The Shadow and Night (34 page)

“It has been climbed?” asked Vero in doubtful tones, as he stared through the fieldscope at it.

“Of course, or I wouldn't have taken this route. By Thenaya Carson first, oh, two centuries ago, and about every decade since. But not by me. It's around eight hundred meters from the base to the lip of the scarp.”

“With packs, and on that surface, it won't be easy.”

“The trick, I'm told from the files, is to go up well away from the river. There is a lot of loose debris and the spray from the waterfalls has smoothed the rocks, so it makes for treacherous climbing. The western side is supposed to be fine, if it hasn't slipped. There's a lot of erosion going on.”

“Ah, the Made Worlds again,” commented Vero with a tight smile.

“Sorry. But it will be a hard climb and we will be exhausted at the top.”

“I'm tired at the thought. How much longer until we stop today?”

“Can you manage another hour?”

“Yes, Forester,” Vero answered, amid a wipe of his brow, “but it can't come too soon.”

They walked on, and half an hour later, as they were walking through a narrow section with high dark stands of the woodland pine on either side, Vero caught Merral's gaze. “I have noticed you listening a lot. You ought to be more at home here than me. What do you feel?”

Merral stopped, listening again to the silence around them. “
Feel?
I don't know. I'm worried that I'm talking myself into seeing and hearing things that don't exist. What with the dog, and Jorgio's warning . . .” He prodded a pebble tentatively with his foot. “But there just doesn't seem anywhere near as much wildlife as I would expect. Not here. Maybe, not since last night. The odd rabbit and the squirrel, that's all, and they seem to keep their distance. Normally, I'd expect to get within feet of them. There are fewer birds, too.”

Merral looked up to see, high above them and too far away to identify, a stiff-winged brown shape circling above them. “And there's the odd buzzard. But little else.”

He found it hard to put his feelings into words. “But I have to say that sometimes . . . sometimes I feel that we are being watched. Do you?”

“Yes, I do,” answered Vero without hesitation, looking ahead at the ridge before them. “I was trying to avoid saying it, but I have an uneasy feeling about this Carson's Sill and what lies beyond it. I am wondering if I should just have asked a full Sentinel Threat Evaluation Team to come in and go through the whole area. With both ships of the Assembly Defense Force sitting in low orbit.”

“I have to say,” Merral said, “that for the first time in my entire life I consider that the Assembly may have been wise in retaining two military vessels. Not that I ever gave it very much thought.”

Vero wiped the sweat off his hands on his trousers. “Yes, persuading the Assembly to maintain two armed cruisers and a hundred crew as a Defense Force on constant readiness has been a priority of the sentinels since Moshe Adlen's day. It has not been an easy task.”

Then he looked at Merral. “I have not said this before, but the existence of the Assembly Defense Force makes my position tricky.”

“How so?”

“This would be their first intervention ever. News of it would go throughout the Assembly, and if it was for a false alarm, then it could be unfortunate for the sentinels. But we may well have to call them anyway.”

And with that he gestured Merral onward.

By five o'clock they had reached a point where the ground had begun to rise toward the sill. Here, with the cliffs looming over them, Merral decided to stop. They had made good time and there was no way that they could climb the sill today. He had already assessed the ascent as requiring at least three hours, and with the evening fast approaching and their growing tiredness, it made sense to camp at the base and tackle the climb when fresh.

They found a suitable spot for camping. A landslide from the cliff had left an enormous mound of debris, within the angular boulders of which there had been enough fine material to make a poor soil in which stunted and tilted fir and spruce trees had grown. At the top of the mound was something of a hollow surrounded by small young firs, and Merral felt that it afforded a perfect site for camping.

In the depression, they put up the tent and then took turns bathing in the river below. As one bathed in the clear but icy river waters, the other sat by on a rock with the tranquilizer gun and a bush knife keeping watch. The troubling thought came to Merral that the very idea of keeping watch would have been inconceivable only a few weeks ago. Now, he realized ruefully, they had slipped into practicing the habit almost as a routine.

Then, refreshed by their baths, they climbed back up to the tent and, for some minutes, lay back on the soft heather enjoying the warm, gentle late-afternoon air and watching the swifts dart above them, hearing their screeching over the echoing rumble of the waterfalls and rapids. Then, taking the fieldscope and with the map in front of them they turned to look up at the rock face, trying to decide which route to take.

As Merral stared at the bulwark of rock that was Carson's Sill, he felt his spirit sink. It was an uncompromising vista; the lines of vertical cliffs of black lava seemed stacked one above another, crag hanging upon crag. Where the towering ranks of the cliff faces were broken, massive piles of sharp-edged rock fragments radiated downward and outward in vast cones of scree. Merral noted that, amid the frequent patches of firs, whole trees were toppled over or had been splintered by rolling rocks, and in the debris piles, fragments of trunks stuck out at crazy angles. The only consolation he could find was that he could see no sign of any creatures on the cliffs.

“Tough,” commented Vero with a frown. “It's like looking up at your castle tree. Only the absolute necessity of my following this trail encourages me to persist.”

