by Susan Kite
“Is that a baby Ologrian?” she asked.
“A pre-morphic youngling,” Greelon informed her.
“Is the rest of what you showed me some type of communication?”
Greelon looked astonished and then shook his head. “I guess they wouldn’t have taught you how to read since you’d be going to a primitive planet.”
“To read?”
“The lines, marks and shapes all have meaning if you know what they mean.”
Corree thought of the times she had followed animal signs and wondered if it was the same. “Could you teach me the meanings?”
“You want to learn to read Ologrian?”
She pointed to the picture showing on the wall. “I want to know what this is all about.” Corree turned back to Greelon. “Do you think I can learn?”
“Do I think…?” He made a choking noise deep in his throat. “Of course you can learn! What you had to learn on Mendel to survive—you can learn anything!”
Corree was excited. If she could learn to read these information containers she could find out for herself what Greelon’s people were like.
Whatever else Greelon was supposed to do on the ship, he put it aside to teach her. She learned the names of the stars and star systems she had seen out of the observation port. Her favorite was Mulladar. It was a relatively close nebula that changed color and shape often. Sometimes it was a flowing green, other times it was tightly spiraled yellow. Sometimes it beat with a rhythmic cadence that soothed her. It made her feel better that there were even stars that could mutate.
On the other hand, the reading was almost impossible. After several days, Corree was ready to give up her quest to learn written Ologrian. There were so many different marks and symbols and she had learned a scant few dozen. Trying to remember that they were based on pictures didn’t help a great deal. Most of the concepts were totally alien to her.
As she grew more comfortable with Greelon, she asked about Riss. He was still confined, unable to get used to the Ologrians, ready to attack one at the slightest provocation. “Why can’t I go see him? He knows me.”
“You are also in the form of an Ologrian. We can’t take that chance yet.”
“He wouldn’t attack me.” But Greelon was adamant and she had to be patient.
****
Greelon had to constantly remind himself that Corree was human. It was uncanny how Ologrian she was in appearance; how Ologrian she acted. He found that reminding himself of her origins didn’t bother him anymore. She was a youth that had been used by her people and was still being used—this time by his. She had never had a chance for growth-play. The youth centers on Alogol allowed the young to play and explore, even for a period of time after their first metamorphosis. Their learning was steeped in play.
From what Corree had told him, she was barely out of her first stage when she had been sent to Mendel. Nine human years old? And responsible for a group of humans younger than herself? No wonder she felt guilt for the one they lost. However, would the The Head and The Claw consider that when they decided what to do with these youngling humans? The Claw, Supreme Commander Garinsh, and The Head, High Judge Mekron, had wanted Corree and Riss destroyed when they had learned of the Federation’s attempt to unleash a plague on their people. It was only his argument that the two humans might be useful that had saved them. Once the plague virus was isolated and countered, he had been directed to learn all he could from them. Their sentence had only been postponed, Greelon was told, not commuted.
Now that he had come to know Corree, Greelon felt himself pinched in the middle of a political rock slide. He had learned much and none of it was of threat to his people, at least from these two humans. What he feared was that Corree and Riss would be taken to the Palace of Science. Once inside, they would have no chance of doing anything except being specimens. Greelon knew that was the other motive of the leaders. They wanted to know more about this ability to mutate these humans had. They wanted to know more about humans.
There was a slight shudder beneath his feet.
“What was that?” Corree asked, her eyes showing alarm.
“I told you we were going to my home world.”
She nodded, a human gesture he found strangely comforting.
“That is the ship adjusting to approaching orbit.”
“Do you have forests on your world, Dr. Greelon?”
He made a soft clicking noise in his throat. She continued to forget he had asked her to call him by the more familiar meta name.
“Sha-Greelon,” she corrected herself with a smile. “Do you have forests?”
“Not like what you are used to, Corree-levret. We have crystalline forests between the equator and the cities at the poles. The plant life has absorbed the mineral properties of the soil and water to harden and survive the harsh wind and dust storms. They are very beautiful, but only the hardiest go to actually see them.”
“Have you?”
“Yes, but I had the wind-sickness for an entire day afterward.”
“It was worth it,” she stated, correctly understanding his feelings.
“It was well worth it. I will show you pictures of it when we arrive at my home.”
“What will happen to me and Riss when we get to Alogol?”
Greelon had wondered when that question would come. “I don’t know, Corree-levret.” He realized he would have to do his best to argue for Corree being considered a diplomat rather than a specimen. He wasn’t sure if The Claw would listen to him. Most likely The Head would, but he couldn’t guarantee it.
“I am still a prisoner.”
“Technically, yes. But I consider you more like a student.”
“You have been very kind to me, Sha-Greelon. Why?”
