“It is not so,” Bhengarn says gently.
“Very well. Very well. I have come to a land where every living thing is a demon or a monster. That is no worse, I suppose, than a land where everyone speaks Japanese and worships stones. It is a world of wonders, and I have seen more than my share. Tell me, creature, do you have cities in this land?”
“Not for millions of years.”
“Then where do the people live?”
“Why, they live where they find themselves! Last night we lived where the ground was food. Tonight we will settle by the Wall of Ice. And tomorrow—”
“Tomorrow,” Noort says, “we will have dinner with the Grand Diabolus and dance in the Witches’ Sabbath. I am prepared, just as I was prepared to sup with the penguin-eating folk of the Cape, that stood six cubits high. I will be surprised by nothing.” He laughs. “I am hungry, creature. Shall I tear up the earth again and stuff it down?”
“Not here. Try those fruits.”
Luminous spheres dangle from a tree of golden limbs. Noort plucks one, tries it unhesitatingly, claps his hands, takes three more. Then he pulls a whole cluster free, and offers one to Bhengarn, who refuses.
“Not hungry?” the Dutchman asks.
“I take my food in other ways.”
“Yes, you breathe it in from flowers as you crawl along, eh? Tell me, Traveler: to what end is your journey? To discover new lands? To fulfill some pledge? To confound your enemies? I doubt it is any of these.”
“I travel out of simple necessity, because it is what my kind does, and for no special purpose.”
“A humble wanderer, then, like the mendicant monks who serve the Lord by taking to the highways?”
“Something like that.”
“Do you ever cease your wanderings?”
“Never yet. But cessation is coming. At Crystal Pond I will become my utter opposite, and enter the Awaiter tribe, and be made immobile and contemplative. I will root myself like a vegetable, after my metamorphosis.”
Noort offers no comment on that. After a time he says, “I knew a man of your kind once. Jan Huyghen van Linschoten of Haarlem, who roamed the world because the world was there to roam, and spent his years in the India of the Portugals and wrote it all down in a great vast book, and when he had done that went off to Novaya Zemlya with Barents to find the chilly way to the Indies, and I think would have sailed to the Moon if he could find the pilot to guide him. I spoke with him once. My own travels took me farther than Linschoten, do you know? I saw Borneo and Java and the world’s hinder side, and the thick Sargasso Sea. But I went with a purpose other than my own amusement or the gathering of strange lore, which was to buy pepper and cloves, and gather Spanish gold, and win my fame and comfort. Was that so wrong, Traveler? Was I so unworthy?” Noort chuckles. “Perhaps I was, for I brought home neither spices nor gold nor most of my men, but only the fame of having sailed around the world. I think I understand you, Traveler. The spices go into a cask of meat and are eaten and gone; the gold is only yellow metal; but so long as there are Dutchmen, no one will forget that Olivier van Noort, the tavernkeeper of Rotterdam, strung a line around the middle of the world. So long as there are Dutchmen.” He laughs. “It is folly to travel for profit. I will travel for wisdom from now on. What do you say, Traveler? Do you applaud me?”
“I think you are already on the proper path,” says Bhengarn. “But look, look there: the Wall of Ice.”
Noort gasps. They have come around a low headland and are confronted abruptly by a barrier of pure white light, as radiant as a mirror at noon, that spans the horizon from east to west and rises skyward like an enormous palisade filling half the heavens. Bhengarn studies it with respect and admiration. He has known for hundreds of years that he must ascend this wall if he is to reach Crystal Pond, and that the wall is formidable; but he has seen no need before now to contemplate the actualities of the problem, and now he sees that they are significant.
“Are we to ascend that?” Noort asks.
“I must. But here, I think, we shall have to part company.”
“The throne of Lucifer must lie beyond that icy rampart.”
“I know nothing of that,” says Bhengarn, “but certainly Crystal Pond is on the farther side, and there is no other way to reach it but to climb the wall. We will camp tonight at its base, and in the morning I will begin my climb.”
“Is such a climb possible?”
“It will have to be,” Bhengarn replies.
“Ah. You will turn yourself to a puff of light like those others we met, and shoot over the top like some meteor. Eh?”
“I must climb,” says Bhengarn, “using one limb after another, and taking care not to lose my grip. There is no magical way of making this ascent.” He sweeps aside fallen branches of a glowing blue-limbed shrub to make a campsite for them. To Noort he says, “Before I begin the ascent tomorrow I will instruct you in the perils of the world, for your protection on your future wanderings. I hold myself responsible for your presence here, and I would not have you harmed once you have left my side.”
Noort says, “I am not yet planning to leave your side. I mean to climb that wall alongside you, Traveler.”
“It will not be possible for you.”
“I will make it possible. That wall excites my spirit. I will conquer it as I conquered the storms of the Strait and the fevers of the Sargasso. I feel I should go with you to Crystal Pond, and pay my farewells to you there, for it will bring me luck to mark the beginning of my solitary journey by witnessing the end of yours. What do you say?”
“I say wait until the morning,” Bhengarn answers, “and see the wall at close range, before you commit yourself to such mighty resolutions.”
During the night a silent lightstorm plays overhead; twisting turbulent spears of blue and green and violet radiance clash in the throbbing sky, and an undulation of the atmosphere sends alternating waves of hot and cool air racing down from the Wall of Ice. The time-flux blows, and frantic figures out of forgotten eras are swept by now far aloft, limbs churning desperately, eyes rigid with astonishment. Noort sleeps through it all, though from time to time he stirs and mutters and clenches his fists. Bhengarn ponders his obligations to the Dutchman, and by the coming of the sharp blood-hued dawn he has arrived at an idea. Together they advance to the edge of the Wall; together they stare upward at that vast vertical field of shining whiteness, smooth as stone. Hesitantly Noort touches it with his fingertip, and hisses at the coldness of it. He turns his back to it, paces, folds and unfolds his arms.
He says finally, “No man or woman born could achieve the summit of that wall. But is there not some magic you could work, Traveler, that would enable me to make the ascent?”
“There is one. But I think you would not like it.”
“Speak.”
“I could transform you—for a short time, only a short time, no longer than the time it takes to climb the wall—into a being of the Traveler form. Thus we could ascend together.”
Noort’s eyes travel quickly over Bhengarn’s body—the long tubular serpentine thorax, the tapering tail, the multitude of powerful little legs—and a look of shock and dismay and loathing comes over his face for an instant, but just an instant. He frowns. He tugs at his heavy lower lip.
Bhengarn says, “I will take no offense if you refuse.”
“Do it.”
“You may be displeased.”
“Do it! The morning is growing old. We have much climbing to do. Change me, Traveler. Change me quickly.” A shadow of doubt crosses Noort’s features. “You will change me back, once we reach the top?”
“It will happen of its own accord. I have no power to make a permanent transformation.”