“Do it,” sputtered the Procurator, heading for the door labeled SANITARY FACILITY. “Summon that rememberer back, and have him find someone. Now!”
From behind a clump of furze, Snark watched Diagonal Red, Four Green Spot, Big Gray Blob, Blue Lines, and Speckled Purple—the ones she’d come to call the Big Five—gather over the camp. Recently these particular ones had been assembling more and more frequently, sometimes only three or four of them, often all five, looming aloft for a while, then descending to encircle the abandoned camp with appendages that seemed almost liquid in their ability to flow together. Peering at them from her hole at the top of the nearest hill, Snark had decided this was either the way they conversed or the way they remembered. Each new picture coalesced on one Ularian before it moved across the united flesh to the next Ularian, where some other details or actions were added. Each Ularian augmented or complicated the picture created by the previous ones, and the event continued accreting finer and finer detail until the sequence was completed. Or until the Ularians got tired of it.
She had watched them kill her mother half a dozen times. Since she had first realized that the color blobs were pictures, she had counted the number of different pictures they shared. The most frequent one was Snark’s mother, a huge mother one who covered the whole front of one of the things. Soon Mother would run across the moor, her hair streaming behind her. The shape of running Mother would move to the left, racing along that great wall of flesh. The next Ularian added the shapes of the pursuers. This picture went on, left, farther left, until Snark lost sight of it. When it came into view again, to her right, the pursuers were pouncing, sending Mother fleeing this way, that way, playing with her. Every time the same, the sea coming nearer and nearer, safety almost within reach …
Each time Snark had seen it, Mother had almost reached the edge before they caught her.
Why did they show it over and over? Tell it over and over? It wasn’t a story one of them told, it was a story they shared. Sometimes Diagonal Red would start it. Sometimes one of the others. And the details were always the same, as though they’d all agreed just how it was, just what had happened, remembering it all the same.
Snark told herself the pictures were not necessarily true. The chase might not have happened at all. Maybe it was something they wanted to have happened. Maybe it was a religious thing, a kind of ritual they went through, like primitives did, counting coup, telling tall tales, even painting lies on their tombs to make their gods think they were better, or bigger, or stronger than they actually were.
Today they weren’t telling the mother-chase story. Today they were showing another favorite, a fish story. The picture was of shaggy forms that hung over the sea, dropping their tentacles into the waves, drawing them up again, laden with silvery fish. The detail was so complete that Snark could see the fish flapping inside the tentacles that had caught them.
When they were finished telling stories, they would float away, like monstrous balloons. There was a wrong-ness to them. Balloons should be festive, not repulsive. Snark put her face onto her hands, waiting for them to finish showing the fish story and go away. Close as they were, she dared not move, though the taste was hard to bear. When she watched them for a long time like this, the taste seemed to permeate her own flesh until she herself tasted as they did, sick of her own saliva, nauseated by the rottenness of her own tongue. When they left, she would lie in the mouth of her cave with her mouth open, letting the sea wind wash around her teeth, cleansing her into humanness once more.
During the past few days, they had been around more frequently and had stayed for longer times. Maybe they were planning a fishing trip. Maybe they’d taken over this whole planet just to go fishing! Though all they’d done so far was talk about it, that is, show pictures about it. They themselves hadn’t caught any fish, not that Snark had seen.
She clamped her eyes shut and concentrated on breathing deeply: one breath, two breaths, three, four, the smell of the sea, the sound of the birds, thirty-two, the sound of the waves, eighty, one hundred, a hundred thirty, seventy….
When she raised her head, they had gone. She didn’t move. A few days ago, she’d thought they were gone and had been about to move when she realized they were hanging directly above her. She’d come that close to being eaten. Or transported. Or cat-and-moused like her mother. Whatever it was they did. Would do.
She risked a look up. Clear sky. Nothing. Nothing near the camp. Nothing between herself and the cliff. Still, one had to be careful. They could move with horrid alacrity. One minute they wouldn’t be anywhere around, the next moment they’d be present.
Maybe they knew she was here. Maybe all this was part of the ritual. Showing her what would happen to her.
She wouldn’t think that. Wouldn’t let herself think that. If she thought that, she’d run screaming right at them, out in the open, panicked. She couldn’t do that. She had to hold on, hold on….
For what? There was no one here. No one to protect, no one to talk to, no one to lie beside, sharing warmth, sharing comfort, even.
Untrue. Somewhere was a monitor. Seeing what she saw. Feeling what she felt. Somewhere on Dinadh was someone watching over her.
Though the monitor might not be the only thing watching over her! Sometimes in the night she woke to that flattened sound, that curtained feeling, that almost subliminal shudder, as though a mighty hoof had touched the
