by Chris Walley
It was odd, Merral thought, how safe had now acquired a meaning that it had never had before.
Vero gestured at the line of tracks. “Let’s spend a few minutes separately and then get back together and share our conclusions.”
Agreeing, Merral began looking at the prints and imaging them on his diary. The most striking tracks were a series of deep, widely spaced footprints with a rough similarity to a bare human foot. Wordlessly, Merral tried to match the pace. Even striding, his footprints were only two-thirds the distance apart of the older prints, and furthermore, penetrated to only just over half their depth.
To their side marched another set of prints with a much lighter impression and a very much shorter pace. In fact, they were so closely spaced that they reminded Merral of those made by a child. Curiously, the prints were bounded by sharp, angular sides and seemed not to have any clear imprint of toes.
Eventually Vero looked up from imaging them.
“Okay, Sentinel,” Merral said, “you tell me what is going on.”
“Going on? I wish I knew.” Vero shook his head. “What I can tell you is what you yourself know. There were two creatures. The larger one has feet not dissimilar to ours, walks upright, weighs as much as you and I together, and must be—I’m guessing—as high as if I sat on your shoulders.”
“And, I presume, the hair Isabella and I found comes from it.”
Vero nodded. “A fair guess. If the sand were Earth quality—sorry, but it’s true; it’s very coarse—we might have seen signs of the fur. The other type is half the size; no, more like a third. And much, much lighter. The foot structure is, however, odd. It’s bipedal too, but where are the toes? Or was it wearing shoes?”
“I don’t feel so. And presumably this is our beetle-like man.”
“Yes,” said Vero, with a frown. “Elana is vindicated. But it is odd.”
Then he looked around at the open river. “Merral, I know these are strange tracks and we could study them more, but I think we should get back off the stream. We are just too visible out here.”
Merral found that he needed little encouragement to get back under the shelter of the trees. Together they clambered back up onto the grassy bank, picked up their packs, and set off again, walking thoughtfully northward.
By late afternoon there was no doubt that both were tiring. Merral checked how far they had traveled and was far from disappointed. Indeed, he realized that he was secretly pleased with the way that Vero had borne up. His light build plainly concealed a considerable toughness.
After some discussion, Merral and Vero singled out a tree-capped hill that rose sharply above a river bend ahead of them as a suitable place to overnight. Vero examined it with the fieldscope from a distance.
“It seems fine. The banks are too steep to climb up from the river. That will make keeping watch easier.”
Whether as a result of his words, his tone of voice, or both, Merral felt a shiver of disquiet. It was, he found himself thinking, both a novel and an unwelcome feeling.
Slowly and carefully, they made their way round up to the summit of the hill where, under the silver-barked birch trees, they found an almost-flat surface covered by heather and bilberry. There they took their backpacks off and, following Vero’s suggestion, made a survey of the immediate area. Their examination showed that, apart from an apparently active ground squirrel set nearby, there seemed to be no life larger than a bird or rabbit in the area. The hill allowed a good view in all directions, and taking the fieldscope, they went and looked northward from the edge of the hill.
The air was clear and they could see as far as the southern Rim Ranges. With the low-angle sunlight picking out features with dark shadows, the nature of the landscape ahead was clear. For some time Merral and Vero gazed at the scene, looking at parts in detail with the scope and comparing what they saw with the map they had with them.
Not far north of the hill the landscape changed. The rolling terrain they had passed through became a broad, open plain of coarse grassland broken by dispersed patches of fresh green woodland and drabber marshlands. Through it the Lannar River flowed, no longer in a single meandering unit, but rather as an array of separate channels weaving their way in and out of each other in a complex silver braid, producing a mosaic of small, pine-covered islands. Behind this, the ground rose sharply up to the Daggart Plateau, a feature marked by a broad, steep escarpment in which lines of black cliffs could be seen. Carson’s Sill, thought Merral as, with the fieldscope on maximum power, he could make out the white thread of the waterfall down it. And behind the escarpment and beyond the Daggart Plateau, the Rim Ranges, with high, incised, and still-snowcapped peaks, marched across the horizon, firmly marking the edge of the Lannar Crater proper.
