“We,” said Ellin. “You mean you and Mouche?”
“Flowing Green and Mouche, yes, but Kaorugi says better if also Ellin and Bao and Ornery, if they can,” said Flowing Green. “Because Ellin and Bao and Ornery are good pretenders, and to make what must be made, we cannot be only what we are, you see?”
“I don’t see,” said Ornery, stubbornly.
Flowing Green whispered a sigh. “On your machine, you saw what the dancers did, what they became, each part doing its own part, thousands of them. This was long in the design, long in the rehearsal. We have no time for design, no time for rehearsal, no time for the many to be choreographed into something huge. We must do it as one thing, first time! To become what we must become, we must imagine. That is the word? We must turn into something else. We must … join, lay aside, divest … “
“Metamorphose,” suggested Bao. “Be turning into a new creature?”
“This is so. Questioner is right. It must be one thing. Male and female and neither. Joy and sorrow and neither. Pleasure and pain and neither. Bigger than we are, and wider and longer, a thing to be to Quaggima what Quaggima needs, and we must do it right, first time.”
“Extemporaneously,” offered Ellin.
“Yes,” cried Flowing Green. “You are good pretenders! I have listened to you in the walls! You imagine. You dance, you are someone else. You are always being other people. You want to be other people. And Bao, when he dances, he is a woman person else. And Ornery is a man person else, not what she was born, and Mouche … oh, Mouche is all kinds of things to the women people he knows. Kaorugi is fascinated by you mankinds, that you are not content to be only the thing you are, so you are full of dreams. Well, this is a dream. In this dream we will really become another being. I am … accustomed to this, but mankinds are not. You dream it, you do not do it, but of all mankinds on this world, you four are the best mankinds to try to really do it. Not the Hags, too old, too set, like stone. Not the Questioner, she is not even all flesh that can be reshaped. Not the men, they are set, too, in maleness, only, not like Bao, or even Mouche … “
“It is seeming to be a risk … “ murmured Bao. “We might fail, we might die … “
“Ah,” said Flowing Green. “Yes, we may fail, we may die, but if we do not do this, we will truly fail, we will truly die.”
Mouche leaned forward and took Ellin’s hands in his own, murmuring words of encouragement. She would do it. He knew it, and so did she, but she needed to be encouraged.
Bao turned to Ornery, taking her hands, saying in his woman’s voice, “This is being wonderful. Think, Ornery, what an adventure!”
Ornery surprised herself by smiling into his eyes, feeling herself respond to his excitement. “Yes,” she said. “Oh, yes. What are we to do?”
“Now we wait,” said Mouche. “Until it is time.”
Questioner moved only a little distance from the women, and Madame followed her to lean plaintively against the rocky side of the caldera. “Questioner, I realize how angry you must be, but believe me, I didn’t know. Most of the people on Newholme didn’t know. What you accuse them of … it must have been done entirely by the Hags. You aren’t suggesting that they, and I, go into that pond as a kind of punishment or reparation, are you? You’d have told us if there were some other way?”
“Punishment is not my business,” said Questioner. “As I have said to others, it never works anyhow. Putting right is my business. Unfortunately, when things are put right, often the innocent suffer with the guilty. If there were some other way, I would try it. Even if I could reach my ship, which I’ve been unable to do since we first went underground, my crew could do nothing on this short notice, so the situation is simple. We will all be destroyed within the next few hours if something isn’t done, so you women have the choice of self-destruction now, soon, or of living the remainder of your lives in some honor.”