by Vernor Vinge
Abruptly, there was a clattering sound that echoed through the vault. Ali Lin had fallen beyond his view, into the downward end. But the sound came again and again, a million metal plates crashing together. Maybe the inward entrance? That was at the lowest point in the vault. Nau moved silently toward the edge of the drop-off.
Pham Nuwen’s voice was faint against the racket: “You’re wrong, Podmaster. You don’t have the—” Nau cut the audio with a swipe of his hand and moved slowly forward. He did a manual traverse of the vault’s fixed cameras. Nothing. The primitive automation was a salvation and a pest. Okay. Weapons. Was there anything smaller than a nuke around here? The database wasn’t set up for such trivia. He let the catalogue listings stream by his huds, and he moved close to wall, still out of sight from below. The clanking and banging continued. Ah, that was the lake-bed servos, their noise channeled down the tunnel! Quite a fanfare for a secret break-in.
The ambusher, such as he was, floated up into sight.
“Ah, Mr. Vinh. I thought you were well drowned.”
In fact, Vinh looked semiconscious, his face pasty pale. There was no sign of his wire-gun wounds. No, he stole one of my jackets. The full-press was trim and perfectly creased, but the right arm was subtly twisted, lumpy. Vinh held Ali gently against his left shoulder. He looked back at Nau, and hatred seemed to bring him more alertness.
But the downward end of the vault was empty of further intruders. And Nau’s catalogue search had completed: there were three wire guns in the cabinet immediately behind him! Nau breathed a sigh of relief and smiled at the Peddler. “You did well, Mr. Vinh.” A few seconds’ difference and Vinh would have been here first, setting a real ambush. Instead…the fellow appeared to be unarmed, one-armed, weak as a kitten. And Tomas Nau stood between him and the wire guns. “I don’t have time to talk, I’m afraid. Stand aside from Ali, please.” He spoke mildly, but didn’t take his eyes off the two. His left hand moved up to open the gun cabinet. Maybe the calm style would work on Vinh, and he would have a clean kill.
“Tomas!”
Qiwi stood above them, at the entrance to the vault’s open space.
For an instant, Nau just stared. She had a nosebleed. Her lacy dress was torn and splattered. But she was alive. The jettison must have jammed along with the taxi hatch. With the taxi still in place, lock security would not reset—and somehow she had clawed her way back in.
“We were trapped, Tomas. Somehow the lock was defective.”
“Oh, yes!” The anguish in Nau’s voice was completely sincere. “It slammed shut and I heard venting. I—I was so sure you were dead.”
Qiwi came down from the ceiling, guiding the body of Rei Ciret onto a grabfelt rest. The guard might be alive, but he was clearly of no use just now. “I-I’m sorry, Tomas. I wasn’t able to save Marli.” She came across the room to hug him, but there was something tentative about the gesture. “Who are you talking to?” Then she saw Vinh and Ali. “Ezr?”
For once, some good luck: Vinh was perfect, his full-press jacket stained like a butcher’s smock, with Ali’s blood. From behind Vinh came the banging of the ruined park. The Peddler’s voice was gasping and harsh. “We’ve taken over L1, Qiwi. Except for a few of Nau’s thugs, we haven’t hurt anyone”—this while her own father lay bleeding in his arms! “Nau is using you like he always does. Only this time, he’s going to kill us all. Look around! He’s going to nuke the temp.”
“I—” But Qiwi did look around, and Nau didn’t like what he saw in her eyes.
“Qiwi,” said Nau, “look at me. We’re up against the same group that was behind Jimmy Diem.”
“You murdered Jimmy!” shouted Vinh.
Qiwi wiped her bloody nose on the fine white fabric of her sleeve. For a moment she looked very young and lost, as lost as when he’d first taken her. She caught her foot on a wall stop and turned toward him, considering. Somehow, he had to make time, just a handful of seconds:
“Qiwi, think who’s saying these things.” Nau gestured in the direction of Vinh and Ali Lin. It was a terrible risk he was taking, a desperate manipulation. But it was working! She actually turned a bit, her gaze shifting away from him. He slipped his hand into the cabinet, feeling for the butt of a wire gun.
