The man who had given her the coin walked a step, and then turned back. "Hey," he said to Rara. "If you're blind, how do you know I'm new here?"
"Strangers are generous," Rara explained, "while those who live here are too frozen to give."
"Look," said the man, "I was told to watch out for blind beggars who weren't blind. My cousin, he warned me ..."
"Not blind!" cried Rara. "Not blind? Why my license is right here. It permits me to beg in specified areas because of loss of sight. If you keep this up, I'll be obliged to show it to you." She turned away with a huff and began in another direction. The man scratched his head, then hurried off.
A few moments later, a man completely swathed in a gray cloak and hood came around the corner and stopped in front of the woman.
"Money for the blind?"
"Can you use this?" the man said. From his cloak he held out a brocade jacket, covered with fine metal work.
"Of course," said Rara softly. Then she coughed. "Er ... what is it?"
"It's a jacket," Jon said. "It's made pretty well. Maybe you can sell it?"
"Oh, thank you. Thank you, sir."
A few blocks later, a ragged boy, who looked completely amazed, was handed a white silk shirt by the man in the gray cloak. In front of a doorway two blocks on, a pair of open-toed black boots with gold disks were left—and stolen from that doorway exactly forty seconds later by a hairdresser who was returning to her home in Devil's Pot. She was missing the little finger of her left hand. Once the gray cloaked figure paused in an alley beneath a clothes line. Suddenly he flung up a ball of gray cloth, which caught on the line, unrolled, and became identifiable as a pair of dark gray trousers. A block later the last minor articles of clothing were hurled unceremoniously through an open window. As Jon turned another corner, he glimpsed a figure ducking into a doorway down the dim street. The man was apparently following him.
Jon walked very slowly down the next block, ambling along in the shadow. The hoodlum crept up behind him, then grabbed his cloak, ripped it away, and leaped forward.
Only there wasn't anything there. The mugger stood for a moment, the cape dangling from his hand, blinking at the place a man should have been. Then something hit him in the jaw. He staggered back. Something else hit him in the stomach. As he stumbled forward now, beneath the street lamp, a transparent human figure suddenly formed in front of him. Then it planted its quite substantial fist into his jaw again, and he went back, down, and out.
Jon dragged the man back to the side of the alley, fading out completely as he did so. Then he took the hoodlum's clothes, which were ragged, smelly, and painfully nondescript. The shoes, which were too small for him, he had to leave off. Then he flung the cape back around his shoulders and pulled the hood over his head.
For the next six blocks he was lost because there were no street signs. When he did find the next one, he realized he was only a block away from the inn.
As he reached the stone building, he heard a thud in the tiny alleyway beside it. A moment later a girl's voice called softly, "There. Just like that. Only you better do exactly as I say or you'll break your arms or legs, or back."
He walked to the edge of the building and peered into the alley.
Her white hair loose, Alter stood looking up at the roof. "All right, Tel," she called. "You next."
Something came down from the roof, flipped over on the ground at her feet, rolled away, and then suddenly unwound to standing position. The black-haired boy ran his fingers through his hair. "Wow," he said. Then he shook his head. "Wow."
"Are you all right?" Alter asked. "You didn't pull anything, did you?"
"No," he said. "I'm all right. I think. Yeah, everything's in place." He looked up at the roof again, two stories above.
"Your turn, Let," Alter called up.
"It's high," came a childish voice from the roof.
"Hurry up," said Alter, her voice becoming authoritative. "When I count three. And remember, knees up, chin down, and roll quick. One, two, three!" There was the space of a breath, and then it fell, rolled, bounced unsteadily to its feet, and resolved into another boy, this one blond, and slighter than the first.
"Hey, you kids," Jon said.
They turned.
Jon looked at the smaller boy. His slight blond frame, less substantial then even Alter's white-haired loveliness was definitely of the royal family. "What are you doing out here, anyway?" Jon asked. "Especially you, your Highness."
All three children jumped.
It looked like they might balk, and after that descent from the roof, he wasn't sure where they might balk to. So he said, "Incidentally, the Duchess of Petra sent me. How did you do that fall?"
His Highness was the only one to relax appreciably.
"And are you sure you're supposed to be outside?"
"We were supposed to stay on the top floor," Tel said. "But him," he pointed to his ragged Highness, "he got restless, and we started telling him about the tricks, and so we went up to the roof, and Alter said she could get us down."
"Can you get them back up?" Jon asked.
"Sure," said Alter, "all we do is climb ..."
Jon held up his hand. "Wait a minute," he said. "We'll go inside and talk to the man in charge. Don't worry. No one'll be mad."
"You mean talk to Geryn?" said Alter.
"I guess that's what his name is."
They started back out of the alley. "Tell me," Jon said, "just what sort of person is Geryn?"
"He's a strange old man. He talks to himself all the time," said Alter. "But he's smart."
Talks to himself, Jon reflected, and nodded. When they reached the door of the inn, Jon pulled his cape off and stepped into the light. A few people at the bar turned around, and when they saw the children, they looked askance at one another.
"Geryn's probably upstairs," Alter said. They went to the second floor. Jon let the children go ahead of him as they passed into the shadow of the hall. He only stepped up to them when Alter pushed open the door at the end of the hall and bright light from Geryn's room fell full across them.
"What is it?" Geryn snapped. And then, "What is it, quick?" He whirled around in the chair at the rough wooden desk when they entered. The giant was standing by the window. Geryn's gray eyes fidgeted back and forth. Finally he said, "Why are you out here? And who is he? What do you want?"
"I'm from the Duchess of Petra," Jon said. "I've come to take Let to the forest people."
"Yes," said the old man. "Yes." Then suddenly his face twisted as if he were trying to remember something. Then shook his head. "Yes." Suddenly he stood up. "Well, go on. I've done my part, I tell you. I've done. Every minute he's in my house he endangers my boarders, my friends. Take him. Go on."
The giant turned from the window. "I am to go with you. My name is Arkor."
Jon frowned. For the first time the scarred giant's height struck him. "Why...?" he started.
"It is my country that we go to," said Arkor. "I know how to get there. I can take you through it. Geryn says it is part of the plan."
Jon felt a sudden knot of resentment tighten inside him. These plans—the Duchess', Geryn's, even the plans of the triple beings who inhabited them—they trapped him. Freedom. The word went in and out of his mind like a shadow. He said, "When do we go then, if you know how to get there?"
"In the morning," said Arkor.
"Alter, take him to a room. Get him out of here. Quick. Go on." They backed from the room and Alter hurried them up the hall.
Jon was thinking. After delivering Let to the forest people, he was going further. Yes. He would go on, try to get through the radiation barrier. But all three of them had to get through if they were to do any good. So why wasn't Geryn coming instead of sending the giant? If Geryn came, then there'd be two people near the Lord of the Flames. But Geryn was old. Maybe the Duchess could bring him with her when she came. Mentally he smashed a fist into his thoughts and scattered them. Don't think. Don't think. Thinking binds up your mind, and you can never be— He stopped. Then another thought wormed into his skull, the thought of five years of glittering hunger.
