Shadow's End

  His arms were marked as they had been the morning before, as was his forehead, a dozen small, slightly reddened spots that were already fading. He gave me that lizard look again, then went into the wagon silently, he who was rarely silent! I stood listening, but there was no outcry from within. He had sneaked out; he had sneaked back. Considering how everyone felt at the moment, perhaps it was best that I keep Leely's excursion to myself. If I said anything about it, Lutha—whose emotions were always at the surface of her, quick to erupt, quick to cool—would blame Trompe, who would be angry at her, which would annoy Leelson, which would make Lutha angry at him. Angrier. She who could no more resist him, or he her, than the stone can resist the rootlets of the tree. Even the hardest stone will break, for the tree will grow, despite all.

  Far better say nothing.

  We broke camp without incident or argument. We drove into the Canyon of Burning Springs, the mouth and throat of which are no different from any other canyon: a trickle of water at the center, water-rounded stones along the sides among a sprinkle of low grasses and forbs and woody plants, then a long slope of rubble piled at the foot of the canyon walls, then the walls themselves, fissured and split, some parts actually overhanging us as we wandered slowly below. The canyon tended generally westward, so we were in light, the sun lying midway between the zenith and the southern rim. We heard no sounds, we saw no living things except ourselves. The canyon curves slightly, so we could not see far ahead, though we could hear the sound of water. We did not realize we had made a considerable change of direction until we were well into what Leelson called a "dogleg." (I called it an elbow. We have no dogs on Dinadh.)

  The change impressed itself on us when the light went out as though someone had closed a shutter. Even in a sunlit canyon there are often narrow shadows thrown across the way by protruding boulders on the rims, but we had come to a veritable lake of shadow, thrown by a monstrous monolith we could see black against the sun glare, south and east of us. We blinked and murmured and stared around ourselves, dark afterimages of the sun dazzle swimming across our eyes. Only after we stepped into the shadow and let our eyes adjust to it did we realize we had come to the place of fire.

  Songfather had often amused the children of Cochim-Mahn with tales of this place, but I'd never imagined it as it really was. I'd thought there would be small fires here and there, like a gathering of campfires, perhaps. When our eyes cleared, however, we saw a world of flame. Fountains gushed everywhere, up the sides of the walls, along the rubble slopes, in the canyon bottom, beside the steamy stream that trickled along beside us, braided into a dozen vaporous streamlets. We were surrounded by firelight and water noise, by fire roar and water glimmer. The light and the sound twisted and warbled together, so that it was hard to know whether we saw the movement or heard it. There was a mineral smell, not unpleasant, and warm damp upon our skins that turned clammy as we moved.

  "Worthy of a tourist's visit," murmured Leelson, an awed expression on his face. "Why have I never heard of this place?"

  "Because Dinadh does not want tourists," Lutha said, in a voice equally awed.

  I had no words at all. Around us the fountains burst forth from smooth basins they had polished into the stone over the centuries. Some were clear jets like pillars of glass, others were peaks of foam; some were single towers of evanescent light, others were multiple spouts that collided in fans of glittering gems, then drained away through multiple fissures, back into the fiery depths below. The small streamlets beside us carried away only a tiny fraction of the leaping water. Mostly it was recirculated, seeping away, bursting forth again, every shining cascade lit by the changing, evanescent spirits of flame burning within the water. Sometimes the fire topped the foam, sometimes the water leapt higher; no instant was like any other. Together, the plash and burble of water and the muted roar of flame hummed like a giant voice, a great harmonic chord.

  "Wow," whispered Lutha, cupping her hands over her ears. An inadequate response, I felt, becoming for an instant very planet proud.

  "You could make hard coin bringing tours from Simidi-ala," said Trompe.

  I said, "It is a tortuous distance overland, and we will not fly unless it is absolutely necessary." My voice was properly stiff and Dinadhish, but my senses echoed Leelson's pleasure. Why shouldn't people from other worlds see this wonder? I knew the answer, of course, but for that moment it did not seem sufficient.

  Our mutual awe and pleasure was quickly lost.

