Analog SFF, March 2009

by Dell Magazine Authors

  “Mortality.”

  “So you still plan to kill me?”

  “No. We'll see to it that you never die.”

  “You offer immortality? I don't believe it. Nothing lives forever.” Claybourne wondered if the Click talked of religion, of death and afterlife.

  Margery Jinsen had spoken of immortality, and she offered a vision of dying: “After the first death, there is no other,” she told him. When he asked if she were quoting some sort of scripture, she had said, “No. That's a line from an ancient poet. But it's true. And heaven awaits those who look for it.”

  The Click who claimed to be a poet produced a bag from what seemed to be a pocket, dug into the bag and pulled out a glob of white substance. “For our ceremonies you must have face paint.”

  This isn't good, Claybourne told himself, and he nearly slapped the poet's hand away, then decided to endure the daubing of white goo on his cheek.

  When he finished, the poet stepped back and inspected Claybourne's face. “Now we sing,” it said. The Clicks began shuffling this way and that, and the poet issued a series of rounded vowels connected with clicks and cheeps.

  An odd warmth washed over Claybourne's face as if the poet had treated his cheeks with menthol. Claybourne tried for a shrug over the effects of the chemical on his skin and turned his attention to the sounds of the song.

  It took a few moments for him to perceive a pattern to the speech. “A poem,” he whispered, marveling at the rhythms and rhymes. And the other Clicks? He watched their movement, the way they seemed to stare at nothing, the pattern of the left foot lifting and going down, the drag of the right: drag drag STEP drag STEP drag drag. “A circle dance,” he said, and tried to mimic their movements. He fixed his vision on a point above the horizon and slipped into the monotony of their dance. It's a form of meditation, he told himself, with the dance serving as a mantra. Drag drag STEP drag STEP drag drag. When the mind cloud enveloped him, it felt familiar, like a meditative trance.

  Later, as the dance ended, Claybourne lay on the ground in a funk, somewhere between paralysis and lethargy and enveloped by a warm sense of well-being. He wondered when he had begun to sing. What were the words? He couldn't remember. And what is a mind cloud? he asked himself. Didn't I think of that term as if I understood it? Wisps of the mind cloud still floated about in his head, and part of him asked if its presence should be a cause for alarm. But he felt no alarm. He did a quick body check and decided all was well except for an odd tingling his left leg, but it seemed minor. Then he remembered the music.

  “Vivaldi,” he said. “I sang Vivaldi. The Four Seasons.” He sat up and looked at the two Alpha males. They looked alike. “Which of you is the poet?”

  “I. He is the warrior you will wrestle.”

  “Vivaldi's piece has no words. And yet I sang them.”

  “You sang. You should wrestle soon, for the metamorphosis has begun.”

  What metamorphosis? Claybourne wondered, and he commanded himself to be alarmed, though nothing came of the command. The sense of well-being overwhelmed any worry. Still, he thought it best to consult the ship's brain. “Sally?” he whispered. “Did I sing Vivaldi?”

  “You should return to the ship,” Sally said. “Something has gone wrong, and the sensors cannot tell me the nature of the problem.”

  “Answer the question.”

  “Yes. You sang, but your tune wasn't exactly what Vivaldi wrote. Come to the ship.”

  “I will, but not yet. And you must be quiet and stop distracting me again.”

  He looked around, mildly surprised that all the Clicks were leaving except for the two Alpha males. “Where is everyone going?”

  “The others go about their business now that we know you are safe to be among us. You reached first level in a single dance.” The poet seemed awed.

  “It's too late to wrestle,” the other Click said.

  It took some concentration for Claybourne to get to his feet, for the tingling in his left foot had become more pronounced. By the time he stood upright, his mind felt clear of whatever had clouded it. “What did I sing about?”

  “You sang of others. Of Ramex. Of Margery Jinsen. Do you wish to see them?”

  “I sang about Margery?” The words came out as a whisper of astonishment, and he felt a deep sense of loss. He swallowed hard, pushing down the pain of losing Margery.

  “Yes. This Margery Jinsen is still here, as is Ramex.”

  “They're here? You mean their tombs?”

  “Come.” The two Alpha males stood.

  “Where are we going?”

