Trickster patted him on the arm. «It's the shift, that's all. You'll be all right as soon as the Winterbloom releases her flower.» Jinndaven blinked, his sense of time and place fuzzy. «Will that be soon?» he asked in a distant tone of voice. «I would really like it if it could be soon. This is very uncomfortable. «That's because you're resisting the shift. Stop trying to access it as if it were something outside yourself. Turn inside inside-out instead.» «Oh,» said the Greatkin of Imagination, struggling to make sense of Rimble's directions. «But—uh—what is this shift?» «Has to do with helixes. I think.» Jinndaven blinked. «You think?» His eyes narrowed, as the truth suddenly dawned on him. Too late, he realized that he was indeed Trickster's dupe. And guinea pig. «Blast you, Rimble! This isn't one of your Improvements. This is one of your untested experiments.» Rimble smiled sheepishly.
His face furious, Jinndaven grabbed his little brother by the frilly front of his greatcoat. «Why you shit-grinned little bastard!» «Now, now,» said Rimble hastily. «It's not nice to mangle a god. Even if I am short,» he added. Jinndaven got to his feet dragging Rimble with him. As he lifted Trickster into the air, he shouted, «Don't give yourself airs, brother dear. You're a Greatkin not a god. Now hear me clearly. You know the word permission? I invented it. And I gave you no permission to muck about with roses. You listening, Rimble?» Feeling Jinndaven's fingers tighten, Rimble swallowed and said, «Oh. Well, perhaps I was getting a teensy bit out of hand—» Jinndaven shook him. «I should rearrange your face. Make that faces.» Rimble broke out in a sweat. «But don't you want to see how the experiment turns out? Think of the mortals, Jinn. Something might go wrong if we don't follow through on this. There's no telling—» Jinndaven pressed his lips together, his eyes searching Rimble's. He took a deep breath, letting it out through clenched teeth. It was true. There was no telling what would happen if he punched the Greatkin of Deviance during an incompleted experiment. Jinndaven dropped Trickster into a nearby snowdrift. As the snowdrift was a least a foot deeper than Rimble was tall, the little Greatkin began swearing. As he dug himself out, Jinndaven leaned down and pointed a finger in Rimble's face. «Okay. Fine for now, Rimble. But when this is over, dear brother, you better run. Because when I catch up with you—» Jinndaven suddenly broke off in mid-sentence, his body shuddering. His handsome face switched gender, changing from male to female and back again. Touching his cheeks, Jinndaven panicked. «What have you done?» Rimble's pied eyes danced. «It's the 'y' that does it. The 'y' in Contrarywise. Welcome to transposition central. It's a matter of pitch.» Naming Rimble every four-letter word he could think of (and the Greatkin of Imagination could think of a lot), Jinndaven tried valiantly to get a psychic grip on his identity, but his normal boundaries of self slipped and slid and would not remain anchored to the here and now. Jinndaven scooped up a handful of snow and mashed it against the bare skin of his neck, hoping the shock of the cold would cause him to return to himself. But it didn't. «Rimble,» whispered the Greatkin of Imagination, «what have you done! I'm entering the Everywhen of the Presence. I'm losing control of my Primordial Face. I'm—» «Yeah, yeah, yeah,» said Trickster feigning boredom. «You've been stuck,» he said, finally extricating himself from the snowdrift in which Jinndaven had dumped him, «and although it doesn't look like it,» he added, brushing snow off his legs, «I'm digging you out. You're shifting.» «But Sathmadd's rule. One Face—» «It's only temporary.» «Sathmadd's rule most certainly is not temporary!» cried Jinndaven as his beautiful face changed into three probable versions of the original. The Greatkin of Imagination clapped his hands to his temples, shut his eyes and grit his teeth. «I am myself!» he whispered. «I am myself!» «It's only a concept. And it's very inadequate,» said Trickster. He sighed. «Resisting the shift won't stop it,» he added conversationally. «And anyway, I was referring to the shift being temporary—not Maddi's rule.» «What?» mumbled Jinndaven, his disassociation from serial time almost complete now. He fell to his knees