by Vernor Vinge
Twenty Ksec into the workday, the ziphead support for two of the research teams fell into deadlock, a temperamental snit that Reynolt could have cleared in a few seconds. Phuong and Silipan whacked at the problem for 6Ksecs, then announced that the zipheads involved would be down for the rest of the day. No, they weren’t translators—but Trixia had been working with one of them, some kind of geologist. Ezr tried to go over to Hammerfest.
“You’re not on my list, buddy.” There was actually a guard at the taxi port, one of Omo’s goons. “Hammerfest is off-limits.”
“For how long?”
“Dunno. Read the announcements, will you.”
And so Ezr ended up in Benny’s parlor, along with a mob and a half of other people. Ezr wedged down at the table with Jau and Rita. Pham was there, too, looking decidedly hungover.
Jau Xin had his own tale of woe: “Reynolt was supposed to retune my pilots. Not a big deal, but our drills went like crap without it.”
“What are you complaining about? Your gear is still functioning, right? But we were trying to do an analysis of this Spider spaceflight stuff—and now our ziphead allocation is offline. Hey, I know bits of chemistry and engineering, but there’s no way I can put it all to—”
Pham groaned loudly. He was holding his head with both hands. “Quit your bitching. This all makes me wonder about Emergent ‘superiority.’ One person gets knocked out and your house of cards comes apart. Where’s the superiority in that?”
Normally Rita Liao was a gentle sort, but the look she gave Pham was venomous. “You Qeng Ho murdered our superiority, remember? When we came here we had ten times the clinical staff we have now, enough to make our systems as good as anything back home.”
There was an embarrassed silence. Pham glared at Rita, but didn’t argue further. After a moment he gave the abrupt shrug that everyone recognized: Trinli was bested, but unwilling to retreat or apologize.
A voice from the next table broke the silence. “Hey, Trud!”
Silipan was standing halfway through the parlor doorway, looking up at them. He was still wearing the Emergent dress uniform of the day before, but now the silken rags had new stains, and they were not artistic tints.
The silence dissolved, people shouting questions, inviting Trud to come up and talk to them. Trud climbed up through the vines toward Jau Xin’s table. There was no room left, so they flipped another table over to make a double-decker. Now Ezr was almost eye to eye with Silipan, even though the other’s face was inverted from his. The crowd from other tables swarmed in close, anchoring themselves among the vines.
“So when are you going to break that deadlock, Trud? I’ve got zipheads reserved, waiting for answers.”
“Yeah, why are you over here when—”
“—There’s only so much we can do with raw hardware, and—”
“Lord of Trade Almighty, give the fellow a chance!” Pham’s voice boomed, loud and irritated. It was a typical Trinli turnabout, always the truculent cannon, but pointing in whatever direction might make him look good. It also, Ezr noticed, silenced the crowd.
Silipan sent Pham a grateful look. The technician’s cockiness was a fragile thing today. There were dark rings under his eyes, and his hand shook slightly as he raised the drink Benny had set before him.
“How is she, Trud?” Jau asked the question in sympathetic, quiet tones. “We heard…we heard, she’s braindead.”
“No, no.” Trud shook his head and smiled weakly. “Reynolt should make a full recovery, minus maybe a year of retrograde amnesia. Things will be a bit chaotic till we get her back online. I’m sorry about the deadlock. Why, I’d have it fixed by now”—some of the old confidence crept back into his voice—“but I was reassigned to something more important.”
“What really happened to her?”
