Shadow's End (12 page)

“But it's got to look natural, and the group must include women,” said Poracious. “I suppose there are women shadows.”

“There are.” The Procurator sighed.

“You don't like the idea?” she asked.

“It may seem foolish to worry about a few lives, about depriving people of their guaranteed human rights, or about the appearance of impropriety when we're threatened with extinction, but I am sworn to uphold the rights
of man,” protested the Procurator, somewhat stiffly. “I can't just—”

“It seems to me the rights of man include the right to go on living,” growled Twisted-tree. “If we're wiped out, it won't matter what we do now, yes? To protect ourselves, we need information, and this is one way, maybe the only way, to get it!”

“We could be open about it,” the Procurator said plaintively. “People would understand….”

“No, they wouldn't.” Twisted-tree grinned without humor. “They'd jump at any excuse to depose us, because that's what people do. Yes. During a crisis, people pull together; they're afraid rocking the boat will dump them over the side, but still, crises make people fearful, which makes them angry, which makes them hostile. When the crisis is over, the opposition decides to see what was done that might be called illegal. Yes. Then executions happen. Exile happens. If we survive this, it should not be to face such a fate! Therefore, we do whatever offers the slightest hope, but we protect appearances while we do it, yes.”

“He's right,” mused Poracious. “Later, when survival is assured, the little opposition scholars will start digging. Make sure there are no records of this, Procurator. And damn few recollections!”

The Procurator sighed. It was true. What they said was indisputably true. “Shadows, then. On Perdur Alas, as soon as we possibly can.”

“S
trip off your shadow suit,” said the lock in its metallic, impersonal voice. Shadow stripped.

“Place your hands in the receptacles.”

Shadow placed.

“Bend your head forward to make contact with the plate.”

Shadow bent.

Light, sounds, movement. Snarkey stood back from the
plate, shaking her head as she always did, bellowing with rage as she always did, though this time with more reason.

“Leave the cubicle,” said the voice, opening the door behind her, opposite the one she'd come in by.

“Goddamn bastards,” screamed Snark, leaping from the cubicle, turning to shake her fist at it.

Behind her someone laughed, and she grew abruptly cold as she turned and glared.

“The mad howler back once again,” said Willit. “Good day, old Snarkey-shad.”

“I nominate you,” growled Snark with a toothy smile.

Willit laughed, uncertainly. Snark went on smiling viciously as the laugh dwindled.

“Whaddayou mean, you nominate me?”

“The name Ularians mean anything to you, shad?” Snark sneered.

“Monsters,” said a voice from a corner. “From outer space.” The speaker giggled.

“No game?” muttered Willit disbelievingly. “Monsters?”

“Monsters,” said Snark. “And they wiped out most of the frontier.”

“That's history,” said Willit doubtfully.

“That's today, buttface. They're back. And the bureaucrats want to find out more about them. So they're gonna put people on a frontier planet, people with chips in 'em, so the skinsuits can tell what happens to the people when the Ularians eat 'em or blow 'em to forever. And guess who, shitheads?”

Silence. Snark glared at them with satisfaction. That had shut the crawlers up. She screwed up her mouth and yowled, “I nominate all of you.”

“Who the fuck's gonna listen to you naming anybody,” muttered Willit. “Ma Ugly herself! Who're you, the Procurator all of a sudden?”

Snarkey laughed. “Who you think they're goin' to take?
They need a few hundred men and women. How many of us you think there are down here?”

“I never counted.” Willit, suddenly apprehensive.

Snark didn't answer. Let the bastards stew. Look at 'em. Every one of 'em trying to think up reasons it wouldn't be him or her.

The hell it wouldn't.

I
n the simul booth, Snark lay snug, the flexible carapace enclosing her, the multiple loops and feedbacks pulsing gently. This time, this one time, she hadn't come in with murder in mind. This time, this one time, she hadn't come in with anything in mind at all except running away, the way she used to run away when she was little. Sometimes she thought her whole life had been running away from things or places or people to other things or places, and it was one of these she dreamed of now, maybe the best place ever, from a long time ago, somewhere far.

