A Deepness in the Sky

"It's Smith down there at Southmost," said a senior sergeant sitting at the bar. "Who else could it be?" He tipped his head in the direction of one of Lighthill's corporals and waited for some reaction. Corporal Suabisme just shrugged, looking very innocent and—by trad standards—indecently young. "I wouldn't be knowing, Sergeant. I truly wouldn't."

The senior sergeant waved his eating hands in a sneer. "Oh? So how come you Lighthill flunkies are all carrying departure bags? I'd say you're just waiting to hop on a plane for someplace."

It was the sort of probing that would normally bring Viki into action, either to withdraw Suabisme or—if necessary—to shut the senior sergeant down. But in the NCO club, Lighthill had zero authority. Besides, the point of being here was to keep the team out of official sight. But after a moment, the senior sergeant seemed to realize he wasn't going to provoke any slips from the young soldier; he turned back to his buddies at the bar.

Viki let out a quiet sigh. She hunkered down until just the tops of her eyes were above the level of the fizzbar. The place was getting busy, the ping of spit in cuspidors a kind of background music. There was little talk, and even less laughter. Off-duty NCOs should be a more lively lot, but these cobbers had plenty on their minds. The center of attention was the television. The NCO cooperative had bought the latest variable-format video. In the dimness behind the bar, Viki smiled in spite of herself. If the world could survive even a few more years, such gear would be as good as the videomancy gear Daddy played with.

The TV was sucking from a commercial news site. One window was a crude image from some rent-a-camera at the embassy airport at Southmost: the aircraft coasting down the embassy runway was a type that Lighthill herself had seen only twice before. Like many things, it was secret and obsolete all at the same time. The press scarcely commented on it. On the main window, an editorialist was congratulating herself on this journalistic coup, and speculating just who was aboard the daggercraft.

"...It's not the King himself, despite what our competitors may claim. Our coverage around the palace and at the Princeton airfields would have detected any movement of the Royal Household. So who is this now arriving at Southmost?" The announcer paused and the cameras moved closer, surrounding her forebody. The picture expanded to spill over the nearby displays. The maneuver gave the impression suddenly of intimate conversation. "We now know that the emissary is the head of the King's Own Intelligence Service, Victory Smith." The cameras backed off a little. "So, to the King's Information Officers, we say: You can't hide from the press. Better to give us full access. Let the people see Smith's progress with the Southlanders."

Another camera, from inside a hangar: Mom's daggercraft had been towed all the way into the embassy hangar, and the clamshell doors were being pulled shut. The scene looked like a diorama built from children's toys: the futuristic aircraft, the closed-body tractors chugging around the hangar's wide floor. No people were visible.Surely they don't have to pressurize the hangar? Even at the eye of the dry hurricane, the pressure couldn't be that low. But after a moment, soldiers popped out of a van. They pushed a stairway up to the side of the dagger. Everyone in the NCO Club became suddenly very quiet.

A soldier climbed to the aircraft's mid-hatch. It cracked open, and...the embassy rent-a-camera feed went dead, replaced by the King's seal.

There was startled laughter, then applause and hooting. "Good for the General!" someone shouted. As much as anyone, these cobbers wanted to know what was happening at Southmost, but they also had a long-standing dislike for the news companies. They regarded these latest, very open discussions as a personal affront.

She looked at her team members. Most had been watching the television, but without great interest. They already knew what was going on, and—as Senior Sergeant Loudmouth had speculated—they expected to see action themselves very soon. Unfortunately, the television couldn't help them with that. At the back of the room, far from the fizzbar and the television, a few hard-core gamers hung around their arcade boxes. That included three of Lighthill's people. Brent had been there since they began to loiter. Her brother was hunched down under a custom game display, the helmet covering most of his head. To look at him, you'd never guess that the world was teetering on the edge of destruction.

Viki slipped off her perch and walked quietly back toward the arcade machines.