A Deepness in the Sky (96 page)

Zinmin did most of the interactive translations. But Trixia and the others were there, and sometimes when the greatest precision was desired, it was her voice that would speak Underville's or Coldhaven's words: Underville the implacable cop, Coldhaven the sleek young general officer. Trixia's voice, others' souls.

At night, there were dreams, often more unpleasant than the reality he faced in the day. The worst were the ones he could understand. Trixia appeared to him, her voice and thoughts slipping back and forth between the young woman he once knew and the alien minds that owned her now. Sometimes her face would morph into a glassy carapace as she spoke, and when he asked about the change she would say he was imagining things. It was a Trixia who would remain forever Focused, ensorcelled, lost. Qiwi was in many of the dreams, sometimes the bratling, sometimes as she had been when she killed Tomas Nau. They would talk, and often she would give him advice. In the dreams it always made sense—and when he woke he could never remember the details.

One by one, the issues were resolved. They had gone from genocide to commerce in less than one million seconds. From L1, Pham Nuwen's voice was filled with pleasure at the progress. "These guys negotiate like Traders, not governments."

"We're giving up plenty, Pham. Since when have Customers had a site presence like we'll be giving the Spiders?"

The usual long pause. But Pham's tone was still bright: "Even that may work out, son. I'll wager some of these Spiders may eventually want to be partners." Qeng Ho.

"...One other thing," Pham continued. "Get through the POW negotiations"—the single remaining agenda item—"and we'll be able to take Trixia off the case. Lighthill got that as a promise from the Underville faction."

The last day of negotiation started like the others. Zinmin and Ezr were guided down a—"spiral staircase" was what Zinmin called it. In human terms, it was a vertical shaft cut straight downward through the rock. An endless draft of warm air swept up past them. The shaft was almost two meters across, the walls set with five-centimeter ledges. Their guards had no trouble; they could reach from one side of the shaft to the other, supporting themselves on all sides. As they descended, the Spiders slowly turned round and round with the spiral. Every ten meters or so, there was an offset, a "landing" for them to catch their breath. Ezr was both grateful for and uneasy about the harness/leash outfit the guards insisted he wear.

"These stairs are really just to intimidate us, aren't they, Zinmin?" He'd asked the question on earlier climbs, but Zinmin Broute had not deigned to answer.

The Focused translator was even more unsteady than Ezr on the narrow ledges, especially since he tried to imitate the splayed stance that made sense only for Spiders. Today he responded to the question. "Yes....No. This is the main staircase down to the Royal Deepness. Very old. Traditional. An honor—" He slipped, swung out over the chasm, for a moment suspended by his rope and harness from the guard above them. Ezr hugged the damp wall, was almost knocked loose himself as Broute regained his footing.

They reached the final landing. The ceiling was low even by Spider standards, just over a meter high. Surrounded by their guards, they stooped and hobbled toward wide, wide doors. Beyond, the lighting was faint and blue. The Spiders could see across such a wide range. You'd think their preferred lighting would be sun-spectrum broad. But as often as not they went in for faint glimmers—or lights beyond where a human could see.

There was a familiar hiss from the dimness ahead of them.

"Come in. Sit down," Zinmin Broute said, but the thought was from the Spider within the room. Ezr and Zinmin crossed the stone flags to their "perches." He could see the other now, a large female on a slightly higher perch. Her smell was strong in the closed air. "General Underville," Ezr said politely.

• • •

The POW issue should have been simple compared with the problems already solved. But he noticed that this time they were alone with Underville. There were no comm links to the outside here; at least none were offered. They were alone, almost in the dark, and Zinmin Broute's phrasing drifted into threatening turns of phrase. Frightening...yet somewhere out of the depths of Ezr Vinh's Trader childhood, insights drifted up. This was deliberately intimidating. Underville had promised Lighthill that the translators would be freeafter the POW negotiations were complete. She had been beaten down on so many things; this was her last stab at saving face.

