by Vernor Vinge
Ritser Brughel is about as weird a human type as you can find. But somehow that might not be the wisest thing to say here and now. Instead, Ezr simply nodded. And for the first time he saw how Ritser might find a fate to match his crimes. The Podmaster’s nightmare of Spiders would be the rest of his life.
SIXTY-FIVE
Ezr Vinh returned a hero to L1. It was possible that no owner or fleet partner had ever been greeted with the enthusiasm he saw at the rockpile. He brought with him the first of the released prisoners, including Jau Xin. He also brought with him the first of their new partners: The first Spiders to fly in space.
Ezr scarcely noticed. He smiled, he talked, and when he saw Rita and Jau together he felt a distant pleasure.
Last out of the pinnace was Floria Peres. She had been one of the coldsleep victims in Ritser’s hidden cache, saved up unused until the very end. Even after 200Ksec, the woman had a terrible, lost look about her. As Ezr guided her out into the open, a silence came upon the crowd in the corridor. Qiwi glided forward. She had asked to help the victims, but when she came to a stop just short of Floria, Qiwi’s eyes got very wide and her lips trembled. The two stared at each other for a moment. Then Qiwi offered Floria her hand, and the crowd opened behind them.
Ezr watched them depart, but his mind’s eye was elsewhere: Anne Reynolt had begun Trixia’s deFocus a Ksec after he left Arachna. During the 200Ksec of transit back to the rockpile, Pham had reported regularly on her progress. This time there was no backing out. Trixia was beyond the prep stage. First, the mindrot had been rendered quiescent, and then Trixia had been put into an artificial coma. From there, the rot’s pattern of drug release was slowly altered. “Anne has done this hundreds of times now, Ezr,” said Pham. “She says this is going well. She should be out of the clinic just a few Ksecs after you get back here.”
No more delays. Trixia would finally be free.
Two days later, the word came. Trixia is ready.
Ezr visited Qiwi before he went to the deFocus clinic. Qiwi was working with her father, remaking the lake park. Most of the trees had died, but Ali Lin thought he could bring them back. Even deFocused, Ali had wonderful ideas for the park. But now the man could love his daughter, too. Trixia will be like this, as free as before the nightmare.
Qiwi was talking to the Spiders when Ezr came down the path through the ruined forest. Kittens circled high above them, curiosity battling with arachnophobia.
“We want to do something new with the lake, some kind of free form, with its own special ecology.” The Spiders stood a little taller than Qiwi. In microgravity, they were no longer low, wide creatures. The natural tension in their limbs produced a Spider version of zero-gee crouch; their arms and legs extended long beneath them, making them tall and slender. The smallest one—probably Rhapsa Lighthill—was talking now. The hissing voice was almost musical compared to Belga Underville’s voice.
“We’ll watch, but I doubt if many will want to live here. We want to experiment with our own temps.” Broute Zinmin was translating, his tone happy and conversational. As of now, he might be the last of the Focused translators.
Qiwi grinned at the Spider. “Yeah, I’m so curious about what you’ll finally do. I—” She looked up, saw Ezr.
“Qiwi, can I talk to you?”
She was already moving toward him. “A moment, Rhapsa, please?”
“Sure.” The Spiders tiptoed away, Zinmin continuing to spout questions at Ali Lin.
Ezr and Qiwi faced each other across thirty centimeters. “Qiwi. They deFocused Trixia about two thousand seconds ago.”
The girl smiled, a bright gesture. There was still a childlike intensity about her. Somehow through it all, Qiwi had remained an open human being. And now she was at the center of their dealings with the Spiders, the engineer they sought over all others. Now he could truly see how bright her wits extended, from dynamics to bioscience to very sharp trading. Qiwi was very much like the spirit of the Qeng Ho.
“Is—is she going to be okay?” Qiwi’s eyes were large, and her hands were tightly clasped in front of her.
“Yes! A little disorientation, Anne says, but her mind and personality are intact, and…and I can go see her later today.”
“Oh, Ezr! I’m so happy for her.” Qiwi’s hands let go of each other, and reached out to his shoulders. Suddenly her face was very close and lips brushed across his cheek.
