Her voice trailed off as though she’d lost the strength to speak.
Snark said, “Suppose Firsters are wrong. Suppose the universe was made for all kinds of creatures.” She took Lutha’s hand and gripped it. “Suppose, Lutha!”
“I don’t know,” Lutha murmured. “Instinctively, it seems to me Firstism is illogical, but even now it’s hard for me to imagine living with creatures. There are no creatures on Central. In my whole life I’ve only seen two or three other kinds of creatures. Gaufers. And the cats … ”
“You must have seen birds in Simidi-ala,” I said. “And we had corn-rats in the hive. And little fishes in the streams. You must have seen them!”
“Perhaps I did. I don’t remember. Of course, I’ve seen Kachis and shaggies and Rottens. Are they animals?”
Poracious sighed. “Isn’t everything alive either a plant, a human, or an animal?” She rubbed at her head, dragging her hair up in dirty spikes. “When I was a child, there were still a few animals on my home planet. I remember horses. I remember—”
“Horses,” said Jiacare Lostre. “Oh, weren’t horses wonderful? So shiny, so majestic, the way their necks arched, the way they pranced, high and proud. I remember seeing one running across a pasture, tail high, with her little one running beside her. Oh, on Kamir, we still had horses in my father’s time. And dogs. We used to ride … ”
His voice faded into nostalgic silence. Poracious Luv drew her blanket more tightly around her, extending one hand from this cocoon to stroke the jar Snark had brought down from her cave. She followed the design with her fingers, asking, “Who are these?”
She was pointing at curvilinear patterns that seemed to make eyes and noses and mouths.
Snark replied, “Father Endless and Mother Darkness. And the carriers of souls.”
“They have not human faces,” Poracious commented. “Why is that?”
“They are mother and father of all things,” I whispered. “Why should they have human faces?”
“Did your tempter have a human face?” Poracious asked Snark.
Snark cast a look over her shoulder, to be sure Leelson and Mitigan were still some distance away, before saying, “The songfathers claimed the Gracious One was male and had a human face and a male … body. Considering how the songfathers lied about other stuff, maybe it’s just a story they made up.”
Poracious moved slightly, looking at the jar from another angle. “Most gods of most worlds have human faces.”
“Because men make them in their image,” Lutha remarked, somewhat bitterly. “To grant mankind license to do what we would do anyway.” Her eyes went back to the entrance and she gasped abruptly.
Snark followed her gaze. The two cats had somehow sneaked by the watchmen. They stood well inside the chamber, crying at us as they rubbed themselves against the stones. Whatever we might have expected, it was not cats. Snark went at once to find a food packet among the store she and Mitigan had lowered from above, and while she opened it the animals arched their backs and wound in and out between her legs. Mitigan and Leelson joined us by the stove, and we all watched while the animals ate. From Leelson’s expression, I think he was expecting the cats to speak or go up in a puff of smoke. No one said anything at all until they had finished and departed.
Mitigan snarled, “Maybe they’re spies. For whatever’s out there.” He stalked back to the entry.
Leelson joined him, saying, “What is out there? And what’s it waiting for?”
“Poracious says it’s Behemoth,” said Snark. “Whatever it is, it’s more like the cats than it’s like us.”
“How?” Poracious demanded. “How like.”
“It’s part of something,” Snark replied.
“So are we!” Mitigan asserted angrily.
She shook her head at him. “No. Not on any homo-normed world. On Central, we didn’t depend on anything, and nothing depended on us! We didn’t respect anything, and nothing respected us. On natural worlds, life makes a loop. Birth and life and death are all parts of it, and all the parts respect one another. There’s no top or bottom. There’s just this … honorable dependency. But on homo-normed worlds, no flesh lives but man-flesh.”