The Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge Read online

  Norman crept to the edge of the cliff and peered over. Five feet below was a ledge about ten inches wide. The ledge slanted down. At its lower end it was only seven feet above the rocks. He went over, clinging to the cliff with one hand, and grasping the sack, which lay on the ground above him, with the other. Norman had not realized how slimy the rocks had become in the wet air. His hand slipped and he fell to the ledge below. The sack was jerked over the edge, but he kept his hold on it. The typewriter in the sack hit the side of the cliff with a loud clang.

  He collected his wits and crawled to the lower part of the ledge. Here he again went over, but was very careful to keep a firm grip. He let go and landed feet first on a huge boulder directly below. The sack crashed down an instant later. Norman clambered over the rocks and soon had descended to level ground.

  Nearby objects were obscured by the fog. It was even colder and damper than above. The fog seemed to enter his mouth and nose and draw away his warmth. He paused, then started in the direction that he remembered seeing the airplane hangar last time. Soon he was ankle deep in wet grass.

  After about one hundred yards, Norman noticed a darkness to his left. He turned and approached it. Gradually the form of a light plane was defined. Soon he could clearly see the Piper Cub. Four place, single-jet aircraft; maximum cargo weight, 1200 pounds; minimum runway for takeoff with full load, 90 yards; maximum speed, 250 miles per hour. Its wings and fuselage shone dully in the weak light. Norman ran up to the Cub, clambered over the struts, and pulled himself into the cabin. He settled his sack in the copilot’s seat and slammed the door. The key had been left in the ignition: Someone had been extremely careless.

  Norman inspected the controls of the little aircraft. Somehow his fear had departed, and specific facts now came easily to mind. He saw that there was an autopilot on the right-hand dash, but it was of a simple-minded variety and could handle only cruising flight.

  He reached down and felt the rudder pedals with his feet. By bracing his back against the seat he could touch the pedals and at the same time hold the steering wheel. Of course, he would not be able to see out very easily, but there really wasn’t very much to see.

  He had to get across the border fast and this airplane was probably the only way.

  He turned the starter and heard the fuel pumps and turbines begin rotating. Norman looked at the dash. What was he supposed to do next? He pushed the button marked FLASH and was rewarded with a loud ffumpf as the jet engine above the wing ignited. He twisted the throttle. The Cub crawled across the field, picking up speed. It bounced and jolted over the turf.

  …Throttle to full, keeping stick forward…until you are well over stall speed (35 miles per hour for a 1980 Cub)…pull back gently on the stick, being careful to remain over…(35 miles per hour)…

  He craned his neck, trying to get a view ahead. The ride was becoming smooth. The Cub was airborne! Still nothing but fog ahead. For an instant the mist parted, revealing a thirty-foot Security fence barely fifty yards away. He had to have altitude!

  …Under no circumstances should high angle-of-attack (climb) maneuvers be attempted without sufficient air speed…

  Instructions are rarely the equal of actual experience, and now Norman was going to learn the hard way. He pushed at the throttle and pulled back hard on the stick. The little aircraft nosed sharply upward, its small jet engine screaming. The air speed fell and with it the lifting power of the wings. The Cub seemed to pause for an instant suspended in the air, then fell back. Jet still whining, the nose came down and the plane plunged earthwards.

  IMAGINE A PLATE of spaghetti—no sauce or meatballs. O.K., now picture an entire room filled with such food. This wormy nightmare gives you some idea of the complexity of the First Security District, otherwise known as the Labyrinth. By analogy each strand of spaghetti is a tunnel segment carved through bedrock. The Labyrinth occupied four cubic miles under the cities of Ishpeming and Negaunee in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Without the power of controlled nuclear fusion such a maze could never have been made. Each tunnel was connected to several others by a random system of secret hatches, controlled by voice and electronic codes. Truly the First Security District was the most spy-proof volume in the solar system. The Savannah plant, the CIA, Soviet IKB, and the entire system of GM factories could have co-existed in it without knowledge of one another. As a matter of fact, thirty-one different Security projects, laboratories, and military bases existed in the Labyrinth with their co-ordinates listed in a single filing computer—and there’s the rub…

  “Because he’s been getting straight A’s,” Dr. William Dunbar finished.

