Authors: Sheri S. Tepper
“The most efficient strategy was economic,” said D’Jevier in that same remote, uncaring voice. “Pay them so little they can’t get by, or don’t hire them at all because women belong at home, and then throw them in jail when they turn to beggary, thievery, or prostitution because they and their children are hungry.”
Questioner said, “How fortunate you are that the problem has never arisen here on Newholme.”
“Fewer women than men are born,” said Madame.
“So I have been told,” said Questioner. “But the Hags and I know that isn’t true.”
The silence stretched. The Hags stared at one another, their faces very still and white.
Questioner rose. “I might have excused the slaughter of the Timmys for various reasons, but doing away with half the female babies born on this planet I cannot excuse.”
D’Jevier turned away.
Madame cried, “No! You wouldn’t! Jevvy? You couldn’t have?”
Silence. The Hags stared into the distance, saying nothing.
Madame demanded, “D’Jevier, tell me it isn’t true!”
D’Jevier said, “Let us explain …”
“No,” said Questioner. “Do not try to explain. I am, quite frankly, sick of explanations!”
After a lengthy silence, Onsofruct whispered, “What will you do?”
Questioner drew herself up. “Assuming we are left alive to do anything, Revered Hags, I will sterilize the race of mankind on this planet, as I have done elsewhere for less provocation.”
She left them, going out onto the ledge, unwilling to listen to the pleadings that no doubt hung on their lips. It didn’t matter what they said. She didn’t care what they said. Within her, Mathilla, and M’Tafa, and Tiu didn’t care what they said. It was simply more injustice. More repression and torture. It was unforgivable!
Ignoring the tumult at the other end of the ledge, Calvy and Simon were watching the descending monsters. The first of them, one of the great crawlers, had reached the Fauxi-dizalonz, bellowing as it plunged. Behind it, the next one pushed into the liquid, dissolving at the leading edge before the following edge had reached the pond, a pond which lapped at its shores like a living thing, its ripples spreading ever more widely.
The next one in the line was a spherical orb of muscles. “Roll ‘em over,” it cried. From one side Ear dangled, and from the other Tongue flapped, “Roll ‘em over!”
It entered the pond like a cannon ball, with a great body-flopping splash that splatted down in a glistening layer that covered the monster like partially set aspic, dripping from his enormous form as he sank gradually into the goo. Tongue, dislodged by the splash, floated about on the surface, gargling “Help, help, I’m drown-ding….”
Flailing and dragging, Crawly came next, with Old Pete jouncing and throbbing behind him, and it was there that the procession stalled, for Crawly entered the pond so slowly that he dissolved while barely in, leaving no traction to move Old Pete. All the monsters came to a halt, still marching in place, voices calling the cadence:
hup, hup, hup
. Then from somewhere a great voice uttered, shivering the surrounding soil. Several leggers raced from a nearby cave, disassembled to get themselves into position, then reassembled to push Old Pete into the pond, little by little, to the accompaniment of shouted commands by their own voice boxes. “Grab him by the balls! Catch him higher up! Push him in!”
When the last of Pete vanished in the goo, the leggers broke into their constituent parts and fled while the next rank of monsters, still hup-two-three-fouring, moved forward and into the increasingly turbid Fauxi-dizalonz, whose surface was spreading wider with each addition.
From their position on the ledge, Madame broke the silence. “Up around the first curve, there’s Bane and Dyre, and that’s Thor Ashburn next to them.”
“Why is he naked?” asked Onsofruct, distractedly. “And what’s that he’s got wrapped around his waist?”
“It looks very much like a whip,” murmured D’Jevier. “Though it seems to be attached between his legs.”
Glad of the distraction, Madame focused on the distant figure. “Well,” she remarked, “I would say it’s a smaller version of Penis-man’s appendage. One designed for inflicting punishment. How very interesting. Clothed, he showed no hint of it at all.”
“I believe you’re right,” said Questioner from her position at the center of the ledge. “An interesting variant.”
“None of this makes sense,” said Calvy, coming to stand beside Questioner. “How is one to understand it?”
Questioner said, “The Fauzi-dizalonz is like a mirror that reflects one’s desires. When you go through the first time, you come out looking as your thoughts and desires would form you, looking like that thing which is most important to you. To that monster, the one you call Penis-man, being male and light-skinned was most important to him. He emerged pale and male and sat in that cave for centuries becoming ever paler and maler. Whatever the others are, they display what was important to them.”
