A Deepness in the Sky (80 page)

A few seconds later, Rita Liao stuck her head into the room. Ezr turned, saw a look of quiet amazement on her face. "You're a magician, Ezr. How'd you get everyone calmed down?"

"I...I guess Trixia just trusts me." That was an innermost hope phrased as diffident speculation.

Rita pulled her head out of the doorway to look up and down the corridor. "Yeah. But you know, after you got her back to work? All the others just quietly returned to their rooms. These translator types have more control functionality than military zips. All you have to do is convince the alpha member, and everyone falls into line." She grinned. "But I guess we've seen this before, the way the translators can control the rote-layer zips. They're the keystone components, all right."

"Trixia is a person!"All the Focused are people, you damn slaver!

"I know, Ezr. Sorry. Really, I understand....Trixia and the other translators do seem to be different. You have to be pretty special to translate natural languages. Of all—of all the Focused, the translators seem the closest to being real people....Look, I'll take care of buttoning things down and let Bil Phuong know things are under control."

"Okay," Ezr replied, his voice stiff.

Rita backed out of the room. The cell door slid shut. After a moment, he heard other doors thumping shut along the corridor.

Trixia sat hunched over her keyboard, oblivious of the opinions just rendered. Ezr watched her for some seconds, thinking about her future, thinking about how he would finally save her. Even after forty years of Lurk, the translators couldn't masquerade real-time voice comm with the Spiders. Tomas Nau would gain no advantage by having his translators down by Arachna...yet. Once the world was conquered, Trixia and the others would be the voice of the conqueror.

But that time will not come.Pham and Ezr's plan was proceeding down its own schedule. Except for a few old systems, a few electromechanical backups, the Qeng Ho localizers could have total control. Pham and Ezr were finally moving toward real sabotage—most important the Hammerfest wireless-power cutoff. That switch was an almost pure mechanical link, immune to all subtlety. But Pham had one more use for localizers. True grit. These last few Msecs, they had built up layers of grit near that switch, and set up similar sabotage in other old systems, and aboard theInvisibleHand. The last hundred seconds would involve flagrant risk. It was a trick that they could try only once, when Nau and his gang were most distracted with their own takeover.

If the sabotage worked—whenit worked—the Qeng Ho localizers would rule.And our time will come.

FORTY-NINE

Hrunkner Unnerby spent a lot of time at Lands Command; it was essentially the home base of his construction operations. Perhaps ten times a year he visited the inner sanctums of Accord Intelligence. He talked with General Smith every day by email; he saw her at staff meetings. Their meeting at Calorica—was that five years ago already—had been not cordial but at least an honest sharing of anxiety. But for seventeen years...for all the time since Gokna died...he had never been in General Smith's private office.

The General had a new aide, someone young and oophase. Hrunkner barely noticed. He stepped into the silence of the chief's den. The place was as big as he remembered, with open-storied nooks and isolated perches. For the moment he seemed to be alone. This had been Strut Greenval's office, before Smith. It had been the Intelligence chief's innermost den for two generations before that. Those previous occupants would scarcely recognize it now. There was even more comm and computer gear than in Sherk's office in Princeton. One side of the room was a full vision display, as elaborate as any videomancy. Just now it was receiving from cameras topside: Royal Falls had stilled more than two years ago. He could see all the way up the valley. The hills were stark and cooling; there was CO2frost in the heights. But nearby...the colors beyond red leaked from buildings, flared bright in the exhaust of street traffic. For a moment, Hrunk just stared, thinking what this scene must have been like just one generation earlier, five years into the last Dark. Hell, this room would have been abandoned by then. Greenval's people would have been stuck up in their little command cave, breathing stuffy air, listening for the last radio messages, wondering if Hrunk and Sherk would survive in their submarine deepness. A few more days and Greenval would have closed down his operation, and the Great War would have been frozen in its own deadly sleep.

But in this generation, we just go on and on, headed for the most terriblewar of all time.

Behind him, he saw the General step silently into the room. "Sergeant, please sit down." Smith gestured to the perch in front of her desk.

