The Chronicles of Mavin Manyshaped

  “Saprophytic,” murmured the Thinker. “Living upon waste and decay, to be eaten in turn by the fishes, which may be eaten in turn by the occupants. Though I wonder if they would digest at all well? Phosphorous poisoning? I would need to look that up.”

  “Will you ... enter?” The robed figures inclined themselves in a mere hint of bow. “Soon the ... wind will ... blow.”

  “My friends will stay here,” said Mavin in a firm voice, “until I have seen whether these accommodations are suitable. Mercald? Thinker? Thinker! Can you concentrate on simply standing here for a few moments?” She had succeeded in jolting his attention away from the lantern fish, at least for the moment. She walked up the little slope to the cave, giving no appearance of hurry or distress. The cave was shallow and sandy-floored with a hinged screen standing ajar. Not large, she thought. Large enough for the three of them to lie down in, not large enough for anyone else to come in. And not furnished with anything. Not a pot of water, not a rag to wash one’s face, not the semblance of a chair or bed to soften the sandy floor.

  She knelt, taking a handful of that sand in her fingers. It was dotted with bright, smooth stones which gleamed at her in blues and violets and greens. Gems. Some of them huge. They were not faceted, but smooth, as though worn by water. Looking back through the gate, she saw sparks of light thrown from many places in the clearing. Well now, she thought. That is interesting. No furnishings of any kind. But protected places, out of the wind. And gems. Everywhere.

  “Very nice.” She went out. “Very comfortable. Do come up, Mercald. Thinker. We offer our thanks, Mirtylon. And to you, Lovewings.” The robed figures confronted her still, offering no food or drink, no comfort or company.

  “Aaahhh,” murmured the one.

  “Aaahhh,” echoed the others.

  “We will find water when we need it in the stream, of course, and root mice growing upon the wall, and edible mushrooms. You mean us to take food and water as we need ... of course.”

  “Of course,” sighed the one.

  “Ahhhv cohhhrz,” echoed the others.

  Mercald and the Thinker came in as Mavin pulled the gate across the opening and peered through it at the figures outside. For a time, t hey did not move. At last, the three turned away as though joined by invisible strings and moved across the clearing where they halted against the dangling root hairs and did not move again.

  “If you notice,” Mavin asked, “no offer of food, or drink. No beds. No chairs.”

  “Persons living a life of religious expiation would hardly be expected to think of such things,” said Mercald in a sententious voice. “It is likely that they fast for days at a time. Probably they engage in self-mortification as well, flagellation or something such, and robe themselves both to avoid licentiousness and to hide their wounds from one another’s eyes.”

  “I don’t know what they engage in, priest, but I do know that hospitality to strangers is a duty of every religion I have ever encountered with no exceptions. None. I am inclined to believe, therefore, that all your blather about expiation and fasting and what not is just that—blather. I don’t know what’s going on here, but it isn’t religious.”

  “Besides which,” said the Thinker, “it’s unlikely that Lovewings, who committed suicide several hundred years ago, could be still alive. To say nothing of Mirtylon, who would have to have lived for about nine hundred years. Unlikely they would still have any licentiousness to cover.”

  “Of course!” Mavin struck her forehead with one hand, waving the other at the Thinker. “That story Beedie was telling me about the lost bridge. Lovewings was the one who threw herself off the stairs.”

  “The Boundless might extend the life of any worthy ...” Mercald began, only to be cut off.

  “The Boundless might, but I’ll bet my socks the Boundless didn’t. No, Mercald. Something other than the Boundless is at work here. Best rest while you can. They say they are concerned about the wind, and yet they stand out there in the clearing, not taking shelter. Something is awry here, so let us be cautious.” She lay on the sandy floor, accommodating herself to it, placing her head where she could see through the woven gate, hearing Mercald burrowing in his pack, smelling the food he unwrapped but refusing a share of it when he offered.

