Shadow's End Page 26

  They gagged.

  Before them, observed from some distance, through a twiggy growth, monstrously shaggy flesh encircled something they could not see, great cliffs of hair reared high as hills, walls of old dog, of lairs deep in layers of fatty bones, the taste of beast, hot reeking blood, and sour spit. From behind them came the sound of the sea. Between their teeth a twig was jammed to keep their mouths slightly open so they wouldn't gag on the taste … on the dreadful taste.

  The scene jiggled and moved as they rose laboriously. Their point of view changed. They climbed, up and up, then peered out once more from above, down at the inside of that wall of flesh, seeing bare skin upon which patterns moved, around and around the abandoned camp, memories of slaughter, retelling of the chase.

  They raised their eyes. Through the air, from the south, three things came toward the others, reaching out with appendages that seemed to stretch forever, joining others, making other enclosures. In the middle distance, a dozen shaggy mountains moved in a slow procession.

  What was it they tasted? Oily, soapy, rancid, bitter, nasty …

  Poracious Luv, from her vision of Perdur Alas, stretched her arm through the vision to find the reality of the retrieval control on Dinadh. She turned it off. While the other two retched and gagged she unashamedly wiped out her mouth with the hem of her garment.

  "Technician!" she said. "Call for a technician to filter out the tastes. We can't analyze this until we filter out the tastes."

  "Do it," sputtered the Procurator, heading for the door labeled sanitary facility. "Summon that rememberer back, and have him find someone. Now!"

  From behind a clump of furze, Snark watched Diagonal Red, Four Green Spot, Big Gray Blob, Blue Lines, and Speckled Purple—the ones she'd come to call the Big Five—gather over the camp. Recently these particular ones had been assembling more and more frequently, sometimes only three or four of them, often all five, looming aloft for a while, then descending to encircle the abandoned camp with appendages that seemed almost liquid in their ability to flow together. Peering at them from her hole at the top of the nearest hill, Snark had decided this was either the way they conversed or the way they remembered. Each new picture coalesced on one Ularian before it moved across the united flesh to the next Ularian, where some other details or actions were added. Each Ularian augmented or complicated the picture created by the previous ones, and the event continued accreting finer and finer detail until the sequence was completed. Or until the Ularians got tired of it.

  She had watched them kill her mother half a dozen times. Since she had first realized that the color blobs were pictures, she had counted the number of different pictures they shared. The most frequent one was Snark's mother, a huge mother one who covered the whole front of one of the things. Soon Mother would run across the moor, her hair streaming behind her. The shape of running Mother would move to the left, racing along that great wall of flesh. The next Ularian added the shapes of the pursuers. This picture went on, left, farther left, until Snark lost sight of it. When it came into view again, to her right, the pursuers were pouncing, sending Mother fleeing this way, that way, playing with her. Every time the same, the sea coming nearer and nearer, safety almost within reach …

  Each time Snark had seen it, Mother had almost reached the edge before they caught her.

  Why did they show it over and over? Tell it over and over? It wasn't a story one of them told, it was a story they shared. Sometimes Diagonal Red would start it. Sometimes one of the others. And the details were always the same, as though they'd all agreed just how it was, just what had happened, remembering it all the same.

  Snark told herself the pictures were not necessarily true. The chase might not have happened at all. Maybe it was something they wanted to have happened. Maybe it was a religious thing, a kind of ritual they went through, like primitives did, counting coup, telling tall tales, even painting lies on their tombs to make their gods think they were better, or bigger, or stronger than they actually were.

  Today they weren't telling the mother-chase story. Today they were showing another favorite, a fish story. The picture was of shaggy forms that hung over the sea, dropping their tentacles into the waves, drawing them up again, laden with silvery fish. The detail was so complete that Snark could see the fish flapping inside the tentacles that had caught them.

