A Fire Upon the Deep

Even though he no longer dreamed in terror of monster minds, Steel would just as soon not have a hundred more aliens running around. "I hadn't realized they could be wakened so easily… But we shouldn't do it right now. We're having trouble finding food that Jefri can eat." That was true; the creature was an incredibly finicky eater. "I don't think we could feed any more right now."

More grunting. More sharp cries from Jefri. Finally, "There is one other thing, my lord. Jefri thinks it may be possible to use the ship's ultrawave to call for help from others like his parents."

The Flenser Fragment jerked out of the shadows. A pair of heads looked down at the mantis, while another stared meaningfully at Steel. Steel didn't react; he could be cooler than any loose pack. "That's something to think about. Perhaps you and Jefri could talk more about it. I don't want to try it till we're sure we won't hurt the ship." That was weak. He saw the Fragment twitch a muzzle in amusement.

As he spoke, Amdiranifani was translating. Jefri responded almost immediately.

"Oh, that's okay. He meant a special call. Jefri says the ship has been signaling… all by itself… ever since it landed."

And Steel wondered if he had ever heard a deadly threat uttered in such sweet innocence.

They began letting Amdi and Jefri outside to play. Beforehand Amdi was nervous about going out. He was unused to wearing clothes. His whole life -all four years of it — had been spent in that one big room. He read about the outside and was curious about it, yet he was also a little afraid. But the human boy seemed to want it. Every day he'd been more withdrawn, his crying softer. Mostly he was crying for his parents or sister, but sometimes he cried about being locked up so deep away.

So Amdi had talked to Mr. Steel, and now they got out almost every day, at least to an inner courtyard. At first, Jefri just sat, not really looking around. But Amdi discovered that he loved the outdoors, and every time he got his friend to play a little more.

Packs of teachers and guards stood at the corners of the yellowing moss and watched. Amdi — and eventually Jefri — got a big kick out of harassing them. They hadn't realized it down in the room, where visitors came at the balconies, but most adults were nervous around Jefri. The boy was half again as tall as a normally standing pack member. When he came close, the average pack would clump together and edge away. They didn't like having to look up at him. It was silly, Amdi thought. Jefri was so tall and skinny, he looked like he might topple over at any moment. And when he ran it was like he was wildly trying to recover from a fall and never quite succeeding. So Amdi's favorite game those first days was tag. Whenever he was the chaser, he contrived to run Jefri right through the most prim looking whitejackets. If he and Jefri did it right they could turn the tag into a three-way event, Amdi chasing Jefri and a whitejackets racing to stay away from both of them.

Sometimes he felt sorry for the guards and whitejackets. They were so stiff and grownup. Didn't they understand how much fun it was to have a friend that you walk right next to, that you could actually touch?

It was mostly night now. Daylight hovered for a few hours around noon. The twilight before and after was bright enough to dim the stars and aurora, but still too faint to show colors. Though Amdi had spent his life indoors, he understood the geometry of the situation, and liked to watch the change of light. Jefri didn't much like the dark of winter… until the first snow fell.

Amdi got his first set of jackets. And Mr. Steel had special clothes made for the human boy, big puffy things that covered his whole body and kept him warmer than a good pelt would have done.

On one side of the courtyard the snow was just six inches deep, but elsewhere it piled into drifts higher than Amdi's head. Torches were mounted in wind shields on the walls; their light glittered golden off the snow. Amdi knew about snow — but he'd never seen it before. He loved to splash it on one of his jackets. He would stare and stare, trying to see the snowflakes without his breath melting them. The hexagonal pattern was tantalizing, just at the limit of his vision.

But tag was no fun anymore; the human could run through drifts that left Amdi swimming in the white stuff. There were other things the human could do, wonderful things. He could make balls of snow and throw them. The guards were very upset by this, especially when Jefri plinked a few members. It was the first time he ever saw them get angry.