Let us go upward, Glimmung said. We are going. He felt the base of the cathedral resist. Perhaps you are right, he thought. I know I am, the voice came. It has happened before; it will happen again; it will always happen. But I can raise Heldscalla, Glimmung said to himself and to them. We can, all of us.
Using them, making them his arms, he lifted; he tugged the body of the cathedral to him and forced it to rise, against its own desires. Feeling it resist he felt bitterness and dismay. I did not know this, he thought. Perhaps this knowledge will kill me; perhaps this is what The Book meant. Perhaps, he thought, I should leave it down here; perhaps it is better the way it is.
It won't lift.
He tried again. No. It will not lift; I say it will not. At any time. For anyone. Under any combination of circumstances.
It will rise, Joe Fernwright said, when you are recovered from your injury, the damage done to you by the Black Cathedral.
"What?" he said, listening. Other voices joined Joe's. When you are stronger. Wait until then.
I must make myself stronger, he realized. Time must pass, authentic time over which I have no control. How can they know this when I do not? He listened, but heard no voices; they had quieted into silence as soon as he ceased striving. So be it, he decided. I will rise to the surface alone, and some day, not long from now, I will try again.
And once again, he decided, I will absorb you. All of you. Once more you will be parts of me as you are now. All right, the voices squeaked. But let us go; prove to us you can release us. I shall, he told them. And let himself rise to the surface.
Cold night air plucked at him and he saw feeble, distant stars.
On a wild shoreline, with nocturnal water birds striding about, he deposited the strident voices, he disgorged all of them, those whom he had incorporated, and then he lunged out again into the water—an aquatic world which was now safe: he could stay here forever and not be endangered by any hostile force. Thank you, Joe Fernwright, he thought, but now no answer came; internally he was again alone. So he spoke the words aloud, and, as he spoke, felt lonely. For a time he had been inhabited. But... it would come again, the warm, interior babble.
He examined his wounds, made himself comfortable in a half-submerged position, and waited.
Shivering, his feet in sandy mud, Joe Fernwright listened and heard Glimmung's voice. "Thank you, Joe Fernwright." He continued to listen, but there was no more.
He could see Glimmung, as the big creature lay a few hundred yards from shore. He would have killed us, Joe thought. And himself, too. In trying to bring up the cathedral. Thank god he listened.
"That was too close," Joe said to the other creatures near him, deployed here and there along the sandy beach. And especially to Mali Yojez, who huddled close to him, trying to get warm. "Much too close," he said, half to himself. He shut his eyes. Anyhow he let us go, he reflected. And now it's just a question of walking until we come to a house or a road. Unless he tries to get us back.
But that did not seem likely. Not, anyhow, for some time. "Are you going to stay on Plowman's Planet?" Mali asked him. "You know what it means; he'll reabsorb all of us who stay here."
Joe said, "I'm staying."
"Why?"
"I want to see The Book proved wrong."
"It's already been proved wrong."
"I mean finally," Joe said. "Once and for all." As of now, he thought, it could still be right... because we don't know what will happen tomorrow or the day after. I could still kill Glimmung, he realized. In some indirect way.
But he knew that would not happen. It was too late. Like many things, it could not now be recalled. The Kalends were doomed. Their power was gone.
"But The Book was almost right," he said. Obviously the Kalends played the percentages. Generally, in the long run, they were correct. But in given instances—such as this—they were wrong. And this was important; this had to do with Glimmung's literal, physical death and the literal, physical raising of Heldscalla.
In relation to this, final events, such as the planet falling back into the sun from which it had arisen, did not really matter. They were too remote. In the final analysis the Kalends might be correct; their prophecies had to do with cosmic trends such as the laws of thermodynamics and terminal entropy. And, of course, Glimmung would eventually die. So would he himself. So would they all. But in the here and now Heldscalla waited for Glimmung to recover. And he would. And—the cathedral would come up from the water, as Glimmung planned.
"We were a polyencephalic entity," Mali said.
"Pardon?" Joe said.
"A group mind. Except that we were subordinate to Glimmung. But for a little while—" She gestured. "All of us, from at least ten star systems; we functioned as a single organism. In some ways it was exciting. To not be—"
"Alone," Joe said.
"Yes; it makes me realize how isolated each of us normally is, how cut off. Separated from everyone else... in particular separated from other life. That ended when Glimmung absorbed us. And we were no longer individual failures."
"It ended," Joe said, "but it's begun again. As of now."
Mali said, "If you stay here on Plowman's Planet, so will I."
"Why?"
"I like the group mind, the group will. As they say on your planet, this is where the action is."
"They haven't said that on Terra," Joe said, "for close to a hundred years."
"Our textbooks were very old," Mali said contritely.
Loudly, to the group members as they stood here and there, Joe said, "Okay; let's get started back to the Olympia Hotel. So we can get a hot bath and some dinner."
"And then sleep," Mali said.
He put his arm around her. "Or whatever else," he said, "that humanoids normally do."
16
Eight twenty-six-hour days later Glimmung asked the group to assemble under the hermetically sealed domes of the heated, illuminated staging center. The robot Willis checked the list as each arrived; when they had all come he notified Glimmung, and, collectively, they waited.
Of them all, Joe Fernwright had been the first to arrive. He made himself comfortable in one of the sturdy chairs and lit a cigarette made from Plowman's Planet grass. It had been a good week; he had seen a lot of Mali, and he had become friends with Nurb K'ohl Daq, the warmhearted bivalve.
"Here's one they're telling on Deneb four," the bivalve said. "A freb whom we'll call A is trying to sell a glank for fifty thousand burfies."
"What's a freb?" Joe asked.
"A kind of—" The bivalve undulated with effort. "A sort of idiot."
"What's a burfle?"
"A monetary unit, like a crumble or a ruble. Anyhow, someone says to the freb, ‘Do you really expect to get fifty thousand burfies for your glank?'"
"What's a glank?" Joe asked.
Again the bivalve undulated; this time it turned bright pink with effort. "A pet, a valueless lower life-form. Anyhow, the freb says, ‘I got my price.' ‘You got your price?' the interrogator interrogates. ‘Really?' ‘Sure,' the freb says. ‘I traded it for two twenty-five-thousand-burfle pidnids.'"
"What's a pidnid?"
The bivalve gave up; it slammed its shell shut and withdrew into privacy and silence.
We're tense, Joe said to himself. Even Nurb K'ohl Daq. It's getting to us all.
He rose to his feet, then; Mali had entered the room. "Here," Joe said, getting a chair for her.