Narabedla Ltd (45 page)

It was she, all right. She turned toward me, eyes wide and wondering. She looked astonished, and shaken, and as though she were about to cry.

I had no doubt of what had happened. We were all in cold storage.

My big worry was how cold I was going to get—cold as in dead, maybe? Were they just holding me temporarily until Dr. Boddadukti or some even worse monster came to sink his fangs into my throat?

I couldn’t believe that. I didn’t want to believe it; but I reasoned that if they were going to make a Jerry Harper-type spectacle of me they’d do it in Execution Square.

All these things flashed through my mind and reached my senses at once. Very quickly.

“Nolly?” said Irene Madigan inquiringly, coming toward me.

“It’s me, all right,” I told her. “I’m sorry to see you here.”

The little Oriental man was peering over her shoulder. “Who are you?” he asked politely.

I didn’t get a chance to answer, because Irene was saying, “Is it true? What Gwan Lee has been telling me? We’ve all been captured by flying-saucer people?”

“She’s quite upset,” Gwan Lee said sympathetically. “I suppose you’re feeling pretty shaken up, too. You’ll want some clothes; but if you just put a note on the skry they’ll bring them to you before you know it.”

“And why
are
you in your pajamas?” Irene asked plaintively.

I held up my hands to slow her down. “It’s a long story,” I began. I started to tell it to her, but I didn’t get very far. She made a soft, sobbing sound, and reached out for me. I put my arms around her. “It’ll be all right,” I whispered to her hair, holding her tight. She just sobbed again. I saw Ephard Joyce looking up at us from his couch, and Conjur standing by his chair, looking angrily amused.

“What’s going to happen now?” I asked Conjur, still holding Irene Madigan.

He shrugged. “We stay here, is all. You got any better ideas?”

“Well,” I began, patting Irene’s back soothingly, “I guess—”

I didn’t finish the sentence because something hammered at my chest, where Irene was snuggled against it; I felt my arms thrust away from around her. There was an instant, almost subliminal orange-yellow flash—

My arms were still outstretched, but there was no one inside them. Irene Madigan was gone.

I gaped at Conjur. “What the hell?” I shouted.

He opened his mouth to respond….

Whatever it was he was saying, I didn’t hear it. There was another of those flashes, and two Kekketies were beside me, holding me up, while another was turning off his silvery machine.

An Eye of the Mother was peering up at me. “L. Knollwood Stennis,” it piped, “the Mother wishes to see you.”

I was out of slow time.

I stared about. Conjur was still opening his mouth to address the space where I had been, frozen still. All the others were frozen, too.

I never got to finish any of those conversations. That’s not surprising. There’s a limit to how much you can say in something less than a minute … or (depending on how you look at it) somewhere around a year and a half.

T
he bedbug wouldn’t say anything else to me, but when it pushed the hanging bead curtain aside to let me into the Mother’s chamber Binnda was there, pacing nervously back and forth. The bedbug quietly scurried to the edge of the Mother’s pool and sat there, quietly waiting, next to a Purry. No, not
a
Purry; it was my own dear friend, because it whispered, “Hello, Nolly.”

Binnda greeted me too, but sadly. “Oh, my dear boy,” he said, “how good it is to see you again! So much has happened! But quickly, you mustn’t keep the Mother waiting, off with those garments and in, please.”

“But I want to know what—”

“Nolly!
In.
She’s the
Mother,”
he said sternly, and wouldn’t answer any questions.

Things had been happening too fast for me. My resistance was low; I did as I was ordered, though not easily. Clothes are a kind of armor; when you don’t have them on your defenses are weakened. I didn’t like that, but I didn’t see any choice.

A couple of those flying things buzzed me as I lowered myself into the Mother’s shallow, smelly pool. I swatted them out of the way (one landed in range of the Mother’s questing tentacles, and was immediately swept up into that obscene-looking orange mouth). I turned to Binnda for instructions.

“Closer,” Binnda urged. “But not too close, of course.”

