"Why...thank you, Hrunkner. But my point is that Sherkaner's idle talk has moved us to the heart of why I asked you to take a thirty-day recruitment. What you're going to hear now is explicitly Strategic Secret."

"Yes, ma'am." He hadn't expected the mission brief to sneak up on him like this. Outside, the storm roared louder. Smith was pushing along at barely twenty miles per hour even on the straightaway. During the early years of a New Sun, even overcast days were dangerously bright, but this storm was so deep that the sky had darkened down to a murky twilight. The wind picked at the auto, trying to pry it off the road. The inside of the cab was like a steam bath.

Smith waved for Sherkaner to continue. Underhill leaned back in his perch and raised his voice to be heard over the growing storm. "As it happens, I have 'worked out the numbers.' After the War, I peddled my ideas around a number of Victory's colleagues. That nearly ruined her promotion. Those cobbers can do the numbers almost as well as you. But things have changed."

"Correction," said Smith. "Things may change." The wind slid them toward a drop-off that Unnerby could barely see. Smith downshifted, forced the auto back toward the middle of the road.

"You see," continued Underhill, undistracted, "there really are power sources that could support civilization through the Dark. You said we'd have to create our own sun. That's close, even if no one knows how the sun works. But there's theoretical and practical evidence of the power of the atom."

A few minutes earlier, Unnerby would have laughed. Even now, he couldn't keep the scorn out of his voice. "Radioactivity? You're going to keep us warm with tons of refined radium?" Maybe the great secret was that the Crown's high command was reading Amazing Science.

Such incredulity rolled off Underhill's back as smoothly as ever. "There are several possibilities. If they are pursued with imagination, I have no doubt that I will have the numbers on my side by the time of the next Waning."

And the General said, "Just so you understand, Sergeant. I do have doubts. But this is something we can't afford to overlook. Even if the scheme doesn't work, the failure could be a weapon a thousand times deadlier than anything in the Great War."

"Deadlier than poison gas in a deepness?" Suddenly the storm outside didn't seem as dark as what Victory Smith was saying.

He realized that for an instant all her attention was upon him. "Yes, Sergeant, worse than that. Our largest cities could be destroyed in a matter of hours."

Underhill almost bounced off his perch. "Worst case! Worst case! That's all you military types ever think about. Look, Unnerby. If we work at this over the next thirty years, we'll likely have power sources that can keep buried cities-not deepnesses, but waking cities-going right through the Dark. We can keep roadways clear of ice and airsnow-and by the middle years of the Dark, they'll stay that way. Surface transport could be much easier than it is during much of the Bright Times." He waved at the hissing rain beyond the sports car's windows.

"Yeah, and I suppose air transport will be likewise simplified," with all the air lying frozen on the ground. But Unnerby's sarcasm sounded faint even to himself. Yes, with a power source, maybe we could do it.

Unnerby's change of heart must have shown; Underhill smiled. "You do see! Fifty years from now we'll look back at these times and wonder why it wasn't obvious. The Dark is actually a more benign phase than most any other time."

"Yeah." He shivered. Some would call it sacrilege, but-"Yeah, it would be something marvelous. You haven't convinced me it can be done."

"If it can be done at all, it will be very hard," said Smith. "We have about thirty years left before the next Dark. We've got some physicists who think that-in theory-atomic power can work. But God Below, it wasn't till 58//10 that they even knew about atoms! I've sold the High Command on this; considering the investment, I'll surely be out of a job if it fizzles. But you know-sorry, Sherkaner-I rather hope it doesn't work at all."

Funny that she would support the traditional view on this.

Sherkaner: "It will be like finding a new world!"

"No! It will be like recolonizing the present one. Sherk, let's consider the 'best case' scenario that you claim we narrow-minded military types always ignore. Let's say the scientists get things figured out. Say that in ten years, or by 60//20 at the outside, we start building atomic power plants for your hypothetical 'cities-in-the-Dark.' Even if the rest of the world hasn't discovered atomic power on its own, this sort of construction cannot be kept secret. So even if there is no other reason for war, there will be an arms race. And it will be a lot worse than anything in the Great War."

Unnerby: "Ugh. Yes. The first to colonize the Dark would own the world."

"Yes," said Smith. "I'm not sure I'd trust the Crown to respect property in a situation like that. But I know the world would wake up enslaved or dead if some group like the Kindred conquered the Dark instead."

It was the sort of self-generated nightmare that had driven Unnerby out of the military. "I hope this doesn't sound disloyal, but have you considered killing this idea?" He waved ironically at Underhill. "You could think about other things, right?"

"You have lost the military view, haven't you? But yes, I have considered suppressing this research. Just maybe-if dear Sherkaner keeps his mouth shut-that would be enough. If no one gets an early start on this business, there's no way anybody will be ready to take over the Dark this time around. And maybe we're generations away from putting this theory into practice-that's what some of the physicists think."

"Well, I'll tell you," said Underhill, "this will be a matter of engineering soon enough. Even if we don't touch it, atomic power will be a big deal in fifteen or twenty years. Only it will be too late for power plants and sealed cities. It will be too late to conquer the Dark. All atomic power will be good for is weapons. You were talking about radium, Hrunkner. Just think what large amounts of such a substance could do as a war poison. And that's just the most obvious thing. Basically, whatever we do, civilization will be at risk. At least if we try for it all, there could be a wonderful payoff, civilization all through the Dark."

Smith waved unhappy agreement; Unnerby had the feeling that he was witnessing a much-repeated discussion. Victory Smith had bought into Underhill's scheme-and sold it to the High Command. The next thirty years were going to be even more exciting than Hrunkner Unnerby had thought.

They reached the mountain village very late in the day, the last three hours of the trip covering just twenty miles through the storm. The weather broke a couple of miles short of the little town.

Five years into the New Sun, Nigh't' Deepness was mostly rebuilt. The stone foundations had survived the initial flash and the high-speed floods. As after every Dark going back many generations, the villagers had used the armored sprouts of the forest's first growth to build the ground floors of their homes and businesses and elementary schools. Perhaps by the year 60//10 they would have better timber and would install a second floor and-at the church-perhaps a third. For now, all was low and green, the short conical logs giving the exterior walls a scaled appearance.

Underhill insisted they pass up the kerosene service station on the main road. "I know a better place," he said, and directed Smith to drive back along the old roadway.

They had rolled down the windows. The rain had stopped. A dry, almost cool wind swept over them. There was a break in the cloud cover and for a few minutes they could see sunlight on clouds. But the light was not the murky furnace of earlier in the day. The sun must be near setting. The tumbled clouds were bright with red and orange and alpha plaid-and beyond that the blue and ultra of clear sky. Brilliance splashed the street and buildings and foothills beyond. God the surrealist.

Sure enough, at the end of the gravel path was a low barn and a single kerosene pumping station. "This is the 'better place,' Sherk?" asked Unnerby.

"Well...more interesting anyway," The other opened the door and hopped off his perch. "Let's see if this cobber remembers me." He walked back and forth by the car, getting the kinks out. After the long drive, his tremor was more pronounced than usual.

Smith and Unnerby got out, and after a moment the proprietor, a heavyset fellow wearing a tool pannier, came out of the barn. He was followed by a pair of children.

"Fill it up, old cobber?" the fellow said.

Underhill grinned at him, not bothering to correct the misestimate of his age. "Sure thing." He followed the other over to the pump. The sky was even brighter now, blue and sunset reds shining down. "Remember me, do you? I used to come through in a big red Relmeitch, right before the Dark. You were a blacksmith then."

The other stopped, took a long stare at Underhill. "The Relmeitch I remember." His two five-year-olds danced behind him, watching the curious visitor.

"Funny how things change, isn't it?"

The properietor didn't know just what Underhill was talking about, but after a few moments the two were gossiping like old pals. Yes, the proprietor liked automobiles, clearly the wave of the future and no more blacksmithing for him. Sherkaner complimented him on some job he had done for him long ago, and said it was a shame that there was a kerosene filling station on the main road now. He bet it wasn't nearly as good at repair work as here, and had the former blacksmith considered how street advertising was being done up in Princeton these days? Smith's security pulled into the open space beyond the road, and the proprietor scarcely noticed. Funny how Underhill could get along with almost anyone, tuning down his manias to whatever the traffic would bear.

Meantime, Smith was across the road, talking to the captain who was running her security detail. She came back after Sherk had paid for the kerosene. "Damn. Lands Command says there's a worse storm due in about midnight. First time I take my own car, and all hell breaks loose." Smith sounded angry, which usually meant she was irritated with herself. They got aboard the auto. She poked at the ignition motor twice. Three times. The engine caught. "We'll bivouac here overnight." She sat for a moment, almost indecisive. Or maybe she was watching the sky to the south. "I know where there's some Crown land west of town."

Smith tooled down gravel roads, then muddy trails. Unnerby almost thought she was lost except she never hesitated or backtracked. Behind them came the security vehicles, about as inconspicuous as a parade of osprechs. The mud path petered out on a promontory overlooking the ocean. Steep slopes fell away on three sides. Someday, the forest would be tall here again, but now even the millions of armored sproutlings could not hide the naked rock of the drop-off.

Smith stopped at the dead end, and leaned back on her perch. "Sorry. I...made a wrong turn." She waved at the first of the security vehicles pulling up behind her.

Unnerby stared out at the ocean and the sky above. Sometimes wrong turnings were the best kind. "That's okay. God, what a view." The breaks in the clouds were like deep canyons. The light coming down them flared red and near-red, reflections of sunset. A billion rubies glinted in the water droplets on the foliage around them. He scrambled out the back of the auto, and walked a little way through the sprouts toward the end of the promontory. The forest mat squelched deep and wet beneath his feet. After a moment, Sherkaner followed him.

The breeze coming off the ocean was moist and cool. You didn't have to be the Met Department to know a storm was coming. He looked out over the water. They were standing less than three miles from the breakers, about as close as it was safe to be in this phase of the sun. From here you could see the turbulence and hear the grinding. Three icebergs were stranded, towering, in the surf. But there were hundreds more, stretching off to the horizon. It was the eternal battle, the fire from the New Sun against the ice of the good earth. Neither could finally win. It would be twenty years before the last of the shallows ice had surfaced and melted. By then, the sun would be waning. Even Sherkaner seemed subdued by the scene.

Victory Smith had left the auto, but instead of following them, she walked back, along the south edge of the promontory. The poor General. She can't decide if this trip is business or pleasure. Unnerby was just as happy they wouldn't get down to Lands Command in one whack.

They walked back to Smith. On this side of the promontory, the ground dropped into a little valley. On the high ground beyond there was some kind of building, perhaps a small inn. Smith was standing where the bedrock edge of the drop-off was nicked, and the slope was not deadly steep. Once, the road might have continued down into the little valley and up the other side.

Sherkaner stopped by his wife's side and draped his left arms over her shoulders; after a moment she slipped two of her arms over his, never saying a word. Unnerby walked to the edge and dipped his head over the drop-off. There were traces of road cut, all the way to the bottom. But the storms and floods of the Early Bright had gouged new cliffs. The valley itself was charming, untouched and clean. "Heh, heh. No way we're going to drive down there, ma'am. The road is washed clean away."

Victory Smith was silent for a moment. "Yes. Washed clean. That's for the best..."

Sherk said, "You know, we could probably walk across, and up the other side." He jabbed a hand at the inn on the hillcrest beyond the valley. "We could see if Lady Encl-"

Victory gave him a sharp, rippling hug. "No. That place couldn't put up more than the three of us, anyway. We'll camp with my security team."

After a moment, Sherk gave a little laugh. "...Fine by me. I'm curious to see a modern motorized bivouac." They followed Smith back to the trail. By the time they reached the vehicles, Sherkaner was in full form, some scheme for lightweight tents that could survive even the storms of the First Bright.

FIFTEEN.

Tomas Nau stood at his bedroom window, looking out. In fact, his rooms were fifty meters deep in Diamond One, but the view out his window was from the loftiest spire of Hammerfest. His estate had grown since the Relighting. Cut diamond slabs made adequate walls, and the surviving special craftsmen would spend their lives polishing and faceting, carving friezes as intricate as anything Nau had owned at home.

The grounds around Hammerfest had been planed smooth, tiled with metals from the ore dump on Diamond Two. He tried to keep the rockpile oriented so only Hammerfest's flag spire actually spiked into the sunlight. The last year or so, that caution wasn't really necessary, but staying in the shade meant that water ice could be used for shielding and some gluework. Arachna hung halfway up the sky, a brilliant blue-and-white disk almost half a degree across. Its light was bright and soft across the castle grounds. It was all quite a contrast to the first Msecs here, the hell of the Relight. Nau had worked five years to create the present view, the peace, the beauty.

Five years. And how many years more would they be stuck here? Thirty to forty was the specialists' best estimate; however long it took the Spiders to create an industrial ecology. It was funny how things had worked out. This really was an Exile, though quite unlike what he had planned back on Balacrea. That original mission had been a different kind of calculated risk: a couple of centuries away from the increasingly deadly politics of the home regime, an opportunity to breed his resources away from poachers-and the outside, golden chance that they might learn the secrets of a starfaring nonhuman race. He hadn't counted on the Qeng Ho arriving first.

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.

Nau let his hands roam her flanks; he felt the worry slowly subside in her. Lots had gone wrong with this mission, but Qiwi Lin Lisolet could be counted as a small triumph. She had been fourteen-precocious, naive, willful-when Nau took down the Qeng Ho fleet. The girl was properly infected with mindrot. She could have been Focused; for a while he had considered making her his body toy. Thank the Plague I didn't.

During the first couple of years, the girl had spent much of her time in this room, crying. Diem's "murder" of her mother had made her the first wholehearted turncoat. Nau had spent Msecs comforting her. At first that had been simply an exercise in the persuasive arts, with the possible side effect that Qiwi might improve his credibility with the other Peddlers. But as time passed, Nau came to see that the girl was more dangerous and more useful than he had guessed. Qiwi had lived much of her childhood on-Watch during the voyage from Triland. She had used the time with almost Focused intensity, learning construction engineering, life-support technology, and trading practices. It was weird; why was one child given such special treatment? Like so many of the Qeng Ho factions, the Lisolet Family had its own secrets, its own interior culture. During the interrogations, he had squeezed the probable explanation out of the girl's mother. The Lisolets used the time between the stars to mold those girl children who were intended for ruling positions in the Family. If things had gone according to Kira Pen Lisolet's plans, the girl would have been ready for further instruction here in-system, totally dominated by her loyalty toward her mother.

As things turned out, this made the girl ideal for Tomas Nau's purposes. She was young and talented, and desperately in need of someone in whom to invest her loyalty. He could run her Watch after Watch without coldsleep, just as he had to run himself. She would be a good companion for the time ahead-and one who was a constant test of his plans. Qiwi was smart and in many ways her personality was still very independent. Even now, with the evidence of what really happened to her mother and the others safely blown away, slipups could happen. Using Qiwi was a thrill ride, a constant test of his nerve. But at least he understood the danger now, and had taken precautions.

"Tomas-" She turned to face him directly. "Do you think I'll ever get the rockpile stabilized?"

Indeed, that was a proper thing for her to worry about. Ritser Brughel-or even a younger Tomas Nau-would not have realized that the correct response was not a threat or even disapproval. "Yes, you'll think of something. We'll think of something. Take a few days' vacation, okay? Old Trinli is off coldsleep this Watch. Let him balance the rockpile for a while."

Qiwi's laughter made her sound even younger than she looked. "Oh, yes. Pham Trinli!" He was the only one of Diem's conspirators she had more contempt than anger for. "Remember the last time he ran the balance? He talks loud, but he started out so timid. Before he knew it, the rockpile was three meters per second off L1 track. Then he overreacted and-" She started laughing again. The strangest things made this Peddler girl laugh. It was one of the puzzles about her that still intrigued him.

Lisolet was silent for a moment, and when she finally spoke, she surprised the Podmaster. "Yeah...maybe you're right. If it's just four days, I can set things up so even Trinli can't do too much damage. I do need to step back, think about things. Maybe we can water-weld the blocks after all... Besides, Papa is awake on this Watch. I'd like to be with him a little more." She looked at him questioningly, implicitly asking for release from duty.

Hunh. Sometimes the manipulation didn't work out as expected. He'd have bet three zipheads she wouldn't take him up on the offer. I could still turn her back. He could agree with just enough reluctance to make her ashamed. No. It wasn't worth it, not this time. And if one does not forbid, then be wholeheartedly generous in giving permission. He gathered her close. "Yes! Even you have to learn to relax."

She sighed, smiled with a hint of mischievousness. "Oh, yes, but I've already learned that." She reached down, and neither of them spoke for some time. Qiwi Lisolet was still a clumsy teenager, but she was learning. And Tomas Nau had years to teach her. Kira Pen Lisolet had not had nearly so much time, and had been a resisting adult. Nau smiled, remembering. Oh yes. In different ways, both mother and daughter had served him well.

Ali Lin had not been born into the Lisolet Family. He had been Kira Pen Lisolet's external acquisition. Ali was one in a trillion, a genius when it came to parks and living things. And he was Qiwi's father. Both Kira and Qiwi had loved him very much, even if he could never be what Kira was and what Qiwi would one day be.

Ali Lin was important to the Emergents, probably as important as any of the Focused. He was one of the few who had a lab outside the attic warrens of Hammerfest. He was one of the few who did not have Anne Reynolt or one of the lesser managers constantly watching out for him.

Now he and Qiwi sat in the treetops of the Qeng Ho park, playing a slow, patient game with the bugs. She had been here 10Ksec, and Papa some time more. He had her doing DNA diffs on the new strains of garbage spiders he'd been breeding. Even now, he seemed to trust her with that work, only checking her results every Ksec or so. The rest of the time he was lost in his examination of the leaves and a sort of daydreaming contemplation of how he might do the projects that Anne Reynolt had set for him.

Qiwi looked down past her feet, at the floor of the park. The trees were flowering amandors, bred for microgravity over thousands of years by people like Ali Lin. The leaves twisted down and down, bushing out so that their eyrie was almost invisible from the shadowed "below." Even without gravity, the blue sky and the turn of the branches gave a subtle orientation to the park. The largest real animals were the butterflies and the bees. She could hear the bees, see an occasional erratic bullet of their flight. The butterflies were everywhere. The micro-gee varieties oriented on the false sunlight, so their flight provided the visitor with one more psychological cue about up and down. Right now the park was empty of other humans, officially closed for maintenance. That was something of a fib, but Tomas Nau had not called her on it. In fact, the park had just become too popular. The Emergents loved it at least as much as the Qeng Ho. The place was so popular that Qiwi could detect the beginnings of system failure; the little garbage spiders weren't quite keeping up anymore.

She looked at her father's abstracted features and smiled. This really was maintenance time, of a sort. "Here's the latest set of diffs; is this what you're looking for, Papa?"

"Hmm?" The other didn't look up from his work. Then abruptly he seemed to hear. "Really? Let's see, Qiwi."

She slid the list across to him. "See? Here and here. This is the pattern match we were looking for. The imaginal disks will change just the way you wanted." Papa wanted a higher metabolism, without losing the population bounds. In this park, the insects did not have bacterial predators; the contest for life went on within their genomes.

Ali took the list from her hands. He smiled gently, almost looking at her, almost noticing her. "Good, you got the multiplier trick just right."

Hearing such words was about as close as Qiwi Lin Lisolet could come to recapturing the past. Age nine to fourteen had been Qiwi's Lisoletish learning time. It had been a lonely time, but Mom had been right about it. Qiwi had come a long way toward growing up, learning to be alone in the great dark. She had learned about the life-support systems that were her father's specialty, learned the celestial mechanics that made all her mother's constructions possible, and most of all she had learned how much she loved to be around others during their waking times. Both her parents had spent several of those years out of coldsleep, sharing maintenance duty with her and the Watch techs.

Now Mama was dead and Papa was Focused, his soul concentrated down upon one thing: the biological management of ecosystems. But within that Focus, he and she could still communicate. In the years since the ambush, they had been together for Msecs of common Watch. Qiwi had continued to learn from him. And sometimes, when they were deep within the complexity of species stability, sometimes it was like before, in childhood, when Papa would get so trapped in his passion for living things that he seemed to forget his daughter was really a person, and they were both swallowed up by wonders greater than themselves.

Qiwi studied the diffs-but mostly she was watching her father. She knew he was very close to finishing the garbage-spider project, his part of it anyway. Long experience told her that there would be a few moments after that when Ali Lin would be approachable, when his Focus cast about for something new to bind on. Qiwi smiled to herself. And I have the project. It was almost what Reynolt and Tomas wanted from Papa, so diverting him would be possible if she played it just right.

There. Ali Lin sighed, gazing contentedly on the branches and leaves around them. Qiwi had maybe fifty seconds. She slipped downward from her branch, holding her position with the tip of her foot. She snagged the bonsai bubble she had smuggled in, and returned to her father. "Remember these, Papa? Really, really small parks?"

Papa didn't ignore her words. He turned toward her as quickly as a normal person, and his eyes widened when he caught sight of the clear plastic sphere. "Yes! Except for light, a completely closed ecology."

Qiwi floated the empty bubble into his hands. Bonsai bubbles were a commonplace in the confines of a ramscoop under way. They existed in all levels of sophistication, from lumps of moss up to things almost as complex as this temp's park. And-"This is a little smaller than the problems we've been working on. I'm not sure your solutions would work here."

Appeals to pride had often worked on the old Ali, almost as often as appeals to love. Now you had to catch Papa at just the right instant. He squinted at the bubble, seemed to feel the dimensions with his hands. "No, no! I can do it. My new tricks are very powerful... Would you like a little lake, maybe lipid bound to lie flat?"

Qiwi nodded.

"And those garbage spiders, I can make them smaller and give them colored wings."

"Yes." Reynolt would let him spend more effort on the garbage bugs. They were important for more than just the central park. So much had been destroyed in the fighting. Ali's work would allow small-scale life-support modules all through the surviving structures. It was something that would normally take a Qeng Ho specialist team and deep searches of the fleet's databases-but Papa was both Focused and a genius. He could do such design work all by himself, and in just a few Msecs.

Papa just needed a push in the right conceptual direction, something that old prune, Anne Reynolt, could rarely provide. So- Ali Lin was suddenly grinning from ear to ear. "I bet I can top the Namqem High Treasures. Look, the filtration webs will carry straight across. The shrubs will be standard, maybe a little modified to support your insect diffs."

"Yes, yes," said Qiwi. They had a real conversation, several hundred seconds, before her father lapsed into the fierce concentration that would make the "simple changes" actually doable. The hardest part would be at the bacterial and mitochondrial level, and that was totally beyond Qiwi. She smiled at her father, almost reached out to touch his shoulder. Mama would be proud of them. Papa's methods might even be new-they certainly weren't in any of the obvious places in the historical dbs. Qiwi had guessed that they might allow some very nice microparks, but this was more than she had hoped for.

The High Treasure bonsais were no bigger than this, thirty centimeters across. Some of them had lived for two hundred years, complete animal/plant ecosystems-even supporting fake evolution. The method was proprietary and not even the Qeng Ho had been able to purchase all of it. Creating such things with only mission resources would be a miracle. If Papa could do better than that...hmm. Most people, even Tomas, seemed to think that Qiwi had been brought up to be an armsman, following her mother's military career. They didn't understand. The Lisolets were Qeng Ho. Fighting came a far second. Sure, she had learned a little about combat. Sure, Mama intended she spend a decade or two learning what to do When All Else Fails. But Trading was what everything came back to. Trading and making a profit. So they had been taken over by the Emergents. But Tomas was a decent person-and he had the hardest job she could imagine. She was doing everything she could to support him, to make what was left of their expeditions survive. Tomas couldn't help that his culture was all screwed up.

And in the end it wouldn't matter that Tomas didn't understand. Qiwi smiled at the empty plastic sphere, imagining what it would be like filled with her father's creation. In civilized places, a top bonsai might sell for the price of an entire starship. Here? Well, Qiwi might make these on the side. After all, it was a frivolity, something that Tomas probably couldn't justify to himself. Tomas had banned hoarding and favor-trading. Uh-oh. Maybe I'll have to work around him for a while. It was much easier to get permission afterward. In the end, she figured the Qeng Ho would change Tomas's people far more than the reverse.

She was just starting a new diffs sequence when there was a ripping sound from below, the source hidden by the lower foliage. For a second, Qiwi didn't recognize the sound. The floor access hatch. That was for construction only. Opening it would tear the moss layer. Damn.

Qiwi swung out from their little nest, and moved quietly downward, careful not to crack branches or cast a shadow on the bottom moss. Breaking in while the park was officially closed was only an annoyance-heck, it was the sort of thing she would do if she felt like it. But that floor hatch was not supposed to be opened. It spoiled the park's illusion, and it damaged the turf. What sort of jackass would do something like that-especially considering how seriously Emergents took official rules and regulations?

Qiwi hovered just above the bottommost canopy of leaves. In a second the intruder would be in view, but she could already hear him. It was Ritser Brughel. The Vice-Podmaster proceeded across the moss, cursing and whacking at something in the bushes. The guy was a real sewer-mouth. Qiwi was an avid student of such language, and she had listened to him before. Brughel might be the number-two boss man of the Emergent expedition-but he was also a one-man proof that Emergent leaders could be bums. Tomas seemed to realize the fellow was a bad actor; he'd put the Vice Podmaster's quarters off the rockpile, on the old Invisible Hand. And Brughel's Watch schedule was the same as much of the regular crew. While poor Tomas aged year after year to keep the mission safe, Brughel was out of coldsleep only 10Msec in every 40. So Qiwi didn't know him very well-but what she knew she loathed. If this jerk could be trusted to pull his own weight, Tomas wouldn't be burning his lifetime away for us. She listened in silence for a moment more. Neat stuff. But there was an undercurrent to it she didn't hear in most folk's obscenities, like the fellow meant what he was saying literally.

Qiwi pushed loudly between the branches, holding herself so that she stood half a meter in the air-about eye-to-eye with the Emergent. "The park is closed for maintenance, Podmaster."

Brughel gave a tiny flinch of surprise. For a second he was silent, his pale pink skin darkening in the most comical way. "You insolent little...so what are you doing here?"