"I'll be glad to take over the job, Podmaster," said Trinli.

But Nau was no fool. He shook his head. "No, you're much more valuable in your overall supervisory role. In fact, I want you and Anne to chat about this. When he comes on-Watch, Ritser will be interested, too. There should be a number of public safety applications for these gadgets."

So Pham Trinli had handed the Emergents even better manacles and chains. For an instant something like chagrined understanding flickered across the old man's face.

Ezr did his best not to talk to anyone for the rest of the day. He had never imagined that he could hate a stupid clown so much. Pham Trinli was no mass murderer, and his devious nature was written large across his every foolish move. But his stupidity had betrayed a secret the enemy had never guessed, a secret that Ezr himself had never known, a secret that others must have taken to their deaths rather than give to Tomas Nau and Ritser Brughel.

Before, he had thought that Nau kept Trinli around for laughs. Now Ezr knew better. And not since that long-ago night in the temp park had Ezr felt so coldly murderous. If there ever came a time when Pham Trinli could have a fatal accident...

After second mess, Ezr stayed in his quarters. His behavior shouldn't be suspicious. The live-music people took over Benny's every day about this time, and jamming was one Qeng Ho custom that Ezr had never enjoyed, even as a listener. Besides, there was plenty of work to catch up on. Some of it didn't even require that he talk to others. He slipped on the new head-up display, and looked at the Fleet Library.

In some sense, the survival of the Fleet Library was Captain Park's greatest failure. Every fleet had elaborate precautions for destroying critical parts of their local library if capture was imminent. Such schemes couldn't be complete. Libraries existed in a distributed form across the ships of their fleet. Pieces would be cached in a thousand nodes depending on the usage of the moment. Individual chips-those damnable localizers-contained extensive maintenance and operations manuals. Yet major databases should have been zeroed in very short order. What was left would have some usefulness, but the capital insights, the terabytes of hard experimental data would be gone-or left only as hardware instantiations, understandable only by painstaking reverse engineering. Somehow that destruction had not happened, even when it was obvious that the Emergent ambush would overwhelm all the ships of Park's fleet. Or maybe Park had acted and there had been off-net nodes or backups that-contrary to all policy-had contained full copies of the library.

Tomas Nau knew a treasure when he saw it. Anne Reynolt's slaves were dissecting the thing with the inhuman precision of the Focused. Sooner or later, they would know every Trader secret. But that would take years; zipheads didn't know where to start. So Nau was using various unFocused staff to wander about the library and report on the big picture. Ezr had spent Msecs at it so far. It was a dicey job, because he had to produce some good results...and at the same time he tried subtly to guide their research away from things that might be immediately useful. He knew he might slip up, and eventually Nau would sense the lack of cooperation. The monster was subtle; more than once Ezr wondered who was using whom.

But today...Pham Trinli had just given away so much.

Ezr forced calmness on himself. Just look at the library. Write some silly report. That would count as duty time and he wouldn't have to freak out in any visible way. He played with the hand control that came with the new, "sanitized" head-up display. At least it recognized the simpler command chords: the huds seamlessly replaced his natural vision of his cabin with a view of the library's entry layer. As he looked around, the automation tracked his head motion and the images slid past almost as smoothly as if the documents were real objects floating in his room. But...he fiddled with the control. Damn. Almost no customization was possible. They had gutted the interface, or changed it to some Emergent standard. This wasn't much better than ordinary wallpaper!

He reached up to pull the thing from his face, to crumple it. Calm down. He was still too ticked by Trinli's screwup. Besides, this really was an improvement over wall displays. He smiled for a moment, remembering Gonle Fong's obscenity-spattered fit about keyboards.

So what to look at today? Something that would seem natural to Nau, but couldn't give them any more than they already had. Ah, yes, Trinli's super localizers. They'd be sitting in an out-of-the-way niche in some secure section. He followed a couple of threads, the obvious directions. This was a view of the library that no mere apprentice would have. Nau had obtained-in ways that Ezr imagined, and still gave him nightmares-top-level passwords and security parameters. Now Ezr had the same view that Captain Park himself could have had.

