Blood on the stone. Whether from the deep or the height, whether from mountain or jungle, whether from claw or talon, beak or fang, blood on the stone, rising up to live again. The very soundlessness was their sound—its sound—and all the other senses as well. They stretched, reaching for being. In silence, sound. In darkness, sight. In nothingness, touch.
The sacrifice, it says. All living is by sacrifice. For one creature to live, another one must die. What will you give me? Where is mine?
It speaks to her! It says: Oh, feel how you have unvoiced us. See how you have cut us down. Hear our silent cries! Our worlds were full of the murmur and clatter of being, now listen to the silence we inhabit, all our spirits, still!
“Lutha?” Leelson, holding out his hand.
“Nothing,” she said in a voice she didn’t recognize as her own. “It’s nothing.”
What was it? Not nothing. What were these visions? Things she had seen as a child in sensurround? Fairy tales? Stories of olden times? Creatures out of dream? Creatures come out of time?
Silence, silence, silence, even while the voice spoke, saying: So you may remember, we give you silence. Where we should be, but are not, there is silence.
What was this listening? Attenuated, the sense stretching itself outward, begging for something to fill it? Feeling one’s own eyes rattling in their sockets, twitching every way, seeking an out, an escape. Why were they here, shielded from the sky? Why was this stone all around them? Why were they not there, at the sea’s edge, crawling out of that salty womb onto the shore in company with the creatures of their common birth?
“Lutha!”
“Nothing,” she cried again.
He shook her. “Lutha.”
Lutha saw him then. Felt his violence transmitted to her own body as he ragged her to and fro, not gently.
“Leelson!” Urgently she called him, from great distance.
“Shhh,” he replied, eyes suddenly aware of some outside presence as he leaned against her, pressing her equally into himself and into the stone.
All of them were pressed into the stones, clinging to them, even Saluez, edging toward the crevices and cracks they’d made their own. A stupid place to choose when skies came down. As in a dream, they saw all the great stone slabs falling, obdurate shadows piercing reverie to become horrible reality, crushing them before they knew they were in danger. Little nutkins in the mighty vise of what? And yet, what other choice? They could be beneath the stone or beneath the sky, the vengeful sky, hearing that quiet!
“Listen,” Lutha whispered.
“No,” said Mitigan in a horrified voice.
“Don’t,” cried Saluez. “Don’t listen.”
They were children afraid of ghosts, pulling up the blanket to cover their eyes, pulling themselves into the stone and huddling there. Even Leelson! Even Mitigan! Where is your courage, Fastigat? Where is your honor, Asenagi? Why are you huddled with the rest while this silence goes on and on and on.
Slither of scales upon stone; scutter of hairy legs, silk filament trailing the wind; hear in the silence what is not there. Cry, cry, cry, a bird who hungers; cry, cry, cry, a bird seeking her young, who will never be again. All is desert, all is dry, all is dead and gone, not even a memory. All that is left is a set of symbols, a list of bases, a pattern stored away. The machine knows them as the machine knows everything, dryly, without blood or breath, but humans do not know them at all!
Leely came drowsily naked out of some crack or crevice where he’d been sleeping, cast them a sidelong look, and went past them toward a tilted arch of starlit stone, a window onto the night, where he stood waving his hands.
Lutha didn’t move. Lutha was lost among the animals. Oh, the colors of them. Oh, the sounds they make. The eyes of them, bright and quick and full of accusation. Who was Leely in the face of this … this!
Too battered by sensation even to be curious, she watched open-mouthed as he turned, again, again, wearing his Leely face, swaying and waving, a familiar and aimless activity. Then his face took on a new expression. Not his usual quiet satisfaction. Not his hungry look or his chilly look or his sleepy look. Not any expression she had seen before. This was something else. A kind of wakefulness.