That night he slept well. Morning pried his eyes open with blades of light that fell through the window. It was very early. He had been up only a minute when there was a knock on his door. Then it opened, and Arkor directed the dwarfed form of the Prince into Jon's room, then turned and left.
"He says to meet him downstairs in five minutes," Let said.
"Sure," said Jon. He finished buttoning up the ragged shirt stolen from the mugger the night before, and looked at the boy by the door. "I guess you're not used to these sort of clothes," he said. "Once I wasn't either. Pretty soon they begin to take."
"Huh?" said Let. Then, "Oh."
"Is something wrong?"
"Who are you?"
Jon thought for a moment. "Well," he said. "I'm sort of a friend of your brother. An acquaintance, anyway. I'm supposed to take you to the forest."
"Why?"
"You'll be safe there."
"Could we go to the sea instead?"
"My turn for a 'why'?" Jon asked.
"Because Tel told me all about it last night. He said it was fun. He said there were rocks all different colors. And in the morning, he said, you can see the sun come up like a burning blister behind the water. He told me about the boats, too. I'd like to work on a boat. I really would. They don't allow me to do anything at home. Mother says I might get hurt. Will I get a chance to work someplace?"
"Maybe," Jon said.
"Tel had some good stories about fishing. Do you know any stories?"
"I don't know," Jon said. "I never tried telling any. Hey, come on. We better get started."
"I like stories," Let said. "Come on. I'm just trying to be friendly."
Jon laughed, then thought a minute. "I can tell you a story, about a prison mine. Do you know anything about the prison mines beyond the forest?"
"Some," said Let.
"Well, once upon a time, there were three prisoners in that prison camp." They started out in the hall. "They'd been there a long time, and they wanted to get out. One was ... well, he looked like me, let's pretend. Another had a limp ..."
"And the third one was chubby, sort of," interrupted Let. "I know that story."
"You do?" asked Jon.
"Sure," Let said.
"Then you go on and tell it." Jon was a little annoyed.
Let told it to him.
They were outside waiting for Arkor when the boy finished. "See," Let said. "I told you I knew it."
"Yeah," said Jon quietly. He stood very still. "You say the other two ... didn't make it?"
"That's right," Let said. "The guards brought them back and dumped their bodies in the mud so that ..."
"Shut up," Jon said.
"Huh?" asked Let.
He was quiet for a few breaths. "Who told you that ... story?"
"Petra," Let answered. "She told it to me. It's a good story, huh?"
"Incidentally," Jon said. "I'm the one that got away."
"You mean?" The boy stopped. "You mean it really happened?"
The early light warmed the deserted street now as Arkor came to the door of the inn and stepped into the street.
"All right," he said. "Come on."
The news service of Toromon in the city of Toron was a public address system that flooded the downtown area, and a special printed sheet that was circulated among the upper families of the city. On the mainland it was a fairly accurate brigade of men and women who transported news orally from settlement to settlement. All announced simultaneously that morning:
Crown Prince KidnapedKing Declares War!
In the military ministry, directives were issued in duplicate and redelivered in triplicate. At eight-forty, the 27B Communications Sector became hopelessly snarled. This resulted in the shipment of a boatload of prefabricated barracks foundations to a port on the mainland sixty-two miles from the intended destination.
Let, Jon, and Arkor were just mounting the private yacht of the Duchess of Petra which was waiting for them at the end of the harbor. Later, as the island of Toron slipped across the water, Let mentioned to Jon, leaning against the railing, that there was an awful lot of commotion on the docks.
"It's always like that," Jon told him, remembering the time he'd gone with his father in the morning to the pier. "They're inspecting cargoes. But it does look awfully busy."
Which was a euphemism. One group of military directives which had been quite speedily and accurately delivered were the offers of contracts, primarily for food, and secondarily for equipment. Two of the distributors of imported fish who had absolutely no chance of receiving the contracts sent in a bid accompanied by a letter which explained (with completely fraudulent statistics) how much cheaper it would be to use imported fish rather than those from the aquariums. Then they commandeered a group of ruffians who broke into the house of old Koshar's personal secretary, who was still sleeping after the previous night's party which he had helped out with. (So far he has appeared in this story only as a hand seen around the edge of a storage cabinet door, a broad hand, with wiry black hair, on which there was a cheap, wide, brass ring in which was set an irregular shape of blue glass.)
They tied him to a chair, punched him in the stomach, and in the head, and in the mouth until there was blood running down his trimmed, black beard; and he had given the information they wanted—information that enabled them to sink three of the Koshar cargo fleet that was just coming into dock.
The Duchess' private yacht made contact with a tetron-tramp returning to the mainland and Let, Jon, and Arkor changed ships. Coming from the yacht in bare feet and rags gave them an incongruous appearance. But on the tramp, among those passengers who were returning for their families, they quickly became lost.
On Toron, the pilot of the shuttle boat that took workers from the city to the aquariums found a clumsily put-together, but nevertheless unmistakable, bomb hidden in the lavatory. It was dismantled. There was no accident. But an authority, Vice-Supervisor Nitum of Koshar Synthetic Food Concerns (whose name you do not need to remember, as he was killed three days later in a street brawl) clenched his jaw (unshaven; he had been called to the office a half an hour early over the sunken cargo boats), nodded his head, and issued a few non-official directives himself. Twenty minutes later, Koshar Synthetic Food Concerns was officially given the government contract to supply the armies of Toromon with food. Because the two rival bidders, the import merchants, had ceased to exist about twelve minutes previously, having suddenly been denied warehouse space, and their complete storage dumped into the streets to rot (nearly seven tons of frozen fish) because the refrigeration lockers, and the refrigeration buildings, and the refrigeration trucks had all been rented from Rahsok Refrigeration, and nobody had ever thought of spelling Rahsok backwards.
In the military ministry, Captain Clemen, along with Major Tomar, was called away from his present job of completing the evacuation of the top four floors of an adjacent office building to accommodate the new corps of engineers, mathematicians, and physicists that the army had just enlisted. Apparently riots had started in the streets around the old Rahsok Refrigeration Houses. The warehouses were just a few blocks away from the official boundary of the Devil's Pot.
They got there ten minutes after the report came in. "What the hell is going on?" Clemen demanded, from the head of the City Dispersal Squad. Behind the line of uniformed men, masses of people were pushing and calling out. "And what's that stench?" added Clemen. He was a tiny man, exactly a quarter of an inch over the minimum for military acceptance—4' 10".
"Fish, sir," the Dispersal Chief told him. "There's tons of it all over the street. The people are trying to take it away."
"Well, let them have it," Clemen said. "It'll clear the streets of the mess and maybe do some good."
