"No, he ..." began Urson.
"We were walking by your door," Geo interrupted, "when we heard a noise and thought there might be trouble."
"Your concern may have cost us all our lives."
"If he's a spy, I gather that means he knows how this thing works," said Geo. "Let Urson and I take him ..."
"Take him anywhere you wish!" hissed Argo. "Get out!"
Just then the door opened. "I heard a sound, Priestess Argo, and I thought you might be in danger." It was the first mate.
The Goddess Incarnate breathed deeply. "I am in no danger," she said evenly. "Will you please leave me alone, all of you."
"What's the Snake doing here?" Jordde suddenly asked, seeing Geo still holding the boy.
"I said, leave me!"
Geo turned, away from Jordde, and stepped past him onto the deck, and Urson followed him. Ten steps farther on, he glanced back, and seeing that Jordde had emerged from the cabin and was walking in the other direction, he set Snake down on his feet. "All right, Little One. March!"
In the passage to the forecastle, Urson asked, "Hey, what's going on?"
"Well, for one thing, our little friend here is no spy," said Geo.
"How do you know?" asked Urson.
"Because she doesn't know he can read minds."
"How do you mean?" Urson asked.
"First of all, I was beginning to think something was wrong when I came back from talking to the priestess. You were too, and it lay in the same vein you were talking about. Why would our task be completely useless unless we accomplished all parts of her mission? Wouldn't there be some value in just returning her sister, the rightful head of Leptar, to her former position? And I'm sure her sister may well have collected some useful information that could be used against Aptor, so that would be some value even if we didn't find the jewel. It doesn't sound too sisterly a thing to me to forsake the young priestess if there is no jewel in it for her. And her tone, the way she refers to the jewel ashers. There's an old saying, from before the Great Fire even: Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. And I think she has not a little of the un-goddess-like desire for power first, peace afterwards."
"But that doesn't mean this one isn't an Aptor spy," said Urson.
"Wait a minute. I'm getting there. At first I thought he was too. The idea occurred to me first when I was talking to the priestess and she first mentioned that there were spies from Aptor. The coincidence of his appearance, that he had even managed to steal the jewel in the first place, that he would present it to her the way he did; all this hinted something so strange, that spy was the first thing I thought of, and I'm sure it was the first thing she thought as well. And she especially would think this if she did not know that Snake could read minds and broadcast mentally, because ignorance of his telepathy removes the one other possible explanation of the coincidences. But, Urson, why did he leave the jewel with us before he went to see her?"
"Because he thought she was going to try and take it away from him."
"Exactly. When she told me to send him up to her, I was fairly sure that was the main reason she wanted him. But if he was a spy, and knew how to work the jewel, then why not take it with him, present himself to Argo with the jewel, showing himself as an equal force, and then come calmly back, leaving her in silence and us still on his side, especially since he would be revealing to her something of which she was nine-tenths aware of already, and would watch him no more carefully than she would were it not confirmed."
"All right," said Urson, "why not?"
"Because he was not a spy, and didn't know how to work the jewel. Yes, he had felt its power once. Perhaps he was going to pretend he had it hidden on his person. But he did not want her to get her hands on it for reasons that were strong, but not selfish.
"Here, Snake," said Geo. "You know how to work the jewel now, don't you; but you learned from Argo just now."
The boy nodded.
"Here, then, why don't you take it?" Geo lifted the jewel from his neck and held it out to him.
Snake drew back and shook his head violently.
Urson looked puzzled.
"Snake has seen into human minds, Urson. He's seen things directly which the rest of us only learn from a sort of second hand observation. He knows that the power of this little bead is more dangerous to the mind of the person who wields it than it is to the cities it may destroy."
"Well," said Urson, "as long as she thinks he's a spy, at least we'll have one of them little beads and someone who knows how to use it. I mean if we have to."
"I don't think she thinks he's a spy any more, Urson."
"Huh?"
"I give her credit for being able to reason at least as well as I can. Once she found out he had no jewel on him, she knew that he was as innocent as you and I are. But her only thought was to get it in any way she could. When we came in, just when she was going to put Snake under the jewel's control, guilt made her leap backwards to her first and seemingly logical accusation for our benefit. Evil likes to cloak itself as good."
They stepped down into the forecastle. By now a handful of sailors had come into the room, mostly drunk and snoring on berths around the walls. One had wrapped himself completely up in a blanket in the middle berth of the tier that Urson had chosen for the three. "Well," said Urson to Snake, "it looks like you'll have to move."
Snake scrambled to the top bunk.
"Now look, that one was mine."
Snake motioned him up.
"Huh? Two of us in one of those?" demanded Urson. "Look, if you want someone to keep warm against, go down and sleep with Geo there. It's more room and you won't get squashed against the wall. I'm a thrasher when I sleep."
Snake didn't move.
"Maybe you better do what he says," Geo said. "I have an idea that ..."
"You've got another idea now?" asked Urson, "Oh, damn, I'm too tired to argue." He vaulted up to the top bunk. "Now move over and be very small." He stretched out, and Snake's slight body was completely hidden. "Hey, get your elbows out of there," Geo heard Urson mutter before there was only a gentle thundering of his snore.
Silver mist suffused the deck of the ship and wet lines glowed a phosphorescent silver; the sky was pale as ice; pricks of stars dotted over the whole bowl. The sea, once green, seemed bleached to blowing clouds of white powder. The door of a cabin opened and white veils flung forward from the form of Argo who emerged like silver from the bone-colored door. The whole movement of the scene made it look like a picture imagination fastens in the slow ripplings of gauze under breeze. One dark spot was at her throat, pulsing darkly, like a heart, like a black flame. She walked to the railing, peered over. In the white washing a skeletal hand appeared. It raised on a beckoning arm, then fell forward in the water. Another arm raised now, a few feet away, beckoning, gesturing. Then three at once; then two more.
A voice as pale as the vision spoke "I am coming. We sail in a hour. The mate has been ordered to put the ship out before dawn. You must tell me now, creatures of the water."
Two glowing arms raised up, and then an almost featureless face. Chest high in the water, it listed backwards and sank again.
"Are you of Aptor or Leptar?" spoke the apparitional figure of Argo again in the thinned voice. "Are your allegiances to Argo or Hama? I have followed thus far. You must tell me before I follow farther."
There was a whirling of sound which seemed to be the wind attempting to say, "The sea ... the sea ... the sea ..."
But Argo did not hear, for she turned away and walked from the rail, back to her cabin.
Now the scene moved, turned toward the door of the forecastle. It opened, moved through the hall, the walls, more like polished steel than weathered wood, and went on. In the forecastle, the yellow oil lamp seemed a white flaring of magnesium.
The movement stopped in front of a tier of three berths; on the bottom one lay a young man with a starved, pallid face. His mop of hair was bleached white. On his chest was a pulsing darkness, a black flame, a dark heart, shimmering with the indistinctness of absolute shadow. On the top bunk a great form like a bloated corpse lay. One huge arm hung over the bunk, flabbed, puffy, without muscle.