  "Uh-oh," murmured Leelson. I looked in the direction of his gaze and saw what the fiery fountains had prevented our seeing until that instant. The pallid wings. The shining forms. Not one or two, but dozens, scores. I found myself counting. There were a hundred of them, at least, sitting around a fountain at the foot of the wall, heads resting on their folded arms or lax upon their shoulders.

  We made no sound, almost holding our breaths. A long moment went by. The pale forms did not move. They took no notice of us. One of the gaufers grew impatient and struck the rock with the hardened skin of his foot. It made a rough, scraping noise, quite loud, but it occasioned no reaction.

  I was close at Leelson's side. I felt him drawing in a deep, quiet breath before he clucked to the gaufers and shook the reins. They moved, their heads down and forward at the end of their long necks. They are curious beasts. So they greet the offer of some new kind of food or the hand of some new handler. We approached the first fountain and its surrounding forms. The fountain danced and chuckled. The Kachis did not move.

  The gaufers drew their heads back, snorting and spitting as they jerked the wain into quicker motion. The next fountain was larger, with even more Kachis about it. We drove by and they did not move. So we went on, four fountains, seven, ten: all of them ringed by Kachis, none of the Kachis moving. Gradually, as our eyes accustomed to the variable light, we saw more Kachis, thousands of them scattered all the way to the canyon walls, up the rubble slopes, behind broken boulders and pillars.

  Lutha tapped my arm and pointed upward. They were there as well, high upon the narrow ledges left when blocks of stone had fallen away. Every shelf was edged with them, like white tatting on the edge of a sleeve.

  "Are they asleep?" Lutha whispered to me.

  How did I know? I had never seen a Kachis asleep. Still, most things sleep, so one might suppose …

  I shook my head at her. Who would know what Kachis do when they are alone, afar, away from us? Who knows the truth of what they do even with us?

  Finally, at the end of the dogleg, Leelson gave the reins to Trompe and told him to drive on. He was going back to examine the Kachis.

  "Don't be a fool," said Lutha, yearning toward him, furious at him.

  "I lead a charmed life, remember?" he told her, actually smiling.

  "Leelson! It's dangerous!"

  "I don't think so," he said. "Drive on. I'll catch up with you in a while."

  Trompe grunted in annoyance, but he drove on. We kept going for some little time, then, at Lutha's insistence, we stopped. We waited, and waited, growing increasingly apprehensive. At the moment when both Trompe and Lutha had decided to turn about and go back, Leelson appeared at the turn in the canyon, sauntering toward us as though he had been out for a morning stroll around a hive!

  "Do you know anything about what we saw back there, Saluez?"

  I looked blankly at him. Of course I didn't.

  "Very strange," he mused. "They're unconscious. As in a trance."

  I said nothing. What could I say?

  He shrugged, with an apologetic look at me. "I'm picking up all kind of avoidance signals here. This is evidently something Saluez doesn't want us to discuss."

  "Saluez doesn't want to talk about the Kachis," said Lutha.

  "Talk," I said weakly, flapping my hands at them. "You talk. I won't listen."

  Of course I did listen, even though they used many words I didn't know then, words I only learned later.

  Leelson said, "There are a few dead ones back in the c
anyon, like the ones we saw yesterday. But those gathered around the fountains don't seem to be dead, even though they're totally unresponsive to stimuli. I thumped a few of them. They're rigid. But there's no sign of decay or mummification, so I wondered what Saluez could tell us."

  Lutha looked at me from the corner of her eye. I avoided her look.

  She said carefully, "I believe … at the ceremony of Tahs-uppi, some Kachis go into the omphalos—"

  The Kachis, I corrected her mentally. All of them. Our beloved ghosts, going on to heaven.

  "—and if this ceremony is dependent upon songfathers getting to the omphalos, perhaps it's a state the Kachis go into at this time. Making the journey safer for people."

  "Interesting," mused Leelson, climbing up to take the reins from Trompe.

  Not interesting! Holy!

  I was amazed to find my eyes wet, to feel that choking sensation that comes with tears. What was there to cry over?

