A Deepness in the Sky

Throughout his speech, Victory Lighthill had sat still and silent, even her eating hands motionless. Now she spoke, a burring warble, soft and sad and wondering, that needed Trixia to translate the words: "Daddy would have loved this plan."

"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 A

Beside him, A

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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 begi

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