Shadow's End

by Sheri S. Tepper

"I am Hah-Rianahm," he said. "Subchief of the Songfathers' Council, Second Grandfather of the Great Assembly. My word binds or looses. It is my decision that you will come with us to the omphalos! We cannot delay to parley with you, for Tahs-uppi approaches, and our presence is required in the eternal circles. When those are broken, however, we will take time to hear what you have to say. This is not a good time for you to have approached us."

  "We didn't pick it," said Poracious. "It was picked for us, by the Ularians."

  "What are these Ularians?" asked Hah-Rianahm.

  "The beings who have destroyed humans on all the occupied worlds in this sector."

  "You have seen these beings?"

  "We will show them to you," said the Procurator. "We will let you see them, and feel them, and taste them … "

  "After Tahs-uppi," called one of the other men urgently. "Even now the circles are forming!"

  "At the first possible moment," said the Procurator. "At the very first possible moment."

  In her cave above the sea, Snark lay dreaming. She'd been doing that a lot lately, spending whole days in the cave, dozing, remembering, having imaginary conversations with people she'd never met or never really known. She carried on an animated three-way conversation among herself, her mother, and the Procurator. She discussed life with Kane the Brain. She talked to the mistress of the sanctuary, the one who had labeled Snark a liar when Snark had claimed to come from the frontier.

  "Wrong," said Snark in her reverie, holding the mistress in a grip of steel, forcing her to look upon the moors of Perdur Alas. "You were wrong about me, madam! Look upon my childhood, my rearing, the cause of all my woe … "

  The daydream dissolved in a spatter of icy spray, and she opened her eyes, startled. Outside on the branch, a large seabird tossed a scaly thing in its beak, preparatory to swallowing it. The scaly thing struggled, not quite fishlike, throwing water in all directions.

  "You woke me," said Snark, wiping her face with the back of her hands.

  The bird did not reply. The bird didn't even see her. It looked past her in the same way people always had. All those at the sanctuary when she was only nine or ten. All those she'd asked for help later, when she'd been a street rat. All those who'd had business with the Procurator: bureaucrats or military, male or female, foreign or domestic, old or young. All of them had been fully present, completely in the picture, aware of one another and of the world at large, but unaware of Snark. She had always been a shadow, even before they made her one. A mere thing in the background, never quite in focus. One of the unseeables who lived in the alleys of Alliance Prime. Like the brain deads she'd known in the sanctuary, kids born with faulty circuits, not bright enough to be human but still able to be embarrassingly vocal. "I, I, I want, I want!" Like some kind of meat animal suddenly standing up and begging out loud. Too human looking to be killed; not human enough to live. Brain dead. That was the mildest of the epithets the other orphan brats had given her. Snark the brain dead, Snark the liar, Snark the thief.

  She wished for them all, wished they were here, fleeing across the moor as the great creatures disported themselves. Let Diagonal Red eat this one, and Big Gray Blob eat this one, and … and, and, and …

  Though eating might not be what the creatures did. Had they eaten her companions? Had they killed Kane the Brain and Willit and Susso? Had they tortured them, enslaved them? What? Would it make her feel better to know they were worse off than she? Not really. Since she'd been alone, she'd longed for them. Even slob-lipped Willit. Especially Susso.

  She rolled onto her side, finding the stony hollow that fit the curve of her hip. Near the opening, the jar in the niche stood as it had when she had found the cave. Never moved. Never looked into. Why was that?

  "Because you know what's inside," she told herself soberly. "You've always known what's inside."

  Mother had made that jar. Mother had painted it, using the rib of a furze plant for a brush, her own blood for the paint. Mother had fired it, so the blood turned black on the white clay. Mother had told her daughter to put her bones inside, in the care of Mother Darkness. If there were any bones.

  When Snark had gone looking for Mother, overcoming her fear, deciding to disobey the prime command ("Stay in the cave!"), she'd found bones. She'd been hiding that from herself for many years, but here at the trembling edge of sleep, nothing could be truly hidden. Longings came out, and hates, and loves, and old, old memories that she'd tried to obliterate. Old horror would sprout, old bones would walk, old blood would fountain up.

  Though homelier things returned as well. Like the stories of Breadh that Mother had sung.

  "Homely Breadh of long ago!"

  Snark remembered once when they'd been inside the cave, Mother cross-legged, Snark in Mother's lap. She hadn't been Snark then. Mother had called her Laluzh, Laluzh-love, Laluzh dearest daughter. Laluzh, last remnant of the faithful.

  "I sing, Laluzh-love, of our homeworld of Breadh, where we patterned our lives as the weaver the cloth, light and dark, day and night, sorrow-joy, pleasure-pain. On Breadh we were born, on her bosom we grew, there we found our nearhearts, there we danced when we wed. On Breadh's shoulder we grieved when our loved ones were lost. So it was, so had been, for time out of time."

  This was story rhythm, a kind of chanting. Mother could do it for hours. Sometimes the story rhythm changed, becoming inexorable:

  "But then the tempter came. Ancient and sly was he. Rising from dark of caves. Mammoth with mighty feet. Furred like Behemoth he. Whispered in darkness, he. Telling the songfathers. How they might never die. If they would make the choice. Leaving beloved Breadh. Where even animals. Were kindred souls to us. Leaving behind our gods—"

  "And the old men listened to the tempter," interrupted Snark, anything to break that rhythm, that pounding.

  Mother nodded, rocking back and forth, resuming the sweet motion Snark loved, like being cradled on the waves of the sounding sea: shush shush shush, to and fro. Mother sighed as she answered, not in story talk but as herself.

  "The old men listened. They listened to sweet words and tempting promises. They bowed down before the tempter and called him the Gracious One. Gracious to them, indeed, for the price demanded was not paid by them but by the womenfolk. Godmongers have always found it easy to pay for their beliefs with women's lives …

  "So, they chose. Some of the people on Breadh said they would not do what the tempter ordered, they would remain behind, on Breadh, but no one was allowed to remain. Even after they were taken to the new home, the faithful refused the new commandments. Though we pretended to follow them, it was in appearance only. In secret, generation after generation, we remembered the old ways and recited the old prayers."

  "For we are the faithful," Laluzh/Snark said.

  "We are the faithful, Laluzh-love. And faithful we remained, even when a traitor among us denounced us to the songfathers. Then we were reviled and persecuted, some of us were tortured and killed. We decided to run away, to go back the way our ancestors had come, to return to Breadh."

  "Many of us. Many, many of us!"

  Mother didn't answer for a long time. There was only the shush shush shush of her garment on the floor as she rocked. Her face was wet when she spoke. "There were many of us who came to the gate. Enough of us to open that gate, for it is a heavy gate indeed, made of stone set upon stone. We were many as we came through that gate, but who knows if any came to Blessed Breadh. A few families of us ended here, and only Mother Darkness knows where the others ended."

  "And the scourges came … "

  "True. When we opened the gate, scourges of the tempter pursued us, coming through the gate with us. Almost before we knew they were here, they had killed some of us. Yet faithful we remained, for in the end, where can even these scourges bring us except to the waiting arms of Mother Darkness and Father Endless, they who were before the Consequential Egg was hatched?"

  She rocked Laluzh/Snark, softly shush shush shush, singing in her mother voice:


  "Ahau, Father Endless, Mother Darkness. Ahau, thou who wert before the stars. Ahau, eternal entropy, refuge of the sorrowful, haven of the weary, salvation of the aged, unlit by grief or pain. Ahau, to lie upon the breast of darkness knowing only peace."

  The song was like a lullaby, a hymn to the gods left behind on Breadh, a memorial to those who entered the gate, a plea for those few left on this world: Mother and Laluzh and the four other children, silent Nances and strong Ehrbas, weepy little Hahnaan and some other little girl whose name Snark couldn't remember. Six of them in all. And Mother herself was gone by the time the ship came.

  An Alliance ship, screaming out of the sky, landing upon the moor, where the children ran back and forth like panicked animals. Twenty standard years ago, when she'd been eight or nine. Old enough to remember the questions.

  "Where did you come from, little girl?"

  "I live here."

  "What happened to all the grown-ups, little girl?"

