Variations on this episode are found from one edge of the galaxy to the other. They are treated as everything from lessons in cleanliness to homilies on the rewards of conformity and social integration.
In the biocybes' version, Achibol steps handily between his traditional guisesdisciplinarian, moralist, teacher, and trickster. Benadek dances between condescension toward the poot, Sylfie (for which Achibol punishes him), and desire for her (and in the role of Trickster, the sorcerer abets him).
One is impressed with the foreignness of this new context. Old elements are missing, and new are left unexplained. Take Sylfie. What, exactly, is her handicap? Why does Benadek treat her first as a lesser being, then as the object of his desire? If she is dissatisfied with her role, why does she not simply change it, change herself, becoming what she wishes to be?
Perhaps the confusion lies less with the biocybes' shadow-characters, enacting their drama against the black backdrop of forgotten times, than with our own cultural biases. Do we force significant reality on simple allegorical tales where none in fact exists? Perhaps as this project progresses, our perceptions will have to change.
(Kaledrin, Senior Editor)
Bassidon town was not much, to Benadek's city-bred eyea half-dozen streets like wheel spokes, lined with unpainted wood shacks and barns. The village center was a hexagonal marketplace with merchants' tents huddled forlornly at one side.
"Is this it, Master?" the boy asked, sneering. "Can we gather an hour's worth of coin here in a week?"
"Appearances, boy! Appearances. Bassidon's folk will part with their coin when they see our offerings. Unload now, and set up for business. Right here will do nicely."
Benadek dug Achibol's fine silky tent from its trunk. Like the merchants' shelters it was faded, but otherwise there was no resemblance. Benadek set no stakes and strung no cords. Instead, he manipulated the keys of Achibol's talisman, and the tent lifted itself. It stretched like a baggy leech filling with blood, and in minutes stood tall, a domed shelter in deep blue and bright violet, painted with oversized palm prints and the magician's usual runes.
It was almost sunset, and there would be no business tonight. "Shall we find the temple, boy? With that out of the way, we'll do nothing tomorrow but read palms, flash arcane lights, and collect coin." Benadek demurred. There was a tavern on the road they'd come in on. He'd heard music and poots' laughter. He suggested dinner and something to wet his dry throat.
"Work first," Achibol insisted. "No fuzzy heads or clumsy fingers should tinker with delicate things. Except poots, of course. That's where your thoughts are, I'll wager."
He would have won the bet. Benadek's thoughts seldom strayed far from poots. But considering his earlier experiencesfrom quiet failure to having a chamberpot dumped on him from a windowhe was depressingly willing to consider such thoughts utter fantasy.
How many temples had they visited since they'd left the honches sprawled in front of the inn? Four? No, five. Benadek had the routine down pat. He went to the doorno gate and courtyard in this poor placeand hammered. A priest opened it, and he laid the magical coin in the pale, outstretched palm. "My master, Achibol the wise, gives this," he said, "and will visit moments hence." The priest took the coin, and shut the door. No words were wasted on the scruffy child.
Achibol arrived soon after. "Wait," he said, forestalling Benadek's knock. "Let him carry it to the almsbowl in the sanctum first. It's effect will spread evenly, then. No priests must waken while we're inside."
Benadek was bored with the whole business. Temple visits were the low points of their arrival in a town. Who would have thought it? For all his erstwhile fear, he had nothing but bored contempt for temples and their machines. Achibol did all the tinkering, and he merely handed his master the proper tools. He knew their names, now: number two star-drive screwdriver, ratchet, socket wrench, jumpers, alligator clips. Even the talisman had a special name"universal interface"and Achibol's staff was a "multipurpose distribution nexus"; only its blue beech shaft, like twisted musculature, was just plain wood. Temples, tinkering, and gadgets were no longer fun.
He had a hard time accepting that temples were foremost in his master's mind and that fortunetelling, scribery, and magic shows served only to earn money for food and drink, and a spot at the inn. And not even that, in Bassidon! There was only a dirty roadhouse with a privy needing a good dose of lime. They would sleep in the tent, where they'd gain no small new companions to ride in their clothes.
