Last Shadow (9781250252135) Read online

  A raven fluttered out of the woods and landed in the grass beside Royal Son. The two birds conversed in a chirping, singing, tweeting, whistling sort of language, and many times Peter was sure he could hear four voices, not two; and one time, five. Yet the sounds all came from the two birds in the grass before him.

  Then Royal Son abruptly flew off to the east, toward where the keas had first met Peter and Wang-Mu.

  “Where did he go?” Peter asked the raven.

  “To sing of his adventure to his own people,” said the raven.

  “Are you the raven we called Phoenix yesterday?”

  “Does it matter?” asked the raven.

  “To us it does.”

  “Can’t you look at me and see? Can’t you tell by my voice and my song?”

  “I cannot,” said Peter. “All the keas looked alike. All the ravens looked alike.”

  “I am Phoenix,” said the raven.

  “Thank you,” said Peter. “Can the humans of this world tell individual ravens apart by their appearance and voice?”

  “If humans live here as natives, it would be useful for them to have such skills, wouldn’t it?” said Phoenix.

  “Can any humans learn your speech and song? It seemed you and Royal Son could speak to each other clearly and fluently.”

  “The keas can’t say anything straight,” said Phoenix. “They keep inserting extra syllables and out-of-tune notes, and they change topics constantly and then change back and expect you to follow them.”

  “Did it work? Did you communicate?” asked Peter.

  “That’s how I know the kea went back to sing his adventure to his own people. The song will be learned by dozens of keas and they will sing his adventure to their fledglings. But they will never sing it the same way twice, and depending on how the singer is feeling toward Royal Son, they will make him more or less heroic, more or less comic. It is their way.”

  “But not your way,” said Peter.

  “When a raven tells a story, it is also memorized, but every repetition is faithful, though we annotate the performance as more facts and evidence come to light.”

  “Can you read human writing?” asked Peter.

  “Write something and let me see,” said Phoenix.

  Peter looked for a patch of bare earth. Near the base of a tree, he scratched with a stick in the dirt.

  I AM PETER WIGGIN

  Phoenix gave a caw. “What does it matter whether I read or not, if that’s all you have to say?”

  Peter rubbed out the words with his shoe. Then he wrote again:

  MAY I MEET WITH THE

  HUMANS OF THIS WORLD?

  “Let me ask Dog if they have located any. All I can be sure of is that you and Royal Mother are humans, and you are on this world. Feel free to meet with each other.”

  Phoenix flew off into the trees.

  Peter turned to Wang-Mu. She was smiling.

  “If you’re laughing at me, I agree,” said Peter. “I feel like I’m trying to bandy words with a philosophy professor.”

  “An experience you have never had,” said Wang-Mu.

  “But I’m sure Ender has,” said Peter. “I know he comes nearer and nearer the surface all the time.” But he wanted to stay on topic. “What did I do wrong with Phoenix?”

  “Nothing,” said Wang-Mu. “My smile was about how clever these birds are, how openly they tell us that they’re keeping secrets, how protective they are.”

  “I feel as if he’s already one step ahead of me. That he knows my words before I say them.”

  “Which is how everyone feels around you, too,” said Wang-Mu. “I wonder if he’s copying your style.”

  “He talked this way when you did almost all the talking yesterday,” said Peter. “And you don’t talk in that riddling way.”

  Wang-Mu only smiled more broadly and then brought his hand—which she was still holding—to her lips and kissed it.

  Another raven flew out of the trees. “Phoenix tells me that you can’t tell us apart.”

  “I wish I could,” said Peter.

  “The Royal Mother of the West recognized me, and recognized Phoenix, too.”

  Peter kept himself from glancing at Wang-Mu to ascertain the truth of this. “Are you Dog?” he asked.

  “I am the leader of the Raven Council in this forest,” she said. “I want to go back with you when you go. Royal Son seemed to enjoy his time there. He felt safe. But I will not remain within the quarantine bay.”

  “Then I will not take you,” said Peter.

