by Brian Daley
"Those pinheads! They wouldn't listen to me, no! Oh, that's ripe!"
"Could you let us in on the joke?" Alacrity hazarded. "We could use a chuckle." Paloma was on her feet, watching Hecate guardedly.
"I told them years and years ago," the old woman managed. "I told them, 'This White Ship project will never be finished!' I saw that they'd never wring the secrets of the First Ones out of the universe. 'You don't grab Creation by the scrote and twist revelations out of it!' I told them."
"And they were too stupid to listen,' Floyt steered deftly. "Too stubborn and arrogant to do it your way."
She suddenly looked crafty. "My way, yes. You want to know what my way is, hey? Do you, germie? All right, but it's nothing you'll ever use. It's nothing anyone will ever use but Hecate!"
She gave them a twisted grin. "You don't force secrets out of the artifacts of the First Ones. You entice them out. You seduce them out. Now, how do you seduce someone?"
The three looked at one another helplessly.
"Oh, you numbskulls! You join with them. You mate with them. You marry yourself to the secrets of the Precursors body and soul and spirit and mind!"
And go insane in the doing, Floyt thought. Perhaps human beings could only uncover Precursor secrets through madness. He glanced to his friend, wondering if Alacrity would be willing to.
Alacrity was carefully stifling his urge to leap at Hecate and beat the secrets out of her. "You mean, you've got all their knowledge? Trois fois merde! You're up there with them, the Precursors!"
She laughed again, but bitterly. "What year is this? Ah, never mind; I have eternity to play with now. No, I'm barely a zygote on the scale of the First Ones, but you … you're not even alive! And you never will be!"
The power of the instrumentality strobed brighter. Alacrity tried to gulp but couldn't.
"But you're still one of us," Floyt said, trying to lay on conviction he didn't feel. "No matter how different they are, humans are still human. I know; I'm a genealogist. Human beings all share—"
She didn't vaporize Floyt on the spot, which was what Alacrity expected to see. The fires swept up from her, coiling and expanding.
"Genealogy? What an absurd pastime! I became bored with it long since. Would you like to know how you little homo-ape-ians connect to me, perhaps? I doubt that mudpie you call a brain could encompass it."
She raised her hands high. A megadetonation of luminosity and sound staggered the three captives. Floyt leaned back to look up, nearly teetering back on his rear end, and saw a family tree, or at least part of one. It took him a few seconds to figure out what he was looking at.
The thing was infinitely complex. Details seemed to spring out at him and leap into clarity as he focused on them, then retreat as he scanned on—the names or identity quanta of more human beings than there were stars in the galaxy. The ones he focused on he saw vividly, feeling he knew them and had a grasp of their lives.
More, there were connections, the whole webwork of human history in four dimensions, lucid and immediate, so that the connections between any two or more, living or dead, were emphatic and plain enough to understand. A part of him speculated on whether he was seeing into Hecate's mind, her instrumentality, or some wisdom of the First Ones. Something like the causality harp? he wondered. Or has every sentient being somehow left its mark on Infinity?
He tried to scan his Overvision back to the beginning of things, but a numbing disorientation came over him and he felt his grip on himself slipping away, breath short and blood kettledrumming in his forehead. Hecate was right; his brain wasn't capable of what he was attempting.
He renounced his Overvision, terrified. The great family tree was gone; Floyt was back on the floor, groaning. "That's a little of what I can do." Hecate sniggered. "Do you still think I'm one of you? What should I care about your White Ship for?"
Paloma looked around at the forest of instrumentality. "No reason, when you've got Precursor machines serving you."
Hecate scowled at her, some of the anger coming back, then cackled and slapped her thigh again. "Precursor? That? Why, you daffy little tramp! I built that! What'd you think I've been doing all this time?"
"You?" Floyt and Alacrity both yelped at the same time.
The expression Hecate gave them was almost coquettish, in a loopy way. "Who else? It's not much. It's like exploring the Central Library at Spica and barely learning the alphabet. But it is so wonderful, my god-lover! Who do you think heard the songs of the First Ones you were playing in space and brought them to my attention? And that's when I found out there was a faker using my name."