There was grass. The grass was important, the smell of it and the feel of it. There were thickly needled evergreen trees and shrubs growing close and tight along a wall. There was an earthen half tunnel burrowing beneath the scratchy branches, a tunnel that could be hidden behind her, and in the heart of the shrubbery lay a nest thickly carpeted with dried needles and soft ferns where a bit of film stuff was wrapped around a dirty old blanket to keep it dry. She could lie wrapped in the blanket with the film stuff outside that, warm and dry no matter if it rained, peering through a tiny hole in the leaves almost like looking through a telescope. Out there the big stone building loomed over the fields and garden plots and barns, and she could watch what went on: the young ones doing their work, the grown ones walking among them, smiling their dangerous smiles. They had their hands hidden in their pockets, holding weapons, just waiting until one
of the kids did something wrong, the way Snark always did something wrong.

The journey always started here, in this hidden place, with her looking out. The people out there might even be looking for her, calling her name, but they couldn't find her. Even if they told the kids to find her, they couldn't. Long delirious moments would go by, with Snark relishing her safety, feeling the warmth around her, the contentment. Her eyes would close, finally, shutting out the world, the people, the stone house. Her breathing would slow. Her heart would slow, too, into quiet, purposeful
bump, bump, bump.
Then even that noise would fade and she would be … elsewhere.

To begin with, she was always on a moor. That's where the journey started. It didn't matter how she got there; the dream didn't bother with that. She was simply there, on an almost flat highland covered with low, scrubby-scratchy bushes between aisles of softer bracken that were interrupted by shallow, moss-surrounded peat-dark ponds. When she thought about the place at all, she thought perhaps it was a place she had been once, a place she had seen, smelled, walked in. Maybe it was the place she'd been born to, where her own people were. She never thought she'd made it up. It was too real for that.

Sometimes she found herself standing there almost naked. Other times she had stout boots and a rain cape with a hood that covered her, and when dressed like this, she could lie well hidden on the moor itself, her body shadowed by the brushy growths or obscured by the bracken. Still, if she did that—and sometimes it seemed someone told her it would be all right if she did—she knew she could be tracked eventually. They could smell her. They could come whistling through the evening air, seeking anything warm-blooded, calling in those tempting voices that always seemed to know her name. No. Even though the moor was safe in comparison to most other places, it wasn't safe enough.

So she never gave in to the relief she felt when she arrived. Relief was only a momentary feeling, not enough by itself. She had to cross the moor, had to dodge along the folds in the ground, following the bracken aisles, keeping her feet out of the ponds, staying as dry as possible as she worked her way toward the horizon, where the world ended against a gray span of featureless sky. Later it might change to blue or even violet, it might glow with sunset or darken to lapis night, but when she arrived, when she crossed the moor, it was always the same: gray and clear, without depth or measure.

At a certain point on her journey she would hear the sea. A murmur only, a soft susurrus against the rattle of the bracken and the squodge of her footsteps. The whisper would grow louder, though never really loud, until she reached the edge where the world fell away in rooty edges above cliffs of gnarl, where the seabirds made screaming dizzy clouds beneath her as they wheeled wildly out, spiraling from their precipice perches over the hammered surface of the sea.

Then panic came, always. Even if she wasn't closely pursued in the dream, even if she had lots of time to walk slowly along the sheer drop, noticing the sparkle of the waters and the whirling gyre of the birds, panic always overcame her. She wouldn't find the right place! It would be better to jump now, jump before they caught up with her. Otherwise they might catch her, and that would be worse. Every time she came here she had to fight down the urge to jump, shut it out, stop thinking about it. She had to turn to her left to walk as close to the edge as possible, eyes hunting for landmarks, putting her feet carefully onto stone and pebbly places, leaving no track to be seen, knowing all the time that her smell remained, floating on the air, hanging there for the hunters to find!

