And now, sitting by the fire and watching her, so bewitched by music that bewitched no one else, he wondered if she had made any progress with her poem.
Jorgenson was saying to Jurgens, “Back at the inn you said we should travel north. We had been warned against the north. You said you were suspicious whenever you were warned, that if one were told not to go somewhere, one must always go. There are always attempts, you said, to mislead one in his quests.”
“That’s quite right,” said Jurgens. “I think my reasoning is sound.”
“But we went west, not north.”
“We traveled toward the known; now we’ll travel to the unknown. Now, having reached the tower, we’ll swing north and have a look at Chaos.”
Jorgenson looked questioningly at Lansing and Lansing nodded at him. “That’s what I had in mind as well. Do you have comment?”
Jorgenson shook his head, embarrassed.
“I wonder,” said Melissa, “what Chaos possibly could be.”
“It could be almost anything,” said Lansing.
“I don’t like the sound of it.”
“You mean you are afraid of it?”
“Yes, that’s it. I’m afraid of it.”
“People put different names to the selfsame thing,” said Mary. “Chaos might mean one thing to us and a totally different thing to someone else. Different cultural backgrounds make for varying perceptions.”
“We are grasping at straws,” said Jorgenson. “Desperately, unthinkingly grasping. We first grasped at the cube, then at the city. Now it’s the singing tower and Chaos.”
“I still think the cube was significant,” Mary said. “I still have the feeling — I can’t get rid of it — that we messed up with the cube. The Brigadier thought it would be the city, but the city was too pat, too patently misleading. It would be a natural reaction for anyone to expect the answers from the city.” She said to Jorgenson, “You found no answers there?”
“Just empty rooms and dust over everything. The four who were lost may have found an answer; that may have been the reason they didn’t return. You found more than we did — the doors and the installation. Still, they told you nothing; they were valueless.”
“Not entirely without value,” said Mary. “They told us much about the inhabitants of the city. A sharply scientific people, technologically inclined, very sophisticated. And what we found pointed the way that they had gone — into other worlds.”
“As we have gone into another world?”
“Precisely,” said Jurgens. “With one exception — they went on their own.”
“And now are snatching us.”
“We can’t be sure of that,” said Lansing. “Someone, some agency, as you say, snatched us, but we can’t be sure who it might have been.”
“This experience,” Mary said to Jorgenson, “can’t be entirely foreign to you. You have been such a traveler. You voluntarily went to other worlds, traveling in time.”
“But no longer,” said Jorgenson. “I have lost my ability. In this place my procedures do not work.”
“Perhaps if you concentrated on how you did it, the mechanism that you used. What you said or did, your state of mind.”
Jorgenson cried at her, “Don’t you think I’ve tried? I tried back there in the city.”
“Yes, he did,” Melissa said. “I have watched him try.”
“If I could have,” said Jorgenson, “if I only could have, it would have been possible to go back in time to that period before the city was deserted, while the people still were there, engaged in whatever work they may have been attempting.”
“That would have been neat,” Melissa said. “Don’t you see how neat it would have been.”
“Yes, we see how neat,” said Lansing.
“You don’t believe in my time traveling,” Jorgenson challenged him.
“I didn’t say that.”
“No, you didn’t. You haven’t. Not in so many words.”
“Look here,” said Lansing, “don’t try to start a hassle. We have all the trouble that we need. We can get along without personality clashes. You say you travel in time and I don’t contradict you. Shall we leave it at that?”
“Fair enough,” said Jorgenson, “if you keep your mouth shut.”
With some effort, Lansing did not answer.
“We’ve struck out,” said Mary, “on most of what we’ve found. I had held a hope the tower might give us a clue.”
“It has given us nothing,” said Jorgenson. “It is like all the other stuff.”
“Sandra may come up with something,” Jurgens said. “She is letting the music soak into her. After a while—”
“It’s nothing but tinkly, seesawing sound,” said Jorgenson. “I can’t see what she could find in it.”
“Sandra comes from an artistic world,” Mary told him. “She is attuned to aesthetic qualities that in other worlds are only marginally developed. The music—”
“If it is music.”
“The music may mean something to her,” Mary said, unperturbed by his interruption. “After a while, she may get around to telling us.”
24
She did not get around to telling them. She ate only a little. She did not refuse to talk, but her talk was short and noncommittal. For the first two days, for almost forty-eight hours, she stood upright, tense with listening, paying no attention to her companions of the trail or, indeed, even to herself.
“We’re wasting time,” Jorgenson complained. “We should be moving north. Chaos, if we find Chaos there, whatever it may be, may tell us something. We can’t be stuck here forever.”
“I won’t go north,” shrilled Melissa. “I’m afraid of Chaos.”
“You’re a flighty bitch,” said Jorgenson. “Not even knowing what it is, you are scared of it.”
“This kind of talk,” said Lansing, “is getting us nowhere. Bickering doesn’t help. We should talk, most certainly, but we should not be yelling at one another.”
“We can’t just march off and leave Sandra,” Mary told them. “She was with us from the start. I will not desert her.”
“North is not the only way to go,” said Jurgens. “We have been told we’ll find a condition there called Chaos, but if we continued, we might find something farther west. At the first inn we heard of the cube and city, but nothing else. At the second inn it was the tower and Chaos. The innkeepers are not too generous with their information. We have a map, but it is worthless. It points the way from the city into the badlands, but nothing more. It does not show the second inn or the tower.”
“Perhaps,” said Lansing, “they tell us all they know.”
“That may be right,” Jurgens agreed, “but we can’t rely on them.”
“The point’s well made,” said Jorgenson. “We should go both west and north.”
“I won’t leave Sandra,” Mary said.
“Maybe if we talked with her,” suggested Jorgenson.
“I’ve tried,” said Mary. “I’ve told her we can’t stay here. I’ve told her we can come back again and then she can listen to the tower. I doubt she even hears me.”
“You could stay with her,” said Jorgenson. “The rest of us split up. Two go west, two go north, see what we can find. Agree all of us will be back in four or five days.”
“I don’t think that’s wise,” protested Lansing. “I am against leaving Mary here alone. Even if I were not, I’m inclined to think we should not split up.”
“So far, there’s been no danger. No real threat of physical danger,” said Jorgenson. “It would be safe. Leave Mary here, the rest of us take a quick run out. I can’t bring myself to hold much hope, but there’s always a chance we will turn up something.”
“Maybe we could carry Sandra,” Jurgens suggested. “If we get her away from the music, she might be all right.”