"You don't understand, sir," the head of Dispersal explained. "It's been poisoned. Just before it was dumped, it was soaked with buckets of barbitide. Half a ton of the stuff's already been carried away."
Clemen turned. "Tomar," he said. "You get back to headquarters and see personally that a city-wide announcement goes out telling about the poisoned fish. Call General Medical, find out the antidote, and get the information all over the city. See to it personally, too."
Tomar got back to headquarters, got General Medical, got the antidote, which was expensive, complicated, and long, and drafted his announcement.
WARNING! Any citizen who has taken fish from the street in the area of Rahsok Refrigeration is in immediate danger of death. The fish has been treated with the fatal poison barbitide. No fish other than that directly traceable to the Synthetic Markets should be eaten.warn your neighbors!If fish has been eaten, go directly to the General Medical building (address followed). Symptoms of barbitide poisoning: intense cramps about two hours after ingestion, followed by nausea, fever, and swollen lymph nodes. Death results in twenty minutes after onset of cramps under normal conditions. Foods with high calcium contents prolong spasms to a maximum hour and a half (foods such as milk, ground egg shell). General Medical has been alerted. There you will receive injections of Calcium Silicate and Atropayic Acid which can counteract the effects of the poison up until the last five or ten minutes.
WARNING! Any citizen who has taken fish from the street in the area of Rahsok Refrigeration is in immediate danger of death. The fish has been treated with the fatal poison barbitide. No fish other than that directly traceable to the Synthetic Markets should be eaten.warn your neighbors!If fish has been eaten, go directly to the General Medical building (address followed). Symptoms of barbitide poisoning: intense cramps about two hours after ingestion, followed by nausea, fever, and swollen lymph nodes. Death results in twenty minutes after onset of cramps under normal conditions. Foods with high calcium contents prolong spasms to a maximum hour and a half (foods such as milk, ground egg shell). General Medical has been alerted. There you will receive injections of Calcium Silicate and Atropayic Acid which can counteract the effects of the poison up until the last five or ten minutes.
Tomar personally sent the directive through Communications Center 27B, marked urgent and emergency. Ten minutes later he received a visiphone call from the Communications Engineer saying that 27B had been hopelessly snarled all morning. In fact so had 26B, 25B. In further fact, said the engineer, the only available sectors open were 34A and 42A, none of which, incidentally, had access to complete city lines.
Tomar made a triplicate copy of the warning and sent it out, nonetheless, through Sectors 40A, 41A, and 42A. A half an hour later the secretary to the Communications Engineer called and said, "Major Tomar, I'm sorry, I just got back from my break and I didn't see your message until just now. Because of the tie-ups, we've received instructions only to let authorized persons have access to the available sectors."
"Well, who the hell is authorized," Tomar bellowed. "If you don't put that through and quick, half the city may be dead by this evening."
The secretary paused a minute. Then he said, "I'm sorry, sir, but ... well, look. I'll give it directly to the Communications Engineer when he gets back."
"When is he getting back?" Tomar demanded.
"I ... I don't know."
"Who is authorized?"
"Only generals, sir, and only those directly concerned with the war effort."
"I see," Tomar said, and hung up.
He had just dispatched seven copies of the announcement with an explanatory note to seven of the fourteen generals in the ministry when the Communications Engineer called again. "Major, what's all this about a bushel of fish?"
"Look, there are seven tons of the stuff all over the streets."
"And poisoned?"
"Exactly. Will you please see that this message gets out over every available piece of city-wide communication as fast as possible? This is really life and death."
"We're just allowed to work on getting war messages through. But I guess this takes priority. Oh, that explains some of the messages we've been getting. I believe there's even one for you."
"Well?" asked Tomar after a pause.
"I'm not allowed to deliver it, sir."
"Why not?"
"You're not authorized, sir."
"Look, damn it, get it right now and read it to me."
"Well ... er ... it's right here sir. It's from the chief of the City Dispersal Squad."
The message was, in brief, that twenty-three men, among them Captain Clemen, had been trampled to death by an estimated two and a half thousand hungry residents of the Devil's Pot, most of them immigrants from the mainland.
A ton and a half of fish was finally removed from the streets and disposed of. But five and a half tons had made its way through the city. The Communications Engineer also added that while they'd been talking, a memorandum had come through that Sectors 34A to 42A were now out of commission, but that the major should try 27B again, because it might have cleared up.
The second shift of workers that day was arriving at the aquariums. In the great pontooned building, vast rows of transparent plastic tubes, three feet in diameter, webbed back and forth among the tetron pumps. Vibrator nets cut the tubes into twenty-foot compartments. Catwalks strung the six-story structure, all flooded with deep red light that came from the phosphor-rods that stuck up from the pumps. Light toward the blue end of the spectrum disturbed the fish, who had to be visible at all times, to be moved, or to be checked for any sickness or deformity. In their transparent tubes, the fish floated in a state near suspended animation, vibrated gently, were kept at a constant 82°, were fed, were fattened, were sorted according to age, size, and species; then slaughtered. The second shift of workers moved into the aquarium, relieving the first shift.
They had been on about two hours when a sweating hulk of a man who was an assistant feeder reported to the infirmary, complaining of general grogginess. Heat prostration was an occasional complaint in the aquarium.
The doctor told him to lie down for a little while. Five minutes later he went into violent cramps. Perhaps the proper attention would have been paid to him had not a few minutes later a woman fallen from a catwalk at the top of the aquarium and broken one of the plastic arteries and her skull, six stories below.
In the red light the workers gathered around her broken body that lay at the end of a jagged plastic tube. In the spread water, dozens of fish, fat and ruddy-skinned, flapped their gills weakly.
The woman's co-workers said she had complained of not feeling well, when suddenly she went into convulsions while crossing one of the catwalks. By the time the doctor got back to the infirmary, the assistant feeder had developed a raging fever, and the nurse reported him violently nauseated. Then he died.
In the next two hours, out of the five thousand two hundred and eighty people who worked at the aquariums, three hundred and eighty-seven were taken with cramps and died in the next two hours, the only exception being an oddball physical culture enthusiast who always drank two quarts of milk for lunch; he lasted long enough to be gotten onto the shuttle and back to General Medical on Toron, where he died six minutes after admittance, one hour and seventeen minutes after the onset of the cramps. That was the first case that General Medical actually received. It was not until the sixteenth case that the final diagnosis of barbitide poisoning was arrived at. Then someone remembered the query that had come in by phone from the military ministry that morning about the antidote.
"Somehow," said Chief Toxologist Oona, "the stuff has gotten into some food or other. It may be all over the city." Then he sat down at his desk and drafted a warning to the citizens of Toron containing a description of the effects of barbitide poisoning, antidote, and instructions to come to the General Medical building, along with a comment on high calcium foods. "Send this to the Military Ministry and get it out over every available source of public communications, and quick," he told his secretary.
