These were the pens of Myrtlesee Fountain. The air was gruel-thick with latrine reek and slaughter-house odors, seeping in with the steam from the processing rooms. Glystra breathed through his mouth to escape awareness of the stink. Horrible odor—but it was a poor time to be fastidious. He frowned. Strange. A component of the stench was a heavy, pungent, almost sweet, smell which tickled his memory.

  He stood quietly, trying to think. Difficult. The stone floor oozed under his bare feet. Four old women crouching beside the wall moaned without pause. A thin red-eyed man vilified a blowsy woman with waist-long blonde hair, which for some reason had not been shaved. She sobbed into her hands, without apparent attention to the curses of the man—guttural throat-catching sobs. Steam and stench poured in from the processing room through chinks and cracks in the stone, likewise bars of yellow light flickering through the steam. With the light and the steam came the sounds of the processing: boiling, pounding, rasping, loud conversation.

  Eyes looked in at him, through the hole to the corridor, blinked, passed on ... Unreality. Why was he here? He was waiting to have his head boiled. Like Bishop’s head. Pianza was lucky; he lay buried beside the yellow reeds of Lake Pellitante. Cloyville was luckier yet. Cloyville wore a grotesque puff of purple lace on his head, and played at being both master and servant.

  This was the low ebb. Nearly the low ebb. Much of a man’s dignity went with his hair. There was one more notch to slip—from naked humiliation into the anonymous soup of the processing pots. It was almost foreordained, this last notch. It had been a steady progress down a slope toward lesser and lesser life, morale, power ... A whiff of the pungent sweet odor came from the processing rooms, stronger than ever. It was definitely familiar. Lemon-verbena? Musk? Hair-oil? No. Something clicked in Glystra’s mind. Zygage! He went to the wall, peered through a chink.

  Almost under his face a tray held four neatly arranged heads, with their brain-pans sawed off to display the mottled contents.

  Glystra twisted away his gaze. To the right a cauldron bubbled; to the left a bin held acorn-shaped fruits. Zygage, indeed. He watched in fascination. A man, sweating and pallid, in clammy black leather breeches and a blue neckerchief, scooped up a shovel-full of the zygage acorns, sprinkled them into the cauldron.

  Zygage! Glystra turned away from the hole, thinking hard. If zygage were a constituent for the oracle-serum, why, then, the brain-extracts? Probably no reason whatever; probably they were added only for their symbolic potency. Of course he could not be sure—but it seemed unlikely that pituitary and pineal soup would cause wild contortions like those he had witnessed in the Veridicarium. Much more likely that the zygage was the active ingredient; such would be the parallel with Earth plant-extracts: marijuana, curare, opium, pejote, a dozen others less familiar.

  He thought of his own experience with zygage: exhilaration, then hangover. The oracle’s reaction was the same, on a vastly exaggerated scale. Glystra pondered the episode. A miserable terrified wretch had undergone torment and catharsis to achieve a magnificent calm and rationality.

  It had been an amazing transformation, baring the optimum personality apparently latent in every human being. How did the drug act? Glystra’s mind veered around the question: a problem for the scientists. It seemed to achieve the results of the great de-aberration institutes on Earth, possibly by the same essential methods: a churning through the events of a lifetime, the rejection of all subconscious obsessions and irrationality. A pity, thought Glystra, that a man only achieves this supreme state to die. It was like the hang-over after his smoke-breathing ... In his brain there was a sudden silence, as if a mental clock had stopped ticking. Bishop had felt no hangover. Bishop had—he recalled Bishop’s intensified well-being after the zygage inhalation; apparently his habit of ingesting vitamins had warded off the hangover.

  Vitamins . . . Perhaps the oracle died from exaggerated vitamin depletion. And the idea gave Glystra much to think about. He walked slowly back and forth across the damp stone floor.

  The woman with the yellow hair watched him dully; the red-eyed man spat.

  “Ssst.”

  Glystra looked toward the wall. Hostile eyes gleamed through the hole. He crossed the room, peered out into the corridor.

  It was Nymaster. His tough round face wore an expression of angry discomfort. “Now you lie in the pen,” he said in a low urgent voice. “So now you die. What then for my father? Your man will take away the swords, and possibly kill my father, for so you ordered.”