Benny showed up with a shrimp-tentacle dinner, his best entree. Silipan dug in hungrily, seeming to ignore the question. This was the most attentive audience Trud had ever had, literally breathless to hear his opinions. Ezr could tell the guy realized this, that he was enjoying his sudden and central importance. At the same time, Trud was almost too tired to see straight. His once perfect uniform actually stank. His fork took a wobbling course from food bucket to mouth. After a few moments, he turned a bleary-eyed look in the direction of his questioner. “What happened? We’re not sure. The last year or so, Reynolt’s been slipping—still in Focus, of course, but not well tuned. Tas a subtle thing, something that only a pro could notice. I almost missed it myself. She seemed to be caught up on some subproject—you know the way zipheads can obsess. Only thing is, Reynolt does her own calibration, so there was nothing I could do. I tell you, tas making me damn uneasy. I was about to report it to the Podmaster when—”
Trud hesitated, seemed to realize that this was a brag with consequences. “Anyway, it looks like she was trying to adjust some of the MRI control circuits. Maybe she knew that her tuning was adrift. I don’t know. She had the safety hood off and was running diagnostics. It looks like there was some kind of situational flaw in the control software; we’re still trying to reproduce that. Anyway, she got a control pulse right in the face. There was a little piece of her scalp in the cabinet behind the controls, where she spasmed. Fortunately, the stimulated drug production was alpha-retrox. She has a concussion and a retrox overdose… Like I say, it’s all repairable. Another forty days and our old lovable Reynolt will be back.” He laughed weakly.
“Minus some recent memories.”
“Of course. Zipheads aren’t hardware; I don’t have backups.”
There was some uncomfortable mumbling around the table, but it was Rita Liao who put the idea into words: “It’s all too convenient. It’s like someone wanted to shut her down.” She hesitated. Earlier in the day, it had been Rita pushing the rumors about Ritser Brughel. It showed how far these Emergents had come that they would stick their noses into what might be a Podmaster conflict. “Has Podmaster Nau checked into the off-Watch status of the Vice-Podmaster?”
“And his agents?” That from a Qeng Ho behind Ezr.
Trud slapped his fork down on the table. His voice came out angry and squeaky. “What do you think! The Podmaster is looking into the possibilities…very carefully.” He took a deep breath, and seemed to realize that the price of fame was too high. “You can be absolutely sure that the Podmaster is taking this seriously. But look—the retrox flood was simply a massive overdose, unlocalized, just what you’d expect in an accident. The amnesia will be a patchy thing. Any saboteur doing that would be a fool. She could be dead and it would’ve looked just as much like an accident.”
For a moment, everyone was silent. Trud glared back and forth at all of them.
Silipan picked up his fork, set it down again. He stared into his half-finished bucket of shrimp tentacles. “Lord, I am so tired. I go back on duty in twenty—damn it, fifteen—Ksecs.”
Rita reached out to pat his arm. “Well, I’m glad you came over and gave us the straight story.” There was a murmur of agreement from the people all around.
“Bil and I will be running the show for some time now. It all depends on us.” Trud looked from face to face, seeking comfort. His voice boasted and quailed at the same time.
They met later that day, in the buffer space beneath the temp’s outer skin. This was a meeting agreed on long before the Lake Park open house. It was a meeting Ezr had waited for with impatience and fear—the meeting where he would lay it on the line to Pham Nuwen about Focus. I have my little speech, my little threats to make. Will they be enough?
Ezr moved quietly past Fong’s sproutling trays. The bright lights and the smell of trebyun greens faded behind him. The dark that was left was too deep for unaided eyes. Eight years ago, on his first meeting with Nuwen, there had been faint sunlight. Now the hull plastic showed only darkness.
But nowadays, Ezr had other ways to see… He signaled the localizer that sat on his temple. A ghostly vision rose. The colors were just shades of yellow, su
ch as you might see if you pressed your finger firmly against the side of your eye. But the light wasn’t random patterns. Ezr had worked long and hard with Pham’s exercises. Now the yellow light revealed the curving walls of the balloon membranes and the outer hull. Sometimes the view was distorted. Sometimes the perspective was from beneath his feet or behind his head. But with the right commands, and lots of concentration, he could see where no unaided person could. Pham can still see better. There had been hints, over the years. Nuwen used the localizers like a private empire.
Pham Nuwen was up ahead, standing behind a wall brace, invisible but for the fact that there were localizers beyond him, looking back. As Ezr closed the last few meters’ distance between them, his vision wavered as the other swung his tiny servants into a different constellation.
“Okay, make it quick.” Pham had stepped out to face him. The yellow pseudo-light painted his face haggard and drawn. He hadn’t dropped the Trinli persona? No, this looked like the hangover Pham had shown in the parlor, but there was something deeper to it.
