"You now know," Mali said, "why I wanted to go back up."
He said, "I'll go up with you." He did not want to remain here any longer. Like Mali, he yearned for the surface, for the world above water. That world contained nothing like this... and, he thought, it never should. That was never intended. "Let's go," he said to Mali, and swam upward; with each passing second he was farther up from these blackchilled depths and all that they held. "Give me your hand." He turned, reached back for her...
And then he saw it. Saw the pot. In the rays of his torch.
"What's wrong?" Mali said in alarm; he had ceased rising.
"I have to go back," he said.
"Don't let it draw you down! That's the terrible thing it does; its valence works on you. Climb." She tore her hand away from his and, kicking vigorously, ascended past him, toward the surface above. Her legs kicked as if she were trying to shake loose some binding substance, something which mired her down here.
"You go on up," Joe said. He sank, lower and lower, his eyes never leaving the pot. And steadily he focused his torch on it. It had coral around it, but, for the most part, it remained uncovered. As if, he thought, it was here waiting for me. Trying to ensnare me, the best possible way... through the thing I love most.
Mali hesitated above him, then reluctantly descended until she was parallel with him. "What—" she began, and then she, too, saw the pot; she gasped.
"It's a volute krater," Joe said. "Very large." Already he could distinguish colors emanating from it toward him, the colors which bound him more firmly to this spot than all the cords and seaweed, all the other snares. He sank. And sank some more.
"What can you tell about it?" Mali asked. They had almost reached the pot; Joe's arms extended themselves as if acting on their own will. "Is it—"
"Not earthenware," Joe said. "It's been fired past five hundred degrees centigrade. It may even have been fired at a temperature as high as twelve hundred and fifty degrees. There's a great deal of vitrification over and above the glaze." Now he touched it. Carefully he tugged at it. But the coral held it tight. "Stoneware," he decided. "Not porcelain; it's not translucent. The white of the glaze makes me think—as a guess—that it's a stannic oxide compound. If so it would then be a majolica ceramic piece. Tin-enameling, it's generally called. Like the Delft ceramic offerings." He rubbed the surface of the pot. "From the feel, I'd say it's sgraffitoware, with a lead glaze. See? The pattern has been incised through the slip, disclosing the body color beneath. As I say, this is a volute krater... but with it here we can probably expect to find psykters and amphoras as well; it's just a question of removing the coral deposits and seeing what's below."
"Is it a good pot?" Mali asked. "I mean, to me it looks unique; I think it's terribly pretty. But in your expert opinion—"
"It's superb," he said, simply. "The red glaze is probably from reduced copper; it passed through a reducing atmosphere in the kiln. And ferrous iron. Look at the black. And the yellow, of course, is obtained from antimony. Which produces an excellent yellow." The color of glaze, he reflected, which attracts me the most. The yellows, the blues. I will never change.
He thought, It's almost as if someone put this here for me to find. He rubbed the surface, on and on, appreciating it by tactile sense-impressions, rather than sight. Cupric oxide blues, he said to himself. This pot has everything but that. Did Glimmung have this put here? he asked himself.
To Mali he said, "Has coral been removed from this? Recently? It seems strange it wasn't completely covered."
For a time Mali poked about the pot, examining its surface and that of the coral holding it from below. As she did so he studied the design on the pot. A complex and ornate scene, more ornate even than the istoriato style of Urbino. What did the scene show? He studied it, pondering. Not all of the design was visible. And yet—he was accustomed to filling in missing segments removed from pottery pieces. What does this tell? he asked himself. A story, but of what? He peered.
"I don't like the amount of black on it," Mali said, all at once. "Anything black down here undermines my sense of security." She floated away from the pot, her examination over. "Now can we go back up?" she asked. Her tension had become even greater; it grew with each tick of the clock. "I'm not going to stay down here and extinguish my life voluntarily for one damn dumb pot. Pots just aren't that important."
Joe said, "What did your examination show?"
"Coral has been stripped from it within the last six months." She broke a section of coral away, revealing more of the pot. "I can finish the job in a few minutes, when I have my tools."
Now he saw more of the design. The first panel showed a man seated alone in a bleak and empty room. The next, an intersystem spacecraft of commercial design. The third showed a man—evidently the same man—fishing; it showed him lifting a huge black fish from the water. That was where the black glaze which Mali objected to came in: the enormous fish. The next panel he could not see. Coral blocked his view. But something came after the lifting up of the giant black fish. Lifting the fish was not the end. There was at least one more panel and perhaps two.
"This is a flambé glaze," Joe said absently. "As I said before, of reduced copper. But in some places it looks almost like ‘dead leaf' glaze; if I didn't know better I'd—"
"You pedantic fop," Mali said savagely. "You miserable nitwit. I'm going up." She kicked away, rose, unfastened the cable which connected them, and was soon gone, her torch flashing above him. He found himself alone with the pot and the nearby Black Cathedral. Silence. And the utter abstention of activity. No fish moved near him; they seemed to shun the Black Cathedral and its environs. They are wise, he decided. As is Mali.
He took one last, long, lonely look at the dead structure, the cathedral which had never been alive.
Bending over the pot he took hold with both hands and tugged mightily, his torch temporarily put aside. The pot broke into many pieces; the pieces drifted away in the ocean currents and he found himself gazing down at the few stillimprisoned fragments.
Bracing himself he grasped a remaining fragment and tore it forward, where the whole pot had been. The consolidated coral hung back; it kept its seizure of the fragment active. And then, by degrees, the coral released the fragment. It came loose in his hands, and at once he flailed for the surface above.
He held in his hand the remaining two panels of the visual narrative. They ascended with him, held tight.
Presently he broke through to the surface. He slid aside his mask, and floating about, examined the two panels by torch light.
"What is it?" Mali called, swimming toward him with long, lean strokes.
"The rest of the pot," he said raspingly.
The first panel showed the great black fish swallowing the man who had caught it. The second—and final—panel revealed the great fish once again. This time it devoured and absorbed a Glimmung... or rather the Glimmung. Both the man and Glimmung disappeared down the throat of the fish, to be decomposed within its stomach. The man and Glimmung ceased. Only the great black fish remained. It had engulfed all.
"This potsherd—" he began, and then broke off. There was something that he had failed to see at first glance. That something now gathered his attention; it tugged at him, drawing him restlessly, impotently toward it.
In the latter panel a talk balloon had been incised above the fish's head. Words filled the talk balloon, words in his own language. He read them haltingly as he bobbed about upon the uneasy water.
Life on this planet is under water, not on the land. Do not get involved with the fat fake calling himself Glimmung. The depths draw from the earth, and within those depths the real Glimmung can be found.