Transfigurations

by Michael Bishop

  I've rigged it so my voice will trigger the recording mechanism whenever I speak. The absence of my voice for a ten-minute period automatically shuts it off. That's to conserve recording time—not that I plan on talking for ten straight days—and to keep me from fiddling with buttons when there might be other things to do. I can always go manual if I have to, of course, countermanding the exclusive lock on my own voice, but so far none of the Asadi have been particularly voluble. Only Eisen Zwei. And his voice would not be apt to woo the ladies. . . .

  I've been thinking. And what I wouldn't give for a copy of one of those centuries-old works no one reads anymore. The Brothers Karamazov, say. Surely The Bachelor is none other than the Asadi equivalent of Pavel Smerdyakov, the illegitimate son who destroys himself out of his innate inability to reconcile the spiritual and the intellectual in his nature. Such passionate despondency! He cannot escape—nor can he accept—the dictum that the individual is responsible for the sins of all. ... *

  * There follows a totally irrelevant analysis of the ways in which The Bachelor resembles the character of Smerdyakov in Dostoevski's novel. This remarkable analysis, delivered extemporaneously while Chaney follows the Asadi chieftain through the Wild, lasts better than an hour. To spare the reader, I've deleted it. I believe thai the passage which follows was recorded almost six hours later. T. B.

  82

  i

  The First Night

  I. CHANEY [whispering]: It's quiet in here, as still as the void. And though you probably can't believe it, I've held my peace for the entire afternoon. Maybe I said, "Damn!" two or three times after scraping my shin or tripping over a root gnarl—but that's all. In here I scarcely feel it's appropriate to talk, to raise my voice above even this hoarse whisper.

  [Chaney clears his throat. There is an echo, a holloiv sound that rings and fades.]

  We—the three of us—are inside the pagoda in front of which The Bachelor became the designated "leader" of his people. I feel free to talk only because he and the huri have gone up a narrow iron stainvay inside the temple's central vault. They're climbing toward the small convex interior of the onionlike dome from which the outside spire rises. I can see them from here. The stairway makes a tremendously wide spiral up toward that dome, and The Bachelor is trudging upward toward it. The huri, meanwhile, is flying in languid circles inside the spiral of the stairway, staying even with The Bachelor's head. The strange thing here is that I can barely hear its wings flapping.

  It's preternaturally cold in here, too. Cold and dead. Like the interior of no other building ever erected in a tropical rain forest. My whispers echo, but the huri's flapping is silent.

  Outside, it's nearly dark. At least it was nearly dark twenty minutes ago when we came through the heax'y doors that the Asadi, twelve days ago, didn't even open. Now at least one of the moons must be up. Maybe a little moonlight falls through the dome overhead. . . . No, no, Chaney. The light in here comes from those three massive globes in the metal ring suspended several meters below the dome like a spartan chandelier. The Bachelor's climbing toward that huge ring, the spiraling stainvay mounts toward it. . . . Light also seeps into this place from the amethyst

  windows set high in all the walls. Listen. Listen to the light seep through. . . .

  [There is no sound for several minutes, perhaps a slight amplification of Chaney^s breathing. Then his voice descends conspiratorially.]

  Nevertheless, Eisen, I think—1 don't know, mind you, but I think—I think that both the chill and the luminosity in here originate in those globes up there. Just a feeling I have. Winter sunlight. The texture of the light reminds me of the glow around probeship ALERT and EVACUATE signs, a cold but hellish sheen.

  All right. Let's move to where we can see.

  [Silence. Rhythmic breathing. Footfalls echoing hollowly off polished stone.]

  I'm looking straight up thewell of the stairway. [An echo: "Way way way way. . . ."/ Come on, Egan, keep it down, keep it down. . . . Better, much better. ... I can see the huri flapping up there, noiselessly, and The Bachelor's legs ascending the spiral. The staircase seems to terminate in a glass platform off to one side of and just a little below the suspended ring of the "chandelier." I'm looking up through the axis of the dome, right up through the chandelier ring hanging beneath it.

