Shadow's End Read online

  "If you intend a similarity, I am offended," she said. "Though I may have assumed the proportions of a nova, I have no intention of bursting. I merely scream when I stand up, because it hurts to stand up! This may sound like an explosion, but actually—"

  "We are not Firsters. You could have—" he interrupted gently.

  "Don't tell me. Of course I could have." Could have chosen not to be pregnant. Could have chosen to delay the development of the fertilized egg. Could have had the baby developed in a biotech uterus, given crèche birth. She hadn't chosen that. Why not? She didn't know why not! Why had he gotten her pregnant in the first place? Fastigats could control that if they wanted to! Obviously, he hadn't wanted to!

  "Well then?" Leelson being reasonable.

  "I keep thinking it must be boring for you." Great Gauphin, it was boring enough for her.

  "A new experience is seldom boring. Womb-birth is becoming quite rare, and rare happenings appeal to the collector's taste. All Fastigats are collectors."

  She didn't say what she was thinking, that the whole thing had been an accident. That she'd had second thoughts about it, but then Leelson's mother had said—Leelson had said …

  The less thought about all that the better. Still, she was peevish when Leelson seemed more fascinated by the pregnancy than he was by her. She said this, laughing at herself.

  "It's not true," he assured her. "I am passionately fond of you, Lutha Tallstaff. You are like a dinner full of interesting textures and flavors, like a landscape full of hidden wonders. I am not ignoring you in all this."

  True. When one had a Fastigat for a lover, one could not complain of being ignored. One's every whim was understood; one's every mood was noted. For the most part, one's every desire was satisfied, or thwarted, only to make the satisfaction greater when it occurred. If a Fastigat lover was not forthcoming, it was not through lack of understanding. Sometimes Lutha felt (so she told me) she was understood far too well. Sometimes she longed for argument, for passionate battle, for a sense of her own self back again. Pride kept her from showing it, that and the fear that Leelson would accommodate her. Only a fool would take on an opponent who could block every thrust before it was made.

  It was easier during those early months after Leely was born, for then Leelson switched at least part of his searching intelligence from her to the child, leaving Lutha to her udderish moods and mutters while he hovered over the infantender, forehead creased, feeling his way into that little mind.

  "Like a maze," he'd said, almost dazedly. "All misty walls and dazzling spaces. Hunger or discomfort comes in like jagged blobs of black, and the minute he eliminates or burps or takes the nipple, he's back to dazzling spaces again."

  "No faces?" she'd asked, disappointed. Babies were supposed to recognize faces. Like baby birds, back when there had been birds, recognizing the special markings of their own species. Eyes, nose, mouth: that configuration was supposed to be instinctively recognized by humans. Lutha had read about it.

  "Well, I can't feel faces," he'd replied. "No doubt they're there."

  Later he postulated that Leely recognized something else or more than faces. Some quality unique to each person, perhaps. Some totality.

  "He's not one of us, I'm afraid. Not a Fastigat." Leelson had shaken his head ruefully over the four-month-old child. It was then Lutha admitted to herself what she had refused to consider before: Leelson was disappointed at not having a Fastigat son. Virtually all Fastigat sons were empaths, at least. If she'd had a daughter, it wouldn't have mattered!

  "Hardly fair," she'd muttered, wanting to weep. "Sexist!"

  He'd smiled charmingly, the way he did. Fastigats were almost always charming. "Not my fault, Lutha. I didn't design it. It's sex-linked, that's all."

  "You'd think biologists—"

  He hadn't let her finish. "Well, of course our women say attempting to make female Fastigats is meaningless, because any normal woman is a sensitivity match for a male empath, any day."

  He'd made her laugh, hiding his own disappointment. Perhaps even then he'd known—or at least suspected—this disappointment wasn't to be the only one.

  Time came soon enough, of course, when suspicion was fulfilled and Leelson went away. Unforgivably away. Without announcement or preamble. One morning she had wakened to find him gone. He'd left a note, of course, if one could call five words a note. Not much after their years together.

  "You must feel abandoned. Betrayed!" This from Lutha's older sister, Yma, sector-famed, thespian absolute.

