The Shadow and Night by Chris Walley Page B

testing waited with perfect patience to be unloaded, and over by the transport offices, other machines were being garaged. As he watched, a pale long-winged survey drone descended gently through the air overhead, extruded legs, and with a smooth glide, came to rest on the small landing strip.
    Merral was met at the gate by Teracy, the assistant manager, who, after warmest greetings and high praise for a recent project he’d undertaken, told Merral that he had a place booked on a freighter going south in half an hour. Wasting no time, Merral took Graceful over to the stables.
    A large, stooped figure in a dark gray jacket walked over awkwardly from the small office by the stables. His left foot dragged behind him.
    â€œIf you please, Mister Merral!” the man sang out loudly in a voice as rough as broken wood.
    â€œJorgio!” Merral replied, delighted at seeing the broad, tanned, and twisted face of his old friend, who served as gardener and stable hand at Wilamall’s Farm. “Greetings! It’s good to see you.”
    â€œGreetings indeed.” Then, careful to avoid crushing a bloodred cyclamen sticking out of his breast pocket, he squeezed Merral in a forceful embrace. Returning the embrace, Merral caught the faint odor of animals, stable, and gardens, and suddenly his earliest memories of meeting Jorgio came back to him. He had been five or six, and he had been taken one cold spring day to see the new lambs near the edge of the cottages where Jorgio lived. At first, he had found the man’s large and deformed figure intimidating. Yet, within minutes, Jorgio had put him at ease and they had been friends ever since. Merral had no idea exactly how old Jorgio was; he assumed he was in his sixties but found it hard to tell.
    They released each other, and Jorgio, his amber-brown eyes gleaming softly, gave Merral a thick-lipped and skewed grin and then turned his large, bald head toward Graceful. He whistled to her in a strangely out-of-tune way. As she trotted over to Jorgio, it came to Merral again that everything about Jorgio, from his legs to his misshapen shoulders, was asymmetrical. Occasionally he felt his logic was unusual as well; Jorgio seemed to have an odd perspective, almost as if the childhood accident that had damaged his body had also curved his way of thinking.
    â€œGraceful, let’s have a look at you,” Jorgio said with a surprising softness of tone. “There’s long miles you have covered.”
    He bent down and ran his rough, veined hands over the mare’s flanks. Watching him as he made soft whispering noises, Merral knew that it was not just affection that he had for this man; it was also respect. He had long felt that, as if in some form of compensation for his distorted body, the Most High had given Jorgio special gifts. He was an excellent gardener, capable of making things flower in the poorest of soils, and had a deep affinity with animals. His curved logic wasn’t wrong; it was just different.
    â€œIt’s a real blessing to see you, Mister Merral,” Jorgio said, glancing up at him. “It really is.”
    â€œAnd for me to see you.”
    It is interesting, Merral thought, as Jorgio looked over the mare, how we deal with people like Jorgio, these accidents of life. We always seem to find them something in which they can fulfill themselves, whether it is tending gardens, painting our houses, or minding our horses. He and I do a job, get the same food and housing, have the same stipend to give away or use, and only the Judge of all the Worlds knows which—if either—of us is the more valuable. Jorgio looked up, his mouth skewed open in a smile. “It is north you’ve been, eh?”
    â€œIndeed so. As far as there are farms, Jorgio.”
    â€œThought so.”
    In an uneven singsong Jorgio whispered words to the horse. Then he gave Merral a clumsy wink. “Let me stable Graceful here and you and I’ll take some