Transfigurations

by Michael Bishop

  [Chaney grunts. Shuffling sounds. Perhaps the weary shifting of a burden.]

  I guess. Don't ask me. I won't watch any more of this foolishness. I'm dizzy. I'm fed up with this nonsense. . . . If I can make it down these steps in the half-light, the hell-glow, I'm going to lie down beside the wall of eyebooks, where I was before, and go to sleep. Directly to sleep. Before the worm turns. . . .

  [Footfalls on the iron steps. Unintelligible mumblings]

  Interlude: Early Afternoon of Day 139*

  CHANEY [speaking conversationally]: Hello. I'm talking to Benedict alone now. Ben? Ben, you're supposed to make a drop tomorrow. Your twentieth. Can you believe that? No, I can't either. It doesn't seem like more than ten or twelve years that I've been out here. Twenty drops. Well I may not pick up this latest

  * From the end of the previous section to the beginning of this one Chaney engaged in a great deal of irrelevant "blathering." I have deleted it. Altogether, about twelve or fourteen hours of real time passed, time during which Chaney also slept and ate. In this "Interlude" I have taken the liberty of borrowing small sections from the deleted passages in order to provide a continuity which would not otherwise exist. T. B.

  one. Not for a while, anyway. God knows when The Bachelor will choose to lead me out of here and back to the clearing. At the moment he's occupied. Let me tell you how.

  First, let me tell you what's going on. I'm standing here by one of the dusty display cases. All its shelves are folded up against the central axis, like the petals of a flower at night. But it's early afternoon, Ben, there's dull light seeping through the swirling violet windows between the separate stories of the pagoda's exterior column. Even so, every cabinet in the place is shut up like a new rose. Eveiy one of them. It happened, I guess, while I was sleeping. The fires have gone out of the three globes overhead—they're as dead and as mutely mottled as dinosaur eggs. I don't know exactly when that happened, either. The eyebooks still work, but everything else in here is dead.

  The pagoda's dead. That's all there is to it. And I have the feeling it won't come alive again until Denebola has set and BoskVeld's moons climb the sky. Moonlight is reflected light, indirect light, and this place seems to function best when the light comes at you cockeyed and filtered. Don't ask me why. . . .

  But The Bachelor. You want to know what happened to him. Again, I don't know exactly. During the night the plumb line from which he fashioned the noose and then hung out over the pagoda's floor while a trio of huri wrapped him in silk—that golden line, I tell you, has lengthened and dropped through the ring of the chandelier so that it's now only a meter or so from the floor. It descended, I suppose, of its own accord. [A chuckle.] Now the ungainly pupa hangs in the daylight gloom of this chamber and turns slowly, slowly, first to the right, then to the left, like the gone-awry pendulum in a grandfather clock .... That's it, Ben, my somber Big Ben, this whole building's just an out-sized timepiece. You can hear BoskVeld ticking in its orbit. Listen ....

  As for the huri, only one of last night's three remains. The original huri, I have to assume. It crouches on the uppermost node of the pupa, the point at which the braid breaks through, and rides

  The Bachelor's mummified head as it used to ride his shoulder. Each time the wrapped body turns this way I feel the huri's staring at me, taking my measure. If I had a pistol, I'd shoot the damn thing, I swear I would. Even if it meant that the concussion would split the seams of this temple and send it crashing down on my ears—every fragile cabinet shattering, every eyebook bursting open. So help me, I would. Which is probably why I didn't bring a weapon out here with me in the first place. . . . But now the little beastie's clawing nervously at the silken membrane, unhinging its wings and shaking their outstretched tips. I think, gang, we're going to get some action. Give me a few minutes, just a few ....

  [Several minutes pass.] Action, indeed. The huri's moving in its own catch-as-catch-can fashion down the swaying cocoon that houses The Bachelor. As it moves, it peels back pieces of the membrane, snips them off with its feet, transfers the pieces to its greedy hands, and eats them. That's right, eats them. ... I'd been wondering what the little bugger subsisted on, and I have to continue to wonder. Viable food chains do not result from a creature's feeding on its own excreta. Too much is lost. . . . Nevertheless, the huri's feeding on the husk of The Bachelor's metamorphosis, on the rind of its master's involuntary change. Maybe that's phrasing it a little too philosophically, but I can't help thinking the huri's eating The Bachelor's former self. . . . It's crabwalking in a spiral down the cocoon, a spiral mirroring the great corkscrew of the pagoda's staircase, and it furiously shovels in and gobbles up the membrane that it's snipping away.

  Now the huri is at the hollow of The Bachelor's chest, and I can see the outline of my old friend's head through the milk-blue film that remains even though the silken outer layer has been eaten away. This film clings to his features like a hood. It's moist and trembly, and through it I can see the death mask of his face.

  Ben, Ben, you can't expect me to stay here and watch this. Tell the others not to expect that of me. The bitch-goddess of xenology's fucked me over too many times already, and I'm nauseated with fatigue. With disgust. It's worse than last night.

  There's an odor in the temple, a smell like excrement and rot and the foul discharges of the glands. I don't know what I'm. . .

  [A retching sound, painful and prolonged. Then, a rapid succession of footfalls, suggestive of running.]

  The doors. I've got to get to the doors. . . .

  The Second Night

  I. CHANEY [his voice thin but genial]: We're in the Wild again. Out in the open. Out among the singing leaves, the dancing moons, the glittering winds. The humidity's horrible. It makes my sinuses act up. After spending one sore-necked night in the refrigerated vault of that Asadi warehouse, though—and one stomach-turning day in it when it changed from a warehouse into a chamel house—well, the humidity's a welcome relief. Let my nose run as it may, where it may. Even though I don't know where the hell the face it's running on is running to. Actually, we're not running at all. We're moving quite leisurely through the trees. The Bachelor and the huri and 1. In no hurry at all.

  [Clinically]: I feel pretty well now. The horror of this afternoon has evaporated. I don't know why it made me ill. It wasn't that bad, really. I should have stayed and watched. That's what I came out here for. But when the smell got so bad, well, I had to get out of there. My system's been under a strain.

  I bolted for the pagoda's entrance, pushed aside the heavy doors, and ran down the tier of steps. The sunlight increased my nausea and I threw up again. But I couldn't go back inside, Ben, and as a consequence I'm not entirely certain what the final circumstances of The Bachelor's removal from the cocoon were. Like a little boy waiting for the library to open, I sat on the bottom step of the pagoda and held my head in my hands. I was ill. Really ill. It wasn't just an emotional thing. . . . But now I feel better, and the night—the stars twinkling up there like chipped ice— seems like my friend.

  [Wistfully]: I wish I could navigate by those stars. But I can't.

  Their patterns are still unfamiliar to me. They don't tell me where we are. Maybe we're going back to the clearing, maybe elsewhere.

  [Throughout this section of Chaney's monologue the sound of wind and leaves corroborates his testimony that they are out of doors, out of the temple.]

  The Bachelor's striding ahead of me, the huri on his shoulder. I know, I know, you're wondering what he looks like, what his disposition is, what his metamorphosis accomplished for him. Well, gang, I'm not sure. You see, he looks. . . . about the same. As I said, I didn't go back into the museum, I waited outside until the sun had set, thinking all the while that I'd go back up the steps when the darkness was complete. I knew that my two disarming friends couldn't get out any other way, that I wouldn't be stranded there alone. At least I didn't see any other doors while I was inside. The ancient Asadi—the Ur'sadi, damn 'em—apparently
didn't see any need to leave themselves a multitude of outs. The end they've come to supports that hypothesis. But before I could steel myself to reentering the pagoda—^just as the twilight began to lose its gloss—The Bachelor, looking not much different, appeared on the highest step.

  And came down the steps. And walked right by me.

  He didn't look at me, and the huri, clinging to his mane, had the comatose look I remember it possessing when Eisen Zwei came into the Asadi clearing for the second time. Now I know why it looked so bloated and incapable of movement—it had just ingested the old man's huri-spun pupa, if indeed a trio of huri had for reasons of their own so encased Eisen Zwei. God help me. I still haven't figured this out. I may never figure it out. . . . Anyhow, I noticed only two small changes as he stalked by me in the jungle, two small changes in The Bachelor, that is. First, his mane's now a full-grown collar of fur, not just a bib under his throat. It's still a little damp from the filmy blue substance that lined the chrysalis. And second, a thin cloak of this film stretches between The Bachelor's naked shoulder blades and falls in folds to the small of his back. Probably it just hasn't dropped away yet.

  And that's it. His eyes are still as mute, as white, as uncommunicative, as they ever were.