Unnerby pulled his attention away from the view, and sat. Smith's -shaped desk was piled with hardcopy reports and five or six small reading displays, three alight. Two showed abstract designs, similar to the pictures that Sherkaner had lost himself in.So she does still humor him.

The General's smile seemed stiff, forced, and so it might be sincere. "I call you Sergeant. What a fantasy rank. But...thank you for coming."

"Of course, ma'am."Why did she call me down here? Maybe his wild scheme for the Northeast had a chance. Maybe— "Have you seen my excavation proposals, General? With nuclear explosives we could dig shielded caves, and quickly. The Northeast shales would be ideal. Give me the bombs and in one hundred days I could protect most of the agri and people there." The words just tumbled out. The expense would be enormous, out of range of the Crown or free financing. The General would have to take emergency powers, Covenant or no. And even then, it would not make a happy ending. But if—when—the war came, it could save millions.

Victory Smith raised one hand, gently. "Hrunk, we don't have a hundred days. One way or another, I expect things will be settled in less than three." She gestured to one of the little displays. "I just got word that Honored Pedure is actually at Southmost in person, orchestrating things."

"Well, damn her. If she lights off a Southmost attack, she'll fry too."

"That's why we're probably safe until she leaves."

"I've heard rumors, ma'am. Our external intelligence is in the garbage? Thract has been cashiered?" The stories just grew and grew. There were terrible suspicions of Kindred agents at the heart of Intelligence. Deepest crypto was being used on the most routine transmissions. Where the enemy had not succeeded with direct threats, they might now win simply because of the panic and confusion that were everywhere.

Smith's head jerked angrily. "That's right. We've been outmaneuvered in the South. But we still have assets there, people who depended on me...people I have let down." That last was almost inaudible, and Hrunk doubted it was addressed to him. She was silent for a moment, then straightened. "You're something of an expert on the Southmost substructure, aren't you, Sergeant?"

"I designed it; supervised most of the construction." And that had been when the South and the Accord had been as friendly as different nation-states ever got.

The General edged back and forth on her perch. Her arms trembled. "Sergeant...even now, I can't stand the sight of you. I think you know that."

Hrunk lowered his head.I know. Oh, yes.

"But for simple things, I trust you. And, oh, by the Deep, just now I need you! An order would be meaningless...but will you help me with Southmost?" The words seemed to be wrung from her.

You have to ask?Hrunkner raised his hands. "Of course."

Evidently, the quick response had not been expected. Smith just gobbled for a second. "Do you understand? This will put you at risk, in personal service to me."

"Yes, yes. I have always wanted to help."I've always wanted to makethings right again.

The General stared at him a moment more. Then: "Thank you, Sergeant." She tapped something into her desk. "Tim Downing"—that young new aide?—"will get you the detailed analysis later. The short of it is, there's only one reason Pedure would be down there in Southmost: The issue there is not decided. She doesn't have all the key people entrapped. Some members of the Southland Parliament have requested I come down to talk."

"But...it should be the King that goes for something like this."

"Yes. It seems that a number of traditions are being broken in this new Dark."

"You can't go, ma'am." Somewhere in the back of his mind, something chuckled at the violation of noncom etiquette.

"You aren't the only person with that advice....The last thing Strut Greenval said to me, not two hundred yards from where we're sitting now, was something similar." She stopped, silent with memories. "Funny. Strut had so much figured out. He knew I'd end up on his perch. He knew there would be temptations to get into the field. Those first decades of the Bright, there were a dozen times when I know I could have fixed things—even saved lives—if I'd just go out and do what was necessary myself. But Greenval's advice was more like an order, and I followed it, and lived to fight another day." Abruptly she laughed, and her attention seemed to come back to the present. "And now I'm a rather old lady, hunkered down in a web of deceit. And it's finally time to break Strut's rule."

"Ma'am, General Greenval's advice is right as ever. Your place is here."

"I...let this mess happen. It was my decision, my necessary decision. But if I go to Southmost now, there's a chance I can save some lives."

