Webshifters 2 - Changing Vision

by Julie E. Czerneda

  Now we sat, grateful for the warmth of our helmetless suits, although mine was set appropriately cooler than Paul's, and contemplated the lovely spray of stars overhead. There wasn't much else to be done. I was of the opinion the Iftsen would come to check on their asteroid. Paul had doubts, especially once I told him about the inscription I'd seen on the side of The Messenger.

  " 'Messenger of Peace and Harmony, donated by the First Citizens' Art Gallery of Brakistem, a work in mixed media,'" he repeated for what had to be the fifth time. "I thought you said it rhymed."

  I chuckled. "It has a very nice rhyme in the original dialect. You want me to say it for you?"

  "No, I believe you." His gray eyes sparkled with grim amusement. "So Inspector Logan stole a work of art."

  "And was very pleased with it, I might add," I said pompously. "Sometimes, there is symmetry, my friend."

  He shook his head in amazement. "As long as you're sure the thing's harmless."

  "Totally. Except to the backs of anyone trying to lift it. And," I grinned, "to the reputations of those who try to use it."

  "Which leaves us with three problems."

  We were sitting side by side. At the sudden seriousness in his voice, I turned to face him. "Three?" When had our troubles multiplied?

  My friend gestured at the view. "Getting out of here. Reconciling the Feneden and Iftsen."

  "That's two," I tallied suspiciously.

  "Our friend Logan. He may not have his superweapon, but he's still a threat to Inhaven—and to Largas Freight."

  I tapped a slender finger against the medallion hanging outside his suit. "I've taken a step or two in that direction," I confessed, peeking up at him through a flash of red eyelids.

  Paul raised one brow. "Why am I not surprised?"

  Fortunately, my Feneden-self was spared a Human-like blush. "Nothing you'd object to," I hastened to assure him. "I merely—clicked—a bit of information into the right ears."

  My friend had a wide, generous mouth, one that smiled particularly well, I'd always thought, with an infectious, warm quality. It was smiling now. "You told the Herd."

  "Oh, not just the Herd Logan dropped on Iftsen Secondus," I corrected, smiling back. "I informed the Ganthor Homeworld."

  If I'd thought he smiled before, I was dazzled by the warmth in his face now. "That's just—that's just—"

  When Paul appeared at a loss for words, I supplied: "That's just brilliant, Esen?"

  He shook his head. "I was thinking poetic, but brilliant? Definitely, old friend. Logan's biggest misjudgment. No one deceives the Ganthor on the battlefield." His smile softened, and he put one hand on my shoulder. "That lonely soldier on Minas XII would have appreciated this, Esen."

  His praise made me uneasy. Why was my solution to the least of our problems so important to him? I asked myself. Of course, it was an ephemeral trait, one Paul had in full measure, to ignore the life-threatening in favor of the emotionally satisfying. It was a good thing I was here, I decided, to make sure he had the right priorities. "The air is getting thinner," I reminded him, waving one arm at the dome. The venting air was freezing as it escaped, snowing on the rocks and forming a rim of frost along the lower third of that area of the dome's surface, occluding the stars. I'd hoped it would jam up the vent, but the mechanism had a servo heater to maintain an opening. "We have a few hours left before the pressure drops too low for—comfort."

  "I know," Paul said, too calmly. I narrowed my eyes, blinking red once or twice before turning my back on him.

  "See if you can pry that tank off my suit," I suggested. "We can rig something to keep the pressure up in yours—won't be pretty, but—"

  "Esen, we have to talk about what might happen."

  I froze, not turning to look at him. Ersh. I hated that note in his voice. "I don't need the air," I went on. "Let's get working on this."

  I felt his hands on my suit, but they didn't start working on the fastenings of the air tank. Instead, they pulled me around.

  "Just listen," Paul insisted.

  "This is a good idea. I can—"

  "Shut up, Esen." Paul's smile was gone. In its place were deep lines drawn around his eyes and mouth, lines I'd never noticed as prominent before. "If the air keeps venting, I'm going to die." He stifled my involuntary protest with a hand over my mouth. "Listen to me! We both know it could happen. And I've something I want you to do for me."

