The Caterpillars Question

Chapter 17

Jack did not reply at once. He rose, feeling tired, and looked around. It had been night when they had plunged through the shadow. Now it was just past dawn. The sky was bright and cloudless, but the sun had not come up above the crater wall.

Tappy sat in the mud like a statue shaped from it. Even the Imaget, crouched on her shoulder, was a hunk of water-soaked earth.

He did not know where they were on the crater floor. The Gaol spaceship was not visible, and there was no grove of trees like those under the ship, nor was there any Gaol camp. He turned slowly while he looked at the great figures on the crater ring, dim objects in the gray light.

After his survey, two things caught his mind's focus. One was the faint shadow through which they had just exited. A fan-shaped pile of mud, drying at its edge, extended from the base of the shadow. Here had once been a huge boulder which a radiator beam had disintegrated, no telling how long ago. The crumbled rock was in a heap beneath the death-shadow, the outline of which could be barely seen. It was close to fading away entirely. When it did, Jack thought, that gateway to the "other" world, the world of blinding light, would be closed.

He noted that more than people could enter and then leave that light-filled world on the other side of the darkness. Mud could also pass through the dark gate.

They had gone into that world through the tree-shadow beneath the spaceship. And they had left it through this boulder-shadow. They had been pushed back into the world to which they belonged. But they had reentered far from the point of entry.

Darkness implied light. There were no shadows without light, and the death-shadow was caused by the blinding light. At least, it seemed so to him.

This place was comparatively close to where he and Tappy had gone in. Probably, it was the first time that this had happened. He did not doubt that it had been no accident. Those people, the dead who were not really dead, had pushed them through this particular gate for a purpose. What the purpose was, he did not know.

But he wondered if the second object that had caught his attention was involved in the purpose.

That was a rose-red cut-quartz stone not sixty feet from where he stood. It was the model of the tiny stone Jack had seen centered in the model of the real crater-wall rings, the model he had seen on the table when he was in the underground complex. A seat and a back, a throne, had been carved out of the desk-sized quartz. According to the Integrator, the first honkers to enter the crater had found it. Though they did not know who had made it, they assumed that it was the work of the Makers. But it was obviously designed for a honker or a human and not for a quadruped.

By then, Tappy had risen shakily from her sitting position. Her tears were washing the mud from her face. Her hands were clasped just below her breasts. He did then what he would have done at once if he had not been so stunned. He went to her and held her while she wept. A few seconds later, he was weeping also.

"My mother... she spoke to me! And my father did, too! They only said my name, but I recognized their voices!"

"My mother," Jack said. "She spoke only one word to me, but I felt her face. And... you heard Malva, too'"

"What was that place?" she said.

"Some place where the dead live. Heaven, for all I know."

He had never believed that there was an afterlife. At times, he had hoped that there might be, but he had no faith that there was. It was a fairy tale which rational people knew was a fairy tale. But now...

"How could we have gotten there?" she said. Her sobs were tapering off. "There's only one way to get there, and we didn't die."

"I don't know," he said. "I could guess. It's possible that the radiator was designed to be a weapon but it had some unforeseen side effects, unexpected by-products. One was that the shadows created by the radiator accidentally opened the way to... what do I call it? Heaven? A parallel universe? I don't know what it is, but it exists.

"If the Makers made the radiators, they would have ignored the shadows after a few of them ventured into the shadows and didn't come back. Not to their knowledge, anyway. They would've had no idea they had serendipitously opened the gates of Heaven or whatever you want to call it. Anyway, what good would it have done them if they had known? Except maybe the certainty that death is not the end."

Even that, he thought, is not certain. What if the world into which we dived is just one that affects the minds of intruders? It's so alien to us that we can't comprehend it; its physical structure or whatever is beyond human understanding. So, the mind constructs something that can be understood, something it desires more than anything else. An afterlife. What the mind can't grasp, it interprets as something else.

If this was so, it would have to be an effect that all humans interpreted as the same. Otherwise, why would Tappy have shared his hallucinations, if they were such?

He was the ever-skeptical rationalist. Tappy, however, once over her tears, was certain that she had been, even if for a short time, in the place where the dead lived. Perhaps she was right. She might have a deeper rationality. Whatever "deeper rationality" meant. In any event, he was not going to try to invalidate her belief. She took great comfort in it, and she needed all she could get.

And... His thought was interrupted by a coldness thrilling through him. Wait a moment! Just hold up! How had he overlooked it? But he had been numb, still was somewhat, and he could be forgiven for forgetting.

"Tappy!" he said. "Your mother! How could you be sure that that woman is your dead mother? I was told by your relatives when I picked you up that you'd never known your mother! I didn't ask them why not. I just took their word. But if you'd never known her, if she died at birth or something, how would you know her?"

