Shadow's End (21 page)

My own sleeping place was near the door, near the outlanders, where, without moving, I could see through the crack. Something was going to happen, because of them or to them, so I had brought my pad and blankets from below. We veiled women have few enough amusements, few enough stories to tell one another. We need to see and hear everything!

The sound of someone moving about woke me in the mid hours of the night. I saw Lutha come out into the little hallway, where she stood looking in on Leelson. Though I could see only his hand, his sleeve, it was enough to tell me he had, as usual, slept only a little before rising to busy himself with Bernesohn's equipment. Often he spent the night so, muttering to himself and making notes. His back was toward Lutha, and she spent a long time staring at him, fury and longing battling on her face. Later she told me her feelings for him were like surf, love and lust pounding at her, only to recede, leaving pools of chilly, clear anger behind.

I grew weary watching her silent battle, and I had shut my eyes when she spoke at last:

“I can't understand why you didn't tell someone!”

The legs of the chair scraped on the floor. It was Bernesohn's chair, the only chair I had ever seen except in Simidi-ala. We do not use chairs in the hives.

He growled, “You can come in, Lutha.”

She bit her lip as she went into the room to join him. Though I could not see them, I could hear them clearly.

He said, “What I can't understand is your bringing the child out here.”

She blurted, “I wasn't given a choice, Leelson!”

“I'm sure the Procurator didn't force you.”

“He gave me to understand my doing what he asked
might have something to do with human survival,” she snarled. “Which would move most of us, even those of us who aren't Fastigats or Firsters.” She came back into the doorway, half in, half out of the room.

He spoke from behind her. “Your coming, I understand. I said I couldn't understand your bringing the child.”

Her expression was disbelieving. “Listen to yourself. Damn it, Leely is Famber lineage—”

“No,” said Leelson firmly. “He is not Famber lineage. Not according to Fastigat custom.”

“Your own people are supporting him!”

“Fastigat responsibility is one thing. Famber lineage is another. Each has its own parameters.”

“You only say that because he's not …”

“Normal? Of course. Fastigat lineage, under Fastigat law, requires a basic condition of humanity. That's where we separate from the Firsters. They would accept Leely, we won't. Humanity, under Fastigat law, has a specific definition.”

She glared at him. “You're saying your own son is not human!”

“Lutha—”

“Leelson!”

They fell silent simultaneously. I thought at first they were concerned about being overheard, but perhaps it was only to get control of themselves that they stopped when they did.

“My belief concerning the child is at least as sensible as yours,” he said at last, rather sadly. “You're trying to hope him into superhuman status, into some new avatar of humanity. We Fastigats, on the other hand, say simply he does not meet our definition.”

“You don't think he's human!” she charged again.

“No.”

“Even though you and I are—”

“Lutha, we've said this—”

“I don't care….”

He sighed deeply, wearily. He said:

“Genetic programming sometimes goes awry and produces a nonreplica. At the cellular level, such mistakes are eradicated. We remove warts; we cure cancers. At a slightly higher level, we remove extra limbs resulting from incomplete twinning. We do all this without great emotional hurricanes. But when the mistake is at a neurocortical level, when the body looks human, or even rather human, emotions get mixed in—”

She interrupted him with an outthrust arm, rigid and furious.

“Let's not discuss it,” he suggested. “We won't agree, Lutha. We can't. Let's agree to accept each other's position. If you had to bring him, you had to bring him. I'll accept that you believed it was necessary.”

She moved into the room and out of my sight. I sneaked into the dark hallway and stood where I could watch them. She was facing the closed shutters, her arms crossed, her hands clutching her shoulders, hugging herself, perhaps cautioning herself. He had gone back to the table and was sorting through the record chips Bernesohn Famber had left strewn about. My mother had gathered them up and put them in boxes, but some of them had already been nibbled by cornrats. Cornrats can survive only because we have made hives safe for ourselves, making havens for them in the process.

