Captives of the Flame

by Samuel R. Delany

  CHAPTER IX

  The green of beetles' wings ... the red of polished carbuncle ... a webof silver fire, and through the drifting blue smoke Jon hurled acrossthe sky.

  Then blackness, intense and cold. The horizon was tiny, jagged, maybeten feet away. He reached a metal out and crawled expertly (notclumsily. Expertly!) across a crevice, but slowly, very slowly. The skywas sharp with stars, though the sun was dim to his light-sensitiverind. Like a sliding cyst, he edged over the chunk of rock that spunsomewhere between Mars and Jupiter. Now he reached out with his mind totouch a second creature on another rock. _Petra_, he called. _Where ishe?_

  _His orbit should take him between the three of us in a minute and ahalf._

  _Fine._

  _Jon, who is the third one? I still don't understand._

  Another mind joined them. _You don't understand yet? I was the third, Ialways was. I was the one who directed Geryn to make the plan in thefirst place for the kidnaping. What made you think that he was incontact with the triple beings?_

  _I don't know_, Jon said. _Some misunderstanding._

  There was the laughter of children. Then Tel said, _Hey, everybody,we're with Arkor._

  _Shhh_, said Alter. _The misunderstanding was my fault, Jon. I told youthat Geryn talked to himself, and that made you think it was him._

  _Get ready_, Petra said. _Here he comes._

  Jon saw, or rather sensed the approach of another spinning asteroid,whirling toward them through the blackness. But it was inhabited. Yes!The three of them threw their thoughts across the rush of space.

  _There...._

  * * * * *

  Roaring steam swirled above him. He raised his eye-stalks another twentyfeet and looked toward the top of the cataract some four miles up. Thenhe lowered his siphon into the edge of the pool of pale green liquidmethane and drank deeply. Far away in a beryl green sky, three sunsrushed madly about one another and gave a little heat to this farthestof their six planets.

  Now Jon flapped his slitherers down and began to glide away from themethane falls and up the nearly vertical mountain slope. Someone wascoming toward him, with shiny red eye-stalks waving in greeting."Greetings to the new colony," the eye-stalks signaled.

  Jon started to signal back. But suddenly he recognized (a feeling way atthe back of his slitherers) who this was. He leaped forward and flungthe double flaps of leathery flesh across his opponent and began toscramble back up the rocks. Jon had his tight, but was wondering wherethe hell were....

  Suddenly his eye-stalk caught the great form that he knew must be Arkorcoming down over the rocks (with Alter and Tel. Yes, definitely; becausethe creature suddenly did a flying leap between two crags that couldhave only been under the girl-acrobat's control), and a moment laterthat Petra had arrived at the other shore of the methane river. Usingher slitherers for paddles, she struck out across the foaming current.

  Think at him, concentrate.... _There...._

  * * * * *

  The air was water-clear. The desert was still, and he lay in the warmsand, under the light of the crescent moon. He was growing, addingfacets; he let the pale illumination seep into his transparent body,decreasing his polarization cross-frequencies. The light was beautiful,too beautiful--dangerous! He began to tingle, to glow red-hot. His baseburned with white heat and another layer of sand beneath him melted,fused, ran, and became part of his crystalline body.

  He stepped up the polarization, his body clouded, and cooled once more.Music sang through him, and his huge upper facet reflected the stars.

  Once more he lessened his polarization, and the light crept further andfurther into his being. His temperature rose. Vibrations suffused histransparency and the pulsing music made the three dust particles thathad settled on his coaxial face seven hundred and thirty years ago danceabove him. He felt their reflection deep in his prismatic center.

  He felt it coming, suddenly, and tried to stop it. But the polarizationindex suddenly broke down completely. For one terrific moment of ecstasythe light of the moon and the stars poured completely through him. Chordafter chord rang out in the desert night. Back and forth along his axis,colliding, shaking his substance, jarring him, pommeling him, came thevibrations. For one instant he was completely transparent. The next, hewas white-hot. Before he could melt, he felt the crack start.

  It shot the length of his forty-two mile, super-heated body. He was intwo pieces! The radio disturbance alone covered a third of a galaxy.Twelve pieces fell away. The chord crashed again, and the crack whippedback and forth vivisecting him. Already he was nearly thirty-sixthousand individual crystals, all of which had to grow again, thirty-sixthousand minds. He was no more.

