The Morphodite

by M. A. Foster

  The sun rose and morning began fading into forenoon. Small towns passed, and the line of the hills began curving off to the east. Now the stops were out on the plains, which were becoming flatter and more watery, although they were a good ways yet from Marula. Once Meliosme went forward and returned with some buns, which she shared with Rael. They were hard and crusty, but good. He was hungry. And sharing them made them better.

  After one long halt at a place called Orgeon, the beamer. started up again, and as soon as it was trundling along out in the open country, he stood up, stiff from long sitting.

  Meliosme glanced at him. “Where are you going?”

  “Want to move about. I’m getting stiff. Is there water somewhere forward?”

  “All the way up.”

  She fumbled a moment, and handed Rael a small metal flask. “Bring me some, please.”

  Rael nodded, and leaned to take it. A motion of the car moved him off-balance, and he caught himself on the sack of fleischbaum, feeling for something he knew would be there. A pin in the fabric, holding a place together that did not matter much. A sharp pain met his palm, and he grasped the pin out and palmed it. Meliosme did not notice. As the car steadied, Rael took the flask.

  Meliosme said, “Be careful between cars; they can pitch you out in the swamp. This is one place you don’t want to walk it, especially nursing bruises or worse.”

  Rael said, “Bosels?”

  She said, grimly, “No. Not here. They’re hill-creatures, or at least they prefer firmer ground. Upper Crule. Here, you’ll have Letomeres, Sentrosomes. Maybe Kidraks.”

  “I’ll watch out.” As if to emphasize his words, the car gave another lurch, which this time did not throw him off balance.

  Meliosme said, “Well, you seem to be getting the hang of it…” And she shifted her attention. Rael turned about and started forward along the length of the car, toward the front of the beamliner, somewhere unseen far ahead, negotiating the ill-set elevated beams which guided the train. Now. Between Orgeon and the next halt, Inenda. It was a long passage, the last long stretch between here and Marula. Now. He could feel apprehension pounding the blood in his ears. Now. He permitted himself a nervous little chuckle, thinking about Pternam and the revolutionaries, all curious, all certain that he would do it in Marula, because he had told them that Damistofia would be there. All wrong. Not in Marula. Before Marula. Now.

  Rael made his way forward through the swaying cars slowly, deliberately, like one who had never been on one before, lurching, leaning, holding on as he went. In part, this was wholly natural, and also in part it was a careful motional disguise, which effectively made him invisible to those around him. In this way he passed through four of the cars before he found what he was looking for: one of the wooden bench seats, occupied by a single young man, who was now looking out the window at the dreary passing landscape, a passing panorama of sloughs, marshes, expanses of territory neither land nor water but an uncomfortable hybrid of both, dotted by random clumps of spikegrass in the water proper, and brackberry tangles covering the land portions with their stiltlegged arachnid stance.

  He had not known which car it would be, but he premembered the scene perfectly, just as it was: the light from Gysa coppering the marshes with its afternoon slants, the clear aqua-blue of the sky, by which he knew that the seasons had changed. Now it was autumn. It would be cooler now. And the young man sitting on the bench.

  Rael leaned forward and said, “Seat taken?”

  The young man shook his head absently, thoughts clearly elsewhere. Rael sat down, softly, so as not to attract any attention. No one had noticed him. The young man placed an arm on the windowsill and propped his head up, leaning forward slightly.

  Rael said, “Excuse me,” and leaned over behind him, as if reaching to place something on the shelf over the windows, and with a motion that did not seem to deviate from those normal lurchings caused by the swaying of the car, drove the pin he had taken into the base of the young man’s brain.

  Rael felt the body stiffen, and then relax, as he resumed his own seat. The body did not slump or fall, but remained in position, propped up; it would remain that way, the muscles locked, until someone moved him, which doubtless would not be until the last stop in the Marula transit yards. Rael sat back, blending into the background with the rest of the sloggers, reflecting, feeling conflicting emotions. He felt a pain deep in his heart, an emotion he could put no name to. It was without doubt that it was an evil thing to dispatch this young man into the darkness so coldly, not even in the heat of an argument, not in conflict, but coldly. Without warning, without anticipation. Yet at the same time he could see this figure as a nexus of powerful forces, himself obscure, a nobody, but paradoxically the carrier of the weight of the whole world. This was the one. This was, without doubt, the enemy. Rael did not understand, but he could see it clearly. This was the one. And he could see the rest of it as well, how he would place a slip of paper in the boy’s hand, with one word printed on it: “Rael.” They would have to know who had done this. Rael printed the word on the paper and placed it in the boy’s free hand, now cool. Rael looked carefully at the face; the eyes were closed, as if the boy were napping along the way. Exactly the way it was supposed to go.

