by Vernor Vinge
Xopi leaned forward, speaking loudly. “Take careful note, friends! Underhill just now admits that he commits crime against nature!”
“Not at all. Evolution has caused us to survive and thrive within Nature. But times change—”
Xopi sounded sarcastic: “So times change? Science made you a Darkstrider, and now you are greater than Nature?”
Trixia laughed. “Oh, I’m still very much a part of Nature. But even before technology—did you know that ten million years ago, the length of the sun’s cycle was less than one year?”
“Fantasy. How could creatures live—”
“How indeed?” Trixia was smiling more broadly, and her tone was one of triumph. “But the record of fossil edgings is very clear. Ten million years ago, the cycle was much shorter and the variation in brightness much less intense. There was no need for deepnesses and hibernation. As the cycle of light and dark became longer and more extreme, all surviving creatures adapted. I imagine it was a harsh process. Many great changes were necessary. And now—”
Xopi made a cutting gesture. Did she make those up or were they somehow implied by the Spider broadcast? “If not fantasy, it’s still not proved. Sir, I will not argue evolution with you. There are decent people who believe it, but it is speculation—no basis for death-and-life decisions.”
“Ha! Point for Daddy!” From their perches atop Brent and Jirlib, the two girls exchanged quiet editorial comments. Where Didire couldn’t see, they were also making maw-gestures at the Honored Pedure. After that first Ten, there had been no obvious reaction, but it felt good to show the cobber how they felt about her.
“Don’t worry, Brent. Daddy’s going to get this Pedure.”
Brent had been even more quiet than usual. “I knew this was going to happen. Things were hard enough. Now Dad has to explain about me, too.”
In fact, Daddy had almost lost it when Pedure called Brent a cretin. Viki had never seen him look quite so lost. But he was taking back lost ground now. Viki had thought Pedure would be a know-nothing, but she seemed familiar with some of what Daddy was throwing at her. It didn’t matter. Honored Pedure wasn’t that knowledgeable; besides, Daddy was right.
And he was on a real pounce now: “Strange that tradition should not show more interest in the earliest past, Lady Pedure. But no matter. The changes that science is making in this current generation will be so great that I might better use them to illustrate. Nature enforced certain strategies—and the cycle of generations is one of them, I agree. Without that enforcement, we likely would not exist. But think of the waste, my lady. All our children are in one stage of life in each year. Once past that stage, the tools of their schooling must lie idle until the next generation. There is no need for such waste anymore. With science—”
Honored Pedure gave a whistling laugh, full of sarcasm and surprise. “So you admit it there! You plot that oophase be a way of life, not your isolated sin.”
“Of course!” Daddy bounced up. “I want people to know that we live in an era that is different. I want people to be free to have children in every season of the sun.”
“Yes. You intend to invade the rest of us. Tell me, Underhill, do you already have secret schools for the oophase? Are there hundreds or thousands like your six, just waiting for our acceptance?”
“Uh, no. So far we have not found playmates for my children.”
Over the years, all of them had wanted playmates. Mother had searched for them, so far without success. Gokna and Viki had concluded that other oophases must be very well hidden…or very rare. Sometimes, Viki wondered if maybe they really were damned; it was so hard to find any others.
Honored Pedure leaned back on her perch, smiling in an almost friendly way. “That last is comfort to me, Master Underhill. Even in our times, most folk are decent, and your perversions are rare. Nevertheless, ‘The Children’s Hour’ continues to be popular, even though the in-phase are now more than twenty years old. Your show is a lure that didn’t exist beforetimes. And our view exchange is therefore terribly important.”
“Yes, indeed. I think so, too.”
Honored Pedure cocked her head. What rotten luck. The cobber realized that Daddy meant it. If she got Daddy to speculating…things could be very sticky. Pedure’s next question was spoken in a casual tone of honest curiosity. “It seems to me, Master Underhill, that you understand moral law. Do you consider it, maybe, to be something like the law of creative art—to be broken by the greatest thinkers, such as yourself?”
