by Vernor Vinge
In earlier generations, all but soldiers would be in their deeps by now. Even in his own generation, in the Great War, only the die-hard tunnel warriors still fought this far into the Dark. This time—well, there were plenty of soldiers. Hrunkner had his own military escort. And even the security cobbers around the Underhill house were in uniform nowadays. But these were not caretakers, guarding against endcycle scavengers. Princeton was overflowing with people. The new, Dark Time housing was jammed. The city was busier than Unnerby had ever seen it.
And the mood? Fear close to panic, wild enthusiasm, often both in the same people. Business was booming. Just two days earlier, Prosperity Software had bought a controlling interest in the Bank of Princeton. No doubt the grab had gutted Prosperity’s financial reserves, and put them in a business that their software people knew nothing about. It was insane—and very much in the spirit of the times.
Hrunkner’s guards had to push their way through the crowd at the Hill House entrance. Even past the property limits, there were reporters with their little four-color cameras hanging from helium balloons. They couldn’t know who Hrunkner was, but they saw the guards and the direction he was heading.
“Sir, can you tell us—”
“Has Southland threatened preemption?” This one tugged on his balloon’s string, dragging the camera down till it hung just over Hrunkner’s eyes.
Unnerby raised his forearms in an elaborate shrug. “How should I know? I’m just a friggin’ sergeant.” In fact, he was still a sergeant, but the rank was meaningless. Unnerby was one of those rankless cobbers who made whole military bureaucracies hop to their tune. As a young fellow he had been aware of such. They had seemed as distant as the King himself. Now…now he was so busy that even a visit with a friend had to be counted by the minute, balanced against what it might cost the life-and-death schedules he must keep.
His claim stopped the reporters just long enough for his team to get past and scuttle up the steps. Even so, it might have been the wrong thing to say. Behind him, Unnerby could see the reporters clustering together. By tomorrow, his name would be on their list. Ah, for the times when everyone thought that Hill House was just a plush annex to the University. Over the years, that cover had frayed away. The press thought they knew all about Sherkaner now.
Past the armored-glass doors there were no more intruders. Things were suddenly quiet, and it was much too warm for jackets and leggings. As he shed the insulation, he saw Underhill and his guide-bug standing just around the corner, out of the reporters’ sight. In the old days, Sherk would have come outside to greet him. Even at the height of his radio fame, it hadn’t bothered him to come outside. But nowadays Smith’s security had its way.
“So, Sherk. I came.” I always come when you call. For decades, every new idea had seemed crazier than the last—and changed the world still again. But things had slowly changed with Sherkaner too. The General had given him the first warning, at Calorica, five years ago. After that, there had been rumors. Sherkaner had drifted away from active research. Apparently his work on antigravity had gone nowhere, and now the Kindred were launching floater satellites, for God’s sake!
“Thanks, Hrunk.” His smile was quick, nervous. “Junior told me you would be in town and—”
“Little Victory? She’s here?”
“Yes! In the building somewhere. You’ll be seeing her.” Sherk led Hrunkner and his guards down the main hall, talking all the while about Little Victory and the other children, about Jirlib’s researches and the youngest ones’ basic training. Hrunkner tried to imagine what they looked like. It had been seventeen years since the kidnappings…since he had last seen the cobblies.
It was quite a caravan they made trooping down the hall, the guide-bug leading Sherkaner leading Hrunkner and the latter’s security. Underhill’s progress was a slow drift to the left, corrected by Mobiy’s constant gentle tugging on his tether. Sherk’s lateral dysbadisia was not a mental disease; like his tremor, it was a low-level nervous disorder. The luck of the Dark had made him a very late casualty of the Great War. Nowadays he looked and talked like someone a generation older.
Sherkaner stopped by an elevator; Unnerby didn’t remember it from his previous visits. “Watch this, Hrunk…Press nine, Mobiy.” The bug extended one of its long, furry forelegs. The tip hovered uncertainly for a second, then poked the “9” slot on the elevator door. “They say no bug can be taught numbers. Mobiy and I, we’re working on it.”
