"Thank you," Mali murmured as she seated herself. She seemed pale, and, when she lit a cigarette, her hands shook. "You should have lighted that for me," she said to him half jokingly and half accusingly. "I guess I'm the last to arrive." She glanced around the chamber.
"You were dressing?" Joe asked.
"Yes." She nodded. "I wanted to look right for what we're going to be doing."
Joe said, "How does one dress for polyencephalic fusion?"
"This." She rose to show him her green suit. "I've been saving this. For a special occasion. This is a special occasion." She reseated herself, crossed her long, trim legs, and smoked vigorously; obviously she was deep in thought: she hardly seemed aware of him.
Glimmung entered the room.
His form was new to them; Joe studied the prim, bagshaped entity and asked himself why Glimmung had imitated this particular form of life. To what star system is this indigenous? he wondered.
"My dear friends," Glimmung boomed. The voice had not changed. "First, I want you to know that I am fully recovered physically, although psychologically a trauma remains, making my memory erratic. Second, I have had tests run on all of you, without your knowledge and at no inconvenience to you, and I have the data which tell me that you, too, are physiologically in top form. Mr. Fernwright, I want to thank you especially for halting my premature efforts to raise the cathedral."
Joe nodded.
After a pause the bag-shaped object reopened its slitlike mouth and continued. "You all seem very quiet."
Getting to his feet Joe confronted Glimmung. "What are our chances of living through this?"
"Good," Glimmung said.
"But not excellent," Joe said.
Glimmung said, "I will make a compact with you. If I feel my strength waning—if I feel I can't make it—I will return to the surface and disgorge you."
"And then what?" Mali asked.
"And then," Glimmung said, "I will go back down and try once more. I will try until I can do it." Three morose eyes snapped open in the center of the baglike shape. "Is that what you mean?"
"Yes," the reddish jelly supported by a metal frame said. "You are really only concerned with that?" Glimmung asked them. "Your personal safety?"
Joe said, "That's right." He felt odd, saying it. By this he had voided the dedicated atmosphere which Glimmung had brought with him; instead of the joint effort the individual lives had become paramount. And yet he had to do it. It was the consensus of the group. And, in addition, it was his own feeling.
"Nothing will happen to you," Glimmung said.
"Assuming," Joe said, "that you can get us up to the surface in time. And on dry land."
Glimmung, with his three centrally located eyes, regarded him for a protracted interval. "I did it once," he said.
Examining his wristwatch, Joe said, "Let's get started."
"Are you timing the universe," Glimmung asked, "to see if it is late? Are you giving breadth and measure to the stars?"
"I'm timing you," Joe said truthfully. "We have polled one another and our decision is to give you two hours."
"'Two hours'?" The three eyes gaped at him in disbelief. "To raise Heldscalla?"
"That's right," Harper Baldwin said.
For a time Glimmung reflected. "You know," he said at last, "I can force polyencephalic fusion on you, on all of you, at any time. And I can refuse to release you."
"It won't come to that," the multilegged gastropod piped up. "Because even in fusion we can refuse to help. And if we don't give you that help you won't be able to do it."
The baglike entity swelled with pompous rage; a Luciferous sight: the indignation of an forty-thousand-ton creature contained by this frail vessel. Then gradually, Glimmung ebbed; he slid by degrees into comparative calm.
"It is now four-thirty in the afternoon," Joe said to Glimmung. "You have until six-thirty to raise Heldscalla and get us back on dry land."
Extending a pseudopodium, the baglike creature brought a copy of the Book of the Kalends from its pouch; it opened the volume and studied the text carefully. Then, thoughtfully, it closed the book and put it away in its pouch once more.
"What does it say?" the sharp-faced middle-aged woman asked.
Glimmung said, "It says I can't do it."
"Two hours," Joe said. "Less than two, now."
"I will not need two hours," Glimmung said, drawing himself up in dignity. "If I haven't done it in one hour, I will give up and deposit you back here." Turning, he stalked from the chamber and out onto the newly repaired wharf.
"Where do you want us?" Joe asked him, following him out of the hermetically sealed, warm region, into the lateafternoon cold.
"At the water's edge," Glimmung said. He sounded angry but at the same time contemptuous; the group's conditions seemed to have enlarged his determination.
Joe said, "Good luck."
The others flew, crawled, or walked out onto the wharf, now; as Glimmung had requested, they lined up at the water's edge. Glimmung surveyed them one last time, then descended the wooden ladder into the water. At once he disappeared beneath the surface; only circles of water and bubbles marked the place where he had gone. Possibly forever, Joe thought. He—and we—may never come back up.
Standing close to Joe, Mali said, "I'm scared."
"It won't be long, now," the plump woman with tangled baby-doll hair said.
"What's your specialty?" Joe asked her.
"Slabbing rock."
After that they waited in silence.
Fusion came to him as a monumental shock. And, he discovered, it came to the others the same way; the frightened babble of their composite voices washed over him—their voices and then the overpowering presence of Glimmung, his thoughts, his desires. And, Joe realized, his fears. Beneath the anger and contempt there was a core of anxiety that had not been evident before fusion. Now they all knew it... and Glimmung was aware of their knowledge; his thoughts altered as he deftly sought to evade their scrutiny.
"Glimmung is scared," the matronly woman declared.
"Yes, very scared," the timid little fellow piped.
"More," the quasiarachnid said, "than we are."
"Than some of us are," the immense dragonfly answered.
"Where are we?" the red-faced heavyset man demanded. "I'm disoriented already." Panic filled his voice.
Joe said, "Mali?"
"Yes." She seemed very near him, close enough for him to touch. But he had no manual extremities; like a worm in a cadaver he found himself, as before, rigidly placed within the magnasoma that was Glimmung. Separate motion was impossible, for any of them. They existed as mentational entities only... a weird sensation that he found unpleasant.
And yet—once again deeply augmented. Multiplied by all the others and, more than anything else, by Glimmung. He was helpless and in addition he constituted a supranormal organism whose potentialities were beyond calculation. For Glimmung, too, there had been a radical enlargement; Joe listened carefully to Glimmung's cerebral activity and marveled at the new acuity of it... acuity and power.
They dropped into the depths of the ocean.
"Where are we?" Harper Baldwin said nervously. "I can't see properly; I'm too far in. Can you see, Fernwright?"
Through Glimmung's eyes Joe saw the shape of Heldscalla grow before them. Glimmung moved rapidly, wasting no time; evidently he took the two-hour limit seriously. Reaching out, Glimmung sought to embrace the cathedral; he discharged, in a split second, his entire fund of energy in an attempt to hug the cathedral in a grip which could not be broken.
Suddenly Glimmung halted. Something rose from Heldscalla and confronted him, a dim figure. Glimmung's micescurrying thoughts poured over Joe, drenching him. From the thoughts Joe understood why Glimmung had ceased to move; he knew what the dim figure was.
A Fog-Thing. From antiquity. Which still lived. And it stood between Glimmung and Heldscalla.