Can she even bathe herself?Vinh glanced downward, at the doorway. The place wasn't big enough for three, but Reynolt had stuck her head and shoulders through the opening. She floated easily on her elbows. She was staring up at Ezr and Trixia with intense interest. "Dr. Bonsol has done well, even better than our own linguists, and they've been Focused since graduate school. Because of her, we'll have a reading knowledge of their language even before the Spiders come back to life."
Ezr touched Trixia's shoulder again. Again, she twitched away. It wasn't a gesture of anger or fear; it was as if she were shrugging off a pesky fly. "Do you remember me, Trixia?" No answer, but he was sure she did—it simply wasn't important enough to comment on. She was an ensorcelled princess, and only the evil witches might waken her. But this ensorcellment might never have happened if he had listened more to the princess's fears, if he had agreed with Sum Dotran. "I'm so sorry, Trixia."
Reynolt said, "Enough for this visit, Fleet Manager." She gestured him out of the roomlet.
Vinh slid back. Trixia's eyes never left her work. Something like that intentness had originally attracted him to her. She was a Trilander, one of the few who had shipped on the Qeng Ho expedition without close friends or even a little family. Trixia had dreamed of learning the truly alien, learning things no human had ever known. She had held the dream as fiercely as the most daring Qeng Ho. And now she had what she had sacrificed for...and nothing else.
Halfway through the door, he stopped and looked across the room at the back of her head. "Are you happy?" he said in a small voice, not really expecting an answer.
She didn't turn, but her fingers ceased their tapping. Where his face and touch had made no impression, thewords of a silly question stopped her. Somewhere in that beloved head, the question filtered past layers of Focus, was considered briefly. "Yes, very." And the sound of her tapping resumed.
Vinh had no recollection of the trip back to the temp, and after that, little more than confused fragments of memory. He saw Benny Wen in the docking area.
Benny wanted to talk. "We're back earlier that I'd ever guessed. You can't imagine how slick Xin's pilots are." His voice dropped. "One of them was Ai Sun. You know, from theInvisible Hand. She was in Navigation.One of our own people, Ezr. But it's like she's dead inside, just like his other pilots and the Emergent programmers. Xin said she was Focused. He said you could explain. Ezr, you know my pop is over on Hammerfest. What—"
And that was all Ezr remembered. Maybe he screamed at Benny, maybe he just pushed past him.Explain Focus to your people, and do it so theycan accept it, so what is left of our missions can survive.
When reason returned...
Vinh was alone in the temp's central park, without any recollection of having wandered there. The park spread out around him, the leafy treetops reaching across to touch him from five sides. There was an old saying: Without a bactry, a habitat cannot support its tenants; without a park, the tenants lose their souls. Even on ramships deep between the stars, there was still the Captain's bonsai. In the larger temps, the thousand-year habitats at Canberra and Namqem, the park was the largest space within the structure, kilometer on kilometer of nature. But even the smallest park had all the millennia of Qeng Ho ingenuity behind its design. This one gave the impression of forest depth, of creatures great and small waiting just behind the nearest trees. Keeping the balance of life in a park this small was probably the most difficult project in the temp.
The park was in deepening twilight, darkest in the direction of down. To his right the last glimmer of skylike blue shone beyond the trees. Vinh reached out, pulled himself hand over hand to the ground. It was a short trip; all together, the park was less than twelve meters across. Vinh hugged himself into the deep moss by a tree trunk and listened to the sounds of the cooling forest evening. A bat flickered against the sky, and somewhere a nest of butterflies muttered musically to itself. The bat was likely fake. A park this small could not stock large animals or scamperers, but the butterflies would be real.
For a blessed space of time, all thought fled...
...and returned with knives resharpened. Jimmy was dead. And Tsufe, and Pham Patil. In dying, they had killed hundreds of others, including the people who might know what to do now.Yet I still live.