  _Jon_, the voice sang through drumbled silicate.

  _Right over here, Petra_, he hummed back. (The note was a perfectquarter tone below A-flat. Perfect! Not clumsy. _Perfect_!)

  _Where's Arkor?_

  To their left the triple notes of an E-flat minor chord (Arkor, Tel, andAlter) sounded: _Right here._

  Just as they had made contact, before the music stopped (and once moretheir thoughts would become separate, individual, and they would loseawareness of each other and of the hundreds of other crystals that layover the desert, under the clear perpetual night)--just then a stridentdissonance pierced among them.

  _There_, sang Petra.

  _There_, hummed Jon.

  _There_, came the triad in E-flat minor. They concentrated, tuned,turned their thoughts against the dissonance. _There...._

  * * * * *

  Jon rolled over and pushed the silk from his white shoulders andstretched. Through the blue pillars, the evening sky was yellow. Music,very light and fast, was coming from below the balcony. Suddenly a voicesounded beside him: "Your Majesty, your Majesty! You shouldn't beresting now. They're waiting for you downstairs. Tltltrlte will befurious if you're late."

  "What do I care?" Jon responded. "Where's my robe?"

  The serving maid hastened away and returned with a sheer, shimmeringrobe, netted through with threads of royal black. The drape coveredJon's shoulders, draped across his breasts, and fell to his thighs.

  "My mirror," said Jon.

  The serving maid brought the mirror and Jon looked. Long, slightlyoriental eyes sat wide-spaced in the ivory face over high cheekbones.Full breasts pushed tautly beneath the transluscent material, and theslender waist spread to sensual, generous hips. Jon almost whistled athis reflection.

  The maid slipped clear plastic slippers on his feet, and Jon rose andwalked toward the stairs. In the lobby, the throng hissed appreciativelyas he descended. On one column hung a bird cage in which a three-headedcockatoo was singing to beat the band. Which was difficult to do,because the band was composed of fourteen copper-headed drums. (Fourteenwas the royal number.)

  Across the lobby wind instruments wailed, and Jon paused on the stairs."Don't worry," the maid said, "I'm right behind you."

  Jon felt the terror rise. _Hey_, he called out mentally, _is that you,Petra?_

  _Like I said, right behind you._

  _Incidentally, how did I come up with this body?_

  _I don't know, dear, but you look devastating._

  _Gee, thanks_, he said, projecting a mental sneer. _Where's Arkor andCompany?_

  The music had stopped. There was only the sound of the three-headedbird.

  _There they are._

  The winds screeched again, and at the entrance of the lobby, the peoplefell away from the door. There was Tltltrlte. He was tall, and dark, ina cloak in which there were many more black threads than in Jon's. Heunsheathed a sword, and began to come forward. "Your reign is through,Daughter of the Sun," he announced. "It is time for a new cycle."

  "Very well," said Jon.

  As Tltltrlte advanced, the throng that crowded the lobby clapped theirhands in terror and moved back further. Jon stood very straight.

  As Tltltrlte came forward, his shoulders narrowed.
He pushed back thehood of his cloak and a mass of ebony hair cascaded down his shoulders.With each step, his hips broadened and his waist narrowed. A verydefinite bulge of mammary glands now pushed up beneath his black silktunic. As Tltltrlte reached the bottom of the steps, she raised hersword.

  _Think at him_, came Arkor from the bird cage.

  _Think at him_, came from Petra.

  Jon saw the blade flash forward and then felt it slide into his abdomen._At her_, he corrected.

  _At her_, they answered.

  As Jon toppled down the steps, dying, he asked, _What the hell is thisanyway?_

  _We're inhabiting a very advanced species of moss_, Arkor explained,with the calmness that only a telepath can muster in certain confusingsituations. _Each individual starts off male, but eventually changes tofemale at the desired time._

  _Moss?_ asked Jon as he hit his head on the bottom step and died.

  _There...._

  * * * * *

  The wave came again and thundered on the beach. He staggered backwards,just as the froth spumed up the sand. The sky was blue-black. He raisedhis fingers to his lips (seven long tines webbed together) and whinedinto the night. He lifted his transparent eyelids from his huge,luminous eyes to see if there wasn't some faint trace of the boat. Sprayfell on them, stung the rims, and he snapped all three lids over them,one after another. He whined again, and once more the wave grew beforehim.

