by Vernor Vinge
“Y-yes. We have set that up. But things have gone too far.” He waved his watch hand. “I wouldn’t put it past the Other Side to cause an elevator wreck and—”
“They let us get this far. If I can talk to Parliament, I think there will be an accommodation.” General Smith smiled at the Southlander, an almost conspiratorial look.
Fifteen minutes later, the elevator had deposited them at the main esplanade. Three sides and the roof simply lifted off. That was an embellishment he hadn’t seen before. Unnerby the engineer couldn’t resist: He froze and stared up into the glaring lights and darkness, trying to see the mechanism that had such a large and silent effect.
Then the crush of police and politicians and reporters swept him off the platform…
…and they were climbing up the stairs of Parliament Hall.
At the top, Southland security finally separated them from the reporters and Smith’s own combateers. They passed by five-ton timbered doors…into the hall itself. The hall had always been an underground affair, in earlier generations squatting just above the local deepness. Those early rulers had been more like bandits (or freedom fighters, depending on your source of propaganda) whose forces roamed the mountainous land.
Hrunkner had helped design this incarnation of Parliament Hall. It was one of the few projects he’d worked on where a major design goal was awesome appearance. It might not really be bombproof, but it looked damned spectacular:
The hall was a shallow bowl, with levels connected by gently curving stairs, each level a wide setback with rows of desks and perches. The rock walls curved in an enormous arch that carried fluorescent tubes—and a half-dozen other lighting technologies. Together those lights had almost the brightness and purity of a mid-Bright day, a light rich enough to show all the colors in the walls. Carpeting as deep and soft as father’s-pelt covered the stairs and aisles and proscenium. Paintings were hung on the polished wood that faced each level, paintings done with a thousand dyes by artists who knew how to exploit every illusion. For a poor country, they had spent much on this place. But then, their parliament was their greatest pride, an invention that had ended banditry and dependence, and brought peace. Until now.
The doors swung closed behind them. The sound returned deep echoes from the dome and the far walls. In here, there would be just the Elected, their visitors, and—high above, Hrunkner could see clusters of lenses—the news cameras. Across the curves of desks, almost every perch was filled. Unnerby could feel the attention of half a thousand Elected.
Smith and Unnerby and Tim Downing started down the steps that led to the proscenium. The Elected were mostly quiet, watching. There was respect here, and hostility, and hope. Maybe Smith would have her chance to keep the peace.
For this day of triumph, Tomas Nau had set North Paw’s weather to be its sunniest, the kind of warm afternoon that could extend all the summer day round. Ali Lin had grumbled, but made the necessary changes. Now Ali was weeding in the garden beneath Nau’s study, his irritation forgotten. So what if the park’s patterns were upset; fixing the problem would be Ali’s next task.
And my task is to manage everything together, Tomas thought. Across the table from him sat Vinh and Trinli, working with the site monitoring he had assigned them. Trinli was essential to the cover story, the only Peddler that Tomas was confident would support the lies. Vinh…well, a credible excuse would take him offline for critical moments, but what he did see would corroborate Trinli. That would be tricky, but if there were any surprises…well, that was what Kal and his men were here to handle.
Ritser’s presence was just a flat image, showing him sitting in the Captain’s chair aboard the Hand. None of his words would be heard by innocent ears. “Yes, Podmaster! We’ll have the picture in a moment. We got a functioning spybot into Parliament Hall. Hey, Reynolt, your Melin got something right.”
Anne was up in the Hammerfest Attic. She was present only as a private image in Tomas’s huds, and a voice in his ear. At the moment, her attention was split in at least three directions. She was running some kind of ziphead analysis, watching a Trixia Bonsol translation on the wall above her, and tracking the data stream from the Hand. The ziphead situation was as complicated as it had ever been. She didn’t respond to Ritser’s words.
“Anne? When Ritser’s spy pics come, pipe them directly to Benny’s. Trixia can do overlay translation, but give us some true audio, too.” Tomas had already seen some of the spybot transmissions. Let the people at Benny’s see living Spiders up close and in motion. That would be a subtle help in the postconquest lies.
