by M. A. Foster
Phaedrus joined Emerna, at whom he questioned, “What did you let her do?’
Janea, who was walking nearby, volunteered, in her bratty voice, “The one who was guard was a favorite with us, and especially Lefthera; she has some instruction for him, and for those others who survive and grope as well.”
As if to bear her words out, they noted that the distant sounds were silent, indeed. But in a moment, behind them, they could hear another start up, at first sounding manlike, but rapidly rising in pitch and frenzy and finally reaching extremes even bosels did not often attain.
Emerna added, “She told me she would rather settle with them than be sheltered, and that her home was not far, in any event. She would return when she had done what she had to do. She told me what they did and I gave her the knife: she has the right, if she does nothing else. It is fitting for them, although they seem to be protesting more than their former victims.”
Janea said, “They aren’t taking their medicine as well as they handed it out: how they laughed and joked! For just a little I’d go back and help her, but for the fact that she’s selfish and wouldn’t share one, not even one.”
Phaedrus asked, “Are there any more like that around here?”
Janea answered, “No. Not one band. This one either killed or ate them all. I hear it’s clear up north all the way to Akchil Sunslope, or so they bragged.”
Nevertheless, they all fell silent, and waited for the next series of screams to begin, and they did not have to wait very long: it was short, hoarse, and ended abruptly. For a time they stood in the empty dark spaces and listened for something else—perhaps approaching footsteps—but there were no more sounds, save that of the wind, and Emerna turned to the north and started walking, and the rest, after hesitating a little, drifted off, following her, more or less. Phaedrus let the survivors string out into an irregular line and brought up the rear, listening into the dark warily, but he heard no more sounds, not even those of bosels.
Apparently, Emerna had decided to walk on through the darkness; either she knew some place farther on, or decided to leave the immediate area. As they walked, he noticed a curious thing happening; each time he looked up at the band, the number of people in it seemed to dwindle. He did not see the women leave, or wander off, but somehow they did, drifting off silently into the darkness, one by one, presumably starting back for wherever they had come from, or resuming their journey. The only one he watched closely was Meliosme, and she did not waver, but trudged on, tiredly but steadily. By the time light was coming up from the east, they were well into the hill country between Crule the Swale and Zolotane, and there were only four of them left: Emerna, Janea, Meliosme and Phaedrus.
This was dry country, but their way crossed and recrossed water courses, at first as dry as the land around them and marked only by gravel beds and brushy tangles along the sides, but soon showing some water in them as they went higher up.
In the shadow of a steep bank, Emerna stopped uncertainly, looking about her wearily. Meliosme joined her, and Phaedrus came up to them in a moment. Emerna wanted to stop and rest, but was uncertain about the place; she was now well out of the area she knew well and additionally had turned into the hills too soon, and admitted she did not know the area. Meliosme glanced about, almost off-handedly, and told her that the place was safe enough, and sat down against a large rock over which a bare and scraggly tree hung, and closed her eyes. Emerna found another place not too far off, and Janea followed her, and they settled down together. Phaedrus watched this, and did not interfere; presently he decided to stay awake as long as he could, to watch over the group while the others slept. He looked about in the brightening daylight, and saw bare, rocky hills, sand-colored, dun brown, pale violet, pocked with clumps of vegetation, an occasional gaunt tree festooned with ragged strips. To the west, more hills against the dark sky; to the east, there were hills, too, but there was only light behind them, the morning, running across the long grasslands of Crule the Swale.
In the tumults of the times, many things had been brought to light by the ministrations of Femisticleo Chugun’s Secret Police, but odd as it might be, much more had remained undiscovered, owing to the organization of the Offworld Watch on Oerlikon, which severely limited what the lower orders knew. This limitation of essential knowledge, coupled with the troubles the central government was having to cope with throughout Lisagor, effectively limited the penetration Chugun’s people were able to effect into the offworld organization, with the immensely practical result that Aranda Palude was able to return to her concealed communications site and broadcast an emergency recall signal, under which conditions the main support ship was to return and retrieve as many as it could, depending on conditions available. This support ship was not armed, and could not carry out operations in a hostile environment, nevertheless they would try to pick up as many as they could. She reported back to Charodei, now with Cesar Kham, the active head of what mission survived. But Charodei did not convey this information to Luto Pternam.