“Greatest thinkers, fooey.” But the question had clearly caught Daddy’s imagination, drawing him away from persuasive rhetoric. “You know, Pedure, I never looked at moral rules like that before. What an interesting idea! You suggest that they could be ignored by those who have some innate—what? Talent for goodness? Surely not…Though I confess to being an illiterate when it comes to moral argument. I like to play and I like to think. The Darkstriding was a great lark, as much as it was important to the war effort. Science will create wonderful change in the near future of Spiderkind. I’m having enormous fun with these things, and I want the public—including those who are experts at moral thought—to understand the consequences of the change.”
Honored Pedure said, “Indeed.” The sarcasm was there only if you were listening as suspiciously as Little Victory was. “And you intend somehow for science to replace the Dark as the great cleanser and the great mystery?”
Daddy made dismissing gestures with his eating hands. He seemed to have forgotten that he was on the radio. “Science will make the Dark of the Sun as innocuous and knowable as the night that comes at the end of every day.”
In the control room, Didi gave a little yip of surprise. It was the first time Viki had ever heard the engineer react to the broadcasts she was supervising. Out on the soundstage, Rappaport Digby sat up as straight as if someone had stuck a spear up his rear. Daddy didn’t seem to notice, and Honored Pedure’s response was as casual as if they were discussing the possibility of rain: “We’ll live and work right through the Dark as if it was just one long night?”
“Yes! What do you think all the talk of nuclear power means?”
“So then we all will be Darkstriders, and there will be no Dark, no mystery, no Deepness for the mind of Spiderkind to rest within. Science will take all.”
“Piffle. On this one small world, there will be no more real darkness. But there will always be the Dark. Go out tonight, Lady Pedure. Look up. We are surrounded by the Dark and always will be. And just as our Dark ends with the passage of time in a New Sun, so the greater Dark ends at the shores of a million million stars. Think! If our sun’s cycle was once less than a year, then even earlier our sun might have been middling bright all the time. I have students who are sure most of the stars are just like our sun, only much much younger, and many with worlds like ours. You want a deepness that endures, a deepness that Spiderkind can depend on? Pedure, there is a deepness in the sky, and it extends forever.” And Daddy was off on his space-travel thing. Even graduate students glazed over when Daddy started on this; only a hard core of crazies specialized in astronomy. It was all so upside down and inside out. For most people, the idea that lights as steady as stars could be like the sun was a leap of faith greater than most religions asked for.
Digby and Honored Pedure watched open-mawed as Daddy built the theory up in more and more elaboration. Digby had always liked the science part of the show, and this had him all but hypnotized. Pedure on the other hand…her shock faded quickly. Either she had heard this before, or it was tending away from the path she wanted to follow.
The clock on the control-room wall was ticking down toward the orgy of commercial messages that always ended the show. It looked like Daddy was going to get the last word…except that Viki was sure Honored Pedure was watching that clock more intensely than anything in the studio, waiting for some precisely chosen strategic instant.
And then the cleric grabbed her mike close, and spoke loudly enough to break into
Sherkaner’s flow of thought. “So interesting, but colonizing the space between the stars is surely beyond the time of this current generation.”
Daddy waved dismissively. “Perhaps yes, but—”
Honored Pedure continued, her voice academic and interested, “So the great change during our time is simply the conquest of the next coming Dark, that which ends this cycle of the sun?”
“Correct. We—all who hear this radio broadcast—will have no need of deepnesses. That is the promise of nuclear power. All the great cities will have sufficient power to stay warm for more than two centuries—all the way through the upcoming Dark. So—”
“I see, and so very large building projects must happen to enclose the cities?”
“Yes, and farms. And we’ll need to provide—”
“And this then is also the reason you want an added generation of adults. This is why you push oophase births.”
“Oh, not directly. It is simply a feature of the new situ—”
“So the Goknan Accord will enter the coming Dark in fact with hundreds of millions of Darkstriders. What of the rest of the world?”