  He opened the two opaque lids, and this time thought he saw them far offthrough the greenish spray. The pentagonal sail rode above abillow-blue, wet, and full. It dipped, rose, and he pulled back histransparent eyelid again, this time when the wave was down, and thoughthe saw figures on the fibrous hammock of the boat. On the blue sail wasthe white circle of a Master Fisherman's boat. His parent was a MasterFisherman. Yes, it was his parent coming to get him.

  Another billow exploded and he crouched in the froth, digging his hindfeet deep into the pebbly beach.

  The crosshatch of planking scudded onto the shore, and they swarmed off.One wore a chain around his neck with the Master Fisherman's seal.Another carried a seven-pronged fork. The two others were justboat-hands and wore identifying black belts of Kelpod shells.

  "My offspring," said the one with the seal. "My fins have smarted foryou. I thought we would never swim together again." He reached down andlifted Jon into his arms. Jon put his head against his parent's chestand watched water beading down the pentagonal scales.

  "I was frightened," Jon said.

  His parent laughed. "I was frightened too. Why did you swim out so far?"

  "I wanted to see the island. But when I was swimming, I saw...."

  "What?"

  Jon closed his eyelids.

  His parent smiled again. "You're sleepy. Come." Now Jon felt himselfcarried to the water and into the waves. The spray fell warmly on hisface now, and unafraid, he relaxed his gill slits as water fell acrosshim and they climbed onto the boat.

  Wind caught the sail, and the open-work of planking listed into the sea.Long clouds swung rapidly across the twin moons like the tines of thefishing forks the fishermen saluted the sacred phosphor fires with whenthey returned from their expeditions. He dreamed of his, a little, inthe swell and drop. His parent had tied him to the boat, and so hefloated at the end of a few feet of slack. Water rolled down hisshoulders, slipped beneath his limp dorsal fin, and tickled. Then hedreamed of something else, the thing he had seen, glowing first beneaththe water, then rising.... He whined suddenly, and shook his head.

  He heard the others on the boat, their webbed feet slipping on the wetplanks. He opened his eyes and looked up. The two boat-hands wereholding onto stays and pointing off into the water. Now his parent hadcome up to them, holding a fishing spear, and they were joined by theSecond Fisherman.

  Jon scrambled from the water onto the plank. His parent put an armaround him and drew him closer. (_Here he comes_, Arkor said.) His otherhand went to the seal of authority around his neck, as though it gavehim some sort of protection.

  "There it is," Jon suddenly cried. "That's what I saw. That's why I wasafraid to swim back." (_There it is_, Jon said.)

  A phosphorescent disk was shimmering under the surface of the water. TheSecond Fisherman raised his spear higher. "What is it?" he asked. (_Whatis it this time?_ Petra wanted to know.)

  Indistinct, yet nearly the size of the ship, it hovered almost threebreast strokes from them, glowing beneath the surface.

  (_I'll have a look_, said Petra.) The Second Fisherman suddenly doveforward and disappeared. Still holding to the frame of the boat, Jon andhis parent went under the water where they could see better.

  One of Jon's eyelids, the transparent one, was actually an envelope oftissue which he could flood with vitreous solution when he was submergedto form a correcting lens over his pupil.

  Through the water he saw the Second Fisherman bubbling through the watertoward the immense, transluscent hemisphere that dangled ahead of them.The Second Fisherman stopped with an underwater double-reverse andhovered near the thing. (_It's a huge jellyfish_, Petra told them.)"Can't figure out what it is," the Second Fisherman signaled back. Thenhe extended his fork and jabbed at the membrane. The seven tines wentin, came out.

  The jellyfish moved, fast.

  The tentacles hanging from the bottom of the bag raveled upward likesnagged threads. The body bloated and surged sideways. Two tentacleswrapped around the Second Fisherman as he tried to swim away. (_Eep_,said Petra. _These things hurt._)

  Jon's parent was on top of deck again, shouting orders to theboat-hands. The ship swung toward the thing which was now heaving to thesurface.

