by John Shirley
The company turned out again to the courtyard, where it met up with an assemblage of mounts and trackers. Ansari kir again detached himself from the general preparations to see Cameron firmly in the saddle of a handsomely turned out gaffa, its trappings and harness gay and colorful in the early sun.
“Here,” Ansari kir handed up a helmet of local design, its utilitarian plastsheen leathered and painted in the amber and green colors of the Hunt. “Wear it and be at one with your mount.”
And with the world, he might have said. Cameron pulled the helmet on and found the colors about him jumping at him in augmented brilliance. He heard sounds of forest wildlife beyond the courtyard walls: timid ground rodents; arboreal creatures; raptors soaring. His gaffa’s mind was strongest and closest to hand. It awaited not his commands but his impulses, and to foray with him as a companion, not as a mere beast of burden. The minds of the trackers, a feeling of all-consuming quest, impinged impatiently. And those of his companions—their swirl and energies flowed about him without words.
Cameron looked about him. If the company felt him, his alienness, they showed no sign. They wore no helmets.
“No need,” said/thought Ansari kir. “And, yes, they see/feel your presence. With welcome and anticipation.”
He waved and the gates folded open. The eager parade flowed out, not into the forest but across a meadow of spring grass and wild flowers. Not at all as Cameron remembered it. He recalled the impinging forest just outside of every wall. Every wall? Were there more outlooks here, more points to the compass than the usual thirty-two?
Another question that held its own answer. It was the best kind. It went unasked.
“Ride!” Ansari kir commanded.
Cameron rode.
When Cameron looked back on it later, it seemed a timeless idyll. Perhaps it had been. Perhaps it had all been a nanosecond synaptic flash, a compression beyond words. Words. Words were seldom used. The helmet obviated the need for words, save those that held their own intrinsic and autonomous body and were to be held up and admired as they sparkled. Or words as shorthand for an abstract shard of thought. There were more of these than a morning of coursing through wood and field might be expected to produce.
The Hunt ranged across meadows wet with morning dew, then hot under a noonday sun. Early hour cricket sounds ceased as they rode through the grass, but the small internal hummings carried unabated through the helmet. The insect hummings of midday never stopped.
There were also dark copses of bay and laurel to be traversed, and forest trails that had to be taken at a slower pace and in single file. No matter that the quarry might not choose to hold to wooded paths.
As the day reached its hottest they emerged from the forest coolness to a grassy swale by the river. The sun was at its zenith, but an array of tents, striped with brightness, drew the eye and promised shade. The party dismounted and turned the gaffas loose to graze, drink, and dream. The tents were airy, the fabric ending several feet off the ground with only the guylines to tie them down. Within were trays of cheeses and breads, drinks in beds of ice, refreshing sorbets. All as if just laid out, though there were no retainers to be seen.
The company looked as if refreshment was in order. Though Cameron was warm, it seemed as nothing compared to Ansari kir and the others of the field. Perspiration flowed on their faces, seeming to melt the promontories of their features, flattening them visibly. Ansari kir’s aquiline nose seemed to have broadened and spread, appearing almost squashy. Cameron looked closer at his companions. Their clothes, too, though they must have been designed for the Hunt, appeared to be too flimsy for the task. They seemed to be bursting at the seams and rent where twigs and branches had torn and snagged. Beneath appeared patches of mottled skin.
None paid any mind; all addressed themselves to the refreshments. Cameron did as well, till Ansari kir called a halt and led them to the largest tent of all. Before his eyes had adjusted to the shadowed light within, Cameron’s feet and nose told him that he was in a dojo. He felt the firm springiness of tatami underfoot. The smell of fresh straw hung in the sunwarmed air. Cameron sat down on the edge of the mat and removed his shoes. When he looked up he saw his companions in a new guise. They were humaniform again, of varying statures and weights, all attired in judo gis. He recognized the faces of old friends and opponents, smelled their body odors around him, felt the rough softness of his often-washed gi on his shoulders. A faint breeze stirred the hairs on his naked chest.