As Merral looked at the scene, he found himself feeling very mixed emotions. One part of him was simply satisfied at the distance they had traveled today. Another part of him—he wondered whether he could call it the “old Merral”—rejoiced in the sheer beauty and grandeur of the view. And yet he realized there was another emotion: one that tainted the view and marred his enjoyment. He tried to isolate the unfamiliar feeling, seeking to name it and wondering if he had the vocabulary for the task. It was, he finally decided, foreboding: a feeling of unease, bordering on fear, about what lay ahead.
“See anything?” Vero asked softly.
“Anything unfamiliar? No. It all looks normal to me.”
“But does it feel normal?”
“No, Vero, no,” answered Merral with a shake of his head, but he did not elaborate on his answer.
Back in the heart of the cluster of birch trees, they sat down and stretched out on the heather. Vero rubbed and stretched his back, as if trying to soothe pained muscles.
“I’m out of practice, Merral. I hope I didn’t hold you back?”
“Not at all. You did well for a—”
There was an inquiring smile. “For a what?”
“For a man from Ancient Earth.” But as he said it, Merral realized it was an odd thing to say and an odd thing to think in the first place.
Vero seemed to sense his consternation and the smile slid off his face. “Ah,” he said, “you seem surprised at the thought.”
“Yes, I am. The idea just came to me that the inhabitants of Ancient Earth were, in their way, old and decrepit. Tired. That sort of thing. Sorry.”
Vero stiffened and looked at him searchingly, concern written across his face. “Merral, can I ask you to think carefully? Have you ever had that thought before? Or anything like it?”
Merral paused. “No. Never. I have awe and honor for Earth’s history. I suppose we look on it as the infant church looked on Jerusalem. A mother to whom we owe a debt we cannot repay, even if we now have a life of our own.”
“Good. But a supplementary, if I’m allowed one. Was there another thought with it? However distant, however unpleasant?”
“An associated idea? You mean if I had continued the train of thought?” He hesitated. “Well, I suppose, it might have gone that Ancient Earth is made up of tired old men and women, and that the new worlds are now the future. It is offensive, I’m afraid.”
There was a raised eyebrow. “Have you ever heard such statements before? Ever read of them?”
“No, not that I can remember. They are—embarrassingly enough—mine alone.”
“I wish they were. Something very like them was said a long time ago.”
“By who?”
“General William Jannafy. In a talk to his council. Around 2102. It was a famous quote: ‘The tired, timid, old men of a decrepit Earth stand in pathetic contrast to the brave vigor of our new worlds.’ ”
“The Jannafy? Of the Rebellion?”
“The same. Just before declaring his independence from the new Assembly.”
“Then it must be coincidence. Or I’ve picked it up from a forgotten history lesson.”
Vero was staring at him. “Perhaps. But Barrand also effectively quoted Jannafy. That the Techno
logy Protocols were made by man, not God, and that they were not Scripture. Jannafy said something very much the same as part of the debate on the first versions.”
“I remember.” And, Merral thought, I remember too your alarm when I mentioned it. “But, all that was long, long ago.”
“I know,” replied Vero with a weak smile. “Everyone says that. It’s the standard answer.”
Then he fell silent and would say no more on the subject.
Eventually, as the sun touched the horizon, Vero spoke out. “I think we must make our preparations for the night. I think it would be better if we do not use any lights.”
I suppose, Merral thought, it’s part of being a sentinel to find danger anywhere. He was deciding that it could get wearisome, then he remembered his own moments of unease earlier and thought of the footprints. No, it might be better not to be taken by surprise by an ape-creature, even if it was benign.
“As you wish.”
They rapidly erected the ultra-light two-person tent and quickly made a stew from the reconstituted supplies.
