Shadow's End (16 page)

“If Leelson Famber or his son came here, it was recently. He wouldn't be weeded out! If he's here, these people would know where!”

“Right. So we pick one at random and ask him? Without being discovered? Without any suspicion attaching to
us? And with one carefully guarded port the only way off Dinadh?”

“Not a good idea,” admitted Chur Durwen.

“Not unless we want our exit slammed in our face. No, if we want to ask a rememberer, we'll have to go to their central place, their capital or holy city, where their so-called index men dwell. Of course, we have no idea where that is. Assuming we can find out, assuming we can get there, then we'll need to abduct one of the index men, hoping he's the right one, one who can lead us to the rememberer we need. He might only lead us to a local subindexer. It might take as many as four or five steps to get us where we want to be.”

Chur Durwen grimaced.

The other said, “I think it's simpler just to do as we planned. Go where they send us, keep our ears and eyes alert, ask questions. When we've got a clue, we'll leave. These canyons will be easy to get lost in. We know how to live off the country. Nobody's going to find us unless we want them to. Eventually, we'll find who we're after. King Lostre set no time limit. We're being paid for our time as well as for the job, so we're in no hurry. It's always safest to take one's own sweet time.”

Their guide went stumping off toward the hostel, shouting something unintelligible.

“As the zossit flies, we'd have arrived two days ago,” muttered Chur Durwen.

“As the zossit flies on this planet, we wouldn't. It has no zossits. It has no large flying creatures at all, only tiny ones.” Mitigan picked up his pack and settled it on one shoulder.

From inside the hostelry came the clangor of a gong, a disruptive sound, quickly smothered, like a cough at a concert.

“Food,” Mitigan said, turning toward the gray building.

From the forest behind them came a voice, an interrogative note, a questing, almost human cry.

Their driver appeared beside the door.

“Come in,” he called. “Now.”

“Such a hurry,” Chur Durwen muttered to himself. “The usual nonsense. Hurry up and wait.”

Mitigan had not moved. He stood staring into the trees. “I heard something … wings. Didn't I just say there were no large birds?”

“Now!” insisted the guide peremptorily.

The man from Asenagi turned and trudged after his colleague, hearing behind him the flutter of wings coming purposefully through the trees.

P
erdur Alas was a celestial anomaly, a planet on which life had stuck at the level of fish, bird, and shrub without any obvious cause for the lack of further diversification. Currently the planet held a limited variety of sea and land plants, enormous schools of a few varieties of fish, and sizable flocks of even fewer scaled bird forms that seemed to have evolved directly from air-breathing flying fish without intermediate land-dwelling stages. Biologically speaking, Perdur Alas was extremely simple. So far as homo-norming went, simplicity made the job easier, which explained the small size of the preliminary team recently evacuated from the planet.

When the pseudo-team of ex-shadows arrived, they were set down beside a new encampment, raw as a wound, just beginning to scab over with ferny and brushy growths. A thousand or so paces to the west a pallid sea swooshed gently onto a rocky shelf at the base of the cliffs. A little north of west the cliffs sagged onto a scanty crescent of graveled beach, the only beach a day's journey in either direction. Farther north, ranks of east-west ridges cut the sky, the nearest jagged, the more distant sparsely freckled with prototrees. Brackenlike and furzelike growths covered everything not covered by blue or purple
mosses, making a moorland that stretched unbroken to the eastern and southern horizons.

When the preliminary work was done, the birds and plants would be gone. The planet would have trees suitable for lumber and grasses suitable for pasture. It would have grains, edible root, leaf, and fruit crops, plus at least one draft and one dairy animal and perhaps—if the colonists were not Firsters—one or two animals from the category “small-furry-dociles” or pets. There was no need for insects or birds in Class-C homo-norm. All plants were designed to be wind-pollinated, and Perdur Alas was windy enough.

The arriving team knew this without needing to consider the implications, though bio-assay tech Snark surprised herself shortly after landing by thinking that a million things could be added to Perdur Alas before it had the same complexity as most untouched Class-A planets. Her next thought was one of recognition. This planet, in all its simplicity, was entirely familiar to her.

