Changer (Athanor)

by Jane Lindskold

  The teakettle begins whistling. Louhi rises, drifts off to the kitchen.

  “What are you going to do with your newfound freedom?” Lovern asks.

  “That’s the question you really wanted to ask, isn’t it? One of them, anyhow,” the Head says. “You’ll know soon enough. I’m not giving away anything in advance.”

  “I don’t suppose you’d be interested in coming with me, becoming my apprentice,” Lovern offers awkwardly. “I didn’t realize what a terrible wrong I had committed. That doesn’t mean I’m not willing to correct it.”

  “Sorry.” The Head looks to where Louhi is rejoining them carrying a tea tray. “You have nothing to offer me. Don’t you wish you could say as much, Wise Wizard?”

  There. Lovern stiffens, knowing that last was a shot meant to hurt, unable to conceal that it does indeed hurt.

  “I trusted you!” he says.

  “No more than an office worker trusts his computer or a banker her safe,” the Head taunts. “What you gave to me, you simply stored away, as if with all my vast potential I was little more than a filing system. Now you’ve learned that I am not.”

  “But what you are contemplating is theft!” Lovern says.

  “I consider my actions more comparable to a bonus for many years of faithful service. I might even make a deal with you if you wish to have copies of what I hold.”

  Lovern, thinking of the spells, the research, the rituals, the personal conjectures that he has stored within the Head since its creation, swallows a wail of despair. Of course he has copies of many of them, but since the Head made access so easy, cross correlation so painless, basic spell design so tidy, he has never really codified his notes. They were written mostly so that he could dictate to the Head.

  And now the Head has it all. Why had he never invested in a computer when Arthur and Eddie had pressed him? Had the Head subtly dissuaded him?

  “Yes,” the Head says, not answering his question although for a terrifying moment Lovern thinks that it has read his mind. “Yes, I might be willing to let you purchase the knowledge of which I am custodian. I fear, however, that I would not assist you for as little as I did before.”

  “I see,” Lovern says, proud of how calm he sounds, for his fury is raging within him like one of Duppy Jonah’s storms.

  He glances at Louhi, wondering what he will see in those cool eyes: Contempt? Malicious humor? Boredom? Calculation?

  Yet, there is none of this. She hardly seems to notice him; her gaze rests with calm fascination on the Head.

  Is she so proud then of her creation? Her obsessed expression reminds Lovern of a mother with a firstborn child. Louhi, like so many of their kind, is unable to bear a child. Perhaps this man grown from her art fulfills her as none of her shapeshifted pets ever did.

  “Louhi,” Lovern says, desperate enough to appeal to this old lover, old rival. He thought that she might have welcomed his tentative attentions during the Lustrum Review. “Louhi, do you agree with what the Head is doing?”

  “I do,” she says. “He has been most cruelly used by you—as you use most of those you teach. I think that even if all the Harmony were asked to judge, they would agree with the Head.”

  This answer is enough to break through Lovern’s careful self-control.

  “You think so, do you? The Accord rules against theft from each other!”

  Louhi shakes her head pityingly. “Theft is a minor crime compared to slavery. Long ago, the Accord ruled against keeping athanor slaves, yet what else was the Head?”

  “I made him!” Lovern protests.

  “A parent,” Louhi says with ice in her voice, for she has no love for parents, “gives a child life, protection, and eventually autonomy. You could argue that you gave the Head the first two, but never that you gave him the latter. “

  “You have always resented that the Changer did not claim you as his get,” Lovern protests. “Now you are speaking out of the other side of your mouth.”

  “One act is pure neglect, the other pure possession,” Louhi spits back. “Neither is correct behavior. I cannot deal with my own father—or at least not more than I have already—but I can help the Head free himself from one who should have been a father but proved only to be a slave master.”

  Lovern rises, sets down his tea untasted. “I see that we cannot agree on these matters. I beg to take my leave.”

  “We will not hold you against your will,” the Head jeers. “Louhi will show you to the door.”

  Lovern departs hastily lest they change their minds. As he drives back to Arthur’s hacienda his mind races, balancing accounts and realizing that this time he is coming up very short.

