The Morphodite

by M. A. Foster

  Her mind raced, as she looked away, trying to hide the hope and the anticipation. Was this the way out? She said, she hoped with the proper shyness, “I don’t know, now. This is sudden.”

  “Of course. That much I well comprehend. But you will consider it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. Exemplary! I’ve taken the liberty of having myself assigned to work with you, so we’ll have more contact, and we can discuss this more. And in the meantime, I can work with you on some exercises; they say you aren’t completely well yet.”

  “Well, no… I tire easily yet, it seems. I don’t know why.”

  “Lack of the proper exercises, lack of motivation. It’s all easy enough. We could start tonight, if you’re so minded ”

  Behind the easy words and the logical progression, Damistofia sensed a subtle pressure; nothing definite, but a pressure she couldn’t recall feeling as Rael. Was he attempting to seduce her? She didn’t have enough experience so that she could remember to tell if that was what he was after. She decided to be cautious, and said, “Tonight? Let me think on it. I am tired after today. Could we not work it in the regular exercise period?”

  A momentary flash of annoyance flickered in his eyes, but he replied, pleasantly enough, “I’m still working those details out, shifting assignments, and that sort of thing. I do have others to work with I can’t just let go.”

  She said, “I understand. Well, tomorrow I have no work assignment, and so I could do it after the regular day.”

  “Very good! We’ll do it that way, then. I’ll come after regular hours.”

  “You won’t be getting into any trouble, will you?”

  “Oh, no. And you won’t, either. Just a little overtime.”

  “I want to ask you something…”

  “Yes. Ask on.”

  “What is that peculiar burnt smell in the air?”

  He looked off into the distant sky, and then said, “Burnt housing. And now is not the time to talk about that.”

  “You know about it?”

  “Yes. Tomorrow. This is not the place.”

  “All right, then. Tomorrow… And what do I call you?”

  “Say nothing to your usual people; they would be offended. But Cliofino, if you’re so minded.”

  She smiled at the informality, and reminded herself to watch him more closely, to see what he looked at She said, “Good enough; and so I will be Damistofia, as opposed to Patient Azart. And so good evening.”

  Cliofino nodded politely and turned back to the way he had come. And Damistofia set out again for her own building in the dusk, now with a fine mistiness in the air that said, beyond a doubt, that the rain was here.

  And later, after supper and a bath, she lay in her little cubicle in the dark and listened to the rainwater running and gurgling in the downspouts and guttering, lying awake for a long time, trying to understand the significance of what had happened to her today; she sensed hidden motivation behind Cliofino’s words, which were reasonable enough, in themselves. And what if he wanted to seduce her? At first consideration the idea seemed odd and a little perverse, but she understood that as arising from her thinking as Rael. And she wasn’t Rael anymore, was she? She ran her hands over her body under the covers. No, most certainly she wasn’t Rael. And she caught herself thinking, This wasn’t quite the way I planned it, but after all, why not. I will have to learn to live completely in this disguise, which is permanent. And, thinking about it some more, she concluded that Cliofino wasn’t unattractive at all, and that if he could be used to get her out of here, it might be well worth the trouble of adjusting to the new experience. And on that note she slept.

  The day opened gray and drizzly, with a damp chill in the air that seemed to soak in and make itself at home; an intimation of the winter of this southerly but not tropical city.

  Nothing definitely cold; just chilly and unpleasant. Damistofia went through her routines of the day absentmindedly, trying to keep warm in the drafty halls and rooms. In her free time, it was no better—her own wing was no less chilly than the rest of the place.

  Toward afternoon, she caught a whiff in the air of the same odor of burnt rags she had smelled the day before, but when she tried to see out the window to see where it might be coming from, she saw little or nothing she could identify. There was a plain, unadorned brick wall around the Marula Palliatory which shut out almost all the view of the world outside, except the tops of the taller buildings and some industrial chimneys. Certainly nothing nearby seemed to be burning.

  And later, while that was still in her mind, late in the afternoon, actually in the early evening, she heard in the distance some very odd sounds; there was a mechanical droning, as of a large number of engines, which grew out of nothing, but didn’t seem very close. The noise level stayed about the same for a time, and then faded, followed by another set of sounds that seemed to alarm her without her knowing why—a noise as of a large crowd of people in confusion, but it, too, was distant, and faded away. The droning came back for a short time, and faded away entirely. And with the dark, there came on the night air another odor of burning, this mixed with a sharp, sweetish chemical odor—something inflammable. The attendants put the more excitable to bed early.

  No one seemed to bother with her, and so she wandered after supper to the dayroom, where there were a few late-stayers and persons as bored and apprehensive as she was, reading magazines and playing cards and dominoes to pass the time. Here, she settled in a corner under a dim lamp with a travel brochure about the Pilontary Islands, a place far to the southeast that she could reasonably hope never to see.

  Damistofia felt the attention of someone watching her closely, staring; she looked up, and saw Cliofino across the room. When she looked up, she saw that he looked away, as if he did not want her to know he had been watching her. He was just a shade too slow. And just a shade too practiced on acting as if he had just seen her; but again, with him, she felt a confusion on trying to interpret his intentions. For a second, she felt like Rael, and felt like screaming, “Dammit, I can’t make the assumptions women do because I don’t know how to be one yet! And so what’s this Cliofino’s game? Why is he so interested in me? It can’t be ravishing beauty—I’m ordinary and plain at best—as a fact, I wouldn’t give me a second look.” The frustration passed, and she nodded to him, that she’d seen him, and he came across the room to her.

  She saw that he was dressed differently from his workaday uniform; he wore dark clothing, dull and plain, except on one shoulder there was the emblematic figure of a dragon worked into the material in a low-contrast pattern of some different material. Again, she felt as if she were groping in the dark; the emblem was obviously intended to symbolize something, but it meant nothing to her at all. He was also damp, and there were rain sparkles on his clothing and hair—he had been outside, somewhere.

  He said, “I signed out the gym for a while, if you’d like.”

  Damistofia put the brochure back in its rack and stood up. “Yes. I could stand some motion, some movement. I need activity, some kind of challenge.”

  He nodded agreeably and said, “That’s right! Most of the duds are content with the routine, and they stay that way! But I thought it would be a good idea for us to go there, and have you work out a little; I want to see how dextrous you are, and check your reflexes, before we get too far into this. You might conceivably need to work on your general body tone before we can go on.”

  “I hardly need an examination to tell that; I already know it.”

  He looked closely at her. “But you don’t remember what you were before…?”

  “No. But I’m not in the shape I could be in… and I’d like to have my figure back, at least, for what life I’ve got left to live.”

  He looked at her again, with an odd, guarded intensity that Damistofia found disconcerting. “There’s nothing in general wrong with the figure you have now—nothing at all.”

  “You couldn’t prove that by me, or my mirror,
as I see it, but if you say so, that gives me some hope all was not lost. Well! Lead on.”

  Without further word, Cliofino turned and led the way out of the dayroom into the dim hallways and set out for the Gymnasium, which was located some distance away in another building. They traversed long corridors, now mostly untenanted, and then outside, for the most part passing under covered walkways from whose eaves the rainwater dripped into puddles. Only once they had to pass from one covered walk to another, and Damistofia felt the rain on her face, and in the air there were still traces of the smoke she had smelled. She asked casually, “What’s burning?’’

  Cliofino looked at her sharply, and waited a moment before replying. Then he said, “Settlement areas, squattertowns. There has been some trouble, and they’ve had a couple of pallet drops.”

  Damistofia shook her head, not understanding what he was referring to. “Please. Say again. I don’t understand.”

  He reiterated patiently, as if recalling that he was talking to a woman who had lost a large part of her knowledge of how things were, “One thing led to another, and there was a riot among the people of some habitats. They restored order by landing several platoons of Pallet-Dropped Heavy Troopers on them.”

  Damistofia walked on for a minute, and then said, “And what do they do?”

  “They hit the ground shooting; they are a force whose sole mission is to terrify and subdue. They carry sawed-off shotguns, flamethrowers, grenade launchers, and chainsaws, which they use as swords. Rumor has it they are recruited in a place called The Mask Factory’ where they have parts of their minds removed to make them amenable to heinous orders, and then given glandular injections to bring their mass up. In this series of actions, of course they were successful and things have quieted down, but it is uneasy. They have gone too far, of course, and who can tell if the measures will work. It seems that people no longer restrain themselves.”

  He was clearly disturbed by the events, as he told them. Something of this showed in his voice. Damistofia said, “You say this as one who does not approve.”

  “Who could?” he asked passionately. “Many were killed, two habitats completely leveled, a third damaged so badly it will have to be pulled down and rebuilt. I mean, everyone knew that there was such a corps as the Pallet-Dropped Heavy Troopers, but they were never actually used against the people.”

  Damistofia said, “If one has a weapon. I would guess time comes to use it.”

  “Mind, we present-day people don’t know if they ever did. They say they loosed them before, but all we saw was the parades in the streets. That was enough. Now they have used them in actuality; and they destroy everything…”

  “I do not remember what my feelings were before this, and I have not been allowed outside, so I cannot approve or condemn on the face of it; still, it would seem to be excessive. What brought that on?”

  Cliofino said, “There are disturbances everywhere now, and they feel they cannot be slack with Changemongers, and so they strike at will—here, there. I know that long ago our ancestors came to Oerlikon to escape the relentless pressure of Change, but their desires built a system that cannot respond, and so resentment and pressure build up. There is no feeling of compromise, of finding the way that will work. The people say, ‘we need,’ and they say, ‘no.’ And when they gather to demonstrate, then come the troops. This is happening all over.”

  They had arrived at the gym door and now stopped before it. Damistofia said, “And what is your place in this? Or am I asking too much on so short an acquaintance?”

  Cliofino opened the door for her, and said, “Something has gone wrong, and we must right it, to maintain the vision of old, that we came to this planet for.”

  Damistofia nodded, not speaking, and stepped into the darkness, which Cliofino banished by turning the lights on, He looked around, and then said, “And now we must work. How do you feel?”

