A Deepness in the Sky

"Yes." Pham's voice caught. Underhill had been a genius and a dreamer, straight out of the Dawn Age. Pham had long since read Trixia's "videomancy diaries," the story of Underhill's counterlurk. The cobber had dug deep into the Emergents' automation, sometimes so deep that the Focused Anne Reynolt had noticed the tampering and thought it evidence of human conspiracy. At the end, Underhill knew what Focus was; he knew the humans didn't have AI or any technology enormously beyond his own. Sherkaner Underhill must have been very disappointed to learn the limits of progress.

Beside him, Anne started to nod, hesitated. And that was when she surprised them all, herself included, but the Spiders most of all. She cocked her head, and a slow smile started across her face. "And what makes you think he didn't survive? He had as much information as any of us—and a good bit more imagination. What makes you think this isn'this plan, too?"

"Anne, I've read the diaries. If he were alive, he'd be here."

She shook her head. "I wonder. Wanderdeep is something we humans aren't built to understand, and Sherkaner thought sure that Smith was dead. But Sherkaner Underhill confounded both humans and Spiders more than once. He took Spiderness in unthought directions—he saw the deepness in the sky. I think he's down there somewhere, and he intends to outlast all the mysteries."

"It could be...it could be." The words, ultimately Trixia's or Victory's, Pham could not tell, were spoken in soft awe. "We don't really know where he landed on the altiplano. If it was something he had scouted out before, he would have a chance."

Pham looked outward, at Arachna. The planet spread across thirty degrees, a vast, black pearl. Traceries of gold and silver gleamed all across the continent into the southern hemisphere, and across the faint luster of the eastern sea. And yet, there were still large areas of unrelieved dark, protected lands that would remain still and cold until the end of the Dark. Pham felt a sudden thrill of understanding.Yes. Somewhere down there the old Spider might still sleep, waiting for his lady lost...and beginning on his greatest Lurk of all.

So high, so low, so many things to know.