Zones of Thought Trilogy

by Vernor Vinge

  Hrunkner dropped from the aisle webbing and refastened the pannier. The steward laughed, bemused. “I’ve heard it said High Equatoria’s best export was plain mountain dirt—never expected to see anyone take it seriously.”

  Unnerby shrugged his embarrassment. Sometimes that was the best cover. He reshouldered the pannier and made to button his parka.

  “Ah, um.” The steward seemed about to say something more, but then stepped back and bowed them off the aircraft. The three of them rattled down the ladders to the tarmac, and suddenly it was obvious what else the fellow had been about to say. Just an hour ago, as they were leaving High Equatoria, the air had been eighty below freezing and the wind over twenty miles per hour. They had needed heated breathers just to walk from the High Eq terminal to the aircraft.

  Here…“By damn, this place is a furnace!” Brun Soulac, his junior security agent, set down her pannier and shrugged out of her parka.

  The senior agent laughed, though she was guilty of the same foolishness. “What do you expect, Brun! It’s Calorica Bay.”

  “Yeah, but this is the First Day of the Dark!”

  Some of the other passengers had been similarly shortsighted. They made a grotesque parade, hopping about as they shed parkas and breathers and leggings. Even so, Unnerby noticed that whenever Brun’s hands and feet were totally occupied with shedding cold-weather gear, Arla Undergate had free hands and a clear view around them. Brun was similarly alert when Arla was shucking her overclothes. By some magic, their service pistols were never visible during the exercise. They could act like idiots, but underneath the act, Arla and Brun were as good as any soldiers Unnerby had known in the Great War.

  The mission to High Equatoria might have been low-tech and low-key, but the Intelligence team in the airport was efficient enough. The bags of rock flour were carted off in armored cars; even more impressive, the major in charge had not even wisecracked about the absurdity of the operation.

  Inside of thirty minutes, Hrunk and his now not-so-relevant bodyguards were out on the street.

  “What d’ya mean, ‘not relevant’?” Arla waved her arms in exaggerated wonder. “Not relevant was shepherding that…stuff across the continent.” Neither of the two knew the importance of the rock flour, and they had not been shy in showing their contempt for it. They were good agents, but they didn’t have the attitude Hrunk was used to. “Now we have something important to guard.” She jerked a hand in Unnerby’s direction, and there was something serious behind the good humor. “Why didn’t you make our life easy, and go with the major’s people?”

  Hrunkner smiled back. “It’s more than an hour before I meet the chief. Plenty of time to walk the distance. Aren’t you curious, Arla? How many ordinary folks get to see Calorica on the First Day of the Dark?”

  Arla and Brun glowered at that, the look of noncoms confronted by stupid behavior that they could not correct. Unnerby had felt that way often enough in his life, though normally he hadn’t shown his disapproval so obviously. The Kindred had demonstrated more than once their willingness to be violent on other peoples’ lands. But I’ve lived seventy-five years, and there are so many things to be afraid of. He was already moving away, toward the lights at the water’s edge. Unnerby’s usual bodyguards, the ones who accompanied him on his foreign site visits, would have bodily restrained him. Arla and Brun were loaners, not so well briefed. After a moment, they scurried forward to pace him. But Arla was talking into her little telephone. Unnerby grinned to himself. No, these two weren’t stupid. I wonder if I’ll notice the agents she’s calling.

  Calorica Bay had been a wonder of the world since the earliest times. It was one of only three volcanic sites known—and the other two were under ice and ocean. The bay itself was actually the broken-down bowl of the volcano, and ocean waters drowned most of its central pit.

  In the early years of a New Sun, it was a hell of hells, though no one had directly observed the place then. The steeply curving walls of the bowl concentrated the sun’s light and the temperatures climbed above the melting point of lead. Apparently this provoked—or allowed—fast lava seepage, and a continuous series of explosions, leaving new crater walls by the time the sun had dimmed to mid-Brightness. Even in those years, only the most foolhardy explorers poked themselves over the altiplano rim of the bowl.

