The Shadow and Night (4 page)

“Must have been. But the biggest I've ever seen. It was heading northward. I suppose it probably landed over the Rim Ranges somewhere in the crater.”

“Oh, it'll do no harm
there.
End up as a handful of dust.”

There was amusement in his gray eyes. “Anyway, you have ten minutes, assuming this new recipe behaves itself. Your usual room. Just time for a shower.”

“A quick shower it is.” And with that, Merral picked up his pack and climbed up the stairs to the guest room.

Some minutes later, Merral was combing his hair and wondering why a shower and clean clothes made so much difference when there was a soft knock on his door.

“Come in!” he called out. In the mirror, he saw a face peer round the door—an oval face with pale blue eyes overhung by an untidy fringe of curly blonde hair. Merral turned round. “Elana! How are you?”

Elana, the oldest and blondest of the three Antalfer girls, was something of a favorite of Merral's. He had a private opinion that she was also the deepest and most thoughtful of them. Although she wasn't fourteen until next month, Merral had felt even on his last visit in high summer that she already had one foot beyond childhood. Now she came into the narrow room and stood under a curving wood beam. She stretched delicately upright on tiptoe and gave him a beaming smile. “I'm fine, Cousin. And you are well?”

Merral looked at her carefully, recognizing in those modifications of her physique the woman so imminent in the girl. “Praise our Lord. I have gained a few more scratches and bruises since I last saw you. And some aches from riding over hard ground. But I am well.”

“You rode here just to see us?”

“Sorry! No, I need to talk to your father about his quarry, so my trip here is part of work.”

She stared at him, amused puzzlement in her eyes. “I thought you were a forester!”

“I still am. But there's no point in us planting a forest if your dad is going to dig a big hole in it, is there now?”

“No, I suppose not.” Elana smiled. “Actually, Merral, I came to say that food is nearly served.”

“Lead the way.”

He followed Elana to the dining hall, noting a new painting on a wall above a stairway. He reminded himself that he must make time to look at his aunt's latest work. He might ask her to do something for his parents' thirty-fifth wedding anniversary next year. He made a mental note that when it came to planning what to do with his stipend next year, he needed to include the cost of the painting.

The dining hall lay in the deepest part of the house, and although it was the largest room, it seemed already full as he entered. Merral tried to identify everybody. On one side were his aunt, the two younger daughters—Lenia and Debora—and, of course, Thomas. On the other were Barrand's parents, Imanos and Irena, and a young couple from the next house.

Merral made his way to the seat offered to him at one end of the table. As he did, Barrand came in bearing a great pot and the chattering ceased. Quietly, everybody stood up and stepped back behind their chairs. Thomas, too short to see over the solid back of his, peered round instead at Merral.

There was silence. Barrand raised his big, gnarled hands to the heavens. “For your love and presence with us, O Lord, our protector and mighty one, and for your kindness to us, we thank you now. In the name of the Prince, the Messiah, our Savior.”

A second's solemn silence was ended abruptly with a chorus of “Amen,” and then the scraping and clattering of chairs and talking.

As he sat down, Merral looked around the dining room. The way the side beams sloped inward toward the floor made it easy to imagine that he was deep down in the hull of a boat. It had taken them the ten years they had been in the house to acquire just the right panels, matching in grain and tone, to complete the dining room. Along some of the roof beams, his uncle had started carving animals to what Merral recognized as his aunt's designs.

The meal was like all the many meals Merral had had at Herrandown, with lots of food, endless noisy chatter, and half a dozen conversations bouncing and jumping around and across the table. Merral was pleased to find that his own substantial appetite by no means outmatched the others at the table. In fact, everyone seemed to be happily hungry. His uncle revealed nothing about the stew other than the fact that the beef-protein had been grown locally and the girls had picked the mushrooms for it in autumn.

Barrand looked up at him. “The family, Merral? You tell us the latest.”

“Well, it is five days since I left Ynysmant and I have covered a lot of ground, but when I left all were well, may the Most High be praised, and I have had no news of any change. The only thing is that Great-Aunt Namia down at Larrenport is not well. She is now very frail; she feels she will be going Home to the Lord in the spring. The doctor thinks she is right.”

Imanos, a silver-haired man with an air of gentle nobility, spoke. “Namia Mena D'Avanos? The language teacher?”

“That would be her.”

“Why, she taught my mother Old-Mandarin; Mama was so proud of mastering it. ‘The hardest of all the Historics,' she said.” He paused, smiling quietly. “I was very glad to be spared it. But she must be very old now. A hundred and twenty at least?”

“A hundred and twenty-four. But still alert and still praising.”

“You'll be seeing her before she goes Home? Please, will you give her our love and blessing.” His wife gently nodded agreement, her fine white hair framing a face as peaceful and still as if it had been molded.

Merral bowed his head slightly to acknowledge the taking on of an obligation. “If the opportunity is granted me, I shall indeed visit her before her death and if I do, I will pass on to her your love and blessings.”

The elderly couple smiled at each other and then gratefully back at him. A few moments later Barrand, one hand tearing off a piece of bread, caught Merral's eye and gave him a broad wink. His loud voice rang down through the room, cutting across three separate conversations.

“Talking of family matters, youngster. You're twenty-six! What's happening between you and Isabella Hania Danol?”

There was a sudden silence and Merral looked at his glass, conscious that everyone was looking at him.

Zennia laughed and raised her hands in mock horror. “Oh, Barrand! Let him tell us in his own time. He's a shy lad.”

“There is really nothing decided.” Merral smiled. “Except that my parents and hers are meeting to discuss whether to approve that we proceed to a commitment. That's all I'll say.”