  The accuracy of this made Lutha blaze hotly as she denied it. "I do not! Leelson's and my relationship lasted a long time. Neither of us is from a contractual culture, so why would I feel betrayed!" She said it as though she meant it. In fact, she did feel betrayed and abandoned, not that she could possibly admit it to Yma. How could he? She couldn't have left Leelson! How could he have left her?

  Yma went on. "Perhaps not a contract, but still … "

  "But still nothing, Yma. I had a child because I wanted a child." That was partly true. She kept her lip from trembling with considerable effort. After the initial shock, she had wanted a child.

  "Well, of course you did, darling, but it was a genetic risk. With him."

  "Fastigat men father normal children on non-Fastigat women all the time!"

  Yma couldn't leave it at that. "Well, there are no aberrations in your family line."

  "You don't know that!" Lutha cried.

  "Oh, yes I do and so do you. Even though we've never met them, we know all about Papa's side of the family. They're all totally ordinary, ordinary, ordinary!" To Yma, nothing could be worse.

  Lutha did indeed know a great deal about Papa's family, and his many siblings and half siblings out on the frontier. Frontier worlds began with a colony ship, a few hundred crew members, and a hundred thousand human embryos. Thirteen or fourteen years later the original embryos were boys and girls who began procreating on their own, using the crèche equipment on the ship. A few decades, the colony might number in the millions! Twenty children per woman was not uncommon, virtually all of them crèche-born. In a homo-normed world, there were few impediments. No dangerous diseases, little danger from weather, no danger from plants or animals—in fact few plants and no animals at all.

  "Mama Jibia does go on and on about the kinfolk," Lutha admitted.

  "She's never said anything indicating they're anything but boring. And Mama's family, we know all about, both sides, four generations back. Her mother is Lucca Pineapple, and we've met her. Remember?"

  "The religious grandma," said Lutha with vague discomfort at the memory. "Who visited us on her way through the sector."

  "Exactly. You do remember! We thought her very strange! Well, women who depilate and tattoo their entire bodies are strange. But that's simply attitudinal; biologically she's quite all right. And Mama Jibia is always telling stories about Lucca's mother—Nitha Bonetree, remember, the one who first ran away to the frontier?"

  "Which is where Lucca was born, and Mama too. I guess I remember some of that. Mama Jibia always said we'd inherited our talents from Nitha's line."

  "It isn't the detail that matters in any case! The only thing that matters is there's no problem in your family on either side back four generations. And Leelson should not have left you to provide the entire care for the boy, as though it were somehow your fault!"

  Lutha felt herself turning red, felt the tears surging, heard the anger in her words. "I had always intended to be responsible for my child. It was my choice."

  Was it? Was it indeed? Then why couldn't she remember making it! She asked me this and I laughed. I couldn't remember either. It had just happened. One couldn't really question it. Lutha said even Yma knew she'd gone too far. Wisely she let the matter drop.

  Lutha never mentioned to Yma the credit drafts regularly deposited to her account from Fastiga. Fastigats did not father by chance. As a society, they fathered no unknown or unacknowledged children, and all children fat
hered by Fastigats received support from Fastiga. It was a matter of honor, one of the primary differences, so said Fastigats, between Fastigats and lesser men.

  Fastigats didn't even sign certificates of intent. Their honor was so untarnished they were exempt from the requirement imposed on all other citizens of Central, to have five responsible, self-supporting coparents on record by the fourth month of pregnancy.

  Lutha and Yma and Mama Jibia and two male cousins had signed for Leely. No one cared who had children, or how many, but one of the basic rights of Alliance citizens was not to be responsible for other people's. The penalties for dereliction of responsibility were severe, and the credit drafts from Fastiga were infuriatingly beyond the call of duty. Even more infuriating were the Fastigat uncles and male cousins who visited at intervals, observed Leely's growth and development, then went away again. Meantime, Leely grew bigger and stronger and older and Lutha became more tired and desperate.