“Your dojo, your art, Cameron,” Ansari kir said. He alone kept his features as Cameron remembered them. “Lead us through the stretches and ukemi.”
The crisp sounds of rollups and arm slaps permeated the air, rebounding off the tent walls. Uchikomi followed, as the judokas paired off and practiced repetitions of step-ins, taking their lead from Cameron. Cameron’s partner was Ansari kir, the player on the defensive. Cameron played tori, attacking with ogoshi in a reverse pivot, spiraling in and down to slam his hips in below his partner’s belt. He slid his arm around Ansari kir’s waist to pull him onto Cameron’s back, and realized something was wrong. He was coming in too high, not breaking his partner’s balance. And Cameron’s arms were not succeeding in encircling a girth that seemed broader than met the eye.
Instinctively, Cameron pivoted out to stand face to face with his partner. Ansari kir bowed. “My apologies,” he said.
Cameron looked again and saw the squatter and heavier form that Ansari kir had presented at the refreshment tent. Only the face remained as before. Cameron nodded in understanding. He took Ansari kir through a series of shorter players’ moves—hip throws, mainly. The other judokas took their cue from the main pair and followed along in the repetitions. In-out; in-out. The air became heavier and moister, overlaid with an exudation subtly different from human sweat.
They were fast learners.
Expectation also hung in the air, as palpable as these other aromas. At last Ansari kir voiced the collective desire. “Randori?”
Cameron nodded. He stepped to the center of the mat together with Ansari kir. They bowed, then grasped each other’s lapels and sleeves and began.
Cameron took them in a wheel counter clockwise. He tried an ankle block. Ansari kir hopped over it. Cameron closed for a right side osoto gari and found his opponent pivoting away. They resumed their circling movement. Cameron tried using his tall man’s leg reach into a tai otoshi, a good throw to use on a short, stocky opponent. He spun on his left foot, shot his right leg out to block Ansari kir’s ankle, and tried to wheel him over his extended leg. Again, his opponent hopped over the block, then pivoted into a kubi nage, his hips coming in swiftly to break Cameron’s balance, his arm going for a headlock. Cameron dropped his hips just in time to get his weight low enough to avoid being doubled over and to slip the encircling arm. Ansari kir was fast. Too fast.
They circled again and Cameron thought it over.
And then he had it. He stopped thinking, adopted a state of no mind. He let his body think, allowing no premeditation that could be read. When his body found the opening and moved in, it was with a hip throw of his own, unlooked for from a taller man. It was Ansari kir’s turn to plant his legs and drop low to block Cameron’s seoi nage. But as Cameron swung in he reversed his pivot, hooking his opponent’s left leg with his right, catching it just below the knee. Cameron slammed his left shoulder into Ansari kir’s, driving him back to his left corner. His opponent’s right leg was off the ground, and Cameron kept driving, hopping on his left leg and hooking Ansari kir’s remaining leg out from under till his opponent fell backwards on his back and slapped the mat hard.
Cameron helped him up. They disengaged to straighten their gis and bowed.
“The technique?” Ansari kir asked with raised eyebrow.
“Ouchi gari. Inside leg hook.”
They made way for others to spar. They changed partners and reengaged again.
Time passed. The sun lowered till its rays pierced the tent opening, illumining
dust motes that danced about them as they sparred.
They were back at the refreshment tent. Cameron regarded his companions over the ices and the fruits. They were back in their clothing of the Hunt, and their transmogrification continued. To what end? How much of their reality could he and humankind accept?
What was reality and what was illusion? Could they be the same thing, different forms?
Cameron felt a wetness on his bare arm and looked up. A transfigured and no longer handsome Ansari kir stood over him, in his hand several pellets of ice. Between his hairy fingers and trickling onto Cameron’s arm were droplets of cold water.
Same thing. Different forms.
The ride back was more leisured. The forest itself seemed less sylvan, more brushy and dotted with down wood and dead snags. Cameron watched with interest but no apprehension as the clothes seemed to tear off the huntsmen, leaving only rags to cover mottled skin blotched by almost random tufts of fur. But still the exhilarating mental byplay went on, a stimulating canopy to whatever was the corporeal underneath.
