ramscoops and ancient radio transmissions.”
“So if there were anything more, we would have seen it,” said Ezr, but he clearly knew what was coming. The arguments were ancient history.
“Only if it’s a place we can look. But parts of the galactic core are plenty shrouded. If our supercivilization doesn’t use radio, if they have something better than ramscoops… down by the core is the one place they might have escaped our detection.” And OnOff’s eccentric orbit had at least passed through those unseen depths.
“Okay, Pham. I agree, it all fits. But you’re talking about thirty thousand light-years to the core, almost that far to the umbral clouds.”
Gonle: “That’s a hundred times farther than anything the Qeng Ho have tried. Without depot civilizations in between, your ramscoops will fail in less than a thousand years. We can dream of such a mission, but it’s totally beyond our ability.”
Pham grinned at them all: “It’s totally beyond our ability now.”
“That’s what I said! It’s always been beyond us.”
But the light was beginning to come on in Ezr’s eyes. “Gonle, he means that it may not be beyond us in the future.”
“Yes!” Pham leaned forward, wondering how many of them he could capture in this dream. “Do a little mind experiment. Put yourself back in the Dawn Age. Back then, for a few brief centuries, peopleexpected things to become radically improved in the future. With Arachna, you will bring a little bit of that spirit back. Maybe you don’t believe it now. You don’t see the civilization that you are building. Ezr and Qiwi, you’re founding a Great Family that will outshine any in Qeng Ho history. Trixia and Victory and all the Spiders will be the greatest thing that ever happened to our business. And you’re just beginning to understand the contradictions of Arachna. You’re right; today, talk of ’faring toward the core is like a child wading in the surf and talking of crossing an ocean. But I’ll lay you a wager: By the next Bright Time, you’ll have the technology I need.”
He looked at Anne beside him. She smiled back, a grin that was both happy and a little mocking. “Anne and I and those on our fleet of three intend to take down the Emergent system. If we succeed there—whenwe succeed —what’s left will still be a high-tech civilization. We’ll make a larger fleet, at least a fleet of twenty. And Anne will let me rename her flagship theWild Goose. And we will return here and outfit to go… a-searching.” And would Anne really come with him then? She said she would. Would tearing down the Emergents’ tyranny lift thegeas that drove her? Maybe not. Winning would leave whole worlds like the deFocus ward in Hammerfest’s Attic. Maybe she would find it impossible to leave the people she had rescued. What then?I don’t know. Once upon a time, he was very good at being alone. Now,how strangely I have changed.
Anne’s smile was gentle now. She squeezed his hand and nodded at the pact he had just described. Pham glanced from face to face: Qiwi looked stunned. Ezr looked like someone who desperately wanted to believe, but had more than a life-full of other endeavors to distract him. As for the Spiders, their aspects ranged from Underville’s truculent “show me” to—
Throughout his speech, Victory Lighthill had sat still and silent, even her eating hands motionless. Now she spoke, a burring warble, soft and sad and wondering, that needed Trixia to translate the words: “Daddy would have loved this plan.”
“Yes.” Pham’s voice caught. Underhill had been a genius and a dreamer, straight out of the Dawn Age. Pham had long since read Trixia’s “videomancy diaries,” the story of Underhill’s counterlurk. The cobber had dug deep into the Emergents’ automation, sometimes so deep that the Focused Anne Reynolt had noticed the tampering and thought it evidence of human conspiracy. At the end, Underhill knew what Focus was; he knew the humans didn’t have AI or any technology enormously beyond his own. Sherkaner Underhill must have been very disappointed to learn the limits of progress.
Beside him, Anne started to nod, hesitated. And that was when she surprised them all, herself included, but the Spiders most of all. She cocked her head, and a slow smile started across her face. “And what makes you think he didn’t survive? He had as much information as any of us—and a good bit more imagination. What makes you think this isn’t his plan, too?”
“Anne, I’ve read the diaries. If he were alive, he’d be here.”
She shook her head. “I wonder. Wanderdeep is something we humans aren’t built to understand, and Sherkaner thought sure that Smith was dead. But Sherkaner Underhill confounded both humans and Spiders more than once. He took Spiderness in unthought directions—he saw the deepness in the sky. I think he’s down there somewhere, and he intends to outlast all the mysteries.”
“It could be… it could be.” The words, ultimately Trixia’s or Victory’s, Pham could not tell, were spoken in soft awe. “We don’t really know where he landed on the altiplano. If it was something he had scouted out before, he would have a chance.”
Pham looked outward, at Arachna. The planet spread across thirty degrees, a vast, black pearl. Traceries of gold and silver gleamed all across the continent into the southern hemisphere, and across the faint luster of the eastern sea. And yet, there were still large areas of unrelieved dark, protected lands that would remain still and cold until the end of the Dark. Pham felt a sudden thrill of understanding.Yes. Somewhere down there the old Spider might still sleep, waiting for his lady lost… and beginning on his greatest Lurk of all.
So high, so low, so many things to know.
