At least Anne Reynolt did not smile when she spoke the lies. In fact, she rarely smiled at all. Director of Human Resources Reynolt. Funny that not even Trixia had picked up on what that title might imply. At first, Ezr thought Reynolt was fighting a proper sense of shame: she hardly ever looked him directly in the eye. But gradually he realized that looking at his face was no more interesting to her than studying a bulkhead. She didn’t see him as a person; she didn’t care a jot for the dead.
Ezr read the reports quietly, not sneering, not crying out when he saw that Sum Dotran was gone. Trixia’s name was nowhere on the list of the dead. Finally he came to the lists of the waking survivors and their present disposition. Almost three hundred were aboard the Qeng Ho temp, also moved to the L1 point. Ezr scanned the names, memorizing: junior people, and virtually no Trilanders or academics. No Trixia Bonsol. He paged further…another list. Trixia! Her name was there, and she was even listed under “Linguistics Department.”
Ezr looked up from the book of windows, tried to sound casual. “What, um, what’s the meaning of this glyph beside some of the names?” Beside Trixia’s name.
“‘Focused.’”
“And what does that mean?” There was an edge, unwanted, in his voice.
“They’re still under medical treatment. Not everyone recovered as easily as you.” Her stare was hard and impassive.
The next day, Nau showed up again.
“Time to introduce you to your new subordinates,” he said. They coasted through a long, straight corridor to a vehicular airlock. This habitat wasn’t the banquet place. There was the faintest drift of gravity, as though it were set on a small asteroid. The taxi beyond the airlock was larger than any the Qeng Ho had brought. It was luxurious in a baroque, primitive way. There were low tables and a bar that served in all directions. Wide, natural-looking windows surrounded them. Nau gave him a moment to look out:
The taxi was rising through the strutwork of a grounded habitat. The thing was incomplete but it looked as big as a Qeng Ho legation temp. Now they were above the strutwork. The ground curved away into a jumble of gray leviathans. These were the diamond mountains, all collected together. The blocks were strangely uncratered, but as somberly dull as common asteroids. Here and there the frail sunlight picked out where the surface graphite had been nicked away, and there was a rainbow glitter. Nestled between two of the mountains he saw pale fields of snow, a blocky tumble of freshly cut rock and ice; these must be the fragments of ocean and seamount they’d lifted from Arachna. The taxi rose farther. Around the corner of the mountains, the forms of starships climbed into view. The ships were more than six hundred meters long, but dwarfed by the rockpile. They were moored tightly together, the way salvage is bundled in a junkyard; Ezr counted quickly, estimated what he could not see directly. “So you’ve brought everything here—to L1? You really intend a lurking strategy?”
Nau gave a nod. “I’m afraid so. It’s best to be frank about this. Our fighting has put us all near the edge. We have sufficient resources to return home, but empty-handed. Instead, if we can just cooperate…well, from here at L1 we can watch the Spiders. If they are indeed entering the Information Age, we can eventually use their resources to refit. In either case, we may get much of what we came for.”
Hm. An extended lurk, waiting for your customers to mature. It was a strategy the Qeng Ho had followed on a few occasions. Sometimes it even worked. “It will be difficult.”
From behind Ezr, a voice said, “For you perhaps. But Emergents live well, little man. Best you learn that now.” It was a voice that Vinh recognized, the voice that had protested of Qeng Ho ambush even as the killing began. Ritser Brughel. Ezr turned. The big, blond fellow was grinning at him. No subtle nuance here. “And we also play to win. The Spiders will learn that too.” Not too long ago, Ezr Vinh had spent an evening sitting next to this fellow, listening to him lecture Pham Trinli. The blond was a boor and a bully, but it hadn’t mattered then. Vinh’s gaze flickered across the carpeted walls to Anne Reynolt. She was watching the conversation intently. Physically, she and Brughel could have been sister and brother. There was even a tinge of red in the guy’s blond hair. But there the similarity ended. Obnoxious as he was, Brughel’s emotions were clear things, and intense. The only affect that Vinh had seen in Anne Reynolt was impatience. She watched the present conversation as one might watch insects in garden soil.
