Shadow Album

by James Alan Gardner

In the deserted city at the heart of Muta’s Great Fog Bank, there is a sundial. Its face is marble, once polished, now rough and pitted with age. The metal of the central gnomon flakes with rust; it has bled a dull brown stain across the dial’s gritty white face.

The sundial no longer tells the time—the perpetual fog smears Muta’s hot blue sunlight into a diffuse gray that casts no shadows, even at midday.

I visit the sundial often; the sight of it calms me when the loneliness grows too strong. I find it comforting to think even a sundial can stop. It seems to be a promise that no responsibility lasts forever.

Once, this city was home to a million beings. Green plants grew, animals basked at midday, the Mutan people cast shadows and shaded their eyes from the afternoon sun. Now, the only flora are lichens and fungus, and the only animals small scavengers that dart in and out of nests under the crumbled buildings. As for the Mutans, they cast their last shadows long ago.

I carry a camera with me wherever I go, and it is full of shadows. Some are recent—photographs I’ve taken to pass the time, to pretend that I’ve chanced upon beauty or importance in a rusted tangle of metal, an oddly shaped mushroom. The recent photos occupy the reusable slots on the camera’s recording diskette, shadows I discard as new ones catch my eye. But there is a set of pictures I have tagged to prevent overwriting, shadows cast before the last light left me. Now, as night falls and the ghosts struggle to wake themselves from their collective sleep, I put the diskette into the viewer in my hut and click through my little album.

Picture 1—Exploration Team Harmony on the Plains of Expanding Accord:

Twenty-two men and women stand in the center of a burnt field, the grass charred black by the heat of a Vac/ship’s landing. The ship is gone now, back to the orbiting task force where a million colonists wait in suspended animation until Harmony Team certifies the planet safe. Our mission is considered a formality—satellites and robot probes have given Muta such a positive rating that supply caches have already been dropped at selected sites all over the planet. Even so, final approval for colonization rests entirely with our team and its superiors. We do not place blind trust in machines; it is a doctrine of our faith.

By the time this picture was taken, all that remained to be explored was the anomalous fog bank perpetually covering a region of Muta’s southern hemisphere: cause unknown, unchanged by wind and sun, impenetrable to orbital eyes. We thought our investigation would be routine and painless.

The team members offer smiles for the camera, showing or not showing their teeth according to their chosen self-image. Most try not to squint, though the sun is in their eyes; they want to look good for the photograph.

Behind them is the skimmer assigned to fly the team to the Great Fog Bank. On the craft’s fuselage, brown letters proclaim Unity Task Force: Muta. Beneath the words are the twenty-two symbols of our totem houses, the spirits that unite our people and set us apart from other human cultures in this galactic sector. The symbols attest that the world is more than a machine, and humans more than a meaty collection of chemicals. We of the Unity are a spiritual people.

Each symbol on the fuselage is carefully labeled: the Dancing Madman, the Ready Mage, the Blind Priestess, and so on. The Unity is relentless in labeling everything.

In the far background, beyond the landing strip, you can see the grassland that the Unity named the Plains of Expanding Accord. Amidst the thick band of green there is a single dab of brown—some inquisitive Mutan herd animal peering at all the curious activity happening around the base.

At first glance, the people posed in this picture may be indistinguishable. They are all uniformed in the same tan fatigues. They all look healthy and competent. But to my eyes, three people stand out from rest. They stand together on the extreme right of the picture: a woman between two men.

The woman is Chiala, Archeology Officer, age 25. In the picture, her skin is the same glossy color as a chestnut fresh from its shell; but I remember it as dark honey, and I dream of the soft brown of her hand resting lightly on my forearm. Her smile is wide and bright. Around her throat she wears a neckerchief, white linen printed with a pattern of orange flowers. The flowers are chrysanthemums, totem flowers of my birthmonth. I nearly told her so when I helped her choose the neckerchief on our last recreation leave, but I decided to hold my tongue. It pleased me to have this secret link to her that even she did not realize.

The man on her right is Planetology Officer MolanDif, the same age as Chiala. In the hand dangling at his side, he holds the Unity regulation manual for missions exploring Earth-like environments. Harmony Team had completed three such assignments at the time the picture was taken, but MolanDif still consulted the manual regularly…not because he wanted to enforce the rules on his juniors but rather because he wanted to be sure of the rules himself. He was a man in constant need of specific instructions, of models to imitate. (His shirt is open low enough to reveal the steaming snout of a dragon tattooed on his chest. He once confessed to me he got that tattoo when he was a teenager; he had read somewhere that teenagers were supposed to do irrevocable things on impulse.)

The graying man on Chiala’s left is Senior Orthodoxy Officer BarlDan, age 49. Me. My smile is self-conscious and clumsy—the skimmer pilot who took the picture for me ordered us to crowd together, and I was keenly aware of the solid warmth of Chiala’s body pressing against my arm. (After the picture was taken, she did not move away from the contact. I was the one who withdrew to attend my duties.)

