The Caterpillar's Question by Piers Anthony and Philip José Farmer (38 page)

He wondered if the Gaol's viewing instruments could penetrate electrical storms. If not, the honkers would be helped. They could do whatever they were going to do without alarming the Gaol.

By then, the honkers had completed making three perfect circles. They were standing still, listening to their group leaders. He supposed that they were still giving instructions or, maybe, a pep talk.

Then several leaders and a number of people in the lines began honking loudly and pointing up and outward. Jack said, "My God!"

The tops of the dark hemispheres rising above the crater wall startled him so much that he did not immediately recognize them. For a few numbing seconds, he was completely at a loss. As they continued to rise, their nature became evident. He said, again, "My God!"

They were Gaol spaceships.

He groaned. But, within seconds, he was yelling at Candy. "Tell Garth to ask the Gaol commander what's the meaning of this."

He waved at the spaceships. Candy whistled at the cyborg. While waiting, Jack, turning slowly, counted the vessels, as if it made any difference how many there were. There were fifteen, each stationed about a mile apart from each other. They had the same structure as the one which the honkers had invaded. That they could be seen at twenty-five miles distance and in this pale light meant that they were enormous indeed.

The empire was showing some of its awesome muscle. Garth whistled then. Candy said, "The commander does not acknowledge the message."

But the ships did not move after they had risen in their entirety above the crater wall. They were going to hover there until... until when?

They might wait until the four hours are up, Jack thought. They have to. If we did intend to cave in to them and give Tappy up, they'd be screwing up by moving in now.

He relaxed somewhat.

The Integrator had quit staring at the ships. Now he was again leading Tappy by her hand. His obvious destination was the rose-red cut-quartz throne. Jack followed them. When the two went through the three lines of honkers toward the stone, he did the same. Behind him came Candy and Garth. Nobody tried to stop them. The moment he was inside the inner circle, however, the lines began moving. The Latest in them shuffled along, honking softly. The group leaders had taken the places left empty for them until now. Jack counted the number of people in each circle. Ninety in the inner ring. Ninety in the next ring. One hundred and eighty in the outer ring. Three hundred and sixty altogether. A compass card had three hundred and sixty points.

The numbers of honkers in the circles were directly related to the compass card points. Thus, since there were three hundred and sixty images and symbols (some groupings were counted as one) on the crater-wall ring, there had to be some relationship between the dancers and the paintings.

The images and symbols were still visible, though they would not be when the storm struck. They moved with majestic slowness, seeming to be as patient as eternity itself. Patient for what? he thought. They had not been set here without purpose.

The Integrator had led Tappy to the throne, which faced west. He made gestures that she should sit down in it. Before she had finished doing that, a honker handed the shaman a tall conical cap topped by a stiff paper model of the three crater rings. Then he gave him a crooked wooden staff at the end of which was a carving of a Maker's face.

Thus accoutered, the Integrator glared around him, his empty eye socket seeming even fiercer than the other eye. He gestured at Jack and his companions. When they came to him, he pushed and pulled until Candy was at the south end of the throne, Garth was at the north end, and Jack was at the east end. Though he was placed so he faced east, Jack did not keep his back to Tappy. He turned around to keep an eye on her. The shaman did not try to make him face eastward again. He was too busy dancing and honking and waving the staff in front of Tappy.

Meanwhile, the people in the three circles had stepped up their pace a little. The inner ring was moving counterclockwise; the middle ring, clockwise; the outer ring, counterclockwise.

The crater ring rotated counterclockwise. If there were indeed two other rings, as the models indicated, then these probably rotated in the same directions as the two outer circles of honkers.

Jack thought. What the hell is this? Magic? A form of sympathetic magic? Where things desired are simulated? Thus, the primitive practice of trying to cause rainfall by pouring water. In this case, simulating the operation of the three circles would cause them to rotate. But they were already moving. At least, the inner crater ring was moving, and he assumed that the other rings were also rotating

Why, then, were they performing a sympathetic magical rite?