“Quarters this way,” announced team leader Kane, hoisting an equipment case onto his shoulder and stumping off toward the team housing at one side of the encampment.

The pseudo-team, though differing from the original team in physical appearance, was identical as to numbers, sex, and functions. Now most of them straggled after Kane without comment. Each of them had a role to play. Kane's was to keep everyone else working. Snark's was to compare current organisms with those included in Class-C category, using an automatic inventory device, to determine which species should be adapted or eliminated and what others should be introduced to make the world suitable for man. A few members of the team had been conditioned as tank-farm workers, assigned to grow and process food. Others were assigned as housekeeping staff, while others yet would provide maintenance duties and staff communications.

Each of them would occupy the same work space and sleep space as his or her counterpart on the former team. Each of them knew the routine for each day's labors. They knew what the departed team had known about the work already done. In addition, they knew, and had had it proved to them on the way out, that they could not injure one another. As in Shadowland, if one formed any intention toward violence, one found oneself curled into the fetal position, thumb in mouth, just as formerly. They knew who they were. They also remembered what they had been, though that matter did not seem relevant and was often forgotten for quite lengthy periods. Each of them had almost invisible scars behind which implanted devices made records of everything seen, heard, smelled, tasted, felt. The devices did not intrude upon thought. Their thoughts, though rare, were their own.

As the team moved off toward the camp the pilot and engineer of the vessel stood at the foot of the loading ramp watching, not noticing Snark, who had stopped to pick up a replacement filter for the bio-assay machine and now stood just inside the open cargo bay.

“Funny bunch,” the pilot said. “You ever notice their eyes?”

“How could you help but notice. You listen to their mouths going on, this that, this that, all sounding pretty good, then you look at the eyes and see these wild animals glaring at you.”

“Crazy people? With implants, maybe?”

“I dunno. One thing sure. They're out here on the edge of nowhere and the Ularians are coming.”

“Hush,” said the engineer. “We were told—”

“We were told not to talk. I'm not talking. Hell, how far is it back to where anybody can hear me!”

“I hear you,” said the other, stiffly. “And both of us could get asked what we saw, what we heard. From anybody.”

Snark read the look on the engineer's face to mean,
“And if they ask me, I'll tell them you were shooting off your mouth!”

“Yeah, well,” said the pilot in sudden discomfort. “We'd best get started back. It feels pretty exposed here. Like somebody might be watching us.”

Snark slipped out of the cargo bay as they went up the ramp, then stood below, watching them. She was remembering another ship, like this ship. Herself going up a ramp just like this one.

Before the lock closed, the pilot risked one more look at the humans moving among the graceless buildings below and mumbled a final comment. To shadows, reading lips was nothing at all, and Snark read the words clearly.

“Bait! That's what they are. Bait.”

L
utha and Trompe discovered their vehicle could not actually “arrive” at the hive of Cochim-Mahn. It could be driven to a point roughly opposite and above our hive, where the road ended at the edge of the cliffs. A flat triangular chunk of metal hung from the roof beam of the vacant guest house, and before doing anything else, Trompe struck it several times. They both waited as the resultant resonance trembled above the depths, seeming to hang interminably before fading into the daysounds of wind and creature.

We heard it, of course, though songfather hadn't waited for it. He knew when they were coming. I hadn't waited for it either. Despite what had happened to me, it was still my duty to clean the quarters of Bernesohn Famber, which I had done, along with airing blankets and sleeping pads for those who were expected.

After a brief wait, Lutha shrugged at the lack of response and carried Leely into the guest house. It had two cramped rooms, a sanitary arrangement added on the back, and a food dispenser wedged into a corner, all very dim behind tightly closed shutters. She stretched and bent, working out the kinks, then lay down on the padded
bench, Leely beside her, and fell into a doze. She might have opened the shutters in order to admire the carved and crenellated canyon, the effect of shade and sun as the occasional clouds came sailing over, but both Lutha and Trompe, so she told me later, were sick unto death of canyons.