At one time, I could have named all the others in this picture. I still remember names, remember faces…but I become confused when I try to pair them. It panics me sometimes, the thought that I was supposed to safeguard all these souls, but now can’t remember which man was the ceremonial castrato, which woman wore the mask of the Riven Tower. I think I know, yet I suspect I’m mistaken, that my memory rearranges itself when I sleep. I wake sometimes to find myself shouting at people who flee from me in my dreams.

The only other face I’m sure of is Junior Planetologist DiDeel, a young red-headed man grinning widely into the camera, his arm around the shoulder of the man beside him; and the only reason DiDeel retains a foothold in my mind is because he was the first to die. The others…dead too, officers, juniors, all dead, murdered in the fog, but I am losing them day by day and I cannot keep them with me.

In the extreme foreground of the picture, we have lined up our spirit masks. The masks are dormant, their inhabiting spirits forced into temporary exile by the brilliant sunlight. Their eyeholes are empty; they are merely constructions of paper and plastic, feather and foil.

Given a choice, I would have preferred not to take photographs of the masks; but some of the spirits were vain and demanded I take pictures of their mask-houses as often as possible. I complied, as I always complied with wishes of the masks. You cannot reason with a spirit.

Picture 2—Chiala examining a Mutan statue:

In the Mutan city within the fog, Chiala kneels at the base of a marble statue. She has arranged weak laser projectors to throw up a yellowy grid-work of cubes around the statue, each cube ten centimeters to the side. The statue is thus boxed into a phantom coordinate system that helps her make measurements.

The statue resembles others found all across the planet: a man-high figure that might be a lump of bread dough, surrounded by a surface that bristles with quills like those of a porcupine. The quills appear to be protrusions of internal bones, forming a type of articulated exoskeleton. The top of the body is clearly a head, with two widely spaced eyes, a cluster of nose-holes shielded by a thatch of quills, and a fully toothed mouth. No ears are visible.

This was our image of the beings who built the Mutan cities, though we did not know how accurately the statues depicted them. Perhaps Mutan art was not representational—perhaps we were seeing some abstract style that only marginally resembled the true Mutans, or it could be that all these statues were idols of some deity whose appearance was utterly unlike the people’s. Perhaps they weren’t statues at all; they might be signposts, or notice boards, or equipment for a game.

The Mutans had vanished centuries before the Unity discovered the planet. It had happened abruptly, without property damage—a plague perhaps, a radiation disaster, or maybe mass suicide. The archeologists had many theories, but no evidence…only ruins, and a fog bank like a cloud of smoke after a great burning.

In the picture, Chiala holds a measuring tape to the pedestal that supports the statue. She has rolled up her sleeves. Some of the mist has condensed on her forearms, giving them a dark sheen, highlighting a line of sleek muscle from elbow to wrist. If I look at this picture too long, I find myself leaning forward to touch the viewer screen, to trace that line of muscle with my finger.

Chiala’s eyes are on the work, not the camera. I approached her quietly through the fog; she didn’t see me watching.

Picture 3—MolanDif’s testing station on the Chastened River:

The picture is taken from the top of the bank looking down toward the water. Eight team members are in sight. Most are on shore, fussing with electronic instruments I cannot name. DiDeel wears hip-waders and stands in the water up to his thighs; he is far enough away to be nearly lost in the fog. He holds a metal pole that stretches out into the mist and disappears. My guess would be that he is scooping a water sample from the middle of the river, but for all I know, he could be fishing.

The group is attempting to locate evidence of volcanic hot springs in the riverbed. The senior planetologists, up in orbit with the colonists, hypothesized the fog bank was created by near-boiling water from springs mixing with near-freezing water running down from the Upward Potential mountains. No one found the hypothesis persuasive, but it offered a foundation for conducting tests until new data suggested something better.

MolanDif is on the far right of the picture, paddling an inflatable dinghy out of the upstream mists. The dinghy is filled with testing equipment. He holds the paddle awkwardly.

When he caught sight of me watching, he hailed me and pulled into shore. As I helped him out of the dinghy, he said, “Officer BarlDan, I’d like to consult with you.”

“In my official capacity?” I asked.

“Of course,” he said—seemingly surprised I might have an unofficial one. “When would be suitable?”

“I’m free now.”

“Oh,” he said. “Oh.” He looked at the ground as if there might be something there needing his attention. “All right, then.” He paused again. “This is a private matter.”

“We’ll walk along the river,” I said.

The Mutans had paved a wide promenade along the top of the bank, running completely across the city. Potholes had developed in the asphalt here and there, and tough fungal growth was working up from below, cracking the surface into patterns like the glass in a smashed mirror; but walking was easy if you watched your step, and it provided a route away from the others without getting lost in the fog. We walked for some time in a silence overlaid with the background mutter of the river. I waited for MolanDif to begin.

“I have reached the age of twenty-five,” he said at last.

I knew that; his birthday had passed while we were in stasis on the way to Muta, but Harmony Team had danced in his honor shortly after we woke up. MolanDif continued, “The social adjustment manual says twenty-five is the optimal age for marriage.”

“To be precise,” I said, “the manual says twenty-five is the median age at which a human being has reached a level of maturity consistent with the obligations of intimate social partnership. Not the same thing.”

