At first it was only a darkness. A darkness within darkness. A circular blackness. A pit, perhaps. A pit smeared with cloudy concentric lines to represent a … I struggled to find a word. A vortex.
A blotch spun past, appearing at the edge farther from us, disappearing behind the edge nearest us. Well then, it wasn’t a representation of a vortex, it was a vortex. A … maelstrom. Though it didn’t look like water.
“Not water,” said the ex-king doubtfully. “It doesn’t look like water.”
Leelson cursed briefly behind me. He had dropped some part of the device and now knelt to attach it once more. The loose parts were almost all attached; I assumed they were finished with it. Trompe knelt beside Leelson and they thrust a record file through a narrow slot.
Poracious followed my glance.
“A record from Perdur Alas,” she murmured. “Unfiltered, if I don’t miss my guess!”
I only half heard her, for the ex-king made a muffled exclamation, drawing my attention back toward the temple where the steadily grunting line, ungh-ah, ungh-ah, ungh-ah, had moved the floor the entire quarter turn the tackle permitted. Now the whirling darkness was fully disclosed. The music stopped. We heard a shouted command. Then trumpets again, and a quicker tempo from the drums. The rope went slack. The ritual personages unshackled it from the eye, hauled it in, and carried thick coils of it away eastward to the accompaniment of panpipes and gongs. The members of the orchestra marched onto the northeast quadrant of the great stone lid and fettered themselves, facing north, while over their left shoulders the vortex whirled with hypnotic force. The musicians’ hair whipped in the rising wind.
“Look away,” demanded Poracious. “Don’t let your eyes get sucked in. Observe—the musicians are wearing blinkers, and none of the people are looking at it.”
As indeed they were not. The temple stood on a slight rise; almost all of the observers were on lower levels, where they couldn’t see the vortex; if any were higher than we, they would see only the temple roof or the processions of spirit people and songfathers who were marching hither and yon, waving banners and censers while drums pounded, gongs sounded, trumpets brayed, and panpipes tweedled breathily. When the music stopped, no one looked toward the temple. All eyes were searching the far canyon edges, where they opened into the valley.
“The beautiful people are coming,” I cried, hearing both the pain and the joy in my words. “Oh, they are coming. They will see us one more time before they go to heaven! Perhaps … perhaps … ”
Oh, perhaps. The crowd stirred. At first I did not see what they saw, then I detected the pale movement at the canyon entrances, like a flow of milk. It did not come closer. Not then.
At the same time Leelson said something in a self-satisfied tone, there was a click, and I was elsewhere.
Before me, observed from some distance, through a twiggy growth, Diagonal Red and Four Green Spot floated over an abandoned camp. I heard the sea, at some distance behind me. A twig was jammed between my teeth to keep my mouth open as I drooled filthily. From the south, enormous shapes bobbed toward me, and my throat formed the words, Blue Lines, Big Gray Blob, and Speckled Purple. In the middle distance, a dozen more shaggy Ularians moved in a slow procession.
I was tasting … what was it I tasted? Soapy, rancid, bitter, nasty … Over the sound of the sea I heard retching; through the view of the moorland, as through a transparent picture, I saw the valley of the omphalos, filled with people who bent and twisted as they tried to get rid of that filthy taste. Abruptly, the effect lessened somewhat, becoming no less nasty but less overwhelming.
I heard Leelson’s voice. “I’ve put in a partial filter.” Whatever he had done, it did not prevent the experience continuing …
… showing pictures on their bodies! Each newly pictured thing coalesced on the body of one single being. “Ularian,” my throat said. The picture moved on to another Ularian, and more detail was added. Each Ularian augmented or complicated the picture created by the previous ones, and the event continued rotating …