Shadow's End Read online

  Thosby Anent was as blessedly unaware of this assessment as he was of most other real things. He galloped through life like a fifth leg on a horse, always in motion, seldom touching the ground, and to no purpose when he did. Even in childhood he had been far too preoccupied with being other people to learn to be himself. Early on, he had played at being Mysterious Child or Royal-Boy-Raised-by-Commoners. Later he had played Brilliant Scholar and Gallant Lover and Deep Thinker, in each case adapting or even curtailing reality to accord with his current persona. He maintained a little recorder in which he entered supportive quotations from old books and antiquarian records along with lists of tasks he meant to undertake, turning each morning to a new page without ever referring to the old.

  All this I was told, in time, by Poracious Luv, who had used all the resources of the Alliance to get a clearer picture of its agent upon Dinadh.

  While in his early twenties, Thosby had experienced the biography of an almost legendary diplomat-cum-secret-agent, and this had convinced Thosby that his true talent lay in foreign service. He thereupon invented the role of Sagacious Applicant, performing it so well that the Bureau of Information Services actually awarded him a minor clerical position, which he filled with his customary distracted inefficiency. His supervisors, finding him too ineffectual to retain but too amiable to dismiss, shifted him to another department, whence he was shifted to others yet as successive executives moved him gently along. Thosby misinterpreted their efforts as he did most things. He believed he was being groomed for A Really Important Position, so he flitted from job to job with an air of intent incomprehension, waiting for his true talents to be applied.

  Thosby reached the acme of incompetence in the Division of Minor Planets, a department whose charge it was to recruit unencumbered persons to serve as factotums and general mumbleglums on small and unimportant worlds—places like Far Barbary or Finagle-Chump or Dinadh. No one objected when Thosby was sent to Dinadh as covert flunky in charge of routing intelligence from Hermes Sector. The personnel officer who made the assignment knew, quite rightly, that any idiot could route intelligence!

  Thosby Anent, however, was not just any idiot. He was an idiot convinced he was being moved into An Important Place! Prior to his arrival on Dinadh, he spent a great deal of time choosing the roles he would play there—the roles, that is, in addition to the one he had been assigned—coming up with two that were no more inappropriate than all his other roles had been. He chose, as primary persona, the role of Master Spy. For this he had designed and rehearsed a conspiratorial manner and a repertoire of winks and nods of great significance. As a "cover" for Master Spy, he adopted the persona of Codger. This required him to smoke a tobacco pipe, wear an eccentric hat, and adopt a manner of gruff but kindly bemusement along with a spraddled way of walking, as though slightly crippled in the knees. In order to avoid "giving anything away," Master Spy was laconic while Codger was obfuscatory, apt to take off in dizzying locutory flights, which left his listeners not only lost but remote from any point of reference.

  Between the mystifications of Master Spy and the divarications of Codger, Dinadh-Alliance communication soon dwindled to a muddy trickle. People back at Prime learned to send Thosby's infrequent reports directly into the files, not even feeding them through content analyzers that would have scanned for key concepts, such as lost contact or disappearance.

  Thosby took comfort in the lack of feedback. He felt continued silence from Prime was an expression of confidence in him and his work. Meantime, after one or two feeble attempts at supervision, line functionaries at Prime gave up on Thosby and turned to alternate sources of information: agents for other organizations, rumor mongers who were paid for knowing things, people with relatives or friends on settled worlds in Hermes Sector. It was through these that Prime had learned of the Ularian incursions, almost as promptly as Thosby could have informed them.

  One young administrator, who was still naive enough to believe that efficiency was a Good Thing, unearthed Thosby's reports, and after laboriously plodding through one or two, recommended that Thosby be replaced. The recommendation, however, languished on the desk of the aide to the deputy assistant to the subassistant secretary for personnel matters. Everyone was now in a panic about Ularians and much too busy to do anything at all about Dinadh.

  All of which, so Poracious Luv told me, explains how the Intelligence Division at Prime, purely on the basis of contiguity and without questioning competence, assigned Thosby Anent the responsibility of monitoring the highly secret work of the Perdur Alas shadow team.

