"We humans thought we knew what was impossible. Only a few nut cases still wondered otherwise, mainly astronomers watching far enigmas. Well, OnOff was the first of those that we've seen close up. And look at what we found: a stellar physics we still don't properly understand; cavorite, which we understand even less—"

Pham broke off, noticing the look in Qiwi's eyes. She was remembering something from a nightmare. She looked away, but Pham didn't continue, and after a moment she spoke very softly. "Tomas Nau used to talk like this. Tomas was an evil man, but—" But evil men, the most dangerous of them, often have sharp ideas. She swallowed, and continued more firmly, "I remember when the Focused ran DNA analysis on the ocean ice we had brought up. The variety—it was greater than a thousand worlds. The analysts thought it was caused by the variety of life niches on Arachna. Tomas...Tomas thought instead that there was so much variety because once, very long ago, Arachna had been a crossroads."

Ezr took Qiwi's hand. "Not just Tomas Nau. We've all wondered about these things. There's way too much crystal carbon around—the diamond forams, the rockpile. Somebody's computers? But the forams are too small, and our L1 mountains are too big...and they're all just dead stone now."

From across the table, Jau Xin said, "Maybe not quite. Thereis cavorite."

Belga Underville rasped something that did not sound impressed; Victory was buzzing laughter. After a moment, Zinmin's translation came. "So the Distorts of Khelm have a new believer, except that now our world is a junkyard and we Spiders are evolved from the gods' garbage-vermin. If this is true, where is the rest of the super-empire?"

"I...I don't know. Remember this was fifty to one hundred million years ago. Maybe they had a war. One of the easiest explanations for your solar system is that it was a war zone, with a sun destroyed, and all planets but one volatilized." And that one survivor protected by some great magic. "Or maybe the empire grew into something else, or is leaving us to develop at our own pace." Some of the possibilities sounded very foolish when he said them out loud.

Underville's eating hands spread in a gesture that Pham recognized as a doubting smile. "You do sound like Khelm! But see, your theory ‘explains' all sorts of things without helping to do anything, much less providing tests for itself."

Gonle Fong jabbed at the air with her hand, a Spiderish gesture unconsciously adopted. "So what's to disagree? ‘Arachna was a place where once all the Failed Dreams were true.' Fine. It's a simple, unifying assumption. At the same time, we live in the here and now, a few hundred light-years, a few thousand years. Whatever the explanation, there is a lifetime of profit to be made just playing with what we see on Arachna now!"

Pham nodded politely. "Yes. A good Qeng Ho attitude. But, Gonle—I was born in a civilization of castles and cannon. I've lived a long time—not counting coldsleep—and I've seen a lot. Since the Dawn Age, we humans have learned a little here, a little there—but mainly we've learned of limits. Planetary civilizations rise and fall. At the height they're wonderful things, but there is so much darkness." Castles and cannon, and worse. "And even the Qeng Ho—we survive and prosper, but we've found limits that we can only edge toward, like lightspeed itself. I broke myself on those limits at Brisgo Gap. When I learned about Focus, I thought it might be the way to end the darkness between civilizations. I was wrong." He looked into Anne's eyes. "So I gave up my dream, the dream of my whole life...and then I looked around. Here at Arachna, we've finally found something fromoutside all our limits. It's a tiny glimpse, shreds and dregs of brightest glory. Gonle, there are planning horizons and there are planning horizons....Ezr asked me what I was going to do after we bring down the Emergents, after we all meet again. Well, just this: I'm going whence Arachna came."

Trixia's translation of his words rattled on a moment longer, and then there was absolute silence all around the table. Ezr sat transfixed. Pham had kept this between himself and Anne; considering all else that was happening, it had been an easy secret to keep. But Ezr Vinh had lived his whole life admiring the Dawn Age and the Failed Dreams, and now he saw how they might yet be attained. The boy stared for a moment, enraptured. Then critical thought came awake again. His words weren't complaints; hewanted Pham's plan to succeed, but—

"But what bearing will you take? And—"

"What bearing? That's the easy question, though we'll have a couple of centuries to think it over. But look, Humankind has been staring at the stars with high technology for thousands of years. At one time or another, almost every Customer civilization has mounted arrays of hundred-meter mirrors, and undertaken all the other clever ways to snoop on things far away. We see some far enigmas. Here and there across this galaxy we see ramscoops and ancient radio transmissions."

"So if there were anything more, we would have seen it," said Ezr, but he clearly knew what was coming. The arguments were ancient history.

"Only if it's a place we can look. But parts of the galactic core are plenty shrouded. If our supercivilization doesn't use radio, if they have something better than ramscoops...down by the core is the one place they might have escaped our detection." And OnOff's eccentric orbit had at least passed through those unseen depths.

"Okay, Pham. I agree, it all fits. But you're talking about thirty thousand light-years to the core, almost that far to the umbral clouds."

Gonle: "That's a hundred times farther than anything the Qeng Ho have tried. Without depot civilizations in between, your ramscoops will fail in less than a thousand years. We can dream of such a mission, but it's totally beyond our ability."

Pham grinned at them all: "It's totally beyond our ability now."

"That's what I said! It's always been beyond us."

But the light was beginning to come on in Ezr's eyes. "Gonle, he means that it may not be beyond us in the future."

"Yes!"Pham leaned forward, wondering how many of them he could capture in this dream. "Do a little mind experiment. Put yourself back in the Dawn Age. Back then, for a few brief centuries, peopleexpected things to become radically improved in the future. With Arachna, you will bring a little bit of that spirit back. Maybe you don't believe it now. You don't see the civilization that you are building. Ezr and Qiwi, you're founding a Great Family that will outshine any in Qeng Ho history. Trixia and Victory and all the Spiders will be the greatest thing that ever happened to our business. And you're just beginning to understand the contradictions of Arachna. You're right; today, talk of 'faring toward the core is like a child wading in the surf and talking of crossing an ocean. But I'll lay you a wager: By the next Bright Time, you'll have the technology I need."

He looked at Anne beside him. She smiled back, a grin that was both happy and a little mocking. "Anne and I and those on our fleet of three intend to take down the Emergent system. If we succeed there—whenwe succeed—what's left will still be a high-tech civilization. We'll make a larger fleet, at least a fleet of twenty. And Anne will let me rename her flagship theWild Goose. And we will return here and outfit to go...a-searching." And would Anne really come with him then? She said she would. Would tearing down the Emergents' tyranny lift thegeas that drove her? Maybe not. Winning would leave whole worlds like the deFocus ward in Hammerfest's Attic. Maybe she would find it impossible to leave the people she had rescued. What then?I don't know. Once upon a time, he was very good at being alone. Now,how strangely I have changed.

Anne's smile was gentle now. She squeezed his hand and nodded at the pact he had just described. Pham glanced from face to face: Qiwi looked stunned. Ezr looked like someone who desperately wanted to believe, but had more than a life-full of other endeavors to distract him. As for the Spiders, their aspects ranged from Underville's truculent "show me" to—