  When they were finished telling stories, they would float away, like monstrous balloons. There was a wrongness to them. Balloons should be festive, not repulsive. Snark put her face onto her hands, waiting for them to finish showing the fish story and go away. Close as they were, she dared not move, though the taste was hard to bear. When she watched them for a long time like this, the taste seemed to permeate her own flesh until she herself tasted as they did, sick of her own saliva, nauseated by the rottenness of her own tongue. When they left, she would lie in the mouth of her cave with her mouth open, letting the sea wind wash around her teeth, cleansing her into humanness once more.

  During the past few days, they had been around more frequently and had stayed for longer times. Maybe they were planning a fishing trip. Maybe they'd taken over this whole planet just to go fishing! Though all they'd done so far was talk about it, that is, show pictures about it. They themselves hadn't caught any fish, not that Snark had seen.

  She clamped her eyes shut and concentrated on breathing deeply: one breath, two breaths, three, four, the smell of the sea, the sound of the birds, thirty-two, the sound of the waves, eighty, one hundred, a hundred thirty, seventy …

  When she raised her head, they had gone. She didn't move. A few days ago, she'd thought they were gone and had been about to move when she realized they were hanging directly above her. She'd come that close to being eaten. Or transported. Or cat-and-moused like her mother. Whatever it was they did. Would do.

  She risked a look up. Clear sky. Nothing. Nothing near the camp. Nothing between herself and the cliff. Still, one had to be careful. They could move with horrid alacrity. One minute they wouldn't be anywhere around, the next moment they'd be present.

  Maybe they knew she was here. Maybe all this was part of the ritual. Showing her what would happen to her.

  She wouldn't think that. Wouldn't let herself think that. If she thought that, she'd run screaming right at them, out in the open, panicked. She couldn't do that. She had to hold on, hold on …

  For what? There was no one here. No one to protect, no one to talk to, no one to lie beside, sharing warmth, sharing comfort, even.

  Untrue. Somewhere was a monitor. Seeing what she saw. Feeling what she felt. Somewhere on Dinadh was someone watching over her.

  Though the monitor might not be the only thing watching over her! Sometimes in the night she woke to that flattened sound, that curtained feeling, that almost subliminal shudder, as though a mighty hoof had touched the planet, moving it slightly in its orbit. What was that? Did it know she was here?

  "Lonely," she whispered. "God, I'm so lonely! I'm all alone. Please. Help me. Come get me. Please!"

  Late Dinadh daylight filtered chill through multiple windows, making puddles of grayed gold upon the floor. Three sat stunned, facing one another, only just returned from Perdur Alas, returned from fear, pain, hunger, cold. From weary loneliness.

  "Well," said the Procurator in an exhausted whisper. "At least we now know what they look like."

  They did not know whether they had been living Snark's life for a day or two or three. Only when she reached the safety of her cave and curled into sleep had they turned off the retriever and let the Dinadh evening surround them once more. The Procurator's words were the first intelligible ones any of them had made, though their experience had been punctuated by cries and grunts and indrawn breaths.

  "Can't we do something for her?" the ex-king asked, his voice breaking. "Send a ship or something."

  Poracious Luv arched her brows disbelievingly. "You? The King of Kamir, the practitioner of ultimate ennui? Touched by the plight of another human being?"


  "She's alone," he blurted, flushing. "I've … I've been alone. It would touch anyone!"

  The Procurator rubbed his forehead wearily. It ached from the battering he, Snark, had received. It had ached before, and now it was worse. He had, after all, sent her there. He was responsible for her.

  He said, "Touched or not, right now there's no ship to send. Even if there were a ship, we couldn't risk it for one survivor."

  "Particularly inasmuch as we now have records of everything she's picked up," said Poracious Luv in a dry, cynical voice. "So there'd be no advantage to rescuing her."

  "Advantage," Jiacare Lostre snarled. "Advantage!"

  "Would you trade a hundred lives for one?" the Procurator said, looking him in the eye. "Surely you don't think those … creatures would let us go to Perdur Alas and simply remove her? We'd have to send a cruiser at least. Would you trade a shipload of men on a gesture?"

  "How do we know they wouldn't?"

  Poracious sighed. "We know what happened to ships in the Hermes Sector a hundred years ago. Any ship approaching a world that had been stripped was taken. They went, just as the people went. Gone. Whisk. Away. Nobody knew where. That's what has happened to the evacuation ships this time, too."

