A Deepness in the Sky (33 page)

"Daddy, Daddy!" Two five-year-olds careered into sight behind them. They were followed by two more cobblies, but these looked almost big enough to be in-phase. For more than ten years, Hrunkner Unnerby had done his best to overlook his boss's perversions: General Victory Smith was the best Intelligence chief he could imagine, probably even better than Strut Greenval. It shouldn't matter what her personal habits were. It had certainly never bothered him that she was born out-of-phase herself; that was something a person had no control over. But that she would start a family at the beginning of a New Sun, that she would damn her own children as she had been damned...And they aren't even all the same age.The two babies had hopped off Underhill's back. They scuttled across the grass and up the legs of their two oldest siblings. It was almost as if Smith and Underhill had deliberately set out to smear offal in the eyes of society's regard. This visit, so long avoided, was turning out to be just as bad as he'd feared.

The two oldest, both boys, hoisted the babies up, pretended for a moment to carry them like real fathers. They had no back fur, of course, and the babies slipped and slid down their carapaces. They grabbed hold of their brothers' jackets and scrambled back up, their baby laughter loud.

Underhill introduced the four to the sergeant. They all trooped across the soggy grass to the protection of an awning. This was the biggest play area that Unnerby had ever seen outside a schoolyard, but it was also very strange. A proper school went through discrete grades, targeting the current age of the pupils. The equipment in Underhill's play garden spanned a number of years. There were vertical gymnets, such as only a two-year-old could easily use. There were sandboxes, several huge dollhouses, and low play tables with picture books and games.

"Junior is the reason we didn't meet you and Mr. Unnerby downstairs, Dad." The twelve-year-old flicked a pointed hand in the direction of one of the five-year-olds—Victory Junior? "She wanted you up here, so we could show Mr. Unnerby all our toys."

Five-year-olds are not very good at hiding their feelings. Victory Junior still had her baby eyes. Even though baby eyes could turn a few degrees, there were only two of them; she had to face almost directly toward whatever she wanted to observe. In a way that could never be true of an adult, it was easy to see where Junior's attention was. Her two big eyes looked first at Underhill and Unnerby, then glanced toward her older brother. "Snitch!" she hissed at him. "You wanted them up here, too." She flicked her eating hands at him, and sidled close to Underhill. "I'm sorry, Daddy. I wanted to show my dollhouse, and Brent and Gokna still had their lessons to finish."

Underhill lifted his forearms to enclose her in a hug. "Well, we were going to come up here anyway." And to Unnerby: "I'm afraid the General has made rather a big thing of you, Hrunkner."

"Yeah, you're an Engineer!" said the other five-year-old—Gokna?

Whatever Junior's desires, Brent and Jirlib got to show off first. Their actual educational state was hard to estimate. The two had some kind of study curriculum, but were otherwise allowed to look into whatever they wished. Jirlib—the boy who had tattled on Junior—collected things. He seemed more deeply into fossils than any child Unnerby had ever seen. Jirlib had books from the Kingschool library that would have challenged adult students. He had a collection of diamond foraminiafera from trips with his parents down to Lands Command. And almost as much as his father, he was full of crazy theories. "We're not the first, you know. A hundred million years ago, just under the diamond strata, there are the Distorts of Khelm. Most scientists think they were dumb animals, but they weren't. They had a magic civilization, and I'm going to figure out how it worked." Actually, that was not new craziness, but Unnerby was a little surprised that Sherkaner let his children read Khelm's crank paleontology.

Brent, the other twelve-year-old, was more like the stereotype of an out-of-phase child: withdrawn, a little bit sullen, perhaps retarded. He didn't seem to know what to do with his hands and feet, and though he had plenty of eyes, he favored his foreview as though he were still much younger. Brent didn't seem to have any special interests except for what he called "Daddy's tests." He had bags of buildertoys, shiny metal dowels and connector hubs. Three or four of the tables were covered by elaborate dowel and connector structures. By clever variation of the number of dowels per hub, someone had constructed various curved surfaces for the child. "I've thought a lot about Daddy's tests. I'm getting better and better." He began fiddling with a large torus, breaking up the carefully built framework.

"Tests?" Unnerby waved a glare at Sherkaner. "What are you doing with these children?"

Underhill didn't seem to hear the anger in his voice. "Aren't children wonderful—I mean, when they aren't a pain in the ass. Watching a baby grow up, you can see the mechanisms of thought grow into place, stage by stage." He slipped a hand gently across his back, petting the two babies, who had returned to safe haven. "In some ways, these two are less intelligent than a jungle tarant. There are patterns of thought that just don't exist in babies. When I play with them, I can almost feel the barriers. But as the years pass, the minds grow; methods are added." 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 social reason there is for rigid birthing times is irrelevant."

"You'll never convince the Church of the Dark."

"That's okay. I'm hoping to convince the millions of open-minded people like Hrunkner Unnerby."

Unnerby couldn't think what to say. The other's argument was all so glib. Didn't Underhill understand? All decent societies agreed on basic issues, things that meant the healthy survival of their people. Things might be changing, but it was self-serving nonsense to throw the rules overboard. Even if they lived in the Dark, there would still be a need for decent cycles of life....The silence stretched out. There was just the clicking of Sherk's little puzzle blocks.