Just because Leelson might be wrong didn’t mean Lutha was right about him, though she was about some things. She was probably right about the Kachis we’d seen at Burning Springs. If the songfathers couldn’t get to the ompahlos, the omphalos wouldn’t be opened. If the omphalos wasn’t opened, the Kachis couldn’t go through it to heaven. It made sense that all the Kachis would find nice warm places and meditate there, awaiting their time of transfiguration.
While I was puzzling over this Leelson had wandered off to the edge of the small stream that we had traveled along since we had left the Burning Springs. He plucked a few lengths of dried grass and came striding back to Trompe, holding out a fist with two straws protruding. Trompe drew one.
Leelson opened his hand to show that the one he retained was the shorter one, and then, without so much as blinking or saying good-bye, he turned and walked rapidly toward the Nodders, leaving Trompe and me with our mouths full of unspoken advice. Leely poked his head out of the wagon and stared at Leelson’s retreating back. Only Lutha, still angrily facing back the way we had come, did not see him go.
When he came beneath the first of the Nodders, I forgot to breathe. The Nodder began to sway again, very gently, side to side, like someone saying no, no, don’t do that. Leelson looked up, hesitated only a fraction of an instant, then went on. The Nodder went on swaying: no, no, no, and it didn’t stop swaying when Leelson went past it, out of its shadow, and strode toward the gap between the two other outliers. Both of them began to sway also, saying no, no, no. This time Leelson didn’t look up. He just went on, arms swinging, eyes on his feet.
The great heads were horning the heavens, right, left, right. Lutha had been right. They resembled a herd of …what? “They look like animal heads,” I whispered. “What is that Old-earthian animal, Trompe? Men fought it ritually, risking their lives. Was it a cattle?”
“Bull,” he said.
Of course. Bull. Virile and puissant. Mighty bull. I remembered now.
From behind me I heard an indrawn breath. Lutha came running. Trompe caught her as she was about to pass us.
“Hush,” he said as she began to babble. “Don’t do anything to foul up the findings. Or to risk his life more than it already is.”
She paused, frozen, one foot still raised, watching as intently as we. A few moments before, she had hated him. A few hours before, when we had stopped to rest, I had seen her in his arms again, the two of them holding one another as though they would never let go. It would be nice, I thought wistfully, if they could sort it out. Whenever I saw them at it, loving or hating, it was hurtful to me.
Leelson went between the sentinel pair, then into a veritable forest of pillars. The great horned heads bobbed restlessly above him, moved by something. Not wind. It was, for the moment, utterly calm and very cold.
When Leelson moved out of sight among the stones, we all looked upward, readying ourselves, I suppose, for one or more of the great heads to fall. Nothing happened but that slight motion, that measured horning. Jab, jab, jab, they said. No, no, no.
Trompe murmured, “We can postulate it’s the correct time to get through, but only just. The traffic controllers seem to be in some doubt.”
That was one explanation. I could think of others, but to no profit. No amount of thinking would tell us what we needed to know; only action would do. I took a deep breath and trudged off in the direction Leelson had gone, hoping the path would be self-evident. One route through might be passable, while another might be forbidden! The two Fastigats had not considered that! Behind me Lutha said something and Trompe hushed her. I heard Leely burbling his eternal Dananana. Then I heard nothing but my own blood roaring in my ears.
The temptation to look up was too strong when I came beneath the first one. I staggered at the sight. So huge. So horrid. So heavy. The tops of our caves are as huge, as heavy, but they curve comfortingly down around us, like sheltering arms. These curves went away, the wrong way, and it was like looking up at the shape of some flying monster, diving on me. I shuddered, forced my eyes down, and kept walking. Everywhere the ground was littered with shards of broken stone, sharp edges, curved surfaces, like fragments of eggshells made gigantic. They had fallen from somewhere. At one time or another, they had fallen.
I kept my feet moving, one foot in front of the other. My mouth and throat were so dry it hurt to move my tongue. I gulped at the sight of bones. Not human. Gaufer bones. A scatter of them, as though something had been eating them. Then, as I moved around a great pillar, there were human ones: shoulders and a skull staring at the sky, arms and torso disappearing under a broken-edged stone.
The rock was curved like a fragment of cup and it rocked as I passed. Curve inside curve. Were the Nodders hollow? Were they great stone eggs? With what inside? Were these the remnants of some that had hatched?
Beware, the skull eyes said to me. Beware. Don’t panic. Don’t shout. Don’t run. Beware!
I had passed between the Nodder pair. Off to my left the streamlet ran, winding among the pillars, which were all around me now, a thick copse of rising trunks with a multitude of paths among them. How did one keep from getting lost? The stony soil showed no trace of Leelson’s passage.
Look up, I
