Lachesis took her to the edge of Purgatory. It looked quite normal and it was—but it was the boundary beyond which it was unsafe for any other person to go.
“And you and Atropos won’t be with me, even in my mind?” Niobe asked uncertainly. She had found she liked their company; it abated the grief in her memory.
We will be with you—but unconscious, Lachesis replied in thought, for they were no longer at the Abode. It would have seemed strange if any other person overheard her talking to herself. Our minds cannot face the Void. But we know yours can, for Daphne went many times. She told us it became easier each time.
“The first, the worst,” Niobe agreed wanly. “And I must seek the heart of it?”
Yes. Only there is the essence pure. Don’t forget to play out the skein.
So she could find her way back. This time a temporary, vanishing travel-thread would not do; she had to be guided by the Thread of Life itself. She certainly would not ignore that detail!
She walked on along the road. If no one could go beyond this point, for whom was the road?
Some do go beyond, Lachesis replied, more faintly. Tolerances differ. But you must go where no other goes.
“Oh? Who else uses this road?”
Some of the other Incarnations. Now Niobe had to strain to pick up the fading thought. Mars, Gaea.... It was gone.
Niobe walked on, and the road dwindled into a footpath through a dense forest. Evidently the vegetable kingdom did not feel limited! “The Incarnation of War,” she murmured. “And of Nature. I wonder what business they have here?” But there was of course no answer. She was on her own.
The forest darkened and the path narrowed until it was a vague ribbon through the gloom. The trees became oppressively large and close, as if seeking to encroach on the path and squeeze whatever was on it. She did not recognize their types; they were simply walls of rough bark, extending up until the branching foliage closed overhead, sealing off the light. But her eyes adjusted, and she could still see. It was mostly her apprehension that was affected.
Nervously, she looked back. Her thread glowed behind, marking the way she had come. She was surprised to see that it soon curved out of sight; she had thought she was going straight. But it was a comfort to know she could not get lost, and she continued to hold the distaff so as to let the thread unwind. It was a thin thread, and she worried about its breaking. But she reminded herself that no one except Atropos could sever the Thread of Life and that there was no one else out here to interfere with it anyway.
The path ended ahead. She stopped, dismayed, then realized that, though a sullen tree blocked the way, it was possible to go around it. She squeezed on by—and found another tree blocking her off. It was just as if they were stepping in front of her, like aggressive men. A false impression, surely! She squeezed around that one, too. Because the trees took up more volume of space above, they could not stand trunk-to-trunk at ground level.
They tried, however. Their roots spread out of the ground and interlocked, and their lower branches reached down. But there was always a way through, however tortuous. The trees might try to balk Fate, but could not succeed. Probably this path was so devious because it fitted through the avenue of least resistance, no straighter or broader than it had to be.
Then the trees seemed to lose cohesion. They became misshapen, with trunks either swollen or shrunken, and their foliage—
She paused to blink and stare. The foliage was wrong! It was no longer green, but purple, and the individual leaves were formed into the shapes of stars or squares or triangles. How could that be?
Obviously it could be, because it was. She moved on. The forest retreated from the path, the trees becoming stranger yet. Now they were multicolored blobs of wood and brush, and some were floating. Apparently the laws of reality were weakening.
The path led her to a slope, and the slope became steep. She walked along the contour, and on her left a mountain stretched until the peak was lost in the brightness of the sun, and on her right the slope continued down into a valley so deep as to give her vertigo. As she proceeded, the slope increased until it was almost vertical—but her feet held the path, which was a level niche cut into the slope. Then the slope above actually passed the vertical, and overhung the path, while that below became undercut, so that the path was no more than a ledge cut into a horrendously leaning cliff. One misstep would send her hurtling down!
Niobe had never been timid about heights or depths, but this daunted her. Still, she saw no reasonable alternative other than to continue on. It was, after all, supposed to be safe, and Lachesis and Atropos, her better two-thirds, would not have sent her to her doom. Their own identities were in similar peril.
But what did they really know? Apparently Daphne had never told them exactly what she had faced here. Maybe it wasn’t possible to convey the full effect—or maybe the attempt would cause needless alarm. After all, the soul substance had to be gathered, and this was where it was, so there was no choice.
She walked on. The slope became more extreme, until the upper wall curved down over the path and the lower wall seemed -to curve up under it; she was walking in a notch or groove cut in the roof of a cave. There was no floor, just cloudy vagueness.
Then the upper wall curved down until it was below the path, and the lower seemed to curve above. She was walking in the eye of a pinwheel! Who could believe geography like this?
At length she emerged from the strange configuration. Ahead was a river—no, it was the path, but—
She stopped and looked back. Behind her was the vertical pinwheel, its walls spiraling outward from the center, which was her path, and expanding in ever-greater sweeps, until she was unable to trace them with her eye. To the sides was open space, with a few faint stars winking. Before her was—well, it started like a path, but continued like a stream. She kept trying to focus on it, but kept not succeeding.