As they ate, Vero poked at the food with a fork. “I suppose I had hoped that your camping food might taste better than ours. I think I shall soon get bored of this.”
“There is little option. We could catch and eat ground squirrel if you wanted.”
Even in the gloom, Merral could make out the grimace.
“As a forester do you have to do that? Killing animals?”
“It’s part of our training,” Merral said. “I’ve had to do it once or twice out of necessity, and we sometimes have to cull weak or sick animals. Or when we get a species that has acquired bad habits. We had some wild boar a few decades ago, they tell me: gentle creatures, ideal for the Made Worlds. Then suddenly they evolved a taste for young trees. It couldn’t be allowed, so there was a Menaya-wide boar hunt. They still talk about it. But yes, I’ve eaten deer and so on. I don’t care for killing, of course, and my experience of real meat leads me to believe that our plant protein versions taste just as good.”
“Well, they are supposed to be indistinguishable at the molecular level. So you could kill?”
“It depends what.” Merral hesitated, realizing that they were no longer talking about food. “Why, what are you thinking?”
“You are on guard tonight while I sleep. I suggest you take both a bush-clearing knife and your tranquilizer gun.”
“Well . . . okay, if it helps you sleep better.”
Merral could see the glint of white teeth as Vero smiled. “You are uncertain, aren’t you, my friend? One part of you is afraid but another part refuses to let you be so.” His voice was sympathetic.
“Yes, I suppose that is so. I partly think you are being ridiculously overdramatic and then—”
“You think of the footprints and what has happened to the Antalfers. And you think of what Jorgio said which makes no sense.”
“Pretty much so.”
“And I am the same.”
Above their heads, a bat fluttered through the darkness, and Merral looked up to see the first stars.
“Vero, tell me something. I gather that what is happening does not conform with your models. So how did you expect things to happen?”
“Expect is too strong a word. The broadly preferred model runs something like this: You may perceive the Assembly as being in some sort of stasis with a fixed but slowly expanding state as the worlds are made. In reality, it is far more complex. There are rhythms, pulses, cycles, waves. We have a whole branch of sentinels that just looks at them. For instance, the seeding projects occur in pulses—as every child knows—and that has a major impact. But there are slow, subtle changes in such things as demand for migration and allocation of resources. There are also ill-identified things that we can only describe as being the ‘mood’ of the Assembly. Sometimes, it breaks the surface.”
“Like the innovative three hundred years from 8120?”
“Yes, and the much less adventurous thousand years before it. I mean, how many Eighth Millennium painters or musicians can you name? Worthy men and women, but no geniuses.”
“So, there are these cycles.”
“Yes, cycles and pulses, and we have tried to chart them. And these great cycles work continuously within the Assembly all the time. With their peaks and troughs. Now suppose that, just once”—Merral was conscious of Vero gesturing in the darkness with his arms—“the crests were to coincide. Like the waves of the sea—the waveforms might peak together and you might get a catastrophic wave.”
“So that the Assembly might be vulnerable to an internal disruption. Through a coincidence of natural events?”
Vero sighed slightly. “We could argue about ‘natural events’ and ‘coincidence’ forever. But the point is that we have been thinking about an internal phenomenon, something felt widely and traceable back to a combination of large-scale ordinary processes. This here, this Farholme phenomenon, is the exact opposite. It is localized—really just one family—and appears to be externally caused by something that—whatever it is—is not ordinary.”
He paused, evidently choosing his words with care. “This is part of the problem for me. If this is a genuine event, it suggests we have been badly wrong. And if we have been wrong here, where else are we wrong?”
Suddenly, Merral remembered that they had to contact Anya, and a few minutes later her blue eyes were peering at them out of the diary screen. “Hi, guys. Well, there’s hardly much point being on video mode as I can barely see your faces.”
“Sorry, Anya,” Merral answered. “But we can see you fine. Anyway it’s a quick call. Do you have anything for us?”