  We're in a kind of tunnel. We've been walking, slipping beneath the vines and hanging bouquets of flowers, for about thirty or forty minutes. A while ago we came upon what seems to be a footpath, a beaten trail where we can walk upright. The only such trail I've seen in the Synesthesia Wild, ever. The Bachelor's moving down it easily, and once again I'm having no trouble keeping up.

  [Singing softly]:

  The Wild is lovely, dark, and deep, Its grottos free of wars alarms —

  But would I were in my bed, asleep. And all Earth in my arms.

  Fm lost. [Pensively]: All the time I've spent in the Asadi clearing, all that time watching them amble around and wear down their heels to no purpose—it seems like centuries ago. No kidding, Ben, Eisen, that time in the clearing just doesn't exist right now. Lost as I am, 1 feel 1 could follow The Bachelor down this narrow trail forever.

  But his metamorphosis—or lack of it—bothers me. I've been thinking about it. My considered, but not necessarily considerate, opinion is that the old grey mayor—mayor, chieftain, what's the difference?—is exactly what he used to be. Anatomically speaking, that is. Maybe the very brief time he spent hibernating in that homemade sleeping bag altered him psychologically rather than physically. Perhaps it put him more closely in tune with his huri and his huri with him.

  Who's to say, gang? Who's to say?

  [Ten minutes of wind, water, and shush-shush-shushing feet.]

  II. CHANEY [whispering]: There's something in the trees ahead of us. A crouched grey shape. The Bachelor just turned on me,

  Ben—he wouldn't let me approach with him. If I don't stay fairly close, though, I'll be lost out here. Damn you, you hulking boonie, I won't let you sneak away. . . . We're off the trail, we've been off it a good while, and the trees, the lianas, the swollen epiphytes— hell, everything's the same, one spot's like another. . . . I'm disobeying the bastard. I'm staying close enough to keep him in my sight. He's out there in a ragged hallway of rainthorn leaves moving toward the thing in the tree. A tumor in the branches, a lump that the moonlight gives a suspicious fuzziness. . . . You should see the way The Bachelor's approaching the thing. He's spread his arms out wide, and he's taking one step at a time, one long easy step. Like an adagio S.S. man. The membrane between his shoulder blades has opened out, too, so that it makes a fan-shaped drapery across his back. Shadows shift across it, shadows and moonlight. . . . What a weird goddamn boonie. You should see him. He's a kind of moving, blown-up version of the drunken huri clinging to his mane. . . . We're closer now. That thing up there, whatever it is, it's either dead, or inanimate, or hypnotized. Hypnotized, I think. It seems to be one of the Asadi from the clearing. A grey shape. Ordinarily you don't get this close at night. You just don't. The Bachelor's hypnotized it with his slow-motion goose step, the filmy rippling of the membrane across his back and arms, maybe even with his empty eyes. . . . Now we're just waiting, waiting. I'm as close as I can get without jeopardizing the purity of this confrontation. ... I can see eyes up there, Asadi eyes, stalled on a sickly but reflective amber. [Aloud, over a sudden thrashing]: The damn thing's just jumped out of the branches! It's one of the Asadi all right, a lithe grey female. The Bachelor's wrenching her backward to the ground, the huri's fallen sidelong away from him! It's fluttering, fluttering in the thicket beneath the rainthorn tree!//I heavy bump. Continued thrashing. Chaney's voice skyrockets to an uncontrolled falsetto]: I knew it! I knew what you were! Dear lord, I won't permit this! I won't permit your hideous evil to flourish! DAMN YOU! [Scuffling. Then, indignantly]: Stay where you are. Don't approach me. Stay where

  you. . . [Violent noises. Then a hum of static and prolonged low breathing.]

  III. CHAt^EY [panting]: My head aches. I've been sick again. I didn't think I could throw up again, my stomach's so tight and empty, but somehow I managed. . . . It's sweet here, though. I'm kneeling in fragrant grass under the lattice-sail trees by the edge of the pagoda's clearing. . . . I've been sick again, yes, but I've done heroic things. Semiheroic things, perhaps. In any case, I'm vaguely proud of myself. . . . Even though I'm sick, down on my hands and knees with the cramps. . . . You can hear me, can't you? I'm talking out loud—OUT LOUD, DAMN IT!—and he's not about to stop me. He's just going to sit there opposite me with his long legs folded and take my reproaches and evil stares. Aren't you, boonie? Aren't you? That's right, that's a good boonie. . . . He's appalled by what I've just done, Ben. As a matter of fact, so am I. I've freed him from that scabby little battlecock of his. . . . There's blood on the grass. Dark, sweet blood. Too sweet, Ben. I've got to get up.