In the center berth was an anonymous bundle of blankets completely covering the figure inside. On this the scene fixed, drew closer ... and the paleness suddenly faded before darkness, into shadow, into nothing.
Geo sat up and knuckled his eyes.
The dark forecastle was relieved by the yellow glow of the lamp. The gaunt mate stood across the room. "Hey, you," he was saying to a man in one of the bunks, "up and out. We're sailing."
The figure roused itself from the tangle of bedding.
The mate moved to another. "Up, you dog face. Up, you fish fodder. We're sailing." Turning around, he saw Geo watching him. "And what's wrong with you?" he demanded. "We're sailing, didn't you hear? Naw, you go back to sleep. Your turn will come, but we need experienced ones now." He grinned briefly, and then went on to one more. "Eh, you stink like an old wine cask. Raise yourself out of your fumes. We're sailing!"
"That dream," Geo said to Urson a moment after the mate left. Urson looked down from his bunk.
"You had it too?"
Both turned to Snake.
"I guess that was your doing, eh?" Urson said.
Snake scrambled down from the upper bunk.
"Did you go wandering around the deck last night and do some spying?" Geo asked.
By now most of the other sailors had risen, and one suddenly stepped between Urson and Geo. "'Scuse me, mate," he said and shook the figure in the second berth. "Hey, Whitey, come on. You can't be that soused from last night. Get up or you'll miss mess." The young sailor shook the figure again. "Hey, Whitey." The figure in the blankets was unresponsive. The sailor gave him one more good shake, and as he rolled over, the blanket fell away from the blond head. The eyes were wide and dull, the mouth half open. "Hey, Whitey," the black sailor said again, and then he stepped back, slowly.
Mist enveloped the ship three hours out from port. Urson was called for duty right after breakfast, but no one bothered either Snake or Geo that first morning. Snake would slip off somewhere and Geo would be left to wander the ship alone. He was walking beneath the dories when the heavy slap of bare feet on the wet deck materialized in Urson. "Hey," greeted his friend. "What are you doing under here?"
"Nothing much," Geo said.
Urson was carrying a coil of rope about his shoulder. Now he slung it down into his hand and leaned against the support shaft and looked out toward the fog. "It's a bad beginning this trip has had," he said. "What few sailors I've talked to don't like it at all."
"Urson," said Geo, "have you any idea what actually happened this morning?"
"Maybe I have and maybe I haven't," Urson said. "What ones have you?"
"Do you remember the dream?" he asked.
Urson scrunched his shoulders as if suddenly cold. "I do," he said.
"It was like we were seeing through somebody else's eyes, almost."
"Our little four-armed friend sees things in a strange way if that's the case."
"Urson, that wasn't Snake's eyes we saw through. I asked him, just before he went off exploring the ship. It was somebody else. All he did was get the pictures and relay them into our minds. And what was the last thing you saw?"
"As a matter of fact," Urson said, turning, "I think he was looking at poor Whitey's bunk."
"And who was supposed to be sleeping in poor Whitey's bunk?"
"Snake?"
"Exactly. Do you think perhaps White was killed?"
"Could be, I guess. But how, and why, and who?"
"Somebody who wanted Snake killed. Maybe the same person who cut his tongue out a year and a half ago."
"I thought we decided that we didn't know who that was."
"A man you know, Urson," Geo said. "What man on this ship have you sailed with before?"
"Don't you think I've been looking?" Urson asked. "There's not a familiar face on deck, other than maybe one I've seen in a dockside bar, but never one whose name I've known."
"Think, Urson, who on this ship you've sailed with before," Geo asked again, more intently.
Suddenly Urson turned. "You mean the mate?"
"That's just who I mean," said Geo.
"And you think he tried to kill Snake. Why didn't Snake tell us?"
"Because he thought if we knew, we'd get in trouble with it. And he may be right."
"How come?" asked Urson.
"Look, we know something is fishy about Argo. The more I think about it, the less I can put my hands on it. But if something is fishy about the mate too, then perhaps he's in cahoots with her. What about when he came into Argo's cabin last night when we were there?"
"Maybe he was just doing what we said we were; walking by when he heard a noise. If it was his eyes we were seeing through, then he sees things awfully funny, then."
"Maybe he's a strange one too, like Snake who 'hears' things funny. Not all strangeness shows," Geo reminded him.
"You could be right," said Urson. "You could be right." He stood up from where he had leaned against a lifeboat support. "Well, you think some more friend, and I'll listen. I'll see you later." He hauled up his rope again and started off in the mist.
Geo decided to search for Snake. A ladder led to the upper deck, and climbing it, he saw across the deck a tall, fog-shrouded figure. He paused, and then started forward. "Hello," he said.
The captain turned from the railing and looked at him.
"Good morning sir," Geo said. "I thought you might be the mate."
The captain was silent for a while, and then said, "Good morning. What do you want?"
"I didn't mean to disturb you if you were ..."
"No disturbance," said the captain.
"How long will it take us to get to Aptor?"
"Another three weeks. Shorter if this wind keeps up."
"I see," said Geo. "Have you any idea of the geography of Aptor?"
"The mate is the only one on board that has ever set foot on Aptor and come off it alive. Except Priestess Argo."
"The mate, sir? When?"
"On a previous voyage he was wrecked there. He made a raft and drifted into the open sea where he had the good fortune to be picked up by a ship."
"Then he will lead whatever party goes to the place?"
"Not him," said the captain. "He's sworn never to set foot on the place again. Don't even ask him to talk about it. Imagine what sort of a place it must be if probable death on the open sea is better than struggling on its land. No, he'll pilot us through the bay to the river's estuary, but other than that, he will have nothing to do with the place.
"Two other men we had on board who'd been there and returned. They went with the Priestess Argo in a boat of thirteen. Ten were dismembered and the pieces of their bodies were thrown in the water. Two survived to row the Priestess back to the boat. One was the sailor who died in the forecastle this morning. Not half an hour ago, I received news that the other one went overboard from the rigging and was lost in the sea. This is not a good trip. Men are not to be lost like coins in a game. Life is too valuable."
"I see," said Geo. "Thank you for your information and time, sir."
"You are welcome," the captain said. Then he turned away.
Geo descended the ladder again and walked slowly forward. Something touched him on the shoulder and he whirled.
"Snake, God damn it, don't do that!"
The boy looked embarrassed.
"I didn't mean to yell," Geo said, putting his arm around the boy's shoulder. "Come on, though. What did you find? I'll trade you what I know for what you do."
You ... sleep, came from Snake.
"I'm sorry, friend," laughed Geo. "But I couldn't take a nap now if you paid me. Now tell me, whose eyes were we seeing through last night? The captain's?"
Snake shook his head.
"The mate's?"
Snake nodded.
