Charon: A Dragon at the Gate

by Jack L. Chalker

  She laughed at that herself, but it brought up an interesting question. All right, I was male—but a male what! I asked her about it.

  “I wondered about that myself,” she said. “According to Grandmother, if we were to, ah, make it, right now nothing would happen. But as soon as the wa inside you gets the rest of you straight, it might just be that we could reproduce our own kind. It’s not certain, but it’s been known to happen. We might start a whole new race!” She looked thoughtful. “Darvus Lacochus.” “Sounds like a disease.”

  She laughed. “You know, this is wonderful, Park. I feel more alive than I have in two years!”

  I could see her joy, and even feel good about it. I liked her, too. Her speech was a little rough, and occasionally became even rougher. She was uneducated and inexperienced, but she was a bright, intelligent woman whose potential had been blunted by a man’s cruel ego. And she was certainly tougher and more decisive than Zala—the old Zala, anyway. I idly wondered what the new Zala was like.

  “Look,” I said, “you’re going to have to fill me in. What the hell happened back there in Bourget? And who did it? And why?”

  She sighed. “Well, for a long time there’s been a devil cult. You know that?”

  I nodded.

  “Well, anyway, it was mostly bored and frustrated women trying to get a little of the Power. But a year or two ago, things changed. How and who did it I don’t know, but they got kinda taken over by this bigger group that wants to overthrow the government. It’s got a real powerful sorc behind it is all I know.”

  “Koril,” I told her. “Used to be Lord.”

  “Yeah, him, I think,” she agreed. “Anyway, lots of folks liked him better. You didn’t have any creepy guys like that security chief, and no troopers jumping out at you. Well, this sorc also contacted all the changeling colonies. He promised them that when he got back they’d be given Tukyan, the south continent, for their own. There’s few people down there now, and it’s mostly still unexplored, but it’s at least as nice as here, or so I’m told. Well, this was great for the changelings, who have no real life and no future here. The humans went along, too, because we’d be out of their hair. See?”

  I nodded. It was very logical—and good politics on Koril’s part. I was beginning to see how formidable the man was, even without his reputed super magical powers. I had to wonder how Aeolia Matuze was ever able to oust him in the first place, and how she kept her power.

  In a flash, I had it—the only logical answer. She was in the job because she backed the war against the Confederacy. The other three Lords couldn’t care less about Charon—Korman said as much. Who did? The only logical answer was the aliens themselves.

  You didn’t have any creepy guys like that security chief …

  Whose Chief of Security was Yatek Morah? Matuze’s? Yes, but only so long as she followed the correct line. And that meant that it was very possible that the strange man with those strange eyes, that robotlike manner, that incredible power, was not human at all. And that meant that, while Charon was unimportant to the war, it was, for some reason, very, very important to the aliens. Why?

  Aeolia Matuze, with her great ego and dreams of god-hood—the aliens would feed that, and in exchange, she would follow the alien line right where they said. It made sense. I wondered if Koril, even now, realized it? What was one Lord of the Diamond to a race prepared to disrupt and take over a thousand worlds or more?

  “What’cha thinking?”

  I was startled out of my reverie. “Just putting a lot of pieces together in my head. I’ll explain them to you later. We’re going to be together a long time, and it’s a long and complicated story.”

  “Together,” she sighed. “You don’t know how good that sounds.”

  “First, some basics. How come I don’t trip over my tail when I walk or tip over on the run? I feel pretty natural in this body.”

  “It was a good spell, with all the necessaries.”

  I nodded. That was good enough for me. “Okay then—where do we go from here?”

  “Far away,” she responded quickly, “and fairly fast. This place is a day’s march from Bourget, but it’ll soon be crawling with government troops. Probably already is. We have a number of defenses—including the ability to stand absolutely still. You’d be surprised, but big as we are, if we’re all surrounded by green and stay completely still they’ll run right past us.”

  “Handy,” I told her, “but the weaponry suddenly turned a lot more modern around here than I was used to, and the good stuff has heat sensors.”

  She laughed. “So what? They tried them in hunting. Our body temperature’s pretty much the same as our surroundings. They’re nearly useless.”

  I hadn’t thought of that angle. “Still, I’d just as soon be away from here—fast. How well do you know the land beyond this region?”

  “Fair,” she responded. “Worse if we get more than a hundred kilometers from here. I never traveled much. But I know where the roads are, even though we can’t use them—and I have landmarks from maps in my head. They made us memorize a bunch of them.”

  “Good girl,” I told her.

  “You want to join up with the others, then?” She sounded almost disappointed.

  I nodded. “I’ll try and explain why as we go. There’s a lot going on they don’t tell you about.”

  “We’ve still got three weeks to get maybe 800 kilometers,” she told me. “That’s time enough to tell me everything. We were supposed to scatter and live off the land until then.”

  “Gives ‘em plenty of time to capture some of us and force those locations out of us,” I said worriedly.

  “Oh, there’s hundreds of rendezvous spots, and only a very small group was told of one and two alternates. Even if they pick up half the changelings, which I doubt, we still would have an even chance that one or more of ours was still good.”

  “Not the odds I like, but they’re the only ones we have.” I looked around. The fog was coming in even more thickly. “And now’s the time to make tracks for far away.”

  She laughed. “And even those’ll be bunhar tracks.”

  There were, in fact, advantages to this shape.

  I looked around. “I think I’m going to have to find a friendly tree,” I told her. “It goes right through you on an empty stomach.”

  She laughed and pointed randomly. I took her advice, picked a spot, and relaxed, looking down.

  “Oh, so that’s where it is,” I said aloud.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Decision at the Pinnacles

  It was, in some ways, an idyllic three weeks, and it bothered me a bit because I thought of it as such. The fact was, I really enjoyed Darva, person to person, and found within myself the stirrings of feelings I never even knew I had. It was a blow to my own self-image, really, that I should feel this way. The strong, solid, emotionless agent of the Confederacy, who needed nothing and no one—ever. Who was born, bred, and trained to be above such petty human feelings as loyalty, friendship … love? Hadn’t I been the one who couldn’t even pin down the meaning of the word to Zala only a few months ago? Was it possible, I found myself wondering, that loneliness was not something only inferior people suffered? Had I, in fact, been as much an alien and an outsider to my own culture as Darva had been to hers? That thought, I knew, was dangerous. It struck at the very value system of the Confederacy which I still told myself I believed in.

  But had we, in our headlong rush to perfection, somehow left holes somewhere in the human psyche? Or was it rather just a new body, a new form, new hormones and whatever that created those boles where they’d never been before? For the moment, I preferred to think the latter—although, from a practical standpoint, it made no real difference when it was happening to me.

  Several times during the three weeks we roamed the jungles of Charon, I was on the brink of telling her my real identity, my real mission, but I always held back. Nothing was to be gained from doing so now, and there was always time
later on. I got to know her, though, as thoroughly as I knew anybody, and I liked what I found. She was a quick study, too, entranced by my tales of the civilized worlds and the frontier she would never see. She had less trouble than I would have thought with the alien/Four Lords backdrop, although I suspect that she thought of the aliens only as a new form of changeling. When you’re bright green, 215 centimeters tall, have a horn and a tail, the concepts of “alien” and “nonhuman” just don’t come across quite as well. But she understood that alien did not mean form as much as mind. If, as I suspected, Morah was an alien, she was all for saving a humanity she’d never see nor ever be a part of.

  Some aspects of the new form were definitely affecting my mind, though. I found myself increasingly emotional, and increasingly aware of that emotion. I still retained all my training and its gimmicks, but I felt everything with an intensity I’d never known before, both positive and negative.

  Our new form, which I shortened to darvas, wasn’t at all bad, either. We were enormously strong, and despite being large, we could indeed fade into any green underbrush, then sprint faster than any human could run. The talons were handy as weapons, although we hadn’t had to use them for that, and for cutting and slicing food of no matter what sort, and they made no difference to us, since our skin was extremely thick and tough—and it shed water like a waterproof coat.

  There was no question they were out looking for us, though. We saw soarers on many occasions, some coming very close to the treetops or open spaces, occasionally with troopers spray-firing into clumps of growth just to panic anything and flush it out The roads were under constant patrol by more of those nasty-looking troopers as well as some locals. Still, as long as we didn’t run into a sorc or an apt and betray ourselves, we found it little trouble to stay out of the way.

  The only trouble, in fact, came near the end of our jungle exile. We had both become easily accustomed to the jungle, a fearsome place for most humans. Our hides were too tough for the insects to penetrate, and we were relatively immune to predators and strong enough to break free of vines and mud. It was, in fact, a wondrous sort of place, the kind of place where there was endless fascination, endless beauty. Although we didn’t really realize it, what we were doing in psych parlance was “going wild,” totally adapting to an environment for which we were, quite literally, designed.

  What brought it home to us was when we ran into the bunhar. Now, we’d seen and encountered many of the large creatures of jungle and swamp, including hundreds I’d had no idea existed before, but mostly we’d managed to steer clear of them—and they seemed to accept us as well But this one was different I will never be sure just what we did wrong. Maybe he was just horny and smelled Darva. But, anyway, he didn’t avoid us; he challenged us with a great roar and snarling teeth. In fact, be looked to me like he was all nice, sharp, pointed teeth.

  Despite some overlarge fanglike incisors, we had the omnivore’s complement in a human-type mouth and face. It was a no-win situation, but try as we might to avoid him he challenged all the more, and we realized we had a fight on our hands. Oddly, I felt a rush of adrenaline or something similar like I’d never known before. While the big saurian sat there, snarling, I found myself overcome with anger and rage—and heard similar, animalistic snarlings from Darva. Without even thinking, both of us charged the brute, who was about our size, heads down and horns straight.

  The bunhar had teeth, all right, but no horn, and I don’t think he was quite prepared for our sudden charge. He reared back on his tail to protect his head, and both our horns penetrated his upper chest, while our talons ripped at him. Again and again we plunged and ripped into him, and he roared in pain and anger as his blood gushed all over his chest and us. Then Darva whirled around and kicked the creature behind his right leg with her own powerful leg, rearing back on her own tail for maximum effect, and the bunhar toppled.

  In a moment we were both on him, plunging our horns into his vulnerable neck and ripping out flesh and limb. The poor creature never had a chance from the start, not only because of the horn but because, even in our animal rush, we had the advantage of human fighting tactics. The creature was killed outright, and neither of us received more than a slight scratch from the foot talons as we plunged in.

  But when it was dead, the anger, the rage, the sense of power without thought, continued in both of us for some time, and we drank of the dead creature’s blood and ripped off and ate chunks of raw flesh until we could eat no more and it was a bloody mess. Only when the eating was done and the feeling of satisfied lethargy overtook us, did we relax. The great emotions subsided, and rational thought returned.

  For a while neither of us could say anything. Finally, Darva looked at me, as blood-spattered as she, then back at the carcass that was already drawing insects and would eventually draw carrion eaters. “My god, what have we done?” she gasped.

  I looked at her, then at the carcass, then back at her again. I shook my head in tired wonder. “It looks like we’re more animal than even you thought”

  She looked dazed, slightly horrified. “It—it wasn’t the bunhar. I mean, the damned thing asked for it. It was—after.” She dipped her hand in a small pool of bunhar blood, brought it up to her nose, then licked it off her fingers. “My god, Park—it felt good! And it tasted …”

  “I know,” I replied wearily. The whole experience was wearing off now, leaving me feeling very tired, muscles aching a bit, and aware now of my scratches. I knew she was feeling the same.

  She was still in that shocked daze. “I—I’ve been this way for over two years, and I never felt like that before, never did anything like that before,”

  I nodded wearily. “Your Isil was more creative than you thought I suspect that this was to be the next stage if you didn’t cave in, as you weren’t—if your Gneezer even remembered you anymore. It was probably a good idea at the time, long forgotten. If the change wouldn’t do it, they would put you off in the swamps, where your animal instincts would take over. You’d go wild, either winding up with a bunhar group or crawling back to them.” I paused for a moment. “Still, it’s not all bad.”

  She looked at me strangely. “What in hell is good about it?”

  “Consider. We—the two of us—killed that mass of muscle and teeth, and did it pretty easily. We instinctively used all our best biological weapons against him. He outweighs us by a couple of hundred kilos, probably, and he was born a predator. But we’re a more fearsome predator. That maneuver that toppled him probably saved us from serious injury. It’s something you did almost automatically, but it would never occur to such a pea-brain as him. We’re the bosses now. The king and queen of Charon’s jungles, totally adapted to our element We have nothing whatsoever to fear while we’re in that element.”

  “But—the blood. God! It was like a shock, an orgasm. It Was like a supercharge, the ultimate drug stimulant! Even now, repelled as I am, I crave the taste of it”

  She was right So did I, and it was something that was going to be hard to ignore.

  I sighed. “Well, I’d say well probably keep it under control, but maybe have to give into it every once in a while. We’re killers now, Darva. Natural predators. It’s the bill that goes with this form and we simply have to accept it.”

  She looked dubious. “I—I don’t know. Park—what if it had been a man? One of those troopers?”

  My training was coming to the fore, my mind sorting and placing the new facts and choosing inevitable courses of action. It would be far harder for Darva, I knew, far harder, but she would have to eventually accept one basic fact and live with it.

  “We’re no longer human, Darva,” I told her flatly. “We’re something else entirely. Frankly, as long as the man is an enemy, I can see no difference between spearing him and shooting him.

  “But—cannibalism!” She shivered.

  “If I ate you, it would be cannibalism,” I said realistically. “But a human is just another smart animal.”

  She sh
ook her head. “I—I don’t know.”

  “You’ll have to accept it, Darv, or go nuts,” I told her.

  “But I wouldn’t worry about it. Back with our own, back in intelligent company with ready food supplies, I doubt if our condition will be any problem at all. Only out here, in the jungle.”

  She said nothing for a while, and we more or less slept off the experience. When we awoke it was nearly dark, but we found a stream and washed the caked blood and remains from each other, feeling a little more like rational people and less like predators after we did.

  Still, she could ask, “Park—those aliens you spoke of. Aren’t we aliens, too? Particularly now?”

  I didn’t really have a ready answer for that one.

  Despite the moralizing, we repeated our orgy the next day—deliberately. This time we found a small female uhar with a wounded leg who had been left by her herd to die because she could no longer hunt food. Such a target of opportunity was quite literally irresistible, incredibly easy, and also easy to defend to our consciences since the creature would have died more agonizingly anyway. Still, the ease and quickness of the decision and the high emotion—“anticipation” I guess would be the word—of the kill actually bothered me more than Darva. My whole life and self-image was based on my absolute confidence in my ability to be completely in control at all times, to be able to analyze and evaluate every situation with cold, dispassionate logic. To be able to give in to such base, animal—literally animal—instincts so easily was disturbing. To enjoy the experience so much was even more disturbing.

  As for the hunting and killing, humans had been doing that to animals since the dawn of time. Though the civilized worlds knew meat only as a synthetic, those on the frontier certainly knew it in the same way ancient man on ancestral Earth had. Here on Charon people made their livings hunting game and fishing and eating their catch, and those who did this work enjoyed it. The fact that the people of Montlay and Bourget, among others, had their meat ground or cut and cooked and seasoned so they no longer really thought of their meal as an animal that had to be butchered only eased their minds a bit Darva and I were no different—we were simply eliminating the hypocrisy. Looking at it in that way we both found it much easier to move fully into our roles as predators.