The Shadow and Night Page 7

  There was the faintest of pauses. “On how Farholme is doing. There are specific questions but . . . well, it’s very open. Anyway, after I disembarked at Isterrane two days ago, I visited Brenito, who had made the request for a visit. And he said I ought to start looking around ‘from the outside in.’ ”

  “And we are one of the farthest towns out. So you came here?”

  A shaft of light caught the dark, lean face, seemingly huddled down in the shelter of the coat’s high collar.

  “Here. And of the thousand doors it seemed right to knock on that of your house.”

  “Well, Vero, I hope it was.”

  “I feel it was. I feel that we are to be friends.”

  “Yes, I think it will prove to be so.”

  He led Vero up a narrow brick path that wound round onto a footbridge that brought them high along the side of the hill so that they looked down over the spired and steepled houses. The only illumination now lay in the directed-downward light of the active yellow strips that switched themselves on as they approached and off as they walked away. Above them they could see the stars flung out across the night sky. At the very top of the bridge, Vero put out a hand in front of Merral.

  “May we stop a moment please? I would like to see where Earth is.”

  Merral pointed out where in the Milky Way, if they had had a telescope, they would have been able to see Sol. Vero was silent for some moments, then he leaned back against the brick parapet of the bridge and stared at Merral.

  “So much of your world I find familiar. Which is as it should be—the Made Worlds are made to be as much like Earth as they can be. Then suddenly I catch a glimpse of something that reminds me where I am.” He shook his head. “And the stars do that all the time. It is almost overwhelming. I can’t recognize a constellation. And no moon. Ever.”

  “Sorry, no visible moon. Just a small invisible Local Gate with enough mass to give the tides to stir our oceans. That’s all.”

  “No, it’s not the same. Our moon is something really special, Merral.” He sighed. “Yes, I can believe those three-hundred-odd light-years now.”

  He seemed to shudder. “And tomorrow is Nativity. Strange to think, Merral, this will be the first one I have had away from my family. And on this side of Ancient Earth I could not have gone much farther away. Actually, it’s the cold that I find odd. Nativity at home in Africa is always hot.”

  For a moment Merral said nothing, trying to put himself in the other’s shoes, imagining himself transported somewhere with a warm Nativity, strange languages, and alien stars. He could sympathize, and he reached out and put an arm around the stranger.

  “I understand.” He paused, trying to think of the words. “And yet, friend Vero, if God is infinite what does three-hundred-odd light-years compare to the infinity that is his? And doesn’t Nativity itself promise that we will have the Most High with us?”

  Vero clasped his arm tightly in return. “You are right, Merral. I’m sorry for expressing myself that way. It was a mastery of my mind by my heart. Perhaps I should explain—it’s no excuse—that we sentinels are supposed to be different. In our training we are encouraged to be sensitive, to be intuitive, to be able to listen to what others cannot hear, to see what others cannot see. And it takes its toll. Particularly after five Gates.”

  Yes, Merral thought, I can see that it could. And yet, are you so different from me? Perhaps with your training I would be as you. Maybe the way of upbringing I have had has suppressed such feelings, or rather channeled them elsewhere. But deep down I have them, and if I too were all the worlds away from home tonight, then I might well feel as you feel.

  “No, I understand. I really do. But why are you trained that way? Sentinels are not exactly an important thing here. We know you watch and guard, but for what?”

  Vero answered thoughtfully. “Your question is delicately ambiguous. ‘For what’ indeed? For what do we search or for what purpose? Ah. . . .” Here he sighed gently. “Both are valid questions that even we inside the sentinels ask. Or at least I ask. And neither has a simple answer.”

  Merral felt there was a curious hint of uncertainty or even doubt in his voice.

  “Well, tell me as we walk on.”

  Vero began to speak using a tone of voice that indicated that what he said had been long thought over. “The sentinels were founded in 2112 by Moshe Adlen, just after the end of Jannafy’s rebellion. Moshe Adlen was from one of those Jewish families whose conversion to the Messiah marked the very start of the Great Intervention. Incidentally, you do call it the Great Intervention here?”

