Perhaps, she told herself. Perhaps, if the worm had information about the fish. Perhaps then. Suppose she saw the fish, the Ularians. Then there’d be reason to pick her up. The monitor would sense what she sensed, but he couldn’t read her mind. The monitor might think she’d found out something important! Whether she did or not, she could say she had. If she said it out loud, the monitor would hear what she said.
So, she would try to see them, if they came, and whether she did or not, she would say loudly that she had found out something. Dangerous, that. How did one find anything out except through one’s senses. If she merely deduced, it would have to be from evidence. From things seen and heard. Could one pretend to see? Pretend to hear?
Such questions preoccupied her. Rarely she thought about men. Susso had come with the other shadows. Maybe she ought to tell Susso about her cave. Invite him to come along.
The idea was transient, the motivation unconvincing. Sex was pleasurable, sure, but survival was sweeter still. Susso wouldn’t keep his mouth shut. Then the others would get involved. They’d interfere. They’d stop Snark leaving. Stop her coming here. Better not say anything to Susso. Who needed men anyhow?
“Inventory’s almost done,” said Kane, when they had been on the planet thirty or forty days. “Tomorrow we’ll start the ag-study.”
“I’m missing supplies in ag-lab,” one of the women said plaintively. “One whole carton of vegetable seeds is missing.”
“They probably miscounted,” said Kane carelessly. “They probably did.”
They were the predecessors, the other team, the real team, acknowledged but unconsidered. They had been here. They had gone. Now we were here. No one ever said, “When we’re finished and gone.” No one ever said, “When the job’s done.” They had been conditioned against such expectations. The job was interminable. The task was lifelong. And though lifelong might be short indeed, they were conditioned against anxiety.
“You got enough seeds left to do the job?” Kane asked. “That’s all that matters.”
She had enough for the job. No one paid any attention to her earlier comment. They went to their daily tasks with perfect gravity and understanding, though it was all accomplished in dreamlike slow motion. Even eating was slow. Every movement, every task was set for them. Go from 1 to 2; 2 leads to 3; 3 leads to 4. Nothing was done because they wanted to or thought of it themselves. They didn’t worry; they didn’t fight. They scarcely spoke. Sometimes two of them would couple in the night with spurious urgency, but even such brief convulsions were muted and soon forgotten.
Very occasionally Snark remembered the simul booth back in Shadowland, but she couldn’t bring herself to want it much. She sometimes remembered raging, remembered shouting, remembered fighting—or trying to. It was all another dream, not unlike this dream of being on Perdur Alas. Each day took care of itself. And now that Snark had found her own place, which was real and remote from dreaming, each night took care of itself as well.
Deprived of his shadows, the Procurator had not yet grown accustomed to pouring his own tea. Often more liquid slopped onto the table than stayed in the cup, on this occasion giving him reason to swear gustily as an underling entered, one Mikeraw.
“Sorry, sir,” the underling murmured.
“You didn’t do it,” grouched the Procurator. “I did. I am clumsy and incapable! We had grown too dependent upon shadows, Mikeraw. Far too dependent!”
Mikeraw, who was lowly in rank and non-Fastigat, had never been served by shadows. He contented himself with a murmured agreement as he helped the Procurator mop both himself and the tabletop.
This accomplished, Mikeraw bowed, murmuring, “I thought you should see this, sir. It seems to impinge—”
“What? What is it?” He reached for the proffered document.
“An agent upon Dinadh, sir. Reporting rumor, sir.”
“An Alliance agent?”
Mikeraw flushed slightly. “As a matter of fact, no, sir. We have an agent there, but he doesn’t report much. This is from a Gadravian agent.”
“The Gadravians take a lot on themselves!”
“They insist they are loyal members of the Alliance and are merely providing us with appropriate redundancy in intelligence matters. As in this case.”