However, Rick had missed none of the essentials for human appearance. He had a gentle, slender face whose contours were difficult to remember. His brown eyes were of a limpid softness that made human females discard all suspicions while the males concentrated on jealousy. Rick's hair was a coarse, but acceptable black. The shoulders were a bit high and the thorax somewhat too heroic, but the total effect aroused no probing questions.
That was the important thing: no probing questions.
Smeg permitted himself a silent sigh. His own shape - that of a middle-aged government official, gray at the temples, slightly paunchy and bent of shoulder, and with weak eyes behind gold-rimmed glasses - was more in the Slorin tradition.
Live on the margins, Smeg thought. Attract no attention.
In other words, don't do what they were doing today.
Awareness of danger forced Smeg into extreme contact with this body his plastic genes had fashioned. It was a good body, a close enough duplicate to interbreed with the natives, but he felt it now from the inside, as it were, a fabric of newness stretched over the ancient substance of the Slorin. It was familiar, yet bothersomely unfamiliar.
I am Sumctroxelunsmeg, he reminded himself. I am a Slorin of seven syllables, each addition to my name an honor to my family. By the pupa of my jelly-sire whose name took fourteen thousand heartbeats to pronounce, I shall not fail!
There! That was the spirit he needed - the eternal wanderer, temporarily disciplined, yet without boundaries. 'If you want to swim, you must enter the water,' he whispered.
* * * *
'Did you say something, Dad?' Rick asked.
Ahhh, that was very good, Smeg thought. Dad - the easy colloquialism.
'I was girding myself for the ordeal, so to speak,' Smeg said. 'We must separate in a few minutes.' He nodded ahead to where a town was beginning to hump itself out of the horizon.
'I think I should barge right in and start asking about their sheriff,' Rick said.
Smeg drew in a sharp breath, a gesture of surprise that fitted this body. 'Feel out the situation first,' he said.
More and more, he began to question the wisdom of sending Rick in there. Dangerous, damnably dangerous. Rick could get himself irrevocably killed, ruined beyond the pupa's powers to restore. Worse than that, he could be exposed. There was the real danger. Give natives the knowledge of what they were fighting and they tended to develop extremely effective methods.
Slorin memory carried a bagful of horror stories to verify this fact.
'The Slorin must remain ready to take any shape, adapt to any situation,' Rick said. 'That it!'
Rick spoke the axiom well, Smeg thought, but did he really understand it? How could he? Rick still didn't have full control of the behavior patterns that went with this particular body shape. Again, Smeg sighed. If only they'd saved the infiltration squad, the expendable specialists.
Thoughts such as this always brought the more disquieting question: Saved them from what?
There had been five hundred pupae in the Scattership before the unknown disaster. Now there were four secondary ancestors and one new offspring created on this planet. They were shipless castaways on an unregistered world, not knowing even the nature of the disaster which had sent them scooting across the void in an escape capsule with minimum shielding.
Four of them had emerged from the capsule as basic Slorin poly-morphs to find themselves in darkness on a steep landscape of rocks and trees. At morning, there'd been four additional trees there - watching, listening, weighing the newness against memories accumulated across a timespan in which billions of planets such as this one could have developed and died.
The capsule had chosen an excellent landing site: no nearby sentient constructions. The Slorin now knew the region's native label - central British Columbia. In that period of awakening, though, it had been a place of unknown dangers whose chemistry and organization required the most cautious testing.
In time, four black bears had shambled down out of the mountains. Approaching civilization, they'd hidden and watched - listening, always listening, never daring to use the mindcloud. Who knew what mental powers the natives might have? Four roughly fashioned hunters had been metamorphosed from Slorin pupae in a brush-screened cave. The hunters had been tested, refined.
Finally - the hunters had scattered.
Slorin always scattered.
* * * *
'When we left Washington you said something about the possibility of a trap,' Rick said. 'You don't really think -'
'Slorin have been unmasked on some worlds,' Smeg said. 'Natives have developed situational protective devices. This has some of the characteristics of such a trap.'
'Then why investigate? Why not leave it alone until we're stronger?'
'Rick!' Smeg shuddered at the youth's massive ignorance. 'Other capsules may have escaped,' he said.
'But if it's a Slorin down here, he's acting like a dangerous fool.'
'More reason to investigate. We could have a damaged pupa here, one who lost part of the detail memory. Perhaps he doesn't know how to act - except out of instincts.'
'Then why not stay out of the town and probe just a little bit with the mindcloud?'
Rick cannot be trusted with this job, Smeg thought. He's too raw, too full of the youthful desire to play with the mindcloud.
'Why not?' Rick repeated.
