Centaurus Changling

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

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  Centaurus Changling

  by Marion Zimmer Bradley

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  Science Fiction/Fantasy

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  Marion Zimmer Bradley Literary Works Trust

  www.mzbworks.com

  Copyright ©1954 by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  First published in Fantasy and Science Fiction, 1954

  NOTICE: This work is copyrighted. It is licensed only for use by the original purchaser. Making copies of this work or distributing it to any unauthorized person by any means, including without limit email, floppy disk, file transfer, paper print out, or any other method constitutes a violation of International copyright law and subjects the violator to severe fines or imprisonment.

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  Centaurus Changeling

  Marion Zimmer Bradley

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  "...the only exception to the aforesaid policy was made in the case of Megaera (Theta Centaurus IV) which was given full Dominion status as an independent planetary government; a departure almost without precedent in the history of the Terran Empire. There are many explanations for this variation from the usual practice, the most generally accepted being that which states that Megaera had been colonized from Terra only a few years before the outbreak of the Rigel-Procyon war, which knocked out communications in the entire Centaurus sector of the Galaxy and forced the abandonment of all the so-called Darkovan League colonies, including Megaera, Darkover, Samarra and Vialles. During these Lost Years, as they were called, a period embracing, in all, nearly 600 years ... the factors of natural selection, and the phenomenon of genetic drift and survival mutation observed among isolated populations, permitted these ‘lost’ colonies to develop along scientific and social lines which made their reclamation by the Terran Empire an imperative political necessity.... “

  From J. T. Bannerton: A Comprehensive History of Galactic Politics, Tape IX.

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  The Official Residence of the Terran Legate on Megaera was not equipped with a roofport for landing the small, helicopter-like carioles. This oversight, a gesture of bureaucratic economy from the desk of some supervisor back on Terra, meant that whenever the Legate or his wife left the Residence, they must climb down four flights of stairs to the level of the rarely used streets, and climb again, up the endless twisting stairs, to the platform of the public skyport a quarter of a mile away.

  * * * *

  Matt Ferguson swore irritably as his ankle turned in a rut—since no Centaurian citizen ever used the streets for walking if he could help it, they were not kept in condition for that purpose—and took his wife's arm, carefully guiding her steps on the uneven paving.

  “Be careful, Beth,” he warned. “You could break your neck without half trying!"

  “And all those stairs!” The girl looked sulkily up at the black shadow of the skyport platform, stretched over them like a dark wing. The street lay deserted in the lurid light of early evening; red Centaurus, a hovering disk at the horizon, sent a slanting light, violently crimson, down into the black canyon of the street, and the top-heavy houses leaned down, somber and ominous. Wavering shadows gloomed down over them, and a hot wind blew down the length of the street, bearing that peculiar, pungent, all-pervasive smell which is Megaera's atmosphere. A curious blend, not altogether unpleasant, a resinous and musky smell which was a little sickish, like perfume worn too long. Beth Ferguson supposed that sooner or later she would get used to Megaera's air, that combination of stinks and chemical emanations. It was harmless, her husband assured her, to human chemistry. But it did not grow less noticeable with time; after more than a year, Terran Standard time, on Megaera, it was still freshly pungent to her nostrils. Beth wrinkled up her pretty, sullen mouth. “Do we have to go to this dinner. Matt?” she asked plaintively.

  The man put his foot on the first step. “Of course, Beth. Don't be childish,” he remonstrated gently, “I told you, before we came to Megaera, that my success at this post would depend mostly on my informal relations—"

  “If you call a dinner at the Jeth-sans informal—” Beth began petulantly, but Matt went on, “—my informal relations with the Centaurian members of the government. Every diplomatic post in the Darkovan League is just the same, dear. Rai Jeth-san has gone out of his way to make things easy for both of us.” He paused, and they climbed in silence for a few steps. “I know you don't like living here. But if I can do what I was sent here to do, we can have any diplomatic post in the Galaxy. I've got to sell the Centaurian Archons on the idea of building the big space station here. And, so far, I'm succeeding at a job no other man would take."

  “I can't see why you took it,” Beth sulked, snatching pettishly at her nylene scarf, which was flapping like an unruly bird in the hot, grit-laden wind.