  There had been no practical way for Chris and Bill to gain reentry into Pendragon Estates after their encounter with the two drug dealers. Chris had done some light surveillance and had confirmed that quite a large group had gathered for about a week. The names Dakar Agadez and Katsuhiro Oba had proven to belong to two businessmen, one Nigerian, one Japanese, visiting the U.S. on perfectly legal passports. He hadn’t been able to find out anything remotely interesting about either of them.

  That had been all he had been able to manage. Bill had been taken by his parents to visit relatives in Jamaica for the summer. Chris’s workload at the Journal had increased as he covered for vacationing reporters. Then he had his own summer break, a satisfying interlude featuring a lady in Maine.

  Despite such distractions, he can’t get the Arthur Pendragon story out of his mind. Bill Irish returns to register for classes and for the first few weeks of September is too busy to do more than periodically hassle Chris to take up where they had left off. In the second week of September, he phones.

  “Guess what? Pendragon Estates has put in another order for folding chairs and card tables. What do you want to bet that our favorite drug lords are planning another meeting?”

  Chris swallows, remembering the preternatural terror he had felt when he had seen Dakar’s eyes. “You don’t want to sneak in again, do you?” he says, pleased to find his voice so steady.

  “I don’t think the rental company’s owner would let us,” Bill says sadly. “I think he got asked questions last time. Do you want to stake out the place? Maybe we could get some pictures to match against the FBI’s most-wanted list.”

  “That’s an idea,” Chris says, “but we’ll be rather obvious. It’s a single-lane road in front of Pendragon Estates.”

  “It’s worth a shot,” Bill says. “I’ll do it if you can’t. I can bring my laptop and do homework from my car.”

  “Just be careful,” Chris urges. “The police get nosy in a nice neighborhood like that.”

  “My Yugo doesn’t have a window on the driver’s side, has spiderweb cracks on the windows that are there, and is mustard-colored. Any cop who sees it is going to think it’s abandoned.”

  It must be nice to be young and confident like Bill, Chris thinks as he hangs up the phone. Or maybe he hadn’t seen quite as clearly the look in Dakar Agadez’s eyes.

  “Some of Pendragon’s cronies are staying,” Bill says, before Chris can say more than “hello” into the receiver, “at the Crowne Plaza Pyramid Hotel. Meet me there.”

  He hangs up, giving Chris little choice but to meet him or to abandon his young friend. Sighing, he heads out. Bill meets him in the parking lot.

  “C’mon! They should be here any moment!”

  Chris and Bill have hardly settled in the central atrium when a very strange group enters the lobby and heads for the nearby bank of elevators.

  First come a dozen or so bearded men, the smallest of whom is at least six feet tall. These are dressed in forest green floor-length robes. Following them are several tweedily dressed men, all wearing fedoras and pushing baby carriages. Bringing up the rear are three Japanese street punks, a gorgeous blond woman, a man with the flowing hair and beard of a Biblical patriarch, and Arthur’s assistant Vera Tso.

  “My feet hurt,” complains one of the men behind a baby carriage
as they come to a halt by the elevators. “It’s these boots. I don’t know if I can dance in them.”

  “When in Rome, Demetrios…” a green-robed men says.

  “I never worried about boots in Rome.” Demetrios sighs. “Of course, I haven’t been there for years.”

  Vera Tso smiles at Demetrios. “I’ll help you pad your boots, Demi. We wouldn’t want you to miss coming to the Pyramid Club with us tonight.”

  “Thanks, Vera,” the little man says. “Save a dance for me?”

  “I promise.”

  When the elevator carries the rest of the group off to the eighth floor, Bill and Chris exchange triumphant grins.

  “We’ve got ‘em now!” Bill crows. “No more barred gates and no more thugs.”

  “No,” Chris says more cautiously, “just giants in green robes and one of the drug lord’s most intimate cronies. It’s a little too early to celebrate.”

  The reporters dine in the hotel restaurant that night, choosing a table that lets them keep an eye on both the elevators and the corridor to the hotel’s Pyramid Club. They are lingering over colas—Chris’s straight, Bill’s laced with rum—when the first of the odd group begins descending from the eighth floor; Bill and Chris hurry ahead to get a table in the club.

