“Come on now, Fang.” She laughed. “How many eligible gnomes are there in Mara Zion anyway? Five? Six? And you’re famous. You slew the daggertooth.”
“And then there was the Sharan.” Fang fell silent, staring at his legs. If Nyneve had been a little more observant, she would have noticed his beery flush turning to an ungnomish pallor.
“I’ve seen her looking at you,” Nyneve continued. “I’m a girl myself, remember? I can tell. I’d say you stood a good chance.”
Fang had taken hold of his right pants leg and was easing it up above his knee, slowly, with infinite care.
“So go and see her, right now.”
“I … I …” Fang croaked, pointing at his leg. “I’ve got a wart, look.”
“That’s not a wart. It’s just some kind of insect. Here, let me.” She reached out to pluck it off.
“No!” He jerked away. “It’s a wild wart! It means death!” He was transformed, shaking, cringing away from her.
“What do you mean?”
It squatted on his skin, feeding off him. He stared at it, the hairs at the nape of his neck prickling. It was small, black and segmented, and it throbbed as it sucked his blood. It must have attached itself some time during the afternoon, when his pant bottom had come out of his boot and exposed the skin. He was lucky to have noticed it before he’d accidentally knocked it and spread its poison through his body.
“You can’t pull them off,” he said, still shuddering. “Their jaws break off and inject a poison, and it kills you just like …” He tried to snap his fingers, but his hands were shaking too much. “Just like that,” he concluded miserably.
“What about burning it off? You can get rid of leeches that way. This could be gnomedom’s version of a leech.”
“You can’t burn them off. They hump up with pain and inject their poison.”
“Can you drown them.”
“No.” He slumped against his tree in an attitude of despair. Gone was the contented gnome of a few minutes ago. “You can’t do anything. They’re awful things, wild warts are. They just stay on you, sucking away. People won’t talk to you. They won’t come near you, in case the wart hops onto them. It’s a terrible affliction, a wild wart.”
“There’s got to be something you can do. It must happen quite often.”
“Not very often, because we gnomes keep well covered up.” He tried to think. “I’ll have to talk to my father. He ought to know something about it.” The thought of visiting the Gooligog depressed him further. “Or I could just hole up and sit it out until the wart dies of old age. I remember someone doing that, once.”
“How long does it take?”
“About five years.”
“That’s a long time … with the umbra closing in,” she reminded him.
“Oh, hell. We must talk to my father about that, too. Now he’ll have to listen. Let’s round up some of the others and go and see him.”
“I’m sorry, Fang, but I have to go home. It’s getting late. Let me put a loose bandage over that wart first, so you won’t knock it.” Nyneve tore a strip from her handkerchief and wrapped it, rather clumsily, around the gnome’s tiny leg. Then she stood. “Go and see your father now,” she said. “And remember, any time you want me, you know how to reach me.”
She stepped into the ring and disappeared, leaving Fang sitting glumly against his tree.
The Gooligog was awakened in the middle of the night by a deputation. His housemouse alerted him first, jumping up with a deafening squeak and bounding onto his bed. The Gooligog jerked awake. The housemouse sniffed at him. The Gooligog thought it had come to eat him. He fought it off.
“Not yet!” he shouted.-”Not quite yet, you bastard!”
The mouse jumped to the floor and began to scrabble at the door. The Gooligog, muttering with temper, kicked it aside and flung the door open, peering into the cold night.
“Who in hell is there?” Then he saw the group of figures. “Who’s that? Is that you, Willie?”
“We’ve come to see you, father.”
“In the middle of the night?”
“That’s of no consequence, Gooligog,” came the Miggot’s voice. “Every minute is precious. Let us in. We must talk to you.”
Outnumbered, the Gooligog stepped aside and the deputation filed past into his tiny living room. They seated themselves around his table: the Miggot of One, Spector the Thinking Gnome, King Bison, Lady Duck, and his wretched son Willie. Apart from Willie it was an impressive gathering, representing the cream of local gnomish society. The Gooligog, mellowing, set mugs of beer before them.