  Matt turned and tucked it into place. “Because it was better than working as the assistant to the assistant to the undersecretary of Terran affairs attached to the Proconsul of Vialles. Cheer up, Beth. If this space station gets built, I'll have a Proconsulship myself."

  “And if it doesn't?"

  Matt grinned. “It will. We're doing fine. Most Legates need years to find their way around a difficult post like Megaera.” The grin melted abruptly. “Rai Jeth-san is responsible for that, too. I don't want to offend him."

  Beth said, and her voice was not very steady, “I understand all that, Matt. But I've been feeling—ah, I hate to be always whining and complaining like this—"

  They had reached the wide, flat platform of the skyport. Matt lighted the flare which would attract a cariole, and sank down on one of the benches. “You haven't whined,” he told her tenderly. “I know this rotten planet is no place for a Terran girl.” He slipped an arm around his wife's waist. “It's hard on you, with other Terran women half a continent away, and I know you haven't made many friends among the Centaurians. But Rai Jeth-san's wives have been very kind to you. Nethle presented you to her Harp Circle—I don't suppose any Terran woman for a thousand years has even seen one, let alone been presented—and even Cassiana—"

  “Cassiana!” said Beth with a catch of breath, picking at her bracelet. “Yes, Nethle's almost too sweet, but she's in seclusion, and until her baby is born, I won't see her. And Wilidh's just a child! But Cassiana—I can't stand her! That—that freak—I'm afraid of her!"

  Her husband scowled. “And don't think she doesn't know it! She's telepathic, and a rhu'ad—"

  “Whatever that is,” Beth said crossly. “Some sort of mutant—"

  “Still, she's been kind to you. If you were friends—"

  “Ugh!” Beth shuddered. “I'd sooner be friends with—with a Sirian lizard-woman!"

  Matt's arm dropped. He said coldly, “Well, please be polite to her, at least. Courtesy to the Archon includes all his wives—but particularly Cassiana.” He rose from the bench. “Here comes our cariole.” The little skycab swooped down to the skyport. Matt helped Beth inside and gave the pilot the address of the Archonate. The cariole shot skyward again, wheeling toward the distant suburb where the Archon lived. Matt sat stiffly on the seat, not looking at his young wife. She leaned against the padding, her fair face sulky and rebellious. She looked ready to cry. “At least, in another month, by their own stupid customs, I'll have a good excuse to stay away from all these idiotic affairs!” she flung at him. “I'll be in seclusion by then!"

  It hadn't been the way she'd wanted to tell him, but it served him right!

  “Beth!” Matt started upright, not believing.

  “Yes, I am going to have a baby! And I'm going into seclusion just like these silly women here, and not have to go to a single formal dinner, or Spice Hunt, or Harp Circle
, for six cycles! So there!"

  Matt Ferguson leaned across the seat. His fingers bit hard into her arm and his voice sounded hoarse. “Elizabeth! Look at me—” he commanded. “Didn't you promise—haven't you been taking your anti shots?

  “N-no,” Beth faltered, “I wanted to—oh, Matt, I'm alone so much, and we've been married now almost four years—"

  “Oh, my God,” said Matt slowly, and let go her arm. “Oh, my God!” he repeated, and sank back, the color draining from his face.

  “Will you stop saying that!” Beth raged. “When I tell you a thing like—” her voice caught on the edge of a sob, and she buried her face in her scarf.

  Matt's hand was rough as he jerked her head up, and the gray pallor around his mouth terrified the girl. “You damn little fool,” he shouted, then swallowed hard and lowered his voice. “I guess it's my fault,” he muttered. “I didn't want to scare you—you promised to take the shots, so I trusted you—like an idiot!” He released her. “It's classified top-secret, Beth, but it's why this place is closed to colonization, and it's why Terran men don't bring their wives here. This damned, stinking, freak atmosphere! It's perfectly harmless to men, and to most women. But for some reason, it plays hell with the female hormones if a woman gets pregnant. For 60 years—since Terra set up the Legation here—not one Terran baby has been born alive. Not one, Beth. And eight out of ten women who get pregnant—oh, God, Betty, I trusted you!"

  She whispered “But this—this was a Terran colony, once—"

  “They've adapted—maybe. We've never found out why Centaurian women go into seclusion when they're pregnant, or why they hide the children so carefully.” He paused, looking down at the thinning jungle of roofs. There would not be time to explain it all to Beth. Even if she lived—but Matt did not want to think about that. They never sent married men to this planet, but Centaurian custom could not admit a single man to be mature enough to hold a place in government. He had succeeded at this post where single men, twice his age, had been laughed at by the Archons. But what good was that now?

  “Oh, God, Beth,” he whispered, and his arms went out blindly to hold her close. “I don't know what to do—"

  She sobbed softly, scared, against him. “Oh, Matt, I'm afraid! Can't we go home—home to Terra? I want—I want to go home—to go home—"

  “How can we?” the man asked drearily. “There won't be a star-ship leaving the planet for three months. By that time, you wouldn't be able to live through blastoff. Even now, you couldn't pass a physical for space.” He was silent for minutes, his arms strained around her, and his eyes looked haunted. Then, almost visibly, he managed to pull himself together.

  “Look, the first thing tomorrow, I'll take you to the Medical HQ. They've been working on it. Maybe—don't worry, darling. We'll get along.” His voice lapsed again, and Beth, wanting desperately to believe him, could find no reassurance in the words. “You're going to be all right,” he told her again. “Aren't you?” But she clung to him and did not answer. After a long, strained silence, he roused a little, and let her go, glancing from the windbreak of the cariole cabin. “Beth, darling, fix your face—” he urged her gently. “We'll be late, and you can't go down looking like that—"

  For a minute Beth sat still, simply not believing that after what she had told him, he would still make her go to the detested dinner. Then, looking at his tense face, she suddenly knew it was the one thing on earth—no, she corrected herself with grim humor, the one thing on Theta Centaurus IV, Megaera, that she must do.

  “Tell him not to land for a minute,” she said shakily. She unfastened her wrist compact, and silently began to repair the wreckage of her cosmetics. Above the Archonate, the cariole maneuvered frantically for place with another careening skycab, and after, what seemed an imminent clash of tangled gyroscopes, slid on to the skyport only seconds before it. Beth shrieked, and Matt flung the door open and abused the pilot in choice Centaurian.

  “I compliment you on your perfect command of our language,” murmured a soft creamy voice, and Matt flushed darkly as he saw the Archon standing at the very foot of the roofport. He murmured confused apology; it was hardly the way to begin a formal evening. The Archon lipped a buttery smile. “I pray you do not think of it. I disregard speech of yours. It is again not spoken.” With an air of esthetic unconcern, he gestured welcome at Beth, and she stepped down, feeling clumsy and awkward, “I stand where you expect me not, only because I think Senior Wife mine in cariole this one,” the Archon continued. Out of courtesy to his guests, he was speaking a mangled dialect of Galactic Standard; Beth wished irritably that he would talk Centaurian. She understood it as well as Matt did. She also had the uncomfortable feeling that the Archon sensed her irritation and that it amused him; a sizable fraction of the Megaeran population was slightly telepathic.

  “You must excusing Cassiana,” the Archon offered languidly as he conducted his guests across the great open skycourt which was the main room of a Centaurian home. “She went to the City, one of our families visiting, for she is rhu'ad, and must be ever at their call when she is needed. And Second Wife is most fortunately in seclusion, so you must excusing her also,” he continued as they approached the lighted penthouse. Beth murmured the expected compliments on Nethle's coming child. “Youngest wife then be our hostess, and since she not used to formal custom, we be like barbarian this night."

  Matt gave his wife a vicious nudge in the ribs. “Cut that out,” he whispered, savagely, and with an effort that turned her face crimson, Beth managed to suppress her rising giggles. Of course there was nothing even faintly informal in the arrangement of the penthouse room into which they were conducted, nor in the classic and affected poses of the other guests. The women in their stiff metallic robes cast polite, aloof glances at Beth's soft drapery, and their greetings were chilly, musical murmurs. Under their slitted, hostile eyes, Beth felt despairingly that she and Matt were intruders here, barbaric atavisms; too big and muscular, too burned by yellow sun, blatantly and vulgarly colorful. The Centaurians were little and fragile, not one over five feet tall, bleached white by the red-violet sun, their foamy, blue-black hair a curious metallic halo above stiff classicized robes. Humans? Yes—but their evolution had turned off at right angles a thousand years ago. What had those centuries done to Megaera and its people?

  Swathed in a symbolic costume, Rai Jeth-san's youngest wife Wilidh sat stiffly in the great Hostess Chair. She spoke to the guests formally, but her mouth quirked up at Beth in the beginnings of a giggle. “Oh, my good little friend,” she whispered in Galactic Standard, “I die with these formals! These are Cassiana's friends, and not mine, for no one knew she would not be here tonight! And they laugh at me, and stick up their backs, all stiff, like this—” she made a rude gesture, and her topaz eyes glinted with mischief. “Sit here by me, Beth, and talk of something very dull and stupid, for I die trying not to disgrace me by laughing! When Cassiana comes back—"

  Wilidh's mirth was infectious. Beth took the indicated seat, and they talked in whispers, holding hands after the fashion of Centaurian women. Wilidh was too young to have adopted the general hostility toward the Terran woman; in many ways, she reminded Beth of an eager school girl. It was hard to remember that this merry child had been married as long as Beth herself; still more incredible that she was already the mother of three children.

  Suddenly Wilidh turned color, and stood up, stammering confused apologies. “Forgive me, forgive me, Cassiana—"

  Beth also rose, but the Archon's Senior Wife gestured for them to resume their seats. Cassiana was not dressed for formal dining. Her gray street wrap was still folded over a plain dress of dark thin stuff, and her face looked naked without cosmetics, and very tired. “Never mind, Wilidh. Remain hostess for me, if you will.” She smiled flittingly at Beth. “I am sorry I am not here to greet you.” Acknowledging their replies with a weary politeness, Cassiana moved past them like a wraith, and they saw her walking across the skycourt, and disappearing down
the wide stairway that led to the lower, private parts of the house.

  She did not rejoin them until the formal dinner had been served, eaten and removed, and the soft-footed servants were padding around the room with bowls and baskets of exotic fruit and delicacies and gilded cups of frosty mountain nectar. The penthouse shutters had been thrown wide, so that the guests could watch the flickering play of lightning from the giant magnetic storms which were almost a nightly occurrence on Megaera. They were weirdly beautiful and the Centaurians never tired of watching them, but they terrified Beth. She preferred the rare calm nights when Megaera's two immense moons filled the sky with uncanny green moonlight; but now thick clouds hid the faces of Alecto and Tisiphone, and the jagged bolts leaped and cast lurid shadows on the great massy clouds. Through the thunder, the eerie noise which passed, on Megaera, for music, was wailing from the slitted walls. In its shadow, Cassiana ghosted into the room and sat down between Beth and Wilidh. She did not speak for minutes, listening with evident enjoyment to the music and its counterpoint of thunder. Cassiana was somewhat older than Beth, small and exquisite, a filigree dainty woman fashioned of gilded silver. Her ash blonde hair had metallic lights, and her skin and eyes had almost the same hue, a gold-cream, smudged with gilt freckles, and with a sort of luminous, pearly glow ... the distinguishing mark of a curious mutation called rhu'ad. The word itself meant only pearl; neither Beth nor any other Terran knew what it implied.

  The servants were passing around tiny baskets, curiously woven of reeds from the Sea of Storms. Deferentially, they laid a basket before the three women.

  “Oh, sharigs!” Wilidh cried with a childish gusto. Beth glanced into the basket at the wriggling mass of small, greenish-gold octopods, less than three inches long, writhing and struggling in their nest of odorous seaweed and striking feebly at each other with the stumps of claws they did not know had been snapped off. The sight disgusted Beth, but Wilidh took a pair of tiny tongs and picked up one of the revolting little creatures, and as Beth watched with fascinated horror, thrust it whole into her mouth. Daintily, but with relish, her sharp small teeth crunched the shell; she sucked, and fastidiously spat the empty shell into her palm.