No luck. The pointers showed the localizers clearly. Their small size was not really a secret, but even their incidentals manifest did not show them as carrying sensors. The on-chip manuals were just as innocent of strange features. Hunh. So Trinli was claiming there were trapdoors in the manuals that were invisible even in a captain's view of the library?

The anger that had been churning his guts was momentarily forgotten. Ezr stared out at the data lands ranged around him, feeling suddenly relieved. Tomas Nau would see nothing strange in this situation. Except for Ezr Vinh, there might not be a single surviving Trader who would realize how absurd Trinli's story must be.

But Ezr Vinh had grown up in the heart of a great trading Family. As a child he had sat at the dinner table, listening to discussions of fleet strategies as they were really practiced. A Captain's level of access to his fleet library did not normally admit of further hidden features. Things-as always-could be lost; legacy applications were often so old that the search engines couldn't find relevance. But short of sabotage or a customizing, nonstandard Captain, there should be no isolated secrets. In the long run, such measures were simply too painful for the system maintainers.

Ezr would have laughed, except he suspected that these sanitized huds were reporting every sound he made back to Brughel's zipheads. Yet this was the first happy thought of the day. Trinli was bullshitting us! The old fraud bluffed about a lot of things, but he was usually careful with Tomas Nau. When it came time to give Reynolt the details, Trinli would scrounge in the chip manuals...and come up empty-handed. Somehow Ezr couldn't feel much sympathy for him; for once the old bastard would get what he deserved.

TWENTY-ONE.

Qiwi Lin Lisolet spent a lot of time out-of-doors. Maybe with the localizer gimmick Old Trinli was promising, that would change. Qiwi floated low across the old Diamond One/Two contact edge. Now it was in sunlight, the volatiles of the earlier years moved or boiled away. Where it was undisturbed, the surface of the diamond was gray and dull and smooth, almost opalescent. The sunlight eventually burned the top millimeter or so into graphite, kind of a micro-regolith, disguising the glitter below. Every ten meters along the edge there was a rainbow glint, where a sensor was set. The ejet emplacements extended off on either side. Even this close, you could scarcely see the activity, but Qiwi knew her gear: the electric jets sputtered in millisecond bursts, guided by the programs that listened to her sensors. And even that wasn't delicate enough. Qiwi spent more than two thirds of her duty time floating around the rockpile, adjusting the ejets-and still the rock quakes were dangerously large. With a finer sensor net and the programs that Trinli was claiming, it should be easy to design better firing regimes. Then there would be millions of quakes, but so small no one would notice. And then she wouldn't have to be here so much of the time. Qiwi wondered what it would be like to be on a low-duty cycle Watch schedule like most people. It would save medical resources, but it would also leave poor Tomas even more alone.

Her mind slid around the worry. There are things you can cure and things you can't; be grateful for what Trinli's localizers will make right. She floated up from the cleft, and checked with the rest of her maintenance crew.

"Just the usual problems," Floria Peres's voice sounded in her ear. Floria was coasting over the "upper slopes" of Diamond Three. That was above the rockpile's current zero-surface. They lost a few jets there every year. "Three loosened mountings...we caught them in time."

"Very good. I'll put Arn and Dima on it, I think we're done early." She smiled to herself. Plenty of time for the more interesting projects. She switched her comm away from her crew's public sequency. "Hey, Floria. You're in charge of the distillery this Watch, true?"

"Sure." There was a chuckle in the other's voice. "I try to get that job every time; working for you is just one of the unavoidable chores that come along with it."

"Well, I have some things for you. Maybe we can deal?"

"Oh, maybe." Floria was on a mere ten-percent duty cycle; even so, this was a dance they had been through before. Besides, she was Qeng Ho. "Meet me down at the distillery in a couple of thousand seconds. We can have tea."

The volatiles distillery sat at the end of its slow trek across the dark side of the rockpile. Its towers and retorts glistened with frost in the Arachna-light; in other places, it glowed with dull red heat where fractionation and recombination occurred. What came out was the simple stock materials for their factory and the organic sludges for the bactries. The core of the L1 distillery was from the Qeng Ho fleet. The Emergents had brought along similar equipment, but it had been lost in the fighting. Thank goodness it was ours that survived. The repairs and new construction had forced them to scavenge from all the ships. If the distillery core had been Emergent technology, they'd've been lucky to have anything working now.

