The transformer trilogy, p.74
The Transformer Trilogy, page 74
DEMSING HAD SHED much of his former habit of subtle concealment, and walked openly through Desimetre. It was not so much a move of carelessness or forgetfulness, but a deliberate stance, which would certainly produce results of its own, as well as provide himself with a longer field of view.
Having realized his own layered past, and having come to terms with it, enabled him to assess considerably better than before, when his perceptions had been colored by his own shadow. What he saw as he walked was easy enough to pick out of the general pattern: his appearance had been picked up quickly by wide-flung members of the Wa’an School, and it had been unexpected, but their reaction had been fast, as he would have expected.
As yet, there had been no response, but they remained alert and followed him closely. It was so easy to pick it up. And as for what they might do, he shrugged off. He had read them, down there in the underground, basing his input on things he had known, and deeper things he realized he should have known. It didn’t matter much, now, about them: they were powerless and had let control of events pass to others. So they watched him, and he thought: Let them watch.
When he neared Klippisch’s place, on a street in Desimetre that had become more familiar to him than any other place in the imaginable universe, he noticed that the number of watchers increased, but was divided into two cohorts: one converging on him, obviously with himself as the target, not yet of any action, and another, which had been aimed at something else, but whose aim had now been changed. From what? They had been mobilized as a team to take over Klippisch’s operation, apparently, but had stopped to wait for the correct moment, crucial to their pattern of thinking, before proceeding.
As he had almost reached the door to enter the building, a woman who had been just a passing figure suddenly turned her full attention on him, and he knew who she was. Not precisely who, but certainly what. This would be the one who was running this operation. What had she been called? Telny? He turned to the woman and stopped.
Demsing saw by slight betrayals within her motions that she had been told what he could become, and was terrified, under the surface layer of effective and ruthless control. He said, “Yes, I am the one you seek.”
It seemed to shake Telny, like a gust of wind, which never blew on Teragon but which they remembered in speech forms whose origins had been lost uncounted years, centuries. She came closer, and asked, “Have you recovered your pasts?”
“Yes. I see Faren has told you. It could have been no one else.”
“What do you intend to do?”
Now he hesitated. Could he say it, so baldly? He thought not. Telny was not ready yet. He said, “I need to collect a company of friends, so that we all may address ourselves to something greater than the sum of our disputes. Send your people to other jobs. We have no need for them.”
“We?”
“You are certainly invited. But not the entire horde out there. After all, they have been set to locate me, and so here I am. They are no longer required, and you will see that your mission has changed.”
“You came as yourself!” It was almost accusatory, as if she expected to see the direct evidence of Change, an adolescent girl.
“Well, of course. Who else would I come as?” For some reason this seemed to frighten her even more. He added, “Go ahead—do as I ask.”
“On faith.”
“Oh faith; I have to show you by example what living for the sure thing alone brings us all.”
Telny smoothed her hand through her hair, glanced around, and repeated it.
Demsing added, “The Klippisch team, as well.”
“We give it all up. Do you know that Dossifey caught Galitzyn, and is bringing him here now?”
He lied, “Yes.” Then, “I need Galitzyn, too. He is about to become useful, instead of what he has been, a nuisance.”
She made another gesture, and almost immediately Demsing could feel the pressure easing off, the watchers dispersing, the net which had been so carefully assembled, now drifting apart. If he could thread his way through this narrow passage, that dispersal would spread throughout Teragon, propagated by the Wa’an School and all its members.
Telny said, “I am Telny. I lead, here. I will take you at your word, although I see no evidence of the powers of which I was told.”
“The problem with this most difficult art that I was taught, and devised in part in an earlier version of myself, is that it cannot be demonstrated convincingly: it can only be used. I do not wish to waste valuable people.”
“Surely you could find a target that doesn’t matter so much.”
Demsing shook his head. “They are all valuable. Priceless, in fact.”
“Then you will extract your price for Chalmour?” She had read his answer completely wrong. How could this woman be so effective and still be so dense to what he was trying to tell her?
He said, slowly, “How should I punish you for permitting the one act which put you and your organization within my reach? You are here, and you speak before acting: do you need any more proof? And if there is to be talk of revenges, then let’s speak instead of that girl you wrote off and sent against me in Meroe. There was a crime you should feel proper guilt over.”
She protested, “That was an internal matter, a routine sanction against insoluble flawing! You have no right to question that, especially since your actions dispatched her!”
“I released her, that is true. That is why I have the right. And that is what I am going to change.”
“Then we will have no more control. If we don’t have death as a bottom line, we can no longer enforce our disciplines.”
“When you have to use force, you’re wrong from the start, no matter what you say.” He turned into the building. “Come inside. We have others to meet.”
Telny, disoriented by the unexpected responses, followed him, saying, “There is no one here except Chalmour and a scrub team of apprentices under Weenix and Slezer, unwashed recruits from Petroniu and the more disreputable parts of The Palterie.”