  “To a place Ramex called the Valley of Bones. Perhaps you will know Ramex, though he looks different from your memory of him. Margery will be more difficult to recognize.”

  “The Valley of Bones?” Claybourne felt fear grip him again. In his distorted report Ramex had mentioned the place as the execution grounds. Clicks took each member of the Terran team there, he had said, and killed them. “You plan to murder me, then.”

  “We do not kill. I told you already.”

  “Right. You cure.” He tried for sarcasm but heard his voice sounding more puzzled than anything else. “The other ones like me, Ramex and Margery—the others, didn't you kill them?”

  “There were no others like you,” the warrior said. “Not even Ramex. We do not kill anyone.”

  “The ones new to your world. You killed them.”

  “No,” the poet said. “They're alive. Do you wish to see them?” He and the warrior turned and walked across the clearing.

  Claybourne followed, reminding himself that his instructions from headquarters were to find out what became of the expedition.

  “There,” one of the Clicks said, pointing. “Beyond those trees is what Ramex called the Valley of Bones. Do not touch the trees.”

  Other plants on the Clicks’ planet looked much like Earth's vegetation, but not these. These trees had a pink and fleshy texture to them, like woody skin, and their leaves reminded Claybourne of the webbed feet of frogs. Rubber trees, he thought—they look like rubber trees, succulents, brittle spongy things that on Earth looked as if they ought to bend, but would break if you exerted much pressure on them.

  The Clicks picked their way among the trees to the edge of the valley, though to Claybourne it looked less like a valley than a gigantic meteor crater covered with chlorophyll-producing shrubs, primitive ones that covered the ground in a thick mat. Scattered across the mat lay the bones.

  “What kind of bones are those?” Claybourne asked. He thought they looked like femurs of some primeval dinosaurs.

  “Not bones. Brothers. Perhaps to you they are sisters. Some are those who came with Ramex.” The two Clicks turned to look at Claybourne, and he stepped back, sliding his feet into the aikido stance, holding arms loose, readying for an attack. They seemed not to notice his preparation. “Ramex is not among them,” the Click continued. “He chose to become something none of us have ever seen.”

  “Magus-of-Stars, that's what I became,” a voice said.

  Startled, Claybourne turned toward a tree and found himself looking at what had to be the biggest parrot in a thousand worlds. It stood on a rubbery-looking tree limb and stretched its wings. “Impressive, aren't they?” the parrot said. “But useless. I'm too flipping heavy to fly.”

  “Ramex?” Claybourne stared. “Ramex? What kind of joke is this?”

  “I knew you would come, and I know where you'll go. Before long I'll be walking among your branches, listening to you sleep. But I won't listen for long. Dreams from the trees that bleed are self-serving and so boring. Not at all like what's out there.” The parrot turned an eye heavenward. “Ah, from out there, the languages, the memories, the magnificence.”

  “An alien mega-parrot,” Claybourne whispered. Amazing.

  “Bah,” the parrot said. “Nothing around here is amazing, not compared to what's out there.”

  “In another life, you mean? In heaven or with some vision of an afterlife?�
��

  The mega-parrot took a few impatient steps on the tree limb, then turned a green eye toward Claybourne. “You humans say the silliest things.”

  “So you're not Ramex.”

  “Remember how you once told the then-me I needed to learn to breathe properly? Remember how I laughed? I was the fool then, and you were the magus. A limited magus, and stupid, but you knew some few useful skills. And I don't mean skills in fighting. You called the good skill meditation. The Ramex I used to be should have learned from you.”

  “So you are Ramex, sort of.” Intelligence on all worlds humans had studied, Claybourne thought, require a brain-to-body ratio far beyond what this parrot has. This creature, he concluded, has the proportions of a parrot, maybe an African gray, but still a parrot, so it might be clever, but not intelligent.

  “You're partly right about the ratios, and I knew about brain size, of course, so I grew a body that housed brains in places other than the head. Better brains, I might add. That report I sent as Ramex? It was full of nonsense. The Clicks have no virgin goddesses, and they're definitely not murderers.”

  Claybourne looked around, noting that the Clicks had drifted away, leaving him with the mad parrot.