When the Assistant Communications Engineer (the first having gone off duty at three o'clock) received the message, he didn't even bother to see who it was from, but balled it up in disgust and flung it into a wastepaper basket and mumbled something about unauthorized messages. Had the janitor bothered to count that evening, he would have discovered that there were now thirty-six copies of Major Tomar's directive in various wastebaskets around the ministry.
Only a fraction of the barbitide victims made it to General Medical, but the doctors were busy. There was just one extraordinary incident, and among the screams of cramped patients, it was not given much thought. Two men near the beginning of the rush of patients, gained access to the special receiving room. They managed to get a look at all the women who arrived. One of the patients who was wheeled by them was a particularly striking girl of about fifteen with snow white hair and a strong, lithe body, now knotted with cramps. Sweat beaded her forehead, her eyelids, and through her open collar you could see she wore a leather necklace of shells.
"That's her," one of the men said. The other nodded, then went to the doctor who was administering the injections, and whispered to him.
"Of course not," the doctor said indignantly in a clear voice. "Patients need at least forty-eight hours rest and careful observation after injection of the antidotes. Their resistance is extremely low and complications ..."
The man said something else to the doctor and showed him a set of credentials. The doctor stopped, looked scared, then left the patient he was examining and went to the bed of the new girl. Quickly he gave her two injections. Then he said to the men, "I want you to know that I object to this completely and I will—"
"All right, Doctor," the first man said. Then the second hoisted Alter from the cot and they carried her out of the hospital.
The Queen Mother had her separate throne room. She sat in it now, looking at photographs. In bright colors, two showed the chamber of the Crown Prince. In one picture the Prince was seated on his bed in his pajama pants with his heel against the side board; standing by the window was a white-haired girl with a leather necklace strung with tiny, bright shells. The next showed the Prince still sitting on the bed, this time with his hand on the newel dolphin. The girl was just turning toward the open window.
The third picture, which from the masking, seemed to have been taken through a keyhole, showed what seemed to be an immense enlargement of a human pupil; mistily discernible through the iris were the dottings and tiny pathways of a retina pattern. On the broad arm of the Queen Mother's throne was a folder marked:Alter Ronid.
In the folder were a birth certificate, a clear photograph of the same retina pattern, a contract in which a traveling circus availed itself of the service of a group of child acrobats for the season, a school diploma, copies of receipts covering a three-year period of gymnastic instruction, a copy of a medical bill for the correction of a sprained hip, and two change of address slips. Also there were several cross reference slips to the files of Alia Ronid (mother, deceased) and Rara Ronid (maternal aunt, legal guardian).
The Queen put the photographs on top of the folder and turned to the guards. There were thirty of them lined against the walls of the room. She lifted up the heavy, jeweled scepter and said, "Bring her in." She touched the two buns of white hair on the sides of her head, breathed deeply, and straightened in the chair, as two doors opened at the other end of the room.
Two blocks had been set up in the middle of the room, about four feet high and a foot apart.
Alter stumbled once, but the guard caught her. They walked her between the blocks, which came to just below her shoulders, spread her arms over the surface and strapped them straight across the tops at the biceps and wrist.
The Queen smiled. "That's only a precaution. We want to help you." She came down the steps of the throne, the heavy jeweled rod cradled in her arm. "Only we know something about you. We know that you know something which if you tell me, will make me feel a great deal better. I've been very upset, recently. Did you know that?"
Alter blinked and tried to get her balance. The blocks were just under the proper height by half an inch so that she could neither stand completely nor could she sag.
"We know you're tired, and after your ordeal with the barbitide—you don't feel well, do you?" asked the Queen, coming closer.
Alter shook her head.
"Where did you take my son?" the Queen asked.
Alter closed her eyes, then opened them wide and shook her head.
"Believe me," said the Queen, "we have ample proof. Look." She held up the photographs for Alter to see. "My son took these pictures of the two of you together. They're very clear, don't you think?" She put the pictures back in the quilted pocket of her robe.
"Aren't you going to tell me, now?"
"I don't know anything," Alter said.
"Come now. That room had as many cameras as a sturgeon has eggs. There are dozens of hidden switches. Somehow the alarms connected with them didn't go off, but the cameras still worked."
Alter shook her head again.
"You don't have to be afraid," said the Queen. "We know you're tired and we want to get you back to the hospital as soon as possible. Now. What happened to my son, the Prince?"
Silence.
"You're a very sweet girl. You're an acrobat too?"
Alter swallowed, and then coughed.
The Queen gave a puzzled smile this time. "Really, you don't have to be afraid to answer me. You are an acrobat, isn't that right?"
Alter nodded.
The Queen reached out and slowly lifted the triplet leather necklace with its scattering of shells in her fingers. "This is a beautiful piece of jewelry." She lifted it from Alter's neck. "An acrobat's body must be like a fine jewel, fine and strong. You must be very proud of it." Again she paused and tilted her head. "I'm only trying to put you at ease, dear, make conversation." Smiling, she lifted the necklace completely from around Alter's neck. "Oh, this is exquisite ..."
Suddenly the necklace clattered to the ground, the shells making an almost miniature sound against the tiles.
Alter's eyes followed the necklace to the floor.
"Oh," the Queen said. "I'm terribly sorry. It would be a shame to break something like this." With one hand the Queen drew back her robes until her shoe was revealed. Then she moved her foot forward until her raised toe was over the necklace. "Will you tell me where my son is?"
There was seven, eight, ten seconds of silence. "Very well," the Queen said, and brought her foot down. The sound of crushed shells was covered by Alter's scream. Because the Queen had brought down the scepter, too, the full arc of its swing, onto Alter's strapped forearm. Then she brought it down again. The room was filled with the scream and the crack of the jeweled scepter against the surface of the block. Then the Queen smashed Alter's upturned elbow joint.
When there was something like silence, the Queen said, "Now, where is my son?"
Alter didn't say for a long while; when she did, they were ready to believe anything. So what she told them didn't do much good when they had time to check it. Later, unconscious, she was carried into the General Medical building wrapped in a gray blanket.
"Another fish poison case?" asked the clerk.
The man nodded. The doctor, who had been there when Alter was removed from the hospital, had been working steadily for six hours. When he unwrapped the blanket, he recognized the girl. When he unwrapped it further, the breath hissed between his lips, and then hissed out again, slowly. "Get this girl to emergency surgery," he said to the nurse. "Quickly!"
In the Devil's Pot, Tel had just gotten over a case of the runs which had kept him away from food all day. Feeling hungry, now, he was foraging in the cold storage cabinet of the inn's kitchen. In the freezing chest he found the remains of a baked fish, so he got a sharp knife from over the sink, and cut a piece. Then the door opened and the barmaid came in. She was nearly seventy years old and wore a red scarf around her stringy neck. Tel had cut a slice of onion and was putting it on top of the fish when the barmaid ran forward and knocked the dish from his hand.
"Ouch," Tel said, and jumped, though nothing had hurt him.
