Tines Species Reference

“Tines” are a doglike alien species from the Zones of Thought (ZoT) books, written by Vernor Vinge. This document is meant to serve as a comprehensive reference on how to depict them in art.

On Pack Mindedness

Tines are a pack mind species. They form usually-small packs which share a single gestalt consciousness made up by its members. A pack is generally to be treated and referred to as one individual, with only one point of active attention. Unlike a traditional hive mind, the presence of each member has a significant impact on the resulting individual, and there is no central entity in control.

Visual References

One of Amdiranifani’s members, illustrated by Caz [source]

Sophiranifani, illustrated by Coyote

Physical Description

• Traditionally black-and-white pelt coloration, with no intermediate grays.
• The fur is relatively short and dense, but very soft.
• Most of their bodily proportions are very wolf-like, with the exception of long, seal-like necks.
• Long muzzle/nose, (and more of a slit than snoot on the breathing nostrils)
• Hairless patches of dark skin, called “tympana”, are typically located on the forehead and shoulders. These membranes enable high-pitched intrapack “mindsound”, along with interpack speech and hearing.

Excerpts from the Zones of Thought books (Click to reveal)

Considering all the thousands of years that dogs have been bred by humans (and others), this could have been some oddball breed … but only just. The hair was short and dense, a deep velour of black and white. The two tones lay in broad swaths with no intermediate grays. This one’s entire head was black, its haunches split between white and black. The tail was a short, unimpressive flap covering its rear. There were hairless patches on its shoulders and head, where Jefri could see black skin. But the strangest thing was the long, supple neck. It would look more natural in a sea’mal than a dog.

Jefri wiggled his fingers, and the puppy’s eyes widened, revealing an edge of white around the iris.

—Vernor Vinge, A Fire Upon the Deep, Chapter 5

Intrapack (member-to-member) Dynamics

• Packs are typically made up of 3-6 members. Their cognitive capacity scales with the size of the pack. A pack has a much greater capacity for intelligence than a singleton.
  • Past 6 members, thought is very difficult to coordinate. Packs larger than 6 are generally too uncoordinated and confusing for cognitive capacity to scale smoothly, thought no longer clear enough to be useful. With that said, slightly larger clear-thinking packs (of up to 8) can and have existed comfortably.
• Members of a pack often have short, usually-monosyllabic names. As a pack, the names are often combined to form a single name, comprised of the member names. For instance, in A Fire Upon the Deep, the members Wic, Kwk, Rac, and Rum make up the foursome known as Wickwrackrum.
  • Packs can also have a chosen or given name. The aforementioned Wickwrackrum is also known as Peregrine, a name that can persist through changes in pack make-up. In other words, some packs choose to refer to the continuity of their identity as it shifts through many iterations of a pack’s existence.
• Not all members of a pack necessarily have ANY physical attributes in common. Most packs are mixed in gender, age, size, pelt pattern, etc.
• Since members can join packs at any point in their life cycle, packs can even be mixed in culture and upbringing (although it is much more rare for a new member to be older, due to intrapack compatibility).
• Though members of a pack have attributes that make them unique, a pack’s members do not have a sense of individuality. A pack is a single being, a single mind, a single self, made up of parts (called “members”).
  • Occasionally, members of a pack die, and new members can join, resulting in change over time. Compatibility with new members is not a given, and is often not possible.
• Packs can think more clearly when they are huddled closer together. Members never stray further than a few meters from the others in their pack, but in particularly echoey, crowded, or otherwise overstimulating environments, packs instinctively put their heads closer to each other, engaging in “heads-together thought” in order to think more clearly.
  • Heads-together thought can also be used consciously to focus active attention. A pack-mind’s natural wandering/stimming can be reigned in by bringing members close together.

