“I doubt if that’s a real problem, if you and Ti aren’t recognized. All Kauri look absolutely identical except to another Kauri, the same as all members of the nymph family. Remove her wings and color her leaf-green and she could be any wood nymph in the world—sorry. But you get the point. It’s only by your total familiarity with her personality and manners that you know it’s her and not another. I’m not concerned about her being recognized at all.”
Doctor Mujahn looked like a bumbling, middle-aged accountant in dark brown monklike robes, complete with small mustache and thin, slicked-down hair and glasses. He also looked like the kind of man who’d forget his head if it wasn’t attached.
He poked and probed and took some skin and blood samples and cooked up a whole bunch of weird stuff, and he often had to be reminded that a subject was there and he wasn’t doing research in his laboratory.
“Bleaching the skin is out, but we can tint it, going from the more olive cast to bronze,” he muttered, not really to anybody else but himself. “We’ve got endless options on the hair, but because of the skin bath I’d recommend a medium brown. Poor contrast but it’ll have a slight reddish tint, and it can be cropped and thickened, yes. Hmmm… Brown eyes… Let’s see, let’s see.” He fumbled through a case full of vials. “Red… bloodshot… black… pinkeye… Ah! This one! Can’t tell for sure what exact color will come out, but it should be somewhere between emerald and turquoise.”
“Wait a minute. You can even change my eye color?” Joe asked him.
“No problem. Simplest of all, really, except for making everything black or albino. That’s child’s play.” He puttered around some more and came up with a vial that seemed made of polished obsidian. “Ah! Yes, the final ingredient! I find it fascinating that your people don’t have much in the way of facial or body hair.”
“What is it? Hair-growing formula?”
“Yes. We looked to give one fellow a hairier chest once. Poor man looked like an ape at the end. Tsk-tsk. Blew my demonstration. Oh, don’t worry! It was a simple mistake—I used one part per thousand when it should have been one per hundred thousand. I was always better at working out formulas than following them. Once baked a loaf of bread that rose so dramatically it blew the roof off the house. Not as bad as the fireworks mixture I did once. You can still see the crater where the town used to be… Hmmm… All right. Now I have everything worked out for you exactly correct. At least I hope I do.”
Joe felt much like Irving had felt being introduced to Gorodo. All he wanted was out of there.
He had Ti—no, Mia now, he’d have to remember that—in the room with him. Poquah was also there, looking over the alchemist’s shoulder, and that was the only reassurance he had. The Imir was one of the few known adepts who was of faerie, and he was pretty damned good. Ruddygore said he’d never be as good as a human adept with the same talent, simply because he was of faerie, but that he was already the most knowledgeable and powerful of the elf family in all history. The Imir were also one of the rare warrior races of elves, and were great in a fight. But Ruddygore had proclaimed that his adept was needed here, particularly if Joe failed.
First the alchemist used a bathtub that could only have been Ruddygore’s—it was the largest even Joe had ever seen—and, after elf servants filled it with water, he began mixing and stirring various potions in there. Joe grew more nervous when he saw that no exact measuring devices were being used; it was a pinch of this and two drops of that.
Finally, Doctor Mujahn proclaimed the mixture correct. “You must get in and submerge completely,” he told Joe. “Eyes and mouth shut, but once under, turn your lips out in a pucker, as if about to give a big kiss. That’s quite important. Don’t worry if you swallow a little bit. The worse that will do is turn your urine green for a few days. Stay under until I tap you on the head. Then you can come up. That, too, is important.”
“Uh—you’re sure I’m not gonna come out purple or something?”
“Reasonably sure. Of course, I could always test, I suppose, but it’s such a waste of time.”
“Test!” Joe ordered.
He sighed. “Very well, very well. Let’s see. Ah. This leather patch will do fine.” He picked up a small patch of dark brown leather, stuck it to the end of a pair of pliers, and dipped it into the bathtub. Then he waited, and waited, whistling a bit as he did so.
“Hey! How long does this take?” Joe asked nervously. “I have to breathe, you know!”