  “Of course. . . . I mean, why not?”

  Vero shrugged. “Every so often someone reminds us that what we call the Great Intervention is really a misnomer and wants to change it. The real Great Intervention in human history, they say, occurred when the Most High took on flesh, died, was raised from death, and returned to heaven. You’ve heard the view?”

  “Oh yes. But then you can argue that the events of revival, repentance, and conversion that we term the Great Intervention were, in a way, merely the outworking of that earlier event.”

  “Exactly; the two-thousand-year-long infancy of the Church finally ended.” Vero nodded. “Here too, Farholme seems orthodox. But back to Moshe Adlen—he was a teacher of theology in a university when the Rebellion broke out, and he joined up. He fought against the rebels and was at the final battle at Centauri, and saw what had happened to the colony. He believed that the Rebellion could have been foreseen. He went to Jerusalem and stood before the three symbols the Assembly created to await the Great King: the empty throne, the unworn crown, and the unwielded scepter. And there he took a solemn oath to the Most High that, in as much as it was humanly possible, he would see to it that no such thing should happen again. So he founded an organization, first to help him, and eventually to perpetuate his work.”

  As the visitor paused, Merral spoke. “Some of this I knew or had been told and had half forgotten. But surely, Vero, we are nearly twelve thousand years on. Do you still hold to the same vision?”

  They were now winding round the sides of the gardens of the elevated levels of the town. The light from the houses was splintered through the bare branches of the trees.

  Vero answered slowly, the words coming out as if he was thinking afresh about the issue. “A sharp question. There has been a modification in some ways. We hold the standard view that, since the Great Intervention, the founding of the Assembly that followed, and the ending of the Rebellion that marred its infancy, we are in the era of the Lord’s Peace as predicted by the prophets of the Old Covenant. The glories of the Most High King are proclaimed already on nigh-on sixteen hundred worlds and a dozen Cities-in-Space. Evil is constrained to a shadow of what it was before the blessed Intervention. We get ill, we suffer loss, we die, but these things do not preoccupy us and mar our existence as they did our distant forefathers. And we believe that this pattern will persist until the end, when the King will return and evil will not simply be bound but will be destroyed and the fabric of the universe will be transformed. But into what, we—as ever—only foresee faintly.”

  He paused. “That much you on Farholme believe too?”

  “Yes. Of course.”

  “Quite. If anything else were the view here, then Brenito or the Custodians of the Faith, who monitor what we believe, would have warned us of it long ago. Now when the King’s Son will return and all things will be renewed is, as it has ever been since the days of the apostles, a mystery. There are two main views. Some say that it may not be long delayed, and there are others that think that the King’s Peace may yet continue for many more thousands of years. Some among the sentinels even speculate that the Assembly of the Firstborn may itself not be complete until the whole galaxy is under his name. After all, did not our Lord plainly say that, at the end, the elect would be gathered ‘from the ends of the heavens’? Indeed, it may be that in the history of the Assembly, all that we have seen so far may simply be the
first chapter.”

  “Whether we are at the dawn or evening of the Assembly is sometimes discussed on Farholme,” Merral replied softly, “but we are mostly too busy about the present to be concerned about a distant future. Such questions are not a specialization here. I personally hold no opinion on the timing of the Messiah’s Return other than to await it with certainty and hope.”

  Vero paused in his stride and gestured up with his arms. “Good. And I hold no fixed opinion. Indeed, there is no contradiction. We plan for a much greater Assembly but we are prepared that the Return and the Remaking may take place before tomorrow dawns. But, on either view, most people consider that rampant evil is a thing of the past.”

  He turned, and Merral could see his eyes shining in the faint light. “Now here, the sentinels interject a note of caution. You see, we believe that the devil—the enemy—is not dead, just cast down; he is not destroyed, but merely bound. We find no guarantee that, even under these conditions, evil cannot return. We insist that the Assembly must watch, listen, and pray. That is the only task of the sentinels: to watch out for a new rise of evil.” He paused. “Well, that’s the theory.”

