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 thecavorite 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 adifference. 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. “Reynolt 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 arenot 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 couldbluff 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
