A Deepness in the Sky (43 page)

Each new Watch saw the Spider children a little differently. After all, most Watches were only a twenty-five-percent duty cycle; the Spider children lived four years for every one that most spacers lived. Rita and some of the others took to visualizing human children to go with the voices. The pictures were scattered across the parlor's wallpaper. Pictures of imaginary human children, with the names Trixia had chosen. "Jirlib" was short, with tousled dark hair and a mischievous smile. "Brent" was larger, not as cocky-looking as his brother. Benny had told him how Ritser Brughel once replaced the smiling faces with pictures of real Spiders: low-slung, skeletal, armored—images from the statuary Ezr had seen in his landing on Arachna, supplemented with low-res pics from the snoopersats.

Brughel's vandalism hadn't mattered; he didn't understand what was behind the popularity of "The Children's Hour." Tomas Nau obviouslydid understand, and was perfectly content that the customers at Benny's booze parlor could sublimate the greatest personnel problem his little kingdom faced. Even more than the Qeng Ho expedition, the Emergents had expected to live in luxury. They had expected that there would be ever-expanding resources, that marriages planned at home could result in children and families here in the OnOff system... .

Now all that was postponed.Our own out-of-phase taboo. Couples like Xin and Liao had only their dreams for the future—and the children's words and children's thoughts that came from the translation of "The Children's Hour."

Even before the live shows, the humans noticed that all the children were the same age. Year by Arachnan year they aged, but when new children came on the show, they were the same age as those replaced. The earliest translations had been lessons about magnetism and static electricity, all free of mathematics. Later the lessons introduced analysis and quantitative methods.

About two years ago, there had been a subtle change, remarked on in the ziphead's written reports—and instantly, instinctively noticed by Jau Xin and Rita Liao: "Jirlib" and "Brent" had appeared on the show. They were introduced as any other children, but Trixia's translations made them seemyounger than the others. Showmaster Digby never remarked on the difference, and the math and science in the show continued to become more sophisticated.

"Victory Junior" and "Gokna" were the latest additions to the cast, new on this Watch. Ezr had seen Trixia play them. Her voice had hopped with childish impatience; sometimes she had bubbled with laughter. Rita's pictures showed these two Spiders as laughing seven-year-olds. It was all too pat. Why should the average age of children on the show be declining? Benny claimed the explanation was obvious. "The Children's Hour" must be under new management. The ubiquitous Sherkaner Underhill was credited with writing the lessons now. And Underhill was apparently the father of all the new children.

By the time Ezr had returned from coldsleep, the show was packing the parlor to capacity. Ezr saw four performances, each a private horror for him. And then, surcease. "The Children's Hour" had not been broadcast for twenty days now. Instead, there had been a stern announcement: "After numerous listener allegations, the owners of this broadcasting station have determined that the family of Sherkaner Underhill practices the out-of-phase perversion. Pending resolution of this situation, broadcasts of ‘The Children's Hour of Science' are suspended." Broute had read the announcement with a voice quite unlike that of Rappaport Digby. The new voice was cold and distant, and full of indignation.

For once, the alienness of Arachna penetrated all the glib wishful thinking. So Spider tradition only allowed new children at the beginning of a New Sun. Generations were strictly separated, each marching through life as a same-aged group. The humans had only guesses for why this should be the case, but apparently "The Children's Hour" had been a cover for a major violation of the taboo. The show missed one scheduled broadcast, two. In Benny's booze parlor, things were sad and empty; Rita began to talk of taking down the silly pictures. And Ezr began to hope that maybe this was the end of the circus.

But that was too much to hope. Four days ago, the gloom had abruptly lifted, even if the mystery remained. Broadcasts from radio stations all across the "Goknan Accord" announced that a spokesman for the Church of the Dark would meet in debate with Sherkaner Underhill about the "propriety" of his radio show. Trud Silipan had promised that the zipheads would be ready, able to translate this new show format.

Now Benny's show-time clock was counting down the seconds to this special edition of "The Children's Hour."