The temple adjustments took little time. There were no roaches or crickets in its workings, no corrosion on its circuit boards. Achibol connected his talisman, then tapped keys in a careful but habitual manner. He called up images on several "screens" and perused them, then nodded and began stowing his tools. "This one was easy," he muttered. "No damn stone fortress around it blocking the air ducts and solar collectors. Half the city temples have been on backup power for a coon's ageand this coon doesn't age much." He snorted and chuckled noisily at his obscure joke. Benadek, accustomed to his master's madness, smiled politely.
"Aren't you in need of templing, boy? When was the last time you had your genes read?"
"Oh no, Master. I . . . I took care of that a few stops back. Abbro, was it? No, I think it was Vankthe town on the river. You remember, don't you?"
Achibol remembered nothing. There was nothing to remember. Achibol gave his apprentice a searching stare. "Well," he said. "At any rate, I think I'll stay here a while, and engage in stimulating repartee with the good clerics when they awaken. Leave the door ajar when you go out." Benadek made his exit quickly, before his master could change his mind. The tavern awaited.
Three drinks and as many rejections later, Benadek trudged dispiritedly into the marketplace. He was hardly tipsy.
When he saw a shadow move across the fabric of the tent, backlit by Achibol's strange fuelless lamp within, he paused to observe. His master had cautioned him to beware of curiosity-seekers who might be in league with his honch enemies. Achibol steadfastly refused to explain why they were enemies, but to an urchin, almost all adults were, and honches the most dangerous. Achibol did not consider honches who guarded gates or patrolled muddy streets at midnight as his foes. He feared roving bands without ostensible purpose"military" honches. "Military," Benadek decided, meant the same as "mad dog."
This shadow was no honch. It was a poot. She walked around the tent, engrossed in its symbols. Benadek was captivated by her pert fanny and the blond gleam of her hair. She can't be much older than I am, he thought.
"What are you looking at?" he asked when he was only a pace from her. Her shoulders jerked convulsively and she swung around, her face a mask of fear.
"Hey! I'm sorry I frightened you. Don't run away."
"I didn't hear you," she said. Her voice, too, was prettya soft contralto. "Is this your tent?"
"It is. What interests you so?"
"These markingsthey're like letters, but they aren't. What are they for?"
"They're magical runes. But how do you know they aren't letters? You can't read."
"I can too! I taught myself how, from my father's books."
Benadek's indulgent smile showed his disbelief.
"I can!" she insisted. "Find something written, and I'll show you."
Benadek drew forth a small practice-tablet Achibol had given him. He could write on it, and the tap of a tile imbedded in its surface would erase what he'd written. If he wanted to keep the result of his effort, tapping another tile stored a memory of his scratchings somewhere inside where he could recall it. There were fifteen touch-tiles, but he'd mastered only the three.
He scrawled three words in the cursive style Achibol was teaching him, and handed the device to the poot. His smug smile grew wider as he saw her forehead wrinkle in puzzlement, as her eyes narrowed with her effort to draw meaning from the sinuous traces.
"That's not writing!" she exclaimed angrily, thrusting the tablet away
"It is too. Admit ityou can't read." He cleared the tablet.
"There aren't any letters, only worm-wiggles." She snatched the pad from him, and painstakingly drew two connected lines, and then a straight one. "There! Those are letters. See?" She had drawn a capital V and an I.
"What letters are they, then?" he teased.
"What do you mean? They're letters, that's all."
"You don't know what they're called? If you don't know that, you can't read them."
"You're stupid! Letters are only little things. Words have names, but they're all longer than that, except a few like `it.' "
Benadek took the stylus and, while she still clung to the tablet, printed what he had written before, this time in capitals. He raised his eyebrow with practiced cynicisma look that Achibol claimed would earn him whippings from a less tolerant master. "Read that."