“But don’t worry, Peddler boy. Your quarters are properly inconspicuous.” Brughel pointed out the forward window. There was a greenish speck, barely showing a disk. It was the Qeng Ho temp. “We have it parked in an eight-day orbit of the main jumble.”
Tomas Nau raised his hand politely, almost as if asking for the floor, and Brughel shut up. “We have only a moment, Mr. Vinh. I know that Anne Reynolt has given you an overview, but I want to make sure you understand your new responsibilities.” He did something with his cuff, and the image of the Qeng Ho temp swelled. Vinh swallowed; funny, it was just an ordinary field temp, barely one hundred meters on a side. His eyes searched the lumpy, quilted hull. He had lived in there less than 2Msec, cursed its squat economies a thousand times. But now, it was the closest thing to home that still existed; inside were many of Ezr’s surviving friends. A field temp is so easy to destroy. Yet all the cells looked fully inflated and there was no patchwork. Captain Park had set this one far from his ships, and Nau had spared it. “…so your new position is an important one. As my Fleet Manager, you have responsibilities comparable to the late Captain Park’s. You will have my consistent support; I will make sure that my people understand this.” A glance at Ritser Brughel. “But please remember: Our success—even our survival—now depends on our cooperation.”
TEN
When it came to personnel management, Ezr knew he was a little slow. What Nau was up to should have been instantly obvious. Vinh had even studied such things in school. When they reached the temp, Nau gave an unctuous little speech, introducing Vinh as the new “Qeng Ho Fleet Manager.” Nau made a special point of the fact that Ezr Vinh was the most senior member of a ship-owning Family present. The two Vinh starships had survived the recent ambush relatively undamaged. If there was any legitimate master for the Qeng Ho ships, it was Ezr Vinh. And if everyone cooperated with legitimate authority, there would yet be wealth for all. Then Ezr was pushed forward to mumble a few words about how glad he was to be back among friends, and how he hoped for their help.
In the days that followed, he came to understand the wedge that Nau had slipped between duty and loyalty. Ezr was home and yet he was not. Every day, he saw familiar faces. Benny Wen and Jimmy Diem had both survived. Ezr had known Benny since they were six years old; now he was like a stranger, a cooperative stranger.
And then one day, more by luck than planning, Ezr ran into Benny near the temp’s taxi locks. Ezr was alone. More and more, his Emergent assistants did not dog his moves. They trusted him? They had him bugged? They couldn’t imagine him doing harm? All the possibilities were obnoxious, but it was good to be free of them.
Benny was with a small crew of Qeng Ho right under the outermost balloon wall. Being near the locks, there was no exterior quilting here; every so often the lights of a passing taxi sent a moving glow across the fabric. Benny’s crew was spread out across the wall, working at the nodes of the approach automation. Their Emergent gang boss was at the far end of the open space.
Ezr glided out of the radial tunnel, saw Benny Wen, and bounced easily across the wall toward him.
Wen looked up from his work and nodded courteously. “Fleet Manager.” The formality was familiar now—and still as painful as a kick in the face.
“Hi, Benny. H-how are things going?”
Wen looked briefly down the length of the volume at the Emergent gang boss. That guy really stuck out, his work clothes gray and stark against the rampant individualism of most Qeng Ho. He was talking loudly to three of the work crew, but at this distance his words were muffled by the balloon fabric. Benny l
ooked back at Ezr and shrugged. “Oh, just fine. You know what we’re doing here?”
“Replacing the comm inputs.” One of the Emergents’ first moves had been to confiscate all head-up displays. The huds and their associated input electronics were the classic tools of freedom.
Wen laughed softly, his eyes still on the gang boss. “Right the first time, Ezr old pal. You see, our new…employers…have a problem. They need our ships. They need our equipment. But none of that will work without the automation. And how can they trust that?” All effective machinery had embedded controllers. And of course the controllers were networked, with the invisible glue of their fleet’s local net that made everything work consistently.
The software for that system had been developed over millennia, refined by the Qeng Ho over centuries. Destroy it and the fleet would be barely more than scrap metal. But how could any conqueror trust what all those centuries had built in? In most such situations, the losers’ gear was simply destroyed. But as Tomas Nau admitted, no one could afford to lose any more resources.
