social reason there is for rigid birthing times is irrelevant.”
“You’ll never convince the Church of the Dark.”
“That’s okay. I’m hoping to convince the millions of open-minded people like Hrunkner Unnerby.”
Unnerby couldn’t think what to say. The other’s argument was all so glib. Didn’t Underhill understand? All decent societies agreed on basic issues, things that meant the healthy survival of their people. Things might be changing, but it was self-serving nonsense to throw the rules overboard. Even if they lived in the Dark, there would still be a need for decent cycles of life…. The silence stretched out. There was just the clicking of Sherk’s little puzzle blocks.
Finally, Sherkaner spoke. “The General likes you very much, Hrunk. You were her dearest cobber-in-arms— but more, you were decent to her when she was a new lieutenant and it looked like her career would end on the trash pile.”
“She’s the best. She couldn’t help when she was born.”
“…Granted. But that’s also why she’s been making your life so hard lately. She thought that you, of all people, would accept what she and I are doing.”
“I know, Sherk, but Ican’t. You saw me today. I did my best, but your cobblies saw through me. Junior did anyway.”
“Heh, heh. She did indeed. It’s not just her name; Little Victory is smart like her mother. But—as you say— she’s going to have to face much worse…. Look, Hrunk. I’m going to have a little chat with the General. She should accept what she can get, learn a little tolerance—even if it is tolerance for your intolerance.”
“I—that would help, Sherk. Thanks.”
“In the meantime, we’ll need you up here more often. But you can come on your own terms. The children would like to see you, but at whatever distance you prefer.”
“Okay. I do like them. I’m just afraid I can’t be what they want.”
“Ha. Then finding the right distance will be their little experiment.” He smiled. “They can be pretty flexible if they look at you that way.”
TWENTY
In Pre-Flight, Pham Trinli had been a distant curiosity to Ezr Vinh. What little he had seen of the guy seemed sullen, lazy, and probably incompetent. He was “somebody’s relative”; it was the only explanation for how he had made the crew. It was only since the ambush that Trinli’s boorish, loudmouth behavior had made its impact on Ezr. Occasionally he was amusing; much more often he was loathsome. Trinli’s Watch time overlapped Ezr’s by sixty percent. When he went over to Hammerfest, there was Pham Trinli trading dirty stories with Reynolt’s techs. When he visited Benny’s booze parlor, there was Trinli with a gang of Emergents, loud and pompous as ever. It had been years—really since Jimmy Diem died—since anyone would think his behavior traitorous. Qeng Ho and Emergents had to get along, and there were plenty of Traders in Trinli’s circle.
Today Ezr’s loathing for the man had changed to something darker. It was the once-per-Msec Watch- manager meeting, chaired as always by Tomas Nau. This was not the empty propaganda of Ezr’s fake “Fleet Management Committee.” The expertise of both sides was needed if they were to survive here. And though there was never a question of who was boss, Nau actually heeded much of the advice given at these meetings. Ritser Brughel was currently off-Watch, so this meeting would proceed without pathological overtones. With the exception of Pham Trinli, the managers were people who really could make things work.
All had gone smoothly through the first Ksec. Kal Omo’s programmers had sanitized a batch of head-up displays for Qeng Ho use. The new interface was limited, but better than nothing. Anne Reynolt had a new Focused roster. The full schedule was still a secret, but it looked like Trixia might get more time off. Gonle Fong proposed some Watch changes. Ezr knew were these were secret payoffs for various deals she had on the side, but Nau blandly accepted them. The underground economy she and Benny had masterminded was surely known to Tomas Nau… but the years had passed and he had consistently ignored it.And he has consistently benefitedby it. Ezr Vinh would never have thought that free trading could add much efficiency in such a small and closed society as this little camp at L1, but it clearly had improved life. Most people had their favored Watch companions. Many had Qiwi Lisolet’s little bonsai bubbles in their rooms. Equipment allocation was about as slick as it could be. Maybe it just showed how screwed up the original Emergent allocation system had been. Ezr still clung to the secret belief that Tomas Nau was the deepest villain he had ever known, a mass murderer, who murdered simply to advance a lie. But he was so clever, so outwardly conciliatory. Tomas Nau was more than smart enough to allow this underground trade that helped him to proceed.
