Free The Shadow and Night by Chris Walley

other, he saw behind her a thinly built, dark-skinned man of medium height wearing a neat blue formal suit rising from a chair.
    His mother took his arm and stretched it out.
    â€œI’m so glad you’re back. Merral, let me introduce you to—I think I have the name right—Mr. Verofaza Laertes Enand.”
    The young man smiled gravely and gave a slight bow. “Indeed,” he said. “Verofaza Laertes Enand, sentinel. A pleasure.”
    Merral stared at him, hurriedly trying to wipe crumbs off his lips with his left hand. The name made no sense. There was only one sentinel on Farholme, an old man, and this was not him. Besides which the man’s accent was out of the ordinary, but somehow familiar. Merral felt he had always known it.
    â€œMerral Stefan D’Avanos,” he said, awkwardly swallowing the last fragments of cake as he shook hands. Then he looked at the guest. “Sentinel? Here?” he asked. “But have you replaced old Brenito? He’s not . . .?”
    The man stood back, his smile slightly awkward, even shy. He’s young, Merral thought, probably my age—midtwenties.
    â€œNo, he is alive and well. I have traveled farther than your capital.”
    Merral realized that he had answered in Communal, not the Farholmen dialect. He was suddenly aware of his mother tugging his arm and speaking to him in a quiet intensity of excitement. But even as she spoke he knew what she was going to say, for he had understood why the accent was familiar and why he had known it since childhood.
    â€œMerral,” she said in an awed voice, “he’s come from Ancient Earth.”

4

    M erral stared at the stranger. At college, he had once been in a meeting that had been addressed by someone from Ancient Earth, and he had met pilots and others who had trained there. But he personally had never as much as shaken hands with anybody from there. Indeed now, as he scrutinized the visitor, he felt there was something unusual about him. The suit had a strangely severe line, the black curly hair was cut in a peculiar way, and the rich dark brown skin was darker than any he had seen on Farholme. On their own, these things were merely oddities; taken together they said that the visitor was not from his world.
    Merral realized that he was staring too much. “I’m sorry, Verofaza. You have taken me by surprise. . . .”
    The other man smiled wryly. “It’s Vero. Everyone calls me that. I gather you’ve been traveling all day. That makes us both travelers.”
    A kind comment, and one that makes me feel more at ease. He found himself warming to the stranger. “I find it generous that you can put my miserable two hundred or so kilometers in the same category as your three hundred and fifty-odd light-years.”
    â€œNearly four hundred in total. I kept careful count.” He gave a little shudder. “The only place they could find was on a long route combination.”
    â€œIt is a mere twenty million million times my journey.”
    Vero grimaced vividly. Merral decided he had a very mobile face and that he could make a great clown or mime actor.
    â€œI try not to think of the distances like that, Merral. A light-year is somehow manageable; ten trillion kilometers isn’t. Please, why don’t we sit down?”
    â€œI’m sorry,” Merral said. “I should have asked you.”
    â€œIt’s not a difficulty. And you don’t mind me using Communal? I seem to understand your dialect easily enough, but I wouldn’t dare try and speak it.”
    Merral felt that the visitor’s warm, deep brown eyes were watching him keenly. “There is no problem. Yes, Farholmen dialect has not yet seriously diverged from Communal. Although there are trends. As a sentinel, I expected you to wear your badge.”
    â€œThe Tower against the Sky?” He smiled. “Oh, I should do, but I find it a bit of a