In some fundamental sense, Sura Vinh had been all those things. For much of her long life, Sura Vinh had seemed to be his friend. And even though she was ultimately his betrayer—still, there at the beginning, Sura Vinh had been a woman good and true.
Someone was shaking him gently, waving a hand in his face. "Hey, Trinli! Pham! Are you still with us?" It was Jau Xin, and he looked genuinely concerned.
"Ungh, yes, yes. I'm fine."
"You sure?" Xin watched him for several seconds, then drifted back to his seat. "I had an uncle who went all glassy-eyed like you just did. Tas a stroke, and he—"
"Yeah, well I'm fine. Never better." Pham put the bluster back in his voice. "I was just thinking, that's all."
The claim provoked diversionary laughter all round the table. "Thinking. A bad habit, Pham, old boy!" After a few moments, their concern faded. Pham listened attentively now, occasionally injecting loud opinions.
In fact, invasive daydreaming had been a feature of his personality since at least his leaving the Canberra. He'd get totally wrapped up in memories or planning, and lose himself the way some people did in immersion videos. He'd screwed up at least one deal because of it. From the corner of his eye, he could see that Qiwi was gone. Yes, the girl's childhood had been much like his, and maybe that accounted for her imagination and drive now. In fact, he had often wondered if the Strentmannians' crazy childrearing was based on stories of Pham's time on theReprise. At least when he had reached his destination, things got better. Poor Qiwi had found only death and deception here. But she still kept going... .
"We're getting good translations now." Trud Silipan was back on the Spiders. "I'm in charge of Reynolt's translator zipheads." Trud was more like an attendant than a manager, but no one pointed that out. "I tell you, any day now we'll start getting information about what the Spiders' original civilization was like."
"I don't know, Trud. Everyone says this must be a fallen colony. But if the Spiders are elsewhere in space, how come we don't hear their radio?"
Pham: "Look. We've been over this before. Arachna must be a colony world. This system is just too hostile for life to start naturally."
And someone else: "Maybe the creatures don't have a Qeng Ho." Chuckles went round the table.
"No, there'd still be plenty of radio noise. We'd hear them."
"Maybe the rest of them are really far away, like the Perseus Mumbling—"
"Or maybe they're so advanced they don't use radio. We only noticed these guys because they're starting over." It was an old, old argument, part of a mystery that extended back to the Age of Failed Dreams. More than anything else it was what had drawn the human expeditions to Arachna. It was certainly what had drawn Pham.
And indeed, Pham had already found Something New, something so powerful that the origin of the Spiders was now a peripheral issue for him. Pham had found Focus. With Focus, the Emergents could convert their brightest people into dedicated machines of thought. A dud like Trud Silipan could get effective translations at the touch of a key. A monster like Tomas Nau could have eyes unresting. Focus gave the Emergents a power that no one had ever had before, subtlety that surpassed any machine and patience that surpassed any human. That was one of the Failed Dreams—but they had achieved it.
Watching Silipan pontificate, Pham realized that the next stage in his plan had finally arrived. The low-level Emergents had accepted Pham Trinli. Nau tolerated, even humored him, thinking he might be an unknowing window on the Qeng Ho military mind. It was time to learn a lot more about Focus. Learn from Silipan, from Reynolt...someday learn the technical side of the thing.
Pham had tried to build a true civilization across all of Human Space. For a few brief centuries it had seemed he might succeed. In the end, he had been betrayed. But Pham had long ago realized that the betrayal had been just the overt failure. What Sura and the others did to him at Brisgo Gap had been inevitable. An interstellar empire covers so much space, so much time. The goodness and justice of such a thing is not enough. You need an edge.
Pham Nuwen raised his bulb of Diamonds and Ice and drank an unnoticed toast, to the lessons of the past and the promise of the future. This time he would do things right.
EIGHTEEN
Ezr Vinh's first two years after the ambush were spread across nearly eight years of objective time. Almost like a good Qeng Ho captain, Tomas Nau was pacing their duty time to match local developments. Qiwi and her crews were out of coldsleep more than any, but even they were slowing down.
Anne Reynolt kept her astrophysicists busy, too. OnOff continued to settle along the light curve that had been seen in previous centuries; to a lay observer, it looked like a normal, hydrogen-eating sun, complete with sunspots. At first, she held the other academics to a lower duty cycle, awaiting the resumption of Spider activity.
