Medusa: A Tiger by the Tail

by Jack L. Chalker

  “Archers!” Hono screamed. “They’re coming for us!”

  All the tension flooded back as the archers jumped up and moved forward. There was still snow falling, but it was light, and we had about a kilometer’s visibility. Out there, on the ice, we could see four of the creatures rise from the ice and into the air, where they grouped, suspended as neatly as a neg-grav car or copter.

  Ching joined us, saw them, and gasped. “Are they using some kind of flying belt or what?”

  I shook my head in wonder. “I don’t think so, honey. The bastards have wings!”

  She frowned. “Where are the tentacles? Those huge things.,.?”

  Hono pointed. “They’re still there—see? But they retract, somehow, into the head, making a short ring of horns. Demon’s horns!”

  “They’re well out of range of my bow,” Quarl said in frustration. “Are they coming on, or not?”

  “I’m not sure,” Hono responded, “but this is getting on my nerves. I wish they’d do. something.”

  “They are,” I said softly. “They’re showing us what they can do, more or less. I don’t think they are coming—I think they’re just giving us a demonstration that they’ll still be there when we come back.”

  Hono shook her head in wonder. “What creatures can these be that are so insane? Part creature of the sea, part insect that flies and crawls, and is that thing hanging down a tentacle or some sort of tail?”

  “They’re all of it, and probably more,” I responded. “They’re living, breathing, thinking creatures that look as if they were put together by a committee, but put together for every environment, every weather or climactic condition, every land form or sea type. Given the kinds of air and temperatures within our broad range, I think they could live on any world I’ve ever seen. They sure scare the hell right out of me.”

  “Those are no demons,” Hono said flatly, surprising me. “I don’t know what they are, but they are no demons.”

  I nodded. “You’re right on that. They’re a smart, tricky, clever race from out there in the stars somewhere.”

  Ching looked at me in mixed shock and surprise. “Then those are the aliens we were told of?”

  “Some of them, anyway. I suspect these are bred for just this kind of job. Manufactured to survive up here and kill anybody who comes along. If we can genetically breed what we need, there’s no reason they can’t go one step further.”

  “But then they should have the city weapons, or worse,” Sitzter noted. “If they have such things, why do they not just sit back where they are and blast us off of here?”

  I was wondering that myself. It didn’t make sense for them to expose themselves like this and yet have no backup of their own equivalent of laser pistols and whatever, which would make short work of us. “Maybe—I know this sounds crazy, but just maybe it isn’t allowed around here,” I suggested. “It looks like they don’t like to come on the mountain for some reason, either, so I think we’re safe for now—until we start back, anyway.” I turned and looked at the imposing Mount of God, most of it hidden in cloud. “Shall we see what’s so special about this mountain, then?”

  Hono grinned. “As long as we are in the area, why not?”

  We climbed up and away from the aliens, and soon the buzzing faded then stopped altogether. What they were going to do I had no idea, but I had new respect for those Free Tribesmen who’d made it here and back. No wonder most of them became highly respected priests and shamans of their tribes.

  Once anybody reached the sacred mountain the instructions became pretty vague—just climb away from the flats a bit, everybody had said, then spend one night there, and that would be it.

  We had lost just about everything except those weapons we retained and the hair skirts and snowshoe boots we wore, and which we now had to discard to climb. It took less than two hours before we came on an area that was small, reasonably flat, and had, surprisingly, some exposed rock, rock that looked far darker and mineral-rich than the usual stuff found on Medusa. But it provided a sheltered area, with something of a rock overhang—if we trusted the ice on top to stay put—and seemed as good a place as any to camp out. The wind and snow were whipping themselves up anyway, and there didn’t seem much point in further exploration during the few remaining hours of daylight. We did, however, look around the small redoubt and found some signs that we were far from the first to ever reach it or spend the night there. In some of the exposed rock, for example, were carved designs, petroglyphs of some sort, although most of them were pretty obscure and it was impossible to take any meaning from them.

  Ching examined the drawings with fascination. “What do you think they used to carve them? The lines are so deep and smooth it almost looks as if they were carved by some weapon or machine.”

  I nodded, but hadn’t a clue.

  The petroglyphs were useful for an hour’s diversion, but that was about it. The wind was up, the snow blowing all around us, and it was growing dark. We eight survivors gathered around mostly for comfort rather than conversation.

  “You know, I’ve been thinking about these aliens,” Ching commented, snuggling up to me.

  “Who hasn’t?”

  “No, I mean those retractable tentacles on their heads. Remind you of anything?”

  For a moment I didn’t know what she was talking about, then, suddenly, it hit me. Medusa. The symbol of the planet and its government, taken from some ancient human religion. The woman with live snakes for hair. “Yeah, I see what you mean,” I told her. “But if I remember right, you were supposed to turn to stone if you looked at Medusa. They finally killed her by making her look at her own face in a mirror or something.”