Qiwi tied down her taxi a few meters from the distillery. She unloaded her thermal-wrapped cargo, and pulled herself along the guide ropes toward the entrance. Around her lay the sweeping drifts of their remaining hoard of volatiles: airsnow and ocean ice from the surface of Arachna. Those had come a long way, and cost a lot. Much of the original mass, especially the airsnow, had been lost in the Relight and chance illuminations since. The remainder had been pushed and balanced into the safest shadows, had been melted in a vain attempt to glue the rockpile together, had been used to breathe and eat and live. Tomas had plans to hollow out portions of Diamond One as a really secure capture cave. Maybe that wouldn't be necessary. As the sun slowly dimmed, it should be easier to save what was left. Meantime, the distillery made its slow progress-less than ten meters per year-through the drifts of ice and air. Behind, it left starglint on raw diamond, and a track of anchor holes.

Floria's control cubby was at the base of the distillery's rearmost towers. As part of the original Qeng Ho module, it had been nothing more than a pressurized hutch to eat and nap in. Over the years of the Exile, its various occupants had added to it. Coming in on it from ground level...Qiwi paused a moment. Most of her life was spent either in close-in rooms and tunnels, or in open emptiness. Floria's latest changes made this something in between. She could imagine what Ezr would say of this: It really did look like a little cabin, almost like the fairy-tale pictures of how a farmer might live in the snow-covered foothills of an ancient land, close to a glistening forest.

Qiwi climbed past the outriggers and anchor cables-the edge of the magic forest-and knocked on the cabin door.

Trading was always fun. She had tried so many times to explain that to Tomas. The poor fellow had a good heart, but he came from a culture that just could not understand.

Qiwi brought partial payment for Floria's most recent output: Inside the thermal wrap was a twenty-centimeter bonsai, something Papa had worked Msecs to build. Micro-dwarf ferns grew out into multiple canopies. Floria held the bonsai bubble close to the room's overhead light and looked up through the green. "The midges!"-submillimeter bugs. "They have colored wings!"

Qiwi had followed her friend's reaction with carefully pretended neutrality, but now she couldn't help herself, and she laughed. "I wondered if you would notice." The bonsai was smaller than Papa's usual, but it might be the most beautiful yet, better than anything Qiwi had ever seen in the library. She reached into the thermal wrap and brought out the other part of the payment. "And this is from Gonle, personally. It's a clasp stand for the bonsai."

"It's...wood." Floria had been charmed by the bonsai. Her reaction to the wood plate was more like amazement. She reached out to slide her fingers across the polished grain.

"We can make it by the tonne lot now, kind of a reverse dry rot. Of course, since Gonle grows it in vats, it looks a little strange." The stripes and whorls were biowaves caught in the grain of the wood. "We'd need more space and time to get real rings." Or maybe not; Papa thought he might be able to trick the biowaves into faking growth rings.

"Doesn't matter." Floria's voice was abstracted. "Gonle has won her bet...or your father has won it for her. Imagine. Real wood in quantity, not just twigs in a bonsai bubble, or brush in the temp's park." She looked at Qiwi's grinning face. "And I bet she figures this more than pays for past deals."

"Well...we hoped it would soften you up." They sat down, and Floria brought out the tea she had promised, from Gonle Fong's agris and before that from the mounds of volatiles and diamond that surrounded the distillery. The two of them worked through the list that Benny and Gonle had put together. The list was not just their orders, but the result of the brokering that went on day after day up in Benny's parlor. There were items here that were mainly for Emergent use. Lord, there were items in here that Tomas could have simply demanded, and that Ritser Brughel would certainly have demanded.

Floria's objections were a catalogue of technical problems, things she would need before she could undertake what was asked of the distillery. She would get all she could out of these deals, but in fact what was being asked of her was technically difficult. Once, in pre-Flight when Qiwi couldn't have been more than seven years old, Papa had taken her to a distillery at Triland. "This is what feeds the bactries, Qiwi, just as the bactries support the parks. Each layer is more wonderful than the one below it, but making even the lowliest distillery is a kind of art." Ali loved his high end of the job above all others, but he still respected those others. Floria Peres was a talented chemist, and the dead goo she made was a marvelous creation.

