"Okay, get your people on it, Anne. You have one year. We'll probably need a major vessel in low orbit during the final Ksecs."

"You know," said Ritser, "I think the groundside of this is working out for the best. With the Kindred, one or two guys are in charge. We'll know who to hold responsible when we give orders. With that pus-be-damned Accord—"

"True. There are too many autonomous power centers within the Accord; their nonsovereign-kingship thing is even crazier than a democracy." Nau shrugged. "It's the luck of the draw. We have to take what we know we can control. Without the cavorite, we'd have another five years of slack. By then, the Accord would have a mature network, and we could take over everything without anyone firing a shot—more or less the goal I'm still hoping for in public."

Ritser leaned forward. "And that is going to be our biggest problem. Once our people realize this is a major Spider fry and their special friends are the main course—"

"Of course. But handled properly, the final outcome should appear to be an unavoidable tragedy, one that would have been much more horrible without our efforts."

"It will be even trickier than the Diem thing. I wish you hadn't given the Peddlers increased resource access."

"It's unavoidable, Ritser. We need their logistical genius. But I will withhold full network processing from them. We'll bring out all your security zips, do really intense monitoring. If necessary, there can be some fatal accidents."

He glanced at Anne. "And speaking of accidents...is there any progress on your sabotage theory?" It had been almost a year since Anne's maybe-accident in the MRI clinic. A year and not a sign of enemy action. Of course, there had been precious little evidence before the event, either.

But Anne Reynolt was adamant. "Someone is manipulating our systems, Podmaster, both the localizers and the zipheads. The evidence is spread through large patterns; it's not something I can put into words. But he's getting more aggressive...and I'm very close to nailing him, maybe as close as when he got me before."

Anne had never bought the explanation that a stupid mistake had wiped her. But her Focushad been out of tune, even if so subtly it slipped past his own checks.Just how paranoid should I be? Anne had cleared Ritser of suspicion in the affair. "He? Him?"

"You know the suspect list. Pham Trinli is still at the top of it. Over the years, he's wrung my techs dry. And he was the one who gave us the secret of the Qeng Ho localizers."

"But you've had twenty years now to study them."

Anne frowned. "The ensemble behavior is extremely complex, and there are physical-layer issues. Give me another three or four years."

He glanced at Ritser. "Opinion?"

The junior Podmaster grinned. "We've been over this before, sir. Trinli is useful and we have a hold on him. He's a weasel, but he'sour weasel."

True. Trinli stood to gain much with the Emergents, and lose even more if the Qeng Ho ever learned of his traitorous past. Watch after Watch, the old man had passed every one of Nau's tests, and in the process become ever more useful. In retrospect, the fellow was always just as sharp as he had to be. Of course, that was the strongest evidence against him.Pus andPest. "Okay. Ritser, I want you and Anne to set things up so we can pull the plug on Trinli and Vinh at an instant's notice. Jau Xin we'll have to keep alive in any case—but we have Rita to keep him in line."

"What about Qiwi Lisolet, sir?" Ritser's face was bland, but the Podmaster knew there was a smirk hidden just below the surface.

"Ah. I'm sure Qiwi will figure things out; we may have to scrub her several times before the crisis point." But with luck she might be of use right to the end. "Okay. Those are our special problem cases, but almost anyone could twig the truth if we have bad luck. Surveillance and suppression readiness must be of the highest order." He nodded to his Vice-Podmaster. "It will be hard work, this next year. The Peddlers are a competent, dedicated crowd. We'll need them on duty till the action begins—and we'll need many of them in the aftermath. The only letup may be during the takeover itself. It's reasonable that they be simply observers then."

"At which time, we'll feed them the story of our noble efforts to limit the genocide." Ritser smiled, intrigued by the challenge. "I like it."

They set up the overall plan. Anne and her strategy zips would flesh out the details. Ritser was right; this would be trickier than the Diem wetwork. On the other hand, if they could just maintain the fraud till the takeover...that might be enough. Once he controlled Arachna, he could pick and choose from both Spiders and Qeng Ho, the best of both their worlds. And discard the rest. The prospect was a cool oasis at the end of his long, long journey.

FORTY-FIVE

The Dark was upon them once more. Hrunkner could almost feel the weight of traditional values on his shoulders. For the trads—and deep down, he would always be one—there was a time to be born and a time to die; reality turned in cycles. And the greatest cycle was the cycle of the sun.

Hrunkner had lived through two suns now. He was an old cobber. Last time when the Dark had come, he had been young. There had been a world war going on, and real doubt if his country could survive. And this time? There were minor wars, all over the globe. But the big one had not occurred. If it did, Hrunkner would be partly responsible. And if it didn't—well, he liked to think that he would be partly responsible for that, too.

Either way, the cycles were shattered forever. Hrunkner nodded to the corporal who held the door for him. He stepped out onto frost-covered flagstones. He wore thick boots, covers, and sleeves. The cold gnawed the tips of his hands, burned his breathing passages even behind his air warmer. The alignment of the Princeton hills kept out the heaviest snows; that and the deep river moorage were the reasons why the city had returned cycle after cycle. But this was late afternoon on a summer day—and you had to search to find the dim disk that had been the sun. The world was beyond the soft kindliness of the Waning Years, beyond even the Early Dark. It stood at the edge of the thermal collapse, when weakening storms would circle and circle, squeezing the last water from the air—opening the way to times much colder, and the final stillness.

In earlier generations, all but soldiers would be in their deeps by now. Even in his own generation, in the Great War, only the die-hard tunnel warriors still fought this far into the Dark. This time—well, there were plenty of soldiers. Hrunkner had his own military escort. And even the security cobbers around the Underhill house were in uniform nowadays. But these were not caretakers, guarding against endcycle scavengers. Princeton wasoverflowing with people. The new, Dark Time housing was jammed. The city was busier than Unnerby had ever seen it.

And the mood? Fear close to panic, wild enthusiasm, often both in the same people. Business was booming. Just two days earlier, Prosperity Software had bought a controlling interest in the Bank of Princeton. No doubt the grab had gutted Prosperity's financial reserves, and put them in a business that their software people knew nothing about. It was insane—and very much in the spirit of the times.

Hrunkner's guards had to push their way through the crowd at the Hill House entrance. Even past the property limits, there were reporters with their little four-color cameras hanging from helium balloons. They couldn't know who Hrunkner was, but they saw the guards and the direction he was heading.

"Sir, can you tell us—"

"Has Southland threatened preemption?" This one tugged on his balloon's string, dragging the camera down till it hung just over Hrunkner's eyes.

Unnerby raised his forearms in an elaborate shrug. "How should I know? I'm just a friggin' sergeant." In fact, hewas still a sergeant, but the rank was meaningless. Unnerby was one of those rankless cobbers who made whole military bureaucracies hop to their tune. As a young fellow he had been aware of such. They had seemed as distant as the King himself. Now...now he was so busy that even a visit with a friend had to be counted by the minute, balanced against what it might cost the life-and-death schedules he must keep.