"'The cold-blood who drinks hot blood.'"
It was Shiyai, the green-eyed and green-robed, however, who first lifted a cup.
"To the other," she said.
"To the other," Grrindah and Wopolsa said.
Ramstan raised his goblet. "To the other."
After a brief pause, he said, "And to the one who is not the other. To both."
He did not know why he said that or what it meant. But some sort of defiance was called for.
The three looked at him over their goblets. Then they said, "To both," and they drank.
Ramstan, flicking his gaze from the one on his left to the one on his right, sipped. The liquid was heavy but cool and delicious, though he could not quite identify its contents. He knew that he could not taste anything which his tongue buds were not receptive to. But it was also possible that these were genetically receptive to this liquid yet had not experienced on Earth, or anywhere until now, this particular taste.
Lowering the goblet, Ramstan said, "I have many questions. I hope you don't mind answering them."
"We have questions which have gone unanswered for eons," Grrindah said. "I hope you aren't going to ask us any of those."
She broke into laughter again.
He looked with some disgust at Wopolsa. Unlike the others, she was still drinking.
"The cold-blood who drinks hot blood." Cold-blooded? She looked as human as the others; she was no more batrachian or reptilian than they. Or did something other than blood flow in her?
Ramstan sketched the story of Wassruss, though he felt that they knew it. Then he said, "I followed the directions in the chant. Now, if you please, tell me the origin and reason for the chant."
"You could find that chant in many millions of societies," Shiyai said. "We originated and instituted it on thousands of planets and it has spread over millions of years. But, more often than not, it has become distorted and so useless. However, it has served its purpose. You are here."
This confused Ramstan and made him more uncertain than before.
"The same chant existed on Kalafala. But you were not there long enough to encounter it."
"You mean," he said, "that this chant was made long ago and far away just so that I might hear it?"
"In a sense, yes," Grrindah said. "But there were and are millions who might have heard it before you did. They would have served us as well."
"I don't understand."
"You and those like you, male and female adults, even some precocious children, were and are of a type inclined to follow the directions and to bring with them what we need. Also, because of their peculiar temperament and magnetism, they cause a focus of certain forces about them."
"I still don't understand."
"There is physical and psychic magnetism, though the two spring from the same source. Perhaps it would be a better analogy to say that there is physical and psychic gravitation. Just as a certain mass bends space around it, no matter what the quality or composition of the mass, so does psychic gravity bend events toward itself. But psychic magnetism differs from physical magnetism in that it is not the mass but the quality and proportion of qualities that determine the psychic gravitational attraction and the kind and quality of events it draws to itself. Perhaps someday we'll show you the mathematics of this. I doubt it, though. None of us has time for that."
Ramstan bit his lip, then said, "Shiyai, it was your voice I heard in the tavern. And it was surely you whom I glimpsed outside my hotel door and on the beach on Webn. I . . ."
"It was also I whom you saw on the tape in your quarters," the green-robed one said.
"How? Why is that?" Ramstan said.
"She rides the thoughts of God," Grrindah said. "Or something like It."
Grrindah laughed.
Ramstan was irritated by her cachinnations. How, he wondered, could the others have endured this rasping habit for so long?
"Not she but her projected image, though it's not really an image as you think of such," Shiyai said. "It's a method of mental transportation in one sense. In another, it's something else. A plucking of certain strings in the harp of space-time fabric. A music which you hear with certain of your mental senses, which hearing is transmuted into physical sight and sound, sometimes, smell and taste and feel, too."
"Just as an electron may be described as both a wave and a particle," Wopolsa said.
"And something else too," Grrindah said, and she cackled.
"I would say that Shiyai rides, not the thoughts of God or Whatever, but Its voice. The vibrations of Its voice, rather," Grrindah said.
Ramstan was thankful that she did not laugh this time. "We are using poetry to try to tell you what happens scientifically," Shiyai said.
"Poetry and science. Never the twain shall meet," Wopolsa said.
"Not in the Pluriverse we know," Grrindah said. "But there is a realm where they do."
She laughed.
Ramstan thought of when the glyfa had mentioned the Pluriverse. And that made him wish that the glyfa would speak up within him now. He needed counsel desperately.
