Maiden, Nymph, and Mother are the eternal royal Trinity of the
island, and the Goddess, who is worshipped there in each of these
aspects, as New Moon, Full Moon, and Old Moon, is the sovereign
Deity.
--Graves
CRETE CIRCA 1300 B.C.
Kaby pushed back at Sid some seconds of bread and olives, and, when he
raised his bushy eyebrows, gave him a curt nod that meant she knew what
she was doing. She stood up and sort of took a position. All the talk
quieted down fast, even Bruce's and Lili's. Kaby's face and voice
weren't strained now, but they weren't relaxed either.
"Woe to Spider! Woe to Cretan! Heavy is the news I bring you. Bear it
bravely, like strong women. When we got the gun unlimbered, I heard
seaweed fry and crackle. We three leaped behind the rock wall, saw our
gun grow white as sunlight in a heat-ray of the Serpents! Natch, we
feared we were outnumbered and I called upon my Caller."
[Illustration]
I don't know how she does it, but she does--in English too. That is,
when she figures she's got something important to report, and maybe she
needs a little time to get ready.
Beau claims that all the ancients fit their thoughts into measured lines
as naturally as we pick a word that will do, but I'm not sure how good
the Vicksburg language department is. Though why I should wonder about
things like that when I've got Kaby spouting the stuff right in front of
me, I don't know.
"But I didn't die there, kiddos. I still hoped to hurt the Greek ships,
maybe with the Snake's own heat gun. So I quick tried to outflank them.
My two comrades crawled beside me--they are males, but they have
courage. Soon we spied the ambush-setters. They were Snakes and they
were many, filthily disguised as Cretans."
There was an indignant murmur at this, for our cutthroat Change War has
its code, the Soldiers tell me. Being an Entertainer, I don't have to
say what I think.
"They had seen us when we saw them," Kaby swept on, "and they loosed a
killing volley. Heat- and knife-rays struck about us in a storm of wind
and fire, and the Lunan lost a feeler, fighting for Crete's Triple
Goddess. So we dodged behind a sand hill, steered our flight back toward
the water. It was awful, what we saw there: Crete's brave ships all sunk
or sinking, blue sky sullied by their death-smoke. Once again the Greeks
had licked us!--aided by the filthy Serpents.
"Round our wrecks, their black ships scurried, like black beetles, filth
their diet, yet this day they dine on heroes. On the quiet sunlit beach
there, I could feel a Change Gale blowing, working changes deep inside
me, aches and pains that were a stranger's. Half my memories were
doubled, half my lifeline crooked and twisted, three new moles upon my
sword-hand. Goddess, Goddess, Triple Goddess--"
* * * * *
Her voice wavered and Sid reached out a hand, but she straightened her
back.
"Triple Goddess, give me courage to tell everything that happened. We
ran down into the water, hoping to escape by diving. We had hardly
gotten under when the heat-rays hit above us, turning all the cool green
surface to a roaring white inferno. But as I believe I told you, I was
calling on my Caller, and a Door now opened to us, deep below the deadly
steam-clouds. We dived in like frightened minnows and a lot of water
with us."
Off Chicago's Gold Coast, Dave once gave me a lesson in skin-diving and,
remembering it, I got a flash of Kaby's Door in the dark depths.
"For a moment, all was chaos. Then the Door slammed shut behind us. We'd
been picked up in time's nick by--an Express Room of our
Spiders!--sloshing two feet deep in water, much more cramped for space
than this Place. It was manned by a magician, an old coot named
Benson-Carter. He dispelled the water quickly and reported on his
Caller. We'd got dry, were feeling human, Illy here had shed his
swimsuit, when we looked at the Maintainer. It was glowing, changing,
melting! And when Benson-Carter touched it, he fell backward--death was
in him. Then the Void began to darken, narrow, shrink and close around
us, so I called upon my Caller--without wasting time, let me tell you!
"We can't say for sure what was it slowly squeezed that sweet Express
Room, but we fear the dirty Snakes have found a way to find our Places
and attack outside the cosmos!--found the Spiderweb that links us in the
Void's gray less-than-nothing."
No murmur this time. This reaction was genuine; we'd been hit where we
lived and I could see everybody was scared as sick as I was. Except
maybe Bruce and Lili, who were still holding hands and beaming gently. I
decided they were the kind that love makes brave, which it doesn't do to
me. It just gives me two people to worry about.
"I can see you dig our feelings," Kaby continued. "This thing scared the
pants off of us. If we could have, we'd have even Introverted the
Maintainer, broken all the ties that bind us, chanced it incommunicado.
But the little old Maintainer was a seething red-hot puddle filled with
bubbles big as handballs. We sat tight and watched the Void close. I
kept calling on my Caller."
* * * * *
I squeezed my eyes shut, but that made it easier to see the three of
them with the Void shutting down on them. (Was ours still behaving? Yes,
Bibi Miriam.) Poetry or no poetry, it got me.
"Benson-Carter, lying dying, also thought the Snakes had done it. And he
knew that death was in him, so he whispered me his mission, giving me
precise instructions: how to press the seven death's hands, starting
lockside counterclockwise, one, three, five, six, two, four, seven, then
you have a half an hour; after you have pressed the seven, do not monkey
with the buttons--get out fast and don't stop moving."
I wasn't getting this part and I couldn't see that anyone else was,
though Bruce was whispering to Lili. I remembered seeing skulls engraved
on the bronze chest. I looked at Illy and he nodded a tentacle and
spread two to say, I guessed, that yes, Benson-Carter had said something
like that, but no, Illy didn't know much about it.
"All these things and more he whispered," Kaby went on, "with the last
gasps of his life-force, telling all his secret orders--for he'd not
been sent to get us, he was on a separate mission, when he heard my
SOSs. Sid, it's you he was to contact, as the first leg of his mission,
pick up from you three black hussars, death's-head Demons, daring
Soldiers, then to wait until the Places next match rhythm with the
cosmos--matter of two mealtimes, barely--and to tune in northern Egypt
in the age of the last Caesar, in the year of Rome's swift downfall,
there to start an operation in a battle near a city named for Thrace's
Alexander, there to change the course of battle, blow sky-high the
stinking Serpents, all their agents, all their Zombies!
"Goddess, pardon, now I savvy how you've guided my least footstep, when
I thought you'd gone and left me--for I flubbed your three-mole signal.
We've found Sid's Place, that's the first leg, and I see the three black
hussars, and we've brought with us the weapon and the Parthian
disguises, salvaged from the doomed Express Room when your Door appeared
in time's nick, and the Room around us closing spewed us through before
it vanished with the corpse of Benson-Carter. Triple Goddess, draw the
milk now from the womanhood I flaunt here and inject the blackest
hatred! Vengeance now upon the Serpents, vengeance sweet in northern
Egypt, for your island, Crete, Goddess!--and a victory for the Spiders!
Goddess, Goddess, we can swing it!"
The roar that made me try to stop my ears with my shoulders didn't come
from Kaby--she'd spoken her piece--but from Sid. The dear boy was purple
enough to make me want to remind him you can die of high blood pressure
just as easy in the Change World.
"Dump me with ops! 'Sblood, I'll not endure it! Is this a battle post?
They'll be mounting operations from field hospitals next. Kabysia
Labrys, thou art mad to suggest it. And what's this prattle of locks,
clocks, and death's heads, buttons and monkeys? This brabble, this
farrago, this hocus-pocus! And where's the weapon you prate of? In that
whoreson bronze casket, I suppose."
She nodded, looking blank and almost a little shy as poetic possession
faded from her. Her answer came like its faltering last echo.
"It is nothing but a tiny tactical atomic bomb."