and toil and disease, of sickness and failure, of human frailty and invincible death.
Yet!
'You,' said the Witchlord, heavily, 'you are a rat.'
'I am not!' protested the beast.
'What are you, then?' said Guest, feeling himself dragged into this conversation rather against his better judgment.
'I'm a quokka.'
'A quokka?' said Guest. 'What in the name of Behenial is a quokka?'
'What, for that matter, is Behenial?' said his father.
'Behenial,' said Guest, 'is one of the gods my good friend Rolf Thelemite used to swear by. Now, by the name of Behenial – what are you, quokka-thing?'
'I'm a philosopher,' said the quokka.
'I asked not of your profession but of your species,' said Guest. 'Of your species, your kind. What manner of thing is a quokka?'
'It is a marsupial,' said the quokka.
'And,' said Guest Gulkan, unable to keep himself from asking the next and most obvious question, 'what then is a marsupial?'
'A kind of rat, obviously,' said his father. 'Shall you kill it or shall I?'
'I will,' said Guest.
'No!' squealed the quokka.
And fled.
Now it might be thought that Witchlord and Weaponmaster had better things to do than hunt after a small furry animal – even an animal which spoke. But both were in a mood for a meal, and both remembered the most excellent taste of the roast rat which had been served to them before their entry into the nethermost depths of the Stench Caves. Accordingly, they set themselves to pursue the quokka-rat, which fled down a sidetunnel which led into a -
Witchlord and Weaponmaster halted at the end of the sidetunnel, and gaped at the vast chamber into which it led.
It was a huge chamber, lit by trumpeting radiance, and dominated by a gigantic multi-tiered banqueting table, the most enormous banqueting table which ever was. It was gorgeous with the orange of oranges, the red gloss of apples, a cascade of cucumbers awash in a river of rain-flushed lettuce leaves. Wine winked in a constellation of crystal vases. Milk and honey ran in rivers. And there were cakes, cakes loaded with cherries, bulging with almonds, adorned with marzipan. And there were cones of sugar, absolute cones of it, fantastically expensive, the height of luxury.
'Grief of a dog!' said Lord Onosh in astonishment.
Then made as if to enter.
But to Guest, this place had an ugly familiarity. It was familiarity by analogy. The Stench Caves were an underworld, a veritable Downstairs, and in this underground was something possessed of an uncommon linguistic fluency, and associated with this was an intoxicating allurement which was analogous to -
'No!' said Guest, grabbing his father He grabbed so roughly that the Witchlord at first feared his son to be intent on murder, and tried to break free.
'Let go!' said Lord Onosh.
'No, no,' said Guest desperately. 'You can't go in, it's murder.'
'If it will make you happy,' said Lord Onosh, with an ill grace, 'then I'll stand here all day and slaver. But come tomorrow, I'll go in and eat!'
'Tomorrow?' said the quokka. 'Why wait for tomorrow? What's the matter? Come in! Come in! There are good things to eat!'
'Then, little thing, ' said Guest, watching the animal closely, 'pray be so kind enough as to fetch me a small portion of one of those good things.'
The quokka hesitated. Its nose twitched nervously. Guest detected this petit betrayal and knew the thing to be a liar.
'We know what this is,' said Guest.
'It's a feast,' said the quokka.
'No it isn't,' said Guest.
'It is, it is!' said the quokka, with insistent fervor.
'No,' said Guest, stamping the word with definitive negativeness. 'It's not a banquet. It's a therapist.'
'A therapist?' said the quokka innocently. 'What on earth is a therapist?'
'Come here,' said Guest. 'Come to my clutches, and I'll show you exactly what a therapist is!'
At that, the quokka ventured forward. In the most affecting manner imaginable, it ventured to place its very paw upon Guest Gulkan's mud-clad shin.
'Will you starve yourself for suspicion?' said the quokka.
'As I trust you, won't you trust me?'
The animal was so trusting, and so surpassingly cute, that it was enough to make the heart melt. Any civilized person would have trusted it immediately. But Guest was a barbarian, a Yarglat barbarian, and one who had lately been terrorized by a murkbeast, and so was in no mood to be merciful. He snatched at the quokka, seized it and shook it – his hand at its throat! – then squeezed it so hard that it squealed. Red blood stained its teeth.
At which, a voice of moiling thunder spoke, a voice underwritten with subsonic threat:
'Let it go!'Guest did not such thing, but turned to view the banqueting chamber. The banquet had entirely disappeared. In its place stood a towering conglomeration of slowly-evolving windmills, of spindling bones and twirling tapes of metal, of skeletal steel and huge beams around which spheres and cones went twining.
'Wah!' said Lord Onosh, taken aback. 'What is it?'
'I am a Great God,' said the dull-roar voice. 'You have displeased me! Fall down on your knees and repent!'
Now when one is confronted by a Great God, and a Great God which is manifestly some ten thousand times larger than an elephant, then one's natural reaction is to do what it says. So Lord Onosh quite naturally went down on its knees.
But Guest Gulkan – who had had far more to do with gods and demons of all descriptions than had his father – gripped his father by his muddy black hair and wrenched him to his feet. Then Guest spat on the floor. Lord Onosh expected that the Great God would retaliate by obliterating them on the spot, but it did no such thing. Guest Gulkan then addressed the apparition in front of him.
'You are no god,' said Guest. 'You are but a wretched therapist, a torturing machine, and once I get out of here then all the world will know of you.'
Then, as the therapist roared with anger, and thrashed at the Weaponmaster with every spike, prong, hook and tentacle at its disposal – finding him, however, some several paces beyond its grasp – Guest retreated, taking the quokka with him.
Once Guest and his father were safe in the main tunnel, Lord Onosh asked the obvious question.
'That thing,' said Lord Onosh. 'How did you know what it was?'
'Because,' said Guest, 'I met a great family of such things on the island of Untunchilamon. They breed there in their thousands, as do huge crabs some ten times the height of a man, and the flying bubbles which men call shabbles.'
Then, having delivered himself of that geographical information, Guest Gulkan set about interrogating the quokka.
'Thing,' said Guest, 'I suspect that the therapist bred you.'
To this, the quokka made no answer.
'In nature,' said Guest, 'there are no such things as talking animals. It follows that you speak through some resource of the therapist. Either you are an extension of the very therapist itself, or else it has somehow tutored your animal brain to enhance it to the point where speech is one of its capabilities.'
Lord Onosh could not quite follow this argument. This is hardly surprising. For Lord Onosh was but poorly educated, whereas his son had long been tutored by Hostaja Sken-Pitilkin, most excellent and sagacious of all the
