by Vernor Vinge
“What?”
“Yeah. I guess over the years, working with Trixia, they think they’ve got you figured out.” He grinned. “They want to see you close up.”
That almost made sense. “Okay.” He thought a moment. “But they’re not getting Trixia. I go down with some other translator.” He glared at Pham. “She’s the star; Underville’s crew would love to get their hands on her.”
“Hm. Maybe someone down there is thinking the same way. The King asked for Zinmin to accompany you.” He noticed the expression on Ezr’s face. “There’s more?”
“I—yes. I want Trixia deFocused. Soon.”
“Of course. I’ve given you my word. I’ve given Anne the same promise.”
Ezr stared at him for a moment. And you’ve changed inside; given up that dream. After all that had happened, Ezr didn’t doubt. But suddenly he couldn’t wait anymore. “Move her to the front of the queue, Pham. I don’t care that you need her translations. Move her up. I want her deFocused by the time I get back.”
Pham raised an eyebrow. “An ultimatum?”
“No. Yes!”
The older man sighed. “You got it. We’ll start on Trixia immediately. I—I confess. We’ve been holding back on the translators. We need them so much.” He pursed his lips. “Don’t expect perfection, Ezr. This is just another place where Nau lied to us. Some of the deFocused are almost as sharp as Anne. Some—”
“I know.” Some came back vegetables, the mindrot in an explosive runaway, triggered by the deFocus process. “But sooner or later we have to try. Sooner or later you have to give up using them.” He bounced up and left Pham’s office. More talk would have just torn them both.
The transport to Arachna was a humble thing, Jau Xin’s pinnace with ad hoc software revised specially by Qiwi. Humankind had the high ground and the remnants of high technology—and precious little in the way of physical resources or automation. As their zipheads were deFocused, the Emergent software became useless junk—and it would be some time before the Qeng Ho automation could be adapted to the hybrid jumble that remained at L1. They were trapped in a nearly empty solar system, with the only industrial ecology down on Arachna. They might drop a few rocks on the planet, or even a few nukes, but Humankind was nearly toothless. The Spiders were powerless, too, but that would change. They knew about the invaders now, and they knew what could be done with technology. They had large parts of the Invisible Hand intact. Sometime soon, the Spiders would be out here in force. Pham thought they had maybe a year to turn things around, to establish some basis of trust. Qiwi said that if she were a Spider, she could do it in far less than a year.
The temp’s axial corridor was filled from end to end when Ezr and Zinmin entered the taxi lock. Almost every unFocused human at L1 was here.
Pham and Anne were there. They floated close, a pair that Ezr Vinh would never have guessed in years past. “We’ve started the deFocus prep,” Anne said. She didn’t have to say who she was talking about. “We’ll do our best, Ezr.”
Qiwi wished him luck, as solemn as he had ever seen her. She seemed uncertain for a moment, then abruptly shook his hand, another thing she had never done before. “Come back safe, Ezr.”
Somehow Rita Liao had put herself right before the hatch, blocking his way. Ezr reached out to comfort her. “I’ll bring Jau back, Rita.” I’ll do my best was what he thought, not having the courage to show his doubts.
Rita’s eyes were bloodshot. She looked even more distracted than when they had talked a few Ksecs before. “I know, Ezr. I know. The Spiders are good people. They’ll know Jau didn’t want to harm them.” She had spent much of her lifetime enamored with the life on Arachna, but her faith in the translations seemed to be slipping away. “But, but if they won’t let you have him…Please. Give him…” She pushed a clear little box into his hand. It had a thumb lock, presumably keyed to Jau Xin. He saw a ’membrance gem inside. She broke off and melted back into the crowd.
SIXTY-FOUR
It was 200Ksec to Lands Command. On the ground, the Spiders drove them up that long valley road. Eerie memories floated through Ezr’s mind. Many of the buildings here were new, but I was here before it all began. It had been so unknowable then. Now there was the superficial gloss of information on everything. Zinmin Broute bounced from window to window and boggled with enthusiasm, naming everything he saw. They passed the library he had raided with Benny Wen. The Museum of the Dark Time. And the statues at the head of King’s Way, that was Gokna’s Reaching for Accord. Zinmin could tell you about every one of the twisted figures.