“I think someone's coming,” Trompe said after a considerable silence. He lay as he had thrown himself down, in a posture of exaggerated exhaustion, and did not remove his forearm from his eyes as he spoke.

“How do you know?” asked Lutha.

“Hmm.” It was a doubtful sound, as though he didn't know himself how he knew. “I'm picking up put-upon feelings. Someone out there is feeling overworked and irascible. Angry or aggrieved about something, too. Not us. Or, not us specifically.”

“Ah.” She rose and went out back to consult the sanitary system, returning brushed and furbished. “Still not arrived? When will he get here?”

“Now he's standing among the trees. Politeness, I think. Waiting until we notice him.”

“If you weren't a Fastigat, that might take some time.”

“I think his next step may be some throat clearing or modest coughs, growing louder with time.”

Indeed, as she opened the door, the sound she heard was an apologetic cough that seemed to ask, “Was I wanted?”

“I am Lutha Tallstaff,” she said across the clearing. “Mother of Leely Famber, direct-lineage son of Bernesohn Famber. With me is my assistant, Trompe.”

“And your son?” asked my father, Chahdzi, who stood beneath the trees.

The upper part of his face was painted blue, the line running horizontally just below his eyes and across the bridge of his nose. Lutha tried to recall anything she might have read about that. Nothing. A local custom, she thought, which was accurate. Persons undertaking dangerous
tasks paint their eyes yellow, asking others to pray for them. Persons who must deal with outsiders paint their faces half-blue, so we will watch and listen carefully, in case they show signs of deviance. And so on.

“Leely is in here, asleep,” she said.

My father stepped from the shade of the trees and came forward. “I am Chahdzi, son of the songfather of Cochim-Mahn. It is my assigned task to serve you as guide to the leasehold of Bernesohn Famber.” Without invitation, he came across the shallow porch and into the room, where he took a long look at Leely, to make sure he was a real, living person. “We have to walk and climb a long way,” he said in explanation. “The boy will be heavy to carry.”

“He can walk,” said Lutha. “He can run and climb.” Like a little goat. “Most of the way, at least.”

“Partway. But of such complexity, interesting patterns are made,” he said in the falsely cheerful tone one adopts for reassuring children.

“I suppose it does,” she said doubtfully. Certainly this whole business was complex enough. “When do we go?”

“Since you were expected today, I left Cochim-Mahn this morning. It took me all of today to get here to meet you, and now it is late. Soon Lady Day departs with all her blessings and the time of whispering comes. When the Lady comes again, we will go.”

“Shortly after dawn tomorrow then,” commented Trompe.

The man shivered, almost undetectably, and nodded. “I will sleep in here, or perhaps in your vehicle.”

“Because,” said Lutha, moved by an obscure impulse, “because it is better not to be out in the dark?”

Again that shiver, almost unnoticeable. “Because of the pattern, matron,” he said in a dignified voice. “Which alternates dark and light, activity and quiet, whisper and shout, sleep and waking …”

“Do I offend in asking about the night?” she asked. “I
am curious about … the things that go about in the dark.”

“Bernesohn Famber was also curious, or so I am told by the rememberers. Outlanders are often curious about Dinadh and the Dinadhi. Why do we paint our faces and sometimes our bodies? Why do we sing all the time? Why do we do this, or that? We tell you all the same things. All is part of the pattern; the light and the dark.” He gestured vaguely. “If one wishes to learn details, one must consult a songfather who is schooled in such things. I am a simple person, a mere yahsdi' imicha dimicha'a.”

She translated mentally. One-who-is-assigned-to-do-what-needs-doing. A man of all work, perhaps. A handyman. She started to ask him how far they would have to go on the morrow, the words drying in her mouth as she saw his face, suddenly alert, listening.

She cocked her head. There was a sound, distant, but not faint. A song, rising from the canyon.

“Forgive me,” said Chahdzi. “I will return shortly.”

He left the room and went out into the open, where he threw his arms open to the sky and began a breathy song, evidently addressed to thin air.