A Deepness in the Sky (66 page)

All that had occurred to Pham; he had argued against variants of the point for Msecs before the Meeting. "But Namqem is the hardest rescue we could possibly face, Sura. An old civilization, entrenched, a civilization exploiting every solar-system resource. We would have had a much easier time with a world threatened with bio-plague or even a totalitarian religion."

Sura was shaking her head. Even now she ignored what Pham set before her. "No. In most cases, you can make a difference, but more often than not it will be like Canberra—a small difference for the better, and written in Trader blood. You're right: Without the fleet of fleets, civilization would have died here in Namqem system. But some people would have survived on Namqem world; some of the asteroid-belt urbs might have survived. The old story would have been repeated, and someday there would be civilization here again, even if by external colonization. You have bridged that abyss, and billions are rightly grateful...but it will take years of careful management to bring this system back. Maybe we here"—her hand twitched in the direction of the Meeting Hall—"can do that, and maybe not. But I know that we can't do it for the universe and for all time." Sura did something, and her chairchuff 'd to a halt.

She turned, extended her arms to touch Pham's shoulders. And suddenly Pham had the strangest feeling, almost a kinesthetic memory, of looking up into her face and feeling her hands on his shoulders. It was a memory from before they were partners, before they were lovers. A memory from their earliest time on theReprise: Sura Vinh, the young woman, serious. There were times when she'd gotten so angry with little Pham Nuwen. There were times when she'd reached out to grab his shoulders, tried to hold him still long enough to make him understand what his young barbarian mind chose to ignore. "Son, don't you see? We span all Human Space, but we can't manage whole civilizations. You'd need a race of loving slaves to do it. And we Qeng Ho will never be that."

Pham forced himself to look back into Sura's eyes. She had argued this since the beginning, and never wavered.I should have known it would cometo this someday. So now she would lose, and Pham could do nothing to help her. "I'm sorry Sura. When you give your speech, you can say this to a million people. Many of them will believe. And then we'll allvote. And—" And from what he had seen in the Great Hall, and what he saw in Sura Vinh's eyes...for the first time, Phamknew that he had won.

Sura turned away, and her artificial voice was soft. "No. I won't be giving that speech. Elections? Funny that you should be depending on them now....We've heard how you ended the Strentmannian Pogrom."

The change in topic was absurd, but the comment touched a nerve. "I was down to one ship, Sura. What would you have done?"I saved theirdamn civilization, the part that wasn't monstrous.

Sura raised her hand. "I'm sorry....Pham, you are just too lucky, too good." She seemed almost to be talking to herself now. "For almost a thousand years, you and I have worked to make this meeting. It was always a sham, but along the way, we created a trading culture that may last as long as your optimistic dreams. And I always knew that in the end, when we were all face-to-face in a Grand Meeting, common sense would prevail." She shook her head, and a smile quavered. "But I never imagined that luck would give you the Namqem debacle so perfectly timed—or that you would master it like magic. Pham, if we follow your way, we'll likely have disaster here in Namqem within a decade. In a few centuries, the Qeng Ho will fragment into a dozen dozen conflicting structures that all think themselves ‘interstellar governances.' And the dream we shared will be destroyed.

"You're right, Pham. You might win the election...and that's why there won't be one, at least not the kind you think."

The words didn't register for a moment. Pham Nuwen had been exposed to treachery a hundred times. The sense for it was burned into him before he'd ever seen a starship. But...Sura? Sura was the only one he could always trust, his savior, his lover, his best friend, the one he'd schemed with for a lifetime. And now—

Pham looked around the room, his mind undergoing a change-of-ground more profound than any in his life. Besides Sura, there were Sura's aides, six of them. There were also Ratko and Butra and Qo. Of his own assistants—there was only Sammy Park. Sammy stood a little off to the side; he looked sick.

Finally, he looked back at Sura. "I don't understand...but whatever the game, there's no way you can change the election. A million people heard me."

Sura sighed. "They heard you, and you might have a bare majority in a fair election. But many you think supported you...are really with me."

