The Shadow and Night (31 page)

“Look, Vero,” he said firmly, “we need to think about this. We have no evidence at all that these things are hurtful, harmful, or even hostile. If they are sentient and can communicate, we either talk to them or bring in those men or machines that can.”

As he heard his words, he knew that he had pitched the tone all wrong; it came out abrasive and critical. Under his dark skin, he felt that Vero was blushing. Eventually his friend spoke quietly. “You are—of course—right, Merral. I was . . . I suppose, letting my imagination get ahead of myself.”

It was now Merral's turn to feel guilty. “Sorry, Vero, I guess I don't know what's up here either.”

He patted his friend on the shoulder.
He's overreacting.
But then it occurred to him that, nevertheless, to follow such a trail as this into the open might not be the wisest thing. “Okay, what do you suggest?” he asked.

“Hmm. I recollect that in the past, when there was the risk of a . . .
confrontation,
it was considered unwise to do the expected thing.”

“Yes,” Merral replied, wondering about the use of the word
confrontation.
“The same rule applies in a Team-Ball game.”

“Quite so. So, could we go south a little way and reach the stream bank at a new point? That way we come out into the open at a different place.”

Merral noted with unease the apparently bizarre way you had to think when you believed there might be enemies around.

As quietly as they could, parting the foliage softly with their hands, they made their way to a point a hundred meters downstream of where the trail would have struck the river. There, Merral motioned Vero to stay, took his pack off, and gently edged his way through a clump of young willows and bright yellow flowering irises down to the pebble strand. There he peered out of the greenery carefully. The Lannar River here was around thirty meters wide, although, he guessed, nowhere now more than waist-deep. Although it had been a wet spring, the river was now at a much lower level than at the height of the winter floods, so that a sizeable strand of rough pebbles and gravel lay on either side of the water. The other side of the riverbank was tree lined, and to both north and south, the river disappeared round meanders within a kilometer or so. Feeling on alert, Merral looked once up and down the river quickly and then again in a slower, more careful scrutiny. There was nothing to see apart from some ducks out on the deeper part of the stream. Equally, apart from the soothing, bubbling flow of the water, there was little to hear except an irregular plop as a fish leapt.

Merral moved out of cover. There was an abrupt splash nearby and he felt his heart beat faster. With relief he saw a stream vole swimming away into the depths. Moments later, the ducks took off, their wings rattling against the water.

Slowly, Merral regained his composure and beckoned Vero to join him.

“A false alarm. There is nothing here.”

Vero was looking up the stream. “We have to decide how to follow this trail now. These pebbles will show no tracks, and we will be very obvious walking along the stream. Anyone watching would see us half an hour before we arrived.”

“I take your point. I presume whatever we are following walked along under the bank; they would be covered by trees that way. I suppose if we walked above the level of the bank we'd cover more ground quickly.”

“I agree.”

For the next two hours they traced the Lannar River northward. So wide were the meander loops here that, although they walked a long way and cut off some meanders entirely, their progress north was not very great. The going along the riverbank was, however, generally easy. Other than a few birds and a glimpse of some tri-horned red deer, they saw nothing. They stopped once for a quiet, frugal, and brief lunch and then kept walking.

As the afternoon wore on and the sun began to sink, Vero raised a concern that was troubling Merral: Could they be sure that they were still following the trail? Shortly afterward, though, they came across a part of the river valley where the edge was marked by a large sandbar.

“Look,” whispered Vero. “Tracks.”

There, faintly cutting across the edge of the coarse sandbar just by the side of the trees, were impressions of footprints, clearly traceable for a length of about a hundred meters before they were lost in coarse gravel. Looking carefully around them, Merral and Vero slithered down onto the bank and took their packs off.

“
Creatures
plural, Merral,” Vero announced dully as he peered at the footprints, the wonder and apprehension in his voice barely concealed.

“Yes,” Merral answered in a strange, distant voice, as his mind grappled with the awesome, unbelievable awareness that he was dealing with reality, not illusion.

Merral squatted down and, staring at the tracks, reached out and stroked the edge of one gently with his finger, watching the black sand grains roll over into the depression.

“It's
real,
” he said, looking across at Vero, whose wide brown eyes stared back at him with an inexpressible emotion. “Vero, let me make a confession.”

“Feel free. But I think I have my own.”

“I now realize that, until this moment, I didn't—in my heart of hearts—really believe in this. I don't know what I expected. I suppose I still believed that there was another more rational explanation. That it was a hallucination, a trick. Anything but this. . . .”

“Yes, I agree,” answered Vero slowly. “I suppose I am more conditioned to be prepared for this, but I too find this an extraordinary moment. I, too, have had my doubts. As you have known. Maybe I have doubted too much. But come, let us examine these prints quickly and be on our way. We have some way to go, and I want to find a safe camping spot for the night.”

It was odd, Merral thought, how
safe
had now acquired a meaning that it had never had before.

Vero gestured at the line of tracks. “Let's spend a few minutes separately and then get back together and share our conclusions.”