Four thousand seconds later, they had agreed on a web of perks and favors for the rest of Floria's Watch. They sat for a time, sipping a new batch of tea and idly discussing what they might try after the current goals were accomplished. Qiwi told her Trinli's claims about the localizers.

"That's good news, if the old fart isn't lying. Maybe now you won't have to live at such a high duty cycle." Floria looked across at Qiwi, and there was a strange, sad expression in her eyes. "You were a little girl, and now you're older than I am. You shouldn't have to burn your life out, child, just to keep a bunch of rocks lined up."

"It-It's not that bad. It needs to be done, even if we don't have the best medical support." Besides, Tomas is always on Watch and he needs my help. "And there are advantages to being up most of the time. I get into almost everything. I know where there are deals to be made, goodies to be scrounged. It makes me a better Trader."

"Hmm." Floria looked away, and then abruptly back. "This isn't trading! It's a silly game!" Her voice softened. "I'm sorry, Qiwi. You can't really know...but I know what trade is really like. I've been to Kielle. I've been to Canberra. This," she waved her hand, as if to encompass all of L1-"this is just pretend. You know why I always ask for this distillery job? I've made this control cubby into something like a home, where I can pretend. I can pretend I'm alone and far away. I don't have to live in the temp with Emergents who pretend they are decent human beings."

"But many of them are, Floria!"

Peres shook her head, and her voice rose. "Maybe. And maybe that's the most terrible part of it. Emergents like Rita Liao and Jau Xin. Just folks, eh? And every day they use other human beings like less than animals, like-like machine parts. Even worse, that's their living. Isn't Liao a 'programmer manager' and Xin a 'pilot manager'? The greatest evil in the universe, and they lap it up and then sit down with us in Benny's parlor, and we accept them!" Her voice scaled up to just short of a shriek, and she was abruptly silent. She closed her eyes tight, and tears floated gently downward through the air.

Qiwi reached out to touch Floria's hand, not knowing if the other might simply strike her. This was a pain she saw in various people. Some she could reach. Others, like Ezr Vinh, held it so rigidly secret that all she felt was a hint of hidden, pulsing rage.

Floria was silent, hunched over on herself. But after a moment she grasped Qiwi's hand in both her own and bowed her head toward it, weeping. Her words were choked, almost unintelligible. "...don't blame you... I really don't. I know 'bout your father." She gasped on silent sobs, and after a moment her words came more clearly. "I know you love this Tomas Nau. That's okay. He couldn't manage without you, but we'd probably all be dead then, too."

Qiwi put her other arm around the woman's shoulders. "But I don't love him." The words popped out, surprising her. And Floria looked up, surprised too.

"I mean, I respect him. He saved me when things were worst, after Jimmy killed my mother. But-" Strange to be talking to Floria like this, saying words that before she had said only inside herself. Tomas needed her. He was a good man raised in a terrible, evil system. The proof of his goodness was that he had come as far as he had, that he understood the evil and worked to end it. Qiwi doubted that she could have done as much; she would have been more like Rita and Jau, dumbly accepting, grateful to have evaded the net of Focus. Tomas Nau really wanted to change things. But love him? For all his humor, love, wisdom, there was a...remoteness...to Tomas. She hoped he never realized she felt that about him. And I hope subversive Floria has disabled Ritser's bugs.

Qiwi pushed the thoughts away. For a moment she and Floria just stared at each other, surprised to see the other's heart exposed. Hmm. She gave Floria a little pat on the shoulder. "I've known you for more than a year of shared Watch, and this is the first time there's been any hint you felt this way..."

Floria released Qiwi's hand, and wiped at the tears that still stood in her eyes. Her voice was almost under control. "Yeah. Before, I could always keep a lid on it. 'Lie low,' I told myself, 'and be a proper little conquered Peddler.' We're naturally good at that, don't you think? Maybe it comes from having the long view. But now...You know I had a sister in-fleet?"

"No." I'm sorry. There had been so many Qeng Ho in the fleet before the fighting, and little Qiwi had known so few.