“Still,” he said, “I believe I am ready for marriage. I…I’m not fulfilled being alone. I think it would be better to be married.”

“Are you unhappy?” I asked.

“Oh no,” he said quickly. “I’m quite well adjusted. To the situation. But I think…life could be fuller, you know? There’s something…” He reached out with his hand and clutched an empty fist. “Life could be fuller,” he repeated.

“Have you chosen a partner?”

“Chiala, of course,” he answered, in a tone of surprise that I could consider any other alternative. “She’s of equal rank. She’s twenty-five.”

“And she’s beautiful,” I said.

“Well, yes. But beauty…the manual says it’s too shallow a reason for seeking marriage. Isn’t it?”

“Yes,” I said. “Yes, it is.”

“Sexual attraction is an inadequate basis for dedicated partnership actualization. That’s right in the manual. The manual stresses that feelings—you know, love…” His voice fell to near inaudibility on the word and he went on quickly. “Whatever you think you feel, it’s only infatuation if you don’t have a deeper basis for…for what you want. I’m not just infatuated with her, BarlDan. I have good deep reasons.”

“She’s of equal rank and she’s twenty-five.”

“Yes. You see how it makes sense?”

“Does it make sense to Chiala?” I asked.

“I couldn’t possibly discuss it with her until you’ve cross-matched our personality profiles,” he said. “If we aren’t compatible in the eyes of the Unity…well, I couldn’t pursue it, could I? I’d just…I couldn’t pursue it. And if we are compatible, I’d have something to talk about with her. I could say the Unity officially thought we had a marriageability coefficient of ninety percent. Or whatever it turns out to be. You understand?”

“Yes,” I said. “I understand. I’ll do the calculations for you.”

He thanked me hastily and headed back to the investigation site almost at a run.

I should have told him I wanted her for myself, that she was a dancing flame which could never burn bright enough fueled by his soggy wood. But how was I any different?

Picture 4—The interior of my hut, evening, first day within the fog:

The picture is taken from the doorway. All the usual amenities are present: cot, sink, desk, two chairs, chemical toilet, mask shrine. On the desk, a lamp glows at minimum brightness; there are plenty of shadows here. The only other light comes from the candles on the shrine and their reflections in the shrine’s mirror.

The juniors who put up the hut for me have placed my shrine so the mask points toward the door. The face that was my second self looks almost directly into the camera. The eyes are not empty in this picture; they’re filled with shadow. It’s dusk and the mask is once again inhabited.

The mask belongs to the Hanged Prophet house. It is an adult male who calls himself ToPu. ToPu the Seer. ToPu the Abiding Observer. His umber papier-mâché face is runneled with crags that have been deepened using paint of blue and green. This shows age and therefore (so the theory goes) wisdom. But when the spirit of ToPu guided me to fashion his mask-home during my time of initiation, his hands were clumsy in affixing the garnet. The gem is centered properly on the forehead, but its setting is tipped to the left. Instead of facing outward, the capital facet looks ashamedly to one side.

For thirty-five years, this was what ToPu saw when he looked at himself in the mirror of my shrine: he saw he was flawed. His little gem, his humble soul, was forever set akilter. He felt this was the kind of seer he was—one who never looked in quite the right direction.

And, of course, ToPu’s sadness infected my own life. However much I, BarlDan, progressed through victories or defeats, ToPu always shadowed me. I would sit before the mirror to don the mask (its interior smelling of paint, sweat, and resin) and in the moments that both BarlDan and ToPu shared my body, I would feel him tumbling down into heartsick shame at the sight of his face. Whenever I regained consciousness at the end of the Dance of the Arcana, I would find that ToPu had been standing apart from the others, simply watching.

All these feelings return when I look at this picture and see ToPu’s imperfect face staring sadly back. If I had set up my room myself, I would have angled the shrine away from the door—I had no need to remind myself of the awkward, earnest sharer of my soul. But I couldn’t rearrange the furniture now: the juniors who set up the hut had seemed so proud of their work, I couldn’t hurt their feelings.

Whenever I view this picture, I look at ToPu first, in order to save the most important detail for last. In the foreground, two chairs are turned to face each other. Draped over the back of the closer one is a white linen neckerchief printed with orange chrysanthemums.

Chiala left it behind after proposing marriage to me. It was her betrothal token. If I accepted her offer, I was to wear it so all the camp would know of our engagement. Otherwise, I was to return it discreetly to her hut and leave it lying across her pillow.

I planned to give back the neckerchief the next night. Sooner would insult her, as if I thought her easy to reject. But I had already rejected her in my own mind more than a dozen times since she joined Harmony Team, even while I talked with her, watched her with hungry eyes, touched her with feigned casualness and felt her touch me.

She told me she loved me because I was gentle, kind, and vulnerable; but analysis of her personality profile revealed she wanted a father figure who would absolve her from the responsibility of growing up. (I once dyed the gray in my hair, hoping she would be dazzled by a younger man. She was appalled I would want to look like some unseasoned junior.)

