The Eternal Enemy

by Michael Berlyn

  It was almost sundown, and the streets were filling with Habers.

  The setting sun bounced crazy hues off the white city buildings, setting the walls into glittering fires of light, and turned the sky around it into a huge blob of kaleidoscopic light. It was sundown. The Habers linked hands and stood motionless, facing the setting sun. They started to hum.

  Markos sprinted a few meters to link up with a group of nearby Habers.

  “What the hell?” Jackson said.

  “That sound—we heard it in the compound,” Straka said. She looked over at McGowen.

  McGowen was smiling like a Buddha, humming very softly.

  They all felt a slight tingling around their navels and then a warm feeling washed through them. They were left feeling strangely secure and unthreatened.

  The feeling stayed with them a few seconds, until the sun had set and the Habers broke their linkup. A large number of Habers remained in the streets, turned now to face Markos and the Terrans, waiting for them to walk by.

  “This isn’t what I expected,” Straka said. “They seem friendly.”

  “They are,” McGowen said. “I can feel it.”

  They walked forward until they stood beside Markos. Markos looked at each man with his pulsating eyes, then said, “These are good creatures. They’re just curious. They find a strange symmetry in your forms. Don’t be offended by their stares.”

  “No problem. As long as I can stare back,” Jackson said.

  They moved through the streets, commenting and laughing at the differences they saw between Habers. Markos tried to put a stop to the laughter by explaining that they were creatures who liked change, and changing themselves was one of their genetic abilities.

  By the time they reached Markos’s building, the Terrans were unsure of just what a Haber was. There were some similarities between them all, and some differences too. The phenotypical Haber they had come to know from Gandji seemed to be far outnumbered by stranger, more exotic mutations.

  As they entered the house, Markos explained that the largest Habers were usually the youngest ones. He briefly explained their metabolism and life cycle, preparing them for the change they were about to undergo.

  He showed them through the corridors and rooms, explaining the use of each piece of furniture and the spaces within the rooms. He led them through a long hallway that emptied into a circular room with a lot of hard rock chairs. Straka recognized the room immediately. There was a corridor leading off that dead-ended. Off this corridor were twelve small rooms. He assigned a room to each of them, told them to relax, to put their thoughts in order, and make their final decision. Markos told them he would reenter the room later to touch and change them. After that it would be too late to turn back.

  Straka settled onto the hard, uncomfortable floor. The room had no windows. She was impatient to undergo the change. She wished Markos would come back in already; the longer she waited, the more nervous she became. She didn’t want to have to deal with the nagging self-doubts and fears. She wanted to be immortal, and that was all there was to it.

  The room offered no distractions. The walls were plain white, the floor an off-white. The chair in the room was rock crystal. There was nothing of interest to look at. She closed her eyes and wondered what it would be like to have a new body. Would there be pain? Would she be like a newborn, unable to care for herself until she got used to the way her new body worked?

  A small Haber stood in the doorway, the same one Straka had talked to a few hours before.

  “I’m sorry I offended you by asking for water,” Straka said.

  “I, I was glad to help,” the Old One said. “Markos does not present me, me accurately. No offense was taken.”

  “Are you their leader?” Straka asked.

  “No. Markos leads us, us in the thing that matters, the change we, we will not survive, the change he calls war.”

  “Oh. Were you on Gandji with him?”

  The Old One took several moments to answer. “Yes. I, I was. Are you ready? Markos is about to begin, and he wishes to start with you.”

  Straka nodded. “I’m ready.”

  “Let me, me counsel you. When Markos touches you, do not fight the strange feelings and changes you feel happening to your body. Let your body float and pay it no attention. Think of who and what you are inside your mind and you will remain the same creature you are now, only physically different. Grasp that and ignore all else.”

  “Thank you,” Straka said.

  The Old One flashed red.

  Markos walked through the doorway. “Ready?” he asked Straka.

  Straka nodded.

  “Second thoughts?”

  “None. Let’s get it over with.”

  “Lie back.”

  Straka lay back and stared at the white ceiling, trying to do exactly what the Haber had instructed her to do. If they were deceiving her, taking their advice would make no difference—she would end up no worse than if she’d stayed in the compound. But if they were truly trying to help, she would be that much ahead of the game by doing as she was told.

  She remembered her youth, her parents, her past loves as Markos bent over and obscured her view of the ceiling.

  Markos’s eyes came alive, glittering and dancing in swirling patterns of intricate beauty, pulling her into their whirlpool. Straka was entranced, locked onto one thought—the totality of being Cathy Straka. The colors flashed to their opposites, then began to mix like paint being slowly stirred.

  “Close your eyes,” Markos said softly and gently in his sandpaper voice.

  Straka smiled and closed her eyes.

  She felt her body float away.

  Straka regained consciousness with a rush of vision, her senses turned on full. She felt absolutely terrific—no pain, no discomfort, stronger than ever, more in tune with her body than she’d ever considered possible.

  The ceiling above her head looked different, and it took her an instant to realize it sparkled with color, as if it were shot through with tiny chips of mica and shards of jewels. Had they moved her? What the hell was going on?