  Lieutenant General Alvin Pederson, Commander of the First Security District, looked up from the computer console with a harried expression on his face. The two men were alone in the chamber containing the memory bank of United States Government Files Central, usually referred to as Files Central or simply Files. Behind the console were racks of fiberglass, whose orderly columns and rows filled most of the room. At the base of each rack, small lasers emitted modulated and coherent light; as the light passed through the fibers, it was altered and channeled by subtle impurities in the glass. Volume for volume, the computer was ten thousand times better than the best cryogenic models. Files Central contained all the information, secret and otherwise, possessed by the U.S.—including the contents of the Library of Congress, which managed to fill barely ten percent of Files’ capacity. The fact that Pederson kept his office here rather than at Continental Air Defense Headquarters, which occupied another part of the Labyrinth, indicated just how important the functions of Files were.

  Pederson frowned. He had better things to do than listen to every overwrought genius that wanted to talk to him, though Dunbar usually spoke out only when he had something important to say. “You’d better start at the beginning, Doctor.”

  The mathematician began nervously. “Look. Norman has never had any great interest in his schoolwork. We may have given the chimp high intelligence with this brain-computer combination, but he has the emotional maturity of a nine-year-old human. Norman is bright, curious—and lazy; he would rather read science fiction than study history. His schoolwork has always been poorly and incompletely done—until six weeks ago. Since then he has spent virtually no time on real studying. At the same time he has shown a complete mastery of the factual information in his courses. It’s almost as if he had an eidetic memory of facts that were never presented to him. As if…”

  Dunbar started on a different tack. “General, you know how much trouble we had co-ordinating the chimp’s brain with his computer in the first place. On the one hand you have an African chimpanzee, and on the other an advanced optical computer which theoretically is superior even to Files here. We wanted the chimp’s brain to co-operate with the computer as closely as the different parts of a human brain work together. This meant that the computer had to be programmed to operate the way the chimp’s mind did. We also had to make time-lapse corrections, because the chimp and the computer are not physically together. All in all, it was a terrifically complicated job. It makes the Economic Planning Programs look like setting up Fox and Geese on a kid’s Brain Truster kit.” Seeing the other’s look of impatience, Dunbar hurried on. “Anyway, you remember that we needed to use the Files computer, just to program our computer. And the two machines had to be electronically connected.”

  The scientist came abruptly to the point. “If by some accident or mechanical failure, the link between Files and Norman were never cut, then…then the chimp would have complete access to U.S. Files.”

  Pederson’s preoccupation with other matters disappeared. “If that’s so, we’ve got one hell of a problem. And it would explain a lot of other things. Look.” He shoved a sheet of paper at Dunbar. “As a matter of routine, Files announces how much information it has supplied to queries during every twenty-four-hour period. Actually it’s sort of a slick gimmick to impress visitors with how efficient and useful Files is, supplying info
rmation to twenty or thirty different agencies at once. Up until six weeks ago the daily reading hung around ten to the tenth bits per day. During the next ten days it climbed to over ten to the twelfth—then to ten to the fourteenth. We couldn’t hunt down the source of the queries and most of the techs thought the high readings were due to mechanical error.

  “Altogether, Files has supplied almost ten to the fifteenth bits to—someone. And that, Doctor, is equal to the total amount of information contained in Files. It looks as if your monkey has programmed himself with all the information the U.S. possesses.”

  PEDERSON TURNED TO the query panel, typed two questions. A tape reel by the desk spun briefly, stopped. Pederson pointed to it. “Those are the co-ordinates of your lab. I’m sending a couple men down to pick up your simian friend. Then I’m sending some more men to wherever his computer is.”

  Pederson looked at the tape reel expectantly, then noticed the words gleaming on a readout screen above the console:

  The co-ordinates you request are not On File.