In his usual place on the other side of the parlor, Trud Silipan seemed to ignore the suspense. He and Pham Trinli were talking in low tones. The two were constant drinking buddies, planning great deals that never seemed to go anywhere.Funny, I used to think Trinli was a loud buffoon. Pham's "magic localizer" claims had not been a bluff; Ezr had noticed the dustmotes. Nau and Brughel had begun using the gadgets. Somehow, Pham Trinli had known a secret about the localizers that had been missing from the innermost sections of the fleet library. Ezr Vinh might be the only one to realize it, but Pham Trinli was not totally a buffoon. More and more, Ezr guessed that the old man was in no part a fool. There were secrets hidden all through the fleet library; there had to be in anything that old and that large. But for a secret that important to be known by this man...Pham Trinli must go back along way.

"Hey, Trud!" shouted Rita, pointing at the clock. "Where are your zipheads?" The parlor's wallpaper still looked out on the forests of some Balacrean nature preserve.

Trud Silipan rose from his table and floated down before the crowd. "It's okay, folks. I just got word. Princeton Radio has started the ‘Children's Hour' intro. Director Reynolt will bring out the zipheads in a moment. They're still synching with the word stream."

Liao's irritation melted away. "Great! Good going, Trud."

Silipan gave a bow, accepting kudos for what was a zero contribution on his part. "So, in a few moments we should know what strange things this Underhill creature has been doing with his children...." He cocked his head, listening to his private data feed. "And here they are!"

The dripping, blue-green forest landscape disappeared. The bar side of the room suddenly seemed to extend into one of the meeting rooms down on Hammerfest. Anne Reynolt slid in from the right, her form distorted by the perspective angle; that part of the wallpaper just couldn't handle 3D. Behind Reynolt came a couple of technicians and five zipheads...Focused persons. One of those was Trixia.

This was where Ezr wanted to start screaming—or run off to some dark place and pretend the world didn't exist. Normally the Emergents hid their zipheads deep within their systems, as if they felt some remnant shame. Normally the Emergents liked to get results from computer and head-up displays, all graphics and hygienically filtered data. Benny had told him that in the beginning Qiwi's freak show had just been the zipheads' voices piped into the parlor. Then Trud told everyone about the translators' byplay, and the show went visual. Surely the zipheads couldn't intuit body language from a Spider audio. That didn't seem to matter; the byplay might be nonsense, but it was what the ghouls around him wanted.

Trixia was dressed in loose fatigues. Her hair floated out, partly tangled. Ezr had combed it sleek less than 40Ksec earlier. She shrugged off her handlers and grabbed the edge of a table. She was looking this way and that, and mumbling to herself. She wiped her face on the sleeve of her fatigue blouse and pulled herself down to a chair restraint. The others followed her, looking as abstracted as Trixia. Most were wearing huds. Ezr knew the sort of thing they were seeing and hearing, the midlevel transduction of the Spider language. That was Trixia's entire world.

"We're synched, Director," one of the techs said to Reynolt.

The Emergent Director for Human Resources floated down the rank of slaves, moving the fidgeting zipheads about for reasons that Ezr couldn't guess. After all this time, Ezr knew the woman had a special talent. She was a stone-eyed bitch, but she knew how to get results from zipheads.

"Okay, start 'em running—" She moved up, out of the way. Zinmin Broute had risen against his seat, and was already speaking in his ponderous announcer's voice. "My name is Rappaport Digby, and this is ‘The Children's Hour of Science.'..."

Daddy took them all to the radio station that day. Jirlib and Brent were up on the top deck of the car, acting very serious and grown-up—and they looked near enough to in-phase that they didn't attract attention. Rhapsa and Little Hrunk were still tiny enough to perch in Daddy's fur; it might be another year before they rejected being called the babies of the family.

Gokna and Victory Junior sat in the back, each on her separate perch. Victory stared out through the smoky glass at the streets of Princeton. This all made her feel a little like royalty. She tilted her head slyly in her sister's direction; maybe Gokna was her handmaiden.

Gokna sniffed imperiously. They were alike enough that she was certainly thinking the same thing—with herself as Great Ruler. "Daddy, if you're doing the show today, why are we even along?"

