Find the Changeling, Page 3

  “Something. Wrong.”

  “No, nothing. Just looking.”

  “For. What.”

  “Never mind. Let’s go.”

  If you were going to die, you couldn’t pick a prettier place, he thought sourly. Time was so precious he couldn’t take a moment to get a solid look at Alvea, and he suspected it would be this way all through the mission. No room for tourism. No time—he glanced upward again, hurrying to catch up to Scorpio, pink grasses plucking at him with wet whispers—to feel the place. To watch golden vines so thin a slight breeze made them swim on unseen currents. To smell the acrid, shimmering leaves that he brushed by. To live, for once, instead of plodding mindlessly ahead in pursuit of a career.

  “Someone.”

  “How far?” Skallon said, blinking with surprise,

  “Seventy. Meters. Closing.” Pause. “Closing.”

  “Get to shelter. Hide.”

  Scorpio was down amid some wrinkled fern leaflets in a few seconds. Skallon decided to wait for whoever it was on the path, and then realized that would seem odd, someone just standing around in the middle of the jungle. He heard a rustle of movement. Abruptly he lurched forward, walking toward the noise. A short, fat Alvean came around the bend in the path. Skallon kept up his pace. The man’s face seemed to pout beneath the fleshy folds of his cheeks. Skallon had never seen anyone so fat in his life. Slides, pictures of Alveans, yes, but the reality—He kept up the rhythm of his walking. “Hail,” he said.

  “Aye?”

  “Do you know where I might find a small cart?”

  “You are needful?” the man said mildly.

  “I am a pilgrim. From the south. I have—”

  “Yes, quite. I thought I spotted your drawl.” The man smiled slightly, as though pleased-with himself at having guessed right. “You can most probably fix upon a cart at the rail connection four kilometers onward.”

  “You are most kind. I shall say a prayer for you in the Transept of—”

  “Yes, yes,” the man muttered, losing interest. “Good journey.” He stepped delicately around Skallon and went down the path. Skallon moved off, too, breathing a bit easier. He had passed his first test. The Doubluth robes seemed unremarkable to the man. They were a dull purple splotched in orange. They billowed out in the occasional breeze that whispered through the jungle.

  “All. Right.”

  Skallon started slightly as Scorpio’s voice droned out from a flowering fungoid patch. “Sure. Everything went perfectly. You’d better keep off the path, though. Follow me in parallel.”

  The dog disappeared again. Skallon stepped off at a rapid walk. It was already afternoon in Alvea’s twenty-six-hour day and he wanted to get well into the city before darkness. On Earth the streets were deadly at night and he wasn’t sure the Alvean Fests, plus the effects of the plague years, wouldn’t make the same true here.

  He would have to watch out for signs of the plagues. Everything he had learned about Alvea—without ever having been here—was based on the tranquil years. For several centuries the Alveans had been free of the vast, sweeping illnesses. Now they had returned, even worse than before. There were vile sicknesses that bulged the eyes out until the pressure popped a vein in the head, and diseases which gnawed away the belly, and frenzies that seized the unsuspecting and made them dance, dance frantically until their feet pounded into bloody stumps and they fell dead in the streets. All because of the slow workings of native Alvean biology. All, Skallon thought, because man would try to thrust in where he didn’t truly fit, no matter what the cost.

  Alvea was a seemingly placid world when mankind first found it. Its vast green oceans swarmed with life and the land was host to many plant, forms. There were even a few gropings toward animal life—fish that wandered dimly along the muddy shores, awkward insects that tumbled through the air in a parody of flight. So men and women came here and mined the rare earths that were profitable. But the F8 star that Alvea circled spat out too great an ultraviolet excess. Cancers multiplied. Stock animals could not reproduce. Some breeds of cow and rabbit died first, then others, and finally men.

