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new rules and kill everyone who doesn’t know what they are. Jacent, remember Metty. She didn’t do anything to anyone. What did Syrilla do? What have any of us done? Don’t you understand what’s going on here? You expect you can figure out what to do to keep yourself out of trouble. You expect logic. You expect good sense. You don’t understand what’s happening.”
Jacent took a deep breath and tried to control himself. He’d never thought he would fall apart like this. But there was blood everywhere these days, blood and messy things. Pieces of people falling out of closets and off of shelves. People coming apart right in front of you, while they were working, while they were eating even. One of his friends had his girlfriend come all to pieces while they were making love, right there on the bed, leaving him covered with parts of her while this terrible gulping laughter went on and on. Horror piled on horror, and nobody knowing why or what to do about it.
“What am I going for?” he said from a dry mouth, trying to control his shaking.
“You’re going to tell Zasper Ertigon or whoever else you find there—Danivon, maybe—that if he can think of any way to help us, now’s the time. Tell him Enarae’s half-gone. Tell him most of the provinces are nothing but a few dazed survivors wandering around wondering what hit them. Either that or religious processions marching back and forth, with people dropping from starvation and dehydration. Tell him the Enforcers that are left are lying low, pretending to be ordinary folk. Tell him everything’s coming to an end very soon if someone doesn’t do something.”
“What can he do?” Jacent spoke from sheer amazement that there was anyone who might be thought to be helpful.
“Nothing,” said Boarmus. “Most likely nothing. But I’ve done everything I can think of, and this is the only thing left to try. There were dragons on Panubi. I don’t know what kind. But Files says dragons are supposed to be … miraculous. Holy, maybe, whatever that means. And if there’s anything holy or miraculous left in this world, we need it to help us. So go, boy. Go!”
Jacent climbed into the machine and went. He didn’t know how to fly it, but it wasn’t that different from something he did know how to fly. He didn’t know where Panubi was, but the
on-board navigator was able to find it. He didn’t know where Zasper was, either, but the model thirty-four knew where the Enforcer post near Shallow was, and those left alive at the post remembered that Zasper had gone west, toward Thrasis and the Great Wall.

14

As he made his erratic way above the River Floh, Jacent saw lines of refugees traveling westward along the banks and over the undulating plains. Scattered encampments stood at the Great Wall where people were frantically building ladders and towers. Though bodies lay heaped here and there along the line of march, Jacent saw no signs of human conflict. The refugees had been hunted down, were still being hunted down by the other thing.
Past the Great Wall the killing stopped. Here he saw only groups on the move, escapees from Deep and Shallow who’d swum past the barrier, and people from other provinces who’d come by boat or raft. The surface of the Floh was still speckled with small craft tacking their slow way upstream.
When the gorge gaped its narrow throat before him, he prudently chose to fly over rather than through it, and this route brought him in sight of two Enforcers making slow progress along the high trail. By that time Jacent needed company almost as badly as he needed directions. He landed the flier—unskillfully—and took Fringe and Danivon aboard. Danivon, who had noted the sloppy landing, took over the flier, and this allowed Jacent to concentrate on Boarmus’s message. Though made rather incoherent by fear and exhaustion, he managed to convey that Tolerance was being wiped out, that Boarmus wanted a miracle, would they take him to Zasper, who would produce one.
“I don’t know what kind of miracle old Boarmus expects,” Danivon said flatly. “I know Zasper won’t produce one, because
Zasper is dead. I don’t know what kind of dragons there are where we’re going, if any. I left the group in Thrasis, and up until then we’d only seen the one dragony beast the old woman had with her plus some smaller ones said to be its descendants.”
“Jory’s dragon was impressive,” commented Fringe in an infuriatingly calm voice.
“That’s true,” Danivon agreed, gritting his teeth. “But it had surprise on its side, and even if there were hundreds like it, they wouldn’t be much use against a world full of killing machines.”
Jacent wiped tears of weariness from his eyes. “Boarmus was really hoping about the dragons. And I was too.”
“Then you must hope for some other dragons. Since none of us have been where we’re going, how can we say what we’ll find?” Danivon cast a sidelong look at Fringe, who sat stiffly beside him, saying nothing, wearing the half smile she had worn since she found him at the riverside. If they all saw inescapable horror looming before them, likely Fringe would still be wearing that same little smile.
“The massif,” she said unnecessarily, pointing ahead of them at the smoothly glowing dome that rose above the center of the continent like a giant carbuncle. “There’s the massif, Jacent.”
Jacent obediently followed her gaze but was unimpressed by landscape. “Nobody was getting killed inside the wall,” he persevered, unwilling to give up hope. “So there must be something here that can fight the network off.”
Danivon shook his head. “Keeping an enemy out is different from fighting one off. Withstanding siege is a different matter from winning a battle.”
Fringe said, “If it’s your safety you’re worried about, likely you’ll be safe here.”
Jacent stopped trying to hide his tears of weariness and frustration and frankly wept, his voice rising in incipient hysteria. “It isn’t just
me.