  But as the sun dimmed into the Waning Years of its cycle, a different visitor appeared. As northern and southern lands found winters that were steadily harsher, now the highest reaches of the bowl were pleasant and warm. And as the world cooled, lower and lower parts of the bowl became first accessible, and then a paradise. Over the last five generations, Calorica Bay had become the most exclusive resort of the Waning Years, the place where people so rich that they didn’t have to save and work to prepare for the Dark could come and enjoy themselves. At the height of the Great War, when Unnerby was pounding snow on the Eastern Front, and even later, when most of the war was tunnel fighting—even then, he remembered seeing tinted engravings showing the life of mid-Brightness leisure that the idle rich led at the bottom of Calorica’s bowl.

  In a way, Calorica at the beginning of the Dark was like the world that modern engineering and atomic energy were bringing to the entire race of Spiders, for all the years of the Dark. Unnerby walked toward the music and lights ahead, wondering what he would see.

  The crowds swirled everywhere. There was laughter and pipe music and occasional argument. And the people were strange in so many ways that for a while Unnerby did not notice the most important things.

  He let the crowd motion jostle them this way and that like particles in a suspension. He could imagine how nervous Arla and Brun felt about this mob of uncleared strangers. But they made the most of it, blending into the rowdy noise, just accidentally staying within arm’s reach of Unnerby. In a matter of minutes, the three had been swept down to the water’s edge. Some in the crowd waved burning sticks of incense, but there was a stronger perfume here at the bottom of the crater, a sulfurous odor that drifted on the warm breeze. Across the water, at the middle of the bay, molten rock glowed in red and near-red and yellow. Steam floated up, wraithlike, all round the center pile. This was one body of water where no one need worry about bottom ice and leviathans—though a volcanic blast would kill them all just as dead.

  “Damn!” Brun slipped out of character, jostled Unnerby back from the edge of the plaza. “Look out there in the water. There are people drowning!”

  Unnerby stared a second at where she was pointing. “Not drowning. They’re…by the Dark, they’re playing in the water!” The half-submerged figures were wearing some sort of pontoons to keep from sinking. The three of them just stared, and he noticed they were not alone in their surprise, though most of the onlookers tried to cover their shock. Why would anyone play at drowning? For a military goal perhaps; in warmer times, both Kindred and Accord had warships.

  Thirty feet down the stone palisade, another reveler splashed into the water. Suddenly, the water’s edge seemed like the edge of a deadly cliff. Unnerby backed off, away from the screams of delight or horror that came from the water. The three of them drifted across the bottom plaza toward light-bedecked trees. Here, in the open, they had a clear view of the sky and the caldera walls.

  It was midafternoon, yet except for the cool-colored lights in the trees, and the heat colors from crater-center, it was as dark as any night. The sun looked down on them, a faint blotch in the sky, a reddish disk pocked with small dark marks.

  The First Day of the Dark. Religions and nations set minor variations in the date. The New Sun began with an explosive blaze of light, though no one was alive to see it. But the end of the light—that was a slow waning that extended across almost the whole of the Brightness. For the last three years, the sun had been a pale thing, scarcely warming your back at high noon, dim enough to stare at with a fully open gaze. For the last year, the brighter stars had been visible all through the day. But even that was not officially the beginning of the Da
rk, though it was a sign that green plants couldn’t grow anymore, that you’d better have your main food supplies in your deepness, and that tuber and grub farms would be all that could sustain you until it came time to retreat beneath the earth.

  So in that gradual slide toward oblivion, what was it that marked the instant—the day at least—that was the first of the Dark? Unnerby stared straight at the sun. It was the color of a warm stovetop, but so dim he felt no warmth. It would get no dimmer. Now the world would simply grow colder and colder and colder with nothing more than starlight and that reddish disk to light it. From now on, the air would always be too cold to be easily breathed. In past generations, this marked the beginning of the final rush to store the necessities in one’s deepness. In past generations, it marked the last chance for a father to provide for his cobblies’ future. In past generations, it marked a time of high nobility and great treason and cowardice, when all those who were not quite prepared were confronted by the fact of the Dark and die cold.