  So the first colonists called by radio to Earth, pleading for help. This was in the earliest, expansionist phase of the New Renaissance. Earth was rich, or at least thought itself so. It sent a bioadaptant team. They studied the complex interweaving of human physiology and Alvean ecology. The problems were not obvious. It was no matter of humans digesting while Alvea produced only right-handed ones. The issues became far more subtle. Small trace elements in human cells were depleted on Alvea. Insignificant fractions of a percent in boron or indium, chemically incompatible with human biochemistry, eventually led to buildup of waste products in certain cells. Nucleotides reacted sluggishly. Contaminants compounded. The centers of some cells grew a halo of sludge. Some of this led to increased aging. Other flaws accumulated and caused the gnawing cancers. There was no cure short of either modifying the entire swarming biosphere of Alvea, or tinkering with the humans who lived there. The New Renaissance was expansive but not foolhardy; it chose genetic alteration of the few thousand humans.

  But no tuning of the DNA helix has only one single effect. The chain of consequences always brings surprises. Toleration of one new element brings with it a slight weakness toward some other factor in the environment. Men were adapted to Earth because billions of tiny lives had paid the price before them. All life was engineered by the heavy hand of elimination. On Alvea, genetic research could sidestep a vast amount of sacrifice, but not all. Humans adapted themselves by delicately rearranging a few elements along the DNA helix. Phosphorus and hydrogen were nudged into new spots. But the inevitable calculus of inheritance meant that the next generation to emerge carried new vulnerabilities, fresh fears.

  A beating noise roused Skallon from his wandering thoughts. Something was hammering softly, wetly. It came toward him. His head jerked up as a huge sleek bird coasted down the wind and picked up speed. A smackwing. At each upward stroke the leathery wings flapped together; its mating call. The bird casually studied Skallon and banked away into the jungle.

  Another genetic adaptant. It had begun as a sea-bird, Skallon recalled. A heron or something like that. Now it was fitted into an ecological niche by a suitable trimming of its genes. A calculated creature, yes, but beautiful, too. Blue sunlight glimmered as its wings slapped together. It flitted lightly in the embracing air.

  Skallon watched it go. Another sound emerged from the jungle’s hush. A tinkling, ahead. He walked on. The noise rose. He crossed a brown plank bridge and looked down. Water jiggled and danced under him, dashing facets of light into his eyes.

  Water. Water running open, along a kind of hole with irregular banks. Fresh water simply lying around, where it could be stolen by anyone passing by. Skallon stared at the stuff. He walked around to the edge and scooped up a handful. It was startlingly cold and tasted like a phosphorescent nerve drink, but it had no numbing effect. He drank some more. It was damned good.

  From childhood memory came images: ethereal forest, humanized animals, a looming presence of man always in the background. Disney’s Bambi, one of the great works of the past, from the latter days of the British Empire, he recalled. His friends studying the media had said it rang false, that it was obvious propaganda used to drum up support for Oversighting. Skallon doubted that. The film had an elfin quality, full of leaping stags and trembling glowing raindrops. It was unlike any propaganda he had ever seen. The real propaganda always had an earnest taste to it, as though the audience was supposed to frown in concentration. No, Bambi was a spontaneous product, as fresh as this jungle. And this water thing—he remembered suddenly the obsolete word, this ditch—was here because nobody thought to channel and save all the water for use before returning it to the oceans. Despite all his study of simulations and holos of Alvea, Skallon had never thought that ditches had to be here.

  6

  Alvea’s star threw shadows along the rail route, its light now a mustard tint. S
kallon tried to relax in the ample railcar seat. He was feeling more confident now. When he’d asked for a cart the woman had murmured a sour reply and simply led him to a crude wooden two-wheeler, gesturing that she wanted it returned when he was through. He had started to give assurances and then remembered that pilgrims were bound by strong moral constraints; she had no doubt that when his pilgrimage was done, he would return the cart. Skallon had read about this, but it still seemed incredible. In the dormitories where Skallon had lived, you had to nail down anything you wanted to keep.

  Skallon sat so he could see the baggage compartment that trundled along behind this one passenger car. The cart was back there, and Scorpio inside it. A few of the red-caped passengers had helped Skallon heave the cart up the ramp onto the baggage carrier, but none of them gave a second glance at his robes or his face. Skallon was fairly sure he would pass even easier in the city. But Scorpio was a giveaway; he was now sorry he had agreed to smuggle the dog into their contact point.

