"I remember now, though it's vague, being in a great cavern complex before we went to Tappuah. Maybe it was the same as the one we were in. I don't know. Anyway, it's coming back, part of it, anyway. It was there I first learned honkerese and English, the English which humans speak on the planet. After a while, we went to Tappuah. Maybe the pressure from the Gaol was off, and my parents thought it was safe to live with humans again. They must've been sick from being under the ground, must've longed for the open air and the sunlight. I know now that my parents and a few other humans and some honkers were part of a secret organization dedicated to fighting the Gaol. Plotting against them, anyway."
She was silent again. When she resumed speaking, she talked with a low voice and in broken phrases. It was as if she were sweeping the fragments of the life she remembered into a basket, then was picking up the pieces from the basket without regard to order.
"Once, I overheard my parents talking. They were saying something about the light that glowed from me when I was born, a light that lasted for an hour or so. By that, they knew that the Imago was inside me. Of course, I didn't know what the Imago was, and I forgot all about it when my mother was killed. That wiped out all my memory of my infancy and early childhood. Later, I forgot my life from the time my mother was killed to the time the airplane crashed and killed my father and crippled me. I could not talk after that. My tongue seemed frozen. Along with much else that was frozen. I lived, but I was half-dead.
"When you came along, you started the thawing out. I began to live again, though not fully. But I knew that you were the person I'd been waiting for to love me."
Father, mother, and lover squeezed into my person, Jack thought. Also, the knight in shining white armor who rode up to rescue her. In reality, the Doubtful Knight.
He said, "Your so-called relatives who raised you, Melvin and Michaela Daw, were they part of the anti-Gaol organization?"
She nodded, and she said, "They must have been. I think they're part of a very small band that went to Earth. They did so, probably, because they knew that I'd have to flee to someplace the Gaol didn't know much about or care about.
"The Gaol have probably been aware of Earth's existence for some time. But they didn't move in on it. They think that overpopulation and pollution will soon cause the collapse of civilization on Earth. Millions will die, and the Earthpeople will revert to savagery. Then they'll be easy pickings. At least, that's what I once heard my father say when he didn't know I was around.
"Anyway, to get back to the couple taking care of me, the Daws. They were in grave danger. And they knew I was the host for the Imago. That's why they were not as loving to me as they should have been. They couldn't treat me as if I were an ordinary child. Sometimes, though, they broke through their fear and awe and tried to love me. But I was a terrible burden to them. Of course, I didn't know that then."
"Still," he said, "they knew that the Chrysalis in you wouldn't become the Imago until you were mature. Why did they advertise for someone to take you to that institution when you were so young?"
He paused, then said, "And why did they pick me to do that?"
She pulled herself loose from his embrace and began pacing back and forth. He smiled. She carried the Imago within her, yet she looked as if she were the least likely vessel for such a great thing. No, not a thing. An entity of unprecedented and unparalleled importance. She was the very essence of the dirty and tattered waif of back alleys, of the most forlorn and rejected type of human.
Finally, she said, "I think that the Gaol may have been getting too close to the trail. They had to hide me someplace else before they fled. Or, I don't know, not really, they weren't going to send me to the institution. They knew that I didn't have time to mature. The Gaol would catch me before I did if I stayed on Earth. They had to take a chance, send me back to this planet. First, though, they advertised for someone to transport me to Vermont. I do know they interviewed at least a score of would-be drivers for me, and they rejected all. Until you came by, that is."
"Why me?"
"The paintings," she said, halting to look into his eyes. Beneath the mud was a face almost shining with exultance. Or exaltation.
"The paintings?"
But he knew before she spoke what she was going to say.
"The paintings in the Makers' burial chamber. They showed a male youth holding a painter's brush in his hand. You. You were a painter, and you were a young man. I think that they thought— maybe were absolutely sure— that you were the one the Makers prophesied. Predicted, anyway."
He snorted, and he said, "Prophecy! Prediction!"
She shrugged before speaking. "It seems farfetched. But who knows how much the Makers knew or how powerful their predictions could be. Maybe they figured out something on a probability basis. Maybe they counted on someone fulfilling the prophecy. Maybe they could see into the future. Or maybe the paintings have been wrongly read. They might've meant something other than the anti-Gaol honkers and humans thought it meant. But the anti-Gaols brought it about that what they thought had to happen did happen, even if they'd misread the paintings. After all, what we think is a painter's brush in the youth's hand in the Maker painting might be something else."
"You've gone a long way since I first met you," he said. "You've grown up fast. No thirteen-year-old I know could reason like you do."
"I'm fourteen now," she said. "Not counting the pseudo-years you implanted in my mind."
He had many more questions based on the fragments she'd muttered. But they had to get going. They walked toward a long double line of tall plants and found a creek between them. Though the water was very cold, they plunged into it and did not leave it until their bodies and clothes were clean. The Imaget stayed in the creek only long enough to wash the mud off. After that, it waited on the bank until the humans spread the wet garments out in the sun and then sprawled naked in its warmth. It crawled onto Tappy and snuggled between her beasts. After about twenty minutes, all three were dry and beginning to toast.
Jack was about to open his eyes and get up when he heard a honking. He jumped up, staring around. Tappy rose and stood by his side.
"We'd better find them," he said.
"But we'd better make sure they're friendly," she said. "There are traitors among the honkers just as there are among humans. Not many, I've been told. But we can't be too careful."
He listened, trying to determine the direction from which the honking came. Halfway around in his turning, he jumped with alarm. A honker had stepped out from behind a tree.
Tappy cried out with relief and welcome. She followed this with a series of blasts.
The honker was the Integrator but not in the condition he had been in at the Gaol spaceship. One eye had been gouged out. One hip tentacle was waving wildly, but the other was missing. A bandage concealed its stump. Dark bruises were scattered over his face and body, and his chest had long bright red rakemarks on it.
The snake around his neck bore a wound close to its head, though this did not keep it from extending part of its body toward Tappy and hissing loudly. The navel-beast's mouth and paws were caked with dried blood.
The shaman had suffered grievous wounds during some struggle, but he had not been defeated. Raised high in one hand was the severed head of a Gaol. He honked loudly, and Tappy murmured, "It's the head of the Gaol captain."
Behind him came Candy, then other Latest, some limping or being supported by their fellows.
A moment later, an aircraft, a vessel designed to carry a score or more, floated from the brush.
Chapter 18
Jack strode toward the shaman. "What happened?" he cried. "What happened?"