Again she concentrated, lips forming first one syllable and then the next. At the third syllable, she threw down the pad. "That's not true!" she said as tears welled up in her eyes. "I won't say that." She stalked stiffly away.
Regretfully and angrily, Benadek watched the shifting of her slim hips and the jiggle of her behind as she departed. Regretfully, because she was leaving. Angrily, because she was the first poot who had ever said more than a dozen words to him, and he'd driven her away. What galled him most of all was that he'd done it for no cause. She could read. He'd watched her lips as she'd picked her way through his three short words. "POOTS CANT READ," he'd written. *
He thought about following her, but by then she had disappeared in the moonless darkness. "Shit!" he said loudly. "Shit, shit!"
"Is that how you treat them all, boy?" How long had Achibol been listening? "No wonder you're as horny as a goat."
"That's not how it is!" he protested. "Everybody knows poots can't read. All they're good for is . . . is . . ."
"Who's stupid? Poots, you say? Pots and kettles, lad! With `magic' all around, can't you accept a little human magic?" He shook his head disdainfully. "No one took the drive out of simples' genes, boyonly most of the abilities." He sniffed scornfully. "You witnessed a human miracle, first hand, and all you can say is `Poots can't read.' She couldn't read well, poor thing. Not like you. But she isn't going to grow up a boffin either. Somehow she has surpassed the inborn limitations an evil creator gave hera miracle, I say. And you? You mock her and drive her away in tears, her supreme accomplishment defiled." Achibol was truly angry, his brown face yellower than tentlight could account for, the whites of his eyes round and large.
"Inside, boy!" the sorcerer commanded. Benadek scuttled past him. Then, observing Achibol loosening his belt, he wished he had run away instead. It was a master's right to whip his apprentice, but Benadek had never considered it happening to him. He'd come to terms with the perils of being turned into a toad or a goat, or being afflicted with boils, but a whipping? He was too old for such punishment.
He was not too old to howl like a child as his master's heavy belt caught him across the buttocks. He howled no less exuberantly with the last stroke than the firstperhaps louder, for he had no idea how many times Achibol intended to shellack him, and if his agony sounded sufficiently intense, perhaps his master would be sooner satisfied. . . .
"It's human to strive, boy," Achibol said when Benadek's yells diminished to sniffles. "We climb as high as we caneven those without legs struggle to attain the heights of their dreams. Laugh at the efforts of others at your own soul's peril."
"What's a soul, Master?" Benadek whispered. Achibol would never punish him for asking questions, though he might for not doing so. . . .
"It's what makes you and meand that poor pootbetter than mules or dogs," Achibol said sadly. "It's what makes you human."
In spite of his stinging buttocks, Benadek sat with his chin on his knees, his face on his folded arms. His shoulders shook as he wept with a pain not physical.
"What is it, lad?" Achibol asked, putting a large, bony brown hand on his shoulder. "Why do you weep?"
"I'm not sure I am human, Master. Poots treat me like I'm a dog or a mule. If I'm human, why don't they want to do . . . human things with me?"
"If you treat them all like . . ."
"Master, I don't! This time I was just turning the tables on one of them. Mostly I try to act just like a cozy would, but they laugh and slam doors on my nose, or dump chamberpots on me."
"Hmm. I suspect now that you're never going to be a cozy, so why act like one? You're my apprentice. Act like that."
"How?"
"I've neglected your training, haven't I? To say `act like me' would be foolish, for I don't want that. One Achibol is enough." He chuckled.
"First, you need new clothesthose urchin's rags will hardly do. There's a long-forgotten ritual for just such occasions as this. It dates back to Old Human times."
Benadek perked up, pain or no pain. Was Achibol going to show him some real magic?
"We'll need water, boy. Lots of it, and hot, too. Puff up the horse trough and let's begin." Benadek fetched a parcel from the trunk, and pressed a tab. Like the tent, it swelled, forming an oval vessel as long as Benadek himself. A bucket of similar construction lay inside it.
