The Morphodite

by M. A. Foster

  He tried to listen for scraps of what the others might be saying, but they said little that he could hear, although a low and continuous murmur floated above the line of walkers and drays. Nothing in the speech of Lisagor, at any rate. All foreign gibberish. Of course, they would now have no pretense to speak as if they were natives here. He listened to the fragments of the speech: short, clipped, terse, all the words seeming to end on consonants, and all those short and crisp. The vowels were short and rather high in tone. He listened to the whispers and low murmurs about him and he thought that it would be a language he would not speak well, nor would he feel comfortable with such speech, no matter how familiar he became with it. It was not a speech of ceremony and tradition and reassuring identity and place, but a speech of contention, of strife, however well-mannered and controlled, and above all of ceaseless change. But of course that was the way of wherever they had come from.

  He often thought of that: Neither Charodei nor Kham had deigned to tell him anything about the world they were going to. When he had asked, the answers had been vague generalities which were completely devoid of informational content. He had not managed to determine if the planet where they were going had a name or not. Or if they were going to a single place; or if they were even going to a planet at all, but perhaps to some unimaginable construction in the void between the worlds, an artificial world. He had heard fleeting allusions to such places, which seemed to have been made for special purposes.

  Nor did he know much more about the ship, except that it was too large to land on a planetary surface. Smaller craft, called “lighters” were carried inside it, and served as the landing craft. This was what they were walking out to board, apparently, although again, he was not sure what he was looking for. He belonged to a country of people who had not wanted space flight, and who had rapidly forgotten as fast as they could. Aircraft they had and understood, although their use was severely controlled, and little or no experimental work was done. Somehow, he could not equate spacecraft with aircraft.

  Now they were far from the town, and somewhere ahead on the dim, almost-invisible plain ahead, there was a weak light glowing, a pale yellow light that did not waver. The group apparently also saw this light, for the speed and amount of conversation increased, as well as the pace. Pternam noticed that some of the people were now casting things aside as they went, pieces of clothing, odds and ends, mementoes which suddenly seemed less valuable, books and papers they would never need again, as if the actual sight of the lighter reminded them that their time here was over, that they were refugees who would soon be returned to their own. He was one with the group, and yet he felt the alienness of the thought. He was not particularly anxious to leave, and yet in the crowd, he caught the overlay of it from them.

  Presently they drew near to something which he assumed was the lighter, a vague structure bulking large in the dark, mysterious, amorphous. He sensed an immense mass, squat and unlovely, resting on a forest of metallic pillars. As they walked under it, he could feel heat from the body poised above him, odd, pungent mechanical odors he did not recognize assaulted his nose. There were sounds of mechanical movements, odd snatches of voices, harsh commands being given and acknowledged.

  The group slowed, and Pternam, looking around, saw a rough line forming at the foot of something that looked like a metal stair extending out of the center of the ship. People walked up to a booth alongside the foot of the stair, spoke somewhat, and proceeded up the stairs, most throwing a few more things away as they went. He felt like shouting at them, Fools! You are throwing away the life-fragments of a whole world!

  The line proceeded at a good pace. No one was excluded, or so it appeared, even questioned much. A short conversation, and then up the stair. Now it bothered him what he might say to whatever was in the booth, whether man, alien, or machine. What speech did it use? He began looking about in concern for someone he knew, and after a moment, caught sight of the bald and shiny cranium of Cesar Kham, who stepped up to the booth smartly, spoke somewhat, and bounded up the steps, taking them two at a time. Pternam looked around in dismay, looking for anyone else he knew, Charodei, Palude, some of the others he had met None. He was now in the midst of strangers.

  Much too soon, he stood at the foot of the stair, which he saw to be indeed metal although it was finished a uniform dull black. The booth contained a single opening whose nature was not apparent, as the opening did not seem to Open to anything. Inside, there was simply a formless darkness from which a voice, clipped and peremptory, presently inquired, “Teilisk gak?”

  Pternam answered, “I am Luto Pternam, invited guest of men who called themselves here Porfirio Charodei and Cesar Kham. Also Aranda Palude. They brought me here, so I assume to enter.”

  There was a long pause, during which Pternam could feel the intent stares of those behind him yet in line. He dared not look around, but somehow he felt a prickly sensation along his lower back that he had committed some dreadful breach. After a moment, something inside the darkness of the booth said, “Dilik. Mek Angren.” Pause. Then, in his own language, it said, “Wait to the side for the others to pass. Then enter.”

  It was then, as he stood aside, that he seriously questioned the wisdom of continuing on this course, which he now realized had been as fixed as the course of the stars in the heavens. Now, something shyly whispered to the darkness of his soul, “You can walk away from here a free man, with no enemies and no obligations” The old Pternam asked the new, “Everything I have burned behind me. Where would I go?”

  The new answered, “Away, somewhere else. Walk off. No one will stop you. These folk don’t care and they don’t want you. The elders of Crule think you went in the ship, and so they will say. Get dirty and ragged, and walk into a settled place, and you can get off free ”

  Several people passed through the line in rapid succession, and the line of those waiting grew visibly shorter. Pternam answered the questioner inside himself, “A bargain has been made. They will give me honor; at least they will have a native of this world to speak with. I have value. I was somebody, and I can be so again.”

  The voice replied, “You were a minor functionary with a criminal ambition and your acts loosed Change on this world. Besides, they have had years to bore into Oerlikon like worms. They manifestly do not need you.” The last few people waiting to speak into the booth passed, and Pternam was alone.

  He looked around. There were dim lights under the ship, and shadows around the many legs of the craft. Somewhere, something vented off, releasing a soft plume of steam. Overhead, the bulk of the craft was quiet. Waiting.

  The booth chirruped to itself, a sound impossible to interpret, and then said, plainly, “Enter the ship without delay. We are holding departure for you.”

  Pternam looked around once more, and all he could see were the landing-legs, the booth, and the metal stairs going up into some dark orifice. Beyond the circle of dim light there was nothing but the endless night of Crule the Swale, a nothingness. He gripped the rail and mounted the stairs.

  At the top of the stairs was a dim cubicle, apparently a landing, which he stepped into, and as he did he heard mechanical noises from behind him, motion. The stairs were lifting up, pivoting back into a recess in the hull. A panel slid shut behind him. Ahead was another corridor, ascending ramplike to some other part of the ship. There was a faint metallic odor in the air. He walked up this ramp until he came to another chamber, which he entered without hesitating. Here, too, a panel slid shut behind him. He felt a motion, a small surge of acceleration, and then nothing more.

  He wondered what this room was for. Was he being examined by the unknowable medical sciences of the star-folk? Presumably they would not wish him to mingle with the others just yet. He waited for what seemed like a long time. Nothing happened. The air did not seem stale, although he could hear no sound of ventilation. There was another motion, as if of metal sliding on metal, although he could not say exactly how the motion was being done, or in wha
t direction. After a time, this too stopped. Then, for a longer time, again, nothing happened. Finally, he spoke. “Let me speak with Porfirio Charodei! With Cesar Kham! I am Luto Pternam! I made this escape possible!”

  There was a sharp grating sound, and instantly Pternam was flung outside by a convusion of the chamber, into naked space. His eyes bulged, a band of iron seized his chest, and his blood boiled, and before him he saw the dark nightside bulk of an immense round object, spattered with points of light. He rotated, and saw, not understanding, a smaller bulk moving away from him, visibly getting smaller. Then the darkness.

  The community which had grown around Phaedrus and Meliosme did not have a name. In a sense, it was not a settlement, or a town, or even a camp, considering each of those things just one of many towns, settlements, camps that could be, were. This was unique. A single place, the only one for those who had stopped there on their flight from the furies. It was simply home.

  But the visit of an emissary from the new world that was growing somehow upset a delicate balance that had existed for them. It was true, and none disputed it, that Salkim’s visit had implied no threats; indeed, he had gone out of his way to insure there were none given, and none taken. Yet it made them aware, and awareness was loss of a kind of innocence they all had thought they had regained. And so not long after the visit, there began to be talk about seeing to things, and having a little more of a sense of organization. Factions, weak and tentative, began to emerge. Some desired alliance with Clisp. Others argued for independence, so long as it might last. Still others, just to cover all possibilities, wanted to at least send an emissary to Crule to see what was going on.

  Late at night, Phaedrus and Meliosme sat on the packed earthen floor on grass mats and spoke of the change. Meliosme let one of the smaller urchins use her lap for a pillow, and after stroking the child’s head and gazing into the fire, she said, “Politics has caught up with us, so I hear.”

  “Yes. I have heard, too.”

  “Our original intent was to find a place of solitude and leave all that”

  “For a time we had it. But it seems there is little enough of the wild left on this planet.”

  “The gatherers will not be able yet to wander over the face of the world the way we used to.”

  “True. I would not wish to go back into the east”

  “What do you have in mind to do with this?”

  “Little or nothing. I do not wish to rule these people; they manage well enough on their own, once they had a place where they could stop and think.”

  “But you could still keep this place as it was.”

  “By rule? Never. Circumstances change, so it seems to me; it can never be the way it was again. They would like it at first—I know that But in time that model wouldn’t agree with the real world, and there’d be resistance, and then the strife would start.”

  “Phaedrus, you could pick a line of thinking and stay with it, here. They trust you, and now you trust yourself.”

  “As I trust myself, so I must trust them to find their own way, whatever it is.”

  “What would you favor, were you deciding for them?”

  “Clisp, of course; they need protection from forays from over the hills. They aren’t much of a barrier. It wouldn’t work the other way, allying with Crule against Qisp. That goes against everything these people ran from. No—it would be Clisp. Not that I don’t have my objections to that, too, but it would have to do.”

  “Then say so. They will follow you.”

  “No. Control breeds the need for more control. And In freeing myself from power, I have freed myself from wanting power over others. I would become the slave of the force I used, worse than them. No. I know the way I go. You helped show it to me, and I will keep on that way. Less, not more. Obscurity, not fame…”

  She showed no sign of agreement or disagreement, but continued looking at the fire and absentmindedly stroking the child’s hair. At last she said, “They are meeting tonight They want to reward us for what we have done for them.”

  He nodded, “I know. Well, this place has grown, and it is time we had some sort of leader, isn’t it? That is simple enough. Here we have no lord, but we need one. We will tell them, choose one among you who will lead. Not me.” He got to his feet wearily. “Even this much I wish I could avoid.”

  Meliosme said, “I would take it, but I want it no more than you… I miss the old freedoms.”

  “They are gone in the new world, but we still have a few left within ourselves.”

  “You say we could be so anywhere.”

  “More or less.”

  “And what then?”

  “I think that we have done something here; but whatever it was, our part in it has faded, and now it’s time to go further. I’ve rested, and been healed of some madnesses; and so I’d go on to find the rest of it”

  “Where? You yourself said there was no wild left.”

  “Clisp. Would you walk with me there?”

  She did not hesitate. “I have walked with you since then, a long time ago. I would not change now. What would we do there?”

  “Just be, that’s all. Struggle, suffer. Do what we could.”

  Meliosme smiled, an expression that always illuminated her plain face with a warm glow. She said, “Well, I was not destined to be a great lady anyway… I will go with you. What about the children?”

  “They are all our children, and then none. Let those who would come, come. And those who would stay, stay.”

  She gently disengaged herself from the child, and stood up to join him. “Very well. So it will be. And now we will tell them.”

  “Yes.”

  “You know that will be a novel idea to them. Me, too. Choosing—there’s an idea.”

  “It won’t cure the flaw we all have in us, but it cools it down a lot. It’s hard to imagine yourself a savior when everybody knows you’re a bosel’s arse, and in fact you know it, too.”

  They stepped outside, into the night, which was filled up with the sound of the sea and the gentle winds in the grass, and from far off they could also hear distant calls of bosels, uninterested, remote.

  They went together to the place among the huts and sheds where the others had assembled, and when Phaedrus came, they all stood up, remembering some of their manners from the older days, and already having decided in their minds that he was to be their lord, since he was here before them; but he asked that they but hear him once, and when they sat and listened, he told them what they should do. At first, they resisted the idea, but after a little time had passed, some of them understood enough of it to see what they should do, and presently, those who were so minded stood up and spoke of what they should do, and sometime later, a rough agreement was reached that a certain Olenzo, formerly of Near Priboy, seemed to have the best head for that sort of thing, and so was chosen leader, subject to recall.

  But before that, Phaedrus and Meliosme had slipped away, and made their way back, through the dark, to their house, where they gathered a few simple things, as if they were leaving then, not waiting for the dawn.

  She said, “You’d not wait for the morning?”

  “No. Even that. I can do the most for these people by leaving now. In the morning, they will have regrets, questions, referrals,”

  Two of the orphans wanted to leave with them, and so they took some extra things for them, too, so that in the end they wound up carrying more than they had planned, but their burdens were not heavy. Phaedrus stepped out into the night again, and looked out over the water, to the west. He sighed, deeply. And turned and said, “Yes. This is the right way.”

  Something moving in the sky caught at the edge of his awareness, and he looked up. In the sky was a falling star, a meteor, but not the quick little flicker of the usual meteor; this one was slow, tumbling and burning, red and orange, and at last it went out, drifting off toward the east. He continued looking at the night sky, at the few stars he could see, the unremarkable stars of the sky of Oerlik
on. And he thought he saw, a little to the east, a point of light moving, dimming as it went.

  Meliosme was watching, too. After a time, she said, “There was something up there.”

  Phaedrus nodded. “Yes. Ever seen anything moving in the night sky before?”

  “A long time ago, once. Like that. I didn’t know then what it was. Now I think I know.”

  “Lights in the sky. Ships. Something fell out of that one.”

  “Or something was dumped that wouldn’t fit. They must have been crowded. We would never find it”

  He agreed. “No. Useless to look. I suppose we won’t see any more of those for awhile… and when we do, they’ll come openly. Come on.”

  And so they walked quietly down to the beach, and began walking northward, and after a long time, they found some shelter in the rocks back from the water and rested for the night.

  In easy stages, then, Phaedrus and Meliosme made their way northward along the coast of Zolotane, and after many days they came to a shallow river, in a flat land where the hill country had receded back over the horizons. But ahead, across the river, were more rugged mountains, trailing off to the southwest. The Serpentine. There they joined a group of other pilgrims, as ragged and undistinguished as they were, and with them, they went across the river on a causeway which had been built, so Meliosme informed him, since the Troubles.

  Their way down the length of the Serpentine was even slower. They would stop. Work for a while, and drift on, slowing down as they went. And at last they reached the outskirts of the great city Marisol, that stood on a high plain with the sea to the north and mountains to the south, a place of sun and light and people rushing everywhere, and after a time Phaedrus found a place as a gardener in one of the immense public parks that they were fond of in Clisp, and they found a modest place to live, and to their surprise, no one troubled them, and their lives settled into a routine.

  Marisol, being exposed to the northern winds off the ocean, had more obvious seasons that Phaedrus could remember, and he lived through two more of the rainy winters. One night, late, as the wind blustered and fussed around the corners of the stone house where they lived, and the rain runoff was brawling in the downspouts and street gutters, Meliosme asked him, quite out of nowhere, “Do you ever have regrets that you gave up the power you had?”