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Pham looked from face to face. Something like Sura's treachery could work, but only if most of the Fleet Captains that he thought supported him were really like Ratko and Butra and Qo. And then only if they had set up proper lies with their own people. "How...long have you been pla
"Ever since you were a young man, Pham. Most of the years of my life. But I prayed it would never come to this."
Pham nodded, numb. If she had pla
"A good deal less, Pham. We've studied your hard-core supporters very carefully."
Given the choice, who wanted to go on a one-way trip to forever? They had been very careful to keep those supporters out of this room. All but Sammy. "Sammy?"
His Flag Captain met his eyes, but his lips were trembling. "Sir. I'm s-sorry. Jun wants a different life for me. We—we're still Qeng Ho, but we can't ship with you."
Pham inclined his head. "Ah."
Sura floated closer, and Pham realized that if he pushed off, he could probably grab the handle on her chair and ram his fist right through her scrawny quilted chest.And break my hand for the effort. Sura's heart had been a machine for centuries. "Son? Pham? It was a beautiful dream, and along the way it made us what we are. But in the end it was just a dream. A failed dream."
Pham turned away without responding. Now there were guards by the doors, waiting to escort him. He didn't look at his children. He brushed past Sammy Park without a word. From somewhere in the still, cold depths of his heart, something wished his Flag Captain well. Sammy had betrayed him, but not like the others. And no doubt Sammy believed the lies about a far fleet. He hoped that Sammy would never see through them. Who would ever pay for a fleet such as Sura described? Not crafty merchants like Sura Vinh and her stone-faced children and the others who had plotted this day. Far cheaper, far safer to build a fleet of real coffins.My father would haveunderstood. The best enemies are the ones who sleep without end.
Then Pham was in a long corridor, surrounded by guards who were also strangers. His last vision of Sura's face still hung in Pham's imagination. There had been tears in the old woman's eyes. One last fakery.
A tiny cabin, mostly dark. The kind of room a junior officer might have in a small temp. Work jackets floated in a closet bag. A lapel tag whispered, and a name floated in his eyes:Pham Trinli.
As always, when Pham let the anger fill him, the memories were more vivid than any huds, and the return to the present was a kind of mocking. Sura's "far fleet" had not been a fleet of coffins. Even now, two thousand years after Sura's betrayal, Pham still could not explain that. Most likely, there had been other traitors, ones with some power and some conscience, who had insisted that Pham and those who wouldn't betray him must not be killed. The "fleet" had been scarcely more than refitted ram barges, with space for nothing but the refugees and their coldsleep tanks. But there had been a separate trajectory for each ship of the "fleet." A thousand years later, they were scattered across the width and height of Human Space.
They had not been killed, but Pham had learned his lesson. He had begun his slow, silent journey back. Sura was beyond mortal reach. But there was still the Qeng Ho that he and she had created, the Qeng Ho that had betrayed him. He still had his dream.
...And he would have died with it at Triland, if Sammy had not dug him up. Now fate and time had handed him a second chance: the promise of Focus.
Pham shook away the past, and readjusted the localizers at his temple and in his ear. There was more work than ever to be done. He should have risked more face-to-face meetings with Vinh before now. With good feedback drills, Vinh could learn to handle shocks like this crazy Nau interview, without giving everything away. Yeah, that was the easy part. The hard part would be to keep him distracted from where Pham was ultimately headed.
Pham turned in his sleeping bag, let his breathing shift to a light snore. Behind his eyes, the images shifted to the action traces he was ru
FORTY
Hrunkner U
But of all Hrunk's visits, this had the strangest feel. The First Day of the Dark. It was a boundary in the mind more than anywhere else—and perhaps that made it even more important.
U
Hrunkner dropped from the aisle webbing and refastened the pa
U
"Ah, um." The steward seemed about to say something more, but then stepped back and bowed them off the aircraft. The three of them rattled down the ladders to the tarmac, and suddenly it was obvious what else the fellow had been about to say. Just an hour ago, as they were leaving High Equatoria, the air had been eighty below freezing and the wind over twenty miles per hour. They had needed heated breathers just to walk from the High Eq terminal to the aircraft.
Here..."By damn, this place is a furnace!" Brun Soulac, his junior security agent, set down her pa
The senior agent laughed, though she was guilty of the same foolishness. "What do you expect, Brun! It's Calorica Bay."
"Yeah, but this is the First Day of the Dark!"
Some of the other passengers had been similarly shortsighted. They made a grotesque parade, hopping about as they shed parkas and breathers and leggings. Even so, U