Hrunkner shed his entourage at the elevator. It was just the two of them—and Mobiy—who headed upward. Sherkaner seemed to relax, and his tremor eased. He patted Mobiy’s back gently, but no longer held so tight to the tether. “This is just between you and me, Sergeant.”
Unnerby sharpened his gaze. “My guards are Deep Secret rated, Sherk. They’ve seen things that—”
Underhill raised a hand. His eyes gleamed in the ceiling lights. Those eyes seemed full of the old genius. “This is…different. It’s something I’ve wanted you to know for a long time, and now that things are so desperate—”
The elevator slowed to a stop and the doors opened. Sherkaner had taken them all the way to the top of the hill. “I have my office up here now. This used to be Junior’s, but now that she’s been commissioned, she has graciously willed it to me!” The hall had once been out-of-doors; Hrunkner remembered it as a path overlooking the children’s little park. Now it was walled with heavy glass, strong enough to hold pressure even after the atmosphere had snowed out.
There was the sound of electric motors, and doors slid aside. Sherkaner waved his friend into the room beyond. Tall windows looked out on the city. Little Victory had had quite a room. Now it was a Sherkaner jumble. Over in the corner was that rocket bomb/dollhouse, and a sleeping perch for Mobiy. But the room was dominated by processor boxes and superquality displays. The pictures shown were Mountroyal landscapes, the colors wilder than Hrunk had ever seen outside of nature. And yet, the pictures were surreal. There were shaded forest glens, but with plaid undertones. There were grizzards sleeting across an iceberg eruption, all in the colors of lava. It was graphical madness…silly videomancy. Hrunkner stopped, and waved at the colors. “I’m impressed, but it’s not very well calibrated, Sherk.”
“Oh, it’s calibrated, all right—but the inner meaning hasn’t been derived.” Sherk mounted a console perch, and seemed to be looking at the pictures. “Heh. The colors are gross; after a while, you stop noticing…Hrunkner, have you ever thought that our current problems are more serious than they should be?”
“How should I know? Everything is new.” Unnerby let himself sag. “Yeah, things are on an infernal slide. This Southland mess is every nightmare we imagined. They have nuclear weapons, maybe two hundred, and delivery systems. They’ve bankrupted themselves trying to keep up with the advanced nations.”
“Bankrupted themselves, just to kill the rest of us?”
Thirty-five years ago, Sherk had seen the shape of all this, at least in general outlines. Now he was asking moron questions. “No,” said Unnerby, almost lecturing. “At least, that’s not how it started out. They tried to create an industrial/agricultural base that could stay active in the Dark. They failed. They’ve got enough to keep a couple of cities going, a military division or two. Right now Southland is about five years further into the cold than the rest of the world. The dry hurricanes are already building over the south pole.” Southland was a marginally livable place at best; at the middle of the Bright Time, there were a few years where farming was possible. But the continent was fabulously rich in minerals. Over the last five generations, the Southlanders had been exploited by northern mining corporations, more avariciously each cycle than the last. But in this generation, there was a sovereign state in the South, one that was very afraid of the North and the coming Dark. “They spent so much trying to make the leap to nuclear-electrics that they don’t even have all their deepnesses provisioned.”
“And the Kindred are poisoning whatever good
will there might otherwise be.”
“Of course.” Pedure was a genius. Assassination, blackmail, clever fearmongering. Whatever was evil, Pedure was very good at. And so now the Southland government figured that it was the Accord that planned to pounce on them in the Dark. “The news networks have it right, Sherk. The Southies might nuke us.”
Hrunkner looked beyond Sherkaner’s garish displays. From here, he could see Princeton in all directions. Some of the buildings—like Hill House—would be habitable even after the air condensed. They could hold pressure, and had good power connections. Most of the city was just slightly underground. It had taken fifteen years of construction madness to do that for the cities of the Accord, but now an entire civilization could survive, awake, through the Dark. But they were so close to the surface; they would quickly die in any nuclear war. The industries Hrunkner had helped to create had done miracles…So now we’re more at risk than ever. More miracles were needed. Hrunkner and millions of others were struggling with those impossible demands. During the last thirty days, Unnerby had averaged only three hours’ sleep a day. This detour to chat with Underhill had scuttled one planning meeting and an inspection. Am I here out of loyalty…or because I hope that Sherk can save us all again?
