[akkartik]

I don't really think of any Vernor Vinge as hard scifi that's got a core "theme" that everything has to connect to. It's rather space opera with fairly deep world building. Every chapter has certain "episodic" aspects, often exploring a single theme, and some chapters advance the broader story arc more than others. So no, the Tines don't connect to the AIs. Instead the Tines contribute to the warp and weft of the story just like the AIs. The angle in their subplot that sticks with me a decade later is the exploration of sense of self when split up between multiple bodies. And what happens to the sense of self when the number of bodies grows or shrinks.

To be fair, "A Deepness in the Sky" has a richer world than Fire. When I reread Fire a few years later I did tend to skim the Tines as well. Whereas every one of the half dozen themes in Deepness has remained compelling after multiple readings.