The Shadow and Night

by Chris Walley

  “As you wish. Well, come in for a few minutes. The children are heading off to school soon so it’s all a bit chaotic. It is probably best you don’t stay. Things are settling back to normal here.”

  His uncle glanced at Vero, and Merral felt that his expression seemed to ask, “How much do you know?”

  “I’m glad to hear it, Uncle.”

  They strolled over to the house in silence. Merral found his aunt and the children at the door and made the introductions to Vero. As he did so he found himself analyzing them, almost fearing the worst. He felt that his aunt looked tired but otherwise well. Elana seemed brighter than she had been, and Thomas appeared to have regained his former good spirits. Perhaps the shadow has lifted off this community. But as they moved inside, Merral caught sight of a welded metal loop against the door frame. Vero’s eyes met his and there was a barely perceptible shake of the dark face.

  They spent barely half an hour inside the house, and during that time Merral felt that there was little said in the conversation of any significance. It was almost, he felt, as if no one wanted them to stay for long. Merral watched for any evidence of problems, but saw little that was obvious. However, it appeared to him that his uncle and aunt were now no longer the vibrant, large-scale characters they had always been to him. They now seemed to be in some way drained, and even shrunken figures, with faint shadows around them. He found himself wondering whether Vero would see anything awry.

  Eventually, with good wishes and unbending embraces and handshakes, Merral and Vero were waved off up the track out of the hamlet.

  When they were out of sight of the house, Merral turned to Vero. “Well, what do you think?”

  Vero said nothing for a few moments and then looked at Merral with a raised eyebrow. “Most odd. They were watchful.”

  “Interesting. Of what? Of us?”

  “No. Of themselves. Let me explain. Of course, I have never met them before. This is my first Frontier Colony, indeed my first Made World. But it is a characteristic of the Assembly that we speak what is on our minds. That we say what we think, without regard for anything other than charity. You agree?”

  “But of course,” answered Merral, once again wondering at the extraordinary perspective that Vero brought to bear on so many things. “Is there any other way?”

  “Ah, that is the interesting thing. If you read the pre-Intervention literature or watch—if you can stomach it—their imaged data, so much of what they said was to actually disguise rather than reveal.”

  “To disguise—”

  “Oh, come on! It comes over in the Book. For instance, when King Herod says he wants to worship the baby Jesus as well. It is a pretense.”

  “But he was an evil man.”

  “However, the principle still stands. Anyway, with your uncle and aunt I detected a watchfulness. They thought before they spoke.”

  “True. I suppose I had noted a lack of freedom, perhaps. But I hadn’t seen the significance.”

  Vero adjusted his backpack and looked across with thoughtful eyes. “It was there all the same. But as I said yesterday, I didn’t come here to investigate the Antalfers.”

  “Yes, I suppose that’s fair.”

  Vero gave Merral a thoughtful look. “Come on; it’s a long walk to the Rim Ranges.”

  He shook his head ruefully. “And besides, who knows what we will meet on the way?”

  11

  As the track out of Herrandown began to steepen and the weight of their packs made itself felt, Merral and Vero fell silent. As he strode up the slope, Merral reminded himself that he had been here with Isabella only a few days ago. And as she came to mind, he realized how perplexed he was there. What was going on? And yet it wasn’t just her; his own feelings seemed to have polarized. A few weeks ago, there had been just a low, deep friendship. Now at least two things had happened. His feelings for her seemed to have evolved into an intensity of desire that almost scared him. And yet another part of him was counseling caution and almost screaming that there was something wrong. It was a conflict that he could not easily resolve. And to make it all worse, he had already made some sort of promise to her.

  Abruptly he saw that they had come to the point where Elana had seen the creature. Merral gestured to Vero to stop and his friend looked at him expectantly. “It was here?”

  “Yes.”

  “I thought so.” He stared around at the view. “Yes, a fine vantage point. And on a day like this, a particularly pleasant view of a charming spot.”

