Free Marianne, the Madame, and the Momentary Gods by Sheri S. Tepper Page A

loci,’ the Foo Dog said. ‘Every locus in the universe has one of us attendant to it. We give material space its reality by giving time its duration. Each moment is dependent upon us. Hence, momentary gods.’
    ‘But if you’re not in your proper – locus, then what happens to the universe?’ she asked, trying to keep her mind off the mess in the fireplace that had stopped screaming and started hissing as it boiled away to nothing.
    ‘We’re there,’ said the Foo Dog. ‘And here. Being in two places at once is very common for a momentary god. We’re basically a wave form with particular aspects.’
    ‘Someone asked me if I had dismissed you,’ she said, trying to remember who.
    ‘We were very gratified when you did not,’ the Wolf Bitch said, licking her nose. ‘Being away from one’s nexus is stimulating.’
    In the fireplace, the thing subsided with a final whimper into a pile of ash. Marianne looked at it. She was not sure what it had been. She did not want to see it again.
    ‘What do you think that was?’ she asked, pointing.
    ‘It could have been one of us,’ the Foo Dog said, turning to the Dragon Dog. ‘Do you think it was one of us momegs? I thought for a moment it looked rather familiar. When it started to yell.’
    Dragon Dog nodded, ‘One of us. Whoever summoned it had built a dismissal in, however. When you burned it, Marianne, you dismissed it. It went back, wherever it belonged.’
    ‘But it wasn’t shaped like a dog. I thought maybe all momentary gods …’
    The Black Dog rolled over and laughed at her out of blood-red eyes. ‘Momegs for short, Marianne. Why should it have resembled a dog? Among the infinite loci in the universe you will find an infinity of gods, momegs, one of every conceivable shape and kind and power, no two alike, though many may be similar. We five are merely similar. We are not alike. That we are doglike is not coincidental.
Marianne
picked us for that reason. She needed doglike creatures for what you – she – meant to do.’
    ‘It wasn’t me, but pass that for the moment. How did I – she – know where you were?’
    ‘If you don’t know that, how do you expect us to know? Somehow you knew. She knew. You summoned us.’
    ‘But I – she – didn’t dismiss you?’
    ‘For which we are grateful. Our gratitude explains why we have taken the trouble to remain close at hand, to provide such guardianship as possible.’
    ‘I didn’t do it because I didn’t know how,’ she confessed, thinking even as she did so that it might be dangerous to be that honest about her own ignorance. ‘I wish you’d realize it wasn’t me. It really wasn’t!’
    ‘What was she is now you,’ the Foo Dog said, not unkindly. ‘We can only address her by addressing you. She gave herself for you. You don’t seem grateful.’
    ‘If you thought about it, you’d know how I feel,’ she snapped. Even knowing it was a dream didn’t protect her from anger. ‘How would you like it if someone you didn’t know laid some great burden on you before you were born. So, she stopped being. I’m sorry. I go on being. I’m not sorry about that. She didn’t dismiss you, maybe because she forgot or didn’t know how, any more than I do. What are we talking about it for?’
    ‘Let me wake up,’ she thought. ‘Please, let this go on by and I’ll wake up.’
    The Foo Dog commented, ‘You didn’t know how, true. But you took no steps to learn how to dismiss us, either. That means you didn’t mind our being loose. For which we are, as we have said, grateful. Our gratitude must now take some palpable and practical form toward whichever of you is available to us. We must offer such advice and help as we can. It must be obvious even to you, Marianne, that you are under attack.’
    She shook her head, not willing to concede this.
    ‘Oh yes. Yesterday’s mishaps were not a mere run of ill luck. Other misfortunes undoubtedly began today the minute that crystalized momeg arrived in