But today they were not lurkers stealing through someone else’s sleep. Today the lights were very bright, and when they finally moved underground, it was as stark and alien as Ritser Brughel’s Spiderish nightmares. The stairs were steep as ladders, and ordinary rooms were so low-ceilinged that Ezr and Zinmin had to crouch to move from place to place. Despite ancient drugs and millennia of gengineering, the full pull of planetary gravity was a constant, debilitating distraction. They were housed in what Zinmin claimed were royalty-class apartments, rooms with hairy floors and ceilings high enough to stand in. The negotiations began the next day.
The Spiders they had known in the translations were mostly absent. Belga Underville, Elno Coldhaven—those were names that Ezr recognized, but they had always been at a distance. They had not been part of Sherkaner Underhill’s counterlurk. They must be consulting Victory Lighthill, though. As often as not during the negotiations, Underville would withdraw and there would be hissing conversations with persons unseen.
After the first couple of days, Ezr realized that some of those persons were very far away: Trixia. Back in their rooms, Ezr called L1. Of course, the link went through Spider control. Ezr didn’t care. “You told me that Trixia was in deFocus.”
The pause seemed much longer than ten seconds. Suddenly Ezr couldn’t wait for the excuses and the evasions. “Listen, damn you! The promise was that she would be in deFocus. Sooner or later you have to stop using her!”
Then Pham’s voice came back. “I know, Ezr. The problem is, the Spiders have insisted that she be available, still Focused. It’s a dealbreaker if we refuse…and Trixia refuses to cooperate with us in deFocus. We’d have to force it on her.”
“I don’t care. I don’t care! They don’t own her any more than Tomas Nau.” He choked on the fear, and almost started bawling. Across the room, Zinmin Broute looked as happy as any ziphead Ezr had ever seen. He was sitting cross-legged on the hairy carpet, paging through some kind of Spider picture book. We’re using him, too. We have to, just for a short while more.
“Ezr, it’s only for a short time. This is breaking Anne up, too, but it’s the only sure insight the Spiders have on us. They almost trust the Focused. Everything we say, every assertion, they are talking over with the zips. We don’t have a chance of getting the Hand people back without that trust. We don’t have a chance of undoing Nau’s work without that.”
Rita and Jau. The thumb-locked box sat at the top of Ezr’s kit. Strange. The Spiders had not insisted on getting into it or his other things. Ezr crumpled. “Okay. But, after this meeting, no one owns anyone. The deal dies—I kill the deal—otherwise.” He cut the connection before any answer could come back. After all, it didn’t matter what the other replied.
Almost every day, they took the tortuous climb down to the same ghastly conference room. Zinmin claimed that this was the chief of Intelligence’s private office, a “bright and open-storied room, with nooks and isolated perches.” Well, there were nooks, dark fluting chimneys with hidden lairs at the top. And the video along the walls was a constant nonsense. He and Zinmin had to cross cold stone to sit on piled furs. Four or five Spiders were usually present, and almost always Underville or Coldhaven.
But the negotiations were actually going well. With the Focused to back up his story, the Spiders seemed to believe what Ezr had to say. They seemed to understand how good things could become with only a little cooperation. C
ertainly, the Spiders could have a presence at the rockpile. Technology would be transferred downward without restriction, in return for human access to the ground. In time, the rockpile and the temps would be moved into high Arachna orbit and there would be joint construction of a shipyard.
Sitting with the Spiders for Ksecs each day was a wearing experience. The human mind was not designed to warm to such creatures. They seemed not to have eyes, just the crystal carapaces that saw better than any human vision. You could never tell what they were looking at. Their eating hands were in constant motion, with meanings that Ezr was only beginning to understand. And when they gestured with their principal arms, the movement was abrupt and aggressive, like a creature on the attack. The air had a bitter, stale smell, which was strongest when extra spiders crowded around. And next time, we bring our own toilets. Ezr was getting bowlegged trying to accommodate himself to the local facilities.
Zinmin did most of the interactive translations. But Trixia and the others were there, and sometimes when the greatest precision was desired, it was her voice that would speak Underville’s or Coldhaven’s words: Underville the implacable cop, Coldhaven the sleek young general officer. Trixia’s voice, others’ souls.
