Shadow's End

by Sheri S. Tepper

  I, Saluez, know this, because I know how he thought. My father often spoke to me of his troubles, of his confusions. He did not get on well with Zinisi, his wife (who was not my mother). Always he resolved to speak to his father, to songfather about it. Always he delayed. Sometimes he spoke of his ambition to become a songfather himself, a das-dzit, a patterner, a seer-of-both-sides. I asked him once why, if seeing both sides was important, only men could be songfathers? Did not women have a side? He said he would ask songfather, but he never did.

  There were two ladders leading down to the first spring, two ladders more to the first pool, where he'd been scraping algae that morning. Six more ladders led to the second spring and pool, the big one that was still under construction, and then two to the bottom, where the orchards and gardens and grain fields were. From there it was an easy walk down the canyon to the feeding stones where the beautiful people would come to feed at dusk. Lovely on wings, the Kachis, he hummed beneath his breath. Lovely on wings, both powerful and wise.

  "See them come on their wings of light," he sang softly. "See them emerge from the shadows of the trees. Beautiful on wings … "

  Though sometimes he wondered if he really wanted … No. That had been decided long ago.

  He muttered these same phrases to me, sometimes. Whispering as though he didn't intend me to hear. Or, perhaps, intended that I should hear without being certain he intended it. A hint, rather than a word. Which is the same way certain other information was transmitted. No one had really said it.

  When he came to the level of the spring, he slowed his climb, taking extra care. There the water falls into the first pool from such a height that it is often blown onto the ladder rungs and into the carved climbing holes, making the footing treacherous. Wetness spread beside him, dripping from the higher to the lower rocks, in some places running in tiny moss-edged diagonals across the almost vertical surfaces of the stones. This was rain that had fallen far from here, high up, soaking into the flesh of the mesa to emerge at last like blood from a wound.

  Arriving at the first pool, he stopped to ease the straps over his shoulders as he listened to the spring dripping musically into the shallow puddle at the lip. From the shallow it runs back into the cavern where he'd been working. There the water glints, sending wavering glimmers of reflected light up the smooth vertical shaft that emerges before the hive. This is the household pool from which the people of Cochim-Mahn take water for cooking and hivekeeping. Several large round pots hung before him, tipped on their sides in their rope cradles, ready to be lowered into the water. As he rested, a pot dropped downward, filled, leveled, and then jerked upward, dripping and sloshing as it went. He could hear women singing, Yeeah-mai, Eeah-mai, as they turned the spool to wind the rope. Our water, our blood; our water, our blood.

  Beneath the sound of their voices chortled the sound of the second spring, the larger one, so powerful at this time of year that it actually spurts from the side of the mountain, arching out between two chunks of green stone to fall chuckling into the big pool the people of Cochim-Mahn have been building for a long, long time. Generations of our people have carved out the mountain behind the water-lip, caulking the cracks to make a place for the water to rest away from the sucking wind and the thirsty sun. Huge stone pillars have been left to hold the mountain up, and among these monstrous trunks the water lies smooth as a mirror, stretching far back into the darkness, deep in some places as four or five tall men.

  Between first pool and second, the ladders are shorter and quite dry. My father made quick work of them. The main water gate stands beside the second pool, where well-caulked wooden pipes lead downward to the tanks below. There, also, is the stone house of the seasonally elected watermaster, one who will assure fair distribution of crop water. This early in the year the house was empty, no water was being used except the bucketsful that had been carried to the fruit trees. From far back in the darkness, my father could hear the tap of hammers. There, behind a cofferdam, several of our kinsmen were cutting more stone away, making the storage pond even larger.

  The last ladders are the longest, down to the canyon floor where a trickle of meltwater, all that had escaped the traps of the hives upstream, ran between green banks dotted with flowers. From here it is an easy trot to the feeding stones.

