Underhill walked along the play tables as he spoke. One of the five-year-olds—Gokna—danced half a pace in front of him, mimicking his gestures, even to the tremor. He stopped at a table covered with beautiful blown-glass bottles, a dozen shapes and tints. Several were filled with fruitwater and ice, as if for some bizarre lawn party. “But even the five-year-olds have mental blinders. They have good language skills, but they’re still missing basic concepts—”
“And it’s not just that we don’t understand sex!” said Gokna.
For once, Underhill looked a little embarrassed. “She’s heard this speech too many times, I fear. And by now her brothers have told her what to say when we play question games.”
Gokna pulled on his leg. “Sit down and play. I want to show Mr. Unnerby what we do.”
“Okay. We can do that—where is your sister?” His voice was suddenly sharp and loud. “Viki! You get down from there! It’s not safe for you.”
Victory Junior was on the babies’ gymnet, scuttling back and forth just below the awning. “Oh, it is safe, Daddy. Now that you’re here!”
“No it’s not! You come down right now.”
Junior’s descent was accompanied by much loud grumbling, but within a few minutes she was showing off in another way.
One by one, they showed him all their projects. The two oldest had parts in a national radio program, explaining science for young people. Apparently Sherkaner was producing the show, for reasons that remained murky.
Hrunkner put up with it all, smiling and laughing and pretending. And each one was a wonderful child. With the exception of Brent, each was brighter and more open than almost any Unnerby remembered. All that made it even worse when he imagined what life would be like for them once they had to face the outside world.
Victory Junior had a dollhouse, a huge thing that extended back a little way into the ferns. When her turn came, she hooked two hands under one of Hrunkner’s forearms and almost dragged him over to the open face of her house.
“See,” she said, pointing to a hole in the toy basement. It looked suspiciously like the entrance to a termite nest. “My house even has its own deepness. And a pantry, and a dining hall, and seven bedrooms…” Each room had to be displayed to her guest, and all the furniture explained. She opened a bedroom wall, and there was a flurry of activity within. “And I even have little people to live in my house. See the attercops.” In fact, the scale of Viki’s house was almost perfect for the little creatures, at least in this phase of the sun. Eventually, their middle legs would become colored wings. They would be woodsfairies, and they wouldn’t fit at all. But for the moment, they did look like little people, scurrying to and fro between the inner rooms.
“They like me a lot. They can go back to the trees whenever they want, but I put little pieces of food in the rooms and they come every day to visit.” She pulled at little brass handles and a part of one floor came out like a drawer from a cabinet. Inside was an intricate maze built of flimsy wood partitions. “I even experiment with them, like Daddy plays with us, except a lot simpler.” Her baby eyes were both looking down so she couldn’t see Unnerby’s reaction. “I put honeydrip near this exit, then let them in at the other end. Then I time how long it takes…. Oh, you are lost, aren’t you, little one? You’ve been here two hours now. I’m sorry.” She reached an eating hand undaintily into the box and gently moved the attercop to a ledge by the ferns. “Heh, heh,” a very Sherkanish chuckle, “some of them are a lot dumber than others—or maybe it’s luck. Now, how do I count her time, when she never got through the maze at all?”
“I… don’t know.”
She turned to face him, her beautiful eyes looking up at him. “Mommy says my little brother is named after you. Hrunkner?”
“Yes. I guess that’s right.”
“Mommy says that you are the best engineer in the world. She says you can make even Daddy’s crazy ideas come true. Mommy wants you to like us.”
There was something about a child’s gaze. It was sodirected. There was no way the target could pretend that he wasn’t the one regarded. All the embarrassment and pain of the visit seemed to come together in that one moment. “I like you,” he said.
Victory Junior look at him for a moment more, and then her gaze slid away. “Okay.”
They had lunch with the cobblies up in the atrium. The cloud cover was burning off, and things were getting hot, at least for a Princeton spring day in the nineteenth year. Even under the awning it was warm enough to start sweat from every joint. The children didn’t seem to mind. They were still taken by the stranger who had given their baby brother his name. Except for Viki, they were as raucous as ever, and Unnerby did his best to respond.
As they were finishing, the children’s tutors showed up. They looked like students from the institute. The children would never have to go to a real school. Would that make it any easier for them in the end?
The children wanted Unnerby to stay for their lessons, but Sherkaner would have none of it. “Concentrate on studying,” he said.
And so—hopefully—the hardest part of the visit was past. Except for the babies, Underhill and Unnerby were alone back in his study in the cool ground floor of the institute. They talked for a while about Unnerby’s specific needs. Even if Sherkaner was unwilling to help directly, he really did have some bright cobbers up here. “I’d like you to talk to some of my theory people. And I want you to see our computing-machinery experts. It seems to me that some of your grunt problems would be solved if you just had fast methods for solving differential equations.”
Underhill stretched out on the perch behind his desk. His aspect was suddenly quizzical. “Hrunk… socializing aside, we accomplished more today than a dozen phone calls could have done. I know the institute is a place you’d love. Not that you’d fit in! We have plenty of technicians, but our theory people think they can boss them around. You’re in a different class. You’re the type that can boss the thinkers around and use what ideas they have to reach your engineering goals.”
Hrunkner smiled weakly. “I thought invention was to be the parent of necessity?”
“Hmf. It mainly is. That’s why we need people like you, who can bend the pieces together. You’ll see what I mean this afternoon. These are people you’d love to take advantage of, and vice versa…. I just wish you had come up a lot earlier.”
Unnerby started to make some weak excuse, stopped. He just couldn’t pretend anymore. Besides, Sherkaner was so much easier to face than the General. “You know why I didn’t come before, Sherk. In fact, I wouldn’t be here now if General Smith hadn’t given me explicit orders. I’d follow her through Hell, you know that. But she wants more. She wants acceptance of your perversions. I—You two have such beautiful children, Sherk. How could you do such a thing to them?”
He expected the other to laugh the question off, or perhaps to react with the icy hostility that Smith showed at any hint of such criticism. Instead, Underhill sat silently for a moment, playing with an antique children’s puzzle. The little wood pieces clicked back and forth in the quiet of the study. “You agree the children are healthy and happy?”
“Yes, though Brent seems… slow.”
“You don’t think I regard them as experimental animals?”
Unnerby thought back to Victory Junior and her dollhouse maze. Why when he was her age, he used to fry attercops with a magnifying glass. “Um, you experiment with everything, Sherk; that’s just the way you are. I think you love your children as much as any good father. And that’s why it’s all the harder for me to imagine how you could bring them into the world out of phase. So what if only one was mentally damaged? I notice they didn’t talk of having any contemporary playmates. You can’t find any who aren’t monstrous, can you?”
From Sherkaner’s aspect, he could tell his question had a struck home. “Sherk. Your poor children will live their whole lives in a society that sees them as a crime against nature.”
“We’re working on these things, Hrunkner. Jirlib told you about ‘The Children’s Hour of Science,’ didn’t he?”
“I wondered what that was all about. So he and Brent are really on a radio show? Those two could almost pass for in-phase, but in the long run somebody will guess and—”
“Of course. If not, Victory Junior is eager to be on the show. Eventually, Iwant the audience to understand. The program is going to cover all sorts of science topics, but there will be a continuing thread about biology and evolution and how the Dark has caused us to live our lives in certain ways. With the rise of technology, whatever