“Qiwi, think who’s saying these things.” Nau gestured in the direction of Ezr and Ali Lin. Poor Qiwi actually turned to look. Behind her, Ezr saw a smile flicker across Tomas Nau’s face.
“You know Ezr. He tried to kill your father back at North Paw; he thought he could get at me through Ali. If he had a knife, he would be cutting into your father right now. You know what a sadist Ezr Vinh is. You remember the beating he gave you; you remember how I held you afterwards.”
The words were for Qiwi, but they hit Ezr like battering rams, horrid truths mixed with deadly lies.
Qiwi was motionless for a moment. But now her fists were clenched; her shoulders seemed to hunch down with some terrible tension. And Ezr thought, Nau is going to win, and I’m the reason. He pushed back the grayness that seemed to close on him from all sides and made one last try: “Not for me, Qiwi. For all the others. For your mother. Please. Nau has lied to you for forty years. Whenever you learn the truth, he scrubs your mind. Over and over again. And you can never remember.”
Recognition and stark horror spread across Qiwi’s face. “This time I will remember.” She turned as Nau pulled something from the cabinet behind them. Her elbow jabbed into his chest. There was a sound like snapping branches; Nau bounced back against the cabinet and floated outward, into the vault’s open space. A wire gun floated after him. Nau lunged for the weapon, but it was centimeters beyond his reach and he had only thin air to brace upon.
Qiwi stood out from the wall, stretched, and snagged the wire gun. She pointed the muzzle at the Podmaster’s head.
Nau was slowly tumbling; he twisted about to track on Qiwi. He opened his mouth, the mouth that had a persuasive lie for every occasion. “Qiwi, you can’t—” he began, and then he must have seen the look on Qiwi’s face. Nau’s arrogance, the smooth cool arrogance that Ezr had watched for half a lifetime, was suddenly melted away. Nau’s voice became a whisper. “No, no.”
Qiwi’s head and shoulders trembled, but her words were stony hard. “I remember.” She shifted her aim away from Nau’s face, to below his waist…and fired a long burst. Nau’s scream became a shriek that ended as the wire-fire spun him around and struck his head.
SIXTY-TWO
Things were very dark, and then there was light. She floated upward toward it. Who am I? The answer came quickly, on a crest of terror. Anne Reynolt.
Memories. The retreat into the mountains. The final days of hide-and-seek, the Balacrean invaders finding her every cave. The traitor, unmasked too late. The last of her people ambushed from the air. Standing on a mountain hillside, circled by Balacrean armor. The stench of burnt flesh was strong even in the chill morning air, but the enemy had stopped shooting. They had captured her alive.
“Anne?” The voice was soft, solicitous. The voice of a torturer, building the mood toward greater horror. “Anne?”
She opened her eyes. Balacrean torture gear bulked large around her, just at the limits of her peripheral vision. It was all the horror she expected, except that they were in free fall. For fifteen years, they’ve owned our cities. Why take me into space?
Her interrogator drifted into view. Black hair, typical Balacrean skin tone, a young-old face. This must be a senior Podmaster. But he wore a strange fractille jacket, like no Podmaster Anne had ever seen. There was a look of false anxiety pasted on his face. A fool; he’s overacting. He floated a bouquet of soft white flowers into her lap, as though making a gift. They smelled of warm summers passed. There must be some way to die. There must be some way to die. Her arms were tied down, of course. But if he came close enough, she still had her teeth. Maybe, if he was enough of a fool—
He reached out, gently touched her shoulder. Anne twisted hard around, caught a bite from the Podmaster�
�s groping hand. He pulled back, leaving a trail of tiny red drops floating in the air between them. But he wasn’t enough of a fool to kill her on the spot. Instead, he glared across the ranked equipment at someone out of sight. “Trud! What the devil have you done to her?”
