“No,” Hresh whispered. “You can’t exist. You all died with the Great World!”
The sapphire-eyes on the left raised one of its little forearms inquiringly.
“How could we have died, little monkey, when we were never alive?” It spoke in a stiff, antiquated way, strange but understandable.
“Never alive?”
“Only machines,” said the one on the right.
“Placed here to welcome human beings at winter’s end into the city of our masters, in whose image we were made,” said the center sapphire-eyes.
“Machines,” said Hresh, absorbing it, digesting it. “Made in the image of your masters. Who died in the Long Winter. I see. I see.” He came up as close to them as he dared, craning his neck to peer into the deep mysteries of their gleaming eyes. “We can go into the city, then? You’ll show us all that it holds?”
He was trembling with awe. He had never seen anything so majestic as these three. And yet he felt an obscure sense of disappointment. All they were were clever artificials of some sort. Not really alive. He had wanted them to be true sapphire-eyes folk, miraculously sustained through the time of cold. But it was impossible. He put that hope aside.
Then he said, after a moment, “Why did you call me ‘little monkey’? Don’t you recognize a human being when you see one?”
The three sapphire-eyes made strange hissing sounds, which Hresh felt to be laughter. He heard another sound from behind him: little gasps and sighs of wonder. He glanced quickly back and saw Koshmar and Torlyri and the rest, standing with mouths agape.
“But you are a little monkey,” said the center sapphire-eyes. “And those are larger monkeys, standing behind you. And it was monkeys of a different and more foolish kind that attacked you in the forest.”
“ Theywere monkeys, perhaps. We are human beings,” said Hresh firmly.
“Ah, no,” said the left-hand sapphire-eyes, and made the little hissing sound again. “Not humans, no. The humans departed long ago, at the outset of the Long Winter.”
“Departed?”
“They are gone, yes. You are only their distant cousins, do you see? Both you and the forest-folk who chatter in the treetops.”
Hresh felt his face flaming with bewilderment and dismay.
“I believe none of this.”
“It is so. You and the forest folk—”
“I forbid you to speak of us and them in the same breath!”
“But they are your kin, little monkey.”
“No! No!”
“Oh, your kind is far superior in matters of the mind, that I will grant. But never confuse yourselves with humans, child. You are not made from human stock, but of something other, something similar, perhaps something of a different line of descent from the ancient ancestor of humans and monkeys both: a second attempt, perhaps, at achieving what the gods achieved with humans.”
Hresh stared. Confusion and wrath choked his throat. These are malicious lies, he thought. Intended to confound and discomfort him, because he had been so rash as to intrude on the age-old solitude of these three malevolent artificials.
“You are somewhat like the humans,” said the left-hand sapphire-eyes, “but not very much so. I assure you of that. They had no hair on their bodies, the humans, and they had no tails, and they—”
“This isn’t a tail!” cried Hresh, indignant. “It’s a sensing-organ!”
“A modified tail, yes,” the sapphire-eyes went on implacably. “It is quite good, it is truly remarkable, in fact. But you are not human. There no longer are humans here. What you are is monkeys, or the children of monkeys. The humans are gone from the earth.”
The incredible words were crushing. They had to be lying, they were toying with him, trying to torment and humiliate him with this hideous impossible slur. But he could not throw it off with the contempt it deserved. He felt his anger giving way to despair.
“Not — human?” Hresh said, close to tears, feeling very small and ugly. “Not — human? No. No. It isn’t possible.”
“What is this?” Koshmar burst in, at last. “Who are these creatures? Sapphire-eyes, are they? And still alive?”
“No,” said Hresh, gathering himself. “Only artificials in the form of sapphire-eyes, guardians of the gate of Vengiboneeza. But did you hear what they said, Koshmar? Crazy stuff. That we aren’t human. That we’re only monkeys, or descended from monkeys, that our sensing-organs are nothing but monkey tails, that the real humans are gone from here—”
Koshmar looked startled. “What nonsense is this?”
“They say—”
“Yes, I heard what they say.” She turned to Torlyri. “What do you make of this?”
The offering-woman, plainly uncertain, blinked, smiled a nervous smile, frowned. “These are ancient creatures. Perhaps they have knowledge which—”
“It’s absurd,” Koshmar said bluntly. She gestured at Hresh. “You! Chronicler! You’ve studied the past. Are we humans or aren’t we?”
“I don’t know. The early chronicles are very difficult. The humans are gone, these artificials say,” Hresh murmured. He was shivering in the forest warmth. His eyes felt hot and swollen: the tears were a moment away.
Koshmar seemed to puff up with fury. “And what would humans be, then, if we are not humans?”
“The artificials say that they had no tails — no sensing-organs — they were without fur—”
“That is some other kind of human,” said Koshmar with a grand dismissing swoop of her arm. “A different tribe, long vanished, if they even existed at all. How do we know they ever lived? We have nothing but the word of these — these things here, these artificials. Let them say whatever they like. We know what we are.”
Hresh was silent. He tried to summon his knowledge of the chronicles, but all that would rise to his mind was cloudy ambiguities.
“We are the children of Lord Fanigole and Lady Theel, who led us to the cocoon,” said Koshmar vehemently. “They were humans and we are humans, and so be it.”
From the sapphire-eyes’ artificials, once again, came that hissing laughter.
Koshmar rounded on them fiercely. She made an angry sweeping gesture, as though brushing cobwebs out of the air before her face. “We are humans,” she repeated, and there was something terrible and awesome in the way she said it. “Let no creature, living or artificial, deny it!”
Hresh hovered between fierce agreement and numb disbelief. He felt as though his soul were fluttering in the balance. Not human? Not human ? What did that mean? How could it be? A monkey, nothing but a monkey, a superior kind of monkey? No. No. No. He looked toward Torlyri, and the offering-woman took his hand in hers. “Koshmar is right,” Torlyri whispered. “The sapphire-eyes wish to mislead us. Koshmar speaks the truth.”
“Yes,” cried Koshmar, overhearing. “It is the truth. If ever there were humans once without fur, without sensing-organs, well, they were some misbegotten mistake, and they are gone now. But we are here. And we are human, by right of blood, by right of succession. It is the truth. By Yissou, it is the truth!” She came forward and faced the three hulking reptiles just within the gate. “What do you say, sapphire-eyes? You tell us we are not humans. But are we not the humans now? Humans of a different kind from the sort you claim to have known, perhaps, but humans of a better kind: for they are gone, if ever they lived at all, and we are here. We have endured, where they have not. We have survived to winter’s end, and now we will take back the world from the hjjk-folk, or whoever else may have seized it in the time of coldness. What do you say, sapphire-eyes? Are we not humans? May we not enter great Vengiboneeza? What do you say?”
There was a long aching silence.
“I tell it to you again,” declared Koshmar unwaveringly. “If we are not the humans you knew, we are the humans now. Admit it! Admit it! Humans by right of succession. It is our destiny to have this city. Where are they, the ones you call the real humans? Where? Where? We are here! I tell you, we are the humans now.”