The Shadow and Night (22 page)

I wonder what Vero makes of that,
Merral wondered, remembering the sentinel's unease at Congregation Hall's role as a refuge.
But we must do things like this
;
on our unstable Made Worlds there is always the risk of some submarine landslide, volcano, or earthquake suddenly displacing a million tons of water landward. And a hundred other perils.
But, as the thought came to him, Merral found his reflection becoming somber as he realized that he had—for all its risks—always found his world vaguely reassuring. True, it had its hazards, but they were all mapped, cataloged, and known. And yet, in the last two days he had come to wonder whether Farholme was such a known world after all. Could it be possible, he had puzzled, that they might have overlooked something? Might it be that there was something not mentioned in the Catalog of Species loose here? Something so strange that no light could be shed on it by all the millennia of knowledge of the Assembly?

Both the atmosphere and space segments of Isterrane Airport seemed busy. Away down to the west, on the long rendered-basalt runways of the space strips Merral noted the white squat hulls of three general survey craft and two of the much larger in-system shuttles. Probably as a result, he found there was a lot of land traffic leaving the port, and the allocating computer almost immediately found him a seat in a vehicle going past the Planning Institute complex. So it was barely twenty minutes after landing that Merral was able to let himself into the guest room that had been issued to him. He unpacked his things, briefly admired his view of the Institute's mixed woodlands and the lake with the high white fin of the Planetary Administration Building rising behind it, and then sat down at the table with his diary to try to contact Vero.

The image that he received showed him immediately that his friend was not yet in Isterrane. The picture was shaking. Vero's face was too close to the screen, and behind him were the unmistakable green furnishings of a long-haul flier. Even as Merral extended a greeting, Vero's eyes closed as if in pain, his face bobbed sharply, and there was a thud as the transmitting diary bounced. The brown eyes opened and Vero gave an unnatural smile. “Merral! I am just being reminded of something I once read but had long since forgotten.”

“What was that?”

The face jerked again.

“Ah! That atmospheric turbulence on the Made Worlds can be very much worse than that on Earth. And much less predictable. Oh, here we”—the image jarred and the dark skin seemed to acquire a paler tone—“go again. I'll never complain about the Gates again. Never! Look, Merral, I'm six hours away. Where shall I meet you?”

“The Planning Institute. I'll be there all this afternoon.”

Vero nodded weakly. “I'll come straight over as soon as I land.
If
I land. . . . Look, I'm going to switch off. On Earth it's very rude to be sick on screen. Oh no!”

The screen went blank. After a few moments of praying for Vero, Merral called Anya Lewitz. She winked at Merral and gave him a broad smile that seemed to split her freckled face. “Tree Man! You made it in from the wilds. Welcome to the big town.” There was a boisterousness to her manner that Merral found engaging and heartening.

“Nice to be here and to see you, Anya. I have something for you.”

“Great, put it on a lead and walk it over. What does it eat?” Merral's concerns seemed to diminish in the presence of Anya's seemingly boundless good cheer.

“Sorry, it's dead. No, just a couple of samples.”

“Shame! You're at the Institute?”

“Yes . . . how did you . . . ?”

“That decor. Terribly dull. No wonder the planet is such a mess; you guys can't even paint your own walls coordinated shades of blue. Look, get on over straight away. We are at the south end of the center. I want to catch up with your news and I've a meeting in a couple of hours.”

Using the Institute's transport allocation system, Merral very quickly found himself a lift to the western side of the city, where the various offices, laboratories, and nurseries of the Planetary Ecology Center occupied most of a park the size of Ynysmant town. From the main entrance, he walked along the long, covered path to the Reconstruction Project Station. There, after stopping briefly to marvel at the wall-size holograph system that was today showing
The Blue Whales of Marsa-Mena,
he was directed up to Anya's office.

This turned out to be a charming, extended second-floor room under a high-pitched wooden roof, with wide glass windows and a balcony overlooking the city. For all its size, the room seemed full. The walls were covered with maps and images of animals, the shelving loaded with equipment, datapaks, models, and books, and the spare table and bench space were covered by papers and charts. In one corner of the room a model of a giant sloth, almost Merral's height, stared at him with a haughty air. In the far corner some tree hamsters in a large cage ran up a branch and peered at him with some uncertainty.

Anya gave him a hearty hug and a moist kiss on the cheek.
Very nice,
Merral thought, surprised at the strength of his feelings. She gestured in her lively way to a seat at a low table. They sat down, and she looked at him in the evaluative way old friends do after an absence of years. Merral felt that Anya's notorious playfulness and exuberance had been slightly tempered with growing maturity, but not entirely lost.
No, she has just learned how to tame it.

Over coffee, they shared news of families, friends, and jobs. Anya's face brightened. “Oh, and while I remember, tonight—come over for a meal. The building over there, Narreza Tower. Fifth—that is, top—floor. It's at my flat; my older sister is in town. You know Perena?”

“Yes, you introduced me at the beach once. The pilot?”

“Ah, a Near-Space Captain now. Anyway, Space Affairs is letting her off for the night, so she's cooking. Theodore will be there too. You've met him?”

“No. I don't think so.”

“Tree Man, you've been out in the bush too long. Theodore is a good friend of mine. He's with Maritime Affairs, works on deep-sea currents. Anyway, you'd be more than welcome.”

“Thanks. But I've got a guest myself coming in from Aftarena. I'd better look after him. He's from Ancient Earth—truly a long way from home.”

“Ancient Earth? Really, oh, you must bring him. Perena would like that. She finished her training there. But who is it?”

