Last Shadow (9781250252135) Read online

  “You were there three minutes,” said Sprout.

  “In a meadow,” said Wang-Mu. “With so much nutritious grass, much of it in seed, you’d think at least some birds would have been there feeding.”

  “You were there in the early morning,” said Sprout. “On Earth, that’s when the songbirds do their best singing.”

  “So … we have ascertained that Descoladora is not Earth,” said Wang-Mu.

  “But the two samples of its biota were largely or partly related to species from Earth,” said Peter, “suggesting contact and deliberate genetic tailoring.”

  “Genetic tailoring,” said Sprout, “which might have been done by humans to accommodate the needs of Earthborn animal species, or which might have been done by an elaborate molecule introduced from another world.”

  “Did you find the descolada virus?” asked Wang-Mu.

  “If we had,” said Thulium, “we would have led with that. But we’ve only ruled out the presence of the descolada in the nuclei of the bee and grass cells. It will take days to work our way through the whole cell. In the nucleus, though, the descolada is huge and has no place to hide. If the descolada were active, that’s where it would be—if it follows the same pattern that it did on Lusitania.”

  There was silence for a few minutes.

  “Somebody is transmitting digital data to the Box,” said Thulium.

  “If they noticed the two of us,” said Peter, “then if we return to the same spot, they might be there to meet us. Is that good or bad?”

  “And if they didn’t notice,” said Wang-Mu, “we should hike around a little, recording everything and inviting large creatures to be curious about us.”

  “Don’t ignore the possibility of long-range weapons,” said Sprout.

  “That’s a wise point,” said Peter. “But I don’t know what I can do about it. If someone wants to snipe at us, we won’t know it until we’re shot at. We’ll get out immediately—if we aren’t instantly killed outright.”

  “I’m excited to go back,” said Wang-Mu. “What are we waiting for?” Peter knew she was being mostly ironic. Did anyone else know that she had some bite in her humor?

  “How do the periods of daylight line up?” Peter asked Thulium.

  It was Wang-Mu who answered. “If we want to arrive at dawn again, we should leave here at midnight this time instead of three in the morning.”

  “What about arriving just before dawn?” asked Peter.

  “About ten-thirty tonight.”

  “I don’t want to arrive in the dark,” said Peter. “Even if the worst nocturnal predators are owls and raccoons or their equivalent, I don’t want to meet them in the dark.”

  “So … sleep until then?” asked Wang-Mu.

  “Meanwhile,” said Thulium, “we’ll keep looking at the cells—and the vids of your brief stay on the enemy planet.”

  In the immediate silence, Thulium said, “I was being ironic. If humans have colonized or terraformed or planted things on this planet, there’s little chance it’s the source of the descolada.” And when no one replied, she added, “Not an enemy planet, therefore.”

  Peter could only nod in agreement. But he could see that Wang-Mu had been taken aback by Thulium’s supposed jest. So he, too, thought through it. Even if it was a joke, it had crossed Thulium’s mind to call the inhabitants of this planet “the enemy.” Not a good xenologer’s attitude toward a newly encountered technological civilization.

  13

  Sprout: I don’t understand your reaction.

  Thulium: To what?

  Sprout: To Peter Wiggin’s perfidy.

  Thulium: Oh, is that what it was?

  Sprout: We were supposed to go first, or at least at the same time, and here we are going through the data he collected on the trip he made without you.

  Thulium: It really is much easier to do our work when we have data to work with.

  Sprout: Did you get a personality transplant without telling me?

  Thulium: No. Whose personality do you think I’m using?

  Sprout: Nobody from the Herodotus, that’s for sure.

  Thulium: Somebody said something that made me think of who, in the absence of my mother, I was using as a mother-figure. I ruled out your mother, though she’s been kind to me. On the ship, I’m sure she was as close to being my mother as anyone, but …

  Sprout: She didn’t even know how to be a mother to her own sons. She never had a mother, either, you know.

