“I don’t remember any of these.”

“They’re from the plateau.”

Gundersen shook his head. “When I think of how disgusted you were by the plateau, how strange and frightening it seemed to you that time we had to crash-land there—”

“I was a child then. When was it, eleven years ago? Soon after I met you. I was only twenty years old. But on Belzagor you must defeat what frightens you, or you will be defeated. I went back to the plateau. Again and again. It ceased to be strange to me, and so it ceased to frighten me, and so I came to love it. And brought many of its plants and animals back here to live with me. It’s so very different from the rest of Belzagor — cut off from everything else, almost alien.”

“You went there with Kurtz?”

“Sometimes. And sometimes with Ced Cullen. And most often alone.”

“Cullen,” Gundersen said. “Do you see him often?”

“Oh, yes. He and Kurtz and I have been a kind of triumvirate. My other husband, almost. I mean, in a spiritual way. Physical too, at times, but that’s not as important”

“Where is Cullen now?” he asked, looking intently into her harsh and glossy eyes.

Her expression darkened. “In the north. The mist country.”

“What’s he doing there?”

“Why don’t you go ask him?” she suggested.

“I’d like to do just that,” Gundersen said. “I’m on my way up mist country, actually, and this is just a sentimental stop on the way. I’m traveling with five nildoror going for rebirth. They’re camped in the bush out there somewhere.”

She opened a flask of a musky gray-green wine and gave him some. “Why do you want to go to the mist country?” she asked tautly.

“Curiosity. The same motive that sent Cullen up there, I guess.”

“I don’t think his motive was curiosity.”

“Will you amplify that?”

“I’d rather not,” she said.

The conversation sputtered into silence. Talking to her led only in circles, he thought. This new serenity of hers could be maddening. She told him only what she cared to tell him, playing with him, seemingly relishing the touch of her sweet contralto voice on the night air, communicating no information at all. This was not a Seena he had ever known. The girl he had loved had been resilient and strong, but not crafty or secretive; there had been an innocence about her that seemed totally lost now. Kurtz might not be the only fallen angel on this planet.

He said suddenly, “The fourth moon has risen!”

“Yes. Of course. Is that so amazing?”

“One rarely sees four, even in this latitude.”

“It happens at least ten times a year. Why waste your awe? In a little while the fifth one will be up, and—”

Gundersen gasped. “Is that what tonight is?”

“The Night of Five Moons, yes.”

“No one told me!”

“Perhaps you never asked.”

“Twice I missed it because I was at Fire Point. One year I was at sea, and once I was in the southern mist country, the time that the copter went down. And so on and on. I managed to see it only once, Seena, right here, ten years ago, with you. When things were at their best for us. And now, to come in by accident and have it happen!”

“I thought you had arranged to be here deliberately. To commemorate that other time.”

“No. No. Pure coincidence.”

“Happy coincidence, then.”

“When does it rise?”

“Perhaps an hour.”

He watched the four bright dots swimming through the sky. It was so long ago that he had forgotten where the fifth moon should be coming from. Its orbit was retrograde, he thought. It was the most brilliant of the moons, too, with a high-albedo surface of ice, smooth as a mirror.

Seena filled his glass again. They had finished eating. “Excuse me,” she said. “I’ll be back soon.”

Alone, he studied the sky and tried to comprehend this strangely altered Seena, this mysterious woman whose body had grown more voluptuous and whose soul, it seemed, had turned to stone. He saw now that the stone had been in her all along: at their breakup, for example, when he had put in for her transfer to Earth, and she had absolutely refused to leave Holman’s World. I love you, she had said, and I’ll always love you, but this is where I stay. Why? Why? Because I want to stay, she told him. And she stayed; and he was just as stubborn, and left without her; and they slept together on the beach beneath the hotel on his last night, so that the warmth of her body was still on his skin when he boarded the ship that took him away. She loved him and he loved her, but they broke apart, for he saw no future on this world, and she saw all her future on it. And she had married Kurtz. And she had explored the unknown plateau. And she spoke in a rich deep new voice, and let alien amoebas clasp her loins, and shrugged at the news that two nearby Earthmen had died a horrible death. Was she still Seena, or some subtle counterfeit?

Nildoror sounds drifted out of the darkness. Gundersen heard another sound, too, closer by, a kind of stifled snorting grunt that was wholly unfamiliar to him. It seemed like a cry of pain, though perhaps that was his imagination. Probably it was one of Seena’s plateau beasts, snuffling around searching for tasty roots in the garden. He heard it twice more, and then not again.

Time went by and Seena did not return.

Then he saw the fifth moon float placidly into the sky, the size of a large silver coin, and so bright that it dazzled the eye. About it the other four danced, two of them mere tiny dots, two of them more imposing, and the shadows of the moonslight shattered and shattered again as planes of brilliance intersected. The heavens poured light upon the land in icy cascades. He gripped the rail of the veranda and silently begged the moons to hold their pattern; like Faust he longed to cry out to the fleeting moment, stay, stay forever, stay, you are beautiful! But the moons shifted, driven by the unseen Newtonian machinery; he knew that in another hour two of them would be gone and the magic would ebb. Where was Seena?

“Edmund?” she said, from behind him.

She was bare, again, and once more the slider was on her body, covering her loins, sending a long thin projection up to encompass only the nipple of each ripe breast. The light of the five moons made her tawny skin glitter and shine. Now she did not seem coarse to him, nor overly aggressive; she was perfect in her nudity, and the moment was perfect, and unhesitatingly he went to her. Quickly he dropped his clothing. He put his hands to her hips, touching the slider, and the strange creature understood, flowing obediently from her body, a chastity belt faithless to its task. She leaned toward him, her breasts swaying like fleshy bells, and he kissed her, here, here, here, there, and they sank to the veranda floor, to the cold smooth stone.

Her eyes remained open, and colder than the floor, colder than the shifting light of the moons, even at the moment when he entered her.

But there was nothing cold about her embrace. Their bodies thrashed and tangled, and her skin was soft and her kiss was hungry, and the years rolled away until it was the old time again, the happy time. At the highest moment he was dimly aware of that strange grunting sound once more. He clasped her fiercely and let his eyes close.

Afterward they lay side by side, wordless in the moonslight, until the brilliant fifth moon had completed its voyage across the sky and the Night of the Five Moons had become as any other night.