Then the last of the figures stepped aside from the temple door, and she could see the sunlight out in the garden. They stood still for a moment, Snake holding high the jewel; then they burst forward, out through the door and down over the bright steps.
Instantly the hymn began again behind them, as if their departure had been a signal. The music flooded after them, and when they reached the bottom step, they both whirled, crouching like animals, expecting the congregation to come welling darkly out after them. But there was only the music, flowing into the light, washing around them, a transparent river, a sea.
“Freeze the drop in the hand,
and break the earth with singing.
Hail the height of a man,
and also the height of a woman.”
Over the music came a brittle chirping from the trees. Fixed with fear, they watched the temple door as the hymn progressed. Then Snake suddenly stood up straight and grinned.
She scratched her red hair, shifted her weight, and looked at Snake. “I guess they’re not coming,” she said, sounding almost disappointed. Then she giggled. “Well, I guess we got it.”
“Don’t move,” repeated Hama Incarnate.
“Now look—” began Urson.
“You are perfectly safe,” the god continued, “unless you do anything foolish. You have shown great wisdom. Continue to show it. I have a lot to explain to you.”
“Like what?” asked Geo.
“I’ll start with the lizards,” smiled the god.
“The what?” asked Iimmi.
“The singing lizards,” said Hama. “You walked through a grove of trees just a few minutes ago. You had just been through a series of happenings that was probably the most frightening in your life. Suddenly you heard a singing in the trees. What was it?”
“I thought it was a bird,” Iimmi said.
“But why a bird?” asked the god.
“Because that’s what a bird sounds like,” stated Urson impatiently. “Who needs an old lizard singing to them on a morning like this?”
“Your second point is much better than your first,” said the god. “You do not need a lizard, but you did need a bird. A bird means spring, life, good luck, cheerfulness. You think of a bird singing and you think of thoughts that men have been thinking for thousands upon thousands of years. Poets have written of it in every language, Catullus in Latin, Keats in English, Li Po in Chinese, Darnel X24 in New English. You expected a bird because after what you had been through, you needed to hear a bird. Lizards run from under wet rocks, scurry over gravestones. A lizard is not what you needed.”
“So what do lizards have to do with why we’re here?” demanded Urson.
“Why are you here?” repeated the god, subtly changing Urson’s question. “There are many reasons, I am sure. You tell me some of them.”
“You have done wrongs to Argo—at least to Argo of Leptar,” Geo explained. “We have come to undo them. You have kidnapped the young Argo, as well as her mother apparently. We have come to take her back. You have misused the jewels. We have come to take the last one from you.”
Hama smiled. “Only a poet could see the wisdom in such honesty. I thought I might have to wheedle to get that much out of you.”
“I guess it was pretty certain that you knew that much already,” Geo said.
“True,” answered Hama. Then his tone changed. “Do you know how the jewels work?”
They shook their heads.
“They are basically very simple mechanical contrivances which are difficult in execution, but simple in concept. I will explain. Human thoughts, it was discovered after the Great Fire during the first glorious years of the City of New Hope, did not produce waves similar to radio waves, but the electrical synapse pattern, it was found, can be read by radio waves, in the same way a mine detector reads the existence of metal.”
“Radio?” Geo said.
“That’s right,” Hama said. “Oh, I forgot, you don’t know anything about that at all. Well, I can’t go through the whole thing now. Suffice it to say that each of the jewels contains a carefully honed crystal which is constantly sending out beams which can read these thought patterns. Also the crystal acts like a magnifying glass or a mirror, and reflects and magnifies the energy from the brain into heat or light or any other kind of electromagnetic radiation—there I go again—so that you can send great bolts of heat with them, as you have seen done.
“But the actual workings of them are not important. And their ability to send heat out is only their secondary power. Their primary importance is that they can be used to penetrate the mind. Now we come to the lizards.”
“Wait a minute,” Geo said. “Before we get to the lizards. Do you mean go into minds like Snake does?” Suddenly he remembered that the boy was not there.
But the god went on. “Like Snake,” he said. “But different. Snake was born with the ability to transmute the brain patterns of his thoughts to others; in that he has a power something like the jewels, but nowhere as strong. But with the jewels, you can jam a person’s thoughts. …”
“Just go into his mind and stop him from thinking?” asked Iimmi.
“No,” said the god. “Conscious thought is too powerful. Otherwise, you would stop thinking every time Snake spoke to you. It works another way. How many reasons does a man have for any single action?”
They looked at him uncomprehendingly.
“Why, for example, does a man pull his hand from a fire?”
“Because it hurts,” said Urson. “Why else?”
“Yes, why else?” asked Hama.
“I think I see what you mean,” said Iimmi. “He also pulls it out because he knows that outside the fire his hand isn’t going to hurt. Like the bird, I mean the lizard. One reason we reacted like we did was because it sounded like a bird. The other reason was because we
