by Chris Walley
Ten minutes later Vero was staring at a projected image that covered most of a wall. It was grainy but clear enough for the individual buildings of Herrandown to be seen. He moved around it, touching parts with a light pointer.
“Your uncle’s house is here? Yes. That’s the new building for animals in winter. The office. Good. As I’d pictured it.” Vero stared at the image and then continued. “And the woods here—this sort of crescent around the side of the hamlet—they run down to the river. The Lannar.”
Merral noted that his friend seemed to have rapidly grasped the area’s geography.
“Now,” Vero said, “show me where the sighting was. And where you found the hair sample.”
Merral pointed out the two localities and Vero stared at them.
“There is less woodland up here than I thought,” he commented. “Other than the plantations, it’s all confined to the rivers. Where it is quite dense, but otherwise the area is quite bare.”
“We are working on it. But in summer it gets very dry with the westerly wind out of the interior. So the best-established woods all follow the rivers.”
“Your trail runs north and, if it went along the river, that runs north–south too. And the dog was last seen going north too. North, north, and north.”
Vero magnified the image until the woods around Herrandown were a tiny patch of green in a vastness of pale browns and grays, and the sharp arc of the southern mountain ramparts of the Lannar Crater appeared at the top of the image.
Vero turned to Merral. “I mean, do you know what happens in the north?”
“I thought I did. It’s a pretty active area. The Lannar Crater averages a rating of eight on the Stellman Scale of geomorphologic activity for Made Worlds. That’s out of a high of ten. Isterrane is around two; Herrandown, four something.”
“It’s unstable?”
“Let’s say, stabilizing. The crater is only about a million or so years old. So it was still pretty fresh at the Seeding, with steep walls and a lot of impact fragments around. When the atmosphere switched to being oxygenating and water-rich in the Eighth Millennium there was an enormous lot of weathering and erosion.”
“As everywhere on Farholme.”
“Yes. But more so here. Pan out to show the whole crater.”
Vero nudged the controls so that the entire circle of the Lannar Crater slid into the center and the brown-smudged blue of the sea edged onto the right of the image.
“At first,” Merral said, “the crater just filled up with a great pile of debris and became a mass of lakes and swamps but, oh, about two thousand years ago, the crater walls began to be breached by river erosion. The Lannar is the southern system, but you can see the important Nannalt river system going out east into the Mazurbine Ocean.”
“The big brown smudge here?” said Vero, gesturing to a protrusion into the sea.
“Yes. The Nannalt Delta. Anyway, so it’s still adjusting to massive changes in its drainage. Some of the swamps are drying up; there’s a lot of river erosion. I’ve seen the images, Vero; some areas are almost unrecognizable within a year.”
Vero stared at the map again. “That helps me. But it has been visited?”
“Yes. The odd botanical, geologic, and zoological trips. I’ve flown over. But it’s wild country. We tend to leave it alone and let the satellites keep an eye on it for us. There are only thirty million people on Farholme and there’s a lot of areas with more promise.”
“So, you have no plans for it?”
“No. Not unless winters warm up a lot. Along the higher parts of the Northern Rim glaciers are growing. You can see them on the image. They’ve done remote seeding of trees and plants, but it’s an area we have left to itself, particularly while it settles down.”
“So, it isn’t visited regularly?”
“No. This isn’t like Ancient Earth, Vero. We have no shortage of wildernesses or work elsewhere. There is no archaeology, no undiscovered animals or plants.”
Vero gave him an odd smile. “That’s what you used to say.”
“True. But what are you thinking?”
Vero put the pointer down and began to pace backward and forward. “I am building a delicate chain of logic. Too delicate, but I must go on. Let us suppose that there is something here, something—what shall we say?—exotic. Yes, that’s the word. Then it must hide, breed somewhere. The best guess would be to the north. To the south, east, and west are bare open wastes. But the river valley offers cover along its length well into the crater. Do you follow my train of thought?”
