In Other Worlds

by Attanasio, AA

  Lying there, watching the flame-antlered clouds and, nearer, the drifting gore of the dead, the voltage of

  his life sizzled into awareness. His hard brain went soft, and he felt his livingness as never before. His body was strong, powerful even, and the animal tension in his nerves smoldered in his muscles, eager for movement.

  The eld skyle had indeed adamized Carl,, for he had never experienced before the integrity of bone and tendon that he knew now. A new health, made terribly alert .by contrast to the stew of body parts swimming above him, centered his perceptions. All at once, Carl was an I, an ephemeral summoning of minerals, water, and light into mind. The gruesome deaths of the five Foke jarred him into the itchy, gummy, renitent physicality of his body. The adamized changes made that immersion easier and more palatable. His flat feet were gone and the achy calves-that went with them.

  The hair on his hulled chest had the glow of fur. And the vitality of his lifeforce stretched him above the dumbness of his meat into the unchangeable domain of I.

  "Let's go," Allin breathed from nearby.

  His voice sharpened Carl's focus, and Carl felt the chill air gnawing him. He was still naked. He rolled to his side and saw Allin bellycrawling deeper into the long grass. He scuttled after him, ignoring the switching cuts of the blades and the thistly ground. At the far end of the long field, the earth (ah, ironic word? crumbled into a deep deciduous pit.

  "We're going to jump again," Allin told him. His red eyes were a smear of disdain. "Do you think you can do it?"

  The side of Carl's jaw where Allin had hit him pulsed louder. "Hell, let's go."

  Allin pushed to his feet, dashed to the lip of the pit, and leaped upward.

  Carl followed. His urgency to embrace this miraculous life erased his fear, and he lunged off the precipice.

  The upward undertow snagged him at once, and he lofted on the cold wind into the opal sky of Midwerld.

  Allin had techniques for riding the, fallpath that allowed him to vary his speed and direction. He bowed his body, reaching behind him for his ankles and the straps of his strider sandals. He slowed and slid back until he was beside Carl. He took some moments to show Carl how to hold himself-sleeking himself for speed and twisting for direction. The Foke used the flaps of furs like sails to steer himself. Finsuit, the term came to Carl.

  Carl glanced back but did not see the black splinter of the jumpship. When he looked forward again, he noticed the survivors of the group circling ahead. They were furious at him, and he couldn't blame them. He had shown himself a coward, and if he'd had a tail, it would have been tucked.

  They gave him clothes, a spare ill-fitting finsuit and tight strider sandals-but for the remainder of the flight, no one spoke to him. The journey lasted longer than he could guess. He was given a horn of water and purple twists of meat tough and spicy as jerky.

  As the sky indigoed and the great gorges of cloud glowered a longer red, he had plenty of time to ponder his situation.

  He carefully reviewed everything he could remember of what the eld skyle had told him, and he explored further the remarkable information that imbued the Foke language he had been given. He contemplated Foke time. The gravitationally refracted colors that banded the whole Werld turned slowly, completing a full rotation in a span of time he estimated was equal to his sense of a century.

  The Foke who survived that long were called wizan. They were the tribe's spiritual leaders, contemplators of time, being, even question.

  He knew they would orient him, but he couldn't have guessed then how profoundly.

  Tarfeather was the nomadic home of the Foke. Thousands of people lived there, migrating in continuous advance groups to test other regions of the Werld for the future locales of Tarfeather. The speed of the endless journey varied. When Carl arrived, the site was well settled. Skyles for many kilometers around showed signs of cultivation: grazing herds, farmland, tree homes, and the sky busy with the movement of people and barges. The fallpaths were distinct with activity, and he could clearly discern the network of gravity-curved flightlanes that enmeshed the skyles.

  The band progressed toward the largest skyle, a mountain range extending both up and down and with an encircling river curling about the equator. The valleys were jungles, and all the prominences and abutments that jutted away from the skyle were naked rock.

  Closer, Carl recognized black-and-gray camouflage tents.