I felt I loved her because she was intelligent, beautiful, and so very alive; but in fact, I was immaturely hoping she would rescue me from a self-centered loneliness from which I was too weak to extricate myself. (On our nights of quiet sociability, it was always she who sought me out. I could never bring myself to believe she’d be happy to see me at her door.)

If we married, I thought, we would cling to each other too tightly, feeding on our weaknesses. We might be happy, but we would fold inward too much, dedicating ourselves to each other instead of the good of the Unity. In solitude, I had calculated our social coefficients many times before: love high, but social desirability just inside the bounds of legality. As Orthodoxy Officer, I could not give my approval.

Instead, I savored an aging coward’s self-indulgent melancholy as I oh so carefully calculated the social coefficients for MolanDif and Chiala. The ratings were no worse with him than with me; better on some scales. The two would never love each other, but they would make it work, without letting it interfere in their pursuit of the greater good.

I told myself my duty was clear.

Still, I took this picture of the neckerchief so I could always remind myself that Chiala had once asked.

Picture 5—Harmony Team singing around a campfire, first evening of the mission:

The campfire roars high. It is a volcanic island of light, ringed by a lagoon of fog, enclosed in an ocean of blackness. The fire has been built inside a cracked concrete dish in the same park as the sundial; an archeologist conjectured the dish was a reflecting pool in the days of Mutan civilization. It is surrounded by what seem to be low marble benches, but benches built for Mutan anatomy. Their tops resemble narrow U-shaped troughs.

The members of Harmony Team lounge on the benches in a variety of postures. Only Chiala looks comfortable. She sits with both legs tucked beneath her, hands in her lap. Her mouth is open wide and her head is tilted back for greater singing volume.

She was a terrible singer. She was, in fact, tone-deaf. The notes she bawled so lustily bore no relationship to the tune the others sang. Chiala didn’t care. Perhaps she didn’t know—who would tell her? In an odd way, her handicap endeared her to the team, bringing her down from the heights of perfection and making her just a bit pitiable.

MolanDif sits awkwardly beside Chiala, his rump at the bottom of the trough, his legs dangling over the edge. The flames tint his face a jaundiced shade of orange. He is not singing; as I remember that night, he was barely breathing, hovering at Chiala’s side all evening but struck speechless by the enormity of what he wanted to say.

From the angle I took this picture, I cannot tell if his thigh is touching her knee. Some nights I think yes, some nights I think no.

A number of team members appear to be in the Arcana trance already. The youth who beats the drum is clearly there. His glassy eyes stare blindly into the fire; his body is slack, though his arms continue to pound out the rhythms of attuning. The harpist too straddles the boundary between our world and the spirits’. Her shirt hangs open to bare the perspiration-slick boniness of her chest. A reflection of flame dances on her moist skin.

Picture 6—Dance of the Arcana, first night of the mission:

The picture shows a bare patch of dirt, not far from the campfire site. Candles are laid out on the ground in a spoked wheel around a silvery mirror-ball at the hub. The candles do not dispel the mist as the campfire did, though they force back the darkness a few paces. Fog wraps and obscures the dancers, in lieu of the clothing they have shed.

Chiala’s mask-self dances proud and beautiful in the foreground. When she proposed, Chiala gave me the name of her mask: Lilijel. Lilijel the Sun-Child. Lilijel the Jewel. Her face is beaten gold, a mask of the Laughing Sun, lacquered black except for the rims of the eyes and a burnished band around the outer edge. The gem in Lilijel’s forehead is a topaz, and it is set perfectly straight.

Lilijel dances, prances, alone. The picture captures her mid-leap, front leg bent, back leg straight. Her jump has such strength that her muscles stand out with sharp definition even in the fog. She throws her arms straining wide above her head. There is something about her that frightens me, a potential for cruelty in her self-absorption. She is always exultant, always alone. It is inconceivable she would deign to dance with an ungainly old man.

Behind Lilijel, MolanDif stands wearing his mask. The mask belongs to the house of the Worldly Cleric, black cloth embellished with spiraling traceries of silver thread. His gem, of course, is a diamond. In the picture, MolanDif prepares to leap in imitation of Lilijel.

It is clear MolanDif is himself…not in trance, not possessed by the mask. The fact is evident in the way he stands—self-conscious, a wary, soul-cluttered man attempting to imitate masks who are as simple as children. Lilijel jumps and he follows like a shadow.

The doctrines of the Unity accept such people as they are. It is simply another sort of disability, like being unable to sing. Men and women who cannot lose themselves are as much a part of the orthodoxy as those who fall into trance effortlessly; they just don’t know it. They torment themselves each night at the dance, watching the spontaneity of the others and guiltily going through the motions.

Not so different from ToPu, though ToPu was a true mask—less a wooden adult and more a sober child.

ToPu took this picture. He often played with my camera while the other masks danced. Only a few of his concrete memories ever leaked into my mind; one is the image of him standing apart from the dance, using the camera to click shot after shot of the other dancers.

In some way, ToPu believed his watching protected the other mask-spirits—that they would wisp away to nothingness if someone didn’t remove himself from the revelries and look on from the sidelines. If no one watched, the dance was random capering, dissipative frenzy…a meaningless hell. Someone had to see how a mask drew pictures in the dirt, someone had to hear it sing nonsense syllables to a stone. Being watched made it all real; taking pictures kept them safe.

