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CHAPTER THIRTEEN,

the travelers' flight, and
the fatal consequence of
Benadek's disobedience.

Little is said of Sylfie in most Achibol tales. Many never even name her, but the biocybes have given her real existence. Having chosen to ignore the moral content of the myths, Sylfie had either to be treated as real or be deleted. Perhaps her demise provides an easy way out.
Benadek's unreadiness to assume human responsibility is apparent. He is demonstrably able to become, but the who and the what of his "change" * are unknown.
"Changing" herein is to be feared, an attitude foreign to the polymorphic over-species we call sapiens. An absolute superiority of one form over others has never been considered. Are the biocybes trying to tell us that, in our remote past, it was?
We have accepted that evolution convergent toward mutability is inevitable. Becoming, we claim, is to the development of sapience as puberty is to an individual—painful but inevitable.
Have we unfairly ignored other hypotheses? Could there be an explanation for becoming besides convergence? It is not the place of this editor, a mythographer not a paleontologist, to propose them, but it is every sentient's duty to wonder . . .
(Saphooth, Project Director)




INTERLUDE

The Great School, Midicor IV

 

"That does it!" Abrovid decided, pulling the data-cube from his terminal. "Old Saphooth's up to something. It's time to find Kaledrin and bring him back."

Midicor was a blue-white star. Unmodified simian-forms like Saphooth could not remain exposed to its actinic light without damaging their delicate tissues. For Abrovid the barrage of radiation was life itself, and it took all his willpower not to forsake his quest, not to claim a plot of poolside sand and bask in it, leaving Kaledrin to his own mindless ecstasies.

Happily, his energy levels were not as depleted as Kaledrin's had been. He was able to resist sun, sand, and soft-chitined females beckoning from every pool, every mud-bank and sun-heated rock. Hopefully Kaledrin, when he found him, would have passed beyond the mindless stage and could leave of his own volition

"Where are you, Kal? I've got to bring you back before it's too late."

 

Achibol, bitterly silent, blamed himself for Sylfie's plight. He hoped one moment that a miracle would happen, and prayed the next that she would die, ending her suffering—if not his own.

Teress passed from one day to the next in the numb state of one who lingers overlong beside deathbeds. She drank water and ate, but her circumscribed world had no room for sunlight or chatter.

Sylfie would not allow Achibol or Benadek to see her. She was no complainer, nor demanding; Teress wondered how anyone could be so damned nice. Then she spat disgustedly. Sylfie was a poot, she reminded herself, and poots were always nice. They even died nicely.

No one would tell Benadek anything. He ground his teeth in frustration. Sylfie had to beg him, through concealing screen or shuttered hatch, to stay away. He maintained his equilibrium by pushing himself to his limits. He taught himself to turn as dark as Achibol, then light again in an hour's time. He learned to make his hair grow inches in a day, the new growth any color he wanted. He shrank himself by half a head, then forced his spine and legs to lengthen until he towered over Achibol.

During each change his copious sweat discolored. His urine was yellow, rust, brown, and stunk of ammonia and corruption, much as Dispucket had smelled. Even his involuntary tears were tainted, and left his cheeks crusty and stained. He ached. Each change required careful visualization, and flawed imagery resulted in parts that failed to work properly together. He paid for mistakes with burning cramps, nagging pains in his joints, headaches, a knotted stomach, and foul, watery stools. He became quite knowledgeable of human anatomy.

His companions were marginally less uncomfortable. There was little breeze, so they had to pole the clumsy hull. The lack of breeze accentuated heat and humidity, so sweat did not cool them. Their skins became oily. They bathed often, though the water was currentless and undrinkable, a breeding ground for vicious insects. Achibol and Teress, badly stung, sickened from accumulated poisons. Benadek grew daily more concerned. The swamp had to end sometime, somewhere, didn't it?

Supplies spoiled in the dense, hot air. Benadek's changes required nourishment in great quantities; he would have consumed their last crumbs, had Achibol not acerbically suggested he learn to eat leaves, snails, and batrachian creatures snatched from water and overhanging vegetation.

Benadek complied. His internal organs seemed to know what they needed, and synthesized it from his crude diet. He learned to pay attention to cravings. Sucking the rusty iron tip of a boathook relieved him when meat was scarce; without conscious effort, his saliva became acidic, etching away red-brown and deep maroon oxides. He ate fur and bones, and consumed netted minnows whole.