“A formality, I'm sure,” said Barrand, waving his bit of bread around and smiling at his girls. “We'll all come down for the wedding, won't we, children?”

“Oh yes, please. When? When?” came the chorus from the children.

“This year, next year, sometime, never,” interjected Zennia. “Everything is still at the first stage. It's commitment, engagement, and
then
marriage. Now, Barrand, leave the lad alone and tell him about the cows.”

“Oh, not half as much fun. But you are right. Now, what with the heat, our cows had a bad summer. . . .”

And so the meal progressed in its animated and somewhat chaotic way, with discussion of the families, farms, animals, life in Herrandown generally, Merral's travels, Barrand's musical projects, and the children's activities.

Eventually even Merral's hunger was assuaged, and slowly, and somewhat heavily, everyone (except the oldest) rose from the table and went to the kitchen to help in the clearing up. Then they went into the family room and heard the children practice their Nativity songs. As tradition demanded, two were in Communal, the universal language of the Assembly; one was in the Farholmen dialect; and one in the historic language assigned to Herrandown. Merral, whose only Historics were French and English, found the Alt-Deutsch quite incomprehensible. Then the neighbors departed, and with kisses all round the children left for bed. Eventually the “senior generation” pleaded age and departed to their own small suite of rooms.

Now the three remaining adults reclined in padded chairs in the small room above the hall and let the conversation drift. Barrand toyed gently with a dark wooden flute of his own carving, occasionally blowing a quiet note and listening carefully to it with a look of suspicion. It was interesting, Merral observed, how the contrasts met in his uncle. To look at him in his work you would think that all he could do was blast quarries and hew out tons of stone. Yet in his wood carving and his music he showed sensitivity and a delicacy of touch. But there were not two separate Barrands, but one: quarrymaster, wood-carver, and musician.

As if conscious of Merral's thoughts, Barrand looked up. “Ah, I'd ask your advice, Merral, but you singers don't understood wood instruments. I'm just not satisfied with this.” He tapped the flute. “But it's a delicate business, adjusting. Easy to mar, hard to mend.”

Zennia stroked Barrand's wrist, her finger delicate and thin against the muscular bulk of his arm. “All the better then, my dear, to leave it to tomorrow.”

“Quite so. Although tomorrow is official work with my nephew the forester. But I will find time. My wife, as usual, is right.” He carefully put the flute down. “Nephew, your glass is nearly empty. More to drink?”

“Not for me.”

Then they let the conversation drift into a slower, more reflective tempo. In time, they got talking about the arts, and Barrand began to talk with his usual enthusiasm about choral music.

“Oh, Merral, I have had a struggle about what to do for Nativity. Very hard. I've always liked to do something special. It's difficult when there are so few of us, but I don't mind using re-created voices.”

Merral remembered that in these small communities, the use of the preserved voices of singers in the past was not luxury in music-making, but necessity.

“As we did Bach at Easter, I thought we'd do something more recent. So it's Rechereg's
Choral Variations on an Old Carol.
You know the piece?”

“Heard of it. It's difficult, isn't it?”

Barrand nodded to his wife. “Our nephew is too busy. Not enough time to listen.”

Zennia patted her husband's arm and smiled back at Merral. “Perhaps, dear, in Ynysmant they are too busy making music to listen to it. Remember our blessing of being so remote.”

“Wives are always right, eh, Merral? But of course you wouldn't know. . . .” His uncle smiled, showing his powerful, white teeth. “Ho. Where was I? Ah yes, let me see. The Rechereg is very demanding. I will need three re-created voices to handle it. The great tenor Fasmiron—the voice is from 8542 when he was at his peak—and Genya Manners, one of the Lannian sopranos during the great years of their academy. She sounds more like a bird than a woman. But I'm having problems with the female alto. It's a very high part.”

He looked into the distance, tapping his fingers on the wood of his chair.

“Who are you using?” Merral asked.

“For the alto?” Barrand stroked his beard. “Hmm, Miranda Cline perhaps. But does she have the range? Just ten years of singing. It was so fortunate that she agreed to let her voice be copied so she could become a re-created when she did. She came and went like a meteor. . . .”

He stared at the wall-hanging opposite. Abruptly, he looked at Merral. “Nephew! A change of subject entirely. Your meteor. Have you considered why the Guardian satellites didn't pick it up and destroy it?”

Merral thought for a moment. “It crossed my mind briefly. It seemed large enough to have done damage if it had hit anything. So the 180 East or the Polar Guardian should have intercepted it, you think?”

His uncle ran his hand through his beard again. “Me? Oh, I don't know. I've never given the Guardian satellites a thought. I know there are four, that they're as old as the present Gate, and that they destroy any meteor or comet coming in on a threatening trajectory. And that is it. They work. So we forget them. . . .” He fell silent, his fingers maintaining a gentle beat on the arm of his chair. “But, Nephew, what I was just wondering was this: Now suppose one or more of the Guardian satellites did see it, but they just plotted the trajectory and then said ‘Oh, the Lannar Crater. Uninhabited waste,' and let it pass. What do you think?”

“I think I see where your logic takes you.” Merral sipped the last of his drink. “With Herrandown being the farthest settlement north, that's fine, but inside a decade or two we might have a Forward Colony up to the margins of the southern Rim Ranges—at least if the winters don't get any worse.”

His uncle nodded, his heavy brow furrowing. “Hmm. Exactly. I just hope someone tells the Guardians. But Nephew, surely the Guardians aren't smart enough to determine an impact trajectory to such precision that they can let it go over our heads like that?”

Suddenly tired, Merral found himself stifling a yawn. “Oh, sorry, Uncle. Yes, you may have a point but my brain is too fatigued. It would be an interesting thing to know. I'll talk to someone when I get back.”