Why indeed? In the instant before answering her, he thought of all the reasons. “You are still a youngling.” At her bristling demeanor he hastened on. “In our society, you are indeed still a youngling. You would be in an educational facility, but it would be one that allowed you to enjoy your youth even as you learned the things you need to live in our society. You would be with friends and not leading a group of pre-metamorphic younglings through life-threatening situations.” He paused, trying to be as diplomatic as he could. Most likely his quarters were wired for the listeners, as were hers. “I am impressed with your intelligence and your…adaptability.”
“You mean my mutating abilities?”
“No, I mean your willingness to understand my people…and me.”
Corree apparently understood she was being monitored almost every moment of the day. She took her time before answering. “What good would it do me to be…contrary? It hasn’t done Riss any good.”
The sound of a warning claxon sent them to their cabin’s landing couches.
Chapter Ten
“Your people have used you, Corree-levret.”
Understatement, thought Corree, continuing to stare out the huge, prismatic window in Greelon’s home. Her tail wrapped itself around her waist. It always did when she was pondering a problem. Greelon knew that, too. She frowned at the enormous, lowering red sun. The window’s side facets gathered the waning light and coalesced it in the middle of the room. Greelon sat in his oversized meditation chair in the ruby light, his thin fingers intertwined on his lap.
Corree knew he had spent most of the first six-day arguing in her defense with the leaders of the Ologrians. She was grateful for that, suspecting Greelon had put his own reputation on the line for her and Riss. She had spent that time in a cell wondering when she was going to be taken to the scientists of this world to be poked, prodded, studied, and possibly tortured. It had been a surprise to her when she was allowed to stay with Greelon in his house.
“Join us, Corree. You have a place in my house, and you would have a place in our society.”
Corree closed her eyes and tried to picture her warm, moist home back on Mendel. It was becoming more difficult. The pictures seemed vaguer; fuzzier around the edges of her memory. W
hy did everyone have to interfere in what had been a peaceful existence with her family? Why did the Ologrians want her to choose them and turn her back on her own kind? Corree knew they were both stupid questions, but she couldn’t help resenting everything that had happened in the past four moon cycles. “How is Riss?” she asked, trying to avoid deciding anything.
Greelon sighed. “He still fights us. Corree...”
“I want to see him.”
“You look like the enemy to him.”
“I know, so does he. I still want to talk to him,” Corree insisted.
“Perhaps you can break through the barriers in his mind.”
Her eagerness to see Riss was tempered with doubts by the time Corree reached the security door where he was being held. The guard motioned her through. Corree knew what was going to happen next, but she still cringed when the door hissed shut behind her.
“Riss?” Corree called out softly at the access panel. It had turned translucent so Riss could see her.
His eyes shuttered until they were vertical slits. “Corree?”
She touched an indention on the wall and it slid open enough for her to slip through. A slight whoosh told her it had shut behind her. Now that she was here, she didn’t know what to say. It was then she realized he hadn’t cringed away from her.
“They let you go where you want?” Riss asked resentfully. He was speaking in their language. She wondered again if the Ologrians could understand her language. They probably did. She didn’t want to take the risk.
She shook her head, feeling the stiff pelt hairs shake. “There’s a guard outside and I have to stay inside Greelon’s house. He’s working in his lab, trying to figure out something so you don’t have to stay here.”
“Lab?”
“Don’t you remember? Our dreams? The old ones and their labs?”
He shuddered.
“They haven’t hurt you, have they?”
He paused. “No,” he finally admitted.
“Maybe you’re getting used to them,” Corree ventured, wanting to steer the subject to something more positive.
“I can stand you. I still want to tear any of the others apart.”
“What makes me different? Even my voice is not the same as before.”
Riss pointed to her spiky pelt. “Closer to your real color on Mendel.”
Corree was confused. She looked over her shoulder at the bristly pelt showing under her riala. It was lighter. But how did that happen? And when? Her mutation to Ologrian had happened quite a while ago. Why change now? Did she do it unconsciously because it made Riss more comfortable?
Maybe now was the time to try what she had been able to do with Lenden and Esteya. Riss? Can you hear me?
Riss shook his head. He rubbed the spot where his pointed ears had been before his mutation.
Riss, I’m thinking to you. Can you hear me?
“Corree?”
Don’t talk out loud. Think to me.
Thinking? You can hear me think?
Only when you think to me, she replied.
Riss’s Ologrian mouth widened and turned up in a facsimile of a grin. She returned the grin. Ologrian facial muscles were not made for grinning, she realized, feeling the strain on her jaws. Ologrians had a click-clack to show pleasure.
They can’t hear thoughts.
Riss sighed and his shoulders sagged. What good is it? His whole body seemed tense from the effort of focusing his thoughts to her.
I don’t know, but I’ll think of something and let you know.
“Will you be able to come again?”
“I think Greelon will let me. He really would like you to be out of here.”
Riss looked dubious.