Anne didn’t look away from her work. “Yes, sir. I see that what you say is heard by Vinh and Trinli.”
“Quite so.”
“Very well. Just want you to know…our internal enemies have stepped up the pace. I’m seeing meddling all through our automation. Watch Trinli. I’ll bet he’s sitting there diddling his localizers.” Anne’s gaze flicked up for an instant, catching the question in Nau’s eyes. She shrugged. “No, I’m still not sure it’s him. But I’m very close. Be ready.”
A second passed. Anne’s voice came again, but now publicly audible here and in the Peddlers’ temp. “Okay. Here we have live video from Parliament Hall at Southmost. This is what a human would actually see and hear.”
Nau looked to the left, where his huds showed Qiwi’s pov in the temp. The main facets of Benny’s display flickered. For an instant it wasn’t clear what they were seeing. There was a jumble of reds and greens, actinic blues. They were looking into some kind of a pit. Stone ladders were cut into the walls. Moss or hairy pelts grew from rock. The Spiders crowded like black roaches.
Ritser Brughel glanced up from the pictures of Parliament and shook his head almost in awe. “It’s like some Frenkisch prophet’s vision of Hell.”
Nau gave a silent nod of acknowledgment. With the ten-second time lag, casual chitchat was to be avoided. But Brughel was right; seeing so many together was even worse than the earlier spybot videos. The zipheads’ cozy, humanesque translations gave a very unreal view of the Spiders. I wonder how much we are missing about their minds. He called up a separate image of the scene, this one synthesized by ziphead translators from a Spider news feed. In this picture, the steep pit became a shallow amphitheater, the ugly splashes of color were orderly mosaics worked into the carpet (which no longer looked like scraggly hair). The woodwork was everywhere glistening with polish (not stained and pitted). And the creatures themselves were somehow more sedate, their gestures almost meaningful in human body language.
In both displays, three figures appeared at the Parliament’s entrance. They climbed (walked) down the stone stairs. The air was full of hissing and clicking, the true sound of these creatures.
The threesome disappeared into the bottom of the pit. A moment passed and they reappeared, climbing the far side. Ritser chuckled. “The midsized one in front must be the spy chief, that’s what Bonsol calls ‘Victory Smith.’” One detail of the ziphead story was accurate: The creature’s clothing was dead black, but it was more a pile of interlocking patches than a uniform. “The hairy creature behind Smith, that must be the engineer, ‘Hrunkner Unnerby.’ Such quaint names for monsters.”
The three climbed out onto an arching spike of stone. A fourth Spider, already on the precarious structure, clambered to its pointed end.
Nau turned from the Spiders’ hall to look at the crowd at Benny’s. They were silent, watching in vast shock. Even Benny Wen’s helpers were motionless, their gaze captured by the images from the Spider world.
“Introductions by the Parliamentary Speaker,” spoke a ziphead voice. “The Parliament will come to order. I have the honor to—” Around the sensible words, Ritser’s spy robot sent back the reality, the hissing clatter, the stabbing gestures with forelegs that ended in rapier points. In truth, these creatures did look like the statues the Qeng Ho had seen at Lands Command. But when they moved it was the chilling grace of predators, some gestures slow, some very ve
ry fast. Strangest of all, for all their superior vision, it wasn’t easy to identify their eyes. Across the fluted ridges of the head, there were patches of smooth glassiness, bulbous here and there, with extensions that might be the cool-down points for its thermal infrared vision. The front of the Spider body was a nightmarish eating machine. The razor mandibles and clawlike helper limbs were in constant motion. But the creature’s head was almost immobile on the thorax.
The Speaker left the tip of the stone needle, and General Smith climbed up, negotiating a tricky passage around the other. Smith was silent for a moment, once she reached the point. Her forelegs waved in a little spiral, as if encouraging foolish persons to get close to her maw. Hiss and clatter came from the speaker. On the “translated” image, a legend appeared over her representation: SMILING GENTLY AT THE AUDIENCE.