  I nodded, licking blood from my lip as Paul removed his grip: my Feneden teeth were sharper than Human norm. "Anything," I said despondently. "You know that. But you aren't going—"

  "Shh," gently. "I want you to use my mass. To assimilate—isn't that the word?—my body into yours."

  Whatever I'd expected, it wasn't this. I stared at my friend. "It won't preserve you," I told him, feeling the truth as a sharp wound. "Your flesh would be altered into web-mass. Nothing Human, nothing of you, would be left. No transfer of memory. No remnant of self. Believe me, Paul. I would give anything if that could be, if I could take you into me and—and save you."

  Wonder of wonders, he smiled. "I know, Es. I think I understand the process as well as it's possible for an alien to do so. But this is what I want you to do for me. You'll know the moment."

  Oh, yes, I told myself bitterly. I was very good at detecting the imminent death of cells, of the cessation of life, if not restoring it. "You are my friend," the last came out past a hiccup I couldn't help. "I will do whatever you want. But why this?"

  His fingers fluffed the soft, sensory cilia under my skin. I savored the warmth of his touch and the patterns of heat from his face. "I want you to have my mass, Esen-alit-Quar," Paul Ragem said. "And I want you to use it to fly."

  I lurched back from the gentle-voiced Human and his horrifying vision. "I won't leave you," I snarled, knowing even as I spoke that he was right, that if we were here long enough to cost him his life, I could escape by spending his mass for propulsion. In web-form I could easily break free of this dome, and soar into space. His body might be enough to take me translight to safety, to a future, to a new life.

  Alone.

  "There will be," I promised him with utter and complete conviction, "another option, Paul. I don't want to hear this wish of yours again."

  "I'll stop if you promise me." He could be as rock-solid, immovable, and depressingly irresistible as Ersh. "Promise, Esen."

  I dropped my face into my hands, admitting the inconceivable with a nod.

  "Good," I heard him say, but with a little break in the word as though he'd been sure I'd argue longer.

  I didn't bother telling him he didn't have the air or time for it.

  Obviously, Paul knew that as well as I.

  Elsewhere

  « ^ »

  "WE'VE decoded the Feneden transmission, Captain."

  Lefebvre ran a hand through his hair, wishing he'd had time to stick his head under the 'fresher. Kearn looked worse than he felt—something Lefebvre attributed more to last night's conversation than the brandy or few minutes of sleep they'd had before this urgent summons to the bridge. Timri stood with the message in her hand, immaculate as always, and looked from one to the other of her superiors as if wanting to ask, but knowing better.

  "I'll take that, Comp-tech," Kearn said before Lefebvre could reach for it, almost snatching the sheet of plas. Lefebvre settled one hip against the railing behind navigation, waiting to be enlightened, and stifled a yawn.

  Kearn, already pale, looked about to faint as he read. Lefebvre glanced at Timri. Her lips were tightly pressed together and her look was a warning. "Sir?" Lefebvre prompted. "Is it about the weapon?"

  "Take it." Kearn's voice was reed-thin, and his hand shook as he held out the message. Then he threw back his shoulders and raised his head to look Lefebvre in the eyes. "I told you this day would come, Captain," Kearn said before turning on his heel and leaving the bridge.

  Lefebvre read: "Our congratulations to the Shifter Hunter. Your glorious trap has worked. We have imprisoned
the Esen Monster and her Human slave within the asteroid dome, awaiting your arrival. This has been a victory for all of Fened Prime and your Commonwealth. Glory to the Shifter Hunter!"

  Chapter 45: Asteroid Morning

  « ^ »

  HAVING a painfully empty stomach did offer one advantage I'd never considered. It made a fine distraction from the difficulty I was beginning to experience whenever I exerted my Feneden-self and had to gasp for air.

  Not that exerting myself was a problem, I thought, looking over at Paul. There wasn't much room and no reason to move anyway. We'd managed to coax the inner air lock door into opening, then made a snug nest inside from whatever was portable. With the door closed again, we had a bubble of air that wouldn't be vented, although it was mountaintop-thin by the time this plan had occurred to us. Our air tanks raised the oxygen levels near our faces whenever we allowed some to escape. There was nothing we could do about the accumulation of carbon dioxide within this space except refrain, as Paul quipped, from dancing.

