The Gentle Seduction

by Marc Stiegler

  As she touched me, I felt tired. I realized that I'd been up for . . . I didn't know how long.

  "Damn these planets that don't have a decent night/ day sequence," I muttered. "How am I supposed to know when I'm supposed to sleep?"

  "What?!" Alarm rang in her voice, but I hardly noticed. "What's your name?"

  "Gibs. Stelman," I yawned. "What's yours?"

  "Sharyn."

  "Sharyn. Beautiful." With her name on my lips, I passed into oblivion.

  I awoke groggy, from a nightmare.

  I smelled cooking.

  Rolling out of the bag, I stalked the chef. Jurn turned to me with a plate. "Here," he offered, with only a hint of hostility. It was scrambled eggs (I didn't ask what kind) and coarse bread, and it was the best meal I'd eaten in a lifetime.

  "You're an outstanding cook," I commended Jurn.

  He turned his head to me, scowling. "You're a leech."

  I gagged. Was he right? No. Or at least, he was only almost right. "You're wrong," I said quietly. "Only recently have I been a leech." I had almost forgotten, in my joy of a moment's living.

  Today, four more people would die.

  I walked away from the fire.

  Sharyn stole silently into the clearing. "Get packed," she commanded.

  "How far do we have to go?" I asked.

  Her head snapped up. "Too far," she said. She turned Eyeward. "Walk with me," she said, signaling. I hesitated for a moment out of philosophical opposition to being given orders; but in this forest she was the boss. We walked together.

  Soon we came to a trail and the going became brisk. "I must thank whoever lent me these clothes for being so close to my size," I said. I waved my hands in a theatrical expression of grandeur. "And I must thank whoever designed this incredible scene for us to walk through." I pointed forward. "The sky, forever poised near sunset," I said.

  Sharyn looked at me strangely. "We are near the city of Sunset," she granted, puzzled.

  I bit my lip. "And the pink backlighting for curling tendrils of clouds. I've never seen anything like it before." Indeed I hadn't. It reminded me of a mackerel sky, but with long, tapered clouds.

  "You've never seen a filament sky before?" The more I talked, the more I put my foot in it.

  "Not for many moons," I said, then realized what a mistake that was: Forma had no moons, and no calendar based on them.

  "Who are you?" This time she didn't make the mistake of asking a second question; this time my life hung in the balance.

  "I am no one you need fear."

  She laughed. "And whom do you think I fear?" she asked.

  I looked across at her. She walked lightly, with the grace of one who knew her own power, her eyes uplifted in defiance of the Universe. I had once known her feeling well, the feeling of confidence in your ability to meet your own Destiny. It was a feeling I had almost forgotten.

  Suddenly I was in love. "Sharyn," I said, holding out my hand.

  "What?" she replied, reaching her hand in turn toward mine.

  Startled, I jerked back. "Nothing." I stared intently at the ground.

  There was a pause, then curt words. "You must answer my question. You must tell me who you are."

  "Yes, I must." I looked up at the filament sky, and refused to let my eyes water. "Who am I? I am the remains of the man whom once I was." I took a deep breath. "A man who was a mortal god. He was one who could save life or bring death."

  "Hm." Sharyn didn't know whether to be impressed or not. "Sounds like a doctor to me."

  I barked a laugh. "Yes, I was a doctor. But a normal doctor cannot save a man's life."

  She looked at me, puzzled.

  "The best a doctor can do is save a few more dusty hours to be appended to a man's life. A doctor cannot grant a 60 year old man more than 20 or 25 more years. He cannot grant a 40 year old man more than an equal 40 years." I held up my hands, stretching them wide before Sharyn. "But I, my lady, once I could grant eternity."

  "You're the Sirian mindshifter," she said.

  "What?"

  "We heard that a Sirian mindshifter had landed without authorization. You really are a hunted man."

  "I'm not Sirian!"

  "Well, if you're not Sirian, then you're Omegaran."

  "No."

  She shook her head in exasperation. "Then why are you here?"

  "I came to find a peaceful place where people were happy, yet where they had never heard of mindshifters or Transfer." My voice turned bitter. "I can see I am too late." I started to reach for her again, and stopped. I smiled. "Instead I found you."

  I was deeply confused. I had first learned to recognize love at first sight near the end of my second lifetime; always since then, I had fallen in love with exactly one woman each time I mindshifted. I had never understood the pattern, but it had always run true.

  Yet here, in a span of 48 hours, I had fallen in love twice! And I did love them both, Keara and Sharyn. What should I do?

  "You certainly didn't find a peaceful place," Sharyn said with bitterness similar to mine. "Fallform and Winterform have been at war for years now. And it looks like Summerform has finally decided to unite with Fallform, since the Sirians arrived."

  "What? I don't believe it. I watched Forma from space, and I haven't seen anything like an army anywhere." I thought back on the blizzarcane. "Frankly, the weather here seems more dangerous than the people."

  She looked at me in disbelief. "Stelman, don't you remember who we Formans are? This was a weather research station! How would you expect us to attack each other?"

  "Omigod. Of course." A number of pieces fell into place. Not only did that explain a storm so powerful it could wreck a fortified city like Whitepeak, but it explained why Glitter had been so badly crisped by a mere lightning bolt, when I first landed. "So that's why the Sirians and Omegarans are here." What an extraordinary weapon weather control would be against the rest of the Federation! Throughout history, the winners of wars had been those who used the longest-ranged weapons. But imagine using a weapon your enemy didn't even know was a weapon!

  "The Sirians want to trade mindshifts for information on weather control. Both the Sirians and the Omegarans promise to leave a mindshifter here to keep the authorities—whichever authorities give them the best deal—immortal. Needless to say, the leaders of all four Forms are dancing as fast as they can to the Sirian tune."

  I snorted. "Whoever wins Sirian support will be in for a big disappointment. The Sirians may be able to persuade a mindshifter to come to the Frontier once to make a few Transfers, but there's no way they'll persuade a surgeon to move out here permanently. The only mindshifters who'll serve Forma on a regular basis are the Frontier mindshifters—and if Forma gives all its best technology to Sirius or Omegar, no Frontier surgeon will touch Forma, because Forma won't have anything worth trading for."

  "Well, the leaders of the Forms don't know that, and wouldn't believe you if you told them. The Sirians have them convinced that they'll get a Sirian mindshifter permanently stationed here." She pointed back at her handful of followers. "That's why we're here. Bardon, the President of Fallform, is the most dangerous leader: he's old, and his position is tenured. He's desperate to win the Transfer." She clenched her fists. "We have to unite the people of Forma, and we have to start by stopping the people like Bardon."

  The scenery had changed as we spoke: the percentage of green-leaved trees increased as we dropped to lower altitudes. More interesting, I noticed a number of clumps of trees that looked suspiciously like they could conceal more technological installations.

  So I wasn't surprised when Sharyn stopped. "We're here," she announced.

  "You keep your ships well hidden," I commented, pointing at the three closest hiding places.

  She turned sharply toward me, then smiled. "You have keen eyes after all."

  "I have more than that. I have centuries of experience with societies such as Forma's. I have realigned many of them." The "realignment" of societies came
with being a mortal god: at each planet I touched, I chose between life and death for the most influential minds of that planet. And a society reflects the thinking of its most influential minds. "Rather than leading a small rebel force, which is what you seem to have gathered here, why don't you let me simply assassinate the most troublesome individuals?"

  She shook her head. "You don't understand. The problem is deeper than that. Even if I killed all the present leaders, the next ones would be just as bad. The whole planet is crazy with Transfer fever."

  I waved her objection aside. "An experienced assassin never needs to kill more than twenty people to end a war or unite a planet. It just requires skillful executions. You have to make sure that the next twenty people, the successors to the dead, know three things: First, they must know that the first twenty were killed intentionally. Second, they must know why their predecessors were killed. Third, and most important, they be completely convinced that they are just as easy to kill as the others were."

  As I was speaking, I got more and more wrapped up in my words. So I was surprised by the effect I had wrought.

