Last Shadow (9781250252135)

by Card, Orson Scott

  “Or the carriers are working faster,” said Jane, “now that they have experience.”

  Everyone got a turn. Jane sent people out of the building as soon as their cure was complete. But she allowed Sprout to stay, because she wanted him to apply his carrier to each person, simultaneously with hers. Apparently Miro was only a substitute, when applying the carriers to Sprout.

  When Jane, Miro, and Sprout were the last three in the building, and everyone had been cured, Sprout asked Jane, “Did you know that the Hive Queen could find a cure?”

  “I didn’t know. I barely hoped. As did she. But what else was there to try, with Thulium nearer and nearer to death?”

  “I know you didn’t invite me out there,” said Sprout. “But I’m glad I went.”

  “I’m glad you came,” said Jane. “Your wisdom in this case—or the foolishness of your devotion to Thulium—led you to make a choice that helped us all.”

  Sprout didn’t allow himself to grin, though the pride he felt demanded it. “I need to go talk to Thulium, now that the work is done.”

  Miro put a hand on Sprout’s shoulder. “First go tell your father that you performed bravely and brilliantly.”

  “I can’t tell him that,” said Sprout. “I only just met him.”

  “Then we will,” said Jane. “Go to Thulium. You’ll know what to say to her.”

  Sprout ran outside and went in search of her. It didn’t take long to find her. She was waiting for him outside the barracks.

  “I told them to save you some supper,” said Thulium.

  “You mean the twins didn’t eat it all?” asked Sprout. Sergeant had demanded that the twins be returned to Lusitania, when it looked like Thulium might die.

  “The cooks always hide most of the food when they’re around.”

  She turned to lead him inside to the mess hall. Without even glancing, she reached out her hand and took his. Hand in hand, they went to finally eat the kind of banquet they had thought they would get in the caverns of Nest. Apparently the cooks were glad they had survived the disease, too.

  22

  Dog the Raven: All five of the worlds you propose seem acceptable, though there may be unforeseen complications.

  Hive Queen: There always are.

  Dog the Raven: If there are human colonies on all these worlds, however, I don’t see how the keas will be able to live there in peace.

  Hive Queen: Three of the worlds are either in a Pangaea continental formation, or the continents are so close together that keas could easily fly from all of them to any other.

  Dog the Raven: Which means that ravens and other corvids could do the same.

  Hive Queen: The other two worlds, however, have at least one continental landmass that is too far from any other for keas to make the flight.

  Dog the Raven: Or ravens.

  Hive Queen: The question is, my sister, do you want to share a continent with the keas, and with no humans, or do you want to share a continent with humans, and no keas.

  Dog the Raven: Why can’t we establish two breeding populations of ravens, one on each?

  Hive Queen: But you agree that sequestering the keas will be better for everyone.

  Dog the Raven: It will be better for the keas. Humans tend to want them all dead.

  Hive Queen: When humans arrived in the keas’ original habitat, New Zealand, the keas mercilessly attacked the sheep the settlers brought with them. The humans responded as if it had been a declaration of war.

  Dog the Raven: I assume the keas merely enjoyed playing with the sheep.

  Hive Queen: Eventually the humans will forget or ignore the treaty restrictions, and they will come to settle and exploit the continent of birds.

  Dog the Raven: It’s our business to make sure we’re ready.

  Hive Queen: For war?

  Dog the Raven: Has anyone ever won a war against the humans?

  Hive Queen: I’m the only one who ever fought one. That is, my sisters did.

  Dog the Raven: We drove them underground.

  Hive Queen: Stalemate, not victory.

  Dog the Raven: Will there be a place for the Yachachiyruna?

  Hive Queen: They are part of the Folk.

  Dog the Raven: They are not part of the Folk, even though they live with them in winter.

  Hive Queen: Invite them. If they choose to come, the Travelers will transport them.

  —Dog the Raven’s account of her conversation with the Hive Queen quoted in Demosthenes, “Deliberate Dispersals”

  There was little discussion about who would go back to the surface of Nest. Peter said, “Wang-Mu and I are going.” Wang-Mu said, “Our only friend among the keas is Royal Son. I am the Royal Mother of the West.” And it was settled.

