Asimov's SF, August 2011

by Dell Magazine Authors

  And the journey had a special appeal for Stiamot. He was among those at court who had begun to give careful thought to the need for a new policy toward the aboriginal folk. A good first step would be to learn more about them, and he hoped to do that by coming here.

  They had always fascinated him, anyway: their silent, stealthy ways, their aloof and unreadable natures, their customs and religious ideas, and, above all, their biologically baffling gift of shapeshifting. He had spent the past several years gathering whatever information he could about them, striving to know them, to get inside their minds. Without that, what sort of settling of accounts with them could be achieved? But he had never managed any real understanding of them. He knew some words of their language, he had collected a few of their paintings and carvings, he had read what he could find of what had been written about them, and still he stood entirely outside them. They remained as alien to him as they had been when, as a small boy, he had first heard that there existed on Majipoor a race of strange beings that once had had exclusive possession of the vast planet, long before the first humans had ever come to it.

  There were no Metamorphs in Stee or any of the other cities in the capital territory, of course, but Stiamot, traveling through the land on this or that mission for the Coronal, had had a few brief glimpses of them. And once, when the Coronal had journeyed down to the Labyrinth to confer with the senior monarch, the Pontifex Gherivale, Stiamot had taken the opportunity to visit the nearby ruins of the ancient Metamorph capital of Velalisier, and quite a wondrous time he had had among those stone temples and pyramids and sacrificial altars. Out here in the hinterlands he hoped for a chance to experience the Metamorph culture at close range. And perhaps the eccentric Dr. Mundiveen would consent to serve as his guide.

  * * * *

  Stiamot's first few days in Domgrave were spent arranging for the Coronal's arrival, checking out the route he would travel for places of possible risk, and seeing to it that the Coronal's lodgings would be not only secure but appropriately comfortable. It was too much to expect luxury in these parts, but a certain degree of magnificence was necessary to remind the local grandees that the ruler of the world was among them. Kalban Vond, the District Resident, offered his own house for the Coronal's use—no palace, but the closest thing to a stately house that Domgrave could provide, a many-balconied building three stories high with ornate moldings and handsome inlays of decorative woods—and Stiamot set about having it bedecked with such tapestries and carpets and draperies as this very provincial province could supply. He himself commandeered a smaller but nevertheless pleasant house not far from the main highway as his own headquarters. He met with wine merchants and providers of meat and game. He sent messengers to the prime landholders of the territory, inviting them to the great banquet that the Coronal would hold. In the evenings he dined with the Resident, who managed to produce reasonable fare, if nothing on par with what Stiamot had become accustomed to at court, and plied him with questions about the region, the climate, the predominant crops, the personalities of the heads of the leading families, and—eventually—about the Metamorph tribes of the forests.

  The Resident, plump and slow-moving and at least twenty years older than Stiamot, was a conventional, cautious man, and beneath his caution Stiamot thought he could detect a weariness, a bleakness of spirit, a thwarted sense that he had hoped for more out of life than a career as District Resident in an unimportant and backward rural district. But he did not seem unintelligent. He listened carefully to Stiamot's questions and responded in abundant detail, and when Stiamot had returned once too often to the subject of the Metamorphs, Kalban Vond said, “You keep coming back to them, don't you? They must interest you very much."

  "They do. It's nothing of an official nature, you understand. Just my own curiosity. We could say that I'm something of a student of them."

  The Resident's sleepy blue eyes turned suddenly bright. “A student? What interests you, may I ask, about those sneaky, nasty savages?"

  Stiamot, startled, caught his breath. But he showed his displeasure only by the slightest quirk of his lips. “Is that how you see them?"

  "Most of us do, out here."

  "Be that as it may, we have to consider that we share the planet with them. They were here first. We thrust ourselves down among them and shoved them aside."

  "So to speak,” said Kalban Vond primly. “Majipoor's a big place. There's plenty of room for both races, wouldn't you say?"

  Stiamot managed a faint smile. “I wonder if they see it that way. But in any case, problems are brewing, and it's necessary to give some thought to them. Our population is growing very rapidly, and I don't just mean the human population. Ghayrogs—Hjorts—the other non-human groups also—"

  "Room for all,” Kalban Vond said, sounding a little nettled. “A very big world. We've lived side by side with them fairly peacefully for thousands of years."

  "Side by side, yes. And fairly peacefully, I suppose. But, as I say, there are more of us than ever before. The world is big, but it isn't infinite. And those thousands of years have gone by, and have they become our friends? Are we heading toward any sort of real rapport with them? You know as well as I do that there have been some very unpleasant incidents, and it's my impression that those incidents are becoming more frequent. They hate us, don't they? And we fear them. They put up with our settling on their world because they have no choice, and here in this valley you live next door to them wondering how long they'll continue to maintain the peace. That's so, isn't it?"

  "Perhaps you put it a bit extremely,” the Resident said. “Hate—fear—"

  "A moment ago you called them ‘sneaky, nasty savages.’ Which one of us is being extreme? Is that how you usually speak of your friends, Resident?"

