“It might help if you consider that … thing that tore him apart. It’s in for a surprise, isn’t it?”
She cast me one incredulous glance, then closed her eyes and refused to speak.
“It’s the big one, Lutha. The prime Ularian. The chief Rotten. And whatever venom Leely spreads, that creature is now awash in it.”
Laughter welled uncontrollably from her throat. She roared. “You’re such a fool!”
He drew away, deeply offended.
“You Firsters! Suppose your Firster god came calling on you. When he arrived, would you call him a Ularian? Would you expect him to resemble you even in your frailties? Would you expect him to catch your cold. To get a bellyache? To sneeze?”
He was rigid, pale, not following her.
She whispered. “You would expect God to be above all that, no? So, if a deity appears who is deity not only of man but of all living things, will you really expect it to die from mange or distemper or an attack of the Leelies?”
He still didn’t understand.
“Bernesohn didn’t understand what’s really happening any more than you do.”
“What are you saying?” he grated. “What do you know that I do not?”
She glared at him. “There is life in Hermes Sector, Leelson. Life breeding here. Life that uses humans as incubators, infinite, wonderful life. Life for old planets that man has ruined and left barren behind him. As mankind seems always to do, we have stumbled into it and contaminated the process, for which we will be punished.”
“No!” he said hoarsely, reaching for her. “No.”
She jerked herself away from him. “And your ultimate Ularian is not merely some alien life-form! It is Behemoth. Creation made manifest. Primordial life. Great Beast. Ruler of some large chunk of the universe. So far as we’re concerned, it’s name is God.”
“You’re mad!” he exclaimed, turning away from me. “Quite mad.”
She shook with hysterical laughter. “We’ll see.”
Snark seized one of her arms and I the other, putting my hand over her mouth. Lutha wasn’t noticing their faces, Mitigan’s and Leelson’s. Both of them were ready to explode. Snark had pushed them, the ex-king had pushed them, now Lutha had pushed them. They were becoming dangerous.
“Enough,” said a voice.
We turned to confront a ghost that rose from the base of the stones. Jiacare Lostre. Ashen, cadaverous, but alive. From around his feet, beetle-ish things bumbled away, tiny Leelies, who did not stop at healing, but also had a sideline in resurrections.
“You were dead!” cried Mitigan in angry disbelief.
“So I was,” he replied. “And if I was killed as a representative of mankind, deservedly so. And if what I heard may be believed, all mankind may soon share my fate, or that of Dinadh, to be incubators for all eternity.”
“It’ll die!” cried Mitigan. “The way the Rottens died. The way the shaggy died. It touched Leely. It’ll die.”
Poracious said, “I think not. Look there!” She pointed to the opening of the cave, where one of the Leelies was dueling with a crab among the stones. He touched it repeatedly, but the crab didn’t seem to care.
Lutha wept. “Behemoth has vaccinated its creatures against our plague. What is breeding here now is Leely-proof.”
The largest Leely crawled into Lutha’s lap, climbed her chest, and put his tiny arms around her neck.
“Lutha mother love,” he whispered. “Don’t cry, Lutha mother love.”
She went on crying, and so did I.
“We should go back to the camp,” said Mitigan in a stiff, unnatural voice. Poor Mitigan. All his world astray, and him lost with it.
No one had anything else or better to offer. Poracious wanted to stay where she was, but Snark wouldn’t let her.
“It’s not a good idea for you to be alone. Not a good idea for any of us.”
After a time of aimless delay, we went from our cave in a wavering line, much the way the Leelies had gone, each of us wrapped in a blanket or two. Lutha carried the largest Leely. Snark carried her jar, taking the lead when we reached the path. I followed after her, then the others, with Mitigan bringing up the rear, his face hard and angry as it had been since Behemoth had appeared. As we went north along the ocean trail we caught glimpses of the smaller Leelies, jumping into tide pools, dodging behind stones, disappearing down holes in the ground. Several of the larger ones greeted us in tiny voices. “Dananana.”
We rounded a corner and confronted a lioness. That is, it was similar to pictures I had seen that were labeled lioness. We scrambled onto the slippery rocks while she passed us by. On her side was a vivid patch of scarlet, bordered by misty violet on one side, by deep wine and bright yellow on the other. Behind her came a train of cubs, each with its own color pattern.
“They are not hungry,” Leelson said in an expressionless voice. “At the moment.”
The lioness was only the first. There were huge almost birds running on the trail, darting their beaks into the tide pools to spear wriggling, silver things. Each of them bore its own pattern of stripes or mottling or moving blotches of color. There were shelled things, clattering on the stones, turtlelike, crablike, strangenesslike. There were small, furry beings with fluffy tails and piping voices that whistled as we passed. Every corner brought a new creature, each one with a new pattern, and each one bringing a new outburst of rage from Mitigan. Their very existence was an insult to him.
We passed the body of the Procurator in late afternoon, and it was evening when we came out onto the beach. There a snake slithered at Mitigan’s feet, and he mouthed impotently, his fury mounting. He saw me cringe, so he turned and began to say to me the kinds of unpleasant things men of his kind often say to women, working himself into yet greater rage.
Snark tired of it. She shouted, “Use your head! This world was not made
