by Chris Walley
Merral, trying to keep his face averted from the wind as much as he could, found little compensation in his route. Here only the thinnest skins of frozen soil and turf covered hard black volcanic rock. There were patches of powdery snow and, every so often, dangerous stretches of colorless ice over which dismounting was necessary. The only vegetation was clumps of rough tussocky grass with occasional straggly bushes of hazel and willow. Given the scarcity of the vegetation and the harsh weather, Merral found no surprise in the fact that he saw little life in the wastes. Every so often he put to flight a party of migrating tundra hares, pale in their winter coats, and once he came across a herd of grazing reindeer, which stared at him stupidly before turning away and shuffling off to resume their foraging. Once a pair of great Gyrfalcons circled above him, ghostly below the clouds, then drifted away southward. But that was all he saw.
Soon he found that he was in a featureless landscape where the gray of the ground faded into the softer grayness of the sky to give an elusive and unchanging horizon. Merral decided that here he could not afford to be lost and set his diary to check the route: a thing he rarely did. So his progress was marked by periodic noises from the diary, a deep long beep for a deviation to the left, a short high one for one to the right, and a bell-like chime for a correct course. Like all Forestry horses Graceful understood the signals enough to steer herself. So together, horse and man progressed slowly over Brigila’s Wastes, the silence broken only by the whistles of the wind, the clip-clop of Graceful’s hooves, and the occasional interruption from the diary.
For the first half hour or so, Merral was preoccupied by what had happened at Herrandown. He was unsatisfied by what both his uncle and aunt had said this morning. Something odd, alarming, and even wrong had happened yesterday. But what? No hypothesis he could invent would make any sense. In the end, Merral reluctantly decided that Zennia and Barrand must be right: It was some sort of psychological oddity that they had mishandled between them so that it had become completely distorted. After all, human beings were complex. On that basis, Merral pushed the affair out of his mind.
Yet as he rode on, he felt a strange feeling of disquiet that seemed to have nothing to do with the weather. More than once, he found himself looking around or even over his shoulder, as if some invisible shadow had fallen upon him. But, other than the gently undulating bleak surface under him and the gray billowy sky above, there was nothing to see.
Eventually, Merral forced himself to concentrate on studying the ground and trying to get a feel for these barren lands. He found himself pondering over the wastes, aware of how widespread this sort of landscape was in Menaya. Here, I can believe this is a half-finished world, with this ripped veneer of soil and scrub over lava and rock outwash supporting, at best, a handful of species. But that thought came to him as more of a challenge than a criticism. God willing, within a few years there would be trees over much of this area, and with them, a much greater diversity of plants and animals. The issue was how to do it.
As the brown reeds of the marsh’s edge came into sight, Merral checked his location from the diary and ordered the active navigation off. He would swing southward down the flanks of the marshes up to the edge of the Great Northern Forest. Not only was there no danger of losing his way here, but the presence of patches of marsh and swamp made such an automated navigation worse than useless.
Merral picked his way along the slope just above where the reed beds started, watching carefully for patches of thin ice. As he rode down along the marsh’s edge his journey became easier. The wind blew now at his side rather than into his face, and the sky lightened overhead so that there was enough sunlight to cast a faint shadow. Here there was life: birdsong from within the reed beds, the whistling of the dwarf swans on the lake, and the piercing cries of the gulls. A reed heron scuttled away in front of him. In the distance he saw a herd of gray deer, a pair of otters slithered away into an ice-free patch of water at the sound of Graceful’s hooves, and a Raymont’s musk ox lurched across his path.
As he drew near the edge of the forest, he crossed the distinctive tracks of a half-ton hexapod surveyor. They were fresh and going south with a purpose rare in surveying machines, and Merral wondered if it had been programmed to return to base before Nativity so that the samples could be unloaded before the break. Wilamall’s Farm would probably be busy today.