Calvy said, “If there had been women among them, no doubt some would have emerged as Breast-woman or Uterus-woman or Hair-woman.”
“Lips-woman, or Legs-woman,” offered Simon. “Mouth-woman, Nagger-woman …”
“Enough, Simon,” said Madame, joining them from among the stones, D’Jevier trailing behind.
“But what’s the Fauxi-dizalonz good for?” begged D’Jevier. “What’s its purpose?”
Questioner said, “I infer that when Kaorugi sends one of its parts out to do something, the part returns with information. The information may be so vital that it will suggest a change or improvement in general structure. In the Fauxi-dizalonz, the information can be evaluated and implemented and possibly spread around to other units.” She fell silent, thinking. “From what we’ve heard from the Corojum, I infer also that the Fauxi-dizalonz destroys information. If a part has experienced evil or felt great pain, Kaorugi takes that memory away….”
“But these monsters didn’t go back in the Fauxi-dizalonz? So what will Bofusdiaga do with them now?” asked D’Jevier.
“They have been too long unfinished to send back through. Now they are only raw material,” said Questioner, “from which to assemble a partner for Quaggima. Using one or more of you ladies for motive power.”
Among a small grove of standing stones, the four young people were hunkered down knee to knee with Flowing Green.
“Long ago and long ago,” whispered Flowing Green in a voice like wind through the trees, “Kaorugi knew all living things, for there was only Kaorugi to know. Then came Quaggima. Oh, but it was strange when Quaggima came. Outside-ness came with Quaggima. Other-ness came with Quaggima. Separate life came with Quaggima. Kaorugi knew no outside, no other, no separateness from self until then.
“Kaorugi went deep, to think. Kaorugi makes all living things, but Kaorugi had never thought of making a thinking thing that was not part of itself. Only after Quaggima came, only after mankinds came and killed so many Timmys and Corojumi, only then did Kaorugi wonder if Kaorugi could make something that was not part of itself.
“Kaorugi told the last Corojum to take a pattern of this otherness, and Corojum took a pattern from you, Mouchidi. Corojum took a tiny bit of you, skin and blood, and Corojum bit you and put a tiny bit of Kaorugi into you. Inside you, the Kaorugi part grew. And the part Corojum took from you, Kaorugi used it when it made me. I am a strangeness, Mouchidi. Even Corojum says so, and Corojum is my friend. I am made of Kaorugi and made of you, a Timmy, yes, but a separate-part mankind creature also.
“So, now, if all is not to end or go back to long ago beginning and start over, we must create together, you and I and Kaorugi. Something that is not mankind alone. Not Timmy alone. Not even Kaorugi alone. And we must do it for sorrow of Quaggima, for pity of little ones in the egg, for delirious delight of it, for ecstacy of it, for love of it.”
“We,” said Ellin. “You mean you and Mouche?”
“Flowing Green and Mouche, yes, but Kaorugi says better if also Ellin and Bao and Ornery, if they can,” said Flowing Green. “Because Ellin and Bao and Orneiy are good pretenders, and to make what must be made, we cannot be only what we are, you see?”
“I don’t see,” said Ornery, stubbornly.
Flowing Green whispered a sigh. “On your machine, you saw what the dancers did, what they became, each part doing its own part, thousands of them. This was long in the design, long in the rehearsal. We have no time for design, no time for rehearsal, no time for the many to be choreographed into something huge. We must do it as one thing, first time! To become what we must become, we must imagine. That is the word? We must turn into something else. We must … join, lay aside, divest …”
“Metamorphose,” suggested Bao. “Be turning into a new creature?”
“This is so. Questioner is right. It must be one thing. Male and female and neither. Joy and sorrow and neither. Pleasure and pain and neither. Bigger than we are, and wider and longer, a thing to be to Quaggima what Quaggima needs, and we must do it right, first time.”
“Extemporaneously,” offered Ellin.