  (_Look, let's finish this thing up for good. Concentrate._ That wasArkor. _There...._)

  (From beneath the water they felt Petra reach her mind into the pulsingmass: _There...._)

  (As the tentacles encased her and she jammed the spear home again andagain through the leaking membrane, she felt Jon's mind join in:There....)

  The boat rammed into the side of the jellyfish, the planks tearing awaythe membrane and the thick, stinging insides fountaining over them. Nowit nearly turned over, and tentacles flapped from the water in wet,fleshy ropes. The Second Fisherman was caught in one of the snarls.

  Their green faces were lighted from beneath by the milky glow.

  (_There...._) Suddenly it tore away from the planks, going down beneaththe water. (_There...._) The Second Fisherman's head bobbed to thesurface, shook the green fin that crested his skull, and laughed.(_There...._)

  3 to 6, 3 to 6, (Jon's frequency oscillated from 3 to 6 as he driftedthrough clouds of super-heated gas) 3 to 6, 3 to 6--7 to 10! (Someonewas coming.) U to 10, 7 to 10, (It was getting closer; suddenly:) 10 to16! (Then:) 3 to 6, 7 to 10, 3 to 6, 7 to 10, (they had passed througheach other. _Hi_, Petra said. _Have you any idea where we are?_)

  (_The temperature is somewhere near three quarters of a million degrees.Any ideas?_)

  9 to 27, 9 to 27, 9 to 27 (came puttering along and passed through bothJon and Petra;) 12 to 35, 10 to 37, (and then, again) 3 to 6, 7 to 10, 9to 27, 9 to 27, 9 to 27 (_We are halfway between the surface and thecenter of a star not unlike our sun_, said Arkor. _Note all the strangeelements around._) 9 to 27, 9 to 27, 9 to 27.

  7 to 10, 7 to 10, 7 to 10 (_They keep on turning into one another_,Petra said.) 7 to 10, 7 to 10, 7 to 10.

  3 to 6, 3 to 6, 3 to 6 (_At this temperature you would too if you wereatomic_, Jon told her.) 3 to 6, 3 to 6, 3 to 6.

  9 to 27, 9 to 27, 9 to 27 (_Where's our friend?_ Arkor wanted to know.)

  pi to e, pi to 2e, 2pi to 4e, 4pi to 8e, 8pi to 16e, 16pi to 32e.

  (_Speak of the_ ... Jon started. _Hey, we've got to do something aboutthat. Not only is it transcendental, it's increasing so fast he'lleventually shake this star apart._) 3 to 6, 3 to 6, 3 to 6.

  (_So that's what causes novas_, said Petra.) 7 to 10, 7 to 10, 7 to 10.

  (At the next oscillation, Arkor, acting as a side-coefficient, pas
sedthrough the intruder.) 32^{2}pi to 64e (Arkor got out before the secondextremity was reached. The wave cycle stuttered, having been reversedend on end.) 642pi to 32e (It tried to right itself and couldn't becauseJon spun through the lower end divisibility) 642pi to 16/9e (then Arkorjumped in, tail first it recovered and it resolved into:) 642pi to 4/3e,642pi to 4/3e, 642pi to 4/3e (it quivered, its range no longergeometric).

  (_Watch this_, said Petra, _About face...._ She gave it a sort of nudge,not passing through it, so that when it whirled to catch her, she wasgone, and it was going the other way:)

  4/3pi to 642e, 4/3pi to 642e, 4/3pi to 642e,

  (_I hope no one ever does that to me_, said Petra. _Look, the poor thingis contracting._)

  4/3 to 640e, 4/3pi to 622, 4/3pi to 560, 4/3pi to 499,

  (Somehow the _e_ component chanced to slip through 125. Jon moved inlike a shower of anti-theta-mazons and extracted a painless cube so fastthat the intruder oscillated on it three times before it knew what hadhappened to it:)

  4/3pi to 5^{3}e, 4/3pi to 5^{3}e, 4/3pi to 5^{3}e under highgravity--very high, that is, two to three million times that of earth,such as inside a star--in such warped space there is a subtle differencebetween 5^{3} and 125, though they represent the same number. It's likethe notes E-sharp and F, which are technically the same, but aredistinguished between when played by a good violinist with a fine ear.When the root came loose, therefore, the variation threw the wave-lengthall off balance:) 4/3pi to 5e, 4/3pi to 5e, 4/3pi to 5e....

