Find the Changeling

by Gregory Benford

  An Alvean woman approaches him with her hands outstretched. From the dead boy’s description, he recognizes her. “Mother,” he says, letting her hug him. “I went out. Those—those men. I am afraid of them.”

  “No,” she says, touching his hair. ‘They are good men—they have come to help us.” She radiates a warmth he can almost feel. A strange sensation. Love, he supposes. On other worlds he has visited, it exists as well. “And you should never go out. Especially not at night. There is sickness and disease, bad people. You must promise me never to go out again. Please. Promise.”

  “I promise, Mother.” A simple act. It is Danon now—it is he. The dead boy in the shallow grave is mere rotting flesh.

  She stands, smiling, still touching his hair. “And now to bed with you. Kish believes in rising early—you know that.”

  “Kish believes in making me work because he’s lazy.”

  She starts to protest, then laughs. “How true.” She guides him softly toward the stairs. “But I have another idea, one where you won’t have to work for Kish.”

  He pauses. “What, Mother?”

  “It will necessitate helping the Earthers. Are you sure you’re not too afraid of them?”

  “I’m not afraid of them at all. You told me not to be.”

  “Good.” She smiles. “It is Skallon, the softer of the two Earthers. He wants someone to guide him through the city. I cannot do it and Kish will not. You could. It’ll be easy work and, with the Earther, you can protect each other.”

  He pretends to concentrate. “I’ll do it, Mother. It is the other Earther I hate—that one and his animal.”

  “Then I’ll wake you in the morning, dear.”

  The room he occupies is small. There are many toys. Soft dolls. There is an aircraft which, when thrown, glides smoothly through the air. A colorful metal box with a handle. He turns the handle. Music. A catchy tune. Turning farther, there is pressure. Suddenly—whang—the top pops off the box and a puppet on a spring vaults through. He falls back, laughing in boyish wonder at the trick and his own resultant fear. On the floor, he curls up and attempts to sleep. Creatures such as he rarely require actual slumber, but he is more tired than usual, spent from so many identity changes. Dreams dance in him, spinning in fog. Yellow, green. Ugly visions predominate. Pain. Suffering. Death from plague. Murder. Shivering, he awakens within a few hours. One tiny window affords an angled view of the empty, dark street beneath. Awaiting dawn, he stands and watches. The red sun arrives in a burst of fire. From the door behind, a gentle knocking sound. “Danon, are you awake?” says Mother.

  “But this is the best route, the only way of reaching the Great Hall quickly,” he says, squirming weakly in Fains tight grasp. “To go another way would require entering those streets frequented by the beast.”

  Days have now passed, and his most difficult task has been avoiding the dog. Fortunately, a mild illness engendered by the beasts more savage impulses has lain the animal low. Guiding Skallon through the city, he has come to know the man more intimately than any Earther before. With Fain, great killer of Changelings, he proceeds more cautiously. All of this is part of the plan which cannot be a plan. To taunt Fain. Frustrate and anger him. To force him to doubt himself. To worry him with inactivity. Then to strike. The key to chaos on Alvea lies with Fain himself. Only he can hold it back.

  To the Great Hall. Where the highcastes of the planet convene to devise intricate plans. A joke. The One must laugh. A deception. He decides nothing now himself. For example, as Fain and Skallon, disguised, enter the Great Hall, he could easily expose their true natures. And yet, what would occur? Fain, using his supply of Vertil, would beat back the angry mob and easily escape. No, Fain must be broken first. He must be shown the truth of chaos. Alvea is less crucial than Fain. The planet can be easily shattered, but not the man.

  Outside, he waits, but not passively. The supply of drugs hidden under his gown can again be used. Some Vertil remains but he chooses a plague strain. Dancing, rotting sickness, not native to Alvea but certainly fatal. Murder means nothing this morning. A cleansing wind whips through the city. In past days, he has injected the strain into a local water supply. Now, as an old Doubluth staggers past, plainly a senior of the caste from his bent back and wrinkled hands, he acts. The old man cries, “Ow,” and touches his arm. He shrugs. Insect bite. Enters the Hall. Will die.

  Some hours pass. He remembers moments of play on the homeworld. The Dance of Death. Children in a circle. Round and round as music plays. The song stops. The children fall. The last to touch ground can be killed by the others. Usually, he is not. Mercy may be granted instantly or after a savage beating. Sometimes, death results. Popular children die but the hated as well. His first lover, a bright blond boy, fell late, had his head torn from his torso. Rivers of blood. The Dance of Death. No patterns could develop. A game that children play.

