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The mission to High Equatoria might have been low-tech and low-key, but the Intelligence team in the airport was efficient enough. The bags of rock flour were carted off in armored cars; even more impressive, the major in charge had not even wisecracked about the absurdity of the operation.
Inside of thirty minutes, Hrunk and his now not-so-relevant bodyguards were out on the street.
"What d'ya mean, ‘not relevant'?" Arla waved her arms in exaggerated wonder. "Not relevant was shepherding that...stuff across the continent." Neither of the two knew the importance of the rock flour, and they had not been shy in showing their contempt for it. They were good agents, but they didn't have the attitude Hrunk was used to. "Now we have something important to guard." She jerked a hand in U
Hrunkner smiled back. "It's more than an hour before I meet the chief. Plenty of time to walk the distance. Aren't you curious, Arla? How many ordinary folks get to see Calorica on the First Day of the Dark?"
Arla and Brun glowered at that, the look of noncoms confronted by stupid behavior that they could not correct. U
Calorica Bay had been a wonder of the world since the earliest times. It was one of only three volcanic sites known—and the other two were under ice and ocean. The bay itself was actually the broken-down bowl of the volcano, and ocean waters drowned most of its central pit.
In the early years of a New Sun, it was a hell of hells, though no one had directly observed the place then. The steeply curving walls of the bowl concentrated the sun's light and the temperatures climbed above the melting point of lead. Apparently this provoked—or allowed—fast lava seepage, and a continuous series of explosions, leaving new crater walls by the time the sun had dimmed to mid-Brightness. Even in those years, only the most foolhardy explorers poked themselves over the altiplano rim of the bowl.
But as the sun dimmed into the Waning Years of its cycle, a different visitor appeared. As northern and southern lands found winters that were steadily harsher, now the highest reaches of the bowl were pleasant and warm. And as the world cooled, lower and lower parts of the bowl became first accessible, and then a paradise. Over the last five generations, Calorica Bay had become the most exclusive resort of the Waning Years, the place where people so rich that they didn't have to save and work to prepare for the Dark could come and enjoy themselves. At the height of the Great War, when U
In a way, Calorica at the begi
• • •
The crowds swirled everywhere. There was laughter and pipe music and occasional argument. And the people were strange in so many ways that for a while U
He let the crowd motion jostle them this way and that like particles in a suspension. He could imagine how nervous Arla and Brun felt about this mob of uncleared strangers. But they made the most of it, blending into the rowdy noise, just accidentally staying within arm's reach of U
"Damn!" Brun slipped out of character, jostled U
U
Thirty feet down the stone palisade, another reveler splashed into the water. Suddenly, the water's edge seemed like the edge of a deadly cliff. U
It was midafternoon, yet except for the cool-colored lights in the trees, and the heat colors from crater-center, it was as dark as any night. The sun looked down on them, a faint blotch in the sky, a reddish disk pocked with small dark marks.
The First Day of the Dark. Religions and nations set minor variations in the date. The New Sun began with an explosive blaze of light, though no one was alive to see it. But the end of the light—that was a slow waning that extended across almost the whole of the Brightness. For the last three years, the sun had been a pale thing, scarcely warming your back at high noon, dim enough to stare at with a fully open gaze. For the last year, the brighter stars had been visible all through the day. But even that was not officially the begi
So in that gradual slide toward oblivion, what was it that marked the instant—the day at least—that was the first of the Dark? U