  “Yes you will,” said Dog. “When we get there, we will wait out the quarantine period. I will submit to all the tests you want, as long as they are not life-threatening. When your scientists declare me clean and safe, I will then go visit with the strange creatures of that world.”

  “What strange creatures?” asked Peter.

  “Two slightly built, somewhat hairy mammals came into the laboratory several times, and sometimes typed into your computers. One other creature, even smaller, but with six limbs and a very different kind of non-mammalian face, stayed in the shadows for a brief period, and then left.”

  Wang-Mu laughed. “And we thought Royal Son spent his time playing, moving things from one place to another.”

  “He was playing,” said Dog. “But his eyes were open and he remembered all.”

  Wang-Mu spoke up. “If you abide by what you just said, then yes, we’ll take you back with us. But once you leave Q-Bay, we cannot be responsible for anything that happens to you. We will do no harm, but Lusitania is not a world that has much experience with birds.”

  “Be careful which trees you land in,” said Peter. He wanted to correct Wang-Mu and act as if it had not been decided whether to take Dog with them, but that was about his sad desire to feel as if he was in charge. Of course they would take her.

  “Among your people,” said Wang-Mu, “are you considered unusually wise or experienced?”

  “Enough to be on the Council,” said Dog.

  “You are the head of the Council,” said Wang-Mu.

  “It was my … season.” Dog preened just a little. “And now they have decided that because you are here, I will remain leader of the Council until they choose someone else.”

  “I’m sorry if we are prolonging your labors,” said Wang-Mu.

  “I like leading the Council, and if I wasn’t good at it, they wouldn’t have prolonged my season.”

  Peter thought of Roman consuls. They were chosen two at a time and governed together, like Wang-Mu and he were doing on this expedition. But in times of emergency, they chose a dictator until the crisis was over. Was their arrival here a crisis? Of course it was. Was Dog now a dictator? It was impossible to guess, but Peter supposed so.

  “I have something to ask you that I think is very important,” Peter said.

  “Ask me after I have experienced your world for a while.”

  Peter opened his mouth to argue, but Wang-Mu gripped his hand a bit more tightly.

  “To me it seems as if that is a fair request. We have seen a tiny bit of your world, and now you should get a glimpse of ours. Or rather, of the world we happen to be living on, where the human presence is very small.”

  “The world belongs to the strange creatures,” said Dog.

  “The world belongs to them and to humans,” said Wang-Mu.

  “So you are not natives there,” said Dog.

  “Only the small ones that Royal Son saw using computers are native to Lusitania,” said Wang-Mu. “The rest of us are colonists or visitors.”

  “Do you plan to colonize our world?” asked Dog.

  “We have no such plan,” said Peter.

  “But others of your kind would desire to do so?”

  “If they found out that your planet exists, perhaps they would,” said Peter. What he did not add was, They are just as likely to try to blow it all up, if you have the descolada virus here.

  “So you have kept your coming here a secret?” asked Dog.


  “Only a few dozen people on Lusitania know of it. Plus the people working in the Box in the sky.”

  Dog bobbed his head, considering. “Can you take me now?” he asked.

  “May we take more plant samples with us when we go?” Wang-Mu asked. “Sprout wants them for his current research assignment.”

  Dog asked, “What kind of sample?”

  “A leaf from a tree,” said Wang-Mu. “A frond from a fern. A flower from this meadow.”

  “The flowers are precious,” said Dog. “You may not take any.”

  Why would flowers be precious to a raven? Peter assumed that eventually it would make sense. It was not as if ravens ate flowers.

  “You took a pollinator when you went,” said Dog. “Are you trying to harm our garden?”

  “We are not,” said Wang-Mu. “We simply needed to know how different your genomics were from ours.”

  “We could have given you pollinators that died of themselves,” said Dog.

  “When we took the bee—the pollinator—we had not yet met you,” said Wang-Mu. “No bird had shown itself.”

  “Did you think that meant this world was uninhabited, and you had the right to take whatever you wanted?” asked Dog.