  Bright-blue-robed figures were rushing out of one tent onto the fallpath to meet the returning group.

  Allin had taken the lead when they entered Tarfeather, flashing mirror signals long before Carl saw any sign of a settlement.

  He saluted the squad when they approached and recounted how Carl had been discovered and seven of the group lost.

  Carl studied their faces. They had the same racial characteristics as the people who had found him: dark and striated hair, broad bones, cinnamon-toned skin, and flecked, agate-banded eyes. They were used faces, and they did not return his stare kindly.

  They said nothing directly to Carl until they helped him land-a trickier maneuver than taking off: He stumbled with the abruptness of the shift from glide to fall and had to be helped to his feet. It was like stepping out of a pool after a long swim. The gravity owned him, and he slumped along the rock path with the others to one of the larger tents.

  The interior had the walnut smell of autumn and a soft sheen of woodsmoke. Sheets of light hung from slit windows in the tent roof. The long hall looked as busy as a bazaar, yet the sound level mimed a temple.

  Carl was led swiftly as his ponderous legs could keep up through the silky warmth, past curtained stalls of conversing people-office, food stalls, gamerooms--till they came to a stall with only one man in it. He was dressed in black and stood out boldly against the intricate cloud tapestry behind him.

  The others regarded him deferentially, and Allin greeted him as wizan. "He speaks the language, sir. Perfectly."

  "Is that so?" The wizan appeared younger than any of them: His immaculately groomed features seemed mild as amber.

  "Yes," Carl replied. "An eld skyle imprinted it in my brain. Then I was sent to the Foke in a thornwing. It's the craziest thing that's ever happened to me-'

  "Yes," the wizan cut him off, "the eld skyles are sometimes helpful in those ways." He was seated on a cushion, still and square as a Mayan icon. "You don't look much like a Foke, but you are clearly human and strong-looking at that. From where did the eld skyle take you?"

  "I'm from the planet called earth." The words felt like tinsel in his mouth. "It existed a long time ago."

  "What position did you have in your world?"

  Carl couldn't find the words businessman or bartender in the Foke language. "I was a trader and brewseller."

  The wizen sighed softly with disappointment.

  "He's just a dropping that knows how to talk," Allin said.

  "He's not useful. I sensed that when we found. him, but the others insisted that he be brought here. On the way, seven of ours were killed. A zotl

  jumpship. I've passed the location along and a strike force is on the way."

  The wizan silenced him with a limp wave. "What is your name?" he asked Carl.

  "Carl."

  "Carl, do you want to stay with us?"

  "The eld skyle sent me to you," Carl answered. "He warned me about the zotl and gumper hogs and blood beetles and told me that you could teach me how to survive here. I'd really appreciate that."

  "I'm sure you would," the wizen -acknowledged. "But our ranks are closed. There are other human communities in the Werld. Rhene is a city where someone like you would be much happier."

  "I would still prefer to stay here."

  "Then you must demonstrate your usefulness to the Foke." The wizan's voice teetered on boredom. "What skills does a trader and a brewseller have?"

  can learn."

  "Tarfeather is not a school." The black bits of his eyes drilled Carl. "Can you make plastique? Can you' ride the fall
path? Can you even tell time?" His eyes hooded, and he went into a rote routine: As a wizan of the Foke, I find you unacceptable for inclusion in our ranks by reason of your inutility-"

  "I can work," Carl objected. "I'll do labor."

  "We all work, Carl," he explained, his voice a scaly integument. "There are no laborers. We share responsibility for labor equally"

  "I'm sure I'm good for something." Carl didn't want to start off his new life by thwarting the eld skyle's will: He wanted the Foke to accept him. Allin was grinning lushly, and Carl knew that whatever pleased Allin was no good for him.

  "Is there a court of appeal?"

  "No, my review is sufficient," the wizan replied in a voice of ravening flatness. "I order that you be taken directly to Rhene and traded for imprisoned Foke or sold for manufactured goods. Away-away."

  Carl let himself be dragged out of the stall. Allin strode beside him, kicked him into a walk, and leered with satisfaction. The blue-robed guards followed to the exit.

