“Of course. But there are no manculains in Zimroel.”
“That’s what I thought, too, until I saw this fellow back of Velathys, along the mountain roads. Very similar to the manculains of Stoienzar, is it not? But with at least one difference.” He knelt beside the cage that held the rotund many-legged creature and made a deep rumbling sound at it. The manculain at once rumbled back and began menacingly to stir the long stiletto-like needles that sprouted all over its body, as though it intended to hurl them through the wire mesh at him. Nayila said, “It isn’t content with being covered with spines. The spines are poisonous. One scratch with them and your arm puffs up for a week. I know. I don’t know what would have happened if the spine got in any deeper, and I don’t want to find out. Do you?”
Yarmuz Khitain shivered. It sickened him to think of these horrendous creatures taking up residence in the Park of Fabulous Beasts, which had been founded long ago as a refuge for those animals, most of them gentle and inoffensive, that had been driven close to extinction by the spread of civilization on Majipoor. Of course the park had a good many predators in its collection, and Yarmuz Khitain had never felt like offering apologies for them: they were the work of the Divine, after all, and if they found it necessary to kill for their meals it was not out of any innate malevolence that they did so. But these—these—
These animals are evil, he thought. They ought to be destroyed.
The thought astounded him. Nothing like it had ever crossed his mind before. Animals evil? How could animals be evil? He could say, I think this animal is very ugly, or,I think this animal is very dangerous, but evil? No. No, Animals are not capable of being evil, not even these. The evil has to reside elsewhere: in their creators. No, not even in them. They too have their reasons for setting these beasts loose upon the world, and the reason is not sheer malevolence for its own sake, unless I am greatly mistaken. Where then is the evil? The evil, Khitain told himself, is everywhere, a pervasive thing that slips and slides between the atoms of the air we breathe. It is a universal corruption in which we all participate. Except the animals.
Except the animals.
“How is it possible,” Yarmuz Khitain asked, “that the Metamorphs have the skill to breed such things?”
“The Metamorphs have many skills we’ve never bothered to learn a thing about, it would appear. They’ve been sitting out there in Piurifayne concocting these animals quietly for years, building up their stock of them. Can you imagine what the place where they kept them all must have been like—a horror zoo, monsters only? And now they’ve been kind enough to share them with us.”
“But can we be certain the animals come from Piurifayne?”
“I traced the distribution vectors very carefully. The lines radiate outward from the region southwest of Ilirivoyne. This is Metamorph work, no doubt about that. It simply can’t happen that two or three dozen loathsome new kinds of animals would burst onto the scene in Zimroel all at the same time by spontaneous mutation. We know that we’re at war: these are weapons, Khitain.”
The older man nodded. “I think you’re right.”
“I’ve saved the worst for last. Come: look at these.”
In a cage of closely woven metal mesh so fine that he was able to see through its walls, Khitain observed an agitated horde of small winged creatures fluttering angrily about, battering themselves against the sides of the cage, striking it furiously with their leathery black wings, falling back, rising again for another try. They were furry little things about eight inches long, with disproportionately large mouths and beady, glittering red eyes.
“Dhiims,” said Nayila. “I captured them in a dwikka forest over by Borgax.”
“Dhiims?” Khitain said hoarsely.
“Dhiims, yes. Found them feeding on a couple of little forest-brethren that I suppose they’d killed—so busy eating they didn’t see me coming. I knocked them out with my collecting spray and gathered them up. A few of them woke up before I got them all in the box. I’m lucky still to have my fingers, Yarmuz.”
“I know dhiims,” said Khitain. “They’re two inches long, half an inch wide. These are the size of rats.”
“Yes. Rats that fly. Rats that eat flesh. Carnivorous giant dhiims, eh? Dhiims that don’t just nibble and nip, dhiims that can strip a forest-brother down to its bones in ten minutes. Aren’t they lovely? Imagine a swarm of them flying into Ni-moya. A million, two million—thick as mosquitos in the air. Sweeping down. Eating everything in their way. A new plague of locusts—flesh-eating locusts—”
Khitain felt himself growing very calm. He had seen too much today. His mind was overloaded with horror.
“They would make life very difficult,” he said mildly.
“Yes. Very very difficult, eh? We’d need to dress in suits of armor.” Nayila laughed. “The dhiims are their masterpiece, Khitain. You don’t need bombs when you can launch deadly little flying rodents against your enemy. Eh? Eh?”
Yarmuz Khitain made no reply. He stared at the cage of frenzied angry dhiims as though he were looking into a pit that reached down to the core of the world.
From far away he heard the shouting begin: “Thallimon! Thallimon! Lord Thallimon!”
Nayila frowned, cocked an ear, strained to make out the words. “Thallimon? Is that what they’re yelling?”
“Lord Thallimon,” said Khitain. “The new Coronal. The new new Coronal. He surfaced three days ago, and every night they have a big rally for him outside Nissimorn Prospect.”
“There was a Thallimon who used to work here. Is this some relative of his?”
“The same man,” Khitain said.
Vingole Nayila looked stunned.
“What? Six months ago he was sweeping dung out of zoo cages, and now he’s Coronal? Is it possible?”
“Anybody can be Coronal now,” Yarmuz Khitain said placidly. “But only for a week or two, so it seems. Perhaps it will be your turn soon, Vingole.” He chuckled. “Or mine.”
“How did this happen, Yarmuz?”
Khitain shrugged. With a wide sweep of his hand he indicated Nayila’s newly collected animals, the snarling three-horned haigus, the dwarf dhumkar, the single-eyed canavong, the dhiims: everything bizarre and frightful, everything taut with dark hunger and rage. “How did any of this happen?” he asked. “If such strangenesses as these are loosed upon the world, why not make dung sweepers into Coronals? First jugglers, then dung sweepers, then zoologists, maybe. Well, why not? How does it sound to you? Vingole! Lord Vingole! All hail Lord Vingole!’”
“Stop it, Yarmuz.”
“You’ve been off in the forest with your dhiims and your manculains. I’ve had to watch what’s been happening here. I feel very tired, Vingole. I’ve seen too much.”
“Lord Thallimon! Imagine!”
“Lord this, Lord that, Lord whoever—a plague of Coronals all month, and a couple of Pontifexes too. They don’t last long. But let’s hope Thallimon does. At least he’s likely to protect the park,” said Khitain.
“Against what?”
“Mob attack. There are hungry people down there, and up here we continue to feed the animals. They tell me that agitators in the city are stirring people up to break into the park and butcher everything for meat.”
“Are you serious?”
“Apparently they are.”
“But these animals are priceless—irreplaceable—!”
“Tell that to a starving man, Vingole,” said Khitain quietly.
Nayila stared at him. “And do you really think this Lord Thallimon is going to hold back the mob, if they decide to attack the park?”