The Madness Season, page 27
... barely manage the change, there must be some metal left inside me: a sliver of spearhead, perhaps, or the point of an arrow. Not close enough to the skin to be discarded, I will have to dig it out later. For now, all that matters is that I have wings, and they do not; that I can find shelter in the sky, while they search the ground with increasing frenzy . . .
... the single-mindedness of Bird is a tonic, that dulls the edge of memory to a low throb, and I embrace it, welcome it, try to lose myself in its animal tenor. I am simple, I am pastless, I have neither human form nor history. There is no pain. I fly ...
... fires behind me. Only what I set? Or will the whole city catch fire, and burn? I must trust to wings, and get myself away from here . . .
... below me my father's grave ...
... I fly ...
... I fly ...
... I fly ...
MEYAGA: SUYAAG SETTLEMENT
It was going to be all right, she thought. Everything was going to be all right.
Behind her flew the human mass changer. He faltered every now and then, as if, even in bird form, flying didn't come easily to him. It should have. But so many things motivations . . . those were beyond guessing, the product of so many layers of experience, past and present intermingled, that she couldn't even begin to work them out. should have, with him. Each time she tried to second-guess him, his all-too-human mind was off on some new, wholly unpredictable tangent. Each time she tried to assess his skills, or his limitations, he managed to prove her wrong. As for his
But if he was a puzzle, he was a welcome one. She needed him—or something like him—to give her a sense of purpose. The role of healer was demanding enough to distract her from the worst of her worries, breaking up her days into a series of finite challenges. Such as tending to the immediate needs of his body. Rising to the challenge of his photosensitivity. Using her Marra skills to find them shelter before daylight came, even as she learned the limits of his tolerance for it. Hunting with him in a variety of forms, as he sought out the blood and the life that he needed to control his flesh. Trying to understand him . . . that last was impossible, she knew, but she worked on it, bit by bit, night after night. He was a contradiction in terms, he could not possibly exist ... but he did, and he was embodied, and the Saudar taught that all embodied creatures could be understood in terms of mass/ energy conversions. And so she tried to understand him, even if it was impossible. It gave her purpose, and a challenge.
As for soothing his fears, that was an even greater challenge. Usually good body design was enough; the embodied were superficial by nature, and tended to accept what their eyes told them. She often got farther in a day's diplomacy merely by wearing a Nurturer's body than other Marra could manage in a span of years using that of a Competitor, or even a Protector. Because while their choice of another reproductive role from among the basic Seven that the Saudar had identified might give them a stronger identity-base than hers, it inevitably promoted an aura of competition. The roles were a bit skewed among the humans, of course, as they only had two body types to express all seven roles, but her usual choice was still a sound one. In this case, though, it simply wasn't enough. He liked the body—he had said so—and clearly valued her presence, but she knew from little things he said—from the way he hesitated just before touching her, and from the look that occasionally came into his eyes when he thought she wasn't watching him—that on some other level he had not yet accepted her. Perhaps he was capable of sensing her true essence, as a Marra would be, and felt threatened by its alien tenor. Or perhaps he had simply led such an isolated life for so many years that any lasting interaction would be difficult for him, even among his own species.
Before dawn—in the darkness of late night, at first, and later in the dull gray preceding sunrise— she would use her mass sense to find them shelter. In the mountain range they were crossing, riddled with caverns, it took little effort. Nevertheless he deemed it a great favor, and expressed his gratitude with an intensity that told her just how hard he found it to accept. Ashe found it hard to accept all her service— and sometimes, her very presence.
What could she say? That his needs were vital to her current Identity? That his presence gave her a context, a structure to exist in? There were no words in any of his tongues—or in Saudar, for that matter—to express such things. How could she begin to explain the truth of her people: that a single Marra alone was no more than sentient chaos, that only by interacting did the Marra structure themselves into distinct personalities? An individual could serve that need—or a town such as Cantona, or even an entire species. Just as the Saudar had, in their time. Just as this single human, wounded and alone, was doing. He was precious to her, his needs were precious, even the frustrating complexity of his psyche was a thing to be treasured. But she wouldn't have known how to explain that to him, and therefore she didn't try.
Once, she had thought that he might have been Marra himself, or of some equivalent species. Later she thought that his native form might be something totally different, not human at all, and that centuries on Earth had obscured his true roots. More than any other concept, the Marra understood forgetting. But now she knew that all those guesses were wrong. She had watched him change his form, observing him on levels that ranged from holistic to molecular, and had seen the truth in his cells. Had watched in fascination as his DNA transformed first, to orchestrate the whole of the changing. Had seen how the strands of amino acids retained a record of their original patterning, genetic echoes of the human he had once been, to remain dormant until further transformation required them. In every other form he took on, those extra patterns were there. He might become a wolf in body, instinct, and behavior, but on a cellular level the illusion collapsed. Only in his own form—human, and of a particular age and appearance—were the echoes gone, and all his cells at rest.
What the Saudar wouldn't have given to study him!