“I wanted to see you before I talked to her—”
“Yes?”
“I—I just wanted to thank you for saving my life, for saving us all.” I want to thank you for giving me back my soul. “If Trixia and I can ever do anything to help you…”
And she was back at arm’s length, and her smile seemed a little odd. “You’re welcome, Ezr. But…no thanks needed. I’m glad you have a happy ending.”
Ezr let go, and was already turning toward the guide ropes Ali had installed for his reconstruction work. “It’s more a happy beginning, Qiwi. All these years have been dead time, and now finally…Hey, I’ll talk to you later!” He waved and pulled himself faster and faster, back toward the cavern’s entrance.
Reynolt had converted the Attic grouproom into a recovery ward. Where zipheads had spent Watch after Watch Focused in Podmaster service, now they were being freed.
Anne stopped him in the corridor just outside the grouproom. “Before you go in, keep in mind—”
Vinh was already edging around her. He stopped. “You said she was coming out okay.”
“Yes. Total affect is normal. General cognition is as good as before; she has even retained her specialized knowledge. We’re doing almost three thousand deFocus operations, more manumissions than any team in Emergent history. We’re getting very good.” She frowned, but it was not the impatient gesture of her old Focus. This was a frown of pain. “I—I wish we could redo the first ones. I think I could do better now.”
Ezr could see the pain, and he felt shame for his sudden joy: So the delay has been for the best. Trixia had had the benefit of all the earlier experience. Maybe she would have been okay anyway. After all, Reynolt had come through all right. But either way, things had worked out. And just beyond Reynolt, down the cool green corridor, was Trixia Bonsol, the princess now finally wakened. He slipped past Reynolt, flew down through the blueness.
Behind him Anne called, “But, Ezr…Look, Pham wants to talk to you when you get done.”
“Okay. Okay.” But he wasn’t really listening now. And then he was into the grouproom. Part of it was still open, and ten or fifteen of the chairs were even occupied, people sitting in little circles, talking. Heads turned in his direction, eyes filled with curiosity that would have been impossible before. Some of the faces were fearful. Many had the sad, lost look of Hunte Wen after he was deFocused. The Emergents among them had no one to go back to. They woke to freedom, but a lifetime and light-years from everything they had known.
Ezr smiled embarrassment and slipped past them. Things have turned out right for Trixia and me, but these lost ones must be helped.
The far side of the room had been partitioned into cubicles. Ezr flitted past the opened doors, stopped at the closed ones just long enough to read the patient labels. And finally…TRIXIA BONSOL. His headlong rush suddenly ended, and he realized he was wearing work clothes and his hair floated all spiky. Like some ziphead, he had ignored everything except his focus.
He brushed his hair down as best he could…and tapped on the light plastic of the privacy hatch.
“Come in.”
…“Hi, Trixia.”
She floated in a hammock not much different from an ordinary bed. Medical instrumentation was a fine haze around her head. It didn’t matter, Ezr had been expecting it. Anne had begun instrumenting the patients, using the data to guide the deFocusing, and afterward to monitor for stroke and infection.
It made it hard to hug someone as thoroughly as Ezr Vinh wanted. He floated near, looking into Trixia’s face, lost in it. Trixia looked back—not around h
im, not impatient that he was blocking her data—but directly into his eyes. A faint, tremulous smile hovered on her lips.
“Ezr.”
And then she was in his arms, her hands reaching up to him. Her lips were soft and warm. He held her for a moment, gently encircling her within her hammock. Then he backed his head away, angling carefully around the medical gear. “So many times I thought we’d never make it back. Do you remember all the times”—years of life time, literally—“that I sat with you in your damn little cell?”
“Yes. You suffered far more than I. For me, it was a kind of dream, and time was a slippery thing. Everything outside of Focus was a blur. I could hear your words but they never seemed to matter.” Her hand came up to the side of his neck, gently stroking, a gesture from their real time together.