  "I never claimed they were my friends, you know,” said Kalban Vond. “You're the one who used the word."

  Stiamot could make no response to that. In the chilly silence that followed, the Resident turned aside to open a second bottle of wine and refill their bowls. Something of a confrontational tone was creeping into the conversation, and perhaps this was meant as a calming gesture. They were drinking a surprisingly fine wine, a blue one from Stoienzar in the south. Stiamot had never expected to be offered anything so good here, or to have the Resident be so generous with it.

  After a moment he said, a little more gently, “I think we both agree, at any rate, that we're not making much progress toward developing a more harmonious relationship with them. Not making any at all, in fact. But we need to. As our population grows, so does their resentment of our presence here. If we don't come to some sort of understanding with them soon, we'll find ourselves in a state of constant collision with them. Warfare, in fact. I've heard the rumors."

  "Well, Prince Stiamot, at least here we agree."

  "It can't be allowed to happen. We need to head it off."

  "And do you have a plan? Does Lord Strelkimar?"

  "It's not something his lordship has spoken of with me. But I assure you the Council has been discussing it."

  Kalman Vond sat up alertly, and his eyes were once again gleaming. All that weariness and self-pitying sadness had fallen from him in a moment. Stiamot saw the man's unabashed eager excitement: it must seem to him that he was about to be made privy to intimate details of the deliberations of the Council. Sitting here sipping wine with one of the Coronal's close advisors was surely the biggest thing that had happened to him in all the years since he had been posted to this dreary province, and the thought that he would very shortly be playing host to the Coronal himself in his very own home must be dizzying.

  But no revelations of court deliberations were going to be forthcoming tonight. Stiamot said, “We've been speaking about the Metamorphs only in the most general way, so far. Everyone agrees that we need to examine the whole problem much more thoroughly than ever before. And, as I said, my interest in them is a matter of mere personal curiosity. They fascinate me. Now that I find myself in a district w
here Metamorphs actually live, I hope to get a chance to learn something more about them—some details of their culture, their governmental structure, their religious beliefs, their art—"

  "You ought to talk to Dr. Mundiveen about all that,” said Kalban Vond.

  * * * *

  Of course Stiamot's interest in the Metamorphs was much more than a matter of mere personal curiosity, but there was no reason why he had to explain that to the District Resident. The Metamorph problem had been central to Council discussions for the past several years, and, though nothing whatever had been heard from the Coronal on the topic, it surely had to be on his mind as well.

  By and large, the Metamorphs kept to their secluded forest homes and the people of the cities and farming districts of Majipoor to the territories they occupied, and each group did its best to pretend that the other was not there, or was, at least, invisible. But there had been a good many ugly incidents. Wherever Metamorph and human interests overlapped, difficulties arose. The Metamorphs held certain places sacred, but who knew which ones they were, until a trespass had occurred? The ever-expanding human population of Majipoor, and its constantly increasing non-human adjuncts, kept pushing outward into new lands where the Metamorphs would abide no intrusion. Reports trickled to the capital of occasional outbreaks of conflict, of kidnappings and killings, of skirmishes, of massacres, even. Information took so long to reach Stee from outlying regions, and arrived in such uncertain form, that no one at the capital could be completely certain of what was taking place; but plainly there was friction, there was violence, and neither side was wholly without blame. Now and again Metamorphs, erupting out of nowhere in the night, had slaughtered human settlers venturing into places that should not have been ventured into. Humans, coming upon some tempting locality that invited settlement, had driven its Metamorph population out by force, or simply destroyed them. There had, of course, been such incidents throughout all the thousands of years since the first emigrants from Old Earth had come to this world. But as the cities spread outward and the agricultural settlements that supported them multiplied, they appeared to be increasing in number, and there were those at court who felt that sooner or later some great precipitating event would touch off an all-out war between the Metamorphs and the humans of Majipoor, and that event could not be many years away.

  The court was broken into various factions. Some members of the Coronal's inner circle, a majority, perhaps, felt that a time was coming when complete separation of the races would have to be enforced, with the Metamorphs packed off into reservations of their own, possibly on the relatively lightly inhabited continent of Zimroel, and permitted there to live as they had always lived, but without access to the territories occupied by humans. An opposing group—not very numerous, but they were exceedingly vocal—regarded that as a futile notion, and were ready to launch an all-out war of extermination, arguing that the Metamorphs could never be confined in that way and such a plan was simply a prescription for an eternity of guerilla warfare.

  Stiamot himself, who was by nature a mediator, a peacemaker, had emerged as the leader of a moderate central faction, one that saw great practical difficulties in the separationist scheme and looked upon the idea of a war of extermination as barbaric and repellent. It was Stiamot's hope that through sympathetic meetings of the minds, a determined attempt by each species to understand the needs and goals of the other, a permanent detente could be established, with clear lines of territorial delineation for each race and complete freedom of travel across those boundaries. In Council he had argued as persuasively as he knew how for such a policy. But Stiamot had not been able to make much headway with that over the extremists to either side of him. So little was known of the real nature of the Metamorphs, and so little had been done to reach out to them, that most council members looked upon his position as hopelessly idealistic. As for the Coronal, he had stayed aloof from the discussions thus far, lost as he was in what seemed to be some inner anguish that had no connection to any of the governmental issues of the day. But he could not remain aloof forever.

