There was no reply.
"Flowing Green?"
Still no reply.
"Ready then," said Kaorugi to his tunnelers. "Now."
The tunnelers at the trench redoubled their efforts. In the Fauxi-dizalonz, the form became more definite, with edges and fringes. The thudding at the heart of the world came more rapidly.
Calvy, clinging to a boulder, shook his head angrily. Oh, to be so close and have this wonder hidden from him!
"Come," murmured Simon, dragging him from the edge. "Your curiosity will kill you, g"Valdet."
So quickly they could not follow it, the Fauxi-dizalonz rose of itself, making a single great fist of green that broke out the narrow dike of rock between it and the trench and poured furiously down that trench to the lip, tumbling over it into the chasm, eating the trench ever deeper as it flowed.
Deeper and deeper yet it cut, splitting the wall between caldera and chasm, all the Fauxi-dizalonz spilling into the abyss, an endlessly flowing green that poured silently, a cataract of purest emerald, down and down and down. Within the flow, an enormous and gla.s.sy shadow moved. Wings it had, or perhaps tentacles. A body it had and many eyes, for they peered upward for an instant before it plunged over the wall. They could not tell what it looked like, and even after it was gone, the emerald flow went on.
Below, the abyssal pounding slowed. The green rose around the Quaggima, totally submerging him except for the upper stretch of his wings. Beings of fire danced in the depths while music rained upon them from the walls of the abyss, for there the Timmys sang and the Joggiwagga beat upon stone pillars to make sounds like bells and blew into hollow stones to make flute and horn sounds while all around crouched a thousand other Joggiwagga, drumming on their own hides, stretched between their spikes. Behind and beneath it all sang the huge voice of Bofusdiaga, the mountains giving voice, the world making thunder.
The flow slowed, abated, finally ended. The trench ran dry. The Fauxi-dizalonz was an empty well, a deep and murky vacancy, all its contents plus the wellspring of its self drained away into the new lake that had acc.u.mulated within the chasm.
"I can"t see anything," whispered Calvy, who had moved back to a rimstone that still rocked to the rhythms of the deep.
"I don"t think we are supposed to," said Questioner, extending her stabilizers. "Shall I tell you what the Timmys are singing?"
Calvy looked incredulous. She smiled and said: "Quaggima despairs, driven against desire to brood Her sp.a.w.n, now loving death and longing to be gone.
Oh, Bofusdiaga, pain defying, Oh, blessed Corojumi, who repair, This Quaggima is dying, Give him your care!"Quaggida destroys all life but Hers. He lies beside the nest where his child and our doom are coalesced.
Oh, Corojumi, bring deliverance!
Oh, great Bofusdiaga, who alloys all life, grant through this dance compensatory joys...."
"How do you know that is what they are singing?" asked D"Jevier. "It is not in our language."
"When we were afloat upon the Pillared Sea, they sang it upon the ship during the voyage of Quaggima, and Corojum had the kindness to translate it, though he left out the genders or mixed them up. You are not the first people to achieve compensating pleasures, Lady. Long before you came here, Bofusdiaga understood the need for them."
D"Jevier snapped, "Are you convinced that at least that part of our arrangement is a good one, then? That our Consorts and our systems are appropriate?"
"Ah, no," said Questioner. "On Newholme, I am convinced of very little."
The song went on, and the dance. The moons moved into line with the sun and a gloom descended, a palpable shade that seemed to war with the music, advancing upon it, being driven away only to advance again. The earth shook, the mountains skipped, distant peaks tumbled like children"s blocks, and still the music went on, the liquid depths surging again and again, waves leaping high, only to fall into gla.s.sy calms that swirled and eddied and rose again.
When two moons moved from the face of the sun, the music softened. As other moons sailed out and away from their gathering, the music softened more. The world stopped rocking, and they breathed again. Bofusdiaga"s voice fell silent, then those of the Timmys, and last the drumming of the Joggiwagga ceased, leaving only the great stone flutes and horns making sonorous harmonies over the misty depths.
During all this time, even during the worst of the tremors, the tunnelers had been repairing the trench, chewing up loads of stone and regurgitating them into the ditch, while leggers pounded them down with their many feet. Lit by the fiery light of midafternoon, only a rough scar on the stone marked where the ditch had been. All was silent. No Timmy spoke, no creature moved. Birdthings sat silent along the rim, like a fringe.
