I whistled. “That’s rough” was all I could think to say. “Oh, I could reverse the spell, probably, by going crawling to Gneezer, but I’d rather be like this than do that. Someday I’ll get even with ’em, you can count on it But it’s not so bad. They didn’t mess with my head, if you know what I mean. But he sure got even. I mean, the only thing I could marry would be a bunhar, and who wants to play sexy with a lizard?”
I saw her point and assumed a bunhar was the kind of creature she half was.
“No chance of having a different, more powerful swore undo it.
She shook her head. “Naw. First of all, they got a brotherhood, a code. Even the women. None of ’em will undo what another has done no matter how much they want to, because if one breaks it they all will, you see, and then where’ll they be?”
It was a good point “And none of the unofficial ones can help?”
Again the head-shake. “It’s a good spell. Them amateurs can only make things worse. Besides, there seems to be something in the spell that makes it tougher. Tried it once—and that’s when I got this horn. That’s enough.”
“Are there others like you around?” I was genuinely curious.
“Like me? Not exactly. Some others got some of the same bunhar parts, I guess, and a lot of other stuff. There’s a few dozen around the Company, I guess, of different kinds. It’s a big place, so we don’t see much of each other, and some of ’em are really messed up in the head by what was done to ’em. They don’t do this all that much—we’re the examples, see?”
I did see, and it made me even happier to be both a townsman with a degree of freedom and on the good side of Tally Kokul and the Charon government.
“Did you ever think of leaving?” I asked her. “I hear there are places where changelings can live together. It would probably be—easier.”
“Oh, yeah, there’s lots of that,” she agreed, “but here’s where the dungheads who did it to me are, and here’s where they could remove it—or I could remove them.” She flexed her very human arms and hands, and I could see that at the end of each finger was not merely a nail but a sharp, long curved talon.
“Well, I’ve got to be getting on,” I told her, not making excuses but being honest. My transportation back to town was waiting. “It was nice, and interesting, talking to you. And if I catch your Mr. Gneezer with his hand in the till I guarantee I’ll remember you when I turn him over t6 Master Kokul.”
She chuckled evilly. “Wouldn’t that be something, now!” She paused for breath, then said more gently, “Hey, look. If you get back over this way, stop by and see me, won’t you? Most of the people here, they treat me like dirt. You’re the first person in a long time who’s been nice to me and treated me like—well, like a human being.”
“I’ll do that,” I promised her. We started to go our separate ways, but I stopped and turned. “Hey—what’s your name, anyway?”
“Darva,” she called back. “With no family now I’m just Darva.”
She took a branch path and walked away from me. I stood there for a moment, watching her lumber off—rather gracefully actually. I also made a mental note of the names Gneezer and Isil. One of these days there would be an accounting.
Months passed, and I settled in very well and really enjoyed the job. Zala taught me how to swim more expertly than I had learned as a kid, and we took full advantage of the warm bay. I also learned how to sail, although I couldn’t afford a boat and had to beg or borrow one for the lessons. Zala saved up enough from her loom work to buy a pair of bicycles, obviously made off-world—on Cerberus, as it turned out—and this extended my range and gave me some much needed exercise when it didn’t rain.
Large sailing ships occasionally came into the bay to pick up manufactured goods and non-perishables and drop off what we needed, and I was very impressed by them. Although strong steel ships could be built on Cerberus, which I understood was a water world, the cost of shipping that size and weight here was prohibitive. Charon’s ships were made out of native hardwoods and were the more impressive for it. I noticed that the crews of these ships often contained a disproportionate number of changelings—every kind and variety I could imagine and many I couldn’t. But certain forms and variations were particularly useful in rigging and setting and taking in sail, and in cargo management. The shipping guilds apparently didn’t care who or what you were if you were best for the job. They mostly remained on board when in port, although once or twice I thought I saw longboats heading for Parhara Point where the changeling colony was supposed to be.
Tally Kokul I saw very infrequently—he kept mostly to himself and his “studies,” and I almost never needed him. His apts occasionally got playful in the wrong places though, and I’d have to send him a note or drop in if he was there and get him to control them. They were mostly young boys—with more power than young boys should have. I wondered what he did with the talented girl apts, then reflected that somebody who could turn a young woman into a hybrid creature could easily disguise the sex of an apt if she were really promising.
I also heard very little from the central government of Charon, other than the routine correspondence and manuals necessary to my job, and that suited me just fine as well. It was with some surprise, then, that a clerk came in one day and told me that a very important visitor had arrived, and he wanted to see me in Kokul’s office as soon as possible. “I’d make it possible right now,” he added, shuddering slightly. “You haven’t seen him yet.”
That was enough to get me up there on the double.
Just walking into the inner office I knew what he had meant. Even before I saw the man, I could sense something, something decidedly wrong. It wasn’t my old agent’s “sixth sense” or any kind of apprehension—it was a real, tangible feeling of unease, almost of dread, like you feel just before you have to stick your hand in a damp, dark hole without knowing what’s on the other side.
He was large and lean, dressed from head to foot in black leather trimmed with silver and gold designs. His face, peering out of a black hood, was lean, hard, even nasty-looking. What really struck me, though, were the eyes—there seemed to be something wrong with them, something odd and not at all human. It was as if his pupils were not solid black, but rather, transparent, like windows into some unfathomable other dimension. It was the damnedest effect I’d ever seen and it was extremely unnerving. Kokul sensed it too, and looked uneasy in his big office chair for the first time since I’d known him. This man was no ordinary man—he was Power, raw, tremendous power of an unknown sort. I noticed the man remained standing even though there were enough chairs, the better no doubt to negate the man-at-the-desk feeling. I, however, just nodded at Tully and sat down. I only came up to the strange man’s chest, anyway. Never, not even with Darva, had I felt so totally small, puny, and weak.
“Park, this is Yatek Morah, from the Castle,” Tully introduced us and I noticed a feeling of unease in his voice. I stood up again and offered my hand, but Morah ignored it. I sat back down. “Any problem?” I asked as casually as I could.
“I am making a survey,” the strange man replied in a voice as cold and emotionless “as an assembly-line robot’s. Coming from a living man it was unnerving, particularly on this planet where robots were impossible. “We are having severe security problems in most of the coastal areas. Ships have been pirated on the high seas and never been seen again. Soarers with important, even vital cargo have vanished, or suffered attack. Important people have been imperiled. As Chief of Security it is my job to put a stop to this.”