  Once boredom holds sway over the Great Hall, slipping inside is a simple matter. He sees Fain nodding, Skallon entranced, but avoids them. A young man in purple Doubluth robes. Self-injection, Vertil. He leans close, breathing harshly in and out, and whispers, “Kind sir, a man will soon die in this Hall. When he does, you must stand and denounce the Earth for killing him.” Then back outside. The wind has fallen and a warming sun washes his back with gentle heat. Beauty lies within the universal pauses. He admires the dead black suns. The airless satellites. The changeless glory of a neutron star. He nods briefly but a terrible nightmare spins him awake, screaming. From within the Hall, harsh voices now rise. Soon there is panic. Escape. He takes shelter behind a post and observes the fleeing crowd. In time, Fain and Skallon appear. He rushes to them. “What happened in there, good sirs? Some say it is an outbreak of the plague.”

  But Fain knows better. Fain knows what has been done to him and why. Suddenly, he—the boy and the Changeling—fears this cold shell of a human being. Fain is the antithesis of all true disorder. Fain is all-knowing, all-seeing. Fain is the living remnant of the long dead God.

  He screams in fear of Joseph Fain.

  But only inwardly.

  Fear is mere part of the changing disorder of the cosmos.

  He observes while Fain has sex with the woman Joane. A dangerous, risky whim. A peephole in the wall of an adjoining room. The dog is present with Fain. Though ill, it may possibly scent the presence of an intruder. Flesh within flesh. Fain and Joane. Her heavy legs flap spasmodically about his plunging thighs. He moans; she shakes. On the homeworld, lots are chosen at random moments. A green marble for male, a blue for female. Twice he has drawn the green and on four occasions the blue. Most recently, holding the blue marble, he grew swollen with child. The process of birth proved an endless pain, a searing fire oblivious to soothing waters. He laughed at the final moment. The newborn child wept. His son. Or daughter. Whisked away by the medical ones. Never seen again. Nor forgotten.

  In order to continue the species, birth is a necessity. But the One, jokingly, has made pain a prerequisite for birth. And—a further, greater joke—made pleasurable sex a prerequisite for pregnancy. Pleasure, then Pain, then simple necessity—an odd, chaotic, senseless pattern. Which does Fain feel now? He moves brutally, passionlessly in and out of the woman. Not pleasure. Joane, who has born a previous child (now deceased), seems to the observer to be ripe for another. Not pain. Her hips are wide, her buttocks, turned up, like slabs of dark meat. Necessity? No, not that. The act is barely a moderate joke. It is evidence. Fain suffers a weakness of the flesh. (Skallon, as well, but that is not important in the dancing singing moment.) As he watches, a burning truth blooms, skimming lightly.

  Fain is doomed. He must fall. The climax draws exhilaratingly near. He draws away from the peephole and, on silent feet, leaves the room. Below, in the kitchen, he approaches Kish, who is preparing himself a late night feast. “Mother and Fain are upstairs in his room,” he says. “They’re making funny sounds.”

  He rushes toward the disguised Fain and Skallon. “I have found him!” h
e cries. “It is your enemy! I have seen him with my own eyes!”

  He used simple Vertil to lure the black-robed assassin into the forbidden hall. Fain should know this but, in the fury of the chase, fails to reflect. Since first hearing of Alvea, he has admired the assassin caste above all others. Terrible in legend, they never act. That is the contradiction and that, for him, is also the beauty.

  While Fain and Skallon hurry into the Great Hall to confront their enemy, he climbs a stone spike and regards the shifting mob in the plaza beneath. They are like frantic insects driven madly about on the gray smooth belly of some rotting beast. What will happen now? Will Fain kill the black-robed one? Will Skallon? Will the man escape and initiate a chase or will he perhaps kill Fain or Skallon or even both? That is why his plans are never truly plans. Consciously, he leaves many options, alternatives. No moment is ever certain. Chance is welcome. When the assassin at last appears, streaking across the gray pavement, he feels nothing. Fain and Skallon follow. His plan has succeeded but he feels no satisfaction. Can a fisherman feel proud of the fish he has caught? No, correctly he cannot, for the One has long since elected to let the fish exist. So it is with his plans of chaos. He is an agent, never a creator.