One way to find out. She resumed her walk—and the path softened. Soon she was sloughing through muck. So she removed her yellow cloak—there was no mandatory color-coding, but it seemed that Clotho traditionally wore yellow, Lachesis brown, and Atropos gray—and laid it on the path. Then she stepped into it, trying to bring as little mud along as possible. There was no problem; the mud did not adhere to her shoes at all. It was like soft plastic, slimy and flexible but cohesive, sticking only to itself.
She settled down cross-legged, feeling exposed in her under-clothing, though there really wasn’t anyone to see. She set the distaff in her lap, stretched her hands out to either side, and set her fingers in the stuff. She pushed off—and the cloak moved slightly forward. She pushed again, and it slid farther forward. After several pushes, the cloak was sliding along well enough.
Then the current caught it, and she was floating on down the stream. Her cloak formed into a saucer-shape; it made a decent if somewhat clumsy boat. She wasn’t sure why it didn’t collapse in on her, but she wasn’t sure about much else in this region, either. She took hold of her distaff before it could spin out of her lap, and played out the lifeline of thread.
The stream carried her by a floating tree, which now seemed more like an island, and on through the starry sky. Perhaps it was a reflection in the water—except that the only water was the stream that the path had become.
Then the islands became big puffs of nondescript matter, which fell apart into lesser blobs that in turn sundered, until she was in a great cloud of pebbles, and then motes, and then smoke. The smoke dissolved, and she found herself drifting in nothingness.
She glanced at her distaff, and discovered that her thread had almost run out. But the stream had not yet run its course; it was carrying her somewhere, which meant that she had not yet gotten where she was going. She couldn’t stop now, but if she didn’t, she would leave her thread behind, and she was pretty certain that would not be expedient. She had to have more thread!
She considered a moment, then dipped her hand over the side and scooped up a handful of substan
ce. It was like thin jelly or thick water. She stretched it between her hands, and it thinned into a taffylike strand. Could she fashion a thread of this? Why not; it was part of the stuff of the Void. It might not be pure, but it might do for this temporary purpose.
It was awkward doing it barehanded; she really needed a spinning wheel. Most yarn or thread was spun into fibers, ranging from the half-inch long cotton to the infinitely long silk; each type required its own special technique. The object was to render the fibers into a continuous thread that could then be worked into whatever fabric was required. The essential process in this conversion was spinning—which, very simply, was the winding of fibers together so that they became the thread. It could be done by hand, and she knew how to do it. She was, after all, a woman.
She had her distaff and spindle, but nothing to card or comb out the fibers. But this stuff of the Void didn’t seem to be fiber; it was more akin to taffy. Presumably she could stretch it out into whatever diameter and length she wanted, and fix it in that form by spinning.
She experimented. She stretched some out between her hands, then used the distaff to take up a crude skein. When she had what she wanted, she used the spindle to twist the line, and she wound it fairly tightly on the spindle. The trick was to stretch and twist and coil in just the right manner to produce an even, strong, and fine thread. This stuff was unlike any she had worked before, but Niobe had excellent coordination and experience. If anyone could do it, she could.
Indeed she could. Her body looked and felt exactly like the mortal one she had left behind, but she was Clotho now, and had magic. Under her will and guidance the stuff of the void spun into crude thread, and this she spun onto the end of the thread she had brought with her, extending it. Now she could safely continue.
At last the cloak drifted to a halt. At least, so she judged; she had no external reference points, but she no longer had to play out the thread. This, evidently, was the heart of the Void, where she had to collect her month’s supply of soul substance.
She had no container, so she used her skill again. She took a handful of the stuff she floated in, and processed it in the way she had the river. This was almost intangible, so she seemed to be going through the motions, spinning in a vacuum. But she felt a slight resistance and had faith she was succeeding. Soon she had some crude substance on her distaff: her skein of soul. She didn’t know how much she needed, but knew she could come back for more when she ran out. This had not been as bad as it might have been.
Now she had to get back. She had drifted to this region, as it was the natural direction; things always drifted toward entropy. Now she had to go against the current— and how was she to do that?
First she tried the obvious—and it worked. She hauled on her lifeline thread. She and her makeshift boat moved readily forward as she hauled; she seemed to have no inertia, no resistance. And she realized now that in the Void inertia was as baseless as matter; the rules of matter were unformed, here. Her thread was now her only connection to the material frame—if it was fair to call Purgatory that—so she was actually hauling herself in to her anchor. She hadn’t needed the thread for finding her way, but for making her way.
The floating blobs reappeared, and the river became more evident; it was a run of from organized matter, flowing from the organized to the disorganized. She had had to get beyond it, because the river was polluted by some aspects of organization. For new souls, the substance had to be as pure as she could make it; Lachesis had stressed that.
She reached the mucky portion of the stream, and finally had to get out and slough to the solid path. She was reentering contemporary reality.
“Hi, babe.”
Niobe jumped. Someone was there, standing in the path, where no person could be!
“I see you are surprised, sweets,” the figure said. He was hazy in outline, but seemed familiar.
“No one—can be here,” she faltered. “Except Mars, or Gaea, or—”
“Or Satan,” the figure concluded. “Where God can go, so can His Nemesis.”
Her whole body stiffened. This was the Prince of Evil— the one who had arranged for her death! The one she intended to punish—somehow. “I hate you!” she exclaimed.