  The stones are huge and flat. Later in the season, when true warmth comes, the people of the nearer towns spend a day here, scrubbing away the grease and winter-filth and scenting the place with fragrant smoke and fresh herbs. My father ignored the smell as he set the open end of the sack at the lip of the dished stone, then turned to spill its contents behind him. He left without looking back. It is not polite to look at other persons' food or at persons who are eating; so it is not polite to observe the Kachis either. Looking at another person's food implies that one has not had enough. Looking at another person's food is like begging. Only babies and dogs look at people eating.

  He set out at a trot for the ladders. Behind him he heard nothing. He slowed. Stopped. Turned. Nothing. Usually there was a call from a tree-clustered canyon and an answering chirrup from somewhere nearer. Usually he had to hurry to be away from the feeding rocks before dusk.

  But tonight, nothing. The Kachis were elsewhere. Unwillingly, my father turned his eyes where the rim of the canyon gleamed high and bright in the last of the light, toward the House Without a Name.

  Dusk on Dinadh.

  Below in the canyon was only darkness. Beneath the arch of the cave, shadows gathered. In the hive, nighttime quiet stopped the tongues of children, men and women began to whisper. The evening song was done. Chahdzi had returned from the canyon. All the door-skins were down but one. Of all the people of Cochim-Mahn, only Hallach still stood outside upon the lip of stone. Hallach and the two women of his family who had gone to take him food and drink.

  "Songfather, this woman brings you evening food," whined son's daughter, my half sister, Hazini.

  "Songfather, this woman brings you water for your mouth," hummed daughter's daughter, Shalumn. My friend Shalumn.

  She remained my friend. Even afterward, she talked to me sometimes. Or, she talked to the wall, knowing I was where I could hear her. So I learned how things were, how things happened, how she read Hallach's face and his movements, seeing what he really felt written upon him.

  So, she said, Hallach turned and held out his hands. Shalumn poured the water into them, murmuring rapidly as she did so. "Blessings upon the pattern of water, water that fecundates, that cleanses, that cools, that blesses, that heals, that becometh a tool in the dedicated hands of the Dinadhi."

  He sipped from his hands, rinsing away the words of song so they would not be contaminated by mere food, then dried his hands upon the folds of his cotton inner robe. He approved of Shalumn's abbreviated litany. If Hazini had poured the water, she would have chattered out the entire water-blessing catalog rather than ending expeditiously with the all-purpose phrase becometh a tool in the hands … And while Hazini had gone on and on, Hallach songfather would have had to stand hungry, which would not have bothered Hazini, who was bony as a lightning-killed tree and ate only so much as a small picky bird. Hazini did not understand hunger.

  Hallach took the bowl Hazini offered, casting his eyes upward. There was light upon the height, still time to eat outside before real darkness came. He sat down, his back politely turned so the girls would not offend custom by catching sight of his food, an important courtesy in times of famine, though one not rigorously observed during the present days. There was no current shortage of food in Cochim-Mahn.

  The women had raided the last of their winter stores to provide stew for tonight, stew full of the flavors of smoked meat and dried roots. A bright stripe of flavor among all those dark stripes of fungus! He scooped a mouthful onto a round of hearth-bread and let the softened meat pleasure his tongue.

  "Songfather?" Hazini said in a self-important voice. "This woman has learned the rest of the rain names and would recite them for songfat
her."

  "Umpn," Hallach said around a mouthful. "Not tonight, Hazini. It is not a proper time."

  She made a disrespectful sound behind him, almost a rudeness.

  He put down his food and turned to look at her. Her lips were compressed into that pinched line Hallach found so annoying. Just like Chahdzi's second wife, Zinisi. Pinch-pinch, whine-whine, never satisfied with anything. Pretty, though. The way she turned her head and looked at men under her lashes, with that half smile, letting that whiny little voice come out like a seeking tendril to wind around their loins. Songfather remembered how Zinisi had wooed poor Chahdzi, the poor widower. "Chaa-dzi. Can liddle Zinisi have the pretty feathers, Chaa-dzi?" Poor Chahdzi hadn't been able to resist her. Now look at him! With only Saluez to listen to him, only Saluez to …

  Hallach felt sudden fury. He fixed Hazini with a songfather glare. "Girl, do not make that tightness with your mouth. You cannot recite sacred names from a mouth like that." Rage filled him. He dared not stop to question why. "Also, your voice is too whiny. It must be full and generous if you are to pray to Daylight Woman and Weaving Woman and Great Lightning Wielder."

  Shalumn's mouth puckered as though she might laugh, but as Hallach turned toward her she bowed hastily, hiding her face. Hazini, shocked into movement, turned and ran back toward the great dark slab of the hive.

  Hallach, ignoring Shalumn for the moment, turned back to his food. He did not ask himself where this rage had come from. He knew. Saluez. Feelings he was supposed to have put behind him.

  Affections a songfather might not indulge in. His anger was unworthy of him, but nonetheless, he felt no remorse at chiding Hazini. The Gracious One had decreed this conflict from the time they had come to Dinadh. Age must discipline youth. Men must teach women the proper way of things. Some must lose that others may gain. Cold against heat, dry against wet, life against death, every quality must strain to contain its opposite, the whole requiring songfathers to sing the pattern into balance.

  Though sometimes it was hard to accept … what happened.

  Hallach shifted uncomfortably. It wasn't wise to think about that either. Such thinking smacked of doubt, and of course he didn't doubt. She'd be fine. She was his … his son's daughter. Of course she'd be fine.

  No longer at all hungry, he set the half-emptied bowl aside.

  Shalumn saw all this and drew her own conclusions. She moved slightly toward him, her hesitancy reminding him she had not been dismissed. Hallach held one finger upright, stopping her where she stood.

  "Saluez," he said, a mere whisper. It would not have been proper for a songfather to ask about a mere girl, but he had not asked. He had merely said a name.

  Shalumn had seen Masanees return. Shalumn had seen her leave again, with two of the sisterhood. Then, in the dusk, they had returned again, a cluster of women who had carried someone, someone alive, perhaps, or dead, perhaps, but who had in either case gone into a side entrance to the hive and down into a shadowy place below, a place Shalumn could not go, where even songfathers could not go.

  No one had mentioned this to songfather, and he could not ask. He had not asked, and Shalumn did not move or speak. She did not look up. Her eyes remained down. There were certain things a woman would never say to a man. Not any man.

  After a moment Hallach waved the finger at her, letting her take the bowl and go.

  It was many days later that I came upon Shalumn in a corridor. She knew me by the borders painted upon my outer robe. Had she not painted them? Had the robe not been her gift to me? Now she turned away, as she must, and began to speak to the corridor wall. She told the wall about songfather, and Hazini, and how songfather had looked and what songfather had said. She knew I was standing in an alcove just behind her. She knew I could hear.

  "Songfather looked very sad," she said. "Songfather looked very strange. I went away then, stumbling a little. I wept. I miss my friend." She gulped, and I saw her wipe her face with her hand. "I miss my love. I will always miss my love." She walked away then, not glancing at me, but her cheeks were wet.

  Shalumn's were the only tears I saw shed for me. Songfather could not show grief. Chahdzi could not show grief. Hazini would not grieve, nor Zinisi, nor any of the people of the hive. Weaving Woman sends the shuttles to and fro, light and dark, youth and age, good and ill, wisdom and stupidity. Belief and doubt, also. Belief and doubt.

  Often the pattern is not as we ourselves would weave it.

  CHAPTER 2

  Masanees brought Saluez back to the hive and her story stopped. Time went by, yes, but Saluez did not care much about that. She did not hunger or thirst. The women around her forced her to eat and drink. Her prayers to Weaving Woman had not been answered. Her shuttle had not carried light. Her pattern was dark, only dark, and no one could see its end. There was no story of Saluez.

  What was true of me was true also of Snark. During that time, she had no story. She was as she was, and little changed from day to day. We were stopped, our shuttles still, our colors waiting. During this time, the story was Lutha's story, the pattern was Lutha's pattern.

  My name is Trompe Paggas," the Fastigat said into Lutha's annunciator. "I've been assigned as your assistant."

