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A Fire Upon the Deep


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A Fire Upon the Deep
by Vernor Vinge
Copyright ┬й 1992 by Vernor Vinge. All Rights Reservedcopynote Published by
arrangement with Tor Books. For the personal use of those who have purchased
the 1993 ESF Award Anthology only.

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Prolog

How to explain? How to describe? Even the omniscient viewpoint quails.

A singleton star, reddish and dim. A ragtag of asteroids, and a single planet, more
like a moon. In this era the star hung near the galactic plane, just beyond the
Beyond. The structures on the surface were gone from normal view, pulverized
into regolith across a span of aeons. The treasure was far underground, beneath a
network of passages, in a single room filled with black. Information at the
quantum density, undamaged. Maybe five billion years had passed since the
archive was lost to the nets.

The curse of the mummy's tomb, a comic image from mankind's own prehistory,
lost before time. They had laughed when they said it, laughed with joy at the
treasure ... and determined to be cautious just the same. They would live here a
year or five, the little company from Straum, the archaeologist programmers, their
families and schools. A year or five would be enough to handmake the protocols,
to skim the top and identify the treasure's origin in time and space, to learn a secret
or two that would make Straumli Realm rich. And when they were done, they

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would sell the location; perhaps build a network link (but chancier that -- this was
beyond the Beyond; who knew what Power might grab what they'd found).

So now there was a tiny settlement on the surface, and they called it the High Lab.
It was really just humans playing with an old library. It should be safe, using their
own automation, clean and benign. This library wasn't a living creature, or even
possessed of automation (which here might mean something more, far more, than
human). They would look and pick and choose, and be careful not to be burned....
Humans starting fires and playing with the flames.