What was all right? This? This was all right?
“It’s the healing,” Leelson shouted at us, slapping Lutha gently to get her attention. “It’s regenerative, that’s all. A whole organism from any fragment. Lutha. It’s all right.”
“It’s not,” she howled. “It’s not all right.”
Several of the Leelies came running across the sand to stand pulling at Lutha’s trousers, caroling, “Dananana,” over and over, then running back to the others to make a bird twitter of tiny voices, among which we heard, “Lutha Lutha mother love.”
I think perhaps Lutha fainted. Or perhaps she simply abdicated responsibility for living. She let go, fell down, and stopped, quit even being aware that life was going on around her, ignoring all our attempts to arouse her.
Leelson said, “Let her alone.”
“Good. Let me alone,” she agreed in a far-off voice.
We did let her alone. The Leelies didn’t. They liked her. She was their Lutha Lutha mother love. They liked me. I was their Saluez of the shadow. They wandered all over both of us, like tiny explorers setting out across a new land, while I sat there, my hands twitching as I tried to decide whether to pick them off or let them be. Hysterically, I told myself to await the jab of a flag driven into my thigh, a voice claiming this new continent!
Under her breath, Lutha was counting. She stopped at the count of one hundred ten.
“One hundred ten?” I asked.
“That’s how many of them I’ve counted,” she said in a high, cracked voice. “One hundred ten.”
More had come in from among the stones. The smallest ones were half the size of my little finger. The largest was three times the size of the one I had found first. I found myself saying, that one is leg-sized. That one is arm-sized. That one grew out of a few drops of blood. They clustered around us like grapes, dangling from Lutha like pendant fruit, eager, joyous. They felt no pain. They knew no fear. They had no worry about what had happened to him, them. It didn’t matter what had happened to him, them, or how they had come to be.
Lutha said brokenly, “God, what kind of mind could have designed such a thing!”
After a time they seemed to find new centers for their attention. A dozen broke away to cluster around a slightly larger one, and that group wandered off. Then, gradually, another dozen, or a score. The groups wavered across the floor, disappearing into holes, reappearing again, vanishing at last. Finally there was only one left. The largest one.
“This is how big he was when he was born,” raved Lutha, “this big. Just this big. The same size … ”
Leelson sat down beside her, his face very white. “Are you all right?”
“I suppose,” she said.
“You understand what’s happened here.”
Her face twisted. I knew she was cursing him, cursing all Fastigats who would not assume anything, who had to spell everything out, letter by letter. Still, she shook herself, gripped her hands tightly together, and answered his stupid question with reasonable self-control.
“I understand it intellectually, Leelson. Not in any other way. I will never understand in any other way.”
“It might help if you consider that … thing that tore him apart. It’s in for a surprise, isn’t it?”
She cast me one incredulous glance, then closed her eyes and refused to speak.
“It’s the big one, Lutha. The prime Ularian. The chief Rotten. And whatever venom Leely spreads, that creature is now awash in it.”
Laughter welled uncontrollably from her throat. She roared. “You’re such a fool!”
He drew away, deeply offended.
“You Firsters! Suppose your Firster god came calling on you. When he arrived, would you call him a Ularian? Would you expect him to resemble you even in your frailties? Would you expect him to catch your cold. To get a bellyache? To sneeze?”
He was rigid, pale, not following her.
She whispered. “You would expect God to be above all that, no? So, if a deity appears who is deity not only of man but of all living things, will you really expect it to die from mange or distemper or an attack of the Leelies?”