"Are you completely crazy?" the woman asked. "You want to be carried out of here like the rest of them?"
Tel looked puzzled as Rara entered the kitchen. "Good grief," she declared. "Where is everybody? I'm starved. I started selling that homebrew tonic of mine that I made up yesterday, and around noon, suddenly everybody was buying the stuff. They wanted something for cramps, and I guess my Super Aqueous Tonic is as good as anything else. I couldn't even get back to eat. Is there some sort of epidemic? Say, that looks good," and she went for the fish.
The old barmaid snatched up the dish and carried it to the disposal can. "It's poisoned, don't you understand?" She dumped it into the chute. "It's got to be the fish that's causing it. Everybody who ate it has been carried off to General Medical with cramps. Lots of them died, too. The woman who lives across the street and me, we figured it out. We both bought it from the same woman this morning, and that's all it could be.
"Well, I'm still hungry," Tel said.
"Can we have some cheese and fruit?" asked Rara.
"I guess that's safe," the woman said.
"Who was carried out?" Tel wanted to know, looking back in the cabinet.
"Oh, that's right," the barmaid said, "you've been upstairs sick all day." And then she told him.
At about the same time, an observer in a scouting plane noticed a boat bearing prefabricated barracks foundations some sixty miles away from any spot that could possibly be receiving such a shipment. In fact, he had sent a corrective order on a typographical error concerning ... yes, it must be, that same boat. He'd sent it that morning through Communication Sector 27B. They were near the shore, one of the few spots away from the fishing villages and the farm communes where the great forest had crept down to the edge of the water itself. A tiny port, occasionally used as an embarkation for the families of emigrants going to join people in the city, was the only point of civilization between the rippling smoke-green sea on one side and the crinkling deep green of the forest tree tops on the other. The observer also noted that a small tetron tramp was about to dock also. But that transport ship ... He called the pilot and requested contact be made.
The pilot was shaking his head, groggily.
The co-pilot was leaning back in his seat, his mouth opened, his eyes closed. "I don't feel too ..." The pilot started, and then reached forward absently to crumple a sheet of tin foil he had left on the instrument panel, in which, a few hours ago, had been a filet sandwich that he and the co-pilot had shared between them.
Suddenly the pilot fell forward out of his chair, knocking the control stick way to the left. He clutched his stomach as the plane banked suddenly to the right. In the observation blister, the observer was thrown from his chair and the microphone fell from his hand.
The co-pilot woke up, belched, grabbed for the stick, which was not in its usual place, and so missed. Forty-one seconds later, the plane had crashed into a dock some thirty feet from the mooring tetron tramp.
There was a roaring in the air. Let cried out and ran forward. Then shadow. Then water. His feet were slipping on the deck as the rail swung by. Then thunder. Then screaming. Something was breaking in half.
Jon and Arkor got him out. They had to jump overboard with the unconscious Prince, swim, climb, and carry. There were sirens at the dock when they laid him on the dried leaves of the forest clearing.
"We'll leave him here," Arkor said.
"Here? Are you sure?" Jon asked.
"They will come for him. You must go on," he said softly. "We'll leave the Prince now, and you can tell me of your plan."
"My plan ..." Jon said. They walked off through the trees.
Dried leaves tickled one cheek, a breeze cooled the other. Something touched him on the side, and he stretched his arms, scrunched his eyelids, then curled himself into the comfortable dark. He was napping in the little park behind the palace. He would go in for supper soon. The leaf smell was fresher than it had ever.... Something touched him on the side again.
He opened his eyes, and bit off a scream. Because he wasn't in the park, he wasn't going in to supper, and there was a giant standing over him.
The giant touched the boy with his foot once more.
Suddenly the boy scrambled away, then stopped, crouching, across the clearing. A breeze shook the leaves like admonishing fingers before he heard the giant speak. The giant was silent. Then the giant spoke again.
The word the boy recognized in both sentences was, "... Quorl ..."
The third time he spoke, he merely pointed to himself and repeated, "Quorl."
Then he pointed to the boy and smiled questioningly.
The boy was silent.
Again the giant slapped his hand against his naked chest and said, "Quorl." Again he extended his hand toward the boy, waiting for sound. It did not come. Finally the giant shrugged, and motioned for the boy to come with him.
The boy rose slowly, and then followed. Soon they were walking briskly through the woods.
As they walked, the boy remembered: the shadow of the plane out of control above them, the plane striking the water, water becoming a mountain of water, like shattered glass rushing at them across the sea. And he remembered the fire.
Hadn't it really started in his room at the palace, when he pressed the first of the concealed micro-switches with his heel? The cameras were probably working, but there had been no bells, no sirens, no rush of guards. It had tautened when he pushed the second switch in the jeweled dolphin on his bedpost. It nearly snapped with metallic panic when he had to maneuver the girl into position for the retina photograph.Nothinghad happened. He was taken away, and his mother stayed quietly in her room. What was supposed to happen was pulling further and further away from the reality. How could anybody kidnap the Prince?
His treatment by the boy who told him about the sea and the girl who taught him to fall pulled it even tighter.Ifthe Princewerekidnaped, certainly his jailors should not tell him stories of beautiful mornings and sunsets, or teach him to do impossible things with his body.
He was sure that the girl had meant him to die when she had told him to leap from the roof. But he had to do what he was told. He always had. (He was following the giant through the dull leaves because the giant had told him to.) When he had leapt from the roof, then rolled over and sprung to his feet alive, the shock had turned the rack another notch and he could feel the threads parting.
Perhaps if he had stayed there, talked more to the boy and girl, he could have loosened the traction, pulled the fabric of reality back into the shape of expectation. But then the man with the black hair and the scarred giant had come to take him away. He'd made one last volitional effort to bring "is" and "suppose" together. He'd told the man the story of the mine prisoners, the one cogent, connected thing he remembered from his immediate past, a real good "suppose" story. But the man turned on him and said that "suppose" wasn't "suppose" at all, but "is." A thread snapped here, another there.
(Over the deck of the boat there was roaring in the air. He had cried out. Then shadow. Then water. His feet were slipping and the rail swung by. Then thunder. Then screaming, his screaming:I can't die! I'm not supposed to die!Something tore in half.)
The leaves were shaking, the whole earth trembled with his tired, unsteady legs. As they walked through the forest, the last filament went, like a thread of glass under a blow-torch flame. The last thing to flicker out, like the fading end of the white hot strand, was the memory of someone, somewhere, entreating him not to forget something, not to forget it no matter what ... but what it was, he wasn't sure.
Quorl, with the boy beside him, kept a straight path through the forest. The ground sloped up now. Boulders lipped with moss pushed out here and there. Once Quorl stopped short; his arm shot in front of the boy to keep him from going further.
