He took a lazy moment to contemplate his answer, or whether he was going to give it at all.
Then he said:
"When I first began looking for the Art, all the clues were about crossroads. Not all. But many. Yes, many. The ones that made any sense to me. And so I kept looking for a crossroads. I thought that was where I'd find the answer. Then Kissoon drew me into his Loop, and I thought, here he is, the last of the Shoal, in a hut in the middle of nowhere. No crossroads. I must have been wrong. And all that's happened since: at the Mission, in the Grove...none of it happened at a crossroads. I was being literal, you see. I've always been so damn literal. Physical. Actual. Fletcher thought of air and sky, and I thought of power and bone. He made dreams from people's heads, I made stuff from their guts and sweat. Always thinking the obvious. And all the time..." his voice was thickening with feeling; hatred in it, self-directed, "...all the time I didn't see. Until I used the Art, and realized what the crossroads were—"
"What?"
He put the less injured of his hands to his shirt, fumbling inside it. There was a medallion around his neck, on a fine chain. He pulled, hard. The chain broke, and he tossed the symbol over to Tesla. She knew before she caught it what it was going to be. She'd played this scene once before, with Kissoon. But that time she'd not been ready to understand what she understood now, holding the Shoal's sign in her hand.
"The crossroads," she said. "This is its symbol."
"I don't know what symbols are any longer," he replied. "It's all one."
"But this stands for something," she said, looking again at the forms inscribed on the arm of the cross.
"To understand it is to have it," Jaffe said. "At the moment of comprehension it's no longer a symbol."
"Then...make me understand," Tesla said. "Because I look at this and it's still just a cross. I mean, it's beautiful an' all, but it doesn't mean a whole lot. There's this guy in the center, looks like he's being crucified, 'cept there's no nails. And then all these creatures."
"Doesn't it make any sense?"
"Maybe if I wasn't so tired."
"Guess."
"I'm not in the mood for guessing games."
A sly look came over Jaffe's face. "You want me to come with you—help you stop whatever's coming through Quiddity—but you haven't got any grasp of what's going on. If you did have, you'd understand what you've got in your hand."
She realized what he was proposing before he said it.
"So if I can work it out, you'll come?"
"Yeah. Maybe."
"Give me a few minutes," she said, looking down at the Shoal symbol with fresh eyes.
"A few?" he said. "What's a few? Five maybe. Let's say five. My offer's good for five minutes."
She turned the medallion over in her hand, suddenly self-conscious.
"Don't stare at me," she said.
"I like to stare."
"You're distracting me."
"You don't have to stay," he replied.
She took him at his word, and got up, her legs unsteady, returning to the crack she'd entered through.
"Don't lose it," he said, his tone almost satiric. "It's the only one I've got."
Hotchkiss was a yard beyond the entrance.
"You heard?" she said to him.
He nodded. She opened her palm and let him look at the medallion. The sole light source, the decaying terata, was fitful, but her eyes were well accustomed to it by now. She could read the expression of befuddlement on Hotchkiss's face. There'd be no revelations from that source.
She claimed the medallion from his fingers and looked over to Grillo, who hadn't moved.
"He's fallen apart," Hotchkiss said. "Claustrophobia."
She went to him anyway. He wasn't staring at the ceiling any longer, nor at the body in the water. His eyes were closed. His teeth were chattering.
"Grillo."
He chattered on.
"Grillo. It's Tesla. I need your help."
He shook his head; a small, violent motion.
"I have to know what this means."
He didn't even open his eyes to find out what she was talking about.
"Thanks a bunch, Grillo," she said.
On your own, babe. No help to be had. Hotchkiss doesn't get it, Grillo won't; and Witt's dead in the water. Her eyes went to the body, momentarily. Face down, arms spread. Poor bastard. She'd not known him at all, but he'd seemed decent enough.
She turned away, opened her palm, and looked at the medallion again, her concentration completely fucked by the fact that the seconds were ticking by.
What did it mean?
The figure in the center was human. The forms that spread from it were not. Were they familiars, maybe? Or the central figure's children? That made more sense. There was a creature between the spread legs like a stylized ape; beneath that something reptilian; beneath that—
Shit! They weren't children, they were ancestors. It was devolution. Man at the center, ape below; lizard, fish and protoplasm (an eye, or a single cell) below that. The past is below us, Hotchkiss had said once. Maybe he'd been right.
Assuming that to be the correct solution, what did it imply about the designs on the other three arms? Above the figure's head something seemed to be dancing, its head huge. Above that the same form, only simplified; and again above that, a simplification, which reached its conclusion as another eye (or single cell) which echoed the shape below. In the light of the first interpretation this wasn't so difficult to understand. Below were images of life leading up to man; above, surely, beyond man, the species elevated to a perfect spiritual state.
Two out of four.
How long did she have?
Don't think about the time, she told herself, just solve the problem.
Reading from right to left across the medallion, the sequence was by no means as easy as south to north. At the extreme left was another circle, with something like a cloud in it. Beside it, closer to the figure's outstretched arm, a square, divided into four; closer still what looked to be lightning; then a splash of some kind (blood from the hand?); then the hand itself. On the other side a series of even less comprehensible symbols. What might have been another spurt from the figure's left hand; then a wave, perhaps, or snakes (was she committing Jaffe's sin here? being too literal?); then what could only be described as a scrawl, as though some sign had been scratched out, and finally the fourth and final circle, which was a hole, bored in the medallion. From solid to insolid.
From a circle with a cloud to an empty space. What the hell did it mean? Was it day and night? No. Known and unknown, maybe? That made better sense. Hurry, Tesla, hurry. So what was round, and cloudy, and known?
Round, and cloudy. The world. And known. Yes. The world; the Cosm! which implied that the empty space on the other arm, the un-known, was the Metacosm! Which left the figure in the middle: the crux of the whole design.
She started back towards the cave, where Jaffe was waiting for her, knowing there could only be seconds left.
"I've got it!" she shouted through to him, "I've got it!" It wasn't quite true, but the rest would have to be instinct.
The fire inside the cave was very low, but there was a horrible brightness in Jaffe's eyes.
"I know what it is," she said.
"You do?"
"It's evolution on one axis, from a single cell to God-hood."
She knew by the look on his face that she'd got that part right at least.
"Go on," he said. "What's the other axis?"
"It's the Cosm and the Metacosm. It's what we know and what we don't know."
"Very good, "he said. "Very good. And in the middle?"
"Us. Human beings."
His smile spread. "No," he said.
"No?"
"That's an old mistake, isn't it? It's not as simple as that."
"But it's a human being, right there!" she said.
"You still see the symbol."