Changing Vision

by Julie E. Czerneda

This had been the source of Meony-ro’s urgent need to talk with Paul back in the cargo hold—news from his other ship, well on its way to Minas XII before being intercepted by The Black Watch. Which was, no surprise to anyone, armed after all.

  Paul and I were sitting across from one another in the ’Lass’ galley, Lefebvre leaning, as seemed to be his habit, beside the closed door. I considered them both, schooling the expression of this form with exceptional care. It was a distinct handicap, knowing how well they could read this face.

  I hadn’t succeeded. “You think it’s for the best,” Lefebvre accused me angrily, keeping his voice low. “Didn’t you see what that fiend did to Paul? Or doesn’t a web-being care about pain and suffering?”

  I wasn’t sure which shocked me most—his accusation or the name of my kind casually on the lips of someone I’d only known for a handful of days.

  Paul turned on Lefebvre, a rare fury in his own voice. “Never speak to Esen about pain and suffering. You have no idea what she’s been through to save my life and the lives of countless others. You have no idea what price she’s paid.”

  I raised my hands appeasingly, and Paul subsided. Lefebvre stood looking at us, red spots on his pale cheeks, unconvinced. “I care, Captain Lefebvre,” I told him as evenly as I could. “I care a great deal. But it is the way of my kind to care for more than individuals. We dare not give the Tly an excuse to back Logan’s ambitions against Inhaven. We must not invite retaliation against Minas XII and those who survived Garson’s World. You’re right. I do think having Logan return to his own kind is the best of bad choices.” I couldn’t help reaching out for Paul’s hand, feeling it take mine and squeeze. “There will be,” I surprised myself by adding coldly, “other opportunities for justice.”

  Paul’s fingers became a vise and there was a clear warning in his look to me, as if what I’d said disturbed him. “The Tly remain within the legal system of the Commonwealth, do they not?” I reminded them both, tugging my hand free. What did he think I meant?

  “Barely,” Lefebvre countered, as if deliberately oblivious to the conflict between Paul and I. The former patroller had already expressed several graphic—and physiologically unlikely—views on how to deal with Logan. “Depends on whether you ask the Tly Deputy Minister or their neighbors.”

  Paul stood, pacing around the table as though he felt it was time for action. Since customs and other officialese would take a while yet, I hardly saw much reason to expend energy. Well, I told myself philosophically, it was a sign my impetuous Human was feeling himself again. “The main thing is to get Esen back to a more—”

  I saw Paul struggling for some tactful word and cheerfully inserted: “—useful, practical, less embarrassing, and,” why not, “definitely something bigger.”

  That brought a chuckle from Paul and a look of doubt from Lefebvre. “All those things, my dear Es,” my friend agreed. “I don’t want to be recorded as arriving with you, if I can avoid it. Meony-ro has some ideas about that.” He paused, stopping to gaze at Lefebvre. The two Humans regarded each other silently for a moment. I had no idea what they were doing, but Paul nodded suddenly. “Rudy will escort you on-station.”

  Where I’ll get rid of this form, I added to myself, suspecting both Humans were in danger of becoming downright sentimental concerning the present version of Esen.

  Elsewhere

  “YOU promised we would destroy the Esen Shifter. We want to destroy the Shifter.”

  Kearn could feel Sas’ hot breath on his neck. He didn’t need the reminder that the Modoren shared the Feneden’s intense feelings on this subject. Insubordinate creature. “We will,” he promised. “This is the first step. It’s the best way—the most sure way—”

  “This is merely a trap,” Anisco said with enough scorn in her tone to almost come through the translator near Kearn’s ear. “It will not kill the Shifter. The Feneden will remain vulnerable. This is not acceptable, Hunter Kearn. We have disagreement.”

  He mopped sweat from his brow, in spite of the chill in the room. “The trap keeps the Shifter where we can kill her. I assure you, Fem Anisco—”

  She snapped off the translator to consult with the others. Kearn used the moment to gingerly survey the room. The carpet had grown to cover the entire floor, glistening tendrils making attempts to climb up the walls but thankfully sagging back under their own weight. The three Feneden who did not use the translators remained on their swings, eyes flashing red as they blinked. Kearn tried to avoid looking at the cilia rippling down the back of Anisco’s head. He no longer entertained any fantasies it was simply attractive and exotic hair.

