Charon: A Dragon at the Gate

CHAPTER SEVEN Settling In

Things actually went off rather nicely, if I do say so myself. As it turned out, the accumulated back pay was more than generous, and we were both able to buy suitable toiletries, wardrobes, and the like.

The wedding took place in the town square, officiated at by one of the local priests who did a lot of pre-rehearsed mumbo-jumbo, and by Kokul as State’s Witness and certifier. Zala made a beautiful bride, and there was a real festival afterwards with lots of singing, dancing, presents, and goodies of all sorts, plus some nice socializing. Kokul was particularly helpful in pointing out the important people in the crowd, and I was taking careful mental notes. Even Zala, who had been expressing extreme misgivings right up to the ceremony, seemed to get into the swing of things, for later she noted that weddings were something she thought everybody should do every year or two.

As for me, I was most interested in settling down, learning the job, and doing it well. There was no percentage in acting any other way. Koril was unlikely to pop up right away, knowing certainly that Matuze would figure we were prime recruiting targets and keep a careful watch on us.

The staff was friendly and helpful, and the system, once fully laid out and demonstrated in practice, was primitive but quite effectively organized. Solar calculators and small solar computers helped, but the basic work was all done by hand and typewriter on endless sheets of accounting paper.

Zala, too, seemed to adjust, after a fashion. Local women taught her how to use the wood stove without burning herself or the house down, and the basics of domestic work.

Since nothing much could be stored in this heat and under these conditions, she went to the market daily and even learned the art of bargaining. What particularly fascinated her was the very concept of handicrafts—nothing in her world or background prepared her for clothing made from scratch, designed and sewn by individuals on individual machines, or pottery hand-made on potter’s wheels and hand-decorated with brush and glaze. Suddenly flung back thousands of years in cultural time, both of us were very surprised to learn that there were whole art forms devoted to such things. The products had a special sort of quality machine and mass production at its best just couldn’t quite match.

My job though took more time than I’d figured, since it included trips out to the Companies to see their accountants, to plan for the future, and to examine and get to know their operations and see if there were new and better ways to do things. Money was tight because the system really wasn’t designed for one person supporting two. Zala, to her credit, solved that problem by learning to use the hand loom and joining a Guild in town in which many women and some men weaved intricate patterns into blankets, bedspreads, you name it, and then sold them to the Guild for a set price per piece. The Guild, through my office, then sold them all over Charon.

The people were friendly, open, and seemed reasonably happy, and neither of us gave them any cause to get mad at us, particularly after we saw a few of the cursed and the changelings. The cursed were more prominent since they weren’t bad off enough to be able to drop out of society. Mostly they just covered up as best they could, but you could always tell. A club foot, a withered arm, a scarred face, or some deformity even worse stood out rather well in a society so well protected by the interior Wardens that cuts always stopped bleeding and never left scars and even amputated limbs grew back.

The knowledge that many of our fellow townspeople could throw curses like these wasn’t very comforting, and the discovery that you could actually buy curses in the marketplace didn’t help either. One old woman who sold them in a small stall explained to me that it didn’t pay as well as weaving, for example, but it was a living.

The changelings, which were beyond the power of an untrained or self-trained local (or so I was assured) were far more bizarre. Many were former apts themselves who had literally done it to themselves, either for psychological reasons or because something got away from them, or they had displeased Kokul or others of great power and training. Kokul was the best around, as he said, but each of the Companies also had a sore of considerable power to add to the changeling population—and since, unlike Kokul, the Company sores were employees of the Company and not the government, they were often willing to do the cruel bidding of their employers, meting out reward and punishment with equal ease. I ached to learn something of that power, but I had neither the time nor the teacher—not at this stage of the game.

For example, there was this two-meter frog that sat on a rock just down from the town staring out to sea and smoking big, fat cigars. Well, actually, I hadn’t a notion what a frog really looked like, but I read the fairy tales just like