“Oh, almost done. Another little bit… yes… there!” He pulled the patch up.
The leather was a yellow orange and most unattractive.
“I don’t want that color!” Joe protested.
“Oh, don’t worry about that. It’s matched to your current skin color. Naturally, it’s going to have a different, but predictable, effect on ordinary brown cow leather. It will work. This is the expected result. Come, come! Your turn!”
Joe sighed. “All right, all right. If it goes too wrong Ruddygore will have to cancel this whole thing and send other people.” He slipped off his loincloth and sandals and went over, hoisted himself up, paused a moment, took a deep breath, let it out, then took in another and held it, then slid into the tub. He submerged all the way, eyes shut, as instructed, but only at the last minute did he remember the pucker. A little did come in. It tasted like cream soda.
His whole body tingled, and he was very uncomfortable. Besides, the water might have been nice and warm when they poured it, but it was at best lukewarm now. He began to fear his lungs were going to burst, and he could hold his breath a pretty long time. As long as he had to pucker, why the hell didn’t they give him a breathing straw? Just when he decided he could hold it no longer, that he was coming up anyway, he felt a none too gentle blow on his forehead and he immediately broke through the surface, gasping for air and coughing.
“Out! Out! Get out quickly or you won’t stay even!” the alchemist shouted, oblivious to his discomfort. He managed to lift himself out and stood there dripping on the floor.
Mia brought him a towel and he wiped his face and eyes and opened them, then looked around. “Well?” he asked, then looked down.
For the first time in his life, Joe de Oro was truly golden. Not bright gold, but the natural kind, the kind you saw in those California and Hawaiian surfing films.
“I want to do the hair before the solution dries,” the alchemist said, busily mixing. “Here. Just soak your hair completely in this bowl, then come up and we’ll dry it off.”
He was suddenly forced over a large bowl full of foul-smelling stuff, rotten egg stinking stuff, and his head was dunked in it. The doctor used a small ladle to apply it to areas that couldn’t be totally submerged, then said, “All right, out. Take this towel and dry your hair as thoroughly as you can. Quickly now! Delay too long and your hair will lose all its color.”
That got him moving, with Mia’s help. His whole scalp tingled, and it wasn’t comfortable at all.
“That’s sufficient,” the alchemist pronounced. “Now come sit in this chair. Girl, you take those scissors and comb and trim his hair nicely in back!”
“Can you do a haircut, Mia?” Joe asked nervously.
“I shall do my best, Master,” she told him.
“Go to it, then.”
The alchemist was still moving fast. “Wait. Before you cut, let me put these drops in his eyes. It will sting a bit. Close them, and keep them closed until I tell you to open them. In the meantime, I’m going to apply the hair paste.”
The guy was as quick and good with drops as an eye doctor, Joe had to admit, but that stuff burned. Not the paste that was being applied over a lot of his face and to his arms, chests, and legs, though. That itched like crazy instead, but every time he went to scratch at it Doctor Mujahn slapped his hand.
Mia’s combing wasn’t too great, either. Actually, it wasn’t so much her as it was the tangles he obviously had in abundance. She kept running into them, trying to comb them out, and, in most cases, wo
und up cutting them out. It felt as if she were doing a lot of cutting back there, and that made him almost as nervous as Doctor Mujahn did.
“Open your eyes!” the alchemist ordered, and he did.
“Blurry as hell,” he said.
“That will pass. Close them again, though. Not quite there yet.”
Now he felt the itching paste being washed from his body with very warm water. The water felt good, but the itching didn’t stop.
“Open your eyes again!” Mujahn ordered. He did, and it was even blurrier. The alchemist studied them, frowning, then he nodded. “All right. Stop the haircut, girl. I’m going to wash his eyes.”
He was given another set of eyedrops, and was told this time to keep blinking. He did, and, slowly, his eyesight began to clear. Mujahn gave him two more flushes, men pronounced himself satisfied.
“Finish the hair now, girl! Well, big fellow, how do you feel?”
“Itchy,” he responded.
“Quite natural. You’ve never had hair there before. Give it a few more days and you’ll have several month’s growth. There! My own mother wouldn’t know you now!”
“Your mother is not the one I’m worried about,” Joe responded. “Mia, how much longer is it gonna be?”
“It is mostly done, Master. I hope you will be pleased.”
“I want to see what I look like, damn it!”
Poquah looked him over. “Actually, since I know your visage well and watched the process, I recognize you, but I doubt if anyone who did not look very closely and very well with great suspicion would, sir.”
“Damn it, Mia, when will you be done? I’m not going to the ball, you know.”
“Just another minute, Master.”
“That’s what you said before.”
“Not too much longer…”
“Finish it, damn it! Now!”
She stiffened, then did two more snips and a comb. “Yes, Master.”
The very instant he regretted the tone he also realized that this was exactly what Ruddygore was talking about. An apology was stopped before it began. You never, never apologized to a slave.
He got up and stalked into the other room, which was a dressing room of sorts and had a full mirror. He stopped, looked at himself, and hardly believed what he saw. Yeah, okay, his face and body weren’t really changed. He was still the same guy. But the changes, all entirely superficial, were as dramatic as a sorcerous transformation.
The most startling were the azure blue eyes. Geronimo had blue eyes, it was said, but he’d never expected to see it. The hair was thick and slightly curly, more beach-bum stuff, and a sandy reddish brown. The eyebrows were a slightly darker brown, probably because he’d wiped his eyes, but it looked natural at least. And the complexion change, for all its discomforts, was actually quite subtle, which made it, in combination with the rest, all the more effective.
But most dramatic was his face. He actually had a thick stubble! Not the occasional wispy hair he’d known, but whiskers. Not yet a beard, but certainly even now at the stage where most white men would be if they hadn’t shaved in a week. Nice and full, too. And hair was also growing over much of the rest of his body! He hadn’t had this sort of hair since he’d returned from that body Ruddygore and his pet demon had formed for him long ago, the same body he was now supposed to destroy.
He turned and saw Mia standing there, looking at him. ”Well? Am I a new man or not?”
“The change is—dramatic, Master.”
“You don’t approve?”
“It is not for me to approve or disapprove. But it wears well on you, Master. No enemy is going to recognize you now.”
And that, of course, was the real point.
“It’s a very good haircut,” he told her, unable to resist.
She was about to respond when Doctor Mujahn came in. “Would you like your voice altered? Wouldn’t be much of a problem to raise or lower you an octave, you know, since your baritone’s about in the middle range. Give you a sore throat for a few days, but after that, fine.”
“No, this is more than good enough, Doctor. In fact, it’s positively brilliant. My apologies for doubting you.” He hesitated. “Ah—this beard and body hair is growing at a fantastic rate. It will slow down, won’t it?”
“Oh, of course. Give it a week and you’ll have enough to trim. After that, trim it every couple of days for another week, then it will have slowed to the normal body rate of about a quarter of an inch a month. The body hair will reach its own length and pretty much stop, but it won’t be replaced very quickly.”
“But it won’t fall out, or the colors wear off?”
“Oh, over many years, perhaps, but not otherwise. After about a year, the hair will have a tendency to go gray, but it can always be dyed. The rest—no, not without more treatments from me.”
He nodded. “Mia, fetch me my barbarian outfit and let’s go meet the critics.”
Marge was absolutely stunned. “It’s perfect!.” she assured him. “And when the beard comes in, you could go up to Bo-quillas himself and spit in his face and he wouldn’t know you!”
“That, my dear, is the whole idea,” Throckmorton P. Ruddy-gore put in. “I have had my staff work up a past history for you, by the way, as a cover story. It will hold up if you practice it. We’ve also worked out a route, of sorts, although circumstances might alter it. I’ll discuss it with you later.”
Joe nodded. “I just wish I could stop this damned hair from itching so much!”
“Oh, when it comes in full, that stops,” Ruddygore assured him. “Then it’s simply a matter of a trim. You’re just out of practice.”
Irving was even more amazed by Joe, not even recognizing him until the big man spoke.
“Oh, wow! You look like Conan of Hawaii!” he exclaimed. Then his face fell. “I guess this means you’re goin’ soon.”
“We leave tomorrow morning,” Joe told him. “I wish more than anything you could come with us, Irv, but it’s just not time yet.”
“I know. I just… well, I just have this crazy…Oh, damn, I’m afraid you won’t come back!”
“If I’m alive, I’ll come back. That I swear,” Joe assured him. “But there’s always that possibility. There was that possibility every time I climbed into a truck for a run or crossed a street.”
“If they get you, I’ll get them,” Irving said firmly. “I promise you that.”
“Then you think you can stick it out with Gorodo?”
The boy grinned evilly. ‘Oh, him and me are gonna get along real fine. He don’t know ’bout karate!”
Joe laughed and hugged him and held him close.
It was dark; they had all eaten, and Marge had gone into Terdiera for her own needs with a promise to be back by ten. Kauri were by nature nocturnal; they could function in daylight, but always in a slight stupor, almost a jet-lag feeling of being up at the wrong time. But nighttime was when they needed a flying sentinel most in any event.
Joe was spending the last hours with Irving and would also not be up until the meeting. Mia was going around, seeing to the last minute details, and was now heading out to the courtyard to practice a dance with her new castanets.
In truth, she still worried Ruddygore the most. He had gotten the report from Poquah of her reaction to Joe’s anger, and he knew she was hurt, that she’d conveyed that hurt wordlessly to Joe, and he’d softened because of it. The half measures he’d taken clearly weren’t adequate. Only a clean break, at the risk of her ego, would do the trick after all. There was no other way open to him.
He stepped out quickly from behind a pillar just in front of her and she jumped a bit, startled. “I—I am sorry, my lord. I did not see you mere.”
“My fault entirely,” he responded, then lifted his hand. She immediately stiffened, in an immediate trance.
“Mia,” he said softly, “I am going to tell you some things about yourself and you will believe them and know that they are true.”
“Yes, my lord.”
> “You are not, nor have you ever been, the highborn and demigoddess Tiana,” he told her. “The memories you have of the parents and siblings of Mia are true. You were, however, Tiana’s maid and slave in the palace. All of your memories and impressions of that life, of Joe and Tiana, come from that. The Dark Baron had you kidnapped and brought to Earth in order to learn intimate details of his enemies, Joe and Tiana, and, as you were under his power, you did so. When he captured Tiana, he first interrogated her, and from that you learned the other details, and then he killed her. Then he cast a spell so that you believed that you were Tiana. He was going to use you to get at us, but he was defeated and so could not use you and his hold on you was broken. You returned as Tiana, and basically fooled yourself that you were really Tiana, the details you knew and your own worshipful devotion to Tiana making you refuse to admit that she was dead and, thanks to the new body and the Rules that gripped you, convincing even Joe that you were really Tiana.
“But when you returned to Husaquahr, you became the slave Mia once more, since that is who you were and the only person you can be. You love Joe, have since your days in the palace, but you know you can never be more than his slave. You now truly realize that you can never keep up the pretense of being Tiana and you are going to abandon it. But you won’t stop loving Joe, no matter how cross he is, no matter if he even beats you, no matter if he has a hundred other women. To be Joe’s slave is your highest aspiration. You are proud to be his slave and proud that for so long you were taken as Tiana’s equal. That is the true source of your own pride. You now know that, were you not a slave, you might have been her equal. You have proven as smart, as tough, and as resourceful as she was. But even as you know your duty, you will ever after know and accept your status and your place.”
He paused, sorry it had come to this. If she survived this—if he survived this, if they couldn’t pull it off!—and if he ever figured that body-switching trick, he promised himself that he would make it up to her, get her out of this body and into one commensurate in status with her intelligence and skills. Until then, this would have to do.
Songs of the Dancing Gods dg-4 Page 14
