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As you know, it helps one to think true thoughts. You didn't know? Well, different tribes have different wisdoms.
"Anyway, it came to me that my great-grandfather didn't visit me because he didn't think it was necessary. I could solve my problem by myself. Which I did. I decided that what you said, what your grandmother told you, was the right path. So ... I'm going on with you."
Deyv surprised both of them by embracing her tightly. But he stepped back quickly.
She stared at him for a moment, then said, "You're happy! You would've missed me!"
"We've been together a long time, and you are a good companion, even if you're grouchy sometimes.
Too touchy, I mean. But then I'd miss—"
"The dog? The cat?"
Deyv gestured. "Oh, you know."
"No. I don't."
Her shoulders stiff, she turned and walked off. Not before he'd seen the tears, though.
He felt a tightening in his chest, and he had to swallow. He hadn't meant to hurt her again. But she was, after all, a woman without an egg. She hadn't felt like one when he had squeezed her; her flesh was no different from that of a woman with a soul. And, he reminded himself, he, too, was eggless. In this situation, logic had no force.
Needing to do something, anything at all to keep from thinking about her, he went to Sloosh. The plantman and the Yawtl were examining the Emerald of Anticipation. Deyv interrupted their discussion.
"Vana and I are going on with you."
The Yawtl burst into barking laughter. Sloosh buzzed his equivalent of mirth.
"Hoozisst was showing me how the stone operates, though so far he can use it only for simple situations.
It takes a long time to get complete mastery of it. However, by coincidence, we were just asking it what the decision of you two would be. And here you come along and confirm what it showed."
The Emerald's interior was glowing with writhing designs of many colors. They looked like visual gibberish to Deyv, though apparently they did make sense. He thought it was an amusing toy but that was about all it was. Certainly, it hadn't helped Feersh much.
"According to the witch, there are a thousand times a thousand such emeralds growing in The Shining
House of Countless Chambers," the Yawtl said. "And there are a thousand times that many different types of stones, each type of which has its own powers. If I could chip off one of each, I'd be the most powerful witch in the world."
"You'd need a chisel made of the metal of the ancients," Sloosh said. "Feersh stole one before she fled, which is why she was able to cut one stone off. But she was too fearful of The Shemibob to take the time to remove more."
"All that's fine," Deyv said. "Only ... I thought that maybe you'd be pleased that we're going with you."
"What do you expect?" Hoozisst said. "That we'd jump with joy?"
"I am pleased," the plant-man said. "I derive a certain amount of emotional satisfaction from your company and have found you most energetic and agreeably aggressive in the dangerous situations we've encountered."
" 'Emotional satisfaction'?" Deyv said sarcastically. "I thought you Archkerri were all intellect, unhampered, as you might say, by emotion."
"Nonsense. Any creature with a nervous system experiences emotions. These may be only fear or anger at the lowest level. As the systems get more complex, the number of emotions increases and so does the complexity, the interrelationships, the subtlety.
"No, it would be impossible, as far as I know, for a sapient to evolve without emotion. Sentiency involves more than just a logical brain. Besides, there are different kinds of logic. Just as there are different kinds of emotions. We Archkerri share some of your emotions but have some you lack. That's all. Except that we are able to use our intellect somewhat better than you humans do. If you weren't doomed to perish with this universe, and you may not be, you might evolve into a higher creature. By
'higher,' I mean a people who would be neither self-destructive nor other-destructive.
"Here we are, here you are, rather, you humans. In the unimaginable time you've been on Earth, you've changed your physical form very little. There was no evolutionary need for it, since you are generalized and so very fit for survival. Like the ant, cockroach, pig, and rat. You have had, however, a vastly more complex brain structure.
"Yet, though you've developed many great civilizations, you haven't been able to make yourself thoroughly cooperative or free yourself of the diseases of body and mind. It's true that you've conquered many, but new ones come to replace them. You're incapable of inventing a panacea for body and mind; you're still selfish, greedy, short-sighted, and illogical outside of a few fields of thought, and sometimes too emotional in those.
"So here you are near the end of the world, savages, beings who, given the time, would build up a great civilization again. You don't have the time, and the long, long story, the many-eons tale of humankind, will end. For what reason? I don't know. The universe, looked at logically, is, despite all its intricate order and irresistible physical principles, senseless.
"Or is it? Perhaps it's been made for emotional satisfaction, not intellectual, though the two aren't always separate. The question is: for whose?
"But if it is emotional satisfaction that is the basis of this universe, the prime reason for the existence of sentients, not immortality, then perhaps you humans are superior to us Archkerri. I shudder at the idea, but I consider it.
"What I know, or think I know, is that the existence of questions implies answers. Otherwise, we have an unbalanced equation—if there can be such a contradictory thing—and that doesn't appeal to my scientific mind. But then perhaps the universe is one cosmic unbalanced equation. It would be the only one; all lesser equations can be balanced. Perhaps it is the very lack of balance that creates space-matter.
"Do I know what I'm talking about? Perhaps. I do know that this type of thinking gives me a brain-ache.
But I get emotional satisfaction from this pain."
The Yawtl had walked away during this discourse. Deyv was fascinated, but he was glad when Sloosh turned to a more mundane matter. Which now was what they'd take to get to the land of The Shemibob.
After a conference which even the slaves attended, though they had no voice in the decision, the shoreline was chosen. It would be the longest way around, but they could get lost too easily in the vast jungles. Also, it was much easier walking on the beach.
"Eventually, following it, we'll get to the far end of the land," Sloosh said. "Then we can rum back into it. The Shemibob lives somewhat inland from the ocean. But we will come to a place on the beach where
The Jeweled Wasteland grows. All we have to do is to enter it there. Feersh the Blind will show us—
rather, tell us—where the House of The Shemibob is."
"No, I can't do that!" the witch shrilled. "I fled from her House to the opposite end. I wouldn't know the path from where we'll enter. Moreover, I'm not sure that I'd recognize now the path I took. It was many many sleep-times since I ran with brain-freezing terror at my heels. Besides, The Wasteland has been growing since then. It's not only spread outward, it's grown upward. The landmarks which I only vaguely remember are probably covered over now."
Sloosh's reply to this was, "I wonder why the stones are growing out of control?"
Thoroughly rested, they packed up and set out. By then The Beast had come around again and slid by half of the sky. Ten sleep-times passed without much incident. They saw during the eleventh a village on the beach and detoured into the jungle. On the twentieth they were warned by Deyv, who was the scout, that a House was ahead. It lay on its side, its base sticking from the jungle onto the sand. Deyv had run into the jungle and gotten close to it to spy.