But something really deadly had happened here. Mindrot runaway. In attacking the problem, Reynolt came as close to emotion as Pham had ever seen her. Some parts of the mystery were solved right away. Trud’s query right at the beginning of the debate had triggered a search across many specialities. That was the reason so many zipheads had been listening to the debate. Their analysis had proceeded very normally for several hundred seconds, but then as the results were posted, there was a surge in communication between the translators. Normally, that was consultative, tuning the words that they spoke aloud. This time, it was deadly nonsense. First Trixia and then most of the other translators began to drift, their brain chemistry indicating an uncontrolled excursion of the rot. Real damage had been done even before Trixia attacked Xopi Reung, but that had marked the beginning of the massive runaway. Whatever was being communicated within the ziphead net provoked a cascade of similar flareups. Before the emergency was fully appreciated, about twenty percent of all the zipheads were affected, the virus in their brains producing out of bounds, flooding them with psychoactives and frankly toxic chemicals.
The nav zipheads were not affected. Brughel’s snoops were moderately affected. Pham watched everything Reynolt did, trying to absorb every detail, every clue.If I can make something like this happen to the L1 supportnetwork, if Brughel’s people could be disabled…
Anne Reynolt seemed to be everywhere. Every technician deferred to her. It was she who saved most of Ritser’s zips; she who managed the reboot of limited Attic operations. And it came to Pham that without Anne Reynolt, there might not have been any recovery. Back in the Emergents’ home solar system, ziphead crashes might be occasional inconveniences. There were universities to generate replacements, hundreds of clinics for Focusing newly created specialists. Here, twenty light-years from the Emergent civilization, it was a different story. Here, little failures could grow unbounded… and without some supernally competent manager, without Anne Reynolt, Tomas Nau’s operation could collapse.
Xopi Reung flat-lined shortly after they brought her out of the MRI. Reynolt broke off from managing the Attic reboot, spent frantic moments with the translator. Here, she had no success. A hundred seconds later, the runaway infection had poisoned Reung’s brain stem… and the rest didn’t matter. Reynolt looked at the still body for a second more, frowning. Then she waved for the techs to float the body out.
Pham watched as Trixia Bonsol was moved out of the clinic. She was still alive; Reynolt herself was at the front of Bonsol’s carrier.
Trud Silipan followed her toward the door. Suddenly he seemed to remember the two visitors. He turned and made a come-along gesture. “Okay, Trinli. End of show.”
Silipan’s face was grim and pale. The exact cause of the runaway was still unknown; it was some obscure interaction between the zipheads. Trud’s use of the ziphead net—his query at the beginning of the debate—should have been an innocuous use of the resources. But Trud was at the pointy end of some very bad luck. Even if his query hadn’t triggered the debacle, it was connected to it. In a Qeng Ho operation, Silipan’s query would have just been another clue. Unfortunately, the Emergents had some very post hoc methods for defining sin.
“Are you going to be okay, Trud?”
Silipan gave a frightened little shrug and chivied them out of the clinic. “Get on back to the temp—and don’t let Vinh come after his ziphead.” Then he turned and followed Reynolt.
Pham and Vinh hiked up from the depths of Hammerfest, alone except for the certain presence of Brughel’s snoops. The Vinh boy was quiet. In a way, today had been the biggest kick in the face he had suffered in years, maybe since Jimmy Diem’s death. For an n-times-removed descendant, Ezr Vinh had a face that was entirely too familiar. He reminded Pham of Ratko Vinh when Ratko was young; he had a lot of Sura’s face. That was not a pleasant thought.Maybe my subconcious is trying to tell me something…. Yes. Not just in the clinic, but all this Watch. Every so often the kid would look at him… and the look was more of calculation than contempt. Pham thought back, trying to remember just how his Trinli character had behaved. Certainly it was a risk to be so interested in Focus. But he had Trud’s scams as a cover for that. No, even while they were standing in the clinic and Pham’s mind had been totally concentrated on Reynolt and the Bonsol mystery—even then he was sure he hadn’t looked anything but mildly dazed, an old charlatan worried that this debacle would mess up the deals he and Trud had planned. Yet somehow this Vinh had seen through him. How? And what to do about it?
