O Master Caliban

by Phyllis Gotlieb

  Sven asked, very evenly, “You take stuff, like her?”

  “What, this?” He spat again. “This is just to chew.” He added contemptuously, “I wouldn’t touch that crap.” He shook water from his poncho and wrapped himself for sleep.

  Sven poked about and found a few pieces of almost dry, half-rotted wood between the sharp flanges of the buttress tree and tossed them on the fire. They crackled and began to glow. He crouched in the tree’s angles, half under the groundsheet. “Are they asleep?” he asked Joshua.

  “They’re so tired you could build a fire under them.”

  “I’d do it if it’d dry us out. I never cared for wind and wet myself.” Thunder crashed, rain thickened to mock him. “One thing I have to say ...” He looked up at Joshua’s head, pushed out over the shelter edge, an eye picking out a point of light in the deep shadow of his face. “If we get there. If we find Dahlgren. I don’t know what he’s doing, or what’s been done to him ... I don’t know what will have to be done ... with him ... for you to get away ...”

  “Yes?”

  “I won’t do it. You understand? The man’s my father. I won’t stop you, I’ll help you any other way I can, but I won’t do anything to him.”

  Joshua came down. “I understand.”

  “Let the others know.” He handed over the poncho and crawled into Joshua’s place.

  “I will.”

  There was not much space for him, and the whole structure creaked under his weight. He found a corner of blanket and pulled; Mitzi shivered to one side of him, Shirvanian whimpered at the other. He rolled over, catching a glimpse of Joshua’s black shape before the fire, veiled by the rain; drops hissed in the flames, the rotted wood smoked. He twisted to find positions of comfort for his arms, his face brushed Mitzi’s tangled hair. Spiderman. He had too many arms. He had never felt it so piercingly. Dahlgren (what is the Dahlgren?) had taught him (what has he/they done?) Dahlgren had taught (done to him?) him ... Dahlgren?

  THE BOARD stood thus: one black, one white Knight taken; Kings castled; their Bishops faced each other on N4, their Knights on B3, their Pawns on K4; the Queen’s Pawns mirrored on Q3 and B3, her Knights on N4.

  Dahlgren faced his erg, but he thought he must look haggard, no reflection of the other.

  Other did not seem more daring: 11. he pulled his Knight back to B2. Dahlgren went after his remaining Bishop with P-KR3. But White kept his pin on Dahlgren’s Knight with 12. B-R4. The board’s symmetry had vanished for good.

  Dahlgren spoke for the first time since he had wakened. “When will you bring my son here?”

  AS SOON AS WE CAN FIND HIM. Erg-Queen watched, still against the wall.

  “Then he has left the house. If you wait long enough he will come.”

  WE HAVE NO TIME TO WAIT FOR HIM.

  “And you cannot find him? That seems strange.”

  WE KNOW WHERE HE IS.

  “Ah ... you cannot take him.” Dahlgren smiled.

  THERE IS NO JOKE HERE, DAHLGREN.

  “No one knows it better than I. Yes,” at erg-Dahlgren’s nod, “I also know it is my move. But I want to see my son.”

  IT WAS PROMISED THAT YOU WOULD SEE HIM.

  “I am not convinced he is alive.”

  I HAVE SAID SO.

  “Men have said my Earth was flat.” He turned to erg-Dahlgren. “It seems that you are going to become my son’s father. What do you think of that? No, you don’t have thoughts.”

  “Will you go on with the game, Dahlgren?”

  “You will not malfunction, will you, when he asks why his father deserted him? What will you say?”

  “What would you say?”

  “I have no idea. I came back here in exchange for his life, because I made promises to machines. It takes a madman to make promises to machines. A stupid one to believe the promises of machines.”

  MEN BREAK PROMISES.

  “Dahlgrens do not. Remember that, Mod Dahlgren. Think what you will say to him. Take care.”

  “ ‘I kept the promise because I am Dahlgren.’ Is that what I am to say?” Erg-Dahlgren moved forward slightly, eyes on his double, mouth open to take words into it.

  “ ‘And I make this promise, Sven. You will be free, even if I cannot stay with you.’ Can you say that?”