“I do not dissent from it. I was thinking vaguely along those lines but was going to wait for Anya’s results.”
Vero sat down at the table and stared at the image. “Merral, my suggestion is this: Tomorrow, if Anya comes up with anything strange . . . indeed, anything unaccountable at all . . . then the trail you picked up must be pursued immediately.”
“It will be cold. Nearly a week old. But I see that you think it can only go one way.”
“Correct. Our creature, assuming we have one—or even two—is furtive and loves cover. It has been seen and knows it. I do not think it will venture out into the open. It will have taken the river. It probably came south down it and retreated back up it.” He adjusted the image so that it showed the entire length of the river from Herrandown to the Southern Rim Ranges.
“Well, true enough. Brigila’s Wastes is no home for such creatures,” Merral answered as he tried to assess Vero’s line of thinking. For all the unfamiliarity of the concepts, he found it made a sort of sense.
“I think, Vero, that I agree with you. If the results are odd then I will get permission and take off up the river for a few days.”
“Can it be done quietly?”
“Yes, I can travel light on foot. If necessary, I can get food dropped to me. I could probably get most of the way up to the Ranges without needing that. But it’s rough going, Vero. Remember our landscape is still in an unfinished state.”
He gestured to the image, wondering if the yellow and red gashes of landslides and mudflows were as visible to his friend as they were to him.
Suddenly Vero spoke quietly. “And if you do, I will come too.”
Merral laughed. “You? Please, Vero. There are no guest rooms there. It’s well, tough country. We would be walking, perhaps with a pack animal. You are . . .” He hesitated. “Well, you show no evidence of being able to travel in this country.”
Vero stood up. “I may surprise you. I have done my share of walking and camping on Ancient Earth. We have our jungles and mountains too.”
On impulse, Merral squeezed Vero’s upper arm. To his surprise, he felt muscle.
“Well. . . .” He paused. “I must say, Vero, that company would be acceptable. Strange. . . .”
Vero was looking at him with curiosity. “Why strange?”
“Because I have spent a lot of time in the last five years on my own in woods such as these. I have camped in solitude in all seasons. I have spent as much as a week without talking to a single person. I have never felt the slightest unease or fear. I watch out for bears and I pass by wolf packs. But that is caution, not fear. Yet since Nativity, on the last few trips, I have felt—” Merral hesitated, trying to find the words. “No, I can’t describe it, Vero. Only that I have been glad to be back home. Behind walls and doors.”
Vero looked at the image again and then turned it off. Then he spoke aloud in a quiet but penetrating voice. “Another tiny thread of evidence. A forester feels uneasy in forests. All tiny threads, but wound together they are forming a solid rope. But attached to what?”
“I have no idea.”
“Me neither.” Vero handed the diary back to Merral. He rubbed his forehead. “Sorry, I’m tired; it was a twelve-hour flight. I may get some sleep. And definitely a shower before this meal tonight. Brenito will put me up. I’d better be off now.”
Merral arranged for a lift for Vero, and then the two of them went to the doorway.
&nbs
p; Vero opened the door and then stopped, his long fingers tapping on the glass. “You know . . . ,” he said, then paused as if in doubt. “No, I ought to say it. There is one more thing. I am reluctant to mention it, but I am worried about the possibility of danger.”
“To who?”
“To your uncle and his family. You see, my dear Forester, you must become a sentinel with me, at least in thought. You and I must ask questions that no one has asked for thousands of years. Try this. What purpose had this creature—assuming there was indeed one—in watching Herrandown?”
Merral felt slightly cold, as if a draught of air had come through the door. “I’m sorry, I hadn’t thought that through. I had assumed just curiosity. As when we watch deer or birds. But you mean that it could be with evil intent? with malice?”
The words evil and malice had a strange, archaic flavor to them, as if they had just been dug up out of the ground.
Vero gave him no answer except a little shrug of his shoulders.