  Again Wang-Mu answered. “As soon as we met the keas, and learned that not only were they mischievous, but also at least one of them could speak, we asked permission before we took anything. The bee did not do well during our passage to Lusitania. We did not kill it, but it soon died … of itself.”

  Peter asked, “Do the bees think and speak?”

  Dog flew to his shoulder and fairly screamed in his ear. “Is that how you judge us all? If we cannot speak, it’s all right to kidnap or kill us?”

  Peter couldn’t move away from Dog, because she was on his shoulder; still, he recoiled from the accusation. But before he could think of any rejoinder, Wang-Mu was already answering.

  “Yes,” she said. “Humans have always measured the worth of other species by our ability to communicate with them. Other sentient species do exactly the same thing, to our sorrow. But if you know a better way, we would be glad to learn.”

  Dog fluttered to the ground again. Peter stood up straighter, relieved of that burden, but also a bit apprehensive about how Dog would respond to Wang-Mu’s candor.

  “That’s how we decide, too,” said Dog at last. “Even among our own kind, we value each other by how well we speak and how well we remember and how wisely we choose.”

  “Not many speak as well as you?” asked Wang-Mu.

  “I am on the Council,” said Dog. “And I already knew that the word ‘dog’ carried many negative connotations to human beings from many cultures. But I accepted the name because we were taught that dogs and humans evolved side by side, hunting together and guarding the tribe together.”

  “That is true,” said Peter. “At least as far as we know.”

  “We also evolved alongside humans, helping each other. The traditional human pets were never brought into this world. We have no canids and no felids. We are the dogs and cats of this world. But we are not tame, and we are not pets. We cooperate with our humans, and they cooperate with us, as long as we each remain within our chosen domain.”

  Peter wanted to pounce on this, but Wang-Mu spoke first. “Please assure the humans of this world that we will not interfere with them or with ravens and keas without the consent of each. That’s why we need to meet with the humans, to get their permission to observe.”

  “Observe what?” asked Dog.

  “We can’t possibly know,” said Peter, “until we’re observing it.”

  “The way you observed the thievery of the keas,” said Dog.

  “Yes,” said Peter. “We did not resist them in any way.”

  “That was stupid of you,” said Dog. “They bit your pants until they fell down.”

  “He wasn’t stupid,” said Wang-Mu. “He was patient.”

  Dog gave a sharp caw that Peter took to be laughter. “The female defends her mate.”

  “You’re right,” said Wang-Mu. “Because we aren’t patient with everything.”

  Dog looked at her steadily. “I understand you.”

  Good thing, thought Peter, because he wasn’t quite sure of the meanings Wang-Mu and Dog were deriving from this exchange. It sounded like Wang-Mu was warning her to back off.

  Would that warning help or hinder their chances of meeting with the human inhabitants of this world?

  “Take me back to your world,” said Dog. “Gather your samples of leaves, ferns, mosses, and the algae and bacteria in the river. And then we will go.”

  Peter wanted to say, we’ll go when I decide. But he realized that this was exactly what Dog had just said—when the humans deemed that they had all the samples they needed, there would be no reason to delay going. Why would Peter object to that?

  Wang-Mu put on plastic gloves and used their sampling containers to hold various leaves, fronds, and whatever else they thought of. But nothing from any flowering plants.

  “What do you eat?” asked Wang-Mu.

  Dog stood still, thinking, apparently. Until she said, “What did Royal Son eat when he was in quarantine?”

  “When they gave us food, he ate from our plates and drank from our cups.”

  “He knows better than that,” said Dog.

  “We didn’t mind,” said Wang-Mu. “What else would we have fed him?”

  Peter had minded, but reached the same conclusion—he had to eat something.

  “I’ll find my own food,” said Dog.

  “I fear that there is no food for you to find. Grains only grow in a few select places. There are no small animals that die and can be eaten. Lusitania has a uniquely limited biota. Not millions of species, but two or three dozen.”

  Dog cawed again. “How can you tell me you don’t plan to colonize this world if your world is so desperately poor.”