At night, there were dreams, often more unpleasant than the reality he faced in the day. The worst were the ones he could understand. Trixia appeared to him, her voice and thoughts slipping back and forth between the young woman he once knew and the alien minds that owned her now. Sometimes her face would morph into a glassy carapace as she spoke, and when he asked about the change she would say he was imagining things. It was a Trixia who would remain forever Focused, ensorcelled, lost. Qiwi was in many of the dreams, sometimes the bratling, sometimes as she had been when she killed Tomas Nau. They would talk, and often she would give him advice. In the dreams it always made sense—and when he woke he could never remember the details.
One by one, the issues were resolved. They had gone from genocide to commerce in less than one million seconds. From L1, Pham Nuwen’s voice was filled with pleasure at the progress. “These guys negotiate like Traders, not governments.”
“We’re giving up plenty, Pham. Since when have Customers had a site presence like we’ll be giving the Spiders?”
The usual long pause. But Pham’s tone was still bright: “Even that may work out, son. I’ll wager some of these Spiders may eventually want to be partners.” Qeng Ho.
“…One other thing,” Pham continued. “Get through the POW negotiations”—the single remaining agenda item—“and we’ll be able to take Trixia off the case. Lighthill got that as a promise from the Underville faction.”
The last day of negotiation started like the others. Zinmin and Ezr were guided down a—“spiral staircase” was what Zinmin called it. In human terms, it was a vertical shaft cut straight downward through the rock. An endless draft of warm air swept up past them. The shaft was almost two meters across, the walls set with five-centimeter ledges. Their guards had no trouble; they could reach from one side of the shaft to the other, supporting themselves on all sides. As they descended, the Spiders slowly turned round and round with the spiral. Every ten meters or so, there was an offset, a “landing” for them to catch their breath. Ezr was both grateful for and uneasy about the harness/leash outfit the guards insisted he wear.
“These stairs are really just to intimidate us, aren’t they, Zinmin?” He’d asked the question on earlier climbs, but Zinmin Broute had not deigned to answer.
The Focused translator was even more unsteady than Ezr on the narrow ledges, especially since he tried to imitate the splayed stance that made sense only for Spiders. Today he responded to the question. “Yes…No. This is the main staircase down to the Royal Deepness. Very old. Traditional. An honor—” He slipped, swung out over the chasm, for a moment suspended by his rope and harness from the guard above them. Ezr hugged the damp wall, was almost knocked loose himself as Broute regained his footing.
They reached the final landing. The ceiling was low even by Spider standards, just over a meter high. Surrounded by their guards, they stooped and hobbled toward wide, wide doors. Beyond, the lighting was faint and blue. The Spiders could see across such a wide range. You’d think their preferred lighting would be sun-spectrum broad. But as often as not they went in for faint glimmers—or lights beyond where a human could see.
There was a familiar hiss from the dimness ahead of them.
“Come in. Sit down,” Zinmin Broute said, but the thought was from the Spider within the room. Ezr and Zinmin crossed the stone flags to their “perches.” He could see the other now, a large female on a slightly higher perch. Her smell was strong in the closed air. “General Underville,” Ezr said politely.
The POW issue should have been simple compared with the problems already solved. But he noticed that this time they were alone with Underville. There were no comm links to the outside here; at least none were offered. They were alone, almost in the dark, and Zinmin Broute’s phrasing drifted into threatening turns of phrase. Frightening…yet somewhere out of the depths of Ezr Vinh’s Trader childhood, insights drifted up. This was deliberately intimidating. Underville had promised Lighthill that the translators would be free after the POW negotiations were complete. She had been beaten down on so many things; this was her last stab at saving face.
He opened his pack and put on a pair of huds. According to the Spiders, all the humans aboard the Hand had survived its forced landing. The starship’s wreckage was strewn across twenty thousand meters of ocean ice, the occupied crew decks virtually the only intact pieces of the vehicle. That anyone had survived was a miracle of Pham’s advice to the ziphead pilots. Once on the ground, however, there had been numerous fatalities. Against all sanity, Brughel and his goons started a firefight with the arriving Spider troops. The goons had all died. With the agility of a true Podmaster, Brughel had abandoned them at the last moment, and attempted to hide among the surviving crew. The Spiders claimed there had been no fatalities after that initial shootout.
