Transformation

by James Gunn

But he was not as confident as he sounded.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Asha let the five winged Aerieans lead her and Adithya and the wingless Aeriean up the dark stairs toward the shop from which they had been escorted forty-eight hours before. Adithya stumbled behind her and caught her arm.

  “You need to get these lights fixed,” she said to her guards in the rudimentary Aeriean she had learned.

  “You must not speak,” the wingless Aeriean said.

  In the darkness Asha heard a muffled blow, like a wing against a body. Her Aeriean spokesman had been punished. They had not hit her, she thought. Perhaps she was not yet assigned to the underclass and subject to correction. Or perhaps her transgression was more serious, and her punishment would be so much more severe that a blow was inconsequential.

  They emerged into the relative brightness of the shop. Three winged Aerieans lay on the tables, being brushed or massaged by wingless Aerieans. Her guess had been right: this was a grooming salon. Two of the winged Aerieans looked up as Asha’s group passed. Up close they were even uglier, almost terrifying in a kind of avian rapaciousness, and Asha thought they must have evolved from birds of prey. She also thought that she should not characterize people by their appearance. They probably thought she was just as ugly. And edible.

  They were marched across the plaza. It was thronged with fully-winged Aerieans strolling, although their clawlike feet gave them a curious gait, like sailors adjusting to an uncertain deck. Other Aerieans soared in the air above the city, delighting to all appearances in mastery of their environment, as if sporting in the sky was the reason, and the reward, for existence.

  There they were gorgeous, as free as the air they inhabited, unencumbered by concerns of everyday existence, ignorant and uncaring about impending doom. Perhaps, Asha thought, it was only when they were brought down to their cities that they were transformed into creatures that waddled, indulged their vanities and their cruelties, amputated the wings of fellow creatures, and relegated them to lives of servitude. Perhaps their entire lives, their joy, were dependent upon their sacrifice of the lesser Aerieans.

  By this time their group had reached the far edge of the plaza. An Aeriean-shaped door had opened in what had looked from a distance like another shopfront. Their guards moved them through it into a pathway beyond—not so much a street and not by any stretch of imagination an avenue but a winding space between buildings that rose higher than the structures around the plaza. Flying creatures did not need, nor value, thoroughfares, Asha thought, and these inadequate arteries were meant for creatures like the wingless, or perhaps the smaller-winged Aerieans who acted as police or militia or mercenaries for the privileged flyers. Or perhaps they were juveniles, serving as overseers until they gained their adult plumage and the right to soar.

  The buildings, whose functions were obscure and would probably remain unknown, grew taller as they moved away from what seemed like town center—the reverse of most cities. The buildings that had glittered like crystals from a distance were less magical up close. The glass-like fronts were scratched at street level, trash was piled up around the edges of the street, and streaks of yellow and white tinged with darker colors were visible in upper portions, as if birds flying overhead had relieved themselves with no concern about what existed below. They passed an amphitheater, its crystalline threads stained like the buildings and strewn with molted feathers.

  Finally they arrived at one of the tallest structures. It soared at the edge of the city. Asha could see the sky coming down to meet the curving edge of Aeriean construction. Beyond was nothing. A vast nothing above a plunging abyss.

  Three fully winged Aerieans soared down from somewhere above and landed beside them, their wings spread wide. They moved forward, separating Asha, Adithya, and the wingless Aeriean from the smallest-winged guards, seizing the captives from behind with clawlike hands that cut into her flesh, and lifting them into the air with massive beatings of their wings.

  This is it, Asha thought. This is where we get jettisoned. She wondered if there was time to get the red sphere in position to save them.

  But she knew there wasn’t.

  * * *

  The captives ascended, not toward the threatening edge of the city but up the side of the building until they arrived at the top, which was square and flat and shudderingly close to the side that dropped into the gulf of a deep and thickening atmosphere. Their captors released their cruel grasps and stepped aside, paying no attention to where they stepped, ignoring the perils of falling over the side. Birds, Asha thought, perceived heights differently.

