The Shadow and Night (13 page)

Merral's father spoke quietly, his words slow. “Well, I must say, things do have a way of catching us all out. Talking of which, Merral, your mother and I must be down at the Lower Square in ten minutes. So you two follow on down. I've made sure that they are reserving a place for both of you up near the front of the hall. It's easier for Vero to get up and read.”

When his parents had gone, Merral sat down facing his guest.

Vero grinned happily at him and stretched out his legs in a gesture of relaxation. “Your parents have made me very welcome.”

“Of course. Now tell me, did you have a pleasant time last night?”

“Ah yes. Everyone was so busy wanting to talk to me that I didn't have to eat anything. I had no idea that merely being from Ancient Earth was enough to make me a celebrity.”

“Well, we are a long way out.”

“Yes, so I realize. The end of the line. I feel there should be a big sign out there in space. ‘You are now leaving the Assembly. May the angels go with you!'” He smiled. “So, my stomach and I have been finally reunited. What about you? Did you get a good night's sleep?”

“Good, although I had an interesting discussion with my parents that I'm thinking through.”

Vero leaned back in his chair, his face attentive. “Really? May I ask what about?”

“By all means. I was expecting them to approve that my friendship with a girl named Isabella Hania Danol go to commitment. But rather to my surprise, they feel that—at the moment—they cannot make any such decision. So, it's all up in the air for six months.”

“Oh?” There was a look of sharp inquiry. “Have they changed their mind about the girl?”

“No. It's that . . . well, it's odd. . . . They think that I may be moving on from here and that she may not be so well suited to such a move. They see me as a frontiersman or something.”

“I like that!” Vero smiled. “I think of everyone here as a frontier person. But are you?”

“A frontiersman? Well, I'm happy in my job. I could want nothing more. But we shall see. I am open to the will of the Most High.”

Vero nodded. “Well said. Incidentally, everyone speaks highly of you. Or they did last night.”

My reputation again. How can I escape it? Or should I even try?

“Anyway,” Vero continued, “there's no approval about you and this young lady. Not unheard of. But how do you feel about it?”

“Well, odd, Vero. You see, it raises all sorts of issues. But I suppose they have a point. I am fond of Isabella; we have a close friendship, and I would have liked it to have gone deeper. But I accept their views.”

“Of course. Is she in Forestry or Forward Planning?”

“Isabella? No, she's an educational advisor. She monitors the progress of twelve- to fourteen-year-olds against Assembly standards. You know the sort of thing?”

“Indeed. I find it a very interesting subject.”

“Well, I'm not sure I do. But it hardly has anything to do with being a sentinel, does it?”

Vero gave a brief smile and uttered the faintest of sighs. “Moshe Adlen said that sentinels were never to overlook anything. Which is fine in principle, but tough in practice. But one model for how we think is this: Imagine the Assembly as being a complex but beautifully balanced mechanical machine going at a vast speed. Like, say, a hydrogen turbine. Now if, within that machine, one part was to suddenly grow even slightly larger, what would happen?”

Merral threw his hands apart. “Explosive disintegration.”

“Exactly. So it is with the Assembly: Stability and balance are vital. And the Assembly has within it a number of mechanisms for ensuring that no part gets larger than it should. One of those mechanisms is education. Through it the Assembly tries to make sure that no world gets unbalanced, perhaps by becoming all artistic or all scientific. It's hard, but things like this are partly our concern too. On one model, as the Assembly grows, the more probability there is that a minor imbalance could become catastrophic. Hence a sentinel's interest in all stabilizing mechanisms.”

“I see. Well, you may have a chance to meet Isabella.”

“I hope so. But take heart. I'm sure it will all work out.” He smiled sympathetically. “Of course, I can say this because we sentinels normally never marry before our early thirties. So, I have all this ahead of me.” He furrowed his forehead. “Although that too is something that I have asked questions about.”

“Do you like being a sentinel?”

There was a pause. “My likes are immaterial. I was born to the job, as was my father and so on before him.”

“Do you question it?”

Merral caught a sharp, thoughtful glance from his companion. “Yes, I do sometimes.” He paused. “Not seriously, of course. That would be akin to the sin of grumbling and worthy of investigation itself. But I do ask questions. One of my lecturers said to me: ‘Verofaza, as someone committed to preventing rebellion, you do a very good job of imitating a rebel.' I have a reputation. If it was not a disrespectful thought, I would say they had sent me to tame me. You can imagine it, can't you? ‘What shall we do with Verofaza Enand?' ‘Oh, I know—let's ship him off to Worlds' End.' ”

Merral laughed. “But what do you question?”

There was a delicate, almost embarrassed, laugh. “I thought it was me who was supposed to ask the searching questions! But . . . ” Vero seemed to choose his words carefully. “You see, in all our time, now nearly four hundred generations of sentinels, we have sat and watched and listened and—”

“Found nothing?”

Vero's head seemed to nod almost imperceptibly in agreement. “More or less. Some argue that evil was trying to break through in the trouble on The Vellant in 12985. It was certainly a very odd malaise, a whole community seized by paranoia and delusions. But we alerted the Council of High Stewards in time.”

“What happened there? I've not heard of it in the history files.”

“It never made it there. They rotated the population out, checked the air and water, and reviewed the diets. Then things settled down.”

Merral felt that there was a rough and uncomfortable edge to Vero's answer. “So, were the sentinels right?”

There was a long pause, as if Vero was making a painful choice. “The currently prevailing view, which is—I think—the correct interpretation, is that the problem was primarily biological. And not spiritual.” He gave a quiet little awkward chuckle. “You are thinking it is not much to show for a hundred and seventeen centuries of labor, is it?”