There was seldom any logic in the pictures he took. When I put the diskette into the viewer on the morning after a dance, I might see a close-up of someone’s hand, or a badly framed tangle of copulating bodies. I don’t know if ToPu even understood what the camera did, for he never learned how to advance the diskette from shot to shot—each new shot overwrote the previous one, so only the last shot of the night was preserved.

But ToPu didn’t care about preserving pictures; he only cared about watching. The camera was a watching machine, and watching was ToPu’s duty.

Picture 7—The death of Junior Planetologist DiDeel, during the Dance of the Arcana:

I took this picture moments after waking from the trance. I believe ToPu saw the horror begin and surrendered the body to me prematurely, in the hope BarlDan could cope with something ToPu could not.

I did not understand. I awoke sluggish, my mask beside me, my camera in hand. When I saw what was happening to DiDeel, my first reaction was to snap a picture, thinking I was seeing some remarkable atmospheric phenomenon.

The picture shows DiDeel frozen in the moment of transition from mask-self back to man. His mask belongs to the house of the Blind Priestess, an eyeless shell of pearly plastic with a wig of blended human hair reaching the ground in a blond-brown-red-black tumble. The mask is pushed far enough back on DiDeel’s forehead that the man’s mouth is uncovered. The mouth is open wide. He appears to be screaming.

That is what the camera recorded; but what my eyes saw was a stream of creamy mist pouring from his mouth like smoke belched by a fire-eater. The mist pierced the surrounding fog and sent it billowing outward in ripple after ripple. DiDeel made no sound but a choked crooning in his throat, like a heartsick child humming itself a lullaby.

All this…and my first reaction was merely to snap a picture. I found the sight odd but not disturbing, as if I were a four-year-old watching a favorite uncle do a magic trick. Accepting it all; almost absorbed. But when I look again at the picture, I cannot blind myself to DiDeel’s agony. His body is bent backward as if some invisible assailant has wrapped one arm around his waist and is pressing the other hand on his sternum, pushing with full strength in an attempt to snap DiDeel’s spine. The man is held impossibly off balance, screaming without noise, the hair of his mask dragging in the dirt.

Yet in the moments after waking, I had a lingering feeling this was very right: that I should want the same for myself.

DiDeel’s body wavered in that pose for one second, two seconds, three, then jerked twice with the force of whipcracks. He heeled backward, striking the ground hard enough to scuff up a cloud of dust, and lay there as limp as his hair.

It was only then I put down the camera. I started shaking and couldn’t stop.

A few of the masks came to look at the fallen body. Lilijel poked it with her finger once, then a second time much harder. I had to shout at her to go away and leave DiDeel alone.

Mask spirits almost never understand death.

Picture 8—Campfire, second night of the mission:

A jump forward in time…but I was too busy to take pictures during the day after DiDeel’s death. There were reports to file. There were morale restoration activities to run: a group contact experience in the morning, a unification dialogue at lunch, grief counseling sessions all afternoon. My hardest duty was calling my superiors in orbit, formally asking them to quarantine Muta until we determined the cause of DiDeel’s death. If this was some kind of disease, we could not risk infecting the main body of the task force. The mother ship offered to send us robots, medicines, any equipment we might need; but what could I ask for?

The picture around the campfire shows the team at the end of the day: haggard, subdued. Our Senior Medical Officer leans against the shoulder of the man beside her; her eyes are half closed. She has not slept except for a three-hour nap I ordered her to take before supper. For the rest of the time, she and her junior have tried to determine why DiDeel died. No success.

Many of the other team members also show signs of exhaustion. No one slept well. DiDeel was popular, respected for his exceptional openness and generosity to all; his death struck hard. The majority of those around the fire simply stare into the flames, their expressions somber. The camera has caught one junior in the process of glancing over his shoulder into the fog.

The fog is thicker than the previous night. It crowds around us hungrily.

Chiala and MolanDif sit in almost the same positions as before. She is not singing—no one is singing—but she is speaking intensely to him, punctuating her words with a sharp gesture of her hands.

The neckerchief is around her throat.

I intended to take it to her hut and leave quickly without being seen…but the hut was full of her, the smell of her hair, a book she’d been reading, the imprint in the blankets where she recently sat on the edge of her cot. As I laid the neckerchief across the pillow I could smell her everywhere—on her pillow, the linen, the talismans dangling from the headboard. A chocolate-brown dress jacket was thrown across the top of her storage trunk; the sight of it brought back memories of her wearing it at celebration dinners, her eyes meeting mine as we drank from a shared chalice, her eyes, her skin, her skin the color of the jacket, her eyes…not one of these photos truly shows her eyes, not the way I want to remember them, how full they were with warmth and heat and fire. And my memory is slippery—in embarrassment and fear, it shies away from recalling the intensity of her gaze. I can see Chiala’s face, but I can’t look into her eyes.

She found me in her hut. I don’t know how long I’d been standing there. The neckerchief was in my hands, though I don’t remember picking it up again. When I laid it down a second time, smoothing it out on the pillow, she asked why.

