During the Great War, there had been times when Hrunkner Unnerby had gone without sleep for days at a time, under fire all the while. This single night was worse. God only knew how bad it was for the General and Sherkaner. Once the phone lines were in place, Unnerby spent most of his time in the joint command post, just down the hall from the Accord-secure room. He worked with the local cops and Underville's comm team, trying to track the rumors around town. The General had been in and out, the picture of composed intensity. But Unnerby could tell that his old boss was over the edge. She was managing too much, involving herself at low levels and high. Hell, she'd been gone now for three hours, off with one of the field teams.
Once, he went out to check on Underhill. Sherk was holed up in the signals lab, right below the top of the hill. Guilt lay like a blight on him, dimming the happy spirit of genius he used to bring to every problem. But the cobber was trying, substituting obsession for buoyant enthusiasm. He was pounding away with his computers, coopting everything he could. Whatever he was doing, it looked like nonsense to Unnerby.
"It's math, not engineering, Hrunk."
"Yeah, number theory." This from the scruffy-looking postdoc whose lab this was. "We're listening for..." He leaned forward, apparently lost in the mysteries of his own programming. "We're trying to break the crypto intercepts."
Apparently he was talking about the signal fragments that had been detected coming out of the Princeton area just after the abduction. Unnerby said, "But we don't even know if that's from the kidnappers."And if I werethe Kindred, I'd be using one-time code words, not some keyed encryption.
Jaybert what's-his-name just shrugged and continued with his work. Sherkaner didn't say anything either, but his aspect was desolate. This was the best he could do.
So Unnerby had fled back to the joint command post, where there was at least the illusion of progress.
Smith was back about an hour after sunrise. She looked through the negative reports quickly, a nervous edge to her movements. "I left Belga downtown with the local cops. Damnation, her comm isn't much better than the locals'."
Unnerby rubbed his eyes, trying vainly to put a polish there that only a good sleep could accomplish. "I fear Colonel Underville doesn't really like all this fancy equipment." In any other generation, Belga would have been fine. In this one—well, Belga Underville was not the only person having trouble with the grand new era.
Victory Smith slid down next to her old sergeant. "But she has kept the press off our backs. What word from Rachner?"
"He's down in the Accord-secure center." In fact, the young major did not confide in Unnerby.
"He's so sure this is a pure Kindred operation. I don't know. They are in on it...but, you know the museum clerk is a trad? And the cobber working the museum's loading dock has disappeared. Belga's discovered he's a traditionalist, too. I think the local trads are in this up to their shoulders." Her voice was mild, almost contemplative. Later, much too much later, Hrunkner would remember back: The General's voice was mild, but she sat with every limb tensed.
Unfortunately, Hrunkner Unnerby was lost in his own world. All night long he had watched the reports, and stared out into the windy dark. All night long he had prayed to the coldest depths of the earth, prayed for Little Victory, Gokna, Brent, and Jirlib. He spoke sadly, almost to himself. "I watched them grow into real people, cobblies that anyone could love. They do have souls."
"What do you mean?" The sharpness in Victory's voice didn't penetrate his fatigue. He had years afterward to think back on this conversation, this single moment, to imagine the ways he might have avoided disaster. But the present did not feel the desperate gaze of the future, and he blundered on: "It's not their fault that they were brought into the world out-of-phase."
"It's not their fault my slippery modern ideals have killed them?" Smith's voice was a cutting hiss, something that even sorrow and fatigue could not block from Unnerby's attention. He saw that his General was trembling.
"No, I—" But it was finally, irrevocably too late.
Smith was on her feet. She flicked a single long arm across his head, whiplike."Get out!"
Unnerby staggered back. His right side vision was a coruscating ray of plaid agony. In all other directions, he saw officers and noncoms caught with aspects of shocked surprise.
Smith advanced on him. "Trad! Traitor!" Her hands jabbed with each word, killing blows just barely restrained. "For years you've pretended to be a friend, but always sneering and hating us. Enough!" She stopped her relentless approach, and brought her arms back to her sides. And Hrunkner knew she had capped her rage, and what she said now was cold and calm and considered...and it hurt even more than the wound across his eyes. "Take your moral baggage and go. Now."