  “Mad, am I? Perhaps. You can think that, if you wish.”

  This version of Ramex, Claybourne thought, has some weird knack for seeing surface thoughts, like the Drumorians, that odd race of primitives on Stockel in the Coal Sack who use rudimentary telepathy for playing games.

  “But I can see more than surface thoughts, and as Magus-of-Stars I play no games.”

  The others sent here to learn about the Clicks, Claybourne wondered—had they been transplanted into the bodies of telepathic parrots?

  “You want to know what happened to them?” The parrot chuckled. “I'm standing on one. This goofy tree. Here's a brain ratio for you—the neurons that were once locked inside the braincase of a woman named Margery Jinsen now live in this tree. Bunch them up and they're still about the same size as they were in Margery's skull, and look at the huge trunk and limbs of the tree she grew herself into. By any biological definitions humans know about, the tree is bound to be stupid. But it isn't. Watch.” The parrot pecked at a branch, a quick scratch with his great curved beak, and drops of red appeared, congealed, scabbed. “She built an automatic nervous system to take care of injuries so she can stay asleep, mostly.”

  Sleep? Claybourne marveled. But Margery changed herself into the tree—she committed suicide—and what made her do it? “Sally,” Claybourne whispered, “can you tell if this tree once was Margery?”

  “The tree is an alien life form,” Sally said.

  “Was it once Margery?”

  “Perhaps, but the question has little meaning. There's something wrong within you, perhaps bad wrong. Come back to the ship.”

  “That mechanical brain you're talking with,” the parrot said, “is essentially a stupid machine. Of course this tree was Margery, and it still is. But the change wasn't suicide. Ask her,” the parrot said.

  “Come back. Fast.” Sally's voice carried an urgent tone, one that made Claybourne chuckle, for he knew the tone to be laced into the voice by artificial intelligence. Sally, after all, wasn't human, and he couldn't trust her judgment in some matters.

  “Talk to a tree?” Claybourne spoke with his own skeptical tone. “Sally,” he whispered, “stop talking to me for now.”

  “Why not speak to a tree? You're talking to a stupid machine through your clever mechanical tools in your ear and in your clothes. Not only that, but look at me. You're talking to a giant parrot. Of course with me you need not talk, if you focus your thoughts in a linear enough way. Try shouting to Margery. That might energize your thoughts and amplify them enough to rouse her.”

  “MARGERY JINSEN.” Claybourne felt foolish for shouting. Then a thought wisped into his mind:

  “Go away, Claybourne.”

  It sounded sleepy, though Claybourne wasn't sure how a thought could sound in any way at all.

  “What happened to you, Margery Jinsen?” Claybourne asked. “What happened to the woman I once loved and who tried to convert me to a mystical religion?”

  “Nothing bad happened.” Margery's thoughts felt like her voice, a creamy alto, rich in feminine nuances, just as Claybourne remembered her speaking. “I remade myself, and I'm in heaven.”

  “You're a tree, Margery, a tree rooted in foreign soil on an alien world.”

  “Heaven.” Her thought-voice seemed to drift. “It's in here and not out there at all. Everything you need to know is already inside you, Claybourne. Go, find it, change, change, change.” The thoughts trailed off.

  “She's asleep again,” the parrot said. “She's finished with you.”

  “So I see.”

  “She's wrong,” the parrot said. “About heaven, that is. Everything worth examining is out there.” The parrot turned an eye toward the sky. “Not inside some silly tree's dream sleep. Margery Jinsen got it wrong. There's mindthreads out there that contain whole cultures.” Again the parrot turned an eye toward the sky. “I can pick them out, learn languages. Eighteen so far, and there's more. One comes from a race that likely is extinct, a race far more advanced than humans. More advanced than Clicks. Go away now, Claybourne. Go root like a tree and dream your stupid dreams. I have gathering to do, thoughts to examine, worlds to understand.”

  Is the man I knew truly dead? Claybourne wondered. And Margery Jinsen, is she dead?

  The parrot snickered. “What is death, said jesting Pilate, and would not stay for an answer.”

  “That's a misquote from an ancient philosopher,” Claybourne said. “The word he used was truth not death.”

  “But you know nothing of truth, and you fear death.”

