O Master Caliban (4 page)

MORNINGS, SVEN
exercised
on the beaten earth outside the door. The sun shone pink through haze, the thatch steamed; blurred red lines striped the housefront from the bloodrains of spring and summer; small animals chattered in their hutches. The wind was light now, the birds chimed like bells and flowers twittered as drifting air whirred their blades; insects buzzed and screamed.

Sven took off his clothes and clasped his upper hands behind his neck; he sprang onto his lower ones and walked on them with legs and torso bent back and upward like a dragonfly’s long thorax, excruciatingly.

because you are not going to look like some damned freak,
said Dahlgren.
I don’t want those lower arms hanging limp like a bottled thing in a cheap circus.

Then why did you make them that way, Dahlgren? But he never asked.

Now lower left and upper right. Upper left and lower right.
Sweat dripped from his nose and chin.
I want every muscle growing, every bone. You have seventy-four extra bones, muscles to move them, tendons to hold them, blood vessels to feed them ...

Sometimes he juggled with stones, or the heavy pods of the
luk
flower.
You won’t have to earn a living as a court jester on Cinnabar Seven, don’t worry. Among Solthrees you will be a Solthree and less clumsy than most.
Then why?

Today he did not juggle. Standing on four arms, sweat dripping, beating blood in his head half stifling him, he wanted to stay that way, not thinking of Dahlgren.

He blinked, saw an upside-down face, and jumped to his feet.

Ardagh was leaning against the doorway. She picked up the rag he had left near his clothes to dry himself and handed it to him.

He took it and wiped himself, not looking at her and not hiding from her, put on the net singlet and pants he wore as sweat-catchers to make up for his lack of body hair. “You have a question about my physiology?” He glanced up and saw that she had turned red.

“Only about how many extra vertebrae you had,” she murmured. “I wanted to be a doctor. A surgeon.”

“Can’t you be?”

“I’m short two vertebrae. My grandparents were fitted for some planet with cold climate and low gravity. The colony went fft and the kids all got left this way, built like servos and with poor coordination.” She added bitterly, “That’s why I’m the Ox to people like Mitzi.”

“Don’t they do most surgery with machines?”

“Not in medschool, or in emergencies.”

“They should have terraformed the planet.”

“Yeah, like here.”

He finished dressing. “If I could learn to coordinate, you can.”

“You have an advantage. Dahlgren is—”

“What?”

She swallowed. Dahlgren is your father. Oh yes, tell him that. He was half a meter taller than she, seventy-five kilos heavier. And he was Dahlgren’s heir all right, all the arrogance waiting to develop in good time. “Nothing ... Dahlgren’s going to GalFed Central and he’ll be taking the ship with him. I don’t know what you want to be, but I won’t get to be anything if we stay here.”

He stood looking at her, not arrogant yet. He didn’t know what to do.

A black streak crossed the sky, whooping. Esther, finished with her morning exercises in the trees, landed on the thatch and slid to the ground. She yawned. “I need more sleep than I got last night.”

“We’d better get the others up,” he muttered.

Shirvanian appeared in the doorway. a peculiar look on his face. “I wet my pants,” he said.

Esther tousled his hair. “Then I guess we’d better clean you up before your friend Mitzi the Mouth has a chance to use it on you.”

Sven grinned. “Hey, Mutti, is he taking my place?”

Esther yipped. “You want your pants changed too?”

While Sven and Esther made breakfast, Ardagh and Shirvanian waited by the house watching the veiled sun rise in a sky the color of a poison mushroom. The day heated, dim with mist; an enormous butterfly with glass wings and a black body hovered over a red-belled wildflower in the cabbage patch, settled to uncurl its long tube into the nectar.

Koz came out with Joshua, both neat, the one by nature and the other with effort: Koz’s long napped robe caught dust, straw, and whatever else was light and loose; it took time to comb and braid his long hair, depilate his heavily bearded jaw. The ill nature had washed out of his face for the moment with his complicated grooming. “Where’s Alpha Centauri?”

“That way.” Shirvanian pointed a negligent finger.

