The Morphodite

by M. A. Foster

  In the wing where she was assigned, there were others about, men and women, girls and boys, patients and employees, and those she watched closely, trying to build an identity by using the hints of their reactions to her; equally importantly, she worked at erasing old patterns which were Rael’s habits, and learning new ones, but that was also hard.

  But, little by little, it began to form. She thought that she would carry it as far as she could in this place, and then, outside, on her own, develop it fully. Because she knew that to vanish completely into the anonymity of the population, she would have to become what she seemed to be; she did not wish to be singled out for any deviation, however insignificant. For she knew very well that the machinery that was Lisagor might be inattentive from time to time, but it could be roused into full alertness very quickly. Rael’s odd science: she still had that, and his martial and survival skills, but she hoped that she would not have to use them. She wanted most of all to be left alone, and vanish.

  And she wanted to forget what Rael’s price had been, what he had had to do, that he could see from the beginning. She felt shame and regret, even though she still knew completely that Rael’s target had been the right one, the pivot point, at that moment. It helped for her to feel a guilt about a cold, calculated murder of an attractive young man, and not as the breaking of a connection holding Lisagor together through the imposition of a third force she had not bothered to trace out, although this lay within the limits of the science Rael had devised.

  News from the outside world was particularly difficult to get, which suggested that her wing was a sort of mental ward; they kept it that way on purpose. Reasonable enough, considering that most of the patients there would have been retreating from the outside reality anyway, and being led back to it was a subtle, gentle task, at which they took their own time.

  Nevertheless, there were hints that something wasn’t quite right outside. Often, and then more often, she would surprise the normally reserved orderlies, engaged in heated discussion, not the less energetic for being conducted in whispers, which would stop as soon as they caught sight of her. She tried to read it, but the data was too thin for her to build an image: Rael’s science built answers like holograms, reconstructing virtual images from the interference of wave fronts. But unlike a hologram, there was a lower threshold limit for assembly, and what she was receiving in the Palliatory was below that limit. Still, it teased her because it seemed to have a particularly dire import for those who talked about it so earnestly. Whatever it was, it seemed to mean some kind of trouble, outside, and it wasn’t getting any better.

  It was about this time that they changed her routine, and put her on outside work, in the landscaped gardens surrounding the Marula Main Palliatory. That was a pleasant change, although it was growing somewhat chill and damp early in the mornings, and in the late afternoons.

  One day, under a high, silvery overcast, she had been working with a small group, finishing a planting set in an odd and random grouping of cast concrete pipes and pipe-junctions. The larger plants had already been set in, and the tubs filled with soil by a detachment from the local labor pool, so that now all that remained was the planting of ornamental creepers and small accent plants, mostly evergreens. Damistofia enjoyed the activity, and being outside; she felt almost normal, although most of her associates seemed to be a dispirited group, with minimal motivation.

  Some she knew by sight; others, not at all. But as she worked, she also watched the others, trying to imagine what circumstances might have brought them here, and what their ultimate fate might be. It saddened her to comprehend that most of those working on the planting didn’t have much of a future: they were withdrawn, passive and resigned to their lot, which was to remain here, doing odd jobs, until some use was found for them, either in the labor pools for the most stultifying jobs, or else material for the Mask Factory, where they would be purged and made faceless servants of the Alloyed Land. That reflection motivated her a bit more, and so she worked more diligently.

  By afternoon, the others on the crew had become familiar to her, so that she knew them as separate personalities, even though she was not interested in them. But one, an older man, she worried about. This one retained some traces of a former high position, but he was the most severely withdrawn of all of them, often talking to himself inaudibly. None of the others seemed to pay any attention to him, and his contribution to the planting seemed to be minimal. When she asked about him, she was told by the more communicative that they knew nothing about him, save that he’d been picked up after a disturbance near the docks, dazed, wandering in the streets, mumbling all things about getting to Tartary, and raving about his agents. They said that he claimed to be the leader of a group of spies, representing vast powers from the Void, but he couldn’t explain how his position had led him to be picked up and unceremoniously assigned to the Marula Palliatory, Deranged Section. They ignored him.

  It was customary to have a midday rest in Marula, and the custom was allowed for the inmates as well, and so, after lunch, they all spread out a little to find sunny spots beside walls or large ornamental rocks, to stretch out, and perhaps to nap a bit under the eyes of the distant supervisors. Damistofia saw something different about this one man, something she needed to do; he was clearly not on a course that would encourage survival. And so after she had eaten the buns they had brought out for lunch, she found the older man, and sat down beside him. She didn’t know exactly what she wanted to do, but she thought if perhaps someone paid a little attention to him, he would come back to himself.

  He paid little attention to her when she sat down, still mumbling disjointedly, and gazing longingly at the low wall that separated the park from the streets of Marula, a wall that might as well have been as high as the sky, as far as getting over it successfully went. She tried to talk to him, but he didn’t respond, so she let him go along as he would, and gradually he seemed to notice her and turn his remarks more toward her.

