by Vernor Vinge
Ezr sighed. Half a year of lifetime away. But not as far away as some things; it would do.
THIRTY-FOUR
Benny’s booze parlor had begun as something sublegal, the visible evidence of a large network of black-market transactions—capital crimes by Emergent standards; in pure Qeng Ho Nese, the term “black market” existed, but only to denote “trade you must do in secret because it offends the local Customers.” In the small community around the rockpile, there was no way to conduct trade or bribe in secret. During the early years, only Qiwi Lisolet’s involvement had protected the parlor. Now…Benny Wen smiled to himself as he stacked the drinks and dinners into his weir. Now he managed here full time whenever he was on-Watch. Best of all, it was a job his father could mostly handle when Benny and Gonle were off. Hunte Wen was still a drifty, gentle soul, and he had never regained his competence in physics. But he had come to love managing the parlor. When he managed it alone, strange things could happen to the place. Sometimes they were ludicrous failures, sometimes marvelous improvements. There was the time he cadged a perfumed lacquer from the volatiles refinery. The smell was okay in small quantities, but painted on the parlor’s walls, it gave off a terrible stink. For a while the largest dayroom became the social hub of the temp. There was another time—four real years later—when he redeemed a Watch’s worth of favor scrip, and Qiwi’s papa devised a zero-gee vine and associated ecosystem to decorate the parlor’s walls and furniture. The place was transformed into a beautiful, parklike space.
The vines and flowers still remained, even though Hunte had been off-Watch for almost two years.
Benny moved up from the bar, in a long circuit through the forest of greenery. Drinks and food were delivered to tables of customers, paper favors paid in return. Benny set a Diamonds and Ice and a meal bucket in front of Trud Silipan. Silipan slipped him a promise-of-favor with the same smug look as always. He obviously figured the promise counted for nothing, that he only paid off because it was convenient.
Benny just smiled and moved on. Who was he to argue—and in a sense, Trud was right. But since the early Watches, very few favors were ever flatly repudiated. Weaseled, yes. The only favors Trud could really give involved service time with the Focused, and he constantly chiseled on his obligations, not finding quite the right specialists, not spending enough ziphead time to get the best answers. But even Trud came through often enough, as with the zero-gee vines he’d caused Ali Lin to design. For behind the farce of paper favors, everyone knew that there was Tomas Nau, who—from clever self-interest or love of Qiwi—had made it clear that the Qeng Ho underground economy had his protection.
“Hello, Benny! Up here!” Jau Xin waved to him from the upper table, the “debating society” table. Watch on Watch, the same sort of people seemed to hang out here. There was usually some overlap between Watches—apparently enough so that even when most of the customers were different, they still sat over here if they wanted to argue about “where it will all end.” This Watch it was Xin and of course Rita Liao, five or six other faces that were no surprise, and—aha, someone who really knew his stuff: “Ezr! I thought it would be four hundred Ksec before you showed up here.” Damn if he didn’t wish he could stay and listen.
“Hi, Benny!” Ezr’s face showed the familiar grin. Funny when you didn’t see a guy for a while, how the changes from times earlier were suddenly sharp. Ezr—like Benny—was still a young man. But they were no longer kids. There were the faintest creases near Ezr’s eyes. And when he spoke, there was a confidence Benny had never seen when they had been on Jimmy Diem’s work crew. “Nothing solid for me, Benny. My gut is still complaining about being unfrozen. There was a four-day change in schedule.” He pointed at the Watch-tree display on the wall by the bar. Sure enough, the update was there, hidden in a flurry of other small changes. “Looks like Anne Reynolt has need of my presence.”
Rita Liao smiled. “That by itself is reason for a meeting of the Debating Society.”
Benny distributed the bulbs and buckets that floated in the weir behind him. He nodded at Ezr. “I’ll get you something to soothe your just-thawed carcass.”
