by Adele Abbot
It’s as though there has never been anything novel in their lives, he thought. Their lack of speech was puzzling, too. Calistrope could not remember meeting anyone who could not speak unless actually dumb and even they had the capacity to understand. Here is yet another subspecies of homo ultimo.
There were many such. The race had modified and reinvented itself so many times that there were hundreds, if not thousands, of variations on a theme. Some were still close enough to the main genotype to interbreed, others had altered to such an extent that procreation between them and other branches of the species was impossible.
“Morph,” he said after watching the behavior of the villagers for some time. “These people have changed since we first came. Do you detect a difference?”
Polymorph was silent for a few seconds. “There is a change. Their minds seem less empty. They wonder who we are, how did we make the new food. I can sense excitement as well somewhere, and pleasure.”
“They are learning from us, would you say?”
“It seems likely. However, I believe this is your expected visitor.”
Calistrope turned to see where Polymorph was looking, Polymorph had its eyes closed, it had sensed the newcomer by their mental signature. Alerted, Calistrope could sense a current of etheric power coming from behind him.
“Come and sit with us, Phariste.”
A figure came into view to his left. “Calistrope? I am afraid I am not this Phariste you expect.”
Until she spoke, Calistrope had not realized the newcomer was a woman.
“Certainly you are not.” Despite his surprise, Calistrope retained his composure. He got to his feet. “If you are the mage who occupies the manse over yonder, my assumptions have been wrong.”
“I am Lelaine,” she said. “The manse, the village, these people, they are mine,” she gathered a voluminous black cloak of fine silk about her and took a seat across the fire from Calistrope, a faint perfume reached him—a scent of woodland flowers. “And you?” Lelaine drew her knees up and rested her folded arms on them.
Calistrope sat down again. “Calistrope, as you have divined. A traveler, as you must have guessed. On my way to Schune, which perhaps you did not know.”
“And the Halfling?”
“Is Polymorph. A companion, a friend.”
Polymorph’s figure became a little more upright, swelled a little with gratification.
“Not human.”
“Absolutely not.”
“This Phariste you mentioned. Why might I be she?”
“He, Madam. Phariste was someone I knew once, a mage as it chances. The nature of the villagers, they reminded me of certain theories Phariste had formulated.”
Lelaine had a narrow oval face; she had dark hair, an ivory-pale complexion and eyes like lilac-colored almonds. Expression was conveyed by her eyebrows; all other parts of her visage seemed a mask, her lips moving only enough to form words, her jaw only sufficient to enunciate.
“Tell me Phariste’s theories,” she demanded.
Calistrope eased himself. “Phariste believed in the power of meditation to cure many ills—both of the mind and of the body. Meditation purged the mind of conflicts, he told me. Thought, he believed—at least, if taken to extremes—overtaxed the body’s resources.”
Lelaine’s eyebrows rose questioningly.
“I don’t recall his attempting to put this into practice but he was wont to say that if thought were entirely banished, then the body might continue to function forever.”
The eyebrows descended, drew together, formed a straight line. Lelaine considered Calistrope’s recollections. “Your friend merely skirted the fundamental truths, Calistrope. Skulked around the heart of the matter like a burglar unexpectedly finding the householder at home.”
“I see.”
“Indeed. You should not be surprised. Did you say your friend was male?”
Calistrope nodded.
“A woman would have been more exacting in her analysis; men are given to prejudgment.”
Calistrope had to admit the fact, if only to himself, that there had been occasions—rare ones—when even he had been less than rigorous. Still…
“Well now,” he said. In Calistrope’s experience, there was rarely anything to choose between the two sexes. Both were equally likely to be affected by prejudice, both prone to prevarication, both would attempt to fit observation to the theory. “There may be something in what you say,” Calistrope opted for diplomacy.
“You may depend upon it,” Lelaine was firm. “Your friend failed to take his arguments to their logical conclusion. You see, it is the thought which affects the person, not the act of thinking. Thoughts are demons, debilitating, degrading and extremely contagious.”
“This seems highly unorthodox.”
“Ah! If you were a mage.”
“Perhaps I am. What is there to say that I am not?”
Lelaine smiled. The first time her lips had been used to express an emotion—sadly it was disdain. “Would a mage have left his name with my griffins?”
“Your griffins? How can this be?”
“The stone griffins at my gate are guardian spirits. If you were a mage, they would not have let you pass—and they heard what you said and related it to me.”
“Well now. Perhaps if I were a mage…”
“If you were a mage, trained to assess—better yet, a woman with her faculties unclouded by the hormones which rage through men’s bodies—in that case, I could explain all of it to you.”
Calistrope shook his head, sighed. “If I were only a mage.”
“And female.”
“Alas.”
“You see, ideas are the curse of the human race.”
“But surely, thought is what makes us what we are. Thought elevates us.”
“Every thought you believe to be good, or useful, or uplifting has its counterpart, driving mankind lower than the beasts. The thoughts themselves pass from one to another of us, shaping our brains to their own ends.”
“You make it sound as though thoughts are independent, entities in their own right.”
“And so they are Calistrope. They are demons, I tell you. Their sole purpose is to multiply, to be stored in our brains and to be passed on to infect others.”
“Mage or not, I simply cannot see this.”
“Because there is no I, no you. Self consciousness is a trick of the thoughts which inhabit your brain.”
“We are no more than the vehicle by which thoughts propagate themselves, then,” Calistrope recalled the moth that had tried to lay her eggs in his body. “Hatching grounds for new thoughts.”
“My villagers are incapable of pursuing a thought for more than a minute or two, incapable of linking two thoughts together.”
“Is this not degrading?”
“Is happiness degrading? They know nothing that is ignoble or hurtful.”
“They know nothing ennobling or inspiring either.”
“The simple things of life. That is what they have, all that is necessary.”
Lelaine had been frowning in concentration, now her eyebrows rose as high as could be: astonishment, amazement, disbelief; her eyebrows conveyed all this in one movement.
Two villagers, an old man and a younger woman grappled unsteadily with a pitcher which first one held and then the other. Occasionally, whichever was in temporary possession would remember to drink from it.
“What are they doing?” Lelaine’s brows bunched together, conveying perplexity.
“I would hazard a guess,” Calistrope answered. “Squabbling over a jug of wine.”
“Yes, yes. I see that but what does it imply? Don’t you see? They are fighting for ownership. Fighting presupposes purpose, purpose demands constructive thought and that is not possible.”
“Interesting.”
“It is impossible! And where did they get wine? Did you bring it? You have done this, haven’t you?” The black brows drew down, close together, accusatory.
Roli chose that moment to return. He looked tired; in fact, exhausted was the word which sprang to Calistrope’s male and prejudiced mind. There was a reasonable amount of happiness in Roli’s expression, too; contentment, perhaps. To Calistrope’s male and limited imagination, it suggested satiety.
“My apprentice,” he introduced as Lelaine inspected the boy and her eyebrows signaled disapproval. Lelaine admired neither slovenliness nor disarray.
For a moment, Calistrope thought she was going to quiz the youngster but she was interrupted by an older woman assaulting two grinning young men a little older than Roli. If Lelaine had not just explained how it was men’s veins which were brimming with hormones and that women were the detached sex, Calistrope might have believed that the woman was tearing at the young men’s clothing.
“What are they doing?” Lelaine asked, shocked rather than ignorant.
Roli was equally shocked.“Yes, what is she doing? She must be three times their age.”
“Twice their age perhaps—though age hardly matters, surely. I’d say she had been watching you make sport with some of your new friends.” Calistrope replied wryly.
“Watching me?” Roli was aghast at the idea.
“You have given her certain ideas, now she obviously wants to try things out herself.”
Roli began to see the humor. “But she is quite old.”
“You seem to have a problem with age, young man. Lovemaking is not just the prerogative of apprentices you know,” Calistrope observed.
Roli giggled. “Well, perhaps not. It’s just that we’re better at it.”
“Not even that. I can assure you.”
Meanwhile, Lelaine had risen and was trying to part the ménage a trois and inevitably one of the men had become interested in her as well.
“What do you think you’re doing?” asked Lelaine sharply as she attempted to resist when he pulled her cloak from her shoulders and laid it on the ground.
“Now stop it,” she admonished. “Stop it or I’ll… Oh, er…” Somehow, he had persuaded Lelaine to lie upon the cloak with him.
“Now this is not the time, not the place… ouch! Oh I…”
Otherwise occupied, Lelaine did not notice the departure of Calistrope, Roli and Morph. They left quietly, not wishing to disturb the sorceress who they could not help but notice was rather a handsome creature.
“Lelaine may well discover some enhancements to add to her hypotheses,” said Calistrope to Morph.
Chapter 14
The four of them climbed the eastern slope rather than backtrack through the village, which they could hear, was in an uproar. When they reached the ridge line, the land could be seen to slant gradually downward towards the floor of the rift. They continued on along the gentler gradient.
Dense thickets of tangled oak and dwarf spruce grew all across this upland and forced their path to wander. Each of the larger clearings were dotted with barrel-stemmed plants surmounted by bright flower heads nodding in unison, a phenomenon which implied that the group grew from the same plant. Fireflies, sparkling like stray reflections of sunlight from a shower of sequins, hovered in the shade cast by the many-colored flowers.
“These are the colors we saw from beside the river,” said Roli. “You said they might be flowers.”
“So I did,” Calistrope grinned, pleased at the accuracy of his earlier guess.
It was the first time in Morph’s short sentient life that it had seen such vivid colors—reds and blues, yellows, dark purples—a single color to each glade. Morph investigated each new crop of blooms with a child’s wonder.
They passed a group of chrome yellow blossoms. Morph poked at the nearest and with an audible snap, it closed and withdrew into the ribbed green trunk. The attendant fireflies blinked out. A little nonplussed at the sudden reaction, it went to another and—careful to avoid touching it, the creature gazed raptly at the tossing flower.
“Are they alive?” he asked after some time, hurrying after the others.
“Oh yes,” Calistrope thought a moment or two. “You may be related to them more than to us. I remember that when you were in your… quiescent phase, you seemed to draw something from the rock beneath you.”
“I believe that’s so,” agreed Morph. “And do these do the same?”
“They extract minerals and certain nutrients from the soil.”
At the next clearing, Morph went to stand next to a perfectly white blossom. “I cannot detect any thought at all.”
“Ah, no. Plants—which is the term we give to this type of life—are not sentient. At least, not on Earth and not as far as I know. You will note too, that they are rooted in the ground, they do not move from place to place.”
Again they walked on and again Morph scurried to catch up, only to stop at the next group of plants. “This exudes a considerable odor,” he said of the orange bloom. “I would classify it as similar to decaying meat, I doubt you would care for it.”
Morph stood on tiptoes to look into the centre of the flower. “There’s a hole at the middle,” he said. His changeable body stretched up a little more. “What are these? Ulp!”
Calistrope, Ponderos and Roli had passed the clearing and it was several seconds before they realized their friend was no longer with them. “Morph?” called Calistrope. “Where are you?” Then, to the others: “We had better go back, we don’t want the fellow getting lost.”
They returned to the last clearing. There were eleven of the big orange flowers and one where the long fleshy petals were folded in.
“This is the right place, isn’t it?” Ponderos asked.
Calistrope nodded. “Orange ones. Yes.”
“You don’t suppose it’s fallen in, do you?” Roli swallowed.
“Into one of the flowers?” Calistrope rubbed his chin. “Morph was saying something about a hole inside, but falling in…”
Ponderos picked up a long twig and waved it over one of the flowers. “Just wondered,” he explained a little sheepishly. “You hear these tales of carnivorous plants, don’t—”
The stick was whisked from Ponderos’ hand and an instant later, his hand and forearm were enfolded by a ring of muscular petals. “It’s going numb,” he gasped. “Can’t feel it.”
Slowly, Ponderos’ arm was being pulled into the flower. Calistrope and Roli caught hold of him and pulled against the plant and slowly, Ponderos’ arm came out. There was a squelchy, sucking sound and suddenly, he was free; they tumbled backwards, laughing with relief until Calistrope thought of Polymorph.
“Morph must be already inside one of these!” Calistrope shouted.
“That one,” said Roli. “The one that’s closed up.”
Ponderos’ arm would not work properly but Calistrope and Roli attacked the plant with their swords, carefully slicing the stringy stem open. The stem was quite hollow, with downward pointing thorns growing in the internal space. When they had completely cut it away, the tubular stem carried on below ground level to unknown depths. They rolled a stone down the tube and it vanished out of sight without a sound, a cut sapling longer than Calistrope reached no barrier.
“I’m afraid that Morph is gone, my friends. Beyond our reach.”
Roli and Ponderos nodded, the latter rubbing his right arm in an attempt to restore some feeling. Calistrope noticed and was instantly remorseful. “Ponderos, I am so sorry. I quite forgot that it had hold of you.”
He looked at Ponderos’ hand and arm. The skin was covered with myriad scratches and was slick with a film of blood. “We must have absorbed quite a lot of power in Lelaine’s village—can you make it heal?”
“Of course. I’ve grown so used to doing without magic that I’d forgotten.” Over a space of twenty seconds, the skin healed and feeling returned to his arm and fingers. The blood dried and fell away in flakes as Ponderos rubbed his other hand over it.
“Good,” Calistrope nodded. “I’m as forgetful as you, too. If we both use our power, we can tear this plant out by the roots. Morph may still be alive.”
The two mages concentrated. The broken stem came up out of the ground as though an invisible giant was tugging at it. Ell after ell of green tube was extruded, broken side vessels showed where it had been connected to the other flowers.The flowers nearby shuddered and wilted as each junction was broken.
Soon there was a huge pile of split plant stems. Rings of brown vegetable muscle clustered around many of the sections; these would be a part of the plant’s digestive organs. Of Morph, there was no sign, however.
“I think we have to admit it,” Ponderos said gently. “Our friend is gone.”
They recommenced their journey, a sad and silent group of travelers. Despite the short time that Polymorph had been a part of the company, all three of them had come to regard the little creature as their friend. Nature had given Morph an exuberant character; the fresh point of view from which it saw everything made the mundane new again, its enthusiasms were contagious.
Now that it had all gone, the travelers felt Morph’s absence more keenly. There were times when each of them preferred to keep his own company and would walk apart from his companions. Calistrope in particular would stand at the edge of the upland and gaze in silence into the depths below while the other two walked on.
Time improved their dispositions gradually, but it was not until they reached the continental edge and the awesome plunge to the ancient seabed that they were able to put the tragedy behind them.
Chapter 15
The ground dropped away steeply, a breathtaking fall of almost a league—the eastward side of the continental massif through and across which they had journeyed. The river, a very respectable torrent by now, cascaded over the lip of hard rock and plunged downward over a series of slides and falls. Long before it reached the marshes which bordered the great river below, much of it had broken into spray and mist, drifting down as a constant rain.
Far off to the southeast—perspective had changed over the past few days—was the sugar-loaf mountain rooted in the nearer waters of the Last Ocean. This was where the single word Schune was situated on their maps. Before them and beyond the shadow of the continental height, the Long River sprawled along the wide alluvial valley.
