Sherk hesitated, then leaned forward to stroke his guide-bug's carapace fur. The creature was. large, must have weighed seventy pounds, but it looked gentle and smart. After a moment, the bug began purring. "I wish the rest of you were as easy to please as Mobiy here. But yes, we do have a lot to talk about." He reached under a filigreed table-the thing looked like a Treppen-dynasty original, something that had survived four passages through the deepnesses of some rich family-and pulled out one of the plastic bags that Hrunk had brought from High Equatoria. He set it on the table with a thump. Wisps of rock flour spread across the polished wood.

"I boggle, Hrunk! Your magic rock dust! What put you on to this? You make one little detour-and bag a secret that all our external intelligence had totally missed."

"Wait, wait. You make it sound like somebody fell down on the job." Some people might look very bad unless he set things straight. "This was outside channels, but Rachner Thract cooperated with me one hundred percent. He loaned me the two cobbers that I came in with. More important, it was his agents at High Equatoria-you know the story?" Four of Thract's people had trekked across the altiplano, brought back that rock flour from the Kindred's inner refinery.

Smith nodded. "Yes. Don't worry, I blame myself for missing this. We've gotten too confident with all our technical superiority."

Sherkaner was chuckling. "Quite so." He poked around in the rock flour. The lights in here were bright and full-color, much better than down in airport customs. But even in good light, the powder looked like nothing more than shale-colored dust-upland equatorial shale, if one were well-trained in mineralogy. "But I still don't see how you came upon this-even as a possibility."

Unnerby leaned back. Actually, the pillows felt pretty good compared with third-class passenger webbing. "Well, you remember, about five years ago, that joint Kindred-Accord expedition to the center of the altiplano? They had a couple of physicists who claimed gravity was screwball there."

"Yes. They thought the mine shafts there would be a good place to establish a new lower boundary for the equivalence principle; instead they found big differences, which depended on the time of day. As you say, they got screwball answers, but they retracted the whole thing after they recalibrated."

"That's the story-but when I was putting in the power plant for West Undergate, I ran into one of the Accord physicists from that expedition. Triga Deepdug is a solid engineer, even if she is a physicist; I got to know her pretty well, Anyway, she claimed that the experimental method on that first expedition was fine, and that she was squeezed out of later participation... So I began to wonder about that huge open-pit mining operation the Kindred started on the altiplano just a year after the expedition. That's almost centered on the physics site-and they had to build five hundred miles of rail to serve it."

"They found copper," said Smith. "A good strike, and that's no lie."

Unnerby smiled at her. "Of course. Anything less and you would have tumbled to it right away. But still...the copper mine is a marginal operation. And my physicist friend knows her business. The more I thought about it, the more I thought it would be nice to see what's going on there." He waved at the bag of rock powder. "What you see there is from their third-level refining. The Kindredian miners had to go through several hundred tons of Equatoria shale to filter out this little packet. My guess is they filter it another hundredfold before they get their final product."

Smith nodded. "And I'll wager that is kept in harder vaults than the Tiefer holy gemstones."

"Sure. Thract's team didn't come close to the final product." Hrunkner tapped at the rock powder with the tip of one hand. "I hope this is enough that you can prove we found something."

"Oh, it is. It is!"

Unnerby stared at Sherk in surprise. "You've had it hardly four hours!"

"You know me, Hrunk. This may be a vacation resort, but I've got my hobbies." And a laboratory to pursue them, no doubt. "Under proper lighting, your rock flour weighs almost half a percent less than otherwise... Congratulations, Sergeant, you've discovered antigravity."

"I-" Triga Deepdug had been so sure, but until now Unnerby hadn't really believed. "Okay, Mister Instant Analysis, how does it work?"

