"What did this world know about s.e.xual arousal?" snarled Questioner, suddenly very much aware of much she had overlooked. "Nothing! And, seemingly, neither do I. After all my instructions to you about not jumping to conclusions-"

"Forgive me for interrupting," said Mouche in the same serene but distant tone he had used since coming from the chasm. "We have every reason to believe this can be managed, but first the four of us need a little rest and something to eat and drink and some quiet conversation." He took Ellin by the hand and tugged her away, up the steep slope toward several tall stones that held between them a patch of moonlit quiet and private s.p.a.ce. Bao and Ornery followed them.

"I must be forgiven, also," said Corojum, "But I am lost in all your talk. What is s.e.xual arousal? What do you mean, Quaggima is not mother. She is child hatcher!"

Questioner replied, "On our home planet, Corojum, back when we had animals, sometimes the male was the child caregiver or hatcher. A bird called the rhea, for example. The seahorse and the stickleback, which are kinds of sea creatures. It just happens that the Quaggi is a race in which the males are the caregivers."

"Males are choosing to be this?"

"They are not choosing," Madame said in an annoyed voice. "They can't help doing it, any more than a pregnant woman can help doing it. If the egg is attached, then the Quaggi can't get rid of it. It has to bear it, even against its own will."

"Could we separate it?" asked Onsofruct. "Could the tunnelers separate it?"

"Do we have the right to interfere with another race's mode of reproduction?" Questioner asked.

"But the hatching will kill him," said Calvy. "It's already crippled him and kept him bound here for an eternity."

"Evidently, that's the way things are done among the Quaggi," said Questioner.

"Does that make it right?" cried Simon. "Just because that's the way they evolved? It's a reasoning, feeling being! It was impregnated against its will!"

D'Jevier laughed, almost hysterically. "Oh, read your history, Simon. Read your history. Some philosophers would no doubt argue that the hatchling, being innocent, has more right to life than the father! Historically, in similar cases, women were expected to sacrifice themselves!"

Onsofruct cried, "Then why should not this male creature die for its child as women have often done? It has already had a long life."

"Aside from the ethics of the situation, he shouldn't die for his child because we'll all die with him," said Madame with asperity. "Revered Hag, this is not philosophy, this is reality. Will you please keep in mind what's going on!"

"I need maintenance," snarled Questioner, more or less to herself. "This is ridiculous. How could I have made such a stupid error. Well, let us start again! Instead of Mouche, Calvy, and Simon, we will use you, Madame. And the two Hags."

Madame and D'Jevier were shocked into silence. Not so Onsofruct, who cried, "Well, if you think we females are going to make a partner for it, forget it! I for one, am not going to do it. Let us have another Miscalculation. Let the world blow itself to Kingdom Come. I don't care."

59.

Into The Fauxi-Dizalonz.

Following Onsofruct's outburst, the people on the ledge regrouped themselves in a mood of general discontent and befuddlement, the Hags and Madame taking refuge behind several large rocks at the western end of the ledge, the two men finding refuge at the eastern end. They could look upward and see movement among the standing stones, where the young people had gone to talk, or downward, where the tunneler levees were so solidly implanted they might as well have been made of stone.

At the female end of the ledge, Onsofruct said for the tenth time, "I won't do it."

"You expected Mouche to do it," snapped D'Jevier.

"He is younger than we," said Onsofruct. "He is more adaptable. If he won't do, let the off-planet girl do it. That dancer. Let Questioner do it. She's female."

"If I were less bionic and more fleshy," said Questioner, from a midpoint on the ledge, "I would leap at the chance for such an experience. Oh, yes, I would go with you."

"You mistake me," grated Onsofruct. "I refuse to go at all."

"You are female. We need females. Why would you shirk your duty to your people?"

"I have never shirked my duty to my people."

"Your duty at times must have been unpleasant," said Questioner in a tone of barely repressed annoyance. "Keeping things as they are."

Silence stretched. None of the three asked what she meant.

She continued, "When Mouche told us of our mistake, I castigated myself for stupidity. Then I wondered what else about your world I might have missed, and of course, once I started looking for it, I saw the mold, the pattern, which should have shouted to me from the beginning."

"And what pattern is that?" asked D'Jevier.