Ezr smiled. We’re talking. Really. Finally. “And now you’re back, and we can live again. I have so many plans. I’ve had years to think on them, what we might do if Nau could be destroyed and you could be saved. After all the death, the mission is turning out to be a greater treasure than we ever imagined.” Great risks, great treasure. But the risks had been taken, the sacrifices made, and now—“With our share of the mission bounty we…we can do anything. We could set up our own Great Family!” Vinh.23.7, Vinh-Bonsol, Bonsol.1, it didn’t matter; it would be theirs.
Trixia was still smiling, but there was the beginning of tears in her eyes. She shook her head. “Ezr, I don’t—”
Vinh rushed on. “Trixia, I know what you’re going to say. If you don’t want a Family—that’s okay too.” In the years under Tomas Nau, there had been plenty of time to think things through, to see what sacrifices were really not sacrifices at all. He took a deep breath and said, “Trixia, even if you want to go back to Triland…I’m willing to go there, to leave the Qeng Ho.” The Family wouldn’t like it; he was no longer a junior heir. This expedition would make the Vinh.23 Family fabulously richer, but…he knew that Ezr Vinh had scarcely been responsible for that. “You can be whatever you want, and we can still be together.”
He leaned closer, but this time she pushed him gently back. “No, Ezr, that’s not it. You and I, we’re years older. I—it’s been a long, long time since we were together.”
Ezr’s voice came out high-pitched. “It’s been years for me! But for you? You said Focus is like a dream, where time didn’t matter.”
“Not exactly. For some things, for the things at the center of my Focus, I probably remember the time better than you.”
“But—” She raised her hand, and he was silent.
“I had it easier than you. I was Focused, and something more, though I never consciously realized it and—thank goodness—neither did Brughel or Tomas Nau. I had a world to escape to, a world that I could build out of my translations.”
Despite himself: “I wondered. There was so much that seemed to be Dawn Age fantasy. So…that was fiction, not the real Spiders?”
“No. It was as close as we could come to the Spider viewpoint in a human mind. And if you read carefully, you get hints of where it can’t be literally true…I think you guessed, Ezr. Arachna was my escape. As a translator, everything about being a Spider was within my Focus. Knowing what it was to be a free Spider consumed us. And when dear Sherkaner understood, even at the beginning when he thought we were machines, it was suddenly a world that accepted us, too.”
That was what had undone Nau, and saved them all, but—“But now you are back, Trixia. This isn’t the nightmare anymore. We can be together, better than we ever thought!”
She was shaking her head again. “Don’t you see, Ezr? We both have changed, and I have changed even more than you, even though I was—” She thought a second. “—even though I spent the years ‘ensorcelled.’ See? I do remember what you used to say to me. But Ezr, it’s not the same anymore. I and the Spiders, we have a future—”
He tried to keep his voice in an even, persuasive tone, but what came out sounded half-panicked even to his own ears. Dear Lord of Trade, I can’t lose her now! “I know. You’re still identifying with the Spiders. We’re the aliens to you.”
She touched his shoulder. “A little. During the first stages of the deFocus, it was like waking into a nightmare. I know how humans look to Arachnans. Pale, soft, grublike. There are pests and food animals like that. But we aren’t as gruesome to them as the reverse.” She looked up at him and her smile was momentarily wider. “The way you have to turn your head to see is endearing. You don’t realize it, but any Arachnan with paternal fur on his back, and most females too, are enthralled when they talk to you close up.”
Like the dreams he had had groundside. In Trixia’s mind, she was still part Spider. “Trixia, look. I’ll come and see you every day. Things will change. You’ll get over this.”
“Oh, Ezr, Ezr.” Her tears floated into the air between them, but she was crying for him and not for herself or for the two of them. “This is what I want to be, a translator, a bridge between you all and my new Family.”
A bridge. She’s not out of Focus. Somehow Pham and Anne had frozen her partway between Focus and freedom. The realization was like a fist in the belly…nausea, followed by rage.
He caught Anne in her new office. “Finish the job, Anne! The mindrot is still running Trixia.”