  Sharyn's mouth dropped open in awe. "Of course! What a brilliant idea!"

  I started to disclaim any brilliance, but she continued.

  "I'll get them all," she laughed, so wickedly I was surprised by her malevolence. Then her laughter ran the scales, from light amusement to near sorrow. "I'm sorry," she said.

  "For what?" I asked.

  "Never mind." She danced close, to kiss me on the cheek. I tried to put my arms around her, but she danced away again. "I have to go," she said, turning.

  "Wait!" I cried.

  She stopped. "What?"

  "You can't do this alone."

  "Why not? You've done it several times before, or so you said. Why would I fail where you succeeded?"

  I closed my eyes. I knew what would happen: she wouldn't believe me when I explained. Yet, I would explain anyway. "I have lived seven full lifetimes. I have had experiences beyond you imagining. There is both wisdom and power in growing older, my lady." I stood straighter, letting my stage presence fill the clump of forest around us.

  "Perhaps." She nodded her head from side to side. "But I think I can handle it."

  My power and the presence evaporated; I felt like an old man.

  How can you explain to a first-lifer the lessons you learn the fifth or a sixth time around? How can you express the little ways you are always aware of the world around you, sensing places where things lie hidden beneath other surfaces, knowing danger in a lifting eyebrow, touching an unfamiliar surface in a careful examination before grasping it?

  I had been a Frontier mindshifter, often a target of the corrupt and the fanatical. In hundreds of tests of survival I had won. To pit me, in my eighth lifetime, against a whole army of first-lifers was to seal their deaths in a sure stroke.

  But Sharyn herself was a first-lifer. Though she might destroy several of her enemies with her prowess and competence, yet her advantage over any one of them was just a narrow margin. One of them would get her, before she could complete the job. "Please," I begged, "let me handle the repair of Forma."

  She put her hands on her hips, and cocked her head. "Wait a minute." She walked around me, slowly, judging. "Who saved whose life yesterday?" she asked. "Who is currently the captive of whom?" Her voice held no mockery, just objective observation. "I will do this job my way." She turned and trotted off.

  "Wait!" I yelled.

  She turned long enough to blow me a kiss.

  "I love you!"

  She continued on, as if she hadn't heard.

  I sat on a fallen tree trunk. I marshalled my arguments for my next meeting with Sharyn; I couldn't go back to Keara until I was sure Sharyn wouldn't get herself killed.

  I sat for a long time. At last a bright yellow blur bounced out of the forest from my right.

  "Hi," said a golden-haired girl of perhaps seventeen years. She held out her hand. "My name is Wendy."

  I stood up, wiping my hand before shaking hers. "And I'm Gibs Stelman."

  "I know. You're the mindshifter."

  I nodded.

  "I'm supposed to take care of you while Sharyn is gone."

  I see.

  Wendy seemed determined to do a good job. She took my hand and dragged me down the trail. "Let me show you where everything is," she said. "At least, everything that isn't classified," she continued with a hushed whisper.

  "Aren't you a bit young to be a rebel recruit?" I asked.

  She frowned, but she never had the chance to answer.

  The sky turned gray, and six cruisers in formation descended from the clouds belching destruction.

  "Come on," Wendy cried. She dodged through the thickets and started pulling back a camouflage net.

  I helped her unveil the vehicle: it was a two-man skycycle.

  Under other circumstances I would have grinned broadly; four lifetimes earlier I had been a skycycle racing champion. I hadn't seen one in a couple of lifetimes, since the invention of the slipjet.

  Unfortunately, with battlecruisers all around an obsolete skycycle was not my first choice vehicle. But when Wendy tilted the clear plastic bubble open, I climbed through the top and into the webbing.

  Frenzied, Wendy pushed the jump throttle, and we smashed into the tree branches above us. She cried out.

  "Let me run this baby," I commanded. "I know a few tricks nobody else on this planet knows when it comes to skycycles."

  A skycycle is a perfectly circular, very tiny machine. The thruster is externally mounted. It is connected, not to the hull of the ship, but rather to the seat assembly inside through a gimballed fuel tank separated from the main hull by magnetic bearings. The ship literally goes the way your chair points; you spin your chair to face your destination, and zoom! you're off.

  The standard commercial skycycles of centuries before were controlled by swinging your chair manually, using handholds around the rim of the hull interior; acrobatic and racing machines used hydraulic controls. This one was hydraulic.

  With supreme confidence I nudged the jump throttle. The ship smashed into the tree branches above us, just as it had for Wendy.

  "Whew! This baby has power, doesn't she?" I asked rhetorically. If the old skycycles had jumped like that, they might never have been replaced.

  A broadsweep beam carved through a swath of trees just meters from our hiding place. With blood pumping in my ears, I pointed the cycle into the clear and let the thruster rip.

  We were up a thousand meters before I could retard the thrust. One of the cruisers turned toward us. "Do we have anything to shoot with?" I asked.

  "A pair of lazeguns, pointing forward from the thruster mount," Wendy's hands were clenched around the arms of her chair. She broke one hand free and flipped several switches. "Push the red button on top of the gimbal control, and they fire."

  I scampered to the side as the cruiser blew apart the piece of sky we had recently occupied. We whipped down toward the beast and fired the lazeguns. "Damn," I muttered. "Why did we bother?" We had scored a direct hit, but we had merely polished the cruiser's armor.

  Again they fired; again I dodged.

  Down below the scene was grim, though I could see very little through the smoke. The smoke seemed to offer a hint of protection, so we plunged back down toward the thickest patch.

  I spotted Sharyn.

  At least I was pretty sure it was her. She was running toward the biggest ship left, a true cruiser as big and potent as those above us.

  Next I saw three of the enemy ships converge above her. "Sharyn!" I cried, and rammed the skyeycle forward, into the lines of sight of the three cruisers to divert their attention, firing wildly in all directions.

  They paid no attention. In unison they poured fury into the cruiser below. It disappeared in a blaze of energy.

  "No!" I cried. I circled twice, but saw no sign of Sharyn.

  "Look out!" Wendy yelled. We dodged another attack.

>   I whimpered. "Sharyn."

  Wendy pulled on my arm. "We have to get out of here," she pleaded, her voice cracking with sorrow.

  I closed my eyes for a moment. Sharyn was gone. I wanted to die.

  It would have been easy to die there; but Wendy would have died with me. She didn't deserve to die for my failures.

  I felt another tug on my arm. There were tears in Wendy's eyes, tears for Sharyn.

  There was no time for grief, not yet. We dived for the forest, just in time; another cruiser had run out of other things to do, and followed us enthusiastically.

  We dropped through the forest canopy. Blaster fire sizzled past.

  I peered through the shadows. The forest was too thick to maneuver through, for normal skycycle pilots. The cruisers should have had us trapped.

  But we would be a bit more difficult to kill than that. I tilted the skycycle edge-up, and laced my way delicately through the trees. I concentrated on careful maneuvering until I and the cycle were one being, with no other thought or purpose in life.

  Wendy cried for both of us.

  A few hours later, I poked the cycle's bubble through the foliage. The sun was higher in the sky; we had been traveling Eyeward. We were alone.

  Wendy lifted her head from her hands, shifting her head from side to side to expunge the cramp: it is not comfortable, riding sideways in a skycycle for hours on end.

  I spun the ship and pointed in a new direction. "I think there's a stream over there, where we can wash our faces." I looked at my companion in sympathy. "Your eyes are bloodshot. You could use some new life."

  We landed. When Wendy knelt near the stream, I splashed a wave of water at her. "Stop that," she said mournfully.

  "Only if you promise to worry about what's going to happen to you now. It's too late to worry about the people we left behind." Ha, how ironic it was that I should play this part. I would mourn for Sharyn in my own self-destructive way, at a later time. For the moment, Wendy needed uplifting. Sorrow looked terrible on one so young.

  "I don't know what will happen to me. All my friends . . ."

  I hugged her. "It's all right. You and I, we'll do fine."