The Incompleat Nifft

by Michael Shea

  "He was still high in the hills when the great maw of foam thunderously swallowed Ladrona Bay at a gulp. Still Nifft lashed his mad team downward, as if moved by the same unstoppable fury as moved the sea. As the road crossed a little upland valley, the leaping sea came avalanching up over the ridge and snatched him, wagon and all, up into a boiling cauldron of weedy brine.

  "For long, unbelievable moments his team crested the boil and dragged his wagon through it, he wielding his whip like Benthodagon in his sea-chariot of Aristoz legend. It was the wave's highest reach; it receded, leaving in the valley a salt lake where, nostrils flaring, eyes glaring, the team at length drowned and dragged the wagon down, and Nifft, a lifetime older than he had been seconds earlier, swam dazedly to higher ground.

  "Ladrona was scoured from the shore. Not even the foundations of his family's hostel remained. Not long after this, Nifft apprenticed himself to a travelling acrobatic troupe, and he has never once returned to the isle of his birth. But perhaps it is equally true to say that he has never left that foaming lake in the hills above drowned Ladrona—has never ceased lashing his team through the waves, to stay ahead of drowning.

  "For when has Nifft ceased from wandering? When has he ceased to push restlessly from exploit to exploit? Whatever he has, he seeks always a further prize. And it is with just this in mind that his good friend, Barnar Ham-Hadryan, urges him: at some point even the greatest craftsmen must say of someplace: Here I will abide—this place I will cherish as my own. For what will Pelfer's Buskins and all the rest bring, but further wandering, further seeking? Whereas on Chilia, in my natal mountains, we have a paradise to resurrect, and then, inhabit!"

  I had to endure in patience a ploy I'd used myself, but I was hard put to hold my tongue. When I answered, I struggled to hide my irritation. "Isn't it enough, Barnar, that we first vowed to seek Pelfer's Tomb, and that my vow of the Witches' Seed came second? Can we not lay this painful controversy to rest on this simple principle of priority?"

  "Come to that, Nifft, why should not the more recent undertaking be the more binding?"

  Discussion was useless. Silence fell again on us. Out in the nursery chamber echoed the whicker and whisper of huge chitinous legs most delicately a-dancing, and the sounds of grubs wetly mouthing, and of demons faintly crooning their annihilation. The murmur of the Nest's mighty life gradually, gently rubbed my thoughts away, and I sank into sleep.

  But some time later, from the deeps of that sleep, a little noise tickled me awake. I lay for a moment listening to it. When I stealthily arose, I found that Ostrogall had got his whole limb thrust out of the mouth of his bag; his industrious little claws had almost untied the bag's binding.

  I roused Barnar and we held judgement over the fractional demon. His gush of verbose apology was silenced by Barnar's gesturings with his axe.

  "Already you have abused our trust," I told Ostrogall. "You now swear you will suffer any punishment to reinstate our tentative agreement. Very well. We must insist on precaution. You must be quit of that remaining limb of yours if we are to keep you here in our quarters. If this is unacceptable to you, we will be glad to return you to those grubs."

  Ostrogall scarcely paused. "Agreed! Agreed, if it must be! I need only my neck, and just a bit of chest to be planted by, but that's quite enough, as long as you will plant me. I humbly accept the precaution. Just give me a fair hearing on the matter of the Unguent when you are so inclined. Question me, and I swear you will be persuaded. And once you are aloft—once, Oh Effulgent Ones, you have the Unguent, and are soaring at will high up among the winds, you will bless the day our paths crossed down here. You will see, my Benefactors!"

  So he extended his limb, and Barnar lopped it off. We returned him to his bag, bound this double tight, hung it high, and went back to our hammocks, and our interrupted sleep.

  X

  Who goeth to the Mother's breast

  Of greater Life to sup,

  Oh, tread ye nimbly through the Nest!

  Oh, firmly grip thy cup!

  EARLY ON OUR FOURTH DAY in the chamber, I teetered atop a half-deflated grub, waiting to free the valve and ease the line back up to the ceiling. As the grub gently, steadily sank under me, I gazed over the larval shoals. Barnar, returning from signalling for suction on this our third larva of the day, came climbing up to keep me company.

