nature. But even the smallest park had all the millennia of Qeng Ho ingenuity behind its design. This one gave the impression of forest depth, of creatures great and small waiting just behind the nearest trees. Keeping the balance of life in a park this small was probably the most difficult project in the temp.
The park was in deepening twilight, darkest in the direction of down. To his right the last glimmer of skylike blue shone beyond the trees. Vinh reached out, pulled himself hand over hand to the ground. It was a short trip; all together, the park was less than twelve meters across. Vinh hugged himself into the deep moss by a tree trunk and listened to the sounds of the cooling forest evening. A bat flickered against the sky, and somewhere a nest of butterflies muttered musically to itself. The bat was likely fake. A park this small could not stock large animals or scamperers, but the butterflies would be real.
For a blessed space of time, all thought fled…
…and returned with knives resharpened. Jimmy was dead. And Tsufe, and Pham Patil. In dying, they had killed hundreds of others, including the people who might know what to do now.Yet I still live.
Even half a day ago, knowing what had happened to Trixia would have put him in a rage beyond reason. Now that rage choked on his shame. Ezr Vinh had had a hand in the deaths aboard theFar Treasure. If Jimmy had been a little more “successful,” all those on Hammerfest might be dead too. Was being foolish, and supporting foolish, violent people—was that as evil as committing a treacherous ambush?No, no, no! And yet, in the end, Jimmy had killed a good fraction of those who had survived the ambush.And I must make amends. Now I must somehow explain Focus to my people,and do it so they can accept it, so what is left of our mission can survive.
Ezr choked on a sob. He was supposed to convince others to accept what he would have died to prevent. In all his schooling, all his reading, all his nineteen years of life, he had never imagined there could be anything so difficult.
A tiny light swung through the middle distance. Branches shuffled aside. Someone had entered the park, was bumbling nearer the central glade. The light flashed briefly in Vinh’s face, then went out.
“Aha. I figured you might go to ground.” It was Pham Trinli. The old man grabbed a low-growing branch and settled on the moss near Vinh. “Brace up, young fellow. Diem’s heart was in the right place. I helped him out as best I could, but he was a careless hothead—remember how he sounded? I never thought he was that foolish, and now a lot of people got killed. Well, shit happens.”
Vinh turned toward the sound of the words; the other’s face was a grayish blob in the twilight. For a moment, Vinh teetered on the edge of violence. It would feel sogood to pulp that face. Instead, he settled a little deeper in the dark and let his breath steady. “Yeah. It happens.” Andmaybe some will happen to you. Surely Nau had the park bugged.
“Courage. I like that.” In the darkness, Vinh couldn’t tell whether the other was smiling or if the fatuous compliment was meant seriously. Trinli slid a little closer and his voice dropped to a whisper. “Don’t take it so hard. Sometimes you have to go along to get along. And I think I can manipulate that Nau fellow. The speech he gave— did you notice? After all the death Jimmy caused, Nau wasaccommodating. I swear, he cribbed his talk from something in our own history.”
So even in hell, there are clowns. Pham Trinli, the aging martinet, whose idea of subtle conspiracy was a whispered chat in a temp’s central park. Trinli was so totally clueless. Worse, he had so many things
They sat in the near-total darkness for some seconds, and Pham Trinli remained mercifully silent. The guy’s stupidity was like a load of rock dumped into the pool of Vinh’s despair. It stirred things up. The absurdities gave him something to hit on besides himself. Nau’s speech… accommodating? In a sense. Nau was the injured party in this. But they were all injured parties. Cooperation was the only way out now. He thought back over Nau’s words.Huh. Some of the phrases really were borrowed, from Pham Nuwen’s speech at Brisgo Gap. Brisgo Gap was a shining high point in the history of the Qeng Ho, where the Traders had saved a high civilization and billions of lives. As much as something so large could be tied to a single point in space-time, Brisgo Gap was the origin of the modern Qeng Ho. The similarities with the present situation were about nil… except that there, too, people from all over had cooperated, had prevailed in the face of terrible treachery.
