by Vernor Vinge
Besides…Sherkaner eased back onto his perch and took careful hold of the steering wheel, throttle, and brakes. Not just the osprechs were watching him. He looked out in all directions, his eyes fully adapted to the twilight. There were two of them. They lurked in the shadows on either side of him. Not animals, not people. Children? Maybe five and ten years old. The smaller one still had its baby eyes. Yet their gaze was animal, predatory. They edged closer to the auto.
Sherkaner revved his engine and bolted forward. Just before he reached the little creek, he noticed a third form—a larger one—hiding in the trees above the water. Children they might be, but this was a serious game of lurk-and-pounce. Sherkaner twisted the wheel hard right, bouncing out of the ruts. He was off the road—or was he? There were faint, scraped-down grooves ahead: the real fording point!
He entered the stream, the water spraying high in both directions. The big one in the trees pounced. One long arm scratched down the side of the auto, but the creature landed to the side of Sherkaner’s path. And then Underhill had reached the far bank, and was rocketing upslope. A real ambush would end in a cul-de-sac here. But the road continued on and somehow his hurtling progress did not carry him off to the side. There was a final scary moment as he emerged from the forest canopy. The road steepened and his Relmeitch tipped back for a second, rotating on its rear tires. Sherkaner threw himself forward from his perch, and the auto slammed down, and scooted up over the hillcrest.
He ended up under stars and twilit sky, parked beside the home he had seen from the far side of the dell.
He killed the engine and sat for a moment, catching his breath and listening to the blood pounding in his chest. It was that quiet. He watched behind him; no one pursued. And thinking back…it was strange. The last he had seen, the big one was climbing slowly out of the creek. The other two had turned away, as if uninterested.
He was by the house he had seen from the other side. Lights came on in the front. A door opened, and an old lady came out on the porch. “Who’s there?” The voice was sturdy.
“Lady Enclearre?” Sherk’s voice came out in kind of a squeak. “The postmaster gave me your address. He said you had an overnight room to rent.”
She came round to the driver’s side and looked him over. “That I do. But you’re too late for dinner. You’ll have to settle for cold sucks.”
“Ah. That’s all right, quite all right.”
“Okay. Bring yourself on in.” She chuckled and waved a little hand toward the valley Sherkaner had just escaped. “You sure did come the long way, sonny.”
Despite her words, Lady Enclearre fed Sherkaner a good meal. Afterward they sat in her front parlor and chatted. The place was clean, but worn. The sagging floor was unrepaired, the paint peeling here and there. It was a house at the end of its time. But the pale glimmer lamps revealed a bookcase set between the screened windows. There were about a hundred titles, mostly children’s primers. The old lady (and she was really old, born two generations earlier than Sherk) was a retired parish teacher. Her husband hadn’t made it through the last Dark, but she had grown children—old cobbers themselves now—living all through these hills.
Lady Enclearre was like no city schoolteacher. “Oh, I’ve been around. When I was younger ’n you, I sailed the western sea.” A sailor! Sherkaner listened with undisguised awe to her stories of hurricanes and grizzards and iceberg eruptions. Not many people were crazy enough to be sailors, even in the Waning Years. Lady Enclearre had been lucky to live long enough to have children. Maybe that was why, during the next generation, she settled down to schoolteaching and helping her husband raise the cobblies. Each year, she had studied the texts for the next grade, staying one year ahead of the parish children, all the way to adulthood.
In this Brightness, she had taught the new generation. When they were grown, she was truly getting on in years. A lot of cobbers make it into a third generation; few live the length of it. Lady Enclearre was much too frail to prepare for the coming Dark by herself. But she had her church and the help of her own children; she would have her chance to see a fourth Bright Time. Meanwhile she kept up with her gossip, and her reading. She was even interested in the war—but as an avid spectator. “Give those bleeding Tiefers a tunnel up their rear, I say. I have two grandnieces at the Front, and I’m very proud of them.”