“Ladies and gentlemen of the Parliament.” The voice was strong and beautiful—Trixia Bonsol’s voice. Nau noticed Ezr Vinh’s head jerk slightly at the sound of her. The diag traces on Vinh rose with the usual conflicted intensity. He’ll be usable, just long enough, thought Nau.
“I come here speaking for my King, and with his full authority. I come here hoping I can offer enough to win your trust.”
“Ladies and gentlemen of the Parliament.” Rank on rank, the Elected looked back upon Victory Smith. All their attention was hers, and Hrunkner felt the power of the General’s personality flowing as strongly as ever it had done. “I come here speaking for my King, and with his full authority. I come here hoping I can offer enough to win your trust.
“We are at a point in history where we can destroy all progress that has been made—or we can make good on all the efforts of the past and achieve an unbounded paradise. These two outcomes are the two sides of our one situation. The bright outcome depends on trust for one another.”
There were scattered hoots of derision, the Kindred partisans. Unnerby wondered if all of those had tickets off Southland. Surely they must realize that any lesser payoff would leave them as dead as the country they were betraying, once the bombs started falling.
The General had told him that Pedure was down here herself. I wonder…Unnerby looked in all directions as the General spoke, his gaze most intensely upon the shadows and sergeants-at-arms. There. Pedure was sitting on the proscenium, not a hundred feet from Smith. After all these years, she was more confident than ever. Wait a little longer, dear Honored Pedure. Maybe my General can surprise you.
“I have a proposal. It is simple but it has substance—and it can be put into place very quickly.” She motioned for Tim Downing to pass the data cards to the Speaker’s clerk. “I think you know my position in the force structure of the Accord. Even the most suspicious of you will grant that, while I am here, the Accord must show the restraint it has publicly promised. I am authorized to offer a continuance of this state. You of the Southland Parliament may pick any three persons of the Accord—including myself, including the King himself—for indefinite residence at our embassy here at Southmost.” It was the most primitive peacekeeping strategy, though more generous than ever in the past, since she was offering the choice of hostages to the other side. And more than ever in history, it was practical. The Accord Embassy at Southmost was plenty big enough to house a small city, and with modern communications it would not even cripple the important activities of the hostage. If the Parliament was not totally corrupted, this might stick a bar between the legs of onrushing disaster.
The Elected were silent, even Pedure’s buddies. Shocked? Facing up to the only real options they had? Listening for instructions from their boss? Something was going on. In the shadows behind Smith, Hrunkner could see Pedure talking intensely to an aide.
When Victory Smith’s speech ended, Benny’s parlor rang with applause. There had been stark shock when the speech began, when everyone saw how living Spiders really looked. But the words of the speech had fit the personality of Victory Smith, and that was something most people were familiar with. The rest would take a lot of getting used to, but…
Rita Liao caught Benny’s sleeve as he sailed by with drinks for the ceiling. “You shouldn’t have Qiwi up front all by herself, Benny. She can squeeze in here, and still talk to everyone.”
“Um, okay.” It was the Podmaster who had suggested the front-row solitude, but surely it couldn’t matter when things were going so well. Benny delivered the drinks, listening to the happy speculations with half his attention.
“—between that speech and our meddling, they should be safe as temps at Triland—”
“Hey, we could be on the ground in less than four Msecs! After all these years—”
“Space or ground, who cares? We’ll have the resources to dump the birth bans—”
Yes, the birth bans. Our own, human version of the oophase taboo. Maybe I can finally ask Gonle—Benny’s mind shied away from the thought. It was tempting fate to act too soon. Nevertheless, he suddenly felt happier than he had in a long time. Benny avoided the tables by diving across the central gap, a quick detour in Qiwi’s direction.
She nodded at Rita’s suggestion. “That would be nice.” Her smile was tentative, and her eyes had barely flicked away from the parlor’s display screens. General Smith was climbing down from the speaker’s platform.
“Qiwi! Things are working out just like the Podmaster planned. Everyone wants to congratulate you!”