Ezr watched Benny Wen head back to the bar and food prep. Benny probably could find something that wouldn’t upset his stomach. Who’d have thought he’d end up like this? Who’d have thought any of them would. At least Benny was still a Trader, even if on a heartbreakingly small scale. And I’m…what? A conspirator with cover so deep that sometimes it fooled even him. Ezr was sitting here with three Qeng Ho and four Emergents—and some of the Emergents were better friends than the Qeng Ho. No wonder Tomas Nau did so well. He had coopted them all, even as they thought they were following the Traders’ Way. Nau had blunted their minds to the slavery that was Focus. And maybe it was for the best. Ezr’s friends were protected from the deadliness of Nau and Brughel—and Nau and Brughel were dulled to the possibility that there might be Qeng Ho who still worked against them.
“So what got you out of the freezer early, Ezr?”
Vinh shrugged. “Beats me. I’m going down to Hammerfest in a few Ksecs.” Whatever it is, I hope it doesn’t mess up my meeting with Pham.
Trud Silipan rose up through the floor spaces, settled in an empty seat. “It’s no big thing, a snit between the translators and the hard-science zipheads. We got it resolved earlier today.”
“So why did Reynolt change Ezr’s schedule?”
Silipan rolled his eyes. “Ah, you know Reynolt. No offense, Ezr, but she thinks that since your specialty is the Dawn Age, we can’t get along without you.”
Hardly, thought Ezr, remembering his last encounter with the Director of Human Resources.
Rita said, “I’ll bet tas something to do with Calorica Bay. The children are down there now, you know.” When Rita spoke of “the children” she was talking about the Spiders from the old “Children’s Hour of Science.”
“They’re not children anymore,” Xin said gently. “Victory Junior is a young wo—young adult.”
Liao shrugged irritably. “Rhapsa and Little Hrunk still qualify as children. They’ve all moved down to Calorica.”
There was an embarrassed pause. The adventures of specific Spiders were an unending drama for many—and as the years passed, it became easier to get more details. There were other families being followed by the Spider fans, but the Underhill one was still the most popular. Rita was easily the biggest fanatic, and sometimes she was just too pathetically obvious.
Trud was oblivious of the sad byplay. “No, Calorica is a scam.”
Xin laughed. “Hey, Trud, there really is a launch site just south of Calorica. These Spiders are launching satellites.”
“No, no. I meant to say the cavorite thing is a scam. That’s what got Ezr rousted early.” He noticed Ezr’s reaction and his smirk broadened. “You recognize the term.”
“Yes, it’s—”
Trud rolled on, not interested in classical trivia: “It’s another of the translators’ screwball references, just more obscure than most. Anyway, a year ago, some Spiders were using abandoned mines in the altiplano south of Calorica, trying to find a difference between gravitational mass and inertial mass. The whole thing makes you wonder how bright these creatures really are.”
“The idea is not stupid,” said Ezr, “until you’ve done some experiments to see otherwise.” He remembered the project now. It had been mainly Tiefer scientists. Their reports had been nearly inaccessible. The human translators had never learned Tiefic in the depth that they had the Accord languages. Xopi Reung and a couple of others might have become fluent in Tiefic, but they had died in the mindrot runaway.
Trud waved off the objection. “What’s stupid is, these Spiders eventually found a difference. And they posted their foolishness, claimed to have discovered antigravity in the altiplano.”
Ezr glanced at Jau Xin. “Have you heard of this?”
“I think so…” Jau looked thoughtful. Apparently this had been kept under wraps until now. “Reynol
t has had me in with the zipheads a couple of times. They wanted to know about any orbital anomalies in our snoopersats.” He shrugged. “Of course there are anomalies. That’s how you do subsurface density maps.”
“Well,” Trud continued, “the Spiders who did this had about an Msec of fame before they discovered they couldn’t reproduce their miraculous discovery. Their retraction came out just a few Ksecs ago.” He chuckled. “What idiots. In a human civilization, their claim wouldn’t have lasted a day.”
“The Spiders are not stupid,” said Rita.
“They’re not incompetent, either,” said Ezr. “Sure, most human societies would be very skeptical of such a report. But humans have had eight thousand years of experience with science. Even a fallen civ, if it were advanced enough to study such questions, would have library ruins that contained the human heritage.”
“Yeah, right. ‘Everything the Spiders do is for the first time.’”
“But it’s true, Trud! We know they’re first-timers. We have only one case that’s really comparable—our rise upon Old Earth. And there are so many things that human first-timers got wrong.”
