‘Very well, Great-aunt. Tell me about this epidemic.’
Dagma did so, as much as she knew. ‘According to the statistician, it’s been going on for decades. According to the governor’s office, the whole thing is a computational error!’
‘For decades, ah?’ Aghrehond sighed. ‘And when Marianne threw the dice, how did they come up?’
‘I heard her say “snake eyes,” and I blinked. When I opened my eyes she was gone. And so was the malachite mouse. And the matchbox, of course.’
‘Of course,’ Aghrehond brooded over the game diagram. ‘It could only be that, could it not? Everything that happens has purpose, or so I have always felt, and when one is caught in a net such as this, things happen as they must. Ah, well. It would do no good at all to play in behind her. We must try to get ahead of her, then wait for her. But, she could leapfrog right over us. What was on the second square?’
‘Before Marianne threw the dice, it said, “Buttercup, Birth to Eight Years.” Now it says, “Queen Buttercup, the first month of her reign.”’
‘So it does,’ said Aghrehond. ‘Which means Marianne must have done something in that square to change things there. She has that quality, does she not? Always busy, upsetting apple carts, turning over kettles. I have seen her – well, of no matter. That was in another time and place. She will have gone past the Buttercup point by now, so there is no point in discussing it. And that raises the point of how she got past that point. The dice are still here.’
‘There was something rattly in the matchbox,’ Dagma offered.
‘Rattly. Well, of course. Game makers must provide for those who play. Dice available here to start the game. And if there are none in there to continue playing with – then perhaps one is trapped? Who knows. Let us suppose she had two dice with her. Using two dice, she could not throw a one, which is fortunate. The square after the Buttercup square is labeled “Forever.”’
‘What does that mean?’
‘It probably means exactly what it says. If she had thrown a three, she would have landed in Forever and no matter all our machinations, Great-aunt, there is no doubt we would not have seen our Marianne again, weep though we might and wait at the horrors of fate.’
‘I … I didn’t have any idea …’
‘No. Well. She would have thought of it if she hadn’t been overtaken by events. Now, by my great, wobbly belly, if one wanted to get to the end of the game quickly, how could it be done? What do the rules say?’
‘Rules?’
‘I make the assumption that verbiage printed at the bottom of the game must be the rules of play. It has that aspect, has it not? That solidity imparted by black ink on a lighter surface which says, “I am official. Pay attention.”’ He turned the printed parchment toward him and read, ‘“Players may pass through previously occupied spaces but may not occupy any space twice in the same game.” If one has been to Buttercup once, one may not go back to Buttercup again.’
‘But it’s not the same Buttercup,’ objected Dagma. ‘It says something else now.’
‘Leaving that aside for the moment, which we must do since we have no one to interpret the rules for us, and returning to my question: How would one get to the end of the game most quickly?’ He mused, ticking off the squares with his fingertip. ‘One would throw a nine, which would take one to the Down Line Express. From there, presumably though not surely, one would reach Frab Junction without another throw. At that point, if one could achieve any combination of throws resulting in fourteen – except for one totaling five or nine if we wished to avoid these other Forevers – one would reach the point labeled “The End.” Of course, it’s unlikely one could throw exactly the right number. One might end up at The Library or Usable Chasm.’ He mused for some time longer. ‘Or even at Seldom Siding, which has a certain feeling of non-quotidian misadventure about it. Since there is no way to know where she is in the game, we must hope that she reaches the end of it and attempt to meet her there. What is the end of the game, after all?’ he asked. ‘Here, in the last square – though it isn’t precisely a square, is it? – where it says, “The End.” So, if we can’t intercept her, then we need to play to get there? Don’t we?’
‘Do we?’ faltered Dagma.
‘Yes, because if she doesn’t show up, we might be able to go backward, or come out and start over. We do. We must. Time wastes and we dally.’
‘We?’ she faltered again.
‘We,’ said Aghrehond with a glance of forbearance which was almost cruel in its charity. ‘Accepting that it was really your father’s responsibility, still, when he died without fulfilling it, it became your task, Great-aunt. Even if you had only a week, or a day, or even an hour, you should have tried to complete it to spare our Marianne. Ah, but then, you know that already.’
