by Eric Brown
I was rigid with horror. The thought of Munn’s tongue on my belly–
Anne snapped, “Don’t be disgusting, David.”
“I thought you liked me to be disgusting,” he said. And he ran his manicured hand over her breast.
I croaked. I pulsed with impotent rage.
Something was happening to my skin. Dark pods were erupting all over me. I felt a powerful urge to clasp something big, soft and cool...
It was the last humiliation. I was getting turned on by what Munn was doing to my wife.
Anne heard my croaking. “Madame, take that toad and put it right back where you found it, this minute.”
“But Mummy, it’s a clever toad.”
“I said this very minute!”
“Oh!” Lizzie flounced to her feet, grabbed me with bad grace, as if I had offended her, and stormed from the house. I hung upside-down, and with my last glimpse of the living room I saw Munn reach out for my wife’s hip.
~
Lizzie marched down the length of the back garden, singing ‘Postman Pat’ to herself. We passed through the gate into the meadow, and Lizzie strode towards the oak tree. She stopped and looked about, frowning in concentration. “Now... where was it? ”
She started, as if with recollection, and ran around the tree. “Here we are!” She held me out before her with both hands. “Is this your home, Mr Toad?”
I was dangling inches above the curved rim of the disc-like, metal object half-buried in the soil. There was an opening in the rim.
Before I could gather my senses, she dropped me into the hole. Due to the tilt of the object, I slithered down what was obviously the entrance.
I fetched up against a cold surface inside the disc’s dim interior. In seconds my eyes adjusted to the reduced light. I stared.
Across the slanting circular floor, watching me, was what I can only describe as... as a monster .
Granted, it was a small one—perhaps half the size of my bulbous toad’s body—but what it lacked in size it made up for in ugliness.
It was lizard-like, and bipedal, and egg-yolk yellow. Its mouth was wide and filled with a hundred sharp, evil teeth. And its eyes... I will never forget the creature’s eyes... its eyes glowed bright green in the dimness of the ship.
We stared at each other. I realised that it must have been as surprised to see me as I was to see it. Tough luck, I thought bitterly. Then it moved.
Lightning-quick, it dashed across to a console set in the wall of the disc. Its stick-thin arm shot out, and a tiny finger depressed a button, and–
~
I took a halting step forward. The dust seemed to crunch beneath my feet, like a covering of snow. My footprints were miraculously sharp, as if I was walking on fine, damp sand.
The ground was tan brown, the sky utterly black.
I was standing in a broad, shallow crater. Low hills shouldered above the close horizon. There were craters everywhere, ranging from several yards to a thumbnail in width, the low sunlight deepening their shadows.
I was enclosed in some kind of suit; I heard a whirr of pumps and fans, the hiss of rather stale air across my face. There was a pack on my back, so massive I had to tip forward to compensate. But I had little sensation of weight.
I turned. A hundred yards distant there was a spaceship, a glistening, filmy construct of gold leaf and aluminium, bristling with antennae and rocket nozzles.
And here came an astronaut. He looked like a human-shaped beach ball, his suit brilliant white, bouncing over the lunar landscape.
Good grief, I thought. What a dream. Now I’m on the moon.
But at least I’m human again.
I tipped back on my heels and looked up.
The sky was black, empty of stars. But the Earth was a fat crescent, four times the size of a full moon...
~
I woke with a start. Actually, I thought I was still half-asleep; my eyes were closed and I had a feeling of falling.
I tried to understand what was happening to me. What was the meaning of these bizarre dreams? And what relationship could they have to this experience of metamorphosis?
There was a pattern, though. In the first dream I had been an amphibian, enduring one of the first forays onto dry land. (How long ago? Three hundred, four hundred million years?) And in the second I was an astronaut, taking the first footsteps on more unexplored territory: the moon. Another evolutionary jump, I supposed.
I felt vaguely excited as I thought it through. After the first dream I’d returned as an amphibian—a modern descendant of that primitive pioneer. That couldn’t be a coincidence...
