Floria released Qiwi's hand, and wiped at the tears that still stood in her eyes. Her voice was almost under control. "Yeah. Before, I could always keep a lid on it. ‘Lie low,' I told myself, ‘and be a proper little conquered Peddler.' We're naturally good at that, don't you think? Maybe it comes from having the long view. But now...You know I had a sister in-fleet?"
"No."I'm sorry. There had been so many Qeng Ho in the fleet before the fighting, and little Qiwi had known so few.
"Luan was a wild card, not too bright, but good with people...the sort a wise Fleet Captain throws in the mix." A smile came close to surfacing, then drowned in bleak remembrance. "I have a doctorate in chemical engineering, but they Focused Luan and left me free. It should have beenme, but they took her instead."
Floria's face twisted with guilt that should not have been. Maybe Floria was immune to permanent infection by the mindrot, like many of the Qeng Ho. Or maybe not. Tomas needed at least as many free as Focused, else the system would die the death of details. Qiwi opened her mouth to explain, but Floria wasn't listening.
"I lived with that. And I kept track of Luan. They Focused her on theirart . Watch-on-Watch, she and her gang carved out those friezes on Hammerfest. You probably saw her a hundred times."
Yes, that is surely true.The carving gangs were the lowest of the Focused jobs. It wasn't the high creation of Ali Lin or the translators. The patterns of the Emergent "legend art" left nothing to creativity. The workers beetled down the diamond corridors, centimeter by centimeter, scooping tiny bits from the walls according to the master pattern. Ritser's original plan had been that the project burn up all the "waste human resources," working them without medical care unto death.
"But they don't work Watch-on-Watch anymore, Floria." That had been one of Qiwi's earliest triumphs over Ritser Brughel. The carving was made lighter work, and medical resources were made available to all who remained awake. The carvers would live through the Exile, to the manumissions that Tomas had promised.
Floria nodded. "Right, and even though our Watches were almost disjoint, I still kept track of Luan. I used to hang around the corridors, pretending to be passing through whenever other people came along. I even talked to her about that damn filthy art she loved; it was the only thing she could talk about, ‘The Defeat of the Frenkisch Orc.' " Floria all but spat the title. Her anger faded, and she seemed to wilt. "Even so, I still could see her and maybe, if I was a good little Peddler, she would be free someday. But now..." She turned to look at Qiwi and her voice once more lost its steadiness. "...now she's gone, not even on the roster. They claim her coffin failed. They claim she died in coldsleep. The lying, treacherous,bastards..."
Qeng Ho coldsleep boxes were so safe that the failure rate was a kind of statistical guess, at least under proper use and for spans of less than 4Gsec. Emergent equipment was flakier, and since the fighting, nobody's gear was absolutely trustable. Luan's death was most likely a terrible accident, just another echo of the madness that had nearly killed them all.And how can I convince poor Floria of this? "I guess we can't be certain of anything we are told, Floria. The Emergents have an evil system. But... I was on one hundred percent Watch for a long time. I'm on fifty percent even now. I've been into almost everything. And you know, in all that time, I haven't caught Tomas in a lie."
"Okay," grudgingly.
"And why would anyone want to kill Luan?"
"I didn't say ‘kill.' And maybe your Tomas doesn't know. See, I wasn't the only one who hung around the diamond carvers. Twice, I saw Ritser Brughel. Once he had all the women together, and was behind them, just watching. The other time...the other time it was just him and Luan."
"Oh." The word came out very small.
"I don't have evidence. What I saw was nothing more than a gesture, a posture, a look on a man's face. And so I was silent, and now Luan is gone."
Floria's paranoia suddenly seemed quite plausible. Ritser Brughelwas a monster, a monster barely held in check by the Podmaster system. The memory of their confrontation had never left Qiwi, theslap slap slap of his steel baton in his hands as he raged at her. At the time, Qiwi had felt angry triumph at putting him down. Since, she'd realized how scared she should have been. Without Tomas, she surely would have died then...or worse. Ritser knew what would happen if he was caught.