But was it necessarily so, Merral considered, that these terms were fit only for a museum? Maybe the sentinels had a point; perhaps evil was only sleeping. It was not a thought that he cared for. Merral hesitated. “Surely not, Vero? All our history says not. Frontier communities are at peril from floods, bush fires, earthquakes. And such like. But not creatures in bushes. Real or imagined. Over ten thousand years of history and sixteen hundred worlds say the same thing. These things do not happen. That is the rule.”
“Is it?” asked Vero softly, with a raised eyebrow.
“Yes. It is statistically improbable that such a rule will come to an end here in Herrandown and in our time. All our history says they are safe.”
“I know, Merral, I know. You see, I can use your argument too. There have been—I was working it out last night—nearly three-quarters of a million sentinels since we were founded. All were looking for what I look for. Logic and statistics say to me that I should not be the one to find what they looked for and failed.”
Vero paused and turned his brown eyes on Merral. “History does abide by rules, but those rules are set by the Everlasting One. And he can change them if he chooses. And he does not have to alert us first. The revivals of the Great Intervention happened quite unexpectedly, in Earth’s darkest hours. The Holy Spirit gave no warning that he was starting a work unparalleled since Pentecost.”
“I suppose not. . . .”
“Besides, consider logic itself. If there is a first time for everything, then logically the first time must happen to someone.”
“But to my uncle and his family?”
Vero looked at him thoughtfully. “Assuredly to someone’s uncle and family.”
9
For many reasons, the meal that evening was an event that firmly embedded itself in Merral’s mind. When he remembered it later—as he often did—it always seemed to him that it marked the end of something. When he tried to define exactly what it was that it ended, the answer was always “the Peace.” Anya’s flat was small and low-roofed, with numerous wall hangings in warm shades of brown and green which made it seem even smaller. Merral felt that the apartment had been hastily tidied and was reminded that Anya had always put neatness well down her list of priorities. Despite the fact that Vero and Merral were, to a greater or lesser extent, strangers who had become last-minute guests, there seemed no sense of awkwardness at their presence. Merral, at least, soon felt at home, and he sensed that Vero had relaxed. Yet somehow, despite being welcomed, Merral found he was more analytical than usual and, at intervals, he caught himself looking round the candlelit circular table at the others and seeing them, as it were, for the first time.
Perena Lewitz sat to Merral’s right. Although Merral had met her two years before, he never really got to know her, and he found it fascinating to compare her with her younger sister. In many respects he felt that she was a muted version of Anya. Physically the hair (which, as a concession to work in weightlessness, she wore short) was auburn rather than red, the eyes were a grayer shade of blue, and the face was less freckled and less immediately pretty.
The pattern persisted in the character, in that while Anya was the sort of person everyone noticed immediately, Perena’s quieter, more introspective personality meant that it took time for her existence to become apparent. She seemed content to be an observer rather than a participant. It struck Merral as typical that when Perena was quietly persuaded into admitting that she was close to being the Farholme Space Affairs champion in old-time chess, Anya should loudly state that the game bored her to distraction and that anyway, she always lost within minutes. Along with Vero, Perena seemed to be one who was most happy to be dragged along by the flow of the conversation rather than to seek to mold it.
Round to the right of her was Theodore, a big, barrel-chested, and deep-voiced man with short blond hair and a pale moustache. He was plainly in high spirits and was given to frequently nodding his head to signify agreement and shaking it vigorously to denote dissent. On one or two occasions he clapped Vero on the back to make a point, once catching him unawares so that he nearly choked on his drink. He and Anya could easily have dominated the entire conversation, and Merral felt that both of them were deliberately holding back to encourage the others.
