After the General was gone, Viki wandered around her little bedroom at the top of the hill. She was still in a daze, but no longer felt unrelieved horror. There was also wonder and hope. She and Gokna had always played at espionage. But Mother didn't talk of what she did, and she was so far above the military of everyday that it seemed a foolish dream to try to follow her. Business intelligence, maybe with companies like Hrunkner Unnerby had founded, that seemed more realistic. Now—
Viki played with Gokna's little dollhouse for a moment. She and Gokna would never get to argue about these plans. Mother's team had suffered its first loss. But now it knew it was a team: Jirlib and Brent, Rhapsa, Little Hrunk, Viki, Victory and Sherkaner. They would learn to do their best.And in the end, that will be enough.
THIRTY-THREE
For Ezr Vinh, the years passed quickly, and not just because of his quarter-time Watch cycle. The time since the ambush and the murders was almost a third of his life. These were the years his inner self had promised would be played out with unswerving patience, never giving up the struggle to destroy Tomas Nau and win back what still survived. It was a time he had thought would stretch into endless torment.
Yes. He had played with unswerving patience. And there had been pain...and shame. Yet his fear was most times a distant thing. And though he still didn't know the details, just knowing that he was working for Pham Nuwen gave Ezr the sure feeling that in the end they would triumph. But the biggest surprise was something that popped up again and again for uneasy introspection: In some ways, these years were more more satisfying than any time since early childhood. Why was that?
Podmaster Nau made thrifty use of the remaining medical automation, and he kept critical "functions" such as translators on-Watch much of the time. Trixia was in her forties now. Ezr saw her almost every day he was on-Watch, and the little changes in her face tore at him.
But there were other changes in Trixia, changes that made him think that his presence and the passing years were somehow bringing her back to him.
When he came early to her tiny cell in Hammerfest's Attic, she would still ignore him. But then, once, he arrived one hundred seconds after the usual time. Trixia was sitting facing the door. "You're late," she said. Her tone was the same flat impatience that Anne Reynolt might use. All the Focused were notorious about punctilio. Still. Trixia had noticed his absence.
And he noticed that Trixia was beginning to do some of her own grooming. Her hair was brushed back, almost neatly, when he arrived for their sessions. Now, as often as not, their conversations were not completely one-sided...at least if he was careful about the topics.
This day, Ezr entered her cell on time, but with some smuggled cargo—two delitesse cakelets from Benny's parlor. "For you." He reached out, bringing one cakelet close to her. The fragrance filled the cell. Trixia stared at his hand, briefly, as if contemplating a rude gesture. Then she waved the distraction away. "You were going to bring the Cur-plus-One translation requests."
Sigh.But he left the confection tacked to the workspace near her hand. "Yes, I have them." Ezr settled in his usual spot by the door, facing her. Actually, the list wasn't long today. Focus could work miracles, but without a glue of normal common sense, the different specialist groups wandered off into private navel inspection. Ezr and the other normals read summaries of the Focused work and tried to see where each group of specialists had found something that was of interest beyond the zipheads' fixation. Those were reported upward, to Nau, and back downward, as requests for additional work.
Today, Trixia had no trouble accommodating the requests, though she muttered darkly at some of them, "Waste of time."
"Also, I've been talking to Rita Liao. Her programmers are very enthusiastic about the stuff you've been giving them. They've designed a suite of financial applications and network software that should run great on the Spiders' new microprocessors."
Trixia was nodding. "Yes, yes. I talk to them everyday." The translators got along famously with the low-code programmers and the financial/legal zipheads. Ezr suspected it was because the translators were ignorant of those fields, and vice versa.
"Rita wants to set up a groundside company to market the programs. They should beat anything local, and we want saturation."
"Yes, yes. Prosperity Software Incorporated; I already invented a name. But it's still too early."
