by Vernor Vinge
The silence was a dramatic three beat, and then: “So my friends, you may wonder what gave us the courage—or the impudence—to return. For the answer to that, I ask you to listen to this afternoon’s edition of ‘The Children’s Hour.’ Whether we continue in the future will largely depend on your reactions to what you hear today…”
Silipan snorted. “What a money-grubbing hypocrite.” Xin and the others waved at him to shut up. Trud sailed over to sit beside Ezr. This had happened before; he seemed to think that because Ezr sat at the edge, somehow he wanted to hear Silipan’s analysis.
Beyond the wallpaper, Broute was introducing the debaters. Silipan anchored a comp to his knee and flipped it open. It was a clumsy Emergent thing, but it had ziphead support and that made it more effective than anything Humankind had created before. He punched the Explain key and a tiny voice gave him background: “Officially, the Honored Pedure represents the traditional Church. In fact—” The voice coming from Trud’s comp paused, presumably while hardware searched databases. “—Pedure is a foreigner to the Goknan Accord. She’s probably an agent of the Kindred government.”
Xin looked around at them, momentarily losing track of Broute-Digby. “Pus, these people take their fundamentalism seriously. Does Underhill know about this?”
The voice from Trud’s hand comp replied. “It’s possible. ‘Sherkaner Underhill’ is strongly correlated with Accord’s security communications…To date, we haven’t seen any military message traffic discussing this debate, but the Spider civilization is not yet well automated. There could be things we’re missing.”
Trud spoke to the device: “I have a lowest-pri background task for you. What would the Kindred want from this debate?” He glanced up at Jau and shrugged. “Dunno if we’ll get any answer. Things are pretty busy.”
Broute was almost done with his introductions. Honored Pedure was to be played by a Xopi Reung. Xopi was a thin little Emergent. Ezr knew her name only from studying rosters and talking to Anne Reynolt. I wonder if anyone else here knows the woman’s name? thought Ezr. Certainly not Jau and Rita. Trud would, just as a livestock herder in primitive times would know his property. Xopi Reung was young; she had been brought out of the freezer to replace what Silipan called “a senility failure.” Reung had been on-Watch for about 40Msec. She was responsible for most of the progress in learning other Spider languages, in particular “Tiefic.” And she was already the second-best translator of “Standard Accord” speech. Someday, she might very well be better than Trixia. In a sane world, Xopi Reung would have been a premier academic, famous across her solar system. But Xopi Reung had been selected in the Podmaster Lottery. While Xin and Liao and Silipan led fully conscious lives, Xopi Reung was part of the automation in the walls, unseen except for the occasional peculiar circumstance.
Xopi Reung spoke: “Thank you, Master Digby. The Radio of Princeton secures itself proud by giving us this time to talk.” During Broute’s introduction, Reung’s attention had flickered all around, birdlike. Perhaps her huds were out of adjustment, or maybe she preferred to scatter important cues all about her visual field. But when she started talking, something feral came into her eyes.
“Not a very good translation,” someone complained.
“She’s new, remember,” said Trud.
“Or maybe this Pedure really does talk funny. You said she’s a foreigner.”
Reung-as-Pedure leaned out over the table. Her voice came silky and low. “Twenty days ago, we all discovered a corruption afester in what millions of people had been taking for years into their homes, into their husbands’ and children’s ears.” She continued for several moments, speaking awkward sentences that seemed very self-righteous. Then: “So it is fitting that the Radio of Princeton should now give us opportunity to cleanse the community’s air.” She paused, “I—I—” It was as though she couldn’t think of the right words. For an instant she seemed the ziphead again, fidgeting, her head cocked. Then abruptly she slammed her palm against the surface of the table. She pulled herself down to her chair and shut up.
“I told you, that one’s not much of a translator.”
TWENTY-FOUR
By leaning hands and forelegs on the wall, Viki and Gokna could keep their main eyes against the glass. It was an awkward pose, and the two skittered back and forth along the base of the window.
“Thank you, Master Digby. The Radio of Princeton secures itself proud by—” blah blah blah.
“She talks funny,” said Gokna.