"I thought so. Now, did he want to kill ... wait a minute," said Geo. "Can the mate read minds, too? Is that why you're keeping things from us?"
Snake shrugged.
"Come on now," Geo said. "Do a little yelling and explain."
Don't ... know, Snake thought out loud.Can ... see ... what ... he ... sees ... hear ... what ... he ... hears. But ... no ... hear ... thoughts ...
"I see. Look, take a chance that he can't read minds and tell me, did he kill the man in the bed you should have been in."
Snake paused for a minute. Then nodded.
"Do you think he was trying to kill you?"
Snake nodded again.
"Did you know that the man killed this morning in your place was one of the two men who came back from Aptor with the Priestess?"
Snake looked surprised.
"And that the other one drowned this morning, fell overboard, and was lost?"
Snake nearly jumped.
"What is it?"
Look ... for ... him ... all ... morning. He ... not ... dead ... hear ... thoughts ... dim ... low.
"Who's not dead?" Geo asked. "Which one?"
Second ... man.
"Did you find him?" Geo asked.
Can't ... find, Snake said.But ... alive ... I ... know.
"One other question," Geo raised the jewel from where it hung against his chest. "How do you work this silly thing?"
Think ... through ... it, said Snake.
Geo frowned. "What do you mean? Can you tell me how it works?"
You ... have ... no ... words, Snake said.Radio ... electricity ... diode ...
"Radio, electricity, diode?" repeated Geo, the sounds coming unfamiliarly to his tongue. "What are they?"
Snake shrugged.
Geo got a chance to report his findings to Urson that evening and the big man was puzzled.
"Can you add anything?" Geo asked.
"All I've had a chance to do is work," grumbled Urson. They were standing by the edge of the rail beyond which the mist steeped thickly, making sky and water indistinguishable and grave. "Hey, Four-arms," Urson suddenly asked. "What are you looking at?"
Snake stared at the water but said nothing.
"Maybe he's listening to something," suggested Geo.
"You'd think there were better things to eavesdrop on than fishes," said Urson. "I guess Argo's given special orders that you two get no work. Some people! Let's go eat." As they started toward the convergence of sailors at the entrance of the mess hall, Urson said, "Oh, guess what?" He turned to Geo and picked up the jewel from the boy's chest. "All you people are going around with such finery, I took my coins to the smithy and had him put chains on them. Now I'll strut with the best of you." He laughed, and then went through the narrow way, crowding with the other sailors into the wide hall.
For two weeks, nights without dreams left them early, and the boat rolled from beneath the fog. Dawn was gray, but clear; then, by one breakfast time the ragged slip of Aptor's beach hemmed the horizon.
On the wheel deck the sailors clustered to the rail, and before them rocks struck like broken teeth from the water. Urson, in his new, triple neckchain, joined Snake and Geo at the rail. "Whew," he said. "Getting through them is going to be fun."
Suddenly heads turned. Behind them now, Argo's dark veils, bloated with the breeze, filled about her as she mounted the steps to the wheel deck. The sailors moved away from her. Then, one hand on a stay rope, she stared across the gray water to the dark tongue of land.
From the wheel the captain spoke, "Jordde, disperse the men and take over the wheel."
"Aye, sir," said the mate. "You, you, and you to the tops." He pointed among the men. "You also, and you. Hey, didn't you hear me?"
"Me, sir?" Geo turned around.
"Yes, you, up to the top spar there."
"You can't send him up," Urson called out. "He's never been topside at all before. It's too choppy for any lad's first time up. He doesn't even know ..."
"And who asked you?" demanded the mate.
"Nobody asked me, sir," said Urson, "but—"
"Then you get below before I have you brigged for insubordination and fine you your three gold baubles. Don't you think I recognize dead man's gold?"
"Now look here," Urson roared.
Geo glanced from Argo to the captain. The bewilderment that flooded the face of the Priestess shocked him.
Jordde suddenly seized up a marlin pin, raised it, and shouted at Urson, "Get down below before I break your skull open."
Urson's fists sprang up.
"Calmly, brother bear," Geo began.
"In a bitch's ass," snarled Urson and swung his huge arm forward. Something leaped on Jordde from behind—Snake! The marlin pin veered inches away from Urson's shoulder. The flung fist sunk into the mate's stomach and he reeled forward, passing Urson, with Snake still clawing at his back. He reached the rail, bent double over it, and Snake's legs flipped up. When Jordde rose, he was free of encumbrance.
Geo rushed to the edge and saw Snake's head emerge in the churning water. Behind him, Urson yelled, "Look out!" Jordde's marlin made an inch of splinters in the length of wood against which he had been leaning.
"Not him!" cried Argo. "No, no! Not him!"
But Jordde had seized Geo's shoulder and whirled him back against the rail. Geo saw Urson grab a loose rope behind them and suddenly swing forward, intending to knock Jordde away with his feet. But suddenly Argo moved in the way of his flying body, turned, saw him, and raised her hands to push him aside so that he swung wide of them and landed on the railing a yard from where they struggled.
Geo's feet slipped on the wet boards, and he felt his body suddenly hurled backwards onto the air. Then his back slapped water. As he broke surface, Urson, still on the rail called to him, "Hang on, friend Geo, I'm coming!" Urson's arms swung back, and then forward as he dove into the sea.
Now Geo could see only Argo and Jordde at the rail. But they were struggling. Urson and Snake were near him in the water. The last thing he saw was Jordde suddenly wrest something from Argo's neck and then fling it out into the sea. The Priestess' hands reached for the flying jewel, followed its arc as she screamed toward the water.
Then hands were at his body. Geo turned in the water as Snake disappeared from beside him and Urson suddenly cried out. Hands were pulling him down.
Roughness of sand beneath one of his sides and the flare of sun on the other. His eyes were hot and his lids were orange over them. Then there was a breeze. He opened his eyes, and shut them quick, because of the light. Then he turned over, thought about pillows and stiff new sheets. Reaching out, he grabbed sand.
He opened his eyes and pushed himself up from the beach with both hands spread in warm, soft crumblings. Over there were rocks, and thick vegetation behind them. He swayed to his knees, the sand grating under his kneecaps. He looked at his arm in the sun, flecked with grains. Then he touched his chest.
His hand came to one bead, moved on, and came to another! He looked down. Both the chain with the platinum claw and the thong with the wire cage hung around his neck. Bewildered, he heaved to his feet, and immediately sat down again as the beach went red with the wash of blood behind his eyeballs. He got up again, slowly.
Carefully Geo started down the beach, looking toward the land. When he turned to look at the water, he stopped.
At the horizon, beyond the rocks, was a boat with lowered sails. So they hadn't left yet. He swung his eyes back to the beach: fifty feet away was another figure lying in the sun.
He ran forward, now, the sand splashing around his feet, sinking under his toes, so that it was like the slow motion running of dreams. Ten feet from the figure he stopped.