An hour or so later Merral stopped and took another bearing. He wanted to be certain of striking the forest edge south of the limits of the rough lava flows. At the ragged edge of the forest, he reined Graceful in and took a last look over the Long Marshes, a great sea of tan reeds swaying gently in the wind as far as the eye could see, broken only by snaking waterways clogged with brittle ice. He would, he decided, come by again in summer and camp and linger.
Today, though, there was something about the wastes that he found peculiarly unwelcoming, and as he entered under the shadows of the trees, Merral found himself rejoicing even more than usual. He had always loved woods, even in winter when the rowans and gray alders were bare and only the pines were green, and even these impoverished and marginal forests with their gale-tumbled trunks. So he didn’t mind that, with the branches low to the ground and the land rough, his journey was a slow one. It took well over an hour’s skillful riding to reach the support road, as he skirted around areas of impenetrable scrub and avoided the deeper streams while trying not to depart from his compass bearing. Even so, he was wondering about taking a location check when suddenly he was out of the trees, and the track—a rift of dead, yellow bleached grass between the high trees—lay before him. The road had been made two centuries or so earlier to ease the passage of the ground transporters bringing in the first trees for this part of the forest. Since then, it had been cleared periodically to maintain a line of access into the forest.
Merral dismounted, letting Graceful graze on the remains of the grass. Then, listening to the wind whistling through the treetops, he looked at the track for signs of recent passage of men or machines but found nothing. Any woodland sampling and observer machines were too delicate on their feet to leave traces on hard ground, and if any humans had come through here lately, they had used some zero-impact machine such as a gravity-modifying sled, a hoverer, or, like him, a horse. He was not surprised; he was too far away from any homes for stray visitors and he knew that the current schedule of the Forestry Development Team did not include any visits in this area. No, today the woods were his and he was glad of it. He loved the solitude and was always glad of the opportunity to sing his heart out to heaven’s King.
He remounted and set off southward, starting to sing as he went. Today, though, for some strange reason, he found a lack of spontaneity in his singing, and it was only by dint of discipline and effort that he kept himself going. But for the next three hours, as he rode slowly along the old track as it wound its way down and round a succession of valley flanks and ridges, Merral sang, working his way twice through the entire Nativity section of the Assembly songbook. It was not, he knew, the greatest singing, and there was little in it of the quality that Barrand’s re-created voices would have, but it was genuine and, with a deep gratitude, he offered it up to the One who was the Light above lights.
But even in the singing Merral was keeping a careful eye on the forest. In general he was pleased with what he saw, finding almost all the trees, apart from those felled or beheaded by ice storms or wind gusts, in a satisfactory state. No, he concluded, after its two centuries of history this wood would pass—at least at first glance—the highest test of a Made World woodland and be taken as an original forest of Ancient Earth, albeit one with some unfamiliar species. A closer inspection would, of course, show a much more limited diversity of plants and animals, and some oddities as species adapted rapidly into the new and unoccupied environmental niches. Everything took time, and you couldn’t just throw a world together and hope it would work. Everything had to be checked, its every possible interaction with everything else modeled and
predicted. And even then things went wrong; like the fungal species that digested dead wood on one hundred and sixty worlds but which, on the hundred and sixty-first, suddenly became one that digested living pine trees. But as they said, “every world sown was new lessons reaped.” What had taken a thousand years on the first Made Worlds now took under half that. But there was always room for improvement and no world was ever truly Earth.
As he rode south, Merral noticed, with faint surprise, that his spirits seemed to lift. He put it down to the gentle lifting of the temperature and to getting away from the bleak emptiness of Brigila’s Wastes. Yet it was funny, he reflected, that he had never felt such a change in mood before. But he soon shrugged off his puzzlement; introspection was not something that he, or any of his world, ever indulged in for long. He stopped once for food in a clearing overlooking a stream, setting Graceful free to find what she could to eat among the blanched and withered grasses. Then, mindful of the short winter days, he set off again. Yet as he did so, a strange, fleeting thought came to him that he had an anxiousness to be home he had never had before. It was still another oddity for him to consider.
