The Shadow and Night (73 page)

She clutched him to herself.

“It's been
ages.
And the Gate
gone.
We have missed you. Has your father got you some food?”

“Well, we've just been talking—”

She turned to his father. “Oh, Stefan! The boy's traveled hundreds of kilometers! You could have started getting
something
for him.” Merral found her tone strange; jocular, yet also with a sharp and critical edge.

His father's face clouded. “Oh yes, sorry. I mean we were talking, weren't we, Son?”

He rose to his feet, shedding more crumbs off his pullover.

His mother frowned. “Oh, Stefan, just look at you! Those crumbs—all over you! The
men
of this house—” She gave a sigh and then hesitated, as if struck by her own reactions. “Sorry,” she said in a quiet, introspective tone. “I'm not feeling quite myself lately. I suppose it's this awful Gate business.”

But is it?
Merral thought as they ate their supper and his mother discussed the practical repercussions of the loss of the Gate in her life and that of her neighbors and colleagues. Was his mother's critical mood a reaction to that event, or was there something else at work?

After supper, Merral called Isabella to apologize for being back a day late. From the diary screen, he could see that she was sitting in her bedroom.

“Can we meet tomorrow?” he asked. “It's the Lord's Day, and we can meet in the afternoon or the evening.”

Isabella's face showed an expression that was close to a pout. Then she brightened and turned her head slightly on one side, smiling. “But you could still come over now,” she said in a voice of warm invitation.

Struggling with his emotions, Merral did not immediately answer.
I care for Isabella,
he thought.
I find her invitation appealing, yet I want to keep my distance. Something is going wrong between us. Time was, we controlled our relationship; now it seems to control us.

Suddenly an excuse came to mind. “Isabella, it's a bit late and I'd like to spend some time with my parents. Tomorrow's better.”

The response was a brief moment of silence.

“Yes,” Isabella said slowly and smiled again, but Merral felt there was effort rather than spontaneity behind her expression. Then, after making arrangements to meet on the following evening, and further pleasantries, they ended the call.

That night, before he went to sleep, Merral lay awake reviewing the day. What he had worried about on the hospital grounds now seemed terribly confirmed by the hints and nuances from within his own family.

The intangible shadow that had fallen over Herrandown and Larrenport was now falling over his own town.

27

T
he following morning, Merral tried to put his concerns out of his mind. He felt it wrong that on the Lord's Day matters of evil should preoccupy him. Yet it was a struggle. Everything seemed to draw his mind back to the nagging shadow that now appeared to loom over everything. Indeed, as he left the Congregation Hall, high at the top of Ynysmant, Merral paused and looked north through the clear air. He could just make out in the far distance the snowcapped summits of the Rim Ranges.
How many days would it take,
he wondered,
for those cockroach-beasts and ape-creatures to reach here?
Could he be certain that, even now, they were not slowly advancing through the greenery of the orchards and woodlands that he could see? In spite of the warm sunshine, he shivered.

In the afternoon, Merral played a full game in the Blue Lakers' B squad. He had no great success, and his injured ankle was throbbing at the end of the match. But it took his mind off matters and gave him some exercise.

That evening Merral and Isabella walked down to the Waterside Center. The sun was setting by the time they got there, and it was still too chilly to sit outside, so they went into the center. Most people were downstairs where a local string-and-wind band was playing, so they went upstairs to an almost deserted lounge. There they got some drinks, found a quiet corner by a window, and made themselves comfortable. As they sat there together, Merral felt his concerns about their relationship slip away. Indeed, he was soon thinking about the kiss they had shared, a recollection that seemed to tingle with promise. Yet, as he thought about it, he realized that while that memory thrilled him, it also troubled him.
There are times and places for every stage in a relationship,
he thought,
and that, somehow, was out of place.

Then Isabella started speaking, and he pushed his troubled thoughts away. “I have a new job,” she said with excitement. “I am starting work this week in Warden Enatus's office. He is setting up a crisis team using people like me who have nothing to do now that the Gate is gone.”

“Looking forward to it?” Merral asked.

“Absolutely.” There was no mistaking the enthusiasm in her dark eyes. “It's going to be very stimulating. I feel like an explorer.”

“I'm glad someone is positive.”

“It's not all bad, you know.”

She leaned over the table. “So, Merral D'Avanos,” she said in a secretive voice, “tell me all about your trip north. You have been very evasive. Did you see that insect man-thing that Elana saw?”

It suddenly came to Merral that this was going to be very different from the conversation with Henri. Isabella would not be content with platitudes. And, as he realized it, he felt a horribly strong temptation to deny everything and to say that he had seen nothing. The attraction of the lie made him feel almost nauseous. Sensing his hesitation, Isabella murmured, “Go on. You can tell me.”

“Isabella, dear,” Merral said after a moment, “I'd just rather not talk about it. I really would.”