“He’s not all that bad,” she assured him.
“But this isn’t home. You are almost as much a prisoner as I am.”
“I know.” I want to go home, too, Riss, she thought. I promise, I’ll figure something out.
Riss said nothing. He huddled in a corner, his red eyes large in his misery. We’ll never get out of here!
Yes, we will! I promise! Corree wasn’t sure how she could keep that promise, but only that she would. “I have to go now.” She knew the guard was monitoring their conversation. He would be there to let her out in a moment.
I wish I knew how you did that.
She turned back to Riss, bewildered. How I did what?
Changed your pelt color. She looked over her shoulder and was startled to find the color had changed back to what it was before she came to see Riss.
I wish I knew, too, she thought ruefully. She considered her unconscious change all the way back to her living quarters. Her other mutations had occurred because she had been around different life forms or in different places. It had happened whether she wanted it or not. This time, though, she had changed because she had wanted something. She had wanted Riss to feel more comfortable around her. How had she accomplished that? Could she will a mutation? Excitement bubbled up. Maybe if she could learn to change whenever she wanted to, Riss could, too. Her excitement faded. He was still a prisoner, regardless if he could change or not.
Later that night Corree curled up in the corner of her room trying to get comfortable in the nest she had constructed of the extra large coverlet Greelon had given her. It was his formal scientific robe. She had been even more grateful when she understood exactly what it was.
Ologrians normally slept like Mendelian sun bugs, their tails and arms curled around their bodies. They lay on flat, hard sheets of rock with no coverings. Even though she had mutated into an Ologrian form, she could not get used to sleeping like that.
Corree pondered the problem of mutating at will. How could she do it without being seen? There was always a little light, even during sleep cycle. Made it easier to keep an eye on her, she thought with a grimace.
What would she try to change? Fingers. She could more easily tell in the cramped confines of her bed if her fingers had changed. Corree concentrated. Webs. She’d try that. She made space under the robe, flexed and relaxed her fingers. Concentrate! She needed to concentrate. Twinges of pain in her shoulders told her she needed to relax.
Corree recalled Greelon telling her to relax when he taught her Ologrian martial arts. She had not been able to effectively learn Ologrian hand to hand fighting until she had controlled her breathing and thoughts. That was exactly what she needed to do now. Corree forced herself to breathe more slowly and empty her mind of everything that would distract her. Riss, home, all of that had to go. The breathing was easy. The other was harder. Corree focused on her hand, visualized the hard-substance skin of her elongated Ologrian fingers.
She mentally softened the skin, then stretched it, pulled it and formed webs between her fingers and thumb. Corree found herself panting from the effort. Strange feelings in her hands told her she was not just visualizing the actions. It was happening for real! She wiggled her fingers and felt webs fold and stretch. Corree almost shouted her elation.
Now to reverse the process. She calmed down, focused, and felt the changes. Reversing was easier. After returning to Ologrian normalcy, Corree let fatigue take over and she fell asleep, content with her progress.
Each night, she worked on her new found skill. One time she mutated her feet, another time her ears. When she was confident enough of her ability, she changed the hard outer covering to her old pelt. Then Corree made her skin flaps reappear; her air lung/reservoirs convert to over-sized lungs like she had enjoyed in the ocean. The lungs worked hard to suck in enough of the dry air and she quickly changed back. One glorious night, she changed to her undersea form.
When she was comfortable and capable of quickly making those changes, Corree wanted to mutate into something new. Could she transform to something she had never been before? To prepare, Corree studied one of Greelon’s specimens during his science lesson. It was a sand creature with short legs all up and down its armor-plated body. Its general shape reminded her of tree snakes back on Mendel. C
orree felt up and down its body, even examining the deadly barb on the end of its tail. It was about half her size in length.
“Some scientists have theorized that we came from a common ancestor,” Greelon explained, breaking into her study of the animal.
Corree examined the head with its dead ruby-colored, bulbous eyes and sharp fangs that extended half a finger length beyond the closed mouth. She could see a few similarities between it and her Ologrian captors, but to be related? “Do you?” she asked.
Greelon clicked his teeth. “I haven’t decided yet, but I tend to think not.”
“Then where do you believe Ologrians come from, sha-Greelon?”
“The same way you did,” he answered thoughtfully. “At least that’s my theory.”
“Created from something else?”
“Yes. We have not been here that long. At least not as long as the creatures like this sand crawler.” He tapped the table with the end of his tail. “I feel that at one time we knew so much more than we know now.”
Corree gazed at Greelon to see if he was making comparisons with her situation; trying to pull information out of her. There was nothing in the Ologrian’s demeaner that suggested he was doing anything other than talking about his own species. Maybe that was another reason he was interested in her.
“I have thought at various times that Alogol is not our planet of origin; that we came from somewhere else. That is what I believe is most probable.”