The Shadow and Night (40 page)

Vero frowned. “Well, it was one idea. Perhaps we must just hope that Anya realizes there is a problem when she calls us.”

Then he sat down and fell silent.

At five o'clock they divided the last of the water, had some food, and for the fiftieth time tried—and failed—to send a signal out. Then they returned to watching, Vero taking the west side of the plateau and Merral the east.

Merral, wishing, among many things, that they had more water, sat dry-mouthed near the edge of the cliff, moving forward every few minutes and peering down to the trees. There the three dark figures continued their seated vigil, and only the occasional slight movement revealed that they were not statues. The lower angle of the late-afternoon sun had enlarged their shadows and somehow seemed to increase their menace. As he stared at them, an alarming thought struck.

He rolled back away and walked slowly over the hot rock to the other side of the summit where Vero was squatting down, peering over the edge. Vero glanced back at him and gestured him down with an unmistakable urgency.

Merral's heart sank. He dropped to his knees and crawled alongside his friend.

Vero grimaced. “Well, we don't have to worry about making a run for it down here. Look.”

Merral carefully looked down. Here, too, the sheer cliff face ended in a long, bare rock scree which, amid more large tumbled boulders, ran down under dense trees. Now, in the shadows of the trees and the boulders, five large figures were standing still, like distorted and blackened imitations of humanity. At their feet, equally immovable, half a dozen smaller, brown figures were clustered. Although they were too far away for him to be certain, and he was squinting against the light, the indelible impression Merral had was that all of them were staring up at the cliff.

For a moment, Merral could say little, so great was the internal turmoil this scene caused him. A part of him, detached from the cold waves and billows of emotion that buffeted him, was able to recognize that he was again deeply afraid.
What I am feeling today is true fear. What I have only read about before, I now experience.
This time, though, he knew it was different; with the cockroach-beast he had been scared, but he had had no time to think about his emotions; he had to act.
Now, I have fear and cannot act, and I can feel the fear seeping into my mind and corroding my thinking.
But, even as he thought this, another part of his mind intruded and said that he must think, and that now was not the time for analysis of his feelings.

He swallowed. “Yes. Interesting. Eight ape-creatures and six cockroach-beasts. I don't suppose sentinel training gives you any idea what to do next?”

“No,” Vero muttered. “Not at all. The vision Jorgio had seems the best guide here: watch, stand firm, and hope. And, at the last, to die well and take as many with you as you can.”

“I hate to add trouble to trouble, but before long, perhaps ten minutes or so, my side of the hill will be in total shadow.”

“Shadow!” Vero winced. “I had forgotten. They might prefer that to darkness. I was hoping for another hour or two at least. What a mess we are in!”

“Perhaps we can hold them off until tomorrow with stones.”

“Perhaps. Would they see one of these flares from space?”

“If they knew where to look they would see one. But if they knew where to look they wouldn't need a flare.”

“We need a bigger flare, then.” Vero screwed his eyes up. “Wait! There may be a way. If I can remember—”

“Listen!” Merral interrupted, as from over the eastern side of the hill came the faintest rattle of stone on stone.

They ran to the edge. Below, in the darkness of the ravine they had come up, two of the dark ape-creatures were climbing up with smooth, confident moves, their arms and feet working together in a powerful and coordinated motion.

Without hesitation, Merral picked a brick-sized basalt fragment and hurled it down. It hit the wall just above the head of the leading ape-creature and shattered. There was an angry rumbling growl, and the creature paused in its ascent and looked up.

They were separated by no more than twenty meters, and Merral could see the face clearly despite the shadows. It seemed to him that, despite its flattened appearance, the face was more human than ape. The large brown eyes seemed to stare at him, and Merral decided that if the face conveyed any emotion at all, it was of a cold intelligence and a determined and calculating hatred. He knew with absolute certainty that it was useless to try to communicate with this creature.

“Throw another!” cried Vero, letting fly with a rock himself. This, however, was way off target and clattered away harmlessly down the ravine.

Merral looked around and found, a few strides away, a large rock slab, the size of a kitchen tabletop but thicker.

“Quick, Vero, help me push this.”

Together they tugged and heaved until the slab was at the cliff edge. Then, putting their shoulders to it, they pushed until it started to hang over the edge.

From below came a high-pitched series of wordless squeals and grunts that conveyed alarm. Merral pushed and suddenly the block began to wobble. He pushed again and the rock fell over the edge.

There was a series of booming and echoing crashes as the slab fell and bounced down the cliff. They peered over the edge in time to see it displace other rocks and cannonade down the gloom of the ravine in a gathering tumult of fragments. At the bottom of the cliff, the debris cloud exploded outward down the scree in a turbulent dark cloud of fragments. Stray rocks could be seen careening clear of the debris flow and bouncing up into the trees.

Then the rising dust cloud covered their view.

“Very satisfactory,” Vero announced in admiring tones, as the sound of crashing and clattering blocks died away.

Merral, nonplussed at the effect of combining one large rock, gravity, and a fifty-meter drop, said nothing.
What have I maimed and injured now?

As if in answer to his question, a howl of agony came from below. Although there were no words, it seemed to Merral that it conveyed an intelligence greater than any animal had. He shivered.

