Access took special knowledge and some concentration. It was not something that could happen by accident or under coercion. Pham relaxed in the hammock, partly to pretend to finally fall asleep, partly to get in the mood for his coming work. He needed a particular pattern of heartbeats, a particular cadence of breathing.Do I even remember it anymore, after allthis time? The sharp moment of panic took him aback. One mote by his eye, another in his ear; that should be enough to provide alignment for the other localizers that must be floating in the room. That should be enough.

But the proper mood still eluded him. He kept thinking back to Anne Reynolt and to what Silipan had shown him. The Focused would see through his schemes; it was just a matter of time. Focus was a miracle. Pham Nuwen could have made the Qeng Ho a true empire—despite Sura's treachery—if only he'd had Focused tools. Yes, the price was high. Pham remembered the rows of zombies up in Hammerfest's Attic. He could see a dozen ways to make the system gentler, but in the end, to use Focused tools, there would have to be some sacrifice.

Was final success, a true Qeng Ho empire, worth that price? Could he pay it?

Yes and yes!

At this rate he'd never achieve access state. He backed off, began the whole relax cycle again. He let his imagination slide into memories. What had it been like in the beginning times? Sura Vinh had delivered theReprise and a still very naive Pham Nuwen to the megalopolis moons of Namqem... .

He had remained at Namqem for fifteen years. They were the happiest years of Pham Nuwen's life. Sura's cousins were in-system, too—and they fell in love with the schemes that Sura and her young barbarian proposed: a method of interstellar synchronization, the trading of technical tricks where their own buying and selling would not be affected, the prospect of a cohesive interstellar trading culture. (Pham learned not to talk about his goals beyond that.) Sura's cousins were back from some very profitable adventures, but they could see the limits of isolated trading. Left to themselves, they would make fortunes, even keep them for a time...but in the end they would be lost in time and the interstellar dark. They had a gut appreciation for many of Pham's goals.

In some ways, his time with Sura at Namqem was like their first days on theReprise. But this went on and on, the imaginings and the teaming ever richer. And there were wonders that his hard head with all its grandiose plans had never considered: children. He had never imagined how different a family could be from the one of his birth. Ratko, Butra, and Qo were their first little ones. He lived with them, taught them, played blinkertalk and evercatch with them, showed them the wonders of the Namqem world park. Pham loved them far more than himself, and almost as much as he loved Sura. He almost abandoned the Grand Schedule to stay with them. But there would be other times, and Sura forgave him. When he returned, thirty years later, Sura awaited, with news of other parts of the Plan well under way. But by then their first three children were themselves avoyaging, playing their own part in founding the new Qeng Ho.

Pham ended up with a fleet of three starships. There were setbacks and disasters. Treachery. Zamle Eng leaving him for dead in Kielle's comet cloud. Twenty years he was fleetless at Kielle, making himself a trillionaire from scratch, just to escape the place.

Sura flew with him on several missions, and they raised new families on half a dozen worlds. A century passed. Three. The mission protocols they had devised on the oldReprise served them well, and across the years there were reunions with children and children's children. Some were greater friends than Ratko or Butra or Qo, but he never loved them quite so much. Pham could see the new structure emerging. Now it was simply trade, sometimes leavened with family ties. It would be much more.

The hardest thing was the realization that they needed someone at the center, at least in the early centuries. More and more Sura stayed behind, coordinating what Pham and others undertook.

And yet they still had children. Sura had new sons and daughters while Pham was light-years away. He joked with her about the miracle, though in truth he was hurt at the thought she had other lovers. Sura had smiled gently and shook her head. "No, Pham, any child I call my own is also of you." Her smile turned mischievous. "Over the years, you have stuffed me with enough of yourself to birth an army. I can't use that gift all at once, but use it I will."

"No clones." Pham's word came out sharper than he intended.

"Lord, no." She looked away. "I...one of you is all I can handle."

Maybe she was just as superstitious as he was. Or maybe not: "No, I'm using you in natural zygotes. I'm not always the other donor, or the only other donor. Namqem medics are very good at this kind of thing." She turned back, and saw the look on his face. "I swear, Pham, every one of your children has a family. Every one is loved....We need them, Pham. We need families and Great Families. The Plan needs them." She jabbed at him playfully, trying to jolly the disapproval from his face. "Hey, Pham! Isn't this the wet dream of every conquering barbarian lord? Well, I'll tell you, you've outfathered the greatest of them."

Yes. Thousands of children by dozens of partners, raised without personal cost to the father. His own father had unsuccessfully attempted something much smaller with his campaign of regicide and concubinage in the North Coast states. Pham was getting it all without the murder, without the violence. And yet...how long had Sura been doing this? How many children, and by how many "donors"? He could imagine her now, planning bloodlines, slotting the right talents into the founding of each new Family, dispersing them throughout the new Qeng Ho. He felt the strangest double vision as he turned the situation around in his mind. As Sura said, it was a barbarian wet dream...but it was also a little like being raped.

"I would have told you at the beginning, Pham. But I was afraid you would object. And this is so important." In the end, Pham did not object. Itwould advance their Plan. But it hurt to think of all the children he would never know.

Voyaging at 0.3c, Pham Nuwen traveled far. Everywhere there were Traders, though beyond thirty light-years, they rarely called themselves "Qeng Ho." It didn't matter. They could understand the Plan. The ones he met spread the ideas still farther. Wherever they went—and farther, since some were convinced simply by the radio messages Pham sent across the dark—the spirit of the Qeng Ho was spread.

Pham returned to Namqem again and again, bending the Grand Schedule almost to its breaking point. Sura was aging. She was two or three centuries old now. Her body was at the limit of what medical science could make young and supple. Even some of their children were old, living too long in port amid their voyaging. And sometimes in Sura's eyes, Pham glimpsed unknowable experience.

Each time he returned to Namqem, he tossed the question up at her. Finally, one night after love almost as good as they had ever had, he came close to bawling. "This wasn't how it was supposed to be, Sura! The Plan was for both of us. Come away with me. At least, go avoyaging."And wecan meet again and again, however long we live.

Sura leaned back from him and slipped her hand behind his neck. Her smile was crooked and sad. "I know. We thought we could both be fly-abouts. Strange that that's the biggest mistake we had in all our original scheming. But, be honest. You know that one of us has to stay in some central place, has to deal with the Plan almost in one long Watch." There were a trillion little details involved in conquering the universe, and they couldn't be handled while you were in coldsleep.