‘I knew that,’ she wept. ‘There seemed to be so little time left.’
‘Time enough to try,’ he said. ‘Who will you be? The rhodolite rhinoceros? The amethyst ape?’
‘The turquoise tortoise,’ she said in a slightly firmer voice. ‘I’ve been so slow about it.’
‘Of course. Stupid of me not to have thought of that. In case there are no dice in the game, we’ll need dice to carry with us. Are there any in the house?’
‘Over in the drawer by the window. I used to sit at that table with my nephew – Marianne’s father – and beat him at backgammon.’
He fetched them, putting one pair in his pocket, another pair in the pocket of her bed jacket. ‘You first then.’
‘Shouldn’t I change into clothing a little more suitable for travel?’
‘The tortoise won’t know the difference,’ he told her.
In the face of his quiet stare she could delay no longer. She rolled the dice. Nine. Perhaps she said something, perhaps not. She was gone, the tortoise was gone.
‘All or nothing,’ said Aghrehond, putting the amethyst ape on the space that said, ‘Start Here.’
And rolled nine again.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The Malachite Mouse clung to a root, a root which bulged like an enormous bulwark against the unimaginable hulk of the trunk looming upward through a layer of gray and oozing clouds.
‘G’nop,’ said something. It was a combination of inquiry and swallow, as though a very large being had asked for sustenance and had been given it all in one instant, satisfaction following hunger instantaneously, only to be immediately succeeded by hunger once more. ‘G’nop.’
The source of the sound moved among the roots with a monstrous squelching, a flatulent bubbling, like mud dropped into mud, the one only slightly more solid than the other so that the two surfaces sucked at one another, stopping only one degree short of mingling.
‘G’nop.’
A long thing darted across the root above the malachite mouse, being at one moment not there and at the next there, then gone once more as though it had solidified out of nothing only long enough to be perceived before vanishing, a kind of solid and rubbery-looking horizontal lightning. And yet there had been time to identify the thing as ‘darting,’ that is coming from somewhere.
‘G’nop,’ the thing went again. The mouse saw it this time, from right to left, then back to the right again, a mighty hawser of viscous stuff with a sticky sheen to it and something fluttery at the end of it. Something fluttery when it withdrew, though not, so far as Mouse could tell, when it had emerged.
If one could say emerged.
‘G’nop.’ The squelching repeated itself, a sodden movement, as of a wet sponge being manipulated in a pot of hot oatmeal.
Mouse turned her head very quietly, very slowly, peering along the side of the great buttress of root to the place it edged into the shadow filling the spaces between roots. There was nothing here but shadow and wet, blotches of filthy duns and ochres, deep feculent smells of bog. The wall edge of the root made a long diagonal line running upward from right to left. Mouse clung flat against it, all claws extended to bite into tiny fissures in the bark. Below
was the glug of water; above, layers of discolored light in a viridescent collage, deepening toward the trunk.
Mouse began to move, very slowly, toward a hole in the root, a fissure deeper than most, almost a cave.
‘G’nop.’
Above the edge of the root an orb began to emerge.
Mouse did not wait for it but leapt, all at once, into the fissure to cower there, panting silently, nose turned outward, and all whiskers atremble. It had been an eye, she told herself, an eye as large as a dome, a glowing dirigible of eye rising over the root wall like a pallid and hungry moon.
‘Zup,’ went the hawser, returning with something screaming at the end of it, then ‘Zup’ again, returning empty.
‘Roawrrr,’ howled the swamp in fury. ‘Roawrrr.’
The mouse shook the dice out of the matchbox and threw them, very carefully, on the tiny level patch at the bottom of the fissure.
‘Eleven,’ it sighed, grabbing up the dice and disappearing from the fissure just as the great tongue entered it.
CHAPTER NINE
At the home of Marianne’s parents, in Virginia, where Dagma lived, where Marianne and Aghrehond were supposed to be visiting, the phone rang.
