The Artifact of Foex

by James L. Wolf

  As for Chet, he was the same guy as always. Just the same no matter how much he delved into dangerous sexuality or conversed with historic men and Flame. Uncomplicated and unaffiliated, unknowing of the past as he’d always been. He might study hard as he pleased, but he could never seem to catch up.

  Even now he was the odd man out.

  While up before dawn might be normal on the farm, it was not in Chet’s usual vocabulary.

  Othnielia woke them while doing chores. Half asleep, Chet stumbled through the motions of dressing and eating until he was faced with a task he’d never had before: mounting a ceros. Othnielia had assigned him an older gelding, placid yet featuring a full rack of horns, which he and Fenimore were to share pillion style. The beast was nine feet tall even without accounting for the horns. Fenimore didn’t seem at all distracted or even interested by the mode of transport, helping to saddle and bridle without comment.

  Chet hung back. His ass was still sore from yesterday, but that would be nothing compared to what it would be tonight when—what? When they were riding in someone else’s vehicle? Asleep—or dead—by the side of the road? Today couldn’t possibly get more intimidating, Chet thought irritably.

  Journey and Knife seemed to be in a sober mood. They both sported knotted kerchiefs under wide-brimmed hats. Saemion—who was up to see them off—had clearly lent Journey clothing. The fashionable purse had been replaced by an army-surplus duffle, which held the Raptus plus spare clothing and food rations. Knife remained exactly the same, of course, though he’d ditched the college sweater. What’s the use of being a shapeshifter if you don’t ever shift your shape? Chet wondered. Now was a great time for the Flame to take on different figures and faces. He kept his thoughts private.

  Fenimore did not. He turned to Othnielia and inquired, “Why do you change to female to travel? Seems to me it’s best to travel as male.”

  Chet blinked. He, too, had wanted to ask Othnielia why she’d turned female, but hadn’t quite dared. She appeared to be third of the age she’d been before—in her mid-forties, perhaps. Still flaxen, she had a certain spare, wry beauty to her face and figure. She was still missing a tooth. Apparently, it was a real loss, not just for show. She, too, wore a kerchief under a wide-brimmed hat.

  Othnielia shrugged. “You never know when you’ll have to navigate unfriendly terrain. Being female means people will deliberately miss when they’re shooting at you. Not that I expect to be shot at in peacetime, but territoriality is a timeless trait. Chivalry and sexism not so much, but still.”

  Masie and Saemion watched, unconcerned, as they mounted up. Or at least as everyone mounted up save Chet. Saemion giggled behind her hand as Masie encouraged him to ascend the beast. “You’ve got to stretch your legs wide open, once you’re on the mounting block," she said cheerfully.

  “You know all about that, Chet.” Fenimore grinned down at him, holding out a hand to haul him up.

  Fortunately, this beast was more placid than the doedicu yesterday. Chet almost popped his thigh out of its socket before he finally succeeded. He gripped Fenimore grimly, expecting to fall any minute. To his relief, Othnielia chose a walking pace.

  Despite Othnielia’s time-tested fears, they traversed territory without issue, cutting across fields and shallow creeks. Chet’s leg muscles ached, but he managed to enjoy himself. It almost seemed like his childhood dreams of camping; a clear sky and real ceros riding. Chet’s family had taken their vacations by a rural lake. He knew how to launch, handle and dock just about every kind of small boat imaginable, but riding a ceros through this rural area seemed a more authentically historic activity. He wondered whether they would see a pride of wild othnielias out here. Probably not, but he could dream.

  As the day warmed, Chet grew cheerful enough to start reciting poetry under his breath. Fenimore gave him an odd look but didn’t interrupt. Encouraged, Chet began another classical poem, this one written by the Magician Zang commemorating the construction of the city-state of Door by the honey-eyed Magicians and Foex. Fenimore joined in. Their emphases were different, and some of the little words had been changed—flipped around in translation?—but they were remarkably aligned with one another. At the end, the Flame applauded.

  “Not bad,” Journey said. “I’ve always felt Zang was best recited by a choir rather than read on the page.”

  Chet, recalling her background in the theater arts, felt immensely cheered by this professional opinion.

