theydo this to their own children?
Finally, the General said quietly, “Do you have a problem with this, Hrunkner?”
Unnerby wanted to swallow his hands all over again. He had known Victory Smith since the day she came into Lands Command, a spanking new junior lieutenant, a lady with an unplaced name and an undisguisable youthfulness. You saw almost everything in the military, and everybody guessed straightaway. The junior lieutenant was truly new; she was born out-of-phase. Yet somehow she’d been educated well enough to get into officer school. The rumor was that Victory Smith was the get of a rich East Coast pervert, the fellow’s family had finally disowned him, and the daughter who shouldn’t exist. Unnerby remembered the slurs and worse that had followed her everywhere for the first quarter year or so. In fact, his first glimmer that she was destined for greatness was the way she stood up to the ostracism, her intelligence and courage in facing the shame of her time of birth.
Finally he got his voice. “Uk. Yes, ma’am. I know. I meant no disrespect. I was brought up to believe a certain way,” about how decent peopleshould live. Decent people conceived their children in the Waning years, and gave birth with the new sun.
The General didn’t reply, but Underhill gave him a backhanded pat. “That’s okay, Sergeant. You should have seen my cousin’s reaction. But just wait; things change. When we have time, I’ll explain why the old rules don’t really make sense anymore.” And that was the most disquieting thing about Sherkaner Underhill: he probably could explain away their behavior—and remain blissfully remote from the rage it would cause in others.
But the embarrassing moment had passed. If these two could put up with Hrunkner’s straitlaced nature, he would do his best to ignore their… quirks. Heaven knew he had put up with worse during the war. Besides, Victory Smith was the sort who seemed to create her own propriety—and once created, it was as deep as any Unnerby had known.
As for Underhill… his attention was already elsewhere. His nervous tremor made him look old, but the mind was as sharp—or as flaky—as ever. It flitted from idea to idea, never quite coming to rest the way a normal person’s would. The rain had stopped and the wind became hot and dry. As they entered the steep country, Unnerby took a quick look at his watch and began counting how much craziness the other might come up with in the next few minutes. (1) Pointing out at the hard-armored first growth of the forest, Underhill speculated what Spiderkind might have been like if it regrew from spores after every Dark instead of emerging full-grown and with children. (2) A crack in the cloud cover appeared ahead, fortunately several miles to the side of their path. For a few minutes, the searing whiteness of once-reflected sunlight shone down upon them, clouds so bright they had to shade that side of the car. Somewhere uphill of them, direct sunlight was frying the mountainside. And Sherkaner Underhill wondered if maybe someone could build “heat farms” on the mountaintops, using temperature differentials to generate electricity for the towns below. (3) Something green scuttled across the road, narrowly avoiding their wheels. Sherkaner had a take on that, too, something about evolution and the automobile. (And Victory commented that such evolution could work both ways.) (4) Ah, but Underhill had an idea for much safer, faster transport than autos or even aircraft. “Ten minutes from Princeton to Lands Command, twenty minutes across the continent. See, you dig these tunnels along minimum-time arcs, evacuate the air from them, and just let gravity do the work.” By Unnerby’s watch, there was a five-second pause. Then: “Oops, little problem there. The minimum-time solution for Princeton to Lands Command would go down kinda deep… like six hundred miles. I probably couldn’t convince even the General to finance it.”
“You are right about that!” And the two were off in an extended argument about less-than-optimal tunnel arcs and trade-offs against air travel. The deep tunnel idea was really dumb, it turned out.
Unnerby lost track after a while. For one thing, Sherkaner was very curious about Unnerby’s construction business. The fellow was a good listener, and his questions gave Unnerby ideas he might never have had otherwise. Some of those might actually make money. Lots of money. Hmm.
Smith noticed: “Hey, I need this sergeant to be poor and in need of a generous enlistment bonus. Don’t lead him astray!”
“Sorry, dear.” But Underhill did not seem apologetic. “It’s been a long time, Hrunkner. I wish we’d seen more of you these last years. You remember back then, my big, ah—”
“Screwball idea of the moment?”
“Yes, exactly!”
