Broute turned to Trixia as Underhill: "And your reply?"

Trixia: "Ah, it is nice to be able to reply." Trixia was smiling again, her tone almost as light as at the beginning of the program. If Underhill had been unhinged by the attack on his son, maybe Pedure's long speech had given him time to recover. "First, all my children are living. There are only six. That should not be surprising. It's hard to conceive children out-of-phase. I'm sure everyone knows this. It is also very hard to nurture the out-of-phase baby welts long enough for them to grow eyes. Nature does indeed prefer that cobblies be created right before the Dark."

Xopi leaned forward, speaking loudly. "Take careful note, friends! Underhill just now admits that he commits crime against nature!"

"Not at all. Evolution has caused us to survive and thrive within Nature. But times change—"

Xopi sounded sarcastic: "So times change? Science made you a Darkstrider, and now you are greater than Nature?"

Trixia laughed. "Oh, I'm still very much a part of Nature. But even before technology—did you know that ten million years ago, the length of the sun's cycle was less than one year?"

"Fantasy. How could creatures live—"

"How indeed?" Trixia was smiling more broadly, and her tone was one of triumph. "But the record of fossil edgings is very clear. Ten million years ago, the cycle was much shorter and the variation in brightness much less intense. There was no need for deepnesses and hibernation. As the cycle of light and dark became longer and more extreme, all surviving creatures adapted. I imagine it was a harsh process. Many great changes were necessary. And now—"

Xopi made a cutting gesture. Did she make those up or were they somehow implied by the Spider broadcast? "If not fantasy, it's still not proved. Sir, I will not argue evolution with you. There are decent people who believe it, but it is speculation—no basis for death-and-life decisions."

"Ha!Point for Daddy!" From their perches atop Brent and Jirlib, the two girls exchanged quiet editorial comments. Where Didire couldn't see, they were also making maw-gestures at the Honored Pedure. After that first Ten, there had been no obvious reaction, but it felt good to show the cobber how they felt about her.

"Don't worry, Brent. Daddy's going to get this Pedure."

Brent had been even more quiet than usual. "I knew this was going to happen. Things were hard enough. Now Dad has to explain about me, too."

In fact, Daddy had almost lost it when Pedure called Brent a cretin. Viki had never seen him look quite so lost. But he was taking back lost ground now. Viki had thought Pedure would be a know-nothing, but she seemed familiar with some of what Daddy was throwing at her. It didn't matter. Honored Pedure wasn't that knowledgeable; besides, Daddy wasright.

And he was on a real pounce now: "Strange that tradition should not show more interest in the earliest past, Lady Pedure. But no matter. The changes that science is making in this current generation will be so great that I might better use them to illustrate. Nature enforced certain strategies—and the cycle of generations is one of them, I agree. Without that enforcement, we likely would not exist. But think of the waste, my lady. All our children are in one stage of life in each year. Once past that stage, the tools of their schooling must lie idle until the next generation. There is no need for such waste anymore. With science—"

Honored Pedure gave a whistling laugh, full of sarcasm and surprise. "So you admit it there! You plot that oophase be a way of life, not your isolated sin."

"Of course!" Daddy bounced up. "I want people to know that we live in an era that is different. I want people to be free to have children in every season of the sun."

"Yes. You intend to invade the rest of us. Tell me, Underhill, do you already have secret schools for the oophase? Are there hundreds or thousands like your six, just waiting for our acceptance?"

"Uh, no. So far we have not found playmates for my children."

Over the years, all of them had wanted playmates. Mother had searched for them, so far without success. Gokna and Viki had concluded that other oophases must be very well hidden...or very rare. Sometimes, Viki wondered if maybe they really were damned; it was so hard to find any others.

Honored Pedure leaned back on her perch, smiling in an almost friendly way. "That last is comfort to me, Master Underhill. Even in our times, most folk are decent, and your perversions are rare. Nevertheless, ‘The Children's Hour' continues to be popular, even though the in-phase are now more than twenty years old. Your show is a lure that didn't exist beforetimes. And our view exchange is therefore terribly important."

"Yes, indeed. I think so, too."

Honored Pedure cocked her head. What rotten luck. The cobber realized that Daddy meant it. If she got Daddy to speculating...things could be very sticky. Pedure's next question was spoken in a casual tone of honest curiosity. "It seems to me, Master Underhill, that you understand moral law. Do you consider it, maybe, to be something like the law of creative art—to be broken by the greatest thinkers, such as yourself?"

"Greatest thinkers, fooey." But the question had clearly caught Daddy's imagination, drawing him away from persuasive rhetoric. "You know, Pedure, I never looked at moral rules like that before. What an interesting idea! You suggest that they could be ignored by those who have some innate—what? Talent for goodness? Surely not....Though I confess to being an illiterate when it comes to moral argument. I like to play and I like to think. The Darkstriding was a great lark, as much as it was important to the war effort. Science will create wonderful change in the near future of Spiderkind. I'm having enormous fun with these things, and I want the public—including those whoare experts at moral thought—to understand the consequences of the change."

Honored Pedure said, "Indeed." The sarcasm was there only if you were listening as suspiciously as Little Victory was. "And you intend somehow for science to replace the Dark as the great cleanser and the great mystery?"

Daddy made dismissing gestures with his eating hands. He seemed to have forgotten that he was on the radio. "Science will make the Dark of the Sun as innocuous and knowable as the night that comes at the end of every day."

In the control room, Didi gave a little yip of surprise. It was the first time Viki had ever heard the engineer react to the broadcasts she was supervising. Out on the soundstage, Rappaport Digby sat up as straight as if someone had stuck a spear up his rear. Daddy didn't seem to notice, and Honored Pedure's response was as casual as if they were discussing the possibility of rain: "We'll live and work right through the Dark as if it was just one long night?"

"Yes! What do you think all the talk of nuclear power means?"

"So then we all will be Darkstriders, and there will be no Dark, no mystery, no Deepness for the mind of Spiderkind to rest within. Science will take all."

"Piffle. On this one small world, there will be no more real darkness. But there will always be the Dark. Go out tonight, Lady Pedure. Look up. We are surrounded by the Dark and always will be. And just as our Dark ends with the passage of time in a New Sun, so the greater Dark ends at the shores of a million million stars. Think! If our sun's cycle was once less than a year, then even earlier our sun might have been middling bright all the time. I have students who are sure most of the stars are just like our sun, only much much younger, and many with worlds like ours. You want a deepness that endures, a deepness that Spiderkind can depend on? Pedure, there is a deepness in the sky, and it extends forever." And Daddy was off on his space-travel thing. Even graduate students glazed over when Daddy started on this; only a hard core of crazies specialized in astronomy. It was all so upside down and inside out. For most people, the idea that lights as steady as stars could be like the sun was a leap of faith greater than most religions asked for.