Sideshow (56 page)

15

All through the night, Danivon stood wakeful: while the darkness drew in, while the stars came out in scatters, while light left the world below, remaining only on the higher clouds; even after true darkness came, he blundered his way from tree to tree, clearing to clearing, unable to rest. He was waiting for Fringe. Fringe had gone away after Great Dragon. Perhaps Fringe had departed from Panubi, cloaked in the dragon’s power and invisibility, slithering through the lines of the killers, saving herself.
He hoped she had.
He knew she had not.
He tried to imagine where she might be and failed. She had had some purpose, that much he guessed, but what? This question brought with it a fit of hysterical though silent laughter. Much of the time her purposes had made no sense to him. Why should he understand this one? He yawned uncontrollably and leaned against a tree, listening to the breathing of those around him, wondering how long he dared let them sleep, half sleeping himself as he stood.
Dawn came at last, with high pink clouds foretelling the arrival of day. From the killing ground, the monster machines began to yammer. Danivon forbade himself to listen, throwing back his head to look up at the clouds, storing up the memory. When death came he would not think of death, or of Fringe, or of anything to do with man. He would hold in his mind a picture of clouds turning from black to gray to blooming rose.
Such resolution did him no good. Fringe remained at the
center of his thought. What was she really like? What had she really wanted? He found himself remembering her, every detail, every nuance of expression or action. Zasper had talked about her. He remembered all the things Zasper had said. Her presence was like a rhythm he couldn’t get out of his mind, like a litany he kept telling over and over, like a summoning spell, an invocation.
Above him the clouds brightened and faded, except for one high, crescent shape that went on glowing with color after all the rest had faded to white.
And then another below it, appearing out of nothing.
“Bertran.” Danivon spoke softly. “Nela?”
The two were already half-awake. They roused themselves and came to stand beside him.
“There,” he said, pointing upward. Something was growing like linked moons, softly shining. A murmur of voices came from the sides, near and far, where others who had been early wakeful had also seen the strangeness. Cafferty and Latibor came from among the trees to stand beside them, watching.
“Did Fringe ever come back?” whispered Nela.
Danivon shook his head, unable to speak.
“I’ve been thinking about her and thinking about her,” said Nela. “So has Bertran. Ever since it started to get light. We can’t get her out of our heads!”
An odd coincidence, Danivon thought, giving it no more attention than that, distracted by the thing in the sky that was continuing to unfold, little by little. The sky brightened, and still the thing grew, each linked crescent a bit lower, a bit closer, the whole mass centering itself upon the great rock dome as upon the bull’s-eye of a target. At last whatever-it-was seemed to occupy most of the massif, many miles across. From its translucent base it rose in a series of interconnected curves, vanishing beyond vision, sunlit at the height. The massif creaked alarmingly, roared and trembled a bit, then steadied. Either it had decided it could hold the weight or the weight had been removed.
The others came from among the trees.
“What is it?” marveled Cafferty.
“No idea,” said Danivon. “Nela?”
She shook her head. “I’ve never seen anything like it. Have you, Latibor?”
He shook his head in return. Never. Nothing like it.
Every person left on Panubi had been gathered tight at the base of the massif, and all of them saw the thing come, though they could not comprehend the arrival. It looked like nothing material, nothing solid, so no one around the massif thought of it as a way of escape. They merely gaped and murmured in hesitant voices, slowly edging toward the thing, standing very quietly with their arms folded, all peering at this hugeness, this wonder, this quite marvelous thing come from nowhere to mystify their last hours.
Not so the Brannigan machines. Around the circle they erupted in sudden frenzies. From behind them, the mighty mountain shivered and growled and moved itself as Great Oozer slithered, leaving dead forests smashed to ashes in his wake. To the south, Chimi-ahm came grinning his tripartite grin, lighted from within by mighty fires, howling like a tempest and beating the ground with a huge flail. From the west, Magna Mater rolled on studded wheels across the forests, each spiked tiptoe an earthquake, each earthquake a catastrophe of broken mountain and flooded river. From the north Lady Bland came on her great car, crushing hills and filling valleys. All four of them approached, mighty as mountains, to crouch just beyond the circle of the Arbai Device, staring at the thing on the massif, no more able to comprehend it than were the people.