  Outside, above the dome, there's a spire pointing at BoskVeld's sky. Inside the dome, depending from its apex, there's a sort of plumb line—of what looks like braided gold—dropping down the central shaft of the pagoda to a point. . . well, about half a meter above the suspended ring. I can't tell for certain, my depth perception's not that good. Been in the jungle too long. Just as the pygmies of the Ituri used to have trouble adjusting their vision to open savannah.

  I apologize for the complicated description of the upper recesses of this temple, but the arrangement is intricate. Also, that's where The Bachelor's going. I can make sense neither of the architecture nor of his intentions. And, my head tilted back like this, my neck's getting sore. I need a rest, base-camp buggers. 'Deed I do

  II. CHANEY [conversationally, but still in something of a whisper]: Me again. About an hour ago The Bachelor reached the glass platform beneath the chandelier ring. He's been standing up there like a Pan-Olympic diver ever since. Insofar as I can tell, he appears to be looking at the braided gold plumb line dangling slightly above him, its far end attached to a hook or threaded through some invisible grommet high in the dome. He can't quite reach the plumb line from his platform, though clearly he would like to. . . . He seems to be hypnotized by it.

  Let me leave him there for a moment and take a walk about the interior of this pagoda. I'll be your tour guide, base campers. Follow me.

  [The sound of footfalls as, apparently, Chancy walks.] This pagoda seems to be a museum. Or, perhaps, a mausoleum. At any rate, a monument to a dead culture. I'm reminded of the Palace of Green Porcelain in Wells's The Time Machine. . . . The walls around three sides of the bottom of this place are lined with tall spindly cabinets, glass display cases of a wildly improbable design. Each one consists of fan-shaped shelves that fold out from a central axis and lock into place on different levels from one another. [Chaney blows.] Dust. Dust on everything. But not particularly thick. And on these shelves—which have the fragile warmth of mother-of-pearl—there are specimens of various kinds of implements and artwork.

  [A click, like stone on stone.] I'm holding a statue that's about as tall as my forearm is long. It represents an Asadi male, full-maned and virile. . . . But the statue depicts him with a kind of cape around his shoulders. A garment, if you can imagine that. Very strange. . . . Here's an iron knife, with a wooden handle carved so that the top resembles the skull of an early terrestrial hominid. An Asadi skull, no doubt. . . . The statue's definitely an anomaly here; everything else in the cabinet looks like a weapon or a heavy tool.

  I'm going across the chamber, past an open corridor leading off down the pagoda's western wing and into darkness. [Footfalls.

  Echoes.] I'm going toward the one wall in here without any of these spindly cabinets against it. . . . The Flying Asadi Brothers are still up there, more rigid than the statue I just picked up. I'm passing directly beneath them now, beneath the iron ring and its energy globes. There's a huge circular pattern on the polished flagstones I'm walking upon. Inside this circle I feel I'm trespassing on sacred territory. . . . Ah, I'm out of the circle and heading toward the horn-colored wall beyond the helical stairway. There are no cabinets on that wall. Instead. . .

  Damn this light! this hollowness! Let me get closer. ... On the wall are what appear to be rows upon rows of tiny plastic wafers. Rows of wafers hung from a couple thousand silver rods protruding for several centimeters at right angles to the wall. . . . The wall's just one big, elegant pegboard glowing like a monstrous fingernail with a bonfire behind it. The rows of these wafers—cassettes, cigarette cases, matchboxes—whatever you want to call 'em— begin at about waist level and go up two or three hands higher
than I can reach. Asadi height, I suppose.

  [For three or four minutes only Chaney's breathing can be heard. Then, slowly]: Interesting. I think I've figured this out, Eisen. I want you to pay attention. . . . I've just unfastened this intricate, ah, wingnut, say, from the end of one of these protruding rods and removed the first of several tiny cassettes hanging from it. . . . Wafer was a serendipitous word choice, because these little boxes are as thin as two or three transistor templates welded together. The faces of the things are about seven centimeters square. . . . I've counted fifty of them hanging from this one rod, and, as I said, they're probably three thousand rods on this wall. That's about 150,000 cassettes altogether, and this section of the pagoda, more than likely, is just a display area.

  But I want to describe the one I've got in my hand, tell you how it works. Maybe, if I can restrain myself, I'll let you draw your own conclusions. Okay, then. In the center of this wafer—which, by the way, does seem to be made of plastic—there's an inset circle of glass with a diameter of about a centimeter, maybe a little more.