  [Chancy moans. A rustling of clothes, then his strained voice]: Okay. Fine. A little bark to lean against here, a tree with spiny shingles. [A stumping sound.] Good, good. ... I refused to let myself get disoriented, Ben. We came slogging right through that opening there, that portal of ferns and violet blossoms. . . . Oh, hell, you can't see where I'm pointing, can you? Never mind, then. Just know that we slogged to this place from that direction I'm pointing, and I kept my head about me all the way here. My head, by the way, continues to ring from the bashing The Bachelor gave me back in that—that other place. He bloodied me, damn him, when I tried to stop him from slaughtering this poor woman here, the one lying here butchered in the grass. ... He knocked me down and I couldn't stop him. Then he whirled her up over his shoulder, grabbed the huri out of the undergrowth by its feet, and took off through the jungle. Because of my bruised head, my aching eye, the Wild rang like a thousand wind chimes. To keep from getting lost, I had to follow him. Dear God, Ben, I had to

  hobble along after that crazy Asadi crew. . . . Then we reached this little patch of grass among the swaying lattice-sail trees—the pagoda's right over there—and The Bachelor threw the dead woman on the ground and disemboweled her. He opened her belly with his teeth. I saw him hovering over her as I stumbled up through the root gnarls and hanging tropical moss after him. I got to this place just as he was making an incision down her abdomen with his canines. ... I collapsed and watched. The enormity of what he was doing scarcely fazed me. Holding my bad eye and squinting through the other, Ben, I watched. In ten or twelve minutes I'd forgotten what it all meant, and the woman didn't look like an Asadi any longer—but a deep-red, a blood-black slab of meat. Now the grass is littered with her, and I didn't even attempt to interfere. But, Ben, I couldn't help that, it was all owing to my fatigue and my bruised head, I wasn't thinking straight, I didn't realize he was butchering a human being. As soon as I could, I remedied the situation. And that's why I'm still a little sick. . . . But my head's clear now; it aches, but it's clear. And the boonie isn't about to strike me again. Are you, boonie? All he can do is sit and stare at me. I've intimidated the hell out of him. He thought I was some ki
nd of maneless Asadi vermin, apparently, and now he's unable to reconcile that image of me with his memory of what I've recently accomplished, poor mute bastard. My semiheroic deed kicked him right in his psychological solar plexus.

  [Bemusedly]: As the night is my witness, Ben, I killed the huri. No, the boonie can't believe it either. Nevertheless, it's true.

  Look at him. He's making slow figure eights with his chin. He thought me just another low Asadi dog, but I've boggled him past recovery. When he was finishing carving up that pitifully helpless woman, that sweet, long-legged lady, he set the huri atop her carcass and busied himself devouring her viscera, the sweet discarded bones of her limbs and skull. ... I had to do something then, of course. I pulled myself up—but the huri was sitting there on her butchered body staring at me blindly and daring me to move. I wasn't supposed to move, you see; I was supposed to be a

  good cannibal and wait until dinner was properly served. . . . But I'm not an Asadi, and I paid no heed to the boonie's stupid sentinel, Ben. I killed it. That's the heed I paid it. I ran up and kicked the huri with my boot, it fluttered backward, and I was upon it with my reinforced heel, grinding its filthy little no-face into the grass. Its body split open. Pus spilled out of the lesion like putty from a plastic tube, stinking to the skies. Strands of the stuff coagulated in the gelatinous mass, grew silken and feathery in the air. The smell was intolerable. . . . That's what made me sick, I'm afraid, the sight and the stink of the huri's silk-making innards. I stumbled away, fell to my knees, and heaved until I thought my guts would wrench loose inside me. You can't imagine what it felt like

  The Bachelor never moved. Killing the huri had given me a hold over him, a power. He just sat, like he's sitting now, half hunkering, half flat-assed on the ground, and watched me be sick. The smell of the grass revived me, convinced me of my own feeble heroism, and that's when I had to tell you about it, when I started talking through my sickness and the heavy, too-sweet smell of the grass.