She hesitated, and Pham looked again at his three children. Ratko avoided his gaze, but Butra and Qo looked back with grim steadiness. "We never wanted to hurt you, Papa," Ratko said, finally looking at him. "We love you. This whole charade of a meeting was supposed to show you that the Qeng Ho could not be what you wished. But it didn't go the way we expected—"

Ratko's words didn't matter. It was the look on his children's faces. It was the same closed stoniness of Pham's brothers and sisters, one Canberra morning. And all the love in between...a charade?

He looked back at Sura. "So how do you propose to win? With the sudden, accidental death of half a million people? Or just the selective assassination of thirty thousand hard-core Nuwenists? It won't work, Sura. There are too many good people out there. Maybe you can win this day, but the word will remain, and sooner or later, you'll have your civil war."

Sura shook her head. "We're not killing anyone, Pham. And the word won't go out, at least not widely. Your speech will be remembered by those in the hall, but their recorders—most are using our information utilities. Our free hospitality, remember? Ultimately your speech will be polished into something...safer."

Sura continued, "Over the next twenty Ksec, you will be in special meeting with your opposition. Coming out of that you will announce a compromise: The Qeng Ho will put a much greater effort into our network information services, the sort of thing that can help rebuild civilizations. But you will withdraw your notion of interstellar governance, convinced by the arguments of the rest of us."

A charade. "You could fake that. But afterwards, you'll still have to kill a lot of people."

"No. You will announce your new goal, an expedition to the far side of Human Space. It will be clear that this is partly out of bitterness, but you will wish us well. Your far fleet is almost ready, Pham, about twenty degrees back along the Gap. We have equipped it honestly and well. Your fleet's automation is unusually good, far more expensive than what would be profitable. You won't need a continuous Watch, and the first wake-up will be centuries from now."

Pham looked from face to face. Something like Sura's treachery could work, but only if most of the Fleet Captains that he thought supported him were really like Ratko and Butra and Qo. And then only if they had set up proper lies with their own people. "How...long have you been planning this, Sura?"

"Ever since you were a young man, Pham. Most of the years of my life. But I prayed it would never come to this."

Pham nodded, numb. If she had planned that long, there would be no obvious mistakes. It didn't matter. "My fleet awaits, you say?" His lips twisted around the words. "And all the incorrigibles will surely be its crew. How many? Thirty thousand?"

"A good deal less, Pham. We've studied your hard-core supporters very carefully."

Given the choice, who wanted to go on a one-way trip to forever? They had been very careful to keep those supporters out of this room. All but Sammy. "Sammy?"

His Flag Captain met his eyes, but his lips were trembling. "Sir. I'm s-sorry. Jun wants a different life for me. We—we're still Qeng Ho, but we can't ship with you."

Pham inclined his head. "Ah."

Sura floated closer, and Pham realized that if he pushed off, he could probably grab the handle on her chair and ram his fist right through her scrawny quilted chest.And break my hand for the effort. Sura's heart had been a machine for centuries. "Son? Pham? It was a beautiful dream, and along the way it made us what we are. But in the end it was just a dream. A failed dream."

Pham turned away without responding. Now there were guards by the doors, waiting to escort him. He didn't look at his children. He brushed past Sammy Park without a word. From somewhere in the still, cold depths of his heart, something wished his Flag Captain well. Sammy had betrayed him, but not like the others. And no doubt Sammy believed the lies about a far fleet. He hoped that Sammy would never see through them. Who would ever pay for a fleet such as Sura described? Not crafty merchants like Sura Vinh and her stone-faced children and the others who had plotted this day. Far cheaper, far safer to build a fleet of real coffins.My father would haveunderstood. The best enemies are the ones who sleep without end.

Then Pham was in a long corridor, surrounded by guards who were also strangers. His last vision of Sura's face still hung in Pham's imagination. There had been tears in the old woman's eyes. One last fakery.

A tiny cabin, mostly dark. The kind of room a junior officer might have in a small temp. Work jackets floated in a closet bag. A lapel tag whispered, and a name floated in his eyes:Pham Trinli.

As always, when Pham let the anger fill him, the memories were more vivid than any huds, and the return to the present was a kind of mocking. Sura's "far fleet" had not been a fleet of coffins. Even now, two thousand years after Sura's betrayal, Pham still could not explain that. Most likely, there had been other traitors, ones with some power and some conscience, who had insisted that Pham and those who wouldn't betray him must not be killed. The "fleet" had been scarcely more than refitted ram barges, with space for nothing but the refugees and their coldsleep tanks. But there had been a separate trajectory for each ship of the "fleet." A thousand years later, they were scattered across the width and height of Human Space.

