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frenzy.
A tinny cry went up from the swarm; "Free us! Free us!"
Russell slapped at several of them and barked, "From what?"
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A welter of piping voices called out to Russell as they spun and fluttered
about his head.
"Accursed form!"
"Hunger eats like worms in belly!"
"Want suck demon!"
"Crush me!"
"Inhale me!"
"Hot kiss of frog's tongue!"
Markham caught a foul scaly thing crawling into his ear, crushed it between
his fingernails, flicked it away. "What do they mean?" he asked the
wasp-woman.
"Some are beset by hungers. Others wish to leave this foul form."
Russell caught in midair a large one which was pleading for death. He popped
it in two and a rank acid odor turned the air blue. The men trotted away from
the spreading murk, but the swarm stayed with them, humming with feral desires
Markham could sense but could not name.
"Those who would die, please crush," the wasp-woman pleaded, flying nearly
into Markham's eye.
"If you'll leave us, yes," Russell bargained.
"I would travel in your wake," she answered, darting around Russell's wrinkled
neck.
"Why?" Markham asked, methodically smashing his cupped hand into the path of
all who ventured near. When they understood that he would accommodate them,
dozens of hornet-people dove directly into his swinging hands. They died with
sharp, brittle cries of almost sensual agony.
The wasp-woman hung by his ear. "I would suck the green blood-pap of a demon."
"We don't want to tangle with them."
"But you are a world-strider, and so will cross them."
"Not if I can help it." Markham panted with exertion.
"They come to test you, yes, vast man." The waspwoman seemed sure other
prediction.
"Try to follow us and la knock you from the air," Russell said imperiously,
patience gone. "If I suck the green-gore pap, I can become a frog or rat,"
the wasp-woman explained as though this were a laudable and common enough
ambition.
"Bravo," Markham said sarcastically.
"Get away!" Russell shouted.
"If will not lead to demon," the wasp-woman cried, "then crush me."
"Well, no, I ..." Despite his horror, to Markham this careening mote was a
person, even if it was a dreadful perversion of nature.
"Is chance I return as worm to sup shit! Or be weevil," the wasp-woman
pleaded.
"And you would rather be that?" Russell was puzzled.
"Would rest from endless gyre!"
The wasp-woman's passionate plea bothered Markham. He could not bring himself
to swat her into oblivion.
Russell pointed at the air. "Look!"
The weaving flecks united for a long moment, hovering, forming letters that
drifted lazily before the men:
Emit
No evil;
live on time.
"Why are you doing that?" Markham asked the wasp-woman.
"Do what? We fly, we seek."
Russell said slowly, "They don't know what they're doing. Something else is
using them."
"To write little epigrams?" Markham snorted.
"It's another palindrome."
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Markham blinked. "Time. Time trap. We should keep going."
"Thirst for blood juice!" a small keening came in his ear.
"Dammit! We can't stand this!" He smashed a few more of the eager suiciders.
His hands were thickly spattered with gore now, and stung.
"Then I will banish them!"
She turned and wove a pattern over their heads, spewing a milky fluid behind
her. It curied into orange smoke as it descended, scattering the swarm. They
fled, sobbing and calling curses at her.
"I don't... are you their ruler, somehow?" Russell asked.
"I hold sway," she said, wings beating the air with a tired drone. "I have
been among the cursed and the crawling for centuries now, and have learned
their vexed arts well."
Russell observed, "But not well enough to escape the form."
Her slit of a mouth pouted forlornly. "I must suck the green-pap five times,
so a frog told me."
"A frog?" Markham wondered if animals talked in Hell. So far he had seen only
domesticated animals and birds.
"It promised me knowledge, if I would approach to be eaten.
Markham said, "So you..."
"Gladly made my way into its mouth cavern.
This shook even Russell's aristocratic demeanor. "All to discover that
drinking demon blood five times will do ... something?"
"Will make me a person! Like you." She said this with awe and desire.
Markham asked, "You were once?"
"When I came, a shepherdess! was. Then I transgressed. Spread thighs and made
sup with a snot-eater. It gave me ram and at its spurting moment pierced my
brain with its prick-sucker."
Russell paled. "Well, at least the sins are more picturesque here. I'm
sure..."
"Then was I cast among the crawlers and flyers. Please let me come with you. I
see knowledge, a path from this vile station."
Markham wondered if this implied a sort of reversed transmigration of souls.
The Hindus-had imagined that they could work their way up the chain of being,
eventually attaining nirvana. Here you could easily slip down evolution's
slick steps, end up a bug. And the Hell of it was that you knew what you were.
Was this a parody of Earthly beliefs, a joke? Or the truth? Perhaps both...
Russell eyed her with hooded eyes, as though he were examining a student in [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]