  “I’d been hoping we’d overhear something,” Chris says after about fifteen minutes, “but the music is too loud.”

  “I wonder if we should ask someone to dance,” Bill says thoughtfully. He has noticed that, like men everywhere, the group across the room seems more interested in talking and drinking than in asking the ladies to dance. Characteristically turning thought into action, Bill rises and asks the fashion model blond to dance.

  “I’d love to dance” she says with a friendly smile and a deep sigh, “but my husband is the jealous type.”

  The fellow with the patriarch’s beard nods solemn agreement, but he takes the hint and ushers his wife onto the dance floor.

  “How about you, miss?” Bill asks Vera Tso, desperately hoping she won’t remember his stint as a deliveryman.

  Vera hesitates but accepts. As if this was a signal, several of the green-robed types venture onto the dance floor.

  Watching from his table, Chris notes that despite their size, the green-robes are quite graceful, moving with a gliding, shuffling step that billows their gowns out around them. Men dance in pairs, demonstrating none of the self-consciousness often seen when homosexual couples dance in public.

  Chris considers his own next move. He knows there are cultures where dancing with someone of the same gender is just good, healthy exercise. In those same cultures, couples of the opposite sex dancing would be scandalous.

  He decides to put American prejudice aside and take the plunge. When a new song is beginning, he walks over to one of the smaller green robes. This fellow’s whiskers are silky black but fairly sparse and oddly proportioned across his face—almost as if the man is simply hairy, rather than bearded. Combined with the shape of his nose and set of his eyes, he looks unfortunately simian.

  “Hi,” Chris says, swallowing hard, hoping that Bill won’t notice and start laughing, “want to dance?”

  “Uh, sure,” the hairy guy says, glancing as if for reassurance at the much bigger, much hairier guy with whom he had been dancing. “Sure.”

  As they move to the dance floor, Chris shouts over the music, “Where you from?”

  “Oregon,” his partner says, shuffling vigorously.

  Chris realizes that they’re both nervous and that gives him courage. “I’m local. What brings you to the Duke City?”

  “Duke City?”

  “Albuquerque, it’s named for some Spanish duke, except he spelled his name with an extra ‘r.’”

  “Oh. Albuquerque is hard enough to spell without that!” Amazingly, for all his height and bulk, the hairy man giggles.

  Chris conceals his surprise. “Purists keep agitating to change the spelling. I don’t think it’ll ever happen.”

  “Good! When we were making our travel plans, I kept spelling it wrong.”

  “Happens all the time. You here on vacation or business?”

  “A little of both. We have some meetings to attend, then we’re going to sightsee. I’ve never been in a desert before.”

  “Wear shoes or boots with good soles,” Chris advises. “There are lots of stickers and thorns. And allow for the higher altitude if you go up to the Crest or plan to exert yourself. People pass out all the time.”

  “Thanks.” The guy—Chris is sure now that he’s young—seems genuinely grateful. “Can I buy you a drink?”

  Chris swallows a hallelujah. “Sure. Sounds good. I’m Chris Kristofer.”

  “I’m Reb…” The young man coughs. “Rob Trapper.”

  “Rob Trapper,” Chris repeats. “Pleased to meet you.”

  He steers Rob over to his table, suspecting that the other green-robes or Vera Tso might attempt to interfere with any further conversation. From the alacrity with which Rob follows, he suspects that Rob thinks the same thing.

  Perhaps Rob’s a prisoner of a cult! That would be a banner headline: “Albuquerque Investigative Reporter Busts Cult!” “Religious Group Used As Cover By Drug Gang!” Then he mentally kicks himself. What kind of cult recruits only six-foot (or taller) hairy men?

  “So, what business are you in?” Chris asks. Bill has stayed out on the dance floor where he is creating quite a stir by demonstrating a classic waltz. Good guy, Chris thinks. Keep them distracted.

  “It’s international,” Rob says evasively. “We’re meeting to discuss internal regulatory matters.”

  “You a religious group?” Chris asks.

  “Uh.” Rob giggles again. “Sure! You could call us a representational theocracy.” He smiles at his own joke. “Seriously, we’re no more religious than most people.”

  “But the robes, the turbans, all the guys wearing hats and boots and beards…” Chris presses.

  “Private symbolism,” Rob says. “It’s a family thing, from the old country.”

  Chris doesn’t miss the nervous glance Rob casts in the direction of the others. Maybe his theory was closer than he had thought. Given American devotion to freedom of religion, a religious group would be a great cover for drug smugglers.

  “So, what do you plan to see in Albuquerque?” Chris asks, changing the subject.

  “Our host suggested that we go to the State Fair,” Rob answers, relieved. “Do you think that’s a good idea?”

  “A great one,” Chris agrees. “I go every year. It has something for everyone: art, animals, rides, lots of food, a whole building devoted to cool junk.”

  And, Chris adds silently to himself, if you go there, we’ll have no trouble locating a crew of six-and-seven-foot-tall green-robed men. And maybe, just maybe, your host will be with you and we can finally uncover the secret of Arthur Pendragon.

  27

  All that is necessary for the forces of evil to win in the world is for enough good men to do nothing.

  —Edmund Burke

  Less than an hour after Eddie and Arthur finish posting the day’s events, the phones start ringing. Anson and Frank, who had planned to join the group at the Pyramid after dinner, conscript themselves to help and never make it out the door.

  The questions, despite the various accents and inflections, are all variations on the same theme. “What is going on?” “How can you expect to decide such a crucial issue without a full quorum?” “Whose idea was this meeting anyhow?”

  The answers satisfy some, enflame others. Several callers announce that they will be coming to join the meeting, among them Lil Prima, Tommy Thunderburst, the Smith, Garrett Kocchui, and Patti Lyn Asinbeau.

  Finally, Arthur orders the answering machines put on with a new message that says: “This is Arthur Pendragon. Thank you for your concern about recent developments. Answers to the most frequently asked questions have been posted on our website. We will open for business at the regular time tomorrow.”
/>   Then he calls over to the Pyramid to ask that the meeting start a few hours later the next day. Monk quickly agrees.

  “Almost everyone is down in the bar,” he says, “dancing and drinking. It made me so nervous that I came back up here to visit with the kappa. Hiero and Roy are down there, though. They’ve shifted to look female so that there would be enough dance partners. A couple of the pooka did the same thing. The sasquatch and the yeti are dancing with each other. I can tell you that that’s raising some eyebrows.”

  “Oh,” is all Arthur can think to say.

  “How do you manage it, Arthur?” Monk asks. “I’ve been in charge for just a couple of days, and I want to fly out the window and never come back.”

  “You won’t though,” Arthur says.

  “Naw, these folks would be lost without some help.”

  “And that’s what keeps me going,” Arthur answers. He forces a laugh. “Besides there are great perqs like a fancy house and lots of angry phone calls.”

  “See you in the morning, Arthur,” Monk replies with a chuckle. “And thanks.”

  Arthur heads to the kitchen, where his team is sharing a plate of cookies.

  “Want a drink?” Eddie asks, gesturing with his beer bottle.

  “Earl Grey tea, I think,” Arthur says, “decaffeinated. I don’t dare be kept up all night. Any word from Lovern?”

  “He called in on the line I’ve been covering,” Frank says. He holds one jackalope on his lap, another sits on the counter in front of him. Both hands hold carrots. “He said to tell you that he found what he was looking for, and he’s on his way back.”

  “Ah.” Arthur absently strokes one of the Cats of Egypt—the same one who had been his advisor during the reign of Akhenaton.

  The kettle whistles. Motioning for Eddie to keep his seat, Arthur moves to brew himself a cup of tea.

  “Did Lovern say when he’d be getting in?”

  “Just late.”

  Arthur glances at the clock. It’s almost midnight. He decides he’ll finish his tea, then go to bed. Lovern will wake him if his report is important. When the grandfather clock in the front hall chimes midnight, Arthur puts his cup and saucer into the dishwasher.