They had not been killed, but Pham had learned his lesson. He had begun his slow, silent journey back. Sura was beyond mortal reach. But there was still the Qeng Ho that he and she had created, the Qeng Ho that had betrayed him. He still had his dream.

...And he would have died with it at Triland, if Sammy had not dug him up. Now fate and time had handed him a second chance: the promise of Focus.

Pham shook away the past, and readjusted the localizers at his temple and in his ear. There was more work than ever to be done. He should have risked more face-to-face meetings with Vinh before now. With good feedback drills, Vinh could learn to handle shocks like this crazy Nau interview, without giving everything away. Yeah, that was the easy part. The hard part would be to keep him distracted from where Pham was ultimately headed.

Pham turned in his sleeping bag, let his breathing shift to a light snore. Behind his eyes, the images shifted to the action traces he was running on Reynolt and the snoops. He had fooled them again. In the long run...? If there weren't any more stupid surprises, in the long run, Anne Reynolt was still the greatest threat.

FORTY

Hrunkner Unnerby flew into Calorica Bay on the First Day of the Dark. Over the years, Unnerby had been at Calorica a number of times. Hell, he'd been here right after mid-Brightness, when the bottom of the pit was still a boiling cauldron. In the years after that, the edge of the mountains had harbored a small town of construction engineers. During the mid-Brightness, conditions were hellish even at high altitude, but the workers were very well paid; the launch facilities farther up in the altiplano were funded by a combination of royal and commercial monies, and after Hrunk installed good cooling machines, it wasn't an uncomfortable place to live. The rich people hadn't begun showing up until the Waning Years, settling as they had for each of the last five generations, in the caldera wall.

But of all Hrunk's visits, this had the strangest feel. The First Day of the Dark. It was a boundary in the mind more than anywhere else—and perhaps that made it even more important.

Unnerby had taken a commercial flight out of High Equatoria, but it was no tourister. High Equatoria might be only five hundred miles away, but it was as far as you could get from the wealth of Calorica Bay on the First Day of the Dark. Unnerby and his two assistants—bodyguards actually—waited until the other passengers had clambered forward along the aisle webway. Then they pulled down their parkas and heated leggings and the two panniers that were the whole reason for the flight. Just short of the exit hatch, Hrunkner lost his grip on the webbing and one of the panniers fell by the feet of the aircraft's steward. The all-weather covering split partway open, revealing the contents to be shale-colored powder, carefully wrapped in plastic sacks.

Hrunkner dropped from the aisle webbing and refastened the pannier. The steward laughed, bemused. "I've heard it said High Equatoria's best export was plain mountain dirt—never expected to see anyone take it seriously."

Unnerby shrugged his embarrassment. Sometimes that was the best cover. He reshouldered the pannier and made to button his parka.

"Ah, um." The steward seemed about to say something more, but then stepped back and bowed them off the aircraft. The three of them rattled down the ladders to the tarmac, and suddenly it was obvious what else the fellow had been about to say. Just an hour ago, as they were leaving High Equatoria, the air had been eighty below freezing and the wind over twenty miles per hour. They had needed heated breathers just to walk from the High Eq terminal to the aircraft.

Here..."By damn, this place is a furnace!" Brun Soulac, his junior security agent, set down her pannier and shrugged out of her parka.

The senior agent laughed, though she was guilty of the same foolishness. "What do you expect, Brun! It's Calorica Bay."

"Yeah, but this is the First Day of the Dark!"

Some of the other passengers had been similarly shortsighted. They made a grotesque parade, hopping about as they shed parkas and breathers and leggings. Even so, Unnerby noticed that whenever Brun's hands and feet were totally occupied with shedding cold-weather gear, Arla Undergate had free hands and a clear view around them. Brun was similarly alert when Arla was shucking her overclothes. By some magic, their service pistols were never visible during the exercise. They could act like idiots, but underneath the act, Arla and Brun were as good as any soldiers Unnerby had known in the Great War.