The Shadow and Night (10 page)

Merral realized that he was staring too much. “I'm sorry, Verofaza. You have taken me by surprise. . . .”

The other man smiled wryly. “It's Vero. Everyone calls me that. I gather you've been traveling all day. That makes us both travelers.”

A kind comment, and one that makes me feel more at ease.
He found himself warming to the stranger. “I find it generous that you can put my miserable two hundred or so kilometers in the same category as your three hundred and fifty-odd light-years.”

“Nearly four hundred in total. I kept careful count.” He gave a little shudder. “The only place they could find was on a long route combination.”

“It is a mere twenty million million times my journey.”

Vero grimaced vividly. Merral decided he had a very mobile face and that he could make a great clown or mime actor.

“I try not to think of the distances like that, Merral. A light-year is somehow manageable; ten trillion kilometers isn't. Please, why don't we sit down?”

“I'm sorry,” Merral said. “I should have asked you.”

“It's not a difficulty. And you don't mind me using Communal? I seem to understand your dialect easily enough, but I wouldn't dare try and speak it.”

Merral felt that the visitor's warm, deep brown eyes were watching him keenly. “There is no problem. Yes, Farholmen dialect has not yet seriously diverged from Communal. Although there are trends. As a sentinel, I expected you to wear your badge.”

“The Tower against the Sky?” He smiled. “Oh, I should do, but I find it a bit of a nuisance. Everybody points you out: ‘Look, Mum, there's a sentinel.' It's a tradition—not a rule—to wear it. And I choose not to. But I will wear it tomorrow.”

Merral turned to his mother, who was still standing nearby. “Mother, will you not sit with us?”

She shook her head, letting her braided, silver-flecked brown hair bob on her shoulders. “No, no thank you, Merral. I'd
love
to, really. Your father has been delayed at the depot and I really
must
get the rooms ready. And
really,
I have to finish off some things for supper and the meal tomorrow. And would you like something to drink? Perhaps another cake?” She gave him a knowing nod.

Merral, suddenly feeling rather sheepish, wiped his mouth again. “Er, yes. Both please, Mother. I've been traveling since dawn.”

She turned to their guest. “Perhaps Vero, a drink of something for you?”

He nodded formally. “Thank you. Just a glass of your excellent water please, Lena.”

She bowed slightly, patted Merral on the shoulder tenderly, and left the room.

“Are you fasting?” Merral asked.

The stranger's face acquired a slightly pained look. “Not really. Over the past two weeks I have been through five Gates. And I have found out that I do not like them. I think that my stomach is still several light-years behind in Below-Space and trying to catch up. In fact, I wonder if I will ever be reunited with it.”

“You found it unpleasant? People vary, I gather.”

“Yes. Very disorienting. Have you ever been though a Gate?”

“I've never even been in Farholme orbit.”

“Lucky you.” Vero stretched himself back in his chair and flexed his long, smooth brown fingers against each other as if concerned that they were all present and working. “Five Gates in thirteen days, Merral. There was a lot of turbulence between the Nelat Four Gate and Rustiran. You could feel the whole Normal-Space tunnel being buffeted. A weird feeling. And weightlessness wasn't much better. Or takeoffs.” He wriggled his face in an almost childlike look of disgust.

Merral found himself enjoying his visitor. “I have lots of questions, you know,” he said.

Vero closed his eyes and shook his head slowly, as if trying to fight off a headache. “Ah, that I can imagine. But I'm here—well, in Ynysmant—for three days, and I promise I'll try and answer some at least. In time. Actually, I'm here to ask questions myself.”

“You are?”

“Yes.”

Merral waited in vain for any further clarification then asked, “What sort?”

Vero flexed his fingers again, stared at them, and then smiled with wide eyes at Merral. “Ah, that is the problem. But my first question is, what sort of journey did you have?”