“How can I be of assistance?” he asked.
“You can do some recalling, for a start,” snapped the Miggot.
“And what do you wish me to educe?”
“How in hell do we know?”
Spector, sensing a conflict of personalities, said, “If we knew what it was, Gooligog, you wouldn’t need to recall it. Do you see the logic of that?”
“That’s true,” said the Gooligog smoothly, keeping his temper. “I see the logic.”
They nodded wisely, drinking; all except Fang, who said impatiently, “Nyneve says it was probably she who flattened Trish. By accident, of course. She stepped right through the umbra onto her!”
Lady Duck, whose eyes had closed for a moment, jerked awake, shouting, “The umbra is coming! The umbra is coming!”
“We’ve been through all this before, haven’t we? said the Gooligog. “I thought we’d agreed it was all nonsense. That was my understanding.”
“Our original understanding,” said Spector carefully. “But circumstances change.”
“But we did agree it was nonsense.”
“It’s not nonsense, you damned fool,” snarled the Miggot. “It’s a believable explanation of what happened to Trish. The umbra is closing in, and what happened to Trish will happen to us all—and worse, when the giants get their hands on us. You must look back into your memory and find the answer, do you hear?” And he stepped close to the Gooligog and seized him by his nightshirt, staring fiercely at him down the full length of his pointed nose.
“Why me?” wailed the Gooligog, helplessly aware that everyone was against him. “Why come to me for an answer? Why not breed something to defend us?” He appealed to King Bison. “You’re our leader. Get the Miggot to breed something!”
“There’s no time,” said Bison flatly.
“You shouldn’t have left it so late!”
“We didn’t. We came to you weeks ago, but you wouldn’t listen.”
“That was when we all agreed it was nonsense!”
“But it’s not nonsense now,” said Spector.
Bison took a firm stand. “You’ve got to get into that memory of yours and find out what the umbra is all about!”
“And what we’re all about,” said Fang quietly.
“What do you mean, what we’re all about?”
“Well, how we got to Earth. What the purpose of the gnomes is.”
The Gooligog, thinking he’d found a weak link in the opposition, launched a sudden attack. “What’s the purpose of anything, Willie, you young idiot? What’s the purpose of this?” He slapped an ancient hand against the wall, bringing down a shower of mud. “What’s the purpose of this?” He snatched up the housemouse and held it struggling before them. The mouse twisted around and sank its incisors into his wrist. “Oh, damn the thing!” he shouted, dropping the animal and sucking at his flesh. He surveyed them with anguished eyes, seeking sympathy and finding none. “We all know our purpose,” he mumbled. “We live in harmony with the world around us. We create life where life is needed. We are kind and good.”
“Yes, but why?”
“What do you mean, why? We are the gnomes. That’s what life is all about.”
Fang regarded his father, choosing his words carefully. What he wanted to say was too important to risk incurring another tantrum. “I think there must have been a beginning,” he said. “We’ve always
accepted that we’re here to do the things we do, and we’re probably responsible for creating every animal in gnomedom. But who is responsible for creating us?”
“The Sharan, Willie. The Sharan.”
“So who fed the ingredients to the Sharan? Who told Pan what was wanted? Who created the Sharan?”
“Who created the creator, Willie? Those kind of questions are futile. They can drive a gnome mad.”
“Well, nothing at all makes sense unless there is another people somewhere, who created us. And maybe if there is, we should be looking for ways to get back to them, before the giants kill us all!”
“What about the umbra?” shouted Lady Duck.
Fang glanced at her, puzzled; then realized that logic was not essential to the issue. “Yes,” he said. “What about the umbra?”
“The umbra! The umbra!” cried King Bison. “What about it?”
The Miggot and Spector remained silent, watching the Gooligog, because the Memorizer’s behavior had become strange. As the cries of inquiry rang around his little home, he had commenced staring at the uneven ceiling with a tortured expression. Then, as the last echoes died away and ten gnomish eyes fixed themselves on him in demanding silence, he buried his face in his hands and began to mumble.
“Speak up, Gooligog,” snapped the Miggot after a while.
An indistinct voice mumbled, “I … can’t.”
“Can’t what?”
“I can’t remember any more.”
“You what?”
There were tears in the Gooligog’s eyes when he looked at them. “Don’t you understand? I can’t educe! I’ve tried, but I’ve lost the power! There’s something stopping me—a monster in my mind, horrible and black! I can’t remember anything before the monster came! I’ve tried all I know!”
There was a long, shocked silence, then the Miggot said coldly, “You have betrayed the trust.”
“Not me,” said the Gooligog, recovering slightly. “Willie betrayed the trust.”
“That was a different trust.”
“Actually,” said Spector thoughtfully, “it was the Miggot who betrayed the trust.”
“Which bloody trust was that? I don’t remember betraying any trust!”
“To hell with the trust!” shouted Lady Duck, losing patience. “What about the umbra?”
They fell silent, watching the Gooligog.
“I’m sorry,” he muttered.
Fang said, “You must teach me to educe.”
“What’s the point? I’ve lost our history!”
“It’s still in your memory lobe, waiting to be educed.” Fang reassured him. “It’s in me, too, because I’m your son. Teach me how to find it, father. Maybe I’m not frightened of the same monsters as you. It’s all waiting here in my mind, all our history right back to when gnomes were first created—and maybe further. Everything we know about our creators will be there, like where they are and how we can reach them. They even might have foreseen the umbra trouble, and have left some clue how we can avoid it. Teach me, father.”
The Gooligog regarded them all. In their various ways, they regarded him back. There was the Miggot of One, with his penetrating stare. Lady Duck, now wide awake and impatient. Spector the Thinking Gnome, probably analyzing his very silence. King Bison, looking anxious. The wretched Willie, who had outwitted him. And the housemouse, considering him, licking its lips.
It was the housemouse that decided him. They knew, housemice did.
“If you insist, Willie,” the Gooligog said loftily.
Autumn in Mara Zion
The Gooligog insisted on a good night’s rest before undertaking the task of teaching Fang. Early the following morning, the young gnome showed up at the swamp, alert and freshly-scrubbed. The Gooligog met him at the door.
“Oh, it’s you,” he said, as though surprised.
“You haven’t forgotten?”
“Of course not. You just looked different. Cleaner, somehow.”
“You’re looking pretty clean yourself, Father,” said Fang, anxious to make a good impression.
The Gooligog glanced around the marshy ground, seeking a suitable place to start the lesson. “Over here,” he said, leading the way to a low, moss-encrusted stump. He sat on it cross-legged, arranging his ceremonial memorizing robe decorously over his thighs. A shaft of sunlight stabbed through the sparse foliage of autumn and illuminated him like a god. “Sit at my feet,” he said in sonorous tones.
“The ground’s wet.”
“The wetness or otherwise of the ground is a mere detail when compared to the gift of memory which I, and all our ancestors, will bestow on you, Willie.”
“Quite probably, but I’m not sitting in this muck. Why don’t we both sit on your doorstep?”
“A doorstep is not the place to undertake this task. The signs must be right. The environment must be suitable.”
“Just wait a moment, then.” Fang trotted over to a pile of assorted belongings outside the Gooligog’s door and returned with an old rush mat. “This will do,” he said, laying it on the ground and sitting down.
“That mat belongs to my mouse. He’s not going to like this,” said the Gooligog—unnecessarily, as it turned out, because the housemouse emerged from the burrow at a scuttling run, took hold of a corner of the mat in its yellow teeth and began to tug.
“Go home!” snapped Fang, his patience wearing thin. “Can’t you control this thing?” he asked his father.
“The mouse has more right to the mat than you do, Willie. He has been my constant companion for many years, which is more than I can say for you.”
“Yes, and you know why he he’s been your constant companion, don’t you?”
