“We ... remember,” blob said. “Number ... Two ... Sticky ...?” It repeated with an unmistakably questioning rise in tone.
“Number Two Sticky,” agreed Mavin. “But you will have to mark yourself somehow, so that we will know which one you are. We cannot smell the difference as you probably do. We must see it.”
Ears and bellows disappeared into the flat surface. The blobs quivered, flowed toward one another, seemed to confer through a process of multiply extrusions and withdrawals. Finally the surfaces of both began to form a dull fibrous pattern against the overall shine. The figures were clear, a large figure “1,” an even larger figure “2.”
“They’ve moved some of their bottom membrane onto their tops,” said the Thinker. “That stands to reason. They couldn’t move around at all if they were sticky on the bottom.”
The conference among the Stickies went on, and more numbers began to appear, 3, then 4 and 5 in quick succession. When all those in the clearing had identified themselves, there were fifteen.
“Handsome,” announced Mavin in an approving tone. “Very handsome. Very useful.”
“And very fortunate that the poor people of Watertight were literate,” sighed Mercald. “I wonder if any of these creatures ate the babies on Lostbridge. Poor things. They wouldn’t have enough language yet to talk with us.”
“There ... are ... more ...” said One, breathlessly. “In ... the ... place we ... stay.”
“How many?” asked the Thinker. “How many of you?”
The glue blob quivered, shivered, erupted in many small bubbles which puckered and burst, then became calm, slick, only the fibrous identifying number contrasting upon its surface. The bellows gasped, puffed hugely: “Three thousand ... nine hundred ... sixty-two now. One was ... crushed in the last ... wind.”
“And that,” said the triumphant Thinker, “proves they can reason with quite large numbers. Well. Most interesting.”
“Do all talk human talk? All understand?” Mavin’s keen sense of survival quivered to attention. How many people had there been on the lost bridge, after all? Surely not almost four thousand of them.
The ear drooped, the bellows pumped. “Only ... four hundred ... seven. All. We ... want ... ed ... did want ... did want ... not now ... understand ... not now.”
“What did you want?” asked Mavin, already sure of the answer.
“Did want ... people ... to eat. For ... the ... others.”
“Noble,” sighed Mercald. “Risking their lives to help their brethren. Giving it up when they learn it is a greater wrong ...”
“Mercald, I am not at all sure they have learned any such thing,” Mavin hissed at him, cupping her hands around her lips and standing close so that the stickies should not hear her. “They have said they do not wish to be ugly. Very well. But they desire to acquire more of—well, whatever it is they acquired when they ate the people of Watertight. They’re outnumbered nine to one by those who speak only in smells. Now, no matter how ugly I might wish to avoid being, that kind of desire would speak strongly to me. We will do them a courtesy by not putting temptation in their way.”
“Of course not,” he said with offended dignity. “I wouldn’t.”
“Then don’t adopt them, Mercald. Don’t make them into some kind of Bottom-dwelling holiness. I’ve had sortie experience with promises of expiation and reformation. I’ve seen what happens when people act on such promises prematurely. We must not risk our lives on some religious notion you may have.” She realized she was glaring, panting, that her face was flushed. “Oh, foosh, Mercald. I feel like we’ve been arguing about this for days. Can’t you simply leave the religious aspects of it alone until you can get back to Topbridge and have a convocation or something to decide what it all means.” She turned away, sure he had not heard a word she had said.
She turned to the stickies. “We have come here to find the big beasts that are eating the roots.” Mavin had started to say “Great, gray oozers,” and had then remembered what Mirtylon, nee Sticky One, had called them. “Do you know about those big beasts?”
“Beasts ... eat ... stickies ... too,” puffed Sticky Seven, quivering in indignation.
“We put... rootsap ... on them. ...” puffed another. Mavin could not see its number, hidden as it was behind two or three others. “Make little … ones sick ... die. ...”
“There, you see!” demanded Mercald. “Our interests are similar. We can help them!”
“We’re going to have to help one another,” muttered Mavin. “Rootsap won’t kill the big ones? Is that what you’re saying?”
“Too big ...” came the disconsolate reply.
“Can the net hold the beasts? Do the big beasts crawl around on top of the net?”
“Go on ... top, yes.” Puff, puff. “Sometimes, net... breaks ... beasts fell ... down ... eat us. Crawl around ... eat ... everything.” This was the same sticky that had spoken before. By extending her neck a little, Mavin could read its number. It was Sticky Eleven.
“How many beasts?” she asked. “Many?”
There was a quivering conference among the glue blobs, with much extrusion of parts and emitting of smells. At last number Eleven struggled to the front of the group. “Nine ... big ones ... left ... near here. Sap ... killed ... little ones. Always had ... little ... ones here ... making pretty stones. First time ... big beasts ... come here. They come from ... down-chasm.” Puff, puff, puff, collapse. Eleven thinned to a pancake, bellows pumping impotently.
Sticky One took up the story. “Eleven is ... right. Nine big ... ones ... left.”
All right, thought Mavin. I’ll need to think about this. She turned to Mercald and the Thinker, hammering a fingertip into her palm. “Now’s the time to negotiate. None of the three of us is a representative of the bridge people—I speak of the governance of them, Mercald, not their religion. So, we need to get Beedie down here promptly. As a Bridger, she should serve nicely as ambassador. I can think of a few things we can try, but the agreement needs to be between the stickies and the chasm people so that it can’t be repudiated later by some collection of Banders or whatnots.”