“Very well, last item.” He smiled down the length of the table. “As usual, the most interesting and difficult item. Qiwi?”
Qiwi Lisolet rose smoothly, stopped herself with a hand on the low ceiling. Gravity existed on Hammerfest, but it was barely good enough to keep the drinking bulbs on the table. “Interesting? I guess.” She made a face. “But it’s also a very irritating problem.” Qiwi opened a deep pocket and pulled out a bundle of head-up displays—all tagged with “cleared-for-Peddler-use” seals. “Let’s try out Kal Omo’s toys.” She passed them out to the various Watch managers. Ezr took one, smiled back at her shy grin. Qiwi was still child-short, but she was as compact and nearly as tall as an average Strentmannian adult. She was no longer a little girl, or even the devastated orphan of the Relighting. Qiwi had lived Watch-on-Watch in the years after the Relight; she had aged a full year for every year that passed. Since OnOff’s light had faded to a more manageable level, she’d had some time off-Watch, but Ezr could see tiny creases beginning at the corners of her eyes.She’s what now? Older than I am. The old playfulness sometimes showed even still, but she never teased Ezr anymore. And he knew the stories about Qiwi and Tomas Nau were true. Poor, damned Qiwi.
But Qiwi Lin Lisolet had become something more than Ezr ever expected. Now Qiwi balanced mountains.
She waited until they all were wearing their huds. Then: “You know I manage our halo-orbit around L1.” Above the middle of the table, the rockpile suddenly materialized. A tiny Hammerfest stuck out of the jumble on Ezr’s side; a taxi was just mooring on the high tower. The image was crisp, cutting precisely across the wall and people behind it. But when he turned his head quickly from the rockpile to Qiwi and back, the pile blurred slightly. The placement automation couldn’t quite keep up with the motion, and the visual fraud failed. No doubt, Kal Omo’s programmers had been forced to replace some of the optimizations. Still, what was left was close to Qeng Ho quality, the images separately coordinated in the field of each head-up display.
Dozens of tiny red lights appeared across the surface of the rockpile. “Those are the electric-jet emplacements”—and then even more yellow spots of light—“and that is the sensor grid.” She laughed, as light and playful as he remembered. “Altogether it looks like a finite element solution grid, doesn’t it? But then, that’s just what it is, though the grid points are real machines collecting data. Anyway, my people and I have two problems. Either one of them is fairly easy: We need to keep the jumble in orbit around L1.” The jumble shrank to a stylized symbol, tracing an everchanging Lissajous figure around the glyphL1. On one side hung Arachna; far away but on the same line was the OnOff star. “We have it set so we’re always near the sun’s limb as seen by the Spiders. It will be many years before they have the technology to detect us here…. But the other goal of the stabilization is to keep Hammerfest and the remaining blocks of ocean ice and airsnow all in the shadow.” Back to the original view of the jumble, but now the volatiles were marked in blue and green. Every year that precious resource shrank, consumed by the humans and by evaporation into space. “Unfortunately these two goals are somewhat inconsistent. The rubble pile isloose. Sometimes our L1 stationkeeping causes torques and the rocks slide.”
“The rubble quakes,” said Jau Xin.
“Yes. Down here at Hammerfest, you feel them all the time. Without constant supervision, the problem would be worse.” The surface of the meeting table became a model of the juncture of Diamonds One and Two. Qiwi motioned across the blocks and a forty-centimeter swath of surface turned pink. “That’s a shift that almost got away from us. But we can’t afford the human resources to—”
Pham Trinli had sat through all this in silence, his eyes squinted down in a look of angry concentration. As Nau’s original choice to manage the stabilization, Trinli had a long history of humiliation on this subject. Finally he exploded. “Crap. I thought you were going to spend some of the water, melt it into a glue you could inject between