“Yes,” cried Flowing Green. “You are good pretenders! I have listened to you in the walls! You imagine. You dance, you are someone else. You are always being other people. You
want
to be other people. And Bao, when he dances, he is a woman person else. And Ornery is a man person else, not what she was born, and Mouche … oh, Mouche is all kinds of things to the women people he knows. Kaorugi is fascinated by you mankinds, that you are not content to be only the thing you are, so you are full of dreams. Well, this is a dream. In this dream we will really become another being. I am … accustomed to this, but mankinds are not. You dream it, you do not do it, but of all mankinds on this world, you four are the best mankinds to try to really do it. Not the Hags, too old, too set, like stone. Not the Questioner, she is not even all flesh that can be reshaped. Not the men, they are set, too, in maleness, only, not like Bao, or even Mouche….”
“It is seeming to be a risk….” murmured Bao. “We might fail, we might die….”
“Ah,” said Flowing Green. “Yes, we may fail, we may die, but if we do not do this, we will truly fail, we will truly die.”
Mouche leaned forward and took Ellin’s hands in his own, murmuring words of encouragement. She would do it. He knew it, and so did she, but she needed to be encouraged.
Bao turned to Ornery, taking her hands, saying in his woman’s voice, “This is being wonderful. Think, Ornery, what an adventure!”
Ornery surprised herself by smiling into his eyes, feeling herself respond to his excitement. “Yes,” she said. “Oh, yes. What are we to do?”
“Now we wait,” said Mouche. “Until it is time.”
Questioner moved only a little distance from the women, and Madame followed her to lean plaintively against the rocky side of the caldera. “Questioner, I realize how angry you must be, but believe me, I didn’t know. Most of the people on Newholme didn’t know. What you accuse them of … it must have been done entirely by the Hags. You aren’t suggesting that they, and I, go into that pond as a kind of punishment or reparation, are you? You’d have told us if there were some other way?”
“Punishment is not my business,” said Questioner. “As I have said to others, it never works anyhow. Putting right is my business. Unfortunately, when things are put right, often the innocent suffer with the guilty. If there were some other way, I would try it. Even if I could reach my ship, which I’ve been unable to do since we first went underground, my crew could do nothing on this short notice, so the situation is simple. We will all be destroyed within the next few hours if something isn’t done, so you women have the choice of self-destruction now, soon, or of living the remainder of your lives in some honor.”
“Honor!”
“You will have saved the Quaggi and its egg. A not inconsiderable achievement.”
“You will save the Quaggi,” cried Madame, “but you will let us die?”
“I, Madame?” Questioner’s eyebrows rose. “I would not think of such a thing. I will simply recommend that mankind not continue on Newholme past the lives of those now living. Even our earliest espousers of human rights limit them to life, liberty, and the pursuit of satisfactions. They do not guarantee posterity or immortality.”
Madame turned away to hide her face. “How long do we have … before we must go into that place?”
“Until the last of these monsters have been absorbed. By then, it will be day. The moons collect near noon, so says the Corojum. All six of the larger ones will be more or less in line with the sun; there will be darkness at noon; we will have one dilly of an eclipse.”
Madame returned to the Hags to tell them brokenly what Questioner had said. They stood where they were, watching. There was nothing else they could do.
Slightly above them on the road, Ashes looked down on the observers and called his sons’ attention to them.
“That’s Mouche over in those rocks,” said Bane, outraged. “What’s he doing here?”
“And there’s that Questioner thing,” said Dyre. “And there’s ol’ Simon and Madame.”
“Who? two, three, four,” muttered Ashes. “Simon? two, three four.”
“Just somebody from House Genevois,” muttered Bane, embarrassed to see Mouche looking up at Ashes’s nakedness. “Why’d you hafta take your clothes off?”
Ashes ignored him. Any clothing worn by the Wilderneers had been stripped away. The rags lay along the descending path. The sight of Mouche made up Bane’s mind for him, and he edged away from Ashes, stepped over the edge of the path behind a large boulder, and waited there while the procession passed him by. He did not notice that Mouche and Ornery, Ellin and Bao had also slipped away to disappear along the boulder-strewn slope that led down to the pond.
Bane heard wings and looked up. Webwings dropped onto the concealing rock and perched there. “What you waitin’ for, boy?”
“I think all you folks should go in first,” said Bane carefully. “Cause you’ve already been in once. Then Dyre and me, because it’ll be our first time.”
“Oh, we’re gonna get all refurbished, we are. Been kind of shabby, lately. You noticed that? Kind of shabby. Kind of worn. But we’ll come out lovely, we will.” Webwings almost purred. “Shiny. Like stars. Just lately, I’ve been thinkin’ about it. All of us have. Hughy Huge. He told me he was gonna be a star.”