“You’re referring to her so-called seventh question?” Oracle asked fiercely, returning his glare.
“What do you mean, so-called?”
Oracle snorted. “You didn’t believe what Tom said, did you? I mean, he repeated what Olly told him, but she didn’t tell him the truth. Those weren’t the seven questions she was asked And those sure as hell weren’t the answers she gave.”
Abasio merely stared at her, openmouthed.
“Believe me,” she snapped. “I know her Knew her. But with all my oracular powers, I do not yet know the truth about her. Or about you.”
The group held too much emotion for it to stay together. Every person in it felt the need of surcease, quiet, privacy, whether for thought or grief or merely sleep. All of them soon went off in different directions, to homes or rooms or newly offered spaces in the great silence that had come over the Place.
Abasio went out into this silence, thinking vaguely that he would find a tavern somewhere. In Fantis he had usually sought out a similar sort of place when deeply distressed, but here none seemed to be open. He was near the gate in the great wall when he saw Captain CummyNup Chingero, jeweled and bedecked, accosting this one and that one to ask if anyone there had seen Abasio the Cat or found his body. Abasio darted out, drew CummyNup into the gatehouse, and told him to keep his voice down.
“You alive!” crowed CummyNup, delighted past measure. “Wait till I tell that Sybbis!”
Abasio shuddered. “No, CummyNup! No.”
“You don’ wan’ I should tell her?”
“You—look. I’m … going to have to go off on a long, long journey I’ll be gone years, maybe. You tell Sybbis that, it would hurt her feelings. Right?”
CummyNup nodded dismally It would hurt her feelings, and Sybbis wasn’t that easy to get along with even when she was feeling good about things!
Abasio went on, “But she probably thinks I’m dead, fallen in battle, and that’s honorable, right? So she’s proud of me And you can … go on, just the way you are. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” He nodded forcefully, making CummyNup nod along with him.
Nonetheless, CummyNup was doubtful. “She carryin’ your baby, Basio.”
“Well …” Abasio made an equivocal gesture. “Maybe. Then again, maybe not I’d be proud to have you be daddy, either way.”
“I s’pose to say you—?”
“Dead,” said Abasio “Killed in battle. A hero.”
“No!” CummyNup said stubbornly. “Gone, not dead. Like—well, jus’ gone.”
“Just gone,” agreed Abasio, thinking of Olly. Why not? If one, why not both? He would be just gone!
Torn between grief and elation, CummyNup went back to Sybbis and the army. Soon they broke camp and moved away toward the northeast, where they would find an ideal place to settle—so said their resident seer, whom they had requested from an archetypal village, along with an archetypal Lady’s Maid for Sybbis and an archetypal Nanny for the child soon to be born. The villages were being sprinkled outward into the world, and archetypes were needed once more.
Sybbis declared the new settlement would be called Abasiostown, to be ruled by herself and CummyNup until her child, Abasio’s child, came of age. It was at her direction that much of the gangers’ armamentarium was left behind.
“We not goin’ to fight,” she told CummyNup. “Got nobody to fight but us, and we not goin’ to. I been talkin’ to these Artemisian women They got things to say that make sense, CummyNup!”
During recent days, Sybbis had acquired an almost regal dignity, which surprised her only a little less than it did anyone else. She had intended to be Queen of Abasiostown. Now she thought she might call herself Mothermost. Maternally, she extended to CummyNup her invitation that he continue as her consort and her permission for him to fetch Mama Chingero as well as Billibee and Crunch, if they wanted to come live in Abasiostown.
Berkli and Mitty went up in the Dome to check walker locations on the console. They wanted to be quite sure all had been destroyed. As they were leaving, they were confronted by Forsmooth Ander.
“Berkli,” he said in his oleaginous voice. “Mitty.”
“Forsmooth,” they acknowledged.
“The Anders have been talking this over. This—what might one say? Happening?”
“Have you now,” grunted Mitty.
“Since none of the other mature Ellels seem to be available, we consider it appropriate for me, as temporary Family head, to take over the control of things in general until Ellel and Ander get back.”
“What things would those be?” asked Berkli, with dangerous calm.
“Why, the shops. The—the ceremonies. You know.”
“Since there are no more walkers and old Seoca has departed, what possible reason can there be for continuing the ceremonies?” said Mitty. “Also, we have turned the orbital telescope onto the space station, and we see that the shuttle seems to have misfired.”
“Misfired?”
“Misfired. Or been misdirected. Or something. At any rate, it never reached the station It seems to be on its way to Betelgeuse, which it will reach in a few hundred or thousand years, give or take. Now, as for the shops, they can be managed only by people who know something about them, and that doesn’t, so far as I know, include any Anders at all. Any of the Family members who want to enroll in the technical school will be welcome there, of course.”
Berkli hid a grin behind his hand.
“I don’t like your tone!” said Forsmooth. “I’m sure Ellel and Ander will be able to turn the shuttle around. After all, they have the guidance system! When they return, we will take the matter up with them.”
At the mention of the guidance system, Berkli’s face had hardened “You do that,” he said. “While you’re waiting, however—and it will be a lengthy wait—you might get your Family together to decide how they’re going to make a living in the future, for I’m afraid the Domer monopoly on the output of the shops is hereby broken.”
Forsmooth stalked away with many flutters of his silken sleeves.
“He didn’t understand what you were saying,” said Mitty.
“It’ll come to him.”
“That was quite a pronouncement. About the shops.”
“So was yours,” said Berkli. “But it’s high time, even though it means the Berklis will also have to go to work. We’ve lived off the Power of the Place far too long.”
The second morning after the battle, Oracle announced a premonition: All the residents of the Place of Power must leave immediately and go west, up toward the forests Gaddirs went from door to door, advising the populace, most of whom took heed, though some Ellels thought it a trick, and some Anders refused to leave their pavilion. Within the hour, people straggled out of the western gates, some of them laden with food and drink and blankets, though Oracle had said they would not need to stay away long.
The last of them had barely come away from the wall before the earth shook and the Place of Power was obscured behind a wallowing yellow cloud that rose straight up, a citywide pillar, like the trunk of a monstrous tree. The people turned and gaped at the dust cloud as a shifting wind from the west frayed the column into long, drooping branches extending eastward, branches that sagged like spruce boughs as the heavier dust fell out of the wind. Below the earth the tremors continued, to the sound of cataclysmic grindings and quakings.
Some farsighted few who had climbed trees to get a view cried out that a chasm had opened down the center of the eastern canyon, where it swallowed boulders and trees down its cavernous maw before it closed again like a pair of huge jaws.
When at last the tremors diminished and stopped, people ran back through the gates, wanting to see what had happened to their homes. Within the walls, the Place remained much as before, except that Gaddi. House was gone Where it had been was only a great heap of yellow-gold rubble that, even as they watched it, flattened and sifted itself into a mere stretch of ochreous dust. Not long afterward, when people went
to their homes seeking light and heat, they found that the Power for which the Place had been named was gone also. There were no lights, no machinery moving, no warm rooms. That night the people slept in darkness, except for candles and lanterns and the baleful glow of makeshift braziers.
Nimwes went off to console her family, and be consoled, as did other of the Gaddir folk.
“All the shops,” grieved Tom to Mitty. “All the machines. I had equipment in there you wouldn’t believe! The things I could make! The things I could do!”
“All the power,” grieved Mitty to Tom. “All the things I could make! The things I could do!”
In nowise comforted, they wandered off together, Tom pausing to collect Qualary, all of them looking for somewhere to sit down while they considered options for their futures, beginning with designing some kind of power plant. Hydroelectric, suggested Mitty Thermoelectric, urged Tom, who knew where there were hot springs. Or perhaps solar.
Or perhaps, Mitty said, they should consult the Edges. The Edges, as everyone knew, still had power.
Perhaps, Qualary said, the Edges would even welcome new residents of a proper kind.
Tom and Mitty grew thoughtful at this suggestion.
Abasio, who had been wandering around trying not to think of anything at all, encountered Arakny near the gate of the Place.
“I’m going down to join Wide Mountain Mother,” she said. “She’s going to be pissed about my losing my library Though, given everything, it was probably more than a fair trade.” She put her arms around Abasio and hugged him “Besides, I’m dying to tell her all about the thrones and the Griffin and Olly’s prophecy. Not that I believe what Olly said to Tom about it.”
“What do you mean, you don’t believe?” he asked, suddenly alert. Oracle had said the same thing!
“I don’t believe that’s what the questions were,” she said quietly. “I believe what she told Tom was just a story, something to pacify us.”
“Why?” he blurted.
“Why? Because she didn’t want the truth widely told, obviously. Like those book-burning teams, altering the past, changing reality. She’s not telling us what really happened She knew I’d put it in the library, and she didn’t want it there. I assume you don’t want it there, either?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Oh, I think you do. Why not share your impressions of the thrones with me? I have the very definite notion that you saw something down there that I didn’t. Heard something I didn’t hear. Hunagor said something to you, didn’t she?”
Abasio shook his head. “You’re wrong We were both there. You saw them, heard them, just as I did.”
She stared at him, tapping her teeth with a thumbnail. “You know, I told Olly once that thrones is a name for an order of angels. When one thinks of angels, one gets sidetracked with old pictures, feathery wings, trumpets and harps, all that. But if you consider what an angel really might be, you get a different idea. A creature dreadfully powerful and awesomely old, for example. A creature not necessarily at all manlike. A terrible creature, perhaps.”
Abasio pulled himself together with a shudder. “Look, Arakny, I don’t know. I wish you’d just drop it. I find the whole thing extremely … repugnant.”
“That’s an odd choice of word.”
“Well, it’s my choice Talk about something else. What are you going to do when you get home, for instance?”
She refused to be diverted “As a librarian, there’s only one thing I can do Make a record of what’s happened, of course. Write an Olly Longaster song, and have the men’s societies create a three-thrones dance. And have a sand- painting designed, with a story to go with it. And refer the question of who and what they were to our philosophical society All ways of remembering. Why else was a librarian present?”
Abasio stood watching while she went down the winding road to join her people.
Later that day the Artemisians broke camp and began their trek eastward, the last of the armies to depart. Orphan’s Hero, who had survived along with about half of his colleagues, had learned of a maiden who was to be sacrificed to a giant sea creature in a seaside town far to the west, and he had ridden off posthaste to take care of the matter. He had taken Oracle with him, for the people needed an Oracle where he was going. Before she left, Oracle explained that the villages were breaking up everywhere, and all the archetypes were going off to find their proper places. Princesses to kingdoms or towers. Misers to greasy old houses along slimy waterfronts. Ingenues into troupes of traveling players This one here and that one there, as needed.
“What are you going to do?” Qualary asked Abasio when she found him still wandering disconsolately about the Place. “Go back to the farm with your grandpa?”
“I don’t think so,” he said reluctantly. He didn’t know what he did want to do, though he was certain of what he didn’t. He didn’t want to live in Artemisia, though Arakny had invited him. He didn’t want to return to the farm. He wasn’t going to Abasiostown to steal CummyNup’s thunder. If there had been another shuttle, he’d have gone off in it in a moment, on Olly’s trail, hopeless though that no doubt was.
He tried to explain himself to Qualary. “I don’t know who she was,” he said. “I loved her, but I never knew who she was The whole world turned on her, but to me she was just the person I loved.”
“None of us knows who other people really are,” said Qualary, plaintively. “I think there must be some part of all of us that others never get to. Sometimes we don’t get to that part ourselves. Sometimes the feelings I get make me know I have such a part in me: a dreadful strangeness, one that goes back, way back.”
Abasio did not find this comforting.
It was during this time of confusion that Coyote limped three-legged in through the open gate in the late afternoon, sniffed his way about the Place, until he came upon Abasio’s trail and eventually Abasio himself.
“Big Blue’s wondering what happened to you. If it wasn’t for Bear and me, he’d have starved to death.”
Abasio wiped his face with his sleeve and tried to think of a reply. “Who bandaged your leg?” he asked. “I thought you were dead! I thought Bear was dead!”
“Well, we’re not. No thanks to you My leg’s broken. The Artemisians set it. Besides, I was talking about your horse!”
“I heard,” mumbled Abasio. “Is he all right?”
“He’s all right,” drawled Coyote. “Bear and I took him up where the wagon is before that last batch of earthquakes happened. Nice grass there.”
Abasio considered the wagon. It was his and Olly’s wagon. Their dyers’ wagon. With Olly’s things in it. He didn’t know if he could bear to see them again.
Farmwife Suttle, who had been listening to Coyote with amazed interest, interrupted Abasio’s cogitations. “The mention of Big Blue reminds me that Cermit and I should be getting back to our farms. Winter has set in, no doubt, and the folk there will have need of us. Burned Man and Drowned Woman will go with us.”
“You’re not paying attention,” Coyote yapped, nosing Abasio sharply. “Do you have anything here you need to retrieve?”
Abasio had nothing he needed to retrieve. When he came to this place, he had carried only a few things. The important ones were all in the pack on his back or in his pockets Enough to go … where? The only thing he could decide was not to decide.
He bade his grandpa farewell “Was your wife’s name Hunagor?” he asked.
“Odd you should mention that,” Grandpa replied. “I always called her Honey. But since being here, hearing that other name, it’s sounded familiar to me and I’ve wondered if she was related to this Hunagor I keep hearing about. Why do you ask?”
“Just interested,” said Abasio “I wondered the same thing.”
And finally, having worn out all his delays, he stumbled through the gates and down the road behind Coyote’s limping form Behind him he heard the industrious babble of people unsettling themselves, the shouts and orders and g
rumbling of a people cleaning up one mess and moving out to start another. Perhaps not. Maybe not this time.
On the roadway, Abasio’s shadow stretched eastward before him, so slender and attenuated that its head fell off the road and bounced along the trees below, a black dot against the yellowish dust that blanketed the forest. As he shuffled along, slowly, so Coyote could keep up, a little wind gusted up to fling the dust along, like clouds of blowing gold, letting it settle again, farther down “It’ll take rain to settle that,” he said to Coyote. “One winter’s snow,” muttered Coyote. “Most things settle with one winter’s snow.” “I guess,” said Abasio.
“So Olly fulfilled her prophecy,” commented Coyote. “Five whole armies of champions.”
Abasio stopped still in the middle of the road “I just thought of something! What happened to her guardian- angel?”
“It went with the ship. To help her when the job was done,” said the Coyote.
“I don’t know where she is,” gasped Abasio, feeling the words as pain “I don’t know where she went.”
“You do,” said Bear, joining them from among the trees along the canyon side “She went to the sky. She became a star. She will be there always. We will sing songs about her!”
Bear had wounds upon his shoulders and painful- looking lacerations on his back Withal, there was an air of contentment about him.
As the sun fell below the hills behind them, they reached the gravel run that led from the road back behind the bulwark of stone, the place they had left the wagon hidden. It stood now in full view with Big Blue between the shafts, his harness gleaming, even his hooves oiled and shining as he pawed the ground in welcome. The animals couldn’t have done it. Someone with hands had been busy here.
“Your mother,” said Coyote, reading his mind. “She doesn’t remember you, but she remembers Olly, and she knows Olly loved you very much.”
Abasio swallowed deeply “You all seem determined to go somewhere.”
“No point in staying here,” said Coyote “Everything’s done and over with As prophesied.”