  A bulb or an eye, call it. Beneath this eye there's a rectangular tab that's flush with the surface of the cassette. Above the bulb, directly under the hole through which the wall rod passes, there's a band containing a series of different-colored dots. Some of the dots touch each other, some don't. The spacing or lack of it between dots probably has significance.

  And here's how this little crackerbox works. [Chancy chuckles.] Oh, Eisen, don't you wish Morrell were here instead of me? I do, too—I really do. . . . It's purposely simple, though. Even a cultural xenologist can figure it out. . . . All you do is hold your thumb over the right half of the tab at the bottom of the cassette. Then the fireworks begin.

  A pleased laugh, and its subsequent echo.] Ah, yes. Right now the eye in the center of the wafer is flashing through an indecipherable program of colors. Reds, violets, greens. Sapphires, yellows, pinks. All premeditatedly interlaced with pauses. Pregnant pauses, no doubt. ... In this dimness my hands are alternately lit and shadowed by the changing colors. Beautiful, beautiful. That's just it, in fact. The entire system probably sacrifices a degree of practicality on the altar of beauty.

  There. I've shut it off. All you do is cover the left half of the control rectangle with your thumb. ... It may be possible to reverse the program—rewind it to a desired point, so to speak— but I haven't stumbled on the method yet. At least I don't think I have. It's impossible for me to remember the sequences of colors—though it probably wasn't a bit difficult for the Asadi, or Ur'sadi, who composed, manufactured, and used these things, however long ago that may have been.

  They're books, or the Ur'sadi equivalent, as I'm sure you've already guessed. [A thumping noise.] I'm pocketing six of them, putting them in my backpack. For the greater glory of Science. To set the shirttails of ole Oliver Oliphant aflame with envy, may his ghost go angrily blazing across the heavens. Not to mention the fact that they'll be just one more thing for Morrell to put his screwdriver to.

  [Musingly]: Look at that wall. Can you imagine the information on hand here? Or the level of technology necessary to devise a storage-and-retrieval system for a "language" that consists of complicated spectral patterns? One fifteen-minute program in one of these cassettes probably represents the equivalent of a three hundred-page book. ... By the way, what do you suppose I was "reading"? I'd guess that the band of colored dots above the eye is the description of the contents. The title, so to speak. Maybe I was scanning a sex-and-sadism tract by the late Marquis de Asadi— my hands had begun to sweat while the program was running.

  [Sober again]: No, no, the eyebook—let's call 'em eyebooks— was the first one on that particular rod. Maybe it's their Iliad, their Divine Comedy, their Origin of the Species, their Brothers Kar-amazov. And what the hell have they done with it? Stuck it in a forgotten, godforsaken temple in the middle of the Synesthesia Wild and left it to commemorate their fall! What colossal waste! What colossal arrogance!

  [Shouting]: Where the hell do you creatures get off neglecting the accumulated knowledge of millennia? You're animals! ANIMALS!

  [A cacophony of echoes. A prolonged, painful ringing]

  Forgive me, Eisen, Benedict, all of you. Forgive me. [Chaney's voice drops to a whisper, scarcely audible.] And you, you Asadi aerialists, that's right, pretend I don't exist, pretend you can't hear me, ignore the voices of your ancestors whispering to you from their deaths. [Venomously]: And may God damn you both to hell!

  III. CHANEY[in a lifeless monotone]: I think I slept for a while. Under the rows upon rows of eyebooks. Maybe an hour. Then a noise woke me, a ringing of iron.

  Now I'm on the helical stairway high above the museum floor. I'm in a curve of the stairway a little below and opposite the glass platform where The Bachelor was standing. He's no longer there. A moment ago he chinned himself up to the cold ring of the chandelier, gained his feet, and balanced on the ring, quite

  precariously. Then he reached out and grabbed the plumb line that drops down from the dome.

  The huri, meanwhile, squats on the foremost globe in the triangle of globes set in the great iron ring. He's been there awhile.