in the snow, holding his head and rocking. He felt the doors of Everywhen open around him, the rush of probable futures brushing across his face like a cold wind with a hot center. Time restructured itself inside him, moving into a speeded up simultaneity. Jinndaven tried valiantly to stop the process, but the impetus of Trickster's shift was too powerful even for him. Rolling his eyes helplessly at Trickster—who was watching him now with unexpected compassion— Jinndaven yielded to the pressure within, his face alternating freely now between male and female according to an inner, organic prompting. Trickster grinned now, his expression now one of fascination and undisguised conceit. He circled Jinndaven jauntily. «Excellent,» said Rimble softly, his pied eyes—one black and one yellow—glittering in the deepening twilight. Jinndaven groaned, shaking his head. «This—will—translate. This—will—cause—havoc—with—Inertia. Mattermat—will-have—your—ass!» «Not if I have anything to say about it!» retorted Trickster. «The—universes—» continued Jinndaven, every word labored. He wondered if he were actually speaking. Maybe my tongue is in the way, he thought spacily. «The—universes. Don't—you—realize—?» Trickster slapped his own thighs gleefully. The sound of it made Jinndaven jump. Then, grabbing the face of the Greatkin of Imagination once more in his small hands, Trickster lifted his chin and said, «Can you imagine the effect this'll have on mortals? They could call the process Shifttime. Or,» he said, wig-wagging his black eyebrows at Jinndaven, «in honor of your supreme sacrifice and eager participation here, they could name it after you. They could call it Jinnaeon.» Jinndaven frowned. He was having a great deal of difficulty following Rimble's words. Worse yet, Jinndaven had the distinct impression that he was about to be blamed for something that was Trickster's fault and not his. He touched his face gingerly, sure that it would never stabilize again. Trickster patted his hand. «Will you relax? I told you—this is just a temporary condition. It'll pass. If you let it,» he added sourly. He peered into Jinndaven's bewildered eyes. «Are you still in there?» «Sure. The whole gang's here,» mumbled Jinndaven. «Who d'you want to speak to? Oh, and specify past, present, or future while you're at it, will you? We wouldn't want to confuse you.» Trickster chuckled. «No chance of that. I'm the original Multiple Personality—remember?» He smiled cheerily at Jinndaven then glanced at the straining bud of the Winterbloom. «Any moment now,» he said to his brother. «Yup—there she goes. I suggest you yield, Jinn. I suggest you yield completely.» «What?» «Yield!» Jinndaven blinked, forcing his eyes to focus on the slowly opening bud in front of him. As the white petals unfurled, Jinndaven felt a curious leap of hope in his heart and a steady streaming of raw, potent joy throughout his body. Unexpectedly delighted, Jinndaven turned to this joy in wonder. As he reached hesitantly for it, the joy reached for him with confident, wild desire. It flooded him, irradiating his every cell with an ancient intelligence that spoke of renewal and a wild emergence of the Utterly New. The Winterbloom continued to flower, the blood-like liquid in its crystal stem now shooting freely into the bud's center. The white petals slowly turned pink along the outside edges then darkened to a glistening, brilliant red. Then a queer thing happened; the center of the Winterbloom began to turn counterclockwise. The effect on Jinndaven was immediate. He gasped, clutching at his heart. «It's opening. The flower. My heart.» Trickster smiled knowingly. Then he leaned toward the Greatkin of Imagination and whispered, «So choose the self you most want to be, Jinn. Pick the one most precious to you. Go on. Imagine the best of all possible yous—living in the best of all possible worlds. Now's the moment of conscious choosing. Now is the moment of Shifttime—when all things are possible. Stir yourself to excellence. Change the psychic code of all Reality. Insert a new sequence of self.» «But there's nothing wrong with the psychic code of all Reality. Or with me as a person,» added Jinndaven crossly. «I'm a perfectly good Greatkin.» «So be a better one,» replied Rimble, his expression hard. «But everyone likes me the way I am. They'll be upset if I go and start imagining myself differently. Especially Sathmadd.» Rimble g
