Last Shadow (9781250252135) Read online

  Airi: I believe they refuse to take no for an answer, and they are here to continue working on us.

  Yuuto: I believe that whatever machine or magical spell allowed them to travel here instantaneously, without a starship, refuses to take them back. I believe that they are trapped here against their will, and so they continue to hope that our love for them will rekindle.

  Airi: They must have been traveling at near lightspeed for a few years their time. Cincinnatus told me that my children were still young—the twins about nine years old, Thulium about eight.

  Yuuto: So they only recently came upon their means of instantaneous travel.

  Andrew: Are we allowed to speak?

  Airi: A self-answering question.

  Mayumi: I want to know a thing that so far my “husband” has refused to answer. Did you come to this world and court us and marry us and have children with us with a plan, from the start, to carry away our children without explanation or apology?

  Airi: At least Ender left you a note that said he was sorry.

  Mayumi: I believe that he was sorry. But still he did it. And when he wrote the note, he had not yet kidnapped Petra and Mazer. So at that point, what was he sorry for?

  Andrew: Sorry that taking your children would grieve you.

  Mayumi: I’m happy that losing my children grieved me. What kind of mother would I be if I took the loss of my children, let alone my husband, without a pang?

  Andrew: You’re right that we can’t yet go home. Nor has anyone explained to us why we can’t. So here we are. We’ll stop visiting if it’s too distressing for you.

  Airi: It’s merely time-consuming. You talk and talk, and yet you say nothing.

  Carlotta: We tell you everything we’re allowed to tell.

  Airi: Oh, yes, top-secret work—but not for any government.

  Carlotta: Our children are extraordinarily brilliant. Like us, they all work in genetics, and they are doing genius-level work on alien genetics.

  Andrew: Carlotta.

  Carlotta: Shouldn’t they know what their children are doing?

  Yuuto: I work with genetics at the top level. You know that, Carlotta—we talked constantly. I also know that you believe that you are aliens, or at least not human, genetically.

  Airi: I believe they are on Lusitania, where the only surviving alien species lives. Where else could they study them? And they had that hideous disease. Did our children help to neutralize that?

  Carlotta: No. It was neutralized before we got there.

  Airi: Then what is so secret about anything they’re doing now?

  Yuuto: There’s another alien species.

  Andrew: I’m so glad Sergeant isn’t here.

  Mayumi: Why?

  Airi: Because now that we’ve been told the secret, Sergeant might try to take us off-planet by force.

  Yuuto: Or kill us. It’s how he thinks.

  Airi: You don’t know Cincinnatus.

  Yuuto: I think you don’t know Cincinnatus.

  Andrew: We’re ready to go home. We miss our children.

  Mayumi: Oh, do you? Maybe that’s why you’re being kept here, so you can have some taste of what we went through when you absconded.

  Airi: Except they know where the children are, and what they’re doing.

  Carlotta: The children are so stubborn and self-willed we have no idea what they’re doing, or even if anybody is taking care of them.

  Yuuto: And besides, Airi, you do know where your twins are. They’re here in Tochoji.

  Airi: But not with me.

  Carlotta: By your request.

  Airi: They have been turned by their father into hateful little saboteurs.

  Carlotta: Mischievous children.

  Airi: Spiteful tengu. Like their father.

  Carlotta: I assure you that their younger sister, Thulium, is of a completely different character. You would love her. And she longs for you.

  Airi: She would be a stranger, like the twins. I knew a baby, not an eight-year-old post-doctoral scientist.

  Carlotta: Technically, she hasn’t received any formal degrees.

  Mayumi: We called this meeting to find out what, if anything, you still want to accomplish.

  Andrew: We were sent here. We did not ask to come.

  Mayumi: So you don’t want to accomplish anything?

  Andrew: I mean that we don’t know the purpose for which we were sent, beyond asking your forgiveness and begging you to come with us to your children.

  Mayumi: And you absolutely refuse to bring them home to us.

  Carlotta: They’re doing work that needs to be done. I know Thulium will be in the thick of it, because she always gets into the thick of things whether invited or not. And since my boy Blue—

  Yuuto: My son Delft—

  Carlotta: Is her devoted friend—her best friend—she is likely to take him along with her on most or all of her self-appointed projects. She would not come here. Nor would Blue or Sprout. They are doing vital, top-level work. Would you call Einstein away from his thought experiments in relativity in order to babysit or be a substitute teacher of thirteen-year-olds?

  Yuuto: Einstein is a name that reverberates through the ages, like Galileo, like Newton. Do you say our children are doing that kind of work?

  Carlotta: I’m saying that they will change the future of the human race, yes. I hope for the better.

  Yuuto: Then they should not interrupt their work.

  Airi: I can’t believe the twins are involved with anything serious.

  Mayumi: Your husband could tell us if he had bothered to come.

  Yuuto: They are spiteful tengu, Airi. I don’t believe that they could be corralled into doing productive work, especially if they had to obey a project leader.

  Airi: I think Cincinnatus brought the twins because nobody else would keep them while he was gone.

  Yuuto: For all I know they’re building a homemade molecular disruption device, so they can blow up this planet.

