“Weird,” offered the ex-king.
“Odd,” Snark replied, shaking her head. “What’s weird is their genetic pattern. Pieces of it are similar to a lot of creatures we have records of—”
She stopped, her words arrested by a break in the thus-far-unchanging view through the crevice. Far to their right the curtain of tentacles was disturbed. A dozen of the lumpy lines thrashed in agitation and began reeling in as the shaggies did when they caught fish. The observers craned, trying to see what had caused the disturbance, seeing nothing at first but stones and bracken. Then came a flash of pale color.
Lutha’s throat knew before her brain did. She heard herself shouting, “Leely!”
He was out there! Stark naked! Skipping along the line of tentacles, letting them run over his body, thrusting his hands into them. Damn Leelson! Damn him. He’d let her baby go!
She turned blindly toward the exit, but Snark grabbed her in a devil’s grip. “Look,” Snark demanded. “Don’t go running off. Look!”
Unwillingly, Lutha turned her head toward the crevice. The tentacles Leely touched were withdrawing, reeling in quickly, more quickly than they’d seen even the shaggies do while fishing. The dangling appendages didn’t grab at him as he skipped by; it was he who plunged in and out of the ropy curtain, moving right to left along the arc of tentacles, up the ridge.
A few—four or five—of the Rottens didn’t reel in when touched. Instead they dropped the touched tentacles, severing them near the body, then drew in all the others, sucking them in as though slurping noodles. This unlikely sight distracted Lutha just long enough that when she looked back to the left, Leely was over the ridge, out of sight.
Once more she tried to get away, struggling with Snark.
“Wait!” demanded Jiacare. “He’s not hurt, and he’s following the circle. He’ll probably come around again.”
She stared outward with a feeling of sick impotence. The Rotten circle was at least four or five hundred paces across, fifteen hundred paces around or more. And Leely was moving in a skipping, sidling way, not in any hurry. It would take him a long time. She counted: One pace, two, three, four. If he moved as she counted…
She lost her place twice and was up to eight hundred something, long past hope of seeing him, when he appeared as he had at first, far to the right, still skipping, still touching, though now there were very few tentacles within his reach.
Only when Lutha saw he was safe did she look elsewhere, following Snark’s jabbed finger toward the Rotten directly above. It was one of those that had withdrawn all its tentacles before being touched. The bottom surface was smooth, shiny, like the surface of a balloon. Colors flowed across it.
“That’s Diagonal Red,” slavered Snark.
None of them could have missed the pulsing scarlet blot, edged on one side with misty violet, on the other by deep wine and vivid yellow.
Lutha wiped her mouth. “Do they all have individual patterns?”
Snark nodded.
“No two alike?”
“Not that I’ve seen.” Snark spat onto the dirt with an apologetic shrug. “I don’t think we can see all of it.”
Despite the difficulty of talking, Lutha persisted.
“Couldn’t that be what Leelson sensed as a name? An individual pattern?”
Snark shrugged, raised her eyebrows, mimed possible agreement, all the while choking and hawking.
Lutha gave up. She would pursue the question later. For now, she’d assume each of them had an individual pattern that might extend beyond visible wavelengths, a pattern of which humans might see only a part. For all they knew, the terrible taste might be part of the creatures’ titles!
The one to the left of Diagonal Red was probably the one Snark called Four Green Spot. It, too, had drawn in its tentacles and was repeating its pattern. If their patterns were their names, then they were saying their names, over and over.
Lutha tried it silently: “My name is——. My name is——.” Why were they telling the humans? A nice point of linguistics! Under what circumstances do creatures announce their names?
Perhaps when they want others to know they have names? Perhaps when they want others to know they are not bees or ants but beings? Or perhaps even to say that ants and bees are beings?
Leely had returned to a point opposite the peek hole. Now he stood facing the rock pile, looking up, his bare little body mottled with chill.
Not mottled. Colored. On his smooth chest and belly a patch of bright scarlet bloomed, bordered on one side in violet and on the other side by deep wine and yellow.
The enormous being above him made a roaring sound, so thunderous and terrible that those who were watching cringed. Colors fled across its underside. Pictures of Rot-tens, pictures of Leely being grabbed, drawn in, his bones falling from the sky.
And on Leely’s belly, nothing but the colored pattern. No pictures.
“Tell it back,” cried Snark out the peek hole. “Oh, little boy, tell it back! Tell it you’ll kill it dead!”
But Leely made no pictures. Just the pattern, then another Rotten’s pattern, then another’s. Lutha pressed her face into her hands, not to see, oh, not to see. Leely had never made pictures that moved. To send a message, he would need motion, but his art was a static art.
It wasn’t even art, blared a voice in her mind. It’s no more art than an echo is art. Or a reflection in a mirror. It’s reproduction, not interpretation. Leelson’s voice, too well remembered.
“He can’t,” she said brokenly. “He can’t answer it.”
“What’s happening?” demanded Leelson from behind them.
Lutha stood aside to let him see.
“They’re hurt!” exclaimed Leelson. “Or they’re scared! By my lineage!”
He plunged off among the stones with Lutha at his heels. They erupted into the open inside that monstrous, fleshy chimney where all the tentacles were raised, all the bellies smooth, all showing pictures of Leely dying,
