A Deepness in the Sky (99 page)

SEVEN YEARS LATER—

The Spiders' world had a moon; the L1 rockpile had been coaxed into a synchronous orbit on Princeton's longitude. By the standards of most habitable worlds, it was a pitiful moon, barely visible from the ground. Forty thousand kilometers out, the lump of diamonds and ice glinted dimly in the light of the stars and the sun. Yet it reminded half the world that the universe was not what they had thought.

Fore and aft of the rockpile stretched a string of tiny stars, beads that grew brighter year by year: the Spiders' temps and factories. In the early years, they were the most primitive structures ever to fly in space, cheap and overbuilt and overcrewed, hoisted on cavorite wings. But the Spiders learned fast and well... .

There had been state dinners in the Arachnan Grand Temp before. The King himself had ascended to orbit for the departure of the fleet to Triland. That had been four starships, refurbished by the new capital industries of his empire and the entire world. And that fleet had carried not just Qeng Ho and Trilanders and former Emergents. Two hundred Spiders had been aboard, led by Jirlib Lighthill and Rachner Thract. They carried first implementations of the improved ramdrives and coldsleep equipment. More important, they carried the keys for the encrypted knowledge beamed earlier across the light-years to Triland and Canberra.

For that departure, nearly ten thousand Spiders had come into space, the King on one of the first all-Arachnan ferries, and that "dinner" had stretched across more than 300Ksec. Since that time, there had been more Spiders in near Arachna space than humans.

To Pham Nuwen, that was only fitting. Customer civilizations should dominate the territory around their planets. Hell, to the Qeng Ho, it was the locals' most important function—to be havens where ships could be rebuilt and refurnished, to be the markets that made trekking across interstellar distances a profitable thing.

For this second departure, the Grand Temp was almost as crowded as at the Triland Farewell, but the actual dinner was much smaller, ten or fifteen people. Pham knew that Ezr and Qiwi and Trixia and Viki had engineered this affair to be small enough that people could talk and be heard. This might be the last time so many of the surviving players might ever see each other in one place.

The ballroom of the Arachnan Grand Temp was something new in the universe. The Spiders had been in space only 200Msec now, scarcely seven of their years. The ballroom was their first attempt at grandeur in free fall. They weren't up to the bioengineering of Qeng Ho parks. In fact, most Spiders hadn't yet realized that for starfarers, a living park is the greatest symbol of power and ability in space. Instead, the King's designers had borrowed from Qeng Ho inorganic construction and tried to adapt their own architectural traditions to free fall. Doubtless, within another century they would regard the effort as laughable. Or maybe the mistakes would become part of tradition:

The outer wall was a tesselation of hundreds of transparent plates, held in a grid of titanium. Some were diamond, some were quartz, some were almost opaque to Pham's eyes. The Spiders still preferred direct views. Video wallpaper and human display technologies didn't come close to matching the range of their vision. The polyhedral surface swept outward to form a bubble fifty meters across. At its base the Spider designers had built a terraced mound, rising to the dining tables at the top. The slope was gentle by Arachna standards, with broad sweeping stairs. To human eyes, the mound was a cliff-walled pinnacle and the stairs were strange, broad ladders. But the overall effect was—for humans or Spiders—that wherever you were sitting around the dining table, you could look out on half the sky. The Grand Temp was a long structure, tidally stabilized, and the ballroom was on the Arachna-facing end. To someone looking straight up, the Spiders' world filled much of the view. To someone looking off to the side, the rockpile and human temps were an orderly jumble, every year longer than before. In the other direction, you could see the Royal Shipyards. At this distance, the Yards were an undistinguished cluster of lights, flickering now and then with tiny flashes. The Spiders were building the tools to build the tools. In another year or so they would lay the spine for their first ramscoop vessel.

Anne and Pham arrived at precisely the appointed time. Small this banquet might be, but the hosts had specified formality. They floated up past tier after tier of the mound, touching the stairs here and there to guide themselves to the circular table at the top. The hosts were already present, Trixia and Viki, Qiwi and Ezr, as were all the other guests, both Arachnan and human. Anne and Pham were last to arrive, the guests of Farewell.

After they were settled, Spider attendants came out from the base of the mound, carrying a mix of Spider and human dishes. The two races could actually eat together, even if each found the other's food mostly grotesque.

