"You choose to wink at them? Youchoose ? I—" Brughel was wordless for a second. When he continued, his voice was more controlled, a metered rage. "Yes, we're twenty light-years from home. We're twenty light-years from your family. And your uncle doesn't rule anymore." The word of Alan Nau's assassination had arrived while their expedition was still three years out of the OnOff system. "At home maybe you could break any rule, protect lawbreakers simply because they were a good lay." He slapped his baton gently against his palm. "Out here, and right now, you're very alone."
Lethal force between Podmasters was beyond any law. That was a principle dating back to the Plague Years—but it was also a basic truth of nature. If Brughel were to smash his skull now, Kal Omo would follow the Vice-Podmaster. But Nau just spoke quietly. "You are even more alone, my friend. How many of the Focused are imprinted on you?"
"I—I have Xin's pilots, I have the snoops. I could make Reynolt redirect whatever else I need."
Ritser was teetering at the edge of an abyss that Tomas hadn't noticed before, but at least he was calming down. "I think you understand Anne better than that, Ritser."
And abruptly the killing flame in Brughel was quenched. "Yeah, you're right. You're right." He seemed to crumple. "Sir...it's just that this mission has turned out so different from what I imagined. We had the resources to live like High Podmasters here. We had the prospect of finding a treasure world. Now most of our zipheads are dead. We don't have the equipment for a safe return. We're stuck here for decades... ."
Ritser seemed on the verge of tears. The passage from threat to weakness was fascinating. Tomas spoke quietly, his tone comforting. "I understand, Ritser. We are in a more extreme situation than anyone has been in since the Plagues. If this is painful to one as strong as you, I am very afraid for ordinary crew of the mission." All true, though most of the crew had much less remarkable personalities than Ritser Brughel. Like Ritser, they were caught in a decades-long cul-de-sac in which family and children-raising were not an option. That was a dangerous problem, one that he must not overlook. But most of the ordinary folk would have no trouble continuing relationships, finding new ones; there were almost a thousand unFocused people here. Ritser's drives would be harder to satisfy. Ritser used people up, and now there were scarcely any left for him.
"But there is still the prospect of treasure—perhaps all that we hoped for. Taking the Qeng Ho nearly cost us our lives, but now we are learning their secrets. And you were at the last Watch-manager meeting: we've discovered physics that is new even to the Qeng Ho. The best is yet to come, Ritser. The Spiders are primitive now, but life could scarcely have originated here; this solar system is just too extreme. We aren't the first species that has come snooping. Imagine, Ritser: a nonhuman, starfaring civilization. Its secrets are down there, somewhere in the ruins of their past."
He guided his Vice-Podmaster around the far end of the coffin racks, and they started back along the second aisle. The head-up display reported green everywhere, though as usual the Emergent coffins were showing high wear. Sigh. In a few years, they might not have enough usable coffins to maintain a comfortable Watch schedule. By itself, a star fleet could not build another fleet, or even keep itself indefinitely provisioned with hightech supplies. It was an old, old problem: to build the most advanced technological products you need an entire civilization—a civilization with all its webs of expertise and layers of capital industry. There were no shortcuts; Humankind had often imagined, but never created, a general assembler.
Ritser seemed calmer now, his desperate anger replaced by thought. "...Okay. We sacrifice a lot, but in the end we go home winners. I can gut it out as well as any. But still...why should it take so pus long? We should land squat on some Spider kingdom and take over—"
"They've just reinvented electronics, Ritser. We need more—"
The Vice-Podmaster shook his head impatiently. "Yes, yes. Of course. We need a solid industrial base. I probably know that better than you; I was Podmaster at the Lorbita Shipyards. Nothing short of a major rebuild is going to save our ass. But there's still no reason for hiding here at L1. If we take over some Spider nation—maybe just pretend to ally with it—we could speed things up."
