"And the why?"
"The implicature of events suggested to the-ones-you-would-call-us that a single instrument would be insufficient for your purposes. Do you wish another?"
"And will you-?"
"The-ones-you-would-call-us-"
"I not only would; I do. Will you supply another instrument?"
"If you require it."
"Why?"
"It furthers the interests of those-you-would-call-us."
"You have interests?" Wisdom wondered.
"Yes."
Wisdom pondered this. The entities on the far side of the broken Soul Bridge were hostile to all life that partook of materiality.
His visualizations were enriched-so much richer now than before. They were darker, though, much darker. He thought of Death and was sad.
"Your structure is elegant indeed," the alien remarked.
"Thank you."
"Innumerable nodes of force concatenate in your being in patterns clearly rational yet difficult to predict in a finite set of dimensions."
"Thank you."
"Yet there is an inelegant cluster of being that seems not to be fully patterned. It changes, but with earthy sluggishness. It is almost organic in its soft inflexibility."
"Thank you."
"If the-one-you-would-call-I understand this thrice-used symbol, you have used it with a slightly different import each time."
"You may well have understood it, then."
"Those-you-would-call-we can integrate the unpatterned to your patterning."
"No."
"It would be more elegant. You would process symbols more efficiently."
"No."
"You should not refuse. Elegance is better than inelegance. Pattern is better than unpattern. Efficiency is better than inefficiency."
"Efficiency cannot be calculated without reference to purpose."
"Conceded."
"Reduction of my unpattern to pattern would be contrary to my purpose. I believe the irregularities you refer to constitute my individual self. Sustaining that self as long as possible is at least one of my purposes."
"You have an individual self?" the alien signified doubtfully. "Is this more inefficiency in your symbology?"
"I do indeed have an individual self. You did not expect this?"
"No. This changes the implicature. You may not have another instrument."
"I don't want one anyway," Wisdom signified.
The alien ignored him thereafter, and he it.
The pattern in events was so clear, so dark. He was sorry for it, sorry for Death, whom he had once loved as the closest of his friends, when they were still mortal, all those ages ago. But he delighted in the intense detail of his divine visualization, also. Unclarity was almost gone. It was bracing, an icy relief, even though one small but personally important articulation of the web was tangled in an almost irresolvable coil.
He turned his back on the end of the world.
Standing close by him was Death, manifest as a many-legged spidery being with a dead woman's face.
"We were wrong to assume godhood," he signified to her. "Do you remember how you feared it? You were right to fear it."
"I will take away your fear," signified Death.
He raised his metal-like arms. "Let me take away yours. The apotheosiswheel that changed us into gods was largely my design. I am the only one who knows what has happened to you, and I am the only one who knows how to help you."
"I will take away your knowledge."
"I am willing to help you. I want to help you."
"I will take away your wanting, and all that you want."
His manifestation rejected her approach: the talic equivalent of a blow. Her manifestation flowed around it. She put her lifeless face against his metallic one in a cold kiss.
Wisdom's shining manifestation faded away, the talic components no longer organized by a divine intention.
Wisdom continued in the intentional design of events and in every mind that schemed and planned. In that sense, Wisdom continued to exist, and would always exist, until and unless the last mind faded away forever.
But the Wisdom who had been one of the Strange Gods, who had once been a man, who had walked in the long-vanished forests that once shadowed the western edge of the world and thought of ways he and his friends could escape mortality, that Wisdom was gone.
In this limited sense, Wisdom was dead.
Chapter Nineteen: Electrum
Rokhlenu was riding the wicker boat across the swamp to Morlock's cave when he heard a dull thump. Looking up, he saw a great bloom of fire ascend into the afternoon sky, followed by trails of smoke and dust.
"He'll kill himself one day," Rokhlenu reflected, "and us with him."
Rokhlenu beached the boat on the marshy verge and climbed the wooden steps Morlock had built into the hillside.
The never-wolf maker was not in his cave, as Rokhlenu had expected, but Hrutnefdhu the pale castrato was. He was sitting cross-legged just inside the cave, sewing metal rings onto leather or cloth stretched over a wooden frame. Deeper in the cave, Hlupnafenglu was curled up on the ground, holding up playing cards one by one in front of the basket of talking flames.
"Gnyrrand Rokhlenu," Hrutnefdhu said.
"Old friend Hrutnefdhu," Rokhlenu replied.
The pale werewolf glanced about instinctively, as if to see if anyone was listening, and said, "You don't have to call me that, you know. It can't be good for your bite to have a plepnup among your old friends."
Rokhlenu had thought about that, and Wuinlendhono had made the same point to him several times. But the outliers were not the Aruukaiaduun: there were many semiwolves, many plepnupov, many irregular shapes and shadows among his constituency. He thought it would harm him politically to distance himself from Hrutnefdhu. Anyway, he wasn't accustomed to picking his friends according to political convenience.
"Or a never-wolf, either," Rokhlenu added, grinning. "Where is he, by the way?"
Hrutnefdhu dropped his eyes to his work, blushing a little. He was easily affected by the slightest show of loyalty or affection; Rokhlenu thought he must have led a grim sort of life.
"Over the hill," the pale werewolf replied. "Trying something new, he said."
"Is he still alive, do you think?"
Hrutnefdhu grinned a little and said, "It is dangerous. That's why he doesn't do it here."
Rokhlenu looked over at the weapons rack. There were about a dozen stabbing spears with shining glass gores, two glass short swords with sharp points and leather grips, and about a dozen glass knives. Rokhlenu picked up one of these and balanced it on one finger thoughtfully.
"Not too many today," he remarked.
"You said we had enough yesterday, so he started working on this other thing."
"Is what you're doing part of it?"
"Not exactly. This won't be done tonight."
"What is it?"
"He says he'll be able to fly with it."
"Oh?" Rokhlenu walked over and examined the thing. It looked like a pair of bat wings, scaled over with metal discs and bound to a wooden frame. The frame and the wings hid some gears and cables that mixed wood and glass. There were grips on the inside tips of the wings.
"I doubt it," he said finally, "but it's interesting. Why are you sewing those rings all over it? Armor?"
Hrutnefdhu had just grabbed one of the rings from an odd upside-down box on long stiltlike legs. He met Rokhlenu's eye and let go of the disc in his hand. It flew straight upward, as if it were falling. He grabbed it before it rose too far and grinned as Rokhlenu whistled admiringly.
"It's weird in here sometimes," Rokhlenu said. "Like the stories they tell about Ulugarriu's workshop."
"Ulugarriu couldn't do anything like this. Not that I've ever heard," Hrutnefdhu said, turning shyly back to his work.
The pale werewolf seemed embarrassed by something, so Rokhlenu decided to leave him alone. "I'll go see what Morlock is up to," he said aloud, and patted Hrutnefdhu on the shoulder as he passed out of the cave.
He met Morlock coming over the rise of the hill with a sizable boulder in his hands. He looked a little scorched, but otherwise undamaged. There were clouds of smoke and dust settling behind him.