  “Good enough, I suppose; a little restless… What do you want me to do?”

  “I will show you—mostly some simple tumbling, and some light defensive methods I will show you. I will be judging your reflexes, your speed in learning.”

  She said, “I see. This is a test I will see more if I pass. And if I do not?”

  He said, in a low voice deliberately restrained, “That you ask that is your admission to continue.”

  They located some loose floor mats and put them together, and then Cliofino led Damistofia through a series of motions and short exercise routines that seemed ridiculously easy at first, something like dancing, but steadily grew more difficult. Still, she took on the activity and did as well as she could; she needed to capture the dynamic feel of her body, and this was an excellent opportunity. And moving, exerting a little, told her things more quiet routines had suggested—that she was now very different from Rael. Her center of gravity was lower, and she was more supple, once she ironed the kinks of inactivity out And putting all of herself into the exercise helped her feel more at home in her body, and it began to feel more right, more herself, less an intrusion. And as this feeling of rightness increased, she found herself becoming more aware of Cliofino, who moved with her easily and with complete confidence. Their close proximity, moving together, brought forth responses from her body itself, and less and less she found them strange and frightening. And doing so, she found that it lessened some internal tension and made things easier.

  Cliofino showed and demonstrated a couple of easy defensive techniques, and then stopped. He was breathing hard. He said, “Enough for now, I think. This will stretch muscles you haven’t used. To the showers! Hot water, and then cold.”

  She sat on the floor and sprawled out awkwardly. “I am already stretched. Tomorrow I will be sore. And I must tell you that my clothes are all sweaty and I shouldn’t want to wash and then put them back on to walk back.”

  “A good idea, that. Well—we can do it that way.”

  “I to my room, and you to yours. Where do you stay?”

  “I have several places. I move around a lot. I would like to come with you, if I may ask.”

  She smiled at him archly. “You see me at my worst, which is not how I might have it.”

  He said, “There isn’t anything wrong with your looks. You are fine. Act with confidence.”

  “Is this also part of the testing?”

  Now he smiled. “No. For now, you pass.” And he extended his hand and helped her to her feet.

  They put the floor mats back where they had found them, and turned out the lights. In the dark, illuminated only by the night-glow coming from the doors. Cliofino took her hand, and with an odd excitement she did not suppress, she did not turn it loose. And on the way back to the dormitory, she did not turn it loose, either, although they said nothing and he attempted nothing more.

  The night air felt cooler now, almost chilly, as they walked along. Damistofia thought many things to herself; in one set of arguments, she sensed a powerful current of danger associated with Cliofino, an out-of-place-ness that bothered the old Rael instincts profoundly. Still she could not work these things out in her head. She would have to write things down, ensymbolize, compute, to determine the answers she needed. The likely computation was that he was a spy of some sort—but for what side? On the other hand, she felt this whole encounter as another test of sorts, one she was conducting on herself.

  She asked, “Now, what about the more that’s assumed to be? Who are you?”

  “A simple worker here, who has associates who believe that we can set things on the correct path… someone who has need of a trusty and agile friend. I would not say much more yet; but on that, would you want to leave, to get out before we go deeper?”

  Damistofia breathed deeply, and then said, “No, I would like to see more. They have given me little enough here, that I would rely on it alone. That’s just it—they don’t seem to care very much what happens to me.”

  “Exactly. You cause them no problems, and the police are no longer interested. They have much m
ore alarming cases to worry about, and so you languish. If it turns out that we will be able to work together, then I believe that I can get you out of here. And I think you should consider getting out of Marula; this is becoming a hazardous place to reside, what with the troubles, and the responses.”

  “Where could I go?”

  “Lisagor is large, and it’s not the whole world.”

  “But Clisp… say. That would be worse, I’d think. They will he hearing down hard in places like that.”

  “I will tell you a secret. The trouble came to Clisp first, and although there are still incidents there, they have written it off. They have trouble here they can’t ignore. Don’t worry about where, just yet. That can be arranged. What I want you to think of is wanting to leave here.”

  “And what of my old life? Perhaps someone waits for me to return.”

  Cliofino said, “They found you with Rael the assassin. There were no reports of missing young women. Therefore the assumption is held that however you came to be there, you came on your own. No one has come searching for you. Whatever your old life was, you seem to have left it behind voluntarily, and if there were others, they let you go. I would say not to worry about the past, but act as you see the best path.”

  She nodded. “There seems to be no future here.”

  “Exactly, I can help, if you allow it.”

  They reached the dormitory building and slipped inside. There was no one about, and they passed through the halls without sound. When they reached Damistofia’s room, and went in, she said, “It’s late and no one is up. All are fast asleep.”

  “Leave the lights off. We don’t want to attract attention.”

  “How will we see?”

  “You know your way around There’s some glow from outside, the city lights in the clouds. We’ll manage.”

  Wordlessly, with her heart pounding, she went through the dark to the bath and set the shower running. After a time, she said, “At least the hot water is on tonight.”

  “Is it ready?”

  “Yes.”