A maid answered it and then went in search of Aghrehond. Not finding him, she reported with some discomfiture to Marianne’s father that the visiting gentleman seemed to have gone out.
‘Out, Briggs?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘But he was with Dagma and Marianne.’
‘Your daughter and the old ma’am’s gone out, too, sir.’
‘Don’t be silly, Briggs. Dagma is far too ill to have gone out.’
‘Well, sir, she’s gone. I don’t know out or where, but she’s not there. Not in her bathroom or her bedroom or the little sitting room, neither.’
‘Either, Briggs,’ Marianne’s father corrected as he gave this matter some thought. ‘Is my wife still napping?’ Arti had not been sleeping well, and she had announced her intention of taking a pill and a long nap.
‘Yes, sir. I peeked in on her just a little while ago.’
‘Who is it calling for Aghrehond?’
‘Overseas phone, sir.’
‘I’ll speak to them.’
Which he did. ‘Makr Avehl? How nice to hear your voice again. It seems an enormous time since the wedding.’
‘________.’
‘What was that about the Cave of Light?’
‘________!’
‘I’m to tell Aghrehond that Makr Avehl is on his way?’
‘________?’
‘He seems to have stepped out, Makr Avehl. Dagma and Marianne as well. They can’t have gone far. Dagma was far too unwell … Yes, I understand. If I see Aghrehond, I’m to tell him to wait for you.’ The connection broke, and Haurvatat was left holding the buzzing instrument, a feeling of sick vacancy deep inside him. Until this moment he had not taken seriously the fact that Briggs had been unable to find Marianne or Dagma or Aghrehond. Until this moment he had not believed there was, really, an epidemic of vanishment. Until this moment – but when one of the Kavi called to warn his daughter about a reading from the Cave of Light …
Shaking, Haurvatat went upstairs, first to search Dagma’s room, then to sit by his wife’s bed and keep an eye on her. He was determined not to leave her until she woke.
CHAPTER TEN
‘To the departure area for the Down Line Express,’ the amethyst ape directed the cabdriver, grasping the shell of the turquoise tortoise more tightly under his arm to prevent its falling into the street.
‘Right-ee-oh,’ the cabman assented, hardly waiting until the ape was seated before flicking his whip over the backs of the matched pair of umble-geese which set off at once with a loud clacking complaint. ‘Where’s yer destination, guvner?’ he asked. ‘You goin’ far?’
‘Ah,’ the ape considered, ‘Frab Junction? There should be a good deal going on in Frab Junction, shouldn’t there?’
‘Depends,’ the cabman said, unfolding an atrophied wing and scratching beneath it with every evidence of enjoyment. ‘On whatcher mean by goin’ on. There’s things doin’ here, too, y’know. People comin’ and goin’ orf again. Stuff comin’ through all the time on its way to Cattermune’s ’Ouse.’
‘I’m very curious about Cattermune’s House,’ said the ape. ‘What can you tell me about it?’
‘Well, not much, and that’s the truth,’ the driver replied, snapping his whip at an intrusive squozzle lizard drawing a heavy dray in the opposing lane. ‘Everybody’s been there, don’t you know, but nobody talks much about it. Oh, they’ll say this and that ’appened to ’em, or this or that occurred, if you take my meanin’, but they’ll not say where, and then you ask ’em and they’ll whisper it at you without seemin’ real sure of it, like as if they didn’t remember it much. “Cattermune’s ’Ouse,” they’ll say. “I think it was Cattermune’s ’Ouse.”’
‘Who or what is Cattermune?’ asked the tortoise in a leisurely tone. The tortoise was incapable of any tone except a leisurely one or of any locomotory speed except slow forward.
‘It’s a he,’ the cabdriver asserted darkly, ‘and that says ’alf of what I know about ’im.’
‘What’s the other half?’ asked the ape.
‘You wouldn’t want to end up in ’is Worm Pits is the other half,’ the driver retorted. ‘That’s a ’undred years is Worm Pits. That’s a long time stay. Illusion Fields is ten thousand years, and that’s a long time, too, but you don’t feel it so much, if you take my meanin’. Worm Pits you’d feel every second, and a ‘undred years’d seem like a few thousand, so they say.’
