A, B, C

by Samuel R. Delany

  “What about those first flying things we met?” whispered Urson. “They don’t change into anything.”

  “Probably we have just been guests of the female of the species,” said Geo. “I think that’s what Snake was warning us about when he took us to see them in the barracks. He was trying to tell us that we might meet them again.”

  “You mean those others could have changed into men too, if they wanted?” Urson asked.

  “If they’d wanted,” answered Geo. “But it was more convenient to stay outside the convent. They come together only for mating, more than likely.”

  “Which just might be what this ceremony of the rising moon is about,” Iimmi observed. “The ones flying against the moon were the other kind, the men. You know there are sections over in Leptar where the female worshipers of Argo completely avoid the male members.”

  “That’s what I was thinking of,” said Geo. “It first dawned on me when they wouldn’t let us eat with the women.”

  In front of them now appeared shiftings of silver light. Five minutes later, they were crouching at the edge of the trees, looking down over the rocks at the shimmering river.

  “Into the water?” Geo asked.

  Snake shook his head. Wait…inside their heads.

  A hand rose from the water. Wet and green, a foot or so from the shore, it turned, the chain and the leather thong dangling down the wrist: swinging there were two bright beads.

  Iimmi and Geo froze. Urson said: “The jewels…”

  Suddenly the big sailor sprang onto the rocks and ran toward the river’s edge.

  Three shadows, one white, two dark, converged above him, cutting the moonlight away. If Urson saw them, he did not stop.

  Iimmi and Geo stood up.

  Urson reached the shore, threw himself along the rock, swiped at the hand, and was covered by flailing wings. The membranous sails splashed in the water, there were shrieks, and one white wing arced high, then flapped down again. Two seconds later, Urson rolled from beneath the creatures still struggling half on land and half in the water. He staggered to his feet and started up the rocks again. He slipped, regained his footing, and came on, to fall into Geo’s and Iimmi’s arms.

  “The jewels…” Urson breathed.

  The struggle continued on the water. Something held them down, twisted at them. Suddenly the creatures stilled. Like great leaves, the three forms drifted apart, caught in the current, and floated away from the rocks.

  Then two more forms bobbed to the surface, faces down, rocking gently, backs slicked wet and green.

  “But those were the ones who…” Geo began. “Are they dead?” His face suddenly hurt a little, with something like the pain of verging tears.

  Snake nodded.

  “Are you sure?” asked Iimmi. His voice was slow.

  Their…thoughts…have…stopped…Snake said.

  Crouching in front of them, Urson opened his scarred hands. The globes blazed through the leaves. The chain and the wet thong hung from his palm to the ground. “I have them,” he whispered. “The jewels!”

  chapter nine

  Snake picked up the beads from the calloused palm, placed one around Geo’s neck, one around Iimmi’s. Urson watched the jewels rise.

  Then they turned into the forest; the sound of wings had stopped.

  “Where do we go now?” Urson asked.

  “We follow rule number one,” said Geo. “Since we know Hama does have a temple somewhere, we try to find it, get the third jewel, and rescue Argo Incarnate. Then we get back to the ship.”

  “In three days?” asked Urson. “Where do we start looking?”

  “The Priestess said something about a band of Hama’s disciples behind the fire mountain—the volcano we saw from the steps in the City of New Hope.” Geo turned to Snake. “Did you read her mind enough to know if she was telling the truth?”

  Snake nodded.

  Iimmi thought a moment. “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 pearly leaves.

  “I still don’t understand what was going on back at the convent,” Iimmi 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 Iimmi. “And what about Snake here?”

  “Argo on the ship apparently doesn’t know about Argo on Aptor,” said Geo. “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 at Snake. “I don’t know. I just don’t know.”

  When the light failed, they lay together and tried to sleep. But minutes after they had settled, and the white disk dropped from the horizon, Geo suddenly called them up again. In the distant red glow they could make out the volcano’s cone.