  In Simidi-ala, the rememberer returned to the outlanders, his brow broken by three deep horizontal wrinkles, his mouth twisted up as though he had drunk sour water, his hands flapping.

  "Well?" demanded the Procurator.

  "Gone!" said the rememberer. "Mitigan and Chur Durwen, they're gone from the hive we sent them to. And there's been a herdsman murdered, a gaufer taken!"

  "Chowby excrement," said the Procurator. "The piss of diseased farbles. The sexual relationships of brain-dead bi-Tharbians."

  "Now, now," said Poracious Luv. "Cursing won't help."

  The Procurator shuddered. "How long ago?" he demanded.

  "Several days." The rememberer fell into a chair limply. "There's hardly a chance of their surviving."

  "Why?" asked the ex-king. "What dangers does your world afford?"

  The rememberer flushed. "We enter upon a delicate area, sirs, madam."

  "I don't care if we enter upon you and your wife in the act of holy procreation," the Procurator snarled. "Damn it, we need to know!"

  "We have certain sacred … creatures upon Dinadh. They are nocturnal. Anyone who is abroad upon the planet during the hours of darkness is almost certain to be … ah, damaged."

  "Mitigan came from Asenagi," said the ex-king. "Though the Asenagi are Firsters, they are of a sect which does not believe in homo-norming. Have you heard of the viper bats of Asenagi? Or the great owl weasel? Both of them are nocturnal. Viper bats go in clouds of several thousand. Owl weasels are more solitary, but then, they're as big as a man. Asenagi youth spend several years in the wilderness, living off the country, before they're accepted into the clan of assassins. Do you think your nocturnal creatures, whatever they are, will bother Mitigan?"

  "Or Chur Durwen," Poracious Luv offered. "Collis, too, is a warlike world. Young men are expected to have slaughtered their first enemy by the time they are seven."

  Beads of sweat stood like pearls along the rememberer's brow. "The songfather of T'loch-ala is questioning those who spoke with the two leaseholders. He will determine whether they gave any hint as to where they are going."

  The Procurator said something under his breath.

  "Meantime," offered the rememberer. "The man you asked for. Thosby Anent? He's waiting to see you."

  He hurried out, and after a long moment the door opened only far enough to admit a lean, rather stooped man who moved through wraiths of smoke on legs oddly bowed, as though he were crippled at the knees. He looked at the three who awaited him, and his posture straightened.

  "A peculiar time," said Codger, bowing slightly. "One in which we might be led to question the very bases of our existence. A time in which humanity's overwhelming concern with its own affairs must give way to a more general consideration … "

  "Anent?" questioned the Procurator.

  "Myself." Thosby bowed. "Who has lately been much involved in philosophical musing."

  "Can such musings be set aside for the moment?" queried Poracious Luv. "I would suggest that now is not the best time for—"

  Thosby interrupted with a grandiose gesture. "But what time is, madam? Is any time best for the consideration of ultimate disaster? When we are faced with—"

  "What are we faced with?" demanded the Procurator. "That's what we want to know! Intelligence Division tells me you are responsible for forwarding reports from the shadow team on Perdur Alas. We've received no information!"

  Thosby was momentarily paralyzed. He puffed furiously, his head disappearing in a hazy cloud. Poracious Luv lunged from her chair and struck the pipe from his lips. It clattered against the far wall.

  "Summon your wits, man! The Procurator wants to know about the team on Perdur Alas."

  "Survivor," murmured the Master Spy, desperately seeking a role to fit the current circumstance. "Just one survivor."

  "One! Since when?" cried the Procurator.

  "Ah, well, one doesn't know, does one? They simply, ah, disappeared."

  "How long ago?" Poracious barked.

  Thosby hum-gargled, deep in his throat. "It's difficult to say. The information received now is sensory, but is it objective or subjective? Does one count time when one is alone as one does when with one's fellows. There's an interesting philosophical—"

  "Stop these interminable divagations!" she cried. "When did you know they had disappeared?"