Pham Nuwen’s speech had been ’cast across Human Space many times during the last two thousand years. It wasn’t surprising Tomas Nau would know it. So he’d spliced in a phrase here and there, sought a common background… except that Tomas Nau’s notion of “cooperation” meant accepting Focus and what had been done to Trixia Bonsol. Vinh realized that some part of his mind had felt the similarities, had been moved by them. But seeing the cribbing laid out cold made things different. It was all so pat, and it ended with Ezr Vinh having to accept… Focus.
Shame and guilt lay so heavily on the last two days. Now Ezr wondered. Jimmy Diem had never been afriend of Ezr’s. The other had been a few years older, and since they first met, Diem had been his crewleader, his most constant disciplinarian. Ezr tried to think back on Jimmy, think of him from the outside. Ezr Vinh was no prize himself, but he had grown up near the pinnacle of Vinh.23. His aunts and uncles and cousins included some of the most successful Traders in this end of Human Space. Ezr had listened to them and played with them since his nursery days… and Jimmy Diem was just not in their league. Jimmy was hardworking, but he didn’t have that much imagination. His goals had been modest, which was fortunate since even working as hard as he did, Jimmy was scarcely able to manage a single work crew.Huh. I never thought about him that way. It was a sad surprise that suddenly made Jimmy the hardnosed crewleader much more likable, someone who could have been a friend.
And just as suddenly, he realized how much Jimmy must have hated playing the game of high-stakes threats with Tomas Nau. He didn’t have the scheming talent for such things, and in the end he had simply miscalculated. All the guy really wanted to do was marry Tsufe Do and get into middle management.It doesn’t make sense. Vinh was suddenly aware of the darkness around him, the sounds of butterflies sleeping in the trees. The damp of the moss was chill through his shirt and pants. He tried to remember exactly what he’d heard over the auditorium speakers. The voice was Jimmy’s, no doubt. The accent was precisely his Diem-family Nese. But the tone, the choice of words, those had been so confident, so arrogant, so… almost
And that left only one conclusion. Faking Jimmy’s voice and accent would have been difficult, but somehow they had done it. And so what else had been a lie?Jimmy didn’t kill anyone. The senior Qeng Ho had been murdered before Jimmy and Tsufe and Pham Patil ever went aboard theFar Treasure. Tomas Nau had committed murders on top of murders to claim his moral high ground.Explain Focus to your people, and do it sothey can accept it, so what is left of our missions can survive.
Vinh stared up into the last light in the sky. Stars glinted here and there between the branches, a fake heaven from a sky light-years away. He heard Pham Trinli shift. He patted Ezr awkwardly on the shoulder, and his lanky form floated off the ground. “Good, you’re not bawling anymore. I figured you just needed a little backbone. Just remember, you gotta go along to get along. Nau is basically a softy; we can handle him.”
Ezr was trembling, a growl of rage climbing up his throat. He caught the growl, made it a sobbing sound, made his trembling anger an exhausted quavering. “Y-yes. We’ve got to go along.”
“Good man.” Trinli patted him on the shoulder again, then turned to find his way back through the treetops. Ezr remembered Ritser Brughel’s description of Trinli after the Relight. The old man was immune to Tomas Nau’s moral manipulation. But that didn’t matter, because Trinli was also a self-deceiving coward.You gotta go along to get along.
One Jimmy Diem was worth any number of Pham Trinlis.
Tomas Nau had maneuvered them all so cleverly. He had stolen the minds of Trixia and hundreds of others. He had murdered all those who might have made a difference. And he hadused those murders to make the rest of them into his willing tools.
Ezr stared up at the false stars, at the tree branches that curved like claws across the sky.Maybe it’s possible to push someone too far, to breakhim so he can’t bea tool anymore. Staring up at the dark claws all around him, Vinh felt his mind spin off in separate directions. One part watched passively, marveling that such disintegration could happen to Ezr Vinh. Another part drew in on itself, drowned in pools of sorrow; Sum Dotran would never return, nor S.J. Park, and any promise of reversing Trixia’s Focus must surely be a lie. But there was a third fragment, cool and analytical and murderous:
For both Qeng Ho and Emergents, the Exile would last for decades. Much of that time would be spent off- Watch, in coldsleep… but they still had years stretching before them. And Tomas Nau needed all the survivors. For now, the Qeng Ho were beaten down, raped, and—so Tomas Nau must be led to think—deceived. The cool one