Pternam clearly had his own hands full, and devoted most of his time alternating between hiding in the deepest recesses of the Mask Factory, expecting the return of Tiresio Rael any moment, and working at a manic pace in stints which might carry him across two full days before he collapsed from exhaustion. Despite the heroic measures, however, Lisagor was melting like a cake of ice placed in the hot sunlight: North Tilanque had joined Karshiyaka, as had Severovost and even the extreme easternmost part of Akchil. South Tilanque and Priboy had gone over to the rebels of Zamor, which left Lisagor with only a small strip to the coast in the central parts of the seaboard province, and this was uncertain and full of rival factions contending. In the north, Zefaa and Greyslope were nominally still under control, but this condition clearly existed solely because the inhabitants had nothing better to do, and could change quickly, in a matter of days. The West was long gone: Clisp, The Serpentine, and what passed for population centers in sparsely-inhabited Zolotane had been among the first to break off, and the new borders remained closed. Rumors were widespread that the new rulers of Marisol were assembling an army to invade Zefaa, and there were companion rumors running with those which suggested that the locals there would surrender immediately were such an invasion to take place. In the south, Sertse Solntsa was still holding, but it was clearly by force alone that the province was being held. In fact, so much of the city had been damaged that it was already useless as a port.
So far, Central Lisagor was holding together, partly from fear of change, fear of the surviving cadres of Pallet-Dropped Heavy Troopers, and partly because no one had yet tried to invade it. Oerlikon had no tradition of war, and so when an area rebelled, their chief concern was to be left alone, repulsing attacks and being content with that. Moreover, it did not seem likely that the central government could invade the rebel provinces, either, as they lacked the numbers of troopers necessary for the task, and the loyalty of their remaining population hinged on an inlanders traditional distaste for the sea-province outlanders. They would not join them, neither would they fight them, and so the one thing that enabled them to hold the inland provinces prevented them from raising an army to recapture any of the outlying provinces.
Charodei was clearly having his own problems as well, chiefly with Pternam, who seemed to be less and less interested in arranging for the Offworlders to find suitable transceiver equipment, and more interested in holding on to what he already had. Hints and suggestions seemed to have little effect on this eroding situation, and so Charodei called for a meeting on the subject. They met at the Mask Factory, this time in broad daylight. Nobody seemed to mind that Pternam had collected some odd associates lately.
Charodei did not waste words; “You know, Pternam, it’s already an open secret that you have allies.”
Pternam shivered and said, “So many of you popped out of the woodwork I’m not surprised people talk.”
“They don’t seem to mind.”
“You know us well, and
we know nothing of you—nevertheless there is much you miss; no matter your loyalties, there is a bad flavor to this, which we Lisaks try to ignore.” He thought a moment, and then added, “We express ourselves in a few selected areas, and elsewhere restrain our plunging lusts—thereby is change thwarted; by operating openly, more or less, you poison things.”
Charodei blinked once, owlishly. “You aver that our assistance is counterproductive to your plans?”
Pternam laughed hollowly, a madman’s chuckle at something no one else would find humorous. “Ha-ha! Counterproductive, indeed. Perhaps, were there plan left, but I have given that up long ago!”
“You don’t think we can deliver, then.”
“Of course you can’t deliver. You never could.”
“No so; we could, and can. Of course, there are measures of the quality of appropriateness… the time is soon approaching when in our estimation, the situation will have gone too far to argue for a reorganization of the central provinces under controllable conditions.”
“I am well aware that things are still deteriorating. Symbarupol is perilously close to the new Changeist territories; the Tilanque strip is gone, as is most of Puropagne south of here. There has been talk of moving the Center out of here, to a more protected location out in Crule. Additionally, we do not seem to have the resources to continue at the level we have tried to maintain. Something more is needed, but Crule and Akchil are unwilling to supply it”
“You need troops…”
“Yes.” For a moment, a shred of hope arose in Pternam. “We even made some contacts with the Freeholders of Tartary, but to little use; they have come to terms with Change in a way that does not accord with the old way we defend here. Likewise, with loyalists in the rebel areas, who claim to want the old way, but who will send no fighting men to enforce it.”
“You can’t make up enough Heavy Troopers?”
“It takes time. We never worried about time before. The people, you see, they got used to the troopers, to their transports. Now they ambush them as they land, take their weapons, and turn them on the following waves. That was all we ever needed… now it isn’t any good anymore. When they move to Crule, the Mask Factory will close; we can’t move everything we need to continue.”
Charodei could see where things were leading. Pternam was in a funk, burned out, he had already given up. Useless, useless. He had clearly no intention of helping them—he had no idea of how to help himself. “What do you imagine you will do?”
“Survive, that’s what. We are already turning out some of the lower orders who were associates here. Some have left, others have run off to the sea provinces…”
After a moment, Charodei said, “Then you are not going to be able to get us access to suitable components to contact the ship?”
Pternam looked away, and then back. He said, “Can you take me with you?”
Charodei felt a surge of anger, and contemptuous mirth with it. The very idea, that this ignorant savage would want to be taken to a world like Heliarcos, which would be incomprehensible to him, even though Charodei knew it in truth to be a backwater world itself. This went through his mind almost instantly, and he let none of it show. He said, instead, “…It’s never been done. This was supposed to be a no-contact mission, here on Oerlikon, and so no provisions were made for such a contingency ”
“But humans, they move around freely, they travel from world to world, back in the place where you come from?”
“Yes, of course… One has to pay fares, and sometimes there are small restrictions, but in general, that is the nature of things: people more or less move about as they feel the urge.”
“You have authority among your group; you could arrange such a novelty.”
“Perhaps. Perhaps not. I would have to work with others, who still recall the original doctrine of this operation.”
Pternam said, “No contact.”
“Exactly.”
“But you have violated that principle by contacting me.”
“True, we did bend things some.”
“Well, I will be brief. My operation is to close down, and there is little else for me to do. Additionally, I have enemies. Here, I have some security against random assassinations, but away… Take me with you and you can have the Mask Factory; there are enough components here presumably for your experts to fabricate something that will work.”
“Otherwise…?”
“Otherwise, I will have everything destroyed. I can’t afford to leave records of what we did. Doubtless there will be those who would like to redress their grievances, even though we have tried to eliminate that negative attitude…”
“What could you do for us?”
“I could make you another Morphodite, and all that goes with that; the conscious control of the hormone system.” And he thought, deep in his mind, Yes, I’ll make another one for them, and this time I’ll loose it early on, and it can savage their worlds like they savaged mine. He forgot something crucial to reality, that it was he, and not the Offworlders, who had savaged Oerlikon and Lisagor.
Charodei saw the repressed excitement in Pternam, the ratlike hope, and read it correctly: And when we get him there, he’ll turn one loose on us, or so he thinks. Well, we can always jettison him in deep space. He said, “There might be some use in that, after all—if for nothing else than explaining events here—how they came to be. You’d have to make do with a smaller sample of experimental subjects; we can’t drag them off the streets like you could here.”
Pternam saw that Charodei did not refuse outright, and therefore still wanted something from him—if nothing else, access within the labyrinthine recesses of the Mask Factory to build a transceiver.
Charodei said, “I cannot promise what will transpire; you understand that I cannot speak for those who may come. At any rate, I will do what I can.”
It seemed little, but enough, considering the circumstances. Pternam said, “Very well. I will have Avaria show you where things are; there should be enough left in the Computorium to do the job.”
“Excellent! Rest assured that we will leave your equipment in operating condition.”
Pternam turned to go. “Oh no. That won’t be necessary at all; in fact, I prefer that your people leave it inoperable. And illegible.”
“Are things that close?”
“Close enough. You can use this building to transmit from. I will give the orders that you not be molested.”
“I will put Palude on it immediately.”
“The sooner the better… Do you think they will come?”
“Depends on what we can put together, where they are, how far. A lot of variables. Remember, we never expected to have to recall the support ship.”
Pternam laughed aloud. “What were you planning to do? Stay here forever?”
Charodei felt an odd spasm of irritation, and he suppressed it with difficulty. “A lot of people did; many more supposed that things would remain changeless on the world that lived for changelessness.”
“You mean when their duty was over, some elected to stay here?”
Charodei explained, “Why not? Their own world was twenty standard years behind them. Lisagor was all they knew.”
“That’s amazing! And what would these people do for a living?”
“They would have some funds supplied through suitable covers, but to avoid drawing attention to themselves they would usually take obscure positions… it was policy that we did not keep up with those who were retired and had gone native. Needless to say, they were all model citizens… by definition. As far as I know, that is.”
Pternam laughed, an erratic, plunging chuckle that sounded more than a little out of control. “Ah-ha! So when we were making the Morphodite, we might well have started with one of your retirees.”
Charodei felt a chill along his backbone. “Yes, I suppose that would have been possible… we would have no way to ascertain if this was the case or not.” Charodei suppressed his feelings again. Changelessnes
s had been maintained by many things, but the Mask Factory had played a larger part than they had suspected, performing experiments and transformations outlawed everywhere else, absolutely prohibited. And this Pternam thought it was humorous that he might have made up his weapon out of material that had come from some far world. And if it were true, what a fate to undergo: drugs, shock, electronic stimulation, the artificial attainment of extreme trance states. Yes, as he reflected on it, he could be certain that some of his people had been processed by Pternam. It strengthened his resolve, and he thought, clearly and consciously, Yes, we’ll jettison the son-of-a-bitch; indeed, I’ll do it personally. Ifs a duty, a responsibility. We cannot let this monster walk about on our own worlds, free to hatch more of his plots.