  Here, today—Hrunk’s attention moved to those on the plaza between him and the trees. There were some—old cobbers and many from the proper current generation—who raised their arms to the sun and then lowered them to embrace the earth and the promise that the long sleep should represent.

  But the air around them was mild as a summer evening in the Middle Years. And the ground was warm, as if the sun of the Middle Years had just set and left the afternoon heat to seep up at them. Most of the people around them were not acknowledging the departure of light. They were laughing, singing—and their clothes were as bright and expensive as if they’d never given any thought to the future. Maybe the rich had always been like that.

  The cool-colored lights in the trees must be powered by the main fission plant that Unnerby’s companies had built in the highlands above the caldera, almost five years ago. They turned the bottomland forest all aglimmer. Someone had imported lazy woodsfairies, released them by the tens of thousands. Their wings glistened blue and green and far-blue in the light, as the creatures swirled in sympathy with the crowds under the trees.

  In the forest, the people danced in piles, and some of the youngest ones ran up into the trees to play with the fairies. The music became frantic as they walked to the center of the grove and started up a gentle incline that would lead to the bottom estates. By now he was used to the sight of out-of-phase people. Even though his instincts still called them a perversion, they really were necessary. He liked and respected many of them. On either side of him, Arla and Brun were unobtrusively clearing the way for him. Both his guards were oophase, about twenty years old, just a little younger than Little Victory must be now. They were good cobbers, as good as any he had ever fought alongside of. Yes, case by case, Hrunkner Unnerby had come to terms with his revulsion. But…I’ve never seen so many oophases, all together.

  “Hey, old fellow, come dance with us!” Two young ladies and a male pounced on him. Somehow Arla and Brun got him free, all the time pretending to be jolly dancers themselves. In the darkened space beneath one tree, Unnerby got a glimpse of what looked like a fifteen-year-old’s molt. It was as if all the carven images of sin and laziness had suddenly become real. Sure, the air was pleasantly warm, but it carried the stench of sulfur. Sure, the ground was pleasantly warm, but he knew that it was not sun’s warmth. Instead, it was a heat in the earth itself that extended down and down, like heat from a rotting body. Any deepness dug here would be a death trap, so warm that the sleepers’ flesh would rot in their shells.

  Unnerby didn’t know how Arla and Brun managed it, but eventually they were on the far side of the forest. Here there were still the crowds and the trees—but the mania of the bottom was muted. The dancing was sedate enough that clothes were not torn. Here, the woodsfairies felt safe enough to land on their jackets, to sit and swing the colored lace of their wings with lazy impudence. Everywhere else in the world, these creatures had lost their wings years ago. Five years ago, Unnerby had walked through Princeton streets after a heavy frost, his boot tips crunching through thousands of colored petals, the wings of sensible woodsfairies, now burrowing deep to lay their tiny eggs. The lazy variant might have a few more summer seasons of life, but they were doomed…or should have been.

  The three walked higher and higher, up the first slopes of the crater wall. Ahead, the mansions of the Late Waning stretched in a ring of light all the way around the wall. Of course, none of these was more than ten years old, but most were built in the parasol-and-bauble style of the last generation. The buildings were new, but the money and the families were old. Almost every estate was a radial property, extending up the crater wall. The mansions of the early waning, halfway up the wall, were often dark, their open architecture unusable. Unnerby could see the glisten of snow on those higher mansions. Sherkaner’s place was up there somewhere, among those rich enough to weatherize the high ground of an estate, but too cheap to rebuild down at the bottom. Sherkaner knew that even Calorica Bay could not escape the Dark of the Sun…it took nuclear power to do that.

  Between the lights of the bottom forest and the ring of estates, there was shadow. The woodsfairies took off, their wings faintly glistening, to fly back to the bottom. The sulfur smell was faint, not as sharp as the clean chill of the air. Above them, the sky was dark but for the stars and the pale disk of the sun. That was real, the Dark. Unnerby just stared for a moment, trying to ignore the lights of the bottom. He tried to laugh. “So which would you rather have, cobbers, some honest enemy action or another run through that mob?”

