In other ways, the year 60//19 was different from 59//19, and very different from the tenth year of all generations before that. The world had entered the Age of Science. An airfield covered the river lowlands that had been farm paddies in past eras. Radio masts grew from the city's highest hills; at night, their far-red marker lights could be seen for miles.

By 60//19 most of the Accord's cities were similarly changed, as were the great cities of Tiefstadt and the Kindred, and to a lesser degree the cities of poorer nations. But even by the standards of the new age, Princeton was a very special place. There were things happening here that didn't show on the visible landscape, yet were the seeds of greater revolution.

Hrunkner Unnerby flew in to Princeton one rainy spring morning. An airport taxi drove him from the riverfront up through the center of town. Unnerby had grown up in Princeton and his old construction company had been here. He arrived before most shops' opening time; street cleaners scuttled this way and that around his taxi. A cool drizzle left the shops and the trees with glints of a thousand colors. Hrunkner liked the old downtown, where many of the stone foundations had survived more than three or four generations. Even the new concrete and the brick upper stories followed designs from before the time of any living person.

Out of the downtown, they climbed through new housing. This was a former Royal property that the government had sold to finance the Great War—the conflict the new generation was already calling simply the War with the Tiefers. Some parts of the new district were instant slums; others—the higher viewpoints—were elegant estates. The taxi trundled back and forth along the switchbacks, rising slowly toward the highest spot in the new tract. The top was obscured by dripping ferns, but here and there he glimpsed outbuildings. Gates opened silently and without apparent attendants. Hunh. There was a bloody palace up ahead.

Sherkaner Underhill stood by the parking circle at the end, looking quite out of place beside the grand entrance. The rain was just a comfortable mist, but Underhill popped open an umbrella as he walked out to greet Unnerby.

"Welcome, Sergeant! Welcome! All the years I've been after you to visit my little hillhouse, and finally you're here."

Hrunkner shrugged.

"I have so much to show you...starting with two small but important items." He tipped back the umbrella. After a moment, two tiny heads peeked up from the fur on his back. The two were babies, holding tight to their father. They could be no older than normal children in the early Bright, just old enough to be cute. "The little girl is Rhapsa and the boy is Hrunkner."

Unnerby stepped forward, trying to seem casual.They probably namedthe child Hrunkner out of friendship. God in deepest earth. "Very pleased to meet you." In the best of times, Unnerby had no way with children—training new hires was the closest he'd ever come to raising them. Hopefully, that would excuse his unease.

The babies seemed to sense his distaste, and retreated shyly from sight. "

Never mind," said Sherkaner, in that oblivious way of his. "They'll come out and play once we're indoors."

Sherkaner led him inside, talking all the way about how much he had to show him, how good it was that Hrunkner was finally visiting. The years had changed Underhill, physically at least. Gone was the painful leanness; he had been through several molts. The fur on his back was deep and paternal, strange to see on anyone in this phase of the sun. The tremor in his head and forebody was a little worse than Unnerby remembered.

They walked through a foyer big enough for a hotel, and down a wide spiral of steps that looked out upon wing after wing of Sherkaner's "little hillhouse." There were plenty of other people here, servants perhaps, though they didn't wear the livery that the super-rich usually demanded. In fact, the place had the utilitarian feel of corporate or government property. Unnerby interrupted the other's nonstop chatter with, "This is all a front, isn't it, Underhill? The King never sold this hill at all, just transferred it." To the Intelligence Service.

"No, really. I do own the ground; I bought it myself. But, um, I do a lot of consulting, and Victory—I mean Accord Intelligence—decided that security was best served by setting up the labs right here. I have some things to show you."

"Yeah. Well, that's the point of my visit, Sherk. I don't think you're working on the right things. You've pushed the Crown into going all out for—I assume we can talk freely here?"

"Yes, yes, of course."

Ordinarily, Unnerby wouldn't have accepted such a casual assertion, but he was beginning to realize how thoroughly secure the building was. There was plenty of Sherkaner design, the logarithmic spiral of the main rooms for instance, but there was also Victory's touch, the—guards, he now realized—lurking everywhere, the crisply clean nature of the carpets and walls. This place was probably as safe as Unnerby's labs inside Lands Command. "Okay. You've pushed the Crown into going all out for atomic power. I'm managing more men and equipment than a billionaire, including several people almost as smart as you are." In fact, though Hrunkner Unnerby was still a sergeant, his job was about as far from that rank as one could get. His life these days was beyond his wildest contractor's dream.

"Good, good. Victory has a lot of faith in you, you know." He led his guest into a large and peculiar room. There were bookcases and a desk, all overflowing with reports, randomly piled books, and notepaper. But the bookcases were fastened to a cobblie jungle gym, and children's books were mixed with the arcana. His two babies hopped from his back and scuttled up the gym. Now they peered down upon them from the ceiling. Sherkaner pushed books and magazines off a lower perch and waved for Unnerby to seat himself. Thank God he didn't try to change the subject.

"Yeah, but you haven't seen my reports."

"Yes, I have. Victory sends them to me, though I haven't had time to read them."

"Well, maybe you should!"Deep Secret reports are sent to him and hedoesn't have time to read them—and he's the cobber who started it all. "Look, Sherkaner, I'm telling you it's not working out. In principle, atomic power can do everything we need. In practice—well, we've made some really deadly poisons. There are things like radium but a lot easier to produce in bulk. We've also got one isotope of uranium that's very hard to isolate, but I think if we do, we can make a hell of a bomb: we can give you the energy to keep a city warm through the Dark, but all in less than a second!"

"Excellent! That's a start."

"That excellent start may be as far as it gets. I've had three labs taken over by the bomb cobbers. Trouble is, this is peacetime; this technology is going to leak out, first to mining interests, then to foreign states. Can you imagine what will happen once the Kindred and the Old Tiefers and God knows who else starts making these things?"

That seemed to penetrate Underhill's durable armor of inattention. "...Yes, that will be very bad. I haven't read your reports, but Victory is up here often. Technology gives us wonders and terrible dangers. We can't have one without the other. But I'm convinced we won't survive unless we play with these things. You're seeing just one part of it all. Look, I know Victory can get you more money. Accord Intelligence has a good credit rating. They can go beyond the tithe for a decade without having to show a profit. We'll get you more labs, whatever you want—"

"Sherkaner, have you heard of ‘forcing the learning curve'?"

"Well, uh—" Clearly he had.

"Right now, if I had all the wealth in the world, I could give you a city heating unit, maybe. It would suffer catastrophic failure every few years, and even when it was working ‘properly,' its transfer fluid—superheated steam, say—would be so radioactive that your city's residents would all be dead before the Dark was even ten years old. Beyond a certain point, throwing more money and technicians at a problem just doesn't help."