“We’ll twine; and then the Barak Dayir will carry us to the Nest of Nests.”
“Twine? You and I? Hresh, we’ve never done a thing like that!”
“No, brother. Not ever.”
Thu-Kimnibol smiled. “How strange that seems, twining with my own brother. But if that’s what we have to do, that’s what we’ll do. Eh, Hresh? So be it.” To Nialli Apuilana he said, “If for some reason I don’t come back—”
“Don’t even say that, Thu-Kimnibol!”
“Hresh offers me no guarantees. These possibilities have to be considered. If I don’t come back, love — if my soul doesn’t return to my body after a certain while, two full days, let’s say — take yourself to Salaman and tell him what has happened. Is that clear? Give our army over into his sole command. Let him have the four Great World weapons.”
“Salaman? But he’s a madman!”
“A great warrior, all the same. The only one, after myself, who can lead us in this campaign. Will you do that?”
“If I must,” said Nialli Apuilana in a low voice.
“Good.” Thu-Kimnibol drew in a deep breath and extended his sensing-organ to Hresh. “Well, brother, I’m ready if you are. Let’s go to visit the Queen.”
There is darkness everywhere, a great sea of dense blackness so complete that it excludes even the possibility of light. And then, suddenly, a fierce glow like that of an exploding sun blossoms on the horizon. The blackness shatters into an infinity of fiery points of piercing brightness and Thu-Kimnibol feels those myriad blazing fragments rushing past him on hot streams of wind.
Within the fiery mystery that lies ahead, he is able now to make out texture and form. He sees something that seems to him to be an immense shining machine, a thing of whirling rods and ceaseless churning pistons, moving flawlessly with never a moment’s slackening of energy or failure of pattern. From it comes a pure beam of dazzling light that rises with scimitar force to cut across the sky.
The Nest, Thu-Kimnibol thinks. The Nest of Nests.
And a voice like the sound of worlds colliding says, speaking out of the core of that unthinkable tireless mechanism, “Why do you return to Me so soon?”
The Queen, that must be.
The Queen of Queens.
He feels no fear, only awe and something that he thinks might be humility. The presence of Hresh beside him gives him whatever degree of assurance he’s unable to find within himself. He has never been this close to his brother in all his life: it’s difficult now for him to determine where his own soul leaves off and that of Hresh begins.
They are descending, or falling, or plummeting. Whether it is by command of that great creature in the brightness before them, or Hresh is still in control of their journey, Thu-Kimnibol has no way of telling. But as they come nearer the Nest he sees it more clearly, and understands that it is no machine at all, but rather a thing of chewed pulp and soil, and what he has taken for a shining machine, rods flailing and pistons pumping in perfect coordination, is simply his perception of the stupendous oneness of the hjjk empire itself, in which not even the smallest of the newly hatched has free volition, but where everything is tightly woven in a predestined pattern with no room for imperfection.
And at the heart of that pattern lies such a creature as he has never imagined: a world in itself, that huge motionless thing. With the aid of the Wonderstone that his brother holds in the curl of his sensing-organ, somewhere thousands of leagues behind them where they have left their unconscious bodies, Thu-Kimnibol can perceive the vastness of the container of flesh that houses the mind of the Queen, the slow journey of the life-fluids through that gigantic ancient body, the ponderous workings of its incomprehensible organs.
It has waited through half of time for his coming here, so he feels. And he has passed all his life in a dream, waiting only for this moment of confrontation.
“There are two of you,” the Queen declares, in that same overwhelming tone. “Who is your other self?”
Hresh does not respond. Thu-Kimnibol sends a probe in his brother’s direction, to prod him to make some reply. But Hresh seems silent, dazed, as if the effort of the journey itself has exhausted the last of his powers.
All is in his own hands, then. He says, “I am Thu-Kimnibol, son of Harruel and Minbain, brother on the mother’s side to Hresh the chronicler, whom you already know.”
“Ah. You have an Egg-maker in common but you come from different Life-kindlers.” There is a long pause. “And you are the one who would destroy us. Why is that, that you feel such hatred for us?”
“The gods guide my hand,” Thu-Kimnibol says simply.
“The gods?”
“They who shape our lives and control our destinies. They tell me that I must lead my people forward against those who stand in the way of our achieving what we must.”
There comes a sound of great pealing laughter now, rising and spreading outward like the floodwaters of some mighty river, so that Thu-Kimnibol has to fight with all his strength to keep from being engulfed in that tremendous outpouring of mockery.
The words he has just spoken echo and re-echo in his ears, amplified and distorted by the tide of the Queen’s laughter so that they become pathetic comic shards of foolishness — destinies … lead … achieving … must …His staunch declaration of purpose seems only like empty nonsense to him now. Angrily he strives to reclaim some shred of his lost dignity.
“Do You mock the gods, then?” he cries.
Again that great flood of laughter. “The gods, you say? The gods?”
“The gods, indeed. Who have brought me here today, and who will strengthen my hand until the last of Your kind has been sent from the world.”
Thu-Kimnibol is aware now of Hresh, distant and vague, fluttering against him like a bird against a sealed window, as if trying to warn him against the course he has chosen. But he ignores his brother’s agitation.
“Tell me this, Queen: do You so much as believe in the gods? Or is Your arrogance so great that You deny them?”
“Your gods?” she says. “Yes. No.”
“What does that mean?”
“Your gods are symbols of the great forces: comfort, protection, nourishment, healing, death.”
“You know that much?”
“Of course.”
“And You have no belief in those gods?”
“We believe in comfort, protection, nourishment, healing, death. But they are not gods.”
“You worship no one and nothing, then?”
“Not as you understand worship,” the Queen replies.
“Not even Your creator?”
“The humans created us,” she says, in a strange offhanded way. “But does that make them worthy of our worship? We think not.” Once more the Queen’s laughter engulfs him. “Let us not discuss the gods. Let us discuss the injuries you do us. How can you carry on such war against us, when you have no true understanding of what we are? Your other self has already seen our Nest. Now it is your turn. Prepare yourself to behold us.”
But there is no time to prepare himself, nor does he know how, or for what. Before the Queen’s voice has died away the Nest in its totality sweeps like a rushing torrent into his soul.
He sees it alclass="underline" the great shining machine, the flawless world within the world, Militaries and Workers, Egg-makers and Life-kindlers, Nest-thinkers and Nourishment-givers and Queen-attendants and all the rest, every one woven together in an inextricable way in the service of the Queen, which is to say in the service of the totality. He understands how the creation of Nest-plenty and Nest-strength fosters the furtherance of Egg-plan, by which Queen-love will ultimately be extended to all the cosmos. He sees the smaller Nests here and there and across the face of the planet, each of them tied to all the rest, and to the great central Nest, by the powerful force of Nest-truth that radiates from the immensity that is the Queen of Queens.