She gazed about at her god-lover/instrumentality. "It is so wise. In fact, there are some regions of it I don't quite understand myself."
She shook herself, looking back to them slyly, and signaled the green globe to approach. "But enough about me."
"Hecate, we're convinced," Alacrity said. "And we'll tell them everything you said, there at the White Ship. Then they'll know you're right and they're wrong, and everybody will be talking about you again."
"That'll put that whole Ship crowd in its place!" Floyt seconded. "Think of it! You'd be rubbing their noses in it!"
"That is, if we can get into the board meeting and speak as Interested Parties," Alacrity segued. "We'd need codes and passwords, of course."
Hecate cocked her head at them like a chicken sizing up three bugs. "Beta-Thud-Actual-Tau-Hecate-Epsilon-Kl'marth-Manila," she said after a moment's sidelong stare. "Shares 1,780,000 through 2,120,000."
That causality harp was right! Alacrity exulted. When the board met in session, he could gain entry with his one share and vote Hecate's stocks, assuming all the perks of a major shareholder.
"Only what makes you think I'm going to let you leave here?" Hecate went on, relishing the looks on their faces. She winked one glowing eye at them, an eerie and dismaying thing to see. "Do you think I'm going to share my holy-lover with anyone, or let anyone else have one?"
"We're no threat to you!" Floyt yelled as Alacrity hollered, "No! No! We won't tell anybody anything!"
"Forgive me! Let us go!" Paloma Sudan begged.
Hecate brought her hands up over her head. The metatechnic jungle erupted with light and reverb; the green globe grounded, waiting. "I'll let you go into this little world without end, here, that's what."
Floyt, the only one armed—with the brolly—steeled himself and charged Hecate, to do his duty or go out trying.
He was the only one who hadn't grappled with her yet. Even though he'd seen her uncanny speed, it came as a shock when she had the umbrella out of his hand, picked him up by his web belt, and slammed him down in one move, tittering foolishly.
The impact sent him sliding a meter or so, sprawling. The breath was driven from him and only by a reflex—hunching his shoulders; tucking his chin as hard as he could—did he avoid having his skull broken against the floor. Hecate stalked after, to finish him.
And as suddenly as that, she was staring down at Floyt in utter horror, the fiery eyes big and round. She screamed in a way they hadn't heard from her before. It took him a few shellshocked seconds to realize what had her so unhinged.
His sweater had been pushed up in the tussle, exposing his Inheritor's belt.
Hecate stood rooted, pointing to it, shrilling something over and over in a language like no other Alacrity had ever heard. Her god-lover/instrumentality began to go dim around her as Hecate foamed at the mouth, yammering the phrase.
Then it was no longer yawning blackness overhead but a shifting starswarm. Rays stabbed down to play over the Inheritor's belt, trailing over it, inquisitive. Floyt felt the belt vibrating at his middle, humming like a tuning fork.
He clumsily unclasped it and pushed it from him, afraid it would explode, undergo lethal shrinkage, or perhaps turn into a cobra. None of those things happened, but the alien symbols on the plaques, symbols no data bank had been able to translate for him, were incandescent. A few of the searchlights played over h
im, forcing him to blink, creating a rainbow nimbus around him.
All the while, Hecate was ranting. At length she turned to her green Cepheid globe. "Take them! Take them all! Do what I tell you!"
Instead, the overhead beams fixed on her for a moment. She squealed.
With no more warning than when they'd come into existence, the motes overhead vanished. There was a cliff's-edge moment of silence, except for Hecate's frothing. Then the Cepheid was on the move, homing in.
Hecate tried to fly from the globe but only managed a pitifully weak little jump, tried to run from it but could only totter slowly. The sphere expanded to envelop her, then zoomed off, dodging in among the terraced flow forms of the instrumentality. Floyt, Alacrity, and Paloma Sudan watched it go, none of them saying a word.
They almost fainted when the whole system came blazing to life again—above, around, and even underfoot, as luminous sections of the nielloed floor shone.
"What's it mean?" Paloma shouted at Floyt. "What's this place doing?"
