"SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP..." for a long time. And then it changed again. "NOD UR HEAD IF U UNDRSTND ME... ."
That was easy too. Vinh moved his head a fraction of a centimeter.
"OK. PRETEND TO BE ASLEEP. CLOSE UR HAND. BLINK ON PALM."
After all the years, conspiracy was suddenly so easy. Just pretend your palm was a keyboard and type at your fellow-conspirators. Of course! His hands were under the covers, so no one else could see! He would have laughed out loud at the cleverness, except that would be out of character. It was so obvious now who had come to save them. He closed his right hand and tapped: "HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?"
For a long time there were no more little flashes. Ezr's mind drifted slowly toward deeper sleep.
Then: "U NU BFR TNITE? DAM ME." Another long pause. "I VRY SORRY. I THOT U BROKN."
Vinh nodded to himself, a little proud. And maybe someday Qiwi would forgive him, and Trixia would return to life, and...
"OK," Ezr tapped at the Prince. "HOW MNY PEOPLE WE GOT?"
"SECRET. ONLY I KNO. EACH CAN TALK BUT NO ONE KNOS ANYONE ELSE." Pause. "TILL U TONITE."
Aha. Almost the perfect conspiracy. The members could cooperate, but no one but the Prince could betray anyone else. Things would be so much easier now.
"WELL IM VRY TIRED NOW. WANNA SLEEP. WE CAN TALK MORE LATR."
Pause. Was his request so strange? Nights are for sleeping. "OK. LATR."
As consciousness drifted finally away, Vinh shrugged deeper into his hammock and smiled to himself. He was not alone. And all along, the secret had been as close as his hand. Amazing!
The next morning, Vinh woke up rested and strangely happy. Huh. What had he done to deserve this?
He floated into the shower bag and sudsed up. Yesterday had been so dark, so shameful. Bitter reality seeped back into him, but strangely slow....Yeah, there had been a dream.That was not unusual, but most of his dreams hurt so much to remember. Vinh turned the shower to dry and hung for a moment in the swirling jets of air. What had it been about this one?
Yes! It was another of those miracle escape dreams, but this time things hadn't turned bad at the end. Nau and Brughel had not leaped out of hiding at the last moment.
So what had been the secret weapon this time? Oh, the usual illogic of dreams, some kind of magic that turned his own hands into a comm link with the chief conspirator. Pham Trinli? Ezr chuckled at the thought. Some dreams are more absurd than others; strange how he still felt comforted by this one.
He shrugged into his clothes and set off down the temp's corridors, his progress the typical zero-gee push, pull, bounce at the turns, swing to avoid those moving more slowly or going in the other direction.Pham Nuwen.Pham Trinli. There must be a billion people with that given name, and a hundred flagships namedPham Nuwen. Recollection of his library search of the night before gradually percolated back to mind, the crazy ideas he'd been thinking just before he went to bed.
But the truth about Captain Park had been no dream. By the time he arrived at the dayroom, he was moving more slowly.
Ezr drifted headfirst into the dayroom, said hello to Hunte Wen by the door. The atmosphere was relatively relaxed. He quickly discovered that Reynolt had brought her surviving Focused back online; there had been no more flareups. On the far ceiling, Pham Trinli was pontificating about what had caused the runaway and why the danger was past. This was the Pham Trinli he had dealt with several Ksecs of each wake period on every overlapping Watch since the ambush. Suddenly the dream and the library session before it were reduced to the proper and completely absurd perspective.
Trinli must have heard him talking to Hunte. The old fraud turned, and for a moment looked back down the room at Vinh. He didn't say anything, didn't nod, and even if an Emergent spy were looking right down Vinh's line of sight, it would have not likely mattered. But to Ezr Vinh, the moment seemed to last forever. In that moment, the buffoon that had been Pham Trinli was gone. There was no bluster in that face, but there was lonely, quiet authority and an acknowledgment of their strange conversation of the night before. Somehow it had not been a dream. The communication had not been magical. And this old man truly was the Lost Prince of Canberra.
TWENTY-SEVEN
"But it's firstsnow. Don't you want to see it?" Victory's voice took on a whine, a tone that worked with virtually no one except this one older brother.
"You've played in snow before."
