Snake reached down, picked the beads up from Urson's hand. The sound of wings had stopped.
"Where do we go now?" Urson asked.
"Follow the general rule, I guess," said Iimmi. "Since we know Hama does have a temple somewhere, we try to find it, get the third jewel, and rescue Argo Incarnate. Then get back to the ship."
"In three days?" asked Urson. They had related the rest of what they had found to him by now. "Well, where do we start looking?"
"The Priestess said something about a band of Hama's disciples behind the fire mountain. That must mean the volcano we saw from the steps in the City of New Hope." Iimmi turned to Snake. "Did you read her mind enough to know if she was telling the truth?"
Snake nodded.
Iimmi paused for a moment. "Well, since the river is that way, we should head," he turned and pointed, "... in that direction."
They fixed their stride now and started through the moon-brushed foliage.
"I still don't understand what was going on back at the monastery," Geo said. "Were they really priestesses of Argo? And what was Jordde doing?"
"I'd say yes on the first question, and guess that Jordde was a spy for them for an answer to the second."
"But what about Argo—I mean Argo on the ship?" asked Geo. "And what about Snake here?"
"Argo on the ship apparently doesn't know about Argo on Aptor," said Iimmi. "That's what Jordde meant when he reported to the priestesses that she was bewildered. She probably thinks just like we did, that he's Hama's spy. And this one here," he gestured to Snake, "I don't know. I just don't know."
In the distance was a red glow in which they could make out the faint lines of the volcano's cone. Snake made lights with the jewels, and once more they began to pick their way over the terrain, barer and barer of vegetation. The earth became cindery and the air bore the acrid smell of old ashes.
Soon the rim of the crater hung close above them.
Iimmi gazed up at the red haze above them. "I wonder what it's like to look into that thing in the middle of the night?" Twenty feet later Snake's light struck a lava cliff that sheered up into the darkness. Going on beside it, they found a ledge that made an eighteen-inch footpath diagonally up the face.
"We're not going to climb that in the dark, are we?" asked Geo.
"Better than in the light," said Urson. "This way you can't see how far you have to fall."
Thirty feet on, instead of petering out and forcing them to go back, the lip of rock broadened into a level stretch of ground and again they could go straight forward toward the red light above them.
"This is changeable country," Urson muttered.
"Men change into animals," said Geo, "jungles turn to mountains." He reached around and felt the stub of his arm in the dark. "I've changed too, I guess."
Iimmi recited:
"Change is neither merciful nor just.They say Leonard of Vinci put his trustin faulty paints: Christ's Supper turned to dust."
"Change is neither merciful nor just.They say Leonard of Vinci put his trustin faulty paints: Christ's Supper turned to dust."
"What's that from?" Geo asked.
"That's one of my bits of original research," Iimmi explained. "It comes from a poem dating back before the Great Fire."
"Who was Leonard of Vinci?" Geo asked.
"An artist, another poet or painter, I suppose," said Iimmi. "But I'm not really sure."
"Who's Christ?" Urson asked.
"Another god."
There were more rocks now, and Geo had to brace his stub against the walls of fissures and hoist himself up with his good hand. The igneous structures were sharp in his palm.
Through the night the glowing rim dropped toward them. With it came a breeze that pushed sulfa powder through their hair and made the edges of their nostrils sting.
The earth became scaley and rotten under their feet. Fatigue tied tiny knots high in their guts so that their stomachs hung like stones.
"I didn't realize how big the crater was," Iimmi said. The red glow cut off at the bottom and took up a quarter of the sky.
"Maybe it'll erupt on us," Urson muttered. He added, "I'm thirsty."
They climbed on. Once Urson looked back and saw Geo had stopped some twenty feet behind them at a niche in the ledge. He turned around and dropped back himself. There was sweat on the boy's up-turned face as the big man came toward him. He could see it in the red haze from the rim.
"Here," Urson said. "Give me a hand."
"I can't," Geo said softly, "or I'll fall."
Urson reached down, now, caught the boy around the chest, and hoisted him over the cropping of rock. "Take it easy," Urson instructed. "You don't have to race with anybody." Together they made their way after the others.
Iimmi and Snake cleared the crater rim first; then Urson and Geo joined them on the pitted ledge. Together they looked into the volcano as red and yellow light fell over their chests and faces.
Gold dribbled the internal slope. Tongues of red rock lapped the sides, and the swirling white basin belched brown blobs of smoke which rose up the far rocks and spilled over the brim a radion away. Light leapt in wavering pylons of blue flame, then sank back into the pit. Winding trails of light webbed the crater's walls, and at places ebon cavities jeweled among the light.
Wind fingered the watchers' hair.
Iimmi saw her first, two hundred feet along the rim. Her drapes, died red and orange in the flame, blew about her as she walked toward them. Iimmi pointed to her, and the others looked up.
As she neared, Geo saw that though she stood very straight, she was old. Her short white hair snapped at the side of her head in the warm breeze. Firelight and shadow fell deeply into the wrinkles of her face. As she approached them, light running like liquid down the side of her winded robe, she smiled and held out her hand.
"Who are you?" Geo suddenly asked.
"Shadows melt in light of sacred laughter,Hands and houses shall be one hereafter."
"Shadows melt in light of sacred laughter,Hands and houses shall be one hereafter."
recited the woman in a calm, low voice.
She paused. "I am Argo Incarnate, of Leptar."
"But I thought ..." Iimmi started.
"What did you think?" inquired the elderly woman, gently.
"Nothing," said Iimmi.
"He thought you were a lot younger," Urson said. "We're supposed to take you home." Suddenly he pointed in to the volcano. "Say, this isn't any of that funny light like back in the city that burned our hands, only this time it made you old?"
She glanced at the pool of light. "This is natural fire," she assured them, "a severed artery of the earth's burning blood. But wounds are natural enough."
Geo shifted his feet and rubbed his stump.
"We were supposed to take the younger sister of the present Argo Incarnate and return with her to Leptar," Iimmi explained.
"There are many Argos," smiled the woman. "The Goddess has many faces. You have seen quite a few since you arrived in this land."
"I guess we have," Urson said.
"Are you a prisoner of Hama?" asked Iimmi.
"I am with Hama," said the woman.
"We are supposed to secure the third jewel and bring it back to the ship. We don't have much time...."
"Yes," said Argo.
"Hey, what about that nest of vampires down there," Urson said, thumbing viciously toward the black behind them. "They said they worshiped Argo. What have you got to do with them? I don't trust anything on this place very much."
"The nature of the Goddess is change," said the woman, looking sadly toward the slope, "from birth, through life, to death," she looked back up at them, "to birth again. As I said, Argo has many faces. You must be very tired."
"Yes," said Geo.
"Then come with me. Please." She turned, and began to walk back along the rim. Snake and Iimmi started after her, and then came Geo and Urson.
"I don't like any of this," the big man whispered to Geo as they came along. "Argo doesn't mean the same thing in this land like she means on Leptar. There's nothing but more evil to come out of this. She's leading us into a trap, I tell you. I say the best thing to do is take the jewels we have, turn around, and get the hell out of here. I tell you, Geo...."
"Urson," Geo said.
"Huh?" the big man asked.
"Urson, I'm very tired."
They walked silently for a few steps more. Then Urson heaved up a half disgusted breath, and put his arm around Geo's shoulder. "Come on," he grunted, supporting Geo against his own great form as they progressed along the rocky ledge, following the new Argo.
At last she turned down a trail that dropped into the crater. "Walk carefully here," she said as they turned into the huge pit.
"Something is not right," Urson said softly. "It's a trap I tell you. How does that thing go? I could use it now.Calmly brother bear ..."
"Calm the winter sleep,Fire shall not harm,"
"Calm the winter sleep,Fire shall not harm,"
continued Geo.
"Says who," mumbled Urson glancing into the bowl of flame. Geo went on:
"water not alarm.While the current grows,amber honey flows,golden salmon leap."
"water not alarm.While the current grows,amber honey flows,golden salmon leap."
"Like I once said before," mused Urson, "In a ..."
"In here," came the voice of Argo. They turned into the dark mouth of one of the caves which pocked the crater's inside wall. "No," she said to Snake, who was about to use the jewels for illumination. "They have been used too much already."
With a small stick taken from a pocket in her robe, she struck a flame against the rock, then raised it to an ornate, branching candelabra that hung from the stone ceiling by brass chains. Flame leapt from cast oil cup to oil cup, from the hand of a demon to a monkey's mouth, from a nymph's belly to the horns of a satyr's head. Chemicals in the cups caused each flame to burn a different color; green, red, blue, and orange white light filled the small chapel and played across the tops of the benches. On the altar sitting on one side of the room were two statues of equal height: a man sitting, and a woman kneeling. Iimmi looked at the altar. Geo and Urson stared at the candelabra.
"What is it?" Iimmi asked when he saw where their eyes were fixed.
"There's one of those things in Argo's cabin on board the ship," Geo said. "And look over there. Where did we see one of those before?" It was a machine with an opaque glass screen, identical to the one in the monastery of Argo.
"Sit down," Argo said. "Sit down."
They sank to the benches; the climb, once halted, knotting their calves and the low muscles on their backs.
"Hama has allowed you the privilege of a chapel even in captivity," commented Iimmi, "but I see you have to share your altar with him."
"But I am Hama's mother," smiled Argo.
Geo and Urson frowned.
"The rituals say that Argo is the mother of all things, the begetter and bearer of all life. I am the mother of all gods as well."
"Those blind women down in the ground," asked Urson, "they aren't really your priestesses, are they? They wanted to kill us. I bet they were really dupes of Hama."
"It isn't so simple," replied Argo. "They are really worshipers of Argo, but as I said, I have many faces. Death as well as life is my province. The dwellers in that convent from which you escaped are a—how shall I say, a degenerate branch of the religion. They were truly blinded by the fall of the City of New Hope. To them, Argo is only death, the dominator of men. For not only is Argo the mother of Hama, she is his wife and daughter."
"Then it's like we figured," said Iimmi. "Jordde isn't a spy for Hama. He's working for the renegade priestesses of Argo."
"Yes," returned Argo, "except that renegade is perhaps the wrong word. They believe that their way is correct, and a respect for belief is essential to the understanding of Man. And it is through understanding that the mysteries that still remain in your mind will be solved."
"Then they must be responsible for all that was going on in Leptar, only somehow blaming it on Hama," said Iimmi. "They were probably just after the jewels, too. You don't look like a prisoner. That must be the whole thing. You're here in league with Hama to prevent the priestesses of Argo from taking over Leptar."
"Nothing could be simpler," said the Goddess. "Unfortunately you are wrong in nearly every other point."
"But then why did Jordde throw the jewel after us when he tore it from Argo's—I mean the other Argo's throat?"
"When he snatched the jewel from around my daughter's neck," added Argo, "he threw it to the creatures of the sea because he knew they would take it back to Aptor. With it once again in the island, the priestesses would have a better chance of getting it; my daughter, acting Argo Incarnate in my absence and her sister's, does not know that what she is fighting is another face of Argo. As far as she is concerned, all her efforts are against the mischief Hama has caused, and truly caused, in Leptar. This ignorance is far greater than you imagine, for beyond these blind creatures is a far greater enemy that she must vanquish."
"Hama...?" began Iimmi.
"Greater than Hama," said old Argo. "It is herself. It is hard for me to watch her and not occasionally call out a word of guidance. With the science here in Aptor it would not be difficult. But I must refrain. I suppose she has actually done well. But there is so much more to do. She has directed you well, and assigned your tasks properly. And until now you have carried them out well."
"She said we were to steal the final jewel from Hama and return with you to the ship," said Geo. "Can you help us with either of these things?"
"The moment I compliment you," laughed Argo, "you completely confuse your mission. Once the jewel is stolen, whom are you supposed to take back to Leptar?"
"Argo Incarnate," Urson said.
"You said that Argo back in the ship was your daughter," said Geo, "but she said you were her younger sister."
"She said nothing of the sort," Argo corrected. "I have two daughters. You have already met one. Now you must rescue the other. When my youngest daughter was ... kidnaped here to Aptor, I was already here, waiting for her. Look."
She turned a dial beneath the screen and lights flickered over the glass until they formed a sleeping figure. She had short red hair, a splash of freckles over a blunt nose, and her hand lay curled in a loose fist near her mouth. A white sheet covered the gentle push of adolescent breasts, and on the table beside her bed was a contraption made of a U-shaped piece of metal mounted on a board, an incomplete coil of wire, and a few more bits of metal, all sitting on top of a crumpled paper bag.
"That is my youngest daughter," Argo said, switching off the picture. "She is the one you must take back to the ship."
"How shall we steal the jewel?" asked Geo.
Argo turned to Snake. "I believe that was your task." Then she looked around at the other three. "You will need rest. After that you can see about the jewel and my daughter. Come with me, now. Pallets have been set up for you in the far room where you may sleep." She rose and led them to a further chamber. The blankets over the loose boughs seemed to pull them down. Argo pointed to a trickle of water that ran from a basin carved in the rock wall. "This stream is pure. You may drink from it." She pointed to a cloth sack in the corner. "There is fruit in there if you become hungry."
"Sleep!" said Urson, jammed his two fists in the air, and yawned.
As they settled, Argo said, "Poet?"
"Yes?" answered Geo.
"I know you are the tiredest, but I must talk to you alone for a moment or two."
As Geo raised himself, Urson stood up too. "Look," he said to Argo, "he needs the rest more than any of us. If you want to question him about rituals and spells, take Iimmi. He knows just as much as Geo."
"I need a poet," smiled Argo, "not a student. I need one who has suffered as he has. Come."
"Wait," Urson said. He picked the jewel from Geo's chest where Snake had returned it when they entered the chapel. "You better leave this with me."
Geo frowned.
"It still may be a trap," said Urson.
"Leave it with him," suggested Argo, "if it eases him."
Geo let the great hand lift the thong from his neck.
"Now come with me," said Argo.
They left the room and walked back through the chapel to the door. Argo stood in the entrance, looking down at the molten rock. The light sifted through her robe, leaving the darker outline of her body. Without turning, she began to speak. "The fire is a splendid symbol for life, do you agree?"
"And for death," said Geo. "One of Aptor's fires burned my arm away."
"Yes," she turned now. "You and Snake have had the hardest time. Both of you have left your flesh to rot in Aptor. I guess that gives you a closeness to the land." She paused. "You know, he had a great deal more pain than you. Do you know how he lost his tongue? I watched it all from this same screen inside the chapel, and could not help. They jammed their knuckles in his jaws and when the mouth came open, Jordde caught the red flesh with pincers that closed all the way through, and stretched it out as far as it would go. Then he looped the tongue with a thin wire, and then he threw a switch. You do not know what electricity is, do you?"
