Transfigurations

by Michael Bishop

  "As a consequence of recent events," Moses concluded, "I seem to be in some small danger of early retirement. Relocation of my family and me to, say, Amersavane or SteppeChilde isn't altogether unlikely—not as hard-scrabble pioneers, mind you, but as 'esteemed wards and wardens of the community.' That's still not a prospect I cherish, Ben."

  We sat for a time without saying anything. Occasionally I caught glimpses of Kretzoi in the foliage, eyeing us cryptically from behind a planter or a stone sculpture.

  Then, almost himself again, Moses flipped open one of the laminated folders and began running his finger down a double column of figures. "Brain volume is 823 cubic centimeters," he said matter-of-factly. "Since Bojangles was a small adult male, the supposition is that Asadi endocranial volume may run as high as 1300 cc's. That's well within human parameters. In fact, the two figiu-es pretty closely approximate the range of brain sizes among known specimens of Homo erectus, contemporary humanity's great-grandparents, so to speak." He looked up, glancing first at Elegy and then at me. "I'm not sure what significance that has, only that the statistics reveal the similarities."

  "It may mean the Asadi are self-aware after the fashion of human beings," Elegy said. "Homo erectus tamed fire and had something approaching a knowledge of the mystical finality of death. They ate the brains of their dead as a means of maintaining spiritual contact with their departed relatives."

  "Or as a means of incorporating and subjugating the essence of their enemies," I added. "It's hard to reconstruct intentions from five-hundred-thousand-year-old skulls with holes near their brain stems."

  Moses looked back down at his folder. "The organization of the Asadi brain also appears to have a good deal in common with ours. A triune evolution and structure—but four principal lobes in the neocortex, with a bridge between hemispheres similar to our corpus callosum. Bojangles's brain, however, has no recognizable counterpart to Broca's area in its left hemisphere, the specific region in which resides our ability to formulate the symbolic structures of language."

  "That's not surprising," I said. "The Asadi don't speak—at least not with their tongues."

  "^Tiat they do have," Moses went on, "is a structure in the right

  hemisphere of the parietal cortex—or superassociation area—that may have a functional correspondence with Broca's area even though it controls the muscles of their eyes rather than those of their lips and tongues. Call it 'Bojangles's area,' if you like—that's how it's recorded in this white paper." Moses tapped the printout. "Anyway, Bojangles's area may act in the Asadi as Broca's area acts in us. It's a source and a repository of the structural grammar of the Asadi's polychromatic optical 'language.' It also appears to perform the function of Wernicke's area in human beings—that is, it stores sensory images, particularly visual ones, and permits the Asadi to communicate with one another in a complex visual code we haven't yet broken."

  "This area—Bojangles's area—exists in the right rather than the left hemisphere of the Asadi neocortex?" I asked.

  "According to this," Moses acknowledged, looking with undisguised awe at the white paper in his hands and riffling its pages. 'This entire folder has to do with the anatomy and function of the Asadi brain. The whole damn thing."

  "In human brain lateralization," Elegy said, picking up my cue, "the left side is the digital computer that formulates the objective personality, the rational self. The right side is the analogue computer that links up the various counterstreaming visions and nightmares of our subconscious self; it's the residence of our intuitive and more recognizably mystical personality. The ego lives in the left brain, the 'not-I' in the right. If the same bicameral correspondences hold in the Asadi brain, then their polychromatic optical language derives much more immediately from 'ancestral voices' than does human speech. The implication—isn't this what you're driving at, Ben?—is that they communicate with one another on a much more intuitive or even artistic level than do human beings?"

  Moses wrapped his feet eiround the front legs of his chair and leaned back in it like a little boy tempting gravity. He gave a derisive bark and shook his head.

  "What?" Elegy asked him.

  "What's 'intuitive' or 'artistic' about staring contests in a humid jungle clearing?"

  "How can we possibly answer that," I asked, "until we know what kinds of information they're exchanging? Even if the Asadi brain superficially resembles ours, the location of Bojangles's area suggests that their intelligence—their entire neuro-symbolic at-tunement to the world—may be of a different order of reality from ours. The physical similarities, the anatomical matchups, even the amazing correspondence of the amino-acid sequences may me£m nothing at all in the face of the Asadi's totally alien perception of their place in the Infinite Scheme of Things."