“I agree, and I'm afraid there is another factor,” Merral added, gesturing up at the sky where high in the atmosphere fine, wispy spirals of cloud were drifting westward. “I think we will find the weather changing tonight. It looks like rain coming in from the east.”

“How bad?”

“Well, if it is going to be a cyclone we'll be warned by the Met Team. But we need to think about a wet-weather path.”

Vero gave a theatrical groan. “Beware the weather in the Made Worlds!” he muttered.

In fact, as they looked up at the cliffs, they soon realized that their choices were limited. The Lannar River had cut something of a gorge through the top part of the plateau edge so that on either side the ground rose through forested flanks up to steep, flat-topped summits several hundred meters higher.

Merral pointed to the V-shaped notch of the stream that was sharply defined against the skyline. “So, Vero, the easiest route is to go straight up to that gorge on the plateau and then on to the Daggart Lake.”

“The easiest, no doubt . . . ,” answered Vero slowly and Merral sensed his disquiet.

In the end, they agreed that there was only one suitable route, an easily followed line which took them in a slow, zigzag fashion over the shiny black lava blocks, up through clumps of spruce and fir, and then upward to the western side of the gorge at the crest.

They returned to the tent and, as the shadows lengthened, ate in silence.

As the sun began to set, the gathering clouds acquired hues of purple, red, and gold so that the sky began to look like some astonishing experiment in flowing and shimmering colors.

“Ah,” mouthed Vero in appreciative wonder, “you do have awesome sunsets here.”

Merral smiled. “There are two explanations. One is that it is God's compensation for our being a Made World. The other is that it is the combination of abundant high-altitude dust—inevitable in this stage of our world's making—and a complex and still partially unstable multilayer atmosphere.”

“May it always be that your world never divorces the two explanations.”

Then, as the light faded and the stars came out, Merral said he was going to call Anya. Vero stopped him. “I think . . . ,” he began hesitantly. “I think we might want to avoid saying anything very much about today's discovery.”

“Fine, but why?”

“Just a feeling. We will see her in a day or two. You see,” he sighed, “she is inclined to believe this Maya Knella. I think there is something very funny there. However I want to talk over with Anya exactly what was said and see the conversation replayed.”

“I see.”

“So I think we should play it down. We say we had a good day's walk and that's all.”

The issue of withholding information made Merral uneasy and he nearly said something, but, in the end, he remained silent. These were strange events and the old rules seemed no longer to hold.
“Things have changed,”
Jorgio had said, and he felt the truth of that. If only, he found himself wishing, things would stabilize long enough, he might see his way to understanding what was going on and working out how to respond to it.

When Anya's image came on the diary, it showed her still in the office. She smiled at them.

“Good to hear from you. I noticed you made good progress earlier. What's new?”

“Bits and pieces, scraps of data,” Merral answered. “We are still puzzling. Tell you about it when we get back, another day or two. Anything new on your end?”

She shrugged, her freckled face showing open puzzlement. “Well, I just can't square Maya's statement with what I've seen.” Vero nudged Merral's arm and then spoke. “Anya, it's Vero. Nice to talk with you.”

“Hi, Sentinel. You shouldn't call people so late. With your complexion I can barely see you in this light.”

“True. I guess I'm designed for nocturnal camouflage,” he joked, then changed his tone. “But look, Anya, this thing with Maya . . . I think we'll talk it over together when we get back. In the meantime, just don't let it bother you.”

“Okay, but it's still odd.” She paused. “Oh, yes, I checked with the Met Team people. Rain tomorrow over your area. Ninety percent probability by dawn. But passing over rapidly.”

“Thanks, Anya, saves me checking. We suspected it. But it will be a wet climb tomorrow.”

“You'll do it. Take care. We'll be in touch the same time tomorrow.”

The screen darkened.

For a few moments, they sat in darkness. Merral looked up to the escarpment to the north of them, now only visible as a high, brooding mass of black against the hazy stars.

“The rain is confirmed, Vero.”

“I'm used to it, as long as it isn't too cold,” Vero answered, stretching himself. “Do you want first or second watch tonight?”

“I'll take second. I'm more used to the rain. But now, after seeing the remains of Spotback, I am under no illusions about a watch being a good idea.”

“Yes, sadly, it is needed.” Vero got to his feet. “Which reminds me, what did Anya mean about noticing us ‘making good progress'? How did she know?”

Merral found himself wondering at his friend's surprise. “By monitoring my diary's location signal, I presume.”

“What? Your diary broadcasts out?” Vero's voice was incredulous. “Without you telling it to do so?”

“Yes, foresters, farmers—anyone who works out in the wilds—always set their diary to emit a location signal.” Merral was puzzled at Vero's tone. Suddenly a realization came to him. “Of course, you probably don't need to do it on Ancient Earth. I think it's every sixty seconds or so. Any satellite or plane can pick it up. If an accident happens, they know where to find me. Standard practice in all the low-population worlds.”

A snort came from Vero. “You mean we have been radiating our position ever since we came? And I have been worried about keeping under cover!” Merral could see him shaking his head. “But why, oh
why
didn't you tell me?” His tone was now one of extreme irritation.