  They came back in the earliest dawn, before sunrise, to the spot where they had first met the keas, where Royal Son had begun to talk to Wang-Mu. Where, later, Sprout had been mobbed.

  This was the hour of the day when many birds did their foraging. Humans were usually in bed. It was a fairly undisturbed time.

  But no birds were about.

  Peter and Wang-Mu each turned around several times, searching.

  Wang-Mu whispered, “It seems impossible that none of them have seen us.”

  “It is impossible,” said Peter softly. “Should we call for Royal Son?”

  “Sounds can be heard by anyone,” whispered Wang-Mu. “They cannot be called back.”

  “Are we afraid of the Folk? Aren’t they underground?” asked Peter.

  “All bets are off,” said Wang-Mu. “For one thing, the Folk must certainly fear our retaliation for their attempted massacre. Maybe they have laid an ambush for us here on the surface.”

  “Why would they imagine we would ever come back?”

  “Because they know,” said Wang-Mu, “that you and I were not with the party they infected.”

  “And they want to kill all the Detourists. The Travelers.”

  “Let’s wait a little longer before leaving. Give the keas a chance to decide whether to recognize us.”

  “By now they should have stolen everything we’re carrying,” said Peter.

  “Or wearing,” said Wang-Mu.

  Every minute the light increased and the ground became more visible. And then Wang-Mu saw a little splash of bright, shiny green in the grass. And another.

  She reached down and picked it up. A dead kea.

  Peter picked up a kea, too. There were dozens all around them. Hundreds, maybe—they couldn’t yet see how far the slaughter had carried into the distance.

  Wang-Mu put the bodies of two keas into her satchel. Peter did the same with his.

  “If Royal Son were coming, he’d be here,” said Peter.

  Wang-Mu took his hand.

  Everyone was waiting out in the lab when they returned to Q-Bay. Procedures now were so disregarded that Miro approached the door to open it. Peter and Wang-Mu both signaled him to stop.

  They opened their satchels and laid the birds on an examining table.

  Miro turned and asked everyone in the lab, “Who does birds?”

  “We’ve never had any birds but xingadoras to examine,” said Fingers. “And their anatomy is different from any birds from Earth.”

  “We need autopsies of the dead keas,” said Peter. “Not healing. How did they die?”

  Soon the anatomists and geneticists were taking samples and opening up corpses. Peter and Wang-Mu underwent their checkups, especially their hands, since they had held the birds and any biological agent might be stuck to their skin. When they were sanitized and pronounced clean, they went out into the lab, looking at slides and vids as they came onto the various monitors.

  Miro, Jane, Sprout, and Thulium gathered around the station where Wang-Mu sat down. Peter knelt on the floor beside her, till Miro pulled up a chair for him.

  “How many keas died?” asked Sprout.

  “We saw no living keas,” said Wang-Mu.

  “There were dozens of dead ones scatt
ered randomly across the grass,” said Peter. “It never got light enough for us to see farther, but it could have been hundreds.”

  “Did you call out for Royal Son?” asked Sprout.

  “We did not call out at all,” said Wang-Mu. “We didn’t know who else might hear.”

  “Very wise,” said Miro.

  “And no ravens showed up?” asked Thulium.

  “The Queen says that Dog is still alive,” said Jane.

  “Then we have to go back,” said Peter.

  “We have to find out as much as we can about how they died,” said Jane. “Nobody goes back till then.” Jane looked pointedly at Thulium, who nodded her consent. Everyone knew why.

  “We have a mission,” said Peter. “If the Folk have come to the surface to kill birds, then we have no time to waste.”

  “If their weapons kill humans, we have all the reason in the world to wait,” said Miro.

  But the answers didn’t take long, because nothing showed up. “They didn’t die of anything,” said Quara. “They just died.”

  “Maybe Ruqyaq knows,” said Sprout.

  “Maybe the Yachachiyruna invented the weapons,” said Little Mum. “Maybe they carried out the massacre.”