  In lieu of dancing, the Human might have been meditating, so shallow and slow was the rise of his chest with each breath, but his eyes never left me. Each time I made to speak, he'd close his eyes briefly, No.

  I didn't dream, but this was nightmare enough for any being. I went through every form assimilated in my memory, searching for anything that could help Paul survive until help came. If it came.

  There was nothing. I was locked as living flesh, flesh that, with the exception of web-form, was as vulnerable to vacuum as the flesh encompassing the spirit of my friend. I wondered how terrifying I would be to Kearn now.

  Soon, I knew, I'd have to assume my natural form. I could scrub some of the carbon dioxide from our pocket of air before it poisoned his blood, grant Paul an hour or so more of life, while robbing him of whatever comfort my companionship provided. There wasn't, I had to admit, much a blob of corrosive blue jelly could offer in that regard.

  My promise was another reason not to cycle—not until he lost consciousness. I couldn't bear to see fear in his eyes, to be the proof he was about to end.

  Memory overwhelmed my sight for a moment, painting his dear face with marks of pain and abuse, merging with the despair of the present. "This is Logan's doing," I said, as unable to save my breath any more than I could keep rage from my voice and thoughts. I felt cilia writhing as my temperature rose with my anguish.

  Paul's gaze intensified, his eyes darkening as if he heard more than I said aloud. "Es, when we met, you spoke to me of how each species, each individual, has its limits, that point beyond which none of us can go because of our very natures. I told you mine, as a condition to our friendship. Do you remember?"

  Of course I did. "You won't endanger innocent lives."

  "Then tell me, Esen, because I must know. Was I wrong to befriend you? Are you capable of killing someone? Will you hunt and kill Logan if I die here?"

  "Your definition of innocent appalls me," I said, trying hard to be angry instead of simply terrified.

  Paul was implacable. His eyes burned into me like coals. "What will you do? Tell me, Esen. And I want the absolute truth."

  I studied his face, needlessly memorizing it, endlessly fascinated by the curve of his eyelashes and the shape of his nose, knowing to each cell how fragile a being formed the other half of my Web. Fragile in form, yet so much stronger, I told myself. "The absolute truth, my friend?" I looked up at the stars, imagining where I might go, what I might do. "I will remember you. Always."

  His voice was relentless, if gentle. "What will you do?"

  I looked back at him, understanding what he needed to know. "Do not fear my grief, Paul Ragem. I would never taint my memory of you with revenge or rage." As if, a darker thought intruded, there could be enough blood to pay for your life, in Logan's flesh or on all the inhabited worlds.

  "Will you go home?"

  I flicked a finger at our surroundings, inviting him to share the joke. "Home is where the Web gathers."

  "I meant Minas XII."

  "When you are gone?" I paused for breath, then shook my head. "I will be alone. I don't think I will be able to stay among your kind for some time." Seeing echoes of your face, but never you. I lightened my voice—a difficult feat as my Feneden-self was already gasping slightly. "There are places I may go. Perhaps I will visit the Iberili and sleep with them for a while. Ersh did, once. There's a lot to be said for resting."

  Paul was frowning. "Esen, the Iberili hibernate three hundred years at a stretch. You can't disappear that long—you'd lose track of languages, you won't know the cultures—you won't be safe."

  "I can relearn what I need," I reminded him. "It just takes time and patience. I have the one and am learning the other. You shouldn't talk so much," I continued, worried about the blue tinge to his lips. "Have a bit of air."

  He obeyed, but only so he had the strength to demand almost harshly, "What of the Web of Esen? What about protecting this sector? I thought it was your chosen task. How can you abandon it?"

  I shook my head. "As you said, there are those with enough knowledge of my kind to be dangerous. They can deal with any web-being who misbehaves—perhaps better than I could." My only success in that area having involved far more luck and discomfort than skill.