  And that, oddly, was very appropriate to me, in a perverse sort of way. Medusa, the planet, had been my mirror; it had reflected all that was wrong or corrupt in me and all that was wrong or corrupt in my society. How odd that such an effect would happen here, on a world filled with those kicked out of my old society and their offspring. I couldn’t help but wonder if the whole Warden system didn’t have that effect. This was a bad world indeed, an evil world, far worse than the banal sameness of the civilized worlds, yet it served, it served….

  Sitting there, holding Ching close to me and reflecting on all of life as one was supposed to on a holy mountain, I drifted off into sleep. It was a deep, almost hypnotic sleep, partially a result of the release of tension from the day’s horrors, but it was not dreamless. In fact, it was filled with images, stray thoughts, and odd sensations that made no sense.

  I dreamed that I was in the presence of something great, something that was very, very young yet eons old—an alien force that was neither friendly nor unfriendly, neither monstrous nor beautiful, but strangely detached and indifferent to all around it.

  There was a great energy and vitality to it, and a tremendous sense of self-importance. It was a believer in gods, for it was a god and a true one, as its very existence proved—for did not all else in the universe, both matter and energy, exist to serve, feed, and nurture it? It was worshiped, yes, by lessors with some small gram of intelligence, yet had no sense of obligation or caring for those who worshiped it. It was worshiped because it was a god, and gods were so far above mortal beings that worship was simply the natural way of things. All who did not recognize this and worship and serve would die, of course, as it never died; but the inevitability of their death was not so much a threat as a matter-of-fact statement of belief. Ultimatums were for lessers and were, in fact, not really understood by it, nor were threats or any other petty human emotions. These things would be because that was the natural order, the way things were.

  I had no sense of the thing’s shape or form, and calling what I perceived thoughts was not really correct. Rather, these attitudes were simply radiated from its mind into mine, and translated there—inadequately—into terms I could grasp.

  Beyond that initial perception, the impressions were beyond any hope of translation by my mind; here were concepts too alie
n, too complex, too fast for me to grab hold of, let alone understand. Only the vastness of its intellect, and that curious feeling of ancient newness pervaded my consciousness. I had the feeling of failing, falling into the mind of the thing itself, and there was a danger of being engulfed, swallowed by that which was totally incomprehensible. My mind shut it out, refused to allow the tremendous onrush of sensory input so alien to humanity that it could not even be correlated. In a sense, I had the feeling that the thing was aware of me, yet mostly indifferent to my existence. Or—maybe not. I felt a gentle nudge, a mental shift from it that swept me away from its tremendous, unfathomable presence, and I found myself shrinking, shrinking into nothingness, into a microbial world. No, I was not merely swept there—I was relegated to it by imperious decree.

  And, slowly, I became aware once more of my body, but not in the normal way. It was as if, suddenly, a new sense was opened to me, allowing me somehow to see, hear, feel every single part of my body.

  I heard the Warden colonies within me sing to one another, and while the sound was incomprehensible the sensation was pleasing and powerful. The Wardens, I realized, were in constant communication, cell to cell, throughout my entire body, yet they were not, in any normal sense, alive. Information was flowing in their song, though, information flowing into my body and into the Wardens from some source I. could not trace.

  I knew I was still dreaming, yet, strangely, I felt wide awake, my mind never clearer or more sensitive. Somehow, I knew, I could interrupt and tap that flow, even if I could not understand it. And, in this new way of seeing, I realized, for the first time, just how unhuman I had become. Each cell an individual, each cell infinitely programmable, operating as a whole but not limited to it. The information for almost any order was there, the information for any transformation of any cell, group of cells, or the entire organism in fact, and while I could not understand the source of that information or the language the Wardens used to govern the cells and cellular interaction, I could speak to them, mentally, and they would respond.

  When I awoke it was dawn. Things looked the same. Everything and everybody looked the same, and yet … Awake, fully conscious, I could still see, still sense the Wardens inside of me. Something very strange had in fact happened in the night I’d spent on the mountain—I had become my dream. Not the dream of the god-thing, but the dream of a new and formless creature, whose collective consciousness totally owned and controlled his body and every cell in it. The last link not only with the Confederacy but with any sort of humanity as I knew or understood it had been cut.

  In a real sense, I was as alien as those terrors on the ice.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Saints Are Not Gods

  The reaction to all this varied a bit with the other seven on the mountaintop, but it was clear that we had all been profoundly changed by the experience. The few who were willing to come out of the clouds and compare notes, such as Hono, Ching, and myself, found that our primary encounters with the presence, whatever it was, were quite different and highly subjective, though the discovery of our own bodies and the Wardens within was almost exactly the same.

  “But what was it?” Ching wanted to know. “I mean—is it really a god?”

  “Most of the others have no doubts whatsoever,” I noted, also gesturing a little for some caution. I didn’t want to start any fights over theology at this point, and lowered my voice to a whisper. “I think, somehow, we were in contact with the alien mind. Or an alien mind, or something. I think their power plant and base is under here somewhere, and somehow, maybe through the Warden organism, we connected.”

  “But the thoughts and pictures were so strange,.. “

  I nodded. “That’s why we call ‘em aliens. We were somehow inside a mind so different from ours, with so little in common, that we could hear each other, maybe be aware of each other, but make no real common connection. If you were born unable to see and then, for a short period, saw a picture of a forest from the air with no explanation of what it was, that would be akin to what we experienced.”