Yards before them the leaves parted, and two great women walked forward. Everything about them was identical, their blue-black eyes, flat noses, broad cheek ridges. Twin sisters, the boy thought. Both women also bore a triplex of scars down the left sides of their faces. They paid no attention to either Quorl or the boy, but walked across into the trees again. The moment they were gone, Quorl started again.
Much later they turned onto a small cliff that looked across a great drop to another mountain. Near a thick tree trunk was a pile of brush and twigs. The boy watched Quorl drop to his knees and being to move the brush away. The boy crouched to see better.
The great brown fingers tipped with bronze-colored nails gently revealed a cage made of sticks tied together with dried vines. Something squeaked in the cage, and the boy jumped.
Quorl in a single motion got the trap door opened and his hand inside. The next protracted squeak suddenly turned into a scream. Then there was silence. Quorl removed a furry weasel and handed it to the boy.
The pelt was feather soft and still warm. The head hung crazily to the side where the neck had been broken. The boy looked at the giant's hands again.
Veins roped across the ligaments' taut ridges. The hair on the joints of the fingers grew up to edge of the broad, furrowed knuckles. Now the finders were pulling the brush back over the trap. They crossed the clearing and Quorl uncovered a second trap. When the hand went into the trap and the knot of muscle jumped on the brown forearm (Squeeeeeeraaaaa!), the boy looked away, out across the great drop.
The sky was smoke gray to the horizon where a sudden streak of orange marked the sunset. The burning copper disk hung low in the purple gap of the mountains. A fan of lavender drifted above the orange, and then white, faint green.... The gray wasn't really gray, it was blue-gray. He began to count colors, and there were twelve distinct ones (not a thousand). The last one was a pale gold that tipped the edges of the few low clouds that clustered near the burning circle.
A touch on the shoulder made the boy turn back. Quorl handed him the second animal, and they went back into the woods. Later, they had built a small fire and had skinned and quartered the animals on the scimitar-like blade that the giant wore. They sat in the diminishing shell of light with the meat on forked sticks, turning it over the flame. The boy watched the gray-maroon fibers go first shiny with juice, and then darken, turn crisp and brown. When the meat was done, Quorl took a piece of folded skin from his pouch and shook some white powder onto it. Then he passed the leather envelope to the boy.
The boy poured a scattering of white powder into his palm, then carefully put his tongue to it. It was salt.
When they had nearly finished eating the forest had grown cooler and still. Fire made the leaves around them into flickering shingles on the darkness. Quorl was cleaning the last, tiny bone with big, yellow teeth when there was a sound. They both turned.
Another branch broke to their left. "Tloto," Quorl called harshly, followed by some sort of invective.
It moved closer, the boy could hear it moving, closer until the boy saw the tall shadow at the edge of the ring of light.
With disgust—but without fear, the boy could see—Quorl picked up a stick and flung it. The shadow dodged and made a small mewing sound.
"Di ta klee, Tloto," Quorl said. "Di ta klee."
Only Tloto didn'tdi ta klee, but came forward instead, into the light.
Perhaps it had been born of human parents, but to call it human now ... It was bone naked, hairless, shell white. It had no eyes, no ears, only a lipless mouth and slitted nostril flaps. It sniffed toward the fire.
Now the boy saw that both the feet were clubbed and gnarled. Only two fingers on each hand were neither misshapen or stiffly paralyzed. It reached for Quorl's pile of bones, making the mewing sound with its mouth.
With a sudden sweep of his hand, Quorl knocked the paraplegic claw away and shouted another scattering of indifferent curses. Tloto backed away, turned to the boy, and came forward, its nostril slits widening and contracting.
The boy had eaten all he could and had a quarter of his meat still left. It's only a head or two taller than I am, he thought. If it's from this race of giants, perhaps it's still a child. Maybe it's my age. He stared at the blank face. It doesn't know what's going on, the boy thought. It doesn't know what's supposed to be happening.
Perhaps it was just the sound of the word in his head that triggered off the sudden panic. (Or was it something else that caught in his chest?) Anyway, he took the unfinished meat and extended it toward Tloto.
The claw jumped forward, grabbed, and snatched back. The boy tried to make his mouth go into a smile. But Tloto couldn't see, so it didn't matter. He turned back to the fire, and when he looked up again, Tloto was gone.
As Quorl began to kick dirt onto the coals, he lectured the boy, apparently on Tloto and perhaps a few other philosophical concepts. The boy listened carefully, and understood at least that Tloto was not worth his concern. Then they lay down beside the little cyst of embers, the glowing scab of light on the darkness, and slept.
When the giant's hand came down and shook his shoulder, it was still dark. He didn't jump this time but blinked against the night and pulled his feet under him. It had grown colder, and dark wind brushed his neck and fingered his hair. Then a high sound cut above the trees and fell away. Quorl took the boy's arm and they started through the dark trees quickly.
Gray light filtered from the left. Was it morning? No. The boy saw it was the rising moon. The light became white, then silver white. They reached a cliff at last, beyond which was the dark sea. Broken rock spilled to ledges below. Fifty feet down, but still a hundred feet above the water, was the largest table of rock. The moon was high enough to light the entire lithic arena as well as the small temple at its edge.
In front of the temple stood a man in black robes who blew on a huge curved shell. The piercing wail sliced high over the sea and the forest. People were gathering around the edge of the arena. Some came in couples, some with children, but most were single men and women.
The boy started to go down, but Quorl held him back. They waited. From sounds about them, the boy realized there were others observing from the height also. On the water, waves began to glitter with broken images of the moon. The sky was speckled with stars.
Suddenly a group of people were led from the temple onto the platform. Most of them were children. One was an old man whose beard twitched in the light breeze. Another was a tall stately women. All of them were bound, all of them were near naked, and all except the woman shifted their feet and looked nervously about.
The priest in the black robe disappeared into the temple, and emerged again with something that looked to the boy from this distance for all the world like a back-scratcher. The priest raised it in the moonlight, and a murmur rose and quieted about the ring of people. The boy saw that there were three close prongs on the handle, each snagging on the luminous beams of the moon, betraying their metallic keenness.
The priest walked to the first child and caught the side of her head in his hand. Then he quickly drew the triple blade down the left side of her face. She made an indefinite noise, but it was drowned in the rising whisper of the crowd. He did the same to the next child who began to cry, and to the next. The woman stood completely still and did not flinch when the blades opened her cheek. The old man was afraid. The boy could tell because he whimpered and backed away.
A man and a woman stepped from the ring of people and held him for the priest. As the blade raked the side of his face, his high senile whine turned into a scream. The boy thought for a moment of the trapped animals. The old man staggered away from his captors and no one paid him any more attention. The priest raised the shell to his mouth once more, and the high, brilliant sound flooded the arena.
Then, as they had come, silently the people disappeared into the woods. Quorl touched the boy's shoulder and they too went into the woods. The boy looked at the giant with a puzzled expression, but there was no explanation. Once the boy caught sight of a white figure darting at their left as a shaft of moonlight slipped across a naked shoulder. Tloto was following them.