Daddy seemed to realize that he was headed for trouble. “Um, but other technologically advanced countries may do the same. The poorer countries will have their conventional deepnesses, and their awakening will come later.”
Now Pedure’s voice had steel in it, a trap that was finally sprung: “‘Their awakening will come later.’ During the Great War, four Darkstriders brought down the most powerful nation of the world. In the next Dark, you will be Darkstriders by the millions. This seems not different from a preparation for the greatest deepness massacres in history.”
“No, it’s not like that at all. We wouldn’t—”
“I’m sorry, lady and sir, our time has run out.”
“But—”
Digby rumbled on over Daddy’s objections. “I’d like to thank you both for being with us today and—” blah blah blah.
On the soundstage, Pedure stood up the moment Digby finished his spiel. The microphones were off now and Viki couldn’t hear the words. The cleric was evidently exchanging pleasantries with the announcer. On the other side of the stage, Daddy looked very nonplussed. As Honored Pedure swept past him, Daddy stood and followed her offstage, talking animatedly. Pedure’s only expression was a haughty little smile.
Behind Viki, Didi Ultmot was pushing levers, tuning the most important part of the broadcast, the commercials. Finally, she turned away from the controls. There was something a little dazed about her aspect. “…You know, your dad has some really…weird…ideas.”
There was a sequence of chords that might have been music, and the words, “Sharpened hands are happy hands. Brim the tinfall with mirthly bands—”
Spider commercials were sometimes the high point of Princeton Radio programs. Molt refresh, eye polish, leggings—many of the products made some sense, even if the selling points did not. Other products were just nonsense words, especially if it was a previously unknown product, and second-string translators.
Today, it was the second-stringers. Reung, Broute, and Trixia sat fidgeting, cut off from the signal stream. Their handlers were already moving in to clear them from the stage. Today the crowd in Benny’s parlor pretty much ignored the commercials, too:
“Not as much fun as when the kids are on, but—”
“Did you get the angle on spaceflight? I wonder what this does to the Schedule? If—”
Ezr wasn’t paying attention. His gaze stayed on the wall, and all the chitchat was just distant buzzing. Trixia looked worse than usual. The flicker of her gaze seemed desperate to Ezr. He often thought that, and a dozen times Anne Reynolt had claimed the behavior was nothing but eagerness to get back to work.
“Ezr?” A hand brushed gently against his sleeve. It was Qiwi. Sometime during the program she had slipped into the parlor. She had done this before, sitting silently, watching the show. Now she had the gall to act like a friend. “Ezr, I—”
“Save it.” Ezr turned away from her.
And so he was looking directly at Trixia when it happened: The handlers had moved Broute out of the room. As they led Xopi Reung past her, Trixia shrieked and lunged from her chair, her fist smashing into the younger woman’s face. Xopi twisted away, jerking out of her handler’s grip. She stared dazedly at the blood streaming from her nose, then wiped her face with her hand. The other tech grabbed the screaming Trixia before she could do more damage. Somehow Trixia’s words made it onto the general audio channel: “Pedure bad! Die! Die!”
“Oh, boy.” Next to Ezr, Trud Silipan bounced off his seat and pushed his way toward the entrance to Benny’s parlor. “Reynolt is going to have a fit about this. I gotta get back to Hammerfest.”
“I’m coming, too.” Ezr brushed past Qiwi and dived for the door. Benny’s parlor was silent for a shocked moment, then everyone was talking—
—but by that time, Ezr was nearly out of earshot, and chasing Silipan. They moved quickly to the main corridor, heading for the taxi tubes. At the locks, Silipan tapped something on the scheduler, then turned. “What do you two want?”
Ezr looked over his shoulder, saw that Pham Trinli had followed them out of Benny’s. Ezr said, “I have to come, Trud. I have to see Trixia.”
Trinli sounded worried too. “Is this going to screw our deal, Silipan? We need to make sure that—”
“Oh, pus. Yeah, we gotta think how this may affect things. Okay. Come along.” He glanced at Ezr. “But you. There’s nothing you can do to help.”