There continued a certain nobility of thought. Another had said it before: an ordinary man is a Buddha; illusion is salvation. A foolish thought—and we are ordinary, vulgar, stupid. The next enlightened thought—and we are the Buddha.
Ansari kir pulled abreast of Cameron, his face a hairy and feral mask. But the mental clarity and fineness was there.
I would have put it differently: a foolish thought—and we are enlightened. An enlightened thought—and we are again ordinary creatures.
Ansari kir squeezed his mount with his thighs and pulled ahead. Enough talk. Enlightenment is an activity, not a state. Let us ride.
The consul’s office was cluttered. Desk drawers open; containers on the floor. Wall hangings were down, leaning against boxes at floor level. The consul’s desk was untypically empty, dotted only by a holocube of his family, and a single pad of scratch paper.
“The Alcaidans want you to stay,” the consul said flatly. “They want me to go.”
Cameron nodded.
“I don’t understand much of this,” the consul went on. “They ask that future teams include Zen practitioners. Also martial artists. Karate, judo, the business with the staffs—what’s the word?”
“Kendo.” Cameron did not bother to explain that the “staffs” were practice swords made of bamboo slats—shinai—or wood—bokutō.
“Yes. I gather they’re getting all this from you.”
“From you, too,” Cameron said. “From all of us. Don’t plan on keeping many secrets. They keep us happy by talking to us, but they don’t have to. They’re telepathic.”
The consul didn’t seem as perturbed by this as Cameron had expected. Perhaps he was more focused on the damage of this assignment to his career.
“What do they want with martial artists?”
“The mindset mostly,” Cameron said. “A way of looking at things. That and the engagement, the sparring—physical and mental. That’s what they value in every new culture they encounter, and that’s how we earn what we want of them.”
The consul was back to the habit of folding and steepling his hands. “I suppose they can adapt to the physicality of our martial arts, being shapeshifters.”
“They’re not shapeshifters,” Cameron said.
The consul looked up.
“That’s an assumption our contact party made when observing their artwork and contrasting it with the appearance they presented us,” Cameron said. “But it’s wrong. They can influence our minds, overlay them with their illusions. They give us a reassuring image, what makes us comfortable.”
Including an inventively useless amount of busy work for you. Cameron thought it, didn’t say it.
“Do you know what they really look like, then?”
Cameron shook his head. Hopeless. “Perhaps. It doesn’t matter, sir. To them that’s all illusion.”
“Well,” the consul said, “I doubt I’ll ever understand. But I do try.”
“Perhaps you’re trying in the wrong way.”
“Is there a right way?”
Cameron looked surprised, then nodded his approval. “That’s better.”
“Do I want to go around asking your kind of questions?” The consul turned to Cameron with the first trace of self-directed humor that Cameron could recall. “And with you not there, whom do I ask?”
Cameron looked at the lacquered desktop for a moment, then reached across it for the scratch pad. Cameron eyed its thickness, then turned it on edge and rapped the desk sharply with it, producing a crisp wooden sound.
The consul started, then settled back in his chair.
Cameron reached out to return the pad. The consul regarded him with a raised eyebrow, then held out his hand to take it. Cameron turned the pad on edge and rapped the consul’s hand smartly. The consul cried out, more in surprise than in pain.
“Why didn’t the desk cry out?” Cameron asked.
The consul held his hand and looked at Cameron in bewilderment.
Cameron spoke into the silence.
“Learn to listen, and you can hear it.”
Game shows have waxed and waned through several cycles of popularity since their introduction on radio in the 1930s. That they might garner intergalactic audiences some day is as valid a speculation as any other in fiction. True, these are games, and not sports, but the Olympic hendiatris Citius, Altius, Fortius (Latin for “Faster, Higher, Stronger”) can certainly apply to intellectual ability as well as physical prowess. Elizabeth Ann Scarborough also presents us with a secret mission and a life-threatening mystery, as well as asking the eternal question: Will dinette sets exist in the far future? Oh . . . hendiatris? Let’s Name That Noun! Is it: (a) three words used to express one idea; (b) a Roman motto coined by Julius Caesar; (c) the same thing as a tricolon? No fair googling! Have you made your final decision? You’ll find the answer at the end of the story. If you answer correctly, you’ll win . . . our sincere thanks for reading this introduction!
