The Shadow and Night (71 page)

“Great-Aunt?” Merral called out softly, and as he walked over to her, she turned slowly and stiffly and looked up at him.

He was immediately struck by how delicate and pale she had become. It was her paleness that struck him most, and it occurred to him that an artist could have painted her faithfully using only a palette of grays, whites, and blues.

Her wan lips twitched and tired bleached-blue eyes smiled at him.

“Merral, dear! How lovely. Come and kiss me.” The voice was slight and brittle.

Merral carefully put the lilies on the table where she could see them, pulled a chair up to the bed, bent over the fragile figure, and kissed a powder-dry cheek.

“Let me sit up more. Sit back a bit,” she whispered between bloodless lips. “Bed, more upright, please.”

There was a faint whine of motors and the top part of the bed tilted. “Bed, stop!” she called and the motion ended.

“Merral, now turn off that camera, please.” She gestured at a small wall-mounted lens. “I can't order that.”

He rose and tapped the switch below it.

“Why, thank you, dear. I don't like being watched all the time.”

He was suddenly aware of the sensor bands on her neck and wrist, of the way her white hair was tied back, of the soft embroidered white nightdress.

His great-aunt gave another thin, forced smile. “So tell me all the news. About everything and everybody.”

“Are you up to it?” he asked.

“Ah,” she said, with almost a snort of amusement. “Look at that book on my side table and tell me what you think of it.”

He picked up the white book, opened it, and was faced with pages of strange characters. “Let me guess,” he said. “Your Old-Mandarin Bible?”

“Indeed so. And I still read it daily. Keeps my mind going. You have to keep up your Historics. But—” a frown crossed the lined face—“it doesn't help. . . .”

She grimaced as if struck by pain. “Later. Tell me about Ynysmant. And the Gate exploding. I can hardly believe that. The family, though, first . . .”

After spending twenty minutes recounting matters to do with his father and mother in Ynysmant, his sisters and their families elsewhere, and other news, Merral looked searchingly at his great-aunt. “But how are you?”

She gave a wheezy sigh. “Not good,” she whispered in a faint and pitiful voice.

Merral held her fragile, bony hand gently, watching as she screwed her old eyes up in misery. Suddenly the novel thought came to him that in his great-aunt, he saw a malignity in old age. At its best, he had always seen old age as a mellow autumnal ripening, and at its worst, as no more than a gentle fading out. It was the slow, soft draining of physical and mental powers; the yawning and dozing before the onset of that long sleep of the real person that extended until the Great Awakening. But now, as he looked at his great-aunt's pained face with a fierce stab of pity, Merral could see aging as the ancients had seen it: as some cruel force that ripped and gnawed at the very essence of what you were.

Namia spoke slowly. “Merral, I need to be honest with you. Can I?”

“Of course.”

“I'm scared.” Her hand shook.

“Of what?” he asked.

“Of dying, Merral. Oh, I know it's crazy, but I'm scared.”

He squeezed the almost fleshless hand gently. “But you know the truth. Jesus loves you and died for you. Dying is going home to heaven—to the Father's house. He is waiting for you.”

Her eyes watered, and he reached for an embroidered handkerchief and dabbed her eyes. There was something contagious about her tears, and he felt like weeping himself.

“I know it in my head,” she said to him in a peculiar and distant tone. “But I can't feel it. I have no confidence. Supposing it's just dark forever? or that I just cease to exist?”

Merral stared at her. “It isn't dark. And you go to be with the King of the worlds. But, Great-Aunt, you have trusted him in the past for well over a century.”

“Yes,” she said weakly.

“I'm puzzled. I've never come across anything like it. You've prayed about it?”

“Yes,” she sighed, but it was nearly a sob, “but I seem to get no answer.”

“I see,” Merral answered, feeling utterly inadequate. “When did it start?”

“I had been here a few days. I was expecting to go. Waiting for him to lift me away. I remember rather looking forward to it. It was the first spring day. It'd been such a long winter. I was sitting down there, in that chair, just watching the ships. Always liked that. One boat attracted my attention. A little thing coming in past the island.
That's like me,
I thought,
nearly ready to get into port.
But as I stared at it I felt there was a dark cloud over it. . . . And then the cloud came and hung over me. And I suddenly had a terrible fear that has never left me since. They gave me tablets for it.”

She gave what was almost a whimper, and on the console above the bed Merral saw that a red light was flickering. “The tablets hide it, but it's still there. That's why I've held on till now.” Her pale eyes seemed to widen, and her frail hand stiffened in his. “It's worse at night. I sleep with the light on.”

There was a tap on the door and a male nurse glided in and came behind him.

