A, B, C: Three Short Novels Read online

  “Hama?” began Iimmi.

  “Greater than Hama,” said old Argo. “It is herself. It is hard for me to watch her and not occasionally call a word of guidance. With the science here in Aptor, it would not be difficult. But I must refrain. Actually she has done well. But there is much more to do. She has directed you well and assigned your tasks properly. And until now you have carried them out well.”

  “She said we were to steal the final jewel from Hama and return with you to the ship,” said Geo. “Can you help us with either of these things?”

  Argo laughed. “The moment I compliment you, you completely confuse your mission. Once the jewel is stolen, whom are you supposed to take back to Leptar?”

  “Argo Incarnate,” Urson said.

  “You said that Argo back in the ship was your daughter,” said Geo, “but she said you were her daughter.”

  Argo laughed. “When my granddaughter was…kidnapped here to Aptor, I was already waiting for her. Look.”

  She turned a dial beneath the screen and lights flickered over the glass: the sleeping girl had short red hair, a splash of freckles over a blunt nose. Her hand curled in a loose fist near her mouth. A white sheet covered the gentle push of adolescent breasts. On the table beside her bed was a contraption made of a U-shaped piece of metal mounted on a board, an incomplete coil of wire, and a few more bits of metal, sitting near a crumpled paper bag.

  “That is my granddaughter,” Argo said, switching off the picture. “She is the one you must take back to the ship.”

  “How shall we steal the jewel?” asked Geo.

  Argo turned to Snake. “I believe that was your task.” Then she looked around at the other three. “You will need rest. After that, you can see about the jewel and my granddaughter. Come with me now. Pallets have been set up for you in the far room, where you may sleep.” She rose and led them to another chamber. The blankets lay over soft boughs. Argo pointed to a trickle of water that ran from a basin carved in the rock wall. “This stream is pure. You may drink from it.” She pointed to a burlap sack in the corner. “There is fruit in there if you become hungry.”

  “Sleep!” Urson jammed his fists into the air, yawned.

  As they settled, Argo said, “Poet?”

  “Yes?” Geo replied.

  “I know you are the most tired, but I must talk to you alone for a moment or two.”

  As Geo raised himself, Urson stood up too. “Look,” he said to Argo, “he needs the rest more than any of us. If you want to question him about rituals and spells, take Iimmi. He knows just as much as Geo.”

  Argo smiled. “I need a poet, not a student. I need one who has suffered as he has. Come.”

  “Wait,” Urson said. He picked the jewel from Geo’s chest, where Snake had returned it when they entered the chapel. “You better leave this with me.”

  Geo frowned.

  “It may still be a trap,” said Urson.

  “Leave it with him,” suggested Argo, “if it eases him.”

  Geo let the big hands lift the thong from his neck.

  “Now come with me,” said Argo.

  They left the room and walked back through the chapel to the door. Argo walked to the entrance and looked down at the molten rock. Light sifted through her robe, leaving the darker outline of her body. Without turning, she spoke: “The fire is a splendid symbol for life, don’t you think?”

  “And for death. One of Aptor’s fires burned my arm away.”

  She turned to him. “You and Snake have had the hardest time. Both of you have left flesh to rot in Aptor. I guess that involves you in this land.” She paused. “You know, he had a great deal more pain than you. Do you know how he lost his tongue? I watched it all from this same screen inside the chapel and could not help him. Jordde jammed his knuckles into his jaws and, when the mouth came open, caught the red flesh with pincers that closed all the way through, and stretched it as far as it would go. Then he looped the tongue with a thin wire and threw a switch. You don’t know what electricity is, do you?”

  “I have heard the word.”

  “When a great deal of it is passed through a thin wire, the wire becomes hot, white hot. And the white-hot loop was tightened until the rope of muscle seared from the roasted stump. But the child had fainted already. I wonder if the young can really bear more pain.”

  “Jordde and the blind priestesses did this to him?”

  “Jordde and some men on the boat that picked up the two of them from the raft on which they had left Aptor.”

  “Who is Jordde?” Geo asked. “Urson knew him before this as a First Mate. But Urson’s story tells me nothing.”

  “I know the story,” Argo said. “It tells you something, but something you would perhaps rather not hear.” She sighed. “Poet, how well do you know yourself?”

  “What do you mean?” Geo asked.

  “How well do you know the machinery of a man, how he manages to function? That is what you will sing of if your songs are to become great.”

  “I still don’t—”

  “I have a question for you, a poetic riddle. Will you try to answer it?”

  “If you will answer a question for me.”

  “Will you do your best to answer mine?” Argo asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Then I will do my best to answer yours. What is your question?”

  “Who is Jordde and why is he doing what he’s doing?”

  “He was at one time,” Argo explained, “a very promising novice for the priesthood of Argo in Leptar, a scholar of myths and rituals like Iimmi and yourself. He also took to the sea to learn of the world. But his boat was wrecked; he and a few others were cast on Aptor’s shore. They strove with Aptor’s terrors as you did, and many fell. Two, however—a four-armed cabin boy, whom you call Snake, and Jordde—were each exposed to the forces of Argo and Hama as you have been. One, in his strangeness, could see into men’s minds. The other could not. Silently, one swore allegiance to one force while one swore allegiance to the other. The second part of your question was why. Perhaps if you can answer my riddle, you can answer that part yourself. I do know that they were the only two who escaped. I do know that Snake would not tell Jordde his choice, and that Jordde tried to convince the child to follow him. When they were rescued, I know that the argument continued, and that Snake held back with childish tenacity both his decision and his ability to read minds, even under the hot wire and the pincers. The hot wire, incidentally, was something Jordde took back with him from the blind Priestess, according to him, to help the people of Leptar. It could have been of great use. But recently all he has done with the electricity is construct a larger weapon with it. Jordde became a staunch First Mate in a year’s time. Snake became a waterfront thief. Both waited. Then, when the opportunity arose, both acted. Why? Perhaps you can tell me, Poet.”

  “Thank you for telling me that much,” Geo said. “What is your question?”

  She glanced down at the flame once more and recited:

  “By the dark chamber sits its twin,

  where the body’s floods begin;

  and the two are twinned again,

  turning out and turning in.

  In the bright chamber runs the line

  of the division, silver, fine,

  diminishing along the lanes

  of memory to an inward sign.

  Fear floods in the turning room;

  Love breaks in the burning dome.”

  “It is not one that I have heard before,” Geo said. “I’m not even sure I know what the question is. I’m familiar with neither its diction nor style.”

  “I doubted very much you would recognize it.” Argo smiled.

  “Is it part of the pre-purge rituals of Argo?”

  “It was written by my granddaughter,” Argo said. “The question is: could you explain it to me?”

  “Oh,” said Geo. “I didn’t realize…” He paused. “By the dark chamber sits its twin, moving in and out; and that’s where the flood
s of the body begin. And they are twinned again. The heart?” he suggested. “The four-chambered human heart? That’s where the body’s flood begins.”

  “I think that will do for part of the answer.”

  “The bright chamber,” mused Geo. “The burning dome. The human mind, I guess. The line of division, running down the lane of memory…I’m not sure.”

  “You seem to be doing fairly well.”

  “Could it refer to something like ‘the two sides of every question’?” Geo asked. “Or something similar?”

  “It could,” Argo said. “Though I must confess I hadn’t thought of it in that way. But it is the last two lines that puzzle me.”

  “Fear floods in the turning room,” repeated Geo. “Love breaks in the burning dome. I guess that’s the mind and the heart again. You usually think of love with the heart and fear with the mind. Maybe she meant that they both, the heart and the mind, have control over both love and fear.”

  “Perhaps she did.” Argo smiled. “You must ask her…when you rescue her from the clutches of Hama.”

  “Does your granddaughter want to be a poet?” Geo asked.

  “I’m not sure what she wants to be,” Argo said. “It can be very trying. But you must go to sleep now. Tomorrow you will have to complete your mission.”

  “Thank you,” Geo said, grateful for his dismissal. “I am…am very sleepy.”

  Before going back to the room to his companions, he looked once more into the volcano. Tongues of light licked the black rock. He turned away now and walked back into the darkness.

  chapter ten

  Dawn lay aslant the crater’s ridge. Argo pointed down the opposite slope. A black temple at the bottom sat among trees and lawns. “Hama’s Temple,” Argo said. “You have your task. Good luck.”

  They started down the cinder slope. It took them about thirty minutes to reach the first trees that surrounded the dark buildings and the vast gardens. As they crossed the first lip of grass, a sudden cluster of notes spilled from a tree.

  “A bird,” Iimmi said. “I haven’t heard one since I left Leptar.”

  Bright blue and the length of a man’s forefinger, a lizard ran halfway down the trunk of the tree. Its sapphire belly heaved in the early light; it opened its red mouth, its throat fluttered, and there was another burst of music.

  “Oh well,” said Iimmi. “I was close.”

  They walked farther until Geo mused: “I wonder why you always think things are going to turn out like you expect.”

  “Because when something sounds like that,” declared Urson, “it’s supposed to be a bird!” He shuddered. “Lizards!”

  “It was a pretty lizard,” said Geo.

  “Echhh!” said Urson.

  “Going around expecting things to be what they seem can get you in trouble…on this Island.”

  There was another sound from the grove beside them. They looked up. The man standing in the center raised his hand and said briskly, “Stop!”

  They stopped.

  He wore dark robes, and his white hair made a close helmet above his brown face.

  Urson’s hand was on his sword. Snake’s hands were out from his sides.

  “Who are you?” the man declared.

  “Who are you?” Urson parried.

  “I am Hama Incarnate.”

  They were silent. Finally Geo said, “We are travelers in Aptor. We don’t mean any harm.”

  As the man moved forward, splotches of light from the trees slipped across his robe. “Come with me,” Hama said. He turned and proceeded among the trees. They followed.

  They entered the Temple garden. It was early enough in the morning so that the sunlight lapped pink tongues over the giant urns along the edges of the path. They reached the Temple.

  The mirrors on the sides of the vestibule tossed images back and forth as they passed between. Beyond pillars of onyx spread the shiny floor of the Temple. On the huge altar sat an immense statue of a cross-legged man. In one monstrous black hand was a scythe. In the other, shafts of grain spired four stories toward the ceiling. Of the three eyes in the head, only the middle one was open.

  As they passed, Hama looked at the jewels on Iimmi’s and Geo’s necks and then up at the gazing eye. “The morning rites have not yet started,” he said. “They will begin in a half hour. By then I hope to have divined your purpose in coming here.”

  At the other side of the hall they mounted a stairway. Above the door was a black circle dotted with three eyes. Just as they were about to go in, Geo looked around, frowned, and caught Iimmi’s eye. “Snake?” he mouthed.

  Iimmi looked around and shrugged. The boy was not with them.

  The room contained screens like the ones in the volcanic chapel and at the convent of the blind priestesses. Other equipment also: a large worktable, and on one wall, a window through which they could see the Temple garden.

  Hama faced them, apparently unaware of Snake’s disappearance. As he closed the door now, he said, “You have come to oppose the forces of Aptor, am I right? You come to steal the jewel of Hama. You have come to kidnap Incarnate Argo. Will you deny that is your purpose? Keep your hand off your sword, Urson!…Don’t move. I can kill you in a moment—”

  —

  She pushed her fist from under the sheet, squinched her eyes as tight as she could, and said, “Yahhhhhwashangnnn, damn!” Then again, “Damn! I’m sleepy.” She rolled over and cuddled the pillow. Then she opened her eyes, one at a time, and lay watching the near-complete motor sitting on the table beside her bed. Her eyes closed.