The thing took no notice of astonishment. Its only response was to open a tiny crack at the base of its substance from which a single creature emerged. The form was completely familiar to Nela and Bertran as it trundled down the slope toward them emitting a strong smell of hay fields.
“Celery,” whispered Nela. “It’s Celery.” She shared a look of hopeful surmise with Bertran, the two of them deep in a wordless interchange during which they remembered the exact wording of their request. Now it seemed inadequate, superficial. It had been so long ago!
They stared at the approaching figure, building together a silent strategy.
“But he won’t want to talk to us,” Bertran muttered in sudden panic as the leafy creature approached. “We’re not multiple anymore.”
“You’re more multiple than you ever were,” murmured Cafferty. “At least for the time being. The Arbai Device is not yet gone.”
The creature reached them and bowed.
“Nela-Bertran,” said Celery (or what they assumed was Celery), “how nice to meet you at last.” (Well then, it wasn’t Celery.) “We’ve heard so much about you.” There was a faint, a very faint overtone of irritation in its voice, as of courtesy strained to its limit.
Bertran bowed. Nela bowed, realizing that somehow here she was under Bertran’s left arm. Habit! She moved slightly away and stood tall. If she was multiple, it didn’t depend on where she was!
“We did what we promised Celery we’d do,” said Bertran, unable to think of anything more apropos.
The being nodded. “We know. And we received your message, of course. Which is why we’re here. I apologize for our being so tardy, but …” (Bertran thought he detected a definite tone of asperity) “we’ve had to come a long way.”
“We’ve interrupted your journey,” said Nela in her most sweetly sympathetic voice. “And after you’d gone to such trouble. Earning your … what was it? Your concession.”
“Well,” said the being with a sidewise look at her, “it was our own fault, wasn’t it.”
“We think it was,” agreed Bertran with a hint of asperity of his own. “Yes.”
“An exemplary situation, however,” the Celerian continued. “One our younger aggregations will profit from for untold generations. Which is, at the moment, neither here nor there….” It made an equivocal gesture and emitted a smell of disappointment.
“When we received your message, we started back, ready to keep our end of the bargain, only to learn as we approached this place that it would be impossible for us.”
Bertran felt himself dwindle. Nela reached for his hand as Danivon cursed slowly, monotonously.
“However,” the creature went on, glancing upward over the trees, at the looming monsters, “since we’re here, there are some things we’d like to clarify. For our own information. We’d like to know what you meant, in the cavern, when you said ‘we’ and ‘us.’”
Danivon came closer, his hands knotting into fists. The Celerian regarded him blandly.
“In the context of what we knew about humans, the words were confusing. We were sure you meant you-Nela-Bertran, of course. That would have been what you meant by ‘us’ at the time you met our colleague. Before you came here. But at the
time your wish was uttered you weren’t alone, so we knew you meant Nela-Bertran-Fringe….”
Nela fixed the being with her eyes and shook her head firmly. “No. As a matter of fact, we meant all of us who are here, around the massif….” Even if the Celerians could not help, let the record show!
“And everyone on Elsewhere,” added Bertran. “Our request referred to all our kind. We asked that mankind no longer be influenced by gods he made in his own image.”
“You are not referring to the Creators?” asked the Celerian curiously. “We would not want to give you the impression we could have had any effect at all on the purposes of the real …”
“We mean,” interrupted Nela, pointing at the monsters visible over the treetops, “things like that, whether visible or invisible, whether real or imaginary. No matter how traditional they are. No matter how divine they are said to be. Now, or ever. Here or anywhere. We want to be free of them.”
“Ah, I do see.” The Celerian did something with its face that gave the effect of a glowing smile. “You wanted us to implement the destiny of man here as elsewhere.”
Nela squeezed Bertran’s hand as she replied, “The Arbai had the power to do it, but they couldn’t accept ambiguity. They worried too much about means and ends. They wouldn’t interfere because they couldn’t accept risk, they couldn’t take the guilt or the pain of possibly being wrong. I understand that. I’ve been like that myself. But you … our experience indicated your people had no hangups about interference.”
“That’s true,” breathed the Celerian in a strangled voice. “We have no hangups about that.”
“We thought you’d be willing to risk it,” said Bertran, head cocked as though thinking deeply. “Willing to risk being wrong.”