The watchers waited. Inside the nearest cave, the members of the entourage muttered among themselves. At last, as evening came, a green spring began to bubble up into the depths of the Fauxi-dizalonz, throwing emerald sparkles in all directions. The stone music faded into quiet. The birdthings flew. Fogs rose from the abyss of the Quaggima, thickly roiling upward to fall as cool rain. When the rain stopped, the abyss was flooded down its western side with a fierce and golden light that gave them a transitory look at every detail of the chasm. The great black wings lay quietly upon the walls, and at the bottom the obsidian gleam of the great egg shone beside the still form of the Quaggima. Nothing else.
The world turned. The abyss shifted out of the sunlight, shadow streaming across its bottom and onto the eastern wall.
"Where are they?" whispered Simon. "Madame, where"s Mouche?"
She shook her head. Nothing so small as a mere person could be seen at this distance. But then, Mouche and his companions had not been that small when they had flowed away. She would have asked the Corojum, but it had disappeared while they had watched the moons. Now there was nothing in the upper caldera but the sodden surface, a scar on the rock, the slowly filling pool of the Fauxi-dizalonz, and the trundling back and forth of the tunnelers and leggers who were smoothing the stone where the trench had been. Of that great being who had plunged over the edge into the chasm, there was no sign at all.
They sat without speaking until the sun had fallen well toward the west, at which point they were recovering sufficiently that Madame and Simon were beginning to murmur to one another their grief over Mouche, and the Hags, huddled with Calvy, were beginning to cast aggrieved glances at Questioner.
Seeing this, Questioner rose and said imperiously, "Now is not the time to discuss the future, if, indeed, it becomes a matter for discussion at all. I intend to have a closer look." She went toward the steep track, and the others straggled after her, for no reason except that it gave them something to do.
They had gone three-quarters of the way down when D"Jevier asked, "Madame, aren"t those your boys?"
Madame searched the caldera, seeing two young men standing beside the rapidly filling pool.
"Bane and Dyre," murmured Madame. "They were never my boys, but I wondered where they"d got to. Now what are they doing?"
"Making up their minds to enter the pond," said Questioner, who had amplified her hearing. "Bane is telling his brother to jump, and his brother is saying he"ll wait until the water gets higher."
A clutch of Timmys approached the two boys, backed by a Joggiwagga. Those on the trail could see the argument that resulted, but they could hear none of it.
Questioner asked Calvy, "These boys killed Marool Mantelby. Leaving aside for the moment the fact that Marool was their mother and that she probably needed killing, what does your system of justice require?"
Calvy replied, "Strictly interpreted, our law would require blue-bodying. For both of them."
D"Jevier commented, "That"s true. But when we wrote those laws we did not have access to a Fauxi-dizalonz."
She had no sooner spoken than the pond began to bubble and percolate, shimmering of its own motion rather than from the wind. A tongue of green licked out of it and wrapped around both Bane and Dyre, lapping them down into the depths. At once, several of the Timmys ran around the pond to the opposite side and waited there.
The persons from the ledge reached the level of the caldera floor before two squat, ugly gargoyles crawled from the pond to stare at one another in horror. Their stench could be detected even by those across the pond. The Timmys did not suffer it. Immediately, they pushed the two back into the pond while, across from their point of entry, other Timmys readied themselves.
Questioner and her a.s.sociates drew closer to observe the eventual emergence of two undistinguished and indistinguishable young men who gagged and gasped upon the sh.o.r.e, but gave off no detectable odor. The pond glittered, made a strangled noise, and spat a mouthful of clothing onto the sh.o.r.e beside them.
Questioner approached the two, prodding Bane with one foot. "How are you, boy? Are you all in one piece?"
"I"m all right," said Bane. He gagged, rolled over, then crawled toward his sodden trousers. "I"m hungry. We haven"t had a decent meal since we left ... wherever it was. Where was it, Dyre?"
"House Genevois," said Dyre, trying to find the sleeves in his wet shirt. "Haven"t had anything good to eat since then."
"And what are you doing here?" asked Questioner.
"Damfino," said Bane, staring about himself in wonder. "Hey, lookit all the Timmys with no clothes on!"
"Do you young men by any chance remember Marool Mantelby?" asked Calvy in an innocent voice.