  He leaned back and watched his fellow passengers. They were all workers, each sitting in the sprawl a fat man adopts in a broad chair. Were their slabs of muscle an indirect effect of gene tampering? Skallon could not be sure. Their wrists, sticking out of their robes, seemed thicker and more wrinkled than his. He was still studying them, making comparisons, when one of the men stood up abruptly, waddled a few paces, and collapsed.

  “Carrier! Carrier!” someone cried.

  “Press the emergency signal! Stop the train. We must get off.”

  Skallon sat quietly as the others lurched out of their seats and twisted away from the crumpled figure. They crowded into the other end of the car. Some whimpered with fear. Suddenly the train squealed _ and began to slow. Skallon debated whether he should get up and make a show of cowering as far away from the fallen man as possible. But if someone happened to tug at his robes, the padding might be revealed. And he stood no real risk sitting here; he wasn’t prey to Alvean diseases. He looked at the man and then noticed something odd.

  The train thumped to a stop. The crowd bolted for the doors and swarmed out, jabbering. Skallon stood up and went over to the fallen man. There didn’t seem to be anything wrong with him. Skallon glanced up, but no one was going to venture into this car until the collectors of the dead arrived, he was sure.

  He rolled the Alvean over. The man’s complexion was dark, typical of the natives. Skallon tested the man’s arterial rate and flipped back the rough eyelids. The man stirred and croaked to himself in dry whispers. Skallon slipped a small plate from his cowl and held it in front of the Alvean’s lips. It clouded a rosy pink.

  “Vertil,” he murmured to himself. “Damn.”

  A chill tightening ran through him. Fain couldn’t have doped an Alvean with Vertil and had time to get the native onto this train. So wherever the Alvean came from, it wasn’t Fain. But there were no sources of Vertil on Alvea, Skallon knew that. Earth had never let the drug get free; it would be socially destabilizing.

  That meant someone from Earth was using it.

  There wasn’t another possibility. It had to be the Changeling.

  Skallon felt a momentary panic. Now they had no advantage whatever over the Changeling. None. The Changeling could change identities and use the Vertil to expand his powers.

  Now the whole idea of sending a two-man team seemed stupid. Sure, they wouldn’t be noticeable, wouldn’t make a ripple in Alvean-Earth relations—but they couldn’t find the Changeling, either, not with this disadvantage.

  This Alvean had been near the Changeling. And he was on the way into Kalic. Which meant the Changeling was moving, was probably ahead of Skallon already. That bothered him. Fain was supposed to deal with the Changeling, he had the experience, that was Fain’s job. Skallon was a guide. Sure, he had field training in addition to a specialist rating in Alvean sociometrics. But he was on his first offworld assignment.

  Now Fain wasn’t here and this babbling Alvean was as clear as a calling card: the Changeling was moving fast. Skallon was alone, stuck with the damned dog. He had to get to shelter.

  Skallon stood up. Some railway officials—he could tell, they wore magenta robes with gold lacings—were standing outside the transparent doors, gesturing toward him. Contorted faces, lined with anxiety.

  Skallon made a holy sign over the Alvean and stood up quickly. It was best to move with assurance and avoid questions. He jerked open the sliding door and shouldered the officials aside.

  “I tried to render aid,” he said quickly. “But I can stay no longer, brothers.”

  “You do great good by the attempt,” one of the men said, obviously impressed. “Many of these are contagious.”

  Skallon nodded, bowed, and slipped away. He had to get the cart down and mingle with the crowd. He had to move. He had to get away.

  7

  Skallon’s feet were burning by the time he reached the jumbled outskirts of Kalic. Padding down the farm lanes was entirely different from skimming over them in a rail car. The native jungle thinned into the grasses and trees men had adapted to Alvea, and broad fields furrowed for fresh crops stretched to the horizon. He recognized the tall plants like mushrooms that flamed red at their crests: qantimakas, the primary Alvean staple. Large chunks of the domed crests were broken off along the ripened edges daily. Boiled, they reddened further and tasted like-chewy potatoes. Blossoming, they gave a hearty, mealy fruit. The entire plant was programmed for use: the stems, dried and beaten, were woven into a coarse red fabric worn during the winter cycle by industrial workers. Skallon tugged his cart alongside others that carried racks of the drying leaves, which were used for wrapping. By the time he reached Kalic he knew far more than he cared to about the pungent reek of the shiny leaves. It seemed unlikely that facing the Changeling could have been worse than qantimakas.