  And the rest: Rael got out of the seat and caught the attention of one sitting nearby, who had also been woolgathering, studiously trying not to see others or be seen by them, and to this one he said, “Pardon, but my friend is sleeping. He’s very tired, and will not need to get off until Marulupol”

  The other nodded. “Right. Up all night with a lady before his trip to the big city, eh? Well, no harm there; it’s not a flaw to nap on the way.”

  Rael agreed, the man continued, “He seemed to be looking for someone, a bit earlier… was he to meet someone on the way?”

  Rael thought, and answered, “Perhaps he was. Maybe they’ll see him when he gets to Marula.”

  The other nodded, and began sinking back into his own thoughts, already dismissing the incident Rael began turning away, letting him sink back. That was fine. He would almost forget it, until incidents at the station caused him to remember. No matter. By then, Rael would be long gone, or so he planned to be. The deed was done now, in the only time-slot open for it. Now the clock was running. When the beamer reached Marula, there would be a confusion over the body, but sooner or later they would sort things out, and then the hunt would be on. Rael figured that to make a successful change, he had to get at least a full day ahead of his pursuers, better yet a day and a half. He started forward, to get the water for Meliosme.

  — 6 —

  Marula

  The outskirts of Marula slid by, mostly beneath the level of the elevated beamer. In the baggage car, Meliosme glanced out the window from time to time but did not keep a close eye on the city. Rael, on the other hand, watched intently, for to his knowledge it was a place totally strange to him. From his training, he knew in a rough sort of way how Marula was laid out, if that phrase could apply to an organism which constantly changed, as variable as the channels of the sluggish inland river whose delta formed its foundation.

  To the Lisaks with the most correct attitude orientation, Marula was something of a necessary evil, but withal a place to be avoided if at all possible. It changed. And its people survived from day to day by managing, so the saying went, with changing channels, docks whose approaches silted up overnight, roads which sank into the soft muck without a trace, elevated beamlines which leaned crazily to either side of center, and were propped up with ropes and stumps. Unlike the other cities of Lisagor, there was no area within the complex which could be called a city center, a built-up area in which authority resided. Authority, such as it was, moved about according to where the action was. No one bothered to erect anything resembling a permanent structure; instead, they threw up temporary buildings which became semi-permanent by force of habit, some part of them in constant repair.

  With so much change about, it was natural that the
inhabitants would take on some of its aspects; to this end, large numbers of the infamous Pallet-Dropped Troopers were settled there in garrison, and were paraded through the streets often. Those who missed their attentions did not complain, but expressed a sigh of relief that they had not been given over to the mercies of the troopers. There were also numerous officials, proctors, attitude patrols, informers, spies, and investigators, the result of which was that Marula, for all its diversity and sprawl, was effectively and tightly controlled.

  Perhaps it was controlled, but it was not run very well. Marula was chaotic and disorganized, a fact Rael hoped to use to his advantage. Here, even with modem communications, things proceeded slowly; slowly enough so that if Rael could get away cleanly from the beamer, he could count on being able to gain the lead on them he needed.

  Here, they did not bother to build the little hills on which the living-quarters grew which were traditional with other Lisak cities; the land wouldn’t support them. Instead, they fashioned small enclaves resembling labyrinths in which one-, two- and three-story buildings proliferated. Inside the enclaves the streets were hardly more than alleys. Low walls separated the enclaves from the rest of the land, which was given over to other uses, mostly industrial.

  Rael said, “Where are we now?”

  It was evening, and the sky was becoming overcast from the southwest, washing the outlines of the city with a soft, weak light that obscured much of its harshness. It seemed, in this light, slightly magical, strange, exotic, a place where odd events might succeed.

  Meliosme said, “This district is called Sango; the beamer won’t stop here. The next named place is Semora, which is where I leave.”

  “It’s close to the markets you have to go to?”

  “Closest for this beamline. Got to walk a bit more.”

  “You’ll still need help…”

  Meliosme looked sidelong at him, an odd coy look. “Still?”

  “I’ll trade you that for you telling me a place I can go and be unknown for, say, two days. After that… it won’t matter.”

  Some light in her face faded. She said, “Plenty of places like that in Marula, in fact, if you’re willing to move, you can keep ahead of them very well indefinitely… I know of something that might do, near the markets, if they haven’t torn it down, which they often do here, but it will probably do. I’ll trade.”

  “What will you do after you sell your fleischbaum?”

  “What else? Go out again for more.”

  “Back to the Symbar area?”

  “No, I’m a wanderer. I’ll probably go on over into Tilanque, more southerly than Symbarupol. Winter’s coming on, cold nights and the like, and I flow with it. You wouldn’t catch me working Grayslope or Severovost in the cold season, no… And what are your plans?”

  “After a day or so, I’ll seek out a position here for the time. That will be enough.”

  “You wouldn’t care to wander?”

  “Not now.”

  “You look as if you could, and there’s not many I’d say that to.”

  Rael chuckled, half to himself. “Not now, but if I came later, how would I fine you?”