  "It's more than a momentary flux," I told him. "I'll swear it! The place is . . . seething! Look where one comes for the empty already." A Nurse, just a spearcast off, loomed down to devour the plundered bag of our second larva of the morning. The whole chamber bustled with activity; feeding was going on everywhere. Nurses and Lickers sped in every direction. We'd found things in this state on our awaking, and for hours now the spate had not slackened.

  Barnar agreed. "It's all the pupae that impress me most. It has to mean a . . . population surge, does it not?"

  We stood thoughtful as the grub deflated. What else could it mean? On our first days here we only occasionally saw the pupae carried out by Nurses. Pupae were constantly forming; matured, full-fed grubs grew quiet and developed a thick sheen of exudate which, in a day or so, hardened into the pupal husk. These pupae were carried off by Nurses to the eclosia (so we had been told), where the callows would hatch and be nursed up to adult size.

  But now, any time and anywhere we looked, we saw more pupae being carried out. Correspondingly, new larvae were being incessantly brought in from the Incubaria. Barnar hesitated, before adding, "Our friend in the bag is most urgent for an audience with our effulgent selves. While I was signalling just now he was wheedling me through the leather, telling me there is a very `significant stir' in the Nest."

  This awareness in the demon-nub, bagged as he was, reminded us that demonkind possessed valuable insights into Behemoth's ways. "Well," I suggested, "let's go back and chat with him." We untethered the suck-line from the empty we stood on, and went back to the nook.

  Hanging blind in his bag, still Ostorgall was aware of us, though we approached quietly to test him. "O Effulgent Ones! Dare I address you? Dare I share with you my humble concern for your safety?"

  What could we lose by hearing his gambits? Unbagged and propped on a ledge, Ostrogall looked as healthy as ever. His recent amputation was smoothly and toughly scabbed over. An oily light of alien solicitude sparkled in his hundred eyes.

  "Gentlemen, only my fears for your safety make me thus importunate, for is not your salvation also my own? As my liberation is your enrichment? I urge only this: if you mean at all to travel through the Nest, then undertake it boldly and at once, for past all doubt, I sense some great business is astir in this Nest. A yeasty ferment is at work, their numbers grow—I feel it! And at such times, sirs, the corridors thunder with traffic, and grow ever more perilous for travellers of our slight size!"

  "You seem to imply," I answered, "that our carrying you down to the subworld is a settled thing, but I, for one, am far from decided. Tell me this, Ostrogall: Do the Younger Umbral's verses, describing the Flight of Forkbeard, accurately represent the Unguent as being obtained by squeezing certain tubers grubbed up from the garden of a giant swamp-waddle?"

  "Forgive me," meekly fluted the demon-nub, "but I really cannot say."

  "You really can't say?" Barnar raised his brows. "What of Cogiter's dactyls? Do these rightly report the Unguent as being the product of a hirsute, odoriferous fruit that grows on the walls of caverns in the floor of the primary subworld, as expressed in the couplet: `Deep grottoes papilla-ed with bulbulous swellings—fruits better for squeezing and draining than smelling'?"

  "I must, with inexpressible regret," Ostrogall faintly piped, "profess myself powerless to respond to your query."

  "Well, what can you tell us then?" I urged. I seized him up by the neck stump and we went out into the open chamber with him. "I so far find no reason not to tuck you back into the larval jaws from which we so imprudently plucked you! What think you, Barnar? Which one looks hungriest to you?"


  "Gentle saviors! Sagacious paladins!" Ostrogall bleated. "I can do no other than cling to my sole poor means of purchasing your aid. Men of your bold make would dare the place without my guidance if you knew where and how to look."

  "That grub over there," Barnar suggested, "looks extremely hungry. See how she works her jaws? We want the demon's end to be quick as possible of course—we're not cruel men. Let's pop him in there."

  "If you are bent on doing so, Masters, I must suffer it," the demon cried. "The grub's loathsome gut will reduce me to a mash of quaternary spores, which will escape in its fecal matter. By little and little, some of these spores of mine will be tracked out in the tunnels, and thence to the subworld floor. It will take perhaps a century before I seed, and root, and bloom, and see again, but I will bear this long blindness if I must!"