Excerpts from the Zones of Thought books (Click to reveal)

It didn’t take Jefri long to realize that the puppies were driven by a single mind. When they ran around him, some would always sit a little way off, their graceful necks arching this way and that—and the runners seemed to know exactly what the others saw. He couldn’t hide things behind his back if there was even one of them to alert the others. For a while he thought they were somehow talking to each other. But it was more than that: when he watched them unfasten his shoes or draw a picture—the heads and mouths and paws cooperated so perfectly, like the fingers on a person’s hands. Jefri didn’t reason things out so explicitly; but over a period of days he came to think of all the puppies together as a single friend.

—Vernor Vinge, A Fire Upon the Deep, Chapter 14

“Wic-Kwk-Rac-Rum looked ahead. He was almost out of it; the south edge of the wreckage. He dragged himself to a patch of clean ground. Parts of him vomited, and he collapsed. Sanity slowly returned. Wickwrackrum looked up, saw Jaqueramaphan just inside the mob. Scriber was a big fellow, a sixsome, but he was having at least as bad a time as Peregrine. He staggered from side to side, eyes wide, snapping at himself and others.

—Vernor Vinge, A Fire Upon the Deep, Chapter 4

Woodcarver, but so … misarranged. One member was so old it had to be helped by the rest. Two were scarcely more than puppies, and one of those a constant drooler. The largest member was white-eyed blind. It was the sort of thing you might see in a waterfront slum, or in the last generation of incest.

—Vernor Vinge, A Fire Upon the Deep, Chapter 11

Steel watched a digger pack at the bottom of one of the trenches. There were thirty members, so close to each other that their shoulders sometimes touched. It was an enormous mob, but there was nothing of an orgy about the association. Even before Woodcarver, construction and factory guilds had been doing this sort of thing: The thirty-member pack below was probably not as bright as a threesome. The front rank of ten swung mattocks in unison, carving steadily into the wall of dirt. When their heads and mattocks were extended high, the ten members behind them darted forward to scoop back the dirt and rocks that had just been freed. Behind them, a third tier of members hauled the dirt from the pit. Making it work was a complicated bit of timing — the earth was not homogeneous — but it was well within the mental ability of the pack.

—Vernor Vinge, A Fire Upon the Deep, Chapter 23

Interpack (pack-to-pack) Dynamics

• Because thought is synonymous with sound for tines, being physically close to another pack completely disrupts clear-thinking. Packs need to stand at least around 10 meters apart in order to avoid confusion, and even smooth, reflective surfaces can confuse thought.
• Mindsound is a very high-pitched buzzing, and it doesn’t propagate very far. Packs use the lower-pitched “interpack speech” to communicate with each other.
  • Interpack speech is much more firmly within the range of human hearing than mindsound, but it is still outside of what is possible for human speech. That said, tympana are capable of producing sound in the range of human speech, and tines can learn to communicate with human language.
• Some packs are also capable of making and interpreting interpack speech in the range of mindsound (“hightalk”), so that the sound doesn’t travel as far, and so that the communication can’t be detected by the longer-range, directional hearing abilities of tine ears (“low-sound ears”)

Excerpts from the Zones of Thought books (Click to reveal)

They stared at each other for a moment, then Scriber made silly squirling gestures at his shoulder tympana. Listen up. “Can you talk like this?” His voice came very high-pitched, up where some people can’t make voluntary conversation, where low-sound ears are deaf. Hightalk could be confusing, but it was very directional and faded quickly with distance; no one else would hear them. Peregrine nodded, “Hightalk is no problem.” The trick was to use tones pure enough not to confuse.

—Vernor Vinge, A Fire Upon the Deep, Chapter 2

”Be careful!” Jefri said, jerking back his hand. He remembered the grownups’ teeth. Suddenly the air was full of gobbling and buzzing. Hmp. They sounded more like goofy birds than dogs. One of the other pups came forward. It extended a sleek nose toward Jefri. “Be careful!” it said, a perfect playback of the boy’s voice … yet its mouth was closed.

—Vernor Vinge, A Fire Upon the Deep, Chapter 5