He opened his pack and put on a pair of huds. According to the Spiders, all the humans aboard theHand had survived its forced landing. The starship's wreckage was strewn across twenty thousand meters of ocean ice, the occupied crew decks virtually the only intact pieces of the vehicle. That anyone had survived was a miracle of Pham's advice to the ziphead pilots. Once on the ground, however, there had been numerous fatalities. Against all sanity, Brughel and his goons started a firefight with the arriving Spider troops. The goons had all died. With the agility of a true Podmaster, Brughel had abandoned them at the last moment, and attempted to hide among the surviving crew. The Spiders claimed there had been no fatalities after that initial shootout.

"The zipheads you can have back," said Underville via Zinmin. "We know that they are not responsible, and some of them made our victory possible." Zinmin's tone was irritable. "The rest are criminals. They killed hundreds. They attempted to kill millions."

"No, only a small minority were in on that. The rest resisted—or were simply lied to about the operation."

Ezr went down the crew list, explaining the roles of the different members. There had been twenty poor souls in coldsleep, Ritser's special toys. Clearly,they were victims, but Underville didn't want to give up the equipment. One by one, Ezr got Underville's permission for release, contingent on access to specialists who could explain the ruins that her agency now owned. Finally, they were down to the toughest cases. "Jau Xin. Pilot Manager."

"Jau Xin, the trigger man!" said the general. Ezr had pumped up the amplification in his huds. His view was not as dim as before. All through the conversation, Underville had sat very still, the only movement being the ceaseless play of her feeding hands. It was a posture that Zinmin represented as face-forward alertness. "Jau Xin was charged with initiating the actual attacks."

"General, we've looked at the records. Your interviews with Jau's Focused pilots are probably even more complete. It's clear to us that Jau Xin sabotaged much of the Emergent attack. I know Jau, ma'am. I know his wife. Both wish your people well." The ziphead analysts, Trixia among them, thought that such family references might mean something. Maybe. But Belga Underville might be much more the classical "national interest" type.

Zinmin Broute tapped away on his tiny console, putting Ezr's words into an intermediate language and then guiding the audio output. Ghostly hissing came from Broute's soundbox, Ezr's thoughts as a Spider might speak them.

Underville was silent for a moment, then gave forth a shrill squeak. Ezr knew that counted as a disdainful snort.

But this interview could ultimately be shown to other Spiders.I'm notletting you off the hook, Underville. Ezr reached into his pack and held up Rita's tiny box.

"And what is that?" said Underville. There was no hint of curiosity in Broute-as-Underville's voice.

"A gift to Jau Xin from his wife. A remembrance, in case you still refuse to free him."

Underville was sitting almost two meters away, but even now Ezr didn't realize just how far a Spider's forearms could reach. Four spearlike black arms flashed out at him, plucking the box from his grasp. Undervile's arms flickered back, held the box close to first one part and then another of her glassy carapace. Her stiletto hands made little scritching noises as she pried at box's top and thumb lock.

"It's keyed to Jau Xin. If you force it open, the contents will be destroyed."

"So be it then." But the Spider stopped pressing the pointed tips of her limbs into the box. She held it a moment more, then gave a screeching hiss, and flung it back at Ezr's chest.

The ugly screeching continued as Zinmin Broute began translating. "Damn your cobblie eyes!" Broute's voice was tight and angry. "Take back this gift for a murderer. Take back Xin and the other staff."

"Thank you, General. Thank you." Ezr scrambled to recover Rita's gift.

The Spider's voice tumbled into silence, then resumed more quietly, sounding somehow like drops of water spatting off hot metal. "And I suppose you think to rescue Ritser Brughel also?"

"Not to rescue him, ma'am. Over the years, Ritser Brughel has probably killed more of our people than ever he did of yours. He has much to answer for."

"Indeed. But there is no way we will give that one up to you." Now Broute's voice was smug, and Ezr guessed this was one point where there were no divisions on the Spider side.

And maybe that was for the best. Ezr shrugged. "Very well. It is for you to punish him."

The Spider had become very still, even unto her eating hands. "Punish? You misunderstand. This silly negotiation has left us with only a single functioning human. Any punishment will necessarily be incidental. We're learning much from dissecting the human corpses, but we desperately need a living experimental subject. What are your physical limitations? How do you creatures respond to extremes of pain and fear? We want to test with stimuli we don't see in your databases. I intend that Ritser Brughel live a long, long time."