Qiwi petted the kitten in her arms gently, but with a kind of intense protectiveness. She looked at him and her expression was oddly puzzled. “Yes, it’s all working out.” She rose from the table and followed Benny across the space to Rita’s table.
“I have to talk to him, Corporal. Immediately.” Rachner drew himself up as he spoke the words, projecting fifteen years of colonelcy into his manner.
And for a moment the young corporal wilted before his glare. Then the oophase cobblie must have noticed the traces of fizz barf on Thract’s maw and the bedraggled state of his uniform. He shrugged, his gaze watchful and closed. “I’m sorry, sir, you’re not on the list.”
Rachner felt his shoulders droop. “Corporal, just ring down to him. Tell him it’s Rachner, and it’s a matter of…of life and death.” And as soon as he said the words, Thract wished he hadn’t asserted this absolute truth. The cobblie stared at him for a second—debating whether to throw him out? Then something like sick pity seemed to rise in his aspect; he opened a comm line and spoke to someone inside.
A minute passed. Two. Rachner paced the visitor holding box. At least it was out of the wind; he’d frozen the tips of two hands just climbing the stairs from Underhill’s helipad. But…an external guard, and a holding box? Somehow, he hadn’t expected such security. Maybe some good had come out of his losing his job. It had wakened the others to the need for protection.
“Rachner, is that you?” The voice that came from the sentry’s comm was frail and querulous. Underhill.
“Yes, sir. Please, I’ve got to talk to you.”
“You—you look terrible, Colonel. I’m sorry, I—” His voice faded. There was mumbling in the background. Someone said, “The speech went well…plenty of time now.” Then he was back, and sounding much less drifty. “Colonel, I’ll be up in a few minutes.”
FIFTY-THREE
“An excellent speech. It could not have been better if we had scripted it.” In the flat video from the Hand, Ritser rattled on, well pleased with himself. Nau just nodded, smiling. Smith’s peace proposal was strong enough to bring the Spider militaries to a pause. It would give the humans time to announce themselves, and propose cooperation. That was the official story, a risky plan that would leave the Podmasters in a second-class position. In fact, about 7Ksec from now, Anne’s zipheads would initiate a sneak attack by Smith’s own military. The resulting Kindred “counterattack” would complete the planned destruction. And we’ll step in and pick up the pieces.
Nau looked out over North Paw’s afternoon brightness, but his huds were filled with a view of Trinli and Vinh, sitting i
n the flesh just a couple meters from him. Trinli had a faintly amused expression, but his fingers never stopped their flickering work on his assignment, monitoring the nuclear munitions in Kindred territory. Vinh? Vinh looked nervous; the diagnostic tags that hovered by his face showed that he knew something was up but hadn’t quite figured out what it was. It was time to move him out of the way, a few brief errands. When he came back events would be in motion…and Trinli would back up the Podmaster’s story.
Anne Reynolt’s voice came tiny in Nau’s ear. “Sir, we have an emergency.”
“Yes, go ahead.” Nau spoke easily, not turning away from the lake. Inside, though, something froze in his guts. This was the closest he had ever heard Anne come to panicky sharpness.
“Our pet subversive has stepped up the pace. There’s much less masking. He’s grabbing everything that’s loose. A few thousand more seconds and he can shut us zipheads down… It’s Trinli, sir, ninety percent probability.”
But Trinli is sitting right here, before my very eyes! And I need him to back up the post-attack lies. “I don’t know, Anne,” he said aloud. Maybe Anne was freaking. It was possible, though he had been tracking her meds and MRI tuning more closely than ever before.
Anne shrugged, didn’t reply. It was the typical dismissive gesture of a ziphead. She had done her best, and he was welcome to ignore her advice and go to hell.
This was not a distraction he needed when forty years’ work was coming to a cusp. Which was exactly why an enemy might pick this moment finally to act.
Kal Omo was standing right behind Nau, and was on the private link with Reynolt. Of the other three guards, only Rei Ciret was actually in the room. Nau sighed. “Okay, Anne.” He gave Omo an invisible signal to get the rest of his team into the room. We’ll put these two on ice, deal with them later.