The animal, Duurowms, had taken the tray out of the chamber. Now he returned and leaped upward, catching the giant jewel in his hands, drawing himself up, and coiling himself around the top of the glittering gem. One dark eye fixed upon Ramstan. Sometime later, glancing up, Ramstan saw that the eye had closed and that the animal seemed asleep.
"It takes immense energy and artistry to ride the voice of God without falling off," Shiyai said. "It is also very dangerous, which is why I do the riding or the plucking of the harp, and not my sisters. I am the most energetic and artistic. And, since it is so demanding and perilous, I seldom ride. That is why you did not hear or see me more often."
"Besides," Grrindah said, "the other was also enticing you here. Though the other is working against us, it is also working for us. It can't help it any more than we can help working for and against it."
Shiyai said, "It's time to quit being coy, sisters. We should tell him everything."
"Everything?" Grrundah said, and she laughed.
"All he should know and a little more."
Ramstan boiled with eagerness to hear this, but there was also something he must say.
"Your pets in the well?" he said.
The three looked at each other, two smiling widely, Grrindah laughing.
"He's very perceptive," Shiyai said.
Then their flesh began melting or seemed to do so. A shimmering wrapped around them, reddish, blue-streaked waves which hurt his eyes, though not so much that he could not look directly into them.
Suddenly, the light and the melting had ceased. Now Shiyai was a beautiful young woman. Grrindah was a handsome middle-aged woman. Wopolsa had seemed to be so old that she could not possibly look more ancient. But she did, and her eyes seemed to have expanded, and Ramstan saw stars in the abysmal black emptiness. Only for an instant. They made him cold and frightened.
Shiyai said, "Now you see us in another form. Not because we have changed form, but because we have allowed other constructs, molds in your mind, to be filled with us. Yet, in a sense, you are seeing us as we are. Especially, Wopolsa."
Ramstan ignored her remarks.
"The pets?" he said. "Are they really pets? Or are they . . . really you? And you are the projections? Are they the sentients, the masters?"
All three laughed uproariously.
When the last of the echoes had bounced from the far walls, Grrindah said, "Perhaps the beings in the well are only projections. Which would, of course, also make us projections of projections. Or perhaps the citizens of the well have been projections so long that they have become realized as solid beings, actualizations of the potentialities of matter, fantasies of light that have transmuted into reality. Though, of course, fantasy is as real as reality, being engendered by reality and maintained by it. Without matter, there is no fantasy, though there may be matter without fantasy. Or is it the other way around or both at the same time
?"
"That's enough," Wopolsa said. "Ask, and you must pay the price. But, first, we will tell you what the price is. Your questions so far have been for free."
"I have many questions," Ramstan said.
"The price from now on is the same for one or many," Wopolsa said. "However, first . . ."
And the three told him much, though not all he needed to know. What he did hear, however, was more than he liked to hear.
... 21 ...
If a tack could have feelings and it had been hit directly with a sledgehammer, it would have felt as Ramstan did. If a rabbit had been seized by a tiger, it would have felt as Ramstan did.
Even so, he thought, and the thought was fire though a flicker, even so there was a difference between him and the tack, between him and the rabbit. He was a man and, thus, not helpless. He had not been utterly crushed and ruined by the hammerb1ows of the revelations. He was not paralyzed with fear forever. He could still fight; the flicker would become a roaring flame.
Was that just bravado? No sooner had he told himself that than he had been hit with another great shock. No. Two more.
While he was still sitting in the trio's chambers, reeling though sitting, Nuoli had called through the skinceiver.
"Captain! You must return to ship! At once!"
Her voice seemed to come through many layers of wool, to be so muffled and distant that it was like a voice in a dream.
"What's the emergency?"
"I don't know, Captain. Commodore Benagur has ordered it."
" Benagur?"
He found it difficult to concentrate upon what she'd said. There was nothing important outside this room. But he forced himself to give at least part of his mind to Nuoli.
"Benagur? He's still in sickbay. What's he doing . . . issuing orders? Where is . . . what's happened to Tenno?"
There was a silence. Nuoli must be using a different frequency to talk to ship. Why?
She spoke again, her voice tense.
"Neither Benagur nor Tenno will tell me, sir. They just repeat that you must return at once."
The Vwoordha had been silent for some time awaiting his answer.
He said, "Pardon me. I must call my ship."