  True, thought Glystra. Nymaster had served him faithfully. “Bring me paper,” he said. “I will write to Corbus.”

  Nymaster handed through a greasy scrap of paper, a bit of sharp graphite.

  Glystra hesitated. “Have you heard anything of—”

  “Koromutin says you will be oracle. For Charley Lys-idder himself. So the prefect told him while he was beating Koromutin.”

  Glystra pondered. “Can you bribe me free? I have other metal, other swords like yours.”

  Nymaster shook his head. “A ton of iron would effect nothing now. Tonight Mercodion has ordained that you burn up your mind for the Bajarnum.”

  The words sank into Glystra’s mind. He stared at Nymaster scratching his cheek with a ruminative finger. “Can you bring Corbus back with you? For another sword of fine steel?”

  “Aye,” said Nymaster grudgingly. “I can do so ... A mortal risk—but I can do so.”

  “Then take him this note, and bring him back with you.”

  Now the sounds and the stenches of the pen had no meaning for him. He paced up and down, whistling thinly through his teeth.

  Up, down, up, down, looking across the room at each turn, watching for Corbus’ face.

  A chilly thought struck him. He had guessed something of the mechanics of the plot against him. After Morwatz had failed, after he had eluded the second expedition by crossing the river Oust and dropping the high-line, he had been left to go his own way to Myrtlesee, but all the time, all the weary miles from Swamp City, he had merely been taking himself to a prearranged trap. The strategy was clear. He had been left to execute it himself. Suppose Corbus was part of the machinery? At this moment nothing was unthinkable.

  “Glystra.”

  He looked up, turned to the hole. It was Corbus in priest’s robes. Glystra glanced right and left, crossed the room.

  Corbus looked in at him quizzically. “How goes it?”

  Glystra pressed close to the hole. “Did you bring it?” he asked in a whisper.

  Corbus passed a little package through the hole. “And now what?”

  Glystra smiled thinly. “I don’t know. If I were you I’d start back down the monoline to Kirstendale. You can’t do any more here.”

  Corbus said, “You haven’t told me what you plan to do with the vitamins.”

  “I plan to eat them.”

  Corbus eyed him questioningly. “They been giving you bum chow?”

  “No. Just an idea I’ve got.”

  Corbus glanced up and down the corridor. “With a big hammer I might make a hole in this wall—”

  “No. There’d be a hundred priests out here at the first click. You go back to the sword-maker’s, wait till tomorrow. If I’m not there then I’m never coming.”

  Corbus said coolly, “There’s one or two charges in the ion-shine. I’ve been half-hoping”—his eyes glistened— “to meet someone we know.”

  Glystra’s throat constricted. “I can’t believe it,” he muttered.

  Corbus said nothing.

  “She never had Bishop killed, I’m sure of it ... It was an accident. Or he tried to stop her.”

  “No matter how you look at it—she’s part of the picture. Four good men killed—Bishop, Pianza, Darrot, Ketch. I’m not counting Vallusser; that little rat was in up to his neck. I’ve been watching her a long time—ever since she insisted on joining our little suicide club.”

  Glystra laughed shortly. “I thought all the time it was—that she—” he had no words to finish.

  Corbus nodded. “I know. One thing I’ll say for her, she put her life on the line alongside ours. She came out on top. She’s up there”—he jerked his thumb—“and you’re down here. What a stinking hole. What are they cooking?”

  “Brains,” said Glystra indifferently. “They distil out some kind of nerve juice which they mix with zygage and feed the oracles. It works on the oracles like the smoke worked on the Beaujolain soldiers, only a thousand times more.”

  “And it kills them?”

  “Dead as a mackerel.”

  “Tonight you’re the oracle.”

  Glystra held up the package Corbus had brought him. “I’ve got this. I don’t know what’s going to happen. From here out I’m playing strictly by ear. And,” he added, “I may be wrong, but I have a hunch there’ll be a few unforeseen developments here at Myrtlesee Fountain and I’m not worrying.“

  Nymaster appeared behind Corbus. “Come, there’s a prefect on his way down. Come quick.”

  Glystra pressed close to the hole. “So long, Corbus.”

  Corbus waved his hand non-committally.

  19. Wisdom for Lysidder

  The sun dropped behind the fronds of Myrtlesee Fountain. A mesh of cirrus clouds flared golden in the sky. Dusk drifted in from eastern lands where night had already fallen over peoples and cities and tribes and castles still unseen.

  A marble pavilion extended to the east of Myrtlesee Dome, enclosed by a colonnade of ornate design. Behind the colonnade was a pond of still water, dimly reflecting the afterglow with the fronds and ferns of the grove silhouetted in reverse. Four blond and slender youths bearing torches came from the dome. Their hair was cut in effeminate bangs. They wore skin-tight costumes sewed of red and green diamonds, black satin slippers with curled toes. They set the torches in tripods of dark wood, returned within.

  A moment later six men in black kilts carried forth a square table which they placed in the exact center of the pavilion. The blond boys brought chairs, and the men in black kilts marched away in a single file.

  The boys spread the table with a gold and brown-striped cloth, giggling like girls. At the center they arranged a miniature landscape—Myrtlesee Fountain in exact detail, complete with dome and pavilion, even to a table on the pavilion, where five persons sat to the light of tiny candles.

  Flagons of liquor and wine were bedded in ice, trays of crystallized fruits, tablets of insect gland-wax, cakes of pressed flower petals were laid exactly in place, then the boys went to pose under the flaming torches, consciously beautiful.

  Minutes passed. The boys fidgeted. Dusk gave way to feather-soft Big Planet night. Stars gleamed. A syrup-smooth breeze drifted through the colonnade to flutter the torches.

  Voices sounded from the dome. Out on the pavilion came Mercodion, the High Dain of Myrtlesee Fountain and Charley Lysidder, Bajarnum of Beaujolais. Mercodion wore his richest robes, with a stole woven of pearls and metal. The Bajarnum wore a gray jacket of heavy soft cloth, red breeches, soft gray boots.

  Behind came the Prefect Superior and two nobles of the Beaujolais empire.

  Charley Lysidder remarked with pleasure at the table, glanced appreciatively at the statue-like youths, seated himself.

  Wine was poured, food was served. Charley Lysidder was in high spirits and Mercodion extended himself to laugh graciously at his jovialities. Whenever there was silence a girl blew chords on a flute. When one of the diners spoke, she stopped instantly.

  Ices and sorbets were brought in glass goblets, and finally pots of fuming incense were placed before each of the diners.

  “Now,” said the Bajarnum, “now for our oracle, Claude Glystra. Originally I had planned to question him under torture, but the oraculation will prove easier for all concerned. He is a man of wide experience and knowledge; he will have much to impart.”

  “A pity that such brief opportunity exists to plumb his wisdom.”

  The Barjarnum shook a finger. “It is a matter you must concern yourself with, Mercodion—the maintenance of longer life in your oracles.”

  The High Dain bowed his head. “It is as you say . . . And now I will order the oracle prepared and we will go to the auditorium.”

  The hall was crowded with the rustling black-gowned priests. By custom hoods were not worn at night, but the characteristic motivation of reducing individuality to the lowest common denominator was expressed by a white head cloth banded loosely around the forehead, around the nape of the neck, forward under the chin.

  Special ceremonial chants had been ordained. Twelve choirs situated each to a wall, mingled their voices in a twelve-part polyphony.

  The Bajarnum, Mercodion and their retinue entered the hall, strolled to benches before the oracle’s dais. A serious-faced girl with shining blonde hair appeared at a side door. She wore black silk pantaloons and a gray-green blouse. For a moment she paused in the doorway, then slowly crossed the room, the only woman among hundreds of men, a peacock among crows. Eyes covertly followed her, tongues moistened celibate lips.

  She stopped beside the Bajarnum, looked down at him with an oddly searching expression. Mercodion bowed politely. The Bajarnum smiled a cold tremble-lipped smile. “Sit down.”

  The expression of intentness vanished, her face became blank. She sat quietly beside the Bajarnum. A whisper, a buzz, a rustle of garments rose from the spectators. By rumor the woman was the new toy of the High Dain. Eyes curiously probed his face, but the sallow skin was set like the rind of a pudding and no emotion appeared.

  A sad chime sounded; a second tremor ran through the hall, a shifting of stance, a motion of eyes. The Bajarnum suddenly seemed to become aware of the assemblage; he muttered to the High Dain, who nodded, rose to his feet.