  "The scourges of the tempter ate them. Something killed Mother, but I put her bones away safe, in the Mother Darkness jar."

  Glances, one man to another. A finger circled beside an ear. Crazy little girl. Out of her head. Must be a survival pod somewhere nearby. Kids must have been boosted off some ship in trouble. Castaways. Couldn't actually have lived here for any length of time. Impossible. There was nothing here: no agriculture, no edible animals, no beasts of any kind. Only seabirds, fish.

  "She's gone snarky from the trauma," said one.

  "What's snarky?"

  "Snark's a kind of a duck thing. From Herangia Five. It goes crazy and drops eggs on people."

  The label had stuck. Laluzh became Snark the crazed, later Snark the liar, Snark the thief. Eventually, she forgot Laluzh, forgot Perdur Alas, forgot Mother. Only the cave had remained, a place of safety and comfort. She might never have remembered the other parts if she hadn't been sent here. But now … now she recalled everything she had been told of: Breadh, the Tempter, the Choice, the Journey to Dinadh, the Faithfulness, the Persecution, the Flight, and the Scourges.

  She had not seen scourges since she'd returned to Perdur Alas. Mother had said they'd died soon after arriving, screaming in the night, crying like lost children, hungry and cold. So it wasn't scourges who'd killed Mother. Something had. Something had killed her and chewed on her bones. Was it as Diagonal Red and the others had shown her? Had they done it?

  She didn't know. There was no way of telling. Nothing was left of that former time. Nothing but monsters. Monsters and Mother's bones.

  CHAPTER 9

  Saluez had thought to grieve a little and then to sleep, but it was not to be. There was a stir of discontent eddying among us travelers, and its name was Lutha Tallstaff. She would not settle. Trompe fell asleep. Leelson fell asleep. Even Leely was quiet, with none of his usual restless little murmurs, but Lutha moved and sighed, sighed and moved, wearing herself out with trivialities. She went out and checked the panels not once but a dozen times. She put Leely's harness upon him and fastened the end to her belt. Though Leelson had already referred to Bernesohn Famber's yellowed map when he said we would finish our journey on the following day, Lutha unrolled the map once more and sat perusing it by lamplight. When she tired of that, she wedged the door shut, leaving me gasping for air.

  "I'll go outside," I said. "There are no Kachis tonight." It was true. There were none at all, and I desperately wanted to be by myself.

  I did not escape. She came after me, to the limit of the cord that bound her to Leely at any rate. Obviously, I was to have no privacy on this particular evening. I sighed and sat myself up within my cocoon of blankets, seeking some topic of conversation that would distract her from this hectic activity.

  "How did you and Leelson ever meet?" I asked.

  She sat down upon the step of the wain. "I met him while working in the Greinson Library at Prime."

  "Such places must be interesting," I said politely.

  She laughed under her breath. "Or deadly dull. I was trying to make sense of some knotty old document written long ago in a dead language, memorializing a contract between peoples who don't exist anymore."

  "Dull, but no doubt important," I murmured.

  "I suppose. It was one of those documents universally acknowledged to be 'precedental,' so I struggled mightily, trying to extract something my client could use in a court of law, glumming, as one does, writing down and crossing out. Then I had this odd feeling, as though I was being stared at, and when I looked up, Leelson was there. I knew at once he was Fastigat."

  "How did you know?"

  "Oh, they have such absolute confidence, a stunning savoir faire which puts mere poise to shame. Still, I'd dealt with Fastigats before. One does tend to get a bit short of breath when they turn on the charm, but up until then I'd considered the effect manageable."

  "Until then?"

  "Until he began to speak, yes. 'Something called me down from up there,' he said. The document niches are all up and down the towers, and the whole place was dotted with little scholars on their lift plates, zooming up, dropping down. He said, 'Perhaps it was your perfume.'

  "I wasn't wearing perfume. I made some remark about being generally in good odor, and Leelson laughed. We introduced ourselves. I thanked him for his compliments, and the whole time I was gasping for air, sort of mentally, you know?"

  I said yes, I knew. I'd been doing the same all evening.