  The Coronal's arrival in Domgrave was still at least a week away when Stiamot saw his first Shapeshifter. It was the quiet time of the morning midway between breakfast and lunch, when the air was dry and still and the sun, climbing toward noon height, held everything in the grip of its insistent force. Stiamot was returning to his lodgings from a meeting with the head of the municipal police, going on foot down a sleepy street of small white-fronted houses flanked by rows of dusty-leaved matabango trees. A tall, very tall, figure wrapped in a flimsy, loosely fitting green robe emerged from an alley fifty feet in front of him, began to cross the street, saw him, halted, turned to face him, stared.

  Stiamot halted as well. He knew at once that the man—was it a man?—was a Metamorph, and he was astonished to encounter one right here in town. The few others that he had seen before had been like wraiths, flitting through the edge of some forest glade and vanishing into the underbrush as soon as they were aware that they were being perceived. But here was this one right in downtown Domgrave, unmistakably a Metamorph, tall, thin, sallow-skinned, sharp of cheekbone, with long narrow eyes that sloped inward toward the place where its nose would be if there were anything more than a minuscule bump where a nose ought to be. It seemed as curious about him as he was about it, pausing, standing in that odd stance of theirs, one long leg wrapped around the shin of the other so that it stood with utter and total dignity while balanced on its left foot alone. Its stare was calm and chilly. Stiamot wondered what, if anything, he could do to capitalize on the opportunity that had been so unexpectedly presented to him. “I greet you in the name of the Coronal Lord Strelkimar, whose counsellor I am?” No. Ridiculous. “I am Prince Stiamot of Stee, and I have come here to learn something about—” No. No. “I am a newcomer in Domgrave, and I wonder whether you and I—"

  Impossible. There was nothing he could say that would be appropriate. The Shapeshifter clearly did not want anything to do with him. Those cold downsloping eyes left no doubt of that. The purpose of that icy glare was to establish a boundary, not to build a bridge. Stiamot and the Metamorph were separated not only by fifty feet of space but by an infinitely greater gulf of difference, and there was no way to breach that barrier. All Stiamot could do was stand, and stare, and curse himself for a blithering feckless fool, hopelessly unprepared for this meeting with one of the beings he had come here to make contact with.

  Then for a single strange moment the outlines of the Shapeshifter's body seemed to blur and flicker, and Stiamot realized he was watching some kind of brief, barely perceptible metamorphosis take place, a loosening and transmogrification of form that ended as quickly as it had begun, as though the Shapeshifter were saying, mockingly, I can do this and you cannot. And then the Metamorph swung around and continued on its way across the street, disappearing from view in a dozen long-legged strides, leaving Stiamot standing stunned and bewildered in the mid-morning stillness.

  * * * *

  There was a second significant encounter much later that same day. Stiamot had fallen into the habit of going at the end of the day with some of the younger staff aides to an inn just off the main square that was frequented by the town's wealthier planters and any visitor from the outlying plantations who happened to be in Domgrave on business. Since these people were going to bear most of the not inconsiderable expense of playing host to a Coronal making the grand processional, it seemed like a wise tactic for Stiamot to go among them, share a couple of flasks of wine with them in their cramped, dreary little tavern, and reassure them that they would find the visit of the Coronal Lord very much to their benefit.

  "He wouldn't have bitten you, you know,” a dry, flat-toned voice said as Stiamot entered. He turned. “Pardon me?"

  "The Piurivar. They're a damned shy bunch, most of them. If you actually want to get anywhere with them, you've got to open your mouth, not just stand there like a gaffed gromwark waiting for them to say something.—I'm M
undiveen, by the way."

  Stiamot had already figured that much out. Crazy old doctor with a limp, Kalban Vond had said. Eccentric, annoying. Stands right out. That much was easy. The man who stood before him, one elbow hooked lazily over the counter of the bar, was old, small, lean almost to the point of fleshlessness, a short, compact figure with piercingly intense gray eyes and a long, wild shock of coarse, unkempt white hair. Stiamot, who was only of medium height himself, towered over him. Mundiveen held his head at an odd angle to his neck and his body pivoted strangely at the middle, as though there might be some sort of a twist in his spine. It was not hard to imagine that he would walk with a limp.

  "Stiamot,” he said uncomfortably. “Of Stee."

  "Yes. Yes, of course. The Coronal's advance man. Everybody in town knows who you are."

  "And what I've been doing, also, I guess. You saw me talking to the—Piurivar, you called it?"

  "That's what they call themselves. I like to use the term too. Metamorph, Shapeshifter, Piurivar, whatever you like. No, I didn't see you with him. What would I be doing awake at that hour? But he told me about it. He said you looked at him as though he were a creature from some other world. What do you like to drink, eh, Stiamot? First one's on me."