  Merral agreed. There was a hint of white blossom on the apple trees now and the other trees were covered in fresh greenery. Over the whole scene the sun shone out of a perfect blue sky flawed only by the faintest high-altitude haze.

  Turning their back on the view, they moved into the woods, and Merral paused at the site where he had found the cut twig. Vero took off his pack and spent a few minutes looking around the site and seemed vaguely satisfied.

  “I am no bushman, and the trail is very cold and has been overprinted by others—I presume you and Isabella. But let us go on.”

  Cautiously, letting his eyes adjust to the lighting under the trees, with the gloom broken in places by brilliant shafts of light, Merral led them on, trying to avoid trapping his pack on the branches.

  They paused briefly at the site where they had found the hair and then moved onward. Now, beyond that part of the trail that he and Isabella had examined, Merral found himself being more watchful. It was not just that the traces they were following were now faint, it was that, somehow, he found himself anxious not to come across anything unexpectedly.

  The trail was still visible as a line of broken, buckled grass, vague imprints in dry soils, and torn and snapped stalks and twigs. Once, Vero stopped to examine the dents in the ground. He looked up at Merral. “Hard to be sure, isn’t it? But I feel there was something heavy through here.”

  Merral gestured to a clumsily broken branch just above his head.

  “Big, too.”

  “So it would seem.” Vero looked up and grimaced. “I’m not sure I want to meet it in a bad mood.”

  “I’m not sure I want to meet it in a good one.”

  “True.” Vero stroked his chin. “You know, I have seen wild gorilla tracks on Earth and, although smaller, they looked similar.” Then he stared ahead, at the way the trail went straight along the valley side. “But were they ever so purposeful?” he added in a baffled tone.

  Over the next hour, Merral led them on at a steady pace as they went northwest under the trees, dropping slowly down toward the Lannar River. He felt a need for urgency. The trail was already very cold and he knew every extra day would make following it harder. Another rainstorm—perfectly possible within the next few days—could make following the trail harder or even impossible. Besides, they could ill afford any delay; in order to allow them to travel faster they had taken only enough food for four days.

  Finally, they started to come to the edges of the wood, so that the trees became absent from the valley ridges and were confined to the base and flanks of the stream valley. There, under the shade of a gnarled, flute-barked oak, they stopped to drink water and have a mouthful of food. Vero wiped the sweat from his face and flicked a fly away. “Forester, what do you think of the track so far?”

  “Interesting. Whoever—whatever—made it is no fool. Down in the gully itself it is very muddy and the going would be slow.”

  “Yes. But why not take the ridge route? You’d make faster progress there.”

  Merral looked up at the bare, grass-covered ridge. “Yes, a puzzle. Perhaps it isn’t that smart.”

  Vero looked at him carefully. “Now if you had sentinel training like me—that curious way of bending your brain so that you see nothing as it really is—you might think that the ridge would be avoided because you would be open to being seen from above.”

  For a moment, Merral stared at Vero, then he looked back at the ridge as it lay open to the sun. “What a very curious idea. So
our watcher doesn’t like to be watched?”

  “A suggestion. That’s all.”

  Then they moved on down the stream flanks toward the Lannar River. As the morning passed, it began to be warm and humid under the trees, and Merral began to be conscious of a sweaty feeling along his back as the weight of the backpack pressed on him. Every so often he stopped, gestured for silence, and as Vero dutifully froze, listened carefully. There was the noise of flies, distant birds in the trees, and increasingly louder as the morning passed, the liquid rustling of the river. But he heard nothing unusual.

  “And what do you think, Sentinel?” he asked at one point.

  “Seems like a normal temperate wood to me. Of course, it’s subtly different. That beech, for example; the trunk seems wider and more ridged while the branches are stubbier. I presume that’s an adaptation. A bit short of animal life, though.”

