The Morphodite

by M. A. Foster

  Another thought also worked in her mind, and that had to do with the consequences of the killing of Cliofino. With the first one, that she remembered well, there were consequencs to that, and she had known them, as Rael. But now, she had not worked the figures that way, so that part of it had been blind to her. She didn’t know anything at all about the results of killing Cliofino. And there was here neither time nor place to sit down and perform the long calculations necessary to work the answer out. No way to know. She reflected as she walked that it did not really matter: she had taken the path she had to for survival, and that was sufficient. She doubted if Cliofino had the Power-That-Supported. He was much too ordinary, too much the climber, to fit into that schema. She had probably rid the world of one who had, for all his motion and activity, no measurable effect on the world. It was not the people who were replaceable at will, but the politicians and climbers.

  Slowly, she let the crowd pass her, as she imperceptibly drifted to the rear of the formation by simply slowing down a little. Some of those who walked with her stayed for a while, but then speeded up to the crowd’s pace and left her behind. Now she began looking for a place to hide, some dark corner. Another thought crossed her mind, a dark thought indeed: This time I’m jumping blind. I don’t know what I’ll be, as Rael knew he’d become me. That’s one of the longest operations in the system. And 1 shouldn’t initiate so soon, either, because this body’s still not ready for that yet—it’s not completed, the old Change. But so much I know: I’ll be male, I’ll remember, and I’ll be younger. Another odd thought crossed her mind: I don’t know what I’ll call myself, then. The answer came, as if a personal demon had entered her mind and placed the answer there: Phaedrus. Very well, Phaedrus it is.

  She stopped and sat down on a curb, as the last part of the crowd from the game passed her by, some casually calling out to her to hurry along and catch up, that surely there would be a tavern open not far down the thoroughfare, closer in to the city; while others passed without noticing her at all. She sat, as if weary beyond endurance, folded her arms on her knees and lowered her head to the arms as if resting. She was seeking the state of consciousness within herself, the odd combination of self-hypnosis and yogi trance in which she could initiate Change. The street faded, and the noises of the crowd died away, although they were only just past her, a lonely figure resting on the curb for a moment. No matter, she’d catch up. And it came surprisingly easy to her, much easier than she remembered it from when she had been Rael. She reached the state of darkness, and the outside world was gone, and there, in the center, was the bright wormlike coiling of the threads, black-and-yellow checkerboard color washing over them, moving impossibly fast, impalpable, inconceivable, and she aligned something in herself to them, and they slowed, and slowed, and stopped, in an uneasy stasis, and she reached into that network and changed a thread, the one that controlled this process, and quickly let go and began falling out of the trancelike state, as fast as possible. The structure resumed its frantic writhing motions, and began fading to bright fog, and was gone, and after a moment her senses began filtering back to her.

  Wrong, wrong. She heard the sounds of running feet, and cries, and the droning roar of motors overhead. She opened her eyes, still dazed by the aftereffects of the trance state she had just gone into so quickly, and she could not at first make sense of it. Before, the Dragon crowd had been moving south; now they were running north in disorder, while overhead motors roared and bright flares fell in slow-acting arcs too bright to look at. What had happened?

  One of the running figures passed her, stopped, came back, and dragged her to her feet. One of the men she had been walking with before, when they had just started here. He was out of breath, but pulled her to her feet, shouting over the noise and confusion, “Come on, girl, you can’t rest here, run!”

  Damistofia stood up, feeling normal, and hypersensually alert, but also knowing what dread timer was running inside her now, that it would probably be only moments before she had the preliminary attack.

  She stammered, “I… don’t understand! What’s happening?”

  The man shouted back, “Pallet drop! Thought we were a riot about to happen, I guess. No matter now, run, save yourself! They go after everyone standing once they ground!” He took her hand and pulled her roughly, and she started out with him, running, her heart pounding. And she thought, What is this exertion going to do to Change? But she couldn’t complete the thought, because there was a powerful roaring drone low overhead, a rattling, a pause and then a hard crash behind her, not too far. She heard staccato sounds, then, and another odd sound, a piercing hissing. A voice, choked with running, cried, “Now leg it good, the first wave’s down, and most made it!”

  She wanted to see what they were running from, but others urged her on. “No! No looking. Run!” Behind her she heard a dull explosion, and something rattled around her on the street and buildings, and some around her fell. The hissing sound increased, drawing into a deeper timbre, and there was a yellow light back there now making dancing shadows ahead of them. A voice cried in terror, “plasma cutters!” And behind her she heard heavy steps, and a mechanical snarling, and there was another explosion, with more immediate peppery rattling around her, and some more fell, and she increased the pace, hearing another voice, strangling, gargling, “Chain-saws and flamethrowers and sawed-off shotgun pistols in this bunch!” And she ran on. There was another droning overhead, and another crash not far behind her, and the sounds started up again. Now ahead there were lights in the sky suddenly, blinding searchlights, and where they pointed, sudden rivers of fire lanced down in brief bursts, and where the fire went, runners went down like grass. And there were crashes to the side as well, now. Dimly, she sensed they were being surrounded, by the lobotomized troopers on three sides, and ahead, slow-moving aircraft armed. It was at that moment that she felt the first presence of Change. A sudden pain cramped her abdomen, and she doubled over, grasping her stomach, and the man who had taken her hand tugged at her. “Come on, you can’t stop now!”

  She fell over, coughing, and managed to gasp out, “Can’t run, I’m hit. Go on!”

  She saw him hesitate a moment, glancing at her, and at those advancing behind them, and then he turned and ran off, with the others who were still on their feet, and behind her she heard, with monstrous clarity, the sounds of chainsaws and flamethrowers, and an occasional boom of a shotgun pistol, fired into the crowd at random. And then she didn’t hear any more, because a terrific constriction took her and firmly and irresistibly tried to bend her in two, and her consciousness faded. She sank into darkness, thinking, I have failed, they will carve me up now with the others. But after that she did not think anymore. Change commenced, and it was far more drastic than the first time. She had been right in one thing: this body had not been ready for the ordeal of Change—it had not yet completed all phases of its own Change.

  Cliofino had been undoubtedly correct about one aspect of life in Marula, that being that the police had things on their minds vastly more important than worrying about exactly who Damistofia Azart was, or had been. For one thing, they were used by the distant authorities as a cleanup force after the depredations of the Pallet-Dropped Troopers, a task they did not relish, but one which occupied much of their time now.

  Achilio Yaderny surveyed the street in the bright light of a clear morning, and shook his head wearily. Bad, bad. No good would come of this, none whatsoever. He saw a street, which would now in normal circumstances be busy with folk on their errands, empty of every sign of life except the body-recovery teams. And, of course, the bodies. In this case, they were spared much of the worst; it appeared that most of the victims had fallen to gunshots, rather than the other traumas which the Troopers were capable of inflicting. Small piles of discarded clothing—that’s what they looked like. And of course, the pallets. They always left them where they lay, along with the Troopers who didn’t make it on the landing. There were a few of those—something near th
e expected ten percent. But there weren’t any Trooper bodies anywhere else.

  The body-recovery teams were sorting through the victims, recording the appearance of them with bulky devices on wheeled carriages, for later comparison with the identification records. Incidentally, and only incidentally, they were also searching for rare survivors of the purge, but they did not expect many; survivors of Trooper raids were usually few.

  Yaderny’s assistant, a wiry and energetic young man who went by the name of Dario Achaemid, came along from out of a side alley, carrying a small notebook, to which he was adding notes. Yaderny called to him, “Find anything?”

  Achaemid consulted his notes, and looked up briskly, after the manner of an overly thoughtful athletic coach, and said as he approached, “Not so much; on the other hand, quite a bit that makes little or no sense.”

  Yaderny, who was used to these odd excursions, by which circumlocutious fits and starts Achaemid attempted to seduce reality into revealing herself, sighed and said, “You may explicate if you will.”

  Achaemid looked owlishly at his notes, and said, “This habitat is hard by an area in which the Bureau of Remandation has little, or no, favor. The general attitude is negative at best, and graduates up through several degrees of hostility, which I will not enumerate, as you are doubtless familiar with them all. Nevertheless,” he said portentously, “Some facts emerge: this was not an assemblage of rioters, but the aftermath of a large Dragon-game, which took place somewhat to the north of here.”

  “A costly mistake.”

  “Correct. On the other hand, they were more adept at escaping because of it. Not so many casualties.”

  “Now that you mention it, there do seem to be fewer.”

  “And so there will be much fewer of the type we’d be interested in; criminals, revolutionaries, rabble-rousers and the like.”

  “I see. Then you do not recommend intense search.”

  “I could not see any particular reason for it. Let the recording teams ran routine ID procedures, and catalogue the victims. The bodies can be hauled off in the usual manner, for sanitization purposes.”

  “Anything else?”

  “We might notify Symbarupol that they are too quick on the trigger. This will not win friends here. Marula is already a very large problem.”

  “Your reasoning is faultless, although the tact and discretion which I have had to cultivate in my position suggest that it might be wiser to edit such remarks severely, or perhaps not utter them at all. I say that not out of fear, but out of a consideration that no effect will result. They are not listening anymore.”

  “Ah! Truth must yield to manners, as always.”

  “True! But what are discretions but the glue that binds us? Well, see to it, will you? I think I will return to Headquarters, and from there try to word something that will pass through. The problem here is so far out of hand that we are not dealing with ordinary criminals at all, and they are gaining entirely too much liberty. I fear much more of this and the city may go.”

  “I have thought the same; and heard much more alarming things.”

  “I have heard them as well; you understand, somewhat fainter, but yet I still hear them.”

  “Very well! It will be as you say. I will clean this up, and have the remains dumped. Where should these go? The last bunch overfilled the burial site.”

  “Are there other places?”

  “Very far out, to the northwest; the Old City ruins, in fact, was what I had in mind. These should be transported far away, to lessen morbid curiosity.”

  “The old spaceport?”

  “Yes.”

  “Aren’t there some stragglers lurking thereabouts?”

  “Renegades, tramps, thieves, and the like. The Troopers often use the area for training exercises, and so the inhabitants are scarcely in evidence. At any rate, they will issue no challenges, neither martial nor legal. The Old City is technically not there…”

  “Not all that good, but I suppose it will have to do.”

  “I’ll be back in tomorrow. This will be unpleasant and extended work.”

  “I understand, Achaemid. Go ahead.”

  And so they parted company, Achilio Yaderny to return to his office and try to say something fundamentally unsayable, and Achaemid to his unpleasant task of disposing of the bodies of the fallen.

  As the body-handling teams worked their way along the street, they soon fell into a routine; after they had made a desultory search for still-living persons among the fallen and scattered heaps, they would arrange the bodies to be recorded, and afterward, bring small, three-wheeled electric wagons alongside, in which the bodies would be piled, as neatly as possible to maximize the load. Then the trucks would set off on the poorly maintained road which still led to the Old City, although few went there now for any purpose.

  The members of the Bureau of Remandation who were working with the teams saw little to pass on of special interest to Achaemid; dead folk were, after all, dead, and that was that. But near the end of the street, they did find one thing, which they duly reported to the assistant, but who in turn dismissed it. They had found a young man, in fact, probably a late-adolescent, who had no wounds or evidence of trauma, but who appeared to have been afflicted by a violent disease. Achaemid examined the body, which was severely emaciated and covered with filth, although he kept his distance, and the team handled the body with tongs. It seemed as cold and stiff as the rest. Achaemid said, “What about this one?”