  “I’m going back,” said Peter. “I owe it to Dog.”

  “I owe it to Royal Son,” said Wang-Mu. “We don’t know that all the keas are dead.”

  Fingers spoke up, without raising his gaze from his holo. “Take a hundred Formic soldiers with you,” he said.

  The words hung in the air.

  “That depends on the circumstances,” said Jane. “And on the Queen’s willingness.”

  “We won’t go back to the same place,” said Peter. “We’ll go to the meadow near the Raven Council.”

  “Good plan,” said Jane.

  “They might all be dead, too,” said Thulium.

  “If that’s the case,” said Peter, “if they’ve committed xenocide against the keas and the ravens, then I think we should turn Sergeant loose underground.”

  “We will not do that,” said Wang-Mu. “If the Folk killed the keas we found, it can’t have been a unanimous choice by all the Folk. We don’t punish all for the crimes of a few.”

  “In war you do,” said Thulium.

  “We are not at war,” said Wang-Mu. “And we are not the judges of Nest. All we are is the hope of moving as many sentient creatures away from Nest as we can.”

  “If there are any keas left,” said Sprout, “we won’t lack for volunteers to join us.”

  “The two of you won’t go alone and unsupported,” said Miro. “And this time, you go with a box.”

  “And we bring back all the birds that will fly inside,” said Sprout.

  “Are there drying racks?” asked Ela. “Shelves? Hat racks? Something they can roost on? They can’t all fit on the floor.”

  It took about twenty minutes to fill the Box with possible roosts. Nobody rode inside it—Jane would bring it along. Miro, Ela, and Quara insisted on coming. So did several of the cousins, pleading that it wasn’t fair for Thulium and Sprout to go to Nest again and again. Jane silenced them with a glare.

  “Go first,” said Jane to Peter and Wang-Mu. “I’ll land the box about thirty meters away.”

  Peter and Wang-Mu hardly had a chance to look around before everyone else in the expedition arrived. Sprout and Thulium arrived at the same time, but separately; Wang-Mu was pretty sure Sprout had brought himself, without any need for Thulium’s help. Quara, Miro, and Ela looked around at the plants, seeing whatever it was that ecologists and xenologers looked for in a new world.

  Peter and Wang-Mu, without discussion, walked toward the Council trees, and when Wang-Mu knelt in the grass, so did Peter. Wang-Mu spoke aloud, but did not shout. If the ravens were there, they would hear her. “Can Dog or Phoenix speak to us? Or is there someone else who can talk to us?”

  There was a rustling in the leaves, and then a naked man with long arms and hands for feet swung down and sat in the grass before them.

  “Ruqyaq,” Sprout greeted him.

  “This isn’t a safe place for birds,” said Ruqyaq. “They have all moved away west and north.”

  “How did the keas die?” asked Peter.

  “Were there survivors?” asked Wang-Mu.

  “Were the ravens also slaughtered?” asked Sprout.

  “Did you know they were going to do this?” asked Thulium.

  Ruqyaq held out his hands. “There isn’t time for a story,” he said. “Did you come to carry away the keas and ravens? Because almost all of them beg you to take them.”

  Jane turned to the others. “The only destination is Lusitania, the meadow beyond the fence. Plenty of time to transport them to the right colony worlds later.”

  “Should I lead you to where they are gathering?” asked Ruqyaq.

  “Can we trust you?” demanded Thulium.

  “What an annoying child,” said Ruqyaq. “Sprout, I want to go with you too. I can’t live with these crimes committed by the Folk.”

  “First,” said Miro, “what is the nature of the weapon that killed so many keas. Will it harm us, too?”

  “I assume it’s a combination of ultrasound and infrasound,” said Ruqyaq. “It’s a weapon I designed for riot control twenty years ago. It keeps the peace underground.”

  “So, not utopia after all,” said Thulium.

  “No one ever said it was,” said Sprout.

  “Can you point me in the right direction?” Jane asked Ruqyaq.

  He rose to his feet and turned to point west-northwest.

  Instantly, they were all standing in a different meadow, with different trees around them. The box was still thirty meters away. And Ruqyaq was still standing and pointing.

