Nau’s face vanished from the display, leaving a view out on the rear-ranged surface of the rockpile. Around the room, Qeng Ho looked at one another, talked quietly. Traders had enormous pride, especially when they compared themselves with Customers. To them, even the grandest Customer civilizations, even Namqem and Canberra, were like brilliant flowers, doomed by their beauty and fixed position to fade and wither. This was the first time that Ezr had seen shame on the faces of so many Qeng Ho.Iworked with Jimmy. I helped him. Even the ones who didn’t must have gloried in Jimmy’s first words from theFar Treasure.
How could something go so wrong?
Ciret and Marli came for him. “Some questions related to the investigation.” The Emergent guards took him inward and up, but not to the taxi dock. Nau was in Vinh’s own “Fleet Manager’s” office. The Podmaster sat with Ritser Brughel and Anne Reynolt.
“Have a seat… Fleet Manager,” Nau said quietly, waving at Ezr’s place at the middle of the table.
Vinh approached it slowly, sat down. It was hard to look Tomas Nau in the eye. The others… Anne Reynolt seemed as impatient and irritable as ever. There was no trouble avoiding her gaze, since she never looked directly into his eyes anyway. Ritser Brughel seemed as tired as the Podmaster, but he had an odd smile that flickered on and off. The man was staring hard at him; Vinh suddenly realized that Brughel was brimming with unspoken triumph. All the deaths—on both sides—were nothing to this sadist.
“Fleet Manager.” Nau’s quiet voice brought Vinh’s head around. “About J.Y. Diem’s conspiracy—”
“I knew, Podmaster.” The words were somewhere between defiance and confession. “I—”
Nau held up a hand. “I know. But you were a minor participant. We’ve identified several others. The old man, Pham Trinli. He provided them with protective coloration—and almost died for his trouble.”
Brughel chuckled. “Yeah, he got half poached. Bet he’s whimpering even yet.”
Nau turned to look at Brughel. He didn’t say anything, just stared. After a second, Ritser nodded and his demeanor became a sullen imitation of Nau’s.
The Podmaster turned back to Vinh. “None of us can afford rage or triumph in this. Now we need everyone, even Pham Trinli.” He looked at Vinh meaningfully, and Ezr fully met his gaze.
“Yes, sir. I understand.”
“We’ll debrief you later about the plot, Fleet Manager. We do want to identify all those who need special watching. For now, there are much more important things than raking over the past.”
“Even after this, you want me to be Fleet Manager?” He had hated that job so much. Now he hated it even more, for entirely different reasons.
But the Podmaster nodded. “You were the proper person before, and you still are. Furthermore, we need continuity. If you visibly and wholeheartedly accept my leadership, the community as a whole has a better chance.”
“Yes, sir.” Sometimes it was possible to atone for guilt. That was more than Jimmy and Tsufe and Pham Patil could ever do.
“Good. As I understand it, our physical situation has stabilized. There are no ongoing emergencies. What about Xin and Wen? Are they going to be able rescue those ice blocks they’re chasing? Getting them more fuel is a priority.”
“We have the distillery online, sir. We’ll begin feeding it in a few Ksecs.” And could refuel the taxis. “I’m hoping we’ll have the last ice blocks grounded and in the shade within forty Ksec.”
Nau glanced at Anne Reynolt.
“The estimate is reasonable, Podmaster. All other problems are under control.”
“Then we have time for the important, human issues. Mr. Vinh, we’ll be putting out several announcements later today. I want you to understand them. Both you and Qiwi Lin Lisolet will be thanked for your help in tracking down what is left of the conspiracy.”
“But—”
“Yes, I know that there’s an element of fabrication there. But Qiwi was never in on the conspiracy, and she has given us solid help.” Nau paused. “The poor girl was ripped apart by this. There’s a lot of rage in her. For her sake, and for the sake of the whole community, I want you to play along with the story. I need it emphasized that there are plenty of Qeng Ho who are not irrational, who have pledged to work with me.”
He paused. “And now the most important thing. You heard my speech, the part about learning Emergent ways?”
“About… Focus?” About what had they had really done to Trixia.
Behind Nau, the sadistic smirk flickered once again across Ritser Brughel’s face.
“That’s the main thing,” said Nau. “Perhaps we should have been open about it, but the training period wasn’t complete. Focus can make the difference between life and death in the present circumstances. Ezr, I want Anne to take you over to Hammerfest and explain it all to you. You’ll be the first. I want you to understand, to make your peace with it. When you have, I want you to explain Focus to your people, and do it so they can accept it, so what is left of our missions can survive.”
And so the secret Vinh had pushed to know, the secret that had driven every dream for Msecs, was now to be revealed to him. Ezr followed Reynolt up the central corridor to the taxi lock. Every meter was a battle for him. Focus. The infection they could not cure. The mindrot. There had been rumors, nightmares, and now he would know.
Reynolt waved him into the taxi. “Sit over there, Vinh.” In a paradoxical way, he preferred dealing with Anne Reynolt. She didn’t disguise her contempt, and she had none of the sadistic triumph that oozed from Ritser Brughel.
The taxi sealed up and pushed off. The Qeng Ho temp was still tied down to the rockpile. The sunlight was still too bright to allow it to be released. The purple sky had faded back to black, but there were a half-dozen comet tails streaking the stars—sundry blocks of ice that now floated some kilometers away. Wen and Xin were out there somewhere.
Hammerfest was less than five hundred meters from the temp, an easy free jump if Reynolt had wished it. Instead they floated across the space in shirtsleeve comfort. If you hadn’t seen it all before the Relight, you might not guess the disaster that had happened. The monster rocks had long since stopped moving. Loose ice and snow had been redistributed across the shadow, larger chunks and smaller and smaller and smaller, a fractal pile. Only now there was less ice, and much less airsnow. Now the shadowed side of the jumble was lit as by a bright moon —the light reflected from Arachna. The taxi passed fifty meters above crews working to reemplace the electric jets. Last time he had checked, Qiwi Lisolet was down there, more or less running the operation.
Reynolt had strapped down across from him. “The successfully Focused are all on Hammerfest. You can talk to almost anyone you please.”
Hammerfest looked like an elegant personal estate. It was the luxurious heart of the Emergent operation. That had been some comfort to Ezr. He’d told himself that Trixia and the others would be treated decently there. They might be held like the hostages of Qeng Ho history, like the One Hundred at Far Pyorya. But no sensible Trader would ever build a habitat rooted in a rubble pile. The taxi coasted over towers of eerie beauty, a fey castle spiring up from the crystal plane. In a short time, he would know what the castle hid…. Reynolt’s phrasing finally took hold of his attention. “Successfully Focused?”
Reynolt shrugged. “Focus is mindrot on a leash. We lost thirty percent in the initial conversions; we may lose more in the coming years. We had moved the sickest ones over to theFar Treasure .”
“But what—”
“Be quiet and let me tell you.” Her attention flicked to something beyond Vinh’s shoulder, and she was quiet for several seconds. “You remember becoming sick at the time of the ambush. You’ve guessed that was a disease of our design; its incubation time was an important part of our planning. What you don’t know is that the microbe’s military use is of secondary importance.” The mindrot was viral. Its original, natural, form had killed millions in the Emergents’ home solar system, had crashed their civilization… and set the stage for the present era of expansion. For the original strains of the bug had a novel property: they were a treasure house of neurotoxins.
“In the centuries since the Plague Time, the Emergency has gentled the mindrot and turned it to the service of civilization. Its present form needs special help to break through the blood-brain barrier, and spreads throughout the brain in a nearly harmless way, infecting about ninety percent of the glial cells. And now we can control the
