The Shadow and Night (62 page)

Clemant gave a slight nod of agreement.

The representative walked to the door with a determined step. “Come, Dr. Clemant, we must leave or we may have to make an explanation. And that would not do. Everybody, nine o'clock the day after tomorrow. And then we must take some action.” Then he gave a small bow of his head and swept his gaze around the table. “Forester, Sentinel, Doctor, and Captain—my greatest thanks.”

Then, with his advisor following him, Representative Corradon left the room.

Perena, anxious to get back to her ship to oversee the repairs, drove them back in her borrowed Space Affairs four-seater. She dropped Anya at the Planetary Ecology Center and Merral and Vero at Narreza Tower, where she and Anya had their apartments. Perena had found Merral and Vero an empty fourth-floor two-bedroom apartment there; an out-of-system visitor was going to occupy it in a fortnight's time, but that wasn't going to happen now.

As they drove, there was almost total silence in the vehicle.
Somehow,
thought Merral, gazing at the somber, wet streets that seemed to echo his mood
, we have crossed another boundary. Until just now, only four of us really knew what was happening. Now we are six, and the two new people have the power to act.

Now we need to decide what to do.

22

V
ero sank heavily onto a sofa and leaned forward, squeezing his head between his hands. Then he looked at Merral with urgent eyes. “Tell me, my friend, did I make the right decision?” “About what?” “Telling Corradon not to do anything. For the moment.” “I think so. We all need time to consider matters. And I can't think of anything we can do at the moment.”

“I suppose so.” Vero sighed. “But God grant we make the right decision when we do meet again.” He stared out of the window at the rain and then shook himself. “I need to talk to Brenito. I have some ideas I need to bounce off him. But what do you propose to do this afternoon?”

Merral thought for a moment. “Now that the diary network is apparently operating properly, call up various people.”

“Okay, but from now on we must always watch what we say.”

“Of course,” Merral answered, reminded of his own incautious conversation with Isabella just before their flight.

Vero paused, as if in thought. After a while he said, “Are you going to call Barrand?”

“Yes. The last thing he heard from us, we were walking northward. I don't want him trying to follow. Any suggestions as to what I say?”

“You can't say much. But—I suppose—you could suggest that he and the other families don't stray into the woods, that they take the dogs with them, and that they stay indoors at night. They might want to have the quarry team move closer. Into the settlement.”

“Do you think there's a risk to them?”

Vero shrugged. “Oh, my friend, you know as much as I do. If the intruders can destroy a Gate, they are powerful enough to put us all at risk. But it may not be so simple. . . .” He paused. “Look, I'd better go. I hope Brenito may have some ideas. I have no idea when I will be back.”

As Vero rose and left, Merral watched him, feeling that his thin figure was visibly bowed under the weight of events.

Alone in the bare apartment, Merral sat on a chair by the window and gazed across at the wet orchards; shiny, red-tiled roofs; and thick gray clouds that twisted across the sky. He checked his diary and found that, as Corradon had promised, the network was now working. For a moment, he stared at the screen, wondering again what to say if anybody asked him where he had been when he had heard about the Gate explosion. Because he and Vero had been on the
Heinrich Schütz
under the names of other men, only a handful of people knew that they had nearly been caught in the Gate's explosion. Merral realized that he could not now admit to having been on his way secretly out of the Alahir System without raising more questions.

For some time, he pondered the novel and rather unnerving problems that this raised. His only real knowledge of being less than totally honest came from the old literature, and he realized that he had never appreciated how treacherous untruth was. He now saw that if you merely failed to reveal a particular truth, it could become necessary, simply in order to protect that, to tell a new and much stronger untruth. And then to protect
that,
still further duplicity was needed. And so on. One small misdeed bred others until there was a whole swarm of multiplying complications that seemed to have no limit. In the end, he simply prayed that he would not have to reveal too much.

He called his uncle first. Barrand was glad to hear from Merral and seemed satisfied by Merral's statement that they had finished the trip safely and now had a lot of data to analyze. When Merral suggested the precautions that Vero had proposed, his uncle hesitated. “Since you passed through,” Barrand said, “the air seems to have cleared. But better play safe; I will do as you suggest.”

Merral then called his mother, who was plainly thrilled to hear from him. The implications of the Gate loss to her seemed to go no wider than how that event had affected Ynysmant, and with her usual gusto, she recounted how two neighbors had relatives caught beyond the Gate. It was all “just so
dreadfully
sad.” His father was well, she said, but was now going to be even busier at work repairing things. Then his mother inquired after Vero, sent her sympathy, and made Merral promise to tell him that he could be considered part of the family. “We could sort of
adopt
him, really,” she said breezily, “for the duration.”

“Mother,” Merral replied, trying not to laugh, “that's a nice idea, but he hardly needs adopting. And ‘the duration' is fifty years plus. But I'll pass on your concern.”

He then called Henri, his director at the Planning Institute. When Merral began to give his careful summary of the trip, Henri cut him short. “Ach, it probably doesn't matter now,” he said, giving his beard a sharp tug. “Man, even keeping Forward Colonies like Herrandown going is now open to question.”

Finally, and with a strange reluctance, Merral called Isabella. She was in her office. Straightening her long black hair, she beamed at him with a tired face.

“Merral!” she cried. “So you are still in Isterrane? I thought you were going away.”

He caught a sharp gaze of inquiry in her dark eyes.

“Ah. Isabella, the loss of the Gate has changed everything. So I'm here for a few more days. Then back home, I presume.” He paused. “Anyway, how are you?”

She shook her head and breathed out heavily, as if unable to express her feelings. “Shaken, in a word. Coming to terms with being out of a vocation.”

The realization that Isabella could indeed hardly assess educational progress against Assembly standards when there was no link to the other worlds struck Merral sharply. It was yet another area in which he hadn't given thought to the implications of the Gate loss.

“Yes, I suppose that's true—”

“You mean you hadn't realized it?” Isabella stared at him, as if offended that it hadn't been at the forefront of his mind.

“Sorry,” Merral replied, feeling embarrassed. “I suppose there are just so many areas that the Gate loss has had an impact on that I hadn't thought of that. And I'm afraid I've been busy on other things too—”

She shook her head ruefully. “Oh well. Anyway, I'm sitting here thinking the unthinkable. What do I do? Now we are separate. Isolated.” She threw her hands up in a gesture of uncertainty and insecurity.

“Isabella, we are all having to come to terms with that. It's not going to be easy.”

“Absolutely, and there's the whole psychological dimension. It's potentially scary.”

It's even scarier than you think.
“I can sense that, but tell me what you believe.”

“It's stood everything on its head. We all grow up with the same sort of mental picture of the Assembly. It's like some great, spiky, three-dimensional shape amid the darkness of the stars, and we at Farholme are on the very tip of one of the protrusions. Yet we are always part of it; that's what the word
Assembly
means. Worlds' End we may have been, but we always looked in to the center, and we always belonged. . . .” She paused. “But no longer. We are
isolated.
We will have to come to terms with that. Psychologically, it's going to be a very interesting fifty years.
Very
interesting.”

I might have known that Isabella would see more deeply than me.
He picked his words carefully before he answered her. “Isabella, you have to say to yourself that it's temporary. It's not permanent. And ultimately nothing has changed in the great scheme of things. That's what we have to hold on to.” He paused. “The King still reigns.”
Perena said that,
he reminded himself.

Isabella seemed to think over his words, and then her face brightened. “Yes, you are right. But it may be difficult for some to adjust. Anyway, when will I see you here?”

“I may be back in Ynysmant the day after tomorrow. Or the day after that, all being well. There's a lot of things to be done here.”

“We must meet up as soon as you get back. There's a lot to talk about. About
us.
”

“Yes,” Merral said, trying to disguise an unwelcome feeling of apprehension as he closed the link.

Merral was sitting at the table, eating and trying to find a new angle on events, when Vero came in. He took off his wet outdoor jacket and, wiping the water off his dark curly hair, came and sat down gently on the chair on the other side of the table. Without explanation, he took a small package out of his pocket and put it down beside him.

Merral pointed to the pasta he had recently made, and Vero found a plate and helped himself.

“So, have you been outside?” Vero asked after giving thanks.

“Briefly, a walk around the block. I thought it might help me think.”