  The sides of the sandy clearing were hung with thick mats of root hairs, like the pelt of some giant beast, and against this shaggy b ackground the robed figures stood out plainly, as silent and un-moving as when they had first arrived there. There were some dozen of the forms around the clearing, all standing with hooded heads slightly down, hands and arms hidden in the sleeves of the flattree-leaf robes. Mavin nagged at herself, wondering what was odd about the grouping, realizing at last that the creatures stood at strange, out-feeling angles one to the other, not toward one another as people tended to do in groups. “Thinker,” she whispered. “Look here.”

  When he lay beside her, she said, “Look at them. Are they talking with one another?”

  He stopped breathing for a time, mouth half open around a chunk of cold fried root mice. Then he sighed. “No. Not talking. But something is happening. Look at the shifting, at the far end of the group, then the next one, then the next, as though they are moving slightly, one by one along that line. You don’t think they are people at all, do you? Well. I have my doubts. We should see what’s under those robes. Do you want me to postulate?”

  “No. Better just find out what’s under the robes. I’m going to sneak out, get around through the root wall. I think you’d better stay close to this cave, not wander about, and you’ll probably be safer if you keep the gate shut until I return.”

  “The root hairs out there are impenetrable. The mean density of root hairs per square ...”

  “Never mind,” she said. “I’ll manage.” She pulled the gate open, slipped through and sidled along the root wall until her relocated eyes told her she was out of direct line of vision from any of the fretted arches. The group across the clearing still stood, heads down. She Shifted.

  Spidery feet with sharp claws levered long legs up the rootwall. Spidery eyes, multifaceted, searched for any sign of movement. Once she had climbed above the level of the netted roof, she stopped to peer away toward the stairs, seeking upward for a fugitive gleam of light. There was still too much light in the chasm to tell whether it burned or not. She thought she saw a little, golden gleaming upon the wall but could not be sure. Well, that matter would wait. Both Roges and Beedie were sensible; they would not take chances.

  The net bounced beneath her as she moved to the place the kite had rested. Once there she turned it over with angled legs, searching with mandible and claw. Only the wrappings, the clothing. Nothing e lse. Except—except a smell. A scent. Not unpleasant, but odd. Odd. Making her shiver and sweat. What was the word the Thinker had used. Pheromones? Well, and what was that? Stinks. Emitted by things. So, there were stink bugs and stink lizards and perfume moths. Back in the long ago, she had met an Agirule. It had had a strange, fungus smell, earthy and warm. Himaggery had smelled like autumn woods. Pheromones. So, these wrappings smelled like the creature that called itself Mirtylon. Which meant, so far as Mavin was concerned, that Mirtylon or one of his fellows had been here. And now the body of the youth was gone. Only his bravely feathered cap, his funeral wrappings remained. She shifted uneasily on her many legs, jigging upon the net until it quivered beneath her. Then she made her way across the net until she was above the quiet forms where they stood, silent and unmoving.

  The wind had begun to blow by the time she reached the place, moving very slowly. The only light lay high upon the evening-light wall, only the eastern end of Topbridge breaking the line of shadow, a hard, chisel shape against the glow. The other bridgetowns hung in darkness. Beneath the net the lantern fishes swarmed in their thousands, moving now toward the walls where they dwindled, diminished, becoming dark egg shapes fastened tightly to the walls. Beneath the net the robed forms stood as they had first arranged themselves, the robes fla
pping a little in the wind. Mavin lay upon the net, let her legs dangle through it, appearing to be only another set of skinny roothairs dangling into the clearing, invisible among countless others.

  She took hold of a sleeve, pulled it gently, gently, tugging in time with the wind. It was fastened tight. She sent an exploratory tentacle along it, not believing what she found. The sleeve had no opening. The two sleeves were joined at the ends. If there had been arms and hands in these sleeves, they had never been expected to reach the outside world.

  Her tentacle dropped to the sandy floor, probed up upward at the top of the clumsy shoe shapes. No opening. Shoes and robe were one. The thing was a balloon, all in one piece. On the net, Mavin snarled to herself, a small, spider snarl. Well and well, what was the sense of this?

  The end of the tentacle grew itself a sharp, ivory claw and cut a slit in the robe, moving like a scalpel along one rib of the flattree l eaf of which the garment was made. When the slit was large enough, the tentacle probed through.

  After which Mavin lay upon the net in furious thought. Whatever she might have suspected, she would not have suspected this. She slid down a convenient root hair, spent some time exploring the area very carefully, with great attention to the boiling springs, then went back up onto the net, finding her way quickly from there back to the cave.

  She paused before entering, searching the high wall for the gleam of amber light, sighing with relief when she found it unmistakably. So. Beedie and Roges were there, above harm’s reach if Mavin had reasoned correctly. Above one harm’s reach, she corrected herself. Slysaw would have reached Bottommost by now. On the morrow, he would come down the Shattered Stair. Well and well once more. After midnight, when the wind stopped, would be time enough to worry about that. There were other things to think of first.

  She slipped inside the cave, pulling the gate tight behind her and taking time to lash it with a bit of thong. Evidently Mercald had ventured out, for there was a pot of steaming tea upon the sandy floor. She looked around for the fire, before realizing there was no smoke.

  “I ventured just as far as that boiling spring,” said Mercald in an apologetic tone. “The Thinker kept watch. It’s only at one side of this clearing. We both wanted something hot. I thought you would, too.”

  Mavin listened to the wind rising outside and nodded. It had been sensible of him, she had to admit. If one set aside the man’s fear of heights, he was brave enough for all ordinary matters. Wishing she could like him more, for Handbright’s sake if for no other reason, she crouched beside the steaming pot and took the cup he offered. If one could not have fire, this would do. There was a long silence. At last she looked up to see both pairs of eyes fastened upon her and realized that they were waiting for her.

  “Can you still see the figures out there?” she asked Mercald who was sitting near the gate.

  He peered into the dusk, nodded. “The wind is fluttering them a little, but they still haven’t moved.”

  “They aren’t likely to,” she said. “They’re anchored to the roots. Besides, they’re empty.” She waited for expostulation, surprise. There was none.

  “When Mercald went out for the water,” said the Thinker, softly, “he said they looked like the cloak room at the Birders House. Hanging there. The minute he said it, I thought that’s why they were left out in the wind—because there was nothing in them.” Mavin peered through the gate, head cocked to one side. They did have that look, a kind of limpness even though she knew they were supported from within by a framework of wiry greenroot. “They are made like balloons,” she began, going on to describe the framework of flexible strands inside, with the flattree leaves stretched over. “There are two slits in the veil, probably to appear as though the beings have eyes, but I doubt it. Then there are no soles to the shoe parts. There is a smell there, at the bottom of the things, as though something flowed out of them and along the soil, away into the root tangle. There are places along there where the roots don’t reach the ground, places about ankle high and an armspan wide, where the roots look burned off or chewed off. No, the ends are smooth. They look—rounded, somehow.”

  “Digested off,” suggested the Thinker.

  “Perhaps,” she agreed, silent for a time after that trying to visualize a being shaped like a flatcake, with an odd smell, which could eat greenroot without dying from it. “Of course, once I saw the greenroot framework inside those things, I knew they couldn’t have been people.”

  “It would poison people,” agreed Mercald. Fresh greenwood sap on the skin, even small quantities of it, caused ulcers which did not heal. He had been listening to all of Mavin’s discoveries, sadly shaking his head from time to time, not in disagreement but in profound disappointment that what he had thought was a religious community was likely to be something quite different.

  “And then,” she went on, “I found a burial kite—what do you call them?”

  “Wings of the Boundless,” said Mercald. “Which carry the dead into the Boundless sky. Or, sometimes, into the Bounded depths. Depending upon what kind of life they’ve lived, of course.”

  “Of course. Part of the duty of the Messenger caste, as I understand it? Manufacture of wings and dispatch of the dead thereon? Yes. Beedie told me. Well, two days ago I saw one of the ... wings ... descending into the chasm. There was a bright feather on the ... well, on the fellow’s cap. That wing now lies on the n et a short way from here. The cap is there, and the white wrappings, and the other clothing, but the body is gone.”

  “Of course it’s gone,” said Mercald with asperity. “It went into the care of the Boundless.”

  “I thought the ones that went up went into the care of the Boundless. This one came down.”