‘I’ll try to stay away from the Worm Pits,’ the ape agreed.
‘Throw a three at Frab Junction and likely you’ll meet Cattermune. Can’t go back three on the Down Line. Three left takes you to the Administrative Offices, which leads right into the Moebius Siding. Nobody in ’is right mind wants to go there. Three forward takes you to Banjog’s Mooring. Give me a choice like that, prob’ly I’d go on to Cattermune’s ’Ouse, Worm Pits or no Worm Pits.’
‘Besides,’ opined the tortoise, ‘you wouldn’t get to the Worm Pits from Cattermune’s House. There’s no way to throw a one.’
‘That’s as may be,’ the driver agreed. ‘But there’s ways and there’s ways. Here’s the terminal. Mind your step.’
‘How much?’ asked the ape.
‘’Ow much what?’ the driver asked in return. ‘No charge, guvner. We’re all in the game together, ain’t we.’ He flicked the whip over the backs of the umble-geese and went clacking back into the surge of wagons and cabs which filled the streets of Down Line Express.
The terminal was typical of railway buildings of the period, a spider’s web of steel clad with high, dirty windows through which a dusty effulgence fell sadly into an echoing cavern, making puddles of melancholy light on the enormous paved floor. Creatures moved into and out of the light to the accompaniment of a continuous barrage of sound, the rattle of wheels, the roar of great locomotives in tunnels, the unintelligible quack and babble of someone announcing departures and arrivals.
At a central kiosk labeled ‘Information,’ the ape asked, ‘When does the next Down Line Express leave?’
‘As soon as it’s full.’ The Information creature smiled vaguely, looking up from its crossword puzzle with one pair of eyes. ‘Be a while, I should think. One left yesterday.’
‘Where are all the other trains going?’
‘Other trains?’ Another vague smile.
‘The ones we hear coming in and going out?’
‘Oh,’ the creature pointed at a shelf near its feet where a tape player hummed. ‘That’s all just for atmosphere, don’t you know. Actually, the Down Line is a gravity train. Very quiet.’
‘We could use a little quiet in here,’ the tortoise said. ‘This racket is giving me a headache.’
‘Would you like it turned off?’ The creature reached down and switched the player off and silenc
e fell into the enormous room like snow into a bucket. Only a few reverberating hoof-falls broke the peace. High above, in the web of steel, a flock of winged creatures argued melodically over a scrap of food. Somewhere someone asked, ‘Can I arrange a throw for Usable Chasm from there?’ the voice falling away into hush.
‘I rather like that,’ said the Information creature. ‘It makes a nice change. Perhaps we’ll just leave it like that until the train fills up.’
‘You said it might take a while?’
‘Several days, perhaps.’
‘But it’s supposed to be an express!’
‘Oh, it is. Expressly for Frab Junction. And very fast. When it leaves.’
‘Which is when it’s full.’
‘Exactly.’
‘Is there somewhere we can get food? Perhaps a bed for the night?’
‘Food booths are all along that wall,’ the creature pointed. ‘Medium of exchange is information about the game. New-comers are allowed to use imaginative assumptions and valid extrapolations from known data against future redemption.’
The ape thought this one over. ‘Like IOUs?’
‘Hmm, rather. There’s a dormitory up on the balcony. Better sleep in relays. They don’t announce departure, you know, and if you’re not there when it leaves, you may miss it.’
‘Thank you,’ said the tortoise weakly. ‘You’ve been very helpful.’
They wandered off toward the food wall, selecting a booth which provided sandwiches and beverages as well as fresh fruit of both familiar and exotic types.
‘So, what have you got to tell?’ the tentacled vendor asked them.
‘I have an imaginative assumption,’ said the ape.
‘First-timer, humph. The assumptions never come to anything, you now. Still, I’m required to accept them, so you might as well spit it out.’
‘I assume,’ said the ape, ‘that this game is played in many worlds, and that the creatures inhabiting the game are those who are currently playing it and haven’t yet found their way out.’
Marianne, the Matchbox and the Malachite Mouse Page 9