  "Well, the equipment says … perhaps thirty, forty standard days, though from the low standard of equipment maintenance I have noticed during my stay here on Dinadh, I would be forced to—"

  "Do you have any other information?" the Procurator said in a dangerously calm voice.

  "No," Thosby said sulkily, retreating into Codger.

  "None at all?" asked Poracious, unbelieving. She retrieved the pipe from where it had fallen and held it out to the man, like one using a morsel of food to coax an unwilling animal from its den.

  "So far as I know, she hasn't found anything at all interesting," mumbled Codger, snatching the pipe. The last time he had monitored the recording had been days ago, but he did not mention this.

  "She?

  "She who?" asked Poracious in a silky tone.

  "The survivor."

  "Who in the name of all the excremental and sexually active deities now or ever thought of is this survivor?" demanded the Procurator, his face gray with rage and frustration.

  "This girl who seems still to be there," said Codger. "This XZ51."

  The other three in the room exchanged looks of amazement.

  "What girl is he talking about?" asked the ex-king.

  Poracious Luv sat down and held her hands high, commanding silence and attention. "Let's make sense of this! Anent seems to be saying the entire team on Perdur Alas has disappeared except for one girl or woman designated by the code number XZ51. That one is still on Perdur Alas with a functioning sensory recorder. Is that more or less correct?"

  "Said that," muttered Master Spy, biting hard upon his pipe stem, his lips writhing back to disclose a gray-coated tongue and stumpy, smoke-blackened teeth, at the sight of which Poracious averted her eyes. "Already said that!"

  "You have the records."

  "No," he said between clamped teeth.

  "You don't have the records? Where are they?"

  "At my house."

  "You will provide them?"

  "That was the plan." It was a favorite saying of Thosby's, used in reply whenever anyone asked him when he would do something he had said he would do a long time previously.

  "Not a plan," whispered the Procurator, his hand at his throat, which felt raw and dry. "Not a futurity, not a possibility, not a matter to be thought over. It is now, an immediate order. Go, at once. As rapidly as it is possible for you to do so. Without doing anything else or going anywhere else. Go to your house, and get the records. Bring them here!"

  "I'd better go with him," said Poracious, heaving her bulk from its chair. "He might get sidetracked."

  The two got only as far as the slightly open door when a young woman of Dinadh pushed it open, bowed politely, and spoke
to Thosby Anent in a cheerfully guileless voice:

  "Sir Thosby, when I learned you were on your way to meet with the Procurator of the Alliance, it occurred to me you might want the records you have been so assiduously compiling." She held out several datachips, offering them to Poracious.

  Poracious broke the astonished silence.

  "And you are?"

  "Chadra Tsum, ma'am. I am housekeeper for Thosby Anent." She relinquished the datachips with a significant glance, which said, "I am who and what I am, but this matter is larger than who and what I am."

  "You were both thoughtful and correct," the large woman said.

  "I believe this room is equipped with retrievers. If the Procurator wants the latest information." Chadra bowed to Poracious, to Thosby, a perfect model of polite servitude.

  "Pushy, unpleasant woman," Thosby snarled as Chadra turned away. "Always interrupting me when I'm busy."

  "Perhaps she wishes to direct your attention to something important," whispered the Procurator. "Had that occurred to you?"

  "Oh, sir," said the Codger with a patronizing smile, "we are too concerned with things we believe are important. When one considers the infinite nature of time, that all races including our own are doomed to live and perish like the candle flame in that infinitude—"

  "Good day," said Poracious, taking him by the shoulder and moving him gently toward the door. "We can't thank you enough for your help." She shut the door behind him, then turned, the data-chips in her hand, murmuring, "Where's the retriever?"

  "What's that beside the window?" the Procurator asked plaintively. "Surely that's a retriever."

  The ex-king took the plat from Poracious and inserted it into a wall-mounted retrieval complex that had been designed to look like a landscape sculpture. "Is there a code?" he murmured, stepping politely aside and averting his eyes.

  Poracious referred to her wrist-link before entering an activation code. The unit hummed briefly, then the walls of the room disappeared and the three were on Perdur Alas, assailed by sounds, sights, smells. And a taste!