by Chris Walley
He nodded toward the horse grazing on some hay just in front of the window. “Take animals now. Like Blackmane there. He’s a horse, but his genes are different from the first horse that left Earth. Or even that arrived here. Look at him: rounded extremities, reduced ears, nostril flaps, more recessed eyes, thicker hair, heavier hooves. He has adapted to this world with its cold and heat and dust.”
“Of course,” Merral said. “You can hardly freeze adaptation. But what’s your point?”
His uncle creased his large forehead in puzzlement. “My point? Yes. Oh, I don’t know. The paradox that we have frozen our culture, but that we have let life evolve. I know it’s not a new thought—what is after so long?—but it has just struck me with some force.”
“But, Uncle, the wisdom of the centuries is that the stable culture is best. You can’t just let a culture evolve; certain limits must be defined. Long, long ago the Assembly decided the parameters in which human beings flourished and set them down. It was a choice; a fixed, conservative, and stable society over one that was open, fluid, and unpredictable.”
There was a deep silence as Barrand, his large frame totally dominating the room, stroked his beard in profound thought. Then he gave a grunt that seemed to indicate mystification.
“Absolutely. What a strange idea for me to have.” He shook his head. “Ho, to business! Oh, I don’t need that cross section. Come and have a look at these maps and let’s switch into official mode, Forester D’Avanos.”
For half an hour they looked at the maps and imagery, and Merral listened intently as his uncle explained why he wanted to quarry the ridge outside the settlement rather than wait for a new access road to the already-planned quarry site fifteen kilometers to the north. Only he wasn’t his uncle now. He was Barrand Imanos Antalfer, Frontier Quarrymaster, and he was presenting his case to Merral Stefan D’Avanos, Forester and head of the team that decided the citing of things such as quarries and forests. Funny, Merral thought, how we distinguish official and family discussions to the extent that it would now be unthinkable for him to call me Nephew and me to call him Uncle.
Eventually Barrand wound to a halt. “So you see, Merral, we could start in the spring and save two years. And think of the energy saving in skipping that thirty-K round-trip. . . .” He trailed off, looking at Merral.
Merral rose to his feet, walked to the window, and looked out at the bare black ridge they had been talking about.
“Barrand,” he said, gesturing at the ridge, “let’s go and look at it.”
Zennia was free to come, and an hour later the three of them were standing on the rocky summit of the hill recovering their breath after the stiff climb up. Merral stared around. Suspended overhead was a cool, eggshell blue sky painted with the most delicate pearl brushstrokes of high cloud. To think that they were just water vapor—had the Most High ever made anything so beautiful from so little? There were one or two of the faint corkscrew twists of cloud that revealed local instability in the upper atmosphere layers, but nothing that portended trouble on his ride tomorrow.
Merral lowered his gaze. The farms, fields, and orchards of Herrandown were almost surrounded by protecting woodlands, beyond which lay rough scrub, grassland, and bare rock. To the west of the settlement the bounding fir and alder woods ran into the tree-lined margins of the Lannar River, whose path he could trace northward toward the ranges. Looking northward, from where a cold wind blew that made the eyes water, the ground became increasingly covered with ice and snow. And there, marching along the farthest skyline, were the jagged teeth of the southern Lannar Rim Ranges, gleaming a dazzling white in the sunlight. The notion struck him that this cluster of houses was a vulnerable community. What a strange idea, he thought. Vulnerable to what? “So, it’s suitable rock and there’s enough?”
Barrand hesitated and said, “But the ridge will be gone.”
“My idea is this. I think we should work on a plan where the excavation is all on the south side of the ridge, leaving a narrow ridge to the north about this height, but we’ll also give permission to excavate below ground level to make one or two long deep lakes.”
Zennia smiled.
Barrand, his face wrapped in deliberation, spoke slowly, his voice warming as he did. “Ho! Yes, I should have thought of it. They’d be spectacular with vertical rock walls behind them. And they’d warm the water because of the solar radiation.”
