The Shadow and Night (41 page)

An hour later Vero came over to where Merral was lying down, peering over the edge at the immobile tableau of creatures below.

“How are things on your side?” Merral asked, drawing back from the margin.

“Only the one ape-creature left; the injured one has gone somewhere else.”

“Your diary?”

“At least thirty minutes, I'd guess, but it is definitely heating up.”

Merral gestured westward where the remains of the morning's storm clouds hung on the horizon as the last of the rain emptied itself into the wastes on Interior Menaya. The red sphere of the sun was dropping rapidly toward them. “A fine sunset,” he commented.

“I would prefer dawn,” sighed Vero.

“And so would I. I feel that this side is where the attack will come from. It's a wider front. I can see various places for them to try and get up. But hopefully they will wait for darkness.”

Vero got down on his knees and moved cautiously to the edge of the plateau. The setting sun had put a warm orange glow on the rocks and at the same time exaggerated both the darkness and the length of the shadows so that it was not easy to see what was happening down below among the trees and rocks.

“There are more,” hissed Vero.

“Yes, I didn't feel it worth telling you,” Merral added as he joined him. There were now at least six of the tall dark figures standing rigid and staring up at them, and perhaps slightly more of the cockroach-beasts, their shorter stature making them hard to distinguish from the shadows of the rocks.
It is unnatural,
Merral decided.
Both types behave like men in many ways and yet they seem to have little individuality. To act as regimented machines is not at all like us. What creatures are they?
He wondered whether Vero was right in thinking that they were modified humans and, if so, what had been taken out of them—or put in—to make them so different.

“Well, I hope they stay there longer,” Vero said as he backed away. “Let me know if anything happens. I'm going to sit back from the edge and check the diary.”

Merral lay down and waited, trying not to stare at the setting sun lest it damage any night vision. Finally, the lower edge of the sun dropped behind the clouds and a warm twilight started to descend. He leaned forward, stared down into the gloom, and saw that nothing had changed.

Something caught his attention. Hanging back behind the ape-creatures and all but hidden in the gloom under the trees was something new. He peered at it, recognizing another anthropoid figure, but one with a different, smaller, and somehow more familiar shape. As he strained his eyes Merral felt that, despite a size midway between the ape-creatures and the cockroach-beasts, there was somehow a presence about the figure as if it was superior to those beasts: almost, it seemed, as if it was their master.

“Vero,” he called out, “there's something odd—”

There was a violent hissing and bubbling next to him. Something spat angrily and stung his right hand.

“
Get back!
” Vero shouted.

Merral threw himself backward, landing awkwardly and painfully on his hip. He was aware of a strange heat around and a smell of burning in the air.

Vero was ducked down behind him, pointing with an urgent hand at the lip of the cliff. An arm's length from where Merral had been lying the rock edge was glowing a livid scarlet and spitting vapor and drops of lava. Bubbles of rock were forming and bursting with an intense popping noise.

“What was
that?
” Merral asked as the color of the rock returned slowly to black.

Vero nodded, as if to himself. “One of a number of things capable of transmitting enough energy to melt rock. An infrared laser, a portable pulsed particle beam, something like that. Probably would just explode flesh and blood.”

“So they are no longer unarmed.” Sucking his hand where a small drop of molten rock had struck, Merral cautiously got to his feet, and together they moved back into the middle of the plateau. Could he be certain of what he thought he had seen? He was about to speak when there was a pulsing on his wrist.

Merral pulled his diary off his belt so fast that he nearly dropped it. On the screen, Anya was staring at him from her laboratory bench.

Thank you Lord,
thought Merral in exultation,
she's called early.
“Anya! Anya!” he shouted at the diary.

To his horror, he saw her face acquire a blank, puzzled look.

Her voice was clear. “Say, what's up with you guys? Merral's location signal goes off. Now, I'm having problems even making contact.”

Vero was beside him now, peeping over his shoulder at the image.

At least,
Merral comforted himself,
she will realize that there is enough of a problem to call for a search tomorrow.

She stared at the screen. “You know guys, I'm getting worried.”

“That's it Anya! Go on. You get worried!
Really worried!
” Merral heard himself speaking aloud.

Without warning, another voice sounded from the diary. Although it was weirdly familiar, for a moment Merral could not recognize it.

“Sorry, Anya. We have had diary problems. Some trick of Vero's, trying to transmit data. Seems to have fused circuits on both.”

Merral heard a gasp from beside him. “
Now
what are we up against?”

“Yes,” the familiar voice went on, “we lost both vision and location.”

“Okay, Merral. Apart from that, how is it going?”

Merral
? In a dreadful, appalling moment of revelation, Merral understood why the voice was familiar. It was his own voice!

“It's not me!” Merral yelled in fury, “Anya,
it's not me!
”

“Hi, Anya,” came from the diary. It was Vero's voice, but so convincing that Merral had to stare at the wide-open mouth of the startled figure next to him to be sure he wasn't hearing his friend. “Sorry. I just used too much power. Stupid sentinel trick. Anyway, we are fine.”

Merral was on the point of saying something when Vero silenced him with a sharp wave of the arm.

“Oh yes,” went on the voice from the diary, “we are fine. We are beyond Daggart Lake. We'll call you tomorrow night. We aim for pickup the day after. Look, we'd better shut down now, while we still have a signal. Good-bye.”

It was Vero to the syllable.

The machine spoke again. “I agree. This is Merral saying good night, too.”

There was a faint look of consternation on Anya's face.

“Well, okay. Sleep well. Talk to you tomorrow. Bye for now.”

The screen went dark. There was a long silence, and finally Vero spoke, his numbed voice suggesting he was still absorbing the impact of what he had overheard. “Well, there have been a couple of times today when I thought we might get out of this alive. I am now repenting my optimism. It was very clever.”

“Clever? It was diabolical!”

“Exactly so.”

“How did they do it?”

“They have been monitoring us. Easy to do. They have had hours to prepare a voice duplicate. That will be how they did Maya Knella, of course. Anya said it was a bad transmission.”

“You mean they
faked
a Gate call?”

Vero laughed quietly and bitterly. “Merral, don't you see? Whoever—or whatever—is behind this can do almost anything. They can bend and break genes to suit themselves, they can create imitation birds, and they can mimic people. Intercepting interstellar communications is a little thing. And not only do they have the means, they have the will.” He seemed to shudder. “They appear to have no barriers. I would have to think carefully, but I am certain that they have broken all of the Technology Protocols and some that were never even thought of.”

“I had no idea. . . .”

“No, neither had I,” Vero replied, looking troubled and seeming to struggle with something. Then, without warning, he slammed a fist into the palm of his hand.

“No! We will not yield without a fight.” His face acquired a determined look. “They are not immune. We will stand firm. By grace, we may win through. But everything hinges on us calling in help. We can't rely on Anya anymore. We are on our own.”

He struck his fist in his palm again in resolve and turned back to Merral. “What do you think?”

“Vero, I am reeling from this morning. And this afternoon.” Then Merral paused, thinking of the right words to express what he wanted to say. “But I will gladly die here if we need to. We must fight. For the Assembly and for the King.”

Vero clapped him on the back. “Good! I feel better listening to you. We may have had nearly twelve millennia of peace, but if we have to fight a last stand here then I feel you—at least—will do no worse than any heroes of the distant past. And I will do what I can.”

“We will try.” Merral added thoughtfully, “I—well, I suppose my own feelings are mixed. I do not mind, or fear, dying, but I do not relish it. And I wish I had not killed.”

“I understand, but we must do what we are called to do. Anyway, let us prepare for an early attack. I think you had best take charge of the weapons. These things seem to be your expertise, not mine.”

“As you wish,” Merral answered as Vero crouched back down over his diary.

Merral went over to their few belongings, put on his jacket, and stuck the two remaining flares in one pocket and the tranquilizer gun with its two cartridges in another. He grasped the knife and clicked the blade in and out, reflecting that this—plus all the rocks he could throw—was all they had. Against adversaries who outmatched them in numbers, technology, and weapons, he knew it wasn't enough.

As he grappled with the thought, he turned to watch the sunset. There was a narrow gap in the clouds at the bottom, and in it a tiny ruby-colored sliver of the sun shone out. As Merral watched, it slipped down below the horizon and, almost instantly, the shadows about him seemed to thicken.

For a strange moment, an extraordinary desire seemed to seize hold of Merral. It was a desire to lament his lot and his pending death, to grieve for himself and Vero and for the loss his saddened family and Isabella would feel. At the heart of this compelling desire was a dark yearning to give in and to admit that the whole thing was hopeless. As he grappled with the emotion, Merral tried, and failed, to label it, until suddenly the word came to him.
Despair,
he thought with a sudden recognition.
That's what I am close to. Today I have met four strange things: ape-creatures, cockroach-beasts, terror, and despair. And will death be the fifth stranger I meet?

Then he looked up into the sky and saw that the stars were coming out and that southward the six beacons of the Gate were becoming plain. Heartened, he praised the All Highest; hope returned and the despair fled.

As he turned to go back to Vero, he remembered that the last warrior to set out to fight for the Assembly had been Lucas Ringell in 2110. He had gone to the Centauri Station to take on Jannafy and the rebels, well trained, surrounded by his troops, and armed and suited with the best defensive and offensive equipment the Assembly could devise.

And as Merral remembered that, he was suddenly aware that all he had was two flares in one jacket pocket, a tranquilizer gun in the other, and a knife. Not one of them had even been designed as a weapon.

Suddenly, the irony of the situation struck him and, in spite of all his fears, Merral smiled.

15

A
s Merral approached him, Vero looked up, his face inscrutable in the gloom. “Nearly there,” he said, his voice an urgent whisper. “It's at 37.5 degrees Celsius and lots of warnings.” Vivid red letters were scrolling across Vero's diary screen. “Ten minutes before it is at the right temperature. Perhaps . . .” Merral noted the uncertainty. Then Vero spoke again. “Can you prepare a message for transmission the moment this goes off? Continuously repeating. Every emergency frequency.”

Merral slid the diary off his belt and chose his words. “Diary! Prepare for a transmission on the maximum emergency frequencies and with maximum output and repetition of the following message: ‘Emergency. Under attack from non-Assembly forces. Request immediate pickup from transmission location. Landing zone 100 by 160 meters and flat.' ”

When, he wondered, was the last time—other than in some play or reenactment of the Rebellion—that anyone had uttered anything like those words
under attack from non-Assembly forces?

He paused the diary and looked at Vero. “And how do I warn about the possibility that they will use weapons? My military terminology is minimal.”

“Ah. How about adding, ‘Attackers have beam weapons capable of damage to ships'?”

“Thanks,” replied Merral as he laid the message out and checked it. Then he looked around. Night was falling quickly and it was already too dark to distinguish colors. A strange, unwelcome thought came to him. For the first time in his life, night was no longer a welcome, restful darkness in which the stars and the Gate shone, but a time when things moved, when evil stirred. What did one of the Psalms say? “You will not fear the terror of the night.” With a barely restrained shiver, he realized that he now understood it.