Asimov's.com publie une nouvelle en ligne et en vo de Robert Silverberg 

Elle s'intitule THE END OF THE LINE, et en voici un extrait : 

Citation:

f you really want to learn something about the Shapeshifters,” the District Resident said, “you ought to talk to Mundiveen. He lived among them for about a dozen years, you know.”  “And where do I find this Mundiveen?” Stiamot asked.  “Oh, you’ll see him around. Crazy old doctor with a limp. Eccentric, annoying, a mean little man—he stands right out.”  It was Stiamot’s second day in Domgrave, the largest city—an overgrown town, really—in this obscure corner of northwestern Alhanroel. He had never been in this part of the continent before. No one he knew ever had, either. This was agricultural country, a fertile land of odd greenish soil where a widely spaced series of little settlements, mere scattered specks amidst zones of densely forested wilderness, lay strung out along the saddle that separated massive Mount Haimon from its almost identical twin, the equally imposing Zygnor Peak. The planters here ruled their isolated estates as petty potentates, pretty much doing as they pleased. The region was in its dry time of the year here, when everything that was not irrigated was parched, and the wind out of the west carried the faint salt tang of the distant sea. The only official representative of the government was the District Resident, a fussy, soft-faced man named Kalban Vond, who had been stationed out here for many years, filing all the proper reports on time and stamping all the necessary bureaucratic forms but performing no other significant function.

Pour plus de détails et la suite, c'est ici