  “No marks, no injuries. Looks like some kind of plague or fever.”

  “Any others like that?”

  “No. Not a one.”

  “He couldn’t have walked around like that, without someone noticing him.”

  “We doubt it.”

  “Put him in the pile with the rest. I’ll see what I can uncover. If there are more, we may want to come back for him later, but I don’t think we’ll find any more; everyone I’ve spoken with said nothing about disease. Any identification on the body?”

  “To be truthful, Ser, we haven’t looked; you know ”

  “Understandable. Distasteful job, this. Well, be sure it’s recorded with the rest. Not to worry. Everyone will be identified, sooner or later.”

  “There is one other thing about this one…”

  “What’s that?”

  “Has on woman’s clothing, or something cut for a woman, so it seems.”

  Achaemid chuckled, an odd note among the somber horrors of the scene, the bright morning sunlight suffusing into the cool street shadows, innocent, clean, while squads of men in disposable overalls gingerly stacked bodies into small trucks with three wheels. He said, “That is not so great a surprise, considering this crowd and what they were doing. I remember a case in South Marula, near the docks, which was my first assignment: there was a fire in one of those transient hostels, you know? One of those old firetraps. But they had time, with this one, and everything was going right. Up came the fire squad and the pumpers, and the water mains were all up to pressure. Everything was going right, impossibly. And of course, all the Information Services people were there, recording like crazy. Inside the building, you could see all these people running back and forth, but they wouldn’t come out, even though they could! Finally, in desperation, the Chief formed up a shock brigade of us, and we went in there and dragged them all out! Saved them all! Turned out the reason they wouldn’t come out was that they were all transvestites, dressed up in women’s clothing. And oh, there were some famous ones in the crowd, you can be sure. The scandal went on for weeks, but eventually quieted down. This is probably something similar. In a Dragon-Game, I wouldn’t be surprised. In fact, I’m surprised you haven’t turned up more.”

  The spokesman for the team said, laughing, “We will exercise more diligence! But how do we tell?”

  “Never mind! And be careful handling that one, will you? That looks contagious, at the least!”

  “No fear! We will not touch it!”

  “Fine—
carry on.” And Achaemid strolled off to another part of the street, to supervise another team at their sad work.

  The body, lying with others in the little truck, soon set out along the broken and disused concrete road to the Old City, and after a long ride, of which none of the cargo was aware, reached a ravine by the Old City, a rugged tumble of irregular blocks, and was rolled off, with the rest, where it lay quietly.

  There was one peculiarity about this particular body which no one noticed at the time. That was that it seemed to lack some of the stiffness and rigidity of the others. And another odd characteristic, hard to see in the fading light among the gullies and chasms of the ravine, was that it was more limber than its associates, when rolled off onto the pile. But the drivers were not interested in looking overly much at what was already a dreary business. If they had looked closely, after the body had stopped rolling, they might have seen some movement in it: a hand clenched, spasmodically, and a leg stiffened, but they were small motions, and the light was uncertain, and they weren’t looking for movement; and to an equally placed observer, there were no more motions, at any rate. At any event, none that could be seen.

  There were a few more loads, but they hurried more, owing to the nature of the work, and they placed their cargoes somewhat off to the side of this particular body, and left hurriedly, for they heard odd sounds in the ruins, and in the distance, the hooting and calling of Bosels, and they thought it better to leave. At least, there were no more to bring.

  Achaemid made meticulous notes, and from them, assembled a report, complete with cross-references and footnotes, which was complete and magnificently documented, and which reached Yaderny’s desk, along with sections of the reports of others. There was a long roster from Identification, listing the positive matches they had made, along with an abbreviated resume of the person so identified. To Yaderny’s general disgust, the list totally lacked known criminals or notorious deviants, although there were a few low-grade rowdies and tavern brawlers among the listings.