A Deepness in the Sky Part 19

"Yeah, well if it works I am. So what's the third group doing?"

But Silipan was already heading back to the entrance. "Oh, them." He waved negligently at the zipheads on his right. "Reynolt's ongoing project. We're going through the corpus of your fleet system code, looking for trapdoors, that sort of thing."

It was the wild-goose chase that preoccupied the most paranoid system administrators, but after what he'd just seen. . .suddenly Pham didn't feel quite so secure. How long do I have before they notice some of How long do I have before they notice some of my my long-agomods? long-agomods?

They left the grouproom and started back down the central tower. "See, Pham, you-all you Qeng Ho-grew up wearing blinders. You just know know certain things are impossible. I see the cliches in your literature: 'Garbage input means garbage output'; 'The trouble with automation is that it does exactly what you ask it'; 'Automation can never be truly creative.' Humankind has accepted such claims for thousands of years. But we Emergents have disproved them! With ziphead support, I can get correct performance from ambiguous inputs. I can get effective natural language translation. I can get human-quality judgment as part of the automation!" certain things are impossible. I see the cliches in your literature: 'Garbage input means garbage output'; 'The trouble with automation is that it does exactly what you ask it'; 'Automation can never be truly creative.' Humankind has accepted such claims for thousands of years. But we Emergents have disproved them! With ziphead support, I can get correct performance from ambiguous inputs. I can get effective natural language translation. I can get human-quality judgment as part of the automation!"

They coasted downward at several meters per second; upward traffic was spa.r.s.e just now. The light at the bottom of the tower glowed brighter. "Yeah, so what about creativity?" This was something Trud loved to pontificate on.

"Even that, Pham. Well, not all forms of creativity. Like I said, there is a real need for managers such as Rita and myself, and the Podmasters above us. But you know about really creative people, the artists who end up in your history books? As often as not, they're some poor dweeb who doesn't have a life. He or she is just totally fixated on learning everything about some single topic. A sane person couldn't justify losing friends and family to concentrate so hard. Of course, the payoff is that the dweeb may find things or make things that are totally unexpected. See, in that way a little of Focus has always been part of the human race. We Emergents have simply inst.i.tutionalized this sacrifice so the whole community can benefit in a concentrated, organized way."

Silipan reached out, lightly touching the walls on both sides, slowing his descent. He dropped behind for a moment before Pham started braking too.

"How long till your appointment with Anne Reynolt?" Silipan asked.

"Just over a Ksec."

"Okay, I'll keep this short. Can't keep the boss lady waiting." He laughed. Silipan seemed to have an especially low regard for Anne Reynolt. If she were incompetent, a lot of things would be simpler for Pham. . . .

They pa.s.sed through a pressure door, into what might have been a sickbay. There were a few coldsleep coffins; they looked like medical temporaries. Visible behind the equipment was another door, this one bearing a Podmaster special seal. Trud gave a nervous glance in that direction, and did not look back again.

"So. Here's where it all happens, Pham. The real magic of Focus." He dragged Pham across the room, away from the half-hidden door. A technician was working by the limp form of a ziphead, maneuvering the "patient's" head into one of the large toroids that dominated the room. Those might be diagnostic imagers, though they were even clunkier-looking than most Emergent hardware.

"You already know the basic principles, right, Pham?"

"Sure." Those had been carefully explained in the first Watch after Jimmy's murder. "You've got this special virus, the mindrot; you infected us all."

"Right, right. But that was a military operation. In most cases the rot didn't get past the blood/brain barrier. But when it does. . .You know about glial cells? You've got lots more of those in your brain than neurons, actually. Anyway, the rot uses the glials as a kind of broth, infects almost all of them. After four days or so-"

"-You have a ziphead?"

"No. You have the raw material for a ziphead; many of you Qeng Ho ended up in that state-unFocused, perfectly healthy, but with the infection permanently established. In such people, every neuron in the brain is adjacent to infection cells. And each rotted cell has a menu of neuro-actives it can secrete. Now, this guy-" He turned to the tech, who was still working on the comatose ziphead. "Bil, what is is this one in for?" this one in for?"