Demsing entered the office, saying over his shoulder, as if Telny no longer mattered, “They seem to be doing well enough.” And he saw Chalmour, behind Klippisch’s desk, looking in his direction, but not precisely at him, as if she wanted to see him, and yet wanted not to see him. The apprentices let him pass unchallenged, and he covered the distance, and those few meters seemed to take forever, while she continued to stare at the door, only daring to watch him with her peripheral vision, as he approached the chair, and touched her gently across the back, just below her neck, and he could feel the tension in her, the muscles held rigid, the artificial light of the office making her pale skin even paler. She turned her face toward Demsing slowly, not yet daring to speak, nor would anyone else. Chalmour stood up, turning and suddenly reached for him and grasped him tightly. Demsing enfolded her within the circle of his arms, holding her as tightly as she held him.
Telny said, after a time, “Of course, we regret any events which may have taken place while . . .”
Both of them turned to stare at Telny after her snide reminder. She fell silent, as much from what she saw in Chalmour’s eyes as for what she saw in Demsing’s. But it was Demsing who spoke for them. “That has no power over me, and you have none over her. Remember that.”
“We will see what power we have.”
Demsing sighed. “This is tiresome. You will cease such word-bandying or I will write you out of the Teragon that is to be. Understood?” Telny fell silent. He said, “You allowed me to reach Chalmour. That was your mistake. As long as you could reach her before me I could not act on your organization with my skill. But it’s too late, now. I can do what I need to, and protect Chalmour, who ties me to you. Test me once more and you yourself will live to see the example you asked for.”
Telny could not mistake what he said, or the conviction in his voice. Finally, she said, “Very well. But I will say one more thing. It is my understanding that you have to concentrate on your inner vision in order to see it.”
Demsing nodded. “That was true at one time. With each successive version, the routine of separation of perceptions has become less necessary. I can call it up now, just by wanting it. I can see the possibilities even as we talk, and there are many ways to enter that. Many, not just one. Of course, each one has its trade-offs, this, here; that, there: slight change according to the way I approach it. While I have spoken to you in this sentence I have seen fourteen distinct ways to write you and your organization off It is only because I need you, we all need you, that I refrain from doing so.”
Telny, clearly, was not accustomed to this kind of talk, and totally without proof, too. But when it came to testing it with action, something held her back, if for no better reason than to hear what he had to say. She stepped back, conscientiously relaxed; she had performed more interrogations than she could remember in her life, and all the signs of deep truth were on Demsing; it didn’t matter if he could do what he said or not, in the abstract: he believed he could do it. More than that: he knew he could do it. In many, far too many cases, will and belief were sufficient.
There was a commotion by the door, a spattering of angry words, and Klippisch, Dossifey, and Galitzyn entered the room. Klippisch was still remonstrating with Galitzyn, who was unable or unwilling to argue with her. Dossifey had him tied by the thumbs, behind, and was absentmindedly leading him around like an unwilling specimen of livestock, grinning like an idiot.
When Klippisch saw who was present, she stopped short, breathed deeply, and began again. “Demsing! Where in the hell have you been? We have been ransacking the planet looking for you, and here you are, and you have brought one of those night-crawlers with you!” She referred to Telny at the last.
He answered, “I see Dossifey has located our missing Galitzyn, who might also answer to the name of Pitalny Vollbrecht.”
“That, and more he’ll answer to,” Klippisch exclaimed. “Bad enough he runs off, but now I can’t find a replacement anywhere, and the house surrounded with the night-demons.” She leered at Galitzyn suggestively, with a glance which promised good. “Slezer has been slack in his interrogations! Some practice he shall have!” She paused for breath, and added, for effect, “We’ll use the Mad Dentist Procedure Number Five! Slezer! Bring the leg irons!”
Galitzyn, it was true, had lost considerable color and in fact looked slightly greenish, a pale gun-metal sheen on his skin.
Demsing said again, “I don’t think we need Slezer and his hands of thumbs. I think Ser Vollbrecht might be willing to discuss things with us in plain language.”
Galitzyn nodded, hopefully, although his smile faded when he looked at Klippisch, who still seemed to want torture, if only in principle.
Telny said, softly, “Klippisch, do you remember that remarkable tale that was circulating, say, about thirty-five standard years ago, about a changeling?”
Klippisch stopped, looked about absently for a moment, and answered, “Yes, I do, now that you mention it. Loose on one of the big ships. But never any more than that.”
“Demsing is that changeling.”
Galitzyn-Vollbrecht rolled his eyes, and groaned. Demsing said, “Yes, it is true. And for you, Galitzyn, you know what I am. You came all this way to do something with me. And so you know that I have remembered. I remember it all. So ask me openly—what do you want with me?”
Galitzyn looked from face to face, and saw no relief there, not from any of them. Now that it was all out, he had no friends on this feral planet. He said, “It began when Kham failed to return. We were also notified of Palude’s suicide. But there was no report, nothing. And no idea of the whereabouts of the Morphodite. On Heliarcos we knew that we had lost track of it in space, and it was only a matter of time until it would appear there. So the Regents ... closed the whole complex down, and left. To the four winds. The entire facility! Pompitus Hall! The Black Projects were only part—the smallest part, but they closed it all down!”
Demsing asked, casually, “So where are they now?”
“No one knows. They destroyed all the records, closed down all funding, covert links, and ran. They were doing other projects, apparently things like the Morphodite, that they didn’t want known in general circulation. They left them high and dry. There is all kinds of trouble out there, on these isolated planets.”
He paused for breath, and then continued, “We had to work on the quiet, you understand. All of us who were left behind had to find other positions on Heliarcos, and not all made it. Some became miners, or janitors. It was a hard time.”
Demsing said, “Jedily Tulilly sympathizes with your suffering.”
Galitzyn said, “We traced you here, to Teragon. We wanted to set things right, and we wanted to ask your help. It was then that we found out that you didn’t know anything of your past, and then we didn’t know what would happen, if you found out by accident. It seemed worse, in the light of what you seemed to have become. I was sent here to find a way.”
Demsing said, “The operations you spoke of: their failure was what Nazarine went through Change to make happen. It has gone too far now to change that.”
“We didn’t want them salvaged. No. We just wanted you to help us rebuild them. The Regents left us with the bills, and the responsibilities. Their problems are beyond what we can solve.”
“We wanted to make sure that sort of thing would be difficult to set up again. The tales of the horror stories will circulate forever. Mankind has another in its pantheon of villains.” Demsing finished, sadly. “Those Regents, they should have read more fiction before they started. An ancient tale, ‘Frankenstein,’ says it all.”
“Would you have helped us?”
“Probably not. But I would have answered you directly. You see, when you do one of these operations that I do, you pay a kind of price for it: once set in motion, the consequences can’t be redone. The act of alteration makes that sequence immune to further alteration. Rael knew this. I know it a lot better. The continued use of the powers of the Morphodite tends to build a rigid universe with no flex in it. It needs flex. Without that, it breaks. The breaks appear in the macrocosm as destructive natural phenomena. It’s like the reverse of magic, in that use of the power builds a universe immune to any power. It becomes locked in. I cannot save you from your own evil. Only you can do that.”
“I see. Then you have no further use of me?”
Klippisch barked, “Not so fast. I have business with the good academician Pitalny Vollbrecht about an unexpired contract!”
Telny said, “Your requirements for us are obviously gone. So we would like to be paid.”
Demsing said, “There is nothing I can do for you; but there is something you can do for me.”
Galitzyn stopped short, struck at Demsing’s obvious sincerity. “What do you have in mind?”
Demsing asked, “You have a faculty, back on Heliarcos?”
“Dispersed somewhat, and in deep trouble, but yes.”
“All kinds of experts, specialists, scientists?”
“Yes, all sorts. Xenobiologists, Cyberneticists, Natural Scientists, Theorists, Philosophers.... Why?”
“We have a grand mystery for them to solve, here, and to assist us to find a way off Teragon. This planet is not a natural object.”
Galitzyn looked alertly at Demsing. So did the rest of them. He asked, “What is it, then?”
“It’s a spaceship. Totally artificial, inside and out. And older than anything we’ve run across before. And its owners have vanished without a trace.”
16
We are vehicles for things which speak through us, and we can sometimes relate these things to totemic spirits whose symbols are drawn from exemplars in the animal world: Raven, Eagle, Coyote, Wolf. These are some of the more obvious symbols—but there are others, equally powerful, who have no symbolic form borrowed from nature.
H. C., Atropine
THELLEDY HAD TAKEN charge of the team assigned to capture Galitzyn, and she had reported their discovery, expecting to get back, from Telny, the signal to proceed. Instead, what she got back was an order to cease and desist, and to disengage immediately. For a moment, she considered going on without orders. She believed that with a little extra effort, she could run the offworlder to earth. But in the end, she backed off and instructed her people to disperse. It was true that if she disregarded the order and succeeded quickly, there would be no strenuous objection, at the least no punishment. But if she had miscalculated, and Galitzyn remained missing, while she continued, then the risk started to increase.
When she had seen to it that all her team members were out of the area, she left, herself, walking quite openly through the streets, going nowhere in particular.
This had all been easy for a long time, almost a routine operation, with no contact. Everything had worked within the bounds of the expected. But since the Meroe incident, things had been drifting astray, none of them going right. Yes, Meroe. That’s where they could trace it from, although the apparent diversion from plan hadn’t actually begun until long after Demsing had returned to Desimetre.
She shook her head. They still didn’t know who had actually killed Asztali, even though Demsing was the most likely suspect. But why kill her at all? Certainly not for revenge—he already had that, from the Carrionflower. But it was after that, that he had started looking for Vollbrecht, so he got that from Asztali, but how had she known that? There was a slip, somewhere. She had heard or found something she had not been allowed to have, and so ... they had set her up, knowing that he tended to do things like that when pressed, hard. She would have carried an antidote, obviously, but if the contents had been switched, the injection would have had no effect, and there she would have been. The conclusion was inescapable.
They wanted him to move out of the Meroe area, but no one reasonably expected him to return to Desimetre, and walk almost into the middle of the contact point. And with him asking about Vollbrecht they couldn’t risk moving him again. He saw too far.