  Moses clumped fonvard and put his elbows on the table again. "That's Thomas Benedict talking out of his right brain," he told Elegy. "What the hell is your friend driving at?"

  Elegy—for the sake of argument, I think—took Moses's part: "Kretzoi and Bojangles did manage to get on the same wavelength for a while, Ben. For that short while, I'm pretty certain, they . . . well, touched."

  "If they did," I said, "it proves only that Bojangles was able to cross an interspecies Rubicon unfordable by you or me. Bojangles made the crossing, Kretzoi didn't. And we may never be able to make it—for the same reason iguanas can't fly or hippopotami sing."

  That shut us all up for a while, even me.

  Then Moses pulled another folder toward him and opened it. "This one has to do with the eye," he announced. "Not the areas in the brain that store visual memory or the Asadi's indecipherable optical grammar, mind you—but the structure and function of the eye itself. Photoreception, the willed conversion of photosynthetic pigments into spectral displays, and the breakdown of sunlight into chemical energy usable as metabolic fuel. The eyes of the Asadi, you see, have at least three distinct functions—they see, they communicate, and they feed. They may do other things as well, but we're not certain yet what they are."

  "Then the Asadi eye is capable of photosynthesis?" Elegy asked.

  "So it appears," Moses responded, "although we still don't completely understand the mechanism. Their eyes capture sunlight in specialized cellular structures containing energy factories similar to the chloroplasts in plant cells. These globular factories—we're calling them chromoplasts because they contain light-absorbing pigments in addition to chlorophyl, some of which we've never seen before—convert light energy into electrical energy and electrical energy into chemical energy. Some of the chemical energy is radiated in the Asadi's spectral displays, which may be either willed or random—although the consensus at the hospital seems to be that the Asadi control them. Just as your father surmised. Civ Gather, and just as we've all along assumed on the basis of simple observation and the empirical evidence of the eyebooks.

  "The remainder of the chemical energy produced in the Asadi's optical chromoplasts goes into the manufacture of ATP and, ultimately, of course, glucose. The efficiency with which their chromoplasts use absorbed light energy appears to be nearly one hundred percent, and the oxygen that in plant photosynthesis is given off as a waste product the Asadi manage to channel back into their systems as an agent in the purely animal-specific energy-producing process of the Krebs cycle. In a sense, then, the Asadi even breathe through their eyes. That's why, when we first began examining the optical photosynthesis theory, our tests for especially high concentrations of oxygen over the Asadi clearing always proved negative.

  "Now, apparently, the theor)''s been confirmed, and that confirmation suggests a reason for their staying in the jungle clearing only during the hours between sunrise and sunset—that's when their eyes photosynthesize most efficiently, and that's when they're best capable of communicating with one another through their spectral displays. The two processes complement each other, setting up a positive feedback loop in the same way that the

  tendency to bipedalism in early terrestrial
hominids and the need to carry objects reinforced and further developed each other. But a positive feedback loop can dictate and drastically limit behavior, too, and that seems to be one of the reasons the Asadi have fallen into such a stagnant and repetitive life-style during their recent history. Perhaps the structure and function of thejr eyes have been the undoing as well as the making of the Asadi as a viable species."

  "They're completely viable," Elegy put in. 'Their numbers are small, but they don't appear in danger of extinction. What you're really saying is that by the standards of Sol Ill's arrogant human primates, they're not readily comprehensible. Isn't that it? Besides, the Asadi aren't absolute slaves to this physiological and biochemical process; at some point, they must have chosen to assemble at dawn and to disperse at sunset."

  "Why?" Moses asked.

  "Because visible light exists prior to dawn and after sunset. Their eyes, if they really operate at almost one hundred percent efficiency, could easily photosynthesize at these times, too."