It was a young black, very dark, skin the color of richly humused soil. The long skull was shaved. Like Geo, he was almost naked. There was a clot of seaweed at his wrist, and the soles of his feet and one up-turned palm were grayish and shriveled.
Geo frowned and stood for a full minute. He looked up and down the beach once more. There was no one else. Just then the man's arm shifted across the sand.
Immediately Geo fell to his knees beside the figure, rolled him over and lifted his head. The eyes opened, squinted in the light, and the man said, "Who are you?"
"My name is Geo."
The man sat up, and caught himself from falling forward by jamming his hands into the sand. He shook his head, and then looked up at Geo again. "Yes," he said. "I remember you. What happened? Did we founder? Did the ship go down?"
"Remember me from where?" Geo asked.
"From the ship. You were on the ship, weren't you?"
"I was on the ship," Geo said. "And I got thrown overboard by that damned first mate in a fight. But nothing happened to the ship. It's still out there, you can see it." Suddenly Geo stopped. Then he said, "You're the guy who discovered Whitey's body that morning!"
"That's right." He shook his head again. "My name is Iimmi." Now he looked out to the horizon. "I see them," he said. "There's the ship. But where are we?"
"On the beach of Aptor," Geo told him.
Iimmi screwed his face up into a mask of dark horror. "No," he said softly. "We couldn't be. We were days away from her...."
"How did you fall in?"
"It was blowing up a little," Iimmi explained. "I was in the rig when suddenly something struck me from behind and I went toppling. In all the mist, they didn't see me, and the current was too strong for me, and ..." He looked around.
"You've been on this beach once before, haven't you?" Geo asked.
"Once," said Iimmi. "Yes, once."
"Do you realize how long you've been in the water?" Geo asked.
Iimmi looked up.
"Over two weeks," Geo said. "Come on, see if you can walk. I've got a lot of things to explain, if I can, and we've got some hunting to do."
Iimmi steadied himself once more, and together they started up the beach.
"What are you looking for?" Iimmi asked.
"Friends," Geo said.
Two hundred feet up, the rocks and torpid vegetation came down to the water, cutting off the beach. Scrambling over boulders and through vines, they emerged on a rock embankment that dropped fifteen feet into the wide estuary of a ribbon of water that wound back into the jungle. Twenty feet further, the bank dropped to the river's surface, and they both fell flat at the edge of a wet table of rock and sucked in cool liquid, watching blue stones and the white and red pebbles shivering six feet below clear ripples.
There was a sound. Both sprang back from the water, turned, and crouched on the rock.
"Hey," Urson said, through leaves. "I was wondering when I'd find you."
Light through branches lay on the gold coins hung against his hairy chest. "Have you seen Snake?"
"I was hoping he was with you," said Geo. "Oh, Urson, this is Iimmi, the other sailor who died two weeks ago."
Both Iimmi and Urson looked puzzled. "Have a drink of water," Geo said, "and I'll explain as best I can."
"Don't mind if I do," said Urson.
While the bear man lay down to drink, Geo began the story of Aptor and Leptar for Iimmi. When he finished, Iimmi asked, "You mean those fish things in the water carried us here? Whose side are they on?"
"Apparently Argo isn't sure either," Geo said. "Perhaps they're neutral."
"And the mate?" asked Iimmi. "You think he pushed me overboard after he killed Whitey?"
"I thought you said he was trying to kill Snake," said Urson, who had finished drinking.
"He was," explained Geo. "He wanted to get rid of all three. Probably Snake first, and then Whitey and Iimmi. He wasn't counting on our fishy friends, though. I think it was just luck that it was Whitey he got rather than Snake. If he can't read minds, which I'm pretty sure he can't, he probably overheard you assigning the bunks for us to sleep in, Urson. When he found out he had killed Whitey instead, it just urged him to get Iimmi out of the way more quickly."
"I could easily have been pushed," Iimmi agreed. "But I still don't see why."
"If there is a spy from Aptor on the ship, then Jordde is it," said Geo. "The captain told me he had been to Aptor once before. It must have been then that he was enjoined into their forces. Iimmi, both you and Whitey had also been on Aptor's shore, if only for a few hours. There must be something that Jordde learned from the island that he was afraid you might learn, something you might see. Something dangerous, dangerous for Aptor, something you might see just from being on the beach. Probably it was something you wouldn't even recognize, something you'd maybe not see the significance of until much later. But probably something very obvious."
Now Urson spoke. "What did happen when you were on Aptor? How were those ten men killed?"
Though the sun was warm, Iimmi shivered. He waited for a moment, and then he began. "We took a skiff out from the ship and managed to get through the rocks somehow. It was evening when we started and the moon, I remember, had risen just above the horizon, though the sky was still deep blue. 'This light of the full moon is propitious to the White Goddess Argo,' she said from her place at the bow of the boat. By the time we landed, the sky was black behind her, and the beach was all silvered by the light, up and down. Whitey and I were left to guard the skiff at the water's edge, and sitting on the gunwales, shoulders hunched in the slight chill, we watched the others go up the beach, five and five, with Argo behind them.
"Suddenly there was a scream, and the first man fell. They came from the air like vultures. The moon was overhead by now, and a cloud of them darkened the white disk with their wings. They scurried after the fleeing men, over the sand. All we could really make out was a dark battling against the silver. There were swords raised in the white light, screams, and howls that nearly sent us back into the ocean. But Argo and a handful of those men left began to run toward the boat. They followed them down to the edge of the water, loping behind them, half flying, half running, hacking one after another down with swords. I saw one man fall forward and his head roll from his body while blood squirted ten feet along the sand, crimson under the moon. One actually caught at her veils, but she screamed and slipped from it into the water now, and climbed back into the boat, panting. You would think a woman would collapse, but no. She stood in the bow while we rowed our arms off. They would not come over the water, apparently, and somehow we managed to get the skiff back to the ship without foundering against the rocks."
"Our aquatic friends may have had something to do with that," said Geo. "Iimmi, you say her veils were pulled off. Tell me, do you remember if she were wearing any jewelry or not?"
"She certainly wasn't," Iimmi said. "She stood there in only her dark robe, her throat as bare as ivory."
"She wasn't going to bring the jewel to Aptor where those monsters could get their hands on it again," said Urson. "But Geo, if Jordde's the spy, why did he throw the jewel in the sea?"
"Whatever reason he had," said Geo, "our friends have given it to me now."
"You said Argo didn't know whose side these sea creatures were on, Leptar's or Aptor's," said Iimmi. "But perhaps Jordde knows, and that's why he threw it to them." He paused for a moment. "Friend, I think you have made an error; you tell me you are a poet, and it is a poet's error. The hinge in your argument that Snake is no spy is that Argo must have dubious motives to send you on such an impossible task, without protection, saying that it would be meaningful only if all its goals were accomplished. You reasoned, how could an honest woman place the life of her sister below the value of a jewel ..."