“One Verofaza Laertes Enand, sentinel.”

Anya wagged her head slowly and seriously as if reading a lot into the answer. “Ah, a sentinel. You are keeping interesting company. I'd heard we had one visiting. Bring him, though. What's he doing?”

A good question, and one that I wonder if Vero can answer.

“Well, he's writing a report. But it's complicated. Ask him yourself, though.”

“Oh, I will.”

There was a pause and Anya glanced at the clock on the wall. “Time flies, I'm afraid. Now, your problem. Tell me about it.”

“It may be something or nothing. I'm involved professionally and also because it is family. I have an uncle at Herrandown, a Forward Colony up toward the Lannar Crater. It's his eldest girl who says she saw it . . . this thing.”

“Yeah, the more I thought about it the stranger it became. She is sticking to the story, I take it?”

“Oh yes. I'm certain she believes in it. She did a drawing. Look at this.” He summoned up a scanned copy on his diary screen and turned it so Anya could see it.

Anya looked at it in silence, her bright blue eyes examining it carefully. Finally, she shook her head. “Like nothing in reality and precious little I've heard of in fiction. I'm no wiser. It's more humanoid than I had thought. But what do
you
think, O great expert of the Great Northern Forest?” Merral noticed a searching look to her face that belied the teasing tone.

“Me? Well to be honest, I'm embarrassed by it. I really don't know. I was set to dismiss it, but then we found that where she said she had seen it there was evidence that something had been there. Watching Herrandown. And it was a good surveillance spot.”

Anya looked at him with surprise.
“Watching
Herrandown? How far away?”

“Two kilometers.”

She shook a finger at him and grinned. “Oh, Merral, so it's intelligent now. With long-distance vision. Some cockroach! We'd better evacuate the planet quick and blow the Gate behind us. That will give the human race forty years minimum to work on insecticides before it makes the next Assembly world. Assuming it doesn't go faster than light too.”

Merral laughed.

Anya shook her head merrily. “Any other data? These samples . . .”

“The branches had been cut to clear the view. I got a sample.” He reached into his bag, pulled out the carefully wrapped sample, and handed it over to Anya. “The right angle cut is mine.”

She took the clear bag in her hands and held it up to the light. “You've looked at it?”

“Not really. It's not my area. What do you see?”

“Not much. But let me look at it under a lens.” She got up and took it over to a desk where a large microscope stood. Merral got up and joined her as the cut piece of wood came into focus on the screen.

Anya peered at it. “Hmm. Need to do comparative studies. But it was a scissors action. From both sides at once; you can see the pressure points on either side. Could be a tool, I suppose. Tiny scoring or scratch marks. See there?” She pointed to part of the image. “Probably two finely serrated scissor blades. But big. That branch is five millimeters thick. Size of my little fingertip.”

She paused, puzzlement in her tone. “Let me see the girl's sketch again.”

Merral called it up and Anya enlarged the area around the creature's hands. “Odder still.” The note of puzzlement was deeper and darker now. “I had assumed that the hands were badly drawn. Let me get a printout.”

A few seconds later, they were peering over a sheet of paper.

“Look, Merral.”

“So?” he asked, noting that there were fingers sketched on each hand.

“The thumb.”

Merral looked again. “Odd,” he said. “It's not really there. As a thumb that is. Just another long finger but oddly wider. Is it an accident of drawing?”

“I think not. See how they are symmetrical? Both hands are alike. It suggests a real memory. But interesting . . .”

“How so?”

Anya gave Merral a distant, abstracted smile and held up her right hand with the fingers aligned together. Then she swung her thumb in and out against the fingers in a snipping motion.

“I see,” said Merral, in surprise. “You think that . . . ?”

She shook her head so that her fine red hair flicked over her shoulders. “It must be coincidence.” She stared out of the window for a moment, then turned back to him. “No. I refuse to fuel silly ideas. I'll get one of our animal people to look at it.”

She put it carefully down, but Merral noticed that her thoughtful look had not evaporated.

“What else?”

“Only this,” Merral said as he handed over the second specimen.

She looked at him in feigned bemusement. “No,
no,
Tree Man. That's
hair.
Normally only mammals have it.”

He smiled. “Oh gosh, Anya, I'd forgotten that. But joking apart, I don't recognize it, and I've seen all our wildlife. That's my job. What's odder still is that it was caught on an overhanging branch above the trail. About a meter seventy-five off the ground, so you can read that as a minimum height. It could have been an even larger creature if it had been stooping.”

Anya rubbed her forehead. “So this little anthropoid arthropod suddenly sprouts hair and doubles in size. Oh dear.”

Merral shrugged. “Oh, I know.”

Anya sucked her lower lip in. “So, we have
two
new beasts. The human cockroach and a big hairy thing.”

“That is a conclusion I've tried to avoid drawing.”

Anya put the sample down carefully and leaned back in her chair.

“I can see why. Of course, it could be that there was a monkey that sat on the back of the cockroach. There, have you considered that possibility?” She grinned at him.

“No.”

“Well, at least we can get the DNA out of this. Assuming it has any. I'll give you the results tomorrow.”

She looked at the hair and then back at Merral. “Well, if it's real, then we have a problem, to put it mildly. Everything we do depends on us knowing exactly what fauna we have here. We always worry about new strains, some new mutant mouse with an insatiable appetite perhaps, but a totally new mammal—let alone a physically impossible mega-arthropod—is totally off the scale. And if it's a nightmare or a delusion we need to keep it in check. We don't want people fearing new creatures. You are certain that it isn't a joke or prank?”