Vinh couldn't help the surprise. If Brughel's zipheads reviewed the records, they would surely notice. The damn localizers could probably pick up on pulse, maybe even blood pressure.If they can see the surprise, make it abig thing. "Lord of All Trade," Vinh whispered, bringing the picture and bio material up on all his windows. It really did look like their own S. J. Park, Fleet Captain of the mission to the OnOff star. He remembered the man from his own childhood; that Park hadn't seemed so very old....In fact, some of this biodata seemed vague. And the DNA record did not match the latter-day Park. Hmm. That might be enough to deflect Nau and Reynolt; they didn't have Ezr's firsthand experience with backstairs Family affairs. But the S. J. Park at Brisgo Gap—two thousand years ago—had been a ship's captain. He'd ended up with Ratko Vinh. There had been some weird scandal involving a failed marriage contract. After that, there was nothing.
Vinh followed a couple of obvious leads on Park—then gave up, the way you might when you learned something surprising but not universe-breaking. The other names on the list...it took him another Ksec to get through them, and none looked familiar. His mind kept returning to S. J. Park, and he almost panicked.How well can the enemy read me? He looked at some pictures of Trixia, surrendered to the familiar pain; he did that often enough just before finally going to bed. Behind his tears, his mind raced. If Ezr was right about Park, he went way,way back. No wonder his parents had treated Park as more than a young contract captain. Lord, he could have been on Pham Nuwen's voyage to the far side. After Brisgo Gap, when Nuwen was about as rich as he'd ever been, he'd departed with a grand fleet, heading for the far side of Human Space. That was typical of Nuwen's gestures. The far side was at least four hundred light-years away. The merchanting details of its environment were ancient history by the time they arrived on this side. And his proposed path would take him through some of the oldest regions of Human Space. For centuries after the departure, the Qeng Ho Net continued to report the progress of the Prince of Canberra, of his fleets growing and sometimes shrinking. Then the stories faltered, often lacked valid authentication. Nuwen probably never got more than partway to his goal. As a child, Ezr and his friends had often played at being the Lost Prince. There were so many ways it might have ended, some adventurous and gruesome, some—the most likely—involving old age and a string of business failures, ships lost to bankruptcy across dozens of light-years. And so the fleet had never returned.
But parts of it might have.A person here or there, perhaps losing heart with a voyage that would take them forever far from their own time. Who knew just which individuals returned?Very likely, S. J. Park had known. Very likely S. J. Park had known precisely who Pham Trinli was—and had worked to protect that identity. Who from the era of Brisgo Gap could be so important, so well known...? S. J. Park had been loyal to someone from that era. Who?
And then Ezr remembered hearing that Captain Park had personally chosen the name of his flagship. ThePham Nuwen.
Pham Trinli. Pham Nuwen. The Lost Prince of Canberra.
And I have finally gone totally crazy.There were library checks that would shoot down this conclusion in a second. Yes, and that would disprove nothing; if he were right, the library itself would be a subtle lie.Yeah, sure. This was the sort of desperate hallucination he must guard against. If you raise your desires high enough, certainty can grow out of the background noise.But at least it got me off the rotisserie!
It was awfully late. He stared at the pictures of Trixia for a while longer, lost in sad memories. Inside, he calmed down. There would be other false alarms, but he had years ahead of him, a lifetime of patient looking. He would find a crack in the dungeon somewhere, and when it happened he wouldn't have to wonder if it was a trick of his imagination.
• • •
Sleep came, and dreams filled with all the usual distress and the new shame, and now mixed with his latest insanity. Eventually there was something like peace, floating in the dark of his cabin. Mindless.
And then another dream, so real that he didn't doubt it until it was over. Little lights were shining in his eyes, but only when he kept his eyes closed. Awake and sitting, the room was dark as ever. Lying down, eyes asleep, then the sparkles started again.
The lights were talking to him, a game of blinkertalk. When he was very young he had played a lot of that, flitting from rock to rock across the out-of-doors. Tonight, a single pattern repeated and repeated, and in Vinh's dream state the meaning formed almost effortlessly:
"NOD UR HEAD IF U UNDRSTND ME....NOD—"
Vinh made a wordless groan of surprise—and the pattern changed:
