He looked at the harness, decided he couldn’t get out at the moment, then opened his pants, peed onto the dirt, and sat down to make a mud picture on the bottom board of the fence. I saw Lutha flinch, but Poracious Luv watched him with lively interest and no discernible disapprobation.
About this time the three Fastigats concluded their conference. Both Leelson and Trompe spat over the fence and then wiped their mouths. The Procurator said something to them, then calmly let himself out the gate and went off down the hill. The spirit people and songfathers had left an aisle open all the way from the pen to the temple at the bottom. He was confronted almost at once by one of those who had accompanied him up the hill in the firstplace.
“Hah-Rianahm,” Poracious whispered. “Lord high-muck-a-muck among this rabble.”
The Dinadhi’s voice was strident. I could hear him clearly, though he spoke from some distance.
“…must return to the pen!” he howled.
“…must take time to experience this record,” shouted the Procurator in stentorian tones, overriding the other, no small achievement considering how the skinny old man was screaming.
“No time! Tahs-uppi!”
“Until Tahs-uppi!”
Gabble and shout, pushing and shoving, the Procurator was thrust back up the hill and through the gate that Leelson opened for him. The three Fastigats exchanged wry looks that said the result of the foray had not been unexpected. Then all three of them began dragging items from the baggage pile, opening sacks and cases, sorting out items of equipment. When they had unpacked and assembled the first half-dozen elements, Lutha said:
“Isn’t that a wide-range retriever? The kind entertainers use?”
Lutha was looking questioningly at Poracious, but the large woman was preoccupied with what was going on at the temple. There the circles of kneeling men were completely filled in and various ritual personages with towering headdresses had taken up positions atop the raised semicircular section of floor. As we watched, songfathers manned the entire length of the pull rope, and half a dozen black-clad spirit men were pouring the contents of large jars upon the northeast quadrant of the temple floor—oil, I presumed, to make easier the moving of the great stone lid across this lower stone. When their jars were empty, they departed. One of the hierarchy shouted a command. Though we could not see musicians from where we stood, the sounds of their instruments came to us clearly: drums, gongs, trumpets, panpipes, and several sonorous stringed instruments.
First a blaring fanfare, then a whomp, whomp, whomp of drums and deep-toned plucked strings, then a shouted command, and those along the rope took up the slack. They began to tug, grunting with each pull. The arrangement of the rope allowed a one-quarter turn of the semicircular stone, and I held my breath, awaiting what this displacement would reveal.
At first it was only a darkness. A darkness within darkness. A circular blackness. A pit, perhaps. A pit smeared with cloudy concentric lines to represent a … I struggled to find a word. A vortex.
A blotch spun past, appearing at the edge farther from us, disappearing behind the edge nearest us. Well then, it wasn’t a representation of a vortex, it was a vortex. A … maelstrom. Though it didn’t look like water.
“Not water,” said the ex-king doubtfully. “It doesn’t look like water.”
Leelson cursed briefly behind me. He had dropped some part of the device and now knelt to attach it once more. The loose parts were almost all attached; I assumed they were finished with it. Trompe knelt beside Leelson and they thrust a record file through a narrow slot.
Poracious followed my glance.
“A record from Perdur Alas,” she murmured. “Un-filtered, if I don’t miss my guess!”
I only half heard her, for the ex-king made a muffled exclamation, drawing my attention back toward the temple where the steadily grunting line, ungh-ah, ungh-ah, ungh-ah, had moved the floor the entire quarter turn the tackle permitted. Now the whirling darkness was fully disclosed. The music stopped. We heard a shouted command. Then trumpets again, and a quicker tempo from the drums. The rope went slack. The ritual personages unshackled it from the eye, hauled it in, and carried thick coils of it away eastward to the accompaniment of panpipes and gongs. The members of the orchestra marched onto the northeast quadrant of the great stone lid and fettered themselves, facing north, while over their left shoulders the vortex whirled with hypnotic force. The musicians’ hair whipped in the rising wind.
“Look away,” demanded Poracious. “Don’t let your eyes get sucked in. Observe—the musicians are wearing blinkers, and none of the people are looking at it.”
As indeed they were not. The temple stood on a slight rise; almost all of the observers were on lower levels, where they couldn’t see the vortex; if any were higher than we, they would see only the temple roof or the processions of spirit people and songfathers who were marching hither and yon, waving banners and censers while drums pounded, gongs sounded, trumpets brayed, and panpipes tweedled breathily. When the music stopped, no one looked toward the temple. All eyes were searching the far canyon edges, where they opened into the valley.
“The beautiful people are coming,” I cried, hearing both the pain and the joy in my words. “Oh, they are coming. They will see us one more time before they go to heaven! Perhaps …perhaps …”
Oh, perhaps. The crowd stirred. At first I did not see what they saw, then I detected the pale movement at the canyon entrances, like a flow of milk. It did not come closer. Not then.
At the same time Leelson said something in a self-satisfied tone, there was a click, and I was elsewhere.
Before me, observed from some distance, through a twiggy growth, Diagonal Red and Four Green Spot floated over an abandoned camp. I heard the sea, at some distance behind me. A twig was jammed between my teeth to keep my mouth open as I drooled filthily. From