“I already told you that. She’s a foreigner.” Didire spoke abstractedly. She was busy with some arcane adjustment of her equipment. She didn’t seem to be paying much attention to what was actually being said on the soundstage. Brent was watching the show with stolid fascination, while Jirlib alternated between the window and standing as close as he could to Didi. He was well cured of giving her technical advice, but he still liked to stand close. Sometimes he would ask an appropriately naive question. When Didi wasn’t busy, that usually got her talking to him.
Gokna grinned at Viki. “No. I meant ‘Honored Pedure’ talks like a bad joke.”
“Hm.” Viki wasn’t so sure. Pedure’s clothing was strange, of course. She hadn’t seen cleric shawls outside of books. It was a shapeless cloak that came down on every side, obscuring all but Pedure’s head and maw. But she had an impression of strength under cover. Viki knew what most people thought of children such as herself. Pedure was just a full-time advocate of that view, right? But her speech had a certain menace…“Do you think she really believes what she’s saying?”
“Sure she believes it. That’s what makes her so funny. See how Daddy’s smiling?” Sherkaner Underhill was perched on the other side of the soundstage, quietly petting his babies. He hadn’t said a word yet, but there was a faint smile twitching across him. Two pairs of baby eyes peered fearfully out from his fur. Rhapsa and Hrunk couldn’t understand everything that was going on, but they looked frightened.
Gokna noticed, too. “Poor babies. They’re the only ones she can scare. Watch! I’m gonna Give Ten to the Honored Pedure.” She turned away from the window and ran to the side wall—and then up the rack of audio tapes. The girls were seven years old, much too big for acrobatics. Oops. The rack was freestanding. It swayed out from the wall, tapes and assorted junk sliding to the edge of each shelf. Gokna reached the top before anyone but Viki realized what was happening. And from there she leaped out, grabbing the top molding of the soundstage window. The rest of her body swung down against the glass with a solid splat sound. For an instant, she was a perfect Ten splayed out across the window. On the far side of the glass, Pedure stared in stupefied shock. The two girls shrieked with laughter. It wasn’t often you could give such a perfect Ten, flaring your underwear in the target’s face.
“Quit it!” Didi’s voice was a flat hiss. Her hands flickered across the controls. “This is the last time you little crappers get into my control room! Jirlib, get over there! Shut your sisters down or drag them out, but no more crapping nonsense.”
“Yes, yes! I’m so sorry.” Jirlib really did sound sorry. He rushed over and plucked Gokna from the glass wall. A second later Brent followed him, grabbing Victory.
Jirlib didn’t seem angry, just upset. He held Gokna very close to his head. “You must be quiet. For once you must be serious.” It occurred to Viki that maybe he was just upset because Didi was so angry with him. But it really didn’t matter. All the laughter had leaked out of Gokna. She touched an eating hand to her brother’s maw, and said softly, “Yes. I’ll be good for the rest of the show. I promise.”
Behind them, Viki could see Didi talking—probably to the phone in Digby’s ear. Viki couldn’t hear the words, but the guy was nodding agreement. He had eased Pedure back to her seat, and now segued into his introduction of Daddy. All the action on this side of the glass had accounted for virtually nothing out there. Someday she and Gokna were going to get themselves into real trouble, but it looked like that adventure wa
s still somewhere in the future.
Xopi sat down amid general confusion. Usually the zipheads tried to keep these shows in approximate real time. Silipan claimed that was only partly his specification—the ziphead translators really liked to stay in synch with the word stream. In some sense, they really did like to act. Today they just weren’t very successful at it.
Finally, Broute got himself together and gave a relatively smooth introduction to Sherkaner Underhill.
Sherkaner Underhill. Trixia Bonsol translated him. Who else could it have been? Trixia had been the first to crack the spoken language of the Spiders. Jau had told Ezr that in the early days of the live show, she had handled all the parts, children’s voices, old people, phone-in questions. After other zipheads acquired fluency and there was a consensus of style, still Trixia had taken the hard parts.