The village well was on the far side of the square. "Why is it," he muttered, "that even real magic means only more hard work for me?" Fifteen trips later, the trough was full. Achibol stuck the base of his staff in it, and murmured an incantation.
"What did you say, Master? If I'm to learn this magic, I should know."
"I said only `I hope the water doesn't short out my staff.' "
"Oh." Benadek observed steam rising from the water, which had been cold when he'd brought it in. Obviously, the sorcerer was not about to give up all his secrets at once.
Achibol sprinkled thick green syrup in the water and swished the staff to mix it. The fresh odor of piny forests rose. "Nowoff with your clothes. Get in."
"In the magic potion? It's hot!"
"The hotter the better. Duck under and soak your hair, too."
"Yeeow! It's too hot!"
"Did you think sorcery would be easy? Your difficulties have only begun. Under! All the way under."
It was not too bad, once he was all the way in. Even his sore behind felt better for it.
"Now this!" Achibol said, holding a rounded block like white lard. "Rub this in your hair, and over your face."
"Yuk! It's greasy," Benadek said, but he obeyed.
"Keep your eyes shut, or they'll burn."
Mixed with the water on his skin, the lardy stuff became slick, and smelled of spices and springtime. "All over!" Achibol commanded. "Now stand up. You must be cleansed of Earth's essences if you would be master of the air." Benadek did not understand why Achibol found that funny.
The sorcerer scrubbed Benadek from head to toe with a stiff brush, eliciting loud complaints, and darkening the water considerably. "Under again, boy," he said, "and we'll see if this has made a difference." Benadek complied gladly, hoping his ordeal was nearing its end.
Achibol expressed approval of the new, considerably lighter, Benadek. "Now we'll see if poots will find you more to their liking," he said.
"What is that stuff you used on me called, Master?" the boy asked as he towelled himself dry. "And the ritualdoes it have a name?"
"It's called soap," Achibol snorted, "and as for the ceremony, you just had your first bath. Now," he continued with a flourish of his dark, bony hands, "I don't know that this is necessaryor that your difficulties with poots are anything more than abysmal lack of sensitivity to the feelings of others, but in case we haven't done enough, I'm going to guarantee you'll find a companion tonight."
He rummaged in his trunk and produced a glass vial. "Here! Androsterone Five. Just the thing for a night on the town."
"What is it?"
"A rare and wondrous extract. From the balls and brain of a great boar."
"Yuk!"
"Would a sow think so? Or a poot? Don't deride what you don't understand. Put a dab of this on a dentist's chair, and not a woman in town would have an unfilled cavity." He snorted at his obscure joke. Using the glass dropper attached to the vial's lid, he dabbed Benadek's chest with odorless fluid.
"What's a dentist?" Benadek dutifully queried.
"Don't ask. In fact, pray heartily you never find out."
Benadek filed "dentist" in the part of his mind where he kept a list of Achibol's demons: Cop; Racist; Politician. And now, Dentist.
Achibol shook out a gaudy shirt and handed it to Benadek. It came to his knees. Then he proffered two black lumps. "I've only one pair of these fits-all army-surplus boots left. Treat them carefully." The boots, seemingly much too small even for Benadek's narrow feet, stretched easily over them. Once in place they felt neither tight nor uncomfortable, though hard as iron to the touch.
The final embellishment was a gold-colored link belt that Benadek thought too light for metal. "An alloy of lithium," Achibol explained. "It's very rare." Cinched around Benadek's waist, the belt turned the oversized shirt into a smaller version of Achibol's own sorcerer's robe.
"Now, Master," Benadek said, proudly glancing down at his finery, "I'm going poot hunting." He strode toward the door, hard-soled boots lending him a decisive, confident stride.
"Wait! Where will you go?" Achibol demanded. "Will you command the first female you see into an alley and be done with it? Did I do all this for you to waste it in a few sordid minutes?"