"But if you fail, then you die and we certainly lose!"

"No. If I die things will be bloodier, but we'll still prevail." She snapped her desk displays closed. "We leave in three hours, from Courier Launch Four. Be there."

Hrunkner almost shrieked his frustration. "At least take special security. Young Victory and—"

"The Lighthill team?" A faint smile showed. "Their reputation has spread, has it?"

Hrunkner couldn't help smiling back. "Y-yes. No one knows quite what they're up to...but they seem to be as wacko as we ever were." There were stories. Some good, some bad, all wild.

"You don't really hate them, do you, Hrunk?" There was wonder in her voice. Smith went on. "They have other, more important things to do during the next seventy-five hours....Sherkaner and I created the present situation by conscious choice, over many years. We knew the risks. Now it's payoff time."

It was the first she had mentioned Sherkaner since he'd entered the room. The collaboration that had brought them so far had broken, and now the General had only herself.

The question was pointless, but he had to ask. "Have you talked to Sherk about this? What is he doing?"

Smith was silent, but her look was closed. Then, "The best he can, Sergeant. The best he can."

The night was clear even by the standards of Paradise. Obret Nethering walked carefully around the tower at the island's summit, checking the equipment for tonight's session. His heated leggings and jacket weren't especially bulky, but if his air warmer broke, or if the power cord that trailed behind him was severed...Well, it wasn't a lie when he told his assistants that they could freeze off an arm or a leg or a lung in a matter of minutes. It was five years into the Dark. He wondered if even in the Great War there had been people awake this late.

Nethering paused in his inspection; after all, he was a little ahead of schedule. He stood in the cold stillness and looked out upon his specialty—the heavens. Twenty years ago, when he was just starting at Princeton, Nethering had wanted to be a geologist. Geology was the father science, and in this generation it was more important than ever, what with all mega-excavations and heavy mining. Astronomy, on the other hand, was the domain of fringe cranks. The natural orientation of sensible people must be downward, planning for the safest deepness in which to survive the next Darkness. What was there to see in the sky? The sun certainly, the source of all life and all problems. But beyond that nothing changed. The stars were such tiny constant things, not at all like the sun or anything else one could relate to.

Then, in his sophomore year, Nethering had met old Sherkaner Underhill, and his life was changed forever—though, in that, Nethering was not unique. There were ten thousand sophomores, yet somehow Underhill could still reach out to individuals. Or maybe it was the other way around: Underhill was such a blazing source of crazy ideas that certain students gathered round him like woodsfairies round a flame. Underhill claimed that all of math and physics had suffered because no one understood the simplicity of the world's orbit about the sun or the intrinsic motions of the stars. If there had been evenone other planet to play mind games with—why, the calculus might have been invented ten generations ago instead of two. And this generation's mad explosion of technology might have been spread more peaceably across multiple cycles of Bright and Dark.

Of course, Underhill's claims about science weren't entirely original. Five generations ago, with the invention of the telescope, binary star astronomy had revolutionized Spiderkind's understanding of time. But Underhill brought the old ideas together in such marvelous new ways. Young Nethering had been drawn further and further away from safe and sane geology, until the Emptiness Above became his love. The more you realized what the stars really were, the more you realized what the universe must really be. And nowadays, all the colors could be seen in the sky if one knew where to look, and with what instruments. Here on Paradise Island, the far-red of the stars shone clearer than anywhere in the world. With the large telescopes being built nowadays, and the dry stillness of the upper air, sometimes he felt like he could see to the end of the universe.

Huh?Low above the northeast horizon, a narrow feather of aurora was spreading south. There was a permanent loop of magnetism over the North Sea, but with the Dark five years old, auroras were very rare. Down in Paradise Town, what tourists were left must be oohing and aahing at the show. For Obret Nethering, this was just an unexpected inconvenience. He watched a second more, beginning to wonder. The light was awfully cohesive, especially at the northern end, where it narrowed almost to a point. Huh. If it did wreck tonight's session, maybe they should just fire up the far-blue scope and take a close look at it. Serendipity and all that.