  Arla Undergate’s answer was serious. “I’d opt for the mob, of course. But…that was very strange.”

  “Scary, you mean.” Brun sounded downright uneasy.

  “Yeah,” said Arla. “But did you notice? A lot of those cobbers were scared, too. I don’t know, it’s like they’re all—we’re all—lazy woodsfairies. When you look up and see the Dark, when you see that the sun has died…you feel awfully small.”

  “Yeah.” Unnerby didn’t know what more to say. These two youngsters were oophase. Surely, they hadn’t been submerged in trad notions all their lives. And yet they had some of the same gut misgivings as Hrunkner Unnerby. Interesting.

  “C’mon. The funicular station is around here someplace.”

  FORTY-ONE

  Most of the midlevel mansions were huge things, stone and heavy timber frontis-halls, extending back to natural caves in the crater wall. Hrunkner had been expecting some kind of “Hill House South,” but in fact Underhill’s place was a disappointment. It looked like a guest house for one of the real mansions, and much of the space inside was shared with security staff, doubled now that the chief was in residence. Unnerby was informed that his precious cargo had already been delivered, and that he would be called for soon. Arla and Brun collected their receipt for delivering him, and Hrunk was shown into a not-so-spacious staff lounge. He passed the afternoon reading some very old news magazines.

  “Sergeant?” It was General Smith, standing in the doorway. “Sorry for the delay.” She wore an unmarked quartermaster uniform, very much like Strut Greenval used to wear. Her figure was almost as lean and delicate as ever, though her gestures seemed a little inflexible. Hrunkner followed her back through the security section, and then up winding wooden stairs. “We’ve had some good luck on this one, Sergeant, you catching Sherk and me so close to your discovery.”

  “Yes, ma’am. Rachner Thract set up the itinerary.” The stairs circled round and round between jade walls. Closed doors and an occasional darkened room showed to the sides. “Where are the children?” The question slipped thoughtlessly out of him.

  Smith hesitated, certainly looking for some complaint in his words. “…Junior enlisted a year ago.”

  That he had heard. It had been so long since he had seen Little Victory. He wondered how she would like the military. She had always seemed a tough little cobblie, but with a piece of Sherkaner’s whimsy. He wondered if Rhapsa and Little Hrunk might still be around.<
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  The stairs emerged from the crater wall. This part of the residence presumably had existed in the early part of the Waning Years. But where before there had been open courts and patios, now triple-paned quartz stood strong against the Dark. It dimmed all the far colors, but the view was naked and stark. The city lights glittered across the bottomland, circling the heat-red lake at the center. A cold fog hung in the air above the water. It glowed dimly with all the light from below. The General pulled the shades on the view as they ascended toward what must have been the original owner’s high perch.

  She waved him into a large, brightly lit room.

  “Hrunk!” Sherkaner Underhill emerged from the overstuffed pillows that were the room’s furniture. Surely these were furnishings of the original owner. Unnerby couldn’t imagine either the General or Underhill choosing such ornaments.

  Underhill trotted awkwardly across the room, his enthusiasm overmatching his agility. He had a large guide-bug on a leash, and the creature corrected his course, patiently bringing him toward the entrance. “You’ve missed Rhapsa and Little Hrunk by a couple of days, I’m afraid. Those two aren’t the cobblies you remember; they’re seventeen years old now! But the General didn’t approve of the atmosphere around here, and she shipped them back to Princeton.”

  Behind himself, Hrunkner saw the General glower at her husband, but she made no comment. Instead she walked slowly from window to window, pulling the blinds, shutting out the Dark. At one time, this room had been an open gazebo; now there were a lot of windows. They settled themselves. Sherkaner was full of news about the children. The General sat in silence. As Sherk launched into Jirlib and Brent’s latest adventures, she said, “I’m sure the Sergeant isn’t that interested in hearing about our children.”