That was interesting. It was also ironically funny, and I had to chuckle. “What’s so funny?”
“Well, you know I wasn’t born on Charon. I was sent here. Sent here by the law.”
She nodded. “I know. It was the talk of Thunderkor.” “Well, I got into—trouble. I killed somebody, for no reason you—or even I, now—would think was right or sane. And the reason, when they found it, was that I was a hermaphrodite, a freak.”
Her mouth formed a little circle. “Oh… So that’s why you looked a little, well, funny.”
I nodded. “But they got me straightened out and happily male,” I continued. “And now—look! I’m a male who looks like your sister!”
She laughed at that herself, but it brought up an interesting question. All right, I was male—but a male what! I asked her about it.
“I wondered about that myself,” she said. “According to Grandmother, if we were to, ah, make it, right now nothing would happen. But as soon as the wa inside you gets the rest of you straight, it might just be that we could reproduce our own kind. It’s not certain, but it’s been known to happen. We might start a whole new race!” She looked thoughtful. “Darvus Lacochus.” “Sounds like a disease.”
She laughed. “You know, this is wonderful, Park. I feel more alive than I have in two years!”
I could see her joy, and even feel good about it. I liked her, too. Her speech was a little rough, and occasionally became even rougher. She was uneducated and inexperienced, but she was a bright, intelligent woman whose potential had been blunted by a man’s cruel ego. And she was certainly tougher and more decisive than Zala—the old Zala, anyway. I idly wondered what the new Zala was like.
“Look,” I said, “you’re going to have to fill me in. What the hell happened back there in Bourget? And who did it? And why?”
She sighed. “Well, for a long time there’s been a devil cult. You know that?”
I nodded.
“Well, anyway, it was mostly bored and frustrated women trying to get a little of the Power. But a year or two ago, things changed. How and who did it I don’t know, but they got kinda taken over by this bigger group that wants to overthrow the government. It’s got a real powerful sore behind it is all I know.”
“Koril,” I told her. “Used to be Lord.”
“Yeah, him, I think,” she agreed. “Anyway, lots of folks liked him better. You didn’t have any creepy guys like that security chief, and no troopers jumping out at you. Well, this sore also contacted all the changeling colonies. He promised them that when he got back they’d be given Tukyan, the south continent, for their own. There’s few people down there now, and it’s mostly still unexplored, but it’s at least as nice as here, or so I’m told. Well, this was great for the changelings, who have no real life and no future here. The humans went along, too, because we’d be out of their hair. See?”
I nodded. It was very logical—and good politics on Koril’s part. I was beginning to see how formidable the man was, even without his reputed super magical powers. I had to wonder how Aeolia Matuze was ever able to oust him in the first place, and how she kept her power.
In a flash, I had it—the only logical answer. She was in the job because she backed the war against the Confederacy. The other three Lords couldn’t care less about Charon—Korman said as much. Who did? The only logical answer was the aliens themselves.
You didn’t have any creepy guys like that security chief…
Whose Chief of Security was Yatek Morah? Matuze’s? Yes, but only so long as she followed the correct line. And that meant that it was very possible that the strange man with those strange eyes, that robot like manner, that incredible power, was not human at all. And that meant that, while Charon was unimportant to the war, it was, for some reason, very, very important to the aliens. Why?
Aeolia Matuze, with her great ego and dreams of god-hood—the aliens would feed that, and in exchange, she would follow the alien line right where they said. It made sense. I wondered if Koril, even now, realized it? What was one Lord of the Diamond to a race prepared to disrupt and take over a thousand worlds or more?
“What’cha thinking?”
I was startled out of my reverie. “Just putting a lot of pieces together in my head. I’ll explain them to you later. We’re going to be together a long time, and it’s a long and complicated story.”
“Together,” she sighed. “You don’t know how good that sounds.”
“First, some basics. How come I don’t trip over my tail when I walk or tip over on the run? I feel pretty natural in this body.”
“It was a good spell, with all the necessaries.”
I nodded. That was good enough for me. “Okay then—where do we go from here?”
“Far away,” she responded quickly, “and fairly fast. This place is a day’s march from Bourget, but it’ll soon be crawling with government troops. Probably already is. We have a number of defenses—including the ability to stand absolutely still. You’d be surprised, but big as we are, if we’re all surrounded by green and stay completely still they’ll run right past us.”
“Handy,” I told her, “but the weaponry suddenly turned a lot more modern around here than I was used to, and the good stuff has heat sensors.”
She laughed. “So what? They tried them in hunting. Our body temperature’s pretty much the same as our surroundings. They’re nearly useless.”
I hadn’t thought of that angle. “Still, I’d just as soon be away from here—fast. How well do you know the land beyond this region?”
“Fair,” she responded. “Worse if we get more than a hundred kilometers from here. I never traveled much. But I know where the roads are, even though we can’t use them—and I have landmarks from maps in my head. They made us memorize a bunch of them.”
“Good girl,” I told her.
“You want to join up with the others, then?” She sounded almost disappointed.
I nodded. “I’ll try and explain why as we go. There’s a lot going on they don’t tell you about.”
“We’ve still got three weeks to get maybe 800 kilometers,” she told me. “That’s time enough to tell me everything. We were supposed to scatter and live off the land until then.”
“Gives ’em plenty of tune to capture some of us and force those locations out of us,” I said worriedly.
“Oh, there’s hundreds of rendezvous spots, and only a very small group was told of one and two alternates. Even if they pick up half the changelings, which I doubt, we still would have an even chance that one or more of ours was still good.”
“Not the odds I like, but they’re the only ones we have.” I looked around. The fog was coming in even more thickly. “And now’s the time to make tracks for far away.”
She laughed. “And even those’ll be bunhar tracks.”
There were, in fact, advantages to this shape.
I looked around. “I think I’m going to have to find a friendly tree,” I told her. “It goes right through you on an empty stomach.”
She laughed and pointed randomly. I took her advice, picked a spot, and relaxed, looking down.
“Oh, so thats where it is,” I said aloud.
CHAPTER TEN
Decision at the Pinnacles
It was, in some ways, an idyllic three weeks, and it bothered me a bit because I thought of it as such. The fact was, I really enjoyed Darva, person to person, and found within myself the stirrings of feelings I never even knew I had. It was a blow to my own self-image, really, that I should feel this way. The strong, solid, emotionless agent of the Confederacy, who needed nothing and no one—ever. Who was born, bred, and trained to be above such petty human feelings as loyalty, friendship… love? Hadn’t I been the one who couldn’t even phi down the meaning of the word to Zala only a few months ago? Was it possible, I found myself wondering, that loneliness was not something only inferior people suffered? Had I, in fact, been as much an alien and an outsider to my own culture as Darva had been to hers? That thought, I knew, was dangerous. It struck at the very value system of the Confederacy which I still told myself I believed in.