It’s everybody. It’s Aunt Syrilla, only she’s already dead, and it’s Boarmus and all my friends in Tolerance, and my home in Heaven, and …”
Danivon turned to lay his fingers on the boy’s lips, shutting down the flow. “All and everyone would probably be safe here, boy, but there’s not enough room in Central Panubi for the entire population of Elsewhere, even if we could think of
means to get it here. Take hold of yourself. Things are as they are, and no amount of wishful thinking will change them!”
He took his hand away and Jacent was quiet, no doubt stunned into silent grief. He wasn’t alone. Since meeting Fringe, Danivon had grieved for her as he did for Zasper. Here she was beside him, yet he grieved as though she were dead. Something had happened to her. He didn’t know what, but she was most dreadfully changed.
He grunted sharply at the sight of the acropolis almost below them and let the flier sideslip toward the shore, landing it like a dried leaf on a stretch of turf. People came running. Jory and Asner limped out from one of the buildings beneath the trees, and those leaving the flier looked beyond them to see dragons standing at the edge of a distant grove.
Danivon’s mouth dropped open. “So there they are,” he said. “I didn’t really believe in them.”
“Arbai,” came a treble voice from above him, where a gylph fluttered awkwardly, lurching on unsteady wings as it screamed in surprise, “Fringe! We thought you were dead!”
“What the … who …” croaked Danivon.
“It’s Nela,” advised Fringe in the kindly-but-impersonal voice that set Danivon’s teeth on edge. “And that’s Bertran in the fur with the webbed feet. I forgot to tell you about them. At the same time I was being put together again, Bertran and Nela were being changed.”
The winged being fell with its arms about Fringe’s neck. Fringe stepped back, and Nela’s arms fell away.
“Fringe?” she asked doubtfully.
“What happened to the three of you?” grated Danivon. He had not asked Fringe what had happened to her; he’d been afraid to know. He had not even looked at her closely since she found him first at the riverside, but now, confronted by these other monstrous changes, he had to look, had to ask.
“Something fixed them when it fixed me,” Fringe said offhandedly. “Rebuilt them and me.”
“The Hobbs Land Gods,” said gylph Nela in a wondering voice. “It seems they’ve been here all the time.”
Danivon felt his heart stop, felt a bloody and violent pressure in his skull, a bursting red geyser, a terror so inbred he couldn’t speak, come from nowhere, about to eat him!
“Ahhhhn,” he shrieked.
“No,” said Fringe in a surprised but fearless voice. “I will not accept that! I will not allow myself to be possessed.”
“It’s all right,” said Jory, to Danivon and Fringe both. “Calm down.”
Danivon didn’t hear her. He was away from the flier, running in panic through the trees beside the river, he didn’t know where except to get away. He fled through the grove and deep into a bed of reeds where he crouched, blood hammering in his ears. Where had he come to? What disaster?
“Why did you do that?” asked a voice from above. “Why did you run off?”
He looked up to see Nela teetering above him once more, on barely manageable wings.
“That was silly,” she gasped.
“Possesseds,” he hissed at her. “Not human anymore. Take us over.”
She half landed, half fell beside him. A snuffly bustling approached through the reeds and erupted at his side, spilling the furred creature between them.
“Why did you run away, Danivon?” asked Bertran.
Danivon put his hands over his eyes and shuddered, still moaning wordlessly.
“He’s scared of us,” said Nela in a sad, remote voice. “Really scared. The way Turtledove used to be scared. Of nothing. He used to scare himself, invent monsters, make up horrors.”
“Danivon,” said Bertran pleadingly. “Danivon. Look at us.”
He looked at them and saw monsters. Horrible, nonhuman monsters with feathers and claws. He howled and hid his face once more, lost in nightmare.
Bertran patted his knee with one webbed hand. “Danivon. You were going to take us apart and rebuild us, weren’t you? So? Something else took us apart, is all, and all we can figure out is it knew we’d always dreamed of being … different from what we were … so it gave us different shapes…. That’s all. We’re the same. Inside, we’re the same.” His tone betrayed him. He did not believe he would ever be the same. “Jory says it will put us back, if we like….”
Danivon trembled, gulped for air, fought for air, couldn’t breathe. “It got Fringe,” he gasped. “It got Fringe. She isn’t Fringe anymore.”
“Isn’t she?” asked Nela. “Really? She did seem odd….”
“Cold,” he howled. “She’s all cold! When she heard Zasper was dead, she didn’t even cry!”
“But she probably wanted to be like that!” cried Nela.
“Fringe wanted something else, Danivon. All her human feelings kept getting in the way. She wanted to be fearless and immune to pain, without all those muddles and pangs. Poor Fringe, she used to hurt all the time. So now maybe she doesn’t.”
“She didn’t want to be like
that!”
he cried.
“But …” said Nela.
“Maybe she really didn’t,” said Bertran. “We didn’t really want to be like this, Nela.”
“But …”
Danivon didn’t hear, couldn’t move. He went on cowering, unable to think, unable to accept. The twins murmured to each other in subdued voices, then went away. After a time Jory and Asner came tunneling through the rattling stems, complaining in cracked voices, to hunker down beside him with many groans and gasps. They talked more to each other than to him.