Merral was just on the point of answering when his mother came back bearing a small wooden tray with two glasses of water and a plate of small cakes. She put them on the low table between the chairs and gave a glass to Vero, who bowed his head in acknowledgement.

“Thank you indeed.” Then he took the glass carefully, held it up toward her as if making a toast, and sipped it delicately.

Merral's mother smiled at him. “And it's our
honor
to have you. But, not wishing to interrupt your conversation, I'd better remind you, Vero, that it's not long before you're expected at the house of Former Warden Prendal. There is a party, with a meal and dancing.”

“You are right, Lena.” Vero glanced at his watch. “And the evening is going. I'd better get ready. Is it far?”

Merral put down his glass. “Ten minutes' walk, a bit more. I'll take you. In say, fifteen minutes?”

“Done.”

Somehow, Merral made time in those few minutes for a shower and a change of clothes. He also managed to wonder why there was a sentinel visiting Farholme, why he had arrived here in Ynysmant, and what exactly sentinels did. Then he grabbed his winter jacket and met up with Vero, who was standing self-consciously by the door in a long, thick brown coat that went down to his ankles. Vero caught Merral's glance.

“Ah yes. The coat. Well, I was near the Congo Position when the Sentinel Council suddenly asked me to go. It was all a last-minute rush. So I was actually on the way to the launch site when I realized I'd be arriving here in winter. The only winter coat I could get was one from a very tall Nord-European. It is far too long, isn't it?” He glanced down at it again in an embarrassed way and then looked up at Merral. Suddenly, they both found themselves laughing.

Merral shook his head in mirth. “What a mess, eh, Vero? They send you four hundred light-years to the end of the Assembly through Below-Space five times and with expenditure of enormous amounts of energy, and all with the wrong-sized coat! Oh, I love it!” he chortled.

Vero shook with laughter. “Do you suppose . . . ?” he spluttered, pausing for breath between stifled snorts of laughter. “Do you suppose . . . ? No. . . . It's too funny.” Here he suddenly seemed to control himself. He turned to Merral with a perfectly solemn face and, in an intensely serious voice said, “My friend, do you think that perhaps I ought to go back and get one that fits?”

Then the facade of seriousness cracked and he broke out with a croaking laugh. Merral, unable to control himself, burst out into renewed peals of laughter. Eventually he clapped Vero on the back and ushered him out the door. Guffawing with mirth together, they set off up the hill.

By the end of the street they had quieted down enough for Vero to begin asking Merral various questions about Ynysmant, such as how big it was and how long he had lived in it. Apparently satisfied, he then said with a quiet intensity, “Now tell me, Merral, are people happy here?”

At first, Merral wondered whether he had heard the question correctly, then he considered whether it was a joke, and then finally he asked for clarification. “Is that an Ancient Earth question? I mean—excuse me for saying it—it barely makes sense.”

Vero stopped in his tracks, obviously thinking hard. “Yes, I know what you mean. But look, are they contented? Do they long for, well . . . what they cannot have?”

Merral heard himself laughing again. “Want what they cannot have? Vero, this may be Worlds' End, but we aren't stupid. I mean, what would a man or woman want with something that was not theirs to have? You'd drive yourself crazy. It'd be like . . . well . . . I don't know—a lake wishing to be a mountain or a bird wanting to be a fish.”

For long moments the only sound was their feet on the cobbles and muffled singing from an adjacent house. Then Vero spoke, but this time it was in a puzzled, reflective tone. “See, I don't even know enough to know where to begin. This whole thing is . . .” He sighed. “Very difficult.”

They walked on without speaking between the high painted walls of the houses and in and out of pools of light and shadow. Barely audible celebratory music and laughter seemed to seep through windows and doors.

“Vero, why did you come here, to this town, to us?”

“Because it seemed right. My task was to visit here and to write a report. It's my first task as an accredited sentinel.”

A cold gust of wind whistled down an alleyway, and Merral was aware of his friend shivering.

“What sort of report?”

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.”