As they walked down the hill, Merral pushed those thoughts away. Zennia turned to him with a smile. “Barrand has been telling me of your recommendations. You have a gifting of vision and leadership, Merral. You would prefer to disown it, but I think you will use it in the end. If not on Farholme, then elsewhere.”
“Elsewhere? I was born here, as you were and all my grandparents were. No one in our family has been off Farholme since, oh, Great-Uncle Bertran traveled forty years ago.”
“Do you want to go elsewhere?”
It is an interesting question, Merral thought, and one that I have struggled with myself. “I have little thought of leaving, Aunt. I love this place and being here. Farholme may be Worlds’ End, but this is my home.” He paused. “I believe that my place is here. For the moment at least.”
Zennia carefully negotiated a sheet of glittering ice and then turned again to him.
“And tell me, you are happy with the forester’s life?”
Merral measured his words. “I am, Aunt. I am happy. There is the challenge of seeing Menaya change and unfold as we work on her and with her.”
She smiled, encouraging him on.
“I love it,” he said. “It’s the combination of art and science. I look at the ground, the lava ridges, the sand sheets, and say to myself, what can I do with it? What will best bring out the uniqueness of the land? Here a beech wood, there a pine forest.”
“I see the attraction; it is like painting.”
“Indeed, it is art at the grandest scale.” Merral smiled. “One of the great purposes of the Assembly—to take brown-and-gray, dead worlds and turn them into blue-and-green ones alive with life. Thus, we fulfill the mandate to humanity to garden what the Lord has entrusted us with.”
Barrand waved an arm in agreement. “Oh, absolutely. But let me ask you a question. Have you really no ambitions beyond all this?”
A hard question. My ambition is not something I normally think of. “Uncle,” he answered after a moment, “I suppose I do have one ambition. More a wish.”
“What?”
Merral stopped and looked up. “Well, I would like to see the forests of Ancient Earth. To examine old woods and jungles. Ecosystems that go back, not just for eight thousand years, but millions of years. Unplanned, at least by us. Composed of a hundred thousand species in relative stability, not our five thousand in unsteady, unpredictable, and changing relationships.”
Barrand grunted, but it was Zennia who spoke. “Yes, I could see that. All Made Worlds are imitations, as best as we can make, of the one original Earth. But I have heard that many of Ancient Earth’s forests were badly affected in the Dark Times; they have been reconstructed.”
“True. They are not as they were when our First Father and Mother walked in them. But I would like to see them once.”
The house was in sight now and the dogs were coming out. Barrand, his teeth bared in a grin, turned to Merral. “And perhaps, Nephew, one day you will.”
“Maybe, Uncle, but it’s a long walk from here.”
And as the dogs romped around them, they laughed again.
That night Merral borrowed an image projector and went up to his room early to work. He wanted to get the ideas for the ridge tidied up before the Nativity holiday and knew that there would be little time on the next day to get anything done. If he got to the Forestry offices at Wilamall’s Farm by dusk as he planned, he should be back in Ynysmant by eight on the regular ground transporter. And as that would leave little time to write up anything, it was best to do it now. So he linked his diary to the image projector and used it to draw an elegant, sc
aled 3-D model of the proposed quarry that appeared hanging over the desk like a gray whale painted with gridlines.
As he adjusted the edges of his model, he paused. Was he really working up here just because he had to get the work done? Or was there more to it than that?
He felt there was something that he didn’t understand in the house, something intangible and impalpable that he preferred to avoid; something he wanted to be away from. Somehow, the house of his uncle and aunt had ceased to be as welcoming as it had been. As he sat there in the room, Merral felt drawn to consider again the mysterious problem that had afflicted Barrand that morning. Had it been resolved, or had it simply been pushed to one side? Certainly, during the evening, his uncle had become more withdrawn and terse.
Merral was sitting there, idly rotating the diagram as he considered his uncle, when there was a gentle tap at the door.
It was Zennia, bearing a glass of warm milk for him. She smiled. “I thought you might like this before you went to bed.”
“Why, thank you very much, Aunt! I hadn’t realized how late it had become.”
