A Deepness in the Sky

On this 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.

So High, So Low, So Many Things to Know

It is an edged cliché that the world is most pleasant in the years of a Waning Sun. It is true that the weather is not so driven, that everywhere there is a sense of slowing down, and most places experience a few years where the summers do not burn and the winters are not yet overly fierce. It is the classic time of romance. It's a time that seductively beckons higher creatures to relax, postpone. It's the last chance to prepare for the end of the world.

We’re long on high principles and short on simple human understanding.

Second by second, the Queng Ho counted from the instant that a human had first set foot on Old Earth's moon. But if you looked at it still more closely ... the starting instant was actually about fifteen million seconds later, the 0-second of one of Humankind's first computer operating systems.

Programming went back to the beginning of time. It was a little like the midden out back of his father's castle.

You ask me the real point of it all. Each of us must take his own path on that, Fleet Captain. Different paths have their own advantages, their own perils. But for your own, human, sake…you should consider: Each civilization has its time. Each science has its limits. And each of us must die, living less than half a thousand years. If you truly understand those limits…then you are ready to grow up, to know what counts.” He was silent for a while. “Yes…just listen to the peace. It’s a gift to be able to do that. Too much time is spent in frenzied rushing. Listen to the breeze in the lestras. Watch Fred try to figure us out. Listen to the laughter of your children and your grandchildren. Enjoy the time you have, however it is given to you, and for however long.” Larson leaned

I’ve studied the humans for almost twenty years, Rachner. They’ve been traveling in space for hundreds of generations. They’ve seen so much, they’ve done so much…. The poor crappers think they know what is impossible. They’re free to fly between the stars, and their imagination is trapped in a cage they can’t even see.” The glowing streaks had passed across the

We were looking for starfarers, but we were too small and all we saw were their ankles.

noble winged pig.’” “Yes, the spirit of programming.

Nau had been very careful that enough nukes remained. If necessary, he could play the old, old game of total disaster management. So what can be salvaged? He

Dreams die in every life. Everyone gets old. There is promise in the beginning when life seems so bright. The promise fades when the years get short. But not Pham’s dream. He had pursued it across five hundred light-years and three thousand years of objective time. It was a dream of a single Humankind, where justice would not be occasional flickering light, but a steady glow across all of Human Space. He dreamed of a civilization where continents never burned, and where two-bit kings didn’t give children away as hostages. When Sammy had dug him out of the cemeterium at Lowcinder, Pham was dying, but not the dream. The dream had been bright as ever in his mind, consuming him.

From this era on, I think invention will be the parent of necessity – and not the other way around.’ That was easy for Sherkaner Underhill to say. He didn’t have to engineer the science into reality.

welts long enough for them to grow eyes. Nature does indeed prefer that cobblies be created right before the Dark.

Those Emergent fuckers have taken away all the I/O that works. I can’t use voice, I can’t use head-up displays. All we have are windows and these mother-damned things!” She threw the keyboard at the table. It bounced up, spinning into the ceiling. There was a chorus of agreement, though not quite so manic. “You can’t do everything through a keyboard. We need huds…. We’re crippled even when the underlying systems are okay.

Funny how Underhill could get along with almost anyone, tuning down his manias to whatever the traffic would bear.

Underhill had an idea for much safer, faster transport than autos or even aircraft. “Ten minutes from Princeton to Lands Command, twenty minutes across the continent. See, you dig these tunnels along minimum-time arcs, evacuate the air from them, and just let gravity do the work.” By Unnerby’s watch, there was a five-second pause. Then: “Oops, little problem there. The minimum-time solution for Princeton to Lands Command would go down kinda deep…like six hundred miles. I probably couldn’t convince even the General to finance it.” “You are right about that!” And the two were off in an extended argument about less-than-optimal tunnel arcs and trade-offs against air travel. The deep tunnel idea was really dumb, it turned out.

minds, who can show the rest of us what is important about the aliens’ differences. So Trixia’s

Spider names look silly. But this ‘‘Accord’’ group is a young culture. Their names are still mostly meaningful in their daily language.

languages. Notice how they almost make sense, some of them.’ ‘Yes, and that’s

Pedure, there is a deepness in the sky, and it extends forever.

Fong’s obscenity-spattered fit about keyboards. So what to look

basically you’re a military man. That’s an honorable profession, and it sets you high, no matter what your origin. You see, there are moral levels to society.” Silipan was clearly lecturing from the received wisdom. “At the top are the Podmasters, statesmen I guess you’d call them. Below that are the military leaders, and underneath the leaders are the staff planners, the technicians, and the armsmen. Underneath that…are vermin of different categories: fallen members of the useful categories, persons with a chance of fitting back in the system. And below them are the factory workers and farmers. And at the very bottom—combining the worst aspects of all the scum—are the peddlers.

many of the oldest programs still ran in the bowels of the Qeng Ho system. Take the Traders’ method of timekeeping. The frame corrections were incredibly complex—and down at the very bottom of it was a little program that ran a counter. Second by second, the Qeng Ho counted from the instant that a human had first set foot on Old Earth’s moon. But if you looked at it still more closely…the starting instant was actually about fifteen million seconds later, the 0-second of one of Humankind’s first computer operating systems.

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

there is a deepness in the sky, and it extends forever.