“Of course, what’s here in noplace
isn’t
the Hobbs Land Gods,” said Jory, patting Danivon on the knee and peering into his eyes.
“No,” Asner agreed. “Not really.”
“Similar, but not identical,” she said. “Because the Hobbs Land Gods had mostly humans to work with, whereas this device is both controlled by the Arbai and dominated by their thoughts and sensitivities. Only if it were freed from their control could it become like the Hobbs Land Gods.”
“True,” said Asner, squeezing Danivon’s shoulder. “Which is no doubt why it affected the twins as it did. And Fringe. If it had enough experience with humans, it would have repaired them differently.”
Danivon merely shuddered, scarcely hearing, while some remote part of himself stood aloof and amazed at this craven animal, this cowering creature he had become. He had not believed himself capable of this. Where had this terror come from? Of course he had always been taught the worst things in the universe were the Hobbs Land Gods, but still….
The two old people went on chatting, of this, of that, of old times, of recent events. After a considerable time, Danivon found his fists unclenched and his jaw relaxed. It was like being under running water, like listening to rain. The remote, judgmental part of himself went away somewhere. The old voices went on and on, unhurried and untroubled, like little fingers, untying all his knots. The tension dissolved.
All the fear dissipated. He wondered, rather vaguely, if he was now possessed, but he didn’t protest when Asner and Jory took his arms and half led, half leaned on him as they made their way out of the reeds and across a grassy plot to the place near the buildings where the others sat around an open fire, dining on bits of roast meat and awaiting his arrival with curious faces.
“Danivon, and you, Fringe, listen to me,” said Jory. “If you want no interference from what you think of as the Hobbs Land Gods, you’ll get none.”
“They’ve already interfered,” said Fringe in her chilly voice. “It’s too late. I will die rather than live possessed.” She said it as though she commented on the weather.
Jory shushed her. “It’s not too late. They’ll put you back precisely as you were and leave you alone. It’s just … they, it had no reliable human index, no one much to cross-check with and very little time.”
“They’ll put me back dead?”
“They’ll put you back however you like! Dead. Alive. Reconstructed as you were before the gaver got you. However.”
“Enslaved,” said Fringe emotionlessly.
“Not,” said Jory in a dispirited tone. “Not enslaved any more than you already were. You will still be enslaved by yourself, by custom, by opinion, by all the hierarchies you have accepted from others or built for yourself, but you’re used to that.”
Fringe merely stared, disbelieving, but Danivon sat up straighter.
“How?” he asked. “How do I get … unpossessed?”
“Simply think of yourself as you were,” Jory said. “The device will help you do it. It won’t cheat. It has no desire for power. It has no ego to assert. It is simply what it was designed to be, a communication device. Because most people like to think of themselves as better than they are—kinder and more generous—the usual net effect of the device is an improvement in people’s ability to get along with one another. There is more trust, more faith, as Asner could tell you. Nonetheless, if you spend some time remembering incidents from your life and how you felt and reacted toward them, you’ll become more and more what you were. The Arbai Device has no use for grieving, rebellious participants.”
Danivon looked only partially convinced.
“How can you prove this?” Fringe demanded. “How would I know it had left me?”
“Are you aware, now, of how Nela feels? No, don’t look at her. Are you aware?”
Fringe nodded, unwillingly. She was. She knew exactly how Nela felt, and Bertran, and Danivon….
“It is the device informing you. Say to yourself now that you do not wish to know how Nela feels. Keep in mind that you do not wish to know about others. Shortly, you will find you do not know.” Jory spoke with rueful and unimpassioned conviction.
“When you are as deaf and unperceiving as you were before, you will know it has gone. When you feel yourself a solitary creature, walled inside yourself, you will know you are alone.”
Fringe turned away, believing she had heard the truth.
“But I always …” murmured Danivon. “I could smell …”
“For you, Asner and I will think up a different test,” said Jory, almost angrily. “But I assure you, you will not be an unwilling part of anything!”
“You haven’t really met Alouez,” Cafferty murmured, changing the subject. “You haven’t met Haifazh, who has only just come.”
The girl nodded, the woman nodded. Danivon merely stared at them, not even hearing their names, as he mentally took an inventory of Danivon as Danivon knew Danivon to be. Seeing his vacant expression, Jory pushed him toward a bench against the sun-warmed wall. He sat there, concentrating on himself-qua-himself, running over the catalog of his faults and virtues, breathing through his mouth, trying not to smell anything or think anything that might make the terror rise up once more.
Jacent was still reciting a catalog of events he had experienced in Tolerance. He went on and on, concluding, “… and it isn’t just Tolerance. All the people of Elsewhere are dying. Children, women, men, old people. All dying. Boarmus said the dragons were his last hope. So what should I do now?”
Jory said firmly, “It’s unfortunate that Boarmus placed any hope in dragons. The Arbai won’t do anything, young man.”
“What’s happening?” Danivon blurted, suddenly aware
that what she had said had to do with him. “Who won’t do anything?”
“Tell him,” Curvis demanded, giving Danivon an almost-contemptuous look. “Tell him all about it. He doesn’t know all about the Arbai Device yet?”