  Despite the translators, communication was becoming more and more difficult. Almost hostile, Kearn fussed to himself. The Panacian, N’Klet, now safely awaiting her transport on the orbital shipcity, had been right. There was something wrong here.

  The Feneden claimed the Iftsen didn’t exist, yet were uncannily familiar with Iftsen Secondus, insisting the Russell III, which was capable of independent liftoff, land at their chosen location—a wide strip of beach in sight of the Underside shipcity and Brakistem, places the Feneden refused to discuss. Kearn hadn’t known what else to do, so he’d given the order—wishing Lefebvre were at the helm instead of the less experienced Timri. The landing had been mercifully uneventful, in part due to the glassing of the beach under what had to have been multiple landings in the recent past.

  Kearn wasn’t sure anymore if he dealt with legitimate representatives of a government or dangerous lunatics. Timri had sent numerous incomprehensible messages for the Feneden directed at their home system. The Russell III hadn’t received a single reply.

  All that seemed to make sense was their desire to kill the Esen Monster. A desire that now seemed greater than his own.

  32: Station Afternoon

  “I’M fine.”

  Lefebvre raised an eyebrow at me. I moderated my tone to something approximating sweet and told the med-tech again, “Thank you. I’m fine.”

  The med, a grumpy, overweight Odarian who looked as though he should be cooking prawlies in some diner—or perhaps be an entrée himself—wasn’t impressed. “I have standards against which my sensitive and modern equipment measures your parameters, young Human. You are a bit short.”

  I am a civilized, intelligent being capable of dealing with other cultures in a civilized, intelligent manner, I reminded myself, counting under my breath and really wanting to kick the appendage within reach of my foot. “That’s because I am a young Human,” I said sweetly.

  “I wish to make new measurements—”

  “I haven’t grown in twenty minutes,” I almost shouted. So much for sweet.

  “Gloria,” Lefebvre said, finally stirring from his post by the door. I suspected he’d been enjoying my discomfiture—or else was fascinated by how this version of me was passing, or rather not passing, the examination Upperside chose to inflict on its visitors. The med hadn’t measured him, I grumbled to myself. Human children were apparently uncommon fodder for this med-tech and he was determined to make the most of me.

  “I’m going to miss my transport, Uncle Rudy,” I used a rising tonal variant I’d seen make Human parents wince and observed a similar effect on Lefebvre. Interesting.

  He made a show of checking his wrist chrono. “Why, you’re right.” Lefebvre’s hitherto friendly tone developed a captain’s snap. “Med-tech Vidbruk, while I appreciate your—zeal—I have to insist. If you haven’t found any medical problems, my niece and I need to be on our way.”

  The Odarian sputtered—quite effectively, since this involved the expulsion of moist air through its trunk. “There are no specific identifiable problems, Hom Lefebvre. But your companion does not fit within the standards set by my sensitive and modern—”

  Lefebvre managed to nod an acknowledgment, press what looked suspiciously like a credit chip into the med-tech’s elbow pouch, and sweep me from the med bench all in one smooth series of movements that were impressively irresistib
le.

  “Short,” I muttered when we were out in the main shipway. “I am not short.”

  Lefebvre coughed; I looked up at him, suspecting Human humor. It hadn’t, I assured myself, been funny.

  His face was reassuringly serious. “Thanks,” I offered. “I thought he’d keep me in there until I somehow stretched.”

  “Can you?”

  We were isolated within a busy crowd, mostly spacers, some tourists and art critics—the usual assortment that disembarked at Upperside and milled around waiting for room on a planet-bound shuttle bus, most lining up to rent e-rigs. It still didn’t seem private enough, but this Human had been remarkably helpful for someone running on trust. “I am always Esen,” I informed him quietly. “This is the Human version. This—me—will grow taller as my true self ages. Eventually I’ll fit into his standard parameters for adulthood.” Although not soon enough to look you in the eyes, I calculated, but didn’t think Lefebvre needed to know that particular detail. I was striving for the respect due my age as Eldest of the Web of Esen; emphasizing my youth was unlikely to help.

