A Deepness in the Sky

"Aha, we got that. Some farm machinery needs it. No, I mean, what about when your contraption breaks? They all do, you know. They're kinda fragile things, not like draft animals."

Sherkaner grinned. He could see the shells of several autos in the forest behind the smith's. This was the right place. "That could be a problem. But you see, I have some ideas. It's leather and metal work that might interest you." He sketched out two of the ideas he'd had that afternoon, things that should be easy to do. The smith was agreeable; always happy to do business with madmen. But Sherkaner had to pay him up front; fortunately, Bank of Princeton currency was acceptable.

Afterward, Underhill drove through the little town, looking for an inn. At first glance this was a peaceful, timeless place to live. There was a traditionalist church of the Dark, as plain and weathered as it should be in these years. The newspapers on sale by the post office were three days old. The headlines might be large and red, shrieking of war and invasion, but even when a convoy for Lands Command rumbled through, it got no special attention.

It turned out Nigh't'Deepness was too small for inns. The owner of the post office gave him directions to a couple of bed-and-breakfast homes. As the sun slid down toward the ocean, Sherkaner tooled around the countryside, lost and exploring. The forest was beautiful, but it didn't leave much room for farming. The locals made some of their living by outside trade, but they worked hard on their mountain garden...and they had at most three years of good growing seasons before the frosts would become deadly. The local harvest yards looked full, and there was a steady stream of carts shuttling back and forth into the hills. The parish deepness was up that way about fifteen miles. It wasn't a large deepness, but it served most of the outback folk. If these people didn't save enough now, they would surely starve in the first, hard years of the Great Dark; even in a modern civilization, there was precious little charity for able-bodied persons who didn't provide for those years.

Sunset caught him on a promontory overlooking the ocean. The ground dipped away on three sides, on the south into a little, tree-covered valley. On the crest beyond the dell was a house that looked like the one the postmaster had described. But Sherk still wasn't in a hurry. This was the most beautiful view of the day. He watched the plaids shade into limited colors, the sun's trace fading from the far horizon.

Then he turned his automobile and started down the steep dirt road into the dell. The canopy of the forest closed in above him...and he was into the trickiest driving of the day, even though he was moving slower than a cobber could walk. The auto dipped and slid in foot-deep ruts. Gravity and luck were the main things that kept him from getting stuck. By the time he reached the creek bed at the bottom, Sherkaner was seriously wondering if he would be leaving his shining new machine down here. He stared ahead and to the sides. The road was not abandoned; those cart ruts were fresh.

The slow evening breeze brought the stench of offal and rotting garbage. A dump? Strange to think of such a thing in the wilderness. There were piles of indeterminate refuse. But there was also a ramshackle house half-hidden by the trees. Its walls were bent, as if the timbers had never been cured. Its roof sagged. Holes were stuffed with wattle-bush. The ground cover between the road and the house had been chewed down. Maybe that accounted for the offal: a couple of osprechs were hobbled near the creek, just upstream of the house.

Sherkaner stopped. The ruts of the road disappeared into the creek just twenty feet ahead. For a moment he just stared, overwhelmed. These must be genuine backwoods folk, as alien as anything city-bred Sherkaner Underhill had ever seen. He started to get out of the auto. The viewpoints they would have! The things he might learn. Then it occurred to him that if their viewpoint was alienenough, these strangers might be less than pleased by his presence.

Besides...Sherkaner eased back onto his perch and took careful hold of the steering wheel, throttle, and brakes. Not just the osprechs were watching him. He looked out in all directions, his eyes fully adapted to the twilight. There were two of them. They lurked in the shadows on either side of him. Not animals, not people.Children? Maybe five and ten years old. The smaller one still had its baby eyes. Yet their gaze was animal, predatory. They edged closer to the auto.

Sherkaner revved his engine and bolted forward. Just before he reached the little creek, he noticed a third form—a larger one—hiding in the trees above the water. Children they might be, but this was a serious game of lurk-and-pounce. Sherkaner twisted the wheel hard right, bouncing out of the ruts. He was off the road—or was he? There were faint, scraped-down grooves ahead: the real fording point!