Beyond Theodore was Vero. To Merral he seemed very much subdued, and for much of the time he sat slightly back from the table as if physically distancing himself from the conversation. Merral felt that he was finding it hard to resist the temptation to withdraw into himself and slip into the shadows. Whether the cause was tiredness, the effects of his flight, or his worries, Merral could not be sure. But he saw no evidence that Vero was not fully attentive to what was going on. Although his mobile fingers would often reach out and toy gently with some item of cutlery, his deep brown eyes seemed to track the conversation carefully around the table as if he was scared of missing something. I wonder whether this is his temperament or his sentinel training? And anyway, after so many generations, could the two be distinguished?
Between Vero and Merral sat Anya, who, despite her sister’s role as cook, was very much the hostess. Whenever the conversation flagged, she drove it on with an anecdote, joke, or provocative statement. Every so often she shook her long hair and the highlights in it glinted in the light of the candles. Merral found himself enjoying watching her face for the sheer animation and joy of life in it. Again, he felt that there was something he found very attractive about her. Once, the thought came to him suddenly that, under other circumstances, there might have been the possibility of something developing between them. The idea so disturbed him that he rejected it immediately and found himself in such a momentary state of consternation that he had to ask Theodore to repeat a question.
The fact that three of the five around the table were relatively quiet did not stop the conversation from moving rapidly and freely. There seemed to be no agenda, no concerns, no preoccupations.
Midway through the evening, Merral suddenly found himself thinking about how he appeared. I have reviewed my friends, but how do they see me? How do I appear to them? Strange, he decided. I’ve never worried about how I seem to others before. It was almost as though he longed for a mirror in which to see himself. Was he becoming self-conscious? These odd thoughts vaguely troubled him. He felt he was worse than some adolescent. He resolved that when the Herrandown problem was resolved he would take some leave. A week just walking the beaches, cliffs, and woods of Cape Menerelm might help clear out these funny ideas. His reverie was interrupted by Anya asking Vero if he found the food satisfactory.
Vero delicately wiped his mouth before answering and smiled. “The food is excellent, Anya, and a credit to Perena’s cooking skills, but I am, I fear, still recovering from having lost and gained several hundred meters of altitude in under a second this morning. Repeatedly.”
“All our fault, Vero,” rumbled Theodore. “The seas are too shallow. We still can’t get the current systems stable. Heat transport is unbalanced. That’s what giv
es you all that turbulence.”
Anya winked at Merral. “For the benefit of our new guests, Theodore is the expert on the thermal properties of the deeper sea basins. He wants to use a Mass Blaster to deepen them all another kilometer.”
Theodore gave a wide grin. “Only some. It’s not really feasible now. But it would have helped when they were knocking Farholme into shape.”
Merral nodded. “I’ve heard that. But it was the early days in making worlds then, Theo. They were still struggling with how to slow rotation speeds so we didn’t have to live around a sixteen-hour day. Contouring ocean depths was an imprecise science. We know better now.”
Perena looked across at Vero. “Well, I sympathize,” she said, her quieter voice somehow cutting across the table in a way that Theo’s louder tones did not. “I’ve seen those equatorial storms bubbling up and I’ve often given thanks that I’m in vacuum. But space is different. . . .”
She paused, rotating the stem of her glass between her delicate fingers. The company looked at her and she continued, but in a tone of voice that almost sounded as if she was talking to herself. “In fact there are times when you would like some turbulence. It’s the sense of void that is striking about space. Of being supported by nothing. Absolutely nothing.”
Anya gave her sister a bemused look. “Oh, for a Near-Space Captain you feel a lot. You are too much the poet.”
Perena shrugged and smiled as if at a private thought. Then in an even quieter voice she said, “But vacuum kills quicker than either air or water.”
There was a brief, stiff silence, and then Anya, in a voice that seemed a fraction too strident, asked, “So Vero, how do you like our world?”
Vero thought for a moment. “For myself, I think I have been surprised how familiar things are. But then, of course, that is the very goal of making worlds. We are—as we have found out—a species that is adapted for one world. To live elsewhere on a lasting basis we must re-create our homeworld as best we can. The standard for every Made World is Ancient Earth. The Assembly has shunned novelty; we cannot take too much strangeness.”