Underhill steepled his forearms, making a little temple in front of his head. “Have…have you ever thought that maybe something else is responsible for our problems?”
“Damn it, Sherk. Like what?”
Sherkaner steadied himself on his perch, and his words came low and fast. “Like aliens from outer space. They’ve been here since before the New Sun. You and I saw them in the Dark, Hrunkner. The lights in the sky, remember?”
He rattled on, his tone so unlike the Sherkaner Underhill of years past. The Underhill of old revealed his weird speculations with an arch look or a challenging laugh. But now Underhill spoke in a rush, almost as if someone would stop him…or contradict him? This Underhill spoke like…a desperate man, grasping at fantasy.
The old fellow seemed to realize that he had lost his audience. “You don’t believe me, do you, Hrunk.”
Hrunkner shrank back on his perch. What resources had already been sunk into this horrifying nonsense? Other worlds—life on other worlds—that was one of Underhill’s oldest, craziest ideas. And now it was surfacing after years of justified obscurity. He knew the General; she’d be no more impressed by this than he was. The world was teetering on the edge of an abyss. There was no room to humor poor Sherkaner. Surely the General did not let this distract her. “It’s like the videomancy, isn’t it, Sherk?” All your life, you’ve made miracles. But now you need them faster and more desperately than ever before. And all you have left is superstition.
“No, no, Hrunk. The videomancy was just a means, a cover so the aliens wouldn’t see. Here, I’ll show you!” Sherkaner’s hands tapped at control holes. The pictures flickered, the color values changing. One landscape morphed from summer to winter. “It’ll be a moment. The bit rate is low, but channel setup is a very big computation.” Underhill’s head tilted toward tiny displays that Hrunkner could not see. His hands tapped impatiently on the console. “More than anyone, you deserved to know about this, Hrunk. You have done so much for us; you could have done so much more if only we’d brought you into it. But the General—”
On the display, the colors were shifting, the landscapes melting into low-resolution chaos. Several seconds passed.
And Sherkaner gave a little cry of surprise and unhappiness.
What was left of the picture was recognizable, if much lower bandwidth than the original video. This appeared to be a standard eight-color video stream. They were looking out a camera in Victory Smith’s office at Lands Command. It was a good picture, but crude compared to true vision, or even Sherk’s videomancy displays.
But this picture showed something real: General Smith stared back at them from her desk. The work was piled high around her. She waved an aide out of the office, and stared out at Underhill and Unnerby.
“Sherkaner…you brought Hrunkner Unnerby to your office.” Her tone was tight and angry.
“Yes, I—”
“I thought we discussed this, Sherkaner. You can play with your toys as much as you please, but you are not to bother people who have real work to do.”
Hrunkner had never heard the General use such tones and such sarcasm with Underhill. However necessary it might be, he would have given anything not to witness it.
Underhill seemed about to protest. He twisted on his perch, and his arms flailed, begging. Then: “Yes, dear.”
General Smith nodded and waved at Hrunkner. “I’m sorry for this inconvenience, Sergeant. If you need help getting back on schedule…”
“Thank you, ma’am. That may be. I’ll check with the airport and get back to you.”
“Fine.” The image from Lands Command vanished.
Sherkaner lowered his head until it rested on the console. His arms and legs were inward-drawn and still. The guide-bug moved closer, pushed at him questioningly.
Underhill moved toward him. “Sherk?” he said softly. “Are you all right?”
The other was silent for a moment. Then he raised his head. “I’ll be okay. I’m sorry, Hrunk.”
“I—um, Sherkaner, I’ve got to go. I have another meeting—” That wasn’t quite true. He had already missed both the meeting and the inspection. What was true was that there were so many other things to attend to. With Smith’s help he might be able to get out of Princeton fast enough to catch up.
Underhill climbed awkwardly down from his perch and let Mobiy guide him after the sergeant. As the heavy doors slid open, Sherkaner reached out a single forehand, gently tugging on one of his sleeves. More insanity?