  "For want of a nail," the Procurator would say to me, Saluez, as he reviewed this entire matter, with many a shake of the head and furrowing of the brow. "For want of a nail, the horse was lost … " (Our animals on Dinadh do not have nails, so I had to ask Lutha what he meant.)

  Thosby accepted responsibility for the shadow team with his usual nonchalance. No one told him how important Perdur Alas was. It would have made no difference if they had. The more challenging and important a task, the more good sense and concentration it required, the more likely Thosby was to ignore it in preference for something else, anything else, that was repetitive and familiar and disconnected from reality.

  As a consequence, the shadow team had been gone for some time before Thosby knew it. To give him credit, he did use his equipment to search for survivors, though it took him ten times as long as it should have. He found Snark through sheer luck, and when he set the machines to provide a readout of Snark's sensory data, he found, to his slight discomfort, that it covered a very long period of elapsed time, during which he, Thosby, should probably have Done Something.

  Codger was neither honest enough to admit incompetence nor dishonest enough to destroy the evidence. Master Spy, on the other hand, was convinced it was a ploy. Trapped among his several personalities, Thosby chose to do what he had often done in the past with real things that presented real problems: ignore them until they went away.

  Perdur Alas didn't go away. The ship that had transported the shadow team stopped subsequently on Dinadh, where, in a drunkenly lugubrious moment, the captain had grieved over the fate of the bait. This was reported to Chadra Tsum, who routinely used Thosby's equipment to find out things that interested her, whether they interested anyone else or not. Chadra knew about Snark long before Thosby did. She told her colleagues, who told other people, with the consequence that, among certain circles in Simidi-ala, Snark was spoken of familiarly and with sympathy as the lonely shadow of Perdur Alas.

  Which is not to say that Dinadh knew. The people at Simidi-ala, because of their forced association with foreigners, are not considered to be real Dinadhi. They are, so to speak and through no fault of their own, tainted and resented. Though I had not realized it, it seems the resentment runs both ways. They are as suspicious of us as we are of them. So, though the port buzzed with the drama of one lonely shadow upon Perdur Alas, one lonely shadow confronting the might and mystery of the Ularians, the rest of Dinadh remained ignorant.

  As did I, and all those with me. We knew only what Lutha had been told: that our worlds were in danger. If my world was in danger, so were my people, so was my child. What more did I need to know?

  It would have been helpful to know a great deal more about driving gaufers! I had assumed they were gentle and accommodating beasts, but then, I had only seen them driven. I may even have seen them being harnessed—without paying much attention—and I'd certainly never done it myself. It surprised me, us, therefore, when the beasts made it clear they did not like being harnessed, did not like pulling, and would do so only when … when something none of us could figure out!

  Leelson blindfolded them to harness them, only to find that when the blindfolds were removed, they would not move. We were working in the predawn darkness, the sun threatening at any moment to edge the rimrock above us, and I was having a hard time staying calm.

  "They are accustomed to some other order," said Lutha in a perfectly rational, matte
r-of-fact voice. She stood next to the lead animals, stroking their necks, an expression of wonder on her face, as though she had never touched animals before. "Use your skills to find out which ones are leaders."

  Leelson and Trompe looked at her in astonishment, the lantern light showing their faces, hard with frustration. Gradually, Leelson's face cleared, however, and he turned his attention to the beasts. "That one," he said, pointing to one of those hitched in the third pair. "I think. Don't you, Trompe?"

  "I think so," said the other doubtfully. "And that one, maybe. The one on the right in the second pair."

  "Likely they will also have a preferred side," said Lutha. "Right or left. If we are lucky, we will have picked one leader for each side."

  I had not thought of any such thing, and obviously the men had not either. Nonetheless, after a few moments of swearing and sweating, they were able to say that the two animals at the front were accustomed to being there and were on their accustomed sides. The animals did not feel affection or longing for the proper side; they merely felt less aversion.