The sort of relationship that Isabella and I have,
he thought in alarm,
should involve progressively greater openness; that is what the whole sequence of commitment, engagement, and marriage involves. Yet instead of going forward, I find myself wanting to hold back. She demands to know more of me, yet I find I am reluctant to do so.

A darkness seemed to cloud her face. “But I ought to know, really. It might help you to talk about what happened.”

There was the usual gentle softness to her voice, but underneath Merral sensed a hard core of insistence.

“Perhaps,” he answered, “in time, I may be able to talk about it fully.”

Isabella looked out of the window into the dusk as if trying to hide her impatience and then turned sharply back to Merral, her dark hair swinging over her shoulder. A strand landed across her face, and almost with irritation, she flicked it back.

“Merral,” she said softly, “I was up there at Herrandown with you. I
know
the problems already. I really ought to be told the end of the story.”

Her tone was gently imploring, and Merral found that somehow it irritated him. And the fact that her insistence irritated him made him feel both miserable and alarmed.

“Well, I said I'd rather not—”

“And at least,” she said, giving him a forced smile, “I want to know how you got from presumably well north of Herrandown to Isterrane, over a thousand kilometers away. Oh, come on, tell me!”

After a moment's further hesitation, Merral spoke. “Look, Isabella, all I wish to say—at the moment—is something like this: Over three days, Vero and I walked up the Lannar River as far as Carson's Sill, which is a rock ridge just before the Rim Ranges proper. There . . .” He paused, puzzling exactly what to say. “Well, there, we saw what shouldn't have been there. That we cannot explain. We asked to be pulled out and were picked up by a general survey craft and taken to Isterrane.”

Isabella stared at him. “So it does exist. I thought so. From the way Elana talked.”

“Well, we think . . . that whatever they are, they are gone. At least from that area.”

“They?”
Her thin eyebrows arched upward.

“There was more than one of them.”

“I see.” She shuddered. “And you are doing something about it?”

“Of course. There is an informal group of people working on it.”

“Who? You and Vero?”

“And Anya Lewitz, the biologist who looked at the samples. And her sister, Perena, who piloted the craft that picked us up.”

Isabella took a sip from her glass before speaking. “I see. But how does she fit in? Perena, I mean, to the group? I mean, I can see how you and Vero fit in, and I can see how Anya fits in. But a pilot? And if she's flying a general survey craft, she has got to be a Near-Space pilot.”

Merral stared at Isabella, realizing that he had underestimated her.

“Well . . . we think it possible that these things may have come from outside Farholme. By ship.”

“You think they are aliens?” Her eyes widened.

Merral hesitated, realizing that he had been dragged into saying more than he had intended. “Well, that may be going too far. We are looking into every possibility, but obviously we need to keep it quiet. We do not want to panic anybody, and as you would be the first to appreciate, now is not the time to release speculations.”

As he spoke, it came to Merral as a fresh insight that while he was capable of being firm in his dealings with captains, advisors, and even representatives, in his dealings with Isabella he was weak. The insight irritated him.

“That is
so
scary. But what I want to know—”

Suddenly, Merral felt he had said enough. “Look, Isabella, I've told you as much as I can at the moment. That's all I want to say. The rest is, for the moment, private.”

As the words came out, he realized how brusque they sounded and was appalled. “Sorry,” he said.

Isabella blinked and then she just reached out and stroked his hand for a second in a placatory gesture.

“I'm sorry; it's been a difficult few days—for us all.”

“That,” Merral said, sitting back, shaking his head, and sighing, “is what everybody says.”
Perhaps,
he thought,
we can work something out between us. What we once had was so good that we ought to be able to get it back.

“But it's true, Merral. It's an unprecedented shock.”

“But is it, in your view,” he said, thinking how relieved he was to turn away from the subject of the intruders and his trip north, “an unmitigated evil?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I was talking to someone at the hospital who was saying to me that at least we might be free of those viruses that come in with travelers from other worlds.”

“Like the Carnathian flu we all had to be inoculated against last year?”

That's it. Stay away from the intruders.
“Yes, I suppose so. . . . I mean, have you found any silver linings in the black cloud? I could use them.”

“Me? Well, I did have one odd thought—”

“Which was?”

She creased her brow and gave him what he always thought of as one of her intense looks. “Well, the Assembly has always valued stability. As you know, Assembly society doesn't change very much in space or time. It has been said that if you could—somehow—transport one of the founding generation here across those twelve millennia, he or she would fit back into our society with barely a murmur.”

“It's almost a truism,” Merral said, feeling more relaxed. “Or if our society does change, it changes within only tiny limits.”

Applause drifted up from the room below.

“Yes, well, that is partly due to planning. But there are also sociological reasons why that has been the case. The Assembly is just too big and too open for innovations to take hold.”

“Yes,” he answered, realizing that part of her charm was the way her intelligence and analytical ability stimulated him. “Genetic systems work in the same way. It's hard to modify large populations as the new genes just get swamped.”