  She opened her door to the surging traffic. A hurrying passerby bumped her visitor hard enough to carom him into her, and clutching one another, they almost fell into her rooms. She stumbled to the door and shut it against the noise of the crowded concourse while her disheveled guest brushed himself off. He seemed more annoyed than the minor trampling warranted.

  "How do you stand it?" he growled.

  "Stand what?" She was puzzled.

  "Living in all this mob!"

  Her face cleared. It wasn't a mob. It was just the ordinary workaday crowd, but this man was used to Fastiga, where things were managed differently, or to Prime, which was, if anything, too sparsely populated. Trompe Paggas had even put on a coverall so he wouldn't be contaminated by rubbing up against people. Now, before he had even divested himself of this garment, he said, "You're ambivalent about me."

  She laughed, the sounds fluttering up her throat like startled birds. This was so familiar, so like Leelson, this Fastigat habit of holding her feelings up before her, as though she didn't know how she felt unless he told her! Even his gently concerned tone of voice was the same, even his expression, kindly and questioning.

  "Trompe, don't tell me. Please. Let that be a rule between us. Of course I'm ambivalent about you. I'm ambivalent about everything! About the trip. About taking Leely. About finding out something, or not finding out anything. About the Ularians wiping out humanity!"

  "Ambivalent, even about the prospect of destruction?" he asked, shocked.

  "Sometimes. Sure. Some days, doesn't it seem like a good idea we should all be wiped out? Some days, don't we make a royal mess of things?" As an official translator, she was aware of that mess, if he wasn't. Words of impassioned rage and raw desperation flowed through her workstation every day. Broken treaties. Misinterpreted promises. Endless renegotiation. Forged certifications. Lies and evasions. She laughed again, seeing his expression.

  "No," he said soberly. "It does not seem like a good idea. All problems can be solved. It merely takes the will and attention to do so."

  She shrugged, smiling: he was so very Fastigat!

  "All right, I won't make problems. I realize you'll know how I feel. I'll tell you right now, you probably won't ever know how Leely feels about anything. Let's accept that. Your job will be to use your abilities to help me cope while we search for anything Bernesohn Famber might have left on Dinadh. You're not here to tell me how I feel or help me deal with my emotions or any of that Fastigat stuff. I've had that. I don't need it."

  He shrugged, making a face like a Leelson face. Physically, he was as unlike Leelson as possible, being short and chunky and dark instead of tall, slender, and bright-haired. A man of gold, Leelson. A man of iron, this. In his favor, he had astonishingly alert blue eyes and was also quite young.
Younger than Lutha, at any rate.

  "Can I see the boy?" he asked.

  She pointed. The door between the office room and the sleeping room was open. He went through it with her behind him.

  Leely was standing naked before the window scene, which was dialed to forest. His clothes lay as he'd dropped them in the corner. He had decorated the wall near the window with a feces finger painting, an extraordinary impression of the blown trees in the forest scene. He turned toward them with a lovely smile and a lilting laugh.

  "Dananana," he purred. "Dananana."

  "Excuse me," she murmured to Trompe. "If you'll give me a moment."

  Trompe nodded expressionlessly.

  She was aware of him watching her as she keyed the room-bot, cleaned Leely, and got the clothes back on him. No matter where she put the fasteners, he managed to get his clothes off, little contortionist! And look at the skin of his chest and shoulders, all blotchy from chill. Well, no harm done. The room-bot had the floor and walls cleaned by the time Leely was dressed again.

  "That's my sweet boy," she murmured, hugging him and putting him down once more, handing him the child-sized paint sticks she'd gone to such trouble to find.

  "Dananana," he said, patting her face with one hand as he threw the sticks across the room with the other. "Dananana."

  "How old is he?" Trompe asked from the doorway. His face showed nothing, but he knew the answer. He was only checking.

  She stiffened. "Almost six." Leely was just past his fifth birthday.

  "Big for his age." Trompe's voice held no emotion, but she could feel something. Disapproval? Or what? "He must weigh what?"

  "He's heavy for his age. But, as you know, Leelson is tall and muscular, and my family also runs to size, so Leely will probably be a big man."