  “Well, naturally, both end up in the care of the Boundless, it’s just that ... our ... theology is a little indefinite about ...”

  “It’s just that you don’t know, Mercald. Do you really think that the Boundless cares about bodies? Well, no matter. In my experience across the lands of this world, bodies invariably vanish because something buries them or burns them or eats them. Beetles, usually. Or things that look like beetles. Except that I could find no beetles around the kite. Excuse me, Mercald. Around the Wing of the Boundless.

  “I did find the smell of whatever. Whatever wore those robes. Whatever greeted us in human language. Whatever guided us here. Whatever has now gone elsewhere, probably because the wind has started to blow and whatever is afraid of being crushed.”

  “The inescapable hypothesis is, then, whatever ate the people of Lostbridge.” said the Thinker.

  “Whatever,” agreed Mavin. She leaned forward to fasten the rattling gate more tightly. The wind kept up its steady pressure on the thong, stretching it.

  “How horrible,” said Mercald, making a sick face. “How dreadful.”

  “Dreadful, certainly,” she agreed. “But helpful. I think we can draw some conclusions from what we know, can’t we, Thinker?”

  “Ahhm. Well. Yes. A form of life which absorbs some—how much, I wonder?—of the mental ability or memory of whatever it eats. Hmmm. Yes. Language for example? Yes. Hmm. Doesn’t manage it any too well, but does have the general idea. Tends to use it reflectively ...”

  “They don’t think very quickly,” said Mavin. She had come to this conclusion some time ago. The poor creatures, whatever they were, did not think well. They struggled with thought, struggled to put ideas together, like a partly brain-killed Gamesman trying to do things he had once done easily, not able to understand why these simplicities were now impossible. She had seen that. More t han once. She clenched her teeth at the memory, set it aside.

  “What would explain this masquerade? Why the robes? Why the names of the long gone?”

  Mercald cleared his throat. “Because, Mavin, they told the truth when they spoke of expiation. No. Listen. Let us suppose these creatures, these whatever, came upon Watertight in the darkness those hundreds of years ago, came upon it and ate the people, only to take
into themselves all the memories of those people, and the thoughts, language, feelings. All the sorrows. All the pain.

  “Before that, they had been animals. They hadn’t had any ‘thinking’ at all. Now, suddenly, they would have language and thought and guilt. For the first time, guilt. Oh, what a terrible thing. A simple animal of some kind, with only animal cleverness or skill, and then suddenly to have all that thinking. No way to get rid of it. No way to go back as they were before. Only the idea of expiation which they had swallowed at the same time they swallowed guilt, but no way to do that, either. And the thinking perhaps gets less and less useful as time goes on ...” He fell silent, sorrowing, hearing the wind sorrowing outside as though it agreed with his mood.

  “Probably asexual reproduction,” said the Thinker. “Which means clones. Which means no change, no natural selection. Every generation the same. as the preceding generation, and every individual—though there really wouldn’t be individuals in that sense—the same as every other. So, whatever ate Mirtylon is still Mirtylon. And whatever ate Lovewings is still Lovewings ...”

  “Because she didn’t die when she jumped,” said Mavin. “She landed in the net and the whatevers got to her while she was still alive.”

  “Possibly more than one of them,” the Thinker went on. “And possibly learned from her that there was good eating on Watertight bridge. If that was the case, then we have to assume that the total effect of thought didn’t come about immediately. Maybe it took s ome time for it to be incorporated into the beings, the whatevers.”

  “Poor things,” said Mercald, sadly. “Poor things.”

  “Well, if they are such poor things, tell me how to help them, Priest. Would you have them expiate, finally, what it was they did? Perhaps we could arrange it. That is, provided they don’t eat us first.”

  “Surely not. Having once felt guilt ...”

  “Having once felt guilt, Priest, there are those who court it, believing that more of the same can be no worse. No, there may be sneaky slyness at work here. I will believe only what these creatures do, not what they say. I do not think they understand words very well, though they use them. I have known people like that in the world above. They say human words, but from an unhuman heart. Even a thrilpat may speak human language, often with seeming sense, but that does not mean I would trust one with my dinner.”