  “And how we—feel—now?”

  “Somehow that connection sensitized us to the Wardens. When we contacted that other mind, it was through the Wardens, somehow. And when we broke contact with it, our brains had been taught how to keep in contact with those in our own bodies. Honey, we haven’t changed a bit. Everybody on Medusa is like this. But we’re some of the very few aware of the fact.”

  “Hey! Tari! Look at me!” Hono’s voice called, and we all turned and gasped at what we saw. It wasn’t Hono at all, but a beautiful, stately goddess, the epitome of grace and beauty and strength—an angel. “I just pictured this in my mind and told my body what that picture was—and I had it!”

  Just like that, I thought wonderingly. As simple as that.

  We spent the rest of the morning experimenting and found that there was little we couldn’t do if we willed it. Hair came and-went, sex changed and changed again in a matter of minutes, in a curious process that seemed much like stop-motion photography. What you willed you could become, and the others could watch it happen. It was, in a sense, a new art form. Even mass seemed unimportant; the Wardens not only obeyed commands, but seemed able to reduce size if needed or create more cells out of energy. To be sure, it was easier to create the new mass than to get rid of it, since getting rid of it turned out to be extremely painful, but to some it was worth the price.

  Since making such changes demanded a tremendous knowledge of biology, biophysics, biochemistry, you name it—knowledge all of us lacked—it became obvious that the Wardens translated the mental visions into reality by drawing on a vast body of knowledge beyond us. Where? I wondered. Some vast, high-speed computer someplace was feeding the things. It had to be.

  Was the computer in fact what we had somehow connected with the night before? An alien computer, whose programming would also be so alien and so complex it would appear to us as a godlike superbeing? It was a good theory, anyway, and a computer had to be located someplace. That, in turn, would mean that the Warden organism was not a natural thing at all, but something artificial, something introduced into the environment of the four worlds. And who but those ugly bastards out there on the ice could have done that?

  So they were here, below the waters, perhaps by choice, when the first exploiter teams arrived. They hadn’t discovered the place—they had been here all along. Did that mean, then, that they could do this as well as we—or better? The combined powers of all four worlds, perhaps—shape-changing, body-switching, the power to create and destroy by sheer force of will…

  But if that were true, then why the robots? Why deal with the Four Lords at all, for that matter—let alone allow them to run their clandestine war against the Confederacy? And why that dangerous game of cat-and-mouse on the ice?

  The clearer things became, the muddier they became. I was fascinated by the problem and hoped to spend a lot of time on it, but only in an intellectual capacity. I was still sincere about my vow, and this was my retirement mission—although it had a wonderful payoff.

  “We have talked with God, and She has made us Her angels!” Quarl whooped with pride and glee, and that seemed to be the general consensus. Only the more pragmatic Hono, a doubter to begin with and with a somewhat wider intellectual horizon than the rest, was anywhere near restrained. Yet even she was exultant with the new power, which was as good or greater than promised.

  “It has occurred to me that the Elders have been here and have received this gift,” she remarked to me. “Ugly old crones, aren’t they?”

  I grasped her meaning at once, for the same thought had also occurred to me. Although this ability might fade with age or lack of regular workouts, the fact was that it was almost impossible to accept those Elders’ appearances as more than theatrical facades at this point. The others, too, understood the implications, and I was glad to pounce on them.

  “Think about what that means,” I warned them. “This power is to be used when necess
ary, and only for good, not to frighten or amuse yourself or others. You have great power, but you also have a sacred trust now. This isn’t something that can be passed on or taught. We all earned it. Now we must return to use it wisely.”

  That statement sobered them a bit, as I hoped. I was anxious to leave before too much of the day was gone. New power or no, I didn’t want to cross that stretch at night with our horror-show friends out there waiting for us, and I really didn’t care to spend another night on this mountain. Once the connection had been established it would be easier the next time, and a few of us were far enough into madness now that no added exposure was needed.

  Hono picked up her spear. “We walk down, then.”

  I thought a moment. “No. Maybe we don’t. Let me try a little experiment here. Be brave, and don’t be too surprised if it doesn’t work.” I looked at Ching, winked, then concentrated, drawing on my long practice of mind control and autohypnosis.

  At once I began to change. I knew it, could see it, feel it, even as I willed it, and I knew that the message was adequate even as the process started.

  The others, Ching included, watched in amazement at the transformation as my hunch paid off. Somewhere in that Warden computer there were the blueprints for a very large creature that flew.

  “What is it?” several cried in alarm.

  “How the hell do I know?” I croaked back. “But it has talons to pick up and rend prey, and it flies. Draw upon yourselves, become this thing as I did, and have a little faith. Then we’ll fly back over that cold waste!”

  That very thought—of flying strongly for a day or less rather than three days of dangerous walking—was enough. Now, for the first time, I could see in the others the creature I had willed up from some unknown source. Great, black man-sized birds, with oddly human eyes and curious, twisted beaks and taloned, powerful feet that could grab and rend if need be.