The Morphodite

by M. A. Foster

  As if reading his mind, and agreeing with some internal argument, Pternam nodded, and said, “Well, that’s a fine set of circumstances, were it true. I agree we’d have no way to know… but just imagine: we preyed upon you just as you were preying upon us, and neither of us knew of the symbiosis… Well, that chapter is over.”

  “Yes. Remember whose side we were on.”

  “Indeed: the side of orthodoxy, of Manclova and Chugun, and Primitivo Mercador and Odisio Chang, lifers all. But in the end it did us all no good, eh? Their orthodoxy, your support, my schemes. There were too many plotters, too many throne-upholders, and so we all pushed it over in the press… Well, tell your people they will doubtless be able to come openly after a time. We will probably need the help after these tumults.”

  “You think they would welcome us again?”

  Pternam shrugged. “You would always be welcome in Clisp. You doubtless have the tools to rebuild the Old Port as well.”

  Charodei said, in a low voice, “I hope you don’t assume omnipotence on our part; we, too, have our limits.”

  Pternam chuckled again, that erratic little laugh: “Ho-ha! Yes, that’s always the way it is—you’re the miracle workers until we really need you, and then you’re only human.”

  “If I may say, you have an odd perspective.”

  “You reminded me what you supported; I remind you that this was my world, better or worse, and that it sits unevenly now that we know that one of the things that allowed us to be changeless was the covert support of people we detested and left, back in the beginning days here. We might have done better to accept some change; some of the advice of Clisp and The Serpentine… Nobody likes to be revealed a fool.”

  “The Morphodite ended our mission here; if you wish revenge, you have already had it.”

  — 14 —

  Morning in Zolotane

  Phaedrus had been dreaming; he awoke instantly, and knew he had dreamed, but he could not remember what. And he saw, head clear, that it was already late on in the morning, and that Meliosme was sitting close by, watching him intently, her regard did not change when she saw that he was awake.

  He said, “You look as if you knew me.”

  She nodded, solemnly. “Yes. You remind me of someone I once met, knew for a short time—a short time indeed; I am from the outlands, the wild places, and so to me all townsmen seem alike, weighted by the inertia of their destiny, pressed into a feed course. Not so you, or the other. You and he share a mannerism, of being live, quick, unweighted. I never knew townsmen before who were like that”

  “And others? Not townsmen?”

  Meliosme mused for a moment, as if savoring something rather than remembering it, looking off into the distance. “I am a fleischbaum harvester, and I meet little save solitaries like me, and do you know there are few men to it? True, though. You, and the other one—you have no weight behind you, no massiness. You can go as you will.”

  He listened to her, and looked deeply at the plain, sturdy figure, the face that was not masculine or feminine but human, illuminated from within by a sense of repose and acceptance of the rhythm of the world; outwardly, Meliosme was rough and homely, but interiorly, she was as sleek as some furred and graceful riparian animal, alert, but not tensed. An odd emotion colored his perceptions, a quick shiver, a ripple, something that whispered to him to make bold, to speak openly of himself, of his identity. Well, perhaps not all of it. Some of it, until he could gauge how she would hear it. No one tells all the truth, for if they did, everyone would immediately go up in flames.

  He said, “You met Tiresio Rael in a traveler’s tavern, and rode on a Beamliner with him, to Marula; you went with him to a room, where he bade you leave him for your safety.”

  Meliosme blinked once, but did not seem otherwise surprised that he would know this. “Yes, it was like that.”

  Phaedrus continued, “He felt a real emotion for the girl he met, or else he would not have sent her away.”

  She said, “You know much; then you will know something of what I felt.”

  “That is so.”

  She ventured after a long silence, “No spy knows such things, no watcher.”

  “I was Rael.”

  “I can see that; I don’t know how, but I see it. You are him, but also different. You are younger.”

  “I changed. It was something that was done to me.”

  “I understand. There were always some like that wandering about; but they were unfinished, un-right, broken. You then were… I don’t know. You were of two natures, one a spirit of peace, of wisdom; and the other, a destroying angel.”

  “I had not thought of myself as a sage; yet destroy I have. But I will no more, nor will I change again.”

  She nodded again, and smiled faintly. “Done. And what will you do?”

  “I act only for myself, now. I need a quiet place, where I can perhaps dig out who I am; who I was. When they changed me, they took away that knowledge. I was not always Rael.”

  “I knew that.”

  “You could see what I was?”

  Meliosme said. “No. That Rael had not always been so. You, too, have that quality of newness.”

  “But I remember the things I have been; the things I have done.”

  “You know them, you did them, you were them, but they are not your prison. You will learn from them.”

  “Where? Here, in this wilderness?”

  “Zolotane is not far. I know these hills well, having passed along these trails many times; over the hills are open lands that slope down to the blue salt sea. There are stands of open fleischbaum groves, and sea creatures to catch, and a land of grass, golden under the sun. Few people are there.”

  Phaedrus glanced at the place where Emerna waited with Janea, still asleep, although the morning was well advanced. “What about them?”

  “They must go along their own path; it is not yours, now.”

  “I was as one dead; she saved me, or I would have been, in the ruin of Marula.”

