Shadow's End (6 page)

She was hungry. Procurator had hosted a banquet today, and shadows had served the food, seeing it, smelling it, seeing other people eat it. Shadows didn't eat. Shadows didn't get hungry or sleepy or need the toilet. Sometimes they got in the way of things and were killed, but if so, they did it quietly. Ordinary people didn't stare at shadows, it wasn't civilized, any more than wondering about them was. Shadows were a peculiar possession of bureaucrats in office in Alliance Prime, and that's all anyone really needed to know unless one was a shadow oneself.

The metallic voice preached at her. “If you'll make it a habit to eat just before you go on shift and immediately
after, you'll feel less hunger and you'll be less uncontrolled. If you are less uncontrolled, you won't find yourself rolling around on the floor making infant noises and attracting the scorn and derision of your fellows.”

“Damn motherfuckers ain my fellows.”

“What did you say?”

“I said I feel little collegiality for those sharing my conditions of servitude.”

In the sanctuary, when Snark was a little kid, the grown-ups had talked High Alliance. She could talk like that anytime. If she hadn't been able to remember back that far, she could mimic her fellow-shad, Kane the Brain. Kane talked like an official butthead.

The voice said, “You aren't required to feel collegiality. You are only required to behave as though you do.”

Snark panted, letting the rage seep away. Each time she came off shift, it was the same. Everything that had happened to her, every glance that had slid across her without seeing her, every gesture she was supposed to notice, every need she was expected to anticipate, all of them boiled inside her all day, rising higher and higher, until the cubicle took the controls off and she exploded.

Which was wasting time, she told herself. Wasting her own time. She only had one third of her time to herself, as herself. One third she was a shadow, under full control. One third she was asleep, also under control. The rest of the time, here in Shadowland, she could feel however she wanted to feel, do whatever she wanted to do. She could eat, talk, have sex—if she could find somebody willing. She could read, attend classes, engage in hobbies. If she wanted to kill somebody, have sex with somebody unavailable, the simulation booth would accommodate her. The booth would help her do anything! Anything except kill people so they stayed dead.

If they didn't stay dead, what was the point! So she'd asked herself before. What was the point of living like this?

“You are at liberty to end it,” Kane had told her. “The fourth human right is the right to die.”

“Th'fucks that mean?” she'd screamed the first time she'd heard Kane on this subject.

Kane had explained it all. Kane had even escorted Snark to a disposal booth and explained the controls. “Simple, for the simpleminded,” Kane had said. “Enter, close door, press button. Wait five minutes to see if you change your mind. When the bell rings, press button again. Zip. All that's left are a few ashes. No pain, no blood, no guts, no untidiness whatsoever.”

So said Kane, but the last thing Snark wanted was a neat disposal booth and a handful of ashes. Where was the joy in no pain, no blood? Who got anything out of that? That was no way to kill anybody, not even yourself! God, if you were going to kill yourself, at least make it a real mess! Make 'em clean up after you!

“Why you all the time wanting to kill folks?” Susso, one of her sometime sex partners, wanted to know.

“Get in my nose,” she'd snarled. “Push against me!”

“Everybody gets in your nose,” Susso said. “All the time. The only way you could be happy is if you killed everybody in the world and had it all to yourself.”

It wasn't true. There'd been some good kids at the sanctuary when they'd first brought Snark there. Snark hadn't wanted to kill them. She'd liked them. She'd been what? Nine or ten maybe? Old enough to tell them things. And to tell the supervisor as well.

“Where are you from, little girl?”

“From the frontier.”

“Don't tell lies, little girl. Children don't come from the frontier.”

“It's not a lie! I did so!”

“Don't contradict me, little girl. Don't be a nasty, contradictory little liar.”

Her name hadn't been Snark then. It had been something else. And she hadn't wanted to kill people then.
That came later, after they'd named her Snark the liar, Snark the thief. Not Snark the murderer, though. She'd never actually killed anybody, though she'd wanted to. Just her luck they'd caught her before she'd done it.

The judgment machines were clear about that: “You are sentenced to lifetime shadowhood because of your emotional need to breach the first and second rights of man.”