  "What is Rhene?" Carl asked at the doorway.

  "You speak Foke and you don't know of Rhene?" He slapped Carl on the back and pushed him out of the wizan tent.

  The beauty of the blued clouds and dark skyles had an unearthliness that made Carl shiver. "Is Rhene a prison city?"

  Allin allowed himself a black laugh. "You were the reason ,my friends died, dropping. I'd just as soon imprison you as flay and gut you. But I am a Foke. ,We don't have penalties or prisons. Just exclusion."

  He motioned Carl toward a steep trail that mounted a sinuous, reptilian terrain to the giant log moorings of a sky barge. The barge was a sleek wooden craft with a needle prow and furled black sail-fins.

  "Rhene," Allin explained, "is a zotl-built city for people-their favorite food. You might say it's a farm. Because it exists, we are spared the zotl hunt."

  "You said Rhene wasn't a prison," Carl reminded him.

  "It isn't," he answered.

  "Then what keeps the people inside?"

  "The people are free to come and go. But going isn't really a hope for most of them."-He gestured at the yawn 4 purpling sky and the skyles that cluttered space like motes of dust. "The cloudlanes, the fallpaths, and the skyles, that is the home of the Foke. But most of the people, in Rhene would not survive to their next meal out here. They are content with their busy lives in the city. The zotl androbs do most of the manual

  work and the people are free to cavort with one another. The only price they must pay is the lottery"

  "I get a bad feeling from that word."

  "When the zotl need to feast, they conduct a lottery. The one percent who lose are eaten. If you survive seven lotteries, your name is permanently removed from the risk. Many people find the seven percent odds of losing more attractive than struggling for existence all the time out here. Isn't that really the way with you?'

  They had come to the boarding ramp of the barge, where Foke bustled to load the hold with crates of blue cabbages. The sweet citron fragrance of the vegetable swirled in the air.

  Unbidden, the thought rose to Carl's mind that those were dream boles, a muscularly euphoric hallucinogen.

  "There are great pleasures in the Werld," Allin said with a chill in his voice.

  "Yeah, well, where I come from, the greatest pleasure is to be free:"

  Surprise ticked across Allin's face. He gripped Carl's beard and shook his head once. "Then why are you so obedient to fear?" He shoved Carl up the ramp. "Go on, get on board, dropping."

  Carl boarded the ship and was steered by-Allin's firm hand to a foredeck cabin. A dozen Foke sat on the benches that extended from the hull's ribs. They were conversing and staring out of the port visors at the scaffolding being slanted to slide the sky barge off the mountain and into the cloudy flightlanes.

  Allin and Carl sat with them until the barge jolted, tilted, and sledded into the sky.

  "Do you know how this works?" Carl asked, after the barge had bucked violently and rocked into the steady sway of its cruise.

  "Don't gad me with your questions, dropping." He swung to his feet. "Let's eat."

  Carl's first full meal was braised cloud trout on a bed of butter-seared owlroot. He learned then that the Foke's fondest pleasure was eating. They were magical cooks and robust eaters.

  Their food was more diverse than anything he could remember of his older life.

  That journey with Allin to Rhene lasted eighteen meals, no two alike, each almost supernaturally savory. During the flight, Carl learned enough about the Werld to -actually think he might be happy in Rhene. The Foke were a dour, hardworking people, but they were convivial when they cooked or ate. Food, or course, was free, and all were happy to display their culinary skills for Carl, even though he was a dropping.

  Not having Allin's reason for hating him, the Foke were indifferent to his origin and fate: Droppings were common.

  But praise among the Foke was not, and they were pleased by his laudations of their cooking prowess. Soon he was accepted among them.

  Between meals, people slept casually and took turns helping with chores. Carl was started off cleaning latrines, but after his poetic praise of Foke cuisine had won him friends, hewas relieved of the odious chores some of the time and allowed to work on deck.