Bil Phuong shrugged. "He's been fighting. Al had to stun him. There's no chance of mindrot runaway, but Reynolt wants his basal-five retrained on the sequence from . . ."

The two traded jargon. Pham glanced with careful disinterest at the ziphead. Egil Manrhi. Egil had been the punning-est armsman in pre-Flight. But now. . .now he was probably a better a.n.a.lyst than he had ever been before.

Trud was nodding at Phuong: "Huh. I don't see why messing with basal-five will do any good. But then she is the boss, isn't she?" He grinned at the other. "Hey, let me do this one, okay? I want to show Pham."

"Just so you sign for it." Phuong moved out of their way, looking faintly bored. Silipan slid down beside the gray-painted toroid. Pham noticed that the gadget had separate power cables, each a centimeter wide.

"Is this some kind of an imager, Trud? It looks like obsolete junk."

"Ha. Not exactly. Help me get this guy's head in the cradle. Don't let him touch the sides. . . ." An alarm tone sounded. "And for G.o.d's sake, give Bil that ring you're wearing. If you're standing in the wrong place, the magnets in this baby would tear your finger off."

Even in low gee, it was awkward to maneuver the comatose Egil Manrhi. It was a tight fit, and the rockpile's gravity was just strong enough to drag Egil's head onto the lower side of the hole.

Trud moved back from his handiwork, and smiled. "All set. Now you're going to see what it's all about, Pham, my boy." He spoke commands and some kind of medical image floated in the air between them, presumably a view inside Egil's head. Pham could recognize gross anatomical features, but this was far from anything he had studied. "You're right about the imaging, Pham. This is standard MRI, as old as time. But it's good enough. See, the basal-five harmony is generated here." A pointer moved along a complex curve near the surface of the brain.

"Now here's the cute thing, what makes mindrot more than a neuropathic curiosity." A galaxy of tiny glowing dots appeared in the three-dimensional image. They glowed in every color, though most were pink. There were cl.u.s.ters and strands of tiny dots, many of them flickering in time with one another. "You're seeing infected glial cells, at least the relevant groups."

"The colors?"

"Those show current drug secretion by type.. . .Now, what I want to do . . ." More commands, and Pham had his first look at the toroid's user manual. ". . .is change the output and firing frequency along this path." His little marker arrow swept along one of the threads of light. He grinned at Pham. " This Thisis how our gear is more than an imager. See, the mindrot virus expresses certain para- and dia-magnetic proteins, and these these respond variously to magnetic fields to trigger the production of specific neuroactives. So while you Qeng Ho and all the rest of humanity use MRI solely as an respond variously to magnetic fields to trigger the production of specific neuroactives. So while you Qeng Ho and all the rest of humanity use MRI solely as an observing observing tool, we Emergents can use it actively, to make changes." He tapped his keyboard; Pham heard a creaking sound as the superconducting cables spread apart from each other. Egil twitched a couple of times. Trud reached out to steady him. "d.a.m.n. Can't get millimeter resolution with him thras.h.i.+ng." tool, we Emergents can use it actively, to make changes." He tapped his keyboard; Pham heard a creaking sound as the superconducting cables spread apart from each other. Egil twitched a couple of times. Trud reached out to steady him. "d.a.m.n. Can't get millimeter resolution with him thras.h.i.+ng."

"I don't see any change in the brain map."

"You won't till I turn off active mode. You can't image and modify at the same time." He paused, watching the step-by-step in the manual. "Almost done.. . .There! Okay, let's see the changes." There was a new picture. And now the glowing thread of lights was mostly blue, and frantically blinking. "It'll take a few seconds to settle in." He continued to watch the model as he talked. "See, Pham. This is what I'm really good at. I don't know what you could compare me to in your culture. I'm a little like a programmer, but I don't code. I'm a little like a neurologist, except I I get results. I guess I'm most like a hardware technician. I keep the gear going for all the higher-ups who take the credit." get results. I guess I'm most like a hardware technician. I keep the gear going for all the higher-ups who take the credit."