  Pederson lunged forward and typed the question again, carefully. The message on the screen didn’t even flicker:

  The co-ordinates you request are not On File.

  Dunbar leaned over the panel. “It’s true, then,” he said hoarsely, for the first time believing his fears. “Probably Norman thought we would punish him if we found out he was using Files.”

  “We would,” Pederson interrupted harshly.

  “And since Norman could use information On File, he could also erase information there. We hardly ever visit the tunnel where his computer was built, so we haven’t noticed until now that he had erased its coordinates.”

  Now that he knew an emergency really existed, Dunbar seemed calm. He continued inexorably, “And if Norman was this fearful of discovery, then he probably had Files advise him when you tried to find the location of his computer. My lab is only a couple hundred feet below the surface—and he surely knows how to get out.”

  The general nodded grimly. “This chimp seems to be one step ahead of us all the way.” He switched on a comm, and spoke into it. “Smith, send a couple men over to Dunbar’s lab…Yeah, I’ve got the coordinates right here.” He pressed another switch and the reel of tape spun, transmitting its magnetic impressions to a similar reel at the other end of the hookup. “Have them grab the experimental chimp and bring him down here to Files Central. Don’t hurt him, but be careful—you know how bright he is.” He cut the circuit and turned back to Dunbar.

  “If he’s still there, we’ll gel him; but if he’s already made a break for the surface, there’s no way we can stop him now. This place is just too decentralized.” He thought for a second, then turned back to the comm and gave more instructions to his aide.

  “I’ve put in a call to Sawyer AFB to send some airborne infantry over here. Other than that, we can only watch.”

  A TV panel brightened, revealing a view from one of the hidden surface cameras. The scene was misty, and silent except for an occasional dripping sound.

  Several minutes passed; then a superbly camouflaged and counterbalanced piece of bedrock in the center of their view swung down, and a black form in orange Bermuda shorts struggled out of the ground, dragging a large white sack. The chimp shivered, then moved off, disappearing over the crest of the bluff.

  Pederson’s hands were pale white, clenched in frustration about the arms of his chair. Although the First Security District was built under Ishpeming, its main entrances were fifteen miles away at Sawyer Armed Forces Base. There were only three small and barely accessible entrances in the area where Norman had escaped. Fortunately for the chimpanzee, his quarters had been located near one of them. The area which contained these entrances belonged to the Ore REclamation Service, a government agency charged with finding more efficient methods of low-grade ore refining. (With the present economic situation, it was a rather superfluous job since the current problem was to get rid of the ore on hand rather than increase production.) All this indirection was designed to hide the location of the First Security District from the enemy. But at the same time it made direct control of the surface difficult.

  A shrill sound came from the speaker by the TV panel. Dunbar puzzled, “Sounds almost like a light jet.”

  Pederson replied, “It probably is. The ORES people maintain a small office up there for appearances’ sake, and they have a Piper Cub…Could that chimp fly one?”

  “I doubt it, but I suppose if he were desperate enough he would try anything.”

  Smith’s voice interrupted them, “General, our local infiltration radar has picked up an aircraft at an altitude of fifteen feet. Its present course will take it into the Security fence.” The buzzing became louder. “The pilot is going to stall it out! It’s in a steep climb…eighty feet, one hundred. It’s stalled!”

  The buzzing whine continued for a second and then abruptly ceased.

  THE TYPEWRITER DEPARTED through the front windshield at great speed. Norman Simmons came to in time to see his dog-eared copy of Galactic Patrol disappear into the murky water below. He made a wild grab for the book, missed it, and received a painful scratch from shards of broken windshield. All that remained of his belongings was the second volume of the Foundation series and the blanket, which somehow had been draped half in and half out of the shattered window. The bottom edge of the blanket swung gently back and forth just a couple of inches above the water. The books he could do without; they really had only sentimental value. Since he had learned the Trick, there was no need to physically possess any books. But in the cold weather he was sure to need the blanket; he carefully retrieved it.

