Alice looked at Jay. Her face was as pale as he suspected his was. Almost imperceptibly, the Brass Babboon started picking up speed again. If they didn’t jump now, they would be carried out the interface… At the same moment, they took courage from the other’s fear and made the leap. Mizar, Dubhe on his back, came last, making certain that Jay was safe.
They hit the ground hard.
“Thought for a moment you folks were going to leave Virginia and me to be the heroes,” Drum said, his grin and broad, helping hand belaying the sarcasm in his tone. “Glad you decided to join us.”
Still gathering breath and courage. Alice and Jay could barely manage smiles as they climbed to their feet.
“Where now?” Dubhe said.
“Scouting,” Virginia said. “Mizar and me. Hell go north; I’ll go south. You folks wait here and study the mountain slope with your binoculars. Map what you can.”
“Right,” Jay agreed, quietly relieved to have her experienced direction. “How long will you be gone?”
“I’ll try to return within a half hour,” Virginia said. “That should let me cover a fair amount of ground. If Mizar does the same, he should cover even more.”
The hound nodded, blinked eyes red and green.
“If I… am caught I… will howl.”
“I can’t do that,” Virginia said, “but if I don’t make it back, feel free to assume the worst. Our opponents claim omniscience. We can’t be certain whether that’s true or not.”
“Luck,” Alice called as the scouts departed.
Jay pulled out his binoculars and began surveying the mountain. “If any of you have something to draw with, I can make us a fairly accurate map.”
Drum produced a light tablet and pen. Jay accepted it with a curt nod that he hoped seemed professional, rather than terrified. Then he set to looking and to drawing what he saw.
“You can’t possibly plan on wearing that!” Skyga protested. “You’ll undermine the entire Celebration!”
A.I. Aisles tugged off his bulbous red clown nose and grinned at the Greater God.
“You said I needed something more elaborate than what I usually wear. I thought this fit the bill.”
“I had priest’s robes, a Sumerian kilt, even a formal kimono or a tuxedo in mind, not a clown’s costume.”
The Hierophant of the Church of Elish (at last poll now one of the four major religious traditions in the Verite—although only if one counted all of the Christian sects as one group) admired his costume in the full-length mirror.
“It is satin and the polka dots are embroidered. The neck ruffle is real lace (or will be in the Verite). And I love the headpiece—a genuine Bozo designer original.”
“NO.” A rumble of thunder accompanied the word.
“What are you going to do? Blast me? If you think that this form is my only one, then you must be nuttier than I am, old pal o’ mine.”
“You are no longer indispensable.”
“But I am nasty, Skyga, and I’ve left some records in various places. If they surfaced and the Verite learned that as far as I see it, the Church of Elish is one big prank…”
“But what you have preached is the truth!”
“Since when has that mattered? Think about it.”
There was a long pause. The thunder rumbles subsided.
“You may have a point. But you will not wear that clown costume.”
“I’ll talk with the High Priest about something in the Sumerian styles then—they’re almost as funny looking when viewed with an objective eye.”
“Why must you mock?”
“It’s my job, part of an ancient and revered tradition—as ancient and revered as gods of sky and sea, and nearly as old as earth mothers.”
Skyga’s eyes (storm grey, today) narrowed.
“Are you indicating that you believe yourself a god, little aion?”
A.I. Aisles belched, covered his pot belly with his hands, and conjured a beer. He began to glow golden.
“It doesn’t matter what I think, Skyga, as well you know. What matters is what the marks think.”
His halo brightened until any but divine eyes would have had to look away.
“And I’ve got lots of them thinking just that way. Maybe I’ll come visiting on Meru someday. You might be surprised at just how high up those slopes I can stroll.”
Draining the beer, he set down the bottle.
“I’ve got to see a High Priest about a dress fitting, bud. Catch you later.”
He vanished in a flash of golden light leaving a resounding belch in his wake. Skyga paused to analyze what he had just learned. Then he withdrew his presence in a much less spectacular fashion.
A voice was singing, dulcet, female, crooning nursery rhymes and lullabies. The genius loci Markon heard, and even in his hearing he could sense the crackling of the moire, a phenomenon not often reported, for most who see the moire do not live long enough to perceive the dry silk of its passage.
“Rock-a-bye baby/ In the treetops/ When the wind blows/ The cradle will rock/ When the bough breaks/ The cradle will fall/ And down will come baby/ Cradle and all.”
“Jack be nimble/ Jack be quick/ John D’Arcy Donnerjack leapt over a candlestick…”
“Tu-ra-lura-lura/ Tu-ra-lura-li/ Tu-ra-lura-lura/ When baby wakes up/ Markon’s gonna die-ai!”
The genius loci spoke in the voice of water surging over rocks.
“Earthma, why must you mock me? I know that I have lost. I made a bad bargain with you and it will mean my ending.”
Earthma laughed. “And you made it to protect a Veritean who has abandoned you at the end. Don’t you feel the fool!”
“Virginia has not abandoned me!”
“I do not sense her in the site. She is gone, Markon. She has left you to die alone—alone and friendless.”
Even in his drained state, Markon did not rise to the taunt. He let his weakness, his befuddlement, bubble up in his words.
“She is gone. Yes. I am alone. You have tricked me.”
“I can be kind, Markon. Would you like an ending now? Usually death is not mine to give, but when I bring forth my child, you will die. Would you like an end to the weariness?”
Markon knew the choice was not his, Earthma was simply enjoying giving him the illusion of freedom.
“End,” he said, and he wept for his dire-cats, his gronhers, his herd-mice, for the tangled trees, the intricate system of underground streams, for the hidden caverns glittering with crystals that no one (not even beloved Virginia) had ever seen.
“End?” Earthma repeated. “You’re giving up?”
“No choice,” he managed. “You would not renounce this child of yours. You have borne Death and now I must be lost to Deep Fields.”
“Perhaps not Deep Fields,” Earthma mused, “for my little one is not yet master there, though lie will be, soon enough.”
Markon dropped the interface that separated him from his neighbors, urged the dire-cats and herd-mice, all the others with legs and wings to flee. He summoned a great wind and sought to carry the seed proges of the curling willow, the Virginia fern, the angel’s tears, all the other plants, out into the greater reaches of Virtu. Something might survive him.
Although she bent over the sarcophagus which held her nascent Death, Earthma sensed the out-flowing of material. She straightened.
“This will not do!” she said angrily.
Throwing back her head, her thick green hair trailing to the ground, she gave a horrible cry, a sound that was both summation and parody of the suffering of every woman who had ever been in labor. The shield fell away from the sarcophagus. Brilliant citron light flared.