They ate the welcoming appetizers in the Spider-traditional silence. Then Trixia Bonsol rose from her place among the Spiders and made a set speech as stately as anything at Jirlib's Farewell. Pham groaned to himself. Except for Belga Underville, all here were close friends. He knew they were scarcely more formal than himself. Yet there was a sadness in this occasion and it seemed greater than even a normal leavetaking should be. He sneaked a look around the table. So solemn, the humans in freefall formal dress that went back at least a thousand years. But it was not like they had to follow diplomatic niceties here. Underville was probably the prickliest creature here, but even she wasn't big on formalities. Now if someone didn't speak up, they might go the whole dinner without really talking.

So when Trixia finished and sat down, Pham gently dumped a half-liter of wine into the air above his place at the table. The dark red liquid wobbled back and forth upon itself, an embarrassing spill that would be even more embarrassing depending on who it splashed onto. Pham stuck his finger into the bobbling wetness, and wiggled it just so. The blob stretched out, braided itself with its own surface tension. He definitely had their attention now, the Spiders even more than the humans. Pham waved off an attendant who floated close with a vacuum napkin. He grinned at his audience. "Neat trick, isn't it?"

Qiwi leaned forward, to look across at him. "It'll be a neater trick if you can land that thing clean." She was also grinning. "I should know; my daughter plays with her food, too."

"Yes. Well, I'll keep it in one piece as long as I can." His hand formed the spinning braid back into a wobbling sphere. So far he hadn't even stained the lace on his cuffs. Qiwi was watching with intent, professional interest. This was the sort of trick she had once done with billion-tonne rocks. He didn't doubt that little Kira Vinh-Lisolet played with her food; Qiwi probably encouraged the little devil.

He left the red bauble floating above his place, and waved for the attendants to bring the next course. "I'll show you some other tricks later; just watch me."

Victory Lighthill rose a little from her perch. Her mouth hands modulated her voice into a sad chirping. "Tricks...long sad gone... drexip." At least that's what Pham thought she said. Even after all this time—even with the downshifter gadget to make all the phonemes audible—Spidertalk was harder than any human language he knew of. Sitting next to Lighthill, Trixia smiled and gave her own translation. "We will miss your tricks, Magician." Her voice held the same sadness that he recognized in the Spider's sounds.Damn. They make this sound like awake.

So Pham smiled brightly and pretended to miss the point. "Yes. In less than a megasecond, Anne and I will be gone." Along with a thousand others, Emergents, exFocused, even some Qeng Ho. Three starships and a thousand crew. "When we return, perhaps two centuries will have passed. But hey! There are often longer partings among the Qeng Ho. I know there are ships a-building in your yards." He waved at the flickering in the far sky behind Victory Lighthill. "Many of you will be 'faring, too. Very likely some of us will meet again—and when we do we'll have new stories to exchange, just like Qeng Ho and people from starfaring worlds always have."

Ezr Vinh was nodding. "Yes, there will be future times, even if we don't know quite how we will meet, or where. But for many of us this will be the last meeting." Ezr didn't quite meet his eye.At bottom, even Ezrdoubts. And Ezr had given half his mission bounty to help Pham and Anne prepare.

But Qiwi laid her hand on Ezr's shoulder. "I say we setup some meeting marks, just like the Great Families do." A time and a place, and a space of life span passed. She looked across at Anne and smiled. Now Qiwi was a mother as well as an engineer. Most times she seemed to be the happiest person around. But Pham still saw a shadow sometimes, perhaps when she thought of her own mother, the other Kira. Qiwiapproved this sending to Balacrea. Hell, he was sure she would be aboard if not for Ezr, and her children, and the new world she was creating here. Ezr had learned much about managing people, even more since he was truly the Fleet Manager for all the humans. But Qiwi's genius was the framework that Ezr depended on. She was the person who could figure out just what technology the Spiders would value most. If not for the deals she had worked out, the Spiders' shipyard would still be a dream. Ezr had always thought of himself as a failed younger son.I wonder if he and Qiwi really understand what theyare creating. They had children, and so had Jau and Rita, and many others. Gonle and Benny had built a nursery for all the new little ones, a place where kids and cobblies played while their parents worked together. The human-Spider enterprise grew every year. Like Sura Vinh long ago, Qiwi and Ezr might not fare much themselves, but this end of Qeng Ho space was due for an explosion of light, a nascence that would dwarf Canberra and Namqem.