  "You ought to consider the alternatives," Yma said, every time they met. "Really, Lutha. You ought to … "

  The Fastigat uncles and cousins also urged her to consider alternatives. Santeresa's World, they'd suggested, where the whole planet made its living caring for the sick, the injured, the disabled. It was expensive, but Fastiga would pay for it. Lutha had refused. Her child was not an alternative. End of statement. End of consideration, no matter how her life narrowed around her day by day and even her necessary professional duties gave way to Leely's needs. She could not decide to let him go any more than she had decided to have him. Though she had. She must have!

  For years now she had kept a fragile calm, slathering sentimental oil on every emotional linkage, making her life move like some old cog-and-belt-driven machine, creaking and wobbling from one day to the next. And now, here, all at once, this skinny old fart, this Fastigat servant of the Alliance, this bureaucrat, had thrust an additional duty among her gears, grinding her to a screaming halt!

  She abandoned simile and summoned anger, making herself rage at being forced to do the Alliance's will. Was this a penalty, for having known Leelson? Another one?

  The anger wouldn't hold. It was too hard to hide from herself the anticipation she felt at the promise of somewhere to go, the relief at the idea of someone to help her. The promise of succor and change.

  So Lutha planned a journey, even as I, Saluez, planned a journey, though hers was far longer than mine. In a sense, at least, hers was longer, though mine wrought greater changes. For me a night soon came when Shalumn and I wept on each other's shoulders, I out of fright, she out of fear of losing me. The following morning I bent beneath the brow-strap of my carrying basket and went up the rocky trail with Masanees. High on a shelf above Cochim-Mahn, I panted, waiting for her to catch up with me. Masanees is not as agile as she once was. She has not yet received Weaving Woman's reward, that comfortable time of life when she need no longer fear conceiving, but she is no longer young. I am young. I am twelve in Dinadh years, twenty standard years. Too young for this, perhaps. But no. Women younger than I, much younger than I have made this trip. If a woman is old enough to conceive, she is old enough for this. So the songfathers say. "Soil which accepts seed is ready for the plow!"

  "Whsssh," Masanees breathed as she came up to the stone where I waited. "Time for a breather. That path gets steeper every year."

  "Have you come up before this year?" I asked, knowing the answer already.

  Masanees nodded. "With Dziloch. And last year with Kh'nas."

  "Imsli a t'sisri," I murmured. Weave no sorrow.

  "None," Masanees replied cheerfully. "They're both fine. We did it right."

  I tried to smile and could not. I was not reassured. Each year some did not return from the House Without a Name. Each year some went behind the veil, down into shadow. Each time the women no doubt thought they had done it right. Who would go there otherwise?

  There was no point in saying it. Saying it only increased terror. I had been told one should, instead, sing quietly to oneself. A weaving song, dark and light, pattern on pattern. Turning away up the hill, I chanted quietly to myself in time with my plodding feet.

  The House Without a Name stands on a promontory above Cochim-Mahn. One can see a corner of it from the shelf where the songfather stands, only a corner. One would not want to see it all. One would not want to look at it as part of one's view of the world. It is easier to ignore it, to pretend it isn't really there. One can then speak of the choice in measured tones, knowing one need not fear the consequences. As songfathers do.

  "That which we relinquished, death and darkness in the pattern.

  "That which we took in its place, the House Without a Name … "

  That's how the answer to the riddle goes, the one no one ever asks out loud, the riddle my grandmother whispered to me in the nighttime, as her grandmother had whispered it to her. "What is it men relish and women regret?" Grandma asked, preparing me. Letting me know without really letting me know. Frightening me, but not terrifying me.

  It's the way we do things now. We hint. We almost tell, but not quite. We let young people learn only a little. If they never know it thoroughly or factually, well, that makes the choice easier. If they do stupid things because they don't know enough, that's expected.

  As a result, ignoring the house becomes habit and I was able to ignore my approach to it until we arrived at the stone-paved area outside the door. Then I had to admit where I was.

  "Shhh," whispered Masanees, putting her arms around me. "It's all right. We've all been through it, child. It's all right."

  Still I shivered, unable to control it. "I'm scared," I whispered, shaming myself.

  Evidently I wasn't the only one to have said something like that, for Masanees went on holding me.

  "Of course you're scared. Of course you are. The unknown is always scary. Sooner we get to it, sooner it'll be over. Come now. Be a good, brave girl."

