Shadow's End

by Sheri S. Tepper

  The reader went on blurting fragmentary words and phrases interrupted by harsh scratching and stretches of gibberish.

  Leelson, Trompe, and Lutha stared at one another.

  "I've played that one several times," said Leelson. "I've jotted down the clear words and phrases, here. Any ideas?"

  "It's enigmatic at best," said Lutha at last. "Was he anticipating legal action? Rejoinder is a word I've only run across in legal documents."

  Leelson shrugged. "The bit about rejoinder to the question of his lineage may refer to the court action Tospia brought against the news sniffer over the paternity of the Famber twins. Did you know about that?"

  Lutha said, "The Procurator mentioned it. Tospia visited Bernesohn here, returned to Central, had twins, and their parentage was questioned."

  "Questions of lineage, as you've discovered for yourself, would have annoyed Bernesohn no end. His voice sounds annoyed. Also, there's a good bit of frustration and weariness, but no real excitement. Possibly because he's tired. As though he'd been digging and digging for something."

  "The answer that wasn't here, perhaps?" Lutha sighed. I knew what she was thinking. To have come all this way for nothing.

  "Or because he'd found out what he needed to know," said Trompe thoughtfully. "He could have learned what he needed to know and done something about the Ularians. He says he took steps to remedy the situation."

  "The record didn't say he took steps to remedy 'the situation,' " contradicted Lutha. "There's a pause there … "

  Trompe paid no attention. "My god, Leelson. The only situation was the Ularian business. If he had a remedy … "

  Lutha sat down, murmuring, "He speaks of abandoned gods. I've heard nothing of abandoned gods while we've been here on Dinadh."

  Oh, but I had. Whispered by grandmothers to granddaughters, mentioned in old songs sung by sisterhoods.

  Lutha went on: "He also speaks of the omphalos. Had he any maps of Dinadh?"

  Leelson nodded. "Here? A whole file of them. But why maps?"

  "Place-names often survive while language changes around them. Sometimes the names of places give us the only evidence of languages that have otherwise disappeared. God names are sometimes applied to places, therefore a place-name might be a clue to what he calls an abandoned god."

  She ran her hands through her hair, pressing her fingertips into her forehead. I could feel her ache in my own forehead as she said:

  "The only other thing that comes to mind is that Bernesohn disappeared from here, where we are. We know hover cars can't get down into the canyon. We know the Dinadhi use fliers only for emergencies—kind of emergency unspecified. So, wherever he went, he probably had to go on foot. Since he mentioned the omphalos, is it credible that he went there?"

  I heard the rustle as Leelson unfolded the maps. I myself had seen them, had unfolded them, studied them, all the wonderful maps. Printed upon them were all the roads, lines of green; the ocean, a blotch of blue; the endless twisting edges of the canyons, black squiggles; and the names of places in curly lettering. The omphalos was shown there, too, shaded in violet and crimson, important colors, sacred colors. When duty had required me to tend to this place by myself, after Mother departed and before Leelson came, I had many times sat at that table and traced the way, how I would go if I were going to the omphalos. To Tahs-uppi. To the renewal. To say goodbye.

  I could feel the map in my hands, soft from handling. I could visualize it, much fingerprinted, bearing many notations in a microscopic hand.

  Lutha saw what I had seen.

  "Somebody's used this," she said. "Bernesohn. He's annotated it."

  "Used it a lot," said Trompe.

  "If Bernesohn Famber went somewhere on foot," Lutha persisted, "how did anyone find out he was gone?"

  Leelson replied. "They told me the housekeeper came in here to clean or bring new supplies. She found the last supplies hadn't been used, so the hive was told to keep watch. When no one saw him for a year, they named him an outlander ghost and said he was wandering among the canyons. They invited him to join the people of Cochim-Mahn."

  "What does that mean?" asked Lutha.

  "I asked the same question. They told me they invite all the ghosts to join them, and furthermore, that most of them do so. They wouldn't clarify the matter, so don't ask. I don't know and I can't pick up anything clear from their emotions."

