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 befree ! 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 solidthump 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 over 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
“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.”
They sat in silence for a moment. The most terrible thing was, Pham might not be lying. He might not even be rationalizing. Maybe they were just talking about one of life’s tragedies. In that case, Tomas Nau’s evil would ride Ezr for the rest of his life.Lord, this is hard. And even though Reynolt’s office was brightly lit, it reminded him of that dark time in the temp’s park, right after Jimmy was murdered. Pham had been there too, and giving comfort that Ezr couldn’t understand. Ezr wiped his face with the back of his hand. “Okay. So Trixia is free. Then she’s also free to change in the future.”
“Yes, of course. Human nature will always be beyond analysis.”
“I waited half my life for her. As long as it takes, I’ll wait for her.”
Pham sighed. “I’m just afraid you might do that.”
“Huh?”
“You’re one of the more dedicated types I’ve met. And you have a talent for people. More than most, it was you who kept the Qeng Ho going in the face of Nau’s thuggery.”
“No! I could never stand up to the man. All I could do was nibble around the edges, try to make things a little less hellish. And it still got people killed. I had no backbone, no admin ability; I was just an idiot that Nau could use to keep better people in line.”
Pham was shaking his head. “You were the only person I trusted for conspiracy, Ezr.” He stopped abruptly, grinned. “Of course, part of that was you were the only one clever enough to figure out who I was. You didn’t bend, and you didn’t break. You even jerked my chain…. You know how far I go back.”
Ezr looked up. “Of course. So?”
“I’ve seen a lot of hotshots.” A lopsided grin. “Sura and I founded many of the Great Families in this end of Qeng Ho space. But you measure up, Ezr Vinh. I’m proud we are related.”
“Hmm.” Ezr didn’t quite think that Pham would lie about something like this, but what he was saying was just too—extravagant—to be true.
But the other wasn’t finished. “There’s a downside to your virtues, though. You had the patience to play a role for hundreds of Msecs. You stuck to your goals when lots of other people had started whole new lives. Now you’re talking about waiting for Trixia however longthat may take. And I believe you really would wait… forever. Ezr, have you ever thought, you don’t always need the mindrot to get Focused? Some people can get fixated all by themselves. I should know! Their will is so strong—or their mind is so rigid—that they can exclude everything outside of the central fixation. That’s what you needed during the years under Nau and Brughel. It was the thing that saved you, and helped carry the rest of the Qeng Ho along. But think now, recognize the problem. Don’t throw your life away.”
Ezr swallowed. He remembered the Emergents’ claims that society had always depended on people who “didn’t have a life.” But, “Trixia Bonsolis a worthwhile goal, Pham.”
“Agreed. But you’re talking about a very high price, waiting the rest of your life for something that may never happen.” He stopped, cocked his head to one side. “It’s a shame you aren’t Focused with the Emergent bug; that might be easier to undo! You’re so fixated on Trixia that you can’t see what’s going on around you, can’t see the people that you are hurting, or the person who could love you.”
“Huh. Who?”
“Think, Ezr. Who engineered the rockpile stability system? Who persuaded Nau to loosen the leash? Who made Benny’s parlor and Gonle’s farms possible? And did it in spite of repeated mindscrubs? Who saved your butt when the crunch finally came?”
“Oh.” The word came out small and embarrassed. “Qiwi… Qiwi is a good person.”
Real anger showed in Pham’s face, the first time he’d seen that since the fall of Tomas Nau. “Wake up,