  "You think we can trust them?" His lips twisted, as if on a bitter taste. I'd settle for any taste at all, right now, I thought, inclined to focus on the hollow space down one side as a far more comforting topic than this one. Still, if Paul wanted to spend our air in conversation, he had the right. "We don't even know who it is. Why leave, Esen?" he asked, as though driven. "Esolesy Ki has a good life, a family—"

  He wanted the truth? "It's your family, Paul. Not mine. There would be no belonging," I shook my head, unsure how to help him understand what I knew to my core. "You are the only web-kin. The only one with whom I am truly Esen-alit-Quar. You are all I have."

  "Esen." Paul seemed to make some decision, because his voice suddenly firmed. "I am not all you have."

  "Lefebvre?" I would have laughed, had I not thought it more likely another sound would come out.

  "No."

  What was he saying? I surged to my feet, a regrettably silly action as I immediately fell to my knees with dizziness, in control of the need to cycle from this failing form only because of the fresh air from the tank Paul held under my nose. He held me as well, and dropped his face into the air to control his own whooping gasps. I put my hands on his shoulders and pressed my forehead against his.

  "What have you done?" I whispered urgently, staring into the one gray eye I could see.

  "Esen," Paul told me, his breath warm on my lips, "the faces I gave you in your gift. They are more than my past."

  I pushed back so I could see all of him. What I saw wasn't reassuring. There was a hardness there, a determination that had more in common with a doctor about to set a broken leg, than a friend's caring last moments. "What are you saying?" I asked.

  "As part of your Web," the Human said with a strange edge to his voice, "it was my role to gather information and prepare it for you. By all I know of you, that makes me the Senior Assimilator."

  There was a notion to roll Ersh right off her rocky mountain, I thought, but couldn't argue.

  Paul took my silence for agreement. "As Senior Assimilator, I decided our Web needed more."

  "More?"

  "I knew you'd outlive me. I knew before I chose to return to you, fifty years ago, that whatever we accomplished together had to last longer than I could. Esen—you can't exist alone. And I couldn't allow you to exist in secret." The air had to be fouler than I thought, I decided, trying to make sense of what Paul was saying so passionately. "I knew you were young—too young," he went on. "You make mistakes, potentially dangerous ones to you and those around you. You have enemies we don't even know yet. Do you understand? I had to make sure others would be there to protect you—when I was gone. That others would know what I do." He gripped my arms, tightening his fingers as if
afraid I was about to run. "Esen, those faces in my gift, are my gift. They all know you. They know all about you. Web-kin, Esen. You aren't alone."

  Had I been Human more often, maybe I would have seen Paul's frequent trips away from Minas XII, his network of beings on many worlds, his occasional secrecy, for what they were. Had I been Human more often, I told myself grimly, maybe he wouldn't have done this at all.

  It was never easy, changing vision to see through another's eyes and mind, making the accommodation necessary when my thought processes had to deal with a different set of interpretations once I cycled. The most familiar aspects of one's life took on completely new meanings.

  Only this time, I had a choice how to see: was Paul's gift to me a glorious extension of my Web? Or were those faces a list of spies—a threat I'd have to avoid?

  If I could have refused to see either, to step back to what I'd been, what we'd been together—the wish of a child.

  From safely unknown among those I knew, the Human had made me known to those I didn't—surrounded by those who might, or might not—my most secret and safest self a fractured and uncertain thing.

  Ersh. I wrapped my arms around my torso, rocking back and forth in a reflex this form found comforting, feeling cold inside and out. "What have you done to me, my friend?" I whispered. "What have you done?"

  Elsewhere

  « ^ »

  KEARN was looking at himself in the mirrored tiles of the 'fresher in his cabin when the expected knock on his door came. He closed his eyes tightly for an instant before saying: "Come in, Captain."

  Lefebvre entered. Kearn could see his face over his shoulder in the mirror, but didn't detect anything there but respectful attention and a touch of anxiety. "The Feneden have been intercepted by the Commonwealth cruiser, the Vigilant, sir. I believe that's the ship you contacted from Upperside?"

  It had been N'Klet, but Kearn didn't plan to tell Lefebvre that detail. He brushed a nonexistent piece of fluff from the polished strip of silver topping his left epaulette. "Thank you, Captain. I'll be up to the bridge shortly. Be ready to change course once I confer with the Feneden and the Vigilant."