"Luan was a wild card, not too bright, but good with people...the sort a wise Fleet Captain throws in the mix." A smile came close to surfacing, then drowned in bleak remembrance. "I have a doctorate in chemical engineering, but they Focused Luan and left me free. It should have been me, but they took her instead."

Floria's face twisted with guilt that should not have been. Maybe Floria was immune to permanent infection by the mindrot, like many of the Qeng Ho. Or maybe not. Tomas needed at least as many free as Focused, else the system would die the death of details. Qiwi opened her mouth to explain, but Floria wasn't listening.

"I lived with that. And I kept track of Luan. They Focused her on their art. Watch-on-Watch, she and her gang carved out those friezes on Hammerfest. You probably saw her a hundred times."

Yes, that is surely true. The carving gangs were the lowest of the Focused jobs. It wasn't the high creation of Ali Lin or the translators. The patterns of the Emergent "legend art" left nothing to creativity. The workers beetled down the diamond corridors, centimeter by centimeter, scooping tiny bits from the walls according to the master pattern. Ritser's original plan had been that the project burn up all the "waste human resources," working them without medical care unto death.

"But they don't work Watch-on-Watch anymore, Floria." That had been one of Qiwi's earliest triumphs over Ritser Brughel. The carving was made lighter work, and medical resources were made available to all who remained awake. The carvers would live through the Exile, to the manumissions that Tomas had promised.

Floria nodded. "Right, and even though our Watches were almost disjoint, I still kept track of Luan. I used to hang around the corridors, pretending to be passing through whenever other people came along. I even talked to her about that damn filthy art she loved; it was the only thing she could talk about, 'The Defeat of the Frenkisch Orc'" Floria all but spat the title. Her anger faded, and she seemed to wilt. "Even so, I still could see her and maybe, if I was a good little Peddler, she would be free someday. But now..." She turned to look at Qiwi and her voice once more lost its steadiness. "...now she's gone, not even on the roster. They claim her coffin failed. They claim she died in coldsleep. The lying, treacherous, bastards..."

Qeng Ho coldsleep boxes were so safe that the failure rate was a kind of statistical guess, at least under proper use and for spans of less than 4Gsec. Emergent equipment was flakier, and since the fighting, nobody's gear was absolutely trustable. Luan's death was most likely a terrible accident, just another echo of the madness that had nearly killed them all. And how can I convince poor Floria of this? "I guess we can't be certain of anything we are told, Floria. The Emergents have an evil system. But...I was on one hundred percent Watch for a long time. I'm on fifty percent even now. I've been into almost everything. And you know, in all that time, I haven't caught Tomas in a lie."

"Okay," grudgingly.

"And why would anyone want to kill Luan?"

"I didn't say 'kill.' And maybe your Tomas doesn't know. See, I wasn't the only one who hung around the diamond carvers. Twice, I saw Ritser Brughel. Once he had all the women together, and was behind them, just watching. The other time...the other time it was just him and Luan."

"Oh." The word came out very small.

"I don't have evidence. What I saw was nothing more than a gesture, a posture, a look on a man's face. And so I was silent, and now Luan is gone."

Floria's paranoia suddenly seemed quite plausible. Ritser Brughel was a monster, a monster barely held in check by the Podmaster system. The memory of their confrontation had never left Qiwi, the slap slap slap of his steel baton in his hands as he raged at her. At the time, Qiwi had felt angry triumph at putting him down. Since, she'd realized how scared she should have been. Without Tomas, she surely would have died then...or worse. Ritser knew what would happen if he was caught.

Faking a death, even committing an unsanctioned execution, was tricky. The Podmasters had their own peculiar record-keeping requirements. Unless Ritser was very clever, there would be clues. "Listen, Floria. There are ways I can check on this. You could be right about Luan, but one way or another we'll find out the truth. And if you're right-well, there's no way Tomas can put up with such abuse. He needs all the Qeng Ho cooperating, or none of us have a chance."

Floria looked at her solemnly, then reached round to give her a fierce hug. Qiwi could feel the shivers that passed through her body, but she wasn't crying. After a long moment, Floria said, "Thank you. Thank you. This last Msec, I've been so frightened...so ashamed."

"Ashamed?"

