Shadow's End by Sheri S. Tepper Read Free Book Online

of teaching me and say, “Go on, go play,” and then I’d have to try to find somebody else whose mama had said, “Go play,” to them too.
    Shalumn and I played together mostly. We played babies and we played wedding and we played planting and harvest, smoothing little patches in the dust and grooving them like ditches, and putting tiny rocks down for the vegetables. We had dolls, of course, made out of reed bundles, covered with cloth, with faces painted on. We didn’t play with the boys, not once we were old enough to know who was a boy and who was a girl. Boys played sheepherder and songfather and watermaster, and they had games where somebody always won and somebody always lost. Shalumn and I played bed games together, and once Mama caught us at it and whipped us both onour bottoms. I still have a little line there, on one side, where the whip cut. After that we were careful.
    I remember those as pleasant times, but I can’t make them sound like much. Nothing much happens with children on Dinadh. We don’t have adventures. If we tried to have an adventure, we’d probably die right away. Maybe better … better I think of some other story. Not my life or Lutha Tallstaff’s life, but someone else’s. Another person entirely, the third one of us. The one Lutha and I met together. Snark the shadow.
    A t the end of each workday the Procurator dismissed his shadows, allowing them to descend the coiled ramps that led from occupied areas to Shadowland beneath. There each shadow entered the lock as he was programmed to do.
    â€œStrip off your shadow suit,” said the lock.
    The shadow stripped off the stiff suit with all its sensors and connectors, hanging it in an alcove in one side of the booth.
    â€œPlace your hands in the receptacles.”
    The shadow placed.
    â€œBend your head forward to make contact with the plate.”
    The shadow bent.
    Light, sounds, movement. Snark stood back from the plate, shaking her head, as she always did, bellowing with rage, as she always did.
    â€œLeave the cubicle,” said the voice, opening the door behind her, opposite the one she’d come in by.
    â€œGoddamn bastards,” screamed Snarkey, hammering at the cubicle wall. “Shitting motherfuckers.”
    The floor grew hot. She leapt and screamed, resolved to obey no order they gave her. As always, the floor grew too hot for her, and she leapt through the door just in time to avoid being seared.
    â€œIt’s the mad howler,” said slobber-lipped Willit froma distant corner of the locker room. “Snarkey-shad herself, makin’ noises like a human.”
    â€œShut the fuck up,” growled Snark.
    Willit laughed. Others also laughed. Snark panted, staring about herself, deciding who to kill.
    â€œSlow learner,” commented Kane the Brain, shaking his head sadly.
    Snarkey launched herself at Kane, screaming rage, only to find herself on the floor, whimpering, her thumb in her mouth.
    â€œAn exceptionally slow learner,” repeated the former speaker, kicking Snark not ungently in the ribs. “Poor old Snark.”
    â€œGood baby-girl shadow.” Willit sneered as he passed on his way to the door. “Play nice.”
    Snark sobbed as the room emptied.
    â€œHave you quite finished?” asked the mechanical voice from a ceiling grille.
    â€œUmph,” she moaned.
    â€œI’ll ask one more time. Have you quite finished?”
    â€œYessir.” The word dragged reluctantly from her throat, burning as it came.
    â€œThen get up and get dressed. The locker room will be steam-cleaned in five minutes. Besides, you are no doubt hungry.”
    She was hungry. Procurator had hosted a banquet today, and shadows had served the food, seeing it, smelling it, seeing other people eat it. Shadows didn’t eat. Shadows didn’t get hungry or sleepy or need the toilet. Sometimes they got in the way of things and were killed, but if so,