“It was our willingness to risk being wrong that won us the great concession,” whispered the Celerian. “The emergence from mere creaturehood demands risk. Intelligence demands risk. Holiness demands risk … and growth, and change. No. We’d have been willing to risk it.”
“But you won’t help us,” said Nela.
The Celerian bowed, tilting forward until its leafy crest almost brushed Nela’s face. “We confess to you: We would feel infinitely more worthy if we could do as you ask. Even we,
however, cannot go back in time to do what has already been done by someone else.”
Nela stepped aside, confused, turning to the others for explanation as the Celerian moved away. It paused only briefly, to call, “Your colleague says to tell you farewell.”
“Colleague?” grated Danivon.
“Your colleague,” said the Celerian. “Who in paying our debt to you has indebted us to … them.”
It went swiftly up the hill, giving them no time to ask the questions that slowly formed in all their minds. After the ship swallowed it up, the ship itself went away as it had come, by vanishment a little at a time.
And nothing happened. The people nearby peered into the brightening day, muttering, retelling, not sure they had not dreamed it. Nothing at all happened. The Gods continued bellowing, but they came no closer. The killing machines yammered and gyrated, but they danced in place. The sun rose, throwing long shadows up onto the massif. People murmured.
And then at last, Chimi-ahm howled more loudly than ever and moved back. Magna Mater backed up. Slow wriggle by slow wriggle, bellowing with each movement, uttering imprecations, Great Oozer slithered in reverse. Lady Bland, shrieking and snarling on her great car, crunched a retreat. Little by little, their movements became a steady withdrawal.
“What happened?” Danivon breathed.
Nela murmured, half hearing, half intuiting what must have occurred. “By the time the Celerians got here, they couldn’t do anything else, because Fringe and Great Dragon had already done it.”
“Done what?”
“I think Fringe … both of them went down under the massif and took the device away from the Arbai.”
“They could do that?” asked Danivon, dumbfounded. “Then why did they wait so long! All this time! While so many died? Why did they wait?”
Bertran shook his head slowly, searching inside himself for answers. “I assume Great Dragon wouldn’t interfere in human affairs unless Jory asked him to,” he murmured. “They were mated in a way I don’t understand. But Jory, though very much her own being, or perhaps one should say a being made in her pattern, was still a creation of the Arbai Device here on Elsewhere. Rebellion was her nature, but she could be … rebellious only to a degree. She could not threaten the fundamental
structure of the Arbai. And it wasn’t until Fringe realized what Jory actually was that she could take over…. Or try.”
“But how?” breathed Danivon. “I can’t imagine how?”
“No,” Nela murmured, “I can’t either, Danivon. But she couldn’t have done it as she was, solitary as she was, I’m sure of that. I get this notion of enormous sacrifice….”
Danivon gritted his teeth, astonished to find tears in the corners of his eyes. “And now she’s gone, is that it? Gone into the device? Or gone off with the Celerians? Or was it Great Dragon who went with the Celerians?”
Nela shrugged, seeking an answer where there was no answer. She could find pictures, memories of the device unbuilding Fringe in the cavern of the Arbai. Memories of its possessing her at her own invitation, destructuring her at her own command. But had it later rebuilt … remade? Of its own volition, perhaps? Of its own memory?
Had it finished with her? Was she free once more?
Nela couldn’t tell. What had been Fringe had vanished, and the device didn’t know where, or how.
Nela put her arms about Danivon, pressed herself tight against him. “I’m not sure, Danivon. I don’t know what happened.”
Danivon fumed helplessly over her shoulder. “And your Celerian friend said something about implementing human destiny, but how could he do that when nobody’s answered the Great Question!”
Nela held him more tightly. Wasn’t that like Danivon? Not to have noticed the answer to the Great Question as it went flitting by. Oh, well. Bertran put his long arms around them both, laying his cheeks against Nela’s and Danivon’s, all of them wet. Whether they were crying from joy or sorrow or simple exhaustion, none of them were able to say.
In the Core, Jordel of Hemerlane wakened to his newly cloned body, sat it up, got it up, looked it over to be sure it was, in fact, his body, then dressed himself and went into the control section of the Core. A moment’s search through the network and he found the four Brannigan monsters on Panubi, where they were being backed slowly toward the sea. Given sufficient time, the Brannigans would be forced all the way back to Tolerance.