  Thulium: I do know. So I thought, am I looking to Jane as a mother? I don’t think so. She’s too powerful, too distracted. Ender Wiggin was the love of her life, and he’s still around inside Peter. And now Miro is her human partner, and the Hive Queen and the Mothertree and the fathertrees.

  Sprout: Yes, I agree, a bad mother-figure.

  Thulium: The real Valentine is very old. When I’m with her, I can see how I quickly make her tired.

  Sprout: That’s not because she’s old. It’s because you’re exhausting.

  Thulium: Ela has a life of her own. We work together very well, because she treats me like a colleague instead of a child. Not a mother.

  Sprout: I thought you were going to explain whose personality you had transplanted into you.

  Thulium: It should be obvious by process of elimination.

  Sprout: And yet it isn’t, primarily because we didn’t start with the same list of candidates.

  Thulium: Si Wang-Mu.

  Sprout: Well, her name does mean Royal Mother, and you’ve always thought you were a princess among commoners.

  Thulium: You see? Three months ago, that comment would have made me angry.

  Sprout: Are you not-angry, or just not-showing your anger?

  Thulium: I find that, as a rule, the less emotion I show, the less I feel, and vice-versa. The more I show, et cetera.

  Sprout: If you can keep this up, it’ll drive the twins insane.

  Thulium: I chose Si Wang-Mu because I saw how she gently guided Peter Wiggin, surrounding him like a cloud, opening good paths in front of him, obscuring unpromising ones.

  Sprout: You think she controls him?

  Thulium: Controlling other people is not in her nature. I think she cares about him enough to devote herself to helping him achieve his goals, which includes helping him avoid doing things that would defeat his own purposes.

  Sprout: She obeys him like a robot.

  Thulium: Look closer. She projects an always-compliant attitude. But she actually complies only when he has heard her out, at which point he usually changes his decision.

  Sprout: You do know that Si Wang-Mu acquired these skills when she was a servant to a very demanding mistress in a viciously hierarchical society.

  Thulium: Unlike our own highly egalitarian system where everyone gets an equal voice.

  Sprout: Ours is a family, not a society.

  Thulium: You said it, not me.

  Sprout: Are you becoming a Christian, like Ender did before he died? Because this smacks of “He that is greatest among you shall be your servant.”

  Thulium: I like the version in Luke better: “He that is greatest among you, let him be as the younger; and he that is chief, as he that doth serve.”

  Sprout: You like that better because you’re the younger.

  Thulium: Si Wang-Mu has no Christianity in her background. Her behavior smacks of intelligent adaptation to the world as she found it, in order to survive and prosper. And as far as I can tell, it’s been working out pretty well for her.

  Sprout: I notice you have never suggested trying to teach me how to fly Outside and In.

  Thulium: If you want to do it, do what I did. Ask Jane.

  Sprout: I don’t actually want to do it.

  Thulium: I didn’t think you would.

  Sprout: Why not?

  Thulium: Because then you’d have to be on call whenever somebody needed an interplanetary errand run.

  —Conversation recorded in Q-Bay by Jane Ribeira, used by permission of Brus
sels Delphiki and Thulium Delphiki Plikt, “The Ribeira Family Saves the World”

  The light was dimmer when Si Wang-Mu opened her eyes after the internal twisting of Out-and-In travel. They arrived facing west toward the sea—which was still several kilometers away—and the trees of the littoral screened its brightest rays. So they had arrived at the correct time.

  Peter was still holding her hand. She let go of him so she could make a complete turn to face the other direction. Was anything different?

  Sounds. Last time had been so silent that she thought perhaps she could hear the distant crash of waves on the shore—almost certainly not, but that’s what her imagination had supplied in the silence.

  This time, though, there was a low murmur. Doves cooing? No, too high-pitched. And growing louder, more agitated.

  And then a bird started up from the grass and quickly flew about three meters above the ground. The underside of its spread wings had a fiery orange blaze. But as other birds rose from all around them—hundreds of birds—Wang-Mu saw that from above, the only orange was at the base of the fanned-out tailfeathers, while the rest of the tail and wings was a beautiful green.

