I shook my top end. “Before we do that, Ganver, there’s something else we can do.”
“Do?” it asked, as though “doing” anything were foreign to its ability. Well, in a sense, I suppose that was true of Eesties. They had never really “done” much except buzz about carrying messages. At least those of Ganver’s generation hadn’t.
“There are a great many things which might be done,” I said, not wanting to give it any time to think the matter over. “The first one that comes to mind concerns how memory works. From what you’ve said, I don’t suppose Lom is remembering everything all the time, simultaneously. At least my mind doesn’t work that way.”
“No,” said Ganver stiffly, not unbending but condescending to explain. “As we messengers move through memory, Lom remembers. Part of the duty of the Eesties is to move through memory, wandering, dancing through every part, recalling all past time to Lom’s consciousness.
“Well, since you’ve been holed up in your grave there, Ganver, who’s been doing the remembering? Don’t tell me. I already know. The Oracle and his friends, right?”
It nodded. If an inclination of the top three points can be considered a nod, that’s what it did, and it did it in that superior manner that made me very angry.
I stamped one point of me. “You know,” I said in a conversational tone, “mankind is no great shakes in the holiness department. I think the Shadowpeople have it all over us, quite frankly. But I’ll stack us against your people any day, great Ganver. Half of you are fanatics and the other half are quitters.”
This was not really a very diplomatic thing to say, nor was it at all kind. I repented of it immediately but was angry enough to go on in dogged fashion, “If the Oracle is in the Maze with its brethren, Ganver, we can take it for granted it is circulating repeatedly among the worst possible memories. It is undoubtedly recalling everything it can of destruction. Of pain. Of the fall of the Bell. All that. And while that is going on, how many of you elder Eesties are sequestered away, not doing anything?”
“Too many,” the Eesty said. It was said so humbly I was ashamed of myself for the outburst. “It seems even one is too many.”
“Well, the point is, of course, that if there are enough of your generation—enough who aren’t ‘Brotherhood’—I’d suggest a thing you might do immediately is to start circulating among the pleasanter events of history. Recall to Lom’s memory some pleasanter times. Cheer it up a bit.”
Ganver did not reply. Even I had to admit to myself that when talking about an entire world, “cheering up a bit” did sound undignified. “And another thing,” I went on stubbornly, “is to figure out whether any particular memory can be destroyed.”
“Destroyed!” The Eesty was aghast. You’d think I’d suggested murdering its entire race.
“Yes, damn it, Ganver. The memory in which the Bell is destroyed. If we could just get rid of that one! If Lom didn’t remember it was gone—don’t you see, if it didn’t know the Bell was gone, it might act as though it weren’t.”
“But the Bell is gone!”
“Where did it come from in the first place? Lom made it, didn’t it? Constructed it, Eesties didn’t make it, did they? I thought not. I think it’s like newts, I really do.”
“Newts?” Ganver evidently didn’t know the word. Well, why should the Eesty know about newts? Nevvts aren’t exactly prepossessing, and they certainly aren’t native to this world because they have tails.
“Newts. If you cut off a newt’s foot, it grows another one. I think it’s because a newt is so stupid it doesn’t know the foot is gone, so another one just pops out. Somewhere inside the newt is the idea of footness, and footness takes over when it is needed. You cut off my foot, on the other hand, and I know very well it’s gone, so another one just doesn’t grow. Well, if Lom didn’t know the Bell was gone . . .”
“You think another one might pop out?” Ganver sounded exactly like Murzy, that same tone of slightly outraged elder dignity.
“I think it’s worth the chance, whether it does or not. Even if another Bell didn’t pop out, it would make Lom feel better not to remember the actual act of destruction.”
The thing I was remembering really had nothing to do with newts. It had to do with that time in Chimmerdong when I had grodgeled with the D’Bor Wife, pretending to find the Daylight Bell, only to see the Bell itself, golden and glorious, sinking beneath the waves of the lake. That was the idea of the Daylight Bell, I knew it. The idea, the model, whatever. If I had seen a Daylight Bell in that distant lake, there might be more or could be more than one. If I had seen another, it must mean that Lom could make another, several, many, If it felt like it. If it felt better!
“And if Lom felt better, maybe it would stop making those yellow crystals that are killing everyone,” I finished, knowing I had not been particularly persuasive. Ah, well, it was mostly hunch, intuition, not reason. Still, to do that would be better than doing nothing.
“How?” asked Ganver, much to the point.
“I’m not sure whether it would work or not, but I’d start by getting some flood-chucks in, and we’d cut all the hedge away from the outside until we got to the place the memory is, then we’d tunnel underneath and collapse it and dig it all out and carry it away. I mean, Ganver, I don’t know how Lom’s mind works, but I do know that part of it is material. Real. Lom-flesh, so to speak. So if we take the real flesh part away, then the memory will have to go with it,