"Beats me!" Sherk was practically vibrating with glee. "You've found something genuinely new. Why, not even the..." He seemed to be searching for words, then settled for: "But it's a subtle thing. I ground a sample of the dust even finer-and you know, nothing floats off the top; you can't distill the 'antigravity fraction.' I think we're seeing some kind of group effect. My lab here isn't up to doing more. I'm going to fly back to Princeton with this first thing tomorrow. Besides its magic weight, there's only one strange thing I've found. These upland shales always have some diamond foram content, but in this stuff the smallest forams-the millionth-inch hexens-are enriched by a factor of a thousand. I want to look for evidence of classical fields in the dust. Maybe these foram particles mediate something. Maybe-" And Skerkaner Underhill was off into a dozen speculations, and plans for a dozen dozen tests to extract the truth from those speculations. As he talked, the years seemed to fall away from him. He still had the tremor, but all his hands had come away from his guide-bug's leash, and his voice was full of joy. It was the enthusiasm that had pushed his students and Unnerby and Victory Smith to make a new world. As he spoke, Victory rose from her perch and came over to sit close beside him. She draped her right arms across his shoulders and gave him a sharp, rippling hug.

Unnerby felt himself grinning back at Sherkaner, captured by the other's words. "Remember all the trouble you got into on the children's radio hour? Saying 'all the sky can be our deepness'? By God, Sherk, with this stuff, who needs rockets? We can hoist real ships into space. We can finally find out what caused those lights we saw in the Dark! Maybe we can even find other worlds out there."

"Yes, but-" Sherkaner began, but suddenly weaker, almost as if getting manic enthusiasm reflected back on him made him realize all the problems that stood between dream and reality. "But, um, we still have Honored Pedure and the Kindred to contend with."

Hrunkner remembered his walk through the bottom forest. And we still have to learn to live in the Dark.

The years seemed to come back down upon Sherkaner. He reached out to pet Mobiy, and set two other hands on the animal's leash. "Yes, there are so many problems." He shrugged, as if acknowledging his age and the distance to his dreams. "But I can't do anything more to save the world till I get to Princeton. This evening is my best chance in a while to see how crowds react to the Dark. What did you think of our First Day of the Dark, Hrunk?"

Down from the heights of hope, head to head with the limitations of Spiderkind. "It was-scary, Sherk. We've given up all the rules one by one, and I saw what's left down there this afternoon. Even-even if we win against Pedure, I'm not sure what we'll be left with."

The old grin wavered across Sherkaner's aspect. "It's not that bad, Hrunk." He came slowly to his feet and Mobiy guided him toward the door. "Most folks left in Calorica are foolish old-money rich...you have to expect a little dissipation. But there's still something to be learned by watching them." He waved at the General. "I'm going to take a walk around the bottom of the ringwall, my dear. These young folks may have some interesting insights."

Smith came off her pillows, walked around Mobiy to give her husband a little hug. "You'll take the usual security team? No tricks?"

"Of course." And Hrunkner had the feeling her request was deadly serious, that since twelve years ago Sherkaner and all the Underhill children were very good about accepting protection.

The jade doors closed softly behind Sherkaner, and Unnerby and the General were alone. Smith returned to her perch, and the silence stretched long. How many years had it been since he had talked to the General in person without a roomful of staff around? They exchanged electronic mail constantly. Unnerby wasn't officially on Smith's staff, but the fission-plant program was the single most important civilian part of her plan, and he took her advice as his command, moving from city to city according to her schedule, doing his best to build to her specs and her deadlines-and still keep the commercial contractors happy. Almost every day, Unnerby was on the phone to her staff. Several times a year they met at staff meetings.

Since the kidnappings...the barrier between them had been a fortress wall. The barrier had existed before that, growing year by year as her children grew; but before Gokna's death, they could always reach over it. Now, it felt very strange to be sitting here alone with the General.

