Things that looked like clear plastic tubing wriggled out, severed ends leaking rosy ichor. A mass of orange gelatinous goo oozed forth along with a writhing charm-bracelet of odd polyhedral organs. Pink froth puddled on the floor. I brought the tool down and struck his crossed arms. The mass of his insides fell with a splat to the floor. He dropped the black-bladed knife.
I took him apart. First the arms. Then one leg. He toppled over and I methodically cut him into pieces like the overgrown lobster that he was. It took several minutes.
When I was done, I looked up to find the room filling with smoke. The far side of the room was in flames and steaming liquid covered the floor.
I looked toward the door. Twrrrll was coming toward me, knife in hand. I ran into a cloud of smoke and fumes, covering my nose and mouth, and sweeping ahead with the flaming cutting tool. I circled blindly, ran into a wall, felt my way along it, found the doorway, and ran through.
Chapter 13
It wasn't long before I met other souls down in that technological inferno. A fire brigade rushed past me dressed in fireproof suits, carrying equipment. They gave me puzzled glances, but did not stop.
I smiled and waved, limping toward the stairwell they had poured out from. I was hurt, though not mortally. The hamstring muscles of my left leg had been butchered a bit, but not completely severed. My right thigh had taken a puncture wound, and that was really hurting. I reached the stairwell and began to climb, but Nogon in bright uniforms?security guards, it turned out-met me before I'd gotten very far up. They took me into custody.
The hour that followed is a little vague in my mind. I was led back through the basement and into an express elevator. We ascended for an hour, it seemed. We alighted onto an office floor, and there I was bound with itchy leatherlike handcuffs and plopped into a chair in a dark office. Motions were made which indicated that I was not to leave. Two guards were posted. The others rushed out, closing and locking the door. I sat there in a daze for about ten minutes. Then the other security people returned and led me to a different office, sat me down, and went out again. This happened twice more. At that point I began to blank out.
I believe I was taken to some sort of infirmary, but little was done. Doctors?if they were doctors?looked me over and decided I wasn't worth bothering with. I felt basically okay.
I just wanted to draw a curtain over my mind and forget. But the stickum all over me and the image of quivering mandibles wouldn't go away. And the sight of intestines that looked like children's plastic building blocks spilling from the body of a creature whose passing glance would stop a child's heart. And the smell of turpentine and almonds.
At some point Susan showed up.
She ran her hand gently over my forehead. She was crying.
'Oh, Jake,' she said.
'Are you all right?' I asked calmly. Then I came out of it. 'Susan,' 'I said, and it all seemed like a dream. 'Suzie. My God, Suzie.'
I stood up. Susan buried her face into my filthy jacket and sobbed.
Her voice muffled, she wailed something.
'… my fault, it's all my fault…' was all I could hear.
'No, no,' I Said.
She cried some more then lifted her face up. She looked as if she'd been crying for hours. Had it been hours since I came up from the depths?
'Poor Tivi,' she said, her lower lip quivering. 'How can I ever…'
She hid her face again and trembled against me.
'There, there.'
I actually said, There, there.
There was more moving around. Ragna came out of what was apparently some official's office, into the anteroom where Susan and I were sitting.
'The distinguished individual to whom I have just been speaking,' he informed us solemnly, 'is wishing to be gazing upon you in person as we are discussing this matter.'
We went into a lavish office that looked more like a bedroom. The Nogon individual was dressed in cerise robes of a crepe material and reclined on a divan like some improbable satrap. His manner was perfunctory, if not downright insulting. He and Ragna exchanged words. We stood by.
In all, five minutes' worth of words were exchanged, and at the end of it the official spat out a phrase that was surely an insult, got up, and flounced out through another door.
'Why are we being blamed?' I asked Ragna. 'And what did he say to you?'
'He is calling me what most of our race are calling us, in so many words, that we are people who are fornicating with creatures that have no eyes?which is to be saying animals who are living in caves. And we are not being blamed, so much, anyway. They are caring nothing for Tivi. A fire, though, to them is frightening stuff, which is understandable?which is serving them right for living in these dumps, by gosh, the bastardly rats. It is all strictly in the nature of being bullshit.' I still didn't understand, but didn't ask for further elaboration. It was all, I was sure, very difficult to be explaining.
We went home.
The Ahgirr medics fixed me up fine, and while I was recuperating, the techs fixed the trailer for us. No one breathed a word about Tivi's death. The Ahgirr, it seemed, didn't have funerals. What was done with the remains was left unspoken as well.
Nothing was said or done which in any way would have led us to believe that we were being held to blame. Tivi's husband Ugar came to us and said that Tivi had died in the performance of her duty as a scientist. That was all he said.
There was a ceremony, however, which we humans all attended. The entire community gathered in a huge central chamber and sat on the cool stone floor in silence for a full hour or more. Then they all got up and left to go about their daily tasks.
I spent two days languishing in Ragna and his wife's suite, staring at the polished granite wall of a bedchamber, seeing strange things swarming in the grainy surface. Tivi's face, Susan's, Darla's, my father's. Scenes from my life, too, darkly and through a glass smudged with forgetfulness.
Gradually, I came out of whatever state I was in and in a week I was more or less back to normal.
Three very busy days passed before we said good-bye to the Ahgirr. I supervised the final touches on the repair job. Ariadne got a facelift and a clean bill of health after extensive repairs. She was still magenta, but now she wore it well.
In the middle of all this, I drew Sean aside. I had avoided doing this for as long as I could. I asked him about what I had seen in the caves.
'Ah, yes,' he said, stroking his explosion of facial foliage. 'Now, what exactly does your Snark look like?'
'What do you mean, my Snark? Are there different varieties?'
'As many as there are people who see them.'
'I don't understand. Was what I saw in the woods back on Talltree real or not?'
'Hard to say. There are a number of theories. Not a shred of solid research has been. done, but it's thought that some types of vegetation on the planet produce hallucinogenic pollen.'
'I see. So what I thought I saw was just brain static. Right?'
'Hard to say. Did you look for tracks?'
'No. I got conked right after I saw the thing.'
'Well, it might have been real. That is to say, you could very well have seen something. Almost nothing's known about Talltree, zoologically speaking.'
'How do you account for its being here?'
He shrugged his mountainous shoulders. 'I don't. But you could have seen a real creature back home, then