The pace was being stepped up again. The stomping of feet was faster and louder. The shaking of the gourds was faster. All were honking the same "chant."

Of course, Jack thought, they're trying to make the great wheels set in the crater go faster. Oh, God, what a waste of time! We should be thinking about ideas to get Tappy away from the Gaol!

But the Integrator knew that his world and Jack's would be destroyed if an attempt was made to spirit her away. Moreover, there was just no way of escape for her. None. None at all!

What about a gate? Not the boulder-gate to Earth but another gate to another world.

No use. Even if they had one, and surely the Integrator would have told them about it if one was available, the Gaol would ruin forever the two planets. And they would keep on hounding Tappy until they caught her.

The Integrator was using this magical ritual because it was his only hope to save the Imago. Not to mention himself, Jack thought.

But the shaman might know something that he and Tappy did not know and for some reason should not know just now.

Maybe they were being kept ignorant because of the Gaol. If these did catch him and Tappy, they might gouge out of them the truth about the rings-- whatever that was-- and thus thwart whatever it was that the Integrator planned.

Jack just did not know, and he was helpless to do anything but watch this useless ritual. His mind was spinning like a centrifuge. An empty centrifuge.

Suddenly, there was a silence. The shaman had lifted the staff and shaken it three times. At that signal, the Latest had stopped both their honking and their dancing. The Integrator spun around to face Tappy. Jack could not see her face, but he imagined that it reflected the terror and confusion she surely must be feeling.

The shaman threw his staff up in the air, bent over, seized Tappy's blouse, and tore it open. One hand threw away the blouse and the other reached out-- he did not even look-- and caught the staff as it came down toward earth. It had whirled three times while aloft.

Tappy gasped. Then the honkers blew one long strong blast. Immediately, they began dancing and chanting again, stomping their feet more swiftly and harder. Jack could feel the earth tremble slightly beneath his feet.

The Integrator reached with his free hand and touched the Imaget, which was almost invisible in Tappy's brownish hair. It did not move. He gently picked it up and placed it over her left breast. At this, the honkers not only moved forward faster, they began whirling, and their honking was so loud that it hurt Jack's ears.

Jack thought, Is this going to go on for four hours? I'll go crazy. So will Tappy.

Then he cried out with horror. The Integrator had moved one step closer to Tappy. The tentacle had lifted, and it had plunged its poisonous tooth into her breast. It came out swiftly from the flesh, but some of the poison had been injected.

Tappy had not flinched when struck. She sat as stiffly as before, her head unmoving, staring at the west.

Jack came out of his numbness and started to crouch before jumping over the throne so that he could attack the shaman. He meant to kill him. But two very strong hands gripped him from behind. A blast of air ruffled the hair on the back of his head, and a blast of sound did deafen him for a second. He struggled and could not move.

Candy called out to him. He could barely hear her.

"He wouldn't harm her! It's all right! It's part of the ritual! She's just partly paralyzed for a little while! That makes her more open to the Imaget's channels!"

Candy must be guessing, but what she said made sense. He quit struggling. After a few seconds, the hands withdrew.

Open to the Imaget's channels? For what?

The shaman was bent over so that his head-nose almost touched hers. Jack could not hear what he was "saying," but he would not have understood it, anyway. Was the shaman speaking to her or to the Imago through her? Whatever he was telling her, his tense gestures made him look as if he were giving her instructions which he was repeating over and over. If she heard him, she did not respond with any body movements. But her lips might be moving.

The storm was coming closer. The dark clouds overhead, forerunners of the blacker and energy-shot body, were moving more swiftly. The breeze was a wind now, blowing his hair and Tappy's toward the east and raising dust clouds. The Integrator had lowered a chin strap to keep his conical hat from being blown off. The rains had passed over the western wall of the crater. Their drops looked like a solid silvery plate with discolorations running down here and there. The Gaol ships hovering there had disappeared behind the rain. He turned back to watch Tappy. He caught his breath.