Questioner came nearer, leaning against one of the stones. "I never have enough time, I seldom have skilled help, but I always have a surfeit of data. I know all that there is to know about life here and there, including on Old Earth. There, historically, various hierarchies were preoccupied with Cura Mulierum, the care of women. Of course, in order to care for women, it is first necessary to make both men and women believe that women cannot care for themselves."

"True," said Madame. "So I have read."

Questioner went on: "The care of women has always presented a problem for government or religion, for there were always leftover women who could not be conveniently disposed of."

"Widows, I suppose," said D'Jevier tonelessly. "Or women no one wants to marry. Or women who don't want to marry."

"Oh, all of those, yes," said Questioner. "Plus women who do marry and can't bear it, or prost.i.tutes, or girls who have babies with no way to support them, or single mothers with large families, and wrinkled old crones hobbling about, muttering imprecations and getting in the way."

"Handling surplus population is a perpetual challenge," said Onsofruct. "Has it not been written that the poor are always with us?"

Questioner shook her head. "Handling surplus men isn't that difficult. Just start a lively war or find some new frontier-there's always dangerous work that needs doing. If that fails, one can create lethal rites of pa.s.sage to kill off batches at a time. One needn't pretend, not with men. The gang chief or general simply talks them into a fury and sends them into battle, and then gives them a medal after they're maimed or dead. Or, the employer gets them to use up their lives in a factory and then tosses them aside with a memento and an inadequate pension. Team spirit does the rest."

"The same would apply to women," said Madame.

"Women are not such good team players, so society has to enforce its control by pretending it's for women's own good. Then, too, women do produce babies, which multiplies the problem."

Onsofruct said in a remote voice, "Purdah always worked well. It allowed troublesome women and girls to be disposed of without anyone knowing. If no one had ever seen your wife or daughters, who would wonder if they disappeared? And then there were nunneries, and witch hunts. I understand religion on Old Earth managed to remove a great many elderly women by claiming they were witches."

"The most efficient strategy was economic," said D'Jevier in that same remote, uncaring voice. "Pay them so little they can't get by, or don't hire them at all because women belong at home, and then throw them in jail when they turn to beggary, thievery, or prost.i.tution because they and their children are hungry."

Questioner said, "How fortunate you are that the problem has never arisen here on Newholme."

"Fewer women than men are born," said Madame.

"So I have been told," said Questioner. "But the Hags and I know that isn't true."

The silence stretched. The Hags stared at one another, their faces very still and white.

Questioner rose. "I might have excused the slaughter of the Timmys for various reasons, but doing away with half the female babies born on this planet I cannot excuse."

D'Jevier turned away.

Madame cried, "No! You wouldn't! Jevvy? You couldn't have?"

Silence. The Hags stared into the distance, saying nothing.

Madame demanded, "D'Jevier, tell me it isn't true!"

D'Jevier said, "Let us explain ..."

"No," said Questioner. "Do not try to explain. I am, quite frankly, sick of explanations!"

After a lengthy silence, Onsofruct whispered, "What will you do?"

Questioner drew herself up. "a.s.suming we are left alive to do anything, Revered Hags, I will sterilize the race of mankind on this planet, as I have done elsewhere for less provocation."

She left them, going out onto the ledge, unwilling to listen to the pleadings that no doubt hung on their lips. It didn't matter what they said. She didn't care what they said. Within her, Mathilla, and M'Tafa, and Tiu didn't care what they said. It was simply more injustice. More repression and torture. It was unforgivable!

Ignoring the tumult at the other end of the ledge, Calvy and Simon were watching the descending monsters. The first of them, one of the great crawlers, had reached the Fauxi-dizalonz, bellowing as it plunged. Behind it, the next one pushed into the liquid, dissolving at the leading edge before the following edge had reached the pond, a pond which lapped at its sh.o.r.es like a living thing, its ripples spreading ever more widely.

The next one in the line was a spherical orb of muscles. "Roll 'em over," it cried. From one side Ear dangled, and from the other Tongue flapped, "Roll 'em over!"

It entered the pond like a cannon ball, with a great body-flopping splash that splatted down in a glistening layer that covered the monster like partially set aspic, dripping from his enormous form as he sank gradually into the goo. Tongue, dislodged by the splash, floated about on the surface, gargling "Help, help, I'm drown-ding...."