As Sherkaner listened, he stared out through Lady Enclearre’s broad, fine-screened windows. The stars were so bright up here in the mountains, a thousand different colors, dimly lighting the forest’s broad leaves and the hills beyond. Tiny woodsfairies ticked incessantly at the screens, and from the trees all around, he could hear their stridling song.
Abruptly a drum started beating. It was loud, the vibrations coming through the tips of his feet and chest as much as through his ears. A second banging started, drifting in and out of synch with the first.
Lady Enclearre stopped talking. She listened sourly to the racket. “This could go on for hours, I’m afraid.”
“Your neighbors?” Sherkaner gestured toward the north, the little valley. It was interesting that, except for her one comment about his coming the “long way round,” she hadn’t said a thing about those strange people in the dell.
…And maybe she wouldn’t now. Lady Enclearre scrunched down on her perch, silent for the first significant period since he’d arrived. Then: “You know the story of the Lazy Woodsfairies?”
“Sure.”
“I made it a big part of the catechism, ’specially for the five- and six-year-olds. They relate to the attercops cuz they look like little people. We studied how they grow wings, and I’d tell them about the ones that do not prepare for the Dark, the ones who play on and on till it’s too late. I could make it a scary story.” She hissed angrily into her eating hands. “We’re dirt poor hereabouts. That’s why I left for the sea, and also why I eventually came back, to try and help out. Some years, all the pay I got for my teaching was in farmers’ co-op notes. But I want you to know, young fellow, we’re good people… Except, here and there, there are cobbers who choose to be vermin. Just a few, and mostly farther up in the hills.”
Sherkaner described the ambush at the bottom of the dell.
Lady Enclearre nodded. “I figured it was something like that. You came up here like your rear end was on fire. You were lucky you got out with your auto, but you weren’t in great danger. I mean, if you held still for them, they might kick you to death, but basically they’re too lazy to be much of a threat.”
Wow. Real perverts. Sherkaner tried not to look too interested. “So the noise is—?”
Enclearre waved dismissively. “Music, maybe. I figure they got a load of drugged fizzspit a while back. But that’s just a symptom—even if it does keep me awake at night. No. You know what really makes them vermin? They don’t plan for the Dark…and they damn their own children. That pair down in the dell, they’re hill folk who couldn’t stomach farming. Off and on they’ve done smithing, going from farm to farm and working only when they couldn’t steal. Life is easy in the middle years of the sun. And all the time they’re fornicating away, making a steady dribble of little ones…
“You’re young, Mister Underhill, maybe a bit sheltered. I don’t know if you realize how tedious it is to get a woman pregnant before the Waning Years. One or two little welts are all that ever come—and any decent lady will pinch them off. But the vermin down in the dell, they’re whacking each other all the time. The guy is always carrying around one or two welts on his back. Thank goodness, those almost always die. But once in a while they grow into the baby stage. A few make it to childhood, but by then they’ve been treated like animals for years. Most are sullen cretins.”
Sherkaner remembered the predatory stares. Those little ones were so different from what he remembered of childhood. “But surely some escape? Some grow into adults?”
“A few do. Those are the dangerous ones, the ones who see what they’ve missed. Off and on, things have been nasty here. I used to rai
se mini-tarants—you know, for companionship and to make a little money. Every one of them ended up stolen, or a sucked-out carcass on my front steps.” She was silent for a time, remembering pain.
“Shiny things catch the cretins’ fancy. For a while, there was a gang of them that figured out how to break into my place. They’d steal candysucks mostly. Then one day they stole all the pictures in the house, even in my books. I locked the indoors good after that. Somehow they broke in a third time—and took the rest of my books! I was still teaching then. I needed those books! The parish constable rousted the vermin over that, but of course she didn’t find the books. I had to buy new teacher texts for the last two years of school.” She waved at the top rows of her bookshelves, at worn copies of a dozen texts. The ones on the lower shelves looked like primers too, for all the way back to babyhood; but they were crisp and new and untouched. Strange.