The silence stretched on, the two of them staring at each other and pretending not to. The air was stale and cold, as if the room had been shut for a long time. Hrunkner forced his attention to wander across the baroque tables and cabinets, all painted with a dozen colored varnishes. Practically every piece of woodwork looked a couple of generations old. Even the pillows and their embroidered fabric were in the overdone style of the Generation 58. Yet he could tell that Sherk really worked here. The perch on his right was by a desk littered with gadgets and papers. He recognized Underhill's shaky penmanship in one title: "Videomancy for High Payload Steganography."

Abruptly, the General broke the tense silence. "You did well, Sergeant." She stood, and walked across the room to sit closer to him, on the perch in front of Sherk's desk. "We had totally missed what the Kindred had discovered here. And we'd still be clueless if you hadn't brought the matter up with Thract."

"Rachner set up the operation, ma'am. He's turned out to be a good officer."

"Yes...I'd appreciate it if you'd let me do any follow-up on this with him."

"Sure." Need to know and all that.

And then there was more silence with nothing to say. Finally, Hrunkner waved at the absurd pillow furniture, the smallest worth a sergeant's yearly salary. Except for Sherk's desk, there was not a sign of either of his friends in this place. "You don't come here often, do you?"

"No," she said shortly. "Sherk wanted to see how people live after the Dark-and this is as near as we could get to it before we all do it ourselves. Besides, it seemed like a safe place to bring our youngest." She looked at him defiantly.

How not to make an argument out of this? "Yes, well I'm glad you sent them home to Princeton. They're...they're good cobblies, ma'am, but this is not a good place for them. I had the strangest feeling down there on the bottom. The people were afraid, like the old stories about folks who don't plan and then are left alone in the Dark. They don't have any goal, and now it's Dark."

Smith sat a little lower on her perch. "We've got millions of years of evolution to battle; sometimes that's harder to deal with than nuclear physics and the Honored Pedure. But people will get used to it."

That was what Sherkaner Underhill would have said, all smiling and oblivious of the uneasiness around him. But Smith sounded more like a trooper in a hole, repeating the High Command's assurances about enemy weakness. Suddenly he remembered how thoroughly she had shuttered every one of the windows. "You feel the same as I do about it, don't you?"

For a moment he thought she would blow up. Instead, she sat inscrutably silent. Finally, "...You're right, Sergeant. As I said, there's a lot of instinct we're running up against." She shrugged. "Somehow, it doesn't bother Sherkaner at all. Or rather, he knows the fear and it fascinates him, just another wonderful puzzle. Every day he goes down to the crater bottom and watches. He even mingles, bodyguards and guide-bug and all-you have to see it to believe it. He would have been down there all today if you hadn't shown up with your own kind of fascinating puzzle."

Unnerby smiled. "That's Sherk for you." Maybe he was on a safe topic. "Did you see how he lit up when we talked about my 'magic rock dust'? I can't wait to see what he does with it. What happens when you give a miracle to a miracle worker?"

Smith seemed to search for words. "We'll figure out the rock dust, that's certain. Eventually. But...hell, Hrunkner, you deserve to know. You've been with Sherk as long as I have. You noticed how his tremor is getting worse? The truth is, he's not aging as well as most in your generation."

"I noticed he's frail, but look at all the results coming out of Princeton these days. He's doing more than ever."

"Yes. Indirectly. Over the years, he's brought together a larger and larger circle of genius students. There are hundreds of them now, scattered all over the computer net."

"...But all those papers by 'Tom Lurksalot'? I thought that was Sherk and his students being coy."

"That? No. That's...that's only his students being coy. They play anonymous games on the net; they make credit-taking into a guessing game. It's just...silliness."

Silly or not, it was amazingly productive. Over the last few years, "Tom Lurksalot" had provided breakthrough insights about everything from nucleonics to computer science to industrial standards. "It's hard to believe. Just now, he seemed the same as always-mentally, I mean. The ideas seemed to come as fast as ever." A dozen weird ideas a minute, when he's on a roll. Unnerby smiled to himself, remembering. Flightiness, thy name is Underhill.