I had a speech prepared—not that I’d planned to recite it to her. I’d constructed it for my own benefit, putting the issues into well-chosen words supposedly showing the wisdom of my decision. In the naked light of her eyes, the words and wisdom shattered. I could say nothing more than “I’m sorry, I can’t, not me” as I fled the hut.

The words of my rehearsed rationalizations came back like shouting ghosts as I retreated to my hut through the fog. “I love you so much I can’t see you. I see your face, that’s all. All I know of you is fragments—the warmth of your body, the smoothness of your bare shoulder, your off-key singing. I can’t glue the fragments into a real woman. I’m blinded by love, I can’t see, what am I loving but a voice, a perfume, the imagined kiss of your skin?”

The ghost words haunt me today as I view my photos and pretend I’ve left my past behind. Like all ghosts, words are liars. I chose loneliness because it was familiar and safe.

Even cowards find themselves facing the truth eventually. They just do it too late.

Picture 9—Fog:

It was my duty to ensure that the Dance proceeded as normal. All the morale-building exercises of the day would be wasted if we didn’t fulfill the Arcana. Every person on the team had danced each night since his or her initiation; to skip the ritual now would completely unhinge them. It was bad enough we had to dance without the circle full. MolanDif kept asking, “Can we do this with only twenty-one houses? Isn’t it against the rules?”

We lit the candles in the dance wheel and set up the mirror-ball at the hub. The drummer drummed, the harpist played, the masks inhabited us (except for MolanDif). ToPu took his pictures, earnestly trying to keep the others safe…I have his memory of that. I do not have his memories of Lilijel if he saw her that night. Sometimes I wonder if she pranced the same as ever, or if Chiala’s feelings about my rejection infected her. Was she struck quiet, or moved to fiercer abandonment? The only picture recording that dance is this picture of fog.

I woke but did not waken; and the fog was inside me. I was BarlDan and ToPu, both—brothers who shared the same eyes. The eyes looked out on fog, bright fog lying before me like the softest of beds, glowing golden. It beckoned with a force stronger than any I had felt in the most sacred rites. “Dance,” a voice said, and the voice was a billion voices. “Join. Dance.”

The fog swirled in serene billows before my eyes. In the distance I heard drums and harps. The voices sang softly, their song achingly sweet. “Dance. Join. Sing together.” I felt tranquillity in the fog, and peace. Love, uncomplicated love, never fading. “Dance. Now. You can see us. Now. Join. Sing.” It would be so easy to surrender. Simply falling into bliss.

ToPu shook his head. I could feel his sad, lonely longing, but he knew his duty didn’t let him join the dance, ever. I felt the same wild yearning to accept, but I too drew back from the fog. I’d resisted my love for Chiala—by comparison, this resistance was nothing.

I took a step away from the fog, from the choir that sang within it. Screeching with sudden outrage, the placid wisps of fog twisted in anger and locked into a hard churning wall the color and height of a thunderhead. Tentacles erupted from that wall, meaty pseudopods caged within quill-like bones, glistening wet and yellow, smelling of rotten fruit. They grabbed at me, trying to wrap around my arms and legs, and I pulled away with all my strength, feeling them slide suckingly off my flesh, slimy as eels.

I had almost dragged myself clear when a human hand burst out of the blackening fog-wall and clamped around my wrist. The fingers were long and muscular, clenched like claws. It did not try to pull me into the cloud, but its grip was iron; I couldn’t wrench it loose. Desperately, I grabbed my trapped wrist with my free hand, and using the strength of both arms heaved backwards. My captor held on; and as I tugged, the rest of my captor’s arm emerged from black fog, then his head—a head with DiDeel’s face but blanched of color, the eyes sewn shut like a corpse’s, the mouth screaming wide. Sweat-slick hair plastered the sides of his face, hair of all shades, the hair of the Priestess. Mask-spirit and man had been crushed into one, like two colors of putty squeezed into a formless lump by a clenching fist. For a moment I stared at the ghastly face; then pseudopods wrapped around the head and smothered it back into the fog. The hand around my wrist went limp, fell away…and I found myself lying on damp earth, night fog clotting powerlessly around me. My mask lay faceup by my side.

In all directions, I heard the same choking crooning DiDeel made before he died. I recognized the tune—the song the fog had sung in my brain. Harmony Team was being absorbed, just as DiDeel had been…just as the Mutans must have been, all those quilled pseudopods in the cloud. Some horror was unleashed here long ago, perhaps a grand experiment to unify the spirits of the people; and soul by soul, the horror had devoured the planet. The entire fog bank was a single ghost…or rather a billion ghosts trapped in a hellish union that had consumed them all.

Out in the fog, one voice lifted above the rest: tone-deaf Chiala, not yet in tune with the crooning mass. I staggered to my feet and followed the sound, hearing her voice twist angrily as it tried to find the right notes to join the song. She was still off-key, but as I searched I heard her growing closer and closer to the tune the others sang.