“I’m coming, Trud.” Ezr found himself less than ten centimeters from the other, with his fists raised.
“Okay, okay! Just stay out of the way.” A moment later, the taxi lock blinked green and they were aboard and accelerating out from the temp. The rockpile was a sunlit jumble just to one side of Arachna’s blue disk. “Pest, this would happen when we were on the far side. Taxi!”
“Sir?”
“Best time to Hammerfest.” Normally, they had to baby the taxi hardware—but apparently the automation recognized Trud’s voice and tone.
“Yessir.” The taxi pushed off at nearly a tenth of a gee. Silipan and the others grabbed for restraints, and tied down. Ahead of them the rockpile grew and grew. “This really sucks, you know that? Reynolt is going to say I was absent from my post.”
“Well, weren’t you?” Trinli had settled down right beside Silipan.
“Of course, but it shouldn’t matter. Hell, one handler should have been enough for the whole pus-be-damned translator crew. But now, I’m going to be the one who looks bad.”
“But is Trixia all right?”
“Why did Bonsol blow up like that?” said Trinli.
“It beats me. You know they bicker and fight, especially some of the ones in the same specialty. But this came from nowhere.” Silipan abruptly stopped talking. For a long moment he stared into his huds. Then, “It’ll be okay. It’ll be okay. I bet there was still some audio feed from the ground. You know, a live mike, a failure of their show management. Maybe Underhill took a swipe at the other Spider. That might make Bonsol’s action ‘valid translation.’…Damn!”
Now the guy was really worried, grasping at random explanations. Trinli seemed too dense to notice. He grinned and slapped Silipan lightly on the shoulder. “Don’t worry about it. You know Qiwi Lisolet is in on the deal. That means that Podmaster Nau wants the zips to be more widely used, too. We’ll just say you were aboard the temp to help me with the details.”
The taxi turned end for end, braking for its landing. The rockpile and Arachna tumbled across the sky.
TWENTY-FIVE
They didn’t see the Honored Pedure on the way out of the radio station. Daddy was a little subdued, but he smiled and laughed when the cobblies told him how much they liked his performance. He didn’t even scold Gokna for Giving Ten. Brent got to sit up front with Daddy on the way back to Hill House.
Gokna and Victory didn’t talk much in the car. They
both knew that everybody was fooling everybody.
When they got home, it was still two hours until dinner. The kitchen staff claimed that General Smith had returned from Lands Command and that she would be at dinner. Gokna and Viki exchanged looks. I wonder what Mother will say to Daddy. The juiciest parts wouldn’t be at dinner. Hmm. So what to do with the rest of the afternoon? The sisters split up, separately recon’d the spiraled halls of Hill House. There were rooms—lots of rooms—that were always locked. Some of them were ones that they had never even been able to steal keys for. The General had her own offices here, even if the most important stuff was down at Lands Command.
Viki poked into Daddy’s ground-floor den and the tech-level cafeteria, but only briefly. She’d bet Gokna that Daddy would not be hiding, but now she realized that today “not hiding” did not preclude “difficult to find.” She roamed through the labs, found the typical signs of his passage, graduate students in various states of puzzlement and sudden, surprised enlightenment. (“Underhill Dazzle” was what the students called it: If you came away puzzled, chances were that Daddy had said something worthwhile. If you were instantly enlightened, it probably meant Daddy had fooled both himself and you with a facile misinsight.)
The new signals lab was near the top of the house, under a roof full of experimental antennas. She caught Jaybert Landers coming down the steps from there. The cobber wasn’t showing any symptoms of Underhill Dazzle. Too bad.
“Hello, Jaybert. Have you seen my—”
“Yeah, they’re both up in the lab.” He jerked a hand over his shoulder.
Aha! But Viki didn’t immediately sidle past him. If the General was already here, maybe she should get some far intelligence. “So what’s happening, Jaybert?”