  The drunken sky, the winds motherly with grass scents and warm showers, powered glad feelings in him; and he affably did whatever he was told. Also, he had time to accustom himself to the seemingly endless depths of the Werld. Carl had always been nervous about heights and had avoided balcony . seats, Ferris wheels, and plane trips. But after a while on deck, he was enthralled by the rhapsodies of distance, and his fear dwindled.

  Knowledge came not only from what the eld skyle had given him but also from those around him. A

  kindly-face Foke physician taught him how to tell time. Units less than a week-twenty-five meals-did not officially exist; 5,555

  "weeks" equaled one full rotation of the gravity rainbow that covered the Werld. The magnetic pole of the black hole, which was also the Rim, never varied in relation to the Werld, so with a compass one had a polar referent to watch the precession of the horizon's thin colors.

  From other passengers, Carl learned that the zotl were in firm command of the Werld, and that they allowed the Foke to exist in exchange for their regular harvest of dream boles. The boles sedated a large segment of the herd city's populace and made zotl dominance easier to take and administer.

  When the glass cupolas and silver minarets of Rhene appeared among the flamingo-tinted clouds, Carl was comfortable with the Foke way. Even Allin seemed less hostile.

  Carl had learned that Allin had been a free child-that is, he was raised in a tribal commune, a rougher life than the family children brought up by parents or other individuals. The Foke who had died helping Carl were the people he had grown up with. Carl's understanding of that resolved a lot of tension between them.

  Rhene was a city of terraced skyles, monorails, and geometric domes opalescent as serpents' eyes. The undersides of these skyles were netted with nacreous flares and web lights, and Carl's first vista of the city had an ethereal effect on him.

  The air under the city glinted with the lights of individual flyers.

  Carl had adjusted himself to his fate by this time, and he was eager to dock. Diatom-like flyers guided the barge into a colossal sky hangar of ribbon-contoured metal and moon-green spotlights. The Foke's wooden ship was primitive among the metal vessels honeycombing the dock, their shark bodies polished to black mirrors.

  The technology amazed him. At the dock, androbs, squat mechanical stevedores, unloaded the holds. Scooters carried people across the wide marmoreal mall of androb-directed traffic to the clearing pavilion. Crystal parabolas arched through twenty stories of offices, coruscated' with elevators and jewel-lighted rampways.

  "How many people are here?" Carl wanted to know.

  "In this part of the Werld, millions." Disdain manacled Allin's face. "This is a matter I wish to conduct a
s quickly as possible, dropping, so stop gawking and keep up with me."

  Getting through the clearing pavilion was not as easy as Allin had expected. Queues of passengers and baggage-laden androbs clogged the waiting mall, and Allin grumbled impatiently to himself.

  The mall, like everything Carl had seen in the Werld, was lush with natural vegetation. Green birds flitted through the trees that lined the rampways, and waterfalls clear as wind whirred between the levels, slapping among rockgardens where scarlet grass shuddered in a breeze of mist and mudscents. But the tameness, the precise order of the place, was disturbing after such a long journey through the wild spaces.

  Carl was gaping with apprehension at this city woven into the terrain when he noticed a woman standing at the lower level on a path among red and blue algal pools. She was a long, coltish woman in a black-and-coral shift. And she was staring at him.

  That was not unusual, actually, since he was ganglier and ruddier than everyone else. But she wasn't goggling at him so much as looking for recognition from him. A tribal crowd carrying seedheads mounted on whip poles swept by her, blue birds flashing about them. After they had passed, she was gone.

  Allin was seated on the androb in line ahead of

  him, his concrete-colored eyes glazed over. Carl watched tiny, blue-bottomed mandrills prowl a brake of bamboo and reminisced nostalgically about Manhattan, where waiting in line was a way of life. He slept awhile among the baggage on the androb behind him, dreamed erotically of confronting Sheelagh with his new body and of her tugging at his clothes. He woke to find himself being stripped by coilringed metallic tentacles.

  Carl howled and writhed, and Allin's big hand clapped onto his shoulder. "Ease up, dropping." His voice glinted with humor, and Carl knew then something unpleasant was going to happen.