Trud frowned. ". . .Hunh? Pus." He looked across the room at where the other Emergent was working. "Bil, this guy's leptin-dop ratio is still low."

"You turned off the field?"

"Of course. Basal-five should have retrained by now."

Bil didn't come over, but apparently he was looking at the patient's brain model.

The line of blue glitter was still a jumble of random change. Trud continued, "It's just a loose end, but I don't know what's causing it. Can you take care of it?" He hooked a thumb in Pham's direction, indicating he had other, more important business.

Bil said, dubiously, "You did sign for it?"

"Yes, yes. Just take care of it, huh?"

"Yeah, okay."

"Thanks." Silipan gestured Pham away from the MRI gear; the brain image vanished. "That Reynolt. Her jobs are the trickiest, not by the book. Then, when you do it the right way, you're likely to end up in a heap of trouble."

Pham followed him out the door and down a side tunnel that cut through the crystal of Diamond One. The walls were a chiseled mosaic, the same style of precise artwork that had mystified Pham long ago, at the "welcoming banquet." Not all the zipheads were high-tech specialists: they pa.s.sed a dozen slave artists cl.u.s.tered around the circ.u.mference of the tunnel, hunched close over magnifying gla.s.ses and needle-like tools. Pham had been along here before, several Watches earlier. Then, the frieze had been only roughly outlined, a mountain landscape with some sort of military force moving toward a nebulous goal. Even that had been a guess, based on the t.i.tle: "The Defeat of the Frenkisch Orc." Now the figures were mostly complete, st.u.r.dy heroic fighters that glittered rainbows. Their goal was some kind of monster. The creature wasn't that novel, a typical Cthulhonic horror, tearing humans with its long claws and eating the pieces. Emergents made a big thing of their conquest of Frenk. Somehow, Pham doubted that the mutations they had warred against had been so spectacular. He slowed, and Silipan took his stare for admiration.

"The carvers make only fifty centimeters' progress every Msec. But the art brings some of the warmth of our past."

Warmth?"Reynolt wants things pretty?" It was a random question.

"Ha. Reynolt couldn't care less. Podmaster Brughel ordered this, per my recommendation."

"But I thought Podmasters were sovereign in their domains." Pham hadn't seen much of Reynolt on prior Watches, but he had seen her humiliate Ritser Brughel in meetings with Nau.

Trud continued on for several meters, not speaking. His face quirked in a silly smile, a look he sometimes got during their bull sessions at Benny's. This time though, the smiled broke into laughter. "Podmaster? Anne Reynolt? Pham, watching you boggle has already made my day-but this tops all." He coasted for several seconds more, still chuckling. Then he saw the glower on Pham Trinli's face. "I'm sorry, Pham. You Peddlers are clever in so many ways, but you're like children when it comes to the basics of culture.. . .I got you cleared to see the Focus clinic; I guess it can't hurt to spell some other things out. No, Anne Reynolt is not a Podmaster, though most likely she was a powerful one, once upon a time. Reynolt is just another ziphead."

Pham let his glower fade to blank astonishment-which also happened to be his true reaction. "But. . .she's running a big part of the show. She gives you orders."

Silipan shrugged. His smile had changed to something sour. "Yeah. She gives me orders. It's a rare thing, but it can happen. I'd almost rather work for Podmaster Brughel and Kal Omo except that they play so. . . rough." His voice trailed off nervously.

Pham caught up. "I think I see," he lied. "When a specialist gets Focused, he fixates on his specialty. So anartist becomes one of your mosaic carvers, a physicist becomes like Hunte Wen, and a manager becomes, uh, I don't know, the manager from h.e.l.l."

Trud shook his head. "It doesn't work like that. See, technical specialties Focus well. We got a seventy-percent success rate even with you Qeng Ho. But people skills-counseling, politics, personnel management-normally, those don't survive Focusing at all. You've seen enough zipheads by now; the one thing they have in common is flat affect. They can no more imagine what's going on in a normal person's head than a rock can. We're lucky to have as many good translators as we do; that's never been tried on this scale before.

"No. Anne Reynolt is something very, very rare. Rumor is, she was a High Podmaster in the Xevalle clique. Most of those got killed or mind-scrubbed, but the story is Reynolt had really p.i.s.sed the Nauly clique. For laughs they Focused her; maybe they thought to use her as body comfort.

But that's not how it turned out. My guess is, she was already close to being a monomaniac. It was one chance in a billion, but Reynolt's management abilities survived-even some of her people skills survived."

Up ahead, Pham could see the end of the tunnel. Light shone on an unadorned hatch. Trud came to a stop and turned to face Pham. "She's a freak, but she is also Podmaster Nau's most valued property. In principle, she doubles his reach. . . ." He grimaced. "It doesn't make it any easier to take orders from her, I'll tell you that. Personally, I think the Podmaster overrates her. She's a miraculous freak, but so what? It's like a dog that writes poetry-no one notices that it's doggerel."

"You don't seem to care if she knows your opinion."

Now Trud was smiling again. "Of course not. That's the one plus of my situation. She's almost impossible to fool on things directly related to my job-but outside of that she's like any other ziphead. Why, I've played some pus-funny j-" He stopped. "Ah, never mind. Tell her what Podmaster Nau asked you to and you'll be okay." He winked, then started back up the corridor, away from Reynolt's office.

"Watch her close. You'll see what I mean."

If Pham had known about Anne Reynolt, he might have postponed the whole localizer scam. But now he was sitting in her office, and there weren't many options. In a way it felt good to be winging it. Ever since Jimmy died, every one of Pham's moves had been so considered, so d.a.m.ned cautious.

At first, the woman didn't even acknowledge his presence. Pham sat uninvited on the chair across from her desk and looked around the room. It was nothing like Nau's office. These walls were naked, rough diamond. There were no pictures, not even the abominations that pa.s.sed for Emergent art. Reynolt's desk was an agglomeration of empty storage crates and network gear.

And Reynolt herself? Pham stared at her face more intently than he might have dared otherwise. He'd been in her presence maybe 20Ksec total and those encounters had been in meetings, with Reynolt generally at the far end of the table. She always dressed plainly, except for that silver necklace tucked down into her blouse. With her red hair and pale skin, the woman might have been Ritser Brughel's sister. The physical type was rare in this end of Human s.p.a.ce, arising most often from local mutation. Anne might have been thirty years old-or a couple of centuries, with really good medical support. In a crazy, exotic way she was lovely. Physically lovely. So you were a Podmaster. So you were a Podmaster.

Reynolt's gaze flickered up, and impaled him for an instant. "Okay. You're here to tell me the details of these localizers."

Pham nodded. Strange. After that momentary glance, her gaze s.h.i.+fted away from his eyes. She was watching his lips, his throat, only briefly his eyes. There was no sympathy, no communication, but Pham had the chill feeling that she was seeing through all his masks.

"Good. What is their standard sensorium?"

He grumbled through the answers, claiming ignorance of details.

Reynolt didn't seem to take offense. Her questions were delivered in a uniformly calm, mildly contemptuous tone. Then: "This isn't enough to work with. I need the manuals."

"Sure. That's what I'm here for. The full manuals are on the localizer chips, encrypted beneath what ordinary techs are allowed to see."

Again that long, scattered stare: "We've looked. We don't see them."

This was the dangerous part. At best, Nau and Brughel would be taking a very close look at Trinli's buffoon persona. At worst. . .if they realized he was giving away secrets that even top armsmen wouldn't know, he'd be in serious trouble. Pham pointed to a head-up display on Reynolt's desk. "Allow me," he said.

Reynolt didn't react to his flippancy, but she did put on the huds and accepted consensual imaging. Pham continued, "I remember the pa.s.scode. It's long, though"-and the full version was keyed to his own body, but he didn't say that. He tried several incorrect codes, and acted irritable and nervous when they failed. A normal human, even Tomas Nau, would have expressed impatience-or laughed.

Reynolt didn't say anything. She just sat there. But then, suddenly, "I have no patience for this. Do not pretend incompetence."

She knew.In all the time since Triland, no one had ever seen this far behind his cover. He'd hoped for more time; once they started using the localizers he could write some new cover for himself. d.a.m.n. d.a.m.n. Then he remembered what Silipan had said. Anne Reynolt knew Then he remembered what Silipan had said. Anne Reynolt knew something. something. Most likely, she had simply concluded that Trinli was a reluctant informant. Most likely, she had simply concluded that Trinli was a reluctant informant.

"Sorry," Pham mumbled. He typed in the correct sequence.

A simple acknowledgment came back from the fleet library, chip doc subsection. The glyphs floated silver on the air between them. The secret inventory data, the component specifications.

"Good enough," said Reynolt. She did something with her control, and her office seemed to vanish. The two of them floated through the inventory information, and then they were standing within the localizers' specifications.

"As you said, temperature, sonics, light levels. . .multispectrum. But this is more elaborate than you described at the meeting."

"I said it was good. These are just the details."

Reynolt spoke quickly, reviewing capability after capability. Now she sounded almost excited. This was far beyond the corresponding Emergent products. "A naked localizer, with a good sensorium and independent operation." And she was seeing only the part that Pham wanted her to see.

"You do have to pulse it power."

"Just as well. That way we can limit its use till we thoroughly understand it."

She flicked away the image, and they were sitting in her office again, the lights sparkling cool off the rough walls. Pham could feel himself beginning to sweat.

She wasn't even looking at him anymore. "The inventory showed several million localizers in addition to those embedded in fleet hardware."

"Sure. Inactive, they pack into just a few liters."

Calm observation: "You were fools not to use them for security."

Pham glowered at her. "We armsmen knew what they could do. In a military situation-"

But those were not the details in Anne Reynolt's Focus. She waved him silent. "It looks like we have more than enough for our purposes."

The beautiful janissary looked back into Pham's face. For an instant, her gaze stabbed directly into his eyes.

"You've made possible a new era of control, Armsman."

Pham looked into the clear blue eyes and nodded; he hoped she didn't understand the full truth that she spoke. And now Pham realized how central she was to all his plans. Anne Reynolt managed almost all the zipheads. Anne Reynolt was Tomas Nau's direct control over operations. Anne Reynolt understood the things about the Emergents that a successful revolutionary must understand. And Anne Reynolt was a ziphead. She might figure out what he was up to-or she might be the key to destroying Nau and Brughel.

Things never got completely quiet in an ad hoc habitat. The Traders' temp was only a hundred meters across; the crew, bouncing around in it, created stresses that could not be completely damped. And thermal stress made an occasional loud snapping sound. But just now was in the middle of most of the crew's sleep period; Pham Nuwen's little cabin was about as quiet as it ever got. He floated in the darkened cabin, pretending to drowse. His secret life was about to become very busy. The Emergents didn't know it, but they'd just been snared by a trap that went deeper than most any Qeng Ho Fleet Captain knew about. It was one of two or three scams that Pham Nuwen had set up long ago. Sura and a few others had known about them, but even after Brisgo Gap, the knowledge hadn't seeped into the general Qeng Ho armamentarium. Pham had always wondered about that; Sura could be subtle.

How long would it take Reynolt and Brughel to retrain their people to use the localizers? There were more than enough of the gadgets to run the L1 stab operations, and also snoop all living s.p.a.ces. At third meal, some of the comm people had told of spikes in the temp's cable spine. Ten times a second, a microwave pulse spread through the temp-enough wireless power to keep the localizers well fed. Just before the beginning of the sleep period, he'd noticed the first of the dustmotes come wafting through the ventilator. Right now, Brughel and Reynolt were probably calibrating the system. Brughel and Nau would be congratulating themselves on the quality of the sound and video. With good luck, they would eventually phase out their own clunky spy devices; even if he wasn't so lucky. . .well, in a few Msecs he would have the ability to subvert the reports from them.

Something scarcely heavier than a dustmote settled on his cheek. He made as if to wipe his face, and in the act settled the mote just beside his eyelid. A few moments later he poked another deep within the channel of his right ear. It was ironic, considering how much effort the Emergents had gone to, disabling untrusted I/O devices.

The localizers did everything that Pham had told Tomas Nau. Just as such devices had done through all of human history, these located one another in geometrical s.p.a.ce-a simple exercise, nothing more than a time-of-flight computation. The Qeng Ho versions were smaller than most, could be powered by wireless across short distances, and had a simple set of sensors. They made great spy devices, just what Podmaster Nau needed. Localizers were by their nature a type of computer network, in fact a type of distributed processor. Each little dustmote had a small amount of computing ability-and they communicated with one another. A few hundred thousand of them dusted across the Traders' temp was more computing power than all the gear that Nau and Brughel had brought aboard. Of course, all localizers-even the Emergent clunkers-had such computational potential. The real secret of the Qeng Ho version was that no added interface was necessary, for output or input. If you knew the secret, you could access the Qeng Ho localizers directly, let the localizers sense your body position, interpret the proper codings, and respond with built-in effectors. It didn't matter didn't matter that the Emergents had removed all front-end interfaces from the temp. Now a Qeng Ho interface was all around them, for anyone who knew the secrets. that the Emergents had removed all front-end interfaces from the temp. Now a Qeng Ho interface was all around them, for anyone who knew the secrets.

Access took special knowledge and some concentration. It was not something that could happen by accident or under coercion. Pham relaxed in the hammock, partly to pretend to finally fall asleep, partly to get in the mood for his coming work. He needed a particular pattern of heartbeats, a particular cadence of breathing. Do I even remember it anymore, after allthis time? Do I even remember it anymore, after allthis time? The sharp moment of panic took him aback. One mote by his eye, another in his ear; that should be enough to provide alignment for the other localizers that must be floating in the room. That should be enough. The sharp moment of panic took him aback. One mote by his eye, another in his ear; that should be enough to provide alignment for the other localizers that must be floating in the room. That should be enough.

But the proper mood still eluded him. He kept thinking back to Anne Reynolt and to what Silipan had shown him. The Focused would see through his schemes; it was just a matter of time. Focus was a miracle. Pham Nuwen could have made the Qeng Ho a true empire-despite Sura's treachery-if only he'd had Focused tools. Yes, the price was high. Pham remembered the rows of zombies up in Hammerfest's Attic. He could see a dozen ways to make the system gentler, but in the end, to use Focused tools, there would have to be some sacrifice.

Was final success, a true Qeng Ho empire, worth that price? Could he pay it?

Yes and yes!

At this rate he'd never achieve access state. He backed off, began the whole relax cycle again. He let his imagination slide into memories. What had it been like in the beginning times? Sura Vinh had delivered the Reprise Reprise and a still very naive Pham Nuwen to the megalopolis moons of Namqem. . . . and a still very naive Pham Nuwen to the megalopolis moons of Namqem. . . .

He had remained at Namqem for fifteen years. They were the happiest years of Pham Nuwen's life. Sura's cousins were in-system, too-and they fell in love with the schemes that Sura and her young barbarian proposed: a method of interstellar synchronization, the trading of technical tricks where their own buying and selling would not be affected, the prospect of a cohesive interstellar trading culture. (Pham learned not to talk about his goals beyond that.) Sura's cousins were back from some very profitable adventures, but they could see the limits of isolated trading. Left to themselves, they would make fortunes, even keep them for a time. . .but in the end they would be lost in time and the interstellar dark. They had a gut appreciation for many of Pham's goals.