  And opened again. “I cannot afford to go back to sleep this morning,” she said softly. “One, two, three!” She threw the covers off, sat up, flung her feet onto the stone floor, and jumped erect, blinking hard from the shock of flesh and cold rock. She put her teeth together and said loudly, “Gnnnnn­nnnnn­,” and stretched to tiptoe.

  Then she collapsed on the bed and jammed her feet under the covers again. With thirty feet of one-and-a-half-inch brass pipe, she mused sleepily, I could carry heat from the main hot-water line under the floor, which I would estimate to be about the proper surface area to keep these stones warm. Let me see: thirty feet of one-and-a-half-inch pipe has a surface area of 22/7 times 3/2 times 30, which is 990 divided by 7, which is…Then she caught herself. Damn, thinking about this to avoid thinking about getting up. She opened her eyes once more, put feet on the stone, and held them there while she scratched vigorously at her hair.

  Then she went to the closet.

  She pulled down a white tunic, wriggled into it, and tied the leather strap around her waist. Then she looked at the clock. “Yikes!” she said quietly, ran out the door, almost slammed it to behind her. But she whirled, caught it on her palms before it banged, then with gingerly care closed it the final centimeter. Are you trying to get caught? she asked herself as she tiptoed to the next door.

  She opened it and looked in. Dunderhead looks cute when he’s asleep, she thought. The cord on the floor ran from under the table by the Priest’s bed, over the stones, carefully following the zigzag crevices. The end lay in the corner of the doorsill. You really couldn’t see it if you weren’t looking for it, which had more or less been the idea when she’d put it there last night before the priests returned from vespers. The far end was tied in a knot of her own invention to the electric plug of his alarm clock. Dunderhead had an annoying habit of resetting his clock every evening (in her plans for this morning she had catalogued all his habitual actions, this one observed three nights running as she hung upside down from the bulky stone portcullis outside his window) to make sure the red second hand still swept away the minutes.

  She tugged on the string and saw it leap from the crevices to a straight line. It lifted from the floor as she drew tighter. The plug blipped quietly onto the floor, and the string went slack.

  She pulled the string again until the slack left, and raised the end a few inches from the floor. With her free hand she plucked the cord and watched th
e vibration run up and down. The knot’s invention was ingenious. At the vibration, two opposed loops shook away from a third, and a four-millimeter length of rubber band that had been sewn in tightened and released a fourth loop from a small length of number-four-gauge wire with a holding tonsure of three quarters of a gram, and the opposing vibration returning up the cord loosed a similar apparatus on the other side of the plug. The knot fell away, and she wound the string quickly around her hand. She stood up and closed the door. The oiled lock was perfectly silent. In fact the doorknob was still just the slightest bit greasy, she noted. Careless.

  She went back to her room. Sunlight from the high window fell over the table. Glancing at her own clock, she saw it was still very early in the morning. She took the parts of the motor up. “I guess we try you out today? No?” She grinned. “Yes!” She put the parts in the paper bag, strode out of the room, and slammed the…whirled and caught it once more. “Gnnnnnnn,” she repeated. “Do you want to get caught?” Now she frowned. “Yes. And remember that too. Or you’ll never get through this.”

  As she walked down the hall, she heard through one of the windows the chirp of a blue lizard from the garden. “Just the sound I wanted to hear.” Her smile came back. “Good sign.”

  Turning into the Temple, she started down the side aisle. The great black columns passed her. Suddenly she stopped. Something had moved between the columns on the other side, swift as a bird’s shadow. At least she thought it had. “Remember,” she reminded herself, “you have guilt feelings about this whole thing, you want to get caught, and you could very easily be manufacturing delusions to scare yourself out of going through with it.” She passed two more columns. And saw it again. “Or,” she went on, “you could be purposefully ignoring the very obvious fact that there is somebody over there. So watch it.”

  Then she saw it again; somebody with no clothes on (for all practical purposes) was sneaking between the pillars. And he had four arms. That made her start to think of something else, but the thought as it arrowed toward recognition suddenly got deflected, turned completely about, and jammed into her brain: he was staring directly at her, and she was afraid.