“In fact, we’re doing them a big favor by taking over.” That from Arlo Dinh, a Qeng Ho. He made the assertion with all the moral smugness of an Emergent.
Ezr nodded reluctantly. “Yeah, our Dawn Age ancestors had an awful lot of good luck to get out of the single-planet trap. And the Spider geniuses are no better than the old-time human ones. Look at this guy Underhill. His students have made a lot of things work, but—”
“But he’s full of superstitions,” Trud put in.
“Right. He has no concept of the limits of software design, and of the limits that puts on hardware. He thinks immortality and godlike computers are just around the corner, the product of just a little more progress. He’s a walking library of the Failed Dreams.”
“See! That’s the real reason you’re Reynolt’s favorite. You know what fantasies the Spiders might believe. When the time comes to take over, that will be important.”
“When the time comes…” Jau Xin gave a lopsided smile. On the far wall, by the Watch Chart, Benny had a window on the Coming-Out Party Betting Pool. Guessing just when they would come out of hiding, when the Exile would end—that was the eternal topic of parlor debate. “It’s been more than thirty real years since the sun relighted. I’m outside a lot, you know, almost as much as Qiwi Lisolet and her crews. These days, the sun is dimming down. We have just a few years till it’s dead again. The Spiders have themselves a deadline. I’m betting they’ll be into the Information Age in less than ten years.”
“No, not far enough for us to make a smooth takeover,” said Arlo.
“Okay. But in the end, other things may force our hand. The Spiders have the beginnings of a space program. In ten years, our operations—our presence here at L1—may be impossible to disguise.”
Trud: “So? They get too uppity, we whack ’em.”
Jau: “And cut our own throats, man.”
“You’re both talking nonsense,” said Arlo. “I’ll bet we have fewer than ten nukes left. Seems we used all the rest on each other a while back—”
“We have directed-energy weapons.”
“Yes, if we were in close orbit. I tell you, we could bluff a good game, but—”
“We could drop our wrecked starships on the buggers.”
Ezr exchanged a glance with Rita Liao. This was the argument that sent her into full froth. She—and Jau and most of the people round the table—thought of the Spiders as people. That was Trixia’s triumph. The Emergents, at least outside the Podmaster class, were uncomfortable with the notion of megamurder. In any case, Jau Xin was certainly right: Whether or not the Emergents had the firepower, the whole object of the Lurk was to create a Customer who could put the mission back in business. Blowing them up made sense only to crazies like Ritser Brughel.
Ezr leaned back, out of the argument. He had seen Pham’s name on the Watch Chart; just a few more days and they would have their first real meeting. Take it slow and patient, no rush. Okay. He hoped the Debating Society would move on to something more interesting, but even this nonsense was a pleasant familiar buzz. Not for the first time, Ezr realized this was almost like having family, a family that argued endlessly about problems that never seemed to change. He got along with even the Emergents, and they with him. Almost like a normal life…He looked through the lattice of z-vines that filled the spaces around them. The flowers actually smelled faintly—though nothing like that stink-lacquer that Hunte tried before. Ah. A clear view opened through the flowers and leaves, to Benny’s station on the floor of the parlor. He started to wave to Benny. Maybe he could stomach some real food, after all. Then he saw a flash of checkered pants and fractille blouse.
Qiwi.
She and Benny were deep in negotiation. Benny pointed at the crappy section of wallpaper that stretched across the parlor’s bottom wall. Qiwi nodded, consulting some sort of list. Then she seemed to feel his gaze. She turned, and waved at Ezr’s group up by the ceiling. She is so beautiful. Ezr looked away, his face suddenly chill. Once Qiwi had been the brat who irritated him beyond measure. Once Qiwi had seemed a betrayer, abusing the zipheads. And once Ezr had hit her and hit her…Ezr remembered the rage, how good it felt to get some revenge for Jimmy Diem and Trixia Bonsol. But Qiwi was no betrayer; Qiwi was a victim more than she knew. If Pham was right about mindscrub—and he must be; the horror fit the facts too well—then Qiwi was a victim almost beyond human imagination. And in beating Qiwi, Ezr had learned something about himself. He had learned that Ezr Vinh’s decency must be a shallow thing. That self-knowledge was something he could keep tucked away most of the time. Maybe he could still do good, even if at bottom he was something vile…But when he actually saw Qiwi, and when she saw him…then it was impossible to forget what he had done.
