“Damn!” Brun slipped out of character, jostled Unnerby back from the edge of the plaza. “Look out there in the water. There are people drowning!”
Unnerby stared a second at where she was pointing. “Not drowning. They’re… by the Dark, they’re playing in the water!” The half-submerged figures were wearing some sort of pontoons to keep from sinking. The three of them just stared, and he noticed they were not alone in their surprise, though most of the onlookers tried to cover their shock. Why would anyoneplay at drowning? For a military goal perhaps; in warmer times, both Kindred and Accord had warships.
Thirty feet down the stone palisade, another reveler splashed into the water. Suddenly, the water’s edge seemed like the edge of a deadly cliff. Unnerby backed off, away from the screams of delight or horror that came from the water. The three of them drifted across the bottom plaza toward light-bedecked trees. Here, in the open, they had a clear view of the sky and the caldera walls.
It was midafternoon, yet except for the cool-colored lights in the trees, and the heat colors from crater- center, it was as dark as any night. The sun looked down on them, a faint blotch in the sky, a reddish disk pocked with small dark marks.
The First Day of the Dark. Religions and nations set minor variations in the date. The New Sun began with an explosive blaze of light, though no one was alive to see it. But the end of the light—that was a slow waning that extended across almost the whole of the Brightness. For the last three years, the sun had been a pale thing, scarcely warming your back at high noon, dim enough to stare at with a fully open gaze. For the last year, the brighter stars had been visible all through the day. But even that was not officially the beginning of the Dark, though it was a sign that green plants couldn’t grow anymore, that you’d better have your main food supplies in your deepness, and that tuber and grub farms would be all that could sustain you until it came time to retreat beneath the earth.
So in that gradual slide toward oblivion, what was it that marked the instant—the day at least—that was the first of the Dark? Unnerby stared straight at the sun. It was the color of a warm stovetop, but so dim he felt no warmth. It would get no dimmer. Now the world would simply grow colder and colder and colder with nothing more than starlight and that reddish disk to light it. From now on, the air would always be too cold to be easily breathed. In past generations, this marked the beginning of the final rush to store the necessities in one’s deepness. In past generations, it marked the last chance for a father to provide for his cobblies’ future. In past generations, it marked a time of high nobility and great treason and cowardice, when all those who were not quite prepared were confronted by the fact of the Dark and the cold.
Here, today—Hrunk’s attention moved to those on the plaza between him and the trees. There were some —old cobbers and many from the proper current generation—who raised their arms to the sun and then lowered them to embrace the earth and the promise that the long sleep should represent.
But the air around them was mild as a summer evening in the Middle Years. And the ground was warm, as if the sun of the Middle Years had just set and left the afternoon heat to seep up at them. Most of the people around them were not acknowledging the departure of light. They were laughing, singing—and their clothes were as bright and expensive as if they’d never given any thought to the future. Maybe the rich had always been like that.
The cool-colored lights in the trees must be powered by the main fission plant that Unnerby’s companies had built in the highlands above the caldera, almost five years ago. They turned the bottomland forest all aglimmer. Someone had imported lazy woodsfairies, released them by the tens of thousands. Their wings glistened blue and green and far-blue in the light, as the creatures swirled in sympathy with the crowds under the trees.
In the forest, the people danced in piles, and some of the youngest ones ran up into the trees to play with the fairies. The music became frantic as they walked to the center of the grove and started up a gentle incline that would lead to the bottom estates. By now he was used to the sight of out-of-phase people. Even though his instincts still called them a perversion, they really were necessary. He liked and respected many of them. On either side of him, Arla and Brun were unobtrusively clearing the way for him. Both his guards were oophase, about twenty years old, just a little younger than Little Victory must be now. They were good cobbers, as good as any he had ever fought alongside of. Yes, case by case, Hrunkner Unnerby had come to terms with his revulsion. But… I’ve never seen so manyoophases, all together.
