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This did not sit terribly well with urTih. Not the essence-draining, he didn't know about that. The urRu and the Skekses were not that closely linked. What didn't sit well with the urRu in question was the prospect of losing any more body parts--usually unexpectedly--to the Skeksis' mad experiments.

Now usually the urRu, urTih included, accepted everything with a quiet, stoic patience. It was simply their way. Things happened, they adjusted, they moved on.

It didn't mean they had to like it.

Nothing is truly infinite. Not even the patience of an urRu. And round about the fifth time he'd collapsed for no reason and with little warning in the middle of something and had had to be resuscitated by urIm the Healer only to come round about three weeks later, urTih's patience had worn quite, quite thin. One day he'd woken up to find he was missing an arm. And he'd lost a leg quite unexpectedly, causing him to tumble down almost the entirety of the spiral path in a very inconvenient and painful manner. He'd also somehow lost sight in his right eye while casting a divinitory bolas, which caused the throw to go wild and hit urSol the Chanter squarely upside the head, knocking him unconscious and stopping the music entirely. Needless to say, it was taken as a Very Bad Sign. If he recalled, the Gelfling extermination started not long after that, but that is beside the point.

So after this latest surprise bloodletting, enough was enough. He wasn't going to lose any more limbs or organs or senses. Not, at least, without something to say about it. So he sat down somewhere and meditated upon contacting to the mind of his other half. It was much easier, now that the valley and the castle were so close. Much easier.

Meanwhile, in the castle, skekTek cackled quietly to himself and set about preparing a round of tests. A whole new kind of essence needed thoroughly examined, of course. He paused, glancing at his hand; it was starting to hurt. Who knew what was in that youngling's mouth? An infection would be distracting, so he paused to disinfect the wound.

Hm. Sure is quiet.

We need to talk.

"AAaaAAAaaAaAaAaAaANNGHhh!" came the predictable startled reply at the sound of a voice in his mind. Test tubes went flying. "Don't do that!" Wheeze. Wheeze. He leaned against the table. His hallucinations are just getting rude, now.

I am not a hallucination. You know who I am.

Quasi-avian meh-face. "I don't want to talk to you."

We are going to talk, anyway. Rather, I am going to talk and you are going to listen.

"Yoooouuuu can't talk to m--er, think at me like that!"

I can. And I will. Now see here, I've tolerated you hacking off bits of yourself--and thereby bits of me--for long enough, I should think. You try going about your business and suddenly losing an arm or the sight in one eye, eh? Wouldn't like it if the shoe were on the other foot, would you?

"You don't wear shoes," skekTek sneered. Laboratory scientists are not well-known for their debate skills.

As I recall, you aren't terribly fond of the cold.... An unaccountable shiver ran through the Skeksis and he wheezed harder. Given that a good deal of him was metal and nothing conducted cold quite like metal, it wasn't long before his beak was chattering and his artificial eye inexplicably frosted over. "C-c-c-curss-s-se youuu...."

I can stand in this cold all day if need be, the telepathic voice reminded him. And urTih could, too. Not only were the urRu naturally warmer, they were bloody stoic. And if any systemic shutdown rebounded back at him, he'd simply lie down and wait it out. Damn and blast.

"Wh-wh-what d'you w-want-t-t?" skekTek shivered.

I simply want you to tread more cautiously. Remember that we share an existence, just as the others do. And fix whatever it is you put in your head--even I grow weary of losing time.

After much spluttering and shivering, skekTek finally acquiesced. "Oh all r-right...."

It is not that much of a chore to work toward maybe a little harmony between existences, now, is it?

"SPLJJJGNGHZZXXXZGGNAAAGH!"

After that comment, however, he found he was alone with his thoughts again, and, after a few more moments, growing warmer. He wheezed and gasped and hissed. Neh. Damned stubborn old--Graaaaaaaaaaaoh, forget it. Once he found he could move again, he put it out of his mind. There was work to do.

Besides, the portal hijacking device might bring in its virst victim any time, now.

The urRu had returned to the valley, and they had more information.

This did not sit well with the Skekses.

Come to think of it, a lot of things didn't sit well with the Skekses. Partly that was simply their nature--unrest dogged their every waking and usually their every sleeping moment because of what they were.