  “…the only hope was to get to Tartary, but that’s gone, now, too… all gone… everything…” he said. And, “…The fools, they are overreacting, just as we knew they would, and it’s going critical now, feeding on itself, injustice and revenge upon injustice and revenge… I tell you, I know these things, once the people get revenge in their heads, nothing but the deaths of millions will get it out… We could stop it, the fools, they won’t listen…”

  Damistofia said, softly intruding, “Stop what?”

  The man glanced at her with the hunted expression of an animal at bay, and then said, “Listen; this is a world whose people undertook an impossible task—they set their task to totally stop change, evolution of society. They failed, of course—for nothing will stay the same, but they slowed it! They slowed it to a negligible amount! Now all that pressure has been building up for generations…”

  Damistofia thought she had his attention now, and so she prodded him a little: “I know, I’m from these parts myself. We don’t change; that’s the way we made this world when we came here. Every child in the schools knows that Why does it fail now?”

  “They had help! That’s what. Help. For a long time. Some people from far away came here to see if it worked, and it was close, but not enough, and so they helped a little, influencing here, pressing there, dampening this influence out here. And then the worst possible combination of chance happened, and we were cut out as neatly as by a scalpel, and now human nature takes its course.”

  “Why don’t you tell the higher-ups? Surely they don’t want change.”

  The man shook his head. “Only worked as long as we were unseen. When we intervene openly, it changes the balance, and we ourselves become part of the process of change.”

  She looked curiously at the man now. And she remembered, as Rael, sitting in a cell poring over odd equations that identified a third source of power on Oerlikon, in Lisagor, a hidden, concealed power. And here it was, right in front of her, somehow scooped up off the street and lodged in the Dement
ed section. She asked, “Why would these people want to help us achieve our goal of changelessness? What could it be to them? If they wanted to live like we do, why couldn’t they just come and be us. I know no one’s done it for a long time, but the immigration laws are still open…”

  He said, after some thought, “I’m not sure I could explain that; these people, you see, they didn’t really want to live here. This is in many ways a primitive little world. It was… we developed an interest here, for ourselves. As long as Lisagor stayed changeless, then we who were in the project had something. And if it changed, then we no longer had a place…” He stopped, and lowered his face to his hands, and after a bit, mumbled, “I’ve told you too much, and besides, you don’t believe me any more than they did in there.”

  Damistofia said softly, “If I did believe, what could I do about it.”

  “Nothing, nothing. It’s too late for us, that’s all. Too late! Nothing can salvage the mission here: that’s gone forever.” He looked at her craftily. “You could help me escape.”

  She shook her head. “I’ve been unable to escape myself.”

  The man looked away, now, and seemed to withdraw internally from her, although he still continued to talk, “Well, so much for that; but it just drives me almost crazy to think that some crazed assassin came out of the darkness and struck in just precisely such a way that it sliced us out of it, and now they’re calling him a hero.”

  Damistofia became suddenly very alert. She said, cautiously, “I heard there was a murder, that they were hunting for an unknown assassin. But is this the same person?”

  “That’s right. You wouldn’t have heard so much in here, if you’ve been here a bit. No, at first they hunted him, but now they call him a great hero, and they seek for him, to honor him. That’s a laugh; when he struck, he pulled more than one world down! They grabbed a couple of our weakest links and they talked enough to get a purge started. We had started withdrawing, of course, knowing what would come, but some were still in place when Chugun’s men came for them.”

  “Who were you?”

  “Here, on this world, I was Anibal Glist, and I was the head of the Oerlikon Project.”

  “It is dangerous that you tell me this—I could identify you. Surely they are looking for you.”

  He shook his head again. “They don’t seem to care about us, now. I have hidden, to be sure, but you? You are in as much trouble as I am; why I don’t know, but you are here and that’s enough for me. And they have much more dire things to worry about besides defunct spy organizations: Clisp is seething with secessionists, Marula is crawling like a maggot pile, daily the ideologues of the inland provinces call for more ruthless measures of expostulation. No, they don’t really want me now. They have their hands full.”

  She said, “You can get out, eventually, if you do what they want you to; and they’ll find a place for you. That is what they are doing for me—I think I’ll be out soon.”

  “You don’t believe me…”

  “No, that doesn’t matter, that I believe or not. You’ve fallen, wherever you came from, into a different trap, and now you have to get out of it and live on.”

  Glist shook his head and looked away. Clearly, the choices before him were almost too much to bear.

  Damistofia discreetly excused herself, seeing that Glist didn’t notice her leaving, and went back to the group at the planter. Outwardly, she was quiet, just as she had been all along since she had found herself in this place, but inside, her mind was working furiously. Rael now called a hero of the people! What a blow: to have gone through so much to escape detection, and now this one says they are calling the unknown assassin a hero. Who would have thought it? But she remembered that in Rael’s analysis of the timing and necessity of the act of change, there was nothing about waiting for honors. One could get killed waiting for honor, and neither Rael nor Damistofia wanted honors when they came posthumously.

  But in the way that things would influence her, she passed that information up. It didn’t matter to her; she was already on the safe course plotted long ago, and she had survived so far. What did interest her was the confirmation of the third force operating in Lisagor, unseen, unknown, generally on the side of those who wanted no change whatsoever. And that it was now inoperative, allowing nature to take its course, whatever that would be. Confirmation! And Rael had been guessing, or hardly more than that. That she could remember: one could feel the third unknown there, but couldn’t identify it, without an exhaustive search. It had been vague, subtle, weak… but enough to tip the balance, and allow such monstrosities as the Mask Factory to exist. And, she added, for their cruel work to produce one such as herself.

  And something was working out there: either Glist was a hopeless basket case, or else it was true—Lisagor was coming apart, unraveling from the weakest points: Clisp and the Serpentine, vast Marula, and the ravings of the intolerant Inlanders. What else, which he couldn’t see, or catch rumor of? And that led straight to the next conclusion, flowing like smooth water—she had to get herself released from the Palliatory and out of Marula. Soon. A vast, massive organism was shifting its weight to another center, and she wanted very much to be as much out of the way as possible. If possible.

  — 8 —

  Marula Nights

  The day’s ration of work was over and Damistofia was walking back to her building alone. The silvery half-overcast had slowly evolved to a dense bluish overcast that promised rain; there was a scent of brackish water from the invisible estuary, a sea-wind, mixed with the odors of the city, the usual ones, too many people, dusty streets, odd chemical odors, and—something else, a faint sour reek she seemed to know but couldn’t quite identify. A smoky odor that seemed to alarm her without her knowing why. Deep in her own thoughts, and pondering the odd odor, she failed to notice that someone was moving along the same walk, from behind her, and catching up, until he was quite close. When she turned to see who it was, he raised his right hand, as if in greeting, and so she stopped.

  She had seen this one before, but never close. He was a young man of the Palliatory, judging by his clothing, which was the pale off-white of the staff. She didn’t know his name, but she had noticed him; slender and muscular, he was quick and nervous, but also very precise, qualities that suggested an alert, predatory nature. His face was oddly delicate for a young man, almost girlish, very finely shaped, and he affected an odd sort of mustache that seemed to grow only at the corners of his mouth. He also wore spectacles, very large ones which seemed to magnify his eyes, which were a pale gray color.

  He said, “I wanted to talk with you before you retired for the night.”

  “I’ve seen you, but I don’t know you.”

  He gestured at himself. “Sorry. Cliofino Orlioz, Exercisist and Disciplinarian. I haven’t worked with your group, either, but I have been observing you—part of the job, you see; we always keep an eye out for indications in our guests that indicate something exceptional.”

  She thought: He’ll be one who watches for those who think they can fool the system.

  He paused and went on, “Not what you may think. My job is to watch for those we can release… or perhaps use here. There is need of experienced people.”

  Damistofia laughed a little. “That’s good! You will use recent loonies to help the real ones back to their feet after they’ve fallen.”

  Cliofino smiled, “And why not? Who better knows the condition? And who would wish to be more successful? All such a person needs is some proper training, and they find a rewarding position here. It is better, it need not be said, than going through the Placement Bureau, and getting the luck of the draw… But I diverge; I race ahead, I pass the real point: they watched you working with that old fellow this afternoon, and they noted how he responded to you, something we’ve not been able to do. He actually responded. They’ve not been able to get him to do that since he’s been here. And so the suggestion is that you might be worth considering… What would you say to that?”


  “You’re not serious.”

  “Oh, yes—indeed I am so.”

  “I know nothing of such matters… I acted by instinct, if you will; no one seemed to care for that man, who has the most remarkable delusion…”

  “We know his delusion; thinks he’s an offworlder, in charge of some great windy plot. No matter. Forget about him. There are others who need Reality Orientation much more.”

  “How can you be sure I would do it well? After all, you might very well assign me to someone I would hate, or feel nothing for, or someone I might abuse.”

  “You’d be surprised how many in a place like this abuse them all with great random abandon; if you only abused every other one, you’d be an improvement over some we have on the staff!”

  Again she laughed. “Come on! I’ve been treated well enough.”

  Cliofino grew more somber, which caused his odd mustache to droop comically. He said, after a moment, “Actually, that’s for other reasons; your illness still hasn’t been identified, nor have you, but in the absence of positive indications of anything, they are not looking closely at that. We don’t know what happened to you…”

  “…Neither do I.”

  “Just so. At any event, you do not appear to be demented, but a victim of someone else’s plot. The theory is now that you were drugged.”

  She said, “I have no recollection of what happened. I remember only some of it… The earliest thing I can recall is that they took me from a room and brought me here.”

  Cliofino continued, “The police have lost interest in your case, although it is not closed. You understand that they have, shall we say, higher priorities now. So we can do this; actually easier than releasing you to general assignment or the labor pool.”