  “Parrots,” said Peter softly.

  Si Wang-Mu shrugged. She didn’t see it.

  “Hooked parrot bill,” said Peter. “Kea, I think. They studied them back on Earth as the only bird species that played almost all the time. Practical jokes.”

  He didn’t really need to say that, because the keas were already landing on their shoulders, clinging to their clothing, landing on their shoes. Within moments, anything that could be easily removed was gone—a bird took it and flew off.

  “Why are you taking these things?” Si Wang-Mu asked them. “You don’t need them, and I do.”

  Peter chuckled. “Don’t brush them away. Nothing hostile. They could turn from playful to angry in an instant, and then they’d mob us and we’d have to leave.”

  Si Wang-Mu was surprised that Peter hadn’t already returned to Q-Bay. Wasn’t this an attack by the native fauna?

  “So … no specimens for Thulium and Sprout?” asked Si Wang-Mu.

  Peter’s trousers dropped. A bird had apparently bitten or gnawed right through the elastic band supporting them. Now a half dozen birds had their heads inside his pants pockets, bunched around his ankles, searching for anything inside.

  A low, whispery, gravelly voice at her ear said, “No weapon.”

  “True,” said Wang-Mu. “Why did you leave my pants up?”

  “Empty pockets,” said the bird on her shoulder.

  That confused Wang-Mu a little—her flashlight had been in her pocket. Had a bird managed to take it out?

  “Who are you talking to?” asked Peter.

  “The bird who’s talking to me.”

  “It’s well known that keas don’t talk.”

  “They’ve had three thousand years to learn,” said Wang-Mu.

  “Why would they speak Stark?”

  “Why not? We knew humans visited here. They apparently brought keas with them.”

  Then the flurry of wings and the murmurings of the kea were overshadowed by a loud caw! Caw!

  Instantly all the kea retreated from Wang-Mu and Peter. A single black bird circled around them, about two meters away, a rapid orbit that ended with the raven alighting on Wang-Mu’s shoulder.

  The raven spoke much more loudly and clearly than the talking kea had. “Visitors from another planet,” it said. “Will you talk to the council?”

  “Yes,” said Wang-Mu.

  The raven leapt up from her shoulder and flew a zigzagging path toward some trees near them to the north. Wang-Mu immediately followed, moving briskly, walking or jogging as the ground allowed. Peter called out “hey!” but pulled up his pants and held them as he ran after her. He soon caught up.

  The raven flew between two trees. Wang-Mu walked directly toward the gap.

  “Is this wise?” Peter asked softly.

  “Yes it is wise,” called out the raven voice. “If she can hear you talking, we can hear you talking.”

  “This is not imitative speech,” said Peter.

  “We imitate your sounds,” said the raven. “We make up our own sentences. It took you so long to come to land. The dancing star has been in our sky for months now.”

  “We were afraid you might have diseases here that would be dangerous to us,” said Wang-Mu.

  She could feel the gathering tension in Peter’s body. She knew that he felt that he should be speaking with the birds.

  So she preempted the issue. “I should be silent now,” she said. “He has the authority on this mission.”

  “Wrong wrong wrong,” said the raven, and other ravens in nearby branches all around them echoed the words. “I talked to you because you talked to us. To the keas, of course, but they are our … allies. Friends.”

  “Were they your scouts?” asked Wang-Mu. “To see if we had weapons?”

  “If you had weapons, we would have fled and stayed far from you forever.”

  “Are there any large predators here that might threaten us?” asked Peter.

  “Do you ask this from your own fear, or for fear of harm to her?” asked the raven.

  “Both,” said Peter.

  “So you are fearful,” said the raven.

  “Any species without fear does not long survive on any world,” said Peter.

  “I see that he thinks he has authority,” said the raven. “The colonizers of this world did not release any major predators into the world. Small rodents and lizards and frogs, so owls and hawks could eat. The predator birds do not prey on us. They know we can talk to humans, and they cannot, and we will not speak for them if they kill smaller birds. So they leave all birds alone.”