  (_All right, everybody, concentrate--_)

  (_There, there, there...._)

  For one moment, the intruding oscillation turned, ducked, tried toescape, and couldn't. It contracted into a small ball with a volume of4/3pi_e_^{3}, and disappeared.

  _There...._

  * * * * *

  Jon Koshar shook his head, staggered forward, and went down on his kneesin white sand. He blinked. He looked up. There were two shadows in frontof him. Then he saw the city.

  It was Telphar, stuck on a desert, under a double sun. The transitribbon started across the desert, got the length of twelve pylons, andthen crumpled.

  As he stood up, something caught in the corner of his eye.

  His eyes moved, and he saw a woman about twenty feet away from him. Herred hair fell straight to her shoulders in the dry heat. He blinked asshe approached. She wore a straight skirt and had a notebook under herarm. "Petra?" he said, frowning. It was Petra, but Petra different.

  "Jon," she answered. "What happened to you?"

  He looked down at himself. He was wearing a torn, dirty uniform. Aprison uniform. His prison uniform!

  "Arkor," said Petra, suddenly. (Her voice was higher, less sure.)

  They turned. Arkor stood in the sand, his feet wide over the whitehillocks. The triple scars down his face welled bright blood in the hotlight.

  They came together now. "What's going on?" Jon asked.

  Arkor shrugged.

  "What about the kids?" asked Petra.

  "They're still right here," Arkor said, pointing to his head andgrinning. Then his finger touched the opened scars. When he drew itaway, he saw the blood and frowned. Then he looked at the City. The suncaught on the towers and slipped like bright liquid along the loopinghighways. "Hey," Jon said to Petra. (No, he realized; it was Petra witha handful of years lopped off.) "What's the notebook?"

  She looked down at it, surprised to find it in her hands. Then shelooked at her dress. Suddenly she laughed, and began to flip through thepages of the notebook. "Why, this is the book in which I finished myarticle on shelter architecture among the forest people. In fact this iswhat I was wearing the day I finished my article."

  "And you?" Jon asked Arkor.

  Arkor looked at the blood on his finger. "My mark is bleeding, like thenight the priest put it there." He paused. "That was the night that Ibecame Arkor, really. That was the time that I realized how the worldwas, the confusion, the stupidity, the fear. It was the night I decidedto leave the forest." Now he looked up at Jon. "That was the uniform youwere wearing when you escaped from prison."

  "Yes," said Jon. "I guess it was what I was wearing when I became me,too. That was the time when freedom seemed most bright." He paused. "Iwas going to find it no matter what. Only somehow I felt I'd gottensideswiped. I wonder whether I have or not."

  "Have you?" asked Petra. She glanced at the City. "I guess when Ifinished that essay, that's when I really became myself, too. I rememberI went through a whole sudden series of revelations about myself, andabout society, and about how I felt about society, about being anaristocrat, even, what it meant and what it _didn't_ mean. And I supposethat's why I'm here now." She looked at the City again. "There he is,"she nodded.

  "That's right," said Jon.

  They started across the sand, now, making toward the shadow of theruined transit ribbon. They reached it quicker than they thought, forthe horizon was very close. The double shadows, one a bit lighter thanthe other, lay like two inked brush strokes over the page of the desert."But how come we're in our own bodies," the Duchess asked, as theyreached the shadow of the first pylon. "Shouldn't we be inhabiting theforms of...." Suddenly there was a sound, the shadow moved. Jon lookedup at the ribbon above them and cried out.

  As the metal tore away, they jumped back, and a moment later a length ofthe ribbon splashed down into the sand, where they had stood. They werestill for a handful of breaths.

  "You're darn right he's there," Jon said. "Come on."

  They started again. Petra shook white grains from her notebook cover andthey moved along the loose sand. A road seeped from under the desert,now, and began to rise toward Telphar. They mounted it and followed ittoward the looming city. Before them the towers were dark streaks on therich blue sky.

  "You know, Petra's question is a good one," Arkor said few minuteslater.