Agreeing, Merral began looking at the prints and imaging them on his diary. The most striking tracks were a series of deep, widely spaced footprints with a rough similarity to a bare human foot. Wordlessly, Merral tried to match the pace. Even striding, his footprints were only two-thirds the distance apart of the older prints, and furthermore, penetrated to only just over half their depth.

To their side marched another set of prints with a much lighter impression and a very much shorter pace. In fact, they were so closely spaced that they reminded Merral of those made by a child. Curiously, the prints were bounded by sharp, angular sides and seemed not to have any clear imprint of toes.

Eventually Vero looked up from imaging them.

“Okay, Sentinel,” Merral said, “you tell me what is going on.”

“Going on? I wish I knew.” Vero shook his head. “What I can tell you is what you yourself know. There were two creatures. The larger one has feet not dissimilar to ours, walks upright, weighs as much as you and I together, and must be—I'm guessing—as high as if I sat on your shoulders.”

“And, I presume, the hair Isabella and I found comes from it.”

Vero nodded. “A fair guess. If the sand were Earth quality—sorry, but it's true; it's very coarse—we might have seen signs of the fur. The other type is half the size; no, more like a third. And much, much lighter. The foot structure is, however, odd. It's bipedal too, but where are the toes? Or was it wearing shoes?”

“I don't feel so. And presumably this is our beetle-like man.”

“Yes,” said Vero, with a frown. “Elana is vindicated. But it is odd.”

Then he looked around at the open river. “Merral, I know these are strange tracks and we could study them more, but I think we should get back off the stream. We are just too visible out here.”

Merral found that he needed little encouragement to get back under the shelter of the trees. Together they clambered back up onto the grassy bank, picked up their packs, and set off again, walking thoughtfully northward.

By late afternoon there was no doubt that both were tiring. Merral checked how far they had traveled and was far from disappointed. Indeed, he realized that he was secretly pleased with the way that Vero had borne up. His light build plainly concealed a considerable toughness.

After some discussion, Merral and Vero singled out a tree-capped hill that rose sharply above a river bend ahead of them as a suitable place to overnight. Vero examined it with the fieldscope from a distance.

“It seems fine. The banks are too steep to climb up from the river. That will make keeping watch easier.”

Whether as a result of his words, his tone of voice, or both, Merral felt a shiver of disquiet. It was, he found himself thinking, both a novel and an unwelcome feeling.

Slowly and carefully, they made their way round up to the summit of the hill where, under the silver-barked birch trees, they found an almost-flat surface covered by heather and bilberry. There they took their backpacks off and, following Vero's suggestion, made a survey of the immediate area. Their examination showed that, apart from an apparently active ground squirrel set nearby, there seemed to be no life larger than a bird or rabbit in the area. The hill allowed a good view in all directions, and taking the fieldscope, they went and looked northward from the edge of the hill.

The air was clear and they could see as far as the southern Rim Ranges. With the low-angle sunlight picking out features with dark shadows, the nature of the landscape ahead was clear. For some time Merral and Vero gazed at the scene, looking at parts in detail with the scope and comparing what they saw with the map they had with them.

Not far north of the hill the landscape changed. The rolling terrain they had passed through became a broad, open plain of coarse grassland broken by dispersed patches of fresh green woodland and drabber marshlands. Through it the Lannar River flowed, no longer in a single meandering unit, but rather as an array of separate channels weaving their way in and out of each other in a complex silver braid, producing a mosaic of small, pine-covered islands. Behind this, the ground rose sharply up to the Daggart Plateau, a feature marked by a broad, steep escarpment in which lines of black cliffs could be seen.
Carson's Sill,
thought Merral as, with the fieldscope on maximum power, he could make out the white thread of the waterfall down it. And behind the escarpment and beyond the Daggart Plateau, the Rim Ranges, with high, incised, and still-snowcapped peaks, marched across the horizon, firmly marking the edge of the Lannar Crater proper.

As Merral looked at the scene, he found himself feeling very mixed emotions. One part of him was simply satisfied at the distance they had traveled today. Another part of him—he wondered whether he could call it the “old Merral”—rejoiced in the sheer beauty and grandeur of the view. And yet he realized there was another emotion: one that tainted the view and marred his enjoyment. He tried to isolate the unfamiliar feeling, seeking to name it and wondering if he had the vocabulary for the task. It was, he finally decided,
foreboding
: a feeling of unease, bordering on fear, about what lay ahead.

“See anything?” Vero asked softly.

“Anything unfamiliar? No. It all looks normal to me.”

“But does it feel normal?”

“No, Vero, no,” answered Merral with a shake of his head, but he did not elaborate on his answer.

Back in the heart of the cluster of birch trees, they sat down and stretched out on the heather. Vero rubbed and stretched his back, as if trying to soothe pained muscles.

“I'm out of practice, Merral. I hope I didn't hold you back?”

“Not at all. You did well for a—”

There was an inquiring smile. “For a what?”

“For a man from Ancient Earth.” But as he said it, Merral realized it was an odd thing to say and an odd thing to think in the first place.