“Even tiny ones can do a great deal of damage,” said Zasper.
“Perhaps we can think of something on our way upstream,” said Curvis soothingly.
Danivon cried, “I won’t go upstream! Now that I know Fringe is near the place she disappeared, I’ll go back to look for her! Zasper!”
Zasper threw up his hands and glanced at Jory, saying softly, “What shall I say? Have you words of wisdom, woman?”
“Few, if any.”
“If you think of some, will you tell me?”
“Fringe is one of my people. And the twins could well be. I want them rescued as much as you do.”
“Zasper,” cried Danivon once more in a fever of impatience.
Zasper shook his head, pulling his braid over his shoulder and tugging at it with one hand, making his head bob sidewise, a gesture he made rarely and only when considerably disturbed. “Danivon, let me think!”
“There’s no time to think!”
“I wish you’d admit you’re in love with her,” Zasper said in exasperation.
Danivon started to deny it. He started, his nose twitched, he sneezed violently. It was the truth. He loved her. Love occupied him all at once, like a strange new tenant that had moved in instantaneously with all its furniture, cluttering the cupboards and corners of his mind. There had been nothing there but the open rooms of himself through which he had moved as impulse took him. Now he stumbled over love’s chattels in every doorway.
“I didn’t know I did love her,” he said stupidly, almost silenced by the realization.
Zasper said, “Well, everyone else knows it, so you may as well join in! If you’ll admit it, you’ll know the reason for your misery, at least, and then you could try thinking. You owe it to her and the rest of us to stop this jittering and stuttering and move cautiously, professionally, in an Enforcer-like manner.”
Curvis patted Danivon’s shoulder, trying to seem sympathetic, though in fact he was not. Danivon’s way with women was nothing new to Curvis, but Danivon in love was. Unacceptably so. “Do you smell she’s alive, Danivon?” he asked, hoping the answer might put an end to their speculation.
His hopes were dashed. Danivon nodded. Yes. Oh, by all he had ever believed in, yes, he smelled she was alive.
While Fringe and the twins slept, a way was opened silently into another, larger cavern. When they woke once more, feeling sick and unrested, they saw that one side of the rocky room had become a rough archway crisscrossed with sparkling lines. An energy barrier, Fringe told herself, though not a kind she was familiar with. They could look through into the space beyond, a very large high-ceilinged cavern with a towering complexity of well-lit gold at the far end.
Nela and Bertran, who had struggled to their feet with considerable pain, joined her at the opening and shook their heads in wonder.
“It’s a church,” said Nela.
Fringe had seen churches. There were a few of them in Enarae, different sorts, mostly used for things like weddings or status achievement ceremonies—ancestor chapels, most of them, though there were a few dedicated to one or another of the ancient Phansuri gods. This one was a good deal more impressive than any she had seen before.
“What kind of church is it?” Fringe asked in a whisper.
Nela shrugged. “Not Christian. No cross. Not any kind I recognize. No Buddhas or anything, though that thing up in front looks like an altar. I’m sure it’s a church, though it doesn’t smell like a church.”
It smelled oily, resinous, chemical, redolent of some other time or place. It was an unnatural smell in this place. She was about to comment on this when the voice came.
“Bow down. Kneel and put your foreheads on the floor. Show respect.”
Fringe, staring around herself stupidly in an effort to find the source of the voice, felt some inner part of her gripped agonizingly. She fell, flopping on the stone like a caught fish.
“Now you two,” said the voice. It was a woman’s voice, full of a sickening motherliness.
“Get down,” muttered Bertran, dragging Nela down beside him. Fringe got her legs under her, and Bertran put a hand on her shoulder, keeping her from rising. “Stay down,” he urged in a whisper.
“Oh, yeah,” she gasped. “Yeah. That’s a good idea.”
“Put … your … foreheads …on … the … floor,” repeated the voice in the manner of a teacher with the stupid pupil, a trainer with a dog.
They did so awkwardly.
“This is how you show reverence,” said the voice with sweet satisfaction. “You will do so whenever you leave us or approach us. You may approach us now.”
Fringe risked a glance. The sparkling net across the door had disappeared. She helped the twins up, both of them gasping and obviously in pain. Together they stepped through the archway and walked slowly along the smooth center line of the larger cavern. On either side the floor was rough and boulder-strewn, but this center aisle was smooth. At the end of it was a rail, and beyond the rail an altar and the complicated golden wall they had seen from their cell.
“Faces,” breathed Nela.
Faces covered the wall, golden faces, carved or cast or living, but in any case moving, watching, eyes blinking, lips pursing, nostrils flaring. Faces stacked on faces, some with hands folded beneath their chins, some with hands cupped behind an ear, some with necks fading into the hair of the face beneath, rows and stacks of them, male and female, old and almost young, bearded and shaven, bald and hirsute, hooded and bare, ranks of them from the level of Fringe’s knees to far above her head. A thousand pairs of eyes slept or peered or stared or winked. A thousand mouths gaped unconsciously or moved restlessly as though chewing, tongues lolling from some, teeth showing in some. A thousand noses protruded, some turned toward them, twitching, dripping, sniffing. Here were the faces of all those in the Great Question Committee, their