Eventually, long after she'd become convinced she had missed it, she came to the curiously twisted rock looming
at the edge of the cliff. It was always there, alongside a shrubby tree with an outflung trunk.

Then she had to be agile and quick. Once, long ago, someone had carried her. Then, she'd locked her arms around someone's neck and that someone had made the jump. Now she was old enough to jump by herself, out from the edge of the cliff, catching the protruding trunk, holding on tightly as it sagged below the level of the rim, and then … then she had to grasp the rooty growth that extended from the cliff face and pull herself in!

In
was through the narrow entry of a cave, a little sandy-floored crevice not much bigger than two or three Snarks, where the floor was softened with dried bracken and flat stones lay piled near the opening. The stones were for stacking in the entrance until only tiny airholes remained. Soft animal skins waited to be pulled around her. Someone … someone had given her the skins, but she could not remember who. It didn't matter. When she was curled there, wrapped there, she was warm and completely safe. No one, not even the trackers, could find her there.

From her position of warm safety, she sometimes heard them coming, their voices keening over the sound of the waters, louder and louder until they were wailing into the ocean wind from just above the place where she lay. They had smelled her as far as the edge, but they smelled her no more. She had flown away like a seabird. She had vanished. Her hole was not visible from above. When the stones were stacked in the opening, it was not visible from the sea below or from the gulf of air. So far as the flying things knew, she was gone.

The spray blew gently into her face. The sound of the seabirds came softly to her ears. At night she could see the stars through the hole in the stone. Sometimes it was enough merely to be there, merely to be safe, and it was tempting to lie there, not eating, not drinking, letting life go away somewhere else, letting herself wither into nothing,
quietly, contentedly, safe. Being dead was safer yet, she knew that, but life still pulled at her. Besides, the cave supported life. At the back of the crevice, water leaked down onto a hollowed stone beside a tight chest full of hard bread and dried fruit and strips of smoked meat. She could stay in safety for days and days at a time, without dying. It was a good place.

Later, after she was … found, picked up by … whoever it had been; later, after she was somewhere else, after she was at the stone house with the wall; later, when she burrowed into the shrubbery to be safe, to be hidden, it was the moor she dreamed of. Rather than go back to the stone house, sometimes she stayed in the dream for a very long time. It didn't matter how long she stayed. When she came back eventually, they still had to feed her, even if they didn't want to. Any child who was sent to the stone house, they had to take care of. They had to feed her. They weren't allowed to kill her.

That still left a lot of stuff they could do if they felt like it, if you broke the rules, if they caught you. It was always Snark who got caught, even when it wasn't Snark who'd done it. When a matron asked who did it, who bloodied the nose, who ripped the shirt, who broke the chair, somebody always giggled and said, the Snark did it. The Snark hit me. The Snark pushed me. The Snark bit me and bloodied my nose. Always when she had and often when she hadn't.

So she figured she might as well. If they were going to say she did, she might as well. And she might as well do it right, once and for all. Might as well use something sharp or heavy, so afterward they couldn't point fingers, couldn't name names, couldn't go running to the older ones yelling Snark, Snark did it.

In the simul booth, she groaned, heaved, grew red with fury at her persecutors.

Peace
, whispered the booth.
It's all right. You don't need to kill anyone. Don't need to hit anyone, hurt anyone,
bloody anyone. Peace. No one can find you here. You're safe here. It's better here than where you were before….

Here. Here at the edge of the cliff it was. Everywhere else the two feelings were all mixed up. Scared-hate. Threat-anger. Fear-rage. She couldn't separate them. They were one feeling. What she feared she hated, what she hated she would kill….

Peace
, whispered the booth.

If she could just kill whatever-it-was, whoever-it-was, so it would stay dead forever. Then, then …

Peace
, the booth insisted.

Peace. See the jar your mother put there, in the niche. See the pictures on it. There is Father Endless and Mother Darkness. There are the peacemakers, the peace bringers. Here, with them watching over you, you needn't kill or harass or bother. Here, with them watching over you, you are safe.