I had no intention of disobeying that part. I waded slowly toward her. Little fishy things were nibbling at my knees and tenderer places, until I got within range of the Mother’s tentacles. Then they stayed away.

The Mother took hold of me at shoulder, waist; and thigh and tugged me gently closer. The ring of tiny eyes regarded me silently as I tried my best not to move. Or even breathe.

Then the Mother began to moan in a gurgly sort of way— most of the time her speaking organ was under water. Her little bedbug translated from the edge of the pool.

“The Ossps are a race most foul,” she said (through the bedbug). “They do not voluntarily abide by the agreed rules of association. They have in the past made war, viciously and harmfully, until they were defeated. Then they promised to refrain from antisocial acts. But even now they violate the accords.”

“I know,” I said.

There was a sudden flurry around my legs. One of the little marine animals had incautiously come close enough to nibble at my knee. It was a mistake. Instantly the Mother’s tentacle slipped away from me and whipped around the thing, dragging it into her huge maw. The Mother went on imperturbably, and so did the bedbug. “I assure you, Knollwood Stennis, to deal with the Ossps is to risk very grave consequences to yourself and to the primitive planet you come from.”

“I just wanted to go home!” I said bitterly.

The Mother’s tentacles stiffened around me for a moment as the bedbug translated that. Then the tentacles relaxed again as the Mother moaned at me again.

“If that is so,” the bedbug translated, “why did you not simply ask me?”

I gaped at those unblinking eyes. “But—” I managed. “But—but that was impossible! Henry Davidson-Jones wouldn’t allow it!”

The tentacles whipped wildly about for a moment, and the Mother’s huge, bright-colored barrel body shook with bubbly moans.

“The Mother is laughing,” Binnda explained, his own voice sounding strained. “But really, my dear boy, what a foolish thing to say!” And he added a string of ho-ho-hos. Even Purry was chuckling softly.

Worse than being threatened is being laughed at. I suppose I was still on an adrenaline-testosterone high. “Cut this crap out,” I stormed, turning to face them … and completely forgetting to move cautiously so near those long, striped tentacles of the Mother.

I had never felt the full strength in the Mother’s tentacles before. They were like wire cables, lashing around me and jerking me toward that hideous, always-chomping mouth.

I yelled. I struggled. I squirmed as hard as I could; I battered against the many-colored, cold, clammy, solid flesh of the Mother, splashing up a Niagara of froth.

None of that stopped her for a moment, or even slowed her down.

It had been very foolish of me, I realized, to set off the feeding reflexes of the Mother. It was one more blunder, and probably the last one I would ever have a chance to make. There was nothing that could save me—

In that I was wrong.

There was a splash and a thud. Something heavy crunched against me, right between me and the Mother’s remorseless mouth. The tentacles slipped away from me and caught it.

It was Purry, making noises out of all his mouths as the tentacles deserted me to wrap around the plump, ocarinashaped body of my friend.

“Nolly! Get out while you can!” Binnda yelled, running up and down agitatedly along the sides of the pool. “Are you
insane?”

Getting out of that pool sounded like a great idea. I don’t know if I could have done it by myself, but there were half a dozen of the Mother’s drones suddenly in the pool with me, butting me away from the orange and blue and scarlet body, ramming me forcefully toward the edge. Binnda’s clawed, sinuous arms darted down and hauled me out. I sprawled on the slick, warm floor, in pain. Dots of blood sprang up all along my shoulders and legs where the Mother’s tentacles had rasped me raw, like metal potato-graters on my skin.

When I turned to look back I was shamed.

Purry had saved my life, but not cheaply.

He was actually being eaten, a mouthful at a time, held fast by the Mother’s implacable tentacles. Little squealy sounds were coming from those apertures in his skin. They weren’t words. They weren’t even cries of pain, although he was being devoured. They were just the sounds a bagpipe makes when you squeeze the last of the air out of the collapsing sack.