  "There are probably other refinements," said Lutha, "but I think we'd better get away before it gets any lighter."

  The rimrock above us already glowed with gold. Even as we looked up, the first notes of the dawnsong came from above and behind the great stone pillars that hid us, notes falling like water, silken as falling water. Lutha put Leely into the wain; Leelson drove it. Trompe, Lutha, and I walked alongside. The animals pulled, though without enthusiasm, and we went away south as quietly as we could.

  "How did you know that?" I asked Lutha. "About the lead gaufers."

  "I am a translator of documents," she said. "I read. I read many things from many worlds. I translate documents about crops and water rights and weapons and marriage law and livestock. My head is full of a million irrelevant facts, one of which just happened to be useful." She laughed, somewhat harshly. "Another thing I know, which is more troubling, is that these animals will have to be fed. Since we're not carrying any food for them, presumably they'll have to have time to graze before night, correct?"

  She was right, of course. I had not thought of it. Even though this was my world, I had not thought of it. It was not a woman's thing to worry about. Only men did the herding. Only men drove the gaufers. Why would I have wondered about it?

  Still, I felt shamed that she had and I had not.

  "It's going to cut down on our travel time," said Leelson, his lips compressed. "They'll probably need to graze for several hours."

  "One of the middle pair would be less unhappy if it was back by the wagon," muttered Trompe. "It's clear enough, once you know to look."

  "Most things are," said Lutha in a dry voice, with a sidelong glance at me. I knew what she was thinking, that I was not clear and that she did not know where to look. "What do they eat, Saluez? Grasses? Leaves? Can we cut fodder for them as we go?"

  I didn't know and was ashamed to say I didn't know. We took knives and cut grasses and leaves along the way, for the trees along the trickling stream were coming into leaf, and when we stopped at noon for a brief meal and a drink from our canteens, we soon learned which things the gaufers would eat and which things they would not. By this time we had come along the canyon wall all the way to the place where the five canyons meet. Because of the way the canyon curved, we could not see Cochim-Mahn behind us, but then, the people there could not see us either. We could cross the open place and go to the right around the Gathered Waters and get all the way to the south-tending canyon before anyone could see us from Cochim-Mahn. Of course, if someone were on the trail across the canyon from the hive …

  "I think that's stretching good sense," said Lutha, when I suggested this plan. "What I think we'll do is camp for the night near the water to give us grazing time. Then we'll get ourselves into that other canyon very early in the morning, when we won't be seen."

  Though Leelson showed surprise at her decisiveness, he grunted approval as he went to help Trompe, who was shifting two of the gaufers to their preferred positions. One animal was still out of place, its preferred slot occupied by another with the same preference. Leelson pointed this out. Trompe said the out-of-place one was the lesser opinionated of the two. This made Lutha laugh, a sound I had not heard since she arrived. She had a lovely laugh, like water. I told her so, and she said she had noticed that Dinadhis think most lovely things are like water.

  "It is because we are water poor," I said. "We value it."

  "Well, it flatters me that you like my laughter," she said. "Sometimes I think I have forgotten how to laugh."

  Her eyes were on the boy, and I knew why she had almost forgotten, but I said nothing. She did not want to discuss Leely, and I did not want to offend her. Still, I wondered why. Among the Dinadhi, once we know a child is … incompetent to live, we do not insist upon keeping it alive. Sometimes a mother will fight the inevitable, and she is allowed to do so. Mothers are mothers, after all. But eventually, even a mother understands that humans are not immune from nature's error. Some babies are not meant to live. I thought Leely was one such. So did Leelson, and this was the source of the conflict between them. I almost said hatred, but it was not hatred. Not that alone, at any rate, for she loved him too. I am no Fastigat, but I could feel her yearning, and his. It was like wind, or sunshine, or flowing water, an undeniable presence.

  It was all very tragic and complicated, and I interested myself with it for all the miles we walked that afternoon, down the long canyon, out into the bare space where the five canyons meet, and across that rocky expanse to the place beside the water where we hid ourselves in a grove of trees and set up our camp.

