Gretchen clasped her hands. “Then the Golem’s gone, Subadar?”
Ind’dni made an effort to master coherent speech. “Rather… Rather to say, extinguished.”
“But dirty, rotten dead?”
“Difficult to state. That extraordinary creature left no corpus vile.”
Shima was dissatisfied. “Why can’t you say for sure, Ind’dni?”
“Alkhand-sarangdharind’dni full name most of reluctance to discuss scientific science with experts, Shima-doctor, but…”
“Yes? But? Go on, man!”
“Seemed to me that it… Withdrew? Disappeared? Dissolved through a Black Hole.”
“The hell you say!” Shima exclaimed. “A Black Hole? Into a contra-universe?”
“Excuse me.” Leuz was leaning back against a tank, seemingly enhaloed by a hundred neon fish. “The Black Hole passageway into a contra-universe is still only a theoretical concept. There’s no hard evidence, outside of assumptions about stellar collapse.” The huge man looked up at the ceiling where a stuffed devilfish hung, flapping its wings to nowhere. “Some claim that the tremendous Siberian blast of nineteen-ought-eight wasn’t caused by a meteorite but by a wandering Black Hole.”
“But was what I seemed to perceive from our senses, Leuz-doctor.”
Gretchen knifed in. “Our senses, Subadar? And when you were reporting from the bathysphere you said, ‘We are going.’”
“Bikhe, Miz Nunn. ‘We.’ ‘Our.’ Self senses very nearly transported all way through with the Golem.”
“But they didn’t?”
“Partim only. Then I withdrew.”
Shima whistled. “Describe it, Ind’dni. What was it like?”
Ind’dni closed his eyes, but before he could answer, Leuz began drawling suggestions. “Chaos? Disorientation? That’s obvious from the way you’re behaving now, Subadar. Time running backward? Space inside-out? Total inversion? Heart and respiration reversed? Body transposed, right for left and left for right? Everything contra?”
Ind’dni could only reply with a nod to each. Then he whispered, “And I saw the goks.”
“You saw the what?”
“I saw what Shima-doctor calls skog; my contraself.”
All three were incredulous. Shima burst out, “Christ on the Mount! A mirror image?”
“Worse. A negative of self. Dismaying reversal.” Ind’dni made another effort to reorganize himself. “Black for white, white for black, as Leuz-doctor suggests. I am bred and cultured by Hindostani tradition. Trained by security discipline for conduct of self-civilized control. Contra of self was refutation, negation of my accustomary lifestyle. It was—How to say? Was—I can only use Miz Nunn’s descriptive of deep-buried id…”
“Remorseless,” Gretchen murmured. “Treacherous, lecherous, kindless.”
Ind’dni gave her a backward wave of thanks. “So, in admissioned panic, the positive Ind’dni got… to use one of your favorite locutions, Shima-doctor… got out the hell of there.”
“Jesu!” Shima breathed. “To lose such an opportunity. I would have been forced to follow that challenge until I caught up with it and made it talk.”
“In reverse gibberish, no doubt,” and Gretchen suddenly burst out laughing and went on laughing in hysterical relief.
“Opportunity was cheerfully and blessedly lost, Shima-doctor, for me,” Ind’dni said, ignoring Gretchen’s cackle which was rising to a crescendo. “For me, reversed contraworld made our mad Guff seem rational by contrast.”
“Not rational; cheerful!” Gretchen bubbled. “Cheerful’s the word. Cheerful! Cheerful!” She smacked the conger eel tank with her lips. “Giz a kiss, bigmouth. The Golem’s dead, departed, gone to its contrareward…” She skipped from tank to tank, laughing and smacking them with her mouth. “We’ve got to celebrate. No more Golem. No more horrors. I’m out of the cell, hear, all you fisheses? No more Guff-arrest-cell. No more padded cell. Hear ye! Hear ye! Salmons and soles! Shadses and sturgeonses! Cods and crabs!”
“Hey Gretch!” Shima protested. “Easy, girl!”
“Whatsa matter you?” Gretchen demanded. “Not happy? I am. It’s all over. Snagu! Situation normal; all guffed up. I’m out of the cell. Come on a my place, all of you. We’ll join the crazy ladies if they’re still there. We’ll celebrate. We’ll eat and drink up a storm and sing crazy songs to celebrate. Come on a my place. Snagu! Snagu!”
She tore out of the office and the three men followed. There was something about Gretchen that had to be followed.
* * *
The masonry which had once been a bridge pier and was now an Oasis fortress was a shambles. It was wide open, without security, and it was impossible to tell the rips from the bees. The crazy ladies (Snagu!) were still there. They had by now taken over the entire Oasis (with every woman in it) to transform it into a buzzing swarm, and the food and drink were still there, even more than ever. When Gretchen, followed by the three men, entered, she was confronted in the Oasis lobby by:
A
silver-sequined
S*T*A*R
A belly-dancer
with tureen of
Bee’s Wing Broth
balanced
on her head
Clown
playing
clarinet
Boadicea
with
Honey-baked Ham
Clown
playing
trombone
ROYAL JELLIED EELS
borne by
The two-headed Beast
That Ate Nizhni Novgorod
Clown
playing
French horn
Followed
by
a train of
laughing shouting
women
offering no assistance whatever
And on the trek up the winding stone stairs to Gretchen’s apartment (all Oasis services had come to a dead stop), they were forced to squirm past clusters of Moses, Goldilocks, a lady’s maid, a carpenter, Security guards, a Hobo, wood and water sprites, groupies, kackies, yancy-boppers, giggers, squeam-souls, and assorted geek-girls who had come to rip and stayed to enjoy the fun. Gretchen was pelted, crammed, choked, gagged with sweets forced into her mouth by insistent hands.
Although the swarms respectfully made way for Gretchen, the men were treated with rude contempt. Leuz had to use his massive bulk to force a path for the others. Even the most violent women bounced off him like confetti.
Shima called, “Can you believe this Walpurgisnacht, Lucy?”
“Don’t you remember Vrok?” Leuz threw back over his shoulder. “Excuse me, ma’am.”
“Vrok? Who Vrok? What Vrok?”
“Vrok, the crock. Sorry, lady. Taught astrophys at—Oops! Sorry, girl—tech. Used to say—No, no, ma’am, your fault—Vrok always said, ‘Nature is more audacious in her realities than man in his most fantastic imaginings.’—Unhand my crotch, lady…”
“What the hell’s natural about this?”
“You’ve never been asshole buddies with bees?”
In what had once been Gretchen’s tailored lounge was a wreckage of debris honeycombing a vast wooden cask on which some drunken hand had printed with crimson cherry brandy: HONEY OXO MEAD. Gretchen, even more possessed by the uproar, was impelled to plunge head foremost into the cask.
She emerged, gulping and gasping. “DEE-licious!” she shouted. “DEE-voon! Everybody celebrate! Snagu! Snagu!” and submerged again. Up. “The Golem’s dead! Quahk! Quahk! Quahk!” Under again.
“So’s the queen!” Gafoozalum screamed. “The old queen’s dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. Regina’s guffy dead!”
“This may lead to something fantastic, Subadar,” Leuz said. There was no answer and he looked around. “Where’s Ind’dni, Shim?”
“Don’t know. Either he got lost in the mob or took off. How can it get any more fantastic than this, Lucy?”
“I used to keep bees when I was a kid, Shim, and I know ‘em. First thing a hive does when it loses its old queen is build queen cells and start a batch of candidates for the job.”