He took the glass and placed it carefully on the desk. As he began to mention his plans for the morning, he saw a glint of emotion cross her face, a look that came and went so fast that it was hard to recognize. But, fleeting as it had been, Merral felt it to be one of concern, and he knew that it confirmed his own unease. There was indeed something wrong in the house.
Zennia, apparently realizing that she had revealed some secret thing, turned sharply and made to go to the door.
“Aunt, wait a moment,” Merral said. “Uncle . . . how is he?”
Zennia stopped, her hand on the door, and looked at him, her eyes showing unhappiness.
“He is tired, Merral. He’s gone to bed.”
“He’s not unwell? Any symptoms?”
“No. Just tired.” She paused as if uncertain whether to continue. When she spoke again, it was in puzzled tones.
“It seems . . . it seems as if he dreamed as well last night—something strange and not very nice. He won’t say what.” She moved again as if to go.
In his surprise, Merral said without thinking, “Oh, I’m sorry to hear that, Aunt. But I thought he said he hadn’t dreamed.”
Zennia, looking away from him, remained still, her only movement the agitated twisting of her fingers on the door frame. When she spoke it was in awkward, hacked phrases. “Well . . . I really can’t—I’m not sure . . . exactly what he said.”
There was a clumsy pause in which both were silent. Then she turned, gave him a cool, formal smile, and left, calling gently over her shoulder as she pulled the door behind her closed, “Good night and blessings, Merral.”
The door was closed by the time he had begun to return her benediction.
With his mind in total confusion, Merral clicked the diary off, and the image looming over his desk instantly vanished. He sat back in the chair, arms behind his head, trying to unravel his perplexed thoughts. So, Barrand had had a foul dream too. That was curious. One bad dream in a house was odd, but for two people to have one on the same night was very mysterious. Yet the dream was not what worried him or, he suspected, Zennia. No, what was making his mind reel was that this morning Barrand had definitely said that he had slept well and had had no dreams. He had said it plainly. And Zennia’s unhappiness when he had pressed her had confirmed it. She avoided answering his inquiry because she couldn’t face the fact that her husband had lied earlier in the day. And with that answer came a terrible awareness: Could it really be that his uncle had lied?
Under the thrust of the word lied Merral got up and paced the small room in agitation. The very word lie was unfamiliar. To deceive, to willfully alter truth; he knew theoretically—as everyone did—what it meant. But understood it was never practiced. You might sometimes mislead people in sport, like in Team-Ball games, where you made them think you were going right not left, but that, of course, was not lying. Nor was it lying to pull a verbal surprise, as in a joke or a riddle. And even when asked a question where the answer would be hurtful to the hearer, it was easy enough, at least in Communal—the historic languages were harder—to give an answer that allowed it to be understood that, for whatever reason, you preferred not to commit yourself. True, the idea of lying came to you on occasions, particularly when you had made a mistake. But you just pushed the idea aside. Since the time of the Great Intervention, the temptation to willfully deceive someone had had little real force. Jannafy’s rebellion in the first days of the Assembly had probably been the last instance of large-scale deception.
No, Merral concluded, the idea of lying was hateful. The entire edifice of the civilization of the Assembly of Worlds was built on truth and on its counterpart, trust. The lie was the enemy to all that. As he lay down on the bed, he reflected that it was an axiom of the whole era of the Lord’s Peace from the Intervention till now that no one lied. Truth had been sacred since the Dark Times, over eleven thousand years ago.
And yet, the thought nagged at Merral until sleep finally fell on him; the conclusion seemed inescapable.
His uncle had lied.
3
Merral was up early the next morning, and after donning his jacket, slipped outside to look at the weather. Although the sun should have been rising there was only a dull glow in the east, and in the gloom he could faintly make out that during the night the wind had changed and was now coming out of the barren wastelands of the west. At least, he comforted himself, from that direction neither rain nor snow would come.
When Merral entered the kitchen he found Barrand sitting at the table. There was an unhappy look on his face, and after the briefest of greetings he blurted out, “Merral, I’m so sorry about yesterday! The whole thing was ridiculous! Zennia said you were worried because I seemed to have, well—contradicted—myself. It could, I suppose, seem like that. The fact is that . . . well . . . I did dream, it’s true. But I had—I suppose—pushed it out of my mind. When you spoke about having a dream, I began to remember it, but I was unsure about it.” Here he paused, as if uncertain what to say next. “I mean I was unsure about whether I had had a dream. If you follow my meaning.”