By four in the afternoon he had approached Wilamall’s Farm and other tracks joined his. At one junction, Merral waited while a woodland surveyor, six smaller undergrowth analyzers docked onto its back, ambled past on its eight long, metallic legs. As it passed him the machine stopped and turned its slender head toward him. The two large glassy eyes looked at him without expression. Merral raised his right hand vertically to reassure the surveyor that he needed no assistance. The machine raised a front paw in dumb mechanical acknowledgement and continued on its way south.
The sun was hanging low on the western hills as Merral came out of the forest and saw below him the fences, roofs, and domes of Wilamall’s Farm. Down by the labs a line of gray samplers full of plant fragments for testing waited with perfect patience to be unloaded, and over by the transport offices, other machines were being garaged. As he watched, a pale long-winged survey drone descended gently through the air overhead, extruded legs, and with a smooth glide, came to rest on the small landing strip.
Merral was met at the gate by Teracy, the assistant manager, who, after warmest greetings and high praise for a recent project he’d undertaken, told Merral that he had a place booked on a freighter going south in half an hour. Wasting no time, Merral took Graceful over to the stables.
A large, stooped figure in a dark gray jacket walked over awkwardly from the small office by the stables. His left foot dragged behind him.
“If you please, Mister Merral!” the man sang out loudly in a voice as rough as broken wood.
“Jorgio!” Merral replied, delighted at seeing the broad, tanned, and twisted face of his old friend, who served as gardener and stable hand at Wilamall’s Farm. “Greetings! It’s good to see you.”
“Greetings indeed.” Then, careful to avoid crushing a bloodred cyclamen sticking out of his breast pocket, he squeezed Merral in a forceful embrace. Returning the embrace, Merral caught the faint odor of animals, stable, and gardens, and suddenly his earliest memories of meeting Jorgio came back to him. He had been five or six, and he had been taken one cold spring day to see the new lambs near the edge of the cottages where Jorgio lived. At first, he had found the man’s large and deformed figure intimidating. Yet, within minutes, Jorgio had put him at ease and they had been friends ever since. Merral had no idea exactly how old Jorgio was; he assumed he was in his sixties but found it hard to tell.
They released each other, and Jorgio, his amber-brown eyes gleaming softly, gave Merral a thick-lipped and skewed grin and then turned his large, bald head toward Graceful. He whistled to her in a strangely out-of-tune way. As she trotted over to Jorgio, it came to Merral again that everything about Jorgio, from his legs to his misshapen shoulders, was asymmetrical. Occasionally he felt his logic was unusual as well; Jorgio seemed to have an odd perspective, almost as if the childhood accident that had damaged his body had also curved his way of thinking.
“Graceful, let’s have a look at you,” Jorgio said with a surprising softness of tone. “There’s long miles you have covered.”
He bent down and ran his rough, veined hands over the mare’s flanks. Watching him as he made soft whispering noises, Merral knew that it was not just affection that he had for this man; it was also respect. He had long felt that, as if in some form of compensation for his distorted body, the Most High had given Jorgio special gifts. He was an excellent gardener, capable of making things flower in the poorest of soils, and had a deep affinity with animals. His curved logic wasn’t wrong; it was just different.
“It’s a real blessing to see you, Mister Merral,” Jorgio said, glancing up at him. “It really is.”
“And for me to see you.”
It is interesting, Merral thought, as Jorgio looked over the mare, how we deal with people like Jorgio, these accidents of life. We always seem to find them something in which they can fulfill themselves, whether it is tending gardens, painting our houses, or minding our horses. He and I do a job, get the same food and housing, have the same stipend to give away or use, and only the Judge of all the Worlds knows which—if either—of us is the more valuable. Jorgio looked up, his mouth skewed open in a smile. “It is north you’ve been, eh?”
“Indeed so. As far as there are farms, Jorgio.”
“Thought so.”
