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Ezr looked over his shoulder at Rita Liao. "What should we do?"
"Wait one." She touched her ear, listened. "Phuong and Silipan will be here to stuff 'em back in their holes, just as soon as they get the others settled down on theHand. "
Lord, that could take a while. In the meantime, twenty translators would be loose in the Attic maze. He gently patted Trixia's arm. "Let's go back to your room, Trixia. Uh, look, the longer you're out here, the more you're out of touch. I'll bet you left your huds in your room. You could use them to ask fleet net your questions." Trixia had probably left her huds behind because they were offline. But at this point, he was just trying to make reasonable noises.
Trixia bounced from wall stop to wall stop, full of indecision. Abruptly she pushed past him and flitted back to the downward fork that led to her little room. Ezr followed.
The cell reacted to Trixia's presence, the lights coming to their usual dim glow. Trixia grabbed her huds, and Ezr synched to them. Her links weren't completely down. Ezr saw the usual pictures and splashes of text; it wasn't quite live from groundside, but it was close. Trixia's eyes darted from display to display. Her fingers pounded on her old keyboard, but she seemed to have forgotten about contacting the fleet information service. Just the sight of her workspace had drawn her back to the center of her Focus. New text windows popped up. Glyphics nonsense shifted so fast across it that it must be a representation of spoken Spider talk, some radio show or—considering the current state of affairs—a military intercept. "I just can't stand the time lag. It's not fair." Again a long silence. She opened another text screen. The pictures beside it went through a flickering series of colors, one of the Spiders' video formats. It still didn't look like a real picture, but he recognized this pattern; he had seen it often enough in Trixia's little room. This was a Spider commercial newscast that Trixia translated daily. "They're wrong. General Smith will go to Southmost instead of the King." She was still tense, but now it was her usual, Focused absorption.
A few seconds later, Rita Liao stuck her head into the room. Ezr turned, saw a look of quiet amazement on her face. "You're a magician, Ezr. How'd you get everyone calmed down?"
"I...I guess Trixia just trusts me." That was an i
Rita pulled her head out of the doorway to look up and down the corridor. "Yeah. But you know, after you got her back to work? All the others just quietly returned to their rooms. These translator types have more control functionality than military zips. All you have to do is convince the alpha member, and everyone falls into line." She gri
"Trixia is a person!"All the Focused are people, you damn slaver!
"I know, Ezr. Sorry. Really, I understand....Trixia and the other translators do seem to be different. You have to be pretty special to translate natural languages. Of all—of all the Focused, the translators seem the closest to being real people....Look, I'll take care of buttoning things down and let Bil Phuong know things are under control."
"Okay," Ezr replied, his voice stiff.
Rita backed out of the room. The cell door slid shut. After a moment, he heard other doors thumping shut along the corridor.
Trixia sat hunched over her keyboard, oblivious of the opinions just rendered. Ezr watched her for some seconds, thinking about her future, thinking about how he would finally save her. Even after forty years of Lurk, the translators couldn't masquerade real-time voice comm with the Spiders. Tomas Nau would gain no advantage by having his translators down by Arachna...yet. Once the world was conquered, Trixia and the others would be the voice of the conqueror.
But that time will not come.Pham and Ezr's plan was proceeding down its own schedule. Except for a few old systems, a few electromechanical backups, the Qeng Ho localizers could have total control. Pham and Ezr were finally moving toward real sabotage—most important the Hammerfest wireless-power cutoff. That switch was an almost pure mechanical link, immune to all subtlety. But Pham had one more use for localizers. True grit. These last few Msecs, they had built up layers of grit near that switch, and set up similar sabotage in other old systems, and aboard theInvisibleHand. The last hundred seconds would involve flagrant risk. It was a trick that they could try only once, when Nau and his gang were most distracted with their own takeover.
If the sabotage worked—whenit worked—the Qeng Ho localizers would rule.And our time will come.
FORTY-NINE
Hrunkner U
The General had a new aide, someone young and oophase. Hrunkner barely noticed. He stepped into the silence of the chief's den. The place was as big as he remembered, with open-storied nooks and isolated perches. For the moment he seemed to be alone. This had been Strut Greenval's office, before Smith. It had been the Intelligence chief's i
But in this generation, we just go on and on, headed for the most terriblewar of all time.
Behind him, he saw the General step silently into the room. "Sergeant, please sit down." Smith gestured to the perch in front of her desk.
U
The General's smile seemed stiff, forced, and so it might be sincere. "I call you Sergeant. What a fantasy rank. But...thank you for coming."
"Of course, ma'am."Why did she call me down here? Maybe his wild scheme for the Northeast had a chance. Maybe— "Have you seen my excavation proposals, General? With nuclear explosives we could dig shielded caves, and quickly. The Northeast shales would be ideal. Give me the bombs and in one hundred days I could protect most of the agri and people there." The words just tumbled out. The expense would be enormous, out of range of the Crown or free financing. The General would have to take emergency powers, Covenant or no. And even then, it would not make a happy ending. But if—when—the war came, it could save millions.