by Chris Walley
The representative, his jaw moving up and down, gestured at the image. “Ape and human DNA intermixed. I find the concept appalling and the reality, well . . . are there no limits?”
“A profound question,” Vero said in a low but insistent voice.
“This data has not gone to Ancient Earth?” Merral turned to see the advisor staring at him.
“No,” Merral answered. “We were taking it with us when the Gate exploded.”
Clemant shook his head. “Putting aside—for the moment—the extraordinary irregularity of your journey, why didn’t you just transmit all this data as soon as you had it?”
Vero spoke before Merral could answer. “S-sir, I take responsibility. It was because we found out that the signals through the Gate were being intercepted.”
“Intercepted?”
“I’m afraid so,” Merral said, feeling he needed to protect Vero. “We can show you the evidence, but the intruders were able to intercept and modify Gate signals and diary calls.”
Vero raised dark, mobile fingers. “A-and if I may interrupt. Please, we must all assume from now on that all our calls can be overheard. Nothing of what we have said here today must be transmitted.”
Corradon and Clemant exchanged wide-eyed glances.
The silence was broken by the advisor’s deep voice. “Let me summarize. One: you believe that non-human—or modified human—creatures have landed in northeastern Menaya. Two: they have at their disposal technologies beyond us: in communications, genetics, and weapons. Three: they are hostile. And four: they are behind the destruction of the Gate. Is that a fair summary?”
Merral was conscious of nods of agreement around him.
“But f-five—” there was determination in Vero’s voice—“we must not neglect the spiritual dimension. The disturbances in Herrandown, the modified re-created voice. The feeling of evil we have felt. Above all, the warnings of this envoy. Indeed, the very fact of his presence.”
Clemant, his face inscrutable, said nothing.
The representative rose. “We must go,” Corradon said. “Although after this, I do not feel like another meeting. I need a chance to think and pray.”
He stared at Vero for a moment before shifting his gaze to Merral. “But I have, of course, one more question: What do you suggest I do? You have had more time to think about things.”
Merral, suddenly finding himself unclear about what he was to say, looked at Vero.
“To be honest, sir,” Vero replied, “I think that, at this precise moment, you should do nothing. Until we can meet again the day after tomorrow.”
“Nothing?”
“Yes; we too need time to think and pray. I do not think a day’s delay will make any difference. I also fear there is a real danger that we may make a wrong decision.”
“But surely,” Corradon asked, “it could be dangerous to delay?”
“Possibly, sir, but we do not know where the intruders are. And your north looks very big to me.”
“I agree with Vero,” Merral said. “We need to keep quiet. For the moment.”
Corradon looked at Clemant, who gave an unhappy shrug. “Sir, I agree,” he said in a low voice. “We need to be very careful. There are issues here that we need to discuss before we act.”
“But shouldn’t people be warned?” Corradon asked, smoothing his streaked hair. “I have a responsibility.”
“Ah, but warned against what, sir?” Vero was frowning. “We do not know how many intruders there are. Or even whether they are a threat beyond the Lannar Crater area. Besides, everyone is so shaken at the loss of the Gate that another shock may cause panic.”
An intense expression of alarm briefly appeared on Clemant’s face before vanishing.
“Hmm. What about the other representatives?” Corradon asked. “I must talk with them. Can I call them?”
Vero shook his head. “Sir, I do not think you should use diary transmission to talk of such things. None of us should; it may be intercepted. Are you meeting them soon?”
“They are all gathering here in two days for what are scheduled as several days of crisis meetings.”
“Sir,” Merral said, catching a nod from Vero, “I suggest we meet with you earlier that day. Would that be possible?”
Corradon looked carefully at him and then glanced at Clemant for support. “Yes.”
“And, s-sir,” Vero interjected, “if I might make a request, can we meet somewhere more isolated? We have no idea what the power of the intruders is, but we cannot rule out being overheard or noticed here. It was an old rule for meetings to do with strategy to be carried out in secret places.”
