familiar with some of what Daddy was throwing at her. It didn’t matter. Honored Pedure wasn’t that knowledgeable; besides, Daddy wasright.
And he was on a real pounce now: “Strange that tradition should not show more interest in the earliest past, Lady Pedure. But no matter. The changes that science is making in this current generation will be so great that I might better use them to illustrate. Nature enforced certain strategies—and the cycle of generations is one of them, I agree. Without that enforcement, we likely would not exist. But think of the waste, my lady. All our children are in one stage of life in each year. Once past that stage, the tools of their schooling must lie idle until the next generation. There is no need for such waste anymore. With science—”
Honored Pedure gave a whistling laugh, full of sarcasm and surprise. “So you admit it there! You plot that oophase be a way of life, not your isolated sin.”
“Of course!” Daddy bounced up. “I want people to know that we live in an era that is different. I want people to be free to have children in every season of the sun.”
“Yes. You intend to invade the rest of us. Tell me, Underhill, do you already have secret schools for the oophase? Are there hundreds or thousands like your six, just waiting for our acceptance?”
“Uh, no. So far we have not found playmates for my children.”
Over the years, all of them had wanted playmates. Mother had searched for them, so far without success. Gokna and Viki had concluded that other oophases must be very well hidden… or very rare. Sometimes, Viki wondered if maybe they really were damned; it was so hard to find any others.
Honored Pedure leaned back on her perch, smiling in an almost friendly way. “That last is comfort to me, Master Underhill. Even in our times, most folk are decent, and your perversions are rare. Nevertheless, ‘The Children’s Hour’ continues to be popular, even though the in-phase are now more than twenty years old. Your show is a lure that didn’t exist beforetimes. And our view exchange is therefore terribly important.”
“Yes, indeed. I think so, too.”
Honored Pedure cocked her head. What rotten luck. The cobber realized that Daddy meant it. If she got Daddy to speculating… things could be very sticky. Pedure’s next question was spoken in a casual tone of honest curiosity. “It seems to me, Master Underhill, that you understand moral law. Do you consider it, maybe, to be something like the law of creative art—to be broken by the greatest thinkers, such as yourself?”
“Greatest thinkers, fooey.” But the question had clearly caught Daddy’s imagination, drawing him away from persuasive rhetoric. “You know, Pedure, I never looked at moral rules like that before. What an interesting idea! You suggest that they could be ignored by those who have some innate—what? Talent for goodness? Surely not…. Though I confess to being an illiterate when it comes to moral argument. I like to play and I like to think. The Darkstriding was a great lark, as much as it was important to the war effort. Science will create wonderful change in the near future of Spiderkind. I’m having enormous fun with these things, and I want the public—including those whoare experts at moral thought—to understand the consequences of the change.”
Honored Pedure said, “Indeed.” The sarcasm was there only if you were listening as suspiciously as Little Victory was. “And you intend somehow for science to replace the Dark as the great cleanser and the great mystery?”
Daddy made dismissing gestures with his eating hands. He seemed to have forgotten that he was on the radio. “Science will make the Dark of the Sun as innocuous and knowable as the night that comes at the end of every day.”
In the control room, Didi gave a little yip of surprise. It was the first time Viki had ever heard the engineer react to the broadcasts she was supervising. Out on the soundstage, Rappaport Digby sat up as straight as if someone had stuck a spear up his rear. Daddy didn’t seem to notice, and Honored Pedure’s response was as casual as if they were discussing the possibility of rain: “We’ll live and work right through the Dark as if it was just one long night?”
“Yes! What do you think all the talk of nuclear power means?”
“So then we all will be Darkstriders, and there will be no Dark, no mystery, no Deepness for the mind of Spiderkind to rest within. Science will take all.”
“Piffle. On this one small world, there will be no more real darkness. But there will always be the Dark. Go out tonight, Lady Pedure. Look up. We are surrounded by the Dark and always will be. And just as our Dark ends with the passage of time in a New Sun, so the greater Dark ends at the shores of a million million stars. Think! If our sun’s cycle was once less than a year, then even earlier our sun might have been middling bright all the time. I have students who are sure most of the stars are just like our sun, only much much younger, and many with worlds like ours. You want a deepness that endures, a deepness that Spiderkind can depend on? Pedure, there is a deepness in the sky, and it extends forever.” And Daddy was off on his space-travel thing. Even graduate students glazed over when Daddy started on this; only a hard core of crazies specialized in astronomy. It was all so upside down and inside out. For most people, the idea that lights as steady as stars could be like the sun was a leap of faith greater than most religions asked for.
Digby and Honored Pedure watched open-mawed as Daddy built the theory up in more and more elaboration. Digby had always liked the science part of the show, and this had him all but hypnotized. Pedure on the other hand… her shock faded quickly. Either she had heard this before, or it was tending away from the path she wanted to follow.
The clock on the control-room wall was ticking down toward the orgy of commercial messages that always ended the show. It looked like Daddy was going to get the last word… except that Viki was sure Honored Pedure was watching that clock more intensely than anything in the studio, waiting for some precisely chosen strategic instant.
And then the cleric grabbed her mike close, and spoke loudly enough to break into Sherkaner’s flow of thought. “So interesting, but colonizing the space between the stars is surely beyond the time of this current generation.”
Daddy waved dismissively. “Perhaps yes, but—”
Honored Pedure continued, her voice academic and interested, “So the great change during our time is simply the conquest of the next coming Dark, that which ends this cycle of the sun?”
“Correct. We—all who hear this radio broadcast—will have no need of deepnesses. That is the promise of nuclear power. All the great cities will have sufficient power to stay warm for more than two centuries—all the way through the upcoming Dark. So—”
“I see, and so very large building projects must happen to enclose the cities?”
“Yes, and farms. And we’ll need to provide—”
“And this then is also the reason you want an added generation of adults. This is why you push oophase births.”
“Oh, not directly. It is simply a feature of the new situ—”
“So the Goknan Accord will enter the coming Dark in fact with hundreds of millions of Darkstriders. What of the rest of the world?”
Daddy seemed to realize that he was headed for trouble. “Um, but other technologically advanced countries may do the same. The poorer countries will have their conventional deepnesses, and their awakening will come later.”
Now Pedure’s voice had steel in it, a trap that was finally sprung: “ ‘Their awakening will come later.’ During the Great War, four Darkstriders brought down the most powerful nation of the world. In the next Dark, you will be Darkstriders by the millions. This seems not different from a preparation for the greatest deepness massacres in history.”
“No, it’s not like that at all. We wouldn’t—”
“I’m sorry, lady and sir, our time has run out.”
“But—”
Digby rumbled on over Daddy’s objections. “I’d like to thank you both for being with us today and—” blah blah blah.
On the soundstage, Pedure stood up the moment Digby finished his spiel. The microphones were off now and Viki couldn’t hear the words. The cleric was evidently exchanging pleasantries with the announcer. On the other side of the stage, Daddy looked very nonplussed. As Honored Pedure swept past him, Daddy stood and followed her offstage, talking animatedly. Pedure’s only expression was a haughty little smile.
Behind Viki, Didi Ultmot was pushing levers, tuning the most important part of the broadcast, the