  Fenimore seemed to have his blood up. He glanced at Chet over his shoulder. “Bet I can beat you in recitations. We each recite a verse no less than twelve lines long, and the other must guess the author and century written. Nothing after my time, though. No cheating.”

  “You’re on,” Chet said fiercely. Here was a game which he might have a chance of beating Fenimore!

  They began with the easy stuff. Chet laughed out loud when Fenimore tried to trick him with the original Maansterdam city-state anthem, nationalist garbage that was a far cry from true classics. Fenimore, in turn, snorted when Chet just about handed him a Tache poet from his own time period. The Flame joined in after a while, and the game became truly hard. In the end, Othnielia stumped everyone when she recited repeating stanzas that sounded like they were from The Book of Twelve but clearly weren’t.

  Chet closed his eyes to think, then gasped. “It’s from Lament to the Metacors! It’s attributed to the mother of gods, Aerora herself, at the end of the Crimson Era. Say, the 3800s? Foex’s millennium.”

  Othnielia stared at him with respect, and Knife whistled low. “You’re good,” Othnielia admitted. “I didn’t know there were any copies left in the world.”

  “Only one. It’s kept under glass in an air-tight vault deep in the Eich Che Independent University library. I gather they acquired it from the God Plain, though I don’t know how or why. I was there on an entirely different research project. Couldn’t resist taking a look, though. One of the oldest written texts in existence, all that.” Chet nibbled on his lip. “You knew those verses pretty well, Othnielia. Are you that old?”

  She laughed. “Abyss, no. No one is, except the gods themselves and Aureate, I guess.”

  “Chet, that was masterfully done. I think you just won the game,” Journey said with the air of an umpire.

  No one gainsaid this; even Fenimore looked a little awed. Chet leaned back in the saddle, grinning with pride. He didn’t get to show off his knowledge often, not even among graduate students. No one wanted to talk about authors, poets, historians and ancient scholars for fun. No one really cared what they’d written beyond the immediately accessible classics in mass-print paperback.

  Feeling bubbly as carbonated water, Chet glanced around and realized they were passing a series of buildings surrounded by cherry orchards. It almost certainly an Acia Nun convent; a small one, anyway. His sisters all belonged to a convent more than six times that size in Fengfu. Chet noticed a billowing line of Nun’s habits on a clothesline. They were bright green, as per usual, with black trim. No one seemed to be around. Maybe the Nuns were praying inside as they did several times a day.

  Inspiration struck. He struggled to get his leg over the ceros’s haunch, then slipped down—down, down!—to the ground. Chet gasped and fell over, blood rushing to his head, his legs aching. He ignored the others' questions as he stumbled to his feet. Then he was off, running toward the clothesline in an ungainly fashion. Chet snatched the nearest two habits and headdresses and raced back, grinning like a boy.

  “What are you doing?” Othnielia hissed, scowling.

  “Saving Journey and Knife some trouble. Quick, let’s get going before they come outside.” Chet glanced guiltily over his shoulder. Stealing from Nuns wasn’t the sort of thing he usually did... Fenimore must be rubbing off on him.

  Indeed, Fenimore seemed nonplussed but not at all shocked. Chet wondered whether he was capable of feeling shock. “That low-lying walnut tree should work as a mounting block.”

  Chet was soon back i
n the saddle, aching and splendidly happy about his discovery. “Don’t you see? If you Flame are disguised as Nuns, no one will question or bother you. And with headdresses you don’t need wigs.”

  Journey and Knife exchanged uncertain looks, and Knife shrugged. “Emulating another god affiliate is no worse than the theft or murder charges, I suppose. The taboo would even serve to make our disguises more believable.”

  Othnielia still looked dour. “My family will need to make quiet donations to the convent. A gift of pies and one of my quilts, I should think. Bottles of Saemion’s mead and dark ale, too. Look, I’m pretty non-political for a god affiliate, but we don’t steal from Tutelary Party allies. The goddess Acia is on our side.”

  She didn’t grumble for long, though, and no one made Chet give the habits back. Needs dictate, he thought smugly. Chet held onto the black-and-green bundles until they stopped for lunch. The peaceful glen apparently represented the last of the trees before the land flattened out into prairie. Journey shook out both habits: one was short and the other... shorter. And wide. Very wide.