  Erg-Dahlgren sat utterly still, body bent forward, mouth open, eyes blank.

  DAHLGREN!

  Erg-Dahlgren blinked. “The game. The move.”

  Without hesitation Dahlgren played P-N4, picking off the pin on his Knight at the risk of baring the King. But he had nothing to play now but risks.

  BECAUSE OF TIREDNESS Esther slept past her personal alarm. The rain had stopped and the sky was the deep gray-mauve of pre-dawn. In an hour the sun would stand full on the horizon. No one was on watch. She scampered to the shelter. “Koz?” She peered over the edge; he was not among the tumbled bodies of the sleepers. “Koz!” Run away? Not likely here.

  Over her hands, clutching the rim, a tendril of crimson runner-vine slithered, branching among the hairs of her fingers, rooting between them prickling as they went. She stared at it for one astonished second and pulled away. It came with her hands, binding them. She wrenched and bit until it broke, dragging away a great creeper swarming over the tree buttresses; it writhed and quivered at every differentiation of heat and moisture in its movement. As she pulled she heard the gasping.

  “Koz! Koz! Oh, get up, get up! All of you! Get up!”

  Koz was wedged between the buttresses and the branch floor in a twisted shape; the red tendrils had swarmed over his arms, neck and head, run into his gasping mouth, his nostrils, ears, the corners of his eyes, his braids of hair.

  Sven jumped down. “Oh God! Come out of that thing, all of you, get the sheet off!”

  Esther yelled, “Don’t touch it, it grows right into you!”

  “Joshua, let’s have some of your muck.” Sven sprayed and rubbed his four hands, and began to rip at the vines on Koz’s arms.

  “Take care of his face, you’ll tear the flesh away!”

  “Where’s a knife?” He slit the cloth over Koz’s chest. The boy’s eyes were staring open, red with veins and tendrils. Sven sprayed the stuff over flesh, but dared not try it in eyes, nose or mouth. The liquid gloved his hands; the vine, once coated, gave way, bringing with it small shreds of skin and membrane. With twenty fingers he picked the runners out of eyes, throat, nostrils, knees gripping Koz’s waist while Esther steadied the jerking head.

  “Ah! Ah!” Koz cried. The inside of his mouth was raw and swollen, threads of blood ran from his nose.

  “Don’t spray in his mouth,” Joshua said.

  “I’m not. Get the alcohol and dilute it in water, about one to seven.” He pulled the slitted cloth, clinging with frayed vine, from Koz’s body, bunched it and flung it into the embers of the fire. The boy’s face was free, eyes full of pink tears, lips and eyelids puffed and red. “I didn’t sleep,” he whispered. “I didn’t sleep. It—”

  “Don’t talk. Tell us later.”

  Esther cleaned his mouth and nostrils with the alcohol mixture. It stung like fire and Koz screamed. “Get out your antibiotic pills,” Esther said.

  “He won’t be able to swallow.”

  “We’ve got injection cartridges,” Ardagh said.

  “Use them.” The runner had not attacked his eyes deeply; their membranes were reddened but untorn.

  Sven yanked the vine away from the tree, it clung only by rootlets, and flung it on the fire. “The thing’s still in his hair—and it’s still alive.”

  Inch-long threads were rooting like cuttings and shooting leaf buds. Koz had the look of an ancient man cursed by a god. “Cut it off,” Esther said.

  “Don’t—don’t cut my hair!”

  “That’ll grow back, it’s the least of your worries.” The s
hoots were crawling out past the hairline and down toward his eyes.

  “It must be rooting in his scalp—oh God, the knife’s gone dull!”

  “Take mine.” Joshua’s knife was power-celled and edged like a razor. The shoots writhed among Sven’s fingers as he cut, snakes of thread that made him cringe.

  “Don’t—”

  “For God’s sake, I’ve got to!” Hives were breaking out, the scalp-follicles welled with crimson sap and scarlet blood.

  When Sven lifted Koz to his feet, cut free at last, he looked flayed to the waist. He leaned trembling against the buttresses, breathing harshly. Sven wiped spray and plant fragments off his hands, and washed down Koz’s head and shoulders. His own fingers were breaking out in red lumps.