The General sighed, and her voice was soft and distant. She might have been talking about made-up storybook characters, not her own personal tragedy. "Sherk has had thousands of crazy ideas and hundreds of beautiful winners. But that's...changed. My dear Sherkaner hasn't come up with anything new in three years. He's into videomancy these days, did you know that? He has all his old flamboyance, but..." Smith's voice guttered into silence.

For almost forty years, Victory Smith and Sherkaner Underhill had been a team, Underhill producing an endless avalanche of ideas and Smith selecting the best and feeding them back to him. Sherk used to describe the process more colorfully, back when he thought artificial intelligence was the wave of the future: "I'm the idea-generating component and Victory is the crap-detector; we're an intelligence greater than anything on ten legs." These two had transformed the world.

But now...what if half the team had lost its genius? Sherk's brilliant whimsy had kept the General on track as much as the reverse. Without Sherk, Victory Smith was left with her own assets: courage, strength, persistence. Was that enough?

Victory didn't say anything more for a time. And Hrunkner wished that he could walk over and put his arms across her shoulders...but sergeants, even old sergeants, don't do that to generals.

FORTY-TWO.

The years had passed, and the danger had grown. More implacably than any human Pham had ever known, Reynolt kept searching and searching. As far as possible, he had avoided manipulating the zipheads. He had even arranged for his operations to continue while he was off-Watch; that was very risky, but it evaded the obvious correlations. It didn't help. Now Reynolt seemed to have concrete suspicions. Pham's tracers showed her searches intensifying, closing in on her suspect-most likely Pham Nuwen. There was no cure for it. However risky the operation, Anne must be eliminated. The open house for Nau's new "office" might be the best chance Pham would get.

"North Paw" was what Tomas Nau called it. Most everybody else-certainly the Qeng Ho who did the engineering-called it simply the Lake Park. Now everyone on-Watch had their one opportunity to see the final result.

The last of the crowd was still trickling in when Nau appeared on the porch of his timbered lodge. He wore a glistening full-press jacket and green pants. "Keep your feet on the ground, people. My Qiwi has invented a whole special etiquette for North Paw." He was smiling, and those in the crowd laughed. Gravity on Diamond One was more of a hint than a physical law. Around the lodge, the "ground" was cleverly textured grabfelt. So everyone did have feet on the ground, but their notion of vertical was only a vague consensus. Beside him on the porch, Qiwi was chuckling at the appearance of the hundreds of people standing before them, tilting this way and that like drunks. A black-furred kitten lay curled across the lace of her blouse.

Nau raised his hands again. "My people, my friends. This afternoon, please enjoy and admire what you have built here. And think about it. Thirty-eight years ago we nearly destroyed ourselves in battle and in treachery. For most of you, that time is not so long ago, just ten or twelve years on-Watch. You remember after that, how I said this was a time like the Plague Years on Balacrea. We had destroyed most of the resources we brought here, we had destroyed our starfaring capabilities. To survive, I said, we must put aside the animosities, and work together no matter how different our backgrounds... Well, my friends, we did that. We are not out of physical danger; our destiny with the Spiders is still to be. But look around you, and you will see how we have healed ourselves. You all built this from the bare rock and ice and airsnow. This North Paw-Lake Park-is not large, but it is a work of highest art. Look upon it. You've made something that rivals the best that whole civilizations might create.