Then he managed words.

“Have you any orders for me, Meretekabinnda?” Purry gasped.

Binnda said sorrowfully. “Oh, no. It’s too late now. Go ahead and get eaten.” And there, right before my eyes, Purry did.

At least when I saw the Duntidon ripping out the throat of Jerry Harper it was only horrible. There was no sense of personal loss. I hadn’t ever known Jerry Harper. But Purry—Purry was my
friend.
Purry was the one who had guided me around Narabedla, the one who had accompanied me when I wanted to raise my voice in song simply to celebrate the fact that I had a voice again … the one who had just saved my life.

And he was being eaten alive. Most of his body was gone now, pulled into that awful mouth. All that was left was his head, with one rabbity little eye looking sadly at me, then looking at nothing as it glazed over. And Binnda was not even watching. He was moving restlessly about the margin of the pool, pausing in front of me. He said, “As to the question of your returning to your The Earth—”

I didn’t even hear him. I was staring transfixed as the last of Purry vanished into the Mother’s mouth.

He was gone, and I was fighting the need to vomit.

Then what Binnda had said penetrated. I gaped at him. “What?” I demanded.

“That is possible,” Binnda said.

I sat down, still naked, still bewildered, still with that lump of bile in my throat that wanted to come up. I rubbed the tiny blood spots on my arm. “What are you talking about?” I demanded.

He said, glancing at the silent, attentive bedbug, “The Tlotta-Mother wishes to see your The Earth. She has agreed to let you return, under certain conditions.”

I shook my head. I said reasonably, “But you told me yourself that the Mother never goes anywhere. I know she said she wished she could go there and see it, but there’s no way. She can’t move; and if she could, my God, how could she disguise herself?”

Binnda preened himself. “It’s true,” he admitted, “that not everyone is fortunate enough to have nearly human anatomy, like me. Nevertheless, disguise is possible.” 

“Disguise
her
as a human being? But that’s ridiculous!” 

“Not necessarily the Mother herself,” Binnda said, reaching out his arm to tap the bedbug by his side.

Which got up on its hind legs to address me. “And not necessarily like a human being, Mr. Stennis,” it piped.

The Mother moaned a command, and one of the other bedbugs rushed out of the chamber. I said, dazed, “Are you really saying I can go back home?”

“Exactly, my boy,” Binnda said sadly. “Oh, I’ll miss you. The whole company will miss you—it’s been terrible, trying to salvage the troupe, in these trying times, especially without our best baritone. But the Mother says you can go.”

I shook my head. “But the rules—”

His bright green tongue sagged in misery. “Rules,” he echoed. “Yes, there used to be rules. Much has happened while you were—away—my dear boy. The Eleven Associated Peoples aren’t the same anymore. Even I shouldn’t be here, but—”

“Wait a minute!
Eleven?”

“There have been secessions,” he said, licking the lips of his three-cornered mouth.

“What about Davidson-Jones?” I asked, trying to take it all in.

“Henry Davidson-Jones need know nothing about it,” Binnda said forcefully. “He is not on his vessel. The crew will obey the instructions of the Eye of the Mother. You will simply—ah, here is the costume for the Eye. You see how well it will work?”

I stared. The bedbug had scurried back, bearing what looked like a small version of the kind of sheepskin you throw over the corner of a couch to show you’ve been to New Zealand. The English-speaking bedbug seized it and, making faint mewing sounds of effort, slipped four of his legs into the legs of the skin, pulled it over his body, and stood there waiting for approval.

“A perfect copy,” Binnda said proudly, “of one of your The Earth dogs. You can take it anywhere.”

I shook my head wonderingly. It didn’t really look like a very convincing dog, but it looked more like a dog than anything else. I began to believe that they were serious in all this.

It was time for me to get serious, too. “All right,” I said, making up my mind. “I’ll take that thing. But I won’t go alone. I’m not going unless Irene Madigan can go back with me. She was kidnapped, just like me; she has every right—”