Time to eat; you've told me that before, Nava; we set off the day after tomorrow - that's my limit. But I did go! And I'm here. Now I'm going into the City. Whatever it is - it's the City. My brain's overgrown with forest. I understand nothing... I've remembered. I was going to the City, to find an explanation for everything; about the Accession, the deadlings, the Great Harrowing, the lake of drowned bodies ... all a deception it seems, everybody's lied their heads off nobody can be trusted... I hoped they would explain how I could get back to my own people, the old man used to keep on saying: the City knows everything - it couldn't possibly not know about our biostation, about the Directorate. Even Hopalong nattered on about Devil's Rocks and flying trees... But surely a lilac cloud couldn't explain anything? It would be terrible if the master turned out to be a lilac cloud. And why "would be"? It's terrible now! It's in front of your nose, Dummy: the lilac fog is the master, here, surely you remember? Yes, and it's no fog either... So that's the way it is, why people are driven away like beasts into dense forest, into swamps, drowned in lakes: they were too weak, they didn't understand and even when they understood they couldn't do anything to interfere with the process... When I hadn't been driven out, when I was still living at home, somebody proved very convincingly that contact between human-oid and non-humanoid intelligence was impossible. Yes, it is impossible. Of course it's impossible. And now nobody can tell me how to get home.
I can have no contact with people, and I can prove that. I can still get a sight of Devil's Rocks, so they say, you can see them sometimes if you climb the right tree in the right season, but you've got to find the right tree first, an ordinary human tree. That doesn't jump and doesn't throw you off, and doesn't try and spike your eyes. Anyway, there's no tree I can see the biostation from... Biostation? Bi-o-sta-tion. I've forgotten what a biostation is.
The forest began to hum and buzz, crackle and snort, once again myriads of flies and ants whirled toward the lilac dome. One swarm passed above their heads and the bushes were deluged with the weak and the dying, the still and the barely twitching, those crushed in the press of the swarm. Kandid sensed an unpleasant burning sensation in his arm and glanced down. Slender threads of mushroom spawn were creeping over the elbow he had propped upon the porous earth. Kandid indifferently brushed them off with his palm. Devil's Rocks was a mirage, thought he, none of that exists. If they told you stories about Devil's Rocks, then it was all lies, none, none of that existed, and now I don't know why I ever came here...
Away to one side came a familiar terrifying snort. Kandid turned his head. At once a mother hippocete looked stupidly out from behind the seven trees on the hill. One of the deadlings suddenly sprang to life, got in gear, and made a few steps toward the hippocete. Once more came the appalling snort, the trees crackled, and the hippocete made off. Even hippocetes are afraid of the deadlings, thought Kandid. Who isn't? Where can you find someone who isn't? ... Flies roaring. Stupid, absurd. Flies - roaring. Wasps roaring...
"Mam!" whispered Nava suddenly. "It's mam coming..."
She was on all fours and gazing over his shoulder. Her face expressed huge astonishment and disbelief. And Kandid saw that three women had emerged from the forest, and, without noticing the deadlings, were heading for the foot of the hill.
"Mam!" shrieked Nava in a voice not her own, leapt over Kandid, and raced to intercept them. At that Kandid also jumped up; it seemed to him that the deadlings were right next to him and he could feel the heat of their bodies.
Three, he thought. Three... One would have been more than enough. He looked at the deadlings. This is the end for me, he thought. Stupid. Why did these old birds have to come barging in here? I hate women, always something going wrong because of them.
The deadlings closed their mouths, their heads slowly swiveling after the sprinting Nava. Then they strode off in unison and Kandid compelled himself to leap up from the bushes and face them.
"Back!" he yelled to the women without looking. "Get out of it! Deadlings!"
