THE CATERPILLARS QUESTION

She wore a blue robe of some sort. It was not a nightgown, but it could easily have been used for that purpose.

A circular section in her breast and stomach areas was white.

Representations of rays emanating from the central brightness shot through her body and several feet bey,")nd her. Was that symbolic of the Imago?

He looked more closely. On her left breast was a vague tentacled shape through which the fabric of the robe could be seen.

The Imaget?

The hairs on the back of his neck seemed to be standing up, and cold raced over his skin.

The young male did not have his face, and his clothes were not those of any Terrestrial. But he held a painter's brush in one hand.

The four certainly seemed to represent prophecies or predictions of the coming of Tappy, Jack, Candy, and Garth. Impossible-yet, there they were, and the young human female shone with the Imago within her, and she bore the lmaget on her breast.

He stepped back, lifted the torch higher, and saw the image above the group. It was of tongues of fire shooting above the heads of the four persons. Above these were images of the craterwall rings and their figures and symbols.

From its interior sprang more tongues of fire. And in their midst were upper-class Gaol, the ratcages. Some of them were burning.

How would the rings be powered? The outer one had been rotating slowly for many thousands of years. Some kind of machinery had to be turning it, the other rings, too, he supposed. Nothing in the painting indicated what that could be. Was there a vast engine deep under the crater floor? What did it use for fuel? A shaft plunging to the hot core of the planet? A shaft which conducted the heat to the machine, where the heat was converted to electricity?

Or had the Makers possessed means of which Terrestrials had no inkling

By now the Integrator was bobbing up and down and whirling with an agility and endurance amazing for such an old person. He was also honking loudly.

Jack moved close to Tappy and spoke softly. "This couldn't be just coincidence."

He felt numb, but deep within him was a fiercely hot ball of excitement. "My God! Predictions can't be valid. No one can look into the future and see what's coming. Not about what individuals'll be doing, anyway. Especially if they won't exist for thousands of years. If true prophecies or predictions could be made, we'd just be machines rolling along tracks that were laid in the begi

"Past, present, a nd future would be fixed. We wouldn't be responsible for anything we did, good or bad. No, I just can't swallow that."

Tappy looked as if she had just seen some horrible monster coming out of a wall.

She said, "I can't believe it either, Jack. The Integrator told me about this, but he made me promise not to tell you about it. It was all I could do to keep silent. But I think I couldn't really believe what he said. I thought we should see this before we got high hopes, too high, and then fell off the wall like Humpty Dumpty."

Jack tried to dispel the numbness but failed. When he spoke, it was as if he were under water.

"Maybe someone-who, I don't know -is trying to make this prophecy, this prophetic mural, come true. Like a self-fulfilling prophecy. That'd be the only rational explanation. But who could be doing this if that is the case?"

"I'm really confused," Tappy said.

"Me, too."

She smiled, though it was obviously difficult for her to do. She said, "What difference does it make if we are programmed? Does it really matter if Fate or Someone has determined our lives? Or if we screw it all up by ourselves? We think we have free will.

Even if it's a delusion, we wouldn't believe it. Not if we had solid proof. We'd deny it. So why worry about it, rant and rail and curse the gods? We can only act as if we truly were the masters of our destinies."

Jack could only grunt. But she was right. And her attitude and her ma

"I suppose," he said, "that the brightness within the girl and the rays shining from it symbolize the Imago?"

"That's what the Latest believe. That's why the Integrator sent that honker to plant the egg-seed in me. The ability to do that, make the egg-seed, I mean, was within their powers long, long ago. They were just waiting for the right person to come alongme-and to do it. There's another burial chamber, miles from here, that gives instructions for doing that. It's in the characters of the alphabet used by the Makers, but with it are images that indicate how to do it."

Jack shook his head, and he said, "Too much, too much. I still think . .

"Think what?"

"Never mind. It doesn't bear thinking about."

He chewed on his upper lip before he spoke again.

"Why didn't the honkers lead us into the underground refuge as soon as we entered through the boulder-gate?"

"The Gaol were too close. Besides, it was evident to the honker spies that I was headed, being urged to head for, a destination north. They assumed that it was the pulsating vessel that had suddenly appeared. They tend not to interfere in certain situations. When we showed up near their underground entrance, the Integrator decided it was time to hide us."

She drew a deep breath.

"Also, when you and I appeared with Candy and Garth, they knew that the prophecy was being fulfilled. It was time to take us in no matter what the consequences might be for them."

"Anything else?"

"I almost forgot. The Integrator said he thought I was attracted to the boulder-gate on Earth because it led to this crater. The crater ring, he thinks, generates a weak field because it's rotating slowly.

But the field was strong enough to attract me to it. I mean attract the Imago in me to it.

"The Makers theorized that the field or whatever should radiate from the Generator would attract the Imago. L'ke 'ron filings to a magnet."

"And ... ?" Jack said.

"And what?"

"That pulsating ship Candy and the other androids ma

"I don't know," she cried. "There's just too much to know, too many unanswered questions."

He embraced her and kissed her softly on the lips. "Take it easy. One thing at a time. You may feel as if you're about to crack up, fall apart. But you're really tough.. Tappy, really strong.

Just hang on."

He became aware that the shaman was silent. He looked toward him and saw him esture for Tappy and him to follow him. He led them out of the muraled room and into another that also had wall paintings. Several yards into it, the shaman halted. He genuflected nine times before stepping ahead again. Then he halted again and genuflected seven times. When he went forward again, he made only three steps. The darkness shrank away from the lights of their torches. Not very far, though. The ceiling was so high that the lights did not touch them.

Now Jack saw, placed on the floor ahead of them, eleven twenty-foot-high globes made of some glittering crystalline material. When the shaman indicated that he and Tappy should come nearer to them, they got very close to the globes. Jack felt as awed and as seized with mystery as the archaeologists who had first entered King Tut's tomb. But this place was probably many thousands of years older than the torn"lder, indeed, than the very first Egyptian tombs or Stonehenge.

Each globe enclosed a body. Jack did not need to be told that each corpse was a Maker's.

They were six-limbed beings, quadrupeds with two arms. Centaurs, he thought, though not resembling much the half-man, half-horse of the Greek myths. Their lower part, the animal body, was shaggy with long red hair. The four legs were long but quite bearlike. The upright torso springing from the front of the quadrupedal form was covered with bright golden hair. Some of the corpses were female. The big, round, and thick-nippled breasts made that certain.