Shame and guilt lay so heavily on the last two days. Now Ezr wondered. Jimmy Diem had never been afriend of Ezr's. The other had been a few years older, and since they first met, Diem had been his crewleader, his most constant disciplinarian. Ezr tried to think back on Jimmy, think of him from the outside. Ezr Vinh was no prize himself, but he had grown up near the pinnacle of Vinh.23. His aunts and uncles and cousins included some of the most successful Traders in this end of Human Space. Ezr had listened to them and played with them since his nursery days...and Jimmy Diem was just not in their league. Jimmy was hardworking, but he didn't have that much imagination. His goals had been modest, which was fortunate since even working as hard as he did, Jimmy was scarcely able to manage a single work crew.Huh. I never thought about him that way. It was a sad surprise that suddenly made Jimmy the hardnosed crewleader much more likable, someone who could have been a friend.
And just as suddenly, he realized how much Jimmy must have hated playing the game of high-stakes threats with Tomas Nau. He didn't have the scheming talent for such things, and in the end he had simply miscalculated. All the guy really wanted to do was marry Tsufe Do and get into middle management.It doesn't make sense. Vinh was suddenly aware of the darkness around him, the sounds of butterflies sleeping in the trees. The damp of the moss was chill through his shirt and pants. He tried to remember exactly what he'd heard over the auditorium speakers. The voice was Jimmy's, no doubt. The accent was precisely his Diem-family Nese. But the tone, the choice of words, those had been so confident, so arrogant, so...almostjoyful. Jimmy Diem could never have faked that enthusiasm. And Jimmy would never have felt such enthusiasm, either.
And that left only one conclusion. Faking Jimmy's voice and accent would have been difficult, but somehow they had done it. And so what else had been a lie?Jimmy didn't kill anyone. The senior Qeng Ho had been murdered before Jimmy and Tsufe and Pham Patil ever went aboard theFar Treasure. Tomas Nau had committed murders on top of murders to claim his moral high ground.Explain Focus to your people, and do it sothey can accept it, so what is left of our missions can survive.
Vinh stared up into the last light in the sky. Stars glinted here and there between the branches, a fake heaven from a sky light-years away. He heard Pham Trinli shift. He patted Ezr awkwardly on the shoulder, and his lanky form floated off the ground. "Good, you're not bawling anymore. I figured you just needed a little backbone. Just remember, you gotta go along to get along. Nau is basically a softy; we can handle him."
Ezr was trembling, a growl of rage climbing up his throat. He caught the growl, made it a sobbing sound, made his trembling anger an exhausted quavering. "Y-yes. We've got to go along."
"Good man." Trinli patted him on the shoulder again, then turned to find his way back through the treetops. Ezr remembered Ritser Brughel's description of Trinli after the Relight. The old man was immune to Tomas Nau's moral manipulation. But that didn't matter, because Trinli was also a self-deceiving coward.You gotta go along to get along.
One Jimmy Diem was worth any number of Pham Trinlis.
Tomas Nau had maneuvered them all so cleverly. He had stolen the minds of Trixia and hundreds of others. He had murdered all those who might have made a difference. And he hadused those murders to make the rest of them into his willing tools.
Ezr stared up at the false stars, at the tree branches that curved like claws across the sky.Maybe it's possible to push someone too far, to breakhim so he can't bea tool anymore. Staring up at the dark claws all around him, Vinh felt his mind spin off in separate directions. One part watched passively, marveling that such disintegration could happen to Ezr Vinh. Another part drew in on itself, drowned in pools of sorrow; Sum Dotran would never return, nor S.J. Park, and any promise of reversing Trixia's Focus must surely be a lie. But there was a third fragment, cool and analytical and murderous:
