Keep Your Shape, Page 3

at all. In fact, some of them weredecidedly otherwise. It had just been the acuity of the Dog-nostrils,the number of smells they had detected and the near-brilliance withwhich they had done so, that had shocked him.

  Also, the sounds weren't half so devastating. Only relatively closesounds stood out. All else was an undetailed whispering.

  Evidently, Pid thought, it had been a long time since Men had beenHunters.

  He tested his legs, standing up and taking a few clumsy steps. _Thud_of foot on ground. Drag the other leg forward in a heavy arc. _Thud._Rocking from side to side, he marched back and forth behind the bush.His arms flapped as he sought balance. His head wobbled on its neck,until he remembered to hold it up. Head up, eyes down, he missedseeing a small rock. His heel turned on it. He sat down, hard.

  The ankle hurt. Pid curled his Man-lips and crawled back into thebush.

  The Man-shape was too unspeakably clumsy. It was offensive to plod onestep at a time. Body held rigidly upright. Arms wobbling. There hadbeen a deluge of sense-impressions in the Dog-shape; there was dull,stiff, half-alive inadequacy to the Man-shape.

  Besides, it was dangerous, now that Pid thought it over, as well asdistasteful. He couldn't control it properly. It wouldn't look right.Someone might question him. There was too much about Men hedidn't--couldn't--know. The planting of the Displacer was tooimportant a thing for him to fumble again. Only luck had kept him frombeing seen during the sensory onslaught.

  The Displacer in his body pouch pulsed and tugged, urging him to be onhis way toward the distant reactor room.

  Grimly, Pid let out the last breath he had taken with his Man-lungs,and dissolved the lungs.

  What shape to take?

  Again he studied the gate, the Men standing beside it, the buildingbeyond in which was the all-important reactor.

  A small shape was needed. A fast one. An unobtrusive one.

  He lay and thought.

  The bush rustled above him. A small brown shape had fluttered down tolight on a twig. It hopped to another twig, twittering. Then itfluttered off in a flash, and was gone.

  That, Pid thought, was it.

  * * * * *

  A Sparrow that was not a Sparrow rose from the bush a few momentslater. An observer would have seen it circle the bush, diving,hedgehopping, even looping, as if practicing all maneuvers possible toSparrows.

  Pid tensed his shoulder muscles, inclined his wings. He slipped off tothe right, approached the bush at what seemed breakneck speed, thoughhe knew this was only because of his small size. At the last second helifted his tail. Not quite quickly enough. He swooped up and over thetop of the bush, but his legs brushed the top leaves, his beak wentdown, and he stumbled in air for a few feet back-forward.

  He blinked beady eyes as if at a challenge. Back toward the bush at afine clip, again up and over. This time cleanly.

  He chose a tree. Zoomed into its network of branches, wove a web offlight, working his way around and around the trunk, over and underbranches that flashed before him, through crotches with no more than afeather's-breath to spare.

  At last he rested on a low branch, and found himself chirping indelight.

  The tree extruded a feeler from the branch he sat on, and touched hiswings and tail.

  "Interesting," said the tree. "I'll have to try that shape some time."

  Ilg.

  "Traitor," hissed Pid, growing a mouth in his chest to hiss it, andthen he did something that caused Ilg to exclaim in outrage.

  Pid flew out of the woods. Over the underbrush and across the openspace toward the gate.

  This body would do the trick!

  This body would do anything!

  He rose, in a matter of a few Sparrow heartbeats, to an altitude of ahundred feet. From here the gate, the Men, the building were small,sharp shapes against a green-brown mat. Pid found that he could seenot only with unaccustomed clarity, but with a range of vision thatastonished him. To right and to left he could see far into the hazyblue of the sky, and the higher he rose the farther he could see.

  He rose higher.

  The Displacer pulsed, reminding him of the job he had to do.

  * * * * *

  He stiffened his wings and glided, regretfully putting aside hisdesires to experiment with this wonderful shape, at least for thepresent. After he planted the Displacer, he would go off by himselffor a while and do it just a little more--somewhere where Ilg and Gerwould not see him--before the Grom Army arrived and the invasionbegan.

