by Chris Walley
He was suddenly aware of Isabella’s eyes scrutinizing him. As if sensing that she now had his attention, she spoke in a firm but insistent voice. “The whole thing is ridiculous. We can do nothing.”
With an effort, Merral directed his thoughts toward Isabella. “It’s the way it is. A parental decision. We wait—what—another three months?”
“And then, will they say yes?”
“Possibly. My parents are very fond of you.”
“And mine of you. They would let me go with you as your wife to your jungle project if necessary. Even if we rarely got the chance to come back here.”
“I’m sure they would. But that, well, just wasn’t the point.”
“Yes, but it seems so, well, sad that our parents won’t approve of us being committed to each other.”
“Sad? I suppose it is. I hadn’t seen it that way. But I don’t see that we can do anything about it. Except wait.”
“And hope.”
“I suppose so,” he answered, wishing that the pending journey wasn’t overshadowing all his thinking.
“I was wondering . . . ,” Isabella said, a few minutes later.
“About what?”
“About an alternative.”
“How do you mean ‘an alternative’?”
“Hmm . . . ,” she replied, as if having difficulty trying to frame the words. In the silence that followed, she nestled closer to him. Merral found it undeniably pleasant with her soft, slight weight against him. In fact, he decided, pleasant was an understatement. There was an excitement about it, a sense of an anticipatory promise. Suddenly marriage—and all that it brought with it—seemed to be something that wasn’t merely attractive to him; it was something so compelling that he felt himself hunger for it.
Isabella reached out, put her soft hand over his, and squeezed gently. “You think it will work out for us?” she inquired in a low, urgent tone.
“I hope so.”
“You’d like it to work out?” There was an almost pleading intensity to her voice. He paused, aware that her eyes were wide and soft and tender.
“Yes . . . ,” he said. Funny, he wondered as the word slipped out, should I have said that? That yes? I should have qualified it with “if it’s right.” But now other thoughts flashed through his mind: this feels so pleasant, it seems so right, Isabella is my best friend, our parents will surely approve, and our being linked together is inevitable.
“You see,” Isabella said, looking at him, her mouth so red, soft, and close that he could sense her breath. “I was thinking that—on that basis—we could have a private understanding between us.”
“ ‘A private understanding between us?’ ” he echoed, a shadow of disquiet trying to intrude into his mind but making little progress against the whirling torment of emotions.
“Yes. An understanding—just between us—that we are, really, sort of committed to each other. Privately. Just waiting for the approval to come.”
Part of Merral’s mind wanted to tease out further what she meant by an understanding. After all, what was the point of waiting for their parents to make a decision if they were to preempt it? But another part of his mind was preoccupied by the delicious fact that she was very close to him. He could sense her warmth and feel her breathing. She stroked his hand.
“You agree?” she asked, her mouth suddenly welcoming, her white teeth shining in the fading light.
Suddenly it didn’t matter; the approval of their parents seemed something he could take for granted.
“Yes,” he answered, almost to his own surprise. “I suppose—”
But Isabella had interrupted him by kissing him on the lips. He yielded to her, and the world seemed to explode into something he had never imagined that flooded his brain with sensations for long, immeasurable seconds.
“Oh, Merral,” she whispered, her face pressed against his so close that he could hear her breathing and feel her heart beat. “I do love you. Thank you.”
Only the committed or the engaged kiss like that, he realized.
Suddenly an urgent note of alarm sounded over the surging flood of excitement and sensation that was flowing through his mind. In a moment’s flash of intuition, he realized that he had initiated something—he was now not quite sure what—without the thought and seeking of God’s will that was required.
He pulled himself back from her, the urgent words forming in his mind: Lord, forgive me. Give me wisdom. Protect me, us. From doing anything foolish, anything wrong.
“Is everything all right, Merral?” she asked sharply, sensing his consternation.
Suddenly there was a triple pulse from the diary adjunct on his watch.
“Sorry, Isabella,” he answered, somehow both relieved and frustrated by the interruption. “I’m expecting a message.”
He glanced at the screen and saw that the call was from Anya Lewitz. He tabbed an acknowledgement and stood up, shaking himself and brushing his hair smooth with his hand. Then, trying to focus his mind on what Anya might say, he went over to a nearby table, sat down rather unsteadily, and unclipped his diary. He angled his chair so that the background was a blank wall and flicked the screen on.
Anya peered at him over her disorganized desk. She looked weary, and there was little trace of her normal ebullience.
“Hi, Merral. I hope I wasn’t disturbing any family reunions.”
“No. Not at all,” he replied, somehow glad that it was a question he could answer honestly. “No family reunions. But I’ve been waiting for your results.”
“Well, they have come in. At last.” She answered slowly. “They are odd. Very. I’d like to talk to both you and Vero about them. Is he there? Or shall we get a three-way discussion going?”
Merral paused, suddenly feeling that he needed to be out of this place. He needed time to think about what was happening—what had already happened—between him and Isabella. “Can you hang on twenty minutes or so, Anya? I’m not with Vero. I think we both need to discuss these things.”
“Okay, I’m around.”
As soon as her image had faded on the screen, Merral called Vero to say that he would be over straightaway. As he clipped the diary back on his belt, he was conscious of Isabella at his side.
“A problem?” she said.
“Sorry, I need to go back down and talk with Vero. We are waiting for some analyses. It may affect our plans for tomorrow.”
“I see. I understand.” Her voice strongly suggested that while she might understand, she wasn’t happy about it.
“Thanks.”
“No, thank you,” she said, and suddenly kissed him softly and fleetingly on the lips.
As he walked back down quiet winding streets to his parents’ house, Merral struggled to try and impose some order on the turmoil of his feelings. Somehow, inadvertently, without seeking the Father’s will, he had made some sort of promise of an understanding of commitment to Isabella. A promise that he was not quite sure he understood the significance of, and one he was not sure that he should have been involved with. But surely it hadn’t been a real commitment, had it? He frowned. It was more, he decided, that it had been a sort of commitment to a commitment. He was unhappy with that as a phrase, but it expressed how things were. And put like that it didn’t seem quite so dreadful. But he realized that this was another thing that seemed odd. Was all of Farholme now running so oddly?
Back at the house Merral pushed the matter of Isabella out of his mind, telling himself that he needed to concentrate. He joined Vero at the table and called Anya with a diary linked to a wallscreen.
“Okay, you guys,” said Anya, rubbing her face in a gesture of tiredness. “It’s been a long, long day. Part of the delay has been because I wanted to check the result with Hamich Bantys and he is on the Mazarma Chain and ten hours behind us; I didn’t want to wake him.” She stared unhappily at the screen. “I take it, Sentinel Vero, this isn’t a test to see if we are alert?”
Vero just shook his head.
Anya sighed. “Sorry, just a desperate last resort. Okay, the DNA results are odd. We’ve checked the machinery and it seems to be running fine, but it doesn’t add up. First of all, it is an unknown species; it has never been recorded. We know its high-level taxonomy—I’ll come on to that—but it seems to be a novelty. Now, as you know, Merral, the Standard Operating Procedure with a novelty is straightforward.”
“Get the Genetic Innovation Team to look at it. We did it with a new thistle last year.”
“Exactly. We’d just say that a new species or subspecies has emerged and ask for a GI investigation. Catch the thing—or sample it—and decide whether it is going to be a blessing or a curse.” She paused. “But this is quite off the scale. We have the DNA analysis, but on the line where we should have species, subspecies, and any matching results from the database, we get merely that it’s mammalian definitely, anthropoid definitely, and hominoid probably.”
“Hominoid?” Vero asked. “So that includes apes and man?”
“Exactly.”
“Ah.”