Sherkaner Underhill: That might be the first Spider they ever had a name for. Underhill showed up in an incredible range of radio broadcasts. At first, it seemed that he had invented two-thirds of the industrial revolution. That misconception had faded: “Underhill” was a common name, and where this “Sherkaner Underhill” was referenced, it was always one of his students who actually did the work. So the guy must be a bureaucrat, the founder of the Princeton Institute, where most of his students seemed to be. But ever since the Spiders invented microwave relays, the snoopersats had been sucking on an increasing stream of easily decrypted national secrets. The “Sherkaner Underhill” ID showed up on almost twenty percent of all the high-security traffic that flowed across the Goknan Accord. Clearly, they were dealing with some kind of institutional name. Clearly…until they learned that “Sherkaner Underhill” had children, and they were on this radio show. Even though they hadn’t figured it all out, there was some real political significance to “The Children’s Hour.” No doubt, Tomas Nau was watching this show over on Hammerfest. I wonder if Qiwi is with him.
Trixia spoke: “Thank you, Master Digby. I am very happy to be here this afternoon. It’s time there be an open discussion of these issues. In fact, I hope that young people—both in-phase and out-of-phase—are listening. I know my children are.”
The look Trixia sent Xopi’s way was relaxed and confident. Yet there was a faint tremor in her voice. Ezr stared at her face. How old was Trixia now? The full ziphead Watch schedules were classified—probably because so many were being run at one hundred percent. It should take a lifetime to learn all Trixia had learned. At least after the early years, every Watch he stood, there she was. She looked ten years older than the Trixia before Focus. And when she played Underhill, she seemed even older.
Trixia was still talking: “But I want to correct one thing that Lady Pedure said. There was no secret plot to keep the age of these children a secret. My two oldest—they’re fourteen, now—have been on the show for some time. It’s quite natural that they should participate, and from the letters they got, I know that they were very popular with both current-generation children and their parents.”
Xopi looked down the table at Trixia: “And of course, that is simply because they kept quiet their true age. On the radio, you can’t tell such small a difference. On the radio, some…obscenities…go unnoticed.”
Trixia laughed. “Indeed they do. But I want our listeners to think on this. Most of them are fond of Jirlib and Brent and Gokna and Viki. Meeting my children ‘blind’ on the radio showed our listeners a truth they might have missed otherwise: the oophase are as decent as anyone else. But again, I hid nothing. Eventually…well, eventually the facts of the matter were so obvious that no one could ignore them.”
“So blatant, you mean. Your second clutch of oophases is scarce seven years old. That obscenity even radio can not disguise. And when we met here in the studio, I see you have two newborns suckling in your fur. Tell me, sir, is there any limit to how much evil you will do?”
“Lady Pedure, what evil, what harm? Our audience has listened to one or another of my children for more than two years. They know Jirlib and Brent and Viki and Gokna as real and likable people. You see Little Hrunk and Rhapsa looking at you from my shoulders—” Trixia paused as if to give the other time for a look. “I know it pains you to see babies so far from the Waning Years. But in a year or two they will be old enough to talk, and I fully intend to have ‘The Children’s Hour’ include all the ages of my children. From program to program, our audience will see that these little cobblies are just as worthy as ones born at the end of the Waning Years.”
“Absurdity! Your scheme only wins if you sneak up on decent people a small step at a time, getting them to accept this waiver of morality and then that, until…”
“Until what?” Trixia asked, smiling benignly.
“Until—until—” Behind her semiclear huds, Ezr could see that Xopi was staring wildly. “Until decent people will kiss upon those ill-timed maggots you carry on your back!” She was out of her chair, waving her arms in Trixia’s direction.
Trixia was still smiling. “In a word, my dear Pedure, ‘Yes.’ Even you see that there can be acceptance. But out-of-phase children are not maggots. They do not need a First Darkness to give them their souls. They are creatures who can become lovable Spiders in their own right. As the years pass, ‘The Children’s Hour’ will make this obvious to everyone, perhaps even to you.”
Xopi sat down. She looked very much like a debater who has been bested and is casting about for some different line of attack. “I see appeal to decency has no strength with you, Master Underhill. And there may be weak people in the audience who move to perversion by your gradual approach. Everyone has immoral inclinations, in that we agree. But we also have quite moral ones, innate. Tradition guides us between the two…but I can see that tradition has small weight with such as you. You are a scientist, not so?”