Corradon shook his head with wearied astonishment. “I had not thought that it was possible to get worse news than the loss of our Gate. But this clearly is. This event . . . no, these events, are almost too terrible for words. Indeed, the combination of this and our isolation . . .” He paused as if reluctant to finish the sentence. Finally, a degree of composure returned to his face. “I’m sure we can find somewhere suitable to meet. Can’t we, Lucian?”
Clemant gave a slight nod of agreement.
The representative walked to the door with a determined step. “Come, Dr. Clemant, we must leave or we may have to make an explanation. And that would not do. Everybody, nine o’clock the day after tomorrow. And then we must take some action.” Then he gave a small bow of his head and swept his gaze around the table. “Forester, Sentinel, Doctor, and Captain—my greatest thanks.”
Then, with his advisor following him, Representative Corradon left the room.
Perena, anxious to get back to her ship to oversee the repairs, drove them back in her borrowed Space Affairs four-seater. She dropped Anya at the Planetary Ecology Center and Merral and Vero at Narreza Tower, where she and Anya had their apartments. Perena had found Merral and Vero an empty fourth-floor two-bedroom apartment there; an out-of-system visitor was going to occupy it in a fortnight’s time, but that wasn’t going to happen now.
As they drove, there was almost total silence in the vehicle. Somehow, thought Merral, gazing at the somber, wet streets that seemed to echo his mood, we have crossed another boundary. Until just now, only four of us really knew what was happening. Now we are six, and the two new people have the power to act.
Now we need to decide what to do.
22
Vero sank heavily onto a sofa and leaned forward, squeezing his head between his hands. Then he looked at Merral with urgent eyes. “Tell me, my friend, did I make the right decision?” “About what?” “Telling Corradon not to do anything. For the moment.” “I think so. We all need time to consider matters. And I can’t think of anything we can do at the moment.”
“I suppose so.” Vero sighed. “But God grant we make the right decision when we do meet again.” He stared out of the window at the rain and then shook himself. “I need to talk to Brenito. I have some ideas I need to bounce off him. But what do you propose to do this afternoon?”
Merral thought for a moment. “Now that the diary network is apparently operating properly, call up various people.”
“Okay, but from now on we must always watch what we say.”
“Of course,” Merral answered, reminded of his own incautious conversation with Isabella just before their flight.
Vero paused, as if in thought. After a while he said, “Are you going to call Barrand?”
“Yes. The last thing he heard from us, we were walking northward. I don’t want him trying to follow. Any suggestions as to what I say?”
“You can’t say much. But—I suppose—you could suggest that he and the other families don’t stray into the woods, that they take the dogs with them, and that they stay indoors at night. They might want to have the quarry team move closer. Into the settlement.”
“Do you think there’s a risk to them?”
Vero shrugged. “Oh, my friend, you know as much as I do. If the intruders can destroy a Gate, they are powerful enough to put us all at risk. But it
may not be so simple. . . .” He paused. “Look, I’d better go. I hope Brenito may have some ideas. I have no idea when I will be back.”
As Vero rose and left, Merral watched him, feeling that his thin figure was visibly bowed under the weight of events.
Alone in the bare apartment, Merral sat on a chair by the window and gazed across at the wet orchards; shiny, red-tiled roofs; and thick gray clouds that twisted across the sky. He checked his diary and found that, as Corradon had promised, the network was now working. For a moment, he stared at the screen, wondering again what to say if anybody asked him where he had been when he had heard about the Gate explosion. Because he and Vero had been on the Heinrich Schütz under the names of other men, only a handful of people knew that they had nearly been caught in the Gate’s explosion. Merral realized that he could not now admit to having been on his way secretly out of the Alahir System without raising more questions.