"Not just her sister," interrupted Geo, "buttheGoddess Argo Incarnate."
"Be patient," said Iimmi. "Only if she wished to make permanent her temporary condition, you thought, could she set such an impossible task. There may be some truth in what you say. But she herself would not bring the jewel to the shores of Aptor, though it was for her own protection. Thanks to you, all three jewels are now in Aptor, and if any part of her story is true, Leptar is now in more danger than it has been in five hundred years. You have the jewels, two of them, and you cannot use them. Where is your friend Snake who can? Both Snake and Jordde could easily be spies and the enmity between them feigned, so that while you focused on one, you could be misled by the other. You say he can move into men's minds? Perhaps he clouded yours."
They sat silent for the lapsing of a minute.
"Argo may be torn by many things," continued Iimmi. "But you, in watching some, may have been deluded by others."
Light from the river quivered on the undersides of leaves. Urson spoke now. "I think his story is better than yours, Geo."
"Then what shall we do now?" asked Geo, softly.
"Do what the Goddess requests as best we can," said Iimmi. "Find the Temple of Hama, secure the stone, rescue the young Goddess, and die before we let the jewels fall into hands of Aptor."
"From the way you describe this place," muttered Urson, "that may not be far off."
"Still," mused Geo, "there are things that don't mesh. Like why were you saved too, Iimmi? Why were we brought here at all? And why did Jordde want to kill you and the other sailor?"
"Perhaps," said Iimmi, "the god Hama has a strange sense of humor and we shall be allowed to carry the jewels up to the temple door before we are slaughtered, dropping them at his feet." He smiled. "Then again, perhaps your theory is the correct one, Geo, and I am the spy, sent to sway your reason."
Urson and Geo glanced at each other.
"There are an infinite number of theories for every set of facts," said the Negro. "Rule number one: assume the simplest; that includes all the known conditions to be true until more conditions arise for which your theory no longer holds. Rule number two: then, and not until, change it."
"Then we go on into the jungle," Geo said.
"I guess we do," said Urson.
"Since we've got this job, we've got to trust ourselves and do it right. Let's see if we can put one more of those things around your neck before we're through." He pointed to the two jewels hanging at Geo's chest. Then he laughed. "One more and you'll be all the way up to me," and he rattled his own triple necklace.
Light lowered in the sky as they walked beside the river, keeping close to the rocky edge and brushing away vines that strung into the water from hanging limbs. Urson broke down a branch as thick as his wrist and as tall as himself and smote the water with it, playfully. "That should put a welt on anyone's head who wants to bother us." He raised the stick from the water and drops ran along the bark, moving sparks at the ends of dark lines.
"We'll have to turn into the woods for food soon," said Iimmi, "unless we wait for animals who come down to drink."
Urson tugged at another branch, and it twisted loose from fibrous white pulp. "Here," he handed it to Iimmi. "I'll have one for you in a moment, Geo."
"And maybe we could explore a little, before it gets dark," Geo suggested.
Urson handed him the third staff. "There's not much here I want to see," he muttered.
"Well, we can't sleep on the bank. We've got to find a place hidden in the trees."
"Can you see what that is through there?" Iimmi asked.
"Where?" asked Geo. "Huh...?" Through the thick growth was a rising shadow. "A rock or a cliff?" he suggested.
"Maybe," mused Urson, "but it's awfully regular."
Geo started off into the underbrush, and the others followed. Their goal was further and larger than it had looked from the river. Once they passed across a section of ten or twelve stones, rectangular and side by side, like paving. Small trees had pushed up between some of them, but for thirty feet, before the edge sank beneath the soft jungle floor it was easier going. Suddenly the growth became thin again and they were at the edge of a relatively clear area. Before them loomed the ruins of a great building. Six girders cleared the highest wall, implying an original height of eighteen or twenty stories. One wall was completely sheared away and fragments of it chunked the ground. The revealed dark caves of broken rooms and cubicles suggested an injured granite hive. They approached slowly.
To one side a great metal cylinder lay askew a heap of rubbish. A flat blade of metal transversed it, one side twisting into the ground where skeletal girders shown beneath ripped plating. A row of windows like dark eyes lined the body, and a door gaped in an idiotic oval halfway along its length.
Fascinated, they turned toward the injured wreck. As they neared, a sound came from inside the door. They stopped, and their staves leapt a protective inch from the ground. In the shadow of the door, ten feet from the ground, another shadow moved, resolving itself into an animal head, long, muzzled, gray. Then they could see the forelegs. It looked like an immense dog, and it was carrying a smaller animal, obviously dead, in its mouth. It saw them, watched them, was still.
"Dinner," Urson said softly. "Come on." They moved forward again. Then they stopped.
Suddenly the beast sprang from the doorway. Shadow and distance had made them completely underestimate its size. Along the sprung arc flowed a canine body nearly five feet long. Urson struck up at it and knocked it from its flight with his stick. As it fell, Iimmi and Geo were upon it with theirs, clubbing its chest and head. For six blows it staggered and could not gain its feet. Then, as it threatened to heave to standing, Urson rushed forward and brought his stave straight down on the chest: bones snapped and tore through the brown pelt, only to have their blue sheen covered a moment later by a well of blood. It howled, kicked its hind feet at the stake with which Urson held it to the ground, and then stretched out its limbs and quivered. The front legs stretched, and stretched, while the torso seemed to pull in on itself, shrinking in the death agonies. The long mouth, which had dropped its prey, gaped open as the head flopped from side to side, the pink tongue lolling, shrinking.
"My God," said Geo.
The sharp muzzle blunted now and the claws in the padded paw stretched, opened into human fingers and a thumb. The hairlessness of the under-belly had spread to the entire carcass. Hind legs lengthened, joints reversed themselves, and bare knees bent as human feet dragged themselves through fragments of brown leaves over the ground and a human thigh gave a final contraction, stilled, and then one leg fell out straight again. A shaggy, black-haired man lay still on the ground, his chest caved and bloody. In one last throw, he flung his hands up to grasp the stake and pull it from his chest, but too weak, they slipped down as his lips curled back from his mouth revealing a row of perfectly white, blunt teeth.
Urson stepped back, and then back again. The stave fell, pulled loose with a sucking explosion from the ruined mess of lung. The bear man had raised his hand to his own chest and seized his triple, gold token. "In the name of the Goddess," he finally said.
Iimmi walked forward now, picked up the carcass of the smaller animal that had been dropped, and turned away. "Well," he said, "I guess dinner isn't going to be as big as we thought."
"I guess not," Geo said.
They walked back to the ruined building, away from the corpse.
"Hey, Urson," Geo said at last to the big man who was still holding his coins, "Snap out of it. What's the matter?"
"The only man I've ever seen whose body was that broken in that way," he said slowly, "was one whose side struck into by a ship's spar."
They decided to settle that evening at the corner of one of the building's ruined walls. They produced fire with a rock against a section of slightly rusted girder. And after much sawing on a jagged metal blade protruding from a pile of rubble, they managed to quarter the animal and rip most of the pelt from its red body. With thin branches to hold the meat, they did a passable job of roasting. Although partially burned, partially raw, and without seasoning, they ate it, and their hunger ceased. As they sat huddled by the wall, ripping red juicy fibers from the last bones with their teeth, night swelled through the jungle, imprisoning them in the shell of orange flicking from their fire.
"Shall we leave it going?" asked Urson.
"Fire keeps animals away," Iimmi said.
On leaves piled together now they stretched out by the wall of the broken building. There was quiet—an insect hum, no un-namable chitterings, except for the comforting rush of the river's water.
Geo was first to awake, his eyes filled with silver. The entire clearing had been flooded by white light from the huge disk of the moon that sat on the rim of the trees. Iimmi and Urson beside him looked uncomfortably corpse-like, and he was about to reach over and touch Iimmi's outstretched arm when there was a noise behind him, like beaten cloth. He jerked his head around, and was staring at the gray wall by which they had camped. He looked up at the spreading plane that tore off raggedly against the night. Fatigue had washed into something unpleasant and hard in his belly that had little to do with tiredness. He stretched his arm in the leaves once more and put his cheek down on the cool flesh of his shoulder.
The beating sound came again and continued for a few seconds. He rolled his face up and stared at the sky. Something crossed on the moon. It seemed to expand a moment, spread its wings, and draw them in again.
He reached out, his arm over the leaves like thunder, and grabbed Iimmi's black shoulder. Iimmi grunted, started, then rolled over on his back, and opened his eyes. Geo saw the black chest drop with expelled breath, the only recognition given. A few seconds later the chest rose again. Iimmi turned his face to Geo and raised his finger to his lips. Then he turned his face back up to the night. Three more times the flapping sounded behind them, behind the wall, Geo realized. Once he glanced down again and saw that Iimmi had raised his arm and put it over his eyes.
They passed years that way. Then a flock suddenly leapt from the wall. Some of them fell twenty feet before their wings filled with air and they rose again. They circled wider and before they returned, another flock dropped off into the night.
As they fell this time, Geo suddenly grabbed Iimmi's arm and pulled it down from his eyes. The figures dropped through the dark like kites, sixty feet above them, forty feet, thirty; then there was a thin, piercing shriek. Iimmi was up on his feet in a second, and Geo beside him, their staffs in hand.
"Here it comes," breathed Iimmi. He kicked at Urson, but the big man was already on his knees, and then feet. The wings beat insistently and darkly before them as they stood against the wall. The figures flew toward them and at the terrifying distance of five feet, reversed. "I don't think they can get in at the wall," said Iimmi.
"I hope the hell they can't," Urson said.
The figures dropped to the ground, black wings crumpling to their bodies in the moonlight. In the growing hoard of shadow in front of them, light snagged on a metal blade.
Then two of the creatures detached from the others and hurled themselves forward, swords arcing suddenly above their heads.
They swung their staffs as hard as they could, catching both beasts on the chest. They fell backwards in a sudden expansion of rubbery wings, as though they had stumbled into billowing dark canvas.
Three more now leapt over the fallen ones, shrieking. As they came, Urson looked up and jammed his staff into the belly of a fourth monster who was about to fall on them from above. One got past Iimmi's whistling staff and Geo had to stop swinging and grab a furry arm. He pulled it to the side, overbalancing the huge, sailed creature. It dropped its sword as it lay for a moment, struggling on its back. Geo grabbed the blade and brought it straight from the ground up into the gut of another of the creatures who spread open its wings and staggered back. He wrested the blade free, and then turned it down into the body of the fallen one; it made a thick sound like a crushed sponge. As the blade came out again and he hacked into a shadow on his left, a voice suddenly sounded, but inside his head.
The ... jewels ...
"Snake!" bawled Geo. "Where the hell are you?" He was still holding his staff, and now he flung it forward, spear-like, into the face of an advancing beast. Struck, it opened up like a black parachute, knocking away three of its companions, before it fell.
In the view, cleared for an instant, Geo saw a slight, spidery form, dart from the jungle edge into the clearing. With his free hand Geo ripped the jewels from his neck and flung the confused handful of thong and chain over the heads of the shrieking beasts. The beads made a double eye in the light at the top of their arc before they fell on the leaves beyond. Snake picked them up and held them above his head.
Fire leapt from the boy's hands in a double bolt that converged in the center of the dark bodies. A red flair silhouetted the jagged edge of a wing. A wing flamed, waved flame, and the burning beast tried to take air before it fell, splashing fire about it. Orange light caught sharp on brown faces chiseled with shadow, caught in the terrified red bead of an eye or along double fangs behind dark lips.
Burning wings withered on the ground; dead leaves had sparked now, and whips of light ran on the clearing floor. The beasts retreated and the three men stood against the wall, panting.
"Watch out!" Iimmi suddenly called.
Snake looked up as the great wings tented over him, hiding him momentarily. Red flared beneath them, and suddenly the beasts fell away, their sails sweeping over the dead leaves, moved by wind or life, Geo couldn't tell. Dark flappings rose on the moon, grew further away, and were gone.
Away from the wall, they saw the fire had blown up against the wall and was dying. They ran quickly toward the edge of the forest. "Snake," said Geo when they stopped. "This is Iimmi, this is Snake. We told you about him."
Iimmi extended his hand. "Glad to meet you."
"Look," said Geo, "he can read your mind, so if you still think he's a spy ..."
Iimmi grinned. "Remember the general rule? If he is a spy, it's going to get much too complicated trying to figure why he saved us like that."
Urson scratched his head. "If it's a choice between Snake and nothing, we better take Snake. Hey, Four Arms, I owe you a thrashing." He paused, then laughed. "I hope some day I get a chance to give it to you."
"Where have you been, anyway?" Geo asked. He put his hand on the boy's shoulder. "You're wet."
"Our water friends again?" suggested Urson.
"Probably," said Geo.
Snake now held one hand toward Geo.
"What's that? Oh, you don't want to keep them?"
Snake shook his head.
"All right," said Geo. He took one jewel and put it around his neck.
Geo took the wrought chain with the platinum claw from his neck and hung it around Iimmi's. The white eye shown on his dark chest in the moonlight. Now Snake beckoned them to follow him back across the clearing. They came, stopping to pick up swords from the shriveled darknesses on the ground about the clearing. As they passed around the edge of the broken building, Geo looked for the corpse they had left there, but it was gone.
"Where are we going?" asked Urson.
Snake only motioned them onward. They neared the broken cylinder and Snake scrambled up the rubble under the dark hole through which the man-wolf had leaped earlier that evening.
At the door, Snake turned and lifted the jewel from Geo's neck, and held it aloft. The jewel glowed now, with a blue-green light that seeped into the corners and crevices of the ruined entrance. Shreds of cloth hung at the windows, most of which were broken. Twigs and rubbish littered the metal floor. They walked between double seats toward a door at the far end. Effaced signs still hung on the walls.
N .. SM .. K .. G
The door at the end was ajar, and Snake opened it all the way. Something scuttered through a cracked window. The jewel's light showed two seats broken from their fixtures. Vines covered the front window in which only a few splinters of glass hung on the rim. Draped in rotten fabric, a few metal rings about wrists and ankles, two skeletons with silver helmets had fallen from the seats. Snake pointed to a row of smashed glass disks in front of the broken seats.
Radio... they heard in their minds.
Now he reached down into the mess on the floor and dislodged a chunk of rusted metal.Gun, he said, showing it to Geo.
The three men examined it. "What's it good for?" asked Urson.
Snake shrugged.
"Are there any electricities, or diodes around?" asked Geo, remembering the words from before.
Snake shrugged again.
"Why did you want to show us all this?" Geo asked.
The boy only turned and started back toward the door. When they were standing in the oval entrance, about to climb down, Iimmi pointed to the ruins of the building ahead of them. "Do you know what that building was called?"
Barracks, Snake said.
"I know that word," said Geo.
"So do I," said Iimmi. "It means a place where they used to keep soldiers all together. It's from one of the old languages."
"Where to now?" Urson asked Snake.
The boy climbed back down into the clearing and they followed him into the denser wood where only pearls of light scattered through the trees. They emerged at a broad ribbon of silver, the river, broken by rocks.
"We were right the first time," Geo said. "We should have stayed here."
The sound of rippling, sloshing, the full whisper of leaves and foliage along the edges of the forest—these accompanied them as they lay down on the dried moss behind the larger rocks. And with the heaviness of release on them, they dropped, like stones down a well, the bright pool of sleep.
The bright pool of silver grew and spread and wrinkled into the familiar shapes of mast, the rail of the deck, and the whiteness of the sea beyond the ship. The scene moved down the deck, until another gaunt figure approached from the other direction. The features, though strangely distorted by whiteness and pulled to grotesquerie, were recognizable as those of the captain as he drew near.
"Oh, mate," said the captain.
Silence, while the mate gave an answer they couldn't hear.
"Yes," answered the captain. "I wonder what she wants, too." His voice was hollow, etiolated like a flower grown in darkness. The captain turned and knocked on Argo's cabin door. It opened, and they stepped in.
The hand that opened the door for them was thin as winter twigs. The walls of the room seemed draped in spider webs and hangings insubstantial as layered dust. The great desk seemed spindly, grotesque, and the papers on top of it were tissue thin, threatening to scutter and crumble with a breath. The chandelier above gave more languishing white smoke than light, and the arms, branches, and complexed array of oil cups looked like a convocation of spiders.
Argo spoke in a pale white voice that sounded like the whisper of thin fingers tearing webs.
"So," she said. "We will stay at least another seven days."
"But why?" asked the captain.
"I have received a sign from the sea."
"I do not wish to question your authority, Priestess," began the captain.
"Then do not," interrupted Argo.
"My mate has raised the objection that ..."
"Your mate has raised his hand to me once," stated the Priestess. "It is only in my benevolence ..." Here she paused, and her voice became more unsure, "... that I do not destroy him where he stands." Beneath, her veil, a face could be made out that might have belonged to a dried skull.
"But," began the captain.
"We wait here by the island of Aptor another seven days," commanded Argo. She looked away from the captain now, in a direction that must have been straight into the eyes of the mate. From behind the veil, hate welled like living liquid from the seemingly empty sockets. They turned to go, and once more on deck, they stopped to watch the sea. Near the indistinct horizon, a sharp tongue of land outlined itself with mountains. The cliffs were chalky on one side, then streaked with red and blue clays on the other. There was a reddish glow beyond one mountain, like the shimmering of a volcano. And dark as most of it was, it was a distinct darkness, backed with purple, or broken by the warm, differing grays of individual rocks. Even through the night, at this distance, beyond the silver crescent of the beach, the jungle looked rich, green even in the darkness, redolently full and quiveringly heavy with life.
And then the thin screams ...
Geo rolled over and out of sleep, stones and moss beneath his shoulder. He grabbed his sword and was on his feet instantly. Iimmi was also standing with raised blade. The river sloshed coldly behind them.
The thin screaming came again, like a hot wire drawn down the gelid morning. Snake and Urson were also up, now. The sounds came from the direction of the ruined barracks. Geo started forward, cautiously, curiosity drawing him toward the sound, fear sending him from the relatively unprotected bank and into the woods. The others followed him.
Abruptly they reached the edge of the forest's wall, beyond which was the clear space before the broken building. They crouched now, behind the trees, watching, fascinated.
Between ape and man, it hovered at the edge of the forest in the shadow. It was Snake's height, but more of Urson's build. An animal pelt wrapped its middle and went over its shoulder, clothing it more fully than either of the four humans were clothed. Thick-footed, great-handed, it loped four steps into the clearing, uttered its piercing shriek, and fell on a hunk of flesh that last night's beasts had dropped from the sky. Its head rocked back and forth as it tore at its food. Once it raised its head and a sliver of flesh shook from its teeth before the face dropped again to devour.
They watched the huge fingers upon broad flat palms, tipped with bronze-colored claws, convulse again and again, reflexively, into the gray, fibrous meat while the fanged mouth ripped.
Whether it was a shift of breeze, or a final reflex, Geo couldn't tell, but one of the membranous sails raised darkly and beat about the oblivious animal that fed on its corpse.
"Come on," Urson said. "Let's go."
A thin scream sounded behind them, and they whirled.
It crouched apishly, the bronze-clawed fingers opened and closed like breathing, and the shaggy head was knotted with dirt and twigs. The breath hissed from the faintly moving, full lips.
Urson reached for his sword, but Iimmi saw him and whispered, "No, don't."
The Negro extended his hand and moved slowly forward. The hulking form took a step back, and mewed.
Geo suddenly caught the idea. Coming up beside Iimmi, he made a quick series of snaps with his fingers and said in a coaxing, baby voice. "Come, come, come." He laughed softly to Urson back over his shoulder. "It won't hurt us," he said.
"If we don't hurt it," added Iimmi. "It's some sort of necrophage."
"A what?" asked Urson.
"It only eats dead things," Geo explained. "They're mentioned in some of the old legends. Apparently, after the Great Fire, so the story goes, there were more of these things around than anything else. In Leptar, though, they became extinct."
"Come here, cutie," said Iimmi. "Nice little, sweet little, pretty little thing."
It mewed again, bowed its head, came over and rubbed against Iimmi's hip. "Smells like hell," the Negro observed, scratching behind its ear. "Watch out there, big boy!" The beast gave a particularly affectionate rub that almost upset Iimmi's balance.
