“What’s a choreographer?” Ornery whispered to Questioner.
“A designer of dances,” Questioner answered. “One who creates the steps and gestures and meanings of dance, though sometimes they copy former choreographers … “
“Which is what we want to do,” cried the Corojum in an agonized voice. “That is what we must do! We must copy the former dance!”
“But you have nothing to copy,” offered Questioner.
“Exactly.”
Mouche opened his mouth, “But … “
“Hush,” said Questioner, raising her hands. “I can feel the questions bubbling up on your lips, but I feel that poised halfway down an interminable stair is not the right time or place. We must have a settled time in which to pursue matters uninterruptedly before we agitate ourselves with hasty questions and half answers.”
The Corojum nodded. “Oh, yes, that is wise. Far better to take time, better even to show than to say. Far better to illustrate than merely explain. Always in the dance, this is so. Come then.” He turned toward the stairs and started down. “It is only a little way now.”
They followed him. His colleagues, the Timmys, had already disappeared, and they did not reappear, even when Questioner’s group emerged at last onto an open and level space. The Corojum ran ahead into darkness, beckoning them. “Come. With less light you will see better.”
Questioner dimmed herself. After a moment, they did see better, and with the seeing came hearing, too, the soft shush of waves on a sloping beach. Before them was the subsurface sea, lighted with a hundred dancing colors and shades, wavelets of luminous peridot and emerald, sapphire and aquamarine, effulgent ripples running toward their feet across a flat beach of black sand to make a citron-colored froth at their toes. Along the beach to their left, a great curved tower went up into the luminous sky, disappearing at the height. Beyond it was another, larger than the largest buildings on Newholme, higher than the tallest, crystalline in structure, reaching upward like a great column.
“I saw these columns being built,” said Questioner. “I saw a record of this world when these pillars were the cores of little volcanoes.”
“True,” offered the Corojum. “First a plain here, then a thousand tiny firemountains, then their cores left behind, then the sea covering the plain with silt, then the plain rising again, then the roof pouring out from other firemountains. So Kaorugi told us, Kaorugi, the builder. It was Kaorugi who sent tunnelers to drill the holes to let the rain through to lick away the soft stone, Kaorugi who sent the closers to seal the holes up again before the land sank beneath the surface seas. It was Kaorugi who built the stairs and made the places for water to run deep into the world and out again, Kaorugi who created the first boat to sail this sea, but then, you know about the boats or you would not have brought sailors with you.”
“Bofusdiaga and the Corojumi sailed the ship,” said Questioner. “According to my informants.”
“We Corojumi guided the ship, yes. And Bofusdiaga told us how to make the journey. But Bofusdiaga was already too large for ships, Bofusdiaga is now too large to move, and besides, it is usually busy elsewhere, and there is only one Corojum, so we must sail as best we can.”
The Corojum ran from them to the edge of the sea, put his huge hands to his mouth and called into the distance.
Watching this, Mouche asked Questioner, “Where did the waterfall stop?”
“Back there, somewhere,” said Questioner. “I imagine in some kind of enclosed cave from which it siphons up or flows out into this sea. If there was, indeed, a designer of this place, it no doubt preferred to keep the noise and dense mists away from this shore. For visibility’s sake, if nothing else.”
“Are we under the ocean?” asked Ornery, apprehensively. “I mean, the Jellied Sea?”
“I think not,” Questioner answered. “My judgment is that the first tunnel brought us under the badlands west of Sendoph, that the first small stream brought us farther west. The river then changed our direction, taking us north or northwest—which would be more or less toward the Jellied Sea—until we came to the fall, from which the stair twisted upon itself going mostly down. Now we are north and west of the place we began, looking westward across this sea, and above us are the badlands. This ocean is self-contained, with its own atmosphere, like a submarine vehicle.”