"What then, Master?" Benadek asked him, truly puzzled. Was there more to be desired than he'd imagined?
"What of the pretty young girl * you so grievously wronged? The one who can read? Don't you owe her an apology?"
"How can I find her? There are hundreds of doors on this street."
"Her name is Sylfie. She lives upstairs, at the sign of the Gray Bird, a featherbed and pillow shop. She's alone and sad, and might welcome your gentle comfortbut compassion, boy! Remember whose apprentice you are. I am Achibol, who gives delight, laughter, and hope, not a butcher or honch."
"I understand, Master. I'll do as you say." Benadek turned again to the exit, afraid Achibol might think of more admonitions, and that his imagined pleasure would become yet more constrained.
When the boy had gone, Achibol shook his head ruefully. <Will you never learn, old fool?> his staff demanded. <What have you loosed upon womanhood?>
"The boy is not what he seems," Achibol replied. "If his pheromones are really different, as I suspect, he'll never find happiness in a poot's bed without help."
<Whoremonger!> the steaming tub called him.
<Yes! A nasty old man, indeed. For all your kindly intentions.> That, from his trunk.
"Just wait, all of you!" Achibol muttered. "It will become clear, or it won't. Just wait and see."
* * *
Benadek had no trouble finding the Gray Bird. The sign was newly painted, an arm's span across. In an upper window, a candle flame waxed and waned as someone moved about. He was not ready to knock on the staircase door. Was he afraid, now that his moment was purportedly at hand? What was to fear?
That question brought a torrent of answers: Achibol was not above playing nasty tricksin the name of learning, of course. Or his master's magic might fail himthe old man was not perfectand Benadek might actually be outside the door of some honch who would beat him. He leaned on a pillar in the shadows across the street.
But fate intervened. He heard the upstairs sash open. A face, a white-clad body, leaned out into the moonlight. It was her! Her sand-blond hair gleamed silver. She looked first one way up the street, then the other. Was she expecting someone at this time of night?
Benadek tensed to move deeper into shadow or to step forward and announce himself. The decision which was taken from his hands.
"You in the shadows! Are you a thief? Come forth or I'll set the bell to ringing!"
"I'm no thief! I'm Benadek, apprentice to the great sorcerer, Achibol. I'm here to apologize. I tarried only to collect my thoughts."
"As well you might!" she snapped. "You might apologize as well for skulking and spying, instead of coming straight to the door."
"Let me in, so we don't wake the neighborhood, and I'll apologize for that too."
"Why don't I fear you?" she mused. "But very well, I'll be down in a moment." He heard her light footsteps on the wooden steps, then the rattle of an ancient lock.
"You're different," she said immediately. "I hardly know you."
"I'm dressed as befits my rank and position," Benadek said glibly, "not in the anonymous garb I affect for lesser occasions."
"There's more to the difference than clothing," she observed astutely. "But never mind. Come upstairs."
The ascent was the high point of Benadek's life, or so he believed. His eyes followed her pert behind from a vantage point only a foot or two away, and he studied the flash of her slim ankles and delicate feet. He had never seen such pretty legs, such a firm . . . He almost fell as his foot reached up for a step that was not there. They had arrived.
The room, lit by a candle on a small wood table, was not what Benadek had expected. It was lined with shelves, and on the shelves were . . . books. Leather-clad books and cloth-covered ones, titles in colors that contrasted with dark leather or yellowed cloth. But his desire to examine them would have to wait.
"I came to apologize," he said, "and to explain why I acted as I did."
"Explain later," she murmured, moving close.
"I was special before," he insisted. "Reading made me different from the other urchins. And youI wasn't special anymore, you see?"
"I'm sorry," she said, unbuttoning him, running her hands over his chest as his shirt fell open.
"I'm supposed to be sorry, not you! Learning to read is special. I was jealous and selfish. Forgive me."
"If I haven't forgiven you, why am I taking your clothing off?"
Benadek, for once, had nothing further to sayand much, so very much, to learn.