“Well, I suppose I was.”

“I would—I think—find it hard to disagree. And I refuse to talk about some of the other cases we have gotten involved in.” He shook his head firmly. “The toad plague on Saganat. The library anomalies on Tegranatar. The so-called psychic triplets of Limaned. Best forgotten. Please!”

“I see. But, Vero, surely you shouldn't question what you do? If you are called to do something, then you do it. Whatever happens—results or not. Here on the Made Worlds we build and plan and sow, but we do not know whether or not we will be successful.”

“Ah, well said.” Vero smiled ruefully. “Oh, I suppose the last two weeks of travel have made me question my vocation a little more.”

“Who knows—perhaps your vigilance has been a factor in the preservation of the Lord's Peace.”

“A useful rebuke.
Perhaps
indeed. We do not know.”

Merral heard, far away, echoing up through the streets, the renewed sounds of percussion and brass. “Time to go. You'd better get your coat. The weather looks nice and the forecast is good, but you never know.”

“It is proverbial. ‘Beware the weather in the Made Worlds.' ”

Outside the house the street had become crowded with people dressed in their colorful best and with an air of exuberant noisiness. All the neighbors wanted to make Vero's acquaintance, and many people on the other side of the street pointed him out to their children. Gradually the sound of the procession became louder and the talking in the crowd died away to be replaced by an eager silence. All eyes turned expectantly to the end of the street. Suddenly, amid raucous laughter, two dogs raced around the corner, wheeled briefly around to look at what was following them, and hurtled up the street, egged on by the cheers and whoops of the crowd. After them, but in a far more dignified manner, came the procession. Three flag bearers led the way, the first held aloft the great Lamb and Stars banner of the Assembly; the next the gleaming blue sphere on a black field for Farholme; and the third Ynysmant's flag, the stylized cone of buildings above a blue lake. After them came the first of the uniformed musical groups, supplied this year by the music college, and following them, the first singers. Three green gravity-modifying sleds borrowed from Agriculture followed, bearing those who by reason of age, pregnancy, or injury could not walk with the procession. After them came his father's band, and Merral and Vero were rewarded by a wink over the trombone. Walking behind them were the first long lines of townsfolk, more flags and banners, and then his mother's choir. Eventually it was time for their street to join the procession. Merral and Vero fell in with the other families.

Half an hour later, they were filing into the vast space of Congregation Hall on the top of the ridge. Merral found the seats allocated to them, scanning the crowd as he did for Isabella. There was no sign of her, but as the hall was such a tumult of people he felt it was not surprising. As he settled into his seat he noticed that Vero was looking around at the roof and walls with an expression of unease. Their eyes met.

“Those are high-load beams. And the doors are airtight and sealable.” His voice was low and curious. “A refuge?”

“Of course it is,” Merral replied in surprise, but it was only as he answered that the significance of the question registered. “Oh, sorry, Vero. I forgot you're from the only planet that doesn't need them. Welcome, inhabitant of Ancient Earth, to one of the Made Worlds. Yes, it's a refuge, with two months' food, air, and water for the whole town underneath us and a landing zone on the roof.”

“I see,” Vero said, his voice somber. He looked around pensively.

It's strange to think that it's new to him,
Merral reflected,
when it's one of the first things we learn in the Made Worlds. That it may all go wrong and we may find ourselves huddled in here for weeks, breathing, eating, and drinking our recycled wastes while they get the rescue shuttles in through the Gate. And we always know that sometimes even refuges may not be enough.

“Do you know much about Yenerag, Vero?”

“You read my mind. Standing in a refuge cannot fail to remind me of Yenerag. A thousand years after the planet's core failure, and the volcano eruptions that buried sixteen cities in ash—
sixteen
—in three days. Fifty thousand people remain entombed in Yenerag's refuges until our King of kings returns.”

Merral shifted in his seat, feeling in some way that such thoughts were unworthy of Nativity Day.

“It could all go wrong, couldn't it?” Vero said suddenly.

“Yes, we live with that reality.” Then a thought came to Merral. “But Nativity helps.”

“How so?”

“The universe is so vast and unforgiving that the only way this whole venture of ours—spreading ourselves over thousands of light-years—makes sense is if God is indeed with us.”

“A fair point.”

Suddenly, with an increasing rapidity, silence descended on the hall. From the floor three people took the stage and stood still, every eye on them. Merral prepared his heart for worship. Then, away behind them at the door of the hall, the trumpets sounded four loud, open chords and, with the echoes dying away, the congregation stood for the invocation.

Almost two hours later the benediction ended the service. Slowly people got to their feet and began to talk and embrace one another.

Merral turned to Vero. “I hope that wasn't too strange for you?”

Vero shook his head gently and returned a warm smile. “No, that was fine. It seems to me that there's nothing wrong with your services.”

Merral wondered whether there was supposed to be and was trying to phrase a question on those lines, when someone came to Vero and introduced himself, and then a moment later Merral's attention was occupied by an old school friend. He had just finished his conversation a few minutes later, when he felt a hand gently grasp his elbow.

“Happy Nativity, Merral D'Avanos!”

Merral turned to see Isabella at his side. How typical of her to slip up to him so unnoticed. They looked at each other, and he noticed how her long gray-blue jacket seemed to offset her dark, almost black, eyes.

“And to you, Isabella Danol. I was looking for you earlier.”

“I was at the back.” Isabella brushed a strand of her long, straight black hair away from her face. “The Earther who read—the one who is staying with you, I missed his name—Vera something, wasn't it?”