"Or someone called Ashes?" asked Madame.
Bane and Dyre looked at one another, mystified, then back at the group. "Sorry, don"t think we"ve met anybody like that."
Madame shrugged. D"Jevier shook her head. Onsofruct narrowed her nostrils and stared through slitted eyes. They were Bane and Dyre, truly, but they weren"t the same young men.
"Blue-bodying?" D"Jevier asked Onsofruct.
"I see no point in it," said Onsofruct, turning to Calvy and Simon. "Do you?"
The two men shook their heads, then stopped, fixing their gaze toward the chasm. "Look," breathed Calvy, pointing down the almost invisible scar where the trench had been.
Laboring toward them over the lip of the chasm came four trudging figures. Ellin and Bao and Ornery and Mouche. Not exactly Mouche. Mouche with a billow of emerald hair that moved like seagra.s.s. Mouche, smiling quietly. Mouche-timmy. Mouche-Flowing Green.
None of them spoke. The four approached, plodding wearily, yet with glowing faces.
"Now we are having time!" Bao called to Questioner. "Yes? Time for tunneling out the Quaggi egg? For lifting Quaggima?"
Mouche stopped where he was, leaning against the rock as if exhausted, but the other three came on to meet the group advancing toward them.
"Were you seeing dance, Questioner?" asked Bao with a wide grin. "We are being d.a.m.n s.e.xy."
"I"m afraid not," she replied. "No one up here did. We heard climactic music, we saw whirlwinds and surf."
"It was all very dramatic," said Calvy. "But not at all s.e.xually explicit."
"Good." Ellin sighed. "At the time, I thought it was very beautiful, but I wouldn"t have wanted it to be ... observed, or even recorded. Besides, in stories it"s nicer when they leave a good deal to the imagination."
"Tell me," Madame whispered to her. "What actually happened?"
Ellin and Bao struggled to find words, glancing at one another. Finally, Ornery said, "The way I remember it is that first we sort of dissolved and then we sort of aggregated, and the thing we aggregated into was put together with all of Ellin"s romantic notions and Bao"s womanly beings and all the satisfactions I"d ever had, plus everything Kaorugi knew about the Quaggima, plus everything Mouche had learned about lovemaking, and then that being dived over the cliff, and we made love to the Quaggima. That kept it distracted while all the pulling and tugging was going on, and afterward, it went to sleep. That"s all."
"And I"d have been embarra.s.sed, really, except it wasn"t me, or Mouche, or any of us," murmured Ellin. "It was something else entirely."
"What happened with Mouche?" asked Madame.
Ellin nodded. "That was a little surprising. When it was all finished, Kaorugi separated us out again, but not Mouche and Flowing Green. Flowing Green was always sort of part of him, so Kaorugi-or maybe Bofusdiaga, I"m not quite sure-left them together."
"How very strange," said Questioner.
Bao shrugged. "Being frank, Questioner, it is not seeming that strange to me. After all this doing and dancing and being, I am regarding gender things in a new light. Both are being much more capacious than I was ever thinking!"
"We owe you a debt of grat.i.tude," said Questioner, meaning it sincerely.
Ellin shook herself and spoke again. "That"s true. But you needn"t owe us, Questioner. When we"ve had time to consider it, we may ask you a favor."
"So soon after such an experience? You recovered from it quickly."
"Well, we talked about it on the way up, while we were resting, and we figured somebody somebody owes us a favor. It won"t be inappropriate or greedy. You can count on that." owes us a favor. It won"t be inappropriate or greedy. You can count on that."
Bao said pleadingly, "We are not bothering you with it now, Questioner. Everything is being too upset and weird, and there are rocks still falling off mountains. And besides ... besides ..." His voice trailed away. Besides, he had been going to say, Flowing Green had changed everything when she had talked to them before the transformation. She had told them something wonderful, right there at the end-something they hadn"t even had a chance to think about. Not yet.
"Well, if you want a favor, I can at least consider it," said Questioner. "You"ve been good and dutiful aides. You"re deserving of some consideration. And what about Mouche?"
"You"ll have to ask Mouche," said Ellin. "I don"t feel all that different from before. Not yet. There were only five of us, but the memory is already fading. I know why the Timmys couldn"t remember, all those thousands of them. But Mouche ... I don"t think he will forget. I think something different happened to Mouche."