"I'm proud of you." He reached out to slip his arm across Qiwi's shoulders, displacing the kitten into the crook of Qiwi's arm. Once upon a time, the relationship between Nau and Lisolet had been an ugly rumor. Now-Pham could see people smiling comfortably at the sight. "You see this is more than a park, more than a Podmaster's sanctum. What you see here is evidence of something new in the universe, a melding of the best that Qeng Ho and Emergent have to offer. Emergent Focused persons-" Pham noticed that he still didn't talk about the slaves as bluntly as he might. "-did the detailed planning for this park. Qeng Ho trade and individual action made it reality. And I personally have learned something: On Balacrea and Frenk and Gaspr, we Podmasters rule for the community good, but we rule largely by personal direction-and often by force of law. Here, working with you former Qeng Ho, I see another way. I know that the work on my park was accomplished as payback for that silly pink scrip you've been hiding from me for so long." He raised a hand and several bills fluttered into the air. Laughter passed around the crowd again. "So! Think what the combination of Podmaster direction and Qeng Ho efficiency can do once we have completed our mission!"

He bowed to enthusiastic applause. Qiwi slipped in front of him, to stand at the porch railing-and the applause just got louder. The kitten, finally fed up with the noise and the jostling, jumped off Qiwi's arm and sailed into the air over the crowd. It unfurled soft wings and slowed its upward trajectory, then curved back to circle over its mistress. "Take note," Qiwi said to the crowd, "Miraow is allowed to fly here. But she has wings!" The cat made a mock dive at her, then flew off into the forest that grew all around the inland side of Nau's lodge. "Now I invite you to the side of the Podmaster's house for refreshments."

Some of the visitors were already there. The rest shuffled round the pathways to trestled tables that bowed subtly downward, as if from the weight of the food that was set upon them. Pham moved along with everyone, loudly greeting anyone who would talk with him. It was important to establish his presence here in as many minds as possible. Meantime, in the back of his eyes, the view from his tiny spies built up the tactical picture of the park and the forest.

Cultures clashed at the food tables, but by now Benny's parlor had established an etiquette for going after food. In a few moments, most people had their first buckets and bottles full of refreshment, and spread back into the open. Pham walked up behind Benny and slapped him on the back. "Benny! This stuff is good! But I thought you were supplying."

Benny Wen swallowed, coughing. "Of course it's good. And of course it's mine-and Gonle's." He nodded at the former quartermaster clerk who was standing beside him. "Actually, Qiwi's father sprouted some new stuff he found in the libraries. We've had it for about half a year now, saving it for this party."

Pham puffed himself up: "I did my part out-of-doors. Someone had to supervise the added drilling and the melt-water for the Podmaster's lake."

Gonle Fong showed her mercenary smile. More than any Qeng Ho-in a way more than Qiwi herself-Fong bought into Tomas Nau's "cooperative vision." Gonle had done very well by doing good. "Everybody got something out of this. My farms are openly endorsed by the Podmaster now. And I've got real automation."

"You have something better than a keyboard now?" Pham said slyly.

"You bet. And today, I'm in charge of services." She lifted her hand dramatically and a food tray floated docilely over to them. It rotated beneath her hand, bobbed politely as she grabbed at spiced seaweed. Then it moved to Benny and then Pham. Pham's little spies looked at the gadget from all directions. The tray maneuvered on tiny gas jets, almost silently. It was mechanically simple, but it moved with grace and intelligence. Benny noticed too. "It's controlled by a Focused person?" he said, sounding a little sad.

"Um, yes. The Podmaster thought it worthwhile, considering the event." Pham watched the other trays. They swept in wide circles, out from the food tables, picking out just the guests who hadn't been fed. Clever. The slaves were kept diplomatically offstage, and people could pretend what Nau had often declared, that Focus took civilization to a higher level. But Nau is right! Damn him.