Flailing and dragging, Crawly came next, with Old Pete jouncing and throbbing behind him, and it was there that the procession stalled, for Crawly entered the pond so slowly that he dissolved while barely in, leaving no traction to move Old Pete. All the monsters came to a halt, still marching in place, voices calling the cadence: hup, hup, hup hup, hup, hup. Then from somewhere a great voice uttered, shivering the surrounding soil. Several leggers raced from a nearby cave, disa.s.sembled to get themselves into position, then rea.s.sembled to push Old Pete into the pond, little by little, to the accompaniment of shouted commands by their own voice boxes. "Grab him by the b.a.l.l.s! Catch him higher up! Push him in!"

When the last of Pete vanished in the goo, the leggers broke into their const.i.tuent parts and fled while the next rank of monsters, still hup-two-three-fouring, moved forward and into the increasingly turbid Fauxi-dizalonz, whose surface was spreading wider with each addition.

From their position on the ledge, Madame broke the silence. "Up around the first curve, there's Bane and Dyre, and that's Thor Ashburn next to them."

"Why is he naked?" asked Onsofruct, distractedly. "And what's that he's got wrapped around his waist?"

"It looks very much like a whip," murmured D'Jevier. "Though it seems to be attached between his legs."

Glad of the distraction, Madame focused on the distant figure. "Well," she remarked, "I would say it's a smaller version of p.e.n.i.s-man's appendage. One designed for inflicting punishment. How very interesting. Clothed, he showed no hint of it at all."

"I believe you're right," said Questioner from her position at the center of the ledge. "An interesting variant."

"None of this makes sense," said Calvy, coming to stand beside Questioner. "How is one to understand it?"

Questioner said, "The Fauzi-dizalonz is like a mirror that reflects one's desires. When you go through the first time, you come out looking as your thoughts and desires would form you, looking like that thing which is most important to you. To that monster, the one you call p.e.n.i.s-man, being male and light-skinned was most important to him. He emerged pale and male and sat in that cave for centuries becoming ever paler and maler. Whatever the others are, they display what was important to them."

Calvy said, "If there had been women among them, no doubt some would have emerged as Breast-woman or Uterus-woman or Hair-woman."

"Lips-woman, or Legs-woman," offered Simon. "Mouth-woman, Nagger-woman ..."

"Enough, Simon," said Madame, joining them from among the stones, D'Jevier trailing behind.

"But what's the Fauxi-dizalonz good for?" begged D'Jevier. "What's its purpose?"

Questioner said, "I infer that when Kaorugi sends one of its parts out to do something, the part returns with information. The information may be so vital that it will suggest a change or improvement in general structure. In the Fauxi-dizalonz, the information can be evaluated and implemented and possibly spread around to other units." She fell silent, thinking. "From what we've heard from the Corojum, I infer also that the Fauxi-dizalonz destroys information. If a part has experienced evil or felt great pain, Kaorugi takes that memory away...."

"But these monsters didn't go back in the Fauxi-dizalonz? So what will Bofusdiaga do with them now?" asked D'Jevier.

"They have been too long unfinished to send back through. Now they are only raw material," said Questioner, "from which to a.s.semble a partner for Quaggima. Using one or more of you ladies for motive power."

Among a small grove of standing stones, the four young people were hunkered down knee to knee with Flowing Green.

"Long ago and long ago," whispered Flowing Green in a voice like wind through the trees, "Kaorugi knew all living things, for there was only Kaorugi to know. Then came Quaggima. Oh, but it was strange when Quaggima came. Outside-ness came with Quaggima. Other-ness came with Quaggima. Separate life came with Quaggima. Kaorugi knew no outside, no other, no separateness from self until then.

"Kaorugi went deep, to think. Kaorugi makes all living things, but Kaorugi had never thought of making a thinking thing that was not part of itself. Only after Quaggima came, only after mankinds came and killed so many Timmys and Corojumi, only then did Kaorugi wonder if Kaorugi could make something that was not part of itself.

"Kaorugi told the last Corojum to take a pattern of this otherness, and Corojum took a pattern from you, Mouchidi. Corojum took a tiny bit of you, skin and blood, and Corojum bit you and put a tiny bit of Kaorugi into you. Inside you, the Kaorugi part grew. And the part Corojum took from you, Kaorugi used it when it made me. I am a strangeness, Mouchidi. Even Corojum says so, and Corojum is my friend. I am made of Kaorugi and made of you, a Timmy, yes, but a separate-part mankind creature also.

