“Because we don’t need animals!” Leelson asserted angrily.
“You say we don’t,” Lutha protested. “But one could argue they need themselves. One could argue that their creator may have purposes for them.”
“Do you have any idea how ridiculous that sounds?” He waved a forefinger in her face. “We can be their creator. We have specifications for every species stored away. They can be reanimated anytime.”
Snark jeered, “Stored away? Like old chairs, in a cellar somewheres? Would that satisfy you, Leelson Famber? Or you, Mitigan. Not living, not breathing, not moving. Just a pattern, in storage. Suppose before they did it to you, they told you, ‘Don’t worry. We can reanimate you anytime.’ How’d you feel about that?”
“Humans are not animals,” Mitigan said angrily. “You can’t compare them. The universe was made for man.”
“So you say,” Snark crowed, with an outrageous snicker. “Now maybe whatever’s out there is remaking the universe. Repopulating it, anyhow.”
“Snark …” Lutha murmured warningly.
Mitigan’s hands twitched toward his weapons; his eyes were hard and slitted. Snark wasn’t noticing, or she didn’t care.
“Well, yeah, but look! Look at this world. Look how it’s set up. Doesn’t it look like a nursery? Some place all clean and ready to multiply life on, and lots of it?”
“You’re saying the world is it-normed?” asked Leelson, incredulously. “Shaggy-normed. Rotten-normed.” He was almost as angry as Mitigan.
“That’s it!” she crowed, a rapscallion, happily infuriating larger and quite dangerous opponents. “Maybe this world is Ularian-normed! Wouldn’t that be a joke on us?”
Mitigan and Leelson were not amused. Before she could say anything else, the ex-king put his hand on Snark’s shoulder, calming her, drawing her away. There was enough danger, his eyes said, without causing more among ourselves.
I sat down beside Lutha and Leely. The boy was busy drawing in the sand, and she watched him, her thoughts written on her face. They were old thoughts, ones she had spoken of: love warring with pain, pain warring with love. Leely was uncanny, a changeling, yet flesh of her flesh, fruit of her love for Leelson—which was perhaps something else, not love at all. Leely smiled meltingly up at her. She reached out, and he crawled into her lap to curl up there, playing with her hair. His mouth made silent words. He was trying names for things, silently working them out.
Poracious reached over and tapped me. “Look,” she said, pointing out toward the sky. It took me a moment to realize that day had come and the sun shone in vast emptiness. The night before, the sky had been full of shaggies. Now there were none.
“Where’d they go?” Snark demanded.
We went to the cavern opening and looked out. No shaggies. No Rottens.
“The sea!” Leelson exclaimed.
It was alive with swimming things. Great fishy creatures, huge as houses. Monstrous shelled things. Eels that squirmed among the rocks along the shore. Various and multiple, fecund and furious, life beat upon the shores of Perdur Alas. We were so awestruck we did not even see the enormous tentacle that reared out of the water and lashed toward us, missing us by a finger!
We scrambled back, getting out of the way. I had felt this same emotion at the Nodders, when I had known they were capable of killing us easily and quickly, with no one to see or mourn or care. So, too, this great welter of living things could drag us down and drown us, leaving no trace. We were not masters here! This world was not made for man!
“Eagles,” said Poracious.
We craned our necks to watch eagles for a while. They were as unexpected and marvelous as the other creatures, soaring in splendid spirals against the cloudless sky. Poracious stuttered and muttered, trying to attach a name to every living thing she saw, but Lutha said not a word.
“Where did they come from?” Leelson cried.
“The shaggies went,” said the ex-king. “The animals came.”
I turned to Lutha, the question in my face.
She shrugged. “I agree with him. The shaggies bred all kinds of creatures. This life is mutable. It will be what its maker wills.”
“What the hell is ‘its maker’ playing at!” demanded Leelson, outraged.
We felt the earth shake, just a little, like a heavy footstep nearby. Poracious put her head on her knees and shuddered. Leelson pointed out into the sea, far, far, where the sky came down on the horizon. An island there, which had not been there before. It became larger while we watched.
“What’s it doing?” demanded Mitigan in a tone almost as furious as Leelson’s had been.
Lutha remarked. “Why so offended, Mitigan? You weren’t this offended by the shaggies or by the Rottens.”
“Animals,” he said. “Why bother being offended at animals?”
“So what’s coming out there isn’t an animal?”
He scalded her with a look, before turning back to watch the blob grow larger. It had horns on top. Even at this great distance it was ineluctable, numinous, but familiar!
Lutha had the same idea. “Did you see Nodders on your way to Tahs-uppi?” she asked Mitigan.
“We climbed around them,” he grated. “Such things have no right to be.”
The ex-king smiled. In some terrible, fatalistic way, he was enjoying himself. “Perhaps this creature feels it has every right to be alive and moving. Perhaps it has judged our storage vaults and found them wanting. Perhaps it has some more immediate destiny to attend to.”
“We will soon know,” said I, from my position atop a boulder. “It’s coming nearer.”
It was very tall. The head was massive. The horns on top showed clearly. This was the reality of which the Nodders were only a symbol. This, whatever this was—had the same proportion of height to horned top, to the great bulk of the nodding head. I had no time to consider the effect, for sound changed, the world shuddered, a peculiarly dreamy sensation overtook me, as though all happenings were inevitable