Pham said something appropriately truculent to Gonle Fong, words that showed that "old fart Trinli" was truly impressed but determined not to admit it. He walked out from the center of the crowd, apparently intent on food. Hmm. Ritser Brughel was off-Watch just now-another cleverness of Tomas Nau. Many people bought into some part of Nau's "vision" nowadays, but Ritser Brughel could unnerve even the fully converted. But if Brughel was off-Watch, and if Nau and Reynolt were diverting rote-layer zipheads to manual serving...this was a chance even better than he had thought. So where is Reynolt? The woman could be surprisingly hard to track; sometimes she dropped off Brughel's direct monitor list for Ksecs at a time. Pham pushed his attention outward. There were millions of the tiny particles scattered throughout the park. The ones stabilizing the lake and running the ventilators were mostly tasked, but that still left immense processing power. No way he could handle all the viewpoints and images. As his mind swept back and forth though the park, he was vaguely aware that he was swaying on his feet. Aha, there! Not a close view, but there inside Nau's lodge, he had a glimpse of Reynolt's red hair and pinkish skin. As expected, the woman wasn't participating in the festivities. She was hunched over an Emergent input pad, her eyes hidden behind stark black huds. She looked the same as ever. Tense, intense, as if on the verge of some deadly insight. And for all I know, she is.

Someone whacked him on the shoulder, as hard as he had struck Benny a few moments earlier. "So Pham, my man, what do you think?"

Pham pushed away the inner visions and looked around at his assailant: Trud Silipan had dressed up for the event. His uniform was like nothing he'd seen except in some Emergent historicals: blue silk, fringed and tasseled, and somehow imitating torn, stained rags. It was the dress of the First Followers, Trud had once told him. Pham let his surprise become exaggerated. "What do I think about what-your uniform or the view?"

"The view, the view! I'm in uniform just because this is such a milestone. You heard the Podmaster's speech. Go ahead, you take a few more moments. Take in the view of Lake Park, and tell me what you think."

Behind them, Pham's inner vision showed Ezr Vinh bearing down on them. Damn. "Well-"

"Yes, what do you think, Armsman Trinli?" Vinh walked around till he stood facing them. He looked straight into Pham's eyes for an instant. "Of all the Qeng Ho here, you are the oldest, most traveled. Of all of us, you must have the deepest experience. How does the Podmaster's North Paw compare to the great parks of the Qeng Ho?"

Vinh's words had a double meaning that went unnoticed by Trud Silipan, but Pham felt an instant of cold rage. You're part of the reason I have to kill Anne Reynolt, you little jerk. Nau's "true" histories of Pham Nuwen had eaten into the boy. For at least a year now, it was clear that he understood the true story of Brisgo Gap, And he guessed what Pham really wanted with Focus. His demands for guarantees and reassurance had become more and more pointed.

The localizers painted false-color images of Ezr Vinh's face, showed his blood pressure and skin temperature. Could a good ziphead snoop look at such pictures and guess that the boy was playing some kind of game? Maybe. The boy's hate for Nau and Brughel still outweighed his feelings against Pham Nuwen; Pham could still use him. But he was one more reason why Reynolt must be removed.

The thoughts passed through Pham's mind even as his mouth twisted into a self-satisfied smirk. "Putting it that way, my boy, you're absolutely right. Book learning can't compare to traveling the light-years and seeing the sights with your own two eyes." He turned away from them and looked down the footpath, past the lodge, to the moorage and the lake beyond. Pretend to be thoughtfully considering.

He had spent Msecs invisibly prowling this construction; it should have been easy to play his proper role. But standing here, he could feel the air drifting slowly out of the trees behind him. It was moist, faintly chill, with a tarry scent that whispered of a thousand kilometers of forest stretching out behind him. Sunlight came warm through high patchy clouds. That, too, was fake. Nowadays, the real sun was not as bright as a decent moon. But the light systems embedded in the diamond sky could imitate almost any visual effect The only clue to the fakery was the faint shimmering rainbows that arched across the farther distances...

Down the hill from him was the lake itself. That was Qiwi's triumph. The water was real, thirty meters deep in places. Qiwi's network of servos and localizers kept it stable, the surface flat and smooth, reflecting clouds and blue from overhead. The Podmaster's lodge overlooked a moorage that sat at the head of an inlet. The inlet spread and spread. Kilometers out-actually less than two hundred meters-two rocky islands rose from the mists, guarding the far shore.