  I had no more idea how to set up the gaufer cage than they did. After a time we figured it out. The pen had the wain for one side, with a narrow panel fastened across the wheels to keep anything from coming under. Two oblong panels hooked onto the front and back of the wain, then onto other panels to make a six-sided enclosure. Then six triangular panels made the peaked roof, all joined together with paran-wood fasteners on the inside.

  "Leather lacings would be easier," said Trompe as he struggled with a panel that would not line up correctly.

  "The Kachis can chew through leather," I said quietly. "They cannot chew paran, which is sometimes called wood-adamant. It must be steamed a long time before it can be worked, and when it is dry, even metal tools have difficulty cutting it."

  "I can see why," he muttered, continuing his struggle.

  Eventually, he and Leelson figured it out. Only after they'd done it by trial and error did they find the faded marks on the edges of the panels to show which one went where. Meantime, the gaufers had been watered and allowed to graze in the woody glade. When the sun was almost gone, they surprised us by coming purposefully out of the woods and entering the enclosure by themselves. They milled about uncertainly until we shut them in, then they settled, each to a small pile of the edible growths we had gathered during the afternoon. We were shut in as well, with a tiny fire in the firebox to warm our food and make a pleasant smoke. The Kachis do not like smoke, though they are attracted to fire. Carrying a torch at night is a sure way to bring them by the dozens.

  We heard the dusk song, echoes of it from far up the canyons. Only from the southern canyon came no sound, for it is too narrow for men to live in. The days are short inside it, and there are no hives there. Luckily, the canyon itself is not long. We could traverse it, I told Lutha, in a couple of days.

  "Will we find enough fodder for the gaufers?" she asked.

  "Lady, I do not know," I told her. "I feel such a fool. I should know more about my own world."

  "Your world is sexually di-cultural," she said seriously. "Men know one set of things, and women know another. And, I suppose the women are di-cultural as well. Those who are … veiled and those who are not."

  "No," I said. "We who are veiled know everything the others do. And more, besides."

  She opened her mouth as though to ask a question, then ca
ught herself and was still. Trompe and Leelson were murmuring together, but they, too, fell quiet in that instant and we all heard the questing cry from the southern canyon.

  At that sound, the gaufers shivered and crowded together, away from the woven panels. They arranged themselves in a circle, holding the same order they had occupied during the day, the less opinionated one hissing and laying his ears back as he took a few moments to decide where he belonged. When they were settled, with their legs folded under them and their heads laid back upon their spines, eyes half-closed, jaws moving, no part of them was within reach of the panels. Whatever was out there could not get hold of them.

  "So interesting," said Lutha, looking at the beasts. "You know, gaufs are the first animals I've ever seen."

  "There are no animals on your world?" I asked, and she said no, no animals upon Alliance Central. No animals on any world that had been completely homo-normed. "They're all in the files," she said. "If there's ever room for them again."

  I thought I would miss animals if there were none. I had a pet corn-rat when I was a child. Many Dinadhi have pet gaufs. Weaving Woman is said to favor animals and there were many in Blessed Breadh, the world from which we came. On the other hand, the Firsters teach that the universe was made for man, made for man to use and use up, including all its creatures. We talked of this in desultory fashion while we listened for approaching wings.

  Try though we would to keep our minds on something else, it did no good. First a little silence fell among us, then a longer one, then one longer yet. Finally, we withdrew into the wagon itself and pulled the door almost shut behind us. There we each sat in our own ten square feet of space and tried not to hear what was going on outside. They were teasing us. Kachis always do, tease us, try to frighten us. They do it, say the songfathers, to try our faith, to be sure we are strong and resolved. First they flutter. Then come the cries, like hungry children, enough to melt ones heart. They shake the panels, they thrust in their long, stick-thin arms. They gnaw at the panels with sharp, white teeth. They cannot chew paran wood. It is for this reason we call paran the Lord Protector of Trees and never cut a mature one without planting two in its place.