“Their own work gangs are going through every node, you know. Not just here, but on all our surviving ships. Bit by bit they are rehosting them.”
“There’s no way they can replace everything.” I hope. The worst tyrannies were the ones where a government required its own logic on every embedded node.
“You’d be surprised what they are replacing. I’ve seen them work. Their computer techs are…strange. They’ve dug up stuff in the system that I never suspected.” Benny shrugged. “But you’re right, they aren’t touching the lowest-level embedded stuff. It’s mainly the I/O logic that gets jerked. In return, we get brand-new interfaces.” Benny’s face twisted in a little smile. He pulled a black plastic oblong from his belt. Some kind of keyboard. “This is the only thing we’ll be using for a while.”
“Lord, that looks ancient.”
“Simple, not ancient. I think these are just backups the Emergents had floating around.” Benny sent another look in the direction of the gang boss. “The important thing is, the comm gear in these boxes is known to the Emergents. Tamper with it, and there’ll be alarms up the local net. In principle they can filter everything we do.” Benny looked down at the box, hefted it. Benny was just another apprentice, like Ezr. He wasn’t much sharper about technical things than Ezr, but he always had a nose for clever deals. “Strange. What I’ve seen of Emergent technology looks pretty dull. Yet these guys really intend to dredge and monitor everything. There’s something about their automation that we don’t understand.” He was almost talking to himself.
On the wall behind him a light grew and grew, shifted slowly sideways. A taxi was approaching the docking bay. The light slid around the curve of the wall, and a second later there was a muted kchunk. Shallow ripples chased out across the fabric from the docking cylinder. The lock pumps kicked in. Here, their whine was louder than at the dock entrance itself. Ezr hesitated. The noise was enough to mask their conversation from the gang boss. Sure, and any surveillance bugs could hear through the racket better than our own ears. So when he spoke, it was not a conspiratorial murmur, but loud against the racket of the pumps. “Benny, lots has happened. I just want you to know I haven’t changed. I’m not—” I’m not a traitor, damn it!
For a moment, Benny’s expression was opaque…and then he suddenly smiled. “I know, Ezr. I know.”
Benny led him along the wall in the general direction of the rest of his work crew. “Let me show you the other things that we are up to.” Ezr followed as the other pointed to this and that, described the changes the Emergents were making in the dock protocols. And suddenly he understood a little more of the game. The enemy needs us, expects to be working us for years. There’s lots we can say to each other. They won’t kill us for exchanging information to get their jobs done. They won’t kill us for speculating about what’s going on.
The whine of the pumps died. Somewhere beyond the plastic of the docking cylinder, people and cargo would be debarking.
Wen swung close to the open hatch of a utility duct. “They’re bringing in lots of their own people, I hear.”
“Yes, four hundred soon, maybe more.” This temp was just some balloons, inflated a few Msecs earlier, upon the fleet’s arrival. But it was large enough for all the crews that had been packed as corpsicles for the fifty-light-year transit from Triland. That had been three thousand people. Now it held only three hundred.
Benny raised an eyebrow. “I thought they had their own temp, and better than this.”
“I—” The gang boss was almost within earshot. But this isn’t conspiracy. Lord of Trade, we have to be able to talk about our jobs. “I think they lost more than they’re letting on.” I think we came within centimeters of winning, even though we were ambushed, even though they had knocked us down with their war disease.
Benny nodded, and Ezr guessed that he already knew. But did he know this: “That will still leave a lot of space. Tomas Nau is thinking of bringing more of us out of coldsleep, maybe some officers.” Sure, the senior people would be more of a risk to the Emergents, but if Nau really wanted effective cooperation…Unfortunately, the Podmaster was much less forthcoming about the “Focused.” Trixia.
“Oh?” Benny’s voice was noncommittal, but his gaze was suddenly sharp. He looked away. “That would make a big difference, especially to some of us…like the little lady I have working in this duct.” He stuck his head partway through the hatch and shouted. “Hey, Qiwi, are you done in there yet?”