“Bernesohn didn't believe in labels,” Leelson murmured. “I've been going through chips for the last three days, and I've yet to find anything that's identified. He also didn't believe in filing categories. Some of these chips have a dozen different things on them.”

Lutha wasn't willing to give up the former topic. “The people here in Cochin-Mahn knew you were here, didn't they? Chahdzi knew you were here. Hell, probably the people in the Edge knew you were here!”

“Of course. Chahdzi brought me here, just as he did
you, and I came through the Edge, just as you did. I was surprised that the housekeeper did not tell me you were coming.”

“Why didn't they tell us? I could have been partway home by now!”

“Well, it's the same question I asked Saluez, isn't it? You didn't ask them if I was here. I didn't ask them if someone else was coming.” He shook his head at her. “If they'd volunteered the information, you'd have left without paying for the hover you no doubt rented, and the guides, and the supplies. Dinadhi don't do anything that discourages custom. They need hard currency too much.”

He inserted a file chip into the retriever and pressed it firmly home.

A woman stood in the center of the room, her voice making a fountain of sound, lovely as falling water in an arid land. Then another woman stood beside her, singing, a voice joined to itself, a duet of pure wonder. The scent of something flowery and spicy filled my nose. I tasted wine. My body ached with wanting….

It was only a fragment, over in a moment. Sensur-round, they call it. Magic. Oh, to think of that being here all these years! If I had only known!

“Tospia,” breathed Lutha. She took a deep breath, then another. She was trembling. I could see it from where I stood. But then, so was I.

“You played that one for me a long time ago,” she said, her voice yearning.

He did not answer for a moment, but when he did, the words came crisply, without emotion. “Since there are no labels, I never know whether I'll find an aria, a shopping list, a lubricious monologue, or something significant.”

He removed the song chip from the retriever and began clicking other chips into it, one by one. Voices muttered. Vagrant scents came and went. I tasted herbs, mud, smoke.

“You've found nothing so far?” she asked. She had
gained control of herself and her voice was as impersonal as his own.

“One fragmentary memorandum. I marked it. It's here somewhere. I'll run across it in a moment.”

I got out of sight as she wandered back into the bedroom where Leely lay sprawled, running her fingers along the walls, along the small, barred air-vent openings. At the storage cubicles, she began a meticulous search. Top to bottom, left to right, missing none, scamping none.

In the third compartment of the second row, she found a set of holograms and a display stand. I knew what they showed. Herself. Herself and Leelson. Different places. Different times. None of them with Leely.

In the next compartment below, she came upon clothing she evidently recognized, for she held it up, smiling, shaking her head. A rainbow-beaded vest. A belt of iridescent leather. Shirts and trousers and a long, warm coat of rare earthsheep's wool. At least Leelson had said it was earthsheep, though none of them existed on earth—Alliance Central—anymore.

I disappeared into my storeroom when I heard Trompe moving around. He came to Lutha's door, demanding, “What?”

“Looking for anything Bernesohn may have left, but all this stuff belongs to Leelson,” she replied.

In the next room, Leelson inserted a chip that whined and scratched before speaking clearly and plainly. During the past several days I'd heard it more than once. The voice was scratchy and a little cantankerous. At hearing it, both Lutha and Trompe crossed into the room where Leelson was.

… 'fore leaving make record of …following significant findings … Ularians…reason for Dinadh's immunity …oldest settled world in the sector … only one, here or elsewhere, where the present inhabitants are mumble-mumble as to origin.

“Is that the memorandum you mentioned?” asked Lutha while the chip made scratchy, whining noises.

“This is the only one I've found that says anything about the Ularians,” said Leelson. “Unfortunately, there are only a few clear places. Something has chewed on the chip.”

He fiddled with the machine; it repeated the last phrase several times,
to origin, to origin, to origin
.

…
narrowed field of inquiry … taken steps to … remedy situation … considering factors that seem … Dinadhi omphalos and abandoned gods … tell Tospia …rejoinder of my lineage …

The reader went on blurting fragmentary words and phrases interrupted by harsh scratching and stretches of gibberish.

Leelson, Trompe, and Lutha stared at one another.

“I've played that one several times,” said Leelson. “I've jotted down the clear words and phrases, here. Any ideas?”

“It's enigmatic at best,” said Lutha at last. “Was he anticipating legal action? Rejoinder is a word I've only run across in legal documents.”

Leelson shrugged. “The bit about rejoinder to the question of his lineage may refer to the court action Tospia brought against the news sniffer over the paternity of the Famber twins. Did you know about that?”

Lutha said, “The Procurator mentioned it. Tospia visited Bernesohn here, returned to Central, had twins, and their parentage was questioned.”

“Questions of lineage, as you've discovered for yourself, would have annoyed Bernesohn no end. His voice sounds annoyed. Also, there's a good bit of frustration and weariness, but no real excitement. Possibly because he's tired. As though he'd been digging and digging for something.”

“The answer that wasn't here, perhaps?” Lutha sighed.
I knew what she was thinking. To have come all this way for nothing.

“Or because he'd found out what he needed to know,” said Trompe thoughtfully. “He could have learned what he needed to know and done something about the Ularians. He says he took steps to remedy the situation.”

“The record didn't say he took steps to remedy ‘the situation,'” contradicted Lutha. “There's a pause there….”

Trompe paid no attention. “My god, Leelson. The only
situation
was the Ularian business. If he had a remedy…”

Lutha sat down, murmuring, “He speaks of abandoned gods. I've heard nothing of abandoned gods while we've been here on Dinadh.”

Oh, but I had. Whispered by grandmothers to grand-daughters, mentioned in old songs sung by sisterhoods.

Lutha went on: “He also speaks of the omphalos. Had he any maps of Dinadh?”

Leelson nodded. “Here? A whole file of them. But why maps?”

“Place-names often survive while language changes around them. Sometimes the names of places give us the only evidence of languages that have otherwise disappeared. God names are sometimes applied to places, therefore a place-name might be a clue to what he calls an abandoned god.”

She ran her hands through her hair, pressing her fingertips into her forehead. I could feel her ache in my own forehead as she said:

“The only other thing that comes to mind is that Bernesohn disappeared from here, where we are. We know hover cars can't get down into the canyon. We know the Dinadhi use fliers only for emergencies—kind of emergency unspecified. So, wherever he went, he probably had to go on foot. Since he mentioned the omphalos, is it credible that he went there?”

I heard the rustle as Leelson unfolded the maps. I myself had seen them, had unfolded them, studied them, all the wonderful maps. Printed upon them were all the roads, lines of green; the ocean, a blotch of blue; the endless twisting edges of the canyons, black squiggles; and the names of places in curly lettering. The omphalos was shown there, too, shaded in violet and crimson, important colors, sacred colors. When duty had required me to tend to this place by myself, after Mother departed and before Leelson came, I had many times sat at that table and traced the way, how I would go if I were going to the omphalos. To Tahs-uppi. To the renewal. To say good-bye.

I could feel the map in my hands, soft from handling. I could visualize it, much fingerprinted, bearing many notations in a microscopic hand.

Lutha saw what I had seen.

“Somebody's used this,” she said. “Bernesohn. He's annotated it.”

“Used it a lot,” said Trompe.

“If Bernesohn Famber went somewhere on foot,” Lutha persisted, “how did anyone find out he was gone?”

Leelson replied. “They told me the housekeeper came in here to clean or bring new supplies. She found the last supplies hadn't been used, so the hive was told to keep watch. When no one saw him for a year, they named him an outlander ghost and said he was wandering among the canyons. They invited him to join the people of Cochim-Mahn.”

“What does that mean?” asked Lutha.

“I asked the same question. They told me they invite all the ghosts to join them, and furthermore, that most of them do so. They wouldn't clarify the matter, so don't ask. I don't know and I can't pick up anything clear from their emotions.”