"So, now, if all is not to end or go back to long ago beginning and start over, we must create together, you and I and Kaorugi. Something that is not mankind alone. Not Timmy alone. Not even Kaorugi alone. And we must do it for sorrow of Quaggima, for pity of little ones in the egg, for delirious delight of it, for ecstacy of it, for love of it."

"We," said Ellin. "You mean you and Mouche?"

"Flowing Green and Mouche, yes, but Kaorugi says better if also Ellin and Bao and Ornery, if they can," said Flowing Green. "Because Ellin and Bao and Orneiy are good pretenders, and to make what must be made, we cannot be only what we are, you see?"

"I don't see," said Ornery, stubbornly.

Flowing Green whispered a sigh. "On your machine, you saw what the dancers did, what they became, each part doing its own part, thousands of them. This was long in the design, long in the rehearsal. We have no time for design, no time for rehearsal, no time for the many to be ch.o.r.eographed into something huge. We must do it as one thing, first time! To become what we must become, we must imagine. That is the word? We must turn into something else. We must ... join, lay aside, divest ..."

"Metamorphose," suggested Bao. "Be turning into a new creature?"

"This is so. Questioner is right. It must be one thing. Male and female and neither. Joy and sorrow and neither. Pleasure and pain and neither. Bigger than we are, and wider and longer, a thing to be to Quaggima what Quaggima needs, and we must do it right, first time."

"Extemporaneously," offered Ellin.

"Yes," cried Flowing Green. "You are good pretenders! I have listened to you in the walls! You imagine. You dance, you are someone else. You are always being other people. You want want to be other people. And Bao, when he dances, he is a woman person else. And Ornery is a man person else, not what she was born, and Mouche ... oh, Mouche is all kinds of things to the women people he knows. Kaorugi is fascinated by you mankinds, that you are not content to be only the thing you are, so you are full of dreams. Well, this is a dream. In this dream we will really become another being. I am ... accustomed to this, but mankinds are not. You dream it, you do not do it, but of all mankinds on this world, you four are the best mankinds to try to really do it. Not the Hags, too old, too set, like stone. Not the Questioner, she is not even all flesh that can be reshaped. Not the men, they are set, too, in maleness, only, not like Bao, or even Mouche...." to be other people. And Bao, when he dances, he is a woman person else. And Ornery is a man person else, not what she was born, and Mouche ... oh, Mouche is all kinds of things to the women people he knows. Kaorugi is fascinated by you mankinds, that you are not content to be only the thing you are, so you are full of dreams. Well, this is a dream. In this dream we will really become another being. I am ... accustomed to this, but mankinds are not. You dream it, you do not do it, but of all mankinds on this world, you four are the best mankinds to try to really do it. Not the Hags, too old, too set, like stone. Not the Questioner, she is not even all flesh that can be reshaped. Not the men, they are set, too, in maleness, only, not like Bao, or even Mouche...."

"It is seeming to be a risk...." murmured Bao. "We might fail, we might die...."

"Ah," said Flowing Green. "Yes, we may fail, we may die, but if we do not do this, we will truly fail, we will truly die."

Mouche leaned forward and took Ellin's hands in his own, murmuring words of encouragement. She would do it. He knew it, and so did she, but she needed to be encouraged.

Bao turned to Ornery, taking her hands, saying in his woman's voice, "This is being wonderful. Think, Ornery, what an adventure!"

Ornery surprised herself by smiling into his eyes, feeling herself respond to his excitement. "Yes," she said. "Oh, yes. What are we to do?"

"Now we wait," said Mouche. "Until it is time."

Questioner moved only a little distance from the women, and Madame followed her to lean plaintively against the rocky side of the caldera. "Questioner, I realize how angry you must be, but believe me, I didn't know. Most of the people on Newholme didn't know. What you accuse them of ... it must have been done entirely by the Hags. You aren't suggesting that they, and I, go into that pond as a kind of punishment or reparation, are you? You'd have told us if there were some other way?"

"Punishment is not my business," said Questioner. "As I have said to others, it never works anyhow. Putting right is my business. Unfortunately, when things are put right, often the innocent suffer with the guilty. If there were some other way, I would try it. Even if I could reach my ship, which I've been unable to do since we first went underground, my crew could do nothing on this short notice, so the situation is simple. We will all be destroyed within the next few hours if something isn't done, so you women have the choice of self-destruction now, soon, or of living the remainder of your lives in some honor."

"Honor!"

"You will have saved the Quaggi and its egg. A not inconsiderable achievement."