“The zipheads you can have back,” said Underville via Zinmin. “We know that they are not responsible, and some of them made our victory possible.” Zinmin’s tone was irritable. “The rest are criminals. They killed hundreds. They attempted to kill millions.”
“No, only a small minority were in on that. The rest resisted—or were simply lied to about the operation.”
Ezr went down the crew list, explaining the roles of the different members. There had been twenty poor souls in coldsleep, Ritser’s special toys. Clearly, they were victims, but Underville didn’t want to give up the equipment. One by one, Ezr got Underville’s permission for release, contingent on access to specialists who could explain the ruins that her agency now owned. Finally, they were down to the toughest cases. “Jau Xin. Pilot Manager.”
“Jau Xin, the trigger man!” said the general. Ezr had pumped up the amplification in his huds. His view was not as dim as before. All through the conversation, Underville had sat very still, the only movement being the ceaseless play of her feeding hands. It was a posture that Zinmin represented as face-forward alertness. “Jau Xin was charged with initiating the actual attacks.”
“General, we’ve looked at the records. Your interviews with Jau’s Focused pilots are probably even more complete. It’s clear to us that Jau Xin sabotaged much of the Emergent attack. I know Jau, ma’am. I know his wife. Both wish your people well.” The ziphead analysts, Trixia among them, thought that such family references might mean something. Maybe. But Belga Underville might be much more the classical “national interest” type.
Zinmin Broute tapped away on his tiny console, putting Ezr’s words into an intermediate language and then guiding the audio output. Ghostly hissing came from Broute’s sound-box, Ezr’s thoughts as a Spider might speak them.
Underville was silent for a moment, then gave forth a shrill squeak. Ezr knew that counted as a disdainful snort.
But this interview could ultimately be shown
to other Spiders. I’m not letting you off the hook, Underville. Ezr reached into his pack and held up Rita’s tiny box.
“And what is that?” said Underville. There was no hint of curiosity in Broute-as-Underville’s voice.
“A gift to Jau Xin from his wife. A remembrance, in case you still refuse to free him.”
Underville was sitting almost two meters away, but even now Ezr didn’t realize just how far a Spider’s forearms could reach. Four spearlike black arms flashed out at him, plucking the box from his grasp. Underville’s arms flickered back, held the box close to first one part and then another of her glassy carapace. Her stiletto hands made little scritching noises as she pried at the box’s top and thumb lock.
“It’s keyed to Jau Xin. If you force it open, the contents will be destroyed.”
“So be it then.” But the Spider stopped pressing the pointed tips of her limbs into the box. She held it a moment more, then gave a screeching hiss, and flung it back at Ezr’s chest.
The ugly screeching continued as Zinmin Broute began translating. “Damn your cobblie eyes!” Broute’s voice was tight and angry. “Take back this gift for a murderer. Take back Xin and the other staff.”
“Thank you, General. Thank you.” Ezr scrambled to recover Rita’s gift.
The Spider’s voice tumbled into silence, then resumed more quietly, sounding somehow like drops of water spatting off hot metal. “And I suppose you think to rescue Ritser Brughel also?”
“Not to rescue him, ma’am. Over the years, Ritser Brughel has probably killed more of our people than ever he did of yours. He has much to answer for.”
“Indeed. But there is no way we will give that one up to you.” Now Broute’s voice was smug, and Ezr guessed this was one point where there were no divisions on the Spider side.
And maybe that was for the best. Ezr shrugged. “Very well. It is for you to punish him.”
The Spider had become very still, even unto her eating hands. “Punish? You misunderstand. This silly negotiation has left us with only a single functioning human. Any punishment will necessarily be incidental. We’re learning much from dissecting the human corpses, but we desperately need a living experimental subject. What are your physical limitations? How do you creatures respond to extremes of pain and fear? We want to test with stimuli we don’t see in your databases. I intend that Ritser Brughel live a long, long time.”