Daddy laughed. "Oh, you never know. The Church of the Dark thinks they own the Right. But I wonder if their debater even knows any out-of-phase children. Underneath all the indignation, she might be likable. In person, she might not be able to breathe fire on little ones just because they aren't the right age."

That was possible. Victory thought of Uncle Hrunk, who hated the idea of their family...and loved them at the same time.

The car drove through crowded streets, up the crosstown avenue that led to the radio hills. Princeton Station was the oldest in the city—Daddy said it began broadcasting before the last Dark, when it was a military radio station. In this generation, the owners had built on the original foundations. They could have had their studios in town, but they made a big thing of their great tradition. So the drive to the station was exciting, wrapping round and round a hill that was the tallest ever, much taller than even the one they lived on. Outside, there was still morning frost on the ground. Victory pushed over onto Gokna's perch and the two swayed out for a better look. This was the middle of winter, and they were almost to the Middle Years of the Sun, but this was only the second time they had seen frost. Gokna jabbed a hand out toward the east. "Look, we're high enough now—you can see the Craggies!"

"And there'ssnow on them!" The two squealed the words together. But the distant glint was really the color of morning frost. It might be a couple more years before firstsnow came to the Princeton area, even in midwinter. What would it be like to walk in snow? What would it be like to fall in a drift of it? For a moment, the two pondered the questions, forgetting the other events of the day—the radio debate that had preoccupied everyone, even the General, for the last ten days.

At first, all of the cobblies and especially Jirlib had been afraid of this debate. "It's the end of the show," their elder brother said. "Now the public knows about us." The General had come up from Lands Command especially to tell them there was nothing to worry about, that Daddy would take care of the complaints. But she didn't say they would get their radio show back again. General Victory Smith was used to briefing troops and staff. She didn't quite have the knack for reassuring children. Secretly, Gokna and Victory thought that maybe this flap about the radio show made Mom more nervous than any of the wartime adventures that lurked in her past.

Daddy was the only one who wasn't caught in the gloom. "This is what I've been waiting for all along," he told Mom when she came up from Lands Command. "It's more than time to go public. This debate will bring lots of things out into the open." Those were the same ideas that Mom spoke of, but from Daddy they sounded joyous. The last ten days, he had been playing with them even more than usual. "You're my special experts for this debate, so I can spend all my time with you and still be the dutiful worker." He had sidled dolefully from side to side, pretending to work at an invisible job. The babies had loved it, and even Jirlib and Brent seemed to accept their father's optimism. The General had departed for the south the night before; as usual, she had lots more to worry about than family problems.

The top of Radio Hill was above the tree line. Low furze covered the ground by the parking circle. The children got out, marveling at the chill that was still in the air. Little Victory felt an odd burning all along her breathing passages, as if...as iffrost was forming there. Was that possible?

"Come along children. Gokna, don't gawk." Daddy and his older sons herded them up the broad old steps of the station. The stone was flame-pitted and unpolished, like the owners wanted people to think they represented some ancient tradition.

The walls inside were hung with photo-impressions, portraits of the owners and the inventors of radio (the same people, in this case). All of them except Rhapsa and Hrunk had been here before. Jirlib and Brent had been doing the radio show for two years, taking over from the in-phase children when Daddy bought the show's franchise. Both boys sounded older than they really were, and Jirlib was smart as most adults. Nobody had seemed to suspect their true age. Daddy had been a little irritated by that. "I want people to guess on their own—but they're too foolish to imagine the truth!" So finally, Gokna and Victory Junior had been added to the show. That had been fun, pretending to be years older, playing up to the dumb scripts they used on the show. And Mr. Digby had been nice, even if he was no real scientist.

Still, both Gokna and Junior still had very young-sounding voices. Eventually, someone had overcome their faith in the goodness of all radio broadcasts, and realized that serious perversion was being flaunted across the public's maw. But Princeton Radio was privately owned, and more important, it owned its patch of spectrum and had interference easements on nearby bands. The owners were Generation 58 cobbers who were still counting their money. Unless the Church of the Dark could make an effective listener boycott, Princeton Radio was going to keep "The Children's Hour." Hence this debate.