“How?” Bertran asked bluntly. “How? What will you offer us?”
“What would you like? Riches? Your people enjoy riches. A long life? We can offer that.” “Could you separate us?”
The creature before them shivered all over, as though stricken by cold. It made a gagging noise and bent awkwardly in the middle, shaking again, then composing itself with seeming difficulty. “No,” it gasped. “We would regard that as an obscenity. We came to you because you are, as we are, multiple. Would one of us willingly separate? Would we commit such an atrocity of isolation upon one of our kind? We cannot even discuss matters with separated persons!”
Nela started to say something, but Bertran laid his hand over hers.
“If you were attempting to discomfit me, you have succeeded,” the being muttered. “I should not be offended. Undoubtedly I discomfited you. Let us proceed gently.”
Bertran asked, “Do we have to decide about the reward now? You’ve given us very little notice.”
“No,” Celery said, pulling itself into rigidity once more. “No. We can grant your wish later on, even from a great distance. Be as quick about it as you comfortably can, but leave it for now.”
This time it was Nela who spoke. “What do you want us to do?”
The matter was simple enough. Celery repeated it several times, being sure they understood it completely. The thing would manifest itself at a time and place foreseen. The twins would be there when it happened. They would fasten upon it a device, and the door would demanifest. The world would be saved. No one would know. Later, when they decided, the twins could request their reward.
“Discuss your reward,” suggested Celery. “State it in words, clearly, saying what you mean. Then speak it into the transmitter I will leave with you and smash the transmitter against some durable surface. We will get the message.”
“One reward for both of us?” asked Bertran, wondering if, perhaps, he might achieve a personal desire that Nela did not share. Once. Just once.
It was not to be.
“One for both of you, when you agree,” the thing confirmed, with obvious distaste, as though asking the question had again transgressed a taboo. It fell silent, as though thinking. When it spoke again it was in a tone conveying both grief and pride. “This Boon will be the m#dk’clm*tbl [Muh-gurgle-duhk-click-cullum-rasp-tubble] memorial. m#dk’clm*tbl was not only a great friendship but a related aggregation. We have warm memories of them/it. This Boon will be suitable, in memory of very great camaraderie.”
It gave them the device, a thing about the size of a lipstick. It told them how, when, and where to use it. It gave them another, slightly smaller device, the transmitter. It got up, bowed or nodded, went out the door, stumbled down the steps, strolled across the hard-packed earth of the parking area and around behind the Mangini trailer. It did not emerge from the other side. Bertran and Nela went out to look. There was no one behind the Mangini trailer. There was nothing there at all but the trampoline frame and the practice trapeze rig where the youngest Mangini daughter, Serafina, spent her mornings training to do multiple somersaults.
“Do we believe this?” asked Nela wonderingly.
“Does it matter?” asked Bertran in return. “Even if we don’t, should we take the chance on not doing it? Celery said he was sure the world would die….”
“Remember Sister Jean Luc?” asked Nela suddenly.
“Yes. Of course.”
“Remember what she told us, about God needing us for something. The creature talked to us because we are as we are, Berty. If we’d been ordinary, he wouldn’t have talked to us at all. Perhaps …”
“You think this is what God’s purpose is?” asked Bertran. He didn’t mean his question to sound ironic or cynical, and yet it did, a little.
“Why not?” she demanded. “Good Lord, Berty, saving the world and all its people is a fairly big thing, wouldn’t you say. Reason enough….”
He hugged her. “Reason enough,” he agreed, tears in his throat. Why didn’t he believe it?
They went back into their wagon, shutting the door behind them, leaving the parking area untenanted except for a strolling cat who stared at the sign on the side of the wagon without interest or comprehension. “Bertran and Nela Zy-Czorsky, the Eighth Wonder of the World!”
“You were here in the Swale all day yesterday,” Zasper said to Fringe, offering her half the fried berry pie he’d just bought from a passing cart. “Don’t you ever go home?”
“I told you before about how Ari’s sister came to visit. She’s a real old lady.”
“Ah?”
“I mean, she’s really old, Zasper. Everybody said it was just for a visit, but she’s not going anywhere else because she doesn’t have anywhere to go.”
“Where did she come from?”
“One of the Seldom Isles, I think. Something dreadful happened there, and most everyone died.”
Zasper nodded, his lips tight. Yes, indeed. Something horrible and inexplicable had happened there, quite recently, and no one had been able to find out how, or why. Enforcers had been sent and come back paler than usual. No one had figured it out.
Not noticing his distraction, Fringe went on, “Yesterday, Ari got this old room module for her to live in and put it out behind the house.” She pursed her lips. “I mean, he stole it.”
Zasper drew his mind back to the conversation and elicited the story. Everyone in the family knew the module was stolen. There had been a yelling match between Char and the Tromses, at the end of which Fringe, with a fine show of indifference, insisted on moving into the module herself, “So Aunty and Nada could be together.”
The two old women had always hated one another (Ari had confided this to Fringe, laughing heartily over it), but angry as Char was, everyone was keeping quiet, so by the time Char and Souile had calmed down enough to pay attention, Fringe was already moved.
“Nobody’s going to find the module there, behind our house,” Fringe said.