They found out. Hecate's instrumentality began to ungrow, vanishing in on itself. At the same time the open area shrank and the very feel of the place began to change radically.
"It's folding in on itself!" Alacrity roared. The open area was getting smaller fast. "It's rabbit-holing, to go someplace else!"
Floyt looked stricken. "Alacrity, it may be able to do that, but it's just one of those tricks I never learned!"
Chapter 9
The Glitter Rubs Right Off
"There! Look over there!"
Paloma was yanking Alacrity's arm, pointing. An arc of darkness had appeared, a tunnel mouth, off where there'd been celestial pinball god-lover systemry moments before.
"It might be a way out!" she said,
"It's a better shot than we've got here; let's go!" Alacrity grabbed for her hand, but, an impressive runner, she dodged him and headed out, slowing only to scoop up her evening shawl. Floyt retrieved his Inheritor's belt and tossed Alacrity the umbrella. Alacrity grabbed the fallen target pistol and the two dashed off after Paloma as space diminished toward them.
They sprinted for what felt like an awfully long time, disoriented and unsteady. The semicircular opening came up at them, then they were pounding along in darkness, footsteps echoing in the confined space. There was light ahead—far ahead. Floyt swore breathlessly at the inactivity of two consecutive Hawking jumps for leaving him in such poor condition.
At last they raced into the sunlight, winded, to throw themselves down a slope of reddish soil dotted with tough tripwire plants. Invictus was bright and hot overhead; it came to Floyt that unless they'd been unconscious for a long time, they were far from Horselaugh.
They panted, looking down on a deep bowl of valley with a lot of lush flora, including tree-size plants and a good deal of open grassland—or what looked like grass. Alacrity could see animals moving around in the distance, apparently grazing. Very big animals. In the far distance was a range of lavender and gold mountains, with a sextet of snowcapped giants rearing into the clouds.
Floyt was on hands and knees, gazing back the way they'd come. "Look at this! Something's happening!"
The peak behind them, out of which they'd raced, was high and sheer. It wasn't exactly collapsing or going into subsidence; it was being drawn inward and down. There was a little shaking-loose of rubble and some flying things were frightened into the air, but aside from that it seemed a calm, almost placid process as reality adjusted to the departure of the Precursor site. When it was over, the peak was a great deal smaller and the passageway was gone.
Like the Pied Piper's place, it occurred to Floyt. He got up and slowly clasped his Inheritor's belt around him, then became aware that Alacrity and Paloma were staring at him. "Did you happen to understand what Hecate was saying about this, Alacrity?"
Alacrity shook his head. "Pure gibberish to me, m'friend." He held up his proteus. "But I've got it down here." He deactivated it, as Floyt did his own.
"I guess Hecate really didn't know everything there was to know about her consort machine," Alacrity added thoughtfully, regarding the peak. "Must've been some things it just wouldn't let her get away with. Like limboizing somebody carrying Pecursor I.D., for instance."
He turned to survey the countryside. "Whew! First thing to figure out is—hey! Paloma!"
She turned back, having started off down the hill, her wrap over one shoulder. "You two lugs can stand around here breezing if you want, but I've got things to do."
Alacrity waved at limitless wilderness that stretched as far as they could see. "Such as?"
She gave an arch smile. "First things first. I'm going to get some directions."
"Directions?" Floyt puzzled.
She angled a thumb over her shoulder, downslope at the grazing giants. "From them."
They hurried to catch up, kicking loose stones and loose soil, as she hiked down the hill, making some adjustment to her proteus. She picked her route carefully, keeping away from overhanging branches and dense undergrowth. Floyt took out his survival implement and opened its biggest blade—twelve centimeters. In the silence around them he could hear yapping, twitterings, stridulations, and other noises in the distance. There was also an odd throbbing in the air, like faint vibrations from a distant quake.
The two friends sized up the great grazers, which Floyt recognized as what the locals called gawklegs. "Suppose they decide you're lunch?" Alacrity inquired.
She tossed back her luxuriant hair. "Oh, I don't think so. By the way, I'll take my pistol back now."
