"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 commercials. Finally, she turned away from the controls. There was something a little dazed about her aspect. "...You know, your dad has some really...weird...ideas."
There was a sequence of chords that might have been music, and the words, "Sharpened hands are happy hands. Brim the tinfall with mirthly bands—"
Spider commercials were sometimes the high point of Princeton Radio programs. Molt refresh, eye polish, leggings—many of the products made some sense, even if the selling points did not. Other products were just nonsense words, especially if it was a previously unknown product, and second-string translators.