  “Oh, give us time, Earther!” Merral said with a laugh. “Just remind yourself that if we went back a mere twelve thousand years here you would have been choked by carbon dioxide, slowly dissolved in an acid rain, and fried on rocks as hot as any home oven. Your world has had far, far longer. In another few thousand—the Ruler of All permitting—Farholme will match old lady Earth.”

  Vero smiled and made a little bow as if to admit defeat. “No, you are right. Forget the Gates, forget the Library, forget our Cities-in-Space. Of all the wonders we have done with the Most High’s permission, the Made Worlds are the greatest. To have turned near-molten rubble and poison gas to soil, woods, flowers, and air is—by God’s grace—our race’s finest achievement.”

  And yet, Vero’s point is true enough; I still long to see, someday, the woods of which these are the copies.

  After half an hour they stopped to get their breath back and took their backpacks off.

  Vero turned to Merral. “Jorgio’s vision. What do you think about it?”

  “I found it made me very uneasy. It’s like nothing I have ever heard of. And, well, visions are not my line.” Merral patted a birch trunk. “Trees, yes; visions, no.”

  “If we assume that it was genuine, then how do you interpret it?”

  Merral thought for a moment. “The candles are the Assembly and the farmhouse is Farholme. That much seems beyond doubt. And in both cases, as a testing, a threat is being unleashed.”

  “Exactly. But a threat of what? Where?”

  Merral shrugged and Vero continued. “There the vision stops and our insight fails. If we knew what we faced it would be easier to obey the charge to watch, stand firm. And perhaps to hope. But visions never tell all.” He sighed. “I desperately want to talk to Brenito about all this and will do when I get back. But, in the meantime . . .” He fell silent.

  “I think we need to focus on the task ahead. So let us move on. And watch,” Merral said and, putting his backpack back on, set off. Vero followed him.

  Ten minutes later the trees began to open out. Vero touched Merral’s arm lightly and whispered, “I think we should be careful down here. We will soon be out into the open.”

  “I agree,” Merral answered with reluctance. “Although the track still shows no sign of being younger than four or five days.”

  Merral listened again, but heard nothing to alarm him. Nevertheless, he felt uneasy. An intangible something seemed to be present. Why is it that I don’t like these woods?

  Vero seemed to sense his unease. “You’re not happy, are you?”

  “Ah, you talked earlier about our Assembly transparency. No, I’m not happy.”

  “May I make a suggestion?”

  “Of course.”

  “From now on have your tranquilizer gun ready. I’m going to wear my bush knife.”

  Merral suddenly realized what lay behind Vero’s interest in the knives the previous day. “A weapon! You’re planning to use it as a weapon?”

  “Not planning, please,” Vero looked vaguely hurt. “Preparing, perhaps. As a last resort.”

  For a moment, Merral could not say anything as he tried to grapple with the concept of a weapon. No, he decided, this was too much. It was important to impose some limits on what were plainly excesses in sentinel thinking, and now was as good a time as any.

  “Look, Vero,” he said firmly, “we need to think about this. We have no evidence at all that these things are hurtful, harmful, or even hostile. If they are sentient and can communicate, we either talk to them or bring in those men or machines that can.”

  As he heard his words, he knew that he had pitched the tone all wrong; it came out abrasive and critical. Under his dark skin, he felt that Vero was blushing. Eventually his friend spoke quietly. “You are—of course—right, Merral. I was . . . I suppose, letting my imagination get ahead of myself.”

  It was now Merral’s turn to feel guilty. “Sorry, Vero, I guess I don’t know what’s up here either.”

  He patted his friend on the shoulder. He’s overreacting. But then it occurred to him that, nevertheless, to follow such a trail as this into the open might not be the wisest thing. “Okay, what do you suggest?” he asked.

  “Hmm. I recollect that in the past, when there was the risk of a . . . confrontation, it was considered unwise to do the expected thing.”