It wasn't much use anyway. He handed it over and shifted his brolly to his right hand, removing and pocketing the ferrule cap. "Are you going to let us in on where we are? We've got to work together."
She gave him a maddening smirk. "Are you asking or telling?"
"Look, me and Ho are in this fix because you've been panning around pretending to be somebody you're not! And if it wasn't for us you'd've been inside that green squeezeball till hell gets recess! So just stuff the cuteness in a convenient lacuna, hmm?"
Floyt stood back, just in case. She crossed her arms and glared at Alacrity. "And what does that mean? That I invited you to come trying to make deals with me?"
"A-ha! You were already throwing in with us when Hecate showed up, remember? Anyway, what I'm saying is, we work together or else get used to the idea of being dead."
Floyt broke in. They'd both more or less forgotten he was there. "Paloma, can you really use those animals to get your bearings? Do they orient on a fixed point or have a migratory pattern or something? They're gawklegs, isn't that correct?"
She studied Floyt for a moment, then relaxed a bit. "I'm going to talk to them. If I'm lucky, they'll listen and help. If not, I imagine they'll stomp me like a paper cup, if they can catch me. Gawklegs have plenty of reasons to hate humans."
Alacrity's brow creased. "Those things are intelligent?"
"Your grasp of the obvious is remarkable." She turned to continue her way. The other two fell into single file behind. "I told you I knew some things about the company. I'd be dead already if they knew how much. Yes; once upon a time the gawks were a very successful species. Quite intelligent, but dumb enough to be friendly to human beings."
"But what makes you think they won't decide to do the two-step on us?"
"Six-step," Floyt corrected.
She shrugged. "I'm just hoping they won't. I hope they'll hear me out, because I have a general idea where we are, and I doubt we can get out of here alive without their help."
"Hear you out?" Floyt pursued. "Are you saying that you can speak their language?"
"Something like that."
"If you know where we are," Alacrity postulated, "where are we?"
"If those mountains over there are the ones I think they are, the nearest human outpost's a couple or four hundred kilometers west of here. Horselaugh's almost halfway around Lebensraum."
"God in the Void," Alacrity snarled. The meeting of the boar
d was only weeks away. It cheapened the value of the universe, his being stuck with the voting codes for 340,000 shares out somewhere a death march away from the Lightning Whelk. He considered for a moment how many shares he'd be willing to trade for a junker sky-crate with no warranty.
A lot.
It was a long descent, hot work and rough on the toes since it was unbroken downhill. Alacrity stopped to adjust his pathfinder boots accordingly, and Floyt relaced his own so his feet wouldn't move around inside them. There was no adapting Paloma's glossy cavalry footgear; she didn't comment or complain. She did, however, point out a fractal-looking plant whose branches were easy and safe to saw off with Floyt's survival tool, and made good walking staffs.
Floyt tried to remember points he'd picked up in his reading and from Alacrity, trying to be aware of his toes, soles of his feet, and knees. He leaned slightly forward to help keep balance in case of a slip, using his staff, taking short steps and cushioning himself with bent knees. Advice like that was a lot easier to read or listen to than it was to apply.
All around were tall-bladed plants that looked like some sort of wild grain in vermilion, and substantial-looking growths that put Floyt in mind of brain coral. Lower down, what had looked like high grass resembled, at close range, enormous lichen. It stained their boots and Floyt's trouser legs with green-brown and smelled pleasantly fragrant when crushed underfoot. They could feel the subsonic throbbing intermittently; it seemed to be getting more intense.
Being almost completely ignorant of the planet, Alacrity and Floyt took their cues from Paloma. She went carefully, pausing every four steps to scan all around and listen, sniffing the air. Floyt and Alacrity were watchful, too, without really knowing what they were watching for, or what was dangerous and what wasn't.
We really do need her to get out of this alive, Floyt realized. Or even live through the afternoon.
The slope gradually leveled off to meet the valley floor. The gawklegs ignored the humans except for an occasional long-necked swing of the head to gauge their approach. The creatures grazed and chewed, their pendulous upper lips rather prehensile, at just about any kind of flora that struck their fancy.