The Brat? Ezr had only seen her two or three times since the ambush, enough to know she wasn’t injured and not a hostage. But more than most, she had spent time outside of the temp and with the Emergents. Maybe she just seemed too young to be a threat. A moment passed; a tiny figure in a screwball harlequin outfit slipped out of the duct.
“Yeah, yeah, I’m all done. I strung the tamperproof all—” She saw Ezr. “Hi, Ezr!” For once, the little girl did not swarm on him. She just nodded and kind of smiled. Maybe she was growing up. If so, this was the hard way to do it. “I strung it all the way past the locks, no problem. You gotta wonder why these guys don’t just use encryption, though.” She was smiling, but there were dark shadows around her eyes. It was a face Ezr would expect in someone older. Qiwi stood in the relaxed crouch of zero gee, with one checkered boot slipped under a wall stop. But she held her arms close at her sides, her hands clasping her elbows. The expansive, grabbing and punching little monster of before the ambush was gone. Qiwi’s father was one of the still-infected, like Trixia. Like Trixia, he might never come back. And Kira Pen Lisolet was a senior armsman.
The little girl continued talking about the setup inside the duct. She was well qualified. Other children might have toys and games and playmates; Qiwi’s home had been a near-empty ramship, out between the stars. That long alone-time had left her on the verge of being several kinds of specialist.
She had several ideas for how they might save time with the cable-pulling the Emergents required. Benny was nodding, taking notes.
Then Qiwi was on a different topic. “I hear we’re gonna have new people in the temp.”
“Yes—”
“Who? Who?”
“Emergents. Then some of our own people, I think.”
Her smile blazed for an instant, and then she forced her enthusiasm down with a visible effort. “I-I was over at Hammerfest. Podmaster Nau wanted me to check out the coldsleep gear before they move it to Far Treasure. I…I saw Mama, Ezr. I could see her face through the transp. I could see her slow-breathe.”
Benny said, “Don’t worry, kid. We’ll…Things will be okay for both your mom and pop.”
“I know. That’s what Podmaster Nau told me, too.”
He could see the hope in her eyes. So Nau was making vague promises to her, becoming poor Qiwi’s lifeline. And some of the promises might even be true. Maybe they would finally cure her father of their damn war disease. But armsmen like Kira Pen Lisolet would be terribl
y dangerous to any tyrant. Short of a counterambush, Kira Lisolet might sleep for a long, long time…Short of a counterambush. His glance flickered across to Benny. His friend’s stare was completely blank, a return to the earlier opacity. And suddenly Ezr knew that there really was a conspiracy. In a few Msecs at most, some among the Qeng Ho would act.
I can help; I know I can. The official coordination of all Emergent orders passed through Ezr Vinh. If he were on the inside…But he was also the most closely watched of all, even if Tomas Nau had no real respect for him. For a moment, fury rose in Ezr. Benny knew he wasn’t a traitor—but there was no way he could help without giving the conspiracy away.
The Qeng Ho temp had escaped the ambush without a scratch. There had not even been pulse damage; before they maimed the local net, the Emergents had a great time mining the databases there.
What was left worked well enough for routine ops. Every few days, a few more people were added to the temp’s population. Most were Emergents, but some were low-rank Qeng Ho released from coldsleep detention. Emergents and Qeng Ho, they all looked like refugees from disaster. There was no disguising the damage the Emergents had suffered, the equipment they had lost. And maybe Trixia is dead. The “Focused” were kept in the Emergents’ new habitat, Hammerfest. But no one had seen any of them.
Meantime, conditions in the Qeng Ho temp slowly got worse. They were at less than one-third the temp’s design population, yet systems were failing. Part of it was the maimed automation. Part of it—and this was a subtle effect—was that people weren’t doing their jobs properly. Between the damaged automation and the Emergents’ clumsiness with life-systems, the other side hadn’t caught on. Fortunately for the conspirators, Qiwi spent most of her time off the temp. Ezr knew she could have detected the scam instantly. Ezr’s contribution to the conspiracy was silence, simply not noticing what was going on. He moved from petty emergency to petty emergency, doing the obvious—and wondering what his friends were really up to.