“Don’t ever give up, Hrunk. There’s always a way, just like before; you’ll see.”
Unnerby nodded, mumbled something apologetic, and eased out of the room. As he walked down the glass-walled hallway toward the elevator, Sherkaner stood with Mobiy at the entrance to the office. Once upon a time, Underhill would have followed all the way down to the main foyer. But he seemed to realize that something had changed between them. As the elevator doors shut behind Unnerby, he saw his old friend give a shy little wave.
Then he was gone, and the elevator was sinking downward. For a moment, Unnerby surrendered to rage and sadness. Funny how the two emotions could mix. He had heard the stories about Sherkaner, and had willed disbelief. Like Sherkaner, he had wanted certain things to be true and had ignored the contrary symptoms. Unlike Sherk, Hrunkner Unnerby could not ignore the hard truths of their situation. And so this ultimate crisis would have to be won or lost without Sherkaner Underhill…
Unnerby forced his mind away from Sherkaner. There would come a time later, hopefully a time to remember the good things instead of this afternoon. For now…if he could commandeer a jet out of Princeton, he might be back at Lands Command in time to chat up his deputy directors.
Around the level of the cobblies’ old park, the elevator slowed. Unnerby had thought this was Sherkaner’s private lift. Who might this be?
The doors slid back—
“Well! Sergeant Unnerby! May I join you?”
A young lady lieutenant, dressed in quartermaster fatigues. Victory Smith as she had been so many years ago. Her aspect had the same brightness, her movement the same graceful precision. For a moment, Unnerby could only boggle at the apparition beyond the doors.
The vision stepped into the elevator, and Unnerby involuntarily moved back, still in shock. Then the other’s military bearing slipped for an instant. The lieutenant lowered her head shyly. “Uncle Hrunk, don’t you recognize me? It’s Viki, all grown up.”
Of course. Unnerby gave a weak laugh. “I—I’ll never call you Little Victory again.”
Viki put a couple of arms affectionately across his shoulders. “No. You’re allowed. Somehow, I don’t think I’ll ever be giving you orders. Daddy said you were coming up today…Have you seen him? Do you have a moment
to talk with me?”
The elevator was sliding to a stop, foyer level. “I—Yes, I did…Look, I’m in a bit of rush to get back to Lands Command.” After the debacle upstairs, he just didn’t know what he could say to Viki.
“That’s okay. I’m on minus minutes myself. Let’s share the ride to the airport.” She waved a grin. “Twice the security.”
Lieutenants might manage a security escort, but they are rarely the subject of one. Young Victory’s group was about half the number of Unnerby’s but, from the look of them, even more competent. Several of the guards were clearly combat veterans. The fellow on the top perch behind the driver was one of the biggest troopers Unnerby had ever seen. When they slid into the car, he’d given Unnerby an odd little salute, not a military thing at all. Huh! That was Brent!
“So. What did Daddy have to say?” The tone was light, but Hrunkner could hear the anxiety. Viki was not quite the perfect, opaque intelligence officer. It might have been a flaw, but then he had known her since she had cobblie eyes.
And that made it all the harder for Unnerby to say the truth. “You must know, Viki. He’s not himself anymore. He’s all into alien monsters and videomancy. It took the General herself to shut him up.”
Young Victory was quiet, but her arms drew into an angry frown. For a moment, he thought she was angry with him. But then he heard her faint mutter, “The old fool.” She sighed, and they rode in silence for a few seconds.
Surface traffic was sparse, mainly cobbers traveling between disconnected boroughs. The streetlights splashed pools of blue and ultra, glittered off the frost that lined the gutters and the sides of buildings. Light from within the buildings glowed through the rime, showing greenish where it caught flecks of snow moss in the ice. Crystal worms grew by the millions on the walls, their roots probing endlessly for morsels of heat. Here in Princeton, the natural world might survive almost into the heart of the Dark. The city around and beneath them was a growing, warming thing. Behind those walls, and below the ground, things were busier than ever in the history of Princeton. The newer buildings of the business district glowed from ten thousand windows, boasting power, spilling broad bands of light upon the older structures…And even a modest nuclear attack would kill everyone here.