The double drumbeat had lost its synchrony, dribbled slowly back into silence. “So yes, Mister Underhill, some of the out-of-phase cobblies live to be adults. They might almost pass for current-generation cobbers. In a sense, they are the next generation of vermin. Things will get ugly in a couple of years. Like the Lazy Woodsfairies, these people will begin to feel the cold. Very few will get into the parish deepness. The rest will be out in the hills. There are caves everywhere, little better than animal deepnesses. That’s where our poorest farmers spend the Dark. That’s where the out-of-phase vermin are really deadly.”
The old lady noticed his look. She gave him a jagged little grin. “I doubt I’ll see another Brightness of the sun. That’s okay. My children will have this land. There’s a view; they might build a little inn here. But if I survive the Dark, I’ll build a little cabin here and put up a big sign proclaiming me the oldest cobber living in the parish… And I’ll look down into the dell. I hope it’s washed clean. If the vermin are back, most likely it’ll be because they murdered some poor farmer family and took their deepness.”
After that, Lady Enclearre turned the conversation to other things, asking about life in Princeton and Sherk’s own childhood. She said that now she had revealed her parish’s dark secrets, he should reveal what he was up to driving an automobile down to Lands Command.
“Well, I was thinking about enlisting.” Actually, Sherkaner intended that the Command enlist in his schemes rather than the other way around. It was an attitude that had driven the University Professoriate nuts.
“Hmm-hmm. ’Tis a long way to come when you could enlist in a minute back in Princeton. I noticed the luggage end of your auto is almost as big as a farmer’s cart.” She waggled her eating hands in curiosity.
Sherkaner just smiled back. “My friends warned me to carry lots of spare parts if I wanted to tour the Pride of Accord by automobile.”
“Shu, I’ll bet.” She stood up with some difficulty, supporting herself on both midhands and feet. “Well, this old lady needs her sleep, even on a nice summer’s evening in such good company. Breakfast will be around sunup.”
She took him to his room, insisting on climbing the stairs to show him how to open the windows and fold out the sleeping perch. It was an airy little room, its wallpaper peeling with age. At one time, it must have been for her children.
“…and the privy is on the outside rear of the house. No city luxury here, Mister Underhill.”
“It will be fine, my lady.”
“Good night then.”
She was already starting down the stairs when he thought of one more question. There was always one more question. He stuck his head out the bedroom door. “You have so many books now, Lady Enclearre. Did the parish finally buy you the rest?”
She stopped her careful progress down the stairs, and gave a little laugh. “Yes, years later. And that’s a story too. It was the new parish priest, even if the dear cobber won’t admit it; he must have used his own money. But one day, there was this postal shipment on my doorstep, direct from the publishers in Princeton, new copies of the teachers’ books for every grade.” She waved a hand. “The silly fellow. But all the books will go to the deepness with me. I’ll see they get to whoever teaches the next generation of parish children.” And she continued down the stairs.
Sherkaner settled onto the sleeping perch, scrunched around until its knobby stuffing felt comfortable. He was very tired, but sleep did not come. The room’s tiny windows overlooked the dell. Starlight reflected the color of burned wood from a tiny thread of smoke. The smoke had its own far-red light, but there were no flecks of living fire in it. I guess even perverts sleep.
From the trees all around came the sound of the woodsfairies, tiny critters mating and hoarding. Sherkaner wished he had some time for entomology. The critters’ buzzing scaled up and down. When he was little there had been the story of the Lazy Woodsfairies, but he also remembered the silly poems they used to put to the fairies’ music. “So high, so low, so many things to know.” The funny little song seemed to hide behind the stridling sound.
The words and the endless song lulled him finally into sleep.
FIVE
Sherkaner made it to Lands Command in two more days. It might have taken longer, except that his redesign of the auto’s drive belt made it safer to run the downhill curves fast. It might have taken less time, except that three times he had mechanical failures, one a cracked cylinder. It had been an evasion rather than a lie to tell Lady Enclearre that his cargo was spare parts. In fact, he had taken a few, the things he figured he couldn’t build himself at a backcountry smith’s.