  “Oh,” said Ruqyaq. And then, “Oh,” again.

  To Wang-Mu’s great relief, she saw the fluttering of bright-colored wings. There were living keas here.

  And ravens, though as usual they kept their distance, watching, waiting.

  Sprout stepped forward, away from the group of humans. “If you want to go to another world, go into the box.”

  Immediately, keas swarmed into the open door of the box. While keas were still queued up outside, Jane called out, “When you see you’re on another world, all of you leave the Box. You will harass no humans, you will steal nothing, you will break nothing.”

  Then the box disappeared. “I need ravens now!” called Jane. “Ravens come and gather here in the grass.”

  At once the keas flew away from the area she indicated, and ravens flew in, not vocalizing at all, but with the beating of their wings making a rushing sound, like the crashing of waves.

  The ravens hadn’t all settled themselves when they disappeared.

  Then the box reappeared, its door open, with no birds inside. Keas again swarmed into the box.

  To Wang-Mu it seemed as if the supply of birds was endless. Ten, twenty, thirty times Jane sent the box as well as loose birds on the grass.

  “Can we help you?” asked Peter.

  “Don’t interfere with my bandwidth,” said Jane.

  Peter turned to Wang-Mu. “So I guess I can’t ask if she’s sent Dog or Phoenix or Royal Son on to Lusitania.”

  “I have,” said Jane. “All three. Now shut up.”

  At last there were no birds left—except for a few that hovered off in the distance, apparently ravens and keas that had no wish to go, even under threat of death from the weapons of the Folk. That was when there emerged from the trees a band of humans, all naked and long-armed and short-legged, male and female, carrying no possessions.

  “Can we trust you to come to our world in peace?” Miro cried out to them.

  They knelt in the grass.

  And they were gone.

  They waited a few more minutes. Jane called out once, “Now is the time. We will not come back.”

  Three more of the Yachachiyruna came out of the trees and ran toward them. They disappeared in mid-run.

&n
bsp; Jane turned to the others. “Peter and Wang-Mu, Thulium and Sprout, take everybody back. Miro, bring the box. And me. Bring me. I’m exhausted.”

  “The meadow?” asked Miro.

  “Too many birds there,” said Peter. “Q-Bay. Except for the box.”

  They arrived in Q-Bay and immediately rushed outside. Now they could see clouds of birds, flying, dipping, sometimes chaotic, sometimes with astonishing order, like watching vids of schools of fish in the sea. Jane said, “Let’s all go to that clear area just beyond the fence.”

  When they were standing in the appointed place, the swarming of the birds ended. They all alit in the grass, making a patchwork carpet of bright keas in this patch, black ravens in that, all facing the humans.

  “I can’t divide you into your tribes and leks,” said Jane loudly. “You need to divide yourselves into your breeding populations. Don’t make any mistakes, because once I take you to your new colony world, you can’t change your minds.”

  The birds swarmed again, seeking out their companions. Wang-Mu noticed that the ravens seemed to fly in pairs as they gathered into groups.

  A raven fluttered out of the group and landed on Jane’s shoulder. Wang-Mu recognized Dog. Jane apparently heard her say something, and called out, “Ravens who want to be on the same continent with the keas, I need two breeding populations of you. To my left. Keas, divide into two groups. And yes, that means I don’t trust you to behave around humans.”

  The sorting continued.

  “If you think you chose the wrong group, change now!” called Jane.

  A few hundred birds flew from one group to another.

  And then they were all settled. Jane had her arm around Miro’s waist. Sprout and Thulium walked to her and touched her arm.

  “Should we?” asked Wang-Mu.

  Peter said, “I think they’ll be enough to sustain her. She’ll ask for us if she needs us.”

  One by one the color-sorted patches of birds disappeared.

  “I wonder if anyone has warned the colonies what’s coming,” said Peter.

  “She won’t send them to human-populated places,” said Wang-Mu. “We’ll go around and tell them all what happened, and inform them that they’re sharing their world, not with two other alien species, but with four or five or six.”