“I remember just before we buttoned up in that Tiefer animal deepness, you were mumbling about this being the last Dark that civilization would ever sleep through. In the hospital afterwards, you were still going on about it. You should be a science-fiction writer, Sherkaner.”
Underhill waved a hand airily, as if acknowledging a compliment. “Actually, it’s been done in fiction. But truly, Hrunk, ours is the first era where we can make it happen.”
Hrunkner shrugged. He had walked in the Great Dark; it still made him queasy. “I’m sure there will be lots more Deep Dark expeditions, larger and better equipped than ours. It’s an exciting idea, and I’m sure the Gen— Major Smith also has all sorts of plans. I could even imagine significant battles in the middle of the Dark.”
“This is a new age, Hrunk. Look at what science is doing all around us.”
They rounded the last curve of dry roadway and plowed into a solid wall of hot rain, the storm they had seen from the north. Smith was not caught by surprise. They had their windows rolled almost all the way up, and the auto was doing only twenty miles per hour when they were enveloped. Still, the driving conditions were suddenly ghastly, the windows fogging almost too fast for the car’s blowers, the rain so thick that even with the deep-red rain lights they could barely see the edge of the roadway. The rain that spattered past the chinks in the windows was hot as a baby’s spit. Behind them, two pairs of deep-reds loomed in the darkness, Smith’s security people pulling closer.
It took a forcible effort to bring his attention back from the storm outside and remember what Underhill had been saying. “I know about the ‘Age of Science,’ Sherk. That’s been my edge in the construction business. By the last Waning we had radio, aircraft, telephones, sound recording. Even during the build-back since the New Sun, that progress has continued. Your auto is an incredible improvement over that Relmeitch you had before the Dark—and that was an expensive vehicle for its time.” And someday, Unnerby wanted to learn just how Sherkaner had obtained it on a grad student’s stipend. “Without a doubt, this is the most exciting era I could ever hope to live in. Aircraft will soon break the sound barrier. The Crown is building a national highway system. You wouldn’t be behind that, would you, Major?”
Victory smiled. “No need. There are plenty of people in Quartermaster who are. And the highway system would happen without any government help at all. But this way, we retain control.”
“So. Big things are happening. In thirty years—by the next Dark—I wouldn’t be surprised if there is worldwide air traffic, picturing telephones, maybe even rocket-borne relays that orbit the world the way the world orbits the sun. If we can avoid another war, I’m going to have the time of my life. But your idea that our entire civilization will sustain itself right through the Dark—pardon me, old Corporal, but I don’t think you’ve worked out the numbers. To do that we’d essentially have to recreate the sun. Do you have any idea of the energy involved? I remember what it took to support our diggers after Dark during the War. We used more fuel in those operations than in all the rest of the War put together.”
Ha! For once, Sherkaner Underhill didn’t have a ready reply. Then he realized that Sherk was waiting for the General to speak. After a moment, Victory Smith raised a hand. “Until now everything has been very sociable, Sergeant. I know, you’ve learned some things that enemies might make use of—clearly you’ve guessed my present job.”
“Yes. And congratulations, ma’am. Next to Strut Greenval, you’re the best that ever had that job.”
“Why… thank you, Hrunkner. But my point is that Sherkaner’s idle talk has moved us to the heart of why I asked you to take a thirty-day recruitment. What you’re going to hear now is explicitly Strategic Secret.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He hadn’t expected the mission brief to sneak up on him like this. Outside, the storm roared louder. Smith was pushing along at barely twenty miles per hour even on the straightaway. During the early years of a New Sun, even overcast days were dangerously bright, but this storm was so deep that the sky had darkened down to a murky twilight. The wind picked at the auto, trying to pry it off the road. The inside of the cab was like a steam bath.
Smith waved for Sherkaner to continue. Underhill leaned back in his perch and raised his voice to be heard over the growing storm. “As it happens, I have ‘worked out the numbers.’ After the War, I peddled my ideas around a number of Victory’s colleagues. That nearly ruined her promotion. Those cobbers can do the numbers almost as well as you. But things have changed.”