  Paul, in what I could only assume was another of those inexplicable moments of prescience he’d been increasingly exhibiting, had booked temp quarters using one of our more secret accounts while we were still on Panacia. I hadn’t been part of all of the planning—this form demanding more sleep than either Paul or Lefebvre seemed to require now that they’d recovered from Logan’s ill-treatment—but I knew Paul was to look after the e-rigs. We were to meet him there.

  Upperside might not be as large as Hixtar or other shipcity stations, but it took time to walk its girth. All was fine, and I was enjoying the chance to stretch my legs, until we passed the posting board for ship arrivals and departures.

  There were too many assorted backs, shoulders, heads, and carapaces for me to read it. Lefebvre, veteran spacer, automatically craned his neck to see, then muttered something that sounded anatomically impossible under his breath and began moving much faster through the crowd.

  “We could,” I suggested after a few minutes of a decidedly ungraceful series of hopping steps, Lefebvre’s lengthening strides covering the equivalent of one and a half of mine, “take a taxi if there’s a rush.”

  “It’s only a third spinward,” he said, slowing for at least ten paces before speeding up again.

  I hauled on his arm, making him stop. “Short,” I reminded him sternly. “What’s the hurry? What did you see on the board?”

  Lefebvre kept looking around us, rather than at me. I could see he was frowning in concentration, surveying the continuously noisy bustle of strangers around us as though seeking one face in particular. Not good, I realized. Not good at all.

  “What’s wrong?” I demanded.

  “Let’s keep going, Es. Okay?”

  Humans. “Not,” I said imperiously, not an easy thing to do with my current voice, “until you tell me what’s happening.”

  Perhaps anticipating my reaction, Lefebvre wrapped his fingers around my arm, gently tugging me forward as he said, “The Russ’ docked yesterday. Kearn’s here, Es.”

  As if that was a surprise, I told myself, wondering, as I often did lately, why the cosmic fates so enjoyed complicating my life. “Kearn does get around,” I replied calmly, more for Lefebvre’s sake than mine. After all, the Human had been living with my secret for a couple of days—he didn’t have the perspective of almost six hundred years of hiding in plain sight, not to mention fifty dealing with this particular nuisance. “Given all you know about Kearn and his search for me, Lefebvre, do you honestly expect him to pick me—this me?—out of the crowd just like that?”

  “He might not be not alone this time. Can the Feneden recognize you in other forms?”

  I blinked. Ersh-memory, which usually roused unpleasantly at that name, remained uncommonly silent—not, I decided, a good sign either. She’d lived among the Feneden and hunted them for hundreds of their generations. Had some of those who survived her done so because they’d sensed her presence? Could Ersh have influenced their evolution? “Impossible,” I told him, this time more for my sake than his. “The med scans read me as Human. I am Human—at the moment,” I added truthfully.

  “So am I—and recognizable to anyone from the crew. I’d rather not try out my story in the middle of this concourse—especially with you to explain away as well.”

  A valid concern, I agreed, finally extending my legs as far and fast as they would go without breaking out into a gallop. I wasn’t at all fond of Lefebvre’s planned explanation. It made sense, of a Human sort, to claim he’d found a clue to the infamous Paul Ragem on Panacia and desperately jumped the first available freighter—the Vegas Lass—to follow it. Kearn, understanding obsession as well as he did, should fall for that one. As to the fine details of their supposed pursuit, including how the ’Lass mysteriously changed captain and crew in deep space, Lefebvre had shrugged, saying he’d come up with something if asked. Since the truth drugs were gone from Lefebvre’s system, and neither Janet Chase nor Able Joe was available to testify differently, it was a simple enough fabrication.

  The trouble with his story was how close it came to the truth, I warned myself, not as ready as Paul to completely trust a being who, until recently, spent every waking moment trying to uncover our secrets.

  There were times when the virtue of self-sufficiency paled beside the proof of how nice it was to know someone truly thoughtful.