Deep within their cavern shelter, their appetites sated by the hunt, she told him stories. His people knew only the life-forms of Earth, and now the Tyr and their hraas. Against such a background her tales of alien species took on an almost supernatural aura. Fairy tales, he called them. But he listened, and tried to understand. Tried to abandon his provincial roots and envision the vastness of the Saudar Unity, to fit his imagination around what the universe had been, what it could be.
Playing the role of kreda, she thought. How easily they fell into the old patterns! She relating history, he recording it—not with pen and paper, but in the neurons and dendrites of his human brain. Giving her tales substance. Permanence.
As the Saudar did, she reflected.
Once . . .
On the third morning, when he had settled into his natural body, she told him tales of the Saudar.
Histories. Of that alien race which traded in knowledge, not gold, and founded an empire based upon such currency. Of the whimsical spirits whom they discovered, named, and bound to serve them—her own people— using time and knowledge as other races would use chains, to forge a link that could never be broken. "Even now?" he asked.
"Even now," she assured him. "Until someone replaces the Saudar, in that bond."
What she didn't tell him was that by listening to her, by recording her memories in the substance of his flesh, he was doing just that.
Once, many eons ago (she explained)—perhaps at the birth of the present universe, perhaps even earlier— there evolved a form of intelligence whose supporting structure was a matrix of time and energy, rather than—as with the humans—energy and matter. Indeed, these beings were wholly ignorant of matter, and of all the concepts that derived from it. They defined themselves by their interrelationships, which were based upon levels of mental intimacy, shared perceptions of time, and . . . (Here she hesitated, and at last, after searching in vain for the memory, shook her head. "It's gone," she whispered.
"Even the Saudar words for it.") They had a society. No one could say, now, what it was, or how it was managed. Say that a civilization existed, without the physical apparati of civilization as humans defined it.
Say that it changed, that change was a necessary part of its functioning. That change was as natural to these beings as breathing, and every bit as necessary.
Then came the Saudar. Who could say when the first contact came, or what form it took? Both races had their mystics, who dreamed of other planes of being, other modes of existence. Somehow, the two made contact. Somehow, at the cost of many Saudar lives— because the earliest contact resulted in insanity, and for the embodied that was a very dangerous state— they managed, after time, to communicate. Simple concepts, like Other. Curiosity. Friendship. And eventually, after many failures, Mass.
Mass.
Like children with a new toy, they played. First the mystics and the scholars—laughed at, until they proved that matter was as real as time —and then all of them, every last one, cavorting about the mass-worlds like children at a circus, learning to sense, recognize, and at last manipulate this glorious, incredible substance.
It was a chaotic time, for all concerned. The unembodied now recognized matter, but were ignorant of its attendant concepts; location and distance were mysteries to them, as was the manner in which mass affected time. Their concept of returning to the site of some previous contact often meant appearing on a new planet, among an unknown species, a millennium or more after the first visit. They had trouble distinguishing between different types of mass, and were as likely to try to communicate with a rock as with a living creature. The Saudar tried to establish regular contact, but could never seem to reach the same Marra twice. It was a time of confusion for all concerned, not least of all the primitive worlds who couldn't know that when the laws of nature seemed to go berserk about them, it was only a Marra trying to communicate. But it was also a time of learning.
Slowly the skills and the understanding of that ethereal people improved. They learned to correctly interpret matter, and to manipulate it. They learned to recognize life, to read its patterns in the mass that supported it, and imitate its structure. They clothed themselves in images they took from the minds of their material counterparts and learned, at long last, the nature of language. They made themselves bodies and moved them, limb by limb at first, later by creating a viable brain and stimulating it to work for them.
The Saudar watched, encouraged, manipulated. The Saudar fed them knowledge, in carefully controlled doses. The Saudar understood what motivated them, as no other people ever did. And whereas another species—such as humankind, or the Tyr—might use weapons or threats to bring another race to heel, the Saudar used their tool of choice: knowledge.
Come, they said, and attempt this manner of contact. Try this image. Grasp these concepts. Let us show you how the brain works, and help you understand it. Let us show you how embodied species differ, and why. Let us tell you what a star is, and why we find it beautiful. These are the complexities of life, and how you can mimic them. This is how you can be involved. . . .
And so on, and so on, for several Saudar centuries. They had a plan, which depended on the curiosity of the Marra (for so they had named these creatures) outweighing their caution. So subtly was this plan executed that the Marra were never aware of it. They embraced their new comrades and played their games, learned of their world and their ways and dedicated themselves to their challenges, without ever once questioning what the eventual cost of it would be. They were having too much fun to think.
Slowly, gradually, the Marra changed. Old memories slipped away, forgotten, and new ones took their place. It was a cycle as old as they themselves, an integral part of their existence. They had never stopped to analyze it. Change was good. Change was necessary. Change was the very essence of Life.
And for a civilization without lasting records, change was inevitable. Any memories not currently in use would pass from consciousness, and others would take their place. It was death and rebirth combined, the gradual replacement of one personality with another. It was the very definition of their existence.