“Hi Qiwi!” Rita had noticed Qiwi’s wave. “Got a second? We want you to settle something for us.”
Qiwi grinned. “Be right there.” She turned back to Benny. He was nodding, handing her a bunch of paper favors. Then she came bouncing up the latticework of vines. She trailed Benny’s net, filled with beer refills and more snacks. In effect, she was doing some of Benny’s work for him. That was Qiwi for you. She was part of the underground economy, the hustlers that made things relatively comfortable here. Like Benny, she didn’t hesitate to lend a hand, to work. And at the same time, she had the Podmaster’s ear; she brought a softness to Nau’s regime that Emergents like Jau Xin could not consciously admit. But you could see it in Jau and Rita’s eyes; they were almost in awe of Qiwi Lisolet.
And she smiled at him. “Hi, Ezr. Benny figured you might want more.” She slid the bucket into sticking contact with the table in front of him. Ezr nodded, not able to meet her gaze.
Rita was already babbling at her; maybe no one noticed his awkwardness. “Not to ask for inside news, Qiwi, but what’s the latest estimate for our Coming-Out date?”
Qiwi smiled. “My guess? Twelve years at the outside. Spider progress with spaceflight may force our hand before that.”
“Yeah.” Rita slid a glance at Jau. “Well, we were wondering. Suppose we can’t grab everything via their computer networks. Suppose we have to take sides, play one power block off against another. Who would we back?”
THIRTY-FIVE
Diamond One was more than two thousand meters long and nearly as wide, by far the largest of all the rocks in the pile. Over the years, the crystal directly beneath Hammerfest had been carved into a labyrinth of caves. The upper levels were the labs and offices. Below that were Tomas’s private rooms. Below that was the latest addition to the inverted architecture: a lens-shaped void more than two hundred meters across. The making of it had worn out most of the thermal diggers, but Qiwi had not objected; in fact, this had been partly her idea.
Their three human forms were almost lost in the scale of the place. “So is this impressive, or is this impressive?” Qiwi asked, smil
ing at Tomas.
Nau was staring straight upward, his face slack with wonder. That didn’t happen often. He hadn’t noticed yet, but he’d lost his balance and was slowly falling over backward. “I…yes. Even the huds mockup didn’t do it justice.”
Qiwi laughed, and patted him back toward vertical. “I confess. In the mockups I didn’t show the lights.” Actinic arcs were buried in the anechoic grooves of the ceiling. The lamps turned the sky into a coruscating gem. By tuning their output, almost any lighting effect could be obtained, but always tinged with rainbows.
On her right, Papa was also staring, but not with rapture, and not upward. Ali Lin was on his hands. He pretty much ignored the subtle hints of gravity as he poked at the pebble-textured surface the diggers had left in the diamond floor. “There’s nothing living here, nothing at all.” His face screwed up in a frown.
“It will be the largest park you’ve ever done, Papa. A blank slate for you to work on.” The frown eased. We’ll work on it together, Papa. You can teach me new things. This one should be big enough for real animals, maybe even the flying kittens. Those were more dream than memory, from the time Mama and Papa and Qiwi spent at the Trilander departure temp.
And Tomas said, “I’m so glad you pushed me on this, Qiwi. I just wanted a little better security and you’ve given me something wonderful.” He sighed, smiled down at her. His hand brushed down her back to just above her hips.
“It’ll be a large park, Tomas, even by Qeng Ho standards. Not the largest, but—”
“But it likely will be the best.” He leaned past her to pat Ali on the shoulder.
“Yes.” Yes, it likely will be the best. Papa had always been a premier parkbuilder. And now, for fifteen years of his lifetime he had been Focused on his specialty. Every year of that time had produced new wonders. His bonsais and microparks were already better than the finest of Namqem. Even the Focused Emergent biologists were as good as the Qeng Ho best, now that they had access to the fleet’s life library.