It was late afternoon when he came round the last bend and caught his first glimpse of the long valley that housed Lands Command. It cut for miles, straight back into the mountains, the valley walls so high that parts of the floor were already in twilight. The far end was blued with distance; Royal Falls descended in slow-motion majesty from the peaks above. This was about as close as tourists ever got. The Royal Family held tight to this land and the deepness beneath the mountain, had held it since they were nothing more than an upstart dukedom forty Darks ago.
Sherkaner ate a good meal at the last little inn, fueled up his auto, and headed into the Royal reservation. The letter from his cousin got him through the outer checkpoints. The swingpole barricades were raised, bored troopers in drab green uniforms waved him through. There were barracks, parade grounds, and—sunk behind massive berms—ammo dumps. But Lands Command had never been an ordinary military installation. During the early days of the Accord, it had been mostly a playground for the Royals. Then, generation after generation, the affairs of government had become more settled and rational and unromantic. Lands Command fulfilled its name, became the hidey-hole for the Accord’s supreme headquarters. Finally, it became something more: the site of the Accord’s most advanced military research.
That was what most interested Sherkaner Underhill. He didn’t slow down to gawk; the police-soldiers had been very definite that he proceed directly to his official destination. But there was nothing to prevent him from looking in all directions, swaying slightly on his perch as he did so. The only identification on the buildings was discreet little numerical signs, but some were pretty obvious. Wireless telegraphy: a long barracks sprouting the weirdest radio masts. Heh, if things were orderly and efficient, the building beside it would be the crypto academy. On the other side of the road lay a field of asphalt wider and smoother than any road. It was no surprise that two low-wing monoplanes sat on the far end. Sherkaner would have given a lot to see what was behind them, under tarpaulins. Farther on, a huge digger snout stuck steeply out of the lawn in front of one building. The digger’s impossible angle gave an impression of speed and violence to what was the slowest conceivable way of getting from here to there.
He was nearing the end of the valley. Royal Falls towered above. A rainbow of a thousand colors floated in its spray. He passed what was probably a library, drove around a parking circle featuring the royal colors and the usual Reaching-for-Accord thing. The stone buildings around the circle wer
e a special part of the mystique of Lands Command. By some fluke of shade and shelter, they survived each New Sun with little damage; not even their contents burned.
BUILDING 5007, the sign said. Office of Materials Research, it said on the directions the sentry had handed him. A good omen that it was right at the center of everything. He parked between two other autos that were already pulled over at the side of the street. Better not be conspicuous.
As he climbed the steps, he could see that the sun was setting almost directly down the path he had come. It was already below the highest cliffs. At the center of the traffic circle, the statues Reaching for Accord cast long shadows across the lawn. Somehow he suspected that the average military base was not quite this beautiful.
The sergeant held Sherkaner’s letter with obvious distaste. “So who is this Captain Underhill—”
“Oh, no relation, Sergeant. He—”
“—and why should his wishes count for squat with us?”
“Ah, if you will read on further, you’ll see that he is adjutant to Colonel A. G. Castleworth, Royal Perch QM.”
The sergeant mumbled something that sounded like “Dumb-ass gate security.” He settled his considerable bulk into a resigned crouch. “Very well, Mr. Underhill, just what is your proposed contribution to the war effort?” Something about the fellow was skewed. Then Sherkaner noticed that the sergeant wore medical casts on all his left legs. He was talking to a veteran of real combat.
This was going to be a hard sell. Even with a sympathetic audience, Sherkaner knew he didn’t cut a very imposing figure: young, too thin to be handsome, sort of a gawky know-it-all. He had been hoping to get to an engineering officer. “Well, Sergeant, for at least the last three generations, you military people have been trying to get some advantage by working longer into the Dark. First it was just for a few hundred days, long enough to lay unexpected mines or strengthen fortifications. Then it was a year, two, long enough to move large numbers of troops into position for attack at the next New Sun.”