“Something will show up,” said Boarmus, pressing a lever down. In the ramified structure beneath him, a signal was emitted: Report time. The Provost is present.
“Where will it come from?” whispered Jacent.
“Elsewhere,” muttered Boarmus. “Anywhere, boy. Halfway around the world. Hold your water. Look subdued.”
It wasn’t difficult. He was subdued. He started violently when the voice came from the wall.
“Boarmus,” it said softly. Not the gulper voice. One of the female-sounding ones.
“I have been considering what you said to me last,” said Boarmus, putting his hand on Jacent’s shoulder.
“There is an unauthorized person with you.”
“True. He is here as an example.”
“An example of what?”
“An example of the awe in which the people of Tolerance hold you,” said Boarmus. Under his fingers, Jacent shivered. Very good, Boarmus thought. Let the boy be scared half to death, so long as he doesn’t forget his lines. “An ordinary person of Tolerance. Not a Provost. Not a member of the Inner Circle.”
“Does he hold me in awe?”
Boarmus shook him. “Do you hold, ah … her … in awe, boy.”
“Oh, yes.” Jacent shivered. “Yes, I do.”
“In reverence?”
Jacent nodded, and had to be prodded into speaking aloud. “Oh, yes.”
“What does he think I am?” The voice managed to sound curious.
“Now,” signaled Boarmus’s fingers, almost gladly. He’d worried about working the conversation around to this point; now he wouldn’t have to.
“Well,” said Jacent from a dry mouth. “Some people think you’re god. But others don’t.”
(Good boy.)
“Why don’t they?” Still curious, not yet angry.
“Well, because,” Jacent said. “God is omniscient. God knows the answers to all questions. If you are god, you’d know the answer to the Great Question. I mean, people say if you’re really god, you’ll answer that question. Then everybody will know you’re god. Everybody will know.”
“How do you know I haven’t answered the question?” Another voice, this one edged with anger, displeasure. Boarmus held on to the boy’s shoulder, keeping him steady. Even this voice was not the really bad one, not the gulper. The gulper must be busy elsewhere.
“You’d have told us,” said Jacent in a firm voice. “In order that we might work toward our destiny properly. You see, that’s how we know all gods before now were false, they never told us what our destiny really was. So, if you do tell us, you’ll be the only true one. And the answer will be so self-evident, we’d all agree with it. Because when a true god truly answers a question, that’s what happens. Everyone knows that.”
“But I am god,” muttered a voice. “We are god.”
“Of course,” quavered Jacent. “I already believe that. But everyone will believe it when you answer the Great Question.”
“I don’t need you to believe. I can make you do what I say even if you don’t believe.” A sulky-sounding voice, this. “God doesn’t need to prove anything, not if god can make people do what god wants.”
Boarmus patted Jacent silent. They had struggled with this argument, whispering, on the way home. Now was time to see if the Brannigan minds would understand it.
Boarmus said, “That’s true. But if people only do what you say, then you’ll only get what you’re already capable of. Gods create beings as tools to explore beyond what they already are and know. To create randomness, chaos, chance. To create discovery. You created man to discover new things for you, and man will discover them, if he knows you’re god, if he wants to please you. That is what you created mankind for, wasn’t it? After all, you’re god, you’re very busy. You created man as a kind of tool, to find things out for you.”
Silence. That silence that Boarmus had always believed meant the minds were talking together. Disagreeing. That was the key. If there was still enough individuality in there for disagreement. Which he wasn’t at all sure of!
He tugged. Time to get out of there. They fled, not quite precipitously.
“What’re they doing now?” murmured Jacent, feeling the cold sweat dripping from his jaw. “What?”
“I hope it’s arguing with itself,” whispered Boarmus, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand. “Pray that’s what it’s doing, boy. Arguing.”
Behind them, in the depths of the Core, there was argument indeed, though it did not go in any way Boarmus could have foreseen.
One presence. “At Brannigan we …”
And another. “… mankind’s problem only …”
And another yet. “… should prove we are what we say we are, after all….”
And another arriving, full of rage, the one Boarmus thought of as the gulper, that one stripped out of Chimi-ahm and deprived of his fun, the gulper thwarted by Great Dragon, that one humiliated before his worshipers!
“We need prove nothing! Nothing!”
Silence in the Core, in the net, everywhere as intention wavered before this thunderous presence.
“But we always said man would answer the question.” One broke the quiet in a mechanical whine. “Not others, only man. But we aren’t man. Not anymore.”
“Then make man answer,” hissed that which had been Chimi-ahm.
“But they don’t have the answer.”
“Lazy,” it again with a horrible gulp. “No concentration. Thinking of other things than their duty to us! We will take some of them and put them somewhere and then we will make them answer!”
“Who?” whispered one. “Who will we take?”
“Those ones,” it gulped with vengeful satisfaction. “Who asked questions about us. Those ones on Panubi!”
FOUR
10
In Du-you, Curvis seized up Jory and Asner, one under each arm, and led the members of the sideshow, abandoning all their paraphernalia, in headlong flight down to the riverside. Behind them dragons rampaged through the city, appearing and disappearing while Houm and Murrey fled wildly before them. When the first dragons reached the riverfront, the chimi-hounds guarding the booms ran howling, a dereliction immediately taken advantage of by the captain of the Dove. Four stocky deckmen skimmed a small boat off to the nearest boom tower, the booms were raised, and the Dove was poled down the channel to the river. Once there, the strongest oarsmen thrust at the sweeps to move the Dove