Name That Planet!
Elizabeth Ann Scarborough
“Welcome to Naaaame That Planet! The game that tests your powers of observation and knowledge as you try to guess where in the cosmos you are!
“The game is simple. A three-member panel of intergalactic citizens chosen randomly from our studio audience provides sensory clues they feel are typical or symbolic of each of their home worlds. Each panel member must provide up to five clues to our intrepid space explorer contestant, sealed into a sensory input globe. Though we can see them, the contestants won’t be able to see us. Successful contestants win fabulous prizes donated by our sponsors, naturally. But additionally, panel members who successfully stump the contestants also win great prizes. So let’s begin this week’s round.
“Our first contestant is the communications officer of a class A starship. Her duties include deciphering alien hieroglyphs and petroglyphs, as well as establishing and maintaining contact between her ship and other cosmic entities. Her hobbies include playing 3-D chess, reading old Terran classics in their original languages, belly dancing, and cake decorating. Let’s have a round of applause for Lt. Shalula Makira!”
Shalula understood the game show conventions as easily as she understood classical Venusian. She jogged out onto the platform situated high above the heads of the audience members in the stadium below. She bounced. Her white-gold hair and breasts augmented for the occasion lifted up and down—but not too far down since the Name That Planet! studio was on the low gravity moon of a wholly owned planetary subsidiary of the FLOG Corporation. The moon was also wholly owned by the FLOG Corporation of course. FLOG stood for Furthering Logistical Organization Galaxy-wide, one of those meaningless acronyms that took in hundreds of thousands of otherwise unrelated enterprises.
Shalula wore a perky red dress uniform with gold piping that matched her Galaxy Corps rank insignia. A miniscule skirt showed off a slice of her thighs between the hem and the tops of the scarlet form-fitting over-
the-knee boots. It actually was not a current issue uniform, being from earlier days when the grizzled male upper echelon of the Corps considered part of the duty of younger female personnel included raising the morale of male personnel. The outfit wasn’t hers and she felt a little uncomfortable in it. The coverall uniform she and all other crewmembers wore on shipboard was far more practical. Actually, her idea had been to wear civvies, something floaty and ethnic, possibly one of her colorful gilt-edged thwabs from the flower ships of Griba-Prime, but the producers of the show said seeing a woman in Galaxy Corps uniform made viewers feel safe and gave them a sense of pan-galactic pride. So they provided this one. It definitely made her feel feminine and sexy. From communications nerd to communications bimbo with a simple change of clothing. That was show business.
The producers also insisted that contestants enthuse and bubble and preferably jump up and down with excitement when they won something, though they were not allowed to curse if they lost. Shalula agreed to respond appropriately. Accomplishing her mission required that she be on the show so she could hardly disagree, even if she were inclined to do so. Besides, it was interesting to study the intergalactic messaging modes in the theatrical subculture represented by the show’s cast, crew, other contestants, panelists, and the studio audience.
When she bounced toward the host and the array of cameras—whether because of the bounce, the uniform, or the vid prompts—the crowd cheered and applauded wildly. She laughed in a manner that did not show her teeth. There were some present whose culture viewed revealing one’s dentition as an act of hostility. She waved both hands in the flop-wristed universal gesture of greeting. Among beings possessing wrists to flop, that was.
“Welcome, Lieutenant!” the host cried out a full three meters before she reached him. He had no compunctions about displaying his dentition to her or the crowd and let interpretations of his expression fall where they may. Large even teeth on full parade were an age-old badge of the game show host, even on Nilurian Amphibats such as Name That Planet!’s own Jiminy Jimson (a stage name, Shalula felt certain). “It’s an honor to have you on our show. Are you ready to Naaame That Planet?”