  He could have picked up a good deal from mine. I got up from the place I was hiding and went to the door. I wanted to hear what they were saying about the omphalos.

  They stood around the table, looking down at the map. Lutha's fingers traced wandering lines of canyons and the tips of mesas, all ramified like the branches and twigs of trees, pointing off in all directions. Canyons run down all the sides of the mesas; mesas limit all the edges of the canyons. Except at the sea. And at the omphalos.

  "Look at this," said Leelson softly as he pointed to the southward leading canyon. "What does that mean? 'Simi'dhm'a.' "

  She raised her head. Later I was to learn what that posture meant, that alertness. Her mind was searching, searching.

  "Separated," she said. "Separated something. What would the root word be? Dhuma?"

  "Could be."

  "The word for songfathers is hahm-dhuma. So this would be what? Separated father?"

  He thought about it. "Ghost?" he suggested. "A parent who's died?"

  She shook her head. "That doesn't have the right feel to it. I need a lexicon. Either that or I need a lot longer with the old chips. Tomorrow we'll ask Chahdzi. Maybe he'll tell us."

  "I will tell you," I said from behind them.

  They turned as one, surprised, perhaps a little hostile.

  "There is a dark canyon, where the sun scarcely touches. It is Simi'dhm'a, which now means lost and lonely, though once it meant abandoned ones. Importances left behind."

  "Left behind where?" whispered Lutha. "Where, Saluez?"

  "On the other world. Before we came here. On the world of Breadh. It was there we left Mother Darkness and Father Endless."

  They looked at me. I could feel the two men probing at me, trying to feel as I felt, feeling as I felt but not knowing why. Lost, they were. Not understanding.

  "Why?" Lutha breathed. "Why did you leave them behind, Saluez?"

  "Because of them," I whispered, gesturing at the shuttered windows.

  Leelson moved to the window. I hurried to turn off the lamp, an outlander lamp, one that runs on stored sunlight.

  They watched as Leelson shifted the lever that controlled the shutters, opening them only a crack.

  "Careful," I whispered. "Oh, be careful."

  Fragile fingers slid between the slats. Luminous eyes peered in at us. Teeth as delicate and sharp as needles bit at the edges of the slats. My flesh knew those teeth. I cried out.

  Lutha turned to me, reached for me, catching my veil with the bracelet she wore. My veil dropped. They saw my face. Lutha hesitated for only a moment, then drew me close to her and held me.

  Leelson closed the lever.

  From the darkness outside came the cries of petulant children, denied a treat. It was the sound I had heard after Masanees had sounded the gong. I had not heard the sound of wings, one or two approaching quietly, as was customary, but these same cries, the noisy approach of many, talking among themselves. And when they came in, they had not gorged themselves on the banquet prepared for them before settling on my back to do what they had come for. No. Instead they had grabbed my hair, pulled at me, raised my head, insisted upon getting at my face.

  "They!" said Leelson with certainty. "They did that to you!"

  They had, yes, but I did not reply. Instead I stood with my head on Lutha's shoulder and let myself cry. I had not seen the beautiful people since the House Without a Name. Perhaps I had hoped never to see them again.

  On Perdur Alas, Kane the Brain came in from the day's labor in the fields, where they'd been planting various food and fiber crops for the ag-test. He was car
rying a bundle on his shoulder, something wrapped in his own jacket, and he put it on the table in the lab, saying to no one in particular, "We found this thing in a cave out there."

  Snark was filing germination records, but she put the pile down and came over to see what it was. A jar, not unlike the jar in her cave.

  "That's Father Endless," she said, tracing the pattern. "And Mother Darkness. And these are the horizons of sleep."

  "How do you know that?" Kane demanded, not too urgently. "You've never seen it before!"

  "I've seen them before," said Snark, remembering all at once that this was true. "My mother told me about them. On Breadh our people believed in them, but then our people listened to the words of the tempter and put their gods aside. My family was of the T'loch sdi, the old order." The words came of themselves. Labels. An identity, for herself, for her mother, for certain other children, certain other mothers and fathers. The old order.