runted. «I doubt she'll even notice a change of this kind. She's not very subtle, you know. But enough of that—go on and shift. The Winterbloom is nearly ready to fly.» «Flowers don't fly,» said Jinndaven stubbornly. «Improoved flowers are liable to do anything,» retorted Rimble. «Even the impossible.» Trickster inclined his head. «Stop stalling, Jinndaven. You know you want this. Your eyes are so bright I can barely look at you.» «Okay, okay,» grumbled the Greatkin of Imagination. Then without further ado, he drew himself up, sifting through a thousand faces until he came to the one most precious to himself. Picking that one, he let that future fill him with purpose. He let that future show him what sequential choices he'd have to make to become this new self. Yielding now to the great good inherent in making the choice to become not only a better person, but the very best he could possibly be, Jinndaven felt himself become inwardly buoyant—ecstatic. His face suffused with a gently psychological radiance, Jinndaven finally relaxed. Suddenly he understood Trickster's great freedom: multiplicity. Everything was again possible—despite the rules. And he was sanely mad—"touched» by Trickster. The shift, he thought, that's the wild labor. Labor for a psychic birth. Movement caught Jinndaven's eye. It was the Winterbloom finally come to term. Like this new self, the blossoming flower now strained against its own roots and yearned for emergence. Jinndaven watched the flower struggle for flight, the entire bloom now beginning to spin. What had once been a rose, thought Jinndaven, was now a Winterbloom. What had been an ordinary flower was now an original. It was wholly new. And somehow, the transformation was contained in the turn. Jinndaven gasped. «My heart—I think you broke it.» «Nothing else will do,» replied Trickster. «Nothing else can induce the turn necessary to support the shock of the new. I said it was hard.» Jinndaven nodded, his eyes still on the flower. Its spin was so swift now that the petals appeared as a white blur. Then slowly the bloom separated from the crystal stem. The stem itself shattered, its pieces tinkling like shards of glass as they fell against each other in the snow. Finally, the Winterbloom lifted into the wintry air and flew free. Jinndaven whooped with delight. «There I go!» he cried, his voice joyous. «I'm soaring!» «Mmm,» nodded Trickster, his face upturned as he watched the flower sail into the gray sky, its spin emitting a hum that echoed over the mountain and made Trickster smile. Then the flower incandesced. As the sky lit with brilliance, the Winterbloom released a fragrance. Its perfume was so heady, so intoxicating that Jinndaven scrambled to his feet, grabbed Rimble by the hand, and danced a mad jig up and down the steep mountain trail. Finally out of breath, the two Greatkin fell backwards into a drift, making snow angels and laughing. «Hoo, hooo!» cried Trickster rubbing his small hands with glee. «It works! What an Improooovement, eh?» he added, clapping his brother on the back and jumping to his yellow-booted feet. The Greatkin of Imagination smiled drunkenly at Trickster. Yessir, he thought, If this was Trickster's ecstasy, he'd come to it any time. Trickster turned a contrarywise circle, spinning left. Grabbing the sheath under his greatcoat, he gave his brother a diabolical grin and said, «Now to take my Improovement to where it'll do some good.» «Where's that?» «Civilization's bed.» Jinndaven's eyes widened. The Greatkin of Civilization was their sister, Themyth. She was also a crone who had only this morning complained of feeling unusually stiff in the joints. Jinndaven swallowed. «You're going to take that two-foot—thing—to Eldest? Have a heart. Themyth will probably run screaming from the house. And you complain about my capacity for change.» Trickster grinned. «You underestimate our good sister. And besides, Jinn, this wouldn't be the first time I've fucked with Civilization.» His expression softened. «Not the first time at all.» Part I: The Leading Edge Some fall off and never return, Some walk the shifting line, But neither knows the tricksy turn Of Rimble's Contrarywise Nine.
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