Uncertain how to respond, Merral just nodded, and his uncle went on in an unsteady fashion. “So, anyway it was just later on in the day that it all came flooding back. And when I said in the morning that I hadn’t dreamed, it was, well . . . true then. But I mean, it wasn’t a major dream anyway. So the whole thing is nothing serious. I wouldn’t want you to get it all out of proportion.”
I need to think about this, Merral thought, recognizing that his uncle seemed to be in serious difficulties.
“I think I understand, Uncle. But actually, if you’ll excuse me, I’d better have breakfast and be off—if that’s all right with you. Graceful and I have a long way to go today.”
A look of relief seemed to cross the gray-blue eyes. “Yes, yes. Now tell me your plans while I get some food out for you.”
Fifteen minutes later as he came down the stairs with his pack, ready to leave, Zennia was waiting at the outer door. She smiled rather distantly at him. “Your uncle has explained everything, has he? A sort of delay in recognizing that he had had a dream. It all makes sense now. Something about nothing.”
Merral hesitated. “Yes, I hope so. I’m glad you’ve got it all sorted out.” He kissed her on the cheek. “I must be away, Aunt. Give my love to the children. I’ll be back this way soon.”
There was the clatter of feet on the stairs and a slender figure in a fluffy pink robe with a straw-colored mop of hair bounced lightly down the stairs, ran over, and clutched his hand.
“Bye, Cousin Merral. Don’t get talking to the trees now.”
Merral gave Elana a hug, noticing as he did that she was already nearly up to his shoulder. “Bye, Elana.”
There was a heavy thudding on the stairs and Thomas leapt down, slid across the wood floor like a skater, and wrapped his arms around Merral.
“Cousin!
You nearly left without saying good-bye.”
Laughing, Merral disentangled himself from Thomas’s clutches and lifted the boy high so that his head nearly touched the roof. “Owf! You are getting too heavy to do this.”
“Have a safe trip, Cousin Merral. Look after Graceful.” Thomas giggled as, with a playful tickle, Merral put him down.
“I will. And you look after the dogs!”
Merral turned to his aunt. “I’d best be off before the rest of the family comes down.”
He raised his hand. “A blessing on this house.” Then he pressed the door switch and, as it slid open, stepped out into the raw grayness of the dawn.
It was still little more than half-light when, ten minutes later, Merral rode Graceful southwest from the hamlet. The route he had planned was a long one. He intended to travel first west over Brigila’s Wastes, keeping south of the still-barren lava seas, then south along the Long Marshes before swinging back through the eastern tip of the Great Northern Forest. From there, a track should allow him to make Wilamall’s Farm, the most northerly forestry base, by midafternoon at the latest. There he would leave Graceful in the stables while he took the daily overland transporter down to Ynysmant. There were more rapid routes home from Herrandown, but Merral wanted to see as much as he could. Sampling and observer machines made regular survey trips across these lands, and drones flew overhead to monitor for changes, but he knew that there was no substitute for walking or riding the ground.
Fifteen minutes later, having carefully crossed the solid ice of the Lannar River on foot and ridden up the sparsely wooded western bank, Merral squinted across at the wastes before him and wondered why he had been so zealous.
Ahead was a desolate and empty landscape across which a cutting wind whistled hungrily around him. Facing into it, he found that there was little escape even with the glare goggles on and the face baffle of his jacket up round his nose. As he rode on, with Graceful picking her way across the frozen tussocks, he decided that there was little to choose between the west and the north wind. While lacking the polar chill of the wind from the north, the west wind had its own cruel character. Here every turbulent gust that struck carried a reminder that it was drawn across five thousand kilometers of treeless waste, much of it a dry, salty, and sandy desert. At least, he reminded himself, in winter there was still enough moisture to remove the dust. In summer, the dry and baking west wind was filled with dust, silt, and static, and became the scourge of machinery and men’s lungs.