"I have heard the word."
"Let me just say that when a great deal of it is passed through a thin wire, the wire becomes very hot, white hot. And the white hot loop was tautened until the rope of muscle seared away and just the roasted stump was left. But the child had fainted already. I wonder if the young can really bear more pain than older people."
"Jordde and the blind priestess did that to him?"
"Jordde and some men on the boat that picked up the two of them from the raft on which they had left Aptor."
"Who is Jordde?" Geo asked. "Urson knew him before this as a first mate. But Urson's story told me nothing."
"I know the story," Argo said, "and it tells you something, but something you would perhaps rather not know." She sighed. "Poet, how well do you know yourself?"
"What do you mean?" Geo asked.
"How well do you know the workings of a man, how he manages to function? That is what you will sing of if your songs are to become great."
"I still don't ..."
"I have a question for you, a poetic riddle. Will you try to answer it?"
"If you will answer a not too poetic riddle for me."
"Will you do your best to answer mine?" Argo asked.
"Yes."
"Then I will do my best to answer yours. What is your question?"
"Who is Jordde and why is he doing what he's doing?"
"He was at one time," Argo explained, "a very promising novice for the priesthood of Argo in Leptar, as well as a scholar of myths and rituals like Iimmi and yourself. He also took to the sea to learn of the world, but his boat was wrecked, and he and a few others were cast on Aptor's shore. They strove with Aptor's terrors as you did, and many succumbed. Two, however, a four-armed cabin boy whom you call Snake, and Jordde were each exposed to the forces of Argo and Hama as you have been. One, in his strangeness, could see into men's minds. The other could not. Silently, one swore allegiance to one force, while one swore allegiance to the other. The second part of your question waswhy. Perhaps if you can answer my riddle, you can answer that part yourself. I do know that they were the only two who escaped. I do know that Snake would not tell Jordde his choice, and that Jordde tried to convince the child to follow him. When they were rescued, I know that the argument continued, and that Snake held back with childish tenacity both his decision and his ability to read minds, even under the hot wire and the pincers. The hot wire, incidentally, was something Jordde brought with him from the blind priestesses, according to him, to help the people of Leptar with. It could have been a great use. But recently all he has done with the electricity is construct a larger weapon with it. However, Jordde became a staunch first mate in a year's time. Snake became a waterfront thief. Both waited. Then, when the opportunity arose, both acted. Why? Perhaps you can tell me, poet."
"Thank you for telling me what you know," Geo said. "What is your question?"
She glanced at the flame through the door once more and then recited:
"By the dark chamber sits its twin,where the body's floods begin;and the two are twinned again,turning out and turning in.In the bright chamber runs the lineof the division, silver, fine,diminishing along the lanesof memory to an inward sign.Fear floods in the turning room;Love breaks in the burning dome."
"By the dark chamber sits its twin,where the body's floods begin;and the two are twinned again,turning out and turning in.
In the bright chamber runs the lineof the division, silver, fine,diminishing along the lanesof memory to an inward sign.
Fear floods in the turning room;Love breaks in the burning dome."
"It is not one that I have heard before," Geo said. "I'm not even sure I know what the question is. I'm familiar with neither its diction nor style."
"I doubted very much that you would recognize it," smiled Argo.
"Is it part of the pre-purge rituals of Argo?"
"It was written by my youngest daughter," Argo said. "The question is, can you explain it?"
"Oh," said Geo. "I didn't realize...." He paused. "By the dark chamber sits its twin, moving in and out; and that's where the floods of the body begin. And it's twinned again. The heart?" he suggested. "The four-chambered human heart? That's where the body's flood begins."
"I think that will do for part of the answer."
"The bright chamber," mused Geo. "The burning dome. The human mind, I guess. The line of division, running down the lane of memory—I'm not sure."
"You seem to be doing fairly well."
"Could it refer to something like 'the two sides of every question'?" Geo asked. "Or something similar?"
"It could," Argo said, "though I must confess I hadn't thought of it in that way. But it is the last two lines that puzzle me."
"Fear floods in the turning room," repeated Geo; "Love breaks in the burning dome.I guess that's the mind and the heart again. You usually think of love with the heart, and fear with the mind. Maybe she meant that they both, the heart and the mind, have control over both love and fear."
"Perhaps she did," Argo smiled. "You must ask her—when you rescue her from the clutches of Hama."
Before turning back to the room with his companions, he looked once more out at the fires of the volcano. Light whirled white and red. Blue tongues licked at black rock siding. He turned away now and went back into the darkness.
Dawn light lay a-slant the crater's ridge. Argo pointed down the opposite slope. A black temple was visible at the bottom among trees and lawns. "There is Hama's temple," Argo said. "You have your task. Good luck."
They started down the incline of cinders. It took them an hour to reach the first trees that surrounded the dark buildings and the great gardens. Entering on the first lip of grass, they heard a sudden cluster of notes from one of the trees.
"A bird," Iimmi said. "I haven't heard one of those since I left Leptar."
Suddenly, bright blue and the length of a man's forefinger, a lizard ran halfway down the trunk of the tree. It's sapphire belly heaved in the early light with indrawn breath; then it opened its red mouth, its throat warbled, and there was another burst of music.
"Oh well," said Iimmi. "I was close."
They walked further, until Iimmi mused, "I wonder why you always think things are going to turn out like you expect."
"Because when something sounds like that," declared Urson, "it usually is a bird!" Suddenly he gave a little shiver. "Lizards," he said.
"It was a pretty lizard," said Iimmi.
"Going around expecting things to be what they seem can get you in trouble—especially on this island," Geo commented.
The angle at which they walked made one of the clumps of tree before them seem to fall apart. A man standing in the center raised his hand and said briskly, "Stop!"
They stopped.
He wore dark robes, and his short white hair made a close helmet above his brown face.
Urson's hand was on his sword. Snake stood with his feet wide, his hands out from his sides.
"Who are you?" the dark man declared.
"Who are you?" Urson parried.
"I am Hama Incarnate."
They were silent. Finally Geo said, "We are travelers in Aptor. We don't mean any harm."
As the man moved forward, splotches of light from the trees slipped across his robe. "Come with me," Hama said. He turned and proceeded among the trees. They followed.
They passed into the temple garden. It was early enough in the morning so that the sunlight lapped pink tongues over the giant black urns that sat along the edges of the path. Now they passed into the temple.
As they passed, Hama turned, looked at the jewels on Iimmi's and Geo's necks, and then looked up at the gazing eye of the statue at the end of the altar. He made no other sign, but turned again and continued. "The morning rites have not yet started," he said. "They will begin in a half an hour. By then I hope to have divined your purpose in coming here."
At the other side of the stairway they mounted a stairway, and then entered a door above which was a black circle dotted with three eyes. Just as they were about to go in, Geo looked around, frowned, and caught Iimmi's eye. "Snake?" he mouthed.
Iimmi looked around and shrugged.
The man turned and faced them, apparently unaware of Snake's departure. As he closed the door, now, he said, "You have come to oppose the forces of Aptor, am I right? You come to steal the jewel of Hama. You have come to kidnap the Incarnate Argo. Is that not your purpose. Keep your hand off your sword, Urson! I can kill you in a moment. You are defenseless."
"Damn! I'm sleepy." She rolled over and cuddled the pillow. Then she opened her eyes, one at a time, and lay watching the nearly completed motor of metal bars and copper wire that sat on the table beside her bed. She stood up.
Then she collapsed on the bed and jammed her feet under the covers again. With thirty feet of one and a half inch brass pipe, she mused sleepily, I could carry heat from the main hot-water line under the floor which I would estimate to be about the proper surface area to keep these stones warm; let me see, thirty feet of one and a half inch pipe have a surface area of 22/7 times 3/2 times 30 which is 990 divided by 7 which is ... Then she caught herself. Damn, you're thinking this to avoid thinking about getting up. She opened her eyes once more, put feet on the stone, and held them there while she scratched vigorously at her uneven mop of red hair.
She looked at the clock. "Yikes!" she said softly, and ran out the door, and slammed it behind her—almost. She whirled around, caught it on her palms before it banged shut, and then closed it with gingerly care the final centimeter and a half of the arc. Are you trying to get caught? she asked herself as she tiptoed to the next door.
She opened it and looked in. Dunderhead looks cute when he's asleep, she thought. There was a cord on the floor that ran from under the table by the priest's bed, over the stones, carefully following the zigzag of the crevices between them, and at last the end lay in the corner of the door sill. You really couldn't see it if you weren't looking for it, which had more or less been the idea when she had put it there last night before the priests had come back from vespers. The far end was tied in a knot of her own invention to the electric plug of his alarm clock. Dunderhead had an annoying habit of re-setting his clock every evening making sure that the red second hand was still sweeping away the minutes. (In her plans for this morning she had catalogued his every habitual action, and had observed this one for three nights running, hanging upside down from the bulky stone portcullis above and outside his window.)
Tugging on the string, she saw it leap from the crevices into a straight line and then lift from the floor as she drew it tauter, and then go slack as the plug blipped quietly onto the floor.
Next she pulled the string again until the slack left and raised her end a few inches from the floor. With her free hand now she gave the string a small twit and watched the vibration run up and down the string twice. The knot's invention was an ingenuous one. At the vibration, two opposed loops shook away from a third, and a four millimeter length of rubber band that had been sewn in tautened and released a fourth loop from around a small length of number four gauge wire with a holding tonsure of three quarters of a gram, and the opposing vibration returning up the thread loosed a similar apparatus on the other side of the plug. The knot fell away, and she wound it quickly around her hand. She stood up, closed the door, and the oiled lock was perfectly silent. The door knob was just the slightest bit greasy, she noted. Careless.