Koz went back into the house and brought out a small gold statuette with a black wooden base. The idol was in the shape of a humanoid female dressed in long ceremonial robes, backed by a three-legged symbol of the sort he was tattooed with. He planted it on the ground toward the distant star and was about to kneel when he happened to glance up. “Hey, look at that!”

The others whirled. A magnificent blue-black gorilla was coming out of the forest on four limbs, in measured steps, an empty string bag slung casually over one shoulder.

Esther jumped out the door. “Hey, Topaze!” She hopped up and down, then ran to the great beast, plucking the bell-flower, butterfly and all, as she went. Topaze sat down between cabbages, resting hands on knees. Esther skipped up the huge belly, planted the flower behind his ear, kissed him, and unhooked the string bag from his arm.

Joshua moved closer, head cocked. “Friend of yours?”

“Just for breakfast.” Esther grinned. “Don’t scare him, now.” She dashed into the house and brought back the bag filled with garden fruits and vegetables. She tossed it to Topaze, who caught it easily by the handle, picked out a fruit, and ate it peaceably. They stepped closer.

“Go ahead, pat him if you like, he’s fairly sociable.”

Ardagh moved up cautiously to admire the pitted snout, sharp eyes, and crested skull.

“He’s my blood brother,” Esther said. “My backup. If I didn’t work out, Dahlgren was going to try gorillas. But when he got me ... he didn’t keep large stocks or play around once he’d proved something. He just let them mate, thought he’d keep a few around and teach them to do odd jobs.”

“Are there any others?”

“Mutant malaria killed the parents, and the ergs got Topaze’s sister. He’s all that’s left. Come closer. Can you hear the ticking?”

Topaze had finished the fruit and spat the pit out with a mighty
ptooh.
He buzzed very faintly.

“That’s the counter. When it gets to a certain pitch in a hot zone it sets off a jolt of adrenalin, he gets scared and backs away. Goodbye, old dear!”

Topaze rose, grunted, slung the bag over his shoulder and marched off with dignity and slow grace, the red flower bobbing behind his ear.

“Just as well,” Esther said. “I don’t know how Sven would’ve got on with a really brainy gorilla.”

Ardagh wondered. Sven, standing on four hands, sweating and grimacing as he paced the red and blue flecked earth ... Dahlgren didn’t play around ...

* * *

Yigal woke cranky as usual and drummed the floor with his hooves. A few bricks were badly cracked in his corner. “Damn.” The sun blanked out and rain drummed the roof for three seconds. “I hate east winds.”

“Ayeh,” said Esther. “You say that every fall.”

Mitzi pulled herself awake groaning and sat with her head on her knees. She looked sick and vulnerable, the fine bone structure of her face pale through drawn skin. Esther, who fed what moved and swabbed what didn’t, wiped her face with a wet shammy, and she swore weakly.

“Up, up!” said Esther. “Breakfast.”

They got the same diet as Topaze. The fruits were crisp and sweet, but the rank odor of wind from the east spoiled the flavor and worry dried the food in their mouths.

“It’s still the same,” Koz said. “How we get out of here.”

“Climate,” said Joshua. “Poisons, diseases, killer ergs, radiation ...” He stopped to look at his pineapple slice and licked his lips, his tongue a pink surprise on his black skin. “You brought seed from the station.”

“Yes,” Sven said. “Corn, rice, manioc, papaya, cuttings, seedlings—”

“Metals, tools, components—”

“Storage foods, books ... everything else we made here.”

“How did you carry it?”

“We didn’t walk a hundred and fifty kilometers! Dahlgren brought us in an old transport by a brick road, one of the erg tracks.”

“Was it an erg?”

Esther said, “Not really. It was an old all-purpose thing Dahlgren called the Argus. He used it to truck around non-rad animals, in the station and out to here. But it had started out as a road-mender, it kept picking bricks all the way here because it was on the road, and that’s how we got this fancy floor. I guess we picked up a lot of radiation with them, but it
didn’t seem to matter then.”

