"Stand aside," Morlock said. "I won't hurt you if I don't have to. Your light can't hurt me, anyway."
"You've already hurt me!" shouted the steersman. "If he finds out that you learned about impulse clouds from me-"
Morlock turned curiously toward the steersman.
"That was a slip, wasn't it?" said the steersman ruefully, in quite a different sort of voice.
"Yes."
"Two such similar simulacra, facing similar challenges in such a short space of time," the steersman's mouth mused. "I'm not surprised I got confused. But I wonder if that was really it. I've been wanting to talk to you for some time, Morlock."
"Who are you?"
"Krecking ghosts. Do I need to tell you? I'm Ulugarriu."
Morlock bent his head back to look at the view-board, then adjusted his course upward and southward. When the ship was headed straight back toward Wuruyaaria in the teeth of the wind, he levelled off again.
"I heard you didn't talk much," the steersman complained. "But it seems to me you're being petulant."
"I'm in the middle of something."
"You're in the middle of the biggest time-wasting mistake a male can commit. There is more at stake here than a single life, a few lives, a thousand lives, an election, a city. You are in greater danger than you can imagine walking amidst powers that you don't understand."
"I'm in the middle of something," Morlock said, adjusting the height of the airship again and cranking the forward speed to maximum. "Send me a message, if you want to arrange a meeting in person. I will not deal with a simulacrum."
"And I'm supposed to let you within sword's reach of me, so you can split me like beef liver with Tyrfing? Not on your flat greasy ape-nose. We'll talk on my terms, because what I have to say you need to hear."
Morlock grabbed the steersman simulacrum by its elbow and stepped off the platform, dragging the other with him. The simulacrum hit the floor first, since Morlock was held up by the levity of his wings. When he reached the floor, he drew his sword and slashed a hole in the fabric.
"You're making a mistake," the steersman simulacrum repeated in a resigned voice.
Morlock stuffed him through the hole and out into the night. He heard the body strike the gondola on its way to earth.
Satisfied, he sheathed the sword and flew back up to the moonstone platform.
The werewolf crew would come for him presently, but he had a plan to deal with them. If his plan failed he would have to improvise, but he hoped it wouldn't come to that. The crew would remember what had happened to the other airship when the crew attacked, and that would slow them down some. It gave him time, perhaps enough …
In the view-board, the cratered peak of Dhaarnaiarnon lay dead center and growing.
The dark bird who was Mercy signified, "The knowledge that Ulugarriu operates through simulacra has disrupted my visualizations."
The swordlike shadow indicated agreement with Mercy.
The indistinct dark cloud that was Death signified nothing.
"My manifested senses perceived the simulacrum as if it were alive," Mercy persisted.
War agreed.
The indistinct dark cloud that was Death signified nothing.
"If there are multiple entities in or around the city who are, in fact, extensions of Ulugarriu," Mercy persisted, "there is a pattern to events that we do not grasp. It will clash with patterns we do grasp, and the results are beyond prediction."
"There is no pattern to events," Death signified. "Or: only one."
"The inevitability of death?"
"Yes."
War indicated boredom with this oft-repeated pattern of symbology.
"You lesser gods," Death replied, "have the luxury of boredom, change, variety. You hold sway in a mortal's life for an hour, a day, a year, some stretch of time. Then they relinquish you, and you them. But I impinge on a mortal's life once, when they become me and I become them. And then they are not, forever. And I go on, forever."
"Or they escape to a place where we can no longer torture them," signified Mercy, "forever. That's my hope."
"Hope," repeated Death, and signified amusement. She ceased to be manifest.
"Wisdom thinks she is frightened," signified Mercy. She would have preferred to discuss this with Wisdom himself, but her visualizations were growing quite tangled and she could not envision a time/space locus in which they would both be manifest.
War signified that boasting often went hand in hand with fear. Both were part of his sphere, so he was well acquainted with them.
"Why did you accept apotheosis, War?" Mercy asked. "I wanted to do good, and be a part of the good that people do. Maybe I have done some of that. But it has made me more and more aware of the power of evil. Why did you become a god?"
War signified that his answer would play out in events.
The airship was now closing on the peak of Dhaarnaiarnon. Morlock kept a close eye on the view-board. He dropped the level of flight lower, and then still lower. For his purpose, too low was better than not low enough.
The airship shuddered with impact. There was a tearing, grinding sound from below, and forward movement stopped. Morlock braced the wheel with his body to keep the ship on course. Abruptly, the ship was flying free again.
Morlock spun the wheel to aim the ship toward the outlier settlement and cranked down the intensity of the impulse light, diminishing the craft's speed. Then he risked jumping down to the chamber floor and peering through the rift.
He was passing over the smoke lights of Wuruyaaria, and could see clearly that the gondola was gone. A few wooden fragments swung from stray cables, but he seemed to have no passengers. He flew back up to the moonstone platform and steered for his cave, beyond the shoulder of Wuruyaaria.
"I don't understand," Mercy said then. "This is why you became a god?"
War signified that he didn't understand how she could not understand. Two men had pitted their lives against a greater, better-armed force to defend those they loved. They had risked much and lost much. Their skill and daring had won a great victory.
"One man, really," Mercy said.
War disagreed. If it were not for Rokhlenu, Morlock would have slept through the attack in a drunken stupor. He displayed the visualization to her.
Mercy was forced to acknowledge this truth. "But many died for that victory," she pointed out.
War observed that more would have died if the outlier settlement had burned to the ground. Mercy for the airship crews was death for the outliers.
"I know," Mercy replied. It was the sort of paradox which made her the weakest of the Strange Gods and War one of the strongest.
War ceased to manifest himself. Mercy, too, departed for another spacetime locus.
Morlock's heart felt relief at the absence of Strange Gods, although he had not been aware of their presence. He dropped the height of the airship almost to ground level and reduced the impulse light until the airship slowed almost to a walking speed. He drifted past the entrance to his cave to the silver-laden waste fields over the hill's shoulder. He set the airship down there, diminishing the intensity of the lens-foci and completely closing the irises.
The fabric skin of the ship sagged from its skeletal framework. Morlock hauled the barrel containing the moonstone off its disk and threw it down to the ground. He jumped down after it and rolled it downslope until he reached the curtain of fabric at the chamber wall. He slashed through it with the ease of practice, though by now he was very weary, and trundled the moonstone barrel through the opening into the warm humid night air, dragging it all the way back to his cave. There it was as safe as he could make it.
Hlupnafenglu and Hrutnefdhu were not in his cave, which he found disappointing, but also something of a relief. He bent over to pick up the bowl of wine he had set down on the cave floor before he had left. He sat down then, wearily but carefully, so that he would not spill the wine. Then he drank the wine.
Chapter Twenty-four: Shadow and Substance