More to the point, though, there were specific things that bothered them. Specific enough to cause skekSo, the Emperor, to stir from the castle and make the journey to the nearby valley. Thoughts roiled in his mind. Thoughts that should not, to all reason, even be there. He had been dead, of that he was certain. He had been dead and his mind had rejoined with its other half in unity with the others for ... a time that had been unmeasured. Unmeasured and unmeasurable. But now he was returned to this form, as they all were.

He didn't want to know why. He didn't care why. The only thing he thought about now was the grudge he still carried from the last life over how it had been ended. Taken from him by his other half. A wretched trick, unbalancing the whole thing by killing him. But moreover, a wretched trick simply killing him. He was going to have WORDS with urSu.

So he let himself in, the protective field of the Standing Stones meaningless to one such as he. He stormed along the spiral path until he found the cave in question. He stalked right in through the entrance, finding his counterpart calmly taking pen to parchment, inscribing something or other in the convoluted spiral writing the urRu favoured so much. He pointed a talon at the other and hissed. "You."

UrSu looked up. Nodded. Folded away the scroll and had the temerity to give skekSo his full, placid, undivided attention. "Yes."

This did not stop skekSo's tirade. "You killed me," he spat, taking a step forward. "You conniving, suicidal wretch, you saw an opening and you killed me."

"Just so," was urSu's reply. "It was necessary."

"IT WAS UNDERHANDED!" Spittle pattered unregarded on the patiently listening urRu. "Everything was within my grasp, under my control! And I lost everything to you and that slow poison you had that herbalist of yours cook up! Don't think I didn't know what you were doing! Why else d'you think I fought it the way I did? I'll bet those drugs I drank didn't make the end very pleasant!"

"I managed to say what needed said," was urSu's reply. Had it been anyone else, a casual observer might almost think the old Mystic was enjoying baiting his frothing counterpart with this unflappable calm.

For an answer, skekSo hissed wordlessly and gesticulated madly. What needed said...! GRAAAAAAH. What had needed said had been enough to send that wretched Gelfling into the teeming divided midst of the remaining Skekses and fulfil that blasted Prophecy! Splj... nngh... ghhjj....

....

"...You lot hid a Gelfling for sixteen years."

"We did."

"...And raised him without our ever finding out."

"We did."

"...And sent him to fulfil the Prophecy the moment your sorry carcass dispersed."

"We did."

"...." Words failed skekSo for a moment, one talon poised in the air. He closed his beak with a snap. Dropped his hand. Found something to sit on, not particularly caring if urSu consented to this action or not. After several beats of Skeksis and urRu staring at one another, he finally spoke again.

"I would almost say," he said. "Almost, that that was nearly a tactic worthy of us. But that would be impossible, wouldn't it?"

"Of course," came the quiet response.

"Because we are nothing alike."

"Just as you say."

"Complete polar opposites in every manner."

"Quite."

Another pause.

"Tea?" urSu offered placidly.

"Oh, all right," skekSo answered grouchily.

Unrest had come to the valley.

It could be seen in the whirling stones--the pendulums and the bolas, the gyromantic balances, all of them. The spiral patterns they traced always pointed to the same thing. Even the sand paintings gave the same signs. Disaster lay in the whorls and curves, great change in the pattern of every stone cast and every shadow measured. Every spiral groove counted. Every number arranged and rearranged. Every tone heard, every dream recalled, every detail meditated upon.

Unrest and curiosity.

It was not absent from the castle, either. In many things the urRu and the Skekses differed, but in this they did not--however twisted their senses, the Skekses could feel something lurking on the multiversal horizon as surely as did the urRu. They could read it in flames, in tarot cards, in runes, in patterns cast again and again. Furtively.

The only thing neither of them could see, no matter what they tried, was whether any of the disaster or change would come to them. Upon that the Master Time Spiral remained silent. Upon that the Crystal gave nothing. Worlds would end, realities would die, and there was nothing that would indicate whether they, themselves, were safe or not.

There was only one thing for it.

The Skekses, as was their nature, took the easy path. Hiding in their castle, they sent Crystal Bats into the Nexus, far and wide, in the hope that the spy crystals would send back some indication that someone, somewhere, would know more. And that that someone could be captured and interrogated.

The urRu, on the other hand, came to a decision, and it was a difficult one. Theirs is not to act, but to observe, and to learn not from doing, but from being. And yet, not even these ultimately resigned beings wished to die, to see their world destroyed. They would have to journey to the Nexus. And they would have to learn more.

So they set out on the trek, knowing that the Crystal Bats searched far and wide on the bidding of their masters. What would come of it would come.

It had started out a lovely day, really. The suns were shining, a breeze was blowing, the birds were singing. Only a few fluffy clouds in the sky. Beautiful. The kind of day people paint pictures of and print on greeting cards--if one likes the sort of paintings that include three suns. Who knows, there is probably a niche market somewhere in the Nexus for picturesque trinary system landscapes. At any rate, it had started out a lovely day.

That is, until the trucks came.

They were Nexus trucks so they were not, in themselves, a bad thing. Clean-burning fusion motors and all that. The people in the trucks weren't even all that bad--scores of burly humans moving large heavy objects and engaged in building things, which is a noisy endeavour in itself, despite whatever sort of eclectic Nexus technology their chosen trade might incorporate.

No, what pretty much ruined the peace of the day like a air horn in a library were the beings to whom the objects in the trucks belonged. Ten beings, tall, beaked and loud, looking like someone's cross between vultures and lizards and wearing elabourate robes, swarmed about the place, screeching and shouting and bellowing. They waved their arms. They pointed and gesticulated with taloned hands. They hissed and bared curved yellow teeth. There was absolutely nothing that wasn't imperative to be communicated at top volume, it seemed.

Now, the Nexus Construction Co. (WE BUILD EVERYTHING, YES, EVEN THAT! ASK ABOUT OUR BLOCK TRANSFER RATES!) had been there for several hours, working on the construction of a huge edifice before the movers and the beings arrived. Now, the confusion simply increased exponentially, because every level of the structure that was completed was immediately pounced upon by scaly beings yelling at the Nexus Movers.

That's right, those Nexus Movers. Complete with the same large curly-haired fellow with the clipboard and if he thought moving in the first group of ten nonhumans was bad, it was nothing compared to all of this ... noise.

And, yes, they know how fragile those components are.

And yes, they know that's your statue, as in you made it, it's your statue.

And YES, they know the swords go with the big black rock and the swords and the big black rock go over there and nobody will separate the swords from the big black rock and what do you MEAN he said the swords and the big black rock actually go over there and why don't you just take it up with the fellow in the armour plating, and just LEAVE THE SWORDS AND THE BIG BLACK ROCK!

If he tore out his hair he'd still have plenty left.

Of course, this was all before they had to move in that crystal.

Oh, you didn't know about the crystal? Take a look over there and you'll see the dozen guys hauling it in on the hoverplatform. Go on and watch, everyone else is, even the urRu. Staring in a most ... un-urRu-like manner. As if to say oh, dear GOD I can't believe they actually brought that wretched thing with them....

That was not the tricky bit. Neither was getting the thing in the doors, or through the hallways, up the stairs, through more hallways, or through interior doorways. Oh, no. The tricky bit was bringing it to where the one in all the red and gold told them to bring it. To a room with a hole in the ground.

Let me say this again because I feel it bears repeating. A room. With a hole. In the ground. Not just the floor, but the ground. Going down for god only knows how far, into--what else? Lava.

"Uhm...." Clipboard Guy pointed out. "You do realise this is a workplace hazard and we will have to charge extra--" He got hissed at for his trouble. Nexus. Oy. Nevertheless, he continued. "So how ... exactly ... d'you expect this thing--" indicating the crystal, "to hang over that?" Indicating the hole.

Clearly someone was glad he asked. Namely a walking collection of medical supplies. It rubbed together what Clipboard Guy hoped to God were its hands and explained the situation in a voice that sounded custom-made for mad cackling:

"The Crystal," it explained, not so much warming to its subject as working itself up to a boiling frenzy of scientific blather, "creates its own countermagnetic gravitational suspension effect through the energy dispersed through its perpetual internal reversed hysteresis--"

"Yeayeayeayeayeah," Clipboard Guy cut him off when it was clear he was no longer speaking English. "Just tell us how we get it up there."

"With the proper spin, of course."

"With the proper... okay." He pointed at the vaguely Skeksis-shaped explosion in an ER. "You're in charge of getting the thing up there. But nobody. Is looking into any lights, y'got that? Not even if there's a bonus in it for us, not even if you need someone else to align the mirrors. No lights."

Curses. Foiled mad scientist at two o'clock.

Work proceeded, as work so often does, despite the distractions. Some schlub ended up looking into the lights anyway, though granted, Jake was never the brightest bulb on the Nexus Movers' Christmas tree. Another mover went missing, but all they had to do was follow the sound of the hollering and cursing and crashing to find the fat being trying to cook roast dwarf. He quickly learnt size was inversely proportional to violent action among humans before forcibly losing consciousness. There were countless games of "A little to the left, no your other left, no your other-other left;" even more games of "gee, how old is--" crash-tinkle-tinkle "uh, these?"; and a cadre of very large movers banded together very early on and made very short work of the being with the eyepatch and hook hand after a slip of the memory caused him to address them as "slaves," duct taping him to the ceiling in a manner that would require powered hand tools to get him back down and eliciting raucous laughter from the other nine.

It was well into the night by the time this was finished. Everything was inside the finished castle, and even that crystal thing was up and hovering unaccountably. The issue of payment had come up, a far larger bill than had accumulated for the neighbouring urRu, and Clipboard Guy was engaged in a heated quarrel with what had identified itself as this bunch's Treasurer. Trust a Treasurer to never pay up when the bill comes round. The movers stood by looking dirty and menacing. The other Skekses stood by looking alien and also menacing. It didn't look as though this was going to go anywhere, and as everyone knows, there's no Nexus authority to bring this to.

That is, until the being in the armour plating got fed up with all this yak yak yak talk talk talk. "You'd argue with a lamppost," he growled at the Treasurer before forcibly extracting the requisite amount of gold amid much hissing and growling and tossing it in the direction of the movers. "Now take it and go!" he then bellowed with a grand sweep of an arm. Others hissed and bared their teeth and he simply placed his taloned fists on his hips and nodded with a satisfied growl, as if to say This is how things get done round here. The others retreated to the castle except for one covered in jewels and other royal paraphernalia, who eyed this armour-wearing being long and cannily.

The movers, however, having received their payment, had piled into the truck. No way were they going to stick around and watch this. With cheeky farewells, they rumbled off into the distance.

With movers rumbling off in clouds of dust and Skeksis already creating far much more noise than was even remotely considered neighbourly, the urRu pondered amongst themselves about many things as they slowly and patiently made their way back to their homes. And one of the things they invariably came back to was this:

I wonder if noise-cancelling devices come in stone-beige?

The Nexus is one big cheat. The mutability and elasticity of its very reality means that any part of it can be as new or as old as one wants it to be, can have whatever climate is suitable, whatever character of land is needed, et cetera.

To wit: The original valley of the urRu was occupied and thus shaped to suit their needs for over a thousand years. It carried that ambiance of time and use and constant adjustment. Its energies were the energies of something well-used. Lived in. It was uniquely theirs.

Now, so is this one.

The Standing Stones had been carved, placed, and aligned by urTih the Alchemist, their shape and position and the sigils and patterns carved upon them reflecting energy back and forth between them in a crisscrossing web that protected the entire valley. Intricate circles of them stood not only on the floor of the bowl-like thalweg at the valley's lowest point, but around its rim as well. Too, the part of the valley where their dwellings lay curled inward on a descending spiral, caves spaced at precise intervals among the heavily carved and embellished rocks.

It is probably needless to say that the gardens and waterfalls, streams and pools were all also subtly changed, planted and arranged to a complicated scheme that guided their energies to a specific purpose.

And when all of this was done, after several days of ceaseless slow, patient work, chanting, the spiral whirling of stones and the singing of numbers, the Nexus answered. The reality adjusted itself, as though a bubble of time popped in the centre of the valley.

And now, everything is as it was, which is how the urRu are most at ease, after all; surrounded by the dust of aeons, the ancient hum of energy that had flowed in these patterns for so long that it had become part of the rocks and the trees, the water and the sand. Now they could listen to new songs of realities from the familiarity of their ancient surroundings.

That did not, however, mean all would be at peace.

It was urSu who noticed it first--maybe a vague feeling in his ancient bones or a disquieting pattern in his tea leaves. But soon the others suspected something as well. Something was drawing near. An inevitability. There was nothing for it, they had to know if that inevitability was what they thought it was and they had to know just how near it was drawing.

So the central circular courtyard in the thalweg was staked out for a sand painting. First, urUtt the Weaver spun cords of precise thickness and length, of a certain kind of fibre that proved oddly resonant; while urNol the Herbalist prepared incenses and urAc the Scribe located amongst their dusty records the tellings of how these things had been done before. The others gathered the necessary objects for this work of divinitory art, anything from the actual components for said painting to the carved sticks with which the cords would be strung about the area to the harp and singing bowls placed over there near the tallest of the Standing Stones. The sticks urTih stood upright in the earth in specific locations in accordance with a hypercomplex chart.

Meanwhile, as though strangely removed from all of this, urAmaj the Cook simply continued preparing the evening meal. Some things, after all, continue despite whatever the other events of the day might be.

This preparation took all morning and somewhat past noon. The sun had passed its zenith and was now casting slightly angled shadows against the ground. The painting itself would take hours to create. As a few of the others secured the cords to the sticks in their crisscrossing lines, urZah the Ritual-Guardian made his way to the centre. At the tallest Standing Stone, urUtt had taken position at the harp, urTih amongst the bowls, and urSol the Chanter stood ready to lead the others in a sonorous chorus. For this was the way of the urRu--everything done with song and ritual. Those who did not stand at the centre or by the tall Standing Stone arranged themselves amongst the other stones to form a tetraktys, and were still able to easily reach the cords. Even urAmaj had stepped away from the simmering pots.

A circle was drawn along the ground. The strings plucked in turn, emitting tones that were taken up by harp, bowls, and chanting voices. The grooves that were made in the dusty earth by the plucked strings were filled in with bright sand--aspect lines. And within the circle, along and around, over and under the aspect lines, a spiral formed--a spiral within an elongated isoceles triangle, with great arcs creating paths off of its curves and smaller spirals marching in a line down its center. Colours flared in circles and ellipses and lesser triangles. And all the while the song continued, mixing with the thought coming from and going into the great spiral creation forming on the ground. For hours lines and curves and shapes were created and music soared until at last, when the shadows touched the tip of the painting's triangle, urZah held up a hand and all struck a great chord of harmony that faded into the distance.

Once there was silence, there were only a few beats in which all could examine this painting for what signs it gave them. They stepped toward it. Regarded it meditatively. Then, as the ritual dictated, urZah obliterated the entire painting with a mighty sweep of his tail.

A wind blew, scattering the sand.

"So," urSu intoned quietly, slowly heading for the caves. "They shall come, the Skeksis. They shall come and this time their castle will make the wind howl in our nighttimes."

Silence, again, as the others meditated upon this concept.

"Ah well," urAmaj said at length. "The quiet was good while it lasted. Dinner's on."

For few can argue with the wisdom that sometimes one simply has to move on with things.

Beep... beep... beep....

It's the sound distinctive only to large land vehicles of the wheeled persuasion, moving in reverse. This particular vehicle, backing into the journalspace, turns out to be a truck of truly enormous size, bearing the legend NEXUS MOVERS--HAULING YOUR STUFF ACROSS THE MULTIVERSE SINCE GOD ONLY KNOWS WHEN. TESTIMONAL AVAILABLE. Slightly smaller text of a different colour reads: ASK ABOUT OUR ANTI-LOL INSURANCE! It's only the fact that the truck is so large that all of this is able to fit and still be of a readable size from four blocks away.

As big as it is, it's still a Nexus vehicle and, therefore, dimensionally transcendental. You try carrying an entire commune in a truck with normal physics, no matter now huge.

By the time one reaches said truck, a score of burly men are already unloading a collection of odd objects, and another one is speaking to a strange being. The man looks at the clipboard and says in the quasi-Manhattan drawl all teamsters are clearly trained to speak in, "So where d'you want the rocks, Mac?"

If the being in question has any objections whatsoever to being misadressed in such a manner, he gives no indication. Neither does he give any indication that looking up at the man with the clipboard is in any way uncomfortable, though it surely must be. The being stands low to the ground on thick, hunched legs, one of four arms supporting his weight on a complex wooden walking staff as he stretches upward slightly to do this looking. The other three hold random objects in carrying bags. The being's tail presumably balances against the ground. His clothing is rustic, decorated with spirals and sigils, and festooned with seemingly random small amulets and whatnot. A cap of similar make is tied round his horizontally-oriented head, amidst the long, thick grey mane of hair.

The teamster, on the other hand, is simply a human clad in jeans, a shirt with the Nexus Movers logo on it, and a bomber jacket. His hair is a dark curly fluff. He resembles a human malamute somehow--big, fluffy, friendly, and prone to galumphing. The man looks at the being's lugubrious, lined countenance and suddenly needs another coffee. Triple espresso. With a Ritalin chaser. Seriously. Standing before him is nothing more than one of ten examples of the cure for insomnia.

"Actually," the being says meditatively and slowly, "I am called 'Ac,' though, with the prefix it makes a little more sense. My colleague has the map showing the Stones' placement; I am merely here to record the inventory and the cost of service."

The man with the clipboard blinks at this for a moment. Right. Moving Day By Committee.

He makes a note of this. The colleague in question is easily located, though. It's the being over there in similar clothing--though sporting two limbs made of wood and an eyepatch--stumping about and muttering, carrying a parchment on which was drawn some diagramme of almost noneuclidean complexity and marking circles on the ground with a piece of chalk. Way ahead of us, then, at least as much as a being like these can be, moving as slowly as they do. Large men with moving implements are carting massive stones to the circles, then waiting about for the being to finish getting there, muttering whatever he's muttering, drawing the alignment markings, and moving on.

All about the space that's being moved into, similar things happen. Movers with large, heavy objects are directed in esoteric patterns with infinite patience and unspeakable slowness.

That is, when they aren't fumbling retorts full of unidentifiable substances, getting tangled in miles of seemingly random strings and cords, or getting caught up in interminable sessions of "a little to the left, no, your other left." The beings are unnaturally patient, the movers less so. The fellow with the clipboard looks on as two men shift an enormous and hypercomplex loom for the nth time, but everyone freezes at the sound of an enormous THOOM!

"Oh, dear," the being to whom the loom belongs says unflappably, shaking his head. "That will be taken as a bad sign."

A look outside into the quasi-courtyard reveals that one of the enormous stones had been dropped. Their owner has facepalmed. One of the other beings, however, is sketching this and swinging and dangling stones about with his other three hands. Clearly this is an event of massive geomantic significance. The entire operation grinds to a halt until he finishes drawing this and noting what the stones tell him, not to mention the spirals made by their movement, the pattern of the movers' footprints, the time of day, the wind direction, the temperature, the humidity, where everyone was standing at the moment, who dropped what, and the pitch of the sound made when the Standing Stone ceased to, erm, Stand.

F sharp, in case anyone's wondering.

This will probably make all kinds of sense to these beings, these--check the clipboard--urRu. But the day's waning and no matter how many people you have on a job, it takes ages to set up enormous stones and great big implements of all sorts of trades and pursuits until the place looks like some kind of Bronze Age artisan colony and hey, did you know all of this is in a big spiral?

As dusk falls, the oldest and most heavily decorated of the lot approaches from whatever he was doing with the move-in (none of them had simply stood by--once placement of large objects was settled upon, they'd set to unpacking smaller ones), having collected the inventory and invoice of payment.

"I do hope," the being says in a sonorous, ancient voice, "that this is acceptable payment." With that, he--slowly, of course--produces from within a pocket in his clothing a ... Nexus Express Platinum Card. The juxtaposition is, to say the least, a little jarring, and it's a few moments before Mister Clipboard stops blinking and says, "Uh... yeah. This'll work." Card is swiped, found valid, and receipt is printed, which is then handed off to the previously encountered being who'd taken charge of recording things.

"A Nexus Express card?" he asks, handing it back to its owner.

"Yes," the urRu answers gravely. "We find a great many things of interest on eBay."

Best not to ponder that. You don't want to see the collections of everything from out-of-print books to Muppet plushies. Lesser beings have experienced aneurysms at the idea.

The beings return to their tasks and the movers pile into the truck and drive off. They aren't done, after all; the neighbours are moving in in the next couple of days.

Subdivisions. Oy.