So much was doctrine, and to so much Shan acquiesced. He had not for a moment lost the notion that something on Hobbs Land was badly awry, but by following the physician’s orders he was able to get himself into a state where he stopped having nightmares and didn’t feel personally threatened. He told himself only the singing had made him feel threatened, and there was no singing upon the escarpment. When Shan mentioned this, Merthal went down to Settlement One to hear the choir for himself and enjoyed it thoroughly. He, like Bombi and Volsa, found it esthetically pleasing and not at all intrusive. He told Shan this, received a shrug in reply, and let it rest there. Once they were back on Thyker, he told himself, his young associate would recover a proper balance. He had simply been overstressed. Meantime Merthal went about humming to himself, “Rise up, rise up oh ye stones.”
The buried things had turned out to be a kind of hard, woody fungus, something similar to a polypore. While their size was extreme, it was not unheard of. The Archives said there were similar things of even larger size on other worlds. Something similar had been found on several of the Belt worlds, and considering the constant bombardment from comets and other trash, a common source was probable. Perhaps there had been a world where these things grew, and it had been broken up, somewhere out there, and the pieces had been drawn into the System, several of them dropping on Belt worlds. This would explain their presence. The group was satisfied with this theory. With a singular lack of imagination, they did not look for other things that might have come from the same source. They took samples for the botanists on Thyker, finished up their documents, and returned to CM, where Spiggy, no less than Bombi, decided that hot water was the first priority.
Spiggy hadn’t actively disliked his liaison with Volsa, though it had lacked certain aspects of mutuality, which would have allowed it to be enjoyable. He had felt summoned. He had felt patronized. His reward for service had had the same emotional weight as a pat on the head. “Here, little boy, take this coin and buy candy, the lady is busy now.” Well, he had no one to blame but himself. There was no requirement in his contract that he provide sexual services for visiting VIPs. To do so had been his own decision, based at least partly on what Spiggy himself identified as prurience of the first degree.
When Spiggy returned to CM, and after a lengthy bath, he tried to tell a strangely relaxed and comfortable Jamice how he felt.
“I’ve always wondered about the High Baidee,” he said. “I rejected the teachings as a child, but the curiosity remained. Kind of a nasty voyeurism, I suppose. I wanted to know what they were really like, up close.”
“Well,” Jamice asked, who was being unaccountably accommodating, “what are they really like, up close.”
“Intense,” he said. “Self-involved. Not Bombi, who has some sense of fun, even a little self-ridicule. But the other two … Well. They burn with a hot, clear flame, put it that way. Especially Shan. He has these nightmares and wakes up screaming, and then he goes around at white heat all day, making up for it. He’s a fearful and yet daring youngster, possessed by something very strange indeed. Capable of destruction, of self or others, I have no doubt.”
“Best they go home soon, then,” said Jamice. “When do they?”
“Immediately,” Spiggy said. “Tomorrow, I think. As soon as they can clean up and have a little rest.”
“Good,” said Jamice, who had said nothing at all to Spiggy about the CM temple or the God Horgy Endure. Thus far, Spiggy had not asked about Horgy Endure. Perhaps he would not. The two had never been close friends. Better, perhaps, he did not ask, not until the Baidee had left. Perhaps the Baidee would all go to bed early, and no one would say anything, and then they would go. Best that they simply go. She did not question why she thought so. It was simply a feeling, but then, recently she had grown to trust her feelings. All of them at CM had learned to trust their feelings.
Spiggy, however, found himself restless and unable to sleep. Perhaps he was too keyed up. Certainly he was on a high, jittery, strung-up, unable to relax. Perhaps he needed a walk. Though it was dark and late and quite cool, he put on warm clothing and went out into the night, finding just enough light to walk by without tripping over things. He went southeast, onto the rolling, low hills which surrounded CM on all sides except where the river valleys came in from the west and departed to the south.
He came upon the temple without seeing it, almost bumping into it before the mass of it obtruded on his senses. Then it was as though someone spoke to him, and he found the door without trying, found the grill to the inner chamber without trying, found the central area where the God stood upon its plinth, and was found by the God in turn.
When he came to himself at first light, he was slumped on the mosaic floor just outside the inner chamber. When he rose, it was with the sensation of something tearing, as though he had been connected to the floor by a pelt of hair-fine filaments. The ripping sensation was not painful. He was not even certain it had been physical. It might well have been totally subjective, a symbolic expression of his being connected to this world. What was remarkable was how well he felt, not at all stiff after what should have been an uncomfortable night.
He