Slowly, the dust died away and they could see one creature standing at the edge of the trees apparently unharmed, while another sat nearby nursing a bloodied and useless arm. Of the third, nothing could be seen until Vero pointed out a red smear under a gray block of rock.

“One ape-creature and a cockroach-beast dead so far. Another wounded.” Vero's voice was dry.

“Ugh! You make it sound like a sport that way.”

“Unintentionally. But men once did, you know.”

“I know. ‘Saul has killed his thousands, David his ten thousands.' But that was another age of the world, Vero. I do not rejoice. I am answerable to their maker for those that I have killed.”

Vero bowed his head slightly. “I am rebuked by your sensitivity. But I do not think that you will stand in judgment before their maker.”

“You mean . . . ?”

“Simply, I do not believe that God alone made them. I believe their maker may have far more to answer for at the Final Judgment than you.”

“You may be right,” Merral said, wondering whether that diminished the magnitude of his killing them. “May the Most High grant us the leisure and security to debate the point further. But how do things stand now?”

“Well, this side now seems to me much less climbable than it was.”

Merral looked down. Sure enough, the top part of the ravine was now cleared of boulders and was vertical for the last ten meters.

Vero rubbed his face with his hands. “Now, it has come to me that there is a slight hope. But only a slight one and it is fraught with problems.”

“Go on.”

Vero tapped a finger on his diary. “Do you realize how much energy these things use in the ten years between energy cell replacement?”

“No. A lot, though.”

“Yes. Well, there is a way of realizing it all, of venting it all in a few milliseconds.”

“You'd have an awesome explosion. I've never heard that.”

“I was told it was the fourth best-kept secret in the Assembly.”

“The other three are?”

“I don't know. The third is probably what the first two are.” Vero's face twisted into a grin and Merral had to laugh.

“The results are spectacular?”

“So it's claimed. Mostly visible light, but a lot of electromagnetic wavelengths get a hefty kick. I was told you could see it on the moon. If you did it on Ancient Earth, that is.” He paused, stroking his diary thoughtfully. “Non-nuclear. Just. I think that's what they said.”

“You think?”

“Well,” he sounded embarrassed, “the whole technique was given as a sort of passing comment at the end of a lecture. A piece of curious information. Any brighter ideas?”

“No.”

“Well, I'll try it. It will take some time to do. It's not an easy trick. For obvious reasons.”

“So I would hope.”

“Quite. Now, Merral, if I may, can I download all my data onto your machine? I wonder if you could check the other side. Just in case they try the same trick.”

Merral handed over his diary, and as Vero made the orders for a full data download to be made, he went over to the western side and peered into the gathering shadows, trying to see if there was any change in the positions of the ape-creatures and cockroach-beasts. Unnervingly, they were standing in silence exactly as he had last seen them. In frustration—and was it also fear?—he threw a block of rock at them, but it fell short and clattered away into the trees with no effect.

He returned to Vero.

“Still there and still out of range. But what's your plan?”

Vero looked up, his eyes showing tiredness. “We need to wait for darkness so we can guarantee being seen. If I can trigger the reaction, we will have a short delay. We find a spot where the energy can be channeled upward. Then, we get down onto that ledge at the south end. Put our fingers in our ears and, well—let it go. Hopefully, one of your satellites will notice a firework that size. You think so?”

“If it is as big as you say, I should think so. We are always on the alert for forest fires or volcanic eruptions. The Northern Menaya Monitor will pick it up unless it's helping Perena watch the rift volcanics. But will they act on it?”

“Ah. A key point. Will they?”

“They may send someone over.”

There was a silence and Vero looked doubtful.

He knows,
thought Merral,
as I know, that it probably will not be enough.
But as he considered Vero's suggestion, an idea came to him.

“There might be a way of making it of more benefit to us,” he suggested.

Vero raised an eyebrow. “How so?”

“If the model you proposed for their interception of our signals is correct, then a blast of such a size might overload their blocking system. At least briefly. If we could get a message out immediately afterward . . .”

“
Yes
!” Vero nodded urgently. “That might work. Let's do that. Anyway, data download is now complete. I feel happier about losing my diary now.”

He handed back Merral's diary and slid open the access panel on his own. He started muttering to himself. “Now you set the toggles. Blue to green, yellow striped to orange . . . and that down, that up. Or is it the other way about? It was such a joke when I was told it. The most useless piece of information ever. Now I close the back and reset. Thus. Now, input the following codes.” His forehead puckered in thought.

“Diary! Go into deep internal level four. Password is Gedaliah. Reveal battery temperature. Now, cycle energy cells one through eight.”

The metallic voice that responded seemed startling in the quietness. “Under current parameters this will eventually give potentially dangerous thermal conditions in energy cells. Require authorization for procedure.”

“This is the first tricky bit. Diary! Password is Eleazar! Aha, looks good.”

“Authorization accepted.”

“Proceed.”

Vero sighed and slid the diary back on his belt.

“So far so good. Let us hope that after that failed assault, our enemies stay down at the foot of the hill for some time.”

“How long before it works?”

“I can't remember. A couple of hours, at least. Anyway, we can't do anything until dark. I suggest we get some more images of those cockroach-beasts through the fieldscope. If we do get out, such evidence will be invaluable. Then we just sit and wait. And pray.”