  Journey tossed this one to Knife with evident glee. “I don’t have the body mass to fill that one, even at the required height. You do. Congratulations, you get to be short and fat for once.”

  Knife blanched as he assessed the habit. “Abyss,” he muttered. He shot Chet a dirty look. “You should have made a more careful selection, Chet.”

  Chet frowned at him. “I don’t understand. I thought you could change your shape to just about anything.”

  “Not so,” Journey said. “Our bodies aren’t nearly as flexible as you might think. We can’t pour ourselves through the eye of a needle or even a chain-link fence. Muscles and tendons can be manipulated but still need space, and bones are rigid no matter what. Anatomical structures exist for a reason, and breaking those rules is painful. Back when I flattened myself out in the car, I was in pain the whole time. As far as these outfits go, we only have one body mass. Shape tall and you’re thin, shape short and you’re fat. It all has to go somewhere. I weigh a little under ten stone, but Knife is thirteen stone six. Ergo he gets the smaller, fatter habit. He’ll need all that weight to shape outwards, you see.”

  “I hate being fat,” Knife grumbled. “I hate big breasts. They sweat. And jiggle. I don’t like the way men stare at them, either. You can’t even sleep on them; it’s like sleeping on enormous, sweaty tumors. I like long legs, the better to run fast and escape.”

  “Too bad.” Journey grinned at him, stripping down to her underclothes without a trace of self consciousness. Chet realized everyone here had seen her naked before. “You don’t mind the distraction of big breasts when you’re tracking a mark.”

  “That’s taking care of Pelin’s dirty laundry, which is my passion. I’m willing to make sacrifices like that in the short term, but I draw the line at having voluntary sex as a woman with big breasts. Or as a woman at all, really.” Knife shuddered. “The jiggling and pawing is enough to make me throw up. Then when you throw in the issue of vaginal penetration... gah. I’ll do it, just never ask me to like it.”

  Othnielia and Journey giggled uproariously. There was no other word for it: they clutched at one another’s arms and gasped for breath. Knife, looking prim, went behind the bushes to change into the habit.

  Chet watched as Journey shaped herself downward, simultaneously growing portly, aged and soft in the process. With Othnielia’s help—as she didn’t have a mirror—Journey shaped a slightly asymmetrical face with vague, watery eyes. She looked like a Nun who’d never heard of the concept of makeup. The headdress went on, and voila: one elderly Nun. As before, Chet couldn’t see anything of Journey in that face, except maybe deep in the eyes. He realized that he’d grown used to her preferred visage, both in male and female forms. It seemed that Flame created a cozy home space within their own bodies, remaining the same far more than they became different.

  Knife, when she—she!—came out from behind the tree, was even more of a contrast. Chet snorted, his hand over his mouth to keep from laughing out loud. Fenimore grinned, not bothering to hide it. Knife was indeed short and quite fat now, squat and maybe even bowlegged. Flaxen-skinned, she had shaped the ugliest face Chet had ever seen. A completely asymmetrical, lumpy visage with jowls, large bags under her eyes and a permanent scowl. Her stitched boots seemed incongruous under the ankle-length habit; Chet hoped no one would notice them.

  Knife waddled over to her ceros and sighed. “Someone want to give me a hand up?” she said in a warbling alto.

  As promised, the last leg was mostly flat and hot under the clear, poppy-colored sky. Highway 1 appeared after a time, a ribbon etched upon the rolls of prairie. Not long after that, Othnielia pulled up her ceros. “You can find your way now. I don’t want to get close to the road, as we’re too visible and easily remembered like this.”

  Chet slid awkwardly to the ground. His whole body ached, even the little muscles he’d never knew existed. “Thank you for everything," he said. The others made their goodbyes, including the typical kiss from both Flame and a long hug from Journey. Then Othnielia galloped away with her string of ceroses behind her.