He was not even disgusted. He visualized his body as a complex of organic reactions, and created symbolic visions of its processes. Food was mass, chemical structures to be broken down by the raging furnace within, then converted into . . . Benadek.

Yet for all his fine resolve, in the aftermath of meeting Dispucket, Benadek was not yet the man he wished to become, and whenever he ate something particularly strange—something that wiggled or squeaked when he crunched it between his strong, young teeth—he tried to make sure Teress noticed, and drew satisfaction in direct proportion to her disgust.

Days passed. Benadek ate and thrived while the others languished, until one morning . . .

 

An hour after sunup, the heat was oppressive. Benadek cracked open gritty eyes. Nothing moved. The swamp did not awaken with the sun, but with its setting. He stumbled to where Achibol had sprawled, feverish, as much unconscious as asleep. He felt the old man's forehead, and was relieved to find it dewed with sweat and cooler than the night before.

Teress did not answer his croaked inquiry, nor did Sylfie. He scooped greenish water and gulped it untasted. He paced the small cockpit, and tried to make out figures in the gloom below. Teress lay spread-eagled on the cabin sole. Sylfie was a shadow on the bunk, a dark convolution too small to be full-grown.

He grabbed handsful of leaves and stuffed them in his mouth, chewing noisily. He unfastened the mooring line, pushed the boat away, and poled it along a narrow channel, glancing frequently at Achibol and at the companionway.

Finally, his uneasiness became too great. He let the boat drift, then dropped into the cabin. He felt Teress's forehead, and snatched his hand away from its heat. Near at hand was a bowl of water and a rag. He wrung it damp and spread it over her forehead, then turned to Sylfie. As his eyes adapted further to the shadows, her still form became clear. Horrifyingly clear.

His breath caught in his throat. His trembling hand pulled back the sheet that almost covered her face.

It was not Sylfie. Sylfie was no ancient crone with skin like old paper over jutting bones, with white hair falling out on her pillow, and wrinkled, liver-spotted hands. Her dull, cloudy eyes stared, unseeing.

Her voice brought him back from the edge of madness—Sylfie's inflections, but an old voice that cracked and grated on his ears. "Is that you, Teress? I can't see you." Benadek trickled water over her dry, hot forehead. "That feels good," she murmured.

He took her withered hand. His tears fell on it. He willed her to change, to heal herself. He was not so mad with grief that he thought it would happen, but there was nothing else he could do except let his tears fall on her hands as he held them.

"Don't cry, Teress," she said, feeling his tears dotting her skin. "I chose this. I know you hate Benadek, but it isn't his fault." Her words were breathy and slow. Her mind had not failed, only everything else. "I mean that, Teress," she continued. "If you hate Benadek, you must hate me too. I've said that before." She panted softly. "If he succeeds, he'll change everything. There won't be any more poots like me, only . . . people." Her voice faded. Her weak, steady breathing indicated sleep.

Benadek climbed jerkily to the cockpit. He soaked his shirt in water and bathed Achibol's face and naked, bony chest, a chest that for all its years was no more shrunken than Sylfie's. He tapped a meager half-cup of potable water from the cask, and held Achibol's head for him to drink. The old man's eyes were clear. "You know," he stated. "You've seen her." Benadek nodded. "But . . . do you understand?"

Benadek said nothing. He laid Achibol's head back. Without emotion, he bathed Teress too. Without lust or anger, he cooled her body with the water-soaked rag. Her fever lessened. She opened her eyes, and looked up with vague comprehension, with what might have been reproach.

Sylfie was again awake. "It's Benadek," he said, not able to deceive her further.

"Benadek. I'm sorry. I didn't want you to see me . . . I wanted you to think of me as a pretty young poot forever." Her wrinkled brow furrowed. "Why did you come?"

"I had to," he choked. "I couldn't stand it any more, I missed you so much. I should have been here, taking care of you, but I didn't know."

"Take me up on deck. I don't have to hide any more. I want to die with the sun on my face."

"You can't die!"

"I want to. If there's anything after . . . then maybe I'll have a better chance. If you succeed . . . a better world. Real people, not simples. No more . . . handicaps."

"Handicaps?"

"Master Achibol's word. For people like me. You can change that."

"I don't know what to do! He hasn't told me anything."

"He doesn't know. At Sufawlz, you'll learn. Then you'll have to tell him what to do. And do it. For me."

"I don't want you to die."

"Benadek, my love," she said so softly he heard no trace of the wreck her voice had become, "there's no chance for us. There never was. Take me up into the sun, now?" He put his head on her emaciated breasts, the breasts he had taken joy in, a lifetime ago, and he wept. Her hand lifted to stroke the back of his head. All too soon it stopped.