  "Yeah," said Jon. "I've been thinking about it too. We seem to be inour own bodies, only they're different. Different as our bodies were atthe most important moments of our lives. Maybe, somehow, we've come to aplanet in some corner of the universe, where three beings almostidentical to us, only different in that way, are doing, for some reasonwe'll never know, almost exactly what we're doing now."

  "It's possible," Arkor said. "With all the myriad possibilities ofworlds, it's conceivable that one might be like that, or like this."

  "Even to the point of talking about talking about it?" asked Petra. Sheanswered herself. "Yes, I guess it could. But saying all this forreasons we don't understand, and saying, 'Saying all this for reasons wedon't understand....'" She shuddered. "It's not supposed to be that way.It gives me the creeps."

  There was another sound, and they froze. It was the low sound of somestructure tumbling, but they couldn't see anything.

  Another fifty feet, when the road had risen ten feet off the ground andthe first tower was beside them, they heard a cracking noise again. Theroad swayed beneath them. "Uh-oh," Arkor said.

  Then the road fell. They cried out, they scrambled; suddenly there wascracked concrete around them, and they had fallen. Above them was ajagged width of blue sky between the remaining edges of the road.

  "My foot's caught," Petra cried out.

  Arkor was beside her, tugging on the concrete slab that held her.

  "Hold on a second," Jon said. He grabbed a free metal strut that stillvibrated in the rubble, and jammed it between the slab and the beam itlay on. Using the wreck of an I-beam for a fulcrum, he pried it up."There, slip your foot out."

  Petra rolled away. "Is the bone broken?" he asked. "I got a friend ofmine out of a mine accident that way, once." He let the slab fallagain. (And for a moment he stopped, thinking, I knew what to do. Iwasn't clumsy, I knew....)

  Petra rubbed her ankle. "No," she said. "I just got my ankle wedged inthat crevice, and the concrete fell on top." She stood up, now, pickingup the notebook. "Ow," she said. "That hurts."

  Arkor held her arm. "Can you walk?"

  "W
ith difficulty," Petra said, taking another step and clamping herteeth.

  "Alter says to stand on your other foot and shake your injured onearound to get the circulation back," Arkor told her.

  Petra gritted teeth, and stepped again. "A little better," she said."I'm scared. This really hurts. This may be a body that looks like mine,but it hurts, and it hurts like mine." Suddenly she looked off into thecity. "Oh hell," she said. "He's in there. Let's go."

  They went forward again, this time under the road. The sidewalks,deserted and graying, slipped past. They passed a shopping section;teeth of broken glass gaped in the frames of store windows. Above, tworoads veered and crossed, making a black, extended swastika on a patchof white clouds.

  Then a sudden rumbling.

  Silence.

  They stopped.

  Now a crash, thunderous and protracted. An odor of dust reached them."He's there," Arkor said.

  "Yes," said Jon.

  "I can...."

  Then the City exploded. There was one instant of very real agony for Jonas the pavement beneath his feet shot up at him, and he reached his mindout as a shard of concrete knocked in his face (all the time crying,_No, no, I've just become Jon Koshar, I'm not supposed to_ ... as a lostPrince had cried out half a year and half a universe away) and at thesame time, _There...._

  Petra got a chance to see the face of the building beside them rip offa foot before the air blast tore the notebook from her hands, and at thesame time she welled her thoughts from behind the bone confines of herskull. _There...._

  And Arkor's thoughts (he never saw the explosion because he blinked justthen) tore out through his eyelids as fragmented steel tore into them._There...._

  * * * * *

  It was cold, it was black. For a moment they saw with a spectrum thatreached from the star-wide waves of novas to the micro-micron skitteringof neutrinos. And it was black, and completely cold. A rarefied breezeof ionized hydrogen (approximately two particles per cubic rod) floatedover half a light year. Once, a herd of pale photons dashed through themfrom a deflected glare on some dying sun a trillion eons past. Otherthan that, there was silence, save for the hum of one lone galaxy,eternities away. They hovered, frozen, staring into nothing, above,below, behind, contemplating what they had seen.

  Then, the green of beetles' wings, and they flailed into the blood ofsensation from the blackness, whirled into red flame the color ofpolished carbuncle, smoothly through the nerves and into the brain;then, before the blue smoke, burning blue through the lightning searedaxion of their corporate organisms, they were snared within the heat andelectric imminency of a web of silver fire.