Underhill gestured no. "Oh, Little Victory, without you and Gokna the rescuers would have been a minute too late. You would all be dead. Gokna—"
"But now Gokna is dead!"Suddenly her armor of unfeeling was broken, and she was swept away. Viki shrieked without words and raced from the room. She fled down the hall to the central stairs, weaving round the uniforms and the everyday inhabitants of the house. A few arms reached out for her, but someone called out from behind, and she was let past.
Up and up Viki ran, past the labs and the classrooms, past the atrium where they always played, where they first met Hrunkner Unnerby.
At the summit was the little gabled attic that she and Gokna had demanded and pleaded and schemed for. Some like the deepest and some like the highest. Daddy always reached for the highest and his two daughters had loved to look down from their lofty perch. It wasn't the highest place in Princeton, but it had been enough.
Viki ran inside, slammed the door. For an instant, she was a little dizzy from the nonstop climb. And then...She froze, staring all around her. There was the attercop house, grown huge over the last five years. As the winters got colder, it had lost its original charm; you couldn't pretend the little critters were people when they started sprouting wings. Dozens of them flittered in and out of the feeders. The ultra and blue of their wings was almost like a wallboard design on the sides of the house. She and Gokna had argued endlessly over who was the mistress of that house.
They had argued about almost everything. There by the wall was the artillery-shell dollhouse that Gokna had brought up from the den. It really had been Gokna's, yet still they argued about it.
The signs of Gokna were everywhere here. And Gokna would never be here again. They could never talk again, not even to argue. Viki almost turned and bolted back out of the room. It was as though a monstrous hole had been torn in her side, her arms and legs ripped from her body. There was nowhere left for her life to stand. Viki sank down in a pile, shivering.
• • •
Fathers and mothers were very different sorts of people. From what the children had been able to figure, some of this was true even for normal families. Dad was around all the time. He was the one who had infinite patience, the one they could usually wheedle extra favors from. But Sherkaner Underhill had his own special nature, surely not the usual: He regarded every rule of nature and culture as an obstacle to be thought about, experimented with. There was humor and cleverness in everything he did.
Mothers—their mother, anyway—was not around every minute, and could not be depended upon to buckle to every childish demand. General Victory Smith was with her children often enough, one day out of ten up in Princeton, and much more so when they went on trips down to Lands Command. She was there when real rules had to be laid down, ones that even Sherkaner Underhill might hesitate to bend. And she was there when you had really, really screwed up.
Viki didn't know how long she had been lying in a huddle when she heard steps ticking up the stairs to her room. Surely not more than half an hour; beyond the windows, it was still the middle of a cool, beautiful afternoon.
There was soft tapping at her door. "Junior? Can we talk?"Mother.
Something strange stirred in Viki: welcome. Daddy could forgive, he always forgave...but Mother would understand how terrible she really had been.
Viki opened the door, stepped back with her head bowed. "I thought you were busy until tonight." Then she noticed that Victory Smith was in uniform, the black-black jacket and sleeves, the ultra and red shoulder tabs. She had never seen the General in that uniform up here in Princeton, and even down in Lands Command it had been reserved for special times, for briefings given to certain superiors.
The General stepped quietly into the room. "I—decided this was more important." She motioned Little Victory to sit beside her. Viki sat, feeling calmness for the first time since this all began. Two of the General's forearms draped lightly across her shoulders. "There have been some serious...mistakes made. You know that both your father and I agree about that?"
Viki nodded. "Yes, yes!"
"We can never bring Gokna back. But we can remember her, and love her, and correct the mistakes that allowed this terrible thing to happen."
"Yes!"
"Your father—I—thought we should keep you out of the larger problems, at least until you were grown. Up to a point, we were right perhaps. But now I see, we put you at terrible risk."
"No!...Mother, don't you understand? It was me, a-and Gokna, who broke the rules. We fooled Captain Downing. We just didn't believe the things that Dad and you warned us about."