“You—You promised me two thousand seconds.”
“Yeah, but things have changed. Or haven’t you noticed?”
“I’ve noticed a lot of things. I think it’s time we finally really talked about them. Nau, he truly admires you…you know that, don’t you?”
“Nau is full of lies.”
“True. But the stories he showed me, some large part of them is true. Pham, you and I have worked together through several Watches now. I’ve thought about things my aunt and my grand-uncles used to say about you. I’m past the hero worship. Finally, I realize how much you must…love…Focus. You’ve made me many promises, but they’ve always been so carefully framed. You want to beat Nau and take back what we lost—but more than anything, you want Focus, don’t you?
The silence stretched out for five seconds. To the direct question, what will he say? When he finally spoke, his voice was grating: “Focus is the key to making a civilization that lasts—across all of Human Space.”
“Focus is slavery, Pham.” Ezr spoke the words softly. “Of course, you know that; and in your heart I think you hate it. Zamle Eng—you made him your inner cover story; I think that was your heart crying out to you.”
Pham was silent for a second, glaring at him. His mouth twisted. “You’re a fool, Ezr Vinh. You read Nau’s stories and you still don’t understand. I was betrayed once before by a Vinh. It won’t happen again. Do you think I’ll let you live if you cross me?”
Pham glided closer. Ezr’s vision was abruptly snuffed out; he was cut off from all localizer input. Ezr raised his hands, palms up. “I don’t know. But I am a Vinh, Sura’s direct descendant, and also yours. We are a Family of secrets within secrets; someday I would have been told the truth about Brisgo Gap. But even as a child, I heard little things, hints. The Family has not forgotten you. There’s even a motto that we never say on the outside: ‘We owe all to Pham Nuwen; be thou kind unto him.’ So even if you kill me, I have to talk to you.” Ezr stared into the silent dark; he didn’t even know where the other was standing now. “And after yesterday…I think you will listen. I think I have nothing to fear.”
“After yesterday?” Pham’s voice was angry and near. “My little Vinh snake, what can you possibly know about yesterday?”
Ezr stared out in the direction of the voice. There was something about Pham’s voice, a hatred that went beyond reason. What did happen with Reynolt? Things were going terribly wrong, but all he had were the words already planned: “You didn’t kill her. I believe what Trud said. Killing her would have been easy, and could have looked just as much like an accident. And so I think I know about where Nau’s stories are true and where they are lies.” Ezr reached out with both arms, and his hands fell on Pham’s shoulders. He stared intently into the dark, willing vision. “Pham! All your life you have been driven. That, and your genius, made us what we are. But you wanted more. Quite what, is never clear in the Qeng Ho histories, but I could see it in Nau’s records. You had a wonderful dream, Pham. Focus might give it to you…but the price is too high.”
There was a moment of silence, then a sound, almost like an animal in pain. Abruptly, Ezr’s arms were struck aside. Two hands grabbed him at the throat, viselike and squeezing shut. All that was left was shocked surprise, dimming toward final blackout…
And then the hands relaxed their pressure. All around him glowbugs flashed stark white light, dozens of tiny popping sounds. He gasped, dazed, trying to understand. Pham was blowing the capacitors in all the nearby localizers! The pinpoint flashes showed Pham Nuwen in bright and black stop action. There was a glittering madness in his eyes that Ezr had never seen.
The lights were farther away now, the destruction spreading outward from them. Ezr’s voice came out a terrified croak: “Pham. Our cover. Without the localizers—”
The last of the tiny flashes showed a twisted smile on the other’s face. “Without the localizers, we die! Die, little Vinh. I no longer care.”
Ezr heard him turn and push off. What was left was darkness and silence—and death that must be just Ksecs away. For no matter how hard Ezr tried, he found no sign of localizer support.