  Maraban Lane was a ravine of tall, ramshackle houses lurching toward each other at odd angles, as though they had been frozen in the balls across the pitted organiform street. The Battachran Hotel opened a black maw of an entranceway into Maraban Lane. A sour reek drifted out of this cobbled throat and into Skallon’s face as he let the cart bang down on the organiform. The lights from within looked as though one were seeing them through bowls of blood. As evening fell the colors of Alvea seemed to get stronger, instead of dimming as they did on Earth.

  Skallon rang the bell. Presently a fat man slowly made his way down the entranceway, shoes clattering on stone. The man eyed the cart warily. “You are how many?” he said in a surprisingly light tenor voice.

  “Two. And this.” He held up a signat.

  “From where?” A show of uninterest.

  “You will learn.”

  The man stroked the deep folds of fat that made his robes bulge. He sighed and with a show of casualness slipped the signat into a ring on his right hand. The ring glowed, first green and then a pearly white.

  “Damn and—” The man stopped. “I never thought—”

  “Anyone would show up? That’s what you’re paid for.”

  “Well, no, not precisely, I mean—I did not imply that. You must understand that I am not accustomed to such, ah…”

  “Procedures.”

  “Ah. Yes.” With sudden energy the man stepped forward, as though he had made up his mind, and shook Skallon’s hand. “I am Kish.” He placed a massive arm on the cart. “I will help you.”

  Together they pulled the cart into the coach yard of the hotel. Skallon took a blanket from Kish and, reaching deep into the cart, brought out Scorpio wrapped in it. Kish looked at the lump under the blanket and wrinkled his brow. Skallon gestured and Kish led the way through a dark corridor. Skallon saw no one else. “How is business?” he said, trying to find a conversational opening.

  “Oh, terrible. Quite terrible. These new plagues—” He kicked open a thick wood door. “—Even in the Fest times, the sickness strikes. It drives people into the countryside.”

  Skallon trudged in and dropped Scorpio on the cobbled floor. The dog tumbl
ed out of the blanket and yelped. Kish stepped backwards, moving with surprising speed for so heavy a man. “What, what—?”

  “A dog. A lower form. Bred for service,” Skallon said mildly. “A very ancient animal.” He stroked the bloodhound’s sleek fur. Beneath the smooth sheen were lean, tough muscles.

  “Native to Earth?”

  “Of course. You must have seen them in holos.”

  “But I did not know they were so large.”

  “Where. We.”

  Kish stepped back two paces and butted into a stone wall, nearly knocking over a flickering oil lamp. “You said a lower form.”

  “Well, relatively. This one’s been augmented.”

  “It speaks.” Kish had a small mouth. He twisted it upward in concern and a row of neat white teeth appeared to bite at the dark upper lip. His eyes swiveled from Skallon to the dog. “Does it understand us?”

  “Yes. I. Have. Vocab.”

  Kish shot a questioning glance at Skallon. “Vocabulary,” Skallon explained. “They cant say words that are too long.” He knelt down. “Scorpio, we’re in Kalic. In a hotel. Fain will be along soon. I will find you a place to rest.”

  “Food. And. Must. Learn…Smells.”

  “Of course.” He stood up after stroking the dog a moment more. He felt a bit ashamed that he had taken out his feelings about Fain on Scorpio. The dog probably sensed his hostility.

  Kish beckoned and Skallon led the dog out a small wooden door and into another gloomy passageway. Kish pulled at a handle and a yellow rectangle appeared; a small closet, just big enough for a bed. Did this pass for a hotel room? For peasants, maybe—but there weren’t any truly deprived classes in Alvean society, he reminded himself. Ritualized, yes, and constrained by codes—but not poorer than the broad average. Or at least, that’s what his text material had said.