  "I didn't realize," mumbled the ex-king. "Sorry. This is all … very new to me. I've tried not to care about anything for a very long time, but this … "

  "Nothing like a heady dose of danger to wake one up," Poracious agreed. "Well, Procurator? What do we do next?"

  "With what we've seen happening currently, there must be dozens of episodes in the record that will warrant perusal by experts."

  "Experts." She laughed. "Ha!"

  "Well, by people who might have specialized insights, at least. Some other Fastigats than myself should see this. Also some linguists who specialize in sight languages."

  "Sight language?" Jiacare Lostre cocked his head curiously.

  "There are, or were historically, several sight languages for people who couldn't hear. Now, of course, such languages aren't necessary, but we still have records of them. The girl mutters to herself a lot, so we can pick up clues as to what she's thinking. She said 'telling stories'; she said 'ritual'; both in connection with that pictorial thing they do. I'd be interested in knowing what others think."

  "What do you think?" demanded the ex-king.

  The Procurator considered. "The episode with the running woman had the feel of a story, didn't it?"

  "Was the woman actually her mother?" Poracious asked.

  "Each time the woman appeared, she, Snark, subvocalized the word," said the Procurator. "She said the word mother, and her throat and mouth sensed the shaping of the word. Whether she actually believes so, we don't know. Her thoughts can't be recorded. Only what she senses."

  Poracious mused. "If the woman was her mother, then the girl was a child there, on Perdur Alas. A survivor from the former Ularian crisis?"

  The Procurator shook his head. "It seems impossible. She'd have to have been third or fourth generation."

  "We've found great-grandchildren of colonists before."

  "True." He stared at his hands, surprised to find them trembling. "I've just thought, Lutha Tallstaff is a linguist. One of the best, according to my sources. I don't know if she knows anything about sight languages, but it's worth bringing her from wherever she was sent. What was the name of the place?"

  "Cochim-Mahn," said Poracious.

  "We should be fetching her anyhow. She's at danger if those two assassins are on the loose. And meantime, we should be bringing in some other experts to experience what this girl is going through." The Procurator stared blindly at his companions. "Think of it. The first human contact with a life-form that speaks, and it speaks a nonverbal language."

  The ex-king remarked, "My Minister of Agriculture would say we don't know that it's speaking. It could be merely replaying things it has seen. My Minister of Agriculture would deny it thinks. He says the universe was made for man."

  Poracious stared at the wall, remembering. She didn't believe it was a mere replay. There had been too much relish in the retelling. Reshowing. She went to the door and beckoned to the tassel-bearded rememberer waiting outside. He rose, bowing attentively as she said:

  "Will you please send word to Cochim-Mahn that we need to get Lutha Tallstaff here, as quickly as possible."

  "And Trompe," called the Procurator. "Bring him as well!"

  The rememberer stared at the ceiling, shifted his feet, cleared his throat.

  "Well?" demanded Poracious, suspiciously. "What?"

  "Inasmuch as we had determined the assassins were no longer where they belonged, I took the liberty of communicating with Cochim-Mahn. While you were … occupied."

  "And? Come on, man. Spit it out. All this havering merely makes us itch."

  "They're gone," he blurted. "She, the boy, her companion. As well as Leelson Famber. Also a shadow woman. An eaten one." He curled his lips around the word, whether in disapproval or disgust, she couldn't tell.

  "Gone?" she cried.

  "Leelson Famber!" exclaimed the Procurator as he joined her in the doorway. "When did Leelson Famber come here?"

  The rememberer shrugged, looking from face to face as though trying to decide which question to answer first. "He came, sir, some time ago. And it is believed by those at Cochim-Mahn that they may all have gone to Tahs-uppi."

  Jiacare Lostre joined the others in the doorway. "Gone where?"

  "Gone to what," corrected the rememberer. "A ceremony. Held once every sixty years or so. At the omphalos. At the sipapu. At Dinadh's birthplace, the site of our emergence. The songfather of Cochim-Mahn believes they have gone there, and he is pursuing them. The assassins asked questions about the ceremony, so we believe they're headed there also."

