“Thank you for telling me that much,” Geo said. “What is your question?”
She glanced down at the flame once more and recited:
“It is not one that I have heard before,” Geo said. “I’m not even sure I know what the question is. I’m familiar with neither its diction nor style.”
“I doubted very much you would recognize it.” Argo smiled.
“Is it part of the pre-purge rituals of Argo?”
“It was written by my granddaughter,” Argo said. “The question is: could you explain it to me?”
“Oh,” said Geo. “I didn’t realize…” He paused. “By the dark chamber sits its twin, moving in and out; and that’s where the floods of the body begin. And they are twinned again. The heart?” he suggested. “The four-chambered human heart? That’s where the body’s flood begins.”
“I think that will do for part of the answer.”
“The bright chamber,” mused Geo. “The burning dome. The human mind, I guess. The line of division, running down the lane of memory…I’m not sure.”
“You seem to be doing fairly well.”
“Could it refer to something like ‘the two sides of every question’?” Geo asked. “Or something similar?”
“It could,” Argo said. “Though I must confess I hadn’t thought of it in that way. But it is the last two lines that puzzle me.”
“Fear floods in the turning room,” repeated Geo. “Love breaks in the burning dome. I guess that’s the mind and the heart again. You usually think of love with the heart and fear with the mind. Maybe she meant that they both, the heart and the mind, have control over both love and fear.”
“Perhaps she did.” Argo smiled. “You must ask her…when you rescue her from the clutches of Hama.”
“Does your granddaughter want to be a poet?” Geo asked.
“I’m not sure what she wants to be,” Argo said. “It can be very trying. But you must go to sleep now. Tomorrow you will have to complete your mission.”
“Thank you,” Geo said, grateful for his dismissal. “I am…am very sleepy.”
Before going back to the room to his companions, he looked once more into the volcano. Tongues of light licked the black rock. He turned away now and walked back into the darkness.
Chapter Ten
Dawn lay aslant the crater’s ridge. Argo pointed down the opposite slope. A black temple at the bottom sat among trees and lawns. “Hama’s Temple,” Argo said. “You have your task. Good luck.”
They started down the cinder slope. It took them about thirty minutes to reach the first trees that surrounded the dark buildings and the vast gardens. As they crossed the first lip of grass, a sudden cluster of notes spilled from a tree.
“A bird,” Iimmi said. “I haven’t heard one since I left Leptar.”
Bright blue and the length of a man’s forefinger, a lizard ran halfway down the trunk of the tree. Its sapphire belly heaved in the early light; it opened its red mouth, its throat fluttered, and there was another burst of music.
“Oh well,” said Iimmi. “I was close.”
They walked farther until Geo mused: “I wonder why you always think things are going to turn out like you expect.”
“Because when something sounds like that,” declared Urson, “it’s supposed to be a bird!” He shuddered. “Lizards!”
“It was a pretty lizard,” said Geo.
“Echhh!” said Urson.
“Going around expecting things to be what they seem can get you in trouble…on this Island.”
There was another sound from the grove beside them. They looked up. The man standing in the center raised his hand and said briskly, “Stop!”
They stopped.
He wore dark robes, and his white hair made a close helmet above his brown face.
Urson’s hand was on his sword. Snake’s hands were out from his sides.
“Who are you?” the man declared.
“Who are you?” Urson parried.
“I am Hama Incarnate.”
They were silent. Finally Geo said, “We are travelers in Aptor. We don’t mean any harm.”
As the man moved forward, splotches of light from the trees slipped across his robe. “Come with me,” Hama said. He turned and proceeded among the trees. They followed.
They entered the Temple garden. It was early enough in the morning so that the sunlight lapped pink tongues over the giant urns along the edges of the path. They reached the Temple.
The mirrors on the sides of the vestibule tossed images back and forth as they passed between. Beyond pillars of onyx spread the shiny floor of the Temple. On the huge altar sat an immense statue of a cross-legged man. In one monstrous black hand was a scythe. In the other, shafts of grain spired four stories toward the ceiling. Of the three eyes in the head, only the middle one was open.
As they passed, Hama looked at the jewels on Iimmi’s and Geo’s necks and then up at the gazing eye. “The morning rites have not yet started,” he said. “They will begin in a half hour. By then I hope to have divined your purpose in coming here.”
At the other side of the hall they mounted a stairway. Above the door was a black circle dotted with three eyes. Just as they were about to go in, Geo looked around, frowned, and caught Iimmi’s eye. “Snake?” he mouthed.
Iimmi looked around and shrugged. The boy was not with them.
The room contained screens like the ones in the volcanic chapel and at the convent of the blind priestesses. Other equipment also: a large worktable, and on one wall, a window through which they could see the Temple garden.
Hama faced them, apparently unaware of Snake’s disappearance. As he closed the door now, he said, “You have come to oppose the forces of Aptor, am I right? You come to steal the jewel of Hama. You have come to kidnap Incarnate Argo. Will you deny that is your purpose? Keep your hand off your sword, Urson!..Don’t move. I can kill you in a moment — ”
She pushed her fist from under the sheet, squinched her eyes as tight as she could, and said, “Yahhhhhwashangnnn, damn!” Then again, “Damn! I’m sleepy.” She rolled over and cuddled the pillow. Then she opened her eyes, one at a time, and lay watching the near-complete motor sitting on the table beside her bed. Her eyes closed.
And opened again. “I cannot afford to go back to sleep this morning,” she said softly. “One, two, three!” She threw the covers off, sat up, flung her feet onto the stone floor, and jumped erect, blinking hard from the shock of flesh and cold rock. She put her teeth together and said loudly, “Gnnnnnnnnnn,” and stretched to tiptoe.
Then she collapsed on the bed and jammed her feet under the covers again. With thirty feet of one-and-a-half-inch brass pipe, she mused sleepily, I could carry heat from the main hot-water line under the floor, which I would estimate to be about the proper surface area to keep these stones warm. Let me see: thirty feet of one-and-a-half-inch pipe has a surface area of 22/7 times 3/2 times 30, which is 990 divided by 7, which is…Then she caught herself. Damn, thinking about this to avoid thinking about getting up. She opened her eyes once more, put feet on the stone, and held them there while she scratched vigorously at her hair.