They came out of the main vertical corridor, and started down the ramp to the taxi locks. The Focused murals were everywhere, ceilings, walls, floors. In places, the diamond walls had been planed thin. Blue light—the light of full Arachna—came softly through the crystal, darker or lighter depending on the depth of the carving. Because Arachna was always in full phase from L1 and the rockpile was kept in a fixed phase relative to the sun, the light had been steady for years. There might have been a time when Pham Nuwen would have fallen in love with that art, but now he knew how it had been made. Watch after Watch, he and Trud Silipan would come down this ramp and see workers, carving. Nau and Brughel had pissed away the lifetimes of nonacademic zipheads to make this art. Pham guessed that at least two had died of old age. The survivors were gone now, too, perhaps finishing the carvings on lesser corridors.After I take over, thingswill be different. Focus was such a terrible thing. It must never be used except for the most critical needs.
They passed a side corridor paneled in tank-grown wood. The grain swirled smoothly, following the curve of the corridor that led downward to Tomas Nau’s private quarters.
And there was Qiwi Lin Lisolet. Maybe she had heard them coming. More likely she had seen their departure from the clinic. Either way, she had been waiting long enough that she stood with feet on the floor, as if in normal planetary gravity.
“Ezr, please. Can we talk, just for a moment? I never meant these shows to hurt—”
Vinh had been drifting ahead of Pham, silently pulling himself along. His head snapped up when he saw Qiwi. For an instant it seemed he might float on by her. Then she spoke. Vinh pushed hard against the wall, diving fast and directly toward her. The action was as bluntly hostile as swinging a fist at another’s face.
“Here now!” Pham blustered, and forced himself to hang back in seeming impotence. He’d already waylaid the fellow once today, and this time the scene would be quite clear to the snoops. Besides, Pham had watched Qiwi work outside. She was in better condition than anyone at L1, and a natural acrobat. Maybe it would do Vinh some good to learn he couldn’t off-load his anger on her.
But Qiwi didn’t defend, didn’t even flinch. Vinh twisted, delivering a powerful, openhanded slap that sent them spinning apart. “Yes, we’ll talk!” Vinh’s voice was ragged. He bounced after her and he slapped her again. And again Qiwi didn’t defend, didn’t even raise her hands to shield her face.
And Pham Nuwen pushed forward before he’d really thought. Something in the back of his mind was laughing at him for risking years of masquerade just to protect one innocent. But that same something also cheered.
Pham’s dive turned into an apparently uncontrolled spin, one that just accidentally slammed his shoulder into Vinh’s gut and smashed the younger man into the wall. Out of sight of any camera, Pham gave his opponent a piece of elbow. An instant after the impact, the back of Vinh’s head smacked against the wall. If they had still been down in the carved diamond corridors, that might have caused serious injury. As it was, when Vinh came off the wall, his arms were flailing weakly. Little droplets of blood sprouted up from the back of his head.
“Pick on someone your own size, Vinh! Cowardly, scummy piece of vermin. You Great Family Traders are all alike.” Pham’s rage was real—but it was also rage against himself, for risking his cover.
The wits slowly percolated back into Vinh’s eyes. He glanced at Qiwi, four meters down the hallway. The girl looked back, her expression a strange combination of shock and determination. And then Vinh looked at Pham, and the old man felt a chill. Maybe Brughel’s cameras hadn’t caught all the details of the fight, but the kid knew how calculated Pham’s assault had been. For an instant the two stared at each other, and then Vinh shrugged free of his grasp and scooted back down the ramp toward the taxi locks. It was the scuttling retreat of a shamed and beaten man. But Pham had seen the look in his eyes; something would have to be done about Ezr Vinh.
Qiwi started after Vinh, but dragged herself to a stop before she had gone ten meters. She floated in the of the corridors, staring off in the direction Vinh had gone.
Pham came near. He knew he had to get out of here. No doubt several cameras were watching him now, and he was just no good at staying in character around Qiwi. So what to say that would get him safely gone? “Don’t worry, kid. Vinh is just not worth it. He won’t bother you again; I guarantee it.”
After a moment, the girl turned to face him. Lord, she looked so much like her mother; Nau had been running her nearly Watch-on-Watch. There were tears in her eyes. He couldn’t see any cuts or blood, but bruises were beginning to show on her dark skin. “I really didn’t meant to hurt him. God, I don’t know what I’ll do if Trixia d-dies.” Qiwi brushed back her close-cut black hair. Grown-up or not, she looked as lost as during the first days after the