  A silk caftan and trousers, in my favorite bronze tone, lay across the table, the ensemble completed by a beaded bag for anything I might choose to carry and already loaded with a portable lamp. Beside it was a broad deep box, filled past its brim with soft, artificial grass. A lightbox stood guard atop a tray of lush, growing duras plants.

  I knew, without having to ask, that this room and the ones attached to it had been scanned for eavesdroppers and recording devices—likely before we docked at Upperside and undoubtedly since Paul’s arrival. With the most modern tech available here.

  I went to the mirrored surface of the fresher stall to say good-bye to my Human-self. She looked back at me, hair tumbled out of order already, eyes spilling moisture for no reason I could name—unless it was the fleeting, unguarded look I’d surprised on Paul’s face as he watched me enter this room. He’d worn the same expression of inevitable loss as the ship carrying his son and daughter sliced upward into the clouds over Minas XII those many years ago.

  I rubbed my eyes and strode almost angrily to the plants, sweeping up the two nearest pots in my arms even as I loosed my hold on this treacherous form, assimilating their mass into more of the true Esen, the real Esen. The Esen, I told myself, perilously close to forgetting who and what she was in order to please one ephemeral.

  I put such thoughts behind me as I rediscovered my Lishcyn-self, concentrating on the delightful slipperiness of clean silk along my hairy scales, and assessing my physical state. A bit hungry, a little overtired. Nothing a snack and nap wouldn’t cure, I thought wistfully, knowing they’d both have to wait.

  It was time to find out what was happening on Iftsen Secondus.

  Elsewhere

  “ACTING Captain Kearn. Captain.”

  Kearn added another folded strip of plas to the top of the delicate tower on his desk. Steady, he told himself. Steady.

  “Captain!”

  There. He held his breath as the structure almost toppled, then steadied. He selected another urgent message and creased it into a v-shape.

  The nagging voice went away. Kearn sighed, closing his eyes for a moment. Then he opened them wide, staring at the door which had begun to glow around one edge. “What do you think you’re—” he shouted, spilling the entire mass to the floor as he leaped to his feet.

  Before he could finish objecting, the door whooshed open as far as it could, sticking on the white-hot remnants of its locking mechanism. Timri stood in the opening and tucked her blaster into its holster. They’d been issued lethal weapons in anticipation of their cap
ture of the Esen Monster, not to use against his door, Kearn thought apprehensively.

  “Ah,” she said calmly, stepping forward and giving a light salute. “There you are, Captain.” Her dark eyes narrowed slightly as they took in the collapsed stack of folded plas. “Busy?”

  “Which p–part of ‘Do Not Disturb’ escaped you, Officer Timri?” Kearn hadn’t been able to come up with a suitable title for his comp-tech since assigning her virtual control of the Russell III.

  “I thought you’d like to know, sir, that the Feneden have taken the e-rigs you provided and left the Russ’.”

  Kearn settled back down into his chair, feeling every bone in his body relax until he couldn’t help but smile. “Why didn’t you say so, instead of breaking down my door? Which will come out of your pay, Timri, make no mistake about—”

  “The Feneden left the Russ’, sir,” Timri continued as if she hadn’t heard him at all, “to board the Feneden starship which landed an hour ago. It set down close enough to scorch our fins. Security Chief Sas has kept watch and reports a considerable amount of activity. Several beings have left the ship.”

  Kearn’s smile struggled to stay in place. “Maybe they have business with the Iftsen,” he suggested.

  “They don’t believe in the Iftsen. Sir.” She took another step toward him; Kearn tried not to cringe, but lost the smile completely. Timri was such a very—imposing person when agitated. “It is our opinion that the Feneden have taken the search for the Esen Monster into their own hands.”

  Letting him off the hook, Kearn thought immediately, and wondered if the scornful look on her face meant she had read it in his expression. He put his hands together, lacing the fingers to keep them still. “Officer Timri. This is very serious. We must inform the Iftsen that they may have armed and dangerous aliens—yes, very dangerous aliens—entering Brakistem.”

  “It’s the Festival of Living Art, sir. There won’t be more than a handful of sober Iftsen in the city.”