  Descending, he tells Fain where the assassin has gone. He takes part in the ensuing pursuit, knowing where—if not how—it must end. The assassin is trapped. Fain says, “The kid and I are waiting. He’ll let me know if the Changeling comes out his way and I’ll cover the street. I’ve decided were going to do it your way, Skallon—no cold-blooded murder. You go back to the hotel, get Scorpio, and bring him here.”

  Scorpio! From his place at the rear of the building, he smiles. An unexpected wrinkle in his plan. Briefly, he envisions yet another alternate future: the dog arrives, sniffs out Danon as the Changeling. Fain, drawing his heatgun, kills the boy. Returning to the hotel, saying nothing, he has sex with Joane before returning in triumph to Earth.

  But, when the dog arrives, he is too clever to come dangerously near it. The alternate future is erased from the slate of ‘possibilities. Instead, the assassin is caught with ease. He fails to die, as Fain discovers the subterfuge of the Vertil too quickly. Anger follows, a great explosion of rage. Fain knows he has been taunted, frustrated, made a fool of.

  He remembers how on the homework! he saw a motion picture film, created long ago in antique American Earth, that was brought to the planet by the original philosophers, as a sacred token of all that they knew and believed. Among a people for whom art could not exist—for art is merely a fruitless attempt by the blind to forge order from the molten flux of chaos—the film enjoyed a vast popularity. The story told how, on a serene and ordinary day, those most gentle and passive of all creatures, the birds, rose up in mass to destroy their human masters. Watching in a crowd, he laughed with the others, for to him the humor lay in the ceaseless efforts of the Earthers to devise some sort of explanation for a series of events that were, of course, utterly senseless. Watching the film, he was filled with a great sense of joy, comprehending its truth and admiring the genius of those who had also known it so many centuries ago. But he also remembers how he saw the film a second time and how, that time, he was filled not with joy but with terror. He stood and he screamed. He attempted to destroy the print and was stopped only by force. It is the same, he shouted to them. Each image, each frame, each spoken word of dialogue. A description of chaos told in the most orderly manner conceivable. The madness of that contradiction terrified him. Since then, he has steadfastly refused to see that film or any other.

  And he is frightened now, too. For similar, if not identical reasons. His skipping, skimming Dance to destroy Fain works too well. Each moment is like the frozen frame in a finished film. Only the conclusion, the denouement, the final revelation of victory or defeat, lies in real doubt. A merging, singing doubt. Now, for the first time, he begins to fear that, too. Everything proceeds too well, too certainly. When he acts, obvious events occur:

  —While Fain and Skallon are busy attempting to lure the Changeling within range of the dog, he moves among the surging city crowds, planting in conspiratorial whispers the possibility of Earth infiltrators within the city. Using his remaining supply of Vertil with care, he captures a number of agents and sends them out to spread similar rumors.

  —For the remainder of the afternoon, he rests quietly in his room. The following hours will be crucial, he knows, and already hesitancy and f ear are beginning to affect him. He naps briefly but is awakened by the usual bad dreams. Hearing his cries, Joane comes to soothe him. He slides into her arms and places his head upon her soft breasts. Muzzy, warm, and dumb they are, singing graces, giving, yes.

  —That night he drugs Skallon’s ale with a mild euphoric purchased from a local street peddler. Before this, he has especially enjoyed listening to Fains discussion of Changelings. Yet, when Skallon says, “The whole thing about Changelings is that they don’t follow patterns. They’re pure intuition,” he is momentarily frightened. Skallon speaks only the truth, but he is aware by now that his current plan, by its success, is violating this precept. A premonition of future failure and ultimate death visits him. He drives the thought away. In chaos, the future can never be foretold. Only the One may glimpse what soon will be, and the One, if forced to tell, would only lie.

  —Leaving the hotel, he enters the streets. Coming across an angry crowd discussing the possibility of Earth infiltrators at loose in Kalic, he uses his Vertil to create an even angrier disturbance. Then back to the hotel. He tells Skallon, “Something’s happening a few blocks away. I can hear the noise. A crowd.” He speaks breathlessly, with excitement, voice high and skittering not all of it feigned. Skallon, made compliant by the drugged ale, comes away with him. As they approach the crowd, he whispers, makes suggestions. Skallon nods, agreeing to everything. In the mob, Skallon reveals his true identity. But Fain arrives. With the help of his own supply of Vertil, Fain disperses the mob. Fain pilots Skallon through the mad sea. He grabs Fain by the sleeve and points. “This way. I know a place where we can hide Skallon.”