  The Bachelor, after grabbing the gold braid, fashioned a noose and slipped his neck into it. Then he swung himself out over the floor so that his feet are hanging a little below the ring of the chandeUer. I'm watching him hang there, his feet inscribing an invisible circle inside the larger circle of the globe-set energy fixture.

  But he isn't dead, not a bit dead. The noose is canted so that it catches him under the throat in the plush of his mane. In the two weeks since his designation his mane has thickened considerably, especially along his jaw and under his throat, and the new fur cushions the steadily constricting braid. So now he's just hanging there. The dangling man.

  [Listlessly]: A pretty damn interesting development, I suppose. At least the huri acts as if it's interesting. The huri's watching all this—should I say watching, considering its eyeless-ness?—with either excitement or agitation, beating its wings sporadically and skittering to stay atop the globe it's perched on. See if you can hear it. I'll hold the microphone out for you. [A vaguely static-filled silence, followed by a distant scratching sound.] That's it, the huri's claws scrabbling on the globe. And the sound of The Bachelor's feet turning north, northeast, east, southeast, south, south-southwest. . . .

  [After almost ten minutes of static filled silence]: The huri's been joined by two of its fellows. They flew up silently out of the lower darkness of the pagoda, I don't know precisely from where, and settled like miniature brood hens on the other two energy globes. As soon as they had arrived, the original huri—The Bachelor's huri—fluttered to the Asadi's head, grabbed his mane with its claws, and began crabwalking around his shoulders and upper body like a steeplejack. After a couple of minutes had passed, I noticed that a kind of milky cobwebbing had begun to

  net in The Bachelor's head and that the huri was paying out this glistening fiber from a pair of axillary spinnerets beneath its half-open wings. The huri's tiny hands pulled out the thread, stretched it around the dangling Asadi's shoulders, and looped the stuff so expertly and with such gentle speed that the beastie appeared to be spinning cotton candy out of its armpits. Wingpils, make that. In any case, this is still going on, base-camp buggers, although the other two huri have spelled The Bachelor's huri a couple of times apiece already and The Bachelor has begun to resemble a huge, nylon-pile-lined sleeping bag turned inside out and made strangely translucent. I no longer know which huri is which, they've alternated their spinning chores so many times. . . .

  [Unawed]: Beautiful. Beautiful and grotesque at once. I'll bet you think I'm drunk or drugged. Making silk out of a souse's fears, so to speak. Not so. I've imbibed no bourbon, played with no Placenol, and I wish it was you, Eisen, or you, Morrell, who was sitting up here on this cramped stairway watching this ritual unraveling of three huri's innards. Is it silk cable or a kind of solid, filamentous milk payed
out through these creatures' axillary mammaries? Who knows? The show is beautiful and grotesque, grotesque and beautiful, but at this stage my principal reaction seems to be one of . . . well, of disgust. [Unemotionally]: God, but my patience has been tried. . . .

  [Several more minutes pass . A faint flapping commences, continues for a time, ceases, and commences again.]

  One of the three huri—don't ask me which—let a strand of silk drop down The Bachelor's body and through the axis of the dome until it damn near reached the floor. Another of the huri flew off its globe and caught up a section of the strand in its claws. Then, with both its claws and hands, flapping in higgledy-ziggledly circles, it covered The Bachelor's feet, his ankles, and his shins. After that, it settled on the old boy's wrapped feet. Now, its wings outspread and its spinnerets, I'd imagine, virtually exhausted, the huri's hanging up there like a bat and still bravely mummy-wrapping its master. It's got help, though. The other two huri are also single-

  mindedly crawling his body, getting The Bachelor ready for Christmas. And all three of them, mind you, are blind, as blind as ... as a besotted cultural xenologist. Good boy, Chaney, no more cliches than the experience itself calls for.

  I don't know how long it'll take—not much longer, apparently— but in a while The Bachelor will be completely encased in a murky chrysalis, a sheath which the huri look as if they would like to finish and tie off as soon as they can. Already they're binding in the Asadi's hands, tightening thread around his thighs, thickening and padding the glowing gauze of his enormous sleeping bag. Soon The Bachelor will be nothing but a lopsided pupa hanging from a golden cord inside the eerie loft of his ancestors' rickety bam. I guess. So to speak.