And thus it happened one day, when the span of the longest memory among them had passed—when they had spent so long among the mass-worlds that they remembered nothing else—that the Marra civilization itself was dead. No one remembered how it had worked; no one could begin to restore it.
Change had something to do with it, and shared temporal values . . . but the Saudar had kept no records in this case, and the Marra never did. They had been bound to the mass-worlds forever.
"But you're not dependent on your body, are you?" He seemed confused. "I thought you said . . . They couldn't change that, could they?"
"No," she said softly. "But if I leave my mass, what am I? I think in 'bodied terms now. If I gave up my flesh, what would I be? A wraith perhaps, a shadow of something that once wore flesh. Floating in emptiness, remembering only what the mass-worlds were, not able even to think without tripping over mass-bound concepts. There's nothing left of what we were," she told him, "and thus, no way to go back.
Ever. That was what the Saudar planned, back then . . . and they were a very efficient people."
He was silent. Aghast. It had that effect on the embodied, she remembered. They read so much into it.
"You must be angry," he managed at last.
She shrugged. "Chemicals. Body-stuff. What would be the point? They did what they felt they had to.
The 'bodied species are driven by so many chemical urges, they have so little control over themselves . . .
how can we get angry at them? They see everything in shades of survival, they equate failure with death—"
"They destroyed your world!"
"Our world changed. All things change, for us. It's only a question of in what way, and how long it takes." All things, she thought, except what we record, through other species. We did learn that much. The Saudar kept our histories for us, and now you . . . with your longevity and your power of recall. . . do you wonder why I share these stories with you, the last of my Saudar memories ?
Hold them for me. Give them back when my memories die. We have no civilization of our own, our continuity must depend upon outsiders. . . .
"Change is the essence of life," she said quietly.
"And of death."
She looked into his eyes, and saw herself mirrored there. Alien, very alien. But not an unwelcome image.
He was adapting.
"Yes," she agreed. "Of death, as well."
The Tyr have made that very clear.
* * *
Late in their fourth night of traveling, they came within sight of Suyaag. With a flutter of wings she landed, choosing a rocky prominence that offered, by its height, a fair view of the settlement. The human came down beside her, shedding his wings as he touched ground.
Growing more adept each night, she noted. That was excellent.
In the distance, the river Hiann signaled its location by glints of reflected starlight. Some quarter of a mile from it, running parallel to its shore, a long, narrow dune rose unnaturally from put of the grasslands, a single discordant note set against an otherwise flat horizon. It was on this ridge that the angdatwa squatted, like a great stone spider overlooking its prey. Between that curious mound and the river, houses lay scattered where they had been caught, tangled in a web of city streets like helpless insects.
There was no sense of order, as there had been in Cantona. Buildings were scattered randomly, bits of unaligned architecture that had nothing in common save one chilling element: that no door, or window, opened toward the angdatwa.
She looked to her companion—and found that he was watching her, rather than the city.
"Why did they name you that?" he asked quietly.
"What? Kiri?"
"The Marra. You said that all Saudar names had meaning. What did marra mean, in that language?"
"It was a long time ago," she said quietly. "A mistake."
He said nothing. Waiting.
"When we first made contact . . . you have to understand, they were fascinated by our life-sense. As soon as they could, they began to ask us questions. What exactly happened to the embodied at the moment of dying? Was there really life after death, for them?"
She tried to use her voice to communicate regret. "We were young. Naive. We thought they really wanted to know."
"And?"
She shrugged. "We told them."
"Not what they wanted to hear."
She looked back toward the settlement, with its looming Tyrran gargoyle. "There is no right answer, when fact confronts faith. We know that now. The embodied need their mysteries." She sighed, and turned back to him. "Marra is the diminutive form for the proper name Marragyath . . . which is the devil, in Saudar mythology. They felt it was appropriate."
"They destroyed your culture," he said softly. "You destroyed their faith."
She was silent for a moment, savoring the sorrow in his voice. He was feeling for her as only the embodied could, experiencing her past through chemical interaction as though he'd lived through it himself. It awed her, that he could invest more emotion in a borrowed memory than she could in the act itself. It had always awed her, that the embodied could do that.
"A true symbiosis," she said gently. "Come, let's get moving. We still have a long way to go before dawn."
* * *
She knew that the Suyaag-Marra would be a disappointment, as soon as they came to his abode.
Standing outside the riverfront hovel, her human companion shivering beside her in the damp chill of early dawn, she wondered just why she was so certain of it. There was certainly no law requiring that Marra live ostentatiously; in these crude and dismal surroundings, it might be considered more appropriate to have such a house as this, simple wood and pitch, well-weathered by the elements. Nor was it required that a Marra live comfortably. The very concept of comfort was a body-thing, irrelevant to her species; such creature comforts as humans required would be no more than showpieces, in a Marra household. So there was no particular significance in the starkness of the Marra's abode, or in the lack of any decorative element whatsoever. Many human houses in Suyaag were like that, Subjugated and expressionless. No, what bothered her about the house was nothing she could put her essence on.