  “I see,” answered Merral, struggling with the concepts. “We are nearly there—it’s just up these stairs. I suppose I understand that. But what exactly are you looking for? Do you know, when I first heard about sentinels as a child, I thought you watched out for aliens.”

  “Aliens?” Vero laughed gently. “No, they have never figured in sentinel thought. Even in Moshe Adlen’s day humanity had realized they were alone. The probability of intelligent life elsewhere had become vanishingly small. Bacteria, yes, but nothing else. And everything since has confirmed that view.”

  “Oh, it was a childish fantasy of mine. But what are you looking for?”

  Vero’s answer was slow in coming and strangely hesitant when it came, “We do not know. Anomalies, oddities, changes.”

  “Sounds like everything and anything.”

  There was a long—and to Merral, very significant—silence before Vero spoke again. “Ah . . . that is the problem.”

  How interesting. He seems to have his reservations. But Merral felt it would have been ungenerous to pursue the matter and gestured Vero onward.

  Soon they turned down a small, narrow street with a single line of trees down the middle and flanked on each side by winding terraces of four-story houses. He began checking the names at the doors, but in the end the sound of the dance music gave away the location.

  “Interesting, Vero, but I’m still only a little wiser. Anyway, here we are.”

  “Hello! Guests!” he called in as he opened the door. Vandra, the former warden’s wife, squeezed past a crowd of relatives and neighbors and came down the hall to greet them. In the next few minutes, Merral found himself immersed in a sea of introductions and repeated requests to stay for food and for the dances. The hosts had opened the doors between three adjacent houses to make a single, long, extended room, but even so, it was still full and barely large enough for the dancing. As Vero was introduced, Merral gradually slipped back so that he stood against the wall. There he stood watching as the next dance started. When the dance—a very formal West Menayan one involving two lines of partners and some complex foot movements—had finished, Merral made arrangements for someone to bring Vero back. Then, pleading tiredness, he offered his apologies and left.

  Winding his way back home, Merral considered what Vero had told him about the sentinels, noting that even after his answers he actually knew only a little more about why Vero personally was here. From that he moved on to think how strange it must be to spend your life doing something so vague and ill-defined. It all seemed so very different from his own work with its all-too-tangible trees, rocks, and lakes, and only slightly less solid plans and schedules. But it was strange how talking to Vero had made him vaguely desirous of seeing beyond his own world’s horizons. Perhaps one day he would have an excuse to go through the Gate. But in the meantime . . .

  Here he began to think about the news of the tropics post that Ingrida had told him was to be his, and he was still working out the implications of this when he entered his house.

  His father was taking his outdoor shoes off in the hallway. Seeing Merral, he stopped what he was doing and, one shoe on and the other off, hopped over and kissed him. Merral felt his father’s beard tickle him, caught the distinctive workshop scent of oil, and rejoiced in the happy memories it brought back.

  “Son! My, but it’s good to see you! It’s been a week.”

  Merral stood back and they examined each other. My father looks tired. But then if he’s only just finished work, he has a right to.

  His father, as if conscious that his appearance was under review, swept his thin, untidy, and graying hair back and stroked his silver-tinted beard. “Sorry I’m late, but it’s been one of those days. Things break down without regard to it being Nativity’s Eve.”

  “Everything all right?” Merral asked, hanging his jacket up.

  “Oh, eventually. We had fun repairing a leaking hydrogen tank on an old lifter. A Series Two had a lot of hard use on the delta, so you can imagine the mud. Took off the tank, flushed it, washed it, dried it, tested it, found the hole, fixed it, tested it with nitrogen—fine. So we tested it with hydrogen—fine. Flushed it again, put it back on. Tested it finally with hydrogen again, and what do you know? Well, it leaks! So, we repeated the entire procedure all over again. But anyway, we fixed it by seven o’clock.”

  My father’s tendency for using many words has not deserted him, but I love him for it. “You must be tired,” he said.