She stared at him, then said, "I remember her now. Those fingers on my face... her voice. I knew nothing of her until that moment. Then I remembered her, it all came back. I was three years old when I last saw her. I'd been sleeping... where was it? Our little house on the edge of the town called Tappuah. Tappuah means the place of apples. Something like that. I can still remember that wonderful smell from the orchards. The humans that lived there had come from another place, I don't know where. There were many honkers, too, traders mostly, but I played with their children, and I learned their language. I was happy there. Then, one night, I was awakened. My parents told me to keep quiet. I didn't know what was going on, but I was frightened. So scared that I didn't make a peep.

"Then I was being carried by my father through darkness. I think it was the forest up in the hills by the town. All of a sudden, a great light from above shone through the big trees. A very, very loud voice, must've been from a loudspeaker in an aircraft, said something about surrendering. But my parents kept on running, and then... then..."

She choked. It was a minute or so before she could continue.

"Then there was a different light, a scarlet-colored beam that swept through the forest and cut through trees. They fell with a terrible sound. By then, I was screaming despite my mother's commands to keep quiet. Then I heard shouts, men yelling. They must have been the Gaol humans who were hunting us. My father stopped and put me into a hole in a tree. He told me to stand still and not move an inch. Otherwise, I'd fall into the shaft behind me. I was standing on a very narrow ledge and hanging on with all my strength to the edge of the hole. The lights got brighter, but the scarlet ray quit coming. Maybe it had been turned off. And then my father turned to help my mother into the hole. But..."

She broke into a long and loud weeping. Jack put his arm around her and held her until she could talk again. Her face against his breast, she said, "Oh, God! Then there was a glare, and I could see that my mother had fallen onto the ground. Her legs were cut off. Her blood was spouting out of the stumps, spraying my father's legs. I was still screaming. Then my father grabbed me with one hand and lifted me up by my clothes and got halfway into the hole. He knew, I suppose, that the Gaol wouldn't shoot at him while he was very close to me. They didn't want to kill me and then have to start searching for the Imago again.

"My father held me in his arms, and he jumped. We fell down the shaft, not very far, I think, and men we were suddenly in bright daylight. He landed with his knees bent-strange how that little detail sticks in my mind-and he staggered. But he put me down and pulled a beamer from his belt and shot its ray upward. I remember just glimpsing a ledge projecting out over the top of the cliff. We must have dropped through a gate in the stone. He blew up the projection with the ray. There must've been explosives or something inside the shaft in the other world. Anyway, it exploded and, I suppose, destroyed the gate. The rocks and the dust rained over us, but my father covered me with his body. He was hurt protecting me, though not bad enough so he couldn't lift me and carry me off. I was still screaming with terror and with grief for my mother."

She paused, doubtless to scan the memories that had surged up from the unconscious, breaking loose through the barrier there. Then she spoke again, her voice less quivery.

"I remember now, though it's vague, being in a great cavern complex before we went to Tappuah. Maybe it was the same as the one we were in. I don't know. Anyway, it's coming back, part of it, anyway. It was there I first learned honkerese and English, the English which humans speak on the planet. After a while, we went to Tappuah. Maybe the pressure from the Gaol was off, and my parents thought it was safe to live with humans again. They must've been sick from being under the ground, must've longed for the open air and the sunlight. I know now that my parents and a few other humans and some honkers were part of a secret organization dedicated to fighting the Gaol. Plotting against them, anyway."

She was silent again. When she resumed speaking, she talked with a low voice and in broken phrases. It was as if she were sweeping the fragments of the life she remembered into a basket, then was picking up the pieces from the basket without regard to order.

"Once, I overheard my parents talking. They were saying something about the light that glowed from me when I was born, a light that lasted for an hour or so. By that, they knew that the Imago was inside me. Of course, I didn't know what the Imago was, and I forgot all about it when my mother was killed. That wiped out all my memory of my infancy and early childhood. Later, I forgot my life from the time my mother was killed to the time the airplane crashed and killed my father and crippled me. I could not talk after that. My tongue seemed frozen. Along with much else that was frozen. I lived, but I was half-dead.

"When you came along, you started the thawing out. I began to live again, though not fully. But I knew that you were the person I'd been waiting for to love me."

Father, mother, and lover squeezed into my person, Jack thought. Also, the knight in shining white armor who rode up to rescue her. In reality, the Doubtful Knight.

He said, "Your so-called relatives who raised you, Melvin and Michaela Daw, were they part of the anti-Gaol organization?"

She nodded, and she said, "They must have been. I think they're part of a very small band that went to Earth. They did so, probably, because they knew that I'd have to flee to someplace the Gaol didn't know much about or care about.