Ritser Brughel is about as weird a human type as you can find.But somehow that might not be the wisest thing to say here and now. Instead, Ezr simply nodded. And for the first time he saw how Ritser might find a fate to match his crimes. The Podmaster's nightmare of Spiders would be the rest of his life.

SIXTY-FIVE

Ezr Vinh returned a hero to L1. It was possible that no owner or fleet partner had every been greeted with the enthusiasm he saw at the rockpile. He brought with him the first of the released prisoners, including Jau Xin. He also brought with him the first of their new partners: The first Spiders to fly in space.

Ezr scarcely noticed. He smiled, he talked, and when he saw Rita and Jau together he felt a distant pleasure.

Last out of the pinnace was Floria Peres. She had been one of the coldsleep victims in Ritser's hidden cache, saved up unused until the very end. Even after 200Ksec, the woman had a terrible, lost look about her. As Ezr guided her out into the open, a silence came upon the crowd in the corridor. Qiwi glided forward. She had asked to help the victims, but when she came to a stop just short of Floria, Qiwi's eyes got very wide and her lips trembled. The two stared at each other for a moment. Then Qiwi offered Floria her hand, and the crowd opened behind them.

Ezr watched them depart, but his mind's eye was elsewhere: Anne Reynolt had begun Trixia's deFocus a Ksec after he left Arachna. During the 200Ksec of transit back to the rockpile, Pham had reported regularly on her progress. This time there was no backing out. Trixia was beyond the prep stage. First, the mindrot had been rendered quiescent, and then Trixia had been put into an artificial coma. From there, the rot's pattern of drug release was slowly altered. "Anne has done this hundreds of times now, Ezr," said Pham. "She says this is going well. She should be out of the clinic just a few Ksecs after you get back here."

No more delays. Trixia would finally be free.

Two days later, the word came.Trixia is ready.

Ezr visited Qiwi before he went to the deFocus clinic. Qiwi was working with her father, remaking the lake park. Most of the trees had died, but Ali Lin thought he could bring them back. Even deFocused, Ali had wonderful ideas for the park. But now the man could love his daughter, too.Trixiawill be like this, as free as before the nightmare.

Qiwi was talking to the Spiders when Ezr came down the path through the ruined forest. Kittens circled high above them, curiosity battling with arachnophobia.

"We want to do something new with the lake, some kind of free form, with its own special ecology." The Spiders stood a little taller than Qiwi. In microgravity, they were no longer low, wide creatures. The natural tension in their limbs produced a Spider version of zero-gee crouch; their arms and legs extended long beneath them, making them tall and slender. The smallest one—probably Rhapsa Lighthill—was talking now. The hissing voice was almost musical compared to Belga Underville's voice.

"We'll watch, but I doubt if many will want to live here. We want to experiment with our own temps." Broute Zinmin was translating, his tone happy and conversational. As of now, he might be the last of the Focused translators.

Qiwi grinned at the Spider. "Yeah, I'm so curious about what you'll finally do. I—" She looked up, saw Ezr.

"Qiwi, can I talk to you?"

She was already moving toward him. "A moment, Rhapsa, please?"

"Sure." The Spiders tiptoed away, Zinmin continuing to spout questions at Ali Lin.

Ezr and Qiwi faced each other across thirty centimeters. "Qiwi. They deFocused Trixia about two thousand seconds ago."

The girl smiled, a bright gesture. There was still a childlike intensity about her. Somehow through it all, Qiwi had remained an open human being. And now she was at the center of their dealings with the Spiders, the engineer they sought over all others. Now he could truly see how bright her wits extended, from dynamics to bioscience to very sharp trading. Qiwi was very much like the spirit of the Qeng Ho.

"Is—is she going to be okay?" Qiwi's eyes were large, and her hands were tightly clasped in front of her.

"Yes! A little disorientation, Anne says, but her mind and personality are intact, and...and I can go see her later today."

"Oh, Ezr! I'm so happy for her." Qiwi's hands let go of each other, and reached out to his shoulders. Suddenly her face was very close and lips brushed across his cheek.

"I wanted to see you before I talked to her—"

"Yes?"

"I—I just wanted to thank you for saving my life, for saving us all."Iwant to thank you for giving me back my soul. "If Trixia and I can ever do anything to help you..."