Bhengarn searches in Noort’s mind for the meaning of that, finds something approximate, and says, “I make no such claim.”
“Good. Good. There are limits to my credulity. How far is this Crystal Pond?”
“We have covered most of the distance. If I proceed at a steady pace I will come shortly to the land of smoking holes, and not far beyond that is the approach to the Wall of Ice, which will demand a difficult but not impossible ascent, and just on the far side of that I will find the vale that contains Crystal Pond, where the beginning of the next phase of my life will occur.” They are walking now through a zone of sparkling rubbery cones of a bright vermilion color, from which small green Stangarones emerge in quick succession to chant their one-note melodies. The flavor of a heavy musk hangs in the air. Night is beginning to fall. Bhengarn says, “Are you tired?”
“Just a little.”
“It is not my custom to travel by night. Does this campsite suit you?” Bhengarn indicates a broad circular depression bordered by tiny volcanic fumaroles. The ground here is warm and spongy, moist, bare of vegetation. Bhengarn extends an excavator claw and pulls free a strip of it, which he hands to Noort, indicating that he should eat. Noort tentatively nibbles. Bhengarn helps himself to some also. Noort, kneeling, presses his knuckles against the ground, makes it yield, mutters to himself, shakes his head, rips off another strip and chews it in wonder. Bhengarn says, “You find the world much changed, do you not?”
“Beyond all understanding, in fact.”
“Our finest artists have worked on it since time immemorial, making it more lively, more diverting. We think it is a great success. Do you agree?”
Noort does not answer. He is staring bleakly at the sky, suddenly dark and jeweled with blazing stars. Bhengarn realizes that he is searching for patterns, navigators’ signs. Noort frowns, turns round and round to take in the full circuit of the heavens, bites his lip, finally lets out a low groaning sigh and says, “I recognize nothing. Nothing. This is not the northern sky, this is not the southern sky, this is not any sky I can understand.” Quietly he begins to weep. After a time he says somberly, “I was not the most adept of navigators, but I knew something, at least. And I look at this sky and I feel like a helpless babe. All the stars have changed places. Now I see how lost I am, how far from anything I ever knew, and once it gave me great pleasure to sail under strange skies, but not now, not here, because these skies frighten me and this land of demons offers me no peace. I have never wept, do you know that, creature, never, not once in my life! But Holland—my house, my tavern, my church, my sons, my pipe—where is Holland? Where is everything I knew? The skies above Magellan’s Strait were not the thousandth part so strange as this.” A harsh heavy sob escapes him, and he turns away, huddling into himself.
Compassion floods Bhengarn for this miserable wanderer. To ease Noort’s pain he summons fantasies for him, dredging images from the reservoirs of the ancient man’s spirit and hurling them against the sky, building a cathedral of fire in the heavens, and a royal palace, and a great armada of ships with bellying sails and the Dutch flag fluttering, and the watery boulevards of busy Amsterdam and the quiet streets of little Haarlem, and more. He paints for Noort the stars in their former courses, the Centaur, the Swan, the Bear, the Twins. He restores the fallen Moon to its place and by its cold light creates a landscape of time lost and gone, with avenues of heavy-boughed oaks and maples, and drifts of brilliant red and yellow tulips blaring beneath them, and golden roses arching in great bowers over the thick, newly mowed lawn. He creates fields of ripe wheat, and haystacks high as barns, and harvesters toiling in the hot sultry afternoon. He gives Noort the aroma of the Sunday feast and the scent of good Dutch gin and the sweet dense fumes of his long clay pipe. Noort nods and murmurs and clasps his hands, and gradually his sorrow ebbs and his weeping ceases, and he drifts off into a deep and easy slumber. The images fade. Bhengarn, who rarely sleeps, keeps watch until first light comes and a flock of fingerwinged birds passes overhead, shouting shrilly, jesting and swooping.
Noort is calm and quiet in the morning. He feeds again on the spongy soil and drinks from a clear emerald rivulet and they move onward toward Crystal Pond. Bhengarn is pleased to have his company. There is something crude and coarse about the Dutchman, perhaps even more so than another of his era might be, but Bhengarn finds that unimportant. He has always preferred companions of any sort to the solitary march, in his centuries of going to and fro upon the Earth. He has traveled with Skimmers and Destroyers, and once a ponderous Ruminant, and even on several occasions visitors from other worlds who have come to sample the wonders of Earth. At least twice Bhengarn has had as his traveling companion a castaway of the time-flux from some prehistoric era, though not so prehistoric as Noort’s. And now it has befallen him that he will go to the end of his journey with this rough hairy being from the dawn of humanity’s day. So be it. So be it.
Noort says, breaking a long silence as they cross a plateau of quivering gelatinous stuff, “Were you a man or a woman before the sorcery gave you this present shape?”
“I have always had this form.”
“No. Impossible. You say you are human, you speak my language—”
“Actually, you speak my language,” says Bhengarn.
“As you wish. If you are human you must once have looked like me. Can it be otherwise? Were you born a thing of silvery scales and many legs? I will not believe that.”
“Born?” says Bhengarn, puzzled.
“Is this word unknown to you?”
“Born,” the Traveler repeats. “I think I see the concept. To begin, to enter, to acquire one’s shape—”
“Born,” says Noort in exasperation. “To come from the womb. To hatch, to out, to drop. Everything alive has to be born!”
“No,” Bhengarn says mildly. “Not any longer.”
“You talk nonsense,” Noort snaps, and scours his throat angrily and spits. His spittle strikes a node of assonance and blossoms into a dazzling mound of green and scarlet jewels. “Rubies,” he murmurs. “Emeralds. I could puke pearls, I suppose.” He kicks at the pile of gems and scatters them; they dissolve into spurts of moist pink air. The Dutchman gives himself over to a sullen brooding. Bhengarn does not transgress on the other’s taciturnity; he is content to march forward in his steady plodding way, saying nothing.
Three Skimmers appear, prancing, leaping. They are heading to the south. The slender golden-green creatures salute the wayfarers with pulsations of their great red eyes. Noort, halting, glares at them and says hoarsely to Bhengarn, “These are human beings, too?”
“Indeed.”
“Natives of this realm?”
“Natives of this era,” says Bhengarn. “The latest form, the newest thing, graceful, supple, purposeless.” The Skimmers laugh and transform themselves into shining streaks of light and soar aloft like a trio of auroral rays. Bhengarn says, “Do they seem beautiful to you?”
“They seem like minions of Satan,” says the Dutchman sourly. He scowls. “When I awaken I pray I remember none of this. For if I do, I will tell the tale to Willem and Jan and Piet, and they will think I have lost my senses, and mock me. Tell me I dream, creature. Tell me I lie drunk in an inn in Amsterdam.”