“Hey, old fellow, come dance with us!” Two young ladies and a male pounced on him. Somehow Arla and Brun got him free, all the time pretending to be jolly dancers themselves. In the darkened space beneath one tree, Unnerby got a glimpse of what looked like a fifteen-year-old’s molt. It was as if all the carven images of sin and laziness had suddenly become real. Sure, the air was pleasantly warm, but it carried the stench of sulfur. Sure, the ground was pleasantly warm, but he knew that it was not sun’s warmth. Instead, it was a heat in the earth itself that extended down and down, like heat from a rotting body. Any deepness dug here would be a death trap, so warm that the sleepers’ flesh would rot in their shells.
Unnerby didn’t know how Arla and Brun managed it, but eventually they were on the far side of the forest. Here there were still the crowds and the trees—but the mania of the bottom was muted. The dancing was sedate enough that clothes were not torn. Here, the woodsfairies felt safe enough to land on their jackets, to sit and swing the colored lace of their wings with lazy impudence. Everywhere else in the world, these creatures had lost their wings years ago. Five years ago, Unnerby had walked through Princeton streets after a heavy frost, his boot tips crunching through thousands of colored petals, the wings of sensible woodsfairies, now burrowing deep to lay their tiny eggs. The lazy variant might have a few more summer seasons of life, but they were doomed… or should have been.
The three walked higher and higher, up the first slopes of the crater wall. Ahead, the mansions of the Late Waning stretched in a ring of light all the way around the wall. Of course, none of these was more than ten years old, but most were built in the parasol-and-bauble style of the last generation. The buildings were new, but the money and the families were old. Almost every estate was a radial property, extending up the crater wall. The mansions of the early waning, halfway up the wall, were often dark, their open architecture unusable. Unnerby could see the glisten of snow on those higher mansions. Sherkaner’s place was up there somewhere, among those rich enough to weatherize the high ground of an estate, but too cheap to rebuild down at the bottom. Sherkaner knew that even Calorica Bay could not escape the Dark of the Sun… it took nuclear power to do that.
Between the lights of the bottom forest and the ring of estates, there was shadow. The woodsfairies took off, their wings faintly glistening, to fly back to the bottom. The sulfur smell was faint, not as sharp as the clean chill of the air. Above them, the sky was dark but for the stars and the pale disk of the sun. That was real, the Dark. Unnerby just stared for a moment, trying to ignore the lights of the bottom. He tried to laugh. “So which would you rather have, cobbers, some honest enemy action or another run through that mob?”
Arla Undergate’s answer was serious. “I’d opt for the mob, of course. But… that was very strange.”
“Scary, you mean.” Brun sounded downright uneasy.
“Yeah,” said Arla. “But did you notice? A lot of those cobbers were scared, too. I don’t know, it’s like they’re all—we’re all—lazy woodsfairies. When you look up andsee the Dark, when you see that the sun has died… you feel awfully small.”
“Yeah.” Unnerby didn’t know what more to say. These two youngsters were oophase. Surely, they hadn’t been submerged in trad notions all their lives. And yet they had some of the same gut misgivings as Hrunkner Unnerby. Interesting.
“C’mon. The funicular station is around here someplace.”
FORTY-ONE
Most of the midlevel mansions were huge things, stone and heavy timber frontis-halls, extending back to natural caves in the crater wall. Hrunkner had been expecting some kind of “Hill House South,” but in fact Underhill’s place was a disappointment. It looked like a guest house for one of the real mansions, and much of the space inside was shared with security staff, doubled now that the chief was in residence. Unnerby was informed that his precious cargo had already been delivered, and that he would be called for soon. Arla and Brun collected their receipt for delivering him, and Hrunk was shown into a not-so-spacious staff lounge. He passed the afternoon reading some very old news magazines.
“Sergeant?” It was General Smith, standing in the doorway. “Sorry for the delay.” She wore an unmarked