  “Marula stands yet.” She shrugged. “Such debts… one can never repay them, and so one cannot. Let her go—she is weighted, set, bound to something dark, black and red.”

  “She wants, I think to go to Clisp.”

  “We will show them the way. But remain with me or no, you will leave her, now or later. It is better now.”

  Then Meliosme led him away from the narrow valley, and showed him simple things they could catch or gather; small dried pomes like miniature apples, an evergreen twining vine with leathery leaves and long, stringy pods, both of which were edible. She pointed out a long, snakelike creature with four pairs of legs, and then caught it with a quick motion, killing it instantly.

  Phaedrus said, “I would not have guessed there was so much here; it looks like a waste, empty.”

  She nodded. “It is so. There is abundance if we know how to look, and we take but what we need.”

  “People do not do that, but grow things of their own and worry if there will be enough.”

  She said, “There will never be enough to still the fear that there might not be enough. But they do not fear scarcity; they fear fear. Look—we may live on these things, but we will not grow content on them.”

  He said, “I understand; to become content is to fear that it will end. We are better a little hungry, I think.” He gestured with his head toward the east, generally. “They feared change so much they made a world that slowed it to nearly zero, but in the end, a pinprick released the years of accumulated pressure, and so it burst.”

  “You did that.”

  “Yes.”

  “Why? Were you their enemy? Was there a revenge to be?”

  He waited, and then said, “I knew them not. They were strangers to me. They saw to that in the Mask Factory, that I had no past. They… took me apart, and reassembled me, leaving some things out. I did not know it then, but I only knew what they wanted me to do, which was perform a simple, single act that would change the world. The reality
of a world, of its people, rests on a single person, low and unknown, changing, shifting slowly, and if you remove that person, you can change the world. That was what I knew, and so I did.” He sighed, deeply. “And now it seems like a dream, like some strange vision.”

  “But you changed… And see—the natural world is the same. At a given moment, it all rests on a single creature which we do not know or understand. And you could see this person!”

  “I could… calculate who it was—that is the best way to say it.”

  “You can still do this?”

  “Yes… They gave me enough so I would believe it, but they thought the idea nonsense.”

  Meliosme laughed to herself, a secretive little chuckle. “What fools they were! To launch a person on the only path he could take, and give him something to believe. Of course he would do it!”

  He said, “So I learned. There are many phases to it…”

  “You could extend it to the natural world.”

  He thought for a moment, and said, “Yes, but it would be… different. I would have to use other symbols, use different manipulations. But then after that… it would be simpler.”

  “Then you will use your art, and understand, and you will tell us… and we will listen. They made you for a weapon, but you will be a gentle hand bringing water to a thirsty land.” Then she said, “You found the person, and sent him to the darkness, and the world changed. Then what happened? Who has it set upon now?”

  “When you take the base away, it flickers for instants among others, but not long enough for stability to be attained. Later, the center slows and settles on another, as obscure as the first. I have not looked hard since then, and the only operation I have done suggested that things were still in flux. It feels that way now to me, but it’s trying to find a place.”

  “Then you can do it without the symbols, the paper, the figures—in your head. You can feel it directly.”

  “I was Rael, I was Damistofia, I am Phaedrus, and through all of those I wished to forget it.”

  “But you cannot; you will turn the evil they set upon you to a good—a worthy thing.”

  “I fear the use of it again.”

  “I understand. But you have changed yourself, and you may not return to what you were, but you will have to learn to live with what you are. I can help.”

  He wanted then to ask why, but felt the air between them growing delicate, and he did not wish to have the issue resolved just then; it felt right as it was, and so he remained silent, and let it be. She said, “Come along, well share with the others, and set them on their way, to Clisp.”

  Together, they climbed back down into the sheltered little valley, really more a dry wash, to the place where they had been the night before. Then they had done nothing, but coming back from the uplands, he felt an odd sense of immediate past intimacy with Meliosme, as if she had shared something with him; like the sharing of sex, but more intimate in a way that the sweet muscular anodyne of coupling could not reach.

  They looked for Emerna and Janea, and found them cowering under a bush with nodding circular leaves, hiding. Not far away stood a solitary bosel, observing, so it appeared, its head crooked comically to the side. This was the first time Phaedrus could remember seeing one, and at first he had to force himself to see it, so odd were its outlines, suggestive of parts of animals he could recall, although he did not know where he knew them from. It stood upright on two legs, a bulbous, birdlike body, small, apparently fragile arms, and a gangling long neck supporting a comical head, round at the back, crowned with expandable, flexible ears, two eyes overshadowed not by brows but feathery appendages that looked like rubbery moth antennae. The snout was long and tubular, with one large orifice and two small ones. The upper body was furred, but the legs were bare and fluted with muscle.

  He said quietly, “It is dangerous?”

  Meliosme walked out into the open, casually, answering over her shoulder, “This one, no. A young buck, only curious.” She made a ducking motion and then turned gracefully about, as if dancing, ending by repeatedly crossing her forearms. To Phaedrus’s amazement, the bosel responded with a little hop which took it erratically to one side, where it turned its snout to the sky and vented a soft breathy whistling, which suggested amusement, or whimsy. Then, with one last sidelong glance toward the two hiding women, it abruptly turned and loped off up the wash somewhere to the north, vanishing among the rocks.