So why, I wondered, hadn’t I returned after the second dream as Buzz Aldrin?
It was so unfair.
Only then did I become fully aware of my physical situation. I opened my eyes, alarmed.
I was falling.
There were fluffy clouds below me; I could see a patchwork of ground—small fields, glowing green, typically English—spread out like a tabletop beneath me.
It was rather like being in a plane, coming in to land at Heathrow.
Except I was plummeting, the detail exploding at me .
I seemed to be spinning. I could see a church spire, pointing up like an arrow towards me, a train of black cars outside, their roofs shining like beetles’ shells...
I panicked. I started to struggle.
I had new muscles across my chest. They seemed immensely strong. I pulled my arms downwards ...
My arms and hands were spindles of bone, trailing sheets of smooth black feathers. Wings. I looked down at my body; it was a compact cone shape, coated with smooth black contour feathers, and my legs were little orange stubs, tucked up beneath me.
I’d been switched again. I was a bird... a crow who didn’t know how to fly.
I continued to fall, tumbling, and I opened my mouth—my jaw was heavy and long, extended into a beak—to cry out. A mournful ‘caw caw’ issued from my throat.
I tried to relax. I was a bird, not a pilot in some feathery aircraft; I should just let this body get on with what it knew best, rather than try to figure out its operation.
I closed my eyes and imagined I was flying, smooth and serene, down towards the church.
When I opened my eyes I was flying. Without conscious control, my wings worked at the air in a figure-of-eight motion. As my chest muscles pumped, I could feel the lift of the air flowing over my feathers. My big powerful lungs sucked in oxygen, and my heart rattled, burning up the energy that was maintaining my flight .
It was beautiful, and exhilarating... but also terrifying. I suppose my instincts were too closely conditioned by all those years as a human being; I couldn’t get used to there being nothing underneath me.
I concentrated on the scenery, not on myself, and my vertigo receded a little.
I opened up my wing feathers and swooped down towards the church. A funeral was in progress, I saw: those big black cars included a hearse. A coffin was being lowered into the ground.
And there was Anne, tastefully dressed in black. It was hard for me to distinguish her from above, but I couldn’t mistake my own wife. Beside her was Lizzie, her little gloved hand tucked into her mother’s hand... and there was David Munn, his possessive arm around my wife’s shoulders.
It was my own funeral!
I cried out, cawing loudly enough for one or two of the mourners to look up, startled.
I couldn’t bear it. I beat my wings and sailed up into the sky. I shot through a layer of low cloud and into clear sunlight. I headed straight into the blinding light, pushing at the air. The ground, with all my shattered dreams, receded beneath me, its colours leaching into the mist. I would fly until I could breathe no longer, or until my wings melted, like that Greek chap...
I suppose I must have blacked out.
~
When I next came to my senses, I discovered that I was—incorporeal; it was as if the jewel of consciousness which had lain behind my eyes had been plucked
out and flung into space.
I did not even have heartbeats to count.
It was impossible to measure time, other than by the slow evolution of my emotions.
Driven by curiosity I began to experiment with my awareness. Physically I was composed of a tight knot of perception; now, cautiously, I began to unravel that knot, to allow the focus of my consciousness to slide over space-time.
Soon it was as if I was flying over the arch of the cosmos, over a sprinkling of galaxies, unbound by limits of space or time.
I allowed my consciousness to soften further, to dilute the narrow human perceptions to which I had clung. Soon there was little of the human left in me. Then, at last, I was ready for the final step.
With the equivalent of a smile, I relaxed. My awareness sparkled and subsided.
I was beyond time and space. The causal river of space and time slid by me, vast and turbulent, and my eyes were filled with the grey light which lies behind all phenomena.
And I was never, I decided, ever going to the Wheatsheaf again, no matter what the guest ale.
~
I woke. I was lying in a soft bed. A human bed.