"I love Luan, but Focus made her a stranger. I should have screamed bloody murder when I heard she was gone. Hell, I should have complained when I saw Brughel with her. But I was afraid for myself. Now..." Floria loosened her grip and regarded Qiwi with a shaky smile. "Now, maybe I've endangered someone else, too. But at least you have a chance...and you know, it's possible that she's alive even now, Qiwi. If we can find her soon enough."

Qiwi raised her palm. "Maybe, maybe. Let's see what I can discover."

"Yes." They finished their tea, discussed everything Floria could remember about her sister and what she had seen. She was doing her best now to seem calm, but relief and nervousness made her words come a bit too fast, made her gestures a bit too broad.

Qiwi helped her set the bonsai bubble and its wood stand in brackets beneath the room's main light. "I can get you lots more wood. Gonle really, really wants you to program for meta-crylates. You might want to panel your home with polished wood, like old-time captains did their inner cabins."

Floria looked around her little space, and played along. "I could indeed. Tell her, maybe we can do a deal."

And then Qiwi was standing at the lock's inner door, and pulling down her coverall hood. For a moment, the fear was back in Floria's face. "Be careful, Qiwi."

"I will."

Qiwi took her taxi through the rest of its stops, inspecting the rockpile, posting problems and changes to the ziphead net. Meantime, her mind raced down scary corridors. It was just as well she had this time to think. If Floria was right, then even with Tomas on her side, this could be very dangerous. Ritser was just into too many things. If he was sabotaging the coldsleep or falsifying death records, then big parts of Tomas's net had been subverted.

Does Ritser suspect that I know? Qiwi glided down across the canyon that separated Diamond Three from Diamond Four. Arachna's blue light shone from directly behind her, illuminating the caves that were the rough interface between the blocks. There was sublimation from some of the water glue. It was too fine to show on the sensor grid, but when she hovered with her face just centimeters from the surface she could see it. Even as she called in the problem, another part of her mind was turning on the deadlier question: Floria was clever enough to sweep her little cabin, even the outside. And Qiwi was very careful with her suit. Tomas had given her permission to disable all its bugs, both official and covert. On the net it was a different story. If Ritser was doing what Floria thought, then very likely he was monitoring even pod communications. It would be tricky to discover anything without tipping him off.

So be very, very careful. She needed an excuse for anything she did now. Ah. The personnel studies that she and Ezr had been assigned. Coasting up from her inspection of the rockpile, it would be reasonable for her to work on that. She put in a low-priority call to Ezr asking for a conference, then downloaded a large block of the Watch and personnel database. The records on Luan would be in there, but they were now cached locally, and her processors were covered by Tomas's own security.

She brought up the bio on Luan Peres. Yes, reported dead in coldsleep. Qiwi flicker-read down through the text. There was lots of jargon, conjecture about how the unit had failed. Qiwi had had years to practice with coldsleep gear, if only as a front-end technician. She could more or less follow the discussion, though it seemed like the florid overkill of a rambling ziphead, what you might get if you asked a Focused person to invent a credible failure.

The taxi floated out of the rockpile's shadow and the sunlight washed away the quiet blues of Arachna-light. The rockpile sunside was naked rock, graphite on diamond. Qiwi dimmed the view and turned back to the report on Luan. It was almost a clean report. It might have fooled her if she hadn't been suspicious or if she hadn't known all the requirements of Emergent doc. Where were the third and fourth crosschecks on the autopsy? Reynolt always wanted her zips to do that; the woman lost what little flexibility she had when it came to ziphead fatalities.

The report was bogus. Tomas would understand that the moment she pointed it out to him.

A chime sounded in her ear. "Ezr, hello." Damn. Her call to him had just been a cover, an excuse to download a big block and look at Luan's records. But here he was. For a moment, he seemed to be sitting next to her in the taxi. Then the image flickered as her huds figured out they couldn't manage the illusion, and settled for putting him in a fixed position pseudo-display. Behind him were the blue-green walls of the Hammerfest attic. He was visiting Trixia, of course.

The picture was more than good enough to show the impatience in his face. "I decided to get right back to you. You know I go off-Watch in sixty Ksec."