The Gooligog’s face froze into an expression of suffering. The mouse jerked vigorously at the mat, gradually working both mat and Fang toward the burrow.
“Listen,” said Fang in exasperation, standing up. “Do we have to go through all this? You’re going to teach me to educe, that’s all. It’s no big deal, is it?”
His childhood had been notable for quarrels with his father. He had invariably bested the Gooligog with his more incisive reasoning. The Gooligog, however, had just as invariably leaned on the dignity of his position and insisted on respect for its own sake. This provided the perfect counter to any common-sense argument Fang might put up. That had been decades ago, since which Fang had thankfully lived alone. Now this morning in the marsh was turning into a repetition of his childhood. “Either you teach me or you don’t!” shouted Fang, infuriated. “But there’s no way I’m sitting in the mud!”
“It is the tradition that the pupil sits at the feet of the master,” intoned the Gooligog, keeping calm.
“No more!” said Fang. He stormed off to the Gooligog’s burrow and entered, seating himself at the table. He prepared to wait his father out. Time went by. There was a crash of thunder and rain began to fall heavily, to Fang’s great satisfaction.
Shortly afterward the Gooligog came hurrying into the burrow, drenched. “You have angered the gods,” he remarked. Quickly assuming a serene demeanor, he gazed around his squalid dwelling as though seeing it for the first time. “My home will be suitable,” he said. “What could be more so?” In order to achieve the desired elevation he sat on the table, swinging his skinny legs. He stared down at Fang severely. “First we will spend a period in meditation.”
“What shall we meditate about?”
“Anything you bloody well like,” snapped the Gooligog, the mask slipping for an instant. He hastily closed his eyes, and there followed a long silence broken only by the gnawing of the housemouse as he systematically consumed his mat.
Fang, satisfied now that he had broken through his father’s cool reserve, also closed his eyes. He began to think worrisome, lewd thoughts about the Princess of the Willow Tree, and the way she had looked while bathing. After a while, disgusted with the images his mind created, he looked up to find the Gooligog regarding him loftily.
“The time is r
ipe,” said the old gnome. “We shall begin. First, you will repeat this apothegm after me. Out of the womb of the Tin Mothers …”
“The what?”
“The Tin Mothers.”
“Out of the womb of the Tin Mothers.”
“We are born into the realms of space.”
“We are born into the realms of space.”
“Freely to travel the endless way.”
“Freely to travel the endless way.”
“In token of which deliverance we undertake this vow.”
“Does this go on very long?”
“Repeat it, Willie. Do you want to fail your duty?”
“In token of which deliverance we undertake this vow.”
The Gooligog went on to repeat the rest of that interminable statement that became known in the Song of Earth—incorrectly—as the Memorizers’ Mantra. It included words very familiar to later humans towards its conclusion:
I will not kill any mortal creature.
I will not work any malleable substance.
I will not kindle the Wrath of Agni.
And the rider that dealt specifically with the gnomes:
Except insofar as it may be necessary to ensure the survival of my subspecies, and this proviso will endure only for forty thousand of the years of the planet Earth.
In consideration of which vow I require that the memories of my ancestors be made available to me.
“… be made available to me.” Fang, whose eyes had been squeezed shut in concentration, looked up at his father. “Is that it?”
“That is the apothegm. Now comes the learning. It is necessary that you learn the whole apothegm and be able to repeat it completely, without mistakes. And you must never forget it, because the time will come when you have to teach it to another. Choose your successor wisely.”
“It’s rather long, isn’t it, father?”
“It would be pointless to have an apothegm that any gnome might hit upon by accident. You must never, never repeat it to anyone other than the person you have chosen as your successor. Otherwise we would have Memorizers springing up all over the place, and you can imagine what a confusion of history that would result in. Remember, Willie, gnomish history is yours and mine in this part of the world. It must be accurate, and contain only those facts which you have sifted and analyzed and decided are correct and valuable. Do not fill our history with dross.”
Fang, the Gnome (Song of Earth) Page 23