When I reached her, MolanDif was already there, cradling her body in his arms. “What’s wrong with her?” he cried when he saw me. Without answering, I pulled off her mask and threw it aside. Her face was slack, still deep in trance. I shook her shoulders and slapped her cheek, rousing her enough that she opened her eyes…but the eyes were still vacant and the humming in her throat went on.

“Get her to the mirror,” I ordered MolanDif, and he was so grateful to be told what to do, he asked no questions. Together we dragged her body to the ball at the hub of the dance wheel and propped her up so she could see her face. “Your name is Chiala,” I shouted in her ear. “Chiala. Chiala. Chiala.”

Her eyes focused and saw. She gasped and threw her arms outward to steady herself against the sphere. The fog condensed where her hands touched the mirror, making misty silhouettes like ghosts. She blinked and looked wonderingly at her beautiful face.

Her humming stopped. “Chiala,” she said.

Picture 10—A bend in the Chastened River:

It’s the afternoon of the next day. There is no fog here. The land is a sunny meadow, buttery with summer wildflowers. The river’s edge is stockaded by rushes. Chiala, MolanDif, and I have paddled the dinghy many hours downstream. We emerged from the fog bank around midday, but kept going until we were well clear.

The rest of Harmony Team is dead. I tried to save them, but failed. Before they died, a few possessed team members smashed our communication equipment. We are now truly on our own.

We carry maps and aerial photographs that indicate it’s a four-day trip to the sea. A few rapids might force portages along the way, but the journey doesn’t look difficult. From the mouth of the river, another two days up the coast leads to one of the planned sites of colonization, and there we should find a cache that contains working communicators.

In the picture, MolanDif and Chiala cook supper over a campfire. They believe I’m still gathering firewood, but I’ve already collected what we’ll need for the night. I have concealed myself in a thicket to take this picture and watch the two of them hover over the pots.

In this shot, their knees are definitely touching.

Picture 11—Chiala by the fire:

She holds her mask in both hands, frozen in the moment of raising it to her face. Her head is twisted slightly toward the camera; she must have heard something as I focused the lens, and turned to look at me. Behind her, the sky is a sheet of deepening indigo spreading over the dark meadows. A clump of trees stands silhouetted on the horizon.

I took this picture to distract Chiala, to interrupt that motion of donning the mask. The click, the flash.

“Why did you do that?” she asked.

“You shouldn’t tonight,” I told her. “The trance opens us too wide. To the fog. Opening yourself to the mask—it’s too risky. The fog wasn’t strong enough to take us when we were ourselves, not even when we were asleep. Only in trance. Please, Chiala, leave the mask.”

She looked at me steadily for several seconds. Half her face was lit with the sun-yellow blaze of the fire, the other half cloaked with shadow. “You have nothing to say to me about taking risks,” she said. Very deliberately, she pulled the mask over her face.

“It should be safe,” MolanDif said from across the fire. “The fog is a long way behind us.” Self-consciously, glancing sideways at Chiala for her approval, he put on his own mask.

Chiala began drumming on her knees. I watched her strong hands rise and fall.

Picture 12—A night view looking upstream over the Chastened River:

Track the image from foreground to background: the dark water flowing over outjuts of black rock; reflections of two of Muta’s moons farther upriver, rippled smears of red and silver; the dark fields rising to rolling hills; the night sky gaudy with stars.

Stretching across half the river valley is a churning wall of fog as high as the eye can see. It approaches with the speed of a summer windstorm.

I took this picture while standing alone on the riverbank, grass whipping my legs with the force of the oncoming gale. Chiala and MolanDif had fled downstream in the dinghy. Chiala was still half in trance as I helped them push off, MolanDif chanting, “You are Chiala, you are Chiala,” with each awkward stroke of his paddle.

They could not travel as fast as the cloud.

I stood between them and the ghosts like a brave man, wrapping myself in an armor of unconvincing hopes. I hoped the mist would not pursue my companions until it had dealt with me; I hoped I could escape it as I escaped before; even if it consumed me, I hoped I could resist long enough for the others to get away.

And I hoped if they did get away, Chiala would realize that I did take a risk, when it was too late for anything else.

I set my camera down carefully and picked up my mask. If I was to be bait, I had to make myself tempting. I donned ToPu’s face and opened myself to him.

Picture 13—My face in terror:

ToPu arrived immediately. He inhabited my body but my consciousness remained awake, watching everything. Perhaps it was ToPu’s choice to keep me with him; perhaps our previous confrontation with the fog had realigned our spirits somehow, allowing us to coexist in the same body. I don’t know. I only know we stood together as the fog descended upon us.

Through ToPu’s spirit eyes, I saw past the physical aspect of the fog and into another plane—a plane of ghosts where a great agglomerate creature rippled and shimmered around us. Heads erupted from its writhing mass and were dragged screaming back inside; pseudopods and arms snaked out of control, scrabbling at the ground, never gaining purchase. From deep within the creature came a ceaseless frenzy of moaning, surging in pulses like ocean waves.

ToPu picked up the camera and began shooting picture after picture of the swallowed souls. Tears ran down his face. It was all he could do for them—watch and let them know he watched.