  Meliosme said, “When they’re young, they find humans fascinating. They watch them all the time in the wild like this. I don’t know what they find so interesting. Later, they become more erratic, unpredictable, although it seems to me that it makes sense to them, somehow, that it is I who don’t understand the web here we have trespassed into. That one will wander off, although he will keep us in sight for a while, or within scent.”

  “There won’t be others?”

  “They’re solitaries—scroungers and scavengers who don’t tolerate company very well. They maintain contact at night, when they are active, by sounds which you have doubtless heard. I do not know the import of the sounds, if there is any. They seem to communicate by gesture, and some of the basic motions I have learned.”

  “You told it something…

  “I told it to go away. It laughed and sent back that it didn’t matter.”

  “That sounds easy.”

  “It’s not. The key motions are short and easy to do wrongly, so that you send a garble, which makes them hostile, or worse, you send something which offends them individually. Even that young one could be dangerous if provoked. They are nowhere near as fragile as they look, or as awkward. They can move fast, and they can… anticipate things. It accepted me as its superior immediately, but it also knew I had other interests: you, them. It might have moved on you. Myself I can protect, but I have never tried to defend another—that is an awkward situation.”

  They walked toward the bush from which Emerna and Janea were now emerging and Phaedrus said, “They sound almost intelligent. Have others tried to contact them?”

  “Only such as I, gatherers, and others of the wild places. And I cannot say whether they have minds.”

  They shared the food they had brought, and rested, saying little among themselves. Phaedrus saw that Emerna had assumed a kind of responsibility for the ragged Janea, and had dismissed him in her mind, and he did not wish to change that. On the other hand, he could see that she saw and resented his easy relationship with Meliosme, who with a night’s rest had changed from a haggard prisoner expecting to be tormented and eaten to an alert and confident person at home in the wilds. He thought he caught a reluctance in Emerna to stay at this place, overlaid by a burning desire to get away from it.

  They spoke of the bosel, and Emerna admitted that she was terrified of them. Janea claimed that Meliosme could have called bosels to save them had she wished.

  Meliosme shook her head and smiled softly. “That’s why people have never tried to learn about them; you can’t get them to do things for you. They don’t seem to understand doing for something else. Besides, one would have done us no good, even if I could have called one, which I can’t—they have never answered my imitations of their calls—they don’t do anything together except procreate.”

  The sun was shining and soon reached the zenith, and the light began to fall in the slanting rays of early afternoon. Janea seemed agitated, eager to be on the way.

  Phaedrus said, “You will, then, want to go on to Clisp?”

  Emerna answered, “At least the Serpentine.” To Meliosme she said, “Do you know the way?”

  Meliosme said, “Yes. But I do not wish to go there, so I will tell you how to go. I will stay—” here she gestured westwards—“there in Zolotane.”

  “What about you?” Emerna directed this at Phaedrus.

  “Clisp is too far for me. I have things to unravel for which I need an emptier land.”

  “There are still empty places in Clisp.”

  “It needs doing no
w.”

  “Very well.” Emerna gathered herself and got to her feet with what seemed to Phaedrus to be an attitude of anger, but nothing came of it. She turned and offered her hand to Janea, who took it and got up, too, eager to be on the way. Emerna said, “I suppose the sooner we start…” And with no more formality than that, they started out northward again, following the creekbed as it followed the course of the defile it had cut.

  As the slanting light changed slowly to twilight, and then evening, they followed the watercourse ever upward and to the northwest. Soon damp patches appeared in the riverbed sand, and then small stretches of standing water, and by evening proper they were walking along the edges of a small creek. The vegetation changed, too; as they went up, the bare ground and vines gave way to a tussocky ground cover, and there began to be trees, with short, barrellike trunks, supporting gnarled and twisted wide-spreading branches. It was quiet, peaceful country, the aisles in the forest filled with golden light falling on the tussocks that covered the ground between the trees. There was no sign of inhabitants, either native or Oerlikon or alien, a fact which Phaedrus noted and commented on. Meliosme pronounced the open forest a notorious haunt of bosels, and was anxious to be past it before nightfall, for that reason, and Emerna and Janea agreed. As if to underline her words, they began to hear some calls from the east, exhausted, tenuous wailing sounds that seemed to have no great import to them. Phaedrus listened carefully and thought to identify at least four separate callers, but they all seemed far away.

  “Not so!” Meliosme asserted with some confidence. “They are great deceivers, standing within arm’s-length and pretending to be miles away. But those you hear are of no matter, near or far; if they were interested in us, you would hear calls from all around. Those kinds of sounds soon end—the ones you hear—and no more is seen or heard of them.”

  What she had said seemed to be borne out a little later on, when the calls, after a rough, rhythmic association, faded out, not suddenly, but as if the callers were finished and had no more to say. But despite Meliosme’s arguments to the contrary, Phaedrus thought he had heard distinct repeating patterns among the odd, diverse calls, which had at first seemed alike only in tone and type of utterance.