With the light, the voice stilled. Mouche took a deep breath and staggered to Ornery, helping her up. Ornery put an arm around him, and they supported one another.
“She is very restless,” said the Corojum, pointing to the movement in the wings, now clearly discernable to them all. “The egg has been moving under her and she has been getting worse for days and days.”
“Sticking to this track will take too long,” said Questioner to the Corojum. “If we have as little time as you say, we must get there more rapidly.”
Corojum whistled. They looked up just in time to see the talons of the Eigers that snatched them from the trail and plunged with them into the depths of the chasm, Questioner and the Corojum held by one great bird, each of the others borne singly, along with a cloud of Timmys who flung themselves into the air, circling and soaring on flaps of skin that joined their arms and legs, like larger versions of the swoopers in the tunnel. Even stranger were the several Joggiwagga that flattened themselves into spiked disks that sailed downward, like spinning plates.
The Questioner’s light surrounded them as they circled, slowing as they neared the bottom. There they were deposited gently one by one on the circular floor, smooth as glass, black and glossy.
“Obsidian,” observed Questioner, brushing herself off, dislodging a few fluffs of down in the process. “Now, where is she?”
Corojum gestured, head down, bowing to something behind Questioner. She turned and stared into an immense, faceted eye the size of a building. Several more such eyes were arranged symmetrically below three tall, flickering antennae that rose like feathery trees. Below the eyes was what could be a mouth, complicated and surrounded by ramified angular structures that twitched restlessly. Below that, laid sideways along the floor, partially enclosed in the glassy floor, was the long, striated, dully gleaming body of the Quaggima, twitching, vibrating, waves of motion rippling down it from the head, away into the darkness.
Though the creature gave no evidence of seeing them, they all bowed. Questioner abated her light, dimming it to a softer, rosier glow, and muttering commands to her troops.
“Mouche, pace off the length of the body. Take a data head and get every inch of her recorded. Ornery, take another data head and go bit by bit over the upper body and head; be sure to get good, clear views. Ellin and Bao, I’d like to test for a reaction, so would you two do something in the way of a pas de deux? I’ll give you some music and atmosphere—anything you’d prefer?”
The two dancers looked at one another. “Debussy,” said Bao. “ ‘La Mer.’ “
Questioner flipped mentally through her catalogues, found the appropriate references, and began to emit the music, along with shifting watery lights that poured like a tidal flow across the dark glass beneath her …
From within which, something watched her. She bent over and beamed her light down, disclosing another faceted eye above a shifting, shadowy depth of moving wings, and beyond the wings, far down, far, far down, another eye …
“This is the egg!” she said to Corojum, without moving or interrupting the music.
“Of course it’s the egg,” said Corojum. “What did you think it was?”
“When the wing moves, I can see far down past it, far, far down. There’s more than one in there.”
“She told Kaorugi, always they have at least twins,” said Corojum. “One male, one female. Each Quaggima mates only once. If they are not to go extinct, she must produce at least two offspring. Sometimes they have four.”
“Are the ones in the egg aware?”
“They are more aware than she is. Long ago, before the egg grew so big, she was awake all the time. She used to cry until the whole world sorrowed, so Kaorugi talked more with her, and when she could talk with someone, she was not sorrowful, but when the egg got bigger, she began to be agitated again, and talking with Bofusdiaga was not enough. That’s when the dancers put her to sleep. Sometimes, like now, when the moons pull and pull, her children move and she feels them moving. What wakes her most is when they cry like they were doing. She hears that!”