  Carlotta: Most of the children could probably rig up such a device, if it were possible, but you’re right, only the twins would set a timer on it just before they left.

  Andrew: I wish I could disagree.

  Yuuto: But my children, according to your account, Carlotta, are turning into people worth knowing. I think it has been too long for me to step back into their lives as a father—they’ve relied on Andrew here and Sergeant as father figures for too long.

  Carlotta: Not really. Ender stays aloof most of the time, even from his own children, and Sergeant is, shall we say, the bogeyman to all of the cousins. Neither one an adequate father.

  Andrew: Thank you for your encouragement.

  Yuuto: Nevertheless, when you go back, take me with you.

  Airi: You would give up your position at the university?

  Yuuto: I have no challenges ahead of me. Whatever our children are doing is bound to be more interesting than the decades of administrative folderol I see before me. And even if I can’t really be a father to my children, they should know me. They should see what they sprang from and decide for themselves if Carlotta made a good choice of father for them.

  Carlotta: You are a better man than I deserve.

  Yuuto: I said nothing about forgiving you.

  Carlotta: Or living with me.

  Yuuto: Oh, that I’ll certainly do. There’s a reason I haven’t married since you left.

  Carlotta: No other woman can take my place?

  Yuuto: Which is like saying that no other storm can take the place of a tornado.

  Airi: No other wave can take the place of a tsunami.

  Mayumi: I’m still not going, Andrew. As your note said, I’m sorry.

  Airi: And everything that Cincinnatus says and does convinces me that living with him would be identical to going to the bathroom with Aka Manto.

  Mayumi: I’d say “blue” and get it over with.

  Airi: No matter what I say, he’ll hear “red,” and I’ll lose all the skin from my back.r />
  Andrew: I think you share knowledge of a story we’ve never heard.

  Mayumi: What a shame you left. Everybody on Nokonoshima knows the tale of Aka Manto.

  Airi: And every good child fears that there are tengu under the house.

  —Transcript of meeting: Andrew Delphiki and Carlotta Delphiki and their spouses Mayumi and Yuuto, also Airi, the spouse of Cincinnatus Delphiki Source material for Demosthenes, “The Delphiki Orphans”

  As soon as Thulium saw Jane in the lab outside Q-Bay, she started yelling and then screaming demands at her, until Jane finally came to the Q-Bay intercom to quiet her down. Peter and Wang-Mu, still in quarantine, acted as if they couldn’t hear either of them.

  “You are not God,” said Thulium.

  “You should be glad I’m not,” said Jane.

  “But you act as if you had the right—”

  “I don’t know about the ‘right,’” replied Jane. “But I certainly have the power to stop you from doing something offensively stupid.”

  “Offensive to whom!”

  “To Sprout, as I’ve told you a dozen times already.”

  “He’ll be lost without me!”

  “By which you mean you are lost without him.”

  “I do not mean that.”

  “Yet you pester me instead of attending to your work.”

  “My work is to be down on that planet to help him deal with those damnable birds!”

  “If you think they’re damnable, then you definitely should not be there.”

  “What will they do to him? Don’t you care?”

  “I know that he’s still alive, and that he has never wished to leave.”

  “Why didn’t he come back when I did?”

  “The philotic connection goes both ways. I think you are so entwined with him that you have the power to carry him with you. But he can sometimes feel smothered by you, so I’m not surprised that he used his own power and will to stay behind.”

  “You think he chose to be lost and alone among a stampeding herd of insane birds?”

  “I know he did,” said Jane.

  “Send me there to be with him!”

  “You would wreck everything,” said Jane.

  “What would I wreck?”

  “I’ll be more specific. Everything Sprout has accomplished. Everything he’s learned. All of his confidence in himself. And his relationship with you.”

  Thulium had a dozen answers, but chose none of them to speak aloud. “You think you know everything.”

  “Not at all. But I know a lot more than you do.”

  Thulium had no answer to that, because it was true. And by now, after ranting and screaming and begging and arguing, it had finally occurred to her that if she had listened to anything Sprout told her, she would have conferred with Peter and Wang-Mu and would have known she could only go to Descoladora if she had permission or an invitation. If she had stayed and met the raven Dog, she might have earned such an invitation. Maybe Sprout understood better than she did what the most productive courses of action might be. And maybe, without her overriding all his suggestions, he might make less of a botch of things than she had.

  “What work do I have?” asked Thulium quietly. “Here, without Sprout, alone.”

  “You’re not alone, and since I’m keeping the twins quite a few light-years away, you have no one pestering you, either.”

  Thulium forced herself not to say, Except you.

  “Except me, of course,” said Jane. “But this past hour, I do believe that it has been you pestering me.”

  “I’ll get to work,” said Thulium. “I’ll go back to processing Peter’s and Wang-Mu’s data.”

  “A mature choice. While you’re at it, make sure you watch the entire video and audio record of their conversations with the birds, on both of their trips.”

  “I’ve already—”

  “Stop,” said Jane. “You haven’t already. You’ve given them a glance and then brooded about how mistreated you are while the video kept playing out in the holospace in front of you.”

