"The rubble quakes," said Jau Xin.

"Yes. Down here at Hammerfest, you feel them all the time. Without constant supervision, the problem would be worse." The surface of the meeting table became a model of the juncture of Diamonds One and Two. Qiwi motioned across the blocks and a forty-centimeter swath of surface turned pink. "That's a shift that almost got away from us. But we can't afford the human resources to—"

Pham Trinli had sat through all this in silence, his eyes squinted down in a look of angry concentration. As Nau's original choice to manage the stabilization, Trinli had a long history of humiliation on this subject. Finally he exploded. "Crap. I thought you were going to spend some of the water, melt it into a glue you could inject between the Diamonds."

"We did that. It helps some, but—"

"But you still can't keep things settled, can you?" Trinli turned to Nau, and half rose from his chair. "Podmaster, I've told you before that I'm best for the job. The Lisolet girl knows how to run a dynamics program, and she works as hard as anyone—but she doesn't have any depth of experience."Depth of experience? How many years of hands-on does she need, old man?

But Nau just smiled at Trinli. No matter how absurd the idiot's contentions, Nau always invited him back. For a long time, Ezr had suspected it was some sadistic humor on the Podmaster's part.

"Well, then perhaps I should give you the job, Armsman. But consider, even now it would mean at least one-third time on-Watch." Nau's tone was courteous, but Trinli caught the dare in it. Ezr could just see the anger growing in the old man.

"One-third?" said Trinli. "I could do it on a one-fifth Watch, even if the other crewmembers were novices. No matter how cleverly the jets are emplaced, success comes down to the quality of the guidance network. Miss Lisolet doesn't understand all the features of the localizer devices she is using."

"Explain," said Anne Reynolt. "A localizer is a localizer. We've been using both ours and yours in this project." Localizers were a basic tool of any technical civilization. The tiny devices chirped their impulse codes at one another, using time of flight and distributed algorithms to accurately locate each participating device. Several thousand of them formed the positioning grid on the rubble pile. Together they were a kind of low-level network, providing information on the orientation, position, and relative velocity of the electric jets and the rubble.

"Not so." Trinli smiled patronizingly. "Ours work with yours well enough, but at the price of degrading their natural performance. Here's what the units look like." The old man fiddled with his hand pad. "Miss Lisolet, these interfaces are worthless."

"Allow me," said Nau. He spoke into the air, "here are the two types of localizers we're using."

The landscape vanished, and two pieces of vacuum-rated electronics appeared on the table. No matter how often Ezr saw this sort of demonstration, it was hard to get used to. In a practiced presentation, with a predetermined display sequence, it was easy to use voice recognition to guide things. What Nau had just done was subtly beyond any Qeng Ho interface. Somewhere up in Hammerfest's attic, one or more of his ziphead slaves was listening to every word spoken here, giving context to Nau's words and mapping them through to the fleet's automation or other ziphead specialists. And here were the resulting images, as quick as if Nau's own mind contained the fleet's entire database.

Of course, Pham Trinli was oblivious to the magic. "Right." He leaned closer to the equipment. "Except that these are really more than the localizers themselves."

Qiwi: "I don't understand. We need a power supply, the sensor probes."

Trinli grinned at her, triumph dripping in his smile. "That's what you think—and perhaps it was true in the early years when ol' OnOff was frying everything. But now—" He reached closer and his finger disappeared into the side of the smaller package. "Can you show the localizer core, Podmaster?"

Nau nodded. "Right." And the image of the Qeng Ho package was cut away, component layer by component layer. In the end, all that was left was a tiny blackened fleck, not more than a millimeter across.

Sitting next to him, Ezr caught an instant of tension in Tomas Nau. The other was suddenly, intensely interested. The moment passed before Ezr was even sure it existed. "My, that is small. Let's take a closer look."

The dustmote image swelled until it was a meter across and almost forty centimeters high. The head-up display automation painted appropriate reflections and shadows.

"Thanks." Trinli stood so they could all see him over the top of the lens-shaped gadget. "This is the basic Qeng Ho localizer—normally embedded in protective barriers, and so on. But see, in a benign environment—even outside in the shade—it is quite self-sufficient."

"Power?" said Reynolt.

Trinli waved his hand dismissively. "Just pulse them with microwaves, maybe a dozen times a second. I don't know the details, but I've seen them used in much larger numbers on some projects. I'm sure that would give finer control. As for sensors, these puppies have several simple things built in—temperature, light levels, sonics."

Jau Xin: "But how could Qiwi and the rest be ignorant of all this?"

Ezr could see where it was all going, but there wasn't a thing he could do about it.

Trinli shrugged magnanimously. He still did not realize how far his ego had taken him. "As I've been saying all along: Qiwi Lin Lisolet is young and inexperienced. Coarse-grain localizers are good enough for most projects. Besides, the advanced characteristics are most useful in military work, and I wager that the texts she studies are deliberately vague on those issues. I, on the other hand, have worked as both an engineer and an armsman. Though it's not permitted normally, the localizers are an excellent oversight facility."

"Certainly," Nau said, looking thoughtful. "Localizers and attached sensors are the heart of proper security." And these dustmotes already had sensors and independence built in. They weren't an embedded component of a system; they could be the system itself.

"What do you think, Qiwi? Would a slew of these make things simpler for you?"

"Maybe. This is all news to me; I never thought a tech book would lie to me." She thought a moment. "But yes, if we had lots more localizers and the processing power scales properly fitted, then we could probably cut back on the human supervision."

"Very well. I want you to get the details from Armsman Trinli, and install an extended network."

"I'll be glad to take over the job, Podmaster," said Trinli.

But Nau was no fool. He shook his head. "No, you're much more valuable in your overall supervisory role. In fact, I want you and Anne to chat about this. When he comes on-Watch, Ritser will be interested, too. There should be a number of public safety applications for these gadgets."

So Pham Trinli had handed the Emergents even better manacles and chains. For an instant something like chagrined understanding flickered across the old man's face.

Ezr did his best not to talk to anyone for the rest of the day. He had never imagined that he could hate a stupid clown so much. Pham Trinli was no mass murderer, and his devious nature was written large across his every foolish move. But his stupidity had betrayed a secret the enemy had never guessed, a secret that Ezr himself had never known, a secret that others must have taken to their deaths rather than give to Tomas Nau and Ritser Brughel.

Before, he had thought that Nau kept Trinli around for laughs. Now Ezr knew better. And not since that long-ago night in the temp park had Ezr felt so coldly murderous. If there ever came a time when Pham Trinli could have a fatal accident...