“You meant the ergs had turned the reactors up and you came through all of that?” Joshua asked. “All that radiation?”

Esther said patiently, “The bricks had the radiation. The Argus was used to carry unradiated animals. It was lead-or concrete-shielded, I don’t know which.”

Koz said, “What happened to it?”

“I don’t know. Dahlgren went back in it.”

Sven said in a listless voice, “When I was a kid ... I used to complain because Dahlgren wouldn’t let me play with the animals and I was bored ... so he bonded the Argus to me and let me ride around in it ...”

“That means there’s safe vehicles somewhere,” Joshua said. “There must have been more.”

“Don’t you realize they’d have scrapped or cannibalized it, the way they’re doing with your ship?”

Shirvanian turned his precious box in his hands. “They may have left it alone because it was bonded to you. Then they’d have booby-trapped it.”

Sven rapped the table. “But what good does it do you to get there? The ergs are killers, and Dahlgren’s free out among the ergs! He’s free to get off the planet! Ardagh tells me he’s reporting to GalFed Central in a few weeks.”

“Then he’s taking the ship!” said Koz. “We’ve got to reach him!”

“If he’s controlling killer ergs, do you think he’d care about saving you?”

Mitzi yelled, “You don’t care about saving us! You’re playing Robinson Crusoe in your safe little hole and you don’t give a shit for anybody else!”

Yigal tapped the table hard with one hoof. The dishes danced. “You will not speak to my friends in that manner, miss, or you will not be safe in this hole.”

“Go easy, Yigal,” said Esther. “She’s not that wrong, Sven. You know there’s no way out. The ergs are crowding and you’ve been sitting around with a long face for half a year.”

Sven crouched with his arms locked tightly and his face set.

Koz sneered. “He’s scared.”

“We’re all scared,” said Ardagh, “but he risked his life to save us ... you’ve got books, Sven.” She went to the storeroom.

“What about them?” he asked dully.

Ardagh’s lumbering gait was somewhat peculiar but not graceless. She came back with a fine old volume,
“Gulliver’s Travels,
waterproofed, very nice,” and turned to the flyleaf: “’For my son, Edvard Dahlgren, in hope that he will lead a life of study and contemplation. From his father, Sven Adolphus Dahlgren ... I wonder if Adolphus liked the Houyhnhnms.”

“Why were you poking about in my things?”

“Because I’m an awful snoop ... he gave you his books, the books his father gave him. He even gave you his father’s name.”

“Why shouldn’t he?”

“What in Holy Mother’s name are you talking about?” Koz asked.

“Dahlgren’s his father. I’ve seen pictures ... I recognized the face.”

“It’s none of your business,” Sven said.

“I know, but I believe I can understand what you’re feeling. Dahlgren’s free, everybody else is dead, he may be controlling the ergs. But he saved the three of you. We have no right to ask you to put yourself in more danger, but we have to help ourselves if we can. There must be something to the man, and maybe he’ll help us.”

“He didn’t only save me!” Sven threw out all four arms. “He made me!”

“For an experiment, you think? For fun?”

“I don’t know.”

“Did he give Esther a pair of horns and a tail with a barb in it? Don’t you think it might have been an accident?”

“He would have aborted.”

“What of your mother?” Joshua asked.

“I had none. She left him before I was born. He had specimens of her ova in the banks. He did it with everybody. He was like that.”

Esther sighed, “Sven thinks his father made him a monster out of revenge against his mother. I don’t believe it, and I can’t get the idea out of his head.”

Sven gripped the table edge with one set of hands and covered his face with the others. “Can’t you leave me alone now? Isn’t that enough for you?”

Mitzi spat in disgust and flung herself out the door. The others watched Sven for a moment in despair and turned away.

There was an ear-splitting shriek from outside, and Koz jumped up. “What’s that dumb bitch done now?”

Mitzi was backed against the red-streaked wall staring and trembling. Hopping through the cabbages was a dull gray thing so contorted it was almost formless. The lowering sky dropped a single sheet of rain, then cleared and the sun blazed orange for a moment.