They said nothing.
He spoke into his skinceiver, but there was no response from al-Buraq.
He then called Nuoli. "What frequency are you using when you talk to Benagur?"
"I'm sorry, sir," she said, "but Commodore Benagur has ordered me not to divulge that to you."
The rage thrust deep under the iciness volcanoed out. He shouted, "Who's in command? Benagur or me?"
Even the Vwoordha started, and the animal opened its eye. Nuoli hesitated, then said, "I'm sorry, Captain. You've been relieved of your command."
"How in Satan's name could that be?"
"I don't know, sir. Just a minute."
Ramstan rose unsteadily, his legs numb from sitting cross-legged for so long.
"I must go now," he said in Urzint.
Shiyai raised beautiful black eyebrows and said, "Your answer?"
"That will have to wait."
Grrindah said, "Someone on your vessel has found the glyfa."
Ramstan felt the blood drain from him again.
"How . . . how do you know?"
"I don't know. But I suspect that that would be the only reason you'd be deprived of your command. Perhaps the glyfa has guided someone to it so that it could be found. I do not know why it should, but it plays a deep game."
"No!" Ramstan cried. "It would have told me that it had been found!"
"Not if it had a reason not to."
"Benagur! He must have gotten into my quarters somehow and found it! But if he did it was with the connivance of someone else! Indra! Only Indra could have done it!"
He stopped. He was breathing heavily. Then, almost irrelevantly, it struck him that the three understood Terrish. Until now, he had assumed that they did not. But if one of them could ride the thoughts or the voice of God or whatever it was through the Pluriverse, then one could also eavesdrop anywhere.
Wopolsa said, "If you no longer have the glyfa, then you cannot help us. But the price is still the same."
He turned and strode out the front door. Down the slope was the launch, its entire crew looking up at him. Even at this ditance, he could see the strain on their faces. He spoke into the skinceiver. "Bring the launch here."
The vessel had just landed by him, and he was taking the first step up, when the com-set blared. Benagur was speaking.
"Nuoli! Return to ship immediately! The Tolt ship has just been detected in orbit above us! I repeat, return at once! If Ramstan is not aboard, return anyway! I repeat, return at once at full speed within the limits of prudence!"
Nuoli said, "Commodore, Captain Ramstan is aboard. Will leave at once as ordered!"
Ramstan thought of jumping off the launch and taking refuge in the house of the Vwoordha. He could only face disgrace in al-Buraq, and the glyfa was lost to him. Though the urge was strong, it did not overcome him. Whatever wrong he had done, he had acted with full knowledge of the possible consequences and full, though not ready, acceptance of the punishment if he were caught. Whatever he was, he was not a coward. If he had been one, he would no longer be.
In other circumstances the affirmation might have been a temporary relief. Not now. The Tolt ship was a menace, and his ship was commanded by a madman. How had Benagur been able to assume command? Why had not Tenno taken over? Surely, he must know that the commodore was not fit for the post of captain. Perhaps, the discovery of the glyfa by Benagur had vindicated him, had convinced Tenno that Ramstan had falsely accused Benagur of insanity for his own perverted reasons. But Doctor Hu surely had her doubts about Benagur, and she would not have been hesitant to voice them.
There was nothing to do but wait until he returned to al-Buraq. This was done swiftly, the pilot having set the launch to return on the plotted course, the computer slowing the velocity only when turn and obstacle demanded it.
Sitting in the rear, the only one watching him a marine guard, Ramstan moved his lips, subvocalizing. He called to the glyfa, but he got no reply. Ramstan cursed and struck his thigh with his fist, causing the marine to jump back, his hand moving toward his holstered olson.
"Don't worry, lad," Ramstan said. "I'm just angry at myself." The launch shot into the port in the midst of shrill alarms and glowing orange orders on moving screens. Ship was being readied for standby before alaraf drive.
The deck and bulkheads quivered, al-Buraq's welcome home to him, a tail-wagging, as it were. He wondered how ship would react when she found out that he was no longer the master. Would she shift loyalty to Benagur? The commodore probably was not aware of the affection circuit in her system, but Indra was. Would be recommend its excision if Benagur had trouble with her?
In the long history of sea navies, many crews had mutinied. But, so far, there was no record of a rebellion in a spaceship.