Chapter 11

Under the trees, she raised up on tiptoe and kissed the balding forehead of a tall, dark-robed priest. “Dunderhead,” she said, “I think you’re cute.” Then she blinked very rapidly and knuckled beneath her eye. “Oh,” she added, remembering, “I was making yogurt in the biology laboratory yesterday. There’s two gallons of it fermenting under the tarantula cage. Remember to take it out. And take care of the hamsters. Please don’t forget the hamsters.”

Finally, they started once more around the slope of the volcano, and the temple and grove fell black and green away behind them.

“Two days to get to the ship,” said Geo, squinting at the pale sky.

“Perhaps we had better put the jewels together,” said Urson. “Keep them out of harm’s way, since we know their power.”

“What do you mean?” Iimmi asked.

Urson took Geo’s leather purse from his belt. Then he took the jewel from Geo’s neck and dropped it in the purse. Then he held the purse out for Iimmi to do the same.

“I guess it can’t hurt,” Iimmi said, dropping his chain into the pouch.

“Here’s mine too,” Argo said. Urson pulled the purse string closed and tucked the pouch in at his waist.

“Well,” said Geo, “I guess we head for the river, so we can get back to your sister and Jordde.”

“Jordde?” asked Argo. “Who’s he?”

“He’s a spy for the blind priestesses. He’s also the one who cut Snake’s tongue out.”

“Cut his--?” Suddenly she stopped. “That’s right: four arms, his tongue--I remember now, in the film!”

“In the what?” asked Iimmi. “What do you remember?”

Argo turned to Snake. “I remember where I saw you before!”

“You know Snake?” Urson asked.

“No, I never met him. But about a month ago I saw a movie of what happened. It was horrible what they did to him.”

“What’s a movie?” asked Iimmi.

“Huh?” said Argo. “Oh, it’s sort of like the vision screens, only you can see things that happened in the past. Anyway, Dunderhead showed me this film about a month ago. Then he took me down to the beach and said I should have seen something there, because of what I’d learned.”

“See something?” Iimmi almost yelled. “What was it?” He took her shoulder and shook it. “What was it you were supposed to see?”

“Why... ?” began the girl, startled.

“Because a friend of mine was murdered and I almost was too because of something we saw on that beach. Only I don’t know what it was.”

“But...” began Argo. “But I don’t either. I couldn’t see it, so Dunderhead took me back to the temple.”

“Snake?” Geo asked. “Do you know what they were supposed to see? Or why Argo was taken to see it after she was shown what happened to you?”

The boy shrugged.

Iimmi turned on Snake. “Do you know, or are you just not telling? Come on now. That’s the only reason I stuck with this so far, and I want to know what’s going on!”

Snake shook his head.

“I want to know why I was nearly killed,” shouted the Negro. “You know and I want you to tell me!” Iimmi raised his hand.

Snake screamed. The sound tore over the distended vocal cords. Then he whirled and ran.

Urson caught him and brought the boy crashing down among leaves. “No you don’t,” the giant growled. “You’re not going to get away from me this time. You won’t get away from me again.”

“Watch it,” said Argo. “You’re hurting him. Urson, let go!”

“Hey, ease up,” said Iimmi. “Snake, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to yell. But I do want you to tell me. Very much.”

Urson let the boy up, still mumbling, “Well, he’s not going to get away again.”

“When did he get away from you the first time?” Geo said, coming over to the boy. “Let him go. Look, Snake, do you know what there was about the beach that was so important?”

Snake nodded.

“Can you tell?”

Now the boy shook his head and glanced at Urson.

“You don’t have to be afraid of him,” Geo said, puzzled. “Urson won’t hurt you.”

But Snake shook his head again.

“Well,” said Geo, “we can’t make you. Let’s get going.”

“I bet I could make him,” the giant mumbled.

“No,” said Argo. “I don’t think you could. I watched the last time somebody tried. And I don’t think you could.”

Late morning flopped over hotly in the sky and turned into afternoon. The jungle became damp, and bright insects plunged like tiny knives of blue or scarlet through leaves. Wet foliage brushed against their chests, faces, and shoulders.

“Why would they show you a film of something awful before taking you to the beach.” Iimmi asked.

“Maybe it was supposed to have made me more receptive to what we saw,” said Argo.

“If horror makes you receptive to what ever it was,” said Iimmi, “I should have been about as receptive as possible.”

“What do you mean?” asked Geo.

“I just watched ten guys get hacked to pieces all over the sand, remember?”

They walked silently for a time.