  Opposite their small group, on the far side of the building top, although “far” was only a few meters away, a small railing was set a meter from the edge, too distant from the enclosing sky to serve as any protection against falling. And as if to answer Asha’s unspoken question about its purpose, an Aeriean flew up from that side and settled on the railing, its clawed feet closing firmly on what was now clearly a bar, a support, and perhaps a position of authority, like a throne or a judicial bench.

  The Aeriean on the bar seemed larger than any Aeriean Asha had seen before. Perhaps older. Its wings were more ragged, its beak sharper, its eyes more hooded and predatory, its mouth wider and looser. Perhaps it was magnified in her eyes because it seemed in a position of authority. It opened its ugly mouth now and said, “You are strangers and must die.”

  “We are not strangers,” Asha said, “but visitors, and visitors, by intergalactic law, must be welcomed and offered the courtesy of guests and the privileges of citizens.” It was, to be sure, a law often disregarded, but it didn’t hurt to invoke it.

  “You must be silent,” the wingless Aeriean said softly.

  Asha was hit from behind by a wing and staggered perilously close to the edge of the building.

  “You speak in riddles,” the presiding Aeriean said. Was it a judge? A mayor? An emperor? Did it have the power to condemn them without further appeal? “There is no law except Aeriean law. There is no ‘intergalactic.’ There are no visitors. There are only Aerieans and strangers, and strangers must die.”

  “We are not strangers but emissaries,” Asha said and waited for a blow that did not come. “We have come to offer help.”

  “Aerieans need no help,” the presiding Aeriean said. “And help, even if needed, would never come from those without wings. You have no wings. You are strangers without wings and must die.”

  “We come from a world without wings,” Asha said.

  “How sad,” the presiding Aeriean said. It shifted its position on the resting bar. “How degrading. You are a world of servants.”

  “The galaxy is full of different creatures,” Asha said. “Each of them has different reasons for being what it is. Each of them has different abilities, different views, different approaches to existence. You fly. My people run and have machines that fly.”

  “They must be a very primitive people.”

  “Like all self-aware creatures they build, they create, they seek wisdom, and they try to understand,” Asha said. “They are alike in that. That is what makes them people.”

  “And yet you do not understand what it is to have wings,” the presiding Aeriean said.

  “We understand the joy you have in flying,” Asha said. “We understand its meaning to you. And we envy it while we value our own qualities. Among these is an acceptance of difference.”

  “Only the wingless need concern themselves with difference,” the presiding Aeriean said, shifting again on its perch. Asha wondered if it was an avian habit, a nervous twitch, or a sign of uncertainty. “But I must hear from the other wingless stranger.”

  “It does not speak your language,” Asha said, looking at Adithya and trying to send a message to not do anything rash while she negotiated. She hoped the Pedia was translating into Adithya’s earring.

  “Then I must hear from the servant who was brought along with you.” Asha did not know whether the Aeriean word for “servant
” was the same as that for “slave.”

  “You are right, Your Eminence,” the Aeriean said and cowered as if expecting a blow that did not come. Asha did not know whether the Aeriean term was equivalent to “Your Honor,” “Your Holiness,” “Your Highness,” or a combination of all three. “As in all things.”

  Clearly the wingless Aeriean was too beaten down to be of any help.

  “Then I must get the truth from you,” the presiding Aeriean said, “before you are executed.”

  * * *

  Asha glanced over at the edge of the rooftop that marked the end of the city and the beginning of the gulf. She looked back at the presiding Aeriean, adjusting itself on the support bar again.

  “We have seen your city,” Asha said, “and it is a magnificent creation, unlike anything in the galaxy.”

  “What is this ‘galaxy’ you speak about?”