In an uneven singsong Jorgio whispered words to the horse. Then he gave Merral a clumsy wink. “Let me stable Graceful here and you and I’ll take some tea together.”
“Ah, I’m sorry, old friend. I’m afraid I shall have to skip the tea. I’ve been put on the next freighter out. Twenty minutes. But I’ll help you stable her.”
“Tut, tut! No tea with me? If you please, you youngsters are too busy by far. Here, lass, give me a hoof. I’ll talk to your horse instead.” He stroked a flank. “Good girl, good girl.”
Suddenly, as if caught by a thought, Jorgio lifted his face up briefly, his brown eyes showing puzzlement. “Do you know, Mister Merral, as I’ve been praying for you lately?”
“You have?” Merral replied, struck by the intensity in his friend’s face. “Well, I value that. I truly do.”
Jorgio was now peering at the hoof. “Tut, tut. Ice and sharp rock are nasty things for a hoof. Even with dura-polymer coatings. If they’re all like this I’ll get new coatings put on ’em. But after Nativity.”
He looked up again at Merral, the angle making his face seem even more distorted. “Funny, it was. I haven’t been sleeping well lately. Restless. For two weeks now. The other night, last night, I think. Anyway, I’m lying awake in my bed. You’ve seen my room, haven’t you? Nice it is. Cozy; you can see it now. Oh no, you’re off away, aren’t you? Anyway, middle of the night the King just says to me, ‘Jorgio Aneld Serter.’ Full name like. So I sits up in bed and says, ‘Your Majesty, present and correct!’ Well, there’s not a lot else to say, is there?”
Sometimes Merral found it hard to know whether Jorgio was trying to make a joke, but this didn’t sound like one. “I suppose so,” he said, patting his friend on the back. “Not much else indeed. But go on.”
Jorgio let the hoof drop to the ground and stood up, screwing his face up as he struggled to remember something.
“So, well, the King, he says, ‘That Merral Stefan D’Avanos, he’s in a spot of bother right now. I think you ought to pray for him.’
“ ‘Well, right you are, Your Majesty,’ I says, and then he’s gone. So I starts asking the Most High to look after you. Half an hour I reckon I prayed. Hard work it was, like wrestling with a bear. Not that I’ve done that, but you takes my meaning. I was in a regular sweat when I finished. I don’t know what the bother was.” He scratched a crumpled ear. “Never had that happen. You know what it was about?”
“Last night? I was safely asleep indoors last night at the Antalfers. But wait. . . .” Something like ice seemed to run up his spine. “When was this? Last night?” Merra
l stared into Jorgio’s eyes.
“Aye, last night. . . .”
“You’re sure?”
The old man wrinkled his weathered face and bit his bottom lip in puzzlement. Then he grunted. “Tut. No! I’m sorry. It wasn’t. It was the night before.”
Merral stepped back, feeling as if a chill hand had touched him. “No, it wasn’t a bear,” he said, suddenly both chastened and grateful. “But it was something. I don’t know what it was. And I’m very glad you prayed. Very glad.”
For a moment, Jorgio stared at him, as if waiting for an explanation. Merral found himself oddly disinclined to say anything about his dream and suggested instead that they stable Graceful.
Ten minutes later, having said farewell to Jorgio, Merral was still oscillating between puzzlement and thankfulness as he made his way down to the loading bay. There, floodlit beneath the weather shelter, he could see the brick red, faceted bulk of the six-wheeled Light Groundfreighter with the code F-28 stamped on its side by the Lamb and Stars emblem.
He was striding toward it when his attention was caught by a slender female figure with long black hair tied back walking ahead of him with a strangely familiar pace.
“Ingrida Hallet!” Merral called out.
The woman spun round smoothly and gave a little cry of recognition. “Why! Merral D’Avanos!”
They hugged each other affectionately. Ingrida had been a year above Merral at college, but they had been close friends. Separating himself from her embrace, Merral stepped back and they looked at each other.