  She pushed the door open. The house had a pitched roof, but there were wide openings under the eaves where birds had flown in and out and little nut-eaters had scrambled down to make their mess among the other droppings.

  "First we had to make all clean," said Masanees. The brooms were lashed to her pack, and I followed her example as we gave the place a good sweeping and brushing, including the tops of two low stone tables that stood side by side. One table had a stone basin in its center. We wiped it clean and filled it with water we'd carried up from below. Then we emptied the packs at either side of the basin, and I exclaimed at the sight of such bounty! Meal cakes, beautifully colored and baked in fancy shapes. Strips of meat dried into spirals around long sticks of candied melon. Squash seeds roasted and salted. Dried fruits. More candied fruits. Masanees showed me how to lay it all out in patterns, varying the colors, making it bright and attractive. There is always a store of such foods kept in the hive, she said, even when we have nothing to eat but winter-fungus. Even when we hunger, these ritual foods are kept sacred so they will not hunger.

  When everything was done on the one table, she cast me a look from the corners of her eyes, and I knew whatever was going to happen to me, Saluez, would happen now. She spread a folded blanket upon the other table and helped me lie facedown upon it. She gave me a ring of basketwork and told me to put my face firmly down in it. She shackled my wrists and ankles to the rings in the stone.

  "Ready?" asked Masanees.

  I jerked at the shackles. I could feel my eyes, wide. I knew the whites were showing, knew I was beginning to panic.

  "Shh, shh. It's all right. Here. Drink this." She raised my head and held the cup to my lips.

  "I'll be all right," I cried mindlessly, not drinking.

  "You'll be all right," Masanees agreed, tipping the cup. "Come on, Saluez. It's easier so."

  I made myself drink. My arms and legs jerked against the bonds. Gradually they stopped moving and lay quiet. I could hear. I could feel. I could breathe through the basketwork, but I did so quietly. The basket ring encircled my face, and
beneath my eyes was only the stone of the table.

  I heard the heavy door close as Masanees left. I knew what was outside, nearby, hanging from the branch of an ancient tree: a wooden mallet beside a gong. I heard her feet pause, heard her voice saying words I knew, heard the metal struck by the mallet, a slow series of blows that reverberated among the canyons, a long plangent sound, not sweet but seductive. One, two, three. Then a long pause.

  Then one, two, three again. The series went on. Triplet, then pause. Triplet, then pause. Then a responsive sound. Was it what she expected? It seemed very loud to me.

  My limbs wanted to jerk, to pull free. They could not move. The sounds outside increased …

  I heard her feet hurry off. Somewhere nearby, hidden in the trees, she would conceal herself to wait, and watch, until she could return to let me go …

  I do not like remembering that time. Sometimes the whole thing comes back on me, all at once, before I have had a chance to shut it out. I cry out, then. I stand shivering. People pretend not to see me, turning their eyes away until I have shaken the memory off and closed the door upon it. I do not like remembering that time, so I shall remember something else instead.

  I shall remember when I was a child in Cochim-Mahn.

  Dinadhi girl-children have much to learn. Clay between the hands and the whirl of the wheel. Wool and cotton between the fingers and the twist of the spindle. The weight of brush and broom, the long hours at the loom. The feel of the grindstone under one's palms, the bend of the back when dropping seeds into the holes made by the planting stick. The setting of the solar cooker to gather all the sun's heat. The forward thrust of the head against the tump line, bringing down wood for the winter. A woman must be always busy if her family is to be clad and shod and fed and kept warm, so a girl-child is taught to be constantly busy as well.

  Once each left-thumb day—it is how we count days: little-finger day, lesser twin, longer twin, point-finger day, thumb day; right hand first, then left, making a double hand; five double hands to the month; twelve months to the year, plus the eight or nine extra days Daylight Woman gives us at harvest time. As I say, once every left-thumb day, my mother went to the sanctuary cells of Bernesohn Famber, taking me with her as her mother had taken her. Famber was not there, of course. He had become an outlander ghost a long time before, in the time of my great-grandmother. Still, he had paid for a hundred-year lease, paid for cells allocated to him and secured against intrusion or extradition for one hundred standard years. The