made us what we are today. Look at the Qeng Ho archives, his life—”
“Oh, I have. They’re a bit scattered, don’t you think?”
“Well, he was the great traveler. I doubt he ever cared much about the historians.”
“Mr. Vinh, Pham Nuwen valued the regard of history as much as any of the giants. I think—Iknow —your Qeng Ho archives have been carefully gardened, probably by your own Family. But you see, someone as great as Pham Nuwen attracted other historians—from the worlds he changed, from other spacefaring cultures. Their stories also float across the ages, and I’ve collected all that passed through this end of Human Space. He is a man I have always tried to emulate. Your Pham Nuwen was no lickspittle trader. Pham Nuwen was a Bringer of Order, a conqueror. Sure, he used your Trader techniques, the deception and the bribery. But he never shrank from threats and raw violence when that was necessary.”
“I—” The diagnostics painted an exquisite combination of anger and surprise and doubt across Vinh’s face, just the mix that Nau would have estimated.
“I can prove it, Mr. Vinh.” He spoke key words into the air. “I’ve just transferred some ofour archives to your personal domain. Take a look. These are unvarnished, non–Qeng Ho views of the man. A dozen little atrocities. Read the true story of how he ended the Strentmannian Pogrom, of how he was betrayed at Brisgo Gap. Then let’s talk again.”
Amazing. Nau had not intended to speak so bluntly, but the evoked effects were so interesting. They exchanged a few meaningless sentences, and the meeting was over. Red shimmered around Vinh’s hands, symptoms of an invisible trembling, as he approached the door.
Nau sat quietly for a moment after the Peddler was gone. He stared off into the distance, but in fact he was reading from his huds. The snoops’ report was a stream of colored glyphs against the landscape of Diamond One. He would read the report carefully… later. First, there were his own thoughts to get in order. The localizer diagnostics were almost magical. Without them, he knew he would have scarcely noticed Vinh’s agitation.More important, without the diagnostics I wouldn’t have been able to guidethe conversation, zeroing in on the topics that needled Vinh. So yes, active manipulation did appear feasible; this wasn’t simply a snoop technique. And now he knew that Ezr Vinh had some substantial portion of his self-image bound up in the Qeng Ho fairy tales. Could the boy actually be turned by a different vision of those stories? Before now, he never would have believed it. With these new tools, maybe…
THIRTY-SEVEN
“We should have another face-to-face talk.”
“…Okay. Look, Pham. I don’t believe these lies that Nau dumped on me.”
“Yeah, well everyone gets to write their own version of the past. The main thing is, I want to give you some drill about handling that sort of ambush interview.”
“I’m sorry. For a few seconds, I thought he was on to us.” The boy’s voice was faint in Pham’s ear. Ezr Vinh had become quite good with their secret comm link; good enough that Pham could hear the stunned tone in his voice.
“You did okay, though. You’ll do better with some feedback training.” They talked a few moments more, setting up a time and a cover story. Then the tenuous link was broken, and Pham was left to think on the day’s events.
Damn.Today had been a disaster just barely avoided… or just temporarily avoided. Pham floated in the darkened room, but his vision flitted across the gap of kilometers, to Diamond One and Hammerfest. The localizers were everywhere there now, and they were operational—though the MRI units in the Focus clinic fried any nearby localizers almost immediately. Getting live localizers onto Hammerfest was the breakthrough he had waited years for, but—If I hadn’t meddled with the diagnostics coming offVinh, we could have lost everything.Pham had known how the Podmaster might use his new toys; similar, if less intense, things had been going on in the temp for years. What he hadn’t guessed was that Nau would have such deadly good luck in his choice of words. For nearly ten seconds, the boy had been sure that Nau had figured out everything. Pham had damped the snoops’ report on that reaction, and Vinh himself had covered for it pretty well, but…
I never thought that Tomas Nau would know so much about me.Over the years, the Podmaster had often claimed to be a great admirer of “the historical giants,” and he always included Pham Nuwen on his list. It had always seemed a transparent attempt to establish a common ground with the Qeng Ho. But now, Pham wasn’t sure. While Tomas Nau had been busy “reading” Ezr Vinh, Pham had run similar diagnostics on the Podmaster. Tomas Nau reallydid admire his notion of the historical Pham Nuwen! Somehow, the monster thought he and Pham Nuwen were alike.He calledme a “Bringer of Order.” That rang a strange resonance. Though Pham had never thought to use the term, it was almost what he wished of himself.Butwe are nothing alike. Tomas Nau kills and kills and it is for himself. All Iever wanted was an end to killing, an end to barbarism. We are different! Pham stuffed the absurdity back in its bottle. The really amazing thing was that Nau had so much of the true story. For the last 10Ksec, Pham had watched over Vinh’s shoulder as the boy read through much of it. Even now, he was trickling the whole database out of Vinh’s domain and into the distributed memory of the localizer net. Over the next Msec, he would study the whole thing.
What he had seen so far was… interesting. Much of it was even true. But whether truth or lie, it was not the awed mythology that Sura Vinh had left in the Qeng Ho histories. It was not the lie that covered Sura’s ultimate treachery.And how will Ezr Vinh take it? Pham had already been much too open with Vinh. Vinh was totally inflexible about Focus; he just wouldn’t stop whining about the zipheads. It was strange. In his life, Pham had blithely lied to crazies and villains and Customers and even Qeng Ho… but playing up to Vinh’s obsession left him exhausted. Vinh just didn’t understand the miracle that Focus could make.
And there were things in Nau’s archive that would make it very difficult for Pham to disguise his true goals from the boy.
Pham dipped back into Nau’s version of history, followed one story and then another, swore at the lies that made him out to be a monster… winced when the story was the truth, even if his actions had been the best he could do. It was strange to see his real face again. Some of these videos had to be real. Pham could almost feel the words of those speeches flowing up his throat and out his lips. It brought back memories: the high years, when almost every destination had brought him into contact with Traders who understood what could be made of an interstellar trading culture. Radio had outpaced him and delivered his message with good effect. And less than a thousand years after Little Prince Pham had been given away to the traveling merchants, his life plan was close to success. The idea of a true Qeng Ho had spread across most of Human Space. From worlds on the Far Side that he might never know, to the tilled and retilled heart of Human Space—even on Old Earth—they had heard his message, they had seen his vision of an organization durable enough and powerful enough to stop the wheel of fate. Yes, many of them saw nothing more than Sura had. These were the “practical minds,” only interested in making great wealth, insuring the benefit to themselves and their Families. But Pham had thought then—and Lord, I still want to believe now—that the majority believed in the greater goal that Pham himself preached.
Across a thousand years of real time, Pham had left the message, the plan for a Meeting more spectacular than any meeting before, a place and a time where the new Qeng Ho would declare the Peace of Human Space, would agree to serve that cause. It had been Sura Vinh who set the place:
Namqem.
True, Namqem was well on the coreward side of Human Space, but it was near the center of heavy Qeng Ho activity. The Traders who could most certainly participate were in relatively easy reach; they would need less than one thousand years of lead time. Those were the reasons that Sura said. And all the time she smiled her old disbelieving smile, as if humoring poor Pham. But Pham had believed he would be given his chance at Namqem.
In the end, there was another reason for agreeing to meet at Namqem. Sura had traveled so little; she had always been the planner at the center of Pham’s schemes. Decades and centuries had passed. Even with occasional coldsleep and the best medical technology in all Human Space, Sura Vinh was now insupportably old, five hundred years of life? six hundred? In the last century before the Meeting, her messages made her seem so very old. If they didn’t have the Meeting at Namqem, maybe Sura would never see the success of what Pham had worked for. Maybe