“I am glad to hear you say so,” murmured Mercald. “Whoever speaks for us should be open-hearted. There is too little love and trust in you for that. You are too cynical. I do not think you are a real messenger from the Boundless, Mavin. The white bird ... your sister ... now, she is a different matter. I can believe she is a messenger.”
Mavin stepped back, stung, angry. Ah, my sister, she thought. Poor, mad Handbright. Yes. She is a different matter indeed. Besides, she doesn’t argue with you, you pompous, self-righteous idiot!
Aloud, she said, “You have not heard me, Mercald. I’m sorry. I have tried to tell you there are dangers in the unknown.”
“And opportunities,” he said. “Opportunities to extend the hand o f friendship, the hand of ...”
“And I have asked you not to extend anything yet,” she snapped. “Wait until Beedie and Roges get down here. I’ll fetch them now and be back by the time it gets light. Just wait here, both of you, and don’t ... do ... anything.”
She cast one quick look in the Thinker’s direction, remembering that he had not yet seen her change shape. Bidding the stickies loudly to wait until she came back, she drew upon the power of the place to Shift into the great bird-bat form she had put together which could fly even in the soggy air of the chasm. Around her the place grew chill. She saw the Thinker shudder with cold as he stared at her. As she lifted through the cold in a whoosh of wings, she heard him cry out behind her.
“Marvelous! Revolutionary! A verification of the ergotic hypothesis!”
“Oh, by Towering Tamor,” Mavin muttered. “Now I’ve done it. He’ll want to talk to me about how I do this, and I can’t explain because when I try to explain or even think about it I can’t do it at all!” Resolutely, she turned her mind to other things, not thinking about flying as she circled upward toward the amber gleam of Beedie’s fire.
> As she came closer, however, she saw that it was the gleam of a torch they carried in a headlong dash down the stairs. She Shifted into her own form and met them.
“Mavin!” cried Beedie. “Whoosh, I’m glad it’s you. There’s a hundred Banders clumping down behind us, and I wanted to warn you. I know you told us to stay put, but we didn’t expect so many.”
“A hundred?” Mavin was doubtful.”Surely not so many as that.”
“One hundred seven,” said Roges, putting down his pack in order to stretch his arms. “When we heard them coming, Beedie went back up to a place she could count them as they crossed a break in the stair. One hundred seven of them, each with much cursing and many weapons. They think they are to find some great treasure down below, something the Beeds and Chafers have kept secret from them for generations.”
“You’re right,” admitted Mavin. “I expected neither so many nor so soon. Let me carry part of that for you. I think we’d best hurry to get as far ahead of them as possible. Throw the torch over; it will go out on the net below. The fish make enough light. Come. ...” She led them on down, carrying some of their burdens so that all could move faster, ignoring all attempts at conversation.
When they had come some little way, she left them in order to fly up along the stair and see the descending Banders for herself. There were over a hundred, as Roges had said, old Slysaw in the forefront, all galumphing down at a steady pace and cursing the stairs as they came. She hovered just out of their sight, listening to their mutinous threats as to what they would do if they were not allowed to rest soon, then dropped on her bat wings down the chasm once more with a feeling of some relief.
“You’ve gained good distance on them,” she told the others. “And they’ll soon stop to rest. Evidently they’ve been climbing in the wind, and even though many of them have strong Bridger’s legs, they are tired and hungry. Come, give me that pack again, and we’ll go a bit more slowly.”
Beedie refused to relinquish the pack until she was told what Mavin and the others had found in the depths. Then there were squeals of astonishment at the descriptions of the stickies and still greater astonishment when she was told they would soon meet Mirtylon and Lovewings—or what remained of them.
“The Thinker is ecstatic at all the new theories he has about them,” said Mavin. “But Mercald is determined that they are something very holy, somehow sanctified through guilt or some such. I have begged him to simply wait until we know a bit more before doing anything, but he accuses me of cynicism.”
“Mercald is such an uneven person,” said Beedie. “He can be brave as a pombi if it is a question of faith in the Boundless, and in the next minute he is peeing in his pants because he has the down-dizzies. I hope he will listen to you, Mavin, because I think he is not very realistic.”
“And I hope you’ve had time to discuss a few things besides theology,” panted Roges. “We may have gained on the Banders, but they will arrive at the Bottom eventually. When they do, they’ll expect to do away with us, I imagine.”
“I have a few ideas,” said Mavin modestly. “A few things that might work out.” Her foot jolted upon the solid floor of the chasm, and she sighed with relief. “Follow me. I’ve found a shorter way than the one we were led in by.”
She led them at a fast trot through the whiskery halls beneath the net, pointing out the features of the place as she did so; the boiling pools—including one very large, deep pond alive with steam—the flopperskin kites that dotted the net, the ankle-high holes connecting between the hallways. Though her way was much more direct than the path the stickies had led them before, daylight was shining through the flattrees on the rim when she brought them into the clearing to find—no one. No Thinker. No Mercald. No stickies.
“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 fell meeting ...”
“Oh, flopper poop,” 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, f or 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!”