  “It is all the worlds you see when the sky is dark,” Asha said. She raised her hand toward the sky where the sun glowed rather than blazed, and braced herself for a blow that did not come. “All those points of light in the sky are stars like your sun, and most of them have worlds like this with people on them of various kinds and shapes, and some of them have sought out each other in machines that fly between the stars at great cost and great sacrifice in people’s lives because they want to know each other and the galaxy they occupy.”

  The Aeriean glared at Asha with its predatory eyes. “There are no other worlds than Aerie,” it said. “We have not seen those points of light you speak of because they do not exist. Aerieans nest when the glorious sun descends into the pit of darkness and bring it up again with our ceremonies.”

  “And yet there are ships out there beyond the reach of your atmosphere,” Asha said. “Ships that Aerieans built, ships that sailed between those stars, ships that brought the glories of Aeriean civilization to other worlds, ships that stand empty now.”

  “Your words are empty of meaning,” the Aeriean said. “Proceed with the execution!”

  Asha’s arms were grabbed from behind. “Wait!” she said. She could have used her feet to free herself and done damage to her winged guard, but she had not yet given up on getting through the Aerieans’ denials. The hands remained on her arms but their grasp relaxed a fraction. “You are a great, starfaring people, but you have forgotten.”

  “We have forgotten nothing,” the Aeriean said.

  “Your glorious buildings go without repair. Your streets are cluttered with trash and dirt.” She would have added “feathers” and “excretions,” but that might get too hurtfully close to Aeriean sensibilities. “The bags of lighter air that support your city high in the air are failing from lack of attention.”

  “There are no such supports,” the Aeriean said. It spoke to the wingless Aeriean: “This is the concern of servants.”

  “I have seen no such bags,” the wingless Aeriean said.

  “The city is what it has always been and will always be,” the presiding Aeriean said. “It is supported by the wings of Aeriean gods who will never die and their wings will never stop beating.”

  “In time,” Asha said, “this city will fall because you have forgotten. It is not your fault. You have been attacked by enemies from beyond the stars. Your memories of your glorious past have been stripped from you. You must try to remember, and if you cannot remember you must believe and accept help and in time—”

  Without warning, as if the presiding Aeriean had given an unseen signal, the hands that gripped her arms from behind thrust her over the edge of the building, and she found herself falling through the empty air.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Asha was tumbling through the air, looking down at the vast emptiness below and then up at the floating city from which she had been thrown. During the moment she was looking up she saw another dark shape against the sunlit sky. It was Adithya. And then, on her next rotation, she saw another shape—the wingless Aeriean. It, too, had suffered their fate, and she felt sorry for destroying its life in her search for a higher good.

  She spread her arms and stabilized her fall while she carefully removed the red material from her pocket and, resisting the tug of air rushing past her, stroked it onto her body until it spread of its own accord and then sprouted the wings that had brought them to the city and might now save them from their sentence. The wings caught the air. She maneuvered her body so that Adithya fell toward her. She caught his arm as he passed. “Your wings!” she shouted. “Very carefully!”

  Adithya dug cautiously into his pocket and she let him go just in time to catch the arm of the wingless Aeriean. “I’ve got you,” she shouted in Aeriean. Its body was unexpectedly light. She remembered that Earth’s birds had hollow bones. “Don’t struggle!”

  The Aeriean was terrified but mixed with that terror was a kind of end-of-life joy at finally being embraced by the air to which evolution had fashioned it.

  Even with the lighter burden Asha had difficulty stabilizing her path through the air until the wings began expanding, as if the red sphere material was adjusting to the increased weight. “Look for a column of air ascending,” the medallion on her chest said. “That is how the ancient soaring birds of Earth kept their place in the sky.”

  She looked around to see any clue to ascending air and noticed a cloud formation below that seemed to be spreading. She turned toward it and a few moments later found herself and the Aeriean rising. Adithya, too, had heard the message on his earring and located another cloud. Soon they were both rising toward the level of the distant city.

  And saw the shapes of distant Aerieans flying toward them on beating wings. Perhaps they had not escaped their execution after all.

  “Go lower!” the medallion said. “Help is on the way.”