  Snake made lights with the jewels, and they began to pick their way over the land, now barer and barer of vegetation. Broken trees leaned against broken boulders. The earth grew cindery. The air bore old and acrid ash.

  Soon the red rim of the crater hung close above them.

  “How near are we?” Urson asked.

  “I think we’ve already started the slope,” Geo said.

  “Maybe we ought to stop before we go any farther and wait till morning.”

  “We can’t sleep here,” mumbled Urson, pushing cinders with his foot. He stretched. “Besides, we don’t have time to sleep.”

  Geo gazed up at the red haze. “I wonder what it’s like to look into that thing in the middle of the night?” He began again and they followed. Twenty feet later Snake’s light struck a lavid black cliff that sheared 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 Iimmi.

  “Better than in the light,” said Urson. “This way you can’t see how far you have to fall.”

  Iimmi started up the lip of rock. Thirty feet on, instead of petering out and forcing them to go back, it broadened into level ground, and again they could go straight toward the red light above them.

  “This is changeable country,” Urson muttered.

  “Men change into animals,” said Iimmi; “jungles turn to mountains.”

  Geo reached up and felt the stub of his arm in the dark. “I’ve changed too, I guess.

  “Change is neither merciful nor just,” he recited:

  “They say Leonard of Vinci put his trust

  in faulty paints: Christ’s Supper turned to dust.”

  “What’s that from?” Iimmi asked.

  “Another one of my bits of original research,” Geo explained. “It comes from a poem dating back before the Great Fire. I found it when I was doing research in the tombs.”

  “Who was Leonard of Vinci?” Iimmi asked.

  “An artist, perhaps another poet or painter,” said Geo. “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 wall fissure and hoist himself up with his good hand. The igneous points were sharp on his palm. The lights wavered from time to time as Snake at the lead transferred them from this hand to that. The boy rounded another jutting and the crags sent double shadows slipping down.

  Reaching a fairly level spot, they turned to look behind them. They were standing on the brim of a bowl of blackness. The sky was starry and lighter than the plate of velvet vegetation circling before them. They turned again and continued.

  Through the night the glowing rim dropped. With it came a breeze that pushed sulfur powder through their hair and made their nostrils sting.

  “Maybe we should go around and ap
proach it from the other side,” Urson suggested. “That way the wind won’t be so bad.”

  They set their climb at an angle now; soon the wind fell, and they could head straight up again.

  The earth became scaly and rotten under their feet. Fatigue tied knots high in their guts so that what was in their stomachs hung like stone.

  “I didn’t realize how big the crater was,” Iimmi said.

  So much nearer, the red glow, cut off at the bottom by the curve of the edge, took up a quarter of the sky.

  “Maybe it’ll erupt on us,” Urson muttered. He added, “I’m thirsty. If Hama is supposed to be behind the volcano, couldn’t we have gone around instead of over it?”

  “We’re this far,” said Iimmi. “Why turn back now?” A scab of shale skittered from under his foot. The wind shifted again and they were forced to skirt farther around the crater.

  “I hope you’re keeping track how far off course we’ve gotten,” Urson said.

  “Don’t worry,” said Iimmi.

  The glow from the jewels in Snake’s hands showed pale yellow growths about them on the slope like miniature bulbous cactuses. Some of them whistled. “What are they?” Urson asked.

  “Sulfur cones,” said Iimmi. “Deposits of sulfur get caught under the surface, are heated, and make little volcanoes all by themselves.”

  After another comparatively level stretch, they began the final ascent over veins of rock and twisting trails that took them up the last hundred feet.

  Once Urson looked back and saw Geo had stopped some twenty feet behind them at a niche in the ledge. Urson turned around and scrambled back. There was sweat on the boy’s upturned face as the big sailor came toward him, gleaming in the red flicker.

  “Here,” Urson said. “Give me a hand.”

  “I can’t,” Geo whispered. “I’ll fall.”

  Urson reached down, caught Geo around the chest, and hoisted him over the rock. “Take it easy. You don’t have to race with anybody.” Together they made their way after the others.