The boy spent his days learning. Quorl taught him to pull the gut of animals to make string. It had to be stretched a long time and then greased with hunks of fat. Once learned it became his job; as did changing the bait in the traps; as did cutting willow boughs to make sleeping pallets; as did sorting the firewood into piles of variously sized wood; as did holding together the sticks while Quorl tied them together and made a canopy for them, the night it rained.
He learned words, too. At least he learned to understand them.Tike—trap,Di'tika—a sprung trap,Tikan—two traps. One afternoon Quorl spent a whole six hours teaching words to the boy. There were lots of them. Even Quorl, who did not speak much, was surprised how many had to be learned. The boy did not speak at all. But soon he understood.
"There is a porcupine," Quorl would say, pointing.
The boy would turn his eyes quickly, following the finger, and then look back, blinking quietly in comprehension.
They were walking through the forest that evening, and Quorl said, "You walk as loud as a tapir." The boy had been moving over dry leaves. Obediently he moved his bare feet to where the leaves were damp and did not crackle.
Sometimes the boy went alone by the edge of the stream. Once a wild pig chased him and he had to climb a tree. The pig tried to climb after him and he sat in the crotch of the branch looking quietly down into the squealing mouth, the warty gray face; he could see each separate bristle stand up and lie down as the narrow jaw opened and closed beneath the skin. One yellow tusk was broken.
Then he heard a mewing sound away to his left. Looking off he saw slug-like Tloto coming towards his tree. A sudden urge to sound pushed him closer to speech (Stay away! Stay Back!) than he had been since his arrival in the woods. But Tloto could not see. Tloto could not hear. His hands tightened until the bark burned his palm.
Suddenly the animal turned from the tree and took off after Tloto. Instantly the slug-man turned and was gone.
The boy dropped from the tree and ran after the sound of the pig's crashing in the underbrush. Twenty feet later after tearing through a net of thick foliage, he burst onto a clearing and stopped.
In the middle of the clearing, the pig was struggling half above ground and half under. Only it wasn't ground. It was some sort of muckpool covered by a floating layer of leaves and twigs. The pig was going under fast.
Then the boy saw Tloto on the other side of the clearing, his nostrils quivering, his blind head turning back and forth. Somehow the slug-man must have maneuvered the animal into the trap. He wasn't sure how, but that must have been what had happened.
The urge that welled in him now came too fast to be stopped. It had too much to do with the recognition of luck, and the general impossibility of the whole situation. The boy laughed.
He startled himself with the sound, and after a few seconds stopped. Then he turned. Quorl stood behind him.
(Squeeeee ... Squeeee ...raaaaaaa! Then a gurgle, then nothing.)
Quorl was smiling too, a puzzled smile.
"Why did you—?" (The last word was new. He thought it meant laugh, but he said nothing.)
The boy turned back now. Tloto and the pig were gone.
Quorl walked the boy back to their camp. As they were nearing the stream Quorl saw the boy's footprints in the soft earth and frowned. "To leave your footprints in wet earth is dangerous. The vicious animals come to drink and they will smell you, and they will follow you, to eat. Suppose that pig had smelled them and been chasing you, instead of running into the pool? What then? If you must leave your footprints, leave them in dry dust. Better not to leave them at all."
The boy listened, and remembered. But that night, he saved a large piece of meat from his food. When Tloto came into the circle of firelight, he gave it to him.
Quorl gave a shrug of disgust and flung a pebble at the retreating shadow. "He is useless," Quorl said. "Why do you waste good food on him? To throw away good food is a—." (Unintelligible word.) "You do not understand—." (Another unintelligible word.)
The boy felt something start up inside him again. But he would not let it move his tongue; so he laughed. Quorl looked puzzled. The boy laughed again. Then Quorl laughed too. "You will learn. You will learn at last." Then the giant became serious. "You know, that is the first—sound I have heard you make since coming here."
The boy frowned, and the giant repeated the sentence. The boy's face showed which word baffled him.
The giant thought a minute, and then said, "You, me, even Tloto, aremalika." That was the word. Now Quorl looked around him. "The trees, the rocks, the animals, they are notmalika. But the laughing sound, that was amalikasound."
The boy thought about it until perhaps he understood. Then he slept.
He laughed a lot during the days now. Survival had come as close to routine as it could here in the jungle, and he could turn his attention to moremalikaconcerns. He watched Quorl when they came on other forest people. With single men and women there was usually only an exchange of ten or twelve friendly words. If it were a couple, especially with children, he would give them food. But if they passed anyone with scars, Quorl would freeze until the person was by.
Once the boy wandered to the temple on the arena of rock. There were carvings on much of the stone. The sun was high. The carvings represented creatures somewhere between fish and human. When he looked up from the rock, he saw that the priest had come from the temple and was staring at him. The priest stared until he went away.
Now the boy tried to climb the mountain. That was hard because the footing was slippery and the rocks kept giving. At last he stopped on a jutting rock that looked down the side of the mountain. He was far from any place he knew. He was very high. He stood with hand against the leaning trunk of a near rotten tree, breathing deep and squinting at the sky. (Three or four times Quorl and he had taken long hunting trips: one had taken them to the edge of a deserted meadow across which was a crazily sagging farmhouse. There were no people there. Another had taken them to the edge of the jungle, beyond which the ground was gray and broken, and row after row of unsteady shacks sat among clumps of slithering ferns. Many of the forest people living there had scars and spent more time in larger groups.) The boy wondered if he could see to the deserted meadow from here, or to the deadly rows of prison shacks. A river, a snake of light, coiled through the valley toward the sea. The sky was very blue.
He heard it first, and then he felt it start. He scrambled back toward firmer ground but didn't scramble fast enough. The rock tilted, tore loose, and he was falling. (It pierced through his memory like a white fire-blade hidden under canvas: "... knees up, chin down, and roll quick," the girl had said a long time ago.) It was perhaps twenty feet to the next level. Tree branches broke his fall and he hit the ground spinning, and rolled away. Something else, the rock or a rotten log, bit the ground a moment later where he had been. He uncurled too soon, reaching out to catch hold of the mountain as it tore by him. Then he hit something hard; then something hit him back, and he sailed off into darkness in a web of pain.
Much later he shook his head, opened his eyes, then chomped his jaws on the pain. But the pain was in his leg, so chomping didn't help. He moved his face across crumbling dirt. The whole left side of his body ached, the type of ache that comes when the muscles are tensed to exhaustion but will not relax.
He tried to crawl forward, and went flat down onto the earth, biting up a mouthful of dirt. He nearly tore his leg off.
He had to be still, calm, find out exactly what was wrong. He couldn't tear himself to pieces like the wildcat who had gotten caught in the sprung trap and who had bled to death after gnawing off both hind legs. He was toomalika.