I knew immediately that I no longer inhabited the restrictive form of a toad or a bird. I could feel the weight of arms, legs, skull. I yawned and stretched. It felt wonderful to be the owner of skilful fingers and opposable thumbs!
For a moment I lay there, luxuriating in my relief.
I thought about the half-buried disc into which Lizzie had dropped me, and my encounter with the green-eyed monster. Clearly the alien—what else could it have been?—was responsible for my dreams and transfigurations.
Was it investigating step-changes in human evolutionary history: from sea to land, from Earth to space, from—ultimately—man to superman, to immortal? That night, when I had witnessed the disc glowing in the field, the alien had used me as an unwilling subject, through my consciousness investigating the far past and distant future of the human race.
Which wouldn’t have been so bad if the whole process hadn’t got so fouled up.
First I had been carelessly returned to the body of an amphibious creature, evidently because of its short distance, in evolutionary terms, from that first land pioneer. And then I had been dropped into another part of the great ocean of life, as a bird. But at least, after this latest transfiguration, I had been returned, once more, to a warm human body .
Not that I really I really cared about all this. The alien probe, the destiny of mankind—even my remarkable experiences—were, frankly, of much less interest to me than my personal concerns.
Thus, I pondered, it has always been.
Even now, I had other things on my mind.
Munn! You bastard!
I opened my eyes.
~
I raised an arm and stared at it. The arm was long and covered in black, shiny hair. I gazed down at my new body.
My penis was the size of a walnut.
Munn groaned and rolled over. He blinked up at me, grimacing in the morning sunlight. “Freddy, will you please lie down and go to sleep?”
I was the pet chimp of the man who was cuckolding me. And I was sharing the bed with Munn and my wife! It was the final insult.
I leapt out of bed, screeching. This startled Munn, I noted with pleasure. I decided that enough was enough. I was done with these transfigurations, these random jumps around the animal kingdom. Now I was an extra from Planet of the Apes . Who could know what I might become next?
I tried to run from the room. I tumbled over, until I worked out how to move on all fours, with my weight resting on my big weightlifter’s arms. When I had the hang of it, I ran downstairs.
From the kitchen I collected a box of matches, and from the garage a can of petrol. I loped around the house and through the back garden. It was still early—fortunately there was no one about. I would have presented a strange sight indeed, a secretive chimp scuttling across the field with a petrol can clutched to its chest.
I reached the buried disc. The corpse of a toad, discarded, lay beside it.
I sat on my haunches, unscrewed the lid and tipped the can. The petrol throbbed from the rusting nozzle with agonising slowness. I decided that, all things considered, half a can should do the trick.
I dribbled a trail of petrol across the ground, retreated a few steps, struck a match and threw it.
An instant whumph! and the disc snorted a great gout of flame like some enraged, half- buried dragon. A secondary explosion shook the oak, but by this time I was scampering back across the field and into the garden.
I saw Lizzie emerge from the house and stare at the plume of smoke that hung above the field. She had a box of Sugar Puffs clutched under her arm. “What was that, Freddy?” she asked sleepily, rubbing tired eyes.
I paused and regarded her, contemplating our future together.
I might have the body of a chimp, I told myself, but it could have been far, far worse.. .
I wrapped my head in my arms, which made her laugh, then took her hand and went inside for breakfast.
Now, I thought, for Munn. Now I had strong arms and legs, and teeth as big as the dominoes at the Wheatsheaf. Now we’d see who was the dominant male around here.
Munn, you bastard! I’m coming to get you!
Sunfly
Onara slipped from the shuttered darkness of the dormitory when she judged that her fellow apprentice Scholars were asleep. She emerged into bright daylight. The sun—as always—was directly overhead, a kernel of yellow light in the sky’s blue bowl.
She was aware of her heartbeat, its frantic drumming accompanying the small voice in her head that told her that what she was doing was forbidden. She crept down the west wing of the Scholars’ manse, along the path that passed her teachers’ common room. She ducked and hurried beneath the flung-open shutters. A few teachers had still not retired, and she heard the deep voice of Sch. Malken, her own tutor.