  Esther stared at her hands. “I’ve got it too. Allergy, I suppose. Anybody got antihistamines?”

  “I have lozenges,” Joshua said. “Koz, can you swallow saliva?”

  “Yes,” Koz whispered.

  Mitzi’s voice quavered. “I want to get out of here.”

  Yigal scrambled to his feet, shook off his coverings, and yawned.

  “Huh,” said Esther. “Good thing it didn’t get to him, with all that beautiful white hair.” She studied her lumpy hands, and then her thick-haired body. “Or me either.”

  “There isn’t any more around here,” Sven said. “It must have been a single plant, and going fast.”

  Koz licked his lips and said hoarsely, “I was standing watch and felt something come round behind and touch my eyes, I tried to grab it, it ran into my mouth and round my neck and pulled me right over.” He touched, his raw scalp with his puffy fingers. “My hair ...”

  “That’ll grow back.”

  “Years ...” The tattoos on his face were half covered with black crusts of blood. He looked into the forest depths. “My robes, my clothes, my hair ...” And down at the strange whiteness of his chest, a wisp of fine brown hair running its midline among spattered drops of blood or sap mingled with puncture marks.

  Joshua handed him a pullover. “Turn up the sleeves and it’ll fit.”

  “I wonder if that thing seeds,” Esther muttered.

  “I think it gave that up long ago,” said Joshua. “It’s a root and cutting propagator.”

  “Let’s get out of here,” Mitzi whispered. “I don’t want any breakfast.”

  The sun was half up the horizon. The forest life twittered, buzzed and rustled; the mist swirled in the morning breeze.

  “Koz won’t be able to travel fast,” said Ardagh.

  “He’ll ride Yigal,” Sven said. “I’ll pack half the load.”

  “Hey, where’s the gorilla?” Mitzi pointed to the empty nest.

  “I sent him home after midnight,” Esther said. “He was too nervous to be trusted anyway, and I didn’t want him getting any more jolts when the rads went up.” The counters sputtered faintly but steadily under the forest noises. “We’re not even in Zone Blue.”

  “We will be before noon. You ready?”

  Sven swung the machete through what would have been his watch. Joshua came after, shoulders loaded double and hand on Yigal’s neck. Koz rode, features swollen, denuded head hanging scored with black and crimson. He sucked lozenges, swallowing painfully. Ardagh and Mitzi followed with Esther, whose hands were so sore she did not want to swing in the trees; Shirvanian, straggling last, looked almost as beaten as Koz: his hair was roughened from burning, and his face, of the sort that collapses under stress, had mauve creases under the eyes and around the mouth.

  * * *

  The sun shone, as always, orange through pink haze. Far above, in the attic, pterodactyl-shaped birds wheeled among clouds of blue and yellow butterflies. When they alit, branches swung under them and shook off dead leaves, flowers, insects, dropping to become fertilizer on the floor. The dusk was of some ancient religious place, and all things, because they were half-familiar, looked doubly strange.

  Below the swirling birds, bright snakes and lizards leaped and twined, sometimes caught in midair by a darting beak. Small animals skittered among the branches; they were patched with colors that did not accord with their surroundings, two or three albinos resembling huge white mice, one with two tails; a furred thing with blue webbed feet, a sharp black beak, and a row of glistening spines down its back. “That’s a normal glymba from Cruxa Two,” Sven said. “The techs used to love them because they’re completely mutation-resistant.”

  “It’s hard to see what it could turn into,” said Ardagh.

  An orange bat dived and whipped away, light in its wings like a stained-glass window. “That thing’s got a nasty bite,” Esther muttered.

  “The clouds here must carry a great load of fertilizer,” Joshua said. “This floor is thicker than any forest I’ve ever seen.” The ground was rich with young ferns, seedlings, vines, tendrils. “But it’s not ... it’s not the way it was back there ... are those the same ferns? The leaves are narrower, they have galls. Some of them look so brittle, they ... they are brittle.”

  “They’re the same ferns,” Sven said.

  “The trees are shorter, upstairs ... the branches are twisted. The leaves are clumped.”

  “We’re not far from the zone baffle. Then it’ll be worse. You took your anti-rad?”

  “You’d better have some too.”

  “I doubt I’ll have children.”

  “You never know. I’ll take the machete now.”

  Sven flexed his hands; they itched with urticarial weals. “You ought to take some of those lozenges,” Ardagh said.

  “You want to give me antihistamines. Joshua wants me to take anti-rad.”

  “Esther thinks you should have breakfast.”

  “Yes. I’m a growing boy.” He shifted the awkward packs.

  “Koz ...” Ardagh hesitated. “Koz hasn’t done any praying today.”

  “Look at him! I don’t blame him.”

  “Pain, danger, that kind of thing, always made him work harder at it.”

  “I don’t think he has the strength to set up Mother Shrinigasa.”

  “You’d be surprised ... have you ever heard of the Triskelian Order?”

  “How would I?”

  “It’s the religion he belongs to. A triskelion is a thing with three bent spokes, you could call it a three-footed cross. It’s part of his idol, and what he’s tattooed with. The Order is celibate, like ancient monks, and it’s a mixture of all the religions you could think of. It has no food laws, but it’s got everything else, hundreds of ranks and rituals ...”

  “Did he tell you that?”

  “A little ... and somebody I met in the Twelveworlds on a holiday, she had a brother.”

  “I see ... I think I’m getting hungry.”

  “You scared?”

  “Of what? I mean aside from everything. I just feel I’m getting more information than I can take.”

  “You may need this. It has nothing to do with the catarrhine primate or the philosophy of Montaigne.”

  “You want to tell me he’s a religious fanatic who’s going to try converting me when we’re busy fighting ergs.”

  “If that was what it was you’d be lucky. The Triskelian Order takes in only the children of very wealthy or very important officials—”

  “Like an expensive school.”

  “Not exactly. They don’t have the heavy robes and heavy statues to lug around, all the praying, the grooming, the tattooing ... the impediments, the busyness.”

  “But not a prison, though—”

  “Not for kids. And not a hospital for the ones who can’t get around in the open.”

  “You mean the Triskelian Order takes in some pretty funny types who are—I guess you’d say on the borderline of something.”

  “Yeah, but I’m not sure what.”

  He looked at her. “
You’re sure.”

  “I could be wrong. I wouldn’t want to look dumb.”

  “You’re not scared of looking dumb.”

  “Thanks for the compliment.”

  “It is a compliment. I’m dumb about a lot of things because I haven’t seen much of civilization, and I’m willing to take the chance of seeming stupid while I learn. What you want is for me to keep an eye on him.”

  “Yes ... I’m scared for him.”

  Esther had recovered enough to run up a tree, and she called down, “Clearing!”

  “Where?”

  “Ten meters east-southeast. Don’t jump right into it, it might be a bog!”

  “Maybe we can eat there.”

  “Not till you find out why it’s there, or it might eat you!”

  Sven took the machete from Joshua. “I passed that when I was scouting, but I kept wide of it. Can you find me a straight stick?”

  Joshua found one and trimmed the branches with his powered knife. Sven pushed through the brush, bound the machete’s handle to one end of the stick with straw twine, and stood watching at the clearing’s edge.

  It was set like a lighted room in the shadowy undergrowth. Except for one overgrown log there was nothing on its floor but dead leaves and twigs. “Not many insects. It looks quite dry.” He extended the blade as far as he could and drew a long straight furrow toward himself with the point. He unearthed a snail and several clumps of rootlets, and halved two bulbous green worms whose pieces burrowed deeper in outrage. “It’s solid. Just a couple of sling leeches.”

  “What’s that?”

  Sven pointed to the farther margin, where two thick threads extended to the ground from branches three meters high. “Just touch one and the leech will slide down and hit where it touches before you can blink. Then you can burn it off, if you’re lucky, or spend three days pulling it out.”

  “Let’s find another place,” said Ardagh.

  “Another planet,” said Joshua.

  “There’s room for all of us. Get the fire going.”

  Mitzi’s eyes widened. She pointed. “That log!”