  “Are there still humans on this world?” asked Peter.

  The raven waited a moment, and then said to Si Wang-Mu, “Tell authority man that if he cannot see for himself that there are at least two humans on this world, he is a fool.”

  “My name is Si Wang-Mu.”

  All the ravens repeated her name several times.

  “My husband is Peter Wiggin.”

  Nobody repeated his name. “Your mate?” asked the raven.

  “Do you have a name?” asked Wang-Mu.

  “I do, but experience has shown us that no human can produce the sounds of our names or our language.”

  “What do the humans of this world call you?” asked Wang-Mu.

  “If there are humans on this world, they might call me Interpreter or Speaker or Barking Dog. I would answer to any such name they bestowed on me, because their names would not matter to us.”

  “Would it offend you if I called you ‘Dog’?” asked Wang-Mu.

  “Why would you choose that name?” asked Dog.

  “You don’t seem to have any dogs here, because if there were any, they would surely chase you,” said Wang-Mu. “And the name is brief and easy to remember, especially when applied to a raven.”

  “Good reasons,” said Dog.

  “I would be grateful,” said Wang-Mu, “for the return of our belongings. Some of them are quite important to us.”

  “If we had humans on this planet, it might be our duty to take everything to them,” said Dog.

  “If you want our friendship, you or the humans who might live on this world, then you will return our equipment. If you steal equipment from us, we will not return.” Wang-Mu was thinking of how impossible Thulium’s mission would be if keas were constantly dismantling and stealing all her gear.

  “Why do you think we will have diseases that are dangerous to you?” asked Dog.

  “In the Dancing Star, our friends have received radio communications that contained descriptions of viruses very similar to the most dangerous disease ever experienced on any world with humans. If you know about that virus, perhaps you have suffered from that disease.”

  Silence. More silence.

  “We have much to discuss,” said Dog.

  “But we ha
ve nothing to discuss,” said Wang-Mu, “unless our belongings are returned to us now.”

  “Part of what we must discuss is whether to return them.”

  “No,” said Wang-Mu. “We will not stay here and wait. We will return to our planet. If we return with all our equipment, then we will come back and talk with you further. But if we return with all our equipment stolen, we will never come back. We will conclude that this planet is populated by hostile beings who wish to be our enemies.”

  Immediately ravens took to the air and swarmed above and around them, cawing loudly.

  Not even a second later, Peter and Wang-Mu were standing on a tidal bench of sand at the seashore, looking down at the rolling swells and the low breaking waves. “Lusitania must also have oceans and a seashore,” said Si Wang-Mu. “Or are we in Lusitania?”

  “We’ve never found a habitable planet that didn’t have oceans,” said Peter. “It’s in the oceans that bacteria manufacture the breathable atmosphere. And we only jumped a few kilometers.”

  “Do you think they’ve seen where we went?” asked Wang-Mu.

  “Definitely,” said Peter. “Even if they don’t see us, they can smell us.”

  “Sorry if I said things I shouldn’t have,” said Wang-Mu. “There was no time to confer.”

  “I’m grateful you spoke directly to the parrots,” said Peter. “That’s what won you their trust. And since you’re doing an excellent job … where did you learn to negotiate like that?”

  “Being poor on Path helps develop many skills,” said Wang-Mu.

  A lone raven flew toward them and landed on the sand a couple of meters off.

  “Are you the raven I call Dog?” asked Wang-Mu.

  “I am unworthy of being mistaken for her,” said the raven. “What will you call me?”

  “What is your duty right now?”

  “To carry messages from you to the Council,” said the raven.

  “Then you are Mercury,” said Wang-Mu.

  “How can that be my name?” demanded the raven. “Nobody believes in that old Roman god.”

  Wang-Mu was baffled yet again. Why would unbelief in a god make its name off-limits? How much did these ravens know? How well-educated were they in the history and lore of humanity? “I would give you the name of a god that is believed in, or of a famous priest, but the names are in Chinese, and no other human you will meet from our world can pronounce that language properly.”