  “We have enough for our needs,” said Wang-Mu. “We don’t need anything from you except knowledge and peace.”

  “What do you think I should eat?” asked Dog.

  “You can look at our food and decide,” said Peter. “When you clear quarantine, we’ll take you to our kitchen and you can see more food. What you choose, we’ll share with you.”

  “We’ll see,” said Dog.

  “Yes,” agreed Peter. “We will.”

  Wang-Mu gave him a tiny nod. So he had jumped into the conversation and done no harm. Good work, Peter Wiggin.

  * * *

  Sprout was resisting all the way. “Not till Wang-Mu gets back,” he said. Thulium knew that he was just as concerned about Peter, but Sprout also knew that mentioning Peter’s name would make Thulium even angrier. “This is crazy,” Sprout said. “We’re not ready. We don’t have our equipment.”

  “We have cameras. We have sampling devices and specimen pouches.”

  “Why did you send Peter to get all that other gear if this is all we need?”

  “Because I could!” Thulium knew this was silly and irrational but that’s how she felt right now.

  “So the personality transplant was a ruse,” said Sprout.

  “Did you think I’d forget Peter’s outrageous insult?”

  “The word is perfidy,” said Sprout.

  “The only person who really believed I was taking it well was you,” said Thulium.

  “Because I trusted you,” said Sprout. “No one has a monopoly on perfidy. Besides, Peter never actually agreed to the plan of the two of us going on our own. He just didn’t bother arguing.”

  “Not arguing is agreeing.”

  “Except when you’re the silent one,” said Sprout.

  “Are you coming with me?” asked Thulium.

  Sprout didn’t answer at once. He regarded Thulium steadily and said, “Will you listen to me, I mean really listen and consider? Or are you just going to do whatever you want? Because if it’s the latter, go get yourself killed alone.”

  “Wang-Mu stays with Pete
r.”

  “She’s his wife! You’re my cousin. My younger cousin.”

  “I do listen to you,” said Thulium. “Always.” As she spoke the words, she knew the truth.

  “By ‘always’ I believe you mean ‘never,’” said Sprout.

  “Every time you make sense!” cried Thulium.

  “Your definition of making sense is ‘agrees with Ultima Thule.’”

  “You call me that?”

  “I’ll have your back in everything,” said Sprout, “if you let me be a partner in this. My science in this is better than yours and you know it. Yet science is your pretense for why Peter should follow and obey you. Why not me?”

  Thulium still had rational faculties engaged, and these words calmed her down. Why not Sprout? He had never led her astray.

  “You want to be in charge?” asked Thulium.

  “We might try it sometime,” said Sprout.

  “All right, you’re in charge. What’s your first decision?”

  “We don’t go until Peter and Wang-Mu get back.”

  “All right,” said Thulium. “Agreed. Done. Do we know when they’re coming back?”

  “They don’t have a portable pocket ansible with them because it hasn’t been invented yet,” said Sprout. “So no, we don’t know when they’re coming back until they come back and show us.”

  “Then let’s go to Q-Bay and watch for their arrival.”

  “Or we could sleep,” said Sprout.

  “Go to the lab with me and sleep while I watch for them,” said Thulium.

  Sprout reached out his hand.

  “No,” said Thulium. “I need to test whether I can carry you with me if we need to leave suddenly when we’re physically separated.”

  Sprout put his hands behind his back and waited.

  And then they were in the lab outside Q-Bay.

  A pequenino said, “Why are you two here? You clocked out and went home.”

  “As if we had a home on Lusitania,” said Thulium.

  “We want to be here when the expeditionaries come back,” said Sprout.

  “Well, here you are. Plenty of open computers, if you want to do anything.”

  “We’ll be fine,” said Sprout. Then he lay down on a padded bench and in moments was asleep. He didn’t snore, he didn’t nestle in, he just lay down and in the first position he assumed, he was asleep. Thulium knew he’d move a couple of times in the night, so he wouldn’t get stiff. He should have been a soldier, she thought. Always alert with or without sleep, never groggy when he woke up, never insomniac when he chose to sleep.