Back in her room, it was standing on the table. Sunlight from the high window fell red across the board. It was very early in the morning. She took the parts of the motor up in her hands. "I guess we try you out today? No?" She answered herself, "Yes." Finally she put the parts in the paper bag, strode out of the room, and slammed the ... whirled around and caught it once more. "Gnnnnnnn," she said. "Do you want to get caught?" For the second time she answered herself, "Yes. And remember that too. Or you'll never get through it."
As she walked down the hall, she heard through one of the windows the chirp of a blue lizard from the garden. "The sound I wanted to hear," she smiled to herself. "A good sign."
Turning into the temple, she started down the side aisle. The great black columns passed before her. Something moved between the columns along the other side, swift and indistinct as a bird's shadow. At least she thought she saw something. "Remember," she reminded herself, "you have guilt feelings about this whole thing, and you could very easily be manufacturing delusions to scare yourself out of going through with it." She went on, passed two more columns, and saw it again. "Or," she went on with her monologue, "you could be purposefully ignoring the very obvious fact that there is somebody over there who is going to see you. So watch it." There were mirrors somewhere in the temple, but they weren't on the opposite wall, so she couldn't be seeing herself. In fact the mirrors were out in the vestibule through which she had come and maybe this other person had come, so maybe it was seeing her as a reflection of ... "Unscramble that syntax," she told herself. "You think like that and you'll never make it."
But there was somebody, with no clothes on (for all practical purposes) sneaking between the pillars. And he had four arms. That made her start to think of something else, but the thought as it arrowed into the past, suddenly got deflected, turned completely about, and jammed into her brain again, because he was staring directly at her.
If he starts walking toward me, she thought,I'm going to be scared out of my ears. So I better start walking toward him. Besides, I want to see what he looks like.She started out from the columns. Glancing quickly both ways, she saw that the temple was deserted save for them.
He's a kid, she thought, three quarters of the way across.My age, she added, and again a foreign thought attempted to intrude itself on her but never made it, because he was coming toward her now. At last he stopped before her, silent, muscles like tight wire under the brown skin, black hair massing low on his forehead, his eyes deep beneath the black shrub of brows.
She gulped and asked him, "What are you doing here? Do you know somebody could catch you in here and get mad as hell? I know I couldn't possibly have, but I think I've seen you before some place; if somebody comes along, they might even think you were trying to steal Hama's eye."I shouldn't have said that, she thought,because he moved funny."You better get out of here because everybody will be up here in a half an hour for morning services."
At that news, he suddenly darted forward, passed her, and sprinted down toward the altar.
"Hey!" she called and ran after him.
Snake vaulted over the brass altar rail.
"Wait a minute," she called, catching up. "Wait, will you!"
Snake turned as she slung her leg across the brass bar. "Look, I realize I gave away my hand. But that was only guilt feelings. You gave yours away too, though. And if you don't think you've got guilt feelings, boy, you're crazy."
Snake frowned, tilted his head, and then grinned.
"So we'll help each other see," she said. "You want it too, don't you." She pointed up to the head of the statue towering above them. "So let's co-operate. I'll get it for a little while. Then you can have it." He was listening, she saw, so she guessed her strategy was working.Play it by ear now, she thought. "We'll help each other. Shake on it, huh?" She stuck out her hand.
All four hands reached forward.
Whoops, she thought,I hope he's not offended.
But the four hands grasped hers, and she added her second to the juncture. "All right," she said. "Come on. Now I had all this figured out last night. And we don't have much time. Let's go around ..." But he walked over to where the stalks of wheat spired from the altar base up through Hama's fist, and grabbed a stalk with the three hands, and hand, over hand, over hand, began to hoist himself up to where the first broad sheets of metal leaves leaned out to form a small platform. At first his dirty feet swung out frog-like, but then he caught the stem with his toes and at last hoisted himself to the front and looked down at her.
"I can't climb up there," she said, "I don't have your elevation power."
Snake looked down and shrugged.
"Oh damn," she said. "I'll do it my way." She ran across the altar to the great foot of the statue. Sitting cross-legged, Hama's foot was on his side. Using the ridges made by the toes as steps, she clammered up to the dark bulge of the deity's godlike bunion. She made her way across the ankle, up the slanting shin, back down the black thigh, until she stood at the crevice where the leg and torso met.
Out beyond the great knee, Snake regarded her from his perch in the groin of yellow leaf. They were about equal height.
"Yoo-hoo," she waved. "Meet you at the clavicle." Then she stuck her tongue out. The bulges in the belly of the god made a treacherous ledge along which she inched until she arrived at the cavernous naval, leaving wet handprints on the black stone.
The god's belly button from this intimate distance revealed itself as a circular door about five feet in diameter and controlled by a combination lock. She missed the first number twice, dried her hands off, and began again. According to the plans in the main safe of the temple (on which she had first practiced combination breaking) there was a ladder behind this door which led up into the statue. She remembered it clearly; and saved her life by doing so.