  ‘Where?” Fain still lacks trust “The hotel.”

  Fain shakes his head. “No, too obvious. Someone may have recognized him—or me. We’ll have to get out of the city entirely.”

  But he has previously considered this objection—and found a devious way around it. “I do not mean within the hotel—I mean beneath it.”

  “Come again,” says Fain.

  On the homeworld, during his initial studies of the planet Alvea, he came across references to the existence of a system of underground caverns located beneath the major cities. Since his arrival here, he has explored these caverns on several occasions. Already he has chosen the perfect place in which to hide Skallon. Fain hesitates, then nods, lacking any real alternative. They return to the hotel and take Skallon below. Fain looks upon the room at the end of the tunnel and purses his thin lips. ‘This may do.” He paces. “Are you sure there’s no other way in or out?” He opens the closet door, studies the interior. “I want it so there’s no way anyone or anything can sneak up on you and Skallon.”

  “There is no way.”

  “And you will stay with Skallon? I want to get back to the hotel and see what’s up. He’s been doped. I can’t leave him alone.”

  “I will gladly stay.”

  “I’ll tell your mother you’re here.”

  Alone, as Danon, he stares at Skallon’s slumbering form and contemplates the possibility of sudden murder. Jittering, jittering, let it come. The One. Approaching the bed, he crouches. His hands descend slowly. Suddenly, Skallon is awake. He stares. “Danon. Where—where am I? What—what—?”

  Softly, he pushes Skallon down. “This is a safe place. You must not fear. Everything will be all right with you.”

  “But Fain-he—”

  “Fain will return. I am to watch you. Be trusting, Skallon. Are we not good friends?”

  Skallon soon sleeps again. He glides away from the bed, stan
ds at the tunnel mouth. Beneath his gown there is the heatgun, but he will not use it. Fain is his enemy—Fain and his dog—but not Skallon. Left alone, Skallon will do nothing to prevent the proper triumph of chaos upon this world. Fain and his dog must die, but Skallon shall live.

  Patiently, he awaits the invisible onrush of dawn.

  Events now occur with the precision of successive snapshots:

  Click. He fetches Skallon’s breakfast.

  Click. He lures Fain and Scorpio below.

  Click. He awakens Skallon, ties him up, assumes his identity, hides him in the closet.

  Click. He speaks with Fain, taunting him a final time.

  Click. He hastens away, sprinting the length of the narrow tunnel.

  Click.

  Better, far better, that Skallon live a few ticks of time longer. Until this moment it has killed whenever possible. Death is, to Norms, disorder. But letting Skallon live deepens the Dance and will confuse Fain still more.

  Ah—the leaping joy as it thinks of Fain. To have Fain at last, to destroy him in the deepest sense—that is a consummation. The moment comes now, presses forward. All else has bloomed properly in these last blessed hours: the Earthers are known, the Alveans rage. This Norm planet teeters, will soon fall, must shatter itself on the One.

  A fever seizes it. The end is now merely waiting, prepared. A few moments, perhaps. But beyond the wreck of the furious delusion that is Norm Alvea, lies the consummation the One finally must demand. Fain himself must be crushed in a new way, a final and total way. Not by simple defeat. Not by returning, beaten, to Earth. Not by serene and sudden death. No. The One will be brought to fullness only if Fain finally sees himself as a fool, sees his order dissolve. The Changeling must whirl Fain through more stumbling Dances to make the man see. He must come ever closer to him, dancing nearer, until in some consuming moment Fain s eyes widen in surprise and fear and the One crashes through him, shatters, brings completion and death. There is danger for the Changeling in this, but the drumming leaping singing song of the One demands it. Each moment slides into the next, bringing fresh worlds, new paths. The Changeling knows that Fain is too important, has killed too many Changelings, has imposed a vast sick tide of order. So Fain must be done in the correct way, must meet his end as he faces the One. The Changelings quicksilver mind flashes over rivulets of possibility. Its world is unblocked by the Earthers’ left-hemisphere dominance. It sees what is, what is real, what is One. No mere words lead it, no babbling of tongues deceives it. It can speak, can seem like a Norm, but the intuition that is in and of the One leaps high, commands the mere word. Whatever must come, will—that is the One. And here in the tunnels, in the blessed blackness, in the cloaking silence, here Fain the great killer of Changelings comes.