She heard a whiny voice that was somehow familiar. “Pham, I warned you this was a difficult procedure. Without her guidance, we can’t be sure—” The speaker came into view. He was a small and nervous-looking fellow in a Balacrean tech’s uniform. His eyes widened as he saw the blood in the air. The look he gave Anne was satisfyingly—and inexplicably—full of fear. “Al and I can do only so much. We should have waited till we get Bil back…Look, maybe it’s just temporary memory loss.”
The older fellow flared into anger, but he seemed afraid, too. “I wanted a deFocus, not a god-damned mindscrub!”
The little man, Trud…Trud Silipan, retreated. “Don’t worry. I’m sure she’ll come around. We didn’t touch the memory structures, I swear.” He shot another fearful glance her way. “Maybe…I don’t know, maybe the deFocus worked fine and we’re seeing some kind of autorepression.” He came a little closer, still beyond her hands and teeth, and gave her a sickly smile. “Boss? You remember me, Trud Silipan? We’ve worked together for years of Watch time, and before that back on Balacrea, under Alan Nau. Don’t you remember?”
Anne stared at the round face, the weak smile. Alan Nau. Tomas Nau. Oh…dear…God. She had wakened to a nightmare that had never ended. The torture pits, and then the Focus, and then a lifetime of being the enemy.
Silipan’s face had blurred, but his voice was suddenly cheerful. “See, Pham! She’s crying. She does remember!”
Yes. Everything.
But now Pham Nuwen’s voice sounded even angrier. “Get out, Trud. Just get out.”
“It’s easy to verify. We can—”
“Get out!”
She didn’t hear Silipan after that. The world had collapsed into pain, sobbing grief that took away her breath and senses.
She felt an arm across her shoulders, and this time she knew it wasn’t the touch of a torturer. Who am I? That had been the easy question. The real question, What am I?, had eluded her a few seconds more, but now the memories were flooding in, the monstrous evil she had been since that day in the mountains above Arnham.
She shuddered from Pham’s arm, only to encounter the straps that held her down.
“Sorry,” he muttered, and she heard the shackles fall away. And now it didn’t matter. She curled up into a ball, barely aware of his comfort. He was talking to her, simple things, repeated over and over in different ways. “It’s all right now, Anne. Tomas Nau is dead. He’s been dead for four days. You’re free. We’re all free…”
After a while, he was quiet, only the touch of his arm on her shoulders announcing his presence. Her tearing sobs wound down. There was no terror now. The worst had happened, over and over, and what was left was dead and empty.
Time passed.
She felt her body slowly relax, unbend. She forced open her tight-shut eyes, forced herself to turn and face Pham. Her face hurt with the crying, and how she wished she could be hurt a million times more. “You…damn you for bringing me back. Let me die now.”
Pham looked back at her quietly, his eyes wide and attentive. Gone was the bluster she had always guessed was a fake. In its place, intelligence…awe? No, that couldn’t be. He reached down beside her and laid the white andelirs back in her lap. The damn things were warm, furry. Beautiful. He seemed to consider her demand, but then he shook his head. “You can’t go yet, Anne. There are more than two thousand Focused persons left here. You can free them, Anne.” He gestured to the Focusing gear behind her head. “I got the feeling that Al Hom was playing roulette when he worked on you.”
I can free them. The thought was the first lightness in all the years since that morning in the mountains. It must have leaked out into her expression, because a hopeful smile appeared on Pham’s lips. Anne felt her eyes narrow down. She knew as much about Focus as any Balacrean. She knew all the tricks of reFocusing, of redirecting loyalty. “Pham Trinli—Pham Whoever-You-Really-Are—I’ve watched you for many years. Almost from the beginning, I thought you were working against Tomas. But I could also see how much you loved the idea of Focus. You lusted after that power, didn’t you?”
The smile left his face. He nodded slowly. “I saw…I saw it could give me what I had spent a lifetime fighting for. And in the end, I saw the price was too high.” He shrugged, and looked down, as if ashamed.
