For a long period Lanefenuu did not move, sat slumped in silence, fighting to find a way through her maze of conflicting thoughts. Finally, when she stirred, some strength returned and she spoke with the voice of authority once again.
“It will be done. Vaintè will be stopped. There was never a need for her to attack across your world of ustuzou. She will be recalled. You will leave. You will stay in your place and we will stay in ours. I do not wish to talk to you or to see you ever again. I wish that your egg had been stepped upon and that you had never emerged.”
Kerrick signed agreement. “But there is one other thing you must do to stop Vaintè. You know her and I know her. She is capable of disobeying your order to stop. She is capable of that — is she not?”
“She is,” said Lanefenuu grimly.
“Then you must go to her, find her and order her return. Then she must stop what she is doing for her Yilanè are your Yilanè, her fargi your fargi. That is what must be done.”
Lanefenuu’s eyes were glinting with hatred — but she kept her body under control. “I will do that.”
“Good.” Kerrick reached up to the ring around his neck, to the knife hanging there. He seized it and pulled it free, handed it over to Lanefenuu. She would not reach out for it so he dropped it into the dust at her feet.
“You will take this to Vaintè. She knows it, she knows what it will mean. She will know that it is I who have done this thing and why I have done it. She will know that you had no choice in what you did.”
“I care nothing of how Vaintè feels, what she knows.”
“Of course, Eistaa.” Kerrick spoke slowly, with controllers of cold anger. “It is just that I want her to know that I, Kerrick, have done this to her, stopped her in her tracks. I want her to understand exactly what I have done.”
With this Kerrick turned on his heel and stalked away. Out of the ambesed and past the gawking fargi who had gathered in terrified crowds. They moved away from him in fear, for all had seen the talking from afar. They did not know what was happening — only that it was terrible beyond belief. Two uruketo were dead and this ustuzou-Yilanè walked with death all around him.
Kerrick walked through Ikhalmenets to the shore, turned to the Yilanè and fargi there.
“In the name of your eistaa I order you from here. All of you. She commands you to attend her in the ambesed. Leave.”
Incapable of lies themselves, they understood what he had spoken as a command and hurried to the ambesed.
As soon as he was alone, Kerrick jumped down to the sand and made his way out of the city.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
“You sent for me,” Enge said. “The message stressed great urgency.”
“Any order that I issue is urgent, though your slothful creatures fail to realize that. If I do not stress urgency then the would-be-messenger would discuss the probity of her acting as my fargi and other irrelevencies.”
“There is truth in that, for as Ugunenapsa said…”
“Silence!” Ambalasi roared the command, her crest rising and falling with rage. Her assistant, Setessei, fled in panic, and even Enge bowed before the storm of the elderly scientist’s wrath. She signed apologies and obedience then waited in silence.
“A slight improvement. From you at least I expect some attention, a slight amount of courtesy. Now, look here, at this splendid sight.”
Ambalasi indicated the Sorogetso who rested in the shade — a splendid sight only to Ambalasi for she shivered with fear and had curled herself into a ball, eyes closed and waiting for her death.
“Not you, foolish creature, my anger is for others,” Ambalasi said, then controlled her temper with a great effort and spoke in the Sorogetso manner. “Attention, little one. Friendship and aid.” She caressed Ichikchee’s green crest until she fearfully opened her eyes.
“Very good. See, here is Enge who has come to be with you, to admire how well you are. Quiet, there will be no pain-accompaniment.”
Ambalasi gently removed the nefmakel that covered and protected the stump of Ichikchee’s leg. The Sorogetso shivered but made no protest.
“Look,” Ambalasi ordered. “Gaze with admiration.”
Enge bent to look at the puckered flesh of the stump where the flaps of skin had been folded over the exposed bone. In the center was a yellowish growth of some kind. It meant nothing to her. But she dared not say so and bring Ambalasi’s ready wrath down upon her again.
“It heals well,” she said finally. “Ambalasi is a mistress of the healing science. The amputation not only heals but there, in the center, something emerges. Can it be object-of-admiration?”
“It certainly can be — but in your ignorance I cannot expect you to appreciate its significance. That is a new foot growing there, a yellow-mottled foot on a green Sorogetso who is a head shorter than we are. Does any of the awesome importance of this penetrate the solid bone of your skull to the submicroscopic brain that sleeps inside?”
Enge swallowed the insult, always the wisest course if communication were necessary with Ambalasi. “Importance-not-understood. Ignorance admitted.”
“Close attention demanded. Earlier theories discarded. Forget any mention of plate tectonics or continental drift. That period of separation is far too large. I doubted it first when I discovered that we could communicate with the Sorogetso, even at a basic and primitive level. Tens of millions of years cannot separate our species, even a million years is too great. We may appear superficially different, but genetically we are one. Or that foot would not be growing. The mystery deepens. Who are the Sorogetso — and how come they here?”
Enge made no attempt to answer, knowing that the elderly scientist’s unfocused eyes were looking through her, beyond her, at wonders of knowledge she could scarcely imagine.
“It disturbs me. I sense dark experiments that should not have been done. I have found evidence of failed experiments before this, but more often in the seas than on the land, work that has gone astray, ugly creatures that should never have been born. You must realize — not all scientists are like me. There are warped minds as well as warped bodies in this world.”
Enge was horrified at the thought. “Such a thing cannot be.”
“Why not?” Ambalasi controlled her temper long enough to smoothly wrap the nefmakel back into place again. “Why not!” She turned away from the Sorogetso and snorted with anger. “There will always be incompetents. I have seen laboratory experiments go so wrong that you would be horrified if you gazed at the deformed results. Remember — all you see about you are the successes. The digesting pits hide the failures. We found Ambalasokei easily enough; others could have come before us. Records not kept, knowledge not passed on. We Yilanè have the fault of temporal indifference. We know that tomorrow’s tomorrow will be the same as yesterday’s yesterday — so find it unnecessary to record the passing of time, of events. What records that you do see are simply shadows of self-esteem. Something discovered, something done that will puff up some tiny ego. Records of failures are never kept.”
“Then you believe that the Sorogetso are the results of an experiment that went wrong?”
“Or one that went right — or one that should never have happened at all. It is one thing to tamper with the gene strings of ustuzou and other lower creatures. It is unheard of for a Yilanè to tamper with genes of Yilanè.”
“Even to improve them, to fight disease?”
“Silence! You say too much, know too little. Disease is eliminated by altering other organisms. We are as we are, as we have been since the egg of time. This discussion is closed.”
“Then I will open it again,” Enge said with great firmness. “Statement-now denies statement-past. You aided us to come to this place because you wished to study the relationship of our philosophy to physiological changes in our bodies. Is that not in the nature of an experiment with Yilanè?”