  In the end we rebagged him. Why not hang him up blind for a while, and see if his attitude evolved? Moreover, in the last analysis, we did not feel his desperate reticence was wholly out of character for one who had a true treasure to protect.

  At the same time, Ostrogall had succeeded in persuading us, though not to the quest he craved. He had convinced us of the danger of this rising pulse in the Nest-life, this fermentation. If we were to explore at large, it must be done now before this tempo grew any quicker. Costard must rest content with the sap we'd sent him. We must be off on our own greater mission, for two jarsful of juice worth three hundredweight of gold.

  Our equipage was soon assembled: our arms, oiled and sharpened, strapped to our backs; two bandoliers each, these hung with some provisions, but primarily laden with dozens of the little skin bladders of orange dye that all tappers carry on their belts for touch-ups of their invisibility. We brought a large surplus of these, for splashes of the dye on the walls of the Nest tunnels could also serve us as path markers. In addition we had two hundred ells of tough, limber climbing-line each, and, most to the point, two leathern amphorae, stoutly lidded, discreetly provided us by Bunt for filling with the giants' pap.

  When all was ready, Barnar sent the "pause-for-rest" code on the signal cord. No simple acknowledgement came back, but rather an impatient clatter of inquiry. We disdained to answer, but we did grow mindful of the gold in our lockless provisions chests, should bumptious Costard be moved to come down if we were long on our errand. So we staggered a half mile or so along the chamber wall with our wealth, till we found a safe nook to bury it in.

  And so we stepped for the first time out into a Nest tunnel. We stepped out cringing, recoiling in advance from monstrosities which . . . did not materialize. We stood in high-vaulted emptiness, scanning a cerulean gloom that yawned away in both directions.

  "Well," said Barnar, "let's be off. What is the slope, would you say? It looks dead level here." We were concerned in our explorations always to move up-slope, following the principle that Behemoth's most protected chambers lie highest in the mountains. By this reasoning, the Royal Brood Chamber must lie at the Nest's apex, above even these lofty strata of the larval chambers.

  "Doesn't this way seem just fractionally . . . ?"

  "Yes, I suppose so. Let's cover ground while it's clear like this." We were off at a jog-trot, squirting arcs of dye every few rods against the gallery walls. The emptiness of the tunnel grew ominous, almost unbearable. Then . . . was that a tremoring underfoot? "Barnar, do you feel—"

  "By Crack, Key and Cauldron!"

  "Dive into this crevice!"

  Thus began our introduction to the larger worker castes. That first one—for we came to recognize their features with some repetition—was a Digger, with huge, blunt, earth-breaking jaws. Its body had half again the bulk of a Nurse's. In moments, the unnatural void that had greeted our entry was obliterated by the thunder of repeated passings. Diggers, Sweepers, Carriers (whose immense crops made them provision-vessels to other castes), the colossal size of all these workers was only half their impact. Their speed was the other half—their speed and their reckless elan. Two workers running abreast might charge headlong at three others oppositely bound, and none would hesitate a jot. All of them would thunderously merge, and sunder, with not a bristle's width to spare, their glossy flanks whickering with glancing frictions, their giant, sharp-kneed legs pumping miraculously free of entanglement. Incessantly though these thunderous mergings occurred, they did not fail to awe us every time.

  Equal to the awe of their onrush was the awe of their stopping. It seemed impossible such hugeness could come to such precise and absolute a halt as these giants could when confronted with a fellow worker's begging. We learned that an individual of any caste could detain any other by bowing, as it were, and, in a crouched posture, twiddle her antennae in a ritualized gesture of supplication. The accosted one then either shared with the beggar food she carried in her jaws, or regurgitated into the beggar's mouth the macerated nourishment she carried in her crop. By such exchange, of course, does a subworld harvest reach every hungry one of a Nest's million mouths.

  These sudden pauses in the flux threatened our rhythm, and we learned not to slow down for anything—to run hard when we were in the clear, to read tremors through our footsoles, and to dive sharp or shin quick up a veining in the wall at the very first vibration of oncomers. We learned to guess the numbers and course of these oncomers, and move decisively before the danger was in view, for by then it might well be too late.