  "I resolved with every fiber of my being not to return to the library and to stay away from Fastigats. My kind of people, that is, Mama Jibia's kind of people, the non-Fastigat professional class, consider Fastigat men unsuitable for women who are serious-minded."

  "You are serious-minded?" I wanted to laugh, but did not. Despite Lutha's undoubted intelligence, she was constantly exploding like fireworks, laughing or crying, passionate about every trifle. On Dinadh, we think of such behavior as typical of children, not serious adults.

  "Don't you think I am?" she asked, surprised.

  I told her exactly what I thought, hoping she would go away.

  When I had finished, however, she only said thoughtfully, "It's the way we were reared, Yma and I. If you'd ever met my Mama Jibia, you'd understand. She was a singular person, of extremely forceful mien, a faithful follower of the Great Org Gauphin, who preached logic and good sense in all things. Mama Jibia was dead set against Yma or me getting tangled up in feelings we couldn't express or understand. Starting at puberty, she had us experiencing sex through sensurround, so we'd know about that. Then, twice a year she had us vetted by the mental health people from the Temple of the Great Org Gauphin. We had emotional and stress inventories and sessions with a behaviorist, and I'd wager we knew more about the human animal at fifteen than most of our contemporaries ever learned."

  I murmured, "It sounds quite … rigorous."

  "Well, she was trying to make us immune to romance or sentimentalism. Of course, many of our friends came from Firster families, and sentimentalism is one of their largest stocks in trade. They use it to excuse all kinds of nasty behaviors. If Papa beats you, it's because he loves you, you know the kind of thing … "

  I did. I knew more than that. Probably far more than she!

  She went on, "Firsters don't approve of pragmatism, self-analysis, or sexual sensurround for anyone, much less virgin girls who should be, so they claim, innocent, by which they really mean susceptible to any self-serving lie that's going around! So, Yma and I saw our friends being romanced and falling in love and making babies they weren't at all ready for, and we thanked our stars we'd been raised differently." She sighed. "How did this conversation start?"

  "You said you were so passionate about everything because of the way you were reared."

  "Yes. Mama thought feelings should be expressed. Whatever they were, it was healthier to have them out in the open, and neither Yma nor I could do it quietly. It's our sense of drama, you see. We inherited it from a scandalous ancestress who was well-known in her
day, as Yma is now. Yma made a career of it. I merely play at it."

  "You play very intently," I said. "You and Leelson. I saw you that time, at the pool. I've watched you. Like magnets, one minute pulling at each other, then turnabout and you're pushing at each other."

  Lutha flushed and gave me a half-angry look. I had no business commenting, and I was slightly ashamed of myself for being rude to her.

  "It's always been that way," Lutha admitted. "Like some kind of shackle we didn't know existed until then, tying us to one another. The relationship was never suitable. Not at all."

  "You don't like his mother?"

  "She's … contemptuous. Of me. Of Leely. Fastiga woman are that way, just like Fastigats. She wanted Leelson to have children with one of his cousins—Fastiga is quite inbred, though they deny it—and of course, I'm far from being a cousin. She used to send some of the relatives over to look at Leely. I'm sure she did it to infuriate me and so she could say 'I told you so,' to Leelson."

  "What about Leelson's father?" I asked, before I thought. I had opened a new floodgate!

  "Leelson's father disappeared. Grebor Two, his name was. And his father disappeared, too. Grebor One. They each fathered one son and then disappeared. Leelson's mother was afraid Leelson was following in their footsteps."

  "Twice doesn't make a habit," I said, giving up rudeness in favor of letting her talk.

  "Three times," Lutha said. "There was a granduncle, too. One of Bernesohn's twins. He did the same thing Leelson did, got some unsuitable person pregnant."

  "Who?" I asked politely, not caring who.

  Lutha frowned for a moment, then came up with an answer. "Dasalum Tabir."

  I laughed, intrigued despite myself. "D'ahslum T'bir! That means skeleton. That's not a name you'd forget."

  Lutha said the words over to herself, this time with the Dinadhi accent. The root words were for bones and for ladder, or tree.

  "She was famous for more than her name, or infamous, depending on how you look at it. A cradle robber, according to the Fastigats. Twice Paniwar Famber's age."