“That’s an Eiger,” murmured D’Jevier, her head thrown back to display the long, vulnerable line of her throat. “The bird who sees all. It’s singing what it sees to Bofusdiaga.”
“You know this,” said Questioner, “because your nursemaid told you, when you were a baby. Your nursemaid who is now dead.”
D’Jevier flushed, looked at her shoes and said nothing.
“Well,” Questioner remarked. “Let us accept that all you Newholmians had nursemaids who told you of Eigers and Bofusdiaga and Corojumi and Timmys and Joggiwagga. And here we are, confronting them in reality. This has been an enlightening journey for all of us, I have no doubt. Are you ready to discuss what it means? Or would you prefer to continue in suspicious ignorance?”
“Madam.” Calvy bowed, grinning at her. “I am sure I speak for everyone when I say we would be … gratified to know what it means.”
Though D’Jevier’s mouth pinched momentarily, holding in her immediate rebuke, she did not utter it. She could not in all honesty disagree, and though Calvy had no right to speak for the Hags, in this case he had represented them honestly.
55—The Tale Of Quaggima
“As i have pieced it together, we are here today because of something that happened a million years ago,” said Questioner.
“Which could be said for anyone being anywhere,” Calvy remarked, his troubled eyes belying his charming smile.
Questioner’s pursed lips and down-the-nose stare apprised him of the impertinence of charm. “There is more than mere timeflow at work here. Our lives have intersected those of a very large, long-lived, star-roving race called the Quaggi. Except for Ellin and Bao, who have heard the name only in passing, you all know about the Quaggi.”
Her listeners glanced covertly at one another.
“Come now,” she coaxed them. “You heard about the Quaggi when you were children.” She stared imperiously at D’Jevier. “When you heard many other interesting stories … “
“Say that we know about the Quaggi,” Calvy interrupted, to spare D’Jevier’s obvious discomfort. “If we don’t, we’ll pretend we do.”
“Ah,” said Questioner. “Pretense. Well, that is something you Newholmians do well. I continue:
“A very long time ago, when this solar system was still quite young, a Quaggida entered the system. I am told by the Corojum that reproductive males sit out on the cold edges of solar systems, summoning, and that one or more females eventually respond to that call. I infer the female is unaware of the consequences, or, if aware, A: finds the lure irresistible, or B: is resigned to her fate.
“When the female arrived she was impregnated. In the process she was rather badly injured and her wings were so mutilated that she could no longer fly. The Quaggida left her there, one would imagine in considerable discomfort, and flew off to get started on the contemplative phase of his existence.”
Madame made a breathy exclamation, then subsided under Questioner’s admonitory gaze.
“This may have been an aberration. It may have happened only in a single case. Or, it may be that both the violation and the concurrent mutilation are required by the Quaggian ethos, or the Quaggian physiology. In any case, the Quaggima lies there on the cold planet, barely able to move, while the egg slowly develops. When it has grown too large for its location, the Quaggima struggles with her crippled wings to leave whatever mild gravity is holding her, and she falls toward the sun, timing this to intercept some moon or planet which is ‘warm.’ “
She paused for a moment, and was interrupted by Onsofruct, who said angrily, “What has all this got to do with us?”
Questioner held up an admonitory hand. “It has everything to do with you, because it happened here!”
“Here? Where we are?”
“It happened here, on a moonlet of the outermost planet, and when the egg was ripe, the Quaggima fell to this world. She fell into a caldera where she somehow laid the egg beneath her in the warm rock. She did not die. I infer that the last act the female Quaggi commits is not the penetration of a warm moon or planet to lay the egg, but the breaking of that egg when it is ready to hatch.