Yubi Das Finger:
'Who is the – the big one?'
'The big one, as you so nicely put it,' said Yubi Das Finger,
'why, that is Asodo Hatch. If memory serves, you were once married to his sister Joma.'
Now that Hatch had been named, Guest felt foolish for not having recognized him, for they had met often enough in the past. Guest's failure to recognize the Frangoni was surely an index of his fatigue, his disorientation, and the pounding he had suffered during his long wanderings. But Guest was not troubled by this hint of mental deterioration. Rather, he was troubled to hear Yubi say that he had been 'once married'. For was he not married now?
'Joma?' said Guest. 'Why, I have a wife, big, yes, tall and purple, but her name – '
'Penelope,' said Das Finger. 'That was the other name. You may have known here as that, but now we call her Joma, for she – but never mind that.'
'What?' said Guest. 'Never mind what? Why? And – and where is she?' Guest was sorely alarmed, for during his entire absence – which had involved him in a trip to Alozay, a preliminary raid on Obooloo, a journey across Moana, prolonged difficulties on Untunchilamon, imprisonment in Obooloo and the hazards of his venture into the Stench Caves – he had imagined Penelope to be faithfully waiting for his return. It had never occurred to him that the woman might have an independent existence, a life which could be separated from his own wants and desires. So he was shocked to hear Yubi use a form of words which suggested the possibility that his long-anticipated reunification with his purple-skinned true-heart might not proceed with automatic ease.
'There is no time for the first question,' said Das Finger, who was unwilling to waste time on lecturing Guest in ethnology.
'And as for the second question, why, I suspect it one better answered by Asodo Hatch himself.'
But the Frangoni warrior Asodo Hatch was too busy to be free for such questions, since he was playing referee, overseeing the duel between his soldiers and the runaway orking pot. The pot, which had once more grown red-hot as Jocasta filled it with flames of wrath, was driven into a bamboo house. The house caught fire, and Hatch's men were driven back, leaving the pot to blunder blindly in the flames.
Asodo Hatch had the house surrounded. His men tore down its pitiful bamboo fence, giving access to the back yard. Guest Gulkan was close to the fore, and almost accidentally buried himself in the yard's copious rubbish pit, which was mired with festering unpleasantness.
As the burning house collapsed, the god-driven orking pot emerged from it uncertainly. Somewhere a woman was screaming. The pot wobbled, then thrust its way toward the waiting soldiers. They made a wall of shields and stood ready to receive the pot.
But the rubbish pit lay between the soldiers and the pot.
The pot hovered over the pit -
Then halted.
It settled.
It was half-over and half-off the rubbish pit.
The Great God Jocasta promptly dropped down into the bottom of the pit and escaped upward through the uncovered portion of that pit.
Asodo Hatch gave a curt order, and a hail of spears assailed the Great God. Most missed, and sent murder hurtling into the crowd of over-eager spectators. Some clanged home, bouncing off the Great God in a demonstration of futility.
The Great God hung in the air, humming.
Asodo Hatch held his ground, and challenged the thing in all the languages he spoke. Guest Gulkan understood none of them, and had to tug at Yubi Das Finger's sleeve to get a translation. Had the Weaponmaster been more diligent in his linguistic studies, he would have known most of those languages – such as the Code Seven of the Nexus.
It is widely believed in Dalar ken Halvar that many of the greatest artefacts available to our own age were sourced in the Nexus. This 'Nexus' is said to have been a grouping of interlinked worlds, an association comprised of more worlds than this world has fingers to count. It is believed in Dalar ken Halvar that the stars of those worlds are not green, red, blue and yellow like the stars of our own sky, but, rather, burn with a cold and uncanny ice- chip white. Under such stars – this at least is Dalar ken Halvar's ruling superstition – metal beasts such as the dorgi were once made.
Asodo Hatch, presuming the Great God Jocasta to be a creature from just such a world, challenged Jocasta in the Code Seven which Dalar ken Halvar believes to have been spoken by the Nexus.
'You!' said Asodo Hatch, bellowing like a water buffalo as he endeavored to imitate that dreaded Nexus monster known as a dorgi. 'You! You! Halt! Halt right there! Or I will eliminate you!'
'You have no idea who I am, or what,' said the Great God Jocasta, responding to Asodo Hatch in the same Code Seven in which Hatch's challenge had been phrased. 'Know that I am a god, and a Great God at that. Many are my servants. Their number is legion. I command heavens of ice and hells of living needles. You will bow down and worship me. Here! Now! Or you will end up in hell, where you will be constrained to burn your own liver as a sacrifice to the Lesser Slime Toad.'
'I know precisely who you are, and what,' said Hatch, who had no patience with such nonsense. 'You are a delinquent asma from Gorbograd. If you are who I think you are, then you were employed in Gorbograd as a person in charge of cart parks.'
This is what Hatch said, or at least the sense of what he said, for his words cannot be translated precisely into any of the languages of our world. For example, the 'carts' of which he spoke were not precisely carts as we understand them, for they had no wheels. Rather, they hovered. But in their hovering they were not like birds or butterflies. The 'carts' of which Hatch spoke were more like ghosts than vehicles made of actual wood and actual leather, for these 'carts' could dissolve themselves, and could travel in a state of dissolution through stone and through steel, later coagulating themselves out of the thin smoke of their ghosthood to come to rest in the ordinary domains of the physical world. Even so, they could carry humans, or take water from place to place, just like the carts of our world.
This at least is what was believed by Asodo Hatch, and by many others in Dalar ken Halvar. And it was believed, too, that the Nexus had so many of these carts that, even though they could not jam the roads as do the carts of our own world, they caused appalling city-blighting traffic jams whenever a great number of them tried to simultaneously come to rest in the same place.
Hatch's slander was that Jocasta's function in the world of the Nexus had been to supervise the 'parking' of these 'carts'. At least, one gathers that it was a slander, though why this should be so is not clear. After all, in our own world we think the pilot's art to be a great and worthy one. A ship's pilot who supervises the docking of ships is surely discharging a function similar to that of one who is in the cart-parking business; and the pilot has ever been saluted as one of civilization's most useful minor functionaries.
Yet on being likened to such a pilot, Jocasta declared:
'Slander! Slander!'
Then spat fire at Asodo Hatch – though weakly, for the Great God had exhausted its strength in the struggle with the orking pot.
Seeing the weakness of the flame spat by the Great God, Hatch ordered his men to seize clothing from civilians, and to use it to manhandle the still-hot orking pot. But even as those futile efforts at capture got underway, the Great God Jocasta began to escape by air, and all Hatch's efforts to hold it firm by engaging it in debate were ignored.
Jocasta fled down Scuffling Road, reached the doors of kaleidoscope which led into Cap Foz Para Lash, and uttered a highpitched command which caused those doors to dissolve away to nothing. With the way thus clear, Jocasta fled into the tunnels of the mountain, with the barriers of kaleidoscope reforming in its wake.
Asodo Hatch came to those doors. They opened for him. Hatch entered, and the doors closed behind him. Guest Gulkan did not know whether he himself still retained any right to enter that mountain, the place which had sheltered him during four long years of convalescence. Would the doors open for him? Hard on the heels of Asodo Hatch, Guest approached the first of the barriers of kaleidoscope. It dissolved away to nothing, admitting him to the interior of the mountain. The inner door then followed suit.
Once past the double doors of kaleidoscope which guarded the interior of Cap Foz Para Lash against