The fog seethed; the thing that was the fog convulsed around us. Something grabbed ToPu’s arm, then his leg, then wrapped around his head. With one great heave, he was ripped away from me, as if my own body were torn in two. The fog clutched both of us in its grip, and for a single moment in our lives, ToPu and I saw each other face-to-face. He was not just a mask now but a complete spirit, a wrinkled man in shabby clothes, held spread-eagled before me. Our eyes met; and in his face I saw what he had never known, that he was wise despite all his fear and doubt. Then, with agonizing effort, he yanked himself free of the fog, arms and pseudopods sliding away from him. He raised the camera and clicked this picture of me.

In that instant, my vision of the ghost-world collapsed like a bubble popping, and my eyes returned to the physical plane.

The fog surrounded me, a rolling night fog that blotted all sight. It seemed too thick to let me breathe. Panic took me and I ran blindly, tripping on uneven ground, picking myself up and running on. Brambles tore at my uniform; my shoulder struck an unseen tree, and I spun away, pain scissoring down my arm. Suddenly there was nothing under my feet and I was tumbling downward, striking the river with a splash that sent warm water stinging up my nose. I swam a few weak strokes, bumped against a rock, and clung to it, panting. Water flowed gurgling around me, while overhead the ghost fog roared.

Picture 14—ToPu:

It took me three days to find my camera in the mist. It was scratched but undamaged. Nearby I found the remains of ToPu.

The picture shows the mask lodged on a bramble bush. Branches of bramble protrude through the eyeholes and the mouth. The papier-mâché of the face has been dented and ripped in numerous places. The garnet and its setting are gone.

Scattered on the ground around ToPu’s bush are the other masks—the rest of the full Arcana, Lilijel and MolanDif’s mask among them. Their eyeholes all stare at ToPu, like an audience gathered to hear a speaker. Their gems are missing, but the masks are otherwise undamaged.

They must have been carried here by the fog cloud, then released. I like to believe the mask-spirits and their human hosts were released too. Perhaps they proved incompatible with the Mutan ghosts and could not truly meld with the whole; but I prefer to think ToPu saved them. Within the cloud, he located each familiar soul, watched it, took its picture, freed it by making it real.

That is what I tell myself. That is my mythology.

The gems are gone, and the mask-spirits departed. Lilijel will not dance on this physical plane again.

I dream that Chiala and MolanDif survived. Though I searched the length of the river, I did not find their bodies or the dinghy. The fog stayed thick about me, angry that my soul was closed to it forever; but despite the fog, I think I would have found Chiala’s body if it were there.

Picture 15—The sundial:

I took this picture earlier today. I won’t tag it for preservation like the others. It’s better to go to the park and see the sundial for myself. I’m a man who should remind himself of the realness of things.

I came back to this city because the huts are here and all our supplies. The fog followed me back…or perhaps it never left. I think it will stay with me wherever I go.

The task force has surely left orbit by now and headed for a new planet. The universe is too rich in worlds for them to trouble with Muta. No colony would ever be safe here, unless they abandoned their masks and the dance. That is a price they will not pay.

The ghost fog swirls around me but its attempts to consume me are futile. My link to the spirit world is gone. If I want to commune with ghosts, all I can do is talk.

Are you listening to me, fog?

I’ve hated you a long time, hated you for the murders and my banishment here. But the loss that hurt me most was none of your doing. And the souls trapped inside you…I can’t help thinking of them as people like me, though I know Mutans are alien, non-human. Maybe to them, being part of this undifferentiated mass is heaven; but I can’t help thinking it’s hell.

I’ve decided to do something, fog. I’ve failed to take action so often in my life, there aren’t many options left for me. But I can still watch. I can still try to see, really see, the souls you’ve swallowed. They may nearly have forgotten the people they once were, but I think they can remember. If they try. If I try.

I’m watching. I know it’s not much, but it’s something. I’m watching.

Picture 16—Fog.

Picture 17—Fog.

Picture 18—Fog.

Author’s Notes

(from Gravity Wells short story collection)

“Shadow Album”: In the 1980s, I did a lot of theater: writing, acting, directing, and improvising (which is writing, acting, and directing combined). Somehow in the middle of that, I got involved in a mask workshop—possibly because said workshop was taught by my wife, Linda Carson.

Masks are powerful things, which is why they feature prominently in shamanistic religious traditions. Donning a mask is often the first step to donning an alternate personality. Masks are therefore used in some types of theater training to help students learn to set aside their mundane selves and become something Other.

If this sounds hokey when you read it on the page, let me assure you it’s very effective in practice. Masks can have a powerful psychological effect…if you let them. In some sense, you can “become” the mask: someone you’d never let yourself be otherwise. There are obvious risks in this process, which is why mask workshops should always be led by people who know what they’re doing; but taking risks is one of the great exhilarations of acting, and when it works, you can be transformed.

In this particular workshop, we constructed our own masks. The mask I built, and the personality I discovered within that mask, are exactly like the character ToPu (pronounced “toa-poo”) as described in “Shadow Album.” The mask of poor sad ToPu still sits in my study as I type these words—the closest thing to a magical object I’ve ever made.

Content

Shadow Album
by James Alan Gardner

Author’s Notes (from Gravity Wells short story collection)