“Hm, yes.”
“And one of the four Darkstriders?”
“…Yes.”
“Our audience may not realize so distinguished a person lurks behind ‘The Children’s Hour.’ You are one of four who has actually seen the Deepest Dark. Nothing holds mystery for you.” Trixia started to respond, but Xopi as Pedure rolled right over her words. “I daresay this explains much of your flaw. You are blind about the striving of previous generations, the slow learning of what is deadly and what is safe in Spiderly affairs. There are reasons for moral law, sir! Without moral law, diligent hoarders will be robbed by the indolent at the end of the Waning Years. Without moral law, innocents in their deepnesses will be massacred by the first-getting-awake. We all want many things, but some of those are bottomly destructive of all desires.”
“This last is true, Lady Pedure. What is your point?”
“The point is that there are reasons for rules, in especial for the rules against oophaseness. As a Darkstrider you make trivial of things, but even you must know the Dark is the great cleanser. I’ve listened to your children. Today before air time, I watched them in the engineer’s control room. There is a scandal within your secret, but not surprising. At least one of your children—the one named Brent?—is a cretin, is he not?”
Xopi stopped talking, but Trixia didn’t respond. Her gaze was steady; she wasn’t scrambling to keep up with the intermediate-layer data reps. And suddenly, Ezr felt the strangest change in perspective, like a change in imagined-down, but enormously more intense. It wasn’t caused by the translators’ words or even the emotion in their words. It was the…silence. For the first time, Ezr knew a Spider as a person, a person who could be hurt.
The silence stretched on for several more seconds. “Ha,” said Silipan. “That’s pretty good confirmation on a lot of guesses. The Spiders breed in large clutches, and then Mother Nature kills off the weak ones during the Dark. Slick.”
Liao grimaced. “Yeah, I guess.” Her hand reached to her husband’s shoulder.
Zinmin Broute abruptly broke the silence. “Master Underhill, are you going to reply to the Honored Pedure’s question?”
“Yes.” The quaver in Trixia
’s voice was more pronounced than before. “Brent is no cretin. He’s not verbal and he learns differently than other children.” Her voice picked up enthusiasm, and there was a shadow of a smile. “Intelligence is such a remarkable thing. In Brent I see—”
Xopi cut her off. “—In Brent I see the classical birth wreck of the oophase child. My friends, I know the strength of the Church suffers now in this generation. There is so much change, and the old ways are so much thought tyrannical. In previous times, a child such as Brent could only happen in backwoods townships, where barbarism and perversion have always been. In previous times, such was easy to explain: ‘The parents evaded the Dark, like not even animals would do. They brought poor Brent into the world to live some years of crippled life, and rightly should they be loathed for their cruelty.’ But in our times, it is an intellectual such as Underhill”—a nod in the direction of Trixia—“who makes this sin. He makes you laugh upon tradition, and I must fight him with his own reasons. Look upon this child, Master Underhill. How many more have you borne like him?”
Trixia: “All my cobblies—”
“Ah, yes. No doubt there have been other failures. You have six that we know of. How many more are there? Do you kill the clear failures? If the world follows your perversion, civilization will die before even the next Dark comes, smothered in hordes of ill-conceived and crippled cobblies.” Pedure went on in this vein at some length. In fact, her complaints were very concrete: birth deformities, overpopulation, forced killings, riots in deepnesses at the beginning of the Dark—all would follow if there were a popular move toward out-of-phase births. Xopi rattled on until she was visibly out of breath.
Broute turned to Trixia as Underhill: “And your reply?”
Trixia: “Ah, it is nice to be able to reply.” Trixia was smiling again, her tone almost as light as at the beginning of the program. If Underhill had been unhinged by the attack on his son, maybe Pedure’s long speech had given him time to recover. “First, all my children are living. There are only six. That should not be surprising. It’s hard to conceive children out-of-phase. I’m sure everyone knows this. It is also very hard to nurture the out-of-phase baby welts long enough for them to grow eyes. Nature does indeed prefer that cobblies be created right before the Dark.”
