[Chaney grunts. Shuffling sounds. Perhaps the weary shifting of a burden.]
I guess. Don’t ask me. I won’t watch any more of this foolishness. I’m dizzy. I’m fed up with this nonsense . . . If I can make it down these steps in the half-light, the hell-glow, I’m going to lie down beside the wall of eyebooks, where I was before, and go to sleep. Directly to sleep. Before the worm turns . . .
[Footfalls on the iron steps. Unintelligible mumblings]
Interlude: Early Afternoon of Day 139*
CHANEY [Speaking conversationally]: Hello. I’m talking to Benedict alone now. Ben? Ben, you’re supposed to make a drop tomorrow. Your twentieth. Can you believe that? No, I can’t either. It doesn’t seem like more than ten or twelve years that I’ve been out here. Twenty drops. Well I may not pick up this latest one. Not for a while, anyway. God knows when The Bachelor will choose to lead me out of here and back to the clearing. At the moment he’s occupied. Let me tell you how.
First, let me tell you what’s going on. I’m standing here by one of the dusty display cases. All its shelves are folded up against the central axis, like the petals of a flower at night. But it’s early afternoon, Ben, there’s dull light seeping through the swirling violet windows between the separate stories of the pagoda’s exterior column. Even so, every cabinet in the place is shut up like a new rose. Every one of them. It happened, I guess, while I was sleeping. The fires have gone out of the three globes overhead – they’re as dead and as mutely mottled as dinosaur eggs. I don’t know exactly when that happened, either. The eyebooks still work, but everything else in here is dead.
The pagoda’s dead. That’s all there is to it. And I have the feeling it won’t come alive again until Denebola has set and BoskVeld’s moons climb the sky. Moonlight is reflected light, indirect light, and this place seems to function best when the light comes at you cockeyed and filtered. Don’t ask me why . . .
But The Bachelor. You want to know what happened to him. Again, I don’t know exactly. During the night the plumb line from which he fashioned the noose and then hung out over the pagoda’s floor while a trio of huri wrapped him in silk – that golden line, I tell you, has lengthened and dropped through the ring of the chandelier so that it’s now only a meter or so from the floor. It descended, I suppose, of its own accord. [A chuckle.] Now the ungainly pupa hangs in the daylight gloom of this chamber and turns slowly, slowly, first to the right, then to the left, like the gone-awry pendulum in a grandfather clock . . . That’s it, Ben, my somber Big Ben, this whole building’s just an out-sized timepiece. You can hear BoskVeld ticking in its orbit. Listen . . .
As for the huri, only one of last night’s three remains. The original huri, I have to assume. It crouches on the uppermost node of the pupa, the point at which the braid breaks through, and rides The Bachelor’s mummified head as it used to ride his shoulder. Each time the wrapped body turns this way I feel the huri’s staring at me, taking my measure. If I had a pistol, I’d shoot the damn thing, I swear I would. Even if it meant that the concussion would split the seams of this temple and send it crashing down on my ears – every fragile cabinet shattering, every eyebook bursting open. So help me, I would. Which is probably why I didn’t bring a weapon out here with me in the first place . . . But now the little beastie’s clawing nervously at the silken membrane, unhinging its wings and shaking their outstretched tips. I think, gang, we’re going to get some action. Give me a few minutes, just a few . . .
[Several minutes pass.] Action, indeed. The huri’s moving in its own catch-as-catch-can fashion down the swaying cocoon that houses The Bachelor. As it moves, it peels back pieces of the membrane, snips them off with its feet, transfers the pieces to its greedy hands, and eats them. That’s right, eats them . . . I’d been wondering what the little bugger subsisted on, and I have to continue to wonder. Viable food chains do not result from a creature’s feeding on its own excreta. Too much is lost . . . Nevertheless, the huri’s feeding on the husk of The Bachelor’s metamorphosis, on the rind of its master’s involuntary change. Maybe that’s phrasing it a little too philosophically, but I can’t help thinking the huri’s eating The Bachelor’s former self . . . It’s crabwalking in a spiral down the cocoon, a spiral mirroring the great corkscrew of the pagoda’s staircase, and it furiously shovels in and gobbles up the membrane that it’s snipping away.
Now the huri is at the hollow of The Bachelor’s chest, and I can see the outline of my old friend’s head through the milk-blue film that remains even though the silken outer layer has been eaten away. This film clings to his features like a hood. It’s moist and trembly, and through it I can see the death mask of his face.
Ben, Ben, you can’t expect me to stay here and watch this. Tell the others not to expect that of me. The bitch-goddess of xenology’s fucked me over too many times already, and I’m nauseated with fatigue. With disgust. It’s worse than last night. There’s an odor in the temple, a smell
