III
It was near sunset. Boys and boy-children were roasting a tremendous fish over coals. Ktollisp was telling them a tale. The children were making much of a pair of indolent furred snakes. Corbell looked for Gording's white hair.
He found Gording and Krayhayft and Skatholtz a good distance from the main group. They were spitting Boyish too fast for Corbell's understanding. He caught the word for Girls, and his own word Ganymede. And he saw the third cat-tail curled in an orange spiral on a rock almost behind Skatholtz.
They saw him. Gording said, "Good! Corbell's sources of knowledge are different from ours."
Krayhayft scoffed. "He did not even see the implications."
Skatholtz said, "Gording is right. Corbell, in one of our tales there is a line with no meaning. The tale tells of the war between Girls and Boys. The line tells that each side destroyed the other."
Corbell sat down cross-legged next to Skatholtz. "Could this have something to do with our strayed planet?"
"Yes, with the mere fleck of light that grows brighter but does not move against the background of fixed stars. Do you understand what that might mean?"
He'd been assuming that that dot of light was the banded gas giant Peerssa had shown him; but that didn't have to be true. If something in the sky grew brighter without moving... grew closer, with no shift sideways?
"It's coming down our throats!"
"Well phrased," said Skatholtz.
But it was monstrously unfair that Corbell should have found eternal youth just before the end of the world! "You're guessing," he said.
"Of course. But the Girls ruled the sky," Krayhayft said. "When the Girls knew they had lost, they may have aimed your missing Ganymede on a long path to smash the world."
He couldn't let this moon thing distract him. When his chance came he had to be ready. But did it matter? What if Don Juan had brought him home just in time to face impact with a lost moon!
"Wait a minute. Why not a short path?"
Krayhayft shrugged. Skatholtz said, "Who can know the mind of a Girl? They are long dead."
"They weren't stupid. The longer the path, the more chance the moon would miss the world. It's been-" Divide by twelve. "-a hundred thousand years, after all."
"We do not know how they moved worlds. How can we know what difficulties they faced? Perhaps the long path was their only choice."
Corbell stood up. He stretched, then sat down on the smooth rock behind him: a big boulder with a cat-tail sleeping on top, well behind his head. He braced his feet against a smaller, half-buried boulder.
"I don't like it. I don't like my place in it. Any minor design change in Don Juan and I could have been back a hundred thousand years sooner or later. What are the odds I'd get here just in time for all the excitement?"
Gording laughed at him. "What an odd bit of luck, that I should be alive at this time!"
"And I!" Skatholtz cried.
Corbell flushed. "Could the tale have meant something else?"
"Of course. No detail is given," Skatholtz said.
"Okay. The Girls knew they'd had it. They were looking for revenge... but why in the sky? They must have lost control of the sky already. Otherwise they would have put the Earth back where it belonged, further from Jupiter, where it wouldn't get too much heat. So they couldn't have thrown a moon at Earth, long path or short path."
"The moon is coming anyway," said Krayhayft.
But Skatholtz said, "Let him speak."
"Did I tell you what Mirelly-Lyra told me? She-" he tripped on the Boyish phrases, then, "she left zero-time with a thousand prisoners. Some of them lived to reach this place. She says the Boys took them, but she escaped."
"You've lost the thread of thought," Krayhayft reproved him.
"No, it fits in. Look, if the Girls were that close to ruined, there wasn't much they could do. But if the Boys were keeping all the dikta in the same place, the Girls could wipe them out."
And as he said it he knew he was right. They all saw it... and their minds were better than his. Without the dikta there would be no more Boys. Only a dwindling population of immortals dying one by one, by accident and boredom and act of God.
"Your Mirelly-Lyra escaped," said Skatholtz, "because there were too few Boys left to hunt her down. The new dikta became pampered pets, they who had been criminals in pre-history." He barked bitter laughter. "But the moon still comes. If it is a random result of the Girls' loss of control, still it could destroy us. Even a near miss-" His Boyish went into high gear... and the others joined in... faster and faster... excluding Corbell. Suddenly the Boys got to their feet and left. They had excluded Gording, too.
For an instant Gording let his fury show... and then he relaxed. And Corbell tested his footing. Butt on smooth rock, feet in front of him against rock that seemed steady... and he dared not look behind him.
"It would not do," Gording said bitterly, "for Boys to discuss such important matters with a dikt."
"What was that about?"
"They must choose, you see. If the moon strikes the world, time ends. But if the moon comes by mischance, it may still pass close by the world. Tides. Earthquakes."
"Oh. Dikta City's right on the ocean. They'll have to move you."
"Move us how? Where? They can't let us go free. We are their treasure, their source, their valued property." Gording was angry already: almost angry enough to strike out at the nearest target.
Now: "Maybe they'll just take some women, the best they can find. Mate them with the boy-children. There's no scarcity of Boys. They can wait till the stock builds up again. After all, they have to be fairly careful with their breeding, considering that their original stock was a bunch of rejects from-"
Unexpectedly soon, unexpectedly fast, Gording leapt for his throat. Corbell pushed hard against the rock, kicked himself out from under Gording's leap. He reached over his head.
Startled from sleep, the cat-tail tried to leap away. Corbell's hand closed on its tail.
Gording hit ground and came at him again, face calm, hands outstretched for murder. He wasn't quick enough. Corbell swung the cat-tail into his face. The beast's teeth closed in Gording's neck. In that moment of distraction Corbell swung a haymaker at his jaw.
Gording jerked aside. The cat-tail was a tight fur collar, its teeth were still in his neck, but he hadn't been as distracted as Corbell had thought. Hopelessly off balance himself, Corbell watched the old man set himself and lash out.
The hard fist sank into his solar plexus. Corbell doubled over. Lightning exploded at the nape of his neck.
His belly hurt... his neck hurt... he was curled on his side in crushed strawberries. He tried to uncurl.
They were standing around him, a lot of Boys looking down. Skatholtz was shaking his head and smiling. "Magnificent, Corbell!"
"Then," said Corbell, "why am I lying on the ground hurting? Never mind." He uncurled a little more. Gording stood relaxed, his hand covering the flesh torn by cat-tail teeth. He showed no inclination to resume hostilities.
Corbell said, "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that. Maybe it's jealousy. You're all like . you're all smarter than I am, and it shows."
There was blood beneath the hand Gording held to his neck. He breathed heavily. He said, "I understand. You were careless with an unfamiliar language. I should not have taken offense. It will be best if I rejoin the dikta for tonight." He turned away and took two stumbling steps before hands closed on his arms.