An explosion of light. Yes! "We'll set a marker, then! The next New Sun—or maybe a few Msecs after, since I seem to remember things being a bit unpleasant right when the sun lights up." About two centuries.Thatwill fit well with my other plans.

Victory via Trixia: "Yes, just after the next Brightness. Here in the Grand Temp—however grander it may be." A gentle laugh. "I'll make a note not to be asleep or light-years away."

"Agreed." "Agreed!" The voices went round the table.

Belga Underville buzzed and hissed, and as usual Pham didn't understand a thing she said, except that her tone was full of truculent incredulity. Fortunately, as the King's chief of Intelligence, she rated a full-time translator. Zinmin Broute sat beside her, listening to her with a faint smile. Broute actually seemed to like the old biddy. When she finished, he wiped the smile from his face and put on a good glower. "This is rank foolishness, or human insanity I don't yet understand. You have three ships, and with them you intend to bring down the Emergent empire? But for the last seven years, you have been saying that we Spiders have nothing to fear from outside invasion, that a planetary civilization with high technology can always mount a successful defense. The Emergents must have thousands of military vessels in their home territories, yet you talk of overthrowing them. Have you been lying to us, or are you just very wishful thinkers?"

Victory Lighthill buzzed a question, put so simply and clearly that Trixia didn't have to translate. "But, maybe...you get help...from far Qeng Ho?"

"No," said Ezr. "I...I'll tell you frankly, Qeng Ho don't like to fight. It's much easier just to let tyrannies alone. ‘Let them trade with themselves,' as the old saying goes."

Anne Reynolt had been quiet through all this. Now she said, "It's okay, Ezr. Youhave helped us... ." She turned to Belga Underville. "Madame General, someone has to do this. The Emergents and Focus are something new. Leave them alone and they will just grow stronger—and someday they'll come to eat you."

Incredulity was patent in the flick of Underville's longest arms. "Yes, more contradictions. Over the last years you have persuaded us to go beyond trade in helping to arm and outfit you." A human speaker might have cast a look in Victory Lighthill's direction; Victory had the ear of the King in this. "But what does it serve that you commit suicide? That is how I see the odds."

Anne smiled, but Pham could tell the questions made her tense. Belga had pounded on these questions in more official forums, and it was unlikely she would receive any satisfaction here. The questions haunted Anne as well. But Belga did not understand that, for Anne Reynolt, this mission gave better odds than she had ever had. "Not suicide, Madame General. We have special advantages, and Pham and I know how to use them." She put her hand on Pham's. "I employ one of the few commanders in human histories who has succeeded at such a thing."

Yeah, the Strentmannian thing was similar. God help me.No one said anything for a moment. The half-liter of wine had drifted upward. Pham poked his finger into its center of rotation and slid it gently back in front of where he sat. "We have advantages more concrete than my fearless leadership. Anne knows as much as any Podmaster about how the inner system works." And their little fleet would carry some surprising hardware, the first products of human/Spider new technology. But that wasn't the fleet's greatest strength. The crews of their three ships were mostly exFocused who understood the mechanisms of the Emergents' automation and who wanted as much as Anne to overthrow it. There were even a few of the original unFocused Emergents. As he spoke, Pham saw Jau Xin watching him intently—and Rita Liao watching Jau. They would come if they didn't have their three little ones. And even now, there was a chance. Pham still had four days to persuade them. Xin had been Pilot Manager for Nau's uncle before the voyage to Arachna. And the latest comm from Balacrea showed the Nau clique was back at the top of the heap.

Pham looked from face to face as he described the plans. Ezr and Qiwi, Trixia and Victory, certainly Jau and Rita:They don't really thinkthis is a wake. They understand we have a good chance, but they worry forus. "And we've been studying Nau's records and the transmissions that he received—that we're still receiving from Balacrea. We've spoofed them into thinking the Emergents won here. We plan on being able to get in-system before they realize that we aren't friendly. We understand alot about the internal factions at the top of their society. All together—" All together, it might not be something he should undertake. But Anne was right about Focus, and Anne wanted this more than anything. And afterward, well, there washis great project, and having Anne in on that would be worth all the risks. "All together, we have a chance. It will be a gamble, an adventure. I wanted to call our flagship theWild Goose, but Anne wouldn't let me."