“Now what?” Mavin sighed in frustration. “Where have they gone? I told them to stay right here. I begged them not to do anything until I returned.”
Roges moved through the open gate into the cave. “Here’s the Thinker behind the door,” he called. “He seems to be thinking.”
The others came in to see him crouched against the wall behind the gate, gesturing to himself as he babbled a string of incomprehensible words over and over. “Thinker!” Mavin demanded. “Where’s Mercald? What happened to Mercald?”
“Mercald? Does one care? When one has verified the ergotic hypothesis at last, does one care about Mercalds? It seems that in order to describe the statistical state of a system, one needs an ensemble. There are those who believe the ensemble has physical reality, that the occurrence of a particular state corresponds to the frequency with which one observes the phenomenon. Others think the ensemble only a mathematical construct. It is now established that all systems must go through all states in the ensemble. Ergo, you can fly. This place is merely a rare event, sitting out in the tail of distribution of all places, non-representative… I shall present a paper before the physical society at the fall meeting…”
“Oh, flopper poop,” said Beedie. “He saw you change shape, didn’t he? He doesn’t believe in the Boundless, like Mercald; and he isn’t open-minded, like Roges and me; so he’s theo … theor… thinking his way through it and has dropped off his bridge completely. He probably thinks I’m a rare event too, and no more real than anything else.” She shook him. “Thinker! Where’s Mercald? Tell me about Mercald!”
“Absolution,” grated the Thinker distractedly, his eyes unfocused. “He wanted to give absolution to Sticky One. He wanted to lay on his hands in forgiveness, and he did, and he couldn’t take his hands off, and he … ah… wah … aaahhh dissolved … aaahhh slurp!” The last word was uttered with a hideously descriptive sound which made them all recoil in disbelief.
“By the Pain of Dealpas,” moaned Mavin. “By the Great Flood and the Hundred Devils. By the p’natti of my childhood. By … by…” She stuttered her way into silence, beating her head with one hand.
“A paper for Physical Review would be out of the question,” muttered the Thinker. “It would never get by the idiot referees.”
“By the Boundless,” Mavin sighed at last. “Did Mercald think they had voluntary control over their stickiness?”
“I don’t imagine he thought at all,” murmured Beedie sadly. “Often he didn’t, you know.”
“Don’t speak of it as though it were in the past,” Mavin urged. “If he has been slurped up by Sticky One, he is still with us, still Mercald, and he will have a lot of time to consider what he has done.” Oh Mercald, I told you to be careful. Because I did not speak in syrupy words, you would not listen. She shook her head again, then laid down her pack and went out into the clearing.
“Sticky-One-Mirtylon-Mercald! Sticky Two! All the Stickies! Come out, come out, wherever you are!”
Then she disgraced herself by weeping.
Beedie took her hand in sympathy. “It’s awful, isn’t it. I really want to throw up, but I haven’t anything in my stomach at all.”
Across the clearing the whiskery wall trembled. Moments passed. A Sticky crawled out, slowly, so flat in aspect that Mavin wondered if it had suffered some accidental crushing. When it emerged completely, she saw that it was Sticky Two. “It’s Lovewings,” she sighed to Beedie.
“Sticky Two,” she said, loudly, then waited for the ear to emerge, which it did only reluctantly. “I know what happened. It was not your fault. Not … your… fault.”
“Sticky … One… fault … it was…” puffed Sticky Two.
“No. It wasn’t any Sticky’s fault,” Mavin sighed. “It was the man’s fault. He didn’t think. Where is Sticky One, now?”
“Very … sick. Sticky … One has…” There was a long, long pause. “Has … too many … things inside … all at once.” The ear trembled, retracted, the bellows sighed dismally to itself.
“I’ll bet he does,” said Beedie. “Can you imagine trying to digest Mercald? Oh my, I shouldn’t joke about it. But then, it shouldn’t seem funny, and it does.”
“Sticky Two.” Mavin was trying not to hear what Beedie said, for it made her want to laugh unbecomingly. “There are ugly men coming. We must do things very quickly. We cannot wait for Sticky One, or anything else. We must talk with all the speaking Stickies at once. Will you fetch them?”
The glue blob dithered for a moment, then flowed away under the wall. Roges came out of the cave nibbling on a piece of bread, offering some to Mavin and Beedie with the other hand. “Thinker is all tied up in knots talking to himself about you, Mavin, and birds and some law or other he claims you broke. I haven’t seen him like this before, and I don’t think he’ll be much use to us.”
“That’s all right,” Mavin replied distractedly. “At least he’ll be out of the way.” She began explaining to Beedie and Roges what she had thought they might do, with much waving of arms and pointing here and there. Roges did not accept it without question.
“That’s dangerous for Beedie, doer-good. She could be hurt!”
“She won’t be, Roges. I’ll take care of that part myself.”
Beedie had a doubtful comment. “You know how Mercald would feel about doing it this way. We still don’t have any proof he would accept that the Banders are what we know they are.”
“He’s not in any position to complain about it,” she laughed bitterly. “We can give the Banders fair warning, if that would make you feel better. They won’t heed it, but we can try. Then, if it’s the wrong thing to do, Mercald can figure out later how we can expiate for it. All of us, including the Stickies who help us do it.”
“Are you sure they will help us?”
“Well, sausage girl, it’s up to your eloquence. I think there’s a good chance for building excellent relations with the Stickies. If they do the chasm people a favour, then they’ll be in good odor with all. If we do the Stickies a favour, they’ll want to treat us well in future. It’s up to you, Beedie. You’ve been reared to work on the roots, to manage a crew. Now we need you to work on the root net, and the Stickies will be your crew. Right now I think they’re very eager to please. Let’s see how eloquent you can be!”
At almost midday the Banders came down to the vast net which spread across the chasm, making a ceiling above the Bottom. The net was made up of many ropey roots, tugged sideways from the forest of verticals, which were knotted or grown together at armspan intervals, again and again, until the whole chasm was divided horizontally by a gridwork of thick, strong lines, each individual polygon of rope-sized roots further connected by a finer mesh of knotted root hairs. When Beedie had first seen it, she had known at once it was sufficiently strong to catch something large and flat dropping from above or perhaps even a person who might fall on his face while running across the grid. She had known at once it would not stop large rocks plunging from the rim – or the crawling gray oozers whose weight had torn ragged holes in the fabric already.
It was not unlike the floor of a bridge before the main planks were laid, and the Banders looked across it as a natural and familiar arena for exploration, whereas the Bottom, with its steams and stinks, was both strange and intimidating. Only one small group of the Banders went to the Bottom, found themselves in the maze of hallways, and promptly rejoined the others above the net level where they stood peering at the distant root wall, wondering where to go next.
It was not long before one of them, more sharp-eyed – or more acquisitive – than the rest spotted a bright sparkle on the net, bounced his way out to it, and brought it back to be passed around among the others
“Jewels,” shouted Byle. “Dah, it’s jewels. Laying there on the net like so much flopper flub. See yonder, there’s another sparkle.”
The gems, in glittering clusters, had been glued onto the grid with rootsap to form a twisting path. They were stones like thos
e Mavin had discovered in the cave – gizzard stones from the small oozers, polished to a fine, high shine by the tumbling of the creatures’ great guts. All the Stickies who spoke human language had been at the labor of placing them until moments before the Banders arrived. Now the Stickies crouched upon the net, and their shiny tops camouflaged with non-sticky bottom membrane, half-hidden with bits of root hair and leaf. The trail of gems wound out across the chasm; some of the younger Banders were already following it and collecting them.
Slysaw bellowed at them. “You all get off there! I didn’t say go, and you don’t go till I say. Now get back here and let me look at those. Well, well, what a wonder. So this is what the Birder and the Beedie wench were after. I’ll be dropped off a bridge by my ears if this isn’t something…”
There were mutterings from the others in the band. One or two looked as though they were going to disregard orders, but these were cuffed into line by some of Slysaw’s close kin.
“Now, boys. Now then. Think what a shortage of saw gravel there’s been lately, and all the time pots of it here in the Bottom to be picked up by the pocketful! And won’t we have fun taking all this back and showing it around. All this secret stuff the high and mighty Beeds and Chafers and Birders never told us about. Let’s be orderly, now. Byle, you and your cousin get out there first, and the rest of us’ll come after.” And soon the hundred were moving across the net in a long line which undulated from side to side as jewels were found and picked and popped into pockets – though some were hidden in shoe tops or behind ears in the expectation of avoiding the eventual sharing out.
Up-chasm, others waited. Roges and Beedie were upon the net; Roges at the root wall, securely anchored to the mainroot, Beedie more or less at the center of the chasm, on the up-chasm side of the steamy place above the boiling pool. Before her, and to either side, Stickies lay upon the net, almost invisible in the steam, their ears carefully extruded between bits of leafy litter as they listened for the signal.
Mavin, hovering high above, peered down through the veils of steam, The mists made seeing difficult, but she had planned for it to be difficult. She did not want the Banders able to see clearly. They must be greedy, angry, and with obscured vision. She lifted a bit higher to see farther, then dropped down to whisper. “Beedie, are you ready?”
Beedie waved her away impatiently, trying to remember her lines. At her direction, the largest, brightest stones had been placed in the steamy place. Now she could hear the result of that placement; raised voices, argument, the sound of blows. She heard Slysaw’s voice as he intervened, his own greed making him half-hearted. “Doesn’t matter who finds ’em,” he shouted at his men. “We’ll share alike when we’re done. Just keep gatherin’ ’em in, and soon we’ll come to the source of it all…”
The group tumbled on, stooping, grabbing, pushing one another in their haste.
“Stop right there, Banders!” Beedie cried in a fine, trumpety voice.
The men stumbled to a halt, their eyes widening in surprise, searching through the steamy veils for the source of the voice. Then one of them glimpsed her, pointed, shouted. Behind him, others pushed close.
“Stop!” she cried again. “You have no business here, Byle. Nor you, Slysaw. The rest of your ruffians should be back at work on the bridgetowns that pay them. I give you warning, you are at peril of your lives, so take care. Go back to the stairs and up where you belong.”
“And who’re you, wench?” Slysaw thrust through the pack, leaning on Byle’s shoulder. “Who appointed you head of chasm council, heh?” The Banders heaved and pushed at one another, drawing into a smaller, tighter group. Behind them Stickies moved across the net.
“Yeah,” interrupted Byle Bander, bouncing and posturing on the net. “Who’re you, Beedie? I’ll tell you. You’re gametime for me, that’s what. And after me, as many of these kin of mine as are interested in your skinny body.”
Cheers and animal howls rose at this sally. Mavin, hearing this from above, recalled old, bad memories of Danderbat keep, and boiled with fury. Still she hovered, close above the place Beedie stood.
“I tell you to go back. You are meddling in things that are none of your business. You do not belong here. You are in danger here. Don’t be stupid, standing there threatening me. Just turn yourselves around and go!” Beedie no longer needed to remember lines she had rehearsed. She was now so angry that they came of themselves. Beside the root wall, Roges heard her anger and sizzled with protective wrath.
“We’ll see, Beedie girl. We’ll see…” Byle plunged toward her through the rising steams, the entire pack pressed at his back. Slysaw was carried along in the rush even as his native suspicion made him try to stem the stampede. They came in all together, individually sure-footed yet stumbling against one another, so intent upon their own beastly mob noises they did not hear Mavin’s scream.
“Stickies. Now. Now. Now. Now.”
Roges at the root wall began to echo the sound, through Mavin’s amplified voice could have been heard by any creature not deafened by its own howls. Beedie, too, cried out, and the three voices rose together. “Now. Now. Now. Now”
Stickies had moved into a circle around the Banders, a circle that had already cut many of the main grid roots supporting the mesh above the boiling pool. Abruptly, with a loud, tearing sound, the fabric ripped to one side of the close-pressed mob. The flap of net they stood upon dropped to one side, throwing many of them flat, dropping others so quickly that arms and legs broke the finer meshes and dangled below, waving frantically at nothing.
Those at the rear of the pack nearest the torn edge were first to realize that there was nothing below but the sound of seething water, occasional glimpses of its bubbling surface appearing through the gusts of steam. Those who saw what lay below tried to climb over the bodies of those above them on the net, shouting and kicking. Those above them retaliated by kicking and pushing in return. Two or three men toppled through the hole and fell, screaming only for a moment before striking the water with a splash, a final agonized gargle and silence.
The entire pack was silent, only for that moment, not realizing what had happened but aware that something was wrong, that the net was no longer horizontal, that Beedie was moving away from them in the veiling mists, her face drawn into an expression of – what was it? Sorrow? Horror? At what? Even as shouts and howls arose once more, Byle, with his usual sensitivity, let voice follow wonder.
“Whatcha starin’ at, bone body? Heh? Run if you like, Beedie, girl, but I’m faster than you are…” Slysaw was grabbing at his shoulder, but the boy shrugged it off, blind and deaf to any needs but his immediate desire to do violence. Slysaw dropped and was trampled under the climbing hands and feet of a dozen others, kicked downward, beneath half a hundred struggling bodies, to lie at last half-dazed upon the very edge of the tear, clinging with both hands to a mesh of root hair.
The Stickies had continued with their work. The tear widened, the finer lacework ripping with an audible shriek, ropey roots breaking under the increased weight with repeated, snapping sounds which made Beedie think of a drum rattling, faster and faster. “Go back,” she screamed, unheard in the general din. “Go back.” It was too late for any of them to go back, and she knew it only briefly before they did.
Now a second tear opened, across from the first. Those who remained upon the net were caught now upon a kind of saddle, low at the sides, high at the ends, with those ends growing more narrow with each breath they took. Beedie stood just beyond one end so that she looked straight into Byle’s face when the far, narrow strip broke through and the entire flap of net hung down for an instant’s time, laden with clutching forms, shedding other forms amid shouted words she could not understand and some she could, old threats and obscenities, all ending in a liquid gulping, diminishing echoes, and quiet.
Beedie stood at the edge of the torn net, unable to move. Seeing her safe, Mavin dropped from her guardian’s post through the roiling steams, past fringy edges of torn
net and the quivering Stickies poised there awaiting her word, down to examine the simmering surface of the pool. Nothing floated in it. She had not measured its depth, but now knew it must be a vast cauldron to have swallowed so many without a sign remaining.
Above, where Beedie stood, the net bounced from some weight hanging below it which jiggled and fought against falling. She looked between her feet to see him hanging upon a remaining shred of root just as his hand took her by the ankle. Byle Bander. She screamed his name.
And Roges drew his knife, cut the root hairs which fastened him safe at the root wall and ran upon the gridwork, sure-footed as any Bridger, not looking down, not remembering to be afraid, thinking of nothing except the sound of her voice. He came to her while she still struggled against the hands that were pulling Byle Bander upward on her body while he cursed at her and called her filthy names.
Beedie’s cry had summoned Mavin back in that instant. She was too late. Her great bird’s beak was too late to strike those climbing hands away. Roges’s knife had already done so, and he stood with Beedie wrapped in his arms on a net which shook and shivered and threatened to collapse beneath them at any moment.
“Come on, young ones,” she said quietly. “There’s other time for that, and better places.” And she led them back to the root wall and down, not letting either of them go until she was sure they were safe.
Later, when they thought of it, they went looking for the Thinker. They could not find him. Mavin was suspicious of the Stickies for a time, but they convinced her of their innocence at last. He had gone, gone as he had come, into some other place, through some wall only he could see or understand.
“Now I’ll never know how I do it,” Mavin thought with some disappointment. “I really thought he’d figure it out and would explain it to me.” The disappointment was not sufficient to keep her from curling up upon the cave floor and sleeping for a very long time.