Spaceling

by Piserchia, Doris

  “Deron isn’t all that good at mathematics.”

  “How do I get you to work if you remain so independent?”

  “In other words, you went looking for a puppet but came up with a real live person.”

  “Take a ride on Bandit and break your neck. Play with a wolf and contract rabies. I suddenly don’t delight in your presence.” I could only guess why he wanted me in the first place. He seldom answered questions, particularly when they were mine. As for ring channels, Deron explained them to me. They were the method by which most muters operated since waiting for a ring of a specific color to come along consumed too much time. The channels were flowing streams of circles of different shades and shapes and could be found in many areas. Their positions remained more or less constant and there was one in the town east of the ranch.

  “Why should I bother telling you anything?” Deron said to me. “You don’t intend to cooperate. You only hang around because of the animals and Kisko.”

  “How did you work with the others before me?”

  “Hypnotism, brainwashing, drugs, whatever worked best. The first two have no effect on you while the third puts you to sleep.”

  “Physiological difference?” I said.

  “Not a permanent one. I think you really are sick. The X-rays I took show a definite mass in a critical area of your brain. By a rare stroke of luck, it might disperse with time. If it goes gradually, you’ll return to normal, whatever that is. If it moves all at once, you’re gone.”

  He took me to see the ring channel. “As far as I’m concerned, there’s nothing there but blank space, but it’s been described to me by plenty of muters. What does it look like to you?”

  “It’s a stream about three meters high,” I said. “Most of the rings are small but some are fairly big. They’re all moving in a more or less straight fine at about ten kilometers an hour. There are reds, greens, blues, browns, grays and plenty of off-shades ”

  “I’m sick of your lying,” he said. “Why don’t you confine it to certain periods throughout the day? It’s difficult to tolerate it all the time.”

  “Anything you say,” I said, not having the faintest idea what had set him off.

  I thought it was uncanny that the majority of people couldn’t see rings. The people in the town walked right through the flowing channel as if it didn’t exist. Had I done something like that—now that the question occurred to me, I discovered I didn’t know the answer. What would happen? Would I be distributed in D-i and D-2 in several portions, would several of me appear in several places in those other dimensions, or would one of them capture all of me?

  “It depends,” said Deron, when I asked him. “What that means is, I don’t know. The few cases I’ve heard of where an infant wandered into a channel, they landed whole in either D-i or D*2. The better the vision, the more control over rings a muter has, or so I’ve been told. Somebody who doesn’t really see them clearly hasn’t a great deal of resistance to their lure. Animals are like that.”

  That evening he tried to ride Bandit and broke his arm when he landed in the water tub. Instructing Wheaty as to how to set it and mount a cast, he sat disagreeably through dinner.

  “Does she have to sniffle like that?” he said.

  “She has a cold,” said Wheaty.

  “Why don’t you adopt her?”

  “I should have filled that cast with poison ivy. As soon as it comes off, Im going to break your jaw. And another thing. If you damage one hair of that horse, I’ll break your other arm and both your legs.”

  I studied maps in front of the cold fireplace. Lying on a thick rug, I perspired and looked at rings and blueprints of labyrinths. It was nearly eighty degrees inside. The air-conditioners were off because of my cold.

  “This is too much work,” I said.

  “What good are you to me if you wont learn your assignments?” said Kisko. Even when sitting in an overstuffed chair he managed to look tense and unfriendly.

  “I mean it isn’t necessary for me to bother with these maps. Show me a color and tell me what to do.”

  Throwing a photograph of a blue ring at me, he said, “Run down the tunnel you find on the other side of this.”

  “Is that all?” I started to get up.

  “Not now. In the morning.” He rubbed his eyes.

  I grinned. “After a good night’s sleep? When I’m rested?” Non-muters kept forgetting we changed bodies when we traveled.

  “Deron was right. You’re wise. Go now, go tomorrow, go to the devil. I’ll have him drive you to the channel.”