For some time, he pondered the novel and rather unnerving problems that this raised. His only real knowledge of being less than totally honest came from the old literature, and he realized that he had never appreciated how treacherous untruth was. He now saw that if you merely failed to reveal a particular truth, it could become necessary, simply in order to protect that, to tell a new and much stronger untruth. And then to protect that, still further duplicity was needed. And so on. One small misdeed bred others until there was a whole swarm of multiplying complications that seemed to have no limit. In the end, he simply prayed that he would not have to reveal too much.
He called his uncle first. Barrand was glad to hear from Merral and seemed satisfied by Merral’s statement that they had finished the trip safely and now had a lot of data to analyze. When Merral suggested the precautions that Vero had proposed, his uncle hesitated. “Since you passed through,” Barrand said, “the air seems to have cleared. But better play safe; I will do as you suggest.”
Merral then called his mother, who was plainly thrilled to hear from him. The implications of the Gate loss to her seemed to go no wider than how that event had affected Ynysmant, and with her usual gusto, she recounted how two neighbors had relatives caught beyond the Gate. It was all “just so dreadfully sad.” His father was well, she said, but was now going to be even busier at work repairing things. Then his mother inquired after Vero, sent her sympathy, and made Merral promise to tell him that he could be considered part of the family. “We could sort of adopt him, really,” she said breezily, “for the duration.”
“Mother,” Merral replied, trying not to laugh, “that’s a nice idea, but he hardly needs adopting. And ‘the duration’ is fifty years plus. But I’ll pass on your concern.”
He then called Henri, his director at the Planning Institute. When Merral began to give his careful summary of the trip, Henri cut him short. “Ach, it probably doesn’t matter now,” he said, giving his beard a sharp tug. “Man, even keeping Forward Colonies like Herrandown going is now open to question.”
Finally, and with a strange reluctance, Merral called Isabella. She was in her office. Straightening her long black hair, she beamed at him with a tired face.
“Merral!” she cried. “So you are still in Isterrane? I thought you were going away.”
He caught a sharp gaze of inquiry in her dark eyes.
“Ah. Isabella, the loss of the Gate has changed everything. So I’m here for a few more days. Then back home, I presume.” He paused. “Anyway, how are you?”
She shook her head and breathed out heavily, as if unable to express her feelings. “Shaken, in a word. Coming to terms with being out of a vocation.”
The realization that Isabella could indeed hardly assess educational progress against Assembly standards when there was no link to the other worlds struck Merral sharply. It was yet another area in which he hadn’t given thought to the implications of the Gate loss.
“Yes, I suppose that’s true—”
“You mean you hadn’t realized it?” Isabella stared at him, as if offended that it hadn’t been at the forefront of his mind.
“Sorry,” Merral replied, feeling embarrassed. “I suppose there are just so many areas that the Gate loss has had an impact on that I hadn’t thought of that. And I’m afraid I’ve been busy on other things too—”
She shook her head ruefully. “Oh well. Anyway, I’m sitting here thinking the unthinkable. What do I do? Now we are separate. Isolated.” She threw her hands up in a gesture of uncertainty and insecurity.
“Isabella, we are all having to come to terms with that. It’s not going to be easy.”
“Absolutely, and there’s the whole psychological dimension. It’s potentially scary.”
It’s even scarier than you think. “I can sense that, but tell me what you believe.”
“It’s stood everything on its head. We all grow up with the same sort of mental picture of the Assembly. It’s like some great, spiky, three-dimensional shape amid the darkness of the stars, and we at Farholme are on the very tip of one of the protrusions. Yet we are always part of it; that’s what the word Assembly means. Worlds’ End we may have been, but we always looked in to the center, and we always belonged. . . .” She paused. “But no longer. We are isolated. We will have to come to terms with that. Psychologically, it’s going to be a very interesting fifty years. Very interesting.”
I might have known that Isabella would see more deeply than me. He picked his words carefully before he answered her. “Isabella, you have to say to yourself that it’s temporary. It’s not permanent. And ultimately nothing has changed in the great scheme of things. That’s what we have to hold on to.” He paused. “The King still reigns.” Perena said that, he reminded himself.
