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Gundersen considered all aspects of the matter. Shortly he said, “I agree to our treaty, many-born one, but only if I may add several clauses.”
“Go on.”
“If Cullen will not tell me the nature of his crime, I am released from my obligation to hand him over.”
“Agreed.”
“If the sulidoror object to my taking Cullen out of the mist country, I am released from my obligation also.”
“They will not object. But agreed.”
“If Cullen must be subdued by violence in order to bring him forth, I am released.”
The nildor hesitated a moment. “Agreed,” he said finally.
“I have no other conditions to add.”
“Then our treaty is made,” Vol’himyor said. “You may begin your northward journey today. Five of our once-born ones must also travel to the mist country, for their time of rebirth has come, and if you wish they will accompany you and safeguard you along the way. Among them is Srin’gahar, whom you already know.”
“Will it be troublesome for them to have me with them?”
“Srin’gahar has particularly requested the privilege of serving as your guardian,” said Vol’himyor. “But we would not compel you to accept his aid, if you would rather make your journey alone.”
“It would be an honor to have his company,” Gundersen said.
“So be it, then.”
A senior nildor summoned Srin’gahar and the four others who would be going toward rebirth. Gundersen was gratified at this confirmation of the existing data: once more the frenzied dance of the nildoror had preceded the departure of a group bound for rebirth.
It pleased him, too, to know that he would have a nildoror escort on the way north. There was only one dark aspect to the treaty, that which involved Cedric Cullen. He wished he had not sworn to barter another Earthman’s freedom for his own safe-conduct pass. But perhaps Cullen had done something really loathsome, something that merited punishment — or purification, as Vol’himyor put it. Gundersen did not understand how that normally su
Srin’gahar and Gundersen went aside to plan their route. “Where in the mist country do you intend to go?” the nildor asked.
“It does not matter. I just want to enter it. I suppose I’ll have to go wherever Cullen is.”
“Yes. But we do not know exactly where he is, so we will have to wait until we are there to learn it. Do you have special places to visit on the way north?”
“I want to stop at the Earthman stations,” Gundersen said. “Particularly at Shangri-la Falls. So my idea is that we’ll follow Madden’s River northwestward, and—”
“These names are unknown to me.”
“Sorry. I guess they’ve all reverted back to nildororu names. And I don’t know those. But wait—” Seizing a stick, Gundersen scratched a hasty but serviceable map of Belzagor’s western hemisphere in the mud. Across the waist of the disk he drew the thick swath of the tropics. At the right side he gouged out a curving bite to indicate the ocean; on the left he outlined the Sea of Dust. Above and below the band of the tropics he drew the thi
“What are those marks on the ground?” asked Srin’gahar.
A map of your planet, Gundersen wanted to say. But there was no nildororu word in his mind for “map.” He found that he also lacked words for “image,” picture,” and similar concepts. He said lamely, “This is your world. This is Belzagor, or at least half of it. See, this is the ocean, and the sun rises here, and—”
“How can this be my world, these marks, when my world is so large?”
“This is like your world. Each of these lines, here, stands for a place on your world. You see, here, the big river that runs out of the mist country and comes down to the coast, where the hotel is, yes? And this mark is the spaceport. These two lines are the top and the bottom of the northern mist country. The—”
“It takes a strong sulidor a march of many days to cross the northern mist country. said Srin’gahar. “I do not understand how you can point to such a small space and tell me it is the northern mist country. Forgive me, friend of my journey. I am very stupid.”
Gundersen tried again, attempting to communicate the nature of the marks on the ground. But Srin’gahar simply could not comprehend the idea of a map, nor could he see how scratched lines could represent places. Gundersen considered asking Vol’himyor to help him, but rejected that plan when he realized that Vol’himyor, too, might not understand; it would be tactless to expose the many-born one’s ignorance in any area. The map was a metaphor of place, an abstraction from reality. Evidently even beings possessing g’rakh might not have the capacity to grasp such abstractions.
He apologized to Srin’gahar for his own inability to express concepts clearly, and rubbed out the map with his boot. Without it, pla
While this was being decided, several of the sulidoror brought a late breakfast of fruit and lake fish to Gundersen, exactly as though they recognized his authority under the Company. It was a curiously anachronistic gesture, almost servile, not at all like the way in which they had tossed him a raw slab of malidar meat the day before. Then they had been testing him, even taunting him; now they were waiting upon him. He was uncomfortable about that, but he was also quite hungry, and he made a point of asking Srin’gahar to tell him the sulidororu words of thanks. There was no sign that the powerful bipeds were pleased or flattered or amused by his use of their language, though.
They began their journey in late afternoon. The five nildoror moved in single file, Srin’gahar at the back of the group with Gundersen perched on his back; the Earthman did not appear to be the slightest burden for him. Their path led due north along the rim of the great rift, with the mountains that guarded the central plateau rising on their left. By the light of the sinking sun Gundersen stared toward that plateau. Down here in the valley, his surroundings had a certain familiarity; making the necessary allowances for the native plants and animals, he might almost be in some steamy jungle of South America. But the plateau appeared truly alien. Gundersen eyed the thick tangles of spiky purplish moss that festooned and nearly choked the trees along the top of the rift wall. The way the parasitic growth drowned its hosts the trees seemed grisly to him. The wall itself, of some soapy gray-green rock, dotted with angry blotches of crimson lichen and punctuated every few hundred meters by long ropy strands of a swollen blue fungus, cried out its otherworldliness: the soft mineral had never felt the impact of raindrops, but had been gently carved and shaped by the humidity alone, taking on weird knobbinesses and hollows over the mille