  He felt a tiny twinge of guilt, as he circled. It was Evil to want tokeep this alien flying shape any longer than was absolutely necessaryto the performance of his duty. It was a device of the Shapeless One--

  But what had Ilg said? _All Grom are born Shapeless._ It was true.Grom children were amorphous, until old enough to be instructed in thecaste-shape of their ancestors.

  Maybe it wasn't _too_ great a sin to alter your Shape, then--just oncein a long while. After all, one must be fully aware of the nature ofEvil in order to meaningfully reject it.

  He had fallen lower in circling. The Displacer pulse had strengthened.For some reason it irritated him. He drove higher on strong wings,circled again. Air rushed past him--a smooth, whispering flow, piercedby his beak, streaming invisibly past his sharp eyes, moving along hisbody in tiny turbulences that moved his feathers against his skin.

  It occurred to him--or rather struck him with considerable force--thathe was satisfying a longing of his Pilot Caste that went far deeperthan Piloting.

  He drove powerfully with his wings, felt tonus across his back, shotforward and up. He thought of the controls of his ship. He imaginedflowing into them, becoming part of them, as he had so often done--andfor the first time in his life the thought failed to excite him.

  No machine could compare with this!

  What he would give to have wings of his own!

  _... Get from my sight, Shapeless One!_

  The Displacer must be planted, activated. All Grom depended on him.

  He eyed the building, far below. He would pass over it. The Displacerwould tell him which window to enter--which window was so near thereactor that he could do his job before the Men even knew he wasabout.

  He started to drop lower, and the Hawk struck.

  * * * * *

  It had been above him. His first inkling of danger was the sharp painof talons in his back, and the stunning blow of a beak across hishead.

  Dazed, he let his back go Shapeless. His body-substance flowed fromthe grasp of the talons. He dropped a dozen feet and resumedSparrow-shape, hearing an astonished squawk from the attacker.

  He banked, and looked up. The Hawk was eyeing him.

  Talons spread again. The sharp beak gaped. The Hawk swooped.

  Pid had to fight as a Bird, naturally. He was four hundred feet abovethe ground.

  So he became an impossibly deadly Bird.

  He grew to twice the size of the Hawk. He grew a foot-long beak witha double razor's edge. He grew talons like six inch scimitars. Hiseyes gleamed a red challenge.

  The Hawk broke flight, squalling in alarm. Frantically, tail down andwidespread, it thundered its wings and came to a dead stop six feetfrom Pid.

  Looking thoughtfully at Pid, it allowed itself to plummet. It fell ahundred feet, spread its wings, stretched its neck and flew off sohastily that its wings became blurs.

  Pid saw no reason to pursue it.

  Then, after a moment, he did.

  He glided, keeping the Hawk in sight, thoughts racing, feeling thenewness, the power, the wonder of Freedom of Shape.

  Freedom....

  He did not want to give it up.

  The bird-shape was wondrous. He would experiment with it. Later, hemight tire of it for a time and assume another--a crawling or runningshape, or even a swimming one. The possibilities for excitement, foradventure, for fulfilment and simple sensual pleasure were endless!

  Freedom o
f Shape was--obviously, now that you thought on it--the Grombirthright. And the caste-system was artificial--obviously. A devicefor political and priestly benefit--obviously.

  _Go away, Shapeless One ... this does not concern you._

  He rose to a thousand feet, two thousand, three. The Displacer's pulsegrew feebler and finally vanished.

  At four thousand feet he released it and watched it spin downward,vanish into a cloud.

  Then he set out after the Hawk, which was now only a dot on thehorizon. He would find out how the Hawk had broken flight as ithad--skidded on air--he wanted to do that too! There were so manythings he wanted to learn about flying. In a week, he thought, heshould be able to duplicate all the skill that millennia had evolvedinto Birds. Then his new life would really begin.

  He became a torpedo-shape with huge wings, and sped after the Hawk.

  ROBERT SHECKLEY

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