“Ah indeed. Unlike thistles or parrots—incidentally, Merral, that new Great Blue variant is making a real mess down on Anazubar—hominoids do not tend to share their genes across species. And in Menaya, of course, there is only one living hominoid.”
“Us,” Vero said, his face wearing a disturbed look. “But is it known outside Farholme?”
She shook her head. “Not in the entire Assembly. I’ve even checked it against the few reliable genetic records of Neanderthals and the like. No match.”
“Most odd. So is it a new species?”
“It’s a theoretical possibility. Hamich agrees. But . . . well, that raises all sorts of problems. There seems to be a lot of human code there, but there are also biochemical and genetic peculiarities.” Anya bit her lip, evidently nonplussed. “Oh, I don’t know. There may be some decomposition . . . or some contamination. But then, the biomarkers seem to be negative on that.”
Vero threw a puzzled glance at Merral, then turned back to look at the screen. “Anya, would you like to speculate what has happened?”
On the screen Merral saw Anya start to open her mouth and then shut it abruptly. “No,” she said firmly. “Speculation in the absence of adequate data is not appropriate. And could be dangerous.” She stared at Vero.
“I understand you, Anya Lewitz,” responded Vero firmly. “I am as reluctant as you are to jump to conclusions.”
“Good,” she answered, and to Merral’s ears she sounded relieved at not having to deliver a final verdict. “Anyway, tomorrow I will make a Gate call to the best person in the field, Maya Knella on Anchala, and will transmit the data to her for a third opinion. I was wondering, Vero. . . .” She paused, as if uncertain about whether to proceed. “Yes, in view of historic sentinel concerns, if there might be someone else you think I should consult.”
“Ah,” Vero’s head rocked gently as if something had become plain. “A generous and thoughtful gesture.”
He paused. “No, I think I can wait. I hope to get more data in another forty-eight hours. I fully appreciate your desire that we do not jump to conclusions.”
Merral felt that there was an emphasis to his last words.
Anya nodded slightly in response. “Which brings me to the cut branch.” She sighed. “What a pair of specimens! Our invertebrate expert is sure that whatever made it was something with very large jaws or mandibles. He suggested some sort of crab and was worried about what we had evolving in our seas. He was nonplussed when I said it was six hundred kilometers inland and in a wood. ‘Well, it would have been twice the size of any crab known here,’ he said. As if that helps.”
She paused for her words to be understood, and then, with a strange look, went on. “So he is scratching his head too. But well, it may be worth mentioning that he estimates that whatever did it could put a lot of force into a shearing action. It could take an arm off, he thought, if it had the gape for it. It could certainly cut through most unarmored synthetics thinner than a centimeter. I thought you should know that.”
“I see,” Vero said. “I was rather hoping for one puzzle to be solved. I now find that I have two unsolved puzzles.”
There was silence and eventually Merral asked. “Is that all?”
“You guys want more?” There was a smile and Merral felt the old Anya was back.
Merral shook his head. “No. Many thanks. You work on your data, Anya. We’ll try and get you some more up country.”
“You are going after it?”
“Or them. A hunt. The first hunt for any totally unknown land organisms for—how many thousand years?”
“Twelve or so. I don’t know. But take care. Incidentally, Perena is based at the Near Station from tomorrow for some low-orbit Central Rift surveys—they want to check the volcanic activity. I’ll get her to watch out to the east. So smile when you look up.”
“Will do. Thanks for your help.”
“Thanks for a challenging problem. And keep safe, Tree Man. And you, Mr. Sentinel.”
Vero bowed slightly and the screen went blank.
Merral leaned back in his chair and stared at his friend. “Now, Vero Laertes Enand, do you know what is going on here?” He was aware of a strange sharpness in his voice.
Vero looked thoughtful, shifted his lean body in the seat, and rapped his fingertips together twice as if summoning something. “Merral, I have a bad feeling. But I am worried about deceiving myself. I wish I had someone else here with my background to talk it through. If you will excuse me, I want to keep my thoughts to myself. I think things are moving to a head, and we will know better in a day or two what is happening.”