  “I don’t want the channel.”

  “I can’t wait all week.”

  “You turned off all the alarms, otherwise you’d know there are about a hundred rings outside.”

  “It has to be the right shade. How can you learn the color I want by just glancing at it? You can’t do it.”

  “I have a good eye. No, don’t come out with me. I couldn’t bear to watch you grieve.”

  “Wise, wise, but take care. If you want to live . .

  “I shouldn’t go at all?”

  He was angry when I came back into the cabin ten minutes later. “What’s the matter? Was I wrong or wasn’t I? You couldn’t find the right color. Great At this rate I’ll have you trained in at least ten years.”

  “I don’t know why you’re mad. I did the job. What more do you want?”

  “Naturally. You went to the correct place in D-2 because it took you only a couple of minutes to find the correct ring in the yard outside and then you hustled down the correct tunnel and came back to me to report.”

  “Sure.”

  “And I suppose it was a multi-colored tunnel with silver sequins on the walls?”

  “It was red with scar marks all over it. It was shaped like an hourglass.”

  He blinked three times and threw another photograph at me. “Of course I’ll expect you back in ten minutes.”

  I was back in nine. He timed me by his watch, listened to me describe a short, wide corridor with a white arrow painted on the right side.

  “That’s enough,” he said. “Go to bed.”

  The next day he had Deron examine my eyes. “What’s the matter with him?” I said. “Why is he always so suspicious of everything?”

  “Of course it isn’t in your vision,” said Deron. “He knows that. We all know it. It’s in your mind. Maybe the explanation is that you have a photographic memory for colors. But that’s no answer for the other mysteries, such as why you don’t require the channels to find the rings you want. Could be you’ll tell me one of these days?” When I didn’t reply, he said, “Have you always been able to operate this way?”

  Cheerfully I said, “I don’t remember.”

  Wheaty had a fit when he found out my assignment for the day would be tunnel number ten. I didn’t even know what it was.

  “You haven’t even prepared her!” he said to Kisko. “Can’t you work her up to it like the others? If you’re that anxious to get rid of her, take her up some country road and dump her out. She’s at least as good as a cat!”

  “She’s ready now. Go work on the generator. It’s not functioning properly and neither are you.”

  “Tunnel eight!”

  “Ten. Every hour counts.” Kisko had some words for me before I left for work. He repeated himself when he said he didn’t like the fact that truth drugs seemed to shut my mouth rather than open it because that was how he had always interviewed his scouts after their stints in D. Their answering simple, straightforward questions wasn’t reliable since the grave possibility existed that they might miss some little detail.

  “Sorry about that,” I said. “Every time I think about blabbing from my subconscious something slams shut in my head, like a door. Maybe that really does happen. You know, if you don’t trust me enough to tell me what I’m supposed to be looking for in D, I’ll most likely overlook it. I’m beginning to think my best course would be for you to give me possession of Bandit, Googs and the
cats and bid me adieu.”

  After blinking, rubbing his eyes and wiping several thunderous scowls off his face, he agreed to describe a few landmarks in which I should take interest that afternoon when I went to Gothland.

  He did and I wasn’t pleased about it. “Im supposed to estimate the height of a ledge at the end of tunnel ten and estimate the circumference of the tunnel entrance above it?” I looked at him and kept looking until he averted his gaze. “Were right back where we started and you haven’t told me a thing. You’re saying I don’t need to worry about points of landscape because what I’m supposed to notice will be so noticeable I can’t miss it Okay. So long.” I walked down the road, went behind the bam and looked through the mess of rings hovering over a swamp. I called one to me.

  Upon my return from Gothland, I stopped in the bam to see why Maverick was making such a fuss. That was the name I had given the mother cat. She snarled and growled until I chased away a big groundhog, after which I sat down to play with the kittens. It was warm and quiet and before long I fell asleep.