  “Not out in the field! But if you visited the markets, you’d likely catch word of me… She looked thoughtful, an attitude that made her plain face seem full of light and animation. “Mind, I offer little in the way of bennies*, but on the other hand, neither would you have to endure a preachy lifer, either. To be free…”

  * Bennies: “Benefits,” i.e., of accepting an income from State Service as opposed to making your own living. These included food, clothing, housing and job security, all of which demanded a careful attention to one’s allegiances and remarks.

  “You don’t have trouble with the authorities?”

  She shrugged. “People want fleischbaum, and it’s a lot of trouble to get it, so they leave it to people like me. Why not? We offer no Change to the sloggers. They wouldn’t leave if they could.”

  Rael said “They might have to, some day.”

  Meliosme frowned. “I know. I’ve heard too, but it’s just talk; it’ll come to nothing, all that. They’ll throw out Monclova and Chugun, but who’ll come along but someone just as vile, with the same kind of boseldung, promising, promising but the end of it is that there’ll still be lifers running things and spouting slogans, and millions of sloggers keeping them afloat, all idiots. At any rate, they won’t do a night-trot with a bosel, and so much for them,.” She looked at Rael again. “Surely you aren’t after all that.”

  Rael answered her straightly, more honestly than he knew. “I need now some time to think, to wait. But after that, well I might come, at least for a while.”

  She looked at him critically. “Need to put some weight on you, and some sun for that dungeon tan you wear on your hide.” but she smiled shyly as she said it.

  Rael agreed. “That wasn’t a seaside resort I was in, that’s a fact.”

  The beamer went through an alarming series of junctions which felt rubbery and insecure, and began slowing down. Meliosme glanced through the window quickly and said, “Semora coming up.”

  “Does the beamer have stops after Semora?”

  “Beyond? Yes. It goes to the yards, to the shops. The old terminal used to be there, and many people still go all the way in. Did you change your mind?”

  “No. Just curious.” Rael turned away from her and pretended to look out the window on the opposite side, to conceal the relief he felt.

  The beamer slowed to a groaning crawl and proceeded through a district, so it seemed, down the middle of a broad street. To either side were drab, low buildings of many sizes and styles, but they all had that shanty atmosphere which seemed to characterize Marula. There were a lot of people about, most on foot, strolling about in the evening air, which was thick and flavored with many odd substances so close to the ocean and the marshes, and with so many different industrial operations. Yet they displayed a certain swagger, a furtive elan, which distinguished them from the rest of Lisaks, who generally favored uniformity and anonymity.

  The beamer aligned itself in the platform area and stopped with a series of alarming noises, and finally a bump, which made Rael wince, as he thought of someone precariously propped on an elbow four cars forward. But he got to his feet calmly, and began working with Meliosme to grapple the awkward bundle, and eventually they got it up between them and struggled to the door.

  Together they made their way through the streets where Meliosme went with an unerring sense of familiarity. Near the station, on the main thoroughfare, there had been crowds, who fastidiously gave them room, but as they left the station area the crowds thinned and grew less deferential, although no one bothered them. They negotiated a series of narrow alleys, poorly lit, and at last came to a cavernous shed which seemed to be abandoned but wasn’t; there was a sleepy night watchman, who let them pass inside without comment, almost without notice.

  Inside the shed there was a dim light from lanterns set at intervals along the walls, none of them bright Meliosme picked a place by a dimmer spot along one wall and there they set the bag down. Rael now took time to look around. Scattered all over the floor of the shed were others with various-sized bundles, some large and apparently unmanageable, others hardly worth the effort of dragging them here. Most of the others appeared to be gatherers like Meliosme, all rather ragged, most catnapping, or conversing in small groups, very quietly in low tones so as not to disturb the others. Now and then one might go out for some food, or a bottle of spirits. In contrast to the lively, wary activity outside on the streets, here was quiet and a sense of peace, in which he felt some irony, for these were the outcasts of Lisak society, the gatherers.

  Meliosme arranged the bag, and settled down next to it, motioning to Rael to sit beside her. This he did, half-leaning against the wall behind them. In the semidarkness, with the soft mumble of distant slow conversations all around them, he was conscious of the solid warmth of her body next to his, and she did not move awa
y. He said, after a time, “You stay here?”

  Meliosme nodded. “This is the fleischbaum bazaar. The selling will commence at dawn. That is why you see little in the way of rowdying and roistering. You have to be awake then, or you’ll wake up with little or nothing for a month’s trip in the wild. No one, besides, wants a gatherer in their hostel or inn, so we stay here. You sell, and then you leave. I expect to make a good bundle this trip…”

  “What do you do with it?”

  “Replace worn clothes, boots, a new knife… If there’s much left over, I’ll get a place for a few days and enjoy some luxuries, like a hot bath; cold streams are fine, but everyone likes a little laziness now and then.” She relaxed a little, softening. “You could stay here tonight without fear. In the morning, I’ll show you how it’s done and then I’ll set you on the righteous path of being free.”