“Ah?” said Fringe.
“We’re really not able to move around. We wondered if you’d mind finding us a loose rock, something about the size of a fist.”
Obediently, Fringe felt her way to the rocky wall and along the base of it, hefting stones, returning with something only a little larger than asked for. “Will this do?” she asked, feeling for his hands.
Bertran took it. She sat beside him once more, feeling the muscles in his arm and shoulder moving and bunching as he hefted the stone.
“This should do nicely,” he said. “Nela, you ready?”
“More or less,” she whispered.
He took something from around his neck and put it on the ledge near Fringe’s leg. “Keep your fingers away from here,” he instructed. “Nela?”
“All right,” she said.
They spoke together, in hushed voices, slowly, very clearly. “We want to know what the destiny of man is, and we want the things persecuting us to believe the answer and let us alone.”
Bertran hammered downward with the stone, once, twice. Brilliant blue light lit the cavern momentarily, then vanished with a cracking sound, as though the mountain had broken asunder.
“What the hell was that?” demanded Fringe, rubbing her eyes where jagged afterimages swam against the darkness.
“When Celery came, all that long while ago,” Nela said, “it left us this little transmitter thing. When we decided on our payment, Berty and I, we were supposed to speak it, then smash the transmitter. So we just did.”
“But that was thousands of years ago!”
“I know. We don’t really expect it to work. The Celerians are all gone….”
Long gone, it appeared, for nothing happened.
Nela sighed. “I supposed it isn’t possible that we might actually answer the question?” She tried to say it cheerfully. It was up to all of them to keep their spirits up, she no less than the other two, though all she wanted to do was curl up against the stone and retreat into thumbsucking silence. “The show,” Aunt Sizzy was wont to say, “may not have to go on, but we don’t buy groceries unless it does!”
“Men have probably come up with all possible answers by now and discarded them,” said Bertran.
“I’ve never thought about the Great Question much since I was a kid,” said Fringe. “It hasn’t seemed relevant, somehow.”
“Oh, but yes.” He laughed, the sound teetering on the edge of control. “Think of how much time and effort it would have saved if we’d only known what man’s destiny actually was. Think of our time, all the fundamentalist fascists versus the civil libertines; all the liberals throwing our money at the poor versus the conservatives throwing our money at themselves; all the male versus female controversies, all the revolutions, sexual, political, and economic. How marvelous if we’d only known what was important and what wasn’t!”
Fringe was amused despite herself. “What did you think man’s destiny was?”
He heaved a deep, obviously painful breath. “Nela, what did we think man’s destiny was? When we were children.”
Nela made a slight humming noise, as though to advise the darkness she was thinking, or as though she might be clenching her teeth to keep from crying. “Well, let’s see,” she said at last in a tight voice that barely hid hysteria. “As good Catholic children, our destiny was to be guilty over sex, to have lots of babies, and to partake of the sacraments sufficiently often to assure we’d go to heaven when we died.”
“Right,” said Bertran. “And in the fundamentalist church down the block, they learned their destiny was to be guilty over sex, to worship the flag (in defiance of the first and second commandments), and to be born again sufficiently often to assure they’d go to heaven when they died, though I’m not sure whether it was the same heaven or not. In fact, the only real difference between us and them was whether we ranked sperm or the flag slightly ahead of god.”
He laughed, choking, then groaned.
“So heaven was your destiny,” said Fringe. “Or having lots of babies.”
“Oh, yes,” murmured Nela. “The only excuse we had for overpopulating our world was that it wouldn’t matter in heaven.” She tried to laugh but couldn’t manage it. The laugh turned into a sob.
“Nela, Nela,” said Fringe, falling to her knees before them and taking Nela into her arms. “Hey.”
“It’s just, just I’m so scared,” Nela whispered. “I’m so scared, Fringe. It’s so dark, and I feel so sick.”
“We’re not very good at this,” Bertran quavered. “Not very good at being brave.”
“You’re the bravest people I’ve ever known,” said Fringe firmly, patting them gently, knowing it to be true. “You two really are! You’ve been brave and gallant all your lives. You’re just not good about showing it, or bragging about it. But listen, I swear to you … I swear to you both, I am your friend, and I will do everything in my power to see that nothing bad happens to you!”
Nela sighed. Under Fringe’s stroking hands she seemed to relax, to give way. “It’s just being … how we’ve always had to be.”
“Well, that’s what bravery is,” Fringe murmured, holding them closely. “Being what you have to be, without whining about it. That’s what Zasper says, anyhow.”
“Maybe that’s man’s destiny,” Nela said. “Just to be brave.” She took two or three deep breaths, easing herself.
“That gives us three answers,” said Fringe. “Babies, heaven, bravery.”
“Which will get us absolutely nowhere,” Bertran offered. “Nothing so simple is going to satisfy those … beings! The Great Question ranks right up there with the quest for the Grail, with seeking the philosopher’s stone or catching a unicorn. Our race is obsessed with quests and questers. As children, we dream the quest before we dream the thing quested for. No doubt some of us are born for the attempt. No matter what shape of box we find ourselves in, we keep struggling to be free!”
Fringe listened to the longing in his voice and was chastened.
He sighed. “How did this Great Question thing get started on Elsewhere anyhow?”
“It wasn’t started here.