"The Gaol have probably been aware of Earth's existence for some time. But they didn't move in on it. They think that overpopulation and pollution will soon cause the collapse of civilization on Earth. Millions will die, and the Earthpeople will revert to savagery. Then they'll be easy pickings. At least, that's what I once heard my father say when he didn't know I was around.

"Anyway, to get back to the couple taking care of me, the Daws. They were in grave danger. And they knew I was the host for the Imago. That's why they were not as loving to me as they should have been. They couldn't treat me as if I were an ordinary child. Sometimes, though, they broke through their fear and awe and tried to love me. But I was a terrible burden to them. Of course, I didn't know that then."

"Still," he said, "they knew that the Chrysalis in you wouldn't become the Imago until you were mature. Why did they advertise for someone to take you to that institution when you were so young?"

He paused, then said, "And why did they pick me to do that?"

She pulled herself loose from his embrace and began pacing back and forth. He smiled. She carried the Imago within her, yet she looked as if she were the least likely vessel for such a great thing. No, not a thing. An entity of unprecedented and unparalleled importance. She was the very essence of the dirty and tattered waif of back alleys, of the most forlorn and rejected type of human.

Finally, she said, "I think that the Gaol may have been getting too close to the trail. They had to hide me someplace else before they fled. Or, I don't know, not really, they weren't going to send me to the institution. They knew that I didn't have time to mature. The Gaol would catch me before I did if I stayed on Earth. They had to take a chance, send me back to this planet. First, though, they advertised for someone to transport me to Vermont. I do know they interviewed at least a score of would-be drivers for me, and they rejected all. Until you came by, that is."

"Why me?"

"The paintings," she said, halting to look into his eyes. Beneath the mud was a face almost shining with exultance. Or exaltation.

"The paintings?"

But he knew before she spoke what she was going to say.

"The paintings in the Makers' burial chamber. They showed a male youth holding a painter's brush in his hand. You. You were a painter, and you were a young man. I think that they thought— maybe were absolutely sure— that you were the one the Makers prophesied. Predicted, anyway."

He snorted, and he said, "Prophecy! Prediction!"

She shrugged before speaking. "It seems farfetched. But who knows how much the Makers knew or how powerful their predictions could be. Maybe they figured out something on a probability basis. Maybe they counted on someone fulfilling the prophecy. Maybe they could see into the future. Or maybe the paintings have been wrongly read. They might've meant something other than the anti-Gaol honkers and humans thought it meant. But the anti-Gaols brought it about that what they thought had to happen did happen, even if they'd misread the paintings. After all, what we think is a painter's brush in the youth's hand in the Maker painting might be something else."

"You've gone a long way since I first met you," he said. "You've grown up fast. No thirteen-year-old I know could reason like you do."

"I'm fourteen now," she said. "Not counting the pseudo-years you implanted in my mind."

He had many more questions based on the fragments she'd muttered. But they had to get going. They walked toward a long double line of tall plants and found a creek between them. Though the water was very cold, they plunged into it and did not leave it until their bodies and clothes were clean. The Imaget stayed in the creek only long enough to wash the mud off. After that, it waited on the bank until the humans spread the wet garments out in the sun and then sprawled naked in its warmth. It crawled onto Tappy and snuggled between her beasts. After about twenty minutes, all three were dry and beginning to toast.

Jack was about to open his eyes and get up when he heard a honking. He jumped up, staring around. Tappy rose and stood by his side.

"We'd better find them," he said.

"But we'd better make sure they're friendly," she said. "There are traitors among the honkers just as there are among humans. Not many, I've been told. But we can't be too careful."

He listened, trying to determine the direction from which the honking came. Halfway around in his turning, he jumped with alarm. A honker had stepped out from behind a tree.

Tappy cried out with relief and welcome. She followed this with a series of blasts.

The honker was the Integrator but not in the condition he had been in at the Gaol spaceship. One eye had been gouged out. One hip tentacle was waving wildly, but the other was missing. A bandage concealed its stump. Dark bruises were scattered over his face and body, and his chest had long bright red rakemarks on it.

The snake around his neck bore a wound close to its head, though this did not keep it from extending part of its body toward Tappy and hissing loudly. The navel-beast's mouth and paws were caked with dried blood.

The shaman had suffered grievous wounds during some struggle, but he had not been defeated. Raised high in one hand was the severed head of a Gaol. He honked loudly, and Tappy murmured, "It's the head of the Gaol captain."

Behind him came Candy, then other Latest, some limping or being supported by their fellows.

A moment later, an aircraft, a vessel designed to carry a score or more, floated from the brush.