“Sorry, Mr. D'Avanos,” he whispered in his ear, “metabolic monitors indicate her stress levels are very high. We'd prefer to let them drop a bit. A mild sedative—”

“Very well,” Merral answered, feeling suddenly angry with whatever it was that had so terribly afflicted this old woman at the end of her life, “but let me pray with her.”

As the nurse retreated to the window, Merral prayed audibly over his great-aunt and was rewarded by a faint “Amen” from the pale lips.

“God bless you, Great-Aunt. Trust him.”

She squeezed his hand feebly.

He rose to his feet and gestured the nurse over. Then slowly he walked to the door. Just as he was opening it, a thought struck him. “Oh, Great-Aunt, one question: the boat you watched. What color was it?”

The nurse looked at him, his face full of bewilderment.

“What a
strange
thing to ask, Merral,” his great-aunt said slowly and faintly. “It was orange.”

At the reception desk the nurse with the blonde ponytail and the round, dark brown eyes looked up at him. “I hope it wasn't too upsetting.”

For a moment, Merral felt lost for words. “Yes,” he answered. “I mean, it
was
alarming. I think I ought to talk to the doctor about what she said.”

She nodded. “Thought so. Follow me.”

As they walked along, Merral turned to her. “By the way, Nurse, I was struck by a comment you made earlier. That the Sunset Side believed it was the real heart of Larrenport. Since when have they been making a fuss about that?”

He caught an expression of mild embarrassment. “Six weeks, eight weeks maybe. It just seemed to start as the weather got warmer. But I was going to say to you that I've been wondering whether I should have said that.”

“That's interesting. How so?”

“I was just thinking about it and it struck me that—well, if you let the business about one side of town being better or worse continue, then there was no telling where it would end.”

Instinctively, Merral patted her gently on the arm. “Nurse, that's about the most sensible thing I've heard all day. You're right.
Don't
pass it on. Try and stop it. We have to fight it.”

She turned to him, pale eyebrows raised in something close to alarm. “What's going on? Your great-aunt . . . ? The mood in the town . . . ? And now the Gate?”

“I don't really know,” he answered. “But, hard as it may be to believe, the Lord still reigns.”

After a moment's thought, she smiled slowly back at him. “I guess so. I never felt I needed reminding of that before.” She gestured to another room. “The doctor is in there.”

The doctor was reclining in an old armchair, drinking from a mug of coffee and staring into space.

“Ah, Forester D'Avanos. I thought I might see you. Do you want a drink? coffee, tea?”

“No, thanks. I'd better get over to the airport soon.”

She scanned his face. “You saw the problem?”

“Oh, indeed. She's scared of dying. No,” Merral corrected himself, “not of
dying,
but of being dead. She's scared of
death.
”

“Exactly. It's very sad. Very disturbing.”

“Is she the only case?”

There was a long pause in which the doctor sipped her coffee and gazed ahead. Then she looked up at him with a frown. “No, there are others in the town. She was one of the first, but she was—
is—
an unusual woman. Very sensitive, perceptive, intuitive.”

She looked at Merral as if comparing him to his great-aunt. “Yes, you have something of that. But any ideas about treatment? I was intending to call Central Geriatric Care on Ancient Earth.” She shrugged. “Not a lot of hurry now. I can find nothing like this in our files. Nothing so deep or so permanent. It's not death as we have known it.”

Merral shook his head. “Oh, you can find references to it,” he said, and he was aware of her look of surprise. “Go back before the Intervention. You'll find it there. My guess is her symptoms were not atypical then. My memory suggests that there are hints of her mood in the Psalms.”

The doctor gave a little start, her face squinting in thought. “Yes . . . I suppose so. But that is
very
odd.”

“Yes. It is odd. My suggestion is to get the brightest spiritual advisor or counselor you can find here and let them dig some of the pre-2050 pastoral counseling material out of the Library.”

He suddenly realized that he had already told her too much. “Look, I'd better go. You have my details with the nurse. Keep in touch.”

She put her coffee down and rose slowly to her feet. “Yes, I think that's a good idea. But, surely—” She looked perplexed. “Surely, that age of humanity is long over?”

“Hmm,” Merral said, moving toward the door. “That's what I used to think too.”

He got to the airport earlier than he had expected and easily found himself a spare place on an early afternoon ferry flight to Ynysmant. Then, while the freighter was loading and being refueled, he found a quiet corner, took out some sheets of paper, and began writing his letter to Representative Corradon. Merral had never been one for using pen and paper, but now he felt it was time to get used to it.

He began by outlining, as precisely as he could, Captain Sterknem's account and suggested that Anya be informed of the relevant biological details. Then he recounted the curious divisions appearing in Larrenport and mentioned the problem he had heard of with the machines at the dock. Finally, he summarized his visit to Great-Aunt Namia and her frame of mind. Then, after a long time thinking and choosing his words, he wrote the final sentences: