Free The Shadow and Night by Chris Walley Page B

a sentinel visiting Farholme, why he had arrived here in Ynysmant, and what exactly sentinels did. Then he grabbed his winter jacket and met up with Vero, who was standing self-consciously by the door in a long, thick brown coat that went down to his ankles. Vero caught Merral’s glance.
    â€œAh yes. The coat. Well, I was near the Congo Position when the Sentinel Council suddenly asked me to go. It was all a last-minute rush. So I was actually on the way to the launch site when I realized I’d be arriving here in winter. The only winter coat I could get was one from a very tall Nord-European. It is far too long, isn’t it?” He glanced down at it again in an embarrassed way and then looked up at Merral. Suddenly, they both found themselves laughing.
    Merral shook his head in mirth. “What a mess, eh, Vero? They send you four hundred light-years to the end of the Assembly through Below-Space five times and with expenditure of enormous amounts of energy, and all with the wrong-sized coat! Oh, I love it!” he chortled.
    Vero shook with laughter. “Do you suppose . . . ?” he spluttered, pausing for breath between stifled snorts of laughter. “Do you suppose . . . ? No. . . . It’s too funny.” Here he suddenly seemed to control himself. He turned to Merral with a perfectly solemn face and, in an intensely serious voice said, “My friend, do you think that perhaps I ought to go back and get one that fits?”
    Then the facade of seriousness cracked and he broke out with a croaking laugh. Merral, unable to control himself, burst out into renewed peals of laughter. Eventually he clapped Vero on the back and ushered him out the door. Guffawing with mirth together, they set off up the hill.
    By the end of the street they had quieted down enough for Vero to begin asking Merral various questions about Ynysmant, such as how big it was and how long he had lived in it. Apparently satisfied, he then said with a quiet intensity, “Now tell me, Merral, are people happy here?”
    At first, Merral wondered whether he had heard the question correctly, then he considered whether it was a joke, and then finally he asked for clarification. “Is that an Ancient Earth question? I mean—excuse me for saying it—it barely makes sense.”
    Vero stopped in his tracks, obviously thinking hard. “Yes, I know what you mean. But look, are they contented? Do they long for, well . . . what they cannot have?”
    Merral heard himself laughing again. “Want what they cannot have? Vero, this may be Worlds’ End, but we aren’t stupid. I mean, what would a man or woman want with something that was not theirs to have? You’d drive yourself crazy. It’d be like . . . well . . . I don’t know—a lake wishing to be a mountain or a bird wanting to be a fish.”
    For long moments the only sound was their feet on the cobbles and muffled singing from an adjacent house. Then Vero spoke, but this time it was in a puzzled, reflective tone. “See, I don’t even know enough to know where to begin. This whole thing is . . .” He sighed. “Very difficult.”
    They walked on without speaking between the high painted walls of the houses and in and out of pools of light and shadow. Barely audible celebratory music and laughter seemed to seep through windows and doors.
    â€œVero, why did you come here, to this town, to us?”
    â€œBecause it seemed right. My task was to visit here and to write a report. It’s my first task as an accredited sentinel.”
    A cold gust of wind whistled down an alleyway, and Merral was aware of his friend shivering.
    â€œWhat sort of report?”
    There was the faintest of pauses. “On how Farholme is doing. There are specific questions but . . . well, it’s very open. Anyway, after I disembarked at Isterrane two days ago, I