"Yes, sorry to bother you. I've been looking over the personnel stats. For that planning committee stuff you and I are stuck with? Anyway, I came up with a question." Her mind raced ahead of her words, searching madly for some issue that would justify this call. Funny how the least attempt at deception always seemed to make life more complicated. She stumbled along for a few sentences, finally came up with a really stupid question about specialist mixing.

Ezr was looking at her a little strangely now. He shrugged. "You're asking about the end of the Exile, Qiwi. Who knows what we'll need when the Spiders are ready for contact. I thought we were going to bring all specialties out of coldsleep then, and run flat out."

"Of course, that's the plan, but there are details-" Qiwi weaseled her way toward credibility. The main thing was just to end the conversation. "-so I'll think about this some more. Let's have a real meeting after you get back on from coldsleep."

Ezr grimaced. "That will be a while. I'm off for fifty Msec." Most of two years.

"What?" That was more than four times as long as his usual off-Watch.

"You know, new faces and all that." There were branches of his Watch tree that had not had much time. Tomas and the manager committee-Qiwi and Ezr included!-had thought everyone should get hands-on time and exposure to the usual training courses.

"You're starting a little early." And 50Msec was longer than she expected.

"Yeah. Well, you have to start someplace." He looked away from the video pov. At Trixia? When he looked back, his tone was less impatient but somehow more urgent. "Look, Qiwi. I'm going to be on ice for a big fifty, and even afterwards I'll be on a low duty cycle for a while." He raised a hand as if to forestall objections. "I'm not complaining! I participated in the decisions myself... But Trixia will be on-Watch all that time. That's longer than she has ever been alone. There'll be nobody to stand up for her."

Qiwi wished she could reach out and comfort him. "No one will harm her, Ezr."

"Yeah, I know. She's too valuable to harm. Just like your father." Something flickered in his eyes, but it wasn't the usual anger. Poor Ezr was begging her. "They'll keep her body working, they'll keep her moderately clean. But I don't want her hassled any more than she already is. Keep an eye on her, Qiwi. You have real power, at least over small fish like Trud Silipan."

It was the first time Ezr had really asked her for help.

"I'll watch out for her, Ezr," Qiwi said softly. "I promise."

After he rang off, Qiwi sat unmoving for several seconds. Strange that a phone call that was an accident and a scam should have such an impact. But Ezr had always had that effect on her. When she was thirteen, Ezr Vinh had seemed the most wonderful man in the universe-and the only way she could get his attention was by goading him. Such teenage crushes should vape away, right? Occasionally she wondered if the Diem massacre had somehow stunted her soul, trapped her affections as they were in the last innocent days before all the death... Whatever the reason, it felt good that she could do something for him.

Maybe paranoia was contagious. Luan Peres dead. Now Ezr gone for even longer than they had planned. I wonder who actually specified that Watch change? Qiwi looked back through her cache. The schedule change was nominally from the Watch-manager committee...with Ritser Brughel doing the actual sign-off. That happened often enough; one Podmaster or the other had to sign for all such changes.

Qiwi's taxi continued its slow coast upward. From this distance, the rockpile was a craggy jumble, Diamond Two in sunlight, the glare obscuring all but the brightest stars. It might have been a wilderness scene except for the regular form of the Qeng Ho temp gleaming off to the side. With augmented vision, Qiwi could see the dozens of warehouses of the L1 system. Down in the shade of the rockpile were Hammerfest and the distillery, and the arsenal at L1-A. In the spaces around orbited the temp, the warehouses, the junked and semi-junked starships that had brought them all here. Qiwi used them as a kind of soft auxiliary to the electric jets. It was a well-tended dynamical system, even though it did look like chaos compared to the close mooring of the early Exile.

Qiwi took in the configuration with practiced eyes, even as her mind considered the much more treacherous problems of political intrigue. Ritser Brughel's private domain, the old QHS Invisible Hand, was outward from the pile, less than two thousand meters from her taxi; she would pass less than fifteen hundred meters from its throat. Hmm. So, what if Ritser had kidnapped Luan Peres? That would be his boldest move ever against Tomas. And maybe it's not the only thing. If Ritser could get away with this, there might be other deaths. Ezr.