  “A bit. But you’ve had a long trip yourself. It went well, I take it? How are Zennia and Barrand?”

  In a flash, Merral decided that he would not say anything about the difficulties there. Indeed as he thought about them, he now seemed to have trouble discerning what those difficulties were exactly. From here it all seemed such a vague matter. “Oh, everything seems all right with the colony—more or less. It’s been a hard winter. They send their love.”

  “Good, good. Well, you’ve met our guest. Quite a surprise, eh?”

  As he spoke, the door opened and Merral’s mother came into the hallway.

  “I thought I heard both of you. Stefan dear, I do hope you aren’t too weary?”

  They kissed affectionately and he put his arm around her shoulder, a gesture that always struck Merral as awkward, given his father’s shorter height.

  “Fine, my dear. And your day went well?”

  “Excellent. Somehow there were no last-minute crises in Housing Allocation this year; no one’s long-lost relatives with six children suddenly deciding to spend Nativity in Ynysmant. Mind you, I always think it so seasonal to have housing crises at this time of the year. There’s such a precedent. And I miss the satisfaction of sorting them out. But one can quite live without them. . . . Supper is ready.”

  As they ate, Merral listened to the news of the town and of his three sisters, all of whom were now married and lived away with growing families. Feeling tired, he was content to listen to the conversation rather than to lead it. Whether it was because of his tiredness or for some other reason, it seemed to him that he had never seen his father and mother with such clarity. It was almost, he fancied, as though they had portrait frames around them. His mother, apron now off and hair flying loose around her face, was apparently all brightness and glitter to the extent that you might have thought she was shallow minded. Then abruptly, as when a crack in a brightly painted surface reveals pure metal underneath, she would make some comment that revealed a hard, acute mind. Merral thought it strange that she and the much less impulsive Zennia were sisters.

  Merral turned his attention to his father. This evening he was, as ever, a source of verbose—if amiable—stories and anecdotes, large portions of which seemed irrelevant and some of which were so diffuse that he lost his way. But here beneath the dryness, grace and good sense gleamed at depth. And Merral saw t
hat while each partner saw the weaknesses of the other—and, he presumed, themself—they were accepted in a spirit of amused love. Merral was also conscious, but less clearly so, that the same benevolent acceptance was turned toward him.

  Over dessert they discussed the guest. His father was enthusiastic. “Well, Merral, I must say, I think it’s great. With the girls away we easily have a spare place for tomorrow.”

  His mother leaned over. “Stefan dear. Of course we have a place for Vero. We could take half a dozen guests. And there’s plenty of food. I’ve made sure. Especially for Vero. No one is going to come all that distance and go back hungry.”

  Merral, trying not to laugh with happiness, was moved to suggest that it was probable that Vero wouldn’t be going back immediately after the meal and that he was unlikely to be short of food after Nativity lunch. “Indeed, it’s problems of overeating that are more likely.”

  As if prompted, his father started wiping his dish with a fragment of bread, only to catch a look of disapproval—tempered by merriment and fondness—from his wife. He put the bread down, winked at her, and turned to Merral. “I hope you get on with our Vero. He’s a long way from home and they all say that the Made Worlds are strange for those born and bred on Ancient Earth. ‘Disturbingly like but unlike,’ someone has said. All that distance must take a toll too, and I can give that floating from Gate to Gate business a miss. If you do have to do it, say to move somewhere else—like a new world—that’s all right, but it’s a dreadful way of transport. I prefer my feet on the ground, or at least on wheels. But, charity apart, he must know a lot. There may be some question over how valuable sentinels are, but there’s no doubt that they train their people well.”

  “But Father,” Merral asked, “why is he here?”

  His father stabbed at a stray bit of cheese with his knife. “The problem, my son, with foresters as a profession is that they don’t deal nearly enough with machines. With machines you have to be precise, verbally logical. ‘Why is he here?’ is inadequately structured. In a word—it is ambivalent. Do you mean, on Farholme, in Ynysmant, or at our house?”