A Deepness in the Sky

"Why must I spell it out for you?" Omo jabbed a finger at Jau's chest, pushing him away from the crawl line and into the wall. He jabbed again. His hard face showed an angry indignation. It was the righteous indignation of Emergency authority, what Jau had grown up with on Balacrea. "It shouldn't really be necessary, should it? But you're like too many of our pod. You've gone bad inside, become a kind of Peddler. The others we can let drift for a while longer, but when theHand reaches low orbit, we need your intelligent, instant obedience." Omo jabbed him once more. "Do you understand now?"

"Y-yes. Yes!"Oh Rita! We will always be part of the Emergency.

FORTY-EIGHT

More than a hundred zipheads were leaving Hammerfest's Attic. Genius that he was, Trud Silipan had scheduled the transfer as a single move. As Ezr headed for Trixia's cell, he was swimming against a current of humanity. The Focused were being herded in groups of four and five, first out of the little capillary hallways that led to their roomlets, then into the tributary halls and finally into the main corridors. The handlers were gentle, but this was a difficult maneuver.

Ezr pulled himself sideways, into a utility nook, a back-eddy in the flow. There were people drifting past that he hadn't seen in years. These were Qeng Ho and Trilander specialists, Focused right after the ambush, just like Trixia. A few of the handlers were friends of the Focused they guided. Watch on Watch they had come to visit the lost ones. At first there had been many such people. But the years passed and hope had dimmed. Maybe someday...they had Nau's promise of manumission. In the meantime, the zipheads seemed beyond caring; a visit was at most an irritation to them. Only rare fools kept at it for years.

Ezr had never seen so many zipheads moving about. Corridor ventilation was not as good as in the little cells; the smell of unwashed bodies was strong. Anne kept the pod's property healthy, but that didn't mean they were clean and pretty.

Bil Phuong hung on a wall strap by a confluence of streams, directing his team handlers. Most teams had a common specialty. Vinh caught scraps of agitated conversation. Could it be that they cared about what was planned for the Spider world?...But no, this was impatience and distraction and technical gibberish. An older woman—one of the network protocol hackers—pushed her handler, actually spoke directly to him. "When then?" Her voice was shrill. "When do we get back to work?"

One of the woman's team members shouted something like "Yeah, the stackface is stale!" and moved in on the handler from the other side. Away from their inputs, the poor things were going nuts. The entire team began screaming at the handler. The group was the nucleus of a growing clot in the stream. Suddenly, Ezr realized that something like a slave revolt could really happen—if the slaves were taken from their work! This was clearly a danger the Emergent team handler understood. He slid to the side, and yanked the stun lanyards on the two loudest zipheads. They spasmed, then went limp. Deprived of a center, the others' complaints subsided into diffuse irritability.

Bil Phuong arrived to calm the last of the combative zipheads. He spared a frown for the team handler. "That's two more I have to retune." The team handler wiped blood from his cheek and glared back. "Tell it to Trud." He grabbed the lanyards and floated the unconscious zipheads out over their fellows. The crowd moved on, and in a few seconds Vinh had a clear jump to the end of the corridor.

The translators weren't going with theInvisible Hand. Their section of the Attic should have been peaceful. But when Ezr arrived, he found the cell doors open and the translators clogging the capillary corridor. Ezr wormed his way past the fidgeting, shouting zipheads. There was no sign of Trixia. But a few meters up the hall he ran into Rita Liao coming from the other direction.

"Rita! Where are the handlers?"

Liao raised both hands in irritation. "Busy elsewhere, of course! And now some idiot has opened the translators' doors!"

Trud had really outdone himself, though most likely this was only a related glitch. Ironically, the translators—who weren't supposed to go anywhere—had needed no urging to leave their cells, and now were loudly demanding directions. "We want to go to Arachna!" "We want to get in close!"

Where was Trixia? Ezr heard more shouting from around an upward corner. He followed the fork, and there she was, with the rest of the translators. Trixia looked badly disoriented; she just wasn't used to the world outside of her cell. But she seemed to recognize him. "Shut up! Shut up!" she shouted, and the gabble quieted. She looked vaguely in Ezr's direction. "Number Four, when do we go to Arachna?"

Number Four?"Um. Soon, Trixia. But not on this trip, not on theInvisible Hand. "

"Whynot ? I don't like the time lag!"