  "What does that mean?"

  She quoted what she had been told:

  "We were faithful to our beliefs. Faithful to Father Endless, to Mother Darkness. When we died, we died into their keeping, for that was part of the everlasting pattern. We did not allow the tempter to sway us. Even after many generations on the new world, we remained faithful. And at last we ran away from the new world, fled from the new commandment. We came here. That is, my parents came here."

  "You weren't born here." Willit sneered. There was no real venom in his voice. The challenge was only habit.

  "No. I think I was only a baby, though. I grew up here. Keeping away from the scourges of the tempter, until the ship came and took us survivors away."

  "Survivors!"

  She rubbed her head fretfully. "Me. And the other children. Five of us. All the adults were gone by then." Gone to Father Endless and Mother Darkness. Gone into the womb between the worlds. To the place where everything dwells in timelessness.

  Willit started to say something sneery, but Kane stopped him. "Snark. Why did they call you survivors?"

  "Because they didn't believe we had lived here. They thought we'd survived a shipwreck, taken off in a survival pod, got twisted into a wormhole, and ended up here. They thought we were castaways. I knew we weren't, but they said the five of us couldn't have lived here otherwise.

  "It was on the ship they said we were survivors. Then, later, they put me in the home. But the people at the home didn't know … who I was. They said I was a liar."

  "Right," barked Willit. "They knew you, kid."

  "I wasn't lying," she said.

  "There's no world called Breadh," said Kane. "Not in this sector. You were probably sent here from one of the other worlds, when the Ularians came. If you were the only ones left, what happened to the others?"

  Snark thought about it. Part of it was clear and close. Scourges. They'd had to stay away from the scourges. And from something else, too. She shrugged. She couldn't really remember.

  "Survivors from Ularians. I be damned," said Kane.

  "And what are these damned Ularians when they're not hiding under a rock?" asked Willit.

  "Nobody really knows." Kane looked at the jar he'd found. "Nobody knows who they are. There were no survivors. Not unless Snark was one."

  "You mean she really could have been? A survivor?"

  It was all very casual, not very meaningful, and everyone went back to work without agonizing over it. In Snark, however, the discovery of the jar began a chain of recollection. She remembered faces, voices. She remembered things people had said. She remembered words. The returned ones. The faithful.

  That child Snark: How long had she been here, before they found her? Had it been only a few days? A few seasons? Had it been years? Whether born here or not, certainly she had grown here. Someone had provided clothing. There had been the animal skins, the fleeces in the cave, the clay jars. Where had the skins come from, with their woolly fleece? There were no animals like that on this world.

  No. They'd been wearing the animal skins when they came! But they had brought no tools, no food. Who had told her that? Someone had. How had they grown food? Had they grown food?

  How much was reality? How much was dream? That night, curled in her blankets in the cave at the edge of the sea, she asked herself that question again and again, finding no answer. In the niche in the wall, the patterned jar kept its enigmatic silence. There were bones in it, she was sure of that. Whose bones they were, she did not really want to remember.

  CHAPTER 5

  On Dinadh, Leelson and Trompe asked me questions until I could answer no more questions. "Saluez? Saluez?" they begged, until at last I wept. All the pain I had refused to feel, all the tears I had stored away, everything came flooding out, drowning me.

  "Leave her alone," Lutha said angrily to the two men. "Later on we'll find out what we need to know. We're too tired now. We will talk when it is light."

  Everything was easier when it was light. Perhaps she knew that better than they. I let her lead me back into the entryway, through the door I had left ajar, to my bed in the storeroom of the hive.

  "Do you sleep here?" she asked, her tone saying what her words did not, that it was a poor place for a woman to sleep.

  "It is … private," I whispered. "And it is closer to my duties than the other place, below, for women like … " For women like me.

  "Why, Saluez?" she begged, her voice a whisper. "Why did they do this to you?"