But each movement he made, each thought he had, happened in the blurring green haze of pain. He raised himself up and looked back. Then he lay down again and closed his eyes. A log the thickness of his body lay across his left leg. Once he tried to push it away but only bruised his palm against the bark, and at last went unconscious with the effort.
When he woke up, the pain was very far away. The air was darkening. No, he wasn't quite awake. He was dreaming about something, something soft, a little garden, with shadows blowing in at the edge of his vision swift and cool, a little garden behind the—
Suddenly, very suddenly, it struck him what was happening, the slowing down of thoughts, his breathing, maybe even his heart. Then he was struggling again, struggling hard enough that had he still the strength, he would have torn himself in half, knowing while he struggled that perhaps the wildcat had beenmalikaafter all, or not caring if he were less, only fighting to pull himself away from the pain, realizing that blood had begun to seep from beneath the log again, just a tiny trickle.
Then the shadows overtook him, the dreams, the wisps of forgetfulness gauzing his eyes.
Tloto nearly had to drag Quorl halfway up the mountain before the giant got the idea. When he did, he began to run. Quorl found the boy; just before sunset. He was breathing in short gasps, his fists clenched, his eyes closed. The blood on the dirt had dried black.
The great brown hands went around the log, locked, and started to shift it; the boy let out a high sound from between his teeth.
The hands, roped with vein and ridged with ligament, strained the log upward; the sound became a howl.
The giant's feet braced against the dirt, slid into the dirt, and the hands that had snapped tiny necks and bound sticks together with gut string, pulled; the howl turned into a scream. He screamed again. Then again.
The log coming loose tore away nearly a square foot of flesh from the boy's leg. Then, Quorl went over and picked him up.
This is the best dream, the boy thought, from that dark place he had retreated to behind the pain, because Quorl is here. The hands were lifting him now, he was held close, warm, somehow safe. His cheek was against the hard shoulder muscle, and he could smell Quorl too. So he stopped screaming and turned his head a little to make the pain go away. But it wouldn't go. It wouldn't. Then the boy cried.
The first tears through all that pain came salty in his eyes, and he cried until he went to sleep.
Quorl had medicine for him the next day ("From the priest," he said.) which helped the pain and made the healing start. Quorl also had made the boy a pair of wooden crutches that morning. Although muscle and ligament had been bruised and crushed and the skin torn away, no bone had broken.
That evening there was a drizzle and they ate under the canopy. Tloto did not come, and this time it was Quorl who saved the extra meat and kept looking off into the wet gray trees. Quorl had told the boy how Tloto had led him to him; when they finished eating, Quorl took the meat and ducked into the drizzle.
The boy lay down to sleep. He thought the meat was a reward for Tloto. Only Quorl had seemed that night full of more than usual gravity. The last thing he wondered before sleep flooded his eyes and ears was how blind, deaf Tloto had known where he was anyway.
When he woke it had stopped raining. The air was damp and chill. Quorl had not come back.
The sound of the blown shell came again. The boy sat up and flinched at the twinge in his leg. To his left the moon was flickering through the trees. The sound came a third time, distant, sharp, yet clear and marine. The boy reached for his crutches and hoisted himself to his feet. He waited till the count of ten, hoping that Quorl might suddenly return to go with him.
A last he took a deep breath and started haltingly forward. The faint moonlight made the last hundred yards easy going. Finally he reached a vantage where he could look down through the wet leaves onto the arena of stone.
The sky was sheeted with mist and the moon was an indistinct pearl in the haze. The sea was misty. People were already gathered at the edge. The boy looked at the priest and then ran his eye around the circle of people. One of them was Quorl!
He leaned forward as far as he could. The priest sounded the shell again and the prisoners came out of the temple: first three boys, then an older girl, then a man. The next one ... Tloto! It was marble-white under the blurred moon. Its clubbed feet shuffled on the rock. Its blind head ducked right and left with bewilderment.
As the priest raised the long three-pronged knife, the boy's hands went tight around the crutches. He passed from one prisoner to the next. Tloto cringed, and the boy sucked in a breath as the knife went down, feeling his own flesh part under the blades. Then the murmur died, the prisoners were unbound, and the people filed from the rock back into the forest.
The boy waited to see which way Quorl headed before he started through moon-dusted bushes as fast as his crutches would let him. There were many people on the webbing of paths that came from the temple rock. There was Quorl!
When he caught up, Quorl saw him and slowed down. Quorl didn't look at him, though. Finally the giant said, "You don't understand. I had to catch him. I had to give him to the old one to be marked. But you don't understand." The boy hardly looked at all where they were going, but stared up at the giant.
"You don't understand," Quorl said again. Then he looked at the boy and was quiet for a minute. "No, you don't," he repeated. "Come." They turned off the main path now, going slower. "It's a ... custom. An important custom. Yes, I know it hurt him. I know he was afraid. But it had to be. Tloto is one of those who—." (The word was some inflection of the verb to know.) Quorl was silent for a moment. "Let me try to tell you why I had to hurt your friend. Yes, I know he is your friend, now. But once I said that Tloto wasmalika. I was wrong. Tloto is more thanmalika—he and the others that were marked. Somehow these people know things. That was how Tloto survived. That's how he knew where you were, when you were hurt. He knew inside your head, he heard inside your head. Many are born like that, more of them each year. As soon as we find out, we mark them. Many try to hide it, and some succeed for a long time. Can you understand? Do you? When Tloto showed me where you were, he knew that I would know, that he would be caught and marked. Do you understand?"
Again he paused and looked at the boy. The eyes still showed puzzled hurt. "You want to know why. I ... we.... Long ago we killed them when we found out. We don't any more. The mark reminds them that they are different, and yet the same as we. Perhaps it is wrong. It doesn't hurt that much, and it heals. Anyway, we don't kill them any more. We know they're important...." Suddenly, having gone all through it with this strange boy, it seemed twisted to the giant, incorrect. Then he gave the boy what the boy had been sent to the forest to get, what the Duchess had found and knew was necessary. "I was wrong," Quorl said. "I'm sorry. I will speak to the priest tomorrow."
They walked until the dawn lightened the sky behind the trees. Once Quorl looked around and said, "I want to show you something. We are very near, and the weather is right."
They walked a few minutes more till Quorl pointed to a wall of leaves, and said, "Go through there."
As they pressed through the dripping foliage, bright light burnished their faces. They were standing on a small cliff that looked down the mountain. Fog the color of pale gold, the same gold the boy had seen so rarely in the sunset, rolled across the entire sky. The center flamed with the misty sun, and way below them through the fog was the shattered traces of water, the color of magnesium flame on copper foil, without edge or definition.
"That's a lake that lies between this mountain and the next," Quorl said, pointing to the water.
"I thought...." the boy started softly, his tongue rough against the new language. "I thought it was the sea."
Beside them appeared the crouching figure of Tloto. Drops from the wet leaves burned on his neck and back, over the drying blood. He turned his blank face left and right in the golden light, and with all his knowing could communicate no awe.