Isabella seemed to think over his words, and then her face brightened. “Yes, you are right. But it may be difficult for some to adjust. Anyway, when will I see you here?”
“I may be back in Ynysmant the day after tomorrow. Or the day after that, all being well. There’s a lot of things to be done here.”
“We must meet up as soon as you get back. There’s a lot to talk about. About us.”
“Yes,” Merral said, trying to disguise an unwelcome feeling of apprehension as he closed the link.
Merral was sitting at the table, eating and trying to find a new angle on events, when Vero came in. He took off his wet outdoor jacket and, wiping the water off his dark curly hair, came and sat down gently on the chair on the other side of the table. Without explanation, he took a small package out of his pocket and put it down beside him.
Merral pointed to the pasta he had recently made, and Vero found a plate and helped himself.
“So, have you been outside?” Vero asked after giving thanks.
“Briefly, a walk around the block. I thought it might help me think.”
“You’ve got the picture of what people are feeling then?”
“I was quite impressed. The crowds I met seemed to be taking a positive attitude to it all, really. Is that what you found?”
“Pretty much,” Vero said, “but it’s early days. I’m not sure how deep or long-lasting the resilience will be.”
“Isabella was saying that there’s got to be a massive psychological adjustment.”
“Indeed,” Vero said, midmouthful. “And that makes our dealing with the intruder situation even harder. We must tread warily.”
“Yes. And how was your meeting with Brenito?”
Vero swallowed and frowned. “He sends his greetings. He is more shaken by the loss of the Gate than I expected. He feels—as I do—responsible for not sending the warning while we had a chance. But we had—I suppose—a profitable meeting. . . .” He wiped his mouth with a napkin and seemed to stare at the wall.
“You don’t seem very convinced.”
“Hmm. Oh, I suppose I had my hopes too high. He wants me to set up a meeting with Jorgio. Fine, we will travel out to meet him at Ynysmant. But otherwise—”
“He wasn’t much help?”
Vero frowned. “Exactly. . .
. In the end he said, ‘Well, I shall be interested to see how you handle this,’ and just looked at me.”
“I thought he was the official sentinel for Farholme? The point that Dr. Clemant was making this morning.”
“I know. But Brenito is a hundred and five and ailing. He also talked about you. ‘You know,’ he said to me, ‘I sensed that Merral would be a warrior; I was puzzled when I saw him head to Earth.’ ”
“I don’t much care for that.”
“Didn’t think you would. ‘That forester and this Jorgio are your assets,’ he said.”
“Jorgio, maybe. I’m less sure I fit in the asset category. But did he have any solid ideas?”
Vero’s face creased into a deeper frown. “Sadly, no. I tentatively outlined some possible actions, and he thought that they were reasonable under the circumstances.”
“What possible actions?”
Vero looked away briefly. “I’d rather not say now, Merral. Not just yet. I need to think and pray over them before we see Corradon and Clemant again. At the moment, I’m not even sure that I agree with them.” His face became overcast with uncertainty, and for some time he poked at the pasta. Then he looked at Merral. “Do you know what I obtained this afternoon?”
“I have no idea.”
Vero pulled the paper bag over and, with an ironic flourish, pulled out two small, yellow, hard-backed notebooks. “It was hard to get them. I am just so unsure about how much our diaries can be explored without our knowledge. But I suspect even the intruders will not be able to spy on pen-and-ink notes. One is for you.”
Merral gazed at it wordlessly for a moment before he could bring himself to take it.
“Thank you.”
“You see,” Vero added, “I have decided that when we next meet with Corradon, he will ask us what we want. That will be the point to make specific requests. I am now going to spend some time making a list so that when they ask, I can say exactly what we need. But exactly what? . . . What dare I ask? What should I ask?”