  She sat up in a rush, saw the walls with their intricate and subtle colors, saw the air move in beautiful patterns before her, saw the floor with its rich textures, and knew for certain she’d been moved. But why? What could Markos hope to accomplish?

  Her mind was the same—whatever had happened, Markos and the old Haber had kept their promise about that. She was still Cathy Straka.

  The air before her billowed for a meter as her body’s movements acted on the still air. She was struck by a numbing thought: She could see through the air, transparent as it always was, and yet she could see it at the same time.

  She looked down at her hands and realized then that she hadn’t been moved to a different room. She’d been changed. She was no longer human.

  Her hands were off-white, covered with a thin layer of soft fur or hair. It was pleasant to touch as she rubbed her palm over the back of her hand. Her palms were soft skin, opaque, a few shades deeper than the fur. Her arms, chest, and legs were covered with the same thing.

  She felt her face. That, too, had been changed.

  She took a breath of air into her lungs, watched the air currents close in to fill the vacuum her breath had created, and realized she hadn’t breathed until then.

  She felt her body tingle, then flush hot and cold as her mind went into shock. She needed to cry, to run, to figure out what they’d done to her. She leaped to her feet with a surge of power, clenched her hands into fists. Her body grew more and more powerful as her anger and frustration mounted. Her body became more massive, her skin tougher, her vision more acute. She needed to unleash herself on something, someone, break a chair or a wall, smash her fist through something hard to release the emotions running out of control. They were trapped inside, working strange tricks of change on her new body.

  “Markos!” she shouted, then turned on her heels and strode determinedly down the hallway to the la
rge, circular room.

  Markos was sitting there calmly, waiting, facing the hall and Straka’s approach.

  Straka rushed into the room, stood before Markos, her mind fluctuating wildly. In an instant she was overcome by a tidal wave of glee, of manic elation, of gratitude and power so strong she could find no words to express herself. In the next instant she was filled with rage, anger, hatred so strong she could feel it seeping out, radiating from her mind in waves of pure power.

  She stood there, vacillating at stroboscopic speed, with laser intensity, unable to say anything but “Markos, help me.”

  Markos’s eyes reached out and enveloped her in colors, wrapping her in a muted blanket of calm, tinting the very air between them. Like a warm bed on a chilly morning, the colors from Markos’s eyes surrounded and comforted her. The fluctuations of Straka’s emotions continued, but their intensity was lessening slowly but surely. Finally, after long and tense minutes, her mind calmed to the point where the emotions blended into a homogenous mixture of rational and emotional thought.

  “Sit down, Cathy,” Markos said calmly, softly, issuing it not as an order but as an invitation.

  Straka sat in the seat beside Markos. The seat was, for the first time, comfortable.

  “The change is a lot to deal with at first. Take your time. Try to remain as calm as possible. Don’t upset yourself with needless worry. Everything is fine—you went through the change like a true Haber would. I’m very proud of you. Of all of you. The Old One was immensely impressed.”

  “The Old One?” Straka asked. “The old Haber who came in to talk with me?”

  “Yes.”

  Straka realized that even in her changed form, Markos’s voice was still difficult to listen to. At least her own voice was the same, or it sounded the same in her ears. Ears? Straka reached up, touched the side of her head—she had no ears.

  “You don’t need them,” Markos said, watching Straka’s reactions. “They’d only get in the way.”

  Another creature appeared in the doorway from the dead-end hall. He was covered with the same color fur as Straka was, and as Straka looked up at his face, she recognized him.

  McGowen.

  Enough of the human features had been preserved to act as a reminder of what McGowen had once looked like. The nose was an irregular bump on his face, and the eyes—the eyes! “Are my eyes like … that?” Straka asked.

  “Yes,” Markos said.

  Straka turned back to stare at McGowen. He seemed to be smiling, and his eyes were radiating a faint reddish light. Straka glanced at Markos.

  Markos was tense, rock hard, waiting for McGowen to undergo the emotional turmoil that Straka had experienced. But McGowen seemed to have a better grip on himself and he approached them slowly, calmly.

  “Hello,” McGowen said, his eyes leaking a minute amount of green light.

  Markos flashed green.

  McGowen smiled.

  Markos smiled.

  Straka watched.

  “I … I don’t know the proper custom now that you’ve made me into this,” McGowen said, “so I’ll have to settle for something simple and Terran.” He approached the few steps until he stood by Markos’s chair, then held out his hand.

  Markos rose to his feet and grasped McGowen’s hand.

  “Thank you,” McGowen said. “It doesn’t express the depth of my gratitude, but it will have to do for now.”

  They shook hands.

  “How are you feeling?” Markos asked.

  “Like never before. When Alpha touched me, I knew there was something more waiting for me, and now I know what it is.”

  “And there’s more to come,” Markos said. “But there’ll be time for that later. Right now another crewmate is about to come out of the sleep I placed him in. I timed the changes pretty closely. Sit and wait with us.”

  “Without doubt,” McGowen said. He sat gracefully as if he’d been born to this body.

  The next crew member came into the room a few minutes later. It was Kominski. There was no mistaking the facial structure. Kominski looked totally bewildered.

  “Where am I? What’s going on?” he asked, panic in his voice. “What is this?”

  Markos’s eyes leaped to life, soothing and calming Kominski, drawing him closer until he stood directly before Markos. He touched Kominski and explained things to him with his eyes and with words. Kominski absorbed the information the way a hungry child eats food.

  “I was crazy,” he said at last.

  “Yes,” Markos said.

  “It’s true, Straka?”

  “Very true, ’Minski. It happened when a geltank malfunctioned. It was no fault of your own.”

  “But no one asked me if I wanted to be changed into something like this!”

  “You were in no condition to be asked. It was either change you or leave you insane, dying in your human form.”

  Kominski sat beside Straka, silent, staring at the floor.

  The others drifted in over the next hour.

  “The hardest thing you face in your new bodies is your emotions. They used to serve an important purpose—now they’re a vestige you’ll have to learn how to overcome. When you were human and you got angry, hormones prepared your body for fighting or fleeing,” Markos said.

  “Adrenaline increased your strength, your heart rate, sharpened your senses, made everything around you appear to move more slowly. But you don’t have adrenaline anymore. You don’t need it either. Your emotions expect certain physical reactions—it’s a learned response, one you’re going to have to unlearn.

  “Do you all understand?”

  The group of changed Terrans nodded their heads and murmured their understanding.

  “This is the hardest time for you. You’re being overwhelmed by the sensory inputs your bodies are providing, and you have to sort it all out. Your emotions are acting as they did when you inhabited human bodies. You can control the arms and legs you were given, but not the entire body. There are tricks—ways of altering what information your eyes pick up, what your tactile senses tell you. You don’t have to hear all the time. You can shut off some parts of your body and turn others on that you don’t even know about yet,” Markos said.

  “But there’s time. I want you all to follow me outside, into the afternoon light, onto the surface of Aurianta. You can get hypnotized by the beauty you’ll see. You have to learn how to dampen your vision before we go out.”

  “I think I know how to do it,” McGowen said.

  “Sure you do,” Jackson said. “Care to explain it?”

  “I focus my attention on a spot right behind my eyes. I imagine I still have eyelids, and I’m squinting. That cuts down some of the light and images that get through.”

  “Hey!” Kominski shouted. “I can do it too! It works!”

  Markos was surprised. They were learning fast.

  Straka learned the trick instantly, too, and found she was proud of herself and her fellow … fellow … fellow what? What the hell were they, anyway? What had they been changed into?

  “Markos,” Straka said.

  “Yes?”

  “What are we? I mean, we’re not crossbreeds, we’re not Terrans, and we’re not Habers. So then what the hell do we call ourselves?”

  “You can call yourself whatever you like, but you are all Habers, like it or not. Genetically speaking, that is.”

  Haber? That race must cover a lot of genetic territory, a lot of phenotypical variations, Straka thought.

  “Shall we go?” Markos asked. “You seem ready, but please be careful. These are not idle warnings. Don’t get carried away by what you see, and don’t wander off too far, and don’t fight your emotions. Study them, analyze them, and learn how your bodies respond.

  “I’m going out with you, and I’ll teach you some things you didn’t know Habers could do. You’ll be pleasantly surprised.”

  Markos led the group through the circular passageways and out into the street. Straka was in the lead, an
d as she saw what the light in the sky did to the buildings, she felt like crying.

  She felt that the years she’d spent as a human being had been wasted, spent in a sensory-deprivation tank. Nothing she’d seen as a human being was the same now. Everything was alive. And everything was constantly changing.

  Markos brought them to a small area in the city that was not developed, where no houses or streets existed. The crew stood in their new bodies as if standing in a new set of clothes, craning their necks to see their backs, turning their hands over and over, searching for new functions for their anatomies.

  Kominski was on his hands and knees, staring at the ground. Every few minutes he would mutter, “Oh, wow,” then fall silent again. Wilhelm took his change stoically, wandering around, wondering at the strange sights, smells, sounds like the others.

  Markos kept a close watch, supervising as a nursery school teacher would during recess, concerned for the safety of his charges.

  Straka knew what Markos was doing and was grateful for his stabilizing presence. She knew the transformation and the adaptation necessary would have been a knife-edged experience, too painful and emotionally charged to have to undergo without his supervision.

  Jackson, Katawba, and—who was that?—Martinez? Yes, Martinez. They played like children, running and leaping into the air, shouting in glee, chasing each other around. Straka understood what they felt and wanted to join them. They weren’t reverting back to a second childhood; they were simply enjoying themselves for the first time in a decade, totally free of the autocratic control of NASA 2, of its geltank imprinting, of the Terran feelings of loyalty, duty, and responsibility. They were reveling in the simple joys of motion, of being in healthy, strong bodies, elated with the prospect of immortality in bodies that saw, felt, and could do things they never could before.

  Yes, Straka thought, immortality. We’re more than halfway there.

  She was in no rush to join the frolicking crewmembers. She didn’t need the physical release yet, the expression of pure joy in physical form. For now, she was content to watch, to think, to wonder what immortality was like.

  “Something wrong?” Markos asked in his rough voice.