“What did you expect?” asked Nela, settling with Bertran beside her.
“Customarily the Derbeckians summon their gods through fasting and chanting, through exhaustion and suggestion and clouds of hallucinogenic smoke blown from their altars. At least, so they have done until now, and the priests profited mightily from it. When did those priests find something to flesh out their dabbo-dam?”
“It’s probably the same thing that infected them with ideas of conquest,” said Asner thoughtfully.
“No doubt. No doubt at all. Something inimical and evil,” agreed Jory. “And whatever it is, it isn’t only in Derbeck but extends all across Elsewhere. Latibor and Cafferty have searched for it. Asner and I have gone back and forth, trying to find evidence of it. Great Dragon is concerned about it. Until tonight we’d seen only the tracks of the beast—pain, torture, violence, the worst that man is capable of, multiplied—but we had not seen the beast itself! And even tonight it wore a mask!”
“The possesseds,” said Fringe. “Before we started on this journey, Danivon said we might encounter possesseds!”
The two old people gazed at her with undisguised amazement. “Possesseds?” asked Jory. “What do you mean, possesseds?”
“Something possessed by the Hobbs Land Gods,” Curvis said firmly. “Something no longer human.”
Jory and Asner exchanged glances. Asner started to speak and Jory shushed him. “How very interesting,” she said.
Fringe said, “It would be a tragedy if they were here, for only here have we retained …” She caught her breath and looked at the girl lying beside her on the deck.
“Diversity.” Curvis finished her statement in an angry tone. “Which Fringe does not so much value now as she did this afternoon.”
“This girl is a different matter,” Fringe muttered. “You don’t know….” She fell silent, confused.
Bertran looked at the sky and drawled, “Fringe was about to say this situation is different from all other situations. While we were growing up, Nela and I learned that our own situations are always different from all other situations, and regardless of the laws or customs, only we ourselves can be trusted to make proper decisions about them.”
“Other people, however, must follow the rules,” added Nela, her lips twisting into a wry smile. “For other people are, without exception, less moral, less well informed, and less ethically motivated than we.”
“Shut up,” muttered Fringe. “Damn it. I’m not a fool! I’m aware of the hypocrisy. You of all people ought to understand why I took her!”
“We do understand,” said Nela, suddenly contrite. She bit her lip and cast a sidelong look at Bertran.
“That’s what she’s saying,” he said to Fringe. “She’s trying … we’re trying to apologize for our earlier … lack of understanding. We’re saying we don’t blame you for … whatever you feel you have to do.”
“You blame me if I don’t do,” said Fringe in a weary voice. “If I do do, Curvis blames me. And Danivon.”
Jory nodded. “That’s true, but then, Curvis and Danivon foresee trouble. They’d be fools if they didn’t. If they don’t take action against you, they become accomplices, because word of your action will get back to Tolerance, if it hasn’t already.”
Fringe was simply too tired to answer. She could not explain to herself what she’d done or why she’d done it. She longed for Zasper. He’d done the same thing she had. He could advise her. Or maybe he couldn’t! No one had seen Zasper break the law. Zasper had done it secretly, and he’d kept it quiet. How could Fringe keep this quiet? Everyone knew what she’d done. And they’d heard Zasper’s name used too. She’d allowed that to be blurted about. She dropped her head, feeling terror all at once, for Zasper, for herself. What had she done!
It was too much! She should be able to live without all these feelings, these guilts and urges and fallings short! She should be able to be what she so longed to be, clean and pure and hard, like the blade she carried, fitted for the job it had to do, without all these mawkish sorrows, without all these painful sentiments. She was sick of feelings!
A cool old hand stroked her forehead. “Put the child over there on that pile of sail,” said Jory. “Lie down beside her and hold her, Fringe. She needs caring arms about her, and it is not yet the end of this world.”
Too weary to argue, Fringe did as she was bid. It might not be the end of the world, and yet it felt monstrously like it.
Those left behind stood wordlessly against the rail.
“It’s time I went below,” said Curvis in a tone of haughty annoyance. “I must consider what to do.”
“Don’t go. Wait,” said Jory.
He peered at her through the darkness. “For what, old woman?”
“I get hunches,” she said, staring into the darkness.
“You’re having one now?”
“Something like.”
He waited for some moments, then prompted her, “Hunches about what?”
“You wouldn’t question there was something dreadful there in Derbeck?” she asked. “Something that knew we were coming? Something aimed at us?”
“I wouldn’t question that, no. And so?”
“And so, now we’ve left, I don’t think whatever it was will stay behind in Derbeck,” she said. “Not now that it has us located. I think we may expect some additional … outrage.”
“The outrage thus far is quite enough,” said Curvis. “Fringe has done the same thing old Paff did, taken someone from her proper place. She’s broken the basic law of Elsewhere, and I can’t simply ignore it!”
“Your law is wrong,” said Nela in a firm voice.
Curvis replied stiffly, “You may find the concept of our law unfamiliar….”
“Actually, the concept isn’t unfamiliar,” Bertran commented in a dry voice. “Though Nela may not remember. In our world there were a number of smallish countries ruled by unpleasant types, and our country occasionally invaded one of them to set something right….”
“Killing numerous innocent bystanders in the process,” snapped Nela with a toss of her head. “As well
