Qeng Ho knowledge was the core of Balacrea's Emergent civilization. Tomas Nau had studied the Qeng Ho all his life, yet till he met them he had not understood how weirdly different the Peddlers were. Their fleet had been softheaded and naive. Infecting them with timed-expression mindrot had been trivial, arranging the ambush almost as easy. But once under attack, the Peddlers had fought like devils, clever devils with a hundred surprises they must have prepared in advance. Their flagship had been destroyed in the first hundred seconds of the battle—yet that seemed only to make them more deadly killers. When finally the mindrot shut the Peddlers down, both sides were wrecked. And after the battle had come Nau's second great misestimate of the Peddlers. Mindrot could kill Qeng Ho, but many of them could not be scrubbed or Focused. The field interrogations had gone very badly, though in the end he had turned that debacle into the means of unifying the survivors.
So Hammerfest's attic and Focus clinic and splendid furnishings—those were cut from the ruined starships. Here and there within the ruins, high technology still functioned. All the rest must come from the raw materials of the rockpile—and the eventual civilization of the Spiders.
Thirty or forty years. They could make it. There should be enough coldsleep coffins to serve the survivors. The main thing now was to study the Spiders, learn their languages, their history and culture. To span the decades, the work was split into a tree of Watches, a few Msecs on duty, a year or two off and in coldsleep. Some, the translators and scientists, would be spending a lot of time on Watch. Others—the pilots and tactics people—would be mainly unused in the early years, then live full time toward the end of the mission. Nau had explained it all in meetings with his own people and the Qeng Ho. And what he had promised was mostly true. The Qeng Ho had great expertise in such operations; with luck, the average person would get through the Exile with only ten to twelve years of lifetime spent. Along the way, he would plunder the Peddlers' fleet library; he would learn everything the Qeng Ho had ever learned.
Nau rested his hand against the surface of the window. It was as warm as the carpet on the walls. Plague's name, this Qeng Ho wallpaper was good. Even looking off to the side, there was no distortion. He chuckled softly. In the end, running the Peddler side of the Exile might be the easiest thing.They had some experience with the duty schedule that Nau proposed.
But for himself...Nau allowed a moment of self-pity. Someone trustable and competent must stay on Watch till final recovery. There was only one such person, and his name was Tomas Nau. On his own, Ritser Brughel would foolishly kill resources that could not be spared—or do his best to kill Nau himself. On her own, Anne Reynolt could be trusted for years, but if something unexpected came up...Well, the Qeng Ho seemed thoroughly subdued, and after the interrogations, Nau was relatively sure that no big secrets remained. But if the Qeng Ho did again conspire, Anne Reynolt would be lost.
So Tomas Nau might be a hundred years old before he saw triumph here. That was middle-aged by Balacrean standards. Nau sighed. So be it. Qeng Ho medicine would more than make up for the time lost. And then—
The room shivered, a nearly inaudible groaning sound. Where Nau's hand touched the wall, the vibration crept in along his bones. It was the third rock quake in the last 40Ksec.
On the far side of the room, the Peddler girl stirred in their bed. "Wha—?" Qiwi Lin Lisolet emerged from sleep, her motion lifting her out of the bed. She had been working for nearly three days straight, trying yet again to find a stable configuration for the rockpile. Lisolet's gaze wobbled about. She probably didn't even know what had wakened her. Her eyes fixed on Nau standing by the window, and a sympathetic smile spread across her face. "Oh, Tomas, you're losing more sleep worrying about us?"
She reached out her arms, a comforting. Nau smiled shyly and nodded. Hell, what she said was even approximately true. He floated across the room, stopped himself with one hand against the wall behind her head. She wrapped her arms around him and they floated, slowly sinking, toward the bed below. He slid his arms toward her waist, felt her strong legs bend around his. "You're doing everything you can, Tomas. Don't try to do more. Things will be all right." Her hands brushed gently against the hair at the back of his neck, and he felt the trembling in her. It was Qiwi Lisolet who worried, who would work herself to death if she thought it would add one percent to their overall chances of survival. They drifted silent for long seconds, till gravity drew them down to the froth of lace that was their bed.