Benadek stayed there, denying what he already knew from the absence of breathing and heartbeat. Then, in a feverish blur, he got up to check on the others. Teress was sweating freely. Achibol slept easily. Both were out of danger.

Kaleidoscopic visions rushed through Benadek's tormented mind. He remembered Bassidon, where he had written "poots can't read." He visualized Sylfie playing the coquette on stage while Achibol performed. He saw himself ignoring her, walking with Achibol while she lead the mules. He remembered her silent sadness when she forgot things she had learned. He remembered making love, and soft, huddled nights. Sickened and ashamed, he recalled forcing her after Teress had shamed him, her silence thereafter, and her forgiveness. He saw the temple square in Lacedemon, and heard her magical tablet clatter across the cobbles, and he cringed at the look in her eyes: she had known she was going to die. "We'll have a little more time," she had said, later. More time—and he wasted it, letting her sit alone in the bow of the boat, unwilling to pass the hated Teress to go to her, absorbed in his own lessons, his own cares . . .

Even now he realized his latest selfishness: Sylfie lay in the dark cabin, her eyes staring, unclosed. He had ignored her last request: "I want to die with the sun on my face." He had wept, and she had comforted him, as if his grief over her passing were more important than her death itself.

That last revelation was too much. It was too late. Too late for anything. She could not even die in the sunlight, now.

Benadek could no longer endure her dead presence. He could no longer endure . . . himself. He leaped from the boat to a hummock, and half-ran, half-waded to the next rise, splashed through shallows, ran over stretches of ground, tripping and sprawling, then proceeding on all fours. Batrachian croaks, ophidian hisses, and the swish and rattle of small creatures unseen swelled to fill the disturbance of his passage. He could not stop, or his wretched thoughts would catch up with him. He plunged deeper into vast, trackless swamp.

Hours passed. He was safely, securely lost. At another time, he might have panicked—there were no sounds but the gurgles and croaks of small lizards and the booming calls of reptilian beasts, long-snouted and thick-tailed, that no longer tried to elude him. He named them crocodiles after mythical beasts.

Water, brush, and thick tree boles hid the signs of his passage. No echoing calls followed him. If the others knew he was gone, if they cared, they were far away. Sighing branches, lapping wavelets, and dense brush would snatch the sounds of their cries from the air.

Benadek stopped running. Slinking creatures with no names scuttled across his feet, unafraid. Uncaring and cold, they warmed themselves in the sun, ignoring him. One beast emerged from the water a few yards away. He watched it approach, impassive, uncaring. It could have killed him, but merely passed by, as uninterested as its small brethren. Benadek was no longer a stranger to the denizens of the morass. He belonged. The others knew. Their behavior showed it.

Immensely weary, he sank to the ground. He did not notice the sweat that beaded his forehead and ran down his sides, dark as dried blood. His skin took on a yellow-green hue. His hair was falling out. While he slept his testicles withdrew like a baby's. His penis pulled back, like a turtle's wrinkled neck into its shell.

 

Benadek awakened to terrible thirst. He dragged himself toward water, his stubby arms out at his sides and his body slung between like a sack. His belly dragged, and his legs cramped tightly against his sides. His coccyx uncurled, elongating into a tail. His anus was an invisible slit at its base.

The water was green and full of life. In it, he saw his face. Only then did he experience brief psychic agony. Now it's all gone: Sylfie and I, and all the dreams. He was doomed, like Dispucket, but to a worse fate. There would be no visions, no creatures to share their sight with him. He would be alone amidst others of his kind—cold, unfeeling reptiles without the spark of vivacious intelligence of the birds and mammals Dispucket knew. It was only fair. Someday he would die, and if he had a spirit, as Sylfie believed, it would perhaps join hers in some unimaginable place where poots could all read, and where urchins learned to care for their fellows more than for their own survival.

Benadek saw his snout reflected in the water, and peered into the wavery image of his reptilian eyes. His vision blurred. Tears? No, merely nictitating membranes, not fully formed yet. He lowered his snout to the water, scooped a mouthful, and tilted his head back for it to trickle down his throat. Already he was learning what he needed to know in this new life. He looked down at his gnarled, knotty hands, his splayed fingers fast becoming sharp, pointed toes, and wished he could weep. He remembered something Achibol had said: "crocodile tears" were not tears of grief.

 

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