  I choked, thrusting her away, trying to put her off, noting the way she had said it. Not "What happened to you?" but "Why did they do it?" How could I say why? How could I tell her when I did not know myself? She caught herself up, becoming very quiet before she laid her fingers upon my mutilated mouth. Tender fingers. Gentle hands.

  "Never mind," she said. "Tomorrow."

  Tomorrow would offer no more explanations than tonight, but I let it be.

  She left me. I lay down upon the shelf, pulling the woolen blanket over me, turning my head upon the cotton pillow to find a certain position in which my face was mostly hidden but was not thrust hard against the fabric. I didn't want anyone to see my face if they happened upon me sleeping, but actually covering it brought pain. There is a venom in their teeth, and any touch can set it afire. The pain sometimes lasts for years, so my sisters say. If I find exactly the right position, the pain diminishes almost to nothing; I can fall asleep and, sleeping, forget, and sometimes even wake without remembering, believing for a few blessed moments I am as I used to be …

  The man who was father to my child is Slozhri T'ri. Turry. In Lutha's language, his name means Worrier. He worried at me from the time we were children together. His mother is … was a second mother to me. My only mother after my own was gone. Poor Chahdzi father. He has had little fortune with his womenfolk. Saluez, his first daughter, now come into this shame. And my mother, his first wife, long since gone into the night and returned as our departed kindred do. She left human form while giving birth to my little brother. I was only a baby then. So, after a time father took another wife, Zinisi, a s'mahs, which is to say a screech bird, one who has made his life a misery. His second daughter … Well, if any man can bear being close enough to Hazini to get her pregnant, the beautiful people will likely let her be. Likely her flesh is bitter as her tongue.

  Even so, perhaps she is the better daughter. Perhaps she will be the better wife to someone. Someone will be a better wife to Turry, too, and he can worry at her for a time.

  He has not asked to see me. Sometimes men do ask, so the sisterhood says, advising against it. Better not to see, not to be seen. Better to have one's child among one's sisters, better to nurse it and wean it and send it up into the hive to be reared by its father's people or by one's own people. Better never to let it call you mother. Better watch it from corners, from behind doorskins, seeing it grow, praying that Weaving Woman will do better for the child than for the mother. Better to take all one's joy in the sisterhood. In the special food and drink, stored by the sisters selfishly, for themse
lves, for their own pleasure and no one else's. In the special songs and stories one hears only there, the special weavings made only among the sisterhood. In the special herbs gathered and dried only there so the sisters may have peace …

  Small pleasures, stored against the darkness of despair. Taste something savory. Smell a little sweetness. Let a sister rub your shoulders where they ache, or brew a special pot of tea, or even join in making bodily delight as some of the sisters do, as I would do if Shalumn were among us. That is the greatest loss. Love is the greatest loss. We make a life of remnants, of details, and so each hour's shadow is delayed, another day, another day. But, oh, the nighttime is hurtful when you lie down and your body longs for the body of the beloved. When your breasts tingle and your nipples get hard and you taste the beloved's skin on your tongue and between your legs, you are on fire. Even being pregnant does not stop that. Animals have more sense. They do not go on rutting and mating once the female has kindled. They do not stand knee-deep in sweet grass and long for apples. But we, we people do. We go on longing and longing and longing, and all the beautiful people and all their teeth and talons do not change that!

  So I lay breathing like a bellows, panting, trying to imagine I was as I used to be and she was beside me, we two moving together in the bed dance.

  All … all for nothing.

  I sat up, tears flowing, unstoppable, as though another dam had broken. There was a water pitcher in the corner. I put my head over the basin and poured the cold water through my hair, gasping when it ran around my ears and into my eyes. Beside the basin was the packet the sisterhood had given me. At first I had taken it, thanked them, told myself I would not use it, but more and more I did use it. Now I took one of the leaf rolls and lit it at the candle, drawing the smoke deep into me.

  "Say, 'Mother Darkness, come to me,' " the sisters had said.

  "Mother Darkness, come to me."

  "Say, 'Father Endless, come to me.' "

  "Father Endless, come to me."

  "Say, 'Mother and Father of peace, come to me.' "