  Deron awakened me by yelling his head off. He stood over me looking amazed and frustrated. Wheaty came running, Kisko came running, Maverick began squalling and then I was dragged away to the house like a truant.

  Why had I fallen asleep in the bam? Why had I gone into the bam in the first place? Didn’t I take this business seriously? Never mind my trying to answer that, why hadn’t I reported back immediately? All the questions coming at me at once served to shut my mouth better than truth drugs had ever done it. Hadn’t I been aware that they thought I was dead? Why should they think such a thing? Because I hadn’t come back!

  “Why shouldn’t I be all right?” I bellowed when I had the chance. “There wasn’t anything there, just the tunnel, the ledge and another tunnel above it, and there wasn’t anything in the second hole besides a bunch of black rocks.”

  “You weren’t supposed to go in that one!” Wheaty yelled.

  Kisko made Deron take Wheaty away and then he and I sat in the living room and discussed my journey. I assured him both tunnels had been uninteresting and even boring.

  “In fact, it was even annoying because of the noise made by some waterfalls somewhere overhead,” I said.

  He found that interesting.

  “There are a lot of falls in D-2, and some of them are really huge so you cant expect total silence anywhere in the dimension,” I said.

  Since he asked, yes, the noise had sounded louder at the far end of the second tunnel. Sitting in the chair cross-legged, I supported my chin in my hands. “Why didn’t you tell me in the first place that what you were really interested in was the noise? You think it’s something besides waterfalls, don’t you? After I ride Bandit, exercise Googs and feed Maverick, I’ll go track it down. Never mind all those dumb routines of checking out tunnels one at a time to see if I know what I’m doing. I’ll just go and find out what the noise is.”

  His eyes must have bothered him fiercely, the way he dug at them with his knuckles. “That sounds like a reasonable idea,” he said, not looking at me. “However, I don’t want you going beyond the pit. Not this time. Do you understand?”

  “I assume I’ll recognize the pit when I see it. Okay, I won’t go beyond it.”

  Wheaty followed me around all the rest of the afternoon. “I’m only making sure you’re comfortable. That’s all right, isn’t it? I mean, that’s my job. I’m a nursemaid, a wet nurse.”

  “Which means I’m a baby. Listen, Wierton, just because I can’t find my birth certificate doesn’t mean a thing. For all you know I’m much older than I seem.”

  “Don’t call me that. I like Wheaty better. About the trip to the pit later, I’m telling you to call it off. In fact, you’re going to get on a bus and hightail it out of here. This is no place for you.”

  “How many have the three of you put in that meat grinder?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Haven’t you been yelling that you’re killing kids?”

  His homely face reddened and his voice rose. “How dare you say a thing like that? Nobody’s killing kids!”

  “You send them on missions into D-2 and they don’t come back. What do you call it?”

  He groaned. “Never mind that. Kisko’s kidding you, as usual. He doesn’t expect you to come back, once you reach the pit He wants you to make it because he needs the information but he doesn’t expect it. Neither do I. Meet me at sundown at the end of the road and I’ll drive you to the bus stop.”

  Before sundown, I was in D-2 chasing and being chased by sloks. How I had hated going into that tunnel. To begin with, it was too narrow. Three meters into it, I knew it wasn’t for me so I backed all the way out onto Earth to find one more to my liking. Materializing behind the bam on the ranch, I ran across the field in pursuit of a smaller circle that was an almost perfect match for the first. This time in Gothland I found a series of tunnels each of which could have accommodated three goths my size. The openings were side by side in a straight line and, since the middle one appealed to me, I went in at an easy trot The noise was so loud I couldn’t hear anything else so I kept a weather eye peeled on my fore and aft. About fifty meters into the tunnel, I rounded a bend and came to a dead stop. Several meters ahead of me a slok fed on the remains of a goth. It was balanced on its bottom tip like a fat, round accordion, its neck extended and bent to the carcass, its teeth clicking as it tore the flesh to pieces.

  Carefully I retreated and left that particular tunnel. The second one I tried was narrower and straighter so that I could see into it for at least a quarter-mile. The way looked clear so in I went at a fast lope.

  Everything appeared to be fine and I was making good time, with nothing threatening, when all of a sudden the hackles on my neck rose. Without pausing or losing my coordination, I performed the most graceful horse kick of my career, braced on my front paws, let my great weight go forward for a moment and then swing backward as my big feet went up and out. I connected with something, kicked it against the tunnel ceiling with all the force of which I was capable.

  Feeling pleased with myself, I looked down at the unconscious slok. It would be asleep all night. Directly above me was a deep niche in the stone where the creature had been crouching. Luckily my timing had been perfect and my feet had caught and hurled it even as it plummeted toward my back.

  The sloks were stupid, or maybe that was a shortcoming of whoever gave them their orders. They were stationed in niches at quarter-mile intervals along the corridor and they weren’t difficult to detect. I dispatched six ugly specimens before arriving at the pit. Four were gotten rid of quite simply. Making sure of a niche’s location, I deliberately loped beneath it and then abruptly sprang backward while the slok leaped for my nonexistent back. Before he landed, I was astraddle him and gripping his neck in my jaws. As for the two remaining creatures, I kicked them into insensibility.

  I don’t know why the machinery in the pit astonished me because even innocuous Gorwyn had managed to transmutate common objects into harnesses and anesthetic guns.

  The machinery was immense, as was the pit itself. Knowing that the tunnel behind me was at least temporarily free of sloks, I lay on the ledge and looked down at about two hundred sloks and goths who worked in what appeared to be an open factory. The machinery, which dominated everything, seemed to be an engine with double bores that disappeared into two mountain walls. If I hadn’t known better, I would have said it was a cannon.

  The goths appeared to be doing what they did voluntarily. They weren’t being forced or coerced, at least not that I could see. In harmony they and the sloks worked on small machines in a cleared area, or they climbed in and out of the big engine, polishing, lubricating, testing parts, putting the monster into operating condition, or rather improving or maintaining that condition, because it plainly functioned. The entire area shook and vibrated in response to the power being generated and unleashed there.

  I was alternately counting machin
es and personnel and looking back over my shoulder when a troop of sloks came down the corridor on the hunt for whoever or whatever had knocked out their sentries. They spotted me at about the same time I spotted them, but they were too late and merely chopped the air where I had been lying. I leaped to a ledge directly above and outside the tunnel where I crouched, reached down and swiped them into the pit, one by one.

  In a short time every slok and goth in the place was climbing a ladder after me. As soon as they were all off the pit floor, I did some climbing of my own, in big leaps and bounds downward until I reached the bore on the right side of the excavation. I ran across the top of it.

  Some sloks came out of the door in the giant engine while a single specimen followed me across the metal pipe. Wondering what to do next, I spied a green ring speeding from inside the mountain wall and into the clearing. Stepping up my pace until I was moving parallel with it, I skipped sideways and flung myself through its center. As I was doing this, a goth dropped from a low ledge in the rock wall and followed me.

  My entrance into Waterworld was accomplished only a second ahead of it but it was enough time for me to grab hold of a shell and swoop inside it. I and the shell’s tenant, a pink wormlike creature, both watched a male swimmer come through the blue donut in a hurry. He looked about with anticipation and did a double take when he didn’t see anyone. Swiftly he whirled, even shaded his eyes with his hands for a few minutes while he shoved water out of his way. The shell drifted in front of him and he pushed it aside.

  A clump of seaweed came within easy reach so I waved goodbye to the startled worm and changed my hiding place. While the swimmer looked about in puzzlement, I got a good look at his face. He was a stranger but at least I would recognize him if I ever saw him again. That was the second important thing I would think about when I had time. The first was the worm in the shell. As far as I could recall, there wasn’t supposed to be anything alive in Waterworld but flora and muters.