Trompe murmured, “We can postulate it’s the correct time to get through, but only just. The traffic controllers seem to be in some doubt.”
That was one explanation. I could think of others, but to no profit. No amount of thinking would tell us what we needed to know; only action would do. I took a deep breath and trudged off in the direction Leelson had gone, hoping the path would be self-evident. One route through might be passable, while another might be forbidden! The two Fastigats had not considered that! Behind me Lutha said something and Trompe hushed her. I heard Leely burbling his eternal Dananana. Then I heard nothing but my own blood roaring in my ears.
The temptation to look up was too strong when I came beneath the first one. I staggered at the sight. So huge. So horrid. So heavy. The tops of our caves are as huge, as heavy, but they curve comfortingly down around us, like sheltering arms. These curves went away, the wrong way, and it was like looking up at the shape of some flying monster, diving on me. I shuddered, forced my eyes down, and kept walking. Everywhere the ground was littered with shards of broken stone, sharp edges, curved surfaces, like fragments of eggshells made gigantic. They had fallen from somewhere. At one time or another, they had fallen.
I kept my feet moving, one foot in front of the other. My mouth and throat were so dry it hurt to move my tongue. I gulped at the sight of bones. Not human. Gaufer bones. A scatter of them, as though something had been eating them. Then, as I moved around a great pillar, there were human ones: shoulders and a skull staring at the sky, arms and torso disappearing under a broken-edged stone.
The rock was curved like a fragment of cup and it rocked as I passed. Curve inside curve. Were the Nodders hollow? Were they great stone eggs? With what inside? Were these the remnants of some that had hatched?
Beware, the skull eyes said to me. Beware. Don’t panic. Don’t shout. Don’t run. Beware!
I had passed between the Nodder pair. Off to my left the streamlet ran, winding among the pillars, which were all around me now, a thick copse of rising trunks with a multitude of paths among them. How did one keep from getting lost? The stony soil showed no trace of Leelson’s passage.
Look up, I told myself. Look past the threatening heads to the canyon rim. Even these monsters are not so high as that lofty edge. Look where the sun is, and where it comes across the heads to make scallop-backed scythes of gray-golden light upon the rocky soil. The rays come from the left. The scythe crescents open to the left. Keep them lying so as you go.
And so I did, while something inside my mind made little gibbering noises and a muscle near my eye twitched as though someone were pulling at it with a thread. The temptation to look up never abated, but it was hard enough to find a way among the fallen fragments without frightening myself more. Turn and turn again. Stop. Look for the light. Turn so the light is coming from the left. Go a little way. Stop again. Look for the light again. No sound at all but my own panting breath escaping the halter of my throat. Turn and turn again, winding among them, winding around them, to come out of them at last quite unexpectedly!
Leelson stood a short distance away, beckoning with one hand, the other before his lips, urging quiet. Then I allowed myself to look up to see them nodding, nodding, nodding: no, no, no.
Still, they had let me pass. I trudged over to Leelson, bending double to catch my breath. I felt sick. I had half strangled myself.
“Lutha and Leely next,” he whispered in my ear. “Is she coming?”
I nodded, supposing that she would. Trompe would tell her she was next; she would take Leely into her arms and start walking in a kind of fatalistic calm. She would recognize the risk. She would tell herself she had never rejected or neglected him, that she had resolutely denied Leelson’s assessment of him. Nonetheless, she .would risk him and herself. If she allowed herself to think about it at all, she would consider dying with Leely to be an acceptable solution to the problems of their lives, hers and his.