‘What’s the matter?’ Elegy asked.
‘Are you ready to take on all eight of those fellows?’
The amethyst eyes of the pagoda, streaming with a multifaceted ooze, stared down on us in macrocosmic parody of the indigo gazes of the Asadi attending Kretzoi’s bier.
Then I heard Elegy say, ‘Look.’
Half turning, I saw the Asadi behind us plunging back into the Wild in a thousand different places, one after the other. Denebola’s rising had triggered their dispersal, an inversion of the usual course of things. But the corpsebearers and torchlighters awaiting us on the temple’s broad, high porch had not yet fled. Maybe they didn’t intend to.
Elegy and I resumed our climb. My arm aching, I continued to whirl the mock-huri above my head.
On the temple’s highest step the Asadi formed a phalanx eight individuals abreast. Bending aggressively forward, they stared down with eyes spinning out of indigo dullness into spectral displays of such angry intensity that their faces seemed to be on fire. A moment later they all began to fade, their bodies emptying of color, texture, and substance – so that through the outlines of their torsos and limbs Elegy and I could clearly see the catafalque behind them, the mossy, rearing facade of the pagoda, and the rough-hewn massiveness of the temple’s doors.
‘Again,’ whispered Elegy, matter-of-fact and noncommittal.
‘Hallucination,’ I told her. ‘They’re radiating a spectral pattern that polarizes or off-centers our ability to perceive them. They do it in concert for maximum effectiveness. It’s a residual capability. The pagoda retains in its structure the essence of this power, and their resorting to it now, Elegy, means they’re out of their boonie minds with fright!’
I hurled the mock-huri with all my strength up the sweep of the tier, fell helplessly forward, and watched as the huri’s wings stabilized its stumpy fuselage and sent it cruising like a crazy kamikaze intelligence into the alien phalanx – sixteen pinwheeling eyes above eight ghostly bodies.
The eyes scattered, and the bodies beneath them were suddenly real again, every one of the shaggy Asadi stumbling down the steps in a direction that would spare it a confrontation with us. Casting aside their torches, they were gone into the Wild almost before we could blink.
‘Kretzoi!’ Elegy shouted. She threw herself up the remaining steps to the summit and knelt beside the granite catafalque. The artificial huri, I noted, had struck the pagoda’s doors and plummeted sidelong to one of the upper steps, where it balanced precariously. Wearily I climbed to the nasty thing and kicked it down the steps. Then I joined Elegy at Kretzoi’s bier.
The primate lay on his back with his knees bent and his sex exposed. He appeared either asleep or unconscious. Holding his receding chin between her thumb and forefinger, Elegy tenderly tilted his head first to this side and then to that, all the while crooning entreaties and prayers. I had to believe that the rhythmic, swaying progress of the Asadi columns through the Wild had hypnotized him, for Elegy was hard pressed to bring him back to our reality.
‘Let me try, ‘I said.
I eased Elegy aside and laid my ear to Kretzoi’s chest. He was breathing as a hibernating animal breathes, all his bodily processes clocked down to the laggardly cadences of winter. I put my mouth over his wide hairy lips, covered his death’s-head nostrils with my hand, and blew a violent puff of air deep into his lungs. He started as if he had been galvanized. I puffed again, tasting the unplaceable odors of his breath and immediately wiping my mouth dry. That done, I dragged Kretzoi off the catafalque and slammed his limp body against the temple’s left-hand door. Holding him there with my hip and one trembling hand, I made a hammer of my other fist and struck him squarely on the sternum. Again, he twitched – like a frog administered an electric shock.
‘Stop it!’ Elegy cried. And, in truth, I don’t know whether I was trying to revive Kretzoi or neutralize my long-pent anxiety and frustration. Maybe I was doing both. Kretzoi was the Asadi I had not been able to get my hands on a moment earlier, and I didn’t want to let him go.
‘Ben!’ Elegy cried again, grabbing my arm. ‘Stop it!’
I shrugged her away, but relinquished my grip on Kretzoi. Amazingly, he didn’t slide down the door. Inside their clear polymer carapaces his human eyes came open, focusing on me with slow-dawning recognition and cold disdain.
As Kretzoi’s consciousness returned, he pressed himself defiantly against the door at his back – with the result that the door groaned inward on its hinges and revealed to both Elegy and me a tall, narrow slice of the pagoda’s interior. Kretzoi fell quickly to all fours and bounded aside.
‘Ben,’ Elegy said tentatively.
‘What?’
‘You did well just then, Thomas Benedict. You were working intuitively for a change. That was your “not-I” performing, you know – your right brain.’
‘Then I hardly deserve any credit, do I?’
Elegy laughed, and there on the top step of the high Asadi altar her laughter sounded incongruously merry and sweetly apropos. ‘Of course you do. It’s your “not-I,” isn’t it?’ She stepped forward and took my arm. ‘The honor’s yours if you want it,’ she said, gesturing at the lofty crack between the temple doors. ‘You’ve waited as long as I have, I guess, and I’ll be damned if it matters to me who goes in there first . . . Kretzoi, sit!’
The animal was edging toward the opening, but at her command he stopped and looked at her inquiringly.
I felt a sudden piquant affection for Kretzoi, an affection born of shame and an ineffable backassward respect. My own unworthiness, in contrast, was almost strong enough to choke me.
‘Let the hairy ape go first,’ I said. ‘There’s always the nasty chance the