  “Clear the hall. All must go.”

  Murmuring, dissatisfied, the priests filed out the great doors. The hall was now near-empty, and reverberated with echoes of every movement.

  A second chime sounded; the oracle appeared. Two prefects stood by his side, the Inculcator in his stiff white gown and tall hat followed close to the rear.

  The oracle was wrapped in a robe of gray and red, and white swathing veiled his head. He walked slowly, but without hesitation. At the dais he paused and was lifted to the oracle’s seat.

  The silence in the hall was like the inside of an ice-cave. Not a breath, not a sigh, not a whisper could be heard.

  The prefects held the oracle’s arm, the Inculcator stepped close behind. He took the hypodermic from his hat, he swung his arm.

  The High Dain frowned, squinted, jumped to his feet. “Stop!” His voice was harsh.

  The watchers sighed.

  “Yes, Dain?”

  “Remove the head-swathing; the Bajarnum would look on the man’s face.”

  The prefect hesitated, then reached forward, slowly unhitched the white burnoose.

  The oracle looked straight ahead, down into the eyes of the Bajarnum. He smiled grimly. “If it isn’t my old shipmate, Arthur Hidders, dealer in leather.”

  The Bajarnum made a slight inclination of the head. “More people know me as Charley Lysidder.” He examined Glystra with a narrow scrutiny. “You appear nervous, Mr Glystra.”

  Glystra laughed, rather shakily. Enormous overdoses of vitamins, amino and nucleic acids were reacting on his motor system like stimulants. “You do me an honor of which I hardly feel myself worthy—”

  “We shall see, we shall see,” said the Bajarnum all too easily.

  Glystra’s eyes went to Nancy. She met his eyes a moment, then looked away^ He frowned. Seen in the new context beside the man he had known as Arthur Hidders, she took on a new identity—one not unfamiliar. “The nun,” he exclaimed.

  Charley Lysidder nodded. “Rather a clever disguise, don’t you think?”

  “Clever—but why was it necessary?”

  The Bajarnum shrugged. “A fur-and-leather-dealer might conceivably accumulate enough Earth exchange to make the old world pilgrimage—but hardly likely that he would bring his talented young concubine with him.”

  “She’s talented all right.”

  Charley Lysidder turned his head, examined Nancy with dispassionate appreciation. “A pity, really, that she had to become a base tool of policy, she is apt at finer things . . . But that fool Abbigens dropped the ship too far from Grosgarth and I had no one at hand to serve me. Yes, a pity, since I will never use a woman fresh from another man’s couch. And now she must find another patron.” He glanced humorously at Mercodion. “I fancy that she will not need to seek far, eh, Dain?”

  Mercodion flushed, darted an angry glance at Lysidder. “My tastes are perhaps as nice, in some respects, as yours, Bajarnum.”

  Charley Lysidder settled back in his seat. “It’s no matter; I have uses for her in Grosgarth. Let us proceed with the oraculation.”

  Mercodion waved his hand. “Continue.”

  The Inculcator stepped forward, raised the hypodermic.

  The point stung deep into Glystra’s neck. There was a feeling of injection, of pressure.

  The prefect’s grip tightened on his arms, tensing in anticipation of his motion. He noticed that Nancy had turned her face to the floor; the Bajarnum of Beaujolais, however, watched the proceedings with lively interest.

  A great dark hand clamped on his brain. His body expanded enormously; his arms felt twenty feet long; his feet were at the bottom of a cliff; his eyes were like two long pipes leading out on the world. The Bajarnum’s voice came like a sibilant whisper in a vast cave.

  “Ah, now he squirms. Now it takes on him.”

  The prefects held Glystra with practiced ease.

  “Look!” exclaimed the Bajarnum delightedly. “Look how he flails about . . . Ah, he has caused me much trouble, that one. Now he pays the price.”

  But Glystra felt no pain. He had passed beyond mere sensation. He was reliving his life, from earliest foetus up through the years, reliving, re-experiencing, re-knowing every detail of his existence. Reviewing these events was a great super-consciousness, like an inspector watching a belt of fruit. As each distorted concept, misunderstanding, fallacy appeared, the hand of the inspector reached down, twitched events into rational perspectives, smoothed out the neural snarls which had clogged Glystra’s brain.