  I got up, clasped my hands at the small of my back, and stared at Kretzoi's half-concealed form in the poolside foliage. "That still doesn't suggest conscious choice. Elegy. The pattern—you suggested this yourself when you implied we could redeem the Asadi by taking them out of their clearing—the pattern may be part of a genetically dictated behavioral program. An instinct. You said yourself their willingness to suffer the monotony of the clearing must have survival value. Don't you remember your speculations about cannibalism?"

  "All I know is that we've lost Bojangles, Ben, and that I'm tired of theory and speculation."

  'That's why I've come to you with facts," Moses said, again riffling the pages of a report. "Look. Look here. Do you remember your father's account of the Asadi 'chieftain'—Chaney called him Eisen Zwei; a typical Chaney impertinence—who did battle with

  Denebola, staring directly at it and wrestling the sun with his hands?"

  Yes, said Elegy, she remembered.

  "The result was that the old Asadi's eyes burned out, became like two blackened holes in his head." Moses shook the report. "The evidence here is that blindness is equivalent to death for the Asadi. And those among them who are handicapped by an absence of photosynthetic pigments in their eyes—like The Bachelor, like the chieftain Eisen Zwei—are regarded with either passive repugnance or worshipful terror, as we might regard a zombie, one of the living dead. These handicapped Asadi have to depend on sources in addition to sunlight to feed themselves, you see, and they're unable to communicate with their fellows in the usual Asadi way. Hence, they're not simply 'mutes' to the community at large, they're walking dead men. That's why, after Eizen Zwei's ritual suicide. The Bachelor—a former pariah—was chosen to succeed the old man as 'chieftain.'"

  "You're theorizing again," I reminded Moses.

  "All right," he said. "Listen. The evidence indicates that direct observation of Denebola definitely bums out the Asadi's eyes. They realize this themselves, and for the most part they prudently avoid staring matches with their sun. Unless, of course, they wish to blind themselves, as Eisen Zwei apparently did."

  "But why did he want to blind himself?" I asked.

  "Figuratively, he was committing suicide. He was old and sick and weary of the rigors of his absentee chieftaincy. If blindness is an absolute metaphor for death, the Asadi who purposely puts out his eyes is symbolically killing himself. In Eisen Zwei's case, according to Chaney's monograph, actual biological death followed this metaphorical death by less than thirty hours. The metaphor hastened the reality, in fact—^just as Eisen Zwei wished it to."

  Elegy's face took on a sudden jaundiced glow. "Bojangles stared at the sun, or tried to, almost the entire first day we had him in here!"

  "Exactly." Moses cocked his finger at Elegy as if she had just solved an especially difficult equation. "His behavior wasn't an involuntary manifestation of Asadi photoperiodism, but Bo-jangles's own conscious attempt to kill himself. He wanted Denebola to bum his eyes out."

  "It didn't," I said.

  'That's because the hangar's skylights—to keep the temperature in here bearable—filter out most of the radiation in the yellow and green parts of the spectrum. An inadvertent result of this process was that Bojangles was unable to blind himself. Ironically, even though he didn't eat the plants that were hauled in for him, his staring upward helped keep him alive. He was 'feeding' in the red and violet parts of the spectrum, you see, and photosynthesiz-ing all the nutrients he required from air, water, and sunlight. Even when he and Kretzoi started conversing and he gave up trying to blind himself, Bojangles was still deriving all the sustenance he required from Denebola's filtered light."

  "He wanted to kill himself," Elegy murmured.

  "That's not hard to believe, is it?" Moses asked her. "Look at this place we're in. You can't expect a creature who's never seen anything like this hangar to adjust to an abrupt and unexpected confinement within it. Bojangles had spent his entire life in the Calyptran Wild. You tore him up by the roots and relocated him in an environment terrifyingly alien."

  "But Bojangles had seen something like this hangar before, Moses." I walked along the edge of the pool toward the place where I had last seen Kretzoi lurking.

  "He had?" Moses pushed himself away from the table and maneuvered his chair about so that he could see me. "What?"

  'The Asadi pagoda," Eleg>' whispered in a throaty way that carried. "Or the Ur'sadi temple, if you prefer." Then, in her normal voice: "Of course Bojangles may never have been inside that temple. So it's entirely possible you're correct. Governor Eisen—the hangar's strangeness may have been enough to prompt him to try to blind himself. Suicide, if you like."

  "Kretzoi!" I called. "Kretzoi, come out here!"

  He emerged reluctantly, walking on all fours like a baboon on open savannah. The fact that he could go upright as well as most human beings was lost in the disdainful animality of his approach.

  Half to show my concern, half to bedevil him, I put my hand on Kretzoi's mane and walked him back to the table.

  "Bojangles told you he'd seen the pagoda described in Chaney's monograph. He told you that on his second day in here, didn't he?"

  Kretzoi nibbled at a tuft of hair on his shoulder, then smoothed it with his tongue.

  "Kretzoi, I'm talking to you. Bojangles told you he'd seen the pagoda. He told you a good deal more, too. Information you haven't shared with us in the wake of his . . ." I let my voice trail off.

  "Murder," Elegy finally said. "In the wake of his murder."

  At that, Kretzoi reared back and promptly made the Ameslan sign for "murder." Then he looked accusingly at each of his human interlocutors in turn.

  "This from a hybrid creature," I told Moses, "whose progenitors sometimes bashed open the skulls of infants to get at their brains."

  "His genetic makeup is partially chimp, partially baboon," Elegy countered angrily, "but human beings also happen to be one of his 'progenitors'! His intelligence was augmented and, apparently, so was his capacity for sensitizing himself to that voice in the neocortex we call conscience. The same thing should happen to you."

  Moses laughed. I exhaled audibly and held up my hands in mock—no, in genuine—surrender.

  "We're going back into the Wild," Elegy enthusiastically told Moses, ignoring me. "No more field studies among the Asadi. No more windy speculation about origins and endings. We're going to look for the temple, where all our answers assuredly lie."

  "Wonderful," said Moses. "How are you going to find it? Geoffrey Sankosh, if you'll recall, spent the better part of a year in

  there looking for that building and the remains of your father. And he didn't find either."

  "He didn't have Kretzoi."

  "Do you 'have' Kretzoi, Civ Gather? And even if you do, what can he accomplish for you if you don't remove another Asadi from the Wild for him to tutor in the basics of Ameslan?"

  "Look through the carapaces over his eyes, Governor."

  Moses hesitated.


  "Go on. Look at Kretzoi's eyes and tell me what you see."

  Moses drew back from the creature and said, "I know what his eyes look like. Elegy. To some extent, like mine. Or like yours. They're not the eyes of an Asadi."

  "Unless you suppose they're malformed in some basic way. Governor—as if congenitally lacking in a full complement of photosynthetic pigments. In the Wild, the Asadi accepted Kretzoi's presence, but after they'd discovered his . . . his handicap, they treated him pretty much as my father said they treated The Bachelor. That is, they tolerated him among them, but they found his presence disturbing. The cause of their uneasiness was his eyes."

  "AH right," Moses said, waiting to be convinced of Kretzoi's future usefulness but altogether skeptical of the accomplishment.

  I wandered away from the table and squatted at poolside, transfixed both by their conversation and the snaky fissure running across the bottom of the pool's deep end.

  "The Asadi regard Kretzoi," I heard Elegy tell Moses, "at least on a subconscious basis, but maybe even on a sociological level, as one of their walking dead. That's why, at first, Bojangles kept telling Kretzoi he was afraid."

  "All right," Moses said again.

  "That means we may be able to induce in them, all of the Asadi, not only a 'passive repugnance' of Kretzoi but a 'worshipful terror.' Weren't those the terms you used? Why must we send him among the Asadi as a lowly Sudra, is what I'm asking, when we could just as easily send him into their midst as a supernatural Brahman?"

  I looked at the figures in dim tableau at poolside. Moses Eisen was leaning back contemplatively in his hardwood chair. Elegy had insinuated the fingers of one hand into the golden pelage of Kretzoi's mane. The primate, meanwhile, sat beneath her touch with the regal composure of a lion.

  "So that's what we're going to do," I heard Elegy say with youthful assurance. "Kretzoi's going to impersonate an Asadi king."

  CHAPTER TWELVE