“We’ll come out at the head of the river. It’s a huge marsh that drains off into the main channel,” said Argo presently.

Late afternoon darkened quickly.

“I was wondering about something,” Geo said, after a little while.

“What?” asked Argo.

“Hama said that once the jewels had been used to control minds, the person who used them was infected--”

“Rather the infection was already there,” corrected Argo. “That just brought it out.”

“Yes,” said Geo. “Anyway, Hama also said that he was infected. When did he have to use the jewels?”

“Lots of times,” Argo said. “Too many. The last time was when I was kidnaped. He used the jewel to control pieces of that thing you all killed in the City of New Hope to come and kidnap me and then leave the jewel in Leptar.”

“A piece of that monster?” Geo exclaimed. “No wonder it decayed so rapidly when it was killed.”

“Huh?” asked Iimmi.

“Argo, I mean your sister, told me they had managed to kill one of the kidnapers, and it melted the moment it died.”

“We couldn’t control the whole mass,” she explained. “It really doesn’t have a mind. But, like everything alive, it has, or had, the double impulse.”

“But what did kidnaping you accomplish, anyway?” Iimmi asked.

Argo grinned. “It brought you here. And now you’re taking the jewels away.”

“Is that all?” asked Iimmi.

“Well,” said Argo, “Isn’t that enough?” She paused for an instant. “You know I wrote a poem about all this once, the double impulse and everything.”

Geo 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._”

“How did you know?” she asked.

“The dark chamber is Hama’s temple,” Geo said. “Am I right?”

“And it’s twin is Argo’s,” she went on. “They should be twins, really. And then the twins again are the children. The force of age in each one opposed to the young force. See?”

“I see,” Geo smiled. “And the body’s floods, turning in and out?”

“That’s sort of everything man does, his going and coming, his great ideas, his achievements, his little ideas too. It all comes from the interplay of those four forces.”

“Four?” said Urson. “I thought it was just two.”

“But it’s thousands,” Argo explained.

The air was drenching. The leaves had been shiny before. Now they dripped water on the loose ground. Pale light lapsed through the branches, shimmered, reflected from leaf to the wet underside of leaf. The ground became mud.

Twice they heard a sloshing a few feet away, and then the scuttling of an unseen animal. “I hope I don’t step on something that decides to take a chunk out of my foot.”

“I’m pretty good at first aid,” Argo said. “It’s getting chilly,” she added.

Just then Geo slipped and sank knee-deep in a muddy pool. Urson raced to the edge of the quicksand bog and grabbed Geo by his good arm. He pulled till Geo emerged, coated to the thigh with gray mud.

“You all right?” Urson asked. “You sure you’re all right?”

Geo nodded, rubbing the stump of his arm with his good hand. “I’m all right,” he said. The trees had almost completely given out. Geo suddenly saw the whole swamp sinking in front of him. He splashed a step backwards, but Urson caught his shoulder. The swamp wasn’t sinking, though. But ripples had begun to appear over the water, spreading, crossing, webbing the whole surface with a net of tiny waves.

Then they began to rise up. Green backs broke the surface, wet and slippery. They were standing now, torrents cascading their green faces, green chests. Three of them, now a fourth. Four more, and then more, and then many more. They stood, now, these naked, green, mottled bodies.

Geo felt a sudden tugging in his head, at his mind. Looking around he saw that the others felt it too.

“Them...” Urson started.

“They’re the ones who carried us...” Geo began. The tug came again, and they stepped forward.

Iimmi put his hand on his head. “They want us to go with them...” And suddenly they were going forward, slipping into the familiar state of half-consciousness which had come when they had crossed the river, to the City of New Hope, or when they had first fallen into the sea.

Wet hands fell on their bodies as they were guided through the swamp. They were being carried through deeper water. Now they were walking over dry land where the vegetation was thicker, and slimy boulders caught shards of sunset on their wet flanks, blood leaking on the gray, the wet gray, and the green.

Through a rip in the arras of vegetation, they saw the moon push through the clouds, staining them silver. A rock rose in silhouette against the moon. On the rock a naked man stood, staring at the white disk. White highlighted one side of his body. As they passed, he howled (or anyway, opened his mouth and threw his head back. But their ears were full of night and could not hear.) and dropped to all fours. A breeze blew momentarily in the sudden plume of his tail, in the scraggly hair of the under-belly, and light lay white on the points of his ears, his lengthened muzzle, his thinned hind legs. The animal turned its head once, and then scampered down the rock and into the darkness as a curtain of trees swung across the opened sky.