The fulfillment of his dream was half a lifetime away, on the other side of the Exile and deadliness he might not yet imagine. Sometimes he wondered if he was crazy to think he could get there. Ah, but the dream burned so bright in his mind:

With Focus, Tomas Nau might hold what he could grasp. Tomas Nau's Emergency would become a single empire across all Human Space. And it would be the one that lasted.

SEVENTEEN

Officially, of course, Benny Wen's booze parlor did not exist. Benny had grabbed some empty utility space between the inner balloons. Working in their free time, he and his father had gradually populated it with furniture, a zero-pool game, video wallpaper. You could still see the utility piping on the walls, but even that was covered with colored tape.

When his tree had the Watch, Pham Trinli spent most of his free time loafing here. And there had been more free time since he botched the L1 stabilization and Qiwi Lisolet took over.

The aroma of hops and barley hit Pham the moment he got past the door. A cluster of beery droplets drifted close by his ear, then zigged into the cleaning vent by the door.

"Hey, Pham, where the hell have you been? Grab a seat." His usual cronies were mostly sitting on the ceiling side of the game room. Pham gave them a wave and glided across the room to take a seat on the outer wall. It meant he was facing sideways from the others, but there wasn't that much room here.

Trud Silipan waved across the room at where Benny floated by the bar. "Where's the beer and frids, Benny boy? Hey, and add on a big one for the military genius here!"

Everyone laughed, though Pham's response was more an indignant snort. He'd worked hard to be the bluff blowhard. Want to hear a tale of derring-do? Just listen to Pham Trinli for more than a hundred seconds. Of course, if you had any real-world experience yourself, you'd see the stories were mostly fraud—and where they were not, the heroic parts belonged to somebody else. He looked around the room. As usual, more than half the clientele were Follower-class Emergents, but most of the groups contained one or two Qeng Ho. It was more than six years since Relight, since the "Diem atrocity." For many of them, that was almost two years of lifetime. The surviving Qeng Ho had learned and adapted. They weren't exactly assimilated, but like Pham Trinli, they had become an integral part of the Exile.

Hunte Wen drifted across the room from the bar. He towed a net full of drink bulbs, and the snack food that was the most he and Benny risked importing to the parlor. Talk lulled for a moment as he passed the goods around, picked up favor scrip in return.

Pham snagged a bulb of the brew. The container was new plastic. Benny had some kind of in with the crews that ran surface operations on the rockpile. The little volatiles plant gulped in airsnow and water ice and ground diamond...and out came raw stocks, including the plastics for drinking bulbs, furniture, the zero-gee pool game. Even the parlor's chief attraction was the product of the rockpile—touched by the magic of the temp's bactry.

This bulb had a colored drawing on the side:DIAMOND AND ICE BREWERY , it said, and there was a picture of the rockpile being dissolved into suds. The picture was an intricate thing, evidently from a hand-drawn original. Pham stared at the clever drawing for a moment. He swallowed his wondering questions. In any case, others would ask them...in their own way.

There was a flurry of laughter as Trud and his friends noticed the pictures. "Hey, Hunte, did you do this?"

The elder Wen smiled shyly and nodded.

"Hey, it's kinda cute. Not like what a Focused artist could do, of course."

"I thought you were some kind of physicist, before you got your freedom?"

"An astrophysicist. I—I don't remember much of that anymore. I'm trying new things."

The Emergents chatted with Wen for several minutes. Most were friendly, and—except for Trud Silipan—seemed genuinely sympathetic. Pham had vague recollections of Hunte Wen before the ambush, impressions of an outspoken, good-natured academic. Well, the good nature remained. The fellow smiled a lot, but a bit too apologetically. His personality was like a ceramic vessel, once shattered, now painstakingly reassembled, functional but fragile.

Wen picked up the last of the payment scrip and drifted back across the room. He stopped halfway to the bar. He drifted close to the wallpaper, and looked out upon the rockpile and the sun. He seemed to have forgotten all of them, was caught once more by the mysteries of the OnOff star. Trud Silipan chuckled and leaned across the table toward Trinli. "Driftier than hell, isn't he? Most de-zips aren't that bad."

Benny Wen came from the bar and drew his father out of sight. Benny had been one of the firebreathers. He was probably the most obvious of Diem's conspirators to survive.

Talk returned to the important issues of the day. Jau Xin wanted to find someone in Watch tree A who was willing to trade into B; his lady was stuck on the other Watch. It was the sort of swap that had to be cleared by the Podmasters, but if everyone was willing...Someone else pointed out that some Qeng Ho woman down in Quartermaster was brokering such deals, in return for other favors. "Damn Peddlers put a price on everything," Silipan muttered.

And Trinli regaled them with a story—true actually, but with enough absurdities that they would know it false—about a Long Watch mission he allegedly commanded. "Fifty years we spent with only four Watch groups. In the end I had to break the rules, allow children In Flight. But by that time, we had a market advantage—"

Pham was coming down on the punch line when Trud Silipan jabbed him in the ribs. "Hsst! My Qeng Ho Lord, your nemesis has arrived." That got a round of chuckles. Pham glared at Silipan, then turned to look.

Qiwi Lin Lisolet had just sailed through the parlor's doorway. She twisted in midair, and touched down by Benny Wen. There was a lull in the room noise and her voice carried to Trinli's group up by the ceiling. "Benny! Have you got those swap forms? Gonle can cover—" Her words faded as the two moved to the far side of the bar and other conversations resumed. Qiwi was clearly in full haggle, twisting Benny's arm about some new deal.

"Is it true she'sstill in charge of stabilizing the rockpile? I thought that was your job, Pham."

Jau Xin grimaced. "Give it a rest, Trud."

Pham raised a hand, the image of an irritated old man trying to look important. "I told you before, I got promoted. Lisolet handles the field details, and I supervise the whole operation for Podmaster Nau." He looked in Qiwi's direction, tried to put just the right truculence into his gaze.Iwonder what she's up to now. The child was amazing.

From the corner of his eye, Pham saw Silipan shrug apologetically at Jau Xin. They all figured Pham was a fraud, but he was well liked. His tales might be tall, but they were very entertaining. The trouble with Trud Silipan was he didn't know when to stop goading. Now the fellow was probably trying to think of some way to make amends.

"Yes," said Silipan, "there aren't many of us who report directly to the Podmaster. And I'll tell you something about Qiwi Lin Lisolet." He looked around to see just who else was in the parlor. "You know I manage the zipheads for Reynolt—well, we provide support for Ritser Brughel's snoops. I talked to the boys over there. Our Miss Lisolet is on their hot list. She's involved in more scams than you can imagine." He gestured at the furniture. "Where do you think this plastic comes from? Now that she's got Pham's old job, she's down on the rockpile all the time. She's diverting production to people like Benny."

One of the others waggled a Diamonds and Ice drink bulb at Silipan. "You seem to be enjoying your share, Trud."