  “Yes,” Merral replied, wondering about the use of the word confrontation. “The same rule applies in a Team-Ball game.”

  “Quite so. So, could we go south a little way and reach the stream bank at a new point? That way we come out into the open at a different place.”

  Merral noted with unease the apparently bizarre way you had to think when you believed there might be enemies around.

  As quietly as they could, parting the foliage softly with their hands, they made their way to a point a hundred meters downstream of where the trail would have struck the river. There, Merral motioned Vero to stay, took his pack off, and gently edged his way through a clump of young willows and bright yellow flowering irises down to the pebble strand. There he peered out of the greenery carefully. The Lannar River here was around thirty meters wide, although, he guessed, nowhere now more than waist-deep. Although it had been a wet spring, the river was now at a much lower level than at the height of the winter floods, so that a sizeable strand of rough pebbles and gravel lay on either side of the water. The other side of the riverbank was tree lined, and to both north and south, the river disappeared round meanders within a kilometer or so. Feeling on alert, Merral looked once up and down the river quickly and then again in a slower, more careful scrutiny. There was nothing to see apart from some ducks out on the deeper part of the stream. Equally, apart from the soothing, bubbling flow of the water, there was little to hear except an irregular plop as a fish leapt.

  Merral moved out of cover. There was an abrupt splash nearby and he felt his heart beat faster. With relief he saw a stream vole swimming away into the depths. Moments later, the ducks took off, their wings rattling against the water.

  Slowly, Merral regained his composure and beckoned Vero to join him.

  “A false alarm. There is nothing here.”

  Vero was looking up the stream. “We have to decide how to follow this trail now. These pebbles will show no tracks, and we will be very obvious walking along the stream. Anyone watching would see us half an hour before we arrived.”

  “I take your point. I presume whatever we are following walked along under the bank; they would be covered by trees that way. I suppose if we walked above the level of the bank we’d cover more ground quickly.”

  “I agree.”

  For the next two hours they traced the Lannar River northward. So wide were the meander loops here that, although they walked a long way and cut off some meanders entirely, their progress north was not very great. The going along the riverbank was, however, generally easy. Other than a few birds and a glimpse of some tri-horned red deer, they saw nothing. They stopped once for a quiet, frugal, and brief lunch and then kept walking.

  As the afternoon wore on and the sun began to sink, Vero raised a co
ncern that was troubling Merral: Could they be sure that they were still following the trail? Shortly afterward, though, they came across a part of the river valley where the edge was marked by a large sandbar.

  “Look,” whispered Vero. “Tracks.”

  There, faintly cutting across the edge of the coarse sandbar just by the side of the trees, were impressions of footprints, clearly traceable for a length of about a hundred meters before they were lost in coarse gravel. Looking carefully around them, Merral and Vero slithered down onto the bank and took their packs off.

  “Creatures plural, Merral,” Vero announced dully as he peered at the footprints, the wonder and apprehension in his voice barely concealed.

  “Yes,” Merral answered in a strange, distant voice, as his mind grappled with the awesome, unbelievable awareness that he was dealing with reality, not illusion.

  Merral squatted down and, staring at the tracks, reached out and stroked the edge of one gently with his finger, watching the black sand grains roll over into the depression.

  “It’s real,” he said, looking across at Vero, whose wide brown eyes stared back at him with an inexpressible emotion. “Vero, let me make a confession.”

  “Feel free. But I think I have my own.”

  “I now realize that, until this moment, I didn’t—in my heart of hearts—really believe in this. I don’t know what I expected. I suppose I still believed that there was another more rational explanation. That it was a hallucination, a trick. Anything but this. . . .”

  “Yes, I agree,” answered Vero slowly. “I suppose I am more conditioned to be prepared for this, but I too find this an extraordinary moment. I, too, have had my doubts. As you have known. Maybe I have doubted too much. But come, let us examine these prints quickly and be on our way. We have some way to go, and I want to find a safe camping spot for the night.”