The Shadow and Night (75 page)

For the next few days, Merral threw himself vigorously into his work. He heard nothing from Isterrane and part of him began to hope that Vero's proposal for teams was going to be refused.
Perhaps,
he thought,
I
can
return to my old life.
Yet every meeting he went to was dominated by the changed priorities they all now faced and reminded him that his old life was gone beyond recall. And at any meeting, whenever a map was produced, he found his glance straying northward to where the broken circle of the Lannar Crater appeared.

Midmorning on the last day of the working week, there was a knock at his door. Henri walked in carrying a large carton and two long white envelopes, one of which was open.

“Morning, Merral,” he said in a strange, unsettled tone. “May I talk to you privately?”

“Of course.”

Henri closed the door behind him and, putting the carton down on the floor, pulled up a chair at the other end of the table.

“Our world is changing isn't it?” Henri's voice expressed how uneasy he was with the idea.

“Yes. And it worries me, very much.”
I can guess what is about to happen. It is what I have been expecting since I got back.

Henri waved the letters. “These were couriered to me today. And this carton. Both marked ‘urgent.' One letter for me personally and one for me to hand to you. From Representative Corradon.”

“Ah.”

He handed an envelope to Merral, who glanced at the front, taking in the linked crests of Farholme and Menaya and the embossed emblem of the Assembly, the words
Private and Confidential,
and the two-line address
Forester Merral Stefan D'Avanos, Ynysmant Planning Institute.

“I think you'd better read it now,” Henri said. “
Ach,
it's private, but we need to discuss what it says.”

Merral opened the heavy envelope with a knife and unfolded the two sheets of paper. The heading on it said simply
Anwar Corradon, representative for northeastern Menaya,
and underneath the previous day's date was a neatly handwritten message. Merral read it carefully through twice.

Dear Forester D'Avanos,

I have carefully considered both our discussions and the letter I have just received from you on the state of matters in Larrenport. After meeting with the other representatives, I am hereby authorizing your release from your duties at the Ynysmant Planning Institute to work specifically on some of the questions raised by the appearance of the intruders. I have written separately to your manager requesting your immediate release. You are authorized to use such resources of Farholme as needed. You may wish to use the Planning Institute as your base for the time being.

In an accompanying package you should find the datapaks of all the imagery you need. I would like to be made aware of any significant developments in this matter as soon as possible by personal or written communication alone. No contact of any form with the intruders is to be sought without my permission. I have written similar letters to Captain Perena Schlama Lewitz and Dr. Anya Schlama Lewitz.

Furthermore, after further discussion with Sentinel Enand, the other representatives, and Advisor Clemant, I have, most reluctantly, authorized the creation of a Farholme Defense Unit that will interlock with the research work authorized above. Sentinel Enand has been authorized to instigate and organize the development of the Defense Unit, again with the strict ruling that no contact with the intruders is to be made without my approval.

In a break with Assembly tradition which, we must pray, is a temporary measure, the nature of your research and the existence of the Farholme Defense Unit is not to be made public knowledge.

These arrangements will be reviewed on a monthly basis.

Please keep this document private and secure.

Be assured of all our prayers and support.

Yours in the service of the Assembly,

Anwar Corradon, representative

Merral closed his eyes as the import of the letter sank in.

“You okay, man? You look like you need some fresh air.”

For long moments, Merral could not answer. “My responsibilities are now heavier than you can imagine,” he said finally. “Sorry, Henri. What do you know?”

“A bit. The representative says that he has appointed you to be—how did it go?” Henri looked at his letter. “ ‘To be in charge of a special project of vital importance to the future of Farholme, centering on some of the oddities that have been occurring within Menaya. Rather uniquely'—
I'll say—
‘this is not to be made public. I would ask you to assist him in whatever way you can. If you wish to discuss this matter, please do it either by a hand-couriered document or by face-to-face contact with me. I am anxious that no mention of this matter is made on either diary links or the Admin-Net.' ” Henri looked up and shook his head. “I'm still trying to work out the implications of that. And the rest. But I don't like it. Not at all.”

“Me neither.”

“Anyway, he goes on to say, ‘I would be grateful if you would not press Forester D'Avanos on any matters to do with this project. Yours,
et cetera.
'
 ”

“Does it say to keep this document private and secure?”

He smiled ruefully. “
Ach.
Man, it's worse. At the bottom it says, ‘Please commit the above to memory and then have it destroyed.' ”

Henri looked intently across the table at him. “I have no real idea what this is about. I have never heard of anything like this happening. But, Merral, you have my support. Anything I can do to help, I will do.”