"Leave your pet alone," said Urson, "and let's get going."
Geo patted the ape-like skull. "So long, beautiful," he said. They turned toward the river again.
As they emerged on the rocky bank, Geo said, "Well, at least we know we have seven days to get to the Temple of Hama and out again."
"What do you mean?" asked Iimmi.
"Don't you remember the dream, back on the ship?"
"Who was thinking that?" asked Iimmi.
"Jordde, the first mate."
"He makes everybody look dead. I thought I was having a nightmare. I could hardly recognize the captain."
"You see one reason for believing he's a spy?"
"Because of the way he sees things?" Again he smiled. "A poet's reason, I'm afraid. But I see."
The thin shriek sounded behind them, and they turned to see the hulking form crouched on the rocks above them.
"Uh-oh," said Urson, "there's your cute friend."
"I hope we haven't picked up a tag-a-long for the rest of the trip," said Geo.
It loped down over the rocks and stopped just before them.
"What's it got?" Iimmi asked.
"I can't tell," said Geo.
Reaching into the bib of its animal skin, it brought out a gray hunk of meat and held it toward them.
Iimmi laughed. "Breakfast," he said.
"That!" demanded Urson.
"Can you suggest anything better?" Geo asked. He took the meat from the beast's claws. "Thanks, gorgeous."
It turned, looked back, and bounded up the bank and into the forest again.
With fire from the jewels, and wooden spits from the woods, they soon had the meat crackling and brown and the grease bubbling down its sides and hissing onto the hot stones they had used to rim the flame. Urson sat apart, sniffed, and then moved closer, and finally scratched his big fingers through his hairy stomach and said, "Damn it, I'm hungry." They made room for him at the fire without comment.
Sun struck the tops of the trees for the first time that morning and a moment later splashed copper in concentric curves on the water by the rock's edge, staining it further with dull gold.
"You seem to know your way around awfully well. Have you ever been on Aptor before?" Iimmi asked Snake suddenly.
Snake paused for a moment. Then he nodded, slowly.
They were all silent now.
Finally Geo asked, "What made you ask that?"
"Something in your first theory," Iimmi said. "I've been thinking it for some time, and I guess you knew I was thinking it too, Four Arms. You thought Jordde wanted to get rid of me, Whitey, and Snake, and that it was just an accident that he caught Whitey first instead of Snake. You thought he wanted to get rid of Whitey and me because of something we'd seen, or might have seen, when we were on Aptor with Argo. I just thought perhaps he wanted to get rid of Snake for the same reason. Which meant he might have been on Aptor before, too."
"Jordde was on Aptor before," said Urson. "You said that's when he became a spy for them."
They all turned to Snake who stood quietly.
"I don't think we ought to ask him any more questions," said Iimmi. "The answers aren't going to do us any good, and no matter what we find out, we've got a job to do, and seven, no—six and a half days to do it in."
Snake quietly handed the metal chain with the pendant jewel back to Iimmi. The dark man put it around his neck once more and they turned up the river.
By twelve, the sun had parched the sky. Once they stopped to swim and cool themselves. Chill water gave before reaching arms and lowered faces. They even dove in search of their aquatic helpers, but grubbed the pebbly bottom of the river with blind fingers instead, coming up with dripping twigs and smooth wet stones. Soon, they were in a splashing match, of which it is fair to say, Snake won—hands down.
Hunger thrust its sharp finger into their abdomens once more, only a mile on. "Maybe we should have saved some of that stuff from breakfast," muttered Urson.
Iimmi suddenly broke away from the bank toward the forest.
"Come on," he said. "Let's get some food."
The building they suddenly came upon had tongues of moss licking twenty to fifty feet up the loosely mortared stones. A hundred yards from the water, the jungle came right to its edges. The whole edifice had sunk a bit to one side in the boggy soil. It was a far more stolid and primitive structure than the barracks. They scraped and hacked in front of the entrance where two great columns of stone, six feet across at the base, rose fifty feet to a supported arch. The stones of the building were rough and unfinished.
"It's a temple," Geo suddenly said.
And again they fell back to work. What spots of light spilled through the twisted net of jungle stopped at the total shadow beneath the great arch. A line of blackness up one side of the basalt door showed that it was ajar. Now they mounted the steps, moving aside a fallen branch which chattered leaves at them. Geo, Iimmi, then Snake, and at last Urson, squeezed through the door.
Ceiling blocks had fallen from the high vault so that three shafts of sun struck through the continual shift of dust to the littered floor.
"Do you think it's Hama's temple?" Urson asked. His voice came back in the stone room, small and hollow.
"I doubt it," said Iimmi. "At least not the one we're supposed to find."
"Maybe it's an abandoned one," said Geo, "and we can find out something useful from it."
Something large and dark suddenly flapped through a far shaft of sun. They stepped back. After a moment of silence, Geo handed his jewel to Snake. "Make some light in here," he said.
The blue green glow flowed from the up-raised jewel in Snake's hand. As the light flared, and flared brighter, they saw that the flapping had come from a medium-sized bird that was perched harmlessly on an arch that ran between two columns. It ducked its head at them, cawed harshly, and then flapped from its perch and out one of the apertures in the ceiling, the sound of its wings still thrumming in echo seconds after it was gone.
There were doors between the columns, and one far wall had not withstood time's sledge. A gaping rent was nearly blocked with vines except for a dim, green-tinted shimmer that broke in here and there through the uneven foliage.
Behind a twisted metal rail and raised on steps of stone, the ruins of a huge statue sat. Carved from black rock, it represented a man seated cross-legged on a dais. An arm and shoulder had broken off and lay in pieces on the altar steps. The hand, its fingers as thick as Urson's thigh, lay just behind the altar rail. The head was completely missing. Both the hand still on the statue and the one in front of them on the steps looked as though they had once held something, but whatever it was had been removed.
Iimmi was moving along the rail to where a set of stone boxes were placed like foot stones along the side of the altar. "Here, Snake," he called. "Bring a light over here." Snake obeyed, and with Geo's and Urson's help, he loosened one of the lids.
"What's in there?" Urson asked.
"Books," said Iimmi, lifting out one dusty volume. Geo peered over his shoulder while the dark fingers turned the pages. "Old rituals," Iimmi said. "Look here," and he pointed to one of them. "You can still read them."
"Let me see," Geo said. "You know I studied with Eadnu at the University of Olcse Olwnh."
Iimmi looked up and laughed. "I thought some of your ideas sounded familiar. I was a pupil of Welis."
"You were at Olcse Olwnh too?" Geo asked.
"Um-hm," said Iimmi turning the pages. "I signed aboard this ship as a summer job. If I'd known where we'd end up, I don't think I'd have gone, though."
Stomach pangs were forgotten.
"These rituals are not at all like those of the Goddess," Iimmi observed.
"Apparently not," agreed Geo. "Wait!" Iimmi had been turning pages at random. "Look there!" Geo pointed.