  They reached the road an hour later. Knife had worked out a reputable cover story as to why elderly Nuns and young men were hitchhiking together: Chet and Fenimore were supposedly volunteers who’d been driving them to the Fengfu Convent on Acia’s business. They’d broken down up the road, and the elderly Nuns had insisted upon continuing forward. It didn’t seem likely to Chet, but he couldn’t think of a better story, so he kept his mouth shut.

  “Four is an awkward number to grab a ride,” Journey sighed after a while.

  Chet nodded agreement, turning once again to stick out three fingers in the usual sign. He knew this highway well. He’d driven it enough times, although he’d never picked up a hitchhiker himself. Chet wondered whether his own reticence was coming back to haunt him. At last, a big-rig truck slowed to a stop, and they hustled—or waddled with dignity—up the road to meet it. The rig had a closed cargo hold. Were they were all going to climb into the back with the cargo?

  The driver was a middle-aged man, oily and unkempt. He looked exactly like the kind of man mothers warned their teenage children about—Chet got chills just looking at him. “Need a ride, sisters?” he said.

  “Why, thank you, young man," Knife warbled, wiping her face with a handkerchief. Knife explained their problem as the driver opened up the back of his cargo hold. It was filled with industrial barrels, the hold half full.

  Was he a smuggler? Chet scrunched his shoulders as little hairs on the back of his neck stirred.

  “Everything is tied down, no problem,” he said. “You sisters can bunk back here. One of you two young guys come up front.” He gave Chet and Fenimore an appraising glance, his eyes lingering on Chet.

  Chet gulped. He instinctively knew that he didn’t want to be the one up front. Fenimore patted him on the shoulder and whispered in his ear, “You be a good girl for our carriage driver now.”

  Fenimore, slimy dium, turned away and made a show of helping the awkward, elderly Nuns into the cargo hold, then followed them inside. He was clearly uninterested in sitting up front... with reason. Journey shot Chet a worried look. Chet tried to smile back at her. He recalled her words back at the farm that she would be the one “taking the hit.” Chet suddenly realized what she’d meant: hitchhiking was free with some drivers, but not with others. Bartering sexual favors was the coin of choice it seemed. Swaddled by her habit, Journey was no longer the target here. Chet was.

  Apparently, it was time to take another one for the team.

  Chapter 15

  The Trouble With Hitchhiking

  The cab smelled of stale beer and body odor. There was a rumpled bed in the back of the tiny compartment covered by dirty clothes. The man beside Chet kept giving him sideways glances.

  “What do they call you, son?” he asked after a time.

  “Chet. And you?”

&nb
sp; “You can call me Rhiys.” The man seemed to be evaluating him.

  Chet looked down, his mouth dry. How personal would this get? As if in answer, Rhiys reached out and put a hand on Chet’s leg. His touch was warm and had some pressure behind it. He rubbed Chet’s leg up and down.

  “You ever hitchhike before?”

  Chet shook his head truthfully. Rhiys lingered at his upper thigh, and Chet couldn’t help himself—he squirmed. “I don’t like that,” he said experimentally. “Please stop.”

  Rhiys put his hand back on the steering wheel, but his expression didn’t change. “You been volunteering with Nuns all your life, boy?”

  “All my sisters are Nuns,” Chet said, sticking with the truth.

  “You want to get those ladies where they’re going, you’re going to need to follow some rules, here. For one thing, this cab is my home. You’re to be polite and respectful to me. You’re to call me sir. Do you understand?”

  Chet didn’t like where this was going. “Yes, sir.”

  “I want you to undo my fly, boy, and pull out my dick.”

  That was quick. No foreplay or anything, right down to business. Chet nibbled his lip, uncertain. What would Journey do in this situation? She’d defended herself readily against Fenimore, yet she’d implied yesterday that she be the one handling this exact circumstance while hitchhiking. Not willingly, but from necessity. Would Journey open this guy’s fly and take out his dick? Chet was afraid the answer was yes. Journey would probably make sure to set some boundaries, though. Both Knife and Fenimore had neatly—and cruelly, in Fenimore’s case—avoided this situation entirely. If Fenimore were up here, he’d probably unsheathe his hunting blade and threaten the man to keep driving. Knife would have employed a subtler tactic with equal results. Lacking a weapon or tactical knowledge, Chet decided to try setting boundaries as a partial solution.