The figure laughed. “Of course, you phenomenally lovely creature! I am the Incarnation of all Evil, and hate is far from the least of evils! Did you realize they have issued a postage stamp in My name? It says HATE-HATE-HATE-HATE-HATE! Already you are coming into My bailiwick!”
This gave her pause. It was true; when she indulged herself in hate, she drew closer to Satan, even though it was Satan she hated. A treacherous situation indeed! She really couldn’t afford to hate him.
She realized ruefully that Satan had scored against her at the outset. It was his advantage. “What are you doing here?”
“I need to clarify certain matters, sugar, as we shall doubtless be interacting henceforth.”
She couldn’t help herself. “Why don’t you clarify why you killed my husband!”
“That is precisely why I have come here, luscious plum,” Satan said. “It is known to Me that you have some misunderstanding about that matter, and it is not meet for confusion to exist between Incarnations.”
“I have no misunderstanding! You interfered in my life!”
“Not so, sweet rose! I specialize in evil; I understand its workings better than any other entity does. Evil is everywhere, to greater or lesser degree, except perhaps in God, who is, frankly, naive in this matter. Let me show you the evil that is in the other Incarnations.”
Niobe hurried along the path, poking her distaff forward to move Satan out of the way, but he floated back without moving his legs. He was simply fixed in place in relation to her, like a mirage. She could not escape his attention. “I—won’t listen to this!” she exclaimed. “The other Incarnations aren’t evil!”
“Evil is as evil does, love,” Satan said. “From your contaminated thread on, evil lurks in every mortal creature, and it is not necessarily expunged by Incarnation.”
“Contaminated thread!” Niobe exclaimed. “I just fetched it from the purest essence of the Void!”
“Purity does not exist in the Void, delicious thing,” Satan said. “Only chaos. What you have is virtually pure entropy—that is, complete disorder. When you spin it, you are imposing order—your brand of order—on the purest chaos you can obtain. That is because you want to define its order completely, with no contamination by order from any other source. But because chaos is complete, it excludes nothing, not even a smidgeon of order. You are necessarily working with imperfect substance, O heart’s desire; in fact it is that contamination of order that enables you to spin it. Without that, you would not be able to get a grip on it. But that is only part of it. That substance is a mixture of good, neutral, and evil, and it is impossible to tell which will prevail in the end. Therefore we run it through the ultimate test for its bias: animated free will.”
Niobe was trying not to listen, but not succeeding. The voice of Evil was insidiously compelling. “I’m making this thread for life!”
“Exactly, darling. Animated free will—otherwise known as life. By the time each modicum of this soul substance runs its course, the nature of its individual balance between good and evil is known, and final order can be achieved. Eventually the last of the Void will have been processed, and the entropy of the universe will have been reduced to zero. All good will be in Heaven, and all evil in Hell. The job will done, and the system will be shut down.”
Niobe was appalled. “All—life—just a—a laboratory to classify the substance of the Void?”
“Indeed. Beautiful, isn’t it? Just like you, cutie. On that day of final reckoning we shall at last know which is dominant: God or Satan. The score will tell.”
“Then what am I doing here?” she demanded, feeling dizzy.
“You are initiating the sequence, honey,” Satan said. “You are taking another spoonful of chaos out of the Void. It is a good and necessary t
ask. But evil is in your thread of life; were it not so, we would not need life at all.”
“Well, the Incarnations aren’t evil!” she said stoutly. “You said yourself that this task I’m doing is good.”
“The task is good, to be sure, doll. But the Incarnations are human—which is to say, imperfect. They have human ambitions, weaknesses, and lusts.”
“Lusts!” she exclaimed indignantly. “What are you talking about?”
“I’m so glad you asked, precious.” They were passing through the pinwheel now, the Incarnation of Evil still drifting before her like a specter, unavoidable. He was becoming clearer, and more eerily familiar. “Indeed the Incarnations do have lusts! They indulge them on occasion with mortals, but this is problematical. You see, ravishing one, the Incarnations do not age, physically—but mortals do. It is difficult for an Incarnation to maintain a relationship with one who constantly ages, particularly a romantic connection. So it is better to do it with another of his kind.”
It had not occurred to Niobe that that sort of thing existed in Purgatory. Still, Lachesis had mentioned the possible use of the body; perhaps that was not merely an extreme occasion. She herself retained her grief for Cedric and her anger at Satan for his connivance in that. She knew from her personal experience already that much of what Satan told her was true: Incarnations did retain human passions.
“Unfortunately, scrumptious,” Satan continued relentlessly, “there are relatively few Incarnations, and most are male.”
“Chronos, Thanatos, and Mars,” Niobe said shortly. “And you.”
“Those are the major ones. Some would consider God to be male too, though that really doesn’t matter. God is indifferent to mortal passions other than power.”
“The major Incarnations? There are others?” She was still trying to ignore him, but he kept intriguing her curiosity.
“Didn’t you know, sweet-buns? There’s Hypnos, who is in charge of sleep, and Eros, in charge of—”
“Never mind. What’s your point?”