What do you do when your dream dies? Pham floated alone in the dark of his room, and thought about the question with something like curiosity, almost indifference. At the edge of his consciousness, he was aware of the ragged hole he had punched in the localizer net. The net was robust. That disruption was not automatically revealed to the Emergent snoops. But without careful revision, news of the failure would eventually percolate out to them. He was vaguely aware that Ezr Vinh was desperately trying to cover the burnout. Surprisingly, the boy had not made things worse, but he had not a prayer of doing the high-level cover-up. A few hundred seconds, at most, and Kal Omo would alert Brughel…and the charade would be over. It really didn’t matter anymore.
What do you do when your dream dies?
Dreams die in every life. Everyone gets old. There is promise in the beginning when life seems so bright. The promise fades when the years get short.
But not Pham’s dream. He had pursued it across five hundred light-years and three thousand years of objective time. It was a dream of a single Humankind, where justice would not be occasional flickering light, but a steady glow across all of Human Space. He dreamed of a civilization where continents never burned, and where two-bit kings didn’t give children away as hostages. When Sammy had dug him out of the cemeterium at Lowcinder, Pham was dying, but not the dream. The dream had been bright as ever in his mind, consuming him.
And here he had found the edge that could make the dream come true: Focus, an automation deep enough and smart enough to manage an interstellar civilization. It could create the “loving slaves” whose possibility Sura had made jest of. So what if it was slavery? There were far greater injustices that Focus would banish forever.
Maybe.
He had looked away from Egil Manrhi, now scarcely more than a scanning device. He had looked away from Trixia Bonsol and all the others, locked for years in their tiny cells. But yesterday, he’d been forced to look upon Anne Reynolt, standing alone against all the power of Focus, spending her life to resist that power. The particulars had been a great surprise to Pham, but he had been fooling himself to think that such was not part of the price for his dream. Anne was Cindi Ducanh writ large.
And today, Ezr Vinh and his little speech: “The price is too high!” Ezr Vinh!
Pham might have his dream…if he gave up the reason for it.
Once before, a Vinh had stepped between him and final success. Let the Vinh snake die. Let them all die. Let me die.
Pham curled inward upon himself. He was suddenly conscious that he was weeping. Except as a deceit, he hadn’t cried since…he didn’t remember…perhaps since those days at the other end of his life when he first came aboard the Reprise.
So what do you do when your dream dies?
When your dream dies, you give it up.
And then what is left? For a long time, Pham’s mind dwelled in a nothingness. And then once more, he became aware of the images flickering around him from the localizer net: down on the rockpile, the Focused slaves crammed by the hundreds in the honeycombs of Hammerfest, Anne Reynolt asleep in a cell as small as any.
They deserved better than what had happened to them. They deserved better than what Tomas Nau had planned for them. Anne deserved better.
He reached out into the net, and gently touched Ezr Vinh, motioned him aside. He gathered up the boy’s efforts and began building them into an effective patch. There were details: the bruises on Vinh’s neck, the need for ten thousand new localizers in the temp interspace. He could handle them, and in the longer run—
Anne Reynolt would eventually recover from what he had done to her. When that happened, the game of cat-and-mouse would resume, but this time he must protect her and all the other slaves. It would be so much harder than before. But maybe with Ezr Vinh, if they worked as a real team…The plans formed and re-formed in Pham’s mind. It was a far cry from breaking the wheel of history, but there was a strange, rising pleasure in doing what felt wholly right.
And somewhere before he finally fell asleep, he remembered Gunnar Larson, the old man’s gentle mocking, the old man’s advice that Pham understand the limits of the natural world, and accept them. So maybe he was right. Funny. All the years in this room he had lain awake, grinding his teeth, planning his plans and dreaming what he might do with Focus. Now that he had given it up, there were still plans, still terrible dangers…but for the first time in many years there was also…peace.
That night he dreamed of Sura. And there was no pain.
PART THREE
FORTY-FOUR
There is always an angle. Gonle Fong had lived her whole life by that principle. The mission to the OnOff star had been a long shot, the sort of thing that appealed mainly to scientists. But Gonle had seen angles. Then had come the Emergent ambush, and the long shot had been turned into servitude and exile. A prison run by thugs. But even then there was an angle. For almost twenty years of her life she had played the angles and prospered—if only by the standards of this dump.