"Who are the 'shu?"
"Tell her," Maeve instructed Musnakaff. "And you, set e down." Once again, the convoy came to a halt. "Help me out of this contraption," Maeve demanded. The bearers sprang to do just that.
"Do you need help?" Musnakaff asked her.
"If I do I'll ask for it," Maeve replied. "Get on with educating the woman. Though Lord knows it's a little late."
"Tell me who the 'shu are," Phoebe said to Musnakaff.
"Not who, what," Musnakaff replied, his gaze drifting off towards his mistress. "What is she doing?"
"We're having a conversation here," Phoebe snapped. "She's going to do herself some harm."
"I'm going to be doing some harm of my own if you don't finish what you were saying. The 'shu-"
"Are spifit-pilots. Pieces of the Creator. Or not. There. Satisfied?" He made to go to his mistress's side, but Phoebe caught hold of him.
"No," she said. "I'm not satisfied."
"Unhand me," he said sniffily. "I will not."
"I'm warning you," he said, jabbing a beringed finger at her. "I've got more important business than-" A puzzled look crossed his face. "Did youfeel that?"
"The tremor, you mean? Yeah, there was one a few minutes ago. Some kind of earthquakes'
"I wish it were," Musnakaff said. He stared at the ground between them. Another tremor came; this the strongest so far.
"What is it then?" Phoebe said, her irritation with Musnakaff forgotten.
She got no answer. The man just turned his back on her and hurried away to the spot on the cobbled stones where Maeve was standing. She could not do so without help. Two of her bearers were supporting her, and a third waiting behind in case she should topple. "We must move on," Musnakaff called to her.
"Do you know what happened on this spot?" she said to him.
"Lady-"
"Do you?" "No."
"This is where I was standing when he first came to find me." She smiled fondly. "I told him, right at the beginning, I said to him: There'll never be anyone to replace my Coker, because Coker was the love of my life@'
At this, the ground shook more vehemently than ever.
"Hush yourself," Musnakaff said.
"What?" said Mistress O'Connell. "Hushing me? I should beat you for that." She raised her stick, and swung at Musnakaff. The blow fell short of its mark, and Maeve lost her balance. Her bearers might have saved her from failing, but she was in a fine fury, and kept flailing even as she toppled. The stick struck the bearer to her right, and he went down, bloodynosed. The man who had been watching over her from behind stepped in to catch hold of her, but as he did so she took another stumbling step towards Musnakaff, swinging again. This time she connected, the blow so hard her stick broke. Then she went down, carrying the bearer to her left-who had not relinquished big hold on her for an instant@own with her.
As she struck the ground, her fall cushioned by the sheer profusion of her shirts and coats, the ground shuddered yet again. But this time, the tremor did not die away. It continued to escalate, turning over the unattended sedan, and sending the guard who had been leading the procession scurrying back up the hill.
"Damn you, woman!" Musnakaff hollered to Maeve as he went to help pick her up. "Now look what you've done."
"What's happening?" Phoebe yelled.
"It's him!" Musnakaff said. "He heard her! I knew he would."
"King Texas?"
Before Musnakaff could reply the street shook from end to end, and this time the ground cracked open. These were not fissures, like those Phoebe had skipped on Hartnon's Heights. There was nothing irregular about them; nothing arbitrary. they were elegantly shaped, carving arabesques in the paving, and everywhere joining up, so that within moments the entire street looked like an immense jigsaw puzzle.
"Everybody stay where they are," Musnakaff said, his voice trembling.
"Don't anybody move." Phoebe did as she was instructed. "Tell him you're sorry," Musnakaff yelled to...aeve. "Quickly!"
With the help of her two conscious bearers the woman had got to her knees. "I've got nothing to apologize for," Maeve said.
"God, you are a stubborn woman!" Musnakaff roared, and raised his arm as if to strike her.
"Don't," Phoebe yelled at him. She'd lost most of her patience with Maeve in the last half-hour, but the sight of her about to be struck brought back painful memories.
She'd no sooner spoken than the divided ground shook afresh, and pieces of the jigsaw fell away, leaving holes three, four, even five feet across in a dozen places. The chill out of them made the icy air seem balmy.
"I told you," Musnakaff said, his voice dropped to a hoarse whisper. Phoebe's eyes darted from one hole to the next, wondering which one the lovelorn King Texas was going to emerge from. "We should never... never
... have come," Maeve was murmuring. "You talked me into it, woman!"
She jabbed her finger in Phoebe's direction. "You're in cahoots with him, aren't you?" She started to struggle to her feet, with the air of her bearers. "Admit it," she said, the words flying from her mouth along with a spray of spittle. "Go on, admit it."
"You're crazy," Phoebe said, "You're all crazy!"
"Now there's a woman knows what she's talk-in' about, " said a voice from the earth, and from every one of the holes rose a column of writhing dirt, which within seconds had climbed up to twice human height.
The sight was more remarkable than intimidating. Gasping with astonishment, Phoebe turned around to see that on every side the tips of the columns were already sprouting branches like spokes, which spread and knotted together overhead.
"Musnakaff?" Phoebe said. "What's happening?"
It was Maeve who replied. "He's making shade for himself," he said, plainly unimpressed by the display. "He doesn't like the light, poor thing. He's afraid it's going to make him wither away."
"Look who's talkin'!" said the voice out of the ground. "You wrote the book on witherin', love of my wretched life."
"Am I supposed to be flattered?" Maeve said.
"No the voice from the ground replied. "You're Supposed to remember that I always tell you the truth, even when it stings a little. And, sweetness, you look old. No, strike that. You look forlorn. Forsaken. Empty."
"That's rich, coming from a hole in the ground!" Maeve snapped.
There was laughter now, out of the earth; soft, ripe laughter.
"Are you going to show yourself," Maeve said, "or are you too ugly these days?"
"I'm whatever you want me to be, my little pussy-rose."
"Don't be crude, for once."
"I'll be a monk for you. I'll never touch myself. I'll-"
"Oh God, how you talk!" Maeve said. "Are you going to show yourself or not?"
There was a short silence. Then the voice simply said "Here," and up out of one of the holes between Maeve and Phoebe came a stream of muddy matter that began to congeal@ven before it had finished rising-into a vaguely human form. It had its back to Phoebe, so she had no sense of its physiognomy, but to judge by the dorsal view it was an unfinished thing: a man of dust and raw rock.
"Satisfied?" it drawled.
"I think it's too late for that," Maeve replied.
"Oh no, baby, that's not true. It's not true at all." He raised his arm (his hand was the size of a snow shovel) as if to touch the old lady. But he refrained from contact, his lumpen fingers hovering an inch from her cheek. "Give up your flesh," he said. "And come and be rock with me. We'll melt together, baby. We'll let people live on our backs and we'll just be down there, warm and cosy." Phoebe studied Maeve's face through this strange seduction and knew she'd heard (or read) these words countless times. "You'll never have another wrinkle," King Texas went on. "You'll never have your bowels seize up. You'll never ache. You'll never wither. You'll never die." He ran out of sweet talking there, and seeing that his words were having no effect, turned to Phoebe. "Now I ask you," he said (as she'd suspected, his face was barely sketched in clay), "does that Sound so damn bad?" His breath was cold and smelled of the underworld. Caves and pure water; things growing in darkness. It was not unpleasant. "Well does it?" he said.