She paused on the border of the garden, hidden now by a stand of sweetcorn. Before her, the land to the south rose in a broad sweep of greensward. As she left the cover of the corn and ran up the hillside towards the forest, she knew that all it would take was for one Scholar to glance through the shutters and she would be seen. The consequences of being caught spurred her on: solitary confinement for a week, or, worse, the whip. She dashed into the custody of the forest and collapsed behind the bole of a tree, breathing hard.
She gazed back down the hillside, following the curve of the land to the north. From her place of shade, she could see the Vale with the sprawling timber edifice of the manse cupped in its palm, and the patchwork design of the crop fields surrounding it. The sunlight beat down, flattening the panorama; the only shadows were tiny pools of darkness beneath the larger trees.
As she followed the lie of the land further to the north, she saw how the fields and copses at the far side of the Vale merged into a fine band of blue and green, and were finally lost in the mist at infinity. And beyond the horizon, the land leapt upwards to become a great wall plastered with sun-glistening lakes and rivers, a wall which reached into the sky, narrowing as it rose.
She lifted her head back and squinted to shut out the sunlight. She could just make out a fine, perfect line crossing the sky and piercing the disc of the unmoving sun. The World was a hoop, suspended around the sun, and that line across the heavens, bluer than the blue of the sky, was a strip of landscape beyond the sun—a land perhaps peopled by humans as was her own Vale, or perhaps inhabited by monsters, like the Foe which had haunted her childhood nightmares.
But now a shadow fell on her face, and she felt the air grow chill. Clouds crossed the sun, and a flock of birds— high and tiny—fled with them to the south. Such migrations were a new feature in her World; nobody knew what they meant—or rather, nobody would tell her.
Again she studied the arch of the landscape which rose beyond the northern horizon. She scanned down the column of land, until she found the point where it almost thinn
ed to invisibility. The Narrowing, as she had heard the Scholars call it, had appeared two months ago, causing much comment and speculation among the apprentice Scholars.
It looked as if the World-band had been stretched almost to breaking point. She shivered. The Narrowing was deeply disturbing to her, a fault in the structure of the World.
~
Rested, she stood and ran easily through the shadowed forest, no urgency in her progress now, just anticipation.
She came to the glade, a moss-lined bowl shaded by the foliage high above. Rarely was she here before Kallis—he had the freedom of the forest, whereas she had to wait until the time was right to leave her dorm. Alone, now, she felt vulnerable. What if she fell prey to the wild hornbeasts which stalked the forest? Or even—she shivered—one of the Foe?
She chastised herself for being so childish. Hadn’t Kallis told her that even wild hornbeasts were wary of man? And as for the Foe—what were they but the creatures of legend? She fingered the leather choker about her neck, a present from the hunter on their very first tryst.
She jumped at a touch to the back of her neck. “Kallis! You fool!” She hugged him as he laughed at her fright.
He pulled away and regarded her, his eyes bright blue in his sun-weathered face. There was something remote about his expression, she saw through her pleasure. “Come,” he said. “Last time I saw you we talked about strange happenings. The clouds, the northerly winds... Now I want to show you something even stranger.”
Without a further word he took her hand and pulled her through the forest, heading east.
They ran swiftly through the undergrowth, Kallis’s cross-bow creaking against his leathers, his footsteps hunter-fleet. She felt her hand enclosed in his strong yet gentle grip, like a small bird.
They must have run for miles. Soon Onara judged that they were approaching the eastern extremity of the forest. Despite Kallis’s reassuring smile, she detected unease in his manner. She wondered if he wished to talk about his declaration, three sleeps ago, that he and a group of fellow Hunters were planning to leave the area. She hoped he’d abandoned the idea; she couldn’t imagine how she might live without her lover, even for a short time.