Anne stared into that face, thinking. Once upon a time, not even Tomas Nau could deceive her. When Anne was Focused, the edges of her mind had been sharp as razors, unencumbered by distraction and wishful thinking—and knowing Tomas’s true intent was no more use to her than a hatchet knowing it is for murdering. Now, she wasn’t sure. This man could be lying, but what he asked of her was what she yearned to do more than anything else in the world. And then, having paid back as best she could, then she could die. She returned his shrug with one of her own. “Tomas Nau lied to you about deFocus.”
“He lied about many things.”
“I can do better than Trud Silipan and Bil Phuong, but still there will be failures.” The greatest horror of all: There would be some who would damn her for bringing them back.
Pham reached across the flowers and took her hand. “Okay. But you will do your best.”
She looked down at his hand. Blood still oozed from the gash she had opened on the side of his palm. Somehow the man was lying, but if he let her deFocus the others…Play along. “You’re running things now?”
Pham chuckled. “I have some say. Certain Spiders have a bigger say. It’s complicated, and it’s still in chaos. Four hundred Ksec ago, Tomas Nau was still running things.” His smile widened with enthusiasm. “But a hundred Msec from now, two hundred Msec, I think you are going to see a renaissance. We’ll have our ships repaired. Hell, we may have new ones. I’ve never seen an opportunity like this.”
Just play along. “And what do you want of me?” How long till I am reFocused as your tool?
“I—I just want you to be free, Anne.” He looked away. “I know what you were before, Anne. I’ve seen the story of what you did on Frenk, your final capture. You remind me of someone I knew when I was a child. She also stood up against impossible odds, and she also was crushed.” His face half-turned back to her. “There were times I’ve feared you more than Tomas Nau. But ever since I’ve known you were the Frenkisch Ore, I’ve prayed you could have another day.”
He was such a very good liar. Too bad for him that his lie was so bald-faced, so pandering. She felt an overwhelming urge to push it over the edge: “So in a few years we’ll have functioning starships again?”
“Yes, and probably better-equipped than we came with. You know the physics we’ve discovered here. And it looks like there are other things—”
“And you will control those ships?”
“Several of them.” He was still nodding, blundering his deception forward.
“And you just want to help. Me, the Frenkisch Orc. Well, sir, you are uniquely qualified. Lend me those ships. Come with me to Balacrea and Frenk and Gaspr. Help me free all the Focused.”
It was amusing to see Pham’s smile freeze as he boggled on her words. “You want to take down a starfaring empire, an empire with Focus, with just a handful of ships? That’s…” Words for such insanity failed to come, and he just stared at her for a moment. Then, amazingly, his smile was back. “That’s marvelous! Anne, give me time to prepare, time to make alliances here. Give me a dozen of your years. We may not win. But I swear, we’ll make the attempt.”
Whatever she asked he simply agreed to. It had to be a lie. Yet if true, it was the only promise that could make her want to live. She stared into Pham’s eyes, trying to see behind the lie. Maybe the inevitable destruction of deFocus had taken her sharpness, for however deeply she looked, she only saw awed enthusiasm. He’s a genius.
And lie or truth, now he has me for twelve years. For just a moment she relaxed into belief. For just a moment she fantasized that this man was not a liar. The Frenkisch Orc might yet free them all. The strangest thrill flowed out from her heart, tingling through her body. It took her a moment to recognize something that had been lost to her for so very long: joy.
SIXTY-THREE
Pham sent Ezr Vinh groundside to negotiate.
“Why me, Pham?” This was the most extraordinary trade situation in the history of Humankind. It was also a war waiting to happen. “You should—”
Nuwen held up his hand, interrupting. “There are reasons for sending you. You know the Spiders better than any of our other unFocused people, certainly better than me.”
“I could be staff. I could help you.”
“No, I’ll be on your staff.” He paused, and Ezr saw a glint of worry. “You’re right, son, this is tricky. In the short run they hold the whip hand, and they have plenty of reason to hate us. We think the Lighthill faction still has the ear of the King, but—”
There were other factions in the Accord regime. Some of them thought Focused translators were a negotiable commodity.
“That’s why it’s even more important you go, Pham.”
“It’s not our choice. You see, they’ve asked for you specifically.”