by Tanith Lee
So I leaped into my bubble, rushed over to Limbo, and burst in. They looked quite peculiar when they saw me. I explained and they backed off, saying, “Oh no, er, no, no, er, certainly not…” and so on, after which I remembered how I’d unintentionally won their sympathy before, and went into these feigned hysterics, screaming about the awful things I was going to do, like jumping into the tub as I was. They gave me a spray of something that made me go limp, and then discussed me flurriedly and agreed they’d better humor me. So I made them get out my records and ordered an exact copy of what I’d been before, scarlet hair and all.
I walked out to the pool, jingling chains of gold anemones and purple shells, singing a Jang ditty. I was unprepared for what happened. This white furry comet hurled itself out of the glass-grass and leaped into my arms, covering my face with soaking wet kisses.
“Oh, what fools we are.” I almost wept as we chased each other around the pool and got tangled up together in the resustated silk flowers.
The pet gave me a sudden long, telling, orange stare. It seemed to be saying, “Do you know, there was some stupid female here earlier, trying to pass herself off as you?”
2
Things didn’t seem so bad after that. I married Hergal for three units, and we had a groshing time. The pet got to like him, but Hergal was always a bit tosky about the pet, looking around nervously to make sure it wasn’t creeping up on him for the kill or anything. Everybody thought I was terribly original going back to an earlier body, and lots of people started doing the same. It was fun. You could actually recognize someone occasionally. Then Hergal and Kley got married and went off to BOO for a while, Kley female and being a real bully and screaming at everyone, because for some reason she’s always so aggressive when she’s female. As for Danor, she—still a girl—was the center of vast attention because she’d stopped having love with anyone at all; of course everyone was running after her—even Jang from other circles—and it’d become quite a fashion in Four BEE to be “yearning for a vrek in her arms.” But Danor and I still shared a sort of cold shadow and never spoke of it.
Hatta came around, and I found he too had reverted to an old body, the three yellow-eyed one, with spots. Still, there was only one head to cope with, at least.
“I didn’t ask you at Limbo,” Hatta began, “but I still wish you’d marry me for a little, just a morning if you like.”
“I’ve told you,” I told him.
He sighed, looked mournful, though you could barely see it through all that ugliness.
“You don’t understand,” he said.
“No, I suppose not.”
“Can’t you see,” Hatta said, pathetic, “the body I’m in doesn’t matter that much? I’m still me.”
“Well, be you in a groshing body and I’ll marry you immediately,” I said wildly. “That’s a promise.”
“No, no,” wailed Hatta.” Oh, look, think, ooma. I want you—I want you. You’ve been a hundred different bodies; I’ve wanted you as you are now, as you were with all that silver hair and the antennae, as you were all those vreks ago with soft-blue tinted skin and golden eyes. I’ve wanted you as a male. I’ve wanted you as you were last, pale and thin, a little nothing girl. Can’t you do the same? It’s not the body that matters; the physical side is a joke in Four BEE and BAA and BOO. It’s irrelevant. It’s like wanting someone because they’re wearing red toe-rings. Oh, ooma, can’t you understand?”
And I almost did. I really almost did. But I couldn’t stand the thought of having love with him as he was now.
“Go away, Hatta,” I snapped.
And away he went.
3
And that evening Four BEE was shocked, stunned, stultified, nonplussed, and staggered by the news of the Great Archaeological Expedition.
Flashes came sizzling across the city. A “sympton of the times,” they called it, a “general desire to get out and at it!” Well, I knew the feeling all right.
Apparently this man, an older male from BEE, had spotted what looked to him like possible ancient ruins out in the desert between BEE and BOO, but well off the sand-ship route. It was quite likely, since nobody ever went into the desert now except to rush through to another city, preferably without looking at anything. But this male—eccentric and exciting he sounded—actually went out there in his special private bird-plane, with clear windows! He’d been making some sort of study of ancient pre-city history, wars and sagas and whatnot, and then the civilizations that grew out of them like obstreperous phoenixes, nomadic and desert-roaming and so on.
I was fascinated as these flashes continued at great length. They ended up by saying this supermale wanted volunteers. I nearly went zaradann. I signaled the Flash Center and asked where I could get hold of him. I just didn’t stop to think. I felt wildly excited again. My poor battered old brain was closing up to all the recent bad bits and fastening its frenzied tentacles on the Expedition.
The Flash Center robots were very helpful. They put me through direct to this man, in his weird all-long pillars and false-hair carpet villa. He was known as Glar Assule, the glar presumably self-designated. He was handsome but in a most odd way. He’d chosen a body that looked somewhat aged. I mean he had lines, wrinkles, and the jet black hair receded from a big domed forehead. He’d honestly made himself look just like a real glar from all those aeons ago. He wore a black robe and a single steel ornament on a chain. I gathered that the ornament was based on some design he claimed to have found in the desert on one of his earlier trips.
“Good evening, Glar.” I dug in at once, radiating enthusiasm, but he didn’t respond. He frowned at me.
“How may I help you?” he asked, looking as if the thought of helping me made him go ice cold from the feet up.
“Well,” I murmured, respectful, “I’ve just heard about your grosh—marvelous expedition, and how you wanted volunteers.”
“Indeed,” he said.
We sat and looked at each other’s three-dimensional images.
“Well,” I said eventually, “I want to be a volunteer.”
“I see.”
Oh floopy farathoom, it was just like chatting to a Q-R.
“Look,” I said then, after this long beastly pause, “if you want volunteers, you’re just going about the best way to get them, I don’t think.”
“Actually,” said Glar Assule grandly, “the sort of volunteer I had hoped for would not be one of the Jang.”
I laughed. No, really I did. It just rushed out of me like something with wings. I really detested him. He was literally chucking all the failures of the past vrek back in my face by saying that.
“You don’t want Jang,” I barked at him. He jumped. I can be pretty nerve-racking when I try. “Why not?”
“I don’t think I have to explain,” he said.
“Oh but you do. Common politeness, or have you never heard of it?”
He went stiff and pompous, then droned out:
“Jang are too irresponsible, I’m afraid, for the serious study I have in mind.”
“Well,” I said, “Jang are probably all you’ll get. We’re all pretty droad”—I didn’t care about using the slang on him now, he deserved it—“and have this groshing youthful enthusiasm apparently, which is being wasted. I personally can think of nothing nicer than studying an ancient ruin, in the middle of those derisann black mountains, but if you told my makers about it, they’d probably laugh till they puked all over you.” Whereupon I made a very nasty Jang-slang sign at him and bashed the recluse switch.
Well, he’d never take me on anyway, so there was no harm done, I reasoned, as soon as the glow wore off and I began to reproach myself.
But I got a real surprise. Ages afterward, when I was deciding whether or not to signal Thinta and go drown my sorrows with her somewhere, experimenting as to whether the pet would go around my neck, which it wouldn’t, the
signal light came on and there was Glar Assule again, very edgy and pink looking.
“I think,” he waded in, “that your youthful rudeness points to possible spirit, and I might consider giving you a place on the team after all.”
But I was feeling sadistic.
“Oh yes,” I crooned, “and just how big is the team?”
He hummed and hahhed, but we got there eventually. There were three others. Apparently he’d been sending out personal flashes for ages, with no luck, and the official flash had brought in these three droopy-sounding persons who were just doing it, I noted later, out of misguided notions of culture. They weren’t actually Jang, but they were useless. Twitty old Glar had realized I might be really interested to sit around and listen to him expounding theories and so on, and to poke about among the rumbling dark mountains of our lost forgotten world.
He still had to be a nuisance though. He’d take me, he said, providing I apologized.
“I apologize,” I said at once. It didn’t matter to me. I couldn’t resist, though, once his image was gone, making that sign again and hissing:
“No I don’t. I meant every syllable.”
Childish, but slightly satisfying.
4
Thinta told me I was zaradann to go, Kley laughed raucously, Hatta just looked repulsively sad. I wished he looked handsome and sad, and then I could gratify my impulse to cuddle him and say “Oh, ooma, don’t!” without being sick immediately afterward. He didn’t, though, so I didn’t and wasn’t.
I was amazed when Danor came to see me. There were about eleven males and even a couple of females hanging around her, with a glittery, predatory look of waiting in their sequined eyes.
“They have a running bet,” said Danor, drawing me aside, “to see which one I’ll succumb to first.”
I was startled by Danor; once so dashing, now she seemed…serene?
“That sounds pretty drumdik,” I said. “Have you tried changing to male to shake them off?”
“Yes, actually I did,” whispered Danor. “They all promptly suicided and came back as girls.” She gave a giggle and I saw a ghostly, sad little hint of mischief in her eyes. “Anyway, ooma,” Danor said, “have fun in the ruins.” And she kissed me so sweetly I made an abrupt mental note that, next time I was male and Danor female, it might be an idea to try the floaters again and see if we could do any better that way. As for the hangers-on, they went every shade of green and puce, wondering if I’d beaten them all to it.
Glar Assule signaled me again and said the team was going to meet in five units outside—guess!—the Robotics Museum.
“How derisann!” I glowed, and he gave me a dirty look.
He said he had some urgent things to attend to for the next three or four units, hence the delay, but I think he was just procrastinating, hoping a few more people would call him and ask to go. No one did, though, and five units later there we were, feeling beastly and conspicuous, with this rotten little robot bee buzzing around us, getting snippets of information for the flashes. I told it to something off, and everyone looked disapproving.
The three other volunteers were an absolute catastrophe. They weren’t even pro-Jang either, at least not here. They thought I should be having love or ecstasy, etc., well out of their range of reception. They insisted on calling me “dear” all the time too, with a sort of undertone that showed they’d really like to call me lots of other things, like Scruff-Bag, and Intolerable-Pest-for-Coming-and-Spoiling-Our-Chance-to-Get-at-the-Glar. They were all female.
He turned up late and bloated with himself; he took us to a private sand-ship he’d hired specially and had reprogrammed to get to the right place. It was full of his equipment, his robots, and his idea of how to furnish a sand-ship—which meant orange hairy drapes and blinding bronze—and him. The females twit-twittered around him. “Yes, Glar,” and “No, Glar,” they smarmed. And was the Glar comfortable? And could they tell the robot to get the Glar anything? I was so glad I’d brought the pet. They cringed whenever it went near them, which it didn’t actually, if it could avoid them. Glar Assule wasn’t too bad, though. He looked as if he was repressing a seizure, patted the pet’s head and nearly got bitten, and said he was glad I’d taken an interest in the desert wildlife. I agreed the pet was pretty wild.
Anyway, we eventually got started and—joy and delight!—there was this Transparency Tower, clear all the time. We went to sit in it, but pretty soon the three females got uneasy; they went off to rustle up some desert orange on ice, or play with their light-crochet machines.
The pet and I and the Glar stayed on, and he looked quite impressed by the way the desert mesmerized me. Once I saw a troop of purple animals with long, long fur, burrowing around some dunes, and he was actually able to tell me what they were.
I began to feel lighthearted. Don’t ever do that; it tempts some dark and evil force abroad in the universe.
In the night, I gather, the three females had a fight as to which one was going to have love with dear old Assule, and then, when they’d practically killed each other and the victor staggered along to his cabin with tom plumage and smeared eyelids, it turned out he was stoned with sleep and threw her out when she protested. It really made a din, all this, but the pet and I got a good laugh out of it.
Dawn came and we were there. The females were very upset because they’d arranged this elaborate first meal for the Glar and he refused to take time to eat it.
He was very good at getting us organized, though. I suppose his domineering streak helped. We had hot wine and four oxygen tablets each.
“When you get there,” he said, “remember to breathe normally and not strain to get extra air; you won’t need it. And it’s not like swimming under water, when you don’t breathe at all,” he added to me. I shrugged. All right, so all Jang swim under water. So. Then the robots got our equipment and went out through the small air lock, and we went out afterward, and oh—
It’s all real out there.
It’s all beautiful and real, and throbbing and singing and alive!
I staggered; he grabbed me and snapped: “I told you you had to breathe, didn’t I? Why don’t you pay attention?”
But I had breathed. I’d more or less gasped my lungs inside out.
It was all so—
And so—
I shook as I stood there.
It was dawn and red this time from some ooma mountain bursting flames, and greener near the top of the sky, and velvet dark above that, with a last sugar-sprinkle of stars. All around, the tall shapes—not buildings but mountains—craned up and up as if to see us, or possibly to avoid seeing us and just stare into all that clear sky. And the sky was so enormous. It made me giddy.
“Here we are,” said the Glar, as grandly as if he’d invented it. “Come along.” And we trooped after him across the blood-soaked-by-light dawn sand.
He pointed to a rock platform and some rock terraces leading up to it, and up again from it.
“There’s the site,” he announced.
“And here’s the sun,” I breathed.
The pet suddenly lost its mind, or found its mind or something, and rushed from my side to roll and spray everyone with the crazy sand.
“Oh, stop it! Stop the nasty thing!” chirruped the females.
The Glar never even noticed.
He was striding on ahead, the robots and machinery trundling after him, making big runnels in the sand for us to walk in.
* * *
—
The site was supposedly something to do with those nomads and things, a primitive rock citadel where they stopped off once in a while, and these were the foundations. Assule reckoned they’d been covered with sand for ages and then some pre-rain storm had blown it all off. It would rain soon, he said, and then we’d have to scramble back to the ship and take cover. They were very wet rains, apparently.
> The third female kept going swoony and having to lean on Assule because she hadn’t mastered the breathing technique. The others were furious they hadn’t thought of that one first.
We had first meal up on the site, sitting on heavy rugs. Assule went on and on about the civilization that had been here first. It could have been very interesting if he hadn’t managed to make it so boring. I don’t know how he did it, actually. Some latent talent for sending everyone droad, I suppose.
After this, he went stamping around the site, disappearing and reappearing from behind rock spires, with about six robots to give him a hand. The rest of us sat on the rugs and the world became turquoise all around us.
Eventually he came back.
I sat up straight and waited for him to give me an ancient swing-pick or something, but he didn’t. He said:
“I think I’ll start machines six and eight over there.” And my heart fell down the stairway of my ribs into my stomach and lay there like solid storm. Here we were again: Always consult the computer….The machine knows best….Oh, they pop automatically in half a split, anyway….
“But Glar,” I burst out, “aren’t we going to do anything ourselves?”
“What?” He was scandalized. “Of course not.”
“But can’t I even brush the sand off the relics as they come up?” I pleaded, being pretty optimistic too about those relics, I must say.
“Certainly not,” he said, “you might damage something.”
The three females fluttered agreeingly and looked at me as if I was obscene even to think of going near anything so precious with my clumsy Jang hands. So all he truly wanted us for was just as an audience to his boring old voice.