“Well, if that’s the way you think is best, then I won’t argue.” Merral thought for a moment. “But I think you know what is going on better than me. There was something that passed between you and Anya.”
Vero shook his head. “No, I do not know. I suspect, but I cannot believe it. And as for Anya? Yes, I fear I know what she saw. But what it means and how it got here at Worlds’ End is quite beyond my understanding.”
He got up and paced the room. After some moments he turned round and stared at Merral. “But oh, I find it too hard to believe. We will see. Oh dear.”
He sat down, steepled his fingers, and stared at them, his smooth brown forehead now furrowed. There was a long silence which Merral did not feel like breaking.
Suddenly Vero got to his feet and stood upright with a stern face.
“Merral, my friend. I owe you an apology for not telling you more. I think—no, I fear—we are on the edge of something so awful that I cannot even begin to understand what it means. But I cannot be certain. The trip north will tell us whether I have found something that is beyond even the sentinels’ nightmares.” Then he paused and spoke in harsher tones as if to himself. “Yet it makes no sense! None at all. Oh, I must be wrong. I must be.”
Then he shrugged and looked back at Merral. “Anyway I must spend the next few hours making a report. I do not wish to be dramatic but I will file it in a closed format with Brenito, with instructions that if I do not report back from our expedition it is to be transmitted to Ancient Earth immediately.”
Merral went to the door, finding it difficult to know what to say. “As I have said before, I hope you are wrong, Vero.”
“I hope so too.”
Merral opened the door to go, and as he was about to slip through, Vero spoke again. “Try to get some sleep. You will not get as much as you like tomorrow.”
“How so?”
“I fear we must adopt an ancient policy that has not been needed for long years.”
“Which is?” Merral asked, with a sense of foreboding.
“We will have to take turns at keeping watch.”
Herrandown seemed deserted in the bright, early-morning sunlight as the rotorcraft pilot landed, and for a few moments, Merral found himself uncomfortably worrying whether some disaster had overtaken the Frontier Colony. Then he saw hi
s uncle’s bulky form emerge from his house and stand watching them. His posture was strangely rigid, as if uninvolved in what was going on.
The pilot swung her tight-clipped blonde head round into the passenger bay and smiled.
“Have a nice walk, fellas. I hope the weather holds. You’re keeping your diaries on?”
“Yes,” Merral answered, “but emergency contact status only.”
“Good enough. Just so the Met Team can warn you if the weather throws a wobbly. It’s been a bad year that way. Anyway, I’m off back. Hope you enjoy our countryside, Mr. Vero. It’s not Ancient Earth, but it does for us.”
Vero paused long enough in pulling on his backpack to bow slightly. “Thank you, Anitra. I’m sure it will do for me, too.”
Then the doors opened and they were on the ground. With a gently rising whistle the rotorcraft soared away southward.
Merral looked up to see Barrand standing before them, his expression one of puzzlement mingled with unease.
“Ho, nephew. Again!”
Merral found little warmth in his uncle’s tone and was struck by the stiff and cool nature of his embrace.
“And a guest. Another guest.” Wasn’t there a sharp edge to the voice here? Merral tried to suppress the idea.
“Uncle, can I introduce . . .”
“Verofaza Laertes Enand, sentinel.” Vero extended a hand in formal greeting.
Barrand took it with a sort of sideways glance at Merral. “Ho. A sentinel now! Am I in trouble, then?”
Merral found the tone strange, as if his uncle had started to make a joke but had changed his mind halfway. He took his uncle by the arm. “Uncle, we are just passing through. At very short notice. Vero wants to see the north so we are going for a long walk. It suits my purposes to examine the area north of here on foot.”
“I see.”
Merral sensed an almost-open hint of suspicion in the voice. “So, Uncle,” he said, trying to adopt a tone of levity that he did not feel, “we are going to be rude and just say ‘hello’ and then ‘farewell.’ ”