  First Asha and then Adithya left their ascending columns and dived deeper into the thickening atmosphere. The winged Aerieans were even faster, however, like predators descending upon helpless prey.

  The Aerieans were almost upon them when the red sphere cut through the air like an apparition, scattering the winged Aerieans in its path. First Adithya and then Asha and her wingless Aeriean were swallowed by the ship. They had been saved, Asha thought. This kind of last-minute heroics was getting out of hand.

  A moment later they stood in the corridor just inside the inner wall of the red sphere, Asha and Adithya with their wings retracting into the material that covered their bodies, the wingless Aeriean looking around at the inside of the ship and then at Riley and Tordor with eyes dazzled and then shocked.

  Riley caught up Asha in a powerful hug. “You’re back!” he said.

  Tordor grasped Adithya’s arm with his trunk. It was an act of friendship Asha had not seen before.

  “And you arrived just in time,” she said.

  “The Pedia told us when you got taken up,” Riley said. “We were half an hour out. So we started our descent, and you kept them talking long enough.”

  “I wasn’t stalling,” Asha said. “I really thought I had a chance to get through to them.”

  “The alien attack seems to create changes that are irreversible,” Riley said. “What is lost doesn’t come back.”

  “Perhaps in time,” Asha said. “Maybe the affected species can build themselves back into functioning beings again. Surely mental changes do not survive more than a generation, if they can survive until then.”

  “What are we going to do with this creature?” Tordor said, indicating the Aeriean with his trunk. “And when are we going to leave this unfortunate world?”

  “I have plans for this Aeriean,” Asha said. “So let’s ascend beyond the reach of our frustrated pursuers until I can see if my plans will work.”

  Asha turned to the Aeriean, now clearly terrified by its surroundings. “This is the kind of ship I was describing to the person you called ‘Your Eminence,’” she said in Aeriean. “And this”—she pointed toward Tordor—“is one of the many creatures who live in different worlds far from Aerie.”
<
br />   “You are gods,” the Aeriean said. That revelation seemed to ease its fears.

  “Not gods,” Asha said, “but people like you and all the rest of the Aerieans used to be before the aliens arrived.”

  “I do not remember,” the Aeriean said. “Our Eminence said it was not true, and in all things Our Eminence speaks with the voice of gods. But you, too, have wings, even if they are not like the great ones that we serve, and I must believe you, too.”

  “We are not gods,” Asha said, “but we speak truth, and you must make a decision about the difficult world you find yourself a part of. But not now. Now you rest, and tomorrow you will decide.”

  * * *

  Half a cycle later, with the wingless Aeriean given a place to sleep on the floor of the space the red sphere had provided as a kind of dining facility—it had refused the space that Asha and Riley had used for rest because it did not like to be alone in this totally alien construction—and after it had accepted only a bowl of gruel for its meal, the Aeriean faced Asha once more. “I have made my decision,” it said. “You have saved my life, worthless as it is, and I place it in your hands.”

  “You must take it in your own hands,” Asha said, and took a piece of the red material from her pocket and stroked it onto his shoulder, still with short feathers as if in mockery of a broken promise. It spread from there until it covered its entire body. The Aeriean looked down as if puzzled and a bit alarmed at its transformation. Asha took another bit of red material from another pocket and applied it to herself.

  “Now we are alike,” she said, and took the Aeriean’s hand and pulled it with her through the yielding surface of the red sphere. They fell, hand in hand, through the air until Asha’s wings sprouted and then the Aeriean’s. “Now you can fly!” Asha said. She released the Aeriean’s hand and, for a moment, the Aeriean dropped, but then its wings caught and it soared. Unlike the long hours of practice that she and Adithya had required, the Aeriean took to flying with the instincts of a species born to a life in the air. It flew triumphantly, as if it had always flown, and after half an hour of ecstasy for the Aeriean, Asha swooped close enough to catch its hand and tug it back again into the red sphere.