  After what we judged a couple miles of this, we rested in a fissure, and took wine. "I'm damned . . ." Barnar said, breathing hard, "if I can tell for sure . . . but I think we're bearing . . . downslope."

  " . . . this run-and-stop rhythm . . . I can't be sure either . . . but I agree."

  We lay catching our breath a moment. Giants thundered past. A few sour draughts of wine caught fire in our racing blood. Courage blazed in us.

  "Shall we retrace and try the other way then?"

  "Why not? You know, Barnar, if this is the worst of it, I think we can manage it."

  "Aye to that and aye again! Look—here's a Licker." She danced bobbingly towards us, mouthing the fungal fur along our stretch of wall. We knew to sit still, our crevice being sunk in a fungal bald patch. High as a galleon's bowsprit, the Licker reared above us her spittly kiss, the arched buttresses of her legs bracketing us in that moment like some mighty temple's nave. Then she danced on.

  "Think, Nifft!" Barnar growled fervently. "With such spawn as these, what must the Queen's dimensions be?"

  We set to jogging back the way we'd come. "What if she proves too big for mounting and milking?" I asked. "What if we can't climb her? Is it not . . . serendipitous how the Unguent, if it be real, would answer so perfectly to this need? Surely we could turn the trick of getting the pap if we were airborne."

  "I tell you, I too feel the itch of that very thought, Nifft! Ostrogall of course has every motive to lie unconstrainedly."

  "Well . . . we must question him closer once we get back."

  Loping along pretty briskly now, we were feeling more attuned to these tunnels with each stride. All at once we sensed the tremor of a very big weight approaching, and we looked sharp for shelter. A natural ridge of quartz ribbed the tunnel wall just ahead of us.

  "Let's shin up that!" I said. We swarmed our way up it just in time to get above a fast-moving Sweeper who veered under us. But even as we sighed relief, here, oppositely bound, there surged titanically towards us a Forager.

  We were almost unhinged—it was the first we'd seen. Still we kept our grips, and scrambled desperately higher, to get above her hugeness. Her jaws alone were half the size of a Nurse! Since the onrushing Sweeper never altered course, the Forager arched up accommodatingly on her legs, while the Sweeper crouched slightly and rushed right under her.

  Unluckily, as the Forager lifted herself in this maneuver, she glanced against the tunnel wall just under us. The shock wave plucked us clean off the rock, and we plunged down toward the Forager's vast back, our hands and feet clawing thin air in a desperate, futile bid to be elsewhere, an
ywhere other than where we fell to.

  Shag Margold's First

  Interjection

  A LITTLE MORE than a decade before the time of this present narrative, Nifft and Barnar endured a subworld sojourn in the Demon-Sea, to which Nifft alludes when they ride the bucket down the gangway. During that infernal submersion among demonry, the pair acquired the friendship-till-death of the shape-shifter Gildmirth of Sordon, whom they set at liberty from durance in that vile abyss.

  Some five years after, and about as long before this present business, Nifft and Barnar had acquired—in the Great Shallows, at a gaming table in one of the raft-cities of the Hydrobani—a little flat-deck yawlp. With this and some rented harpoons, they went out next morning a-sculping. Towards mid-day, they harpooned (as they thought) a particularly large and fine-looking sculp. It was a solid hit, and took the barb deep, and they were already congratulating themselves on a very profitable venture. Then their sculp melted into the form of a giant marine reptile, who held their bloodless harpoon in one claw, and towed them for a long and merry ride through the Shallows, skimming at incredible speed above those gorgeous reefs all aflame with life and color. The pair could neither quit nor cut the harpoon cable. They ceased to try when the reptile began to sing and warble melodiously in an unknown tongue as it towed them through their crazy course. Long before Gildmirth melted down to his true form, and climbed dripping aboard, they had guessed him for who he was.

  From this merry, chance meeting of friends, weighty events developed which, while they may concern us elsewhere, cannot detain us here. But it was on this occasion that Nifft heard from Gildmirth a highly particular account of Pelfer the Peerless' tomb, and of the Buskins, Cowl and Gantlets buried there with that arch-thief. These Supreme Facilitators of Felonious Appropriation are of course a by-word through the world at large; even the uncouth upland brigands of the Ingens Cluster swear by the "boots, hood and gloves of the Pilferer."