  “You don’t know what I’m—”

  “Everybody knows what you’re thinking,” said Jane, “because it won’t stop coming out of your mouth.”

  * * *

  When he had looked at the woods while standing in the meadow, it seemed like a random arrangement of trunks with leaves flowing together like water above them. But now, following Royal Son, he could see that the forest was not at all like the ocean. The tree trunks were all different, with branches coming out in different ways, with bark of many colors and textures. Insects crawled and flew among the branches of trees and undergrowth, and many flowers, some of extravagant size and coloration, grew in the dappled shade on the ground.

  Other plants grew in the trees, with no apparent attachment to the ground. Were they parasites, or did they get their water from the air? They too had blooms that drew his eye. What nonsense, the idea that flowers were precious and rare!

  Or maybe they were. Maybe the birds were stewards of this forest, of all the beauty and life in it, and humans with their stomping feet were not appreciated here.

  They walked far—farther than Sprout had ever walked in his life. He was weary and out of breath, even though Royal Son had not led him too quickly. In fact, Royal Son was very considerate, pausing on branches and fluttering his wings when Sprout had lost sight of him, so that Sprout always knew where he needed to go next.

  They crossed two small streams. Sprout took off his shoes and stockings to wade across. Royal Son mocked him only a little. “You float like a dead boy in the river, but now you don’t want to get your shoes wet.” But by now Sprout knew that this was just a game the kea played with him, and he took no offense. Keeping your shoes dry was a rule of hiking—Sprout had learned that from several books he had read as a child.

  You are still a child, he told himself. But somehow, by learning to be quiet and stay out of the various quarrels and spats among the cousins on the Herodotus, he had trained himself to bear with patience the kinds of things that caused Blue and Boss to leave the room, and Little Mum to try to take charge and calm things down, and the twins to throw things and make dire threats, and Thulium to give her hate stare and then speak her mind in clear, deeply offensive language. That discipline, which allowed him to be nobody’s enemy and enabled him to work with Thulium, had given him the strength to do exactly the right thing after Thulium left—nothing. Just bear it all silently, and even when he spoke, ask only informational questions rather than making complaints and demands.

  Thulium could not have done it. Sprout’s silence would have been wasted, because she would outshout it with her angry speech. Even when she was justified, she sometimes damaged her own cause by making people want to reject whatever she said. But the few times he had tried to point this out to her—or, to be honest, merely hint that things might go better if she acted a different way—she had shunned him for days, or sniped at him about his disloyalty.

  When they stopped in a place where enough sunlight came all the way through the canopy of leaves to create a dappled circle of light upon the deep green grass and moss and ferns, Sprout wanted to ask if he could lie down here and rest his legs and feet for just a few minutes.

  He didn’t have to.

  “We’re here,” said Royal Son.

  “Are we meeting someone?” asked Sprout.

  “Someone will come, or no one will,” said Royal Son.

  “Is there anything I should do to encourage them?” asked Sprout.

  “You followed me here. You bore the mobbing of the keas. Everyone knows this now. I think someone will come. If no one comes, it’s because they’re busy. Or they’re in awe of you.”

  “Are you keas so terrible that others are in awe of anyone who survives your treatment?”

  “We are worse than you think,” said Royal Son, “because that’s in our nature and because it’s also our job. And they are in awe because they know that you chose to stay when t
he girl left, and because they know you could have left at any time but you endured all.”

  “I don’t know if I could have left,” said Sprout. Better to have that understood.

  “But I know you could have,” said Royal Son. “I see how you are tied by all those threads, and who you are tied to.”

  “Who?” asked Sprout.

  “If you don’t know, then it’s not mine to tell,” said Royal Son.

  There was a rustling in the leaves, coming closer and closer.

  “Someone comes,” said Royal Son.

  Sprout refrained from saying, Do tell. Obviously someone was coming. But it didn’t sound like a bird—birds didn’t rustle leaves except by the wind of their passing. This sounded more like someone bustling right through the leaves. Like a blundering human. But high overhead.

  When it began crashing downward, Sprout could soon see that it was a human being—patches of skin, reflecting light; also patches of hair.

  But when the newcomer swung down, branch to branch, Sprout realized that this was not a human being—or at least not one of the standard design. That he was male was made obvious by his complete lack of clothing. His arms were at least twice as long as his legs, and where feet should be, he had large grasping hands. Sprout was almost surprised that there was no prehensile tail, though only a certain group of monkeys among the primates had such a thing.

  The man, if man he was, dropped to the ground from a low branch. He did not walk like a gorilla or chimpanzee. Sprout knew from the vids that those near relatives of humans did not have legs placed directly below their hips, so walking erect was hard for them. But this was a human—the hips were slender and the thighs extended directly below them. And when the man walked, he did not bend to put some of his weight on his knuckles, even though his arms brushed the taller grasses as he walked.

  “The child wants a story,” said the man. His Stark was heavily accented, but quite intelligible. It occurred to Sprout that he might be speaking with unusual clarity, so that the foreigner could understand him.

  “His name,” said Royal Son, “is Sprout, and he can fly faster than light, when the need and the power come upon him.”