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 foryears. 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 raise minitarants—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 inhis 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 pervertssleep.
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