Because when she caught the second number, reversed the direction and felt the telltale click of the third, she pulled on the handle and was almost pushed from the ledge by the swinging circular door. She grabbed at a handle that she hardly saw on the door's inside, just as the stone slipped from beneath her feet. Then she was hanging five feet out in the air over the sacred groin some fifty feet below.
The first thing she tried, after closing her eyes and mumbling a few laws of motion, was to swing the door to. When she swung out, however, the door swung closed; and when she swung in, the door swung opened. After a while, she just hung. She gave small thanks that she had dried her hands. When her arms began to ache, she wished that she hadn't, because then it would be over by now. She went over what she knew about taking judo falls.
Then the door swung closed, and someone grabbed her around the waist. She didn't open her eyes, but felt her body pressed against the tilting stone. Her arms fell tingling to her sides. The ligaments flamed with pain. Then the pain dulled to throbbing, and she opened her eyes. "How the hell did you get down here?" she asked Snake. With his help she staggered through the open door and stopped to rub her arms. "How did you know about the ladder?"
They were standing in the shaft now, with the ladder beside them running up into the darkness.
He looked at her with a puzzled expression.
"What is it?" she asked. "Oh, I'll be able to climb up there, never you worry. Hey, can you speak?"
Snake shook his head.
"Oh," she said. Something started at the edge of her mind again, a picture of something unpleasant. Snake had started up the ladder, which he had come down so quickly a minute ago. She glanced out the door, saw that the temple was empty, pulled the door to, and followed.
They ascended into complete darkness. Her arms were beginning to ache again, just slightly. She reached up for the next rung, and found it in its proper place. Then the next. And then again the next.
She started counting steps now, and when seventy-four, seventy-five, and seventy-six dropped below her, there was a missing rung. She reached above it, but there was none. She ran her hand up the edge of the ladder and found that it suddenly curved into the wall. "Hey, you," she said in the darkness.
Something touched her waist. "Gnnnnnggggg," she said. "Don'tdothat." It touched her on the leg, took hold of her ankle, and pulled. "Watch out," she said.
It pulled again. She raised her foot, and it was tugged sideways a good foot and a half and set on solid flooring. Then a hand (her foot was not released) took her arm, and another held her waist, and tugged. She stiffened for one instant before she remembered the number of limbs her companion had. Then she came off the ladder, sideways into the dark, afraid to put her other foot down lest she step headlong into the seventy-five foot plus shaft.
But he tugged again, and in losing her balance, her foot came down on cool, solid stone. Holding her arm now, he led her along the tunnel. They passed into a steep incline. Now down the upper arm, she recalled.
"I feel like Eurydice," she said aloud.
You ... funny ...an echoing voice sounded in her skull.
"Hey," she said. "What was that?" But the voice was silent. The wall turned abruptly and the floor leveled out. They were in a section of the passage now that corresponded roughly to the statue's radial artery. At the wrist, there was a light. They mounted a stairway, came out a trap door, and found themselves standing high in the temple. Below them the great room spread, vastly deep, and still empty. Beside them, the stems of the bronze wheat stalks rose up through the fist and spired another fifty feet before breaking into clusters of golden grain and leaves. Across from them, over the dark curve of Gargantuan chest, in the statue's other hand, the shaft of the scythe leaned away into shadow.
"Look," she said. "You follow me now." She started back along the top of the forearm and then began the tedious climb over the rippling biceps, till at last they reached the broad shoulder. They walked across the hollow above the collar bone until they stood just below the great scooping shell of the ear.
She took the paper bag she had stuffed into her belt, tied one end of the string around the neck, and then, holding the other, she heaved the bag up and over the ear. She got the other end of the string, knotted it as high as she could reach, and gave it a tug. "I hope this works," she said. "I had it all figured out yesterday. The tensile strength of this stuff is about two hundred and fifty pounds, which ought to do for you and me." She planted her foot on the swell of the neck tendon, and in seven leaps she made it to the lobe of the ear. She swung around into the hollow, using the frontal wing as a pivot. Crouching in the hollow trumpet, she looked down at Snake. "Come up," she said. "Hurry up."
Snake joined her a moment later.
The ear was hollow, too. It led back into a cylindrical chamber which went up through the head of the god. The architect who had designed the statue had conveniently left the god's lid flipped. They climbed the ladder and emerged amid the tangle of pipes which represented the hair of the god. They made their way forward through the mass of pipes to where the forehead sloped dangerously forward. They could see the foreshortened nose and the rim of the statue's middle eye above that. There wasn't much of anything after that for the next thousand feet until the base of the altar. "Now you can really be some help," she told him. "Hold on to my wrist and let me down. I'll get the jewel."
They grabbed wrists, and Snake's three other hands, as well as the joints of his knees, locked around the base of five pipes that sprouted around them.
