
Probably not for long
. Hamid began sawing at the agrav fabric—tearing off a slice, testing for an upwelling breeze, then tearing off another. They drifted through the cloud deck into a light drizzle, a strange rain that burned the skin as it wet them. He slid the carpet sideways into the sunlight, and they could breathe again. Things looked almost normal, except where the clouds cast a great bloody shadow across the farmland.
Where best to land? Hamid looked over the edge of the carpet … and saw the enemy waiting. It was a cylinder, tapered, with a pair of
small fins at one end. It drifted through the carpet’s shadow, and he realized the enemy craft was
close.
It couldn’t be more than ten meters long, less than two meters across at the widest. It hung silent, pacing the carpet’s slow descent. Hamid looked up, and saw the others—four more dark shapes. They circled in, like killer fish nosing at a possible lunch. One slid right over them, so slow and near he could have run his palm down its length. There were no ports, no breaks in the dull finish. But the fins—red glowed dim from within them, and Hamid felt a wave of heat as they passed.
The silent parade went on for a minute, each killer getting its look. The Blab’s head followed the craft around and around. Her eyes were wide, and she was making the terrified whistling noises of the night before. The air was still, but for the faint updraft of the carpet’s descent. Or was it? … The sound grew, a hissing sound like Tines had made during his phone call. Only now it came from all the killers, and there were overtones lurking at the edge of sensibility, tones that never could have come from an ordinary telephone.
“Blab.” He reached to stroke her neck. She slashed at his hand, her needle-teeth slicing deep. Hamid gasped in pain, and rolled back from her. The Blab’s pelt was puffed out as far as he had ever seen it. She looked twice normal size, a very large carnivore with death glittering in her eyes. Her long neck snapped this way and that, trying to track all the killers at once. Fore and rear talons dragged long rips through the carpet. She climbed onto the thickest folds of the carpet, and
shrieked
at the killers … and collapsed.
For a moment, Hamid couldn’t move. His hand, the scream: razors across his hand, icepicks jammed in his ears. He struggled to his knees and crawled to the Blabber. “Blab?” No answer, no motion. He touched her flank: limp as something fresh dead.
In twenty years, Hamid Thompson had never had close friends, but he had never been alone, either. Until now. He looked up from the Blabber’s body, at the circling shapes.
Alone at four thousand meters. He didn’t have much choice when one of the killer fish came directly at him, when something wide and dark opened from its belly. The darkness swept around them, swallowing all.
HAMID HAD NEVER BEEN IN SPACE BEFORE. UNDER OTHER CIRCUMSTANCES, he would have reveled in the experience. The glimpse he’d had of Middle America from low orbit was like a beautiful dream. But now, all he could see through the floor of his cage was a bluish dot, nearly lost in the sun’s glare. He pushed hard against the clear softness, and rolled onto his back. It was harder than a one-handed pushup to do that. He
guessed the mothership was doing four or five gees … and had been for hours.
When they had pulled him off the attack craft, Hamid had been semiconscious. He had no idea what acceleration that shark boat reached, but it was more than he could take. He remembered that glimpse of Middle America, blue and serene. Then … they’d taken the Blab—or her body—away.
Who?
There had been a human, the Ravna woman. She had done something to his hand; it wasn’t bleeding anymore. And … and there had been the Blabber, up and walking around. No, the pelt pattern had been all wrong.
That must have been Tines.
There had been the hissing voice, and some kind of argument with Ravna.
Hamid stared up at the sunlight on the ceiling and walls. His own shadow lay spread-eagled on the ceiling. In the first hazy hours, he had thought it was another prisoner. The walls were gray, seamless, but with scrape marks and stains, as though heavy equipment was used here. He thought there was a door in the ceiling, but he couldn’t remember for sure. There was no sign of one now. The room was an empty cubicle, featureless, its floor showing clear to the stars: surely not an ordinary brig. There were no toilet facilities—and at five gees they wouldn’t have helped. The air was thick with the stench of himself … . Hamid guessed the room was an airlock. The transparent floor might be nothing more than a figment of some field generator’s imagination. A flick of a switch and Hamid would be swept away forever.
The Blabber gone, Pop gone, maybe Larry and the slug gone … . Hamid raised his good hand a few centimeters and clenched his fist. Lying here was the first time he’d ever thought about killing anyone. He thought about it a lot now … . It kept the fear tied down.
“Mr. Thompson.” Ravna’s voice. Hamid suppressed a twitch of surprise: after hours of rage, to hear the enemy. “Mr. Thompson, we are going to free fall in fifteen seconds. Do not be alarmed.”
So, airline courtesy of a sudden.
The force that had squished him flat these hours, that had made it an exercise even to breathe, slowly lessened. From beyond the walls and ceiling he heard small popping noises. For a panicky instant, it seemed as though the floor had disappeared and he was falling through. He twisted. His hand hit the barrier … and he floated slowly across the room, toward the wall that had been the ceiling. A door had opened. He drifted through, into a hall that would have looked normal except for the intricate pattern of grooves and ledges that covered the walls.
“Thirty meters down the hall is a latrine,” came Ravna’s voice. “There are clean clothes that should fit you. When you are done … when you are done, we will talk.”
Damn right.
Hamid squared his shoulders and pulled himself down the hall.
SHE DIDN’T LOOK LIKE A KILLER. THERE WAS ANGER—TENSION?—ON HER face, the face of someone who has been awake a long time and has fought hard—and doesn’t expect to win.
Hamid drifted slowly into the—conference room? bridge?—trying to size everything up at once. It was a large room with a low ceiling. Moving across it was easy in zero gee, slow bounces from floor to ceiling and back. The wall curved around, transparent along most of its circumference. There were stars and night dark beyond.
Ravna had been standing in a splash of light. Now she moved back a meter, into the general dimness. Somehow she slipped her foot into the floor, anchoring herself. She waved him to the other side of a table. They stood in the half crouch of zero gee, less than two meters apart. Even so, she looked taller than he had guessed from the phone call. Her mass might be close to his. The rest of her was as he remembered, though she looked very tired. Her gaze flickered across him, and away. “Hello, Mr. Thompson. The floor will hold your foot, if you tap it gently.”
Hamid didn’t take the advice; he held onto the table edge and jammed his feet against the floor. He would have something to brace against if the time came to move quickly. “Where is my Blabber?” His voice came out hoarse, more desperate than demanding.
“Your pet is dead.”
There was a tiny hesitation before the last word. She was as bad a liar as ever. Hamid pushed back the rage: if the Blab was alive, there was something still possible beyond revenge. “Oh.” He kept his face blank.
“However, we intend to return you safely to home.” She gestured at the star fields around them. “The six-gee boost was to avoid unnecessary fighting with the Lothlrimarre being. We will coast outwards some further, perhaps even go into ram drive. But Mr. Tines will take you back to Middle America in one of our attack boats. There will be no problem to land you without attracting notice … perhaps on the western continent, somewhere out of the way.” Her tone was distant. He noticed that she never looked directly at him for more than an instant. Now she was staring just to one side of his face. He remembered the phone call, how she seemed to ignore his video. Up close, she was just as attractive as before—more. Just once he would like to see her smile.
And somewhere there was unease that he could be so attracted by a murderous stranger.
If only,
“If only I could understand
why
. Why did you kill the Blab? Why did you kill my father?”
Ravna’s eyes narrowed. “That cheating piece of filth? He is too tricky to kill. He was gone when we visited his farm. I’m not sure I have killed anyone on this operation. The Lothlrimarre is still functioning, I know that.” She sighed. “We were all very lucky. You have no idea what Tines has been like these last days … . He called you last night.”
Hamid nodded numbly.
“Well, he was mellow then. He tried to kill me when I took over the ship. Another day like this and he would have been dead—and most likely your planet would have been so, too.”
Hamid remembered the Lothlrimarre’s theory about the tines’s need. And now that the creature had the Blab … “So now Tines is satisfied?”
Ravna nodded vaguely, missing the quaver in his voice. “He’s harmless now and very confused, poor guy. Assimilation is hard. It will be a few weeks … but he’ll stabilize, probably turn out better than he ever was.”
Whatever that means.
She pushed back from the table, stopped herself with a hand on the low ceiling. Apparently their meeting was over. “Don’t worry. He should be well enough to take you home quite soon. Now I will show you your—”
“Don’t rush him, Rav. Why should he want to go back to Middle America?” The voice was a pleasant tenor, human-sounding but a little slurred.
Ravna bounced off the ceiling. “I thought you were going to stay out of this! Of course the boy is going back to Middle America. That’s his home; that’s where he fits.”
“I wonder.” The unseen speaker laughed. He sounded cheerfully—
joyfully
—drunk. “Your name is shit down there, Hamid, did you know that?”
“Huh?”
“Yup. You slagged the Caravan’s entire shipment of fusion electrics. ‘Course you had a little help from the Federal Police, but that fact is being ignored. Much worse, you destroyed most of the agrav units.
Whee.
Up, up and away. And there’s no way those can be replaced short of a trip back to the Outsi—”
“Shut up!” Ravna’s anger rode over the good cheer. “The agrav units were a cheap trick. Nothing that subtle can work in the Zone for long. Five years from now they would all have faded.”
“Sure, sure. I know that, and you know that. But both Middle America and the Tourists figure you’ve trashed this Caravan, Hamid. You’d be a fool to go back.”
Ravna shouted something in a language Hamid had never heard.
“English, Rav, English. I want him to understand what is happening.”
“He is going back!”
Ravna’s voice was furious, almost desperate. “We
agreed
!”
“I know, Rav.” A little of the rampant joy left the voice. It sounded truly sympathetic. “And I’m sorry. But I was different then, and I understand things better now … . Hey, I’ll be down in a minute, okay?”
She closed her eyes. It’s hard to slump in free fall, but Ravna came close, her shoulders and arms relaxing, her body drifting slowly up from the floor. “Oh, Lord,” she said softly.
Out in the hall, someone was whistling a tune that had been popular in Marquette six months ago. A shadow floated down the walls, followed by …
the Blab?
Hamid lurched off the table, flailed wildly for a handhold. He steadied himself, got a closer look.
No. Not the Blab. It was of the same race certainly, but this one had an entirely different pattern of black and white. The great patch of black around one eye and white around the other would have been laughable … if you didn’t know what you were looking at: at last to see Mr. Tines.
Man and alien regarded each other for a long moment. It was a little smaller than the Blab. It wore a checkered orange scarf about its neck. Its paws looked no more flexible than his Blab’s … but he didn’t doubt the intelligence that looked back from its eyes. The tines drifted to the ceiling, and anchored itself with a deft swipe of paw and talons. There were faint sounds in the air now, squeaks and twitters almost beyond hearing. If he listened close enough, Hamid guessed he would hear the hissing, too.
The tines looked at him, and laughed pleasantly—the tenor voice of a minute before. “Don’t rush me! I’m not all here yet.”
Hamid looked at the doorway. There were two more there, one with a jeweled collar—the leader? They glided through the air and tied down next to the first. Hamid saw more shadows floating down the hall.
“How many?” he asked.
“I’m six now.” He thought it was a different tines that answered, but the voice was the same.
The three floated in the doorway. One wore no scarf or jewelry … and looked very familiar.
“Blab!” Hamid pushed off the table. He went into a spin that missed the door by several meters. The Blabber—it must be her—twisted around and fled the room.

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