"I shouldn"t be surprised," muttered Questioner. "Though this planet has, on several occasions, surprised me." She turned to stare at the two Hags, who were standing a little distance away. "Unpleasantly," she added with a sniff.
Onsofruct caught Questioner"s glance. Her eyes brimmed with tears, and she turned away to hide the tears that spilled down her cheeks. "It"s going to happen, Jevvy. Our grandmothers made the wrong choice."
"No," said D"Jevier angrily. "They made the right choice. It just doesn"t happen to fit into Haraldson"s edicts."
"What?" demanded Calvy. "What are you talking about?"
"She"s going to sterilize mankind on Newholme," murmured D"Jevier.
"Because of the Timmys?" Calvy cried, not waiting for an answer. "She"s going to sterilize the people?" He turned to confront Questioner, saying accusingly, "Sterilize my children? That"s a rotten way to repay Mouche and Ornery for their efforts on your behalf, Questioner. Or all the people on this planet who never killed a single Timmy. No future for them, either?"
"What are you talking about?" cried Ornery. "She"s going to do what?"
"The innocent suffer with the guilty," said Questioner, with a significant glance at the Hags. "And it is not because of the Timmys! Let them explain it to you." She moved ponderously up the hill away from them.
Behind her, D"Jevier burst into tears, to be comforted by Ellin, who stared after Questioner, wondering if she and Bao should stay or go after her. Bao put a hand on her shoulder, holding her in place. Well then, they would stay. They did not yet understand what exactly was happening, but they understood well enough that Mouche and Ornery along with the rest of Newholmian people were condemned to a fate that had sunk the others of their group deep in grief.
Away toward the chasm, Mouche looked up, noticed the unhappy group by the Fauxi-dizalonz and came slowly toward them.
"How can I tell him?" wept Madame. "Everything he"s done for us, for us all, and now this. I can"t tell him."
"It wouldn"t make any difference to him, would it?" asked Ornery. "He never had any future, anyhow. Not in the way of children and a family."
"But this is different," Madame cried. "Different ... when it"s the whole world."
Ornery, watching Mouche"s slow approach, was not at all sure that the difference was worth mentioning.
61.
Love Cards Wild.
Over the succeeding days, the Quaggi egg was tunneled away from the body of Kaorugi and also out of the body of Quaggima-a job for which Kaorugi created two large creatures with geo-surgical apt.i.tudes. The blast capsules beneath the egg were also carefully disa.s.sembled and Questioner"s ship-whose captain had claimed "parts failure" as an excuse for failing to respond during the gathering of the moons-proved capable under the Gablian commander of lifting Quaggima and the egg and the dangerous hatching mechanism from the planet"s surface. Quaggima was deposited on one of the tiny moonlets...o...b..ting Newholme, for a time of rehabilitation, but the egg was taken farther out, to be cracked when Quaggima was ready. According to Bofusdiaga, Quaggima intended to take his children under his wing, male and female both, to start a Quaggian rights movement, a movement that might seek an allegiance with the Council of Worlds, who would be asked to lend certain ships to the task of rescuing abused and dying Quaggi. During the enlightening intercourse that had taken place in the chasm, the Quaggima had acquired strong feelings about Quaggian s.e.xuality.
These effort were still underway when Mouche paid a visit to House Genevois, where he found both Madame and D"Jevier, pale and shadow-faced, grieving the future loss of their people upon Newholme. Mouche hugged them both and told them to keep up their spirits, use their heads, the game wasn"t over, there might be a card or two to play yet, burying them in so many hope-inducing cliches that they both laughed.
"Are you coming back to House Genevois, Mouche?" Madame asked. "I will understand if you choose not to do so."
"Questioner has offered to pay off my contract. As for what I will do, I am uncertain at the moment, but I think we would all agree, Madame, that I am an unlikely Consort." He shook out his shock of green hair, letting it flow like seagra.s.s, grinning at her in a devilishly intimate manner.
"You are unlikely, Mouche. You"re also unusually impertinent." She gave him a tearful smile.
The smile undid him. He had sworn to himself to say nothing, but these women needed a hint of hope. "Madame, I have set myself the task of changing Questioner"s mind. If I fail, keep in your minds that Kaorugi does not want mankind departed from its world, and Kaorugi is capable of much we do not understand."