She seemed to swallow. “Well, yes, I have. You fellows may not like this. But you may be on a wild-goose chase. I was going to call you, but I thought you might still be swinging through the trees. You see, I called Maya Knella on a truly lousy Gate line. The signal to Anchala must have gone round the Assembly several times, and it’s only a hundred or so light-years away. Look, she is dismissive. She thinks we have cellular decay as well as faulty hardware.”
Vero spoke before Merral could say anything. “Sorry, Anya. Faulty hardware?”
Anya’s face acquired an uneasy expression. “Yes, Vero. She says there is the possibility that the analyzer was miscalibrated before being sent out to Farholme. She has heard of something similar.”
“Anya, I can’t believe she said that!” Merral snapped, unable to control himself. “That the Assembly could allow such a thing to happen!” He turned to Vero, his face just visible in the reflected glow from the diary screen. “Can you credit that?”
Vero answered in a flat tone, as if he was restraining himself. “It is indeed an odd suggestion and I agree it is very worrying. Anya, this Maya Knella is good? You know her?”
“Well, we’ve never met in the flesh, Vero. I’ve been at screen symposia she has spoken at. She is good—the best. I was . . . well, shocked myself.”
Vero was speaking again, and Merral felt that he was pushing gently. “So she doesn’t think there is anything wrong here? No strange, exotic, alien forms?”
Anya, after opening and closing her mouth as if struggling for words, spoke slowly. “She was—I have to say—incredibly negative about it. She implied that any other option was preferable.”
“I see,” answered Vero. “Was she negative about your work, in any way?”
Anya looked at the screen thoughtfully. “She did not go out of her way to affirm my competence. It was all rather odd. . . .”
Feeling irritated at this turn of events, Merral nudged his friend. “Show her the images, Vero,” he said quietly.
“Not yet,” Vero whispered under his breath.
“Hey, what images? What have you guys seen?”
Vero gestured out of the range of the camera for Merral to be silent. “Oh, just some tracks, Anya. We’ll show them to you sometime. I need to think about them properly. Run some enhancement, computer comparison, and so on. But, I suppose, we must fol
low our expert geneticist’s advice. Still, it’s a nice stroll. Look, we’d better shut down for the night.”
Anya peered at them. “Okay. Well, I’ll check out the equipment here. But it’s odd.”
“Yes, it is odd. And Anya . . .”
“Yes, Vero?”
“Er . . . don’t spread what Maya’s saying around, will you? If it’s true, it’s very bad news. If it’s not then, well—she’s made a fool of herself.”
There was a hesitant pause. “No, I’ll keep it private.”
The light of the screen vanished, and Merral and Vero were left alone in the dark.
Vero spoke first. “To spare you questions, no, I don’t know what is going on. But I do not believe this Maya Knella. She is covering something up. She must be. Perhaps there the solution lies. Perhaps there is a problem on Anchala, too. Perhaps the Assembly has let something loose. I must find out—” He stopped suddenly. “Merral—my most tolerant friend—I am babbling. Would you mind sleeping first? I couldn’t sleep and I need to think over all that I have seen and heard today. It’s now nearly eight, and first light will be—if I remember—at six. I’ll take watch until one and wake you.”
Merral agreed, laid out his things where he could find them in the dark, slipped inside the thermal sleeping bag in the tent, and adjusted its insulation settings.
The last thing he was aware of before sleep took him was a glimpse of Vero, hunched under the tent fly sheet and, apparently deep in thought, silhouetted against the evening sky and staring resolutely northward.
12
Merral felt that no sooner had he fallen asleep than his shoulder was being shaken gently and Vero was telling him that it was one o’clock and time for his watch. “Glory! I must have been tired,” he muttered, realizing that the darkness was complete. “Anything to report?” “Puzzled badgers, or what passes for them here. I watched them through the fieldscope on infrared. A fox went down along the riverbank; some bats and an owl circled overhead a bit.”