The place was a Lord-blessed masterpiece. "It's a tresartnis," said Pham, but he made the word sound like an insult.

Silipan frowned. "What-?"

Ezr said, "It's parkbuilder jargon. It means-"

"Oh, yes. I've heard the word: a park or a bonsai that goes to extremes." Trud puffed up defensively. "Well, it is extreme; the Podmaster pushed for that. Look! An enormous microgravity park, perfectly imitating a planetary surface. It breaks a lot of aesthetic rules-yet knowing when to break the rules is the mark of a great Podmaster."

Pham shrugged, and continued to munch on Gonle's refreshments. He turned idly and looked up into the forest. The crest of the hill matched the true wall of the cavern, a standard parkbuilder trick. The trees stood ten and twenty meters tall, moss glistening cool and dark on their long trunks. Ali Lin had grown them on wires in incubator tents on Diamond One's surface. A year ago they had been three-centimeter seedlings. Now, by Ali's magic, these trees might have been centuries old. Here and there, dead wood of "older" forest generations lay gray within the blue and green. There were parkbuilders who could achieve such perfection from a single viewpoint. But Pham's hidden eyes looked from all directions, throughout the forest. The Podmaster's park was such a perfection at every level. Cubic meter for cubic meter it was as perfect as the finest Namqem bonsai.

"So," said Silipan, "I think you see why I have reason to be proud! Podmaster Nau provided the vision, but it was my work with system automation that guided the implementation."

Pham sensed the anger building in Ezr Vinh. No doubt he could contain it, but a good snoop would still pick it up. Pham punched Ezr lightly on the shoulder and gave the braying laugh that was a Trinli trademark. "Did you get that, Ezr? Trud, what you mean is the Focused persons you supervise did this." And supervise was too strong a word. Silipan was more of a custodian, but saying that would be an insult Trud could not forgive.

"Er, yes, the zipheads. Isn't that what I said?"

Rita Liao approached from the crowd around the tables. She was carrying food for two. "Anyone seen Jau? This place is so big you can lose someone."

"Haven't seen him," said Pham.

"The flight tech? I think he went around the other side of the lodge"-this from an Emergent, someone whose name Pham should not know. Nau and Qiwi had arranged an intersection of Watches for this open house so that there were some near-strangers in the crowd.

"Well, pus. I should just bounce off the ceiling and take a look." But even in the present mellow circumstances, Rita Liao was a good Emergent Follower. She kept her feet squarely on the gripping ground as she turned to scan the crowd. "Qiwi!" she shouted. "Have you seen my Jau?"

Qiwi detached herself from the group around Tomas Nau and shuffled up the walk toward them. "Yes," she said. Pham noticed Ezr Vinh backing off, heading for another group. "Jau didn't believe the pier was real, so I suggested he go take a look."

"It's real? The boat, too?"

"Sure. Come on down. I'll show you." The five of them walked down the path. Silipan strutted along in his silken rags, waving at others to follow. "See what we've done here!"

Pham sent his inner gaze ahead, studying the rocks around the pier, the bushes that leaned out over the water. This Balacrean vegetation was beautiful in a stark way that fit with the cool air. And the entrance to the utility tunnel was hidden in the cliff behind the blue-green fronds. This may be my best chance. Pham walked next to Qiwi, asking questions that hopefully would mark his presence later. "You can actually sail in it?"

Qiwi smiled. "See for yourself."

Rita Liao made an exaggerated shivering sound. "It's cold enough to be real. North Paw is pretty, but can't you redial for something tropical?"

"No," said Silipan. He hurried to walk in front of them and lecture. "It's too real for that. Ali Lin's whole point was realism and detail." Now that Qiwi was present, he spoke of the zipheads like human beings.

The path wound back and forth, realistic switchbacks that took them down the rocky face of the harbor wall. Most of the guests were following, curious to see what this moorage could really be.

"Water looks awfully flat," someone said.