Again.
But Seer didn't cry aloud…
Seer shook, yes…
And Seer wept, certainly…
But Seer did not cry out as if in pain…
Not normally…
There was a sudden screech again, louder this time. But it seemed that whatever was making the noise was trying to suppress it, to seal its own lips from the outcry of its own lungs…
Quietly, he moved across the hallway to the door, pushed it gently open, peered in…
And stood transfixed.
Frozen…
There, on the old mans bed, was Mayna. Her leotard suit was pulled down to her waist. Her breasts were naked, and Seer, nestled in her lap like a child, was drawing upon one. The breasts were longer than they were wide and were mostly fleshy nipple like an animal's teat.
Suddenly, almost spasmodically, she jerked her head to face him.
“You—” he started to say.
“Get out!” she screamed.
The words hung back in his throat, choking him with their reluctant syllables, their hesitant fingers of meaning…
“Get out!”
He closed the door, his head spinning. Why with Seer of all people? Why with, a babbling idiot? Even Babe would have been better. Or Corgi, certainly. He turned and ran, throwing his hands over his ears to block out any traces of the weeping. He found his room, fumbled the door open and shut, and fell into bed without palming the lights. Why, why, why? And why the Hell should he care? It was bad enough that she did it, but why was he all hung up over it? Forget it. Wipe it out. It's nothing to you. If she wants the old man, let her have him. The idiot! The slobbering moron!
The door crashed open, and she was there, dressed once again, standing in the rectangle of light that flooded through the open portal.
“Get out!” he snapped.
She slammed the door, palmed only the nightlight which brightened the room — but not too much. “You,” she said, hissing in tones that were more cat than woman and that made the single word a paragraph.
“It's my turn to say get out!” He bunched his fists, searching for something to strike out at, wondering all the while why he was so enraged. “You're in my room. I want you out.”
“I don't give a damn,” she hissed again, her foot claws trembling in and out of their sheaths, retracting, springing, over and over. “I don't give a little good damn what you want! What right have you got to snoop in other people's rooms?”
“I thought he was in trouble. I heard the weeping noises — like someone in pain.”
“He bit me. He bit me, Hero Tohm, not you!”
“I thought he was alone; old fool like that hurt—”
“Shut up!”
“Get out!” he snapped back, determined, this time, to fight her viciousness with cunning and hatred of his own.
“No. Not until I've told you really what a worm you are, Hero Tohm!”
“I'm not a hero.”
“I know that.”
“Get out!”
“No. I started to tell you some of this in the caves before supper. You thought, by appealing to my animal characteristics, my lust, you'd buy time for yourself. You thought a good kiss would get me all heated up.”
“You aren't heated by anyone but old fools—”
She leaped on top of a chair, sitting on the back, perfectly balanced, ready to spring upon a mouse. She looked down at the bed. “Old fool, is he? You don't know half of what he knows. None of us does. None of us can imagine just what he sees, Hero Tohm. Fool indeed! You're the fool. A damn fool, Hero Tohm. He has reason to babble: he sees. He sees it!”
“It?” he asked, interested despite himself.
“God!” she boomed, leaping from the chair to the dresser, sitting with her exquisite back to the mirror. “God, Hero Tohm. Seer sees God, and he can't take it. Does that mean anything to you? Does it suggest anything? Seer looks down into the very heart of things, past the stars, beyond the realities and semi-realities and quasi-truths and what we call the Real Truths. It is all chaff to him, Hero Tohm. Seer looks around the bends we don't even know are there and peeks into corners we have forgotten about or never seen. He looks upon God. And it has driven him insane. Does that mean anything to you, Hero Tohm?”
“I—” He started to sit up.
“No. It wouldn't. You don't understand the concepts. But God, Hero Tohm, is a concept you should certainly be able to understand. Vaguely, at least. Don't tax your mind. You had God on your primitive little world, didn't you? Some kind of god. Wind God. Sun God. But God is nothing like you imagine him or I imagine him — or like anyone has ever imagined him. Seer knows what He is like, and Seer has been driven insane by the knowledge. So, Hero Tohm, what the Hell is God? What is it that could be so horrible that it has kept Seer babbling and weeping all these years? Maybe he doesn't see anything — just vast emptiness, pitch, void, godlessness. Maybe there is no God, Hero Tohm. But I don't think that's it. I think Seer could recover from that view. God is there. But God is something so horrible and with so many facets of terror that Seer never ceases to be horrified into insanity.”
Tohm grabbed his head in his hands as if to burst it, to smash it open. All he wanted was Tarnilee. He thought that was it. Wasn't it? He couldn't really put his finger on anything else. At least, he wouldn't let himself.
She hissed scornfully. “Certainly I suckle him. He can't eat. It's not only a case of not being able to feed himself; there's more, much more, to it. He has reverted, Hero Tohm. If he could get his nourishment from a tube connected with his belly, he would be happy. He wants back in the womb, Hero Tohm. He wants swallowed. But he can't have that. Damn it, he should, but he can't. So there is nothing but breast feeding; that's the farthest back he can go. And he would starve if he didn't have that. Hell, maybe that would be better. Maybe it would be merciful to let his stomach curl in on itself, shrivel and toss about in agony, trying to gobble him up for nourishment. Hell, maybe we should put a bullet through his head and rip up his brain, let him bleed his soul out on the cement. But I won't. Corgi won't. The Old Man won't, and the Old Man has more guts and brains than all of us. There's something horrible about Seer and something holy too. Something holy that rubs off from that undescribed demon called God, Hero Tohm.”
“I didn't know.”
“Okay,” she spat. “Then you didn't know. You don't know. But don't be so goddamn superior! Don't judge me, Hero Tohm, by what you think I should and should not do. Don't go setting my moral standards and values when you don't have the least understanding of what I am! Don't give me goody-goody nonsense. By now you should know the world is not goody-goody.”
He stood, crossed the space between them in a near leap, clutched her and dragged her from the dresser.
“Get away from me!”
“Mayna, listen—”
She purred as he ran his hand through her great pile of hair.
“Listen, I was confused. Hell, I don't know anything. I didn't ask to be here. I didn't ask to be ripped free from my village and plunged into confusion.”
She laced her arms around his back, cried into his shoulder.
“I came looking for a girl. At first, I wanted only to find her and go home. I don't know any more. I have to find her now because that has been my motivation all along, that has been the thing that has kept me alive. It would be like cheating a dream if I stopped. So if I trampled on anyone, maybe it is worth it, maybe not. But I don't mean to trample.”
She was shivering. He lifted her slight body and carried her to the bed with him.
“The Seer,” he said. “Hell, that's terrible. Terrible, not only for him, but for everyone who understands him.”