  Norman pushed open a door, and climbed onto the struts of the Cub for a look around. The plane had crashed nose first into a shallow pond. The jet had been silenced in the impact, and the loudest sound to be heard now was his own breathing. Norman peered into the fog. How far was he from “dry” land? A few yards away he could see swamp vegetation above the still surface of the water; beyond that, nothing but mist. A slight air current eased the gloom. There! For an instant he glimpsed dark trees and brush about thirty yards away.

  Thirty yards, through cold and slimy water. Norman’s lips curled back in revulsion as he stared at the oily liquid. Maybe there was an aerial route, like Tarzan used. He glanced anxiously up, looking for some overhanging tree branch or vine. No luck. He would have to go through the water. Norman almost cried in despair at the thought. Suffocating visions of death by drowning came to mind. He imagined all the creatures with pointy teeth and ferocious appetites that might be lurking in the seemingly placid water: piranhas to strip his bones and—no, they were tropical fish, but something equally deadly. If he could only pretend that it were clear, ankle-deep water.

  Dal swam silently toward the moonlit palms and palely gleaming sands just five hundred yards away. Five hundred yards, he thought exultantly, to freedom, to his own kind. The enemy could never penetrate the atoll’s camouflage…He didn’t notice a slight turbulence, the swift emergence of a leathery tentacle from the water. But he fought desperately as he felt it tighten about his leg. Dal’s screams were bubbly gurglings inaudible above the faint drone of the surf, as he was hauled effortlessly into the depths and sharp, unseen teeth…

  For a second his control lapsed, and the fictional incident slipped in. In the comfort of his room, the death of Dal had been no more than the pleasantly chilling end of a villain; here it was almost unbearable. Norman extended one foot gingerly into the water, and quickly drew it back. He tried again, this time with both feet. Nothing bit him and he cautiously lowered himself into the clammy water. The swamp weeds brushed gently against his legs. Soon he was holding the strut with one hand and was neck deep in water. The mass of weeds had slowly been compressed as he descended and now just barely supported his weight, even though he had not touched bottom. He released his grip on the strut and began moving toward shore. With one hand he attempted to keep his blanket out of the water while with the o
ther he paddled. Norman glanced about for signs of some hideous tentacle or fin, saw nothing but weeds.

  He could see the trees on the shore quite clearly now, and the weeds at his feet seemed backed by solid ground. Just a few more yards—Norman gasped with relief as he struggled out of the water. He noticed an itching on his legs and arms. There had been blood-drinkers in the water after all, but fortunately small ones. He paused to remove the slugs from his body.

  Norman sneezed violently and inspected his blanket. Although the mists had made it quite damp, he wrapped it around himself. Only after he was more or less settled did he notice the intermittent thrumming sound coming through the trees on his left. It sounded like the transport vehicles back in the tunnels, or like the automobiles that he had heard and seen on film.

  Norman scrambled through the underbrush in the direction of the noises. Soon he came to a dilapidated four-lane asphalt highway. Every minute or so, a car would appear out of the mist, travel through his narrow range of vision, and disappear into the mist again.

  MOST SECRET (Unauthorized use of MOST SECRET materials is punishable by death.) He had to get to Canada or they would kill him for sure. He knew millions, billions of things labeled MOST SECRET. Nearly all were unintelligible. The rest were usually boring. A very small percentage were interesting, like something out of an adventure story. And some were horrifying bits of nightmare couched in cold, matter-of-fact words. But all were labeled MOST SECRET, and his access to them was certainly unauthorized. If only he had known beforehand the consequences of Memorizing It All. It had been so easy to do, and so useful, but it was also a deadly, clinging gift.

  Now that the airplane had crashed, he had to find some other way to get to Canada. Maybe one of these cars could take him some place where he would have better luck in his attempt. For some reason, the idea didn’t trigger warning memories. Blissfully unaware that a talking chimpanzee is not a common sight in the United States, Norman started down the embankment to the shoulder of the highway, and in the immortal tradition of the hitchhiker in Two for the Road, stuck out his thumb.