Wave Without A Shore

XXIX

A ship passed in the night sky, a shuttle, headed offworld. Herrin watched it go, from the hills above Kierkegaard. He looked down on the city, with its dimly lighted streets, with the bright glare of the port like a bleeding wound. He felt Sbi's presence at his elbow without needing to look. "Do you know what that was, Sbi?"

"One of the shuttles. I know. You taught us about other worlds."

"Does it occur to you that we two don't control everything?"

"Ah, Herrin, I understand more than that."

"What more, Master Sbi?"

"That somewhere among those points of light stand others who misapprehend their limits; that somewhere at this moment someone is in pain; that somewhere a life has begun; that somewhere one has ended; I feel them all tonight"

"I'm trying to feel them."

"Somewhere," said Sbi, "is someone else wrestling with dilemma. Somewhere is someone wondering the value of life itself. The universe is always asking questions."

"Somewhere," said Herrin, "someone is scared."

"Beside you, Herrin Law."

He turned and looked at the ahnit, who almost blended with the night, a shadow among shadows. A strange impulse possessed him, a melancholy; he opened his arms and embraced Sbi's alien shape, gently, because contact hurt. He had done so in his life with his parents, with his sister when they were both small; with Keye when he made love; with Waden when Waden had a public gesture to make; with the workers when they helped him from the scaffolding . . . only those times in his life had someone touched him; and with Sbi again it was different. Sbi embraced him very gently, and he stepped back and looked at Sbi sadly. "I don't see you have any need to go down there."

"Probably you don't see," Sbi said. "In some things you're very complicated. Why did you go to your old house, Herrin Law, and to those people?"

"I don't know."

"A Master does something and confesses not to know why?"

"I wanted shelter. It didn't quite work out, did it?" Heat came to his face. "I've made that mistake several times; it brought me here. Possibly it's got hold of me again. Why else am I going down there? Stubbornness. I have some perverse desire to try it again, to talk to people I knew, to shake them till they see. I'm sure the Outsiders will see. I'm sure those who did this to me will." He thought a moment. "I'm mad, aren't I? Invisibles are. So why should you go?"

"Why did you go to your old house, and to those people?"

"Not satisfied with my answer?"

"No."

He folded his arms across his ribs and stared at all the lights. "Well, it doesn't make sense."

And after a moment: "Why go, Sbi? Answer my questions."

"But this is what I've lived my life for."

"What, 'this'? What this?"

Sbi rested a hand on his shoulder. "That you give me back my faith. That I see our destroyers have the capacity to create. For one who believes in the whole universe, to one who doesn't . . . how can I explain?"

Herrin looked up at the sky above the city.

"We've become part of it again," Sbi said.

"And if we all die, Sbi? Somewhere in your universe, somewhere out there—is there some world dying tonight?"

"Do you feel so?"

"O Sbi." He shivered, and shook his head. And started down the slope, losing sight of the city among the hills.

Sbi overtook him, a soft pacing beside him in the grass, company in the dark.

"I don't think," Sbi said, "that the port market is likely to be open. The Outsiders were unfriendly to it. And without it—invisibles will go hungry; and some will pilfer in-town and some will trade for what those pilfer; and some who are ahnit will have gone away."

"Best they should," he said glumly. He considered what he should do, what there was to say . . . to Waden Jenks.

Try reason again? He had no doubt that Waden could kill him. Likely there were Outsiders about who would never let him close enough to say anything at all. They walked among the hills a long while, back and forth among the troughs and through the sweet-smelling grass. He savored the time finally, for what it was, because of the grass and the smell and the sounds and the hills and the sky. And Sbi's presence. That too.

Then he rounded the shoulder of a hill and had a limited view of the city again, faint jewels against the dark.

And some of them were red.

"Sbi?—Sbi, what do you make of that?"

"The port," Sbi said.

"It's not fire. It's not that." The lights flashed. There was a whole cluster of them. The unwonted sight disturbed him. It was an Outsider phenomenon. He recalled the shuttles which had lifted, more activity than Freedom had ever had from Outsiders. He thought of Waden, and increasingly he was afraid—for Waden, for Keye, for all of them down there who had started to disturb more than they knew how to see.

"Let me go to explore this thing," Sbi said. "I know where to go, how to move and when to move. Let me go ask questions. Some of us will have seen this thing close at hand."

"No," he said at once, and started off again, hurrying. "No, we're both going. I have a place to go, too, and questions to ask, and I know where to ask them."

"A ship," said Sbi. "Herrin Law, look, see it."

Something was lifting from the port. He began to laugh, a breath of relief. "A launch, that's all. Maybe it looks like that from up here."

"No," said Sbi. "I've seen, and it doesn't."

The ship climbed, shot off with blinking lights.

And exploded.

"Sbi!"

"I see," the ahnit said.

The flower died in the heavens. Suddenly there were bursts on land, flares which curled up silent, firelit smoke that traced toward the city.

Herrin began to run, downhill. "Wait," Sbi called to him, hastening after. Herrin ran, slid, slowed when his ribs shot pain through him and shortened his breath . . . he walked then, because that was all he could do, and the bursts of fire continued, stitching their way through Kierkegaard.

"Waden's Outsiders," he mourned to Sbi. "Waden's ambitions . . ."