Reynolt’s face seemed even paler than usual. He suddenly guessed that she’d been waiting for him. “You know there’s no way we can destroy the virus, Ezr. Tune them down, make them dormant, yes, but…” Her voice was tentative, utterly unlike the Anne Reynolt of times past.
“You know what I mean, Anne. She’s still in Focus. She’s still fixed on the Spiders, on her Focused mission.”
Anne was silent. She knew.
“Bring her all the way back, Anne.”
Reynolt’s mouth twisted, as if stifling physical pain. “The structures are so deep. She’d lose knowledge she’s gained, probably her born language talent. She’d be like Hunte Wen.”
“But she would be free! She could learn new things, just like Hunte has.”
“I—I understand. Till yesterday, I thought we could bring it off. We were down to triggering the last restructuring—but Ezr, Trixia doesn’t want us to take it any further!”
That was just too much, and suddenly Ezr was shouting. “By damn, what do you expect? She’s Focused!” He brought his voice down, but the words had the intensity of deadly threat. “I know. You and Pham still need slaves, especially ones like Trixia. You never meant to free her.”
Reynolt’s eyes grew wide and her features flushed bright red. It was something he had never seen in her, though Ritser Brughel had always turned that shade when he climbed into a towering rage. Her mouth opened and shut but no words came out.
There was a solid thump on the office wall, someone arriving in a hell of a hurry. An instant later, Pham came through the door. “Anne, please. Let me handle this.” His voice was gentle. After a moment, Anne sucked in a breath. She nodded, seemed to be coughing. She came around her desk without saying anything, but Ezr noticed how fiercely she grasped Pham’s hand.
Pham shut the door quietly behind her. When he turned back to Ezr, his expression was not gentle. He jerked a finger at the seat in front of Reynolt’s desk. “Tie down, mister.”
There was something about his voice that froze Ezr’s rage, and forced him to sit down.
Pham settled himself by the other side of the desk. For a moment, he just stared at the younger man. It was strange. Pham Nuwen had always had a presence, but suddenly it felt like before this, he had never really turned it on. Finally, Pham said, “A couple of years ago you gave me some straight talk. You forced me to see that I was wrong and that I must change.”
Ezr stared back coldly. “Looks like I failed.” You’re in the slave business anyway.
“You’re wrong, son. You succeeded. Not many people have turned me around. Even Sura couldn’t do it.” A strange sadness seemed to flicker across him, and he was silent for a moment. Then, “You�
��ve done Anne a great disservice, Ezr. I think someday you’ll want to apologize to her for it.”
“Not likely! You two have things so neatly rationalized. DeFocusing is just too expensive for you.”
“Um. You’re right, it’s expensive. It’s been a near calamity. Under the Emergent system, the zipheads were supporting virtually all of our automation, their work mixed seamlessly with the real machines’. Worse, all the maintenance programming in the fleet has been done by Focused persons; we’re left with millions of lines of incoherent junk. It will be some time before we have our old systems working well…But you know that Anne is the Frenkisch Orc, the ‘monster’ in all the diamond friezes.”
“Y-yes.”
“Then you know that she would die to give the Focused freedom. It was her one nonnegotiable demand of me when she came back from Focus. It is her life’s meaning.” He stopped, looked away from Ezr. “You know the most evil thing about Focus? It’s not that it’s effective slavery, though Lord knows that puts it worse than most any other villainy. No, the greatest evil is that the rescuers become a type of killer themselves, and the original victims are mutilated a second time. Even Anne didn’t fully understand that, now it’s tearing her apart.”
“So because they want to be slaves, we leave them that way?”
“No! But a Focused person is a still a human being, not too different from certain rare types that have always existed. If they can live on their own, if they can clearly express their wishes—well at that point, you have to listen…Until about half a day ago, we thought everything was going to be okay with Trixia Bonsol. Anne had prevented the rot from doing a random runaway. Trixia wasn’t going to be one of the psychotics or one of the vegetables. She was free of Emergent loyalty fixation. She could be talked to, evaluated, comforted. But she absolutely refuses to give up any more deep structure. Understanding the Spiders is the center of her life, and she wants it to stay that way.”