He extended his hand and Merral shook it.

“Thanks, Henri,” he answered, his mind still adjusting to the arrival of what he had both hoped and feared. Then he walked over to the window and for long moments stood there, resting his fingers on the sill. He looked across the lake where the sun was breaking through thin, ashen clouds and lighting up the tops of waves in the distance.
My days of being a forester are ended,
he thought. He tried to console himself that, weeks or months away, he might be fully able to resume the work he loved. Yet it was a consolation that now seemed hard to believe.

Finally, he turned round to Henri. “Thanks. I need to sit and think. And pray. Then, if I may, I will come back to you, probably with some requests.”

“I'll do everything I can, Merral. May God help you.”

“May he help us all, Henri.”

An hour later, Merral walked into Henri's office with a piece of paper in his hand.

“Okay,” Henri drawled, “tell me what you want.”

“I need some things to start with. A big cupboard, big enough for maps and papers.”

“Done.”

“And I want another computer, able to handle map data for the whole of northeastern Menaya.”

“Again, done.”

“Thanks. But there may be a problem. I want that machine isolated from the network.”

“Isolated?” Henri's jaw sagged slightly. “But, man, to state the obvious, if you do that no one will be able to interface with it.”

“That's the point.”

“
Ach.
I see,” Henri said, his face showing evidence of a brain working double-speed to handle new ideas. “So I get to lose you? That's bad news for me.”

“I've been thinking about that. I don't think I can work all day on this project, anyway. I'll need a break. And if I dropped out of all forestry work, everyone would be very curious. So why don't we cut my workload, and I'll see how much I can do?”

Merral found the happy look that came to Henri's face gratifying.

“Excellent. Anything else?”

“I want to see if one of the maintenance people can modify my office door in some way.”

“Let me guess. The same as Herrandown. You want a bolt?”

“No. More complex. A device so that I can bolt and unbolt the door, but from the outside.”

An uncomprehending stare slid across Henri's face. Merral paused and then reluctantly said, “The design will be in the Library files. It's called a door lock.”

“A door lock . . .” Henri stared at the map on his wall for a long minute in a perplexed manner and then turned to Merral. “What, in the name of the Assembly and all it stands for, are we up against?”

There was a long silence, and then Merral said, “The problem is, Henri, I don't know.” He paused, struck afresh by the dreadful responsibility that had now been thrust upon him. “And it has become my responsibility to find out before it's too late.”

28

W
ithin hours, Merral had started on his task of finding the ship. And by the end of the day, he had realized that he faced a daunting task. Not only had he a vast area of incredibly rugged terrain to search—his estimate was that the Lannar Crater alone covered around a million square kilometers—but he didn't know what he was looking for. What shape was the ship? What color? What size? Would it show up on gravity or magnetic data? Could he eliminate swamps, screes, and mountain summits? The answer, he realized, was, in every case, that he simply didn't know.

Over the next week, Merral's doubts deepened. One promising technique had failed completely. He tried getting the computer to compare last year's images with this year's and to flag any changes. The problem was that the crater area was so dynamic that every square kilometer turned out to have something new, whether it was a fresh stream, some fallen trees, or a new landslide. So for two days he turned the images into a digitally created landscape, put on imaging glasses, and cruised across it at a variety of altitudes. But he found no trace of any ship.

In the end, Merral divided the imagery into blocks of ten square kilometers and began to look at each in turn, cross-checking the visual data with any geophysical oddities. It was slow work, and he found he could only concentrate for so many minutes at a time before he had to take a break. As a change—and to try and freshen his mind—he took to running along the lake edge at lunchtime. But after a week's work, the verdict was inescapable: he had discovered nothing.

One of the few consolations that emerged during that first week of the search was that Merral found his relationship with Isabella seemed to be running more smoothly. For one thing, her new job seemed to occupy her energies. It soon emerged that she had been made the deputy leader of the warden's crisis team. For another, she seemed to have made a decision not to push Merral to say anything more about the intruders, and he was spared more troubling questions. But the topic didn't go away. Merral felt that, like a rock under the surface of the water, the subject was always there. In the end, Merral found the whole thing so awkward and irritating that he decided to tell Isabella almost everything. So, one evening, they went for a walk in the woods south of Ynysmant and there, in a clearing a long way from anywhere, Merral told her—on the condition she told no one else—what had happened.