“They got no right,” Snark had snarled to Susso. “They got no right.”

“Why don' they?” he'd asked. “As much as you.”

“They're machines,” she'd told him. “On'y machines. I'm a person, a human. The universe was made for me!”

Susso had shaken his head. “You been listenin' to some Firster godmonger on the newslink, girl. Some belly-sweller. Some prick-waver. Forget Firsters. They don't talk for this world. Not for Alliance Central, they don't. Too many Fastigats on Alliance Central. Fastigats don't listen to Firsters. This world is different. This world has shadows, and most of the time shadows aren't human. One third the time, shadows got the right to live like they want except they try an' hurt somebody. The rest o' the time, shadows got no rights. That's the way this world is!”

Snark knew that. When the invigilators had dragged her before the huge, unbearably shiny robo-judge, they'd read her the words printed across its front:
EQUAL JUSTICE; THE SAME REMEDY FOR THE SAME CRIME, EVERY TIME.

“On Alliance Central, human rights are those rights our people grant one another and enforce for one another,” the machine said in its solemn, mechanical voice. “There are four human rights universally recognized. The first of these is the right of all individuals to do what they choose with an absolute minimum of interference. Man is not required to meet any standard of behavior so long as he is not adversely sensed by any other human. The second right is that of choosing one's dependents. Persons may not be taxed or otherwise forced to support dependents
they have not chosen, though they are absolutely required to care for those they have signed for. The third right is to be protected from those who would infringe upon the first two rights through interference or unlawful dependency. Thievery, of which you have been convicted, is a crime of interference and dependency. You have put others to inconvenience and you have supported yourself at others' expense. You may be brought into alignment with social norms if you so choose. Do you so choose?”

Of course she hadn't so chosen. And she never would! Which she'd said, not quite that politely.

Imperturbably, the machine had gone on: “If one chooses not to be aligned, the fourth human right is to die. Do you choose to die?”

She hadn't chosen that either.

“On Alliance Central, persons choosing neither to be aligned nor to die have only one alternative remaining—to become shadows.”

Or, as Kane the Brain said later, “Spend two thirds of your time asleep or serving the bureaucracy so they'll let you think you're doing what you want one third of your time!”

Which is what Snark had ended up doing. No fix for her. No having her mind changed so she wouldn't want to steal anymore. No having her chemistry changed so she wouldn't want to maim or kill. No, better be herself one third of the time than never be herself at all.

“So go to the simul and kill somebody,” Susso had yelled at her when she'd tried to damage Susso and found herself curled up on the floor, thumb in mouth. “Go to the simul and slap people around, kill people, that's what you want. Do it! But you can't do it out here!”

It sounded great, but nobody stayed dead in a simul! How could you get any satisfaction killing somebody who didn't stay dead? You wake up the next day, the same person is still walking around, looking through you. No matter you'd disposed of him in the simul, you'd still be
smelling him. And even when Snark was in the simul, something inside her just knew the people in there weren't real, even though they looked just like the ones, sounded just like the ones Snark hated!

Sounded like Kane, talking like he did. Or looked just like that bastard Willit, egging her on that way, making her end up with her thumb in her mouth. Sounded like that bastard Procurator, him with his fancy tea parties. If Snark wanted, she could bring up the Procurator in the simul booth, or that black-haired woman he'd had with him the other day, Lutha Tallstaff. There she'd sat, hair perfect, face perfect, dressed in clothes you could kill for, holding out a cup to be filled, never noticing who it was that filled it! Never noticing who brought the food, who served it! Not a nod. Not a smile. Pretending Snark really was invisible!

Bitch! What she'd like to do to that bitch! She could tie her up and make her watch while Snark carved the old bastard into slices. Then, when it got to be her turn, let her feel what it was like not to exist! Let high-and-mighty Lutha Tallstaff learn what it felt like to be chopped up into bloody pieces, made into nothing!

Whimpering in eagerness, ignoring her hunger, Snark ran from the locker room in the direction of the simul booth.

T
he day I went to the House Without a Name, Chahdzi, my father, spent the morning cleaning the upper pool. In the afternoon it was his responsibility to carry food down into the canyon, so all day he kept an eye on the shadow at the bottom of the canyon, judging the progress of the day. If he was to return before dusk, he would need to stop work on the upper pool when the shadow touched the bottom of the eastern wall, or perhaps, for safety's sake, a little time before.

When the shadow was where he thought it should be, he went up the short ladders to the cave floor, took a sack
of Kachis-kibble from the storehouse, put it over his shoulders, fastened it onto the carrier belts that crossed his chest, swung himself around the ends of the ladder, and began the descent to the canyon floor. Tonight he needed to speak to songfather about the old outlander ghost who was causing so much inconvenience. When he had done that, perhaps he could also discuss certain conflicts in his own life that needed patterning. Had these conflicts been decreed by Weaving Woman? If so, could they be sung and acknowledged? Could his annoyance be exorcised in song? Or must it remain silent, part of the corruption inevitably incurred when the terrible choice had been made?

I, Saluez, know this, because I know how he thought. My father often spoke to me of his troubles, of his confusions. He did not get on well with Zinisi, his wife (who was not my mother). Always he resolved to speak to
his
father, to songfather about it. Always he delayed. Sometimes he spoke of his ambition to become a songfather himself, a das-dzit, a patterner, a seer-of-both-sides. I asked him once why, if seeing both sides was important, only men could be songfathers? Did not women have a side? He said he would ask songfather, but he never did.

There were two ladders leading down to the first spring, two ladders more to the first pool, where he'd been scraping algae that morning. Six more ladders led to the second spring and pool, the big one that was still under construction, and then two to the bottom, where the orchards and gardens and grain fields were. From there it was an easy walk down the canyon to the feeding stones where the beautiful people would come to feed at dusk.
Lovely on wings, the Kachis
, he hummed beneath his breath.
Lovely on wings, both powerful and wise.

“See them come on their wings of light,” he sang softly. “See them emerge from the shadows of the trees. Beautiful on wings …” Though sometimes he wondered
if he really wanted…No. That had been decided long ago.

He muttered these same phrases to me, sometimes. Whispering as though he didn't intend me to hear. Or, perhaps, intended that I should hear without being certain he intended it. A hint, rather than a word. Which is the same way certain other information was transmitted. No one had really said it.

When he came to the level of the spring, he slowed his climb, taking extra care. There the water falls into the first pool from such a height that it is often blown onto the ladder rungs and into the carved climbing holes, making the footing treacherous. Wetness spread beside him, dripping from the higher to the lower rocks, in some places running in tiny moss-edged diagonals across the almost vertical surfaces of the stones. This was rain that had fallen far from here, high up, soaking into the flesh of the mesa to emerge at last like blood from a wound.

Arriving at the first pool, he stopped to ease the straps over his shoulders as he listened to the spring dripping musically into the shallow puddle at the lip. From the shallow it runs back into the cavern where he'd been working. There the water glints, sending wavering glimmers of reflected light up the smooth vertical shaft that emerges before the hive. This is the household pool from which the people of Cochim-Mahn take water for cooking and hivekeeping. Several large round pots hung before him, tipped on their sides in their rope cradles, ready to be lowered into the water. As he rested, a pot dropped downward, filled, leveled, and then jerked upward, dripping and sloshing as it went. He could hear women singing,
Yeeah-mai, Eeah-mai
, as they turned the spool to wind the rope. Our water, our blood; our water, our blood.

Beneath the sound of their voices chortled the sound of the second spring, the larger one, so powerful at this time of year that it actually spurts from the side of the mountain,
arching out between two chunks of green stone to fall chuckling into the big pool the people of Cochim-Mahn have been building for a long, long time. Generations of our people have carved out the mountain behind the waterlip, caulking the cracks to make a place for the water to rest away from the sucking wind and the thirsty sun. Huge stone pillars have been left to hold the mountain up, and among these monstrous trunks the water lies smooth as a mirror, stretching far back into the darkness, deep in some places as four or five tall men.