Slowly she slid forward, until her free hand slipped on the stone and she dropped the length of their two arms and swung just above the statue's nose. The eye opened in front of her. The lid arced above her, and the white of either side of the ebony iris shone faintly in the half darkness. At the center of the iris, in a small hollow, sitting on the top of a metal support, was the jewel.
She reached her free hand toward it as she swung.
From somewhere a gong suddenly sounded. Light flooded over her. Looking up, she saw white sockets of light shining down into her own eyes. Panicking, she almost released Snake's wrist. But a voice in her head (hers or someone else's, she couldn't tell) rang out.Hold ... on ... damn ... it ...
Then she grabbed the jewel. The metal shaft in which the jewel had stood was not steady, and tilted as her hand came away from it. The tilting must have set off some clockwork mechanism, because the great eyelid was slowly lowering over the ivory and ebony eye. She swung again at the end of the rope of bone and flesh; half blinded by the lights above her, she looked over her shoulder, into the temple below. There was singing, the beginning of a processional hymn. The morning rites had started!
Light glinted on the stone limbs of the god. Figures were pouring into the temple. They must have seen her, but the hymn, sonorous and gigantic, rose like flood water, and she suddenly thought that if she fell, she would drown in the sound of it.
Snake was pulling her up. Stone against her arm, against her cheek. She clenched her other fist tightly at her side. Another hand came down and helped pull her. Then another. Then she was lying among the metal pipes, and he was loosening her fingers from his wrist. He tugged her to her feet, and for a moment she was looking out over the now filled temple.
Nervous energy contracted coldly along her body, and the sudden sight of the great drop filled her eyes and her head, and she staggered. Snake caught her and at last helped her back to the ladder. "We've got it," she said to him before they started down. She breathed deeply. Then she checked in her palm to see if it was still there; it was, and again she looked out over the people below. Light on the up-turned faces made them look like scattered pearls on the dark floor. An exaltation suddenly burst in her shoulders, flooded her legs and arms and for a moment washed the pain away. Snake, with one hand on her shoulder, was grinning also. "We've got it!" she said again.
They went down the ladder into the statue's skull. Snake preceded her out the hollow ear. He reached around, caught the cord, and let himself down to the shoulder.
She hesitated for a moment, then put the jewel in her mouth, and followed him. Standing beside him once more, she removed it, and then rubbed her shoulders. "Boy, am I going to have some Charley horse by tomorrow," she said. "Do me a favor and untie my bag for me?"
Snake untied the parcel from the end of the cord, and together now they climbed down the bicep and back over the forearm to the trap door in the wrist.
She glanced down at the faces of the worshipers just before they disappeared into the tunnel. Snake was taking the jewel from her hand. She let him have it, and watched him raise it up above his head.
Immediately, when he raised the jewel, the pearls of faces went out like extinguished flames as heads bent all through the temple.
"That's the ticket," grinned Argo. "Come on." But Snake did not go into the tunnel. Instead he walked around the fist, took hold of one of the bronze wheat stems, and slid down through an opening between the thumb and forefinger. "That way?" asked Argo. "Oh well, I guess so. You know I'm going to write an epic about this."
But Snake had already gone. She followed him, clutching her feet around a great bunch of stems. He was waiting for her at the plateau of leaves, and nestled there, they gazed out once more at the fascinated congregation.
Again Snake held aloft the jewel, and again heads bowed. The hymn began to repeat itself, the individual words lost in the sonority of the hall. They started down the last length of stems now, coming quickly. When they stood at last on the base, she put her hand on his shoulder and looked across the brass altar rail. The congregation pressed close, although she did not recognize an individual face. Yet a mass of people stood there, enormous and familiar. As Snake started forward, holding up the jewel, the people fell back from the rail. Snake climbed over the altar rail, and then helped her over.
Her shoulders were beginning to hurt now, and the enormity of the theft ran chills up and down, up and down her spine. The black marble altar step as she put her foot down was awfully cold.
They started forward again, and the last note of the hymn echoed to silence, filling the hall with the roaring quiet of the hushed breathing of hundreds.
Simultaneously, both she and Snake got the urge to look back at the great diminishing height of Hama behind them. All three eyes were shut firmly now. A quiet composed of the rustling of a hundred dark robes upon another hundred hissed about them as they started forward again.
There was a spotlight on them, she suddenly realized. That was why the people, hovering back from the circular effulgence over the floor around them seemed so dim. Her heart had become a pulse at the bottom of her tongue. They kept on going forward, into the shadowed faces, into the parting sea of dark cloaks and hoods.
Then the last of the figures stepped aside from the temple door, and she could see the sunlight out in the garden. They stood still for a moment, Snake holding high the jewel; then they burst forward, out through the door and down over the bright steps.
Instantly the hymn began again behind them, as if their departure had been a signal. The music flooded after them, and when they reached the bottom step, they both whirled, crouching like animals, expecting the congregation to come welling darkly out after them. But there was only the music, flowing into the light, washing around them, a transparent river, a sea.