  Iimmi and Snake cleared the crater rim first; Urson and Geo joined them on the pitted ledge. Together they looked into the volcano as red and yellow light splashed their bellies and faces.

  Gold dribbled the internal slope. Tongues of red rock lapped the sides, and the swirling basin belched brown blobs of smoke that rose up the far rocks to spill the brim a radian away.

  White explosions in the white rock roared below them. Pylons of blue flame leaped, then sank back. Trails of light webbed the crater’s walls. At places ebon cavities jeweled the rock.

  Wind fingered the watchers’ hair.

  —

  Geo saw her first, two hundred feet along the rim. Her veils, bloodied by the flame, blew about her as she approached. Geo pointed to her. The others looked up.

  She stood very straight. White hair snapped at the side of her head in the warm wind. Firelight and shadow fell deeply in the wrinkles of her face. As she neared them, light ran 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,”

  recited the woman in a sure, low voice.

  “Hands and houses shall be one hereafter.”

  She paused. “I am Argo Incarnate.”

  “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 into 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 down the crater wall. “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 daughter of the present Argo Incarnate and return with her to Leptar,” he explained.

  “There are many Argos.” The woman smiled. “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.”

  “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 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.” She looked sadly down 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, followed by Geo and Urson.

  “I don’t like any of this,” the big sailor whispered to Geo as they followed. “Argo doesn’t mean the same thing in this land as she does in Leptar. There’s nothing but more trouble 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.”

  “Huh?”

  “Urson, I’m very tired.”

  They walked silently for a few steps more. Then Urson heaved up a disgusted breath and put his arm around Geo’s shoulder. “Come on,” he grunted, supporting Geo against his side as they progressed along the rocky ledge, following Argo.

  She turned down a trail that dropped into the crater. “Walk carefully here,” she said as they turned into the huge pit.

  “Something’s 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,”

  continued Geo:

  “Fire shall not harm…”

  “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.”

  “Like I once said before,” muttered Urson: “In a—”

  “In here,” announced Argo. They turned into one of the caves that pocked the inner 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 from a pocket in her robe, she struck a flame against the rock, then raised it to an ornate, branching petrolabra that hung from the stone ceiling by brass chains. Flame leaped from oil cup to oil cup, from the hand of a demon to a monkey’s mouth, from a nymph’s belly to a satyr’s head. Chemicals in the cups caused each flame to burn a different color: green, red, blue, and orange light filled the small chapel and played on the polished benches. On the altar were two statues of equal height: a man sitting and a woman kneeling. Geo and Urson stared at the petrolabra.

  “What is it?” Iimmi asked when he saw where their eyes were fixed.

  “There’s one of those things in Argo’s cabin onboard the ship,” Geo said. “And look over there. Where did we see one of those before?” The opaque glass screen was identical to the one in the convent.

  “Sit down,” Argo said. “Please sit down.”

  They sank to the benches. The climb, once halted, knotted their calves and the muscles low in their backs.

  “Hama has allowed you the privilege of a chapel even in captivity,” commented Geo, “but I see you have to share your altar with him.”

  “But I am Hama’s mother.” Argo smiled.

  Geo and Urson frowned.

  “You yourselves know 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,” said 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 it?—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. Not only is Argo the mother of Hama, she is his wife and daughter.”

  “Then it’s like we figured,” said Geo. “Jordde isn’t a spy for Hama. He’s working for the renegade priestesses of Argo.”

  “Yes,” returned Argo, “except that word ‘renegade’ is perhaps the wrong choice. They believe that their way is correct.”

  “Then they must be responsible for all that was going on in Leptar, only somehow blaming it on Hama,” said Geo. “They were probably just after the jewels too. You don’t look like a prisoner. 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,” explained Argo, “he threw it to the creatures of the sea because he knew they would take it back to Aptor. With it once again on the Island, the priestesses would have a better chance of getting it; my daughter, acting Argo Incarnate in the absence of her own daughter, 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. But beyond these blind creatures is a greater enemy that she must vanquish.”