  “Do you know what death is?” Claybourne demanded. “When that tree was still Margery, she liked to tell me about heaven, about dying and becoming a spirit, an incorporeal being floating in some vague somewhere. But back then she had a body, such a wonderful body. She was body. And yet she turned into this tree, so is there no more Margery Jinsen? Perhaps death is radical change. So what if some part of you lives on as a spirit, as she once believed—or as a sleeping tree or as a mad parrot with brains in its belly? What she was, what you once were, are so different from your former selves that Margery and Ramex are dead. Is that right?”

  “I'm not dead,” the parrot said.

  “No. But you're not Ramex, either. You're strange, stranger than any creature ever imagined by Ramex when I knew him, and stranger than the mystic visions of afterlife Margery Jinsen once embraced.”

  The parrot eyed him. “Do you think such quibblings matter to me? Do you think I care about your Ramex? I have worlds out there to examine.”

  “Yeah. Just as the tree that once was Margery now has internal worlds to examine in dreams.”

  “You bore me,” the parrot said. “Go away now or speed up your metamorphosis into a tree or into one of those creatures that look like bones and give their lives to grazing like slugs.”

  “I'll do no such thing.”

  “No? One of the Clicks put a paste on your face, right? It contains a hallucinogenic spore that will dig into the core of the one you call Claybourne, and it will grow, and you with your symbiote will change Claybourne, for within you is the knowledge of how to regrow yourself. Margery Jinsen was right in that, at least, and your choosing to change has nothing at all to do with conscious will. You'll change, but you won't die. Clicks kill no one. They are one of the most advanced races in the universe.”

  The facial paint, Claybourne thought, and his hand went to his cheek. I've got to defeat this infection, he told himself: I must survive as Claybourne. I don't want to die. There's medicine for treating invasions from foreign infection, Claybourne thought in a panic, but they're back on the ship. Can I get to them in time?

  Fear gripped him, and he estimated his chances of surviving long enough to get to the meds and leaving the planet alive as being one in hun
dred.

  The parrot chuckled. “Your chances of leaving are worse than you think. Look to your feet.”

  He looked at his shoe, where woody-looking tentacles spilled away from his tingling ankle and seemed to be probing into the soil.

  “What do you see?” Magus-of-Stars spoke with the sound of a smirk in its voice.

  “Is this death? I'll not sink into it without a fight. Sally, do you have advice for how I can get back to the ship?”

  “Run,” Sally said. “Keep the tendriled foot off the ground as much as possible. Don't stop.”

  Claybourne ran, but he stumbled on the spongy ground, and the worm-like roots spilling from his shoe probed the ground. He jerked the foot up, stumbled to his feet, and ran again.

  The foot slowed him, and as he ran he felt a flapping of the tentacles that had sprouted from his ankle. By the time he crossed the area where he had danced with the Clicks, both feet flapped against the ground with writhing fingers of woody flesh.

  A group of Clicks watched him run past them, their faces showing surprise and curiosity. Claybourne found himself chanting in a panicked voice, “Stay alive. Be Claybourne. Stay alive.” He revised his chances of living to 75 percent. Then he reached the ship, stumbled through the door Sally irised open for him, and collapsed in the med chair she had waiting. “I'd say I have a 90 percent chance now,” he muttered as the chair embraced him and he slipped into unconsciousness.

  He awoke to a sense of well-being, one he knew Sally and the meds were responsible for, but it still felt good. “Will I make it, Sally?” he asked.

  “Yes,” the ship's brain said. “Your feet will need surgery.”

  “What was I doing to myself?”

  “It wasn't you. The nanodocs injected into you isolated a worm. The creature is now in cryonics for later evaluation. It looks as if the worm takes control of fundamental biological processes and alters them to suit its purposes. It would have killed you through making your body into an alien being much like the sleeping tree that claims to be Margery.”

  “Margery's truly dead, then.”

  “Yes.”

  Claybourne sighed and told himself that he had already grieved for her. But somehow the fact of her death hit him again, almost like a hard blow to his body, and he remembered the snatch of poem she once quoted to him: “after the first death, there is no other.” The poem is true, he told himself, but not in the sense Margery had thought.