She was shining!

The glow was bright, about the strength of a dozen 100-watt light bulbs. But it was becoming brighter, spreading out from her as if the windows of her flesh were slowly opening.

That glow came from deep within her.

He shouted, "The Imago!"

And then he cried out again but uttered no words.

The fleet above the eastern wall was moving slowly toward the center of the crater.

Chapter 20

Abruptly, the row of spaceships was veiled as rain struck. A few seconds later, the vessels faded away entirely. The downpour slashed into the center of the plain, drenching the area around the throne. The thunder boomed loudly as if it were a vast boulder rolling down a mountain. A lightning bolt like the flaming crooked cane of a blind god slammed into the earth nearby. A tree cracked into two parts, one of which toppled over.

Despite the drenching, the thunder, and the lightning, the honkers kept on dancing and chanting. Jack had jumped when the bolt had hit the tree, but he had been looking at Tappy's back when it happened. She had not moved. Nor did she seem affected by the rain and the cold. Her brownish hair had turned black with the water; that was the only change.

The light emanating from her was as bright as before the full rage of the storm. It pushed back the darkness brought by the clouds and the deluge.

Although he was shivering with fright and cold, Jack felt a tiny warmth deep inside him. The Integrator had done it! Somehow, he had evoked the Imago. But he could not have done it until Tappy had matured. Just when that had taken place, he did not know. Nor did he know the definition of "maturity." Somewhere along the line of time, she had passed from girlhood into full womanhood. It had happened very recently. Otherwise, the Integrator would have performed this ritual before now. He had been waiting for the unseen moment to occur. In fact, he must have been very nervous because he knew that the Gaol would be down on them like a lioness leaping on a zebra.

Maturity had come to her as silently and as unseen as the moment when a peach ripened and was ready for eating. Yet, the Integrator had felt it. Or had he been so desperate that he had started the ritual but had not known if she was ready for it?

It did not matter now. She had passed from human chrysalis into human imago just as the Imago-- which had really been a chrysalis-- was now an imago.

Jack, the eternal questioner, could not help wondering who had made the Imago. It seemed to him that the Makers had done it. They seemed to have been able to cross the bridge from the physical to the superphysical or the supernatural.

The infraphysical?

The death-shadow caused by the action of the radiator indicated that. Had the Makers been trying to find a gate into other worlds which were not physical worlds as Earthpeople defined such? And had they accidentally opened a gate into the afterlife itself? A gate they could not use.

Had this experimental project also revealed that the Makers could construct an entity such as the Imago? Though it was artificial, it was immortal. And it could be used only under certain conditions.

Either the Imago had been made because of the challenge of the Gaol or it been made before the Gaol had risen like the temperature of a malignant fever to spread through the universe. The latter event seemed more reasonable. Whatever the chronology, the Makers, despite their vast knowledge, had made the Imago a little bit too late. They had been vanquished. Not, however, before they had created a heritage that threatened the Gaol empire.

That heritage had been preserved by the Latest, the seemingly primitive species whom the Gaol did not fear. They had passed on this heritage-- part of it, anyway-- to a few human beings. And to who knew how many other species?

The honkers may have made the gates among many worlds so that the plot against the Gaol could spread. Or they may simply have used what they found in the Makers' burial chambers. The chamber which Jack and Tappy had seen was not the only one in the underground complex.

Lightning smashed the ground nearby again, though it was not as close as the tree-riving bolt. Its flash seemed to light up a previously hidden thought in Jack.

The prophetic paintings in that burial chamber had been recently repainted. The Integrator had told him that. But what if the Integrator had not repainted the ancient images? What if the walls had been blank or he had brushed over old works? Then he had painted the images which the two humans saw? They had been a pious fraud, a device to stimulate Tappy into a state where the Imago would manifest itself.

It was not so much physical maturity that had opened the gate in Tappy and allowed the Imago to be summoned. It was a maturity of the psyche.