  "Can we intercept them on the way?" Poracious demanded.

  The rememberer turned up his palms helplessly. "Who knows which way they've gone. If they intended to avoid other travelers, they would have tried less-traveled ways, of which there are thousands! The canyons ramify, netlike. They go off into pockets and branches. We'd never find them."

  "Well then," the Procurator said. "How long for us to get where they're going?"

  "Not long, great sir. I can arrange it for tomorrow. We can fly."

  The three shared helpless glances, equally at a loss. Poracious Luv broke the silence, attempting encouragement. "We'll meet them when they arrive," she said, patting the Procurator upon the shoulder.

  "If they arrive," corrected the rememberer. "I would be remiss if I did not tell you that their arrival is far from certain."

  CHAPTER 8

  The first of us to catch sight of the Nodders was Trompe. He was driving the hitch; Leely was asleep inside the wain; and the rest of us were trudging some way behind, cursing every step we made across the curved pebbles that often twisted treacherously beneath our feet. Trompe's whoof of surprise brought us stumbling forward to find him gaping, the reins lax in his hands. Gaufers are incapable of astonishment. They simply lay down, snapping and grumbling at one another as they did at every halt. We made no effort to get them moving. There seemed to be nowhere they could go—It was another place like the Burning Springs, that is, one I'd heard described without getting any idea what it was really like. Songfather had said there were many Nodders, that they were tall, thin pillars of stone, topped with stone heads.

  What he'd said wasn't inaccurate; it was simply a ridiculous understatement. Trompe climbed down from the wagon seat to join Lutha, Leelson, and me as we went slowly forward. The first Nodder was like a sentinel, standing a little forward from the rest. As we neared it our eyes were drawn upward, seeing the tower narrowed to a pinpoint against the massive bulk of the balanced stone head. Perspective, I told myself. It wasn't really that slender. It couldn't be. It couldn't be frigidly cold in the vicinity of the stone, either, but we thrust our shivering arms into our sleeves as we backed slowly away. Beyond the first pillar stood two more, side
by side, and behind them, hundreds.

  Songfather had said they were many, tall, and thin. I also recalled—as we fled in howling panic!—he had said the stone heads moved.

  It was impossible to run over that treacherous footing and we collapsed in a confused heap not far away.

  "I thought it was coming down on us!" Lutha cried as she scrabbled backwards on all fours, never taking her eyes from the ponderous, impossible nodding of that great stone head.

  I still thought it would come down. When it did, it would roll purposefully over us. Behind the three menacing outliers, the great forest of them seemed to whisper to one another in sinister agreement. Yes, yes, let's roll over on that wagon and squish all the people. Wouldn't that be fun?

  I couldn't keep from saying this, a mere whisper to Lutha, and she laughed, a wild peal of amusement. The two men turned disapproving looks on her, which only increased her hilarity. All the tension she'd bottled up during the journey poured out in hysterical torrents. She put her hands over her mouth and smothered the sound, head on knees, shoulders shaking.

  Leelson, with his usual casual disapproval, pointed to the sharp-edged fragments of curved stone that littered the ground, fragments not unlike those that had been troubling our footsteps for some miles. He said pointedly, "It really isn't funny, Lutha. They do come down."

  Not the least sobered, she spared a glance for the surfaces around us, then took a quick look at the conspiratorial heads. My eyes followed hers, and the same odd idea possessed us both at once, for we said, as in one slightly echoed voice:

  "From where?"

  "Why, from … " said Leelson, his words trailing into silence.

  "If some tops fell down, then there should be some pillars without tops." Lutha giggled. Her voice sounded foolish, like that of a petulant little girl. She heard herself, cleared her throat, and said in a more normal tone, "But there aren't any pillars without tops. So where did they fall from?"

  "Strange," mused Trompe. "Very strange. The shape of the heads, I mean. They shouldn't be quite that spherical, should they? Or would erosion tend to round them off?"