Smeg pulled the car to a stop at the side of the dirt road, opened his window. It was getting hot - be noon in about an hour. The landscape was a hardscrabble flatness marked by sparse vegetation and a clump of buildings about two miles ahead. Broken fences lined both sides of the road. Low cottonwoods off to the right betrayed the presence of the dry creekbed. Two scrofulous oaks in the middle distance provided shade for several steers. Away on the rim of the flatland, obscured by haze, there was a suggestion of hills.
'You going to try my suggestion?' Rick asked.
'No.'
'Then why're we stopping? This as far as you go?'
'No.' Smeg sighed. 'This is as far as you go. I'm changing plans. You will wait. I will go into the village.'
'But I'm the younger. I'm - '
'And I'm in command here.'
'The others won't like this. They said -'
'The others will understand my decision.'
'But Slorin law says -'
'Don't quote Slorin law to me!'
'But-'
'Would you teach your grandfather how to shape a pupa?' Smeg shook his head. Rick must learn how to control the anger which flared in this bodily creation. 'The limit of the law is the limit of enforcement - the real limit of organized society. We're not an organized society. We're two Slorin - alone, cut off from our pitiful net. Alone! Two Slorin of widely disparate ability. You are capable of carrying a message. I do not judge you capable of meeting the challenge in this village.'
Smeg reached across Rick, opened the door.
'This is a firm decision?' Rick asked.
'It is. You know what to do?'
Rick spoke stiffly: 'I take that kit of yours from the back and I play the part of a soil engineer from the Department of Agriculture.'
'Not a part, Rick. You are a soil engineer.'
'But-'
'You will make real tests which will go into a real report and be sent to a real office with a real function. In the event of disaster, you will assume my shape and step into my niche.'
'I see.'
'I truly hope you do. Meanwhile, you will go out across that field. The dry creekbed is out there. See those cottonwoods?'
'I've identified the characteristics of this landscape.'
'Excellent. Don't deviate. Remember that you're the offspring of Sumctroxelunsmeg. Your jelly-sire's name took fourteen thousand heartbeats to pronounce. Live with pride.'
'I was supposed to go in there, take the risk of it -'
'There are risks and there are risks. Remember, make real tests for a real report. Never betray your niche. When you have mad
e the tests, find a place in that creekbed to secrete yourself. Dig in and wait. Listen on the narrow band at all times. Listen, that is all you do. In the event of disaster, you must get word to the others. In the kit there's a dog collar with a tag bearing a promise of reward and the address of our Chicago drop. Do you know the greyhound shape?'
'I know the plan, Dad.'
Rick slid out of the car. He removed a heavy black case from the rear, closed the doors, stared in at his parent.
Smeg leaned across the seat, opened the window. It creaked dismally.
'Good luck, Dad,' Rick said.
Smeg swallowed. This body carried a burden of attachment to an offspring much stronger than any in previous Slorin experience. He wondered how the offspring felt about the parent, tried to probe his own feelings toward the one who'd created him, trained him, sealed his pupa into the Scattership. There was no sense of loss. In some ways, he was the parent. As different experiences changed him, he would become more and more the individual, however. Syllables would be added to his name. Perhaps, someday, he might feel an urge to be reunited.
'Don't lose your cool, Dad,' Rick said.
'The God of the Slorin has no shape,' Smeg said. He closed the window, straightened himself behind the steering wheel.
Rick turned, trudged off across the field toward the cotton-woods. A low cloud of dust marked his progress. He carried the black case easily in his right hand.
Smeg put the car in motion, concentrated on driving. That last glimpse of Rick, sturdy and obedient, had pierced him with unexpected emotions. Slorin parted, he told himself. It is natural for Slorin to part. An offspring is merely an offspring.
A Slorin prayer came into his mind: 'Lord, let me possess this moment without regrets and, losing it, gain it forever.'
The prayer helped, but Smeg still felt the tug of that parting. He stared at the shabby buildings of his target town. Someone in this collection of structures Smeg was now entering had not learned a basic Slorin lesson: There is a reason for living; Slorin must not live in a way that destroys this reason. Moderation, that was the key.
* * * *
A man stood in the dusty sunglare toward the center of the town - one lone man beside the dirt road that ran unchecked toward the distant horizon. For one haunted moment Smeg had the feeling it was not a man, but a dangerous other-shaped enemy he'd met before. The feeling passed as Smeg brought the car to a stop nearby.
Here was the American peasant, Smeg realized - tall, lean, dressed in wash-faded blue bib overalls, a dirty tan shirt and tennis shoes. The shoes were coming apart to reveal bare toes. A ground green painter's hat with green plastic visor did an ineffective job of covering his yellow hair. The visor's rim was cracked. It dripped a fringe of ragged binding that swayed when the man moved his head.
Smeg leaned out his window, smiled: 'Howdy.'
'How do.'
Smeg's sense of hearing, trained in a history of billions of such encounters, detected the xenophobia and reluctant bowing to convention at war in the man's voice.
'Town's pretty quiet,' Smeg said.
'Yep.'
Purely human accents, Smeg decided. He permitted himself to relax somewhat, asked: 'Anything unusual ever happen around here?'
'You fum the gov'ment?'
'That's right.' Smeg tapped the motor-pool insignia on his door. 'Department of Agriculture.'
'Then you ain't part of the gov'ment conspiracy?'
'Conspiracy?' Smeg studied the man for a clue to hidden meanings. Was this one of those southern towns where anything from the government just had to be communist?
'Guess you ain't,' the man said.
'Of course not.'
'That there was a serious question you asked, then ... about unusual thing happening?'
'I ... yes.'
'Depends on what you call unusual.'
'What ... do you call unusual?' Smeg ventured.
'Can't rightly say. And you?'
Smeg frowned, leaned out his window, looked up and down the street, studied each detail: the dog sniffing under the porch of a building labeled 'General Store,' the watchful blankness of windows with here and there a twitching curtain to betray someone peering out, the missing boards on the side of a gas station beyond the store - one rusty pump there with its glass chamber empty. Every aspect of the town spoke of heat-addled somnolence ... yet it was wrong. Smeg could feel tensions, transient emotional eddies that irritated his highly tuned senses. He hoped Rick already had a hiding place and was listening.
'This is Wadeville, isn't it?' Smeg asked.
'Yep. Used to be county seat 'fore the war.'
He meant the War Between The States, Smeg realized, recalling his studies of regional history. As always, the Slorin were using every spare moment to absorb history, mythology, arts, literature, science - You never knew which might be the valuable piece of information.
'Ever hear about someone could get right into your mind?' the man asked.
Smeg overcame a shock reaction, groped for the proper response. Amused disbelief, he decided, and managed a small chuckle. 'That the unusual thing you have around here?'
'Didn't say yes; didn't say no.'
'Why'd you ask then?' Smeg knew his voice sounded like crinkling bread wrapper. He pulled his head back into the car's shadows.
'I jes' wondered if you might be hunting fer a teleepath?'
The man turned, hawked a cud of tobacco toward the dirt at his left. A vagrant breeze caught the spittle, draped it across the side of Smeg's car.
'Oh, dang!' the man said. He produced a dirty yellow bandanna, knelt and scrubbed with it at the side of the car.
* * * *
Smeg leaned out, studied this performance with an air of puzzlement. The man's responses, the vague hints at mental powers - they were confusing, fitted no pattern in Slorin experience.
'You got somebody around here claiming to be a telepath?' Smeg asked.
'Can't say.' The man stood up, peered in at Smeg. 'Sorry about that there. Wind, you know. Accident. Didn't mean no harm.'
'Certainly.'
'Hope you won't say nothing to the sheriff. Got 'er all cleaned off your car now. Can't tell where I hit 'er.'
The man's voice carried a definite tone of fear, Smeg realized. He stared at this American peasant with a narrow, searching gaze. Sheriff, he'd said. Was it going to be this easy? Smeg wondered how to capitalize on that opening. Sheriff. Here was an element of the mystery they'd come to investigate.
As the silence drew out, the man said: 'Got 'er all clean. You can get out and look for yourself.'
'I'm sure you did, Mr ... ahhh ... '
'Painter, Josh'a Painter. Most folks call me Josh on account of my first name there, Josh'a Painter.'
'Pleased to meet you, Mr Painter. My name's Smeg, Henry Smeg.'
'Smeg,' Painter said with a musing tone. 'Don't rightly believe I ever heard that name before.'
'It used to be much longer,' Smeg said. 'Hungarian.'
'Oh.'
'I'm curious, Mr Painter, why you'd be afraid I might tell the sheriff because the wind blew a little tobacco juice on my car?'
'Never can tell how some folks'll take things,' Painter said. He looked from one end of Smeg's car to the other, back to Smeg. 'You a gov'ment man, this car an' all, reckoned I'd best be sure, one sensible man to another.'
'You've been having trouble with the government around here, is that it?'
'Don't take kindly to most gov'ment men hereabouts, we don't. But the sheriff, he don't allow us to do anything about that. Sheriff is a mean man, a certain mean man sometimes, and he's got my Barton.'
'Your barton,' Smeg said, drawing back into the car to conceal his puzzlement. Barton? This was an entirely new term. Strange that none of them had encountered it before. Their study of languages and dialects had been most thorough. Smeg began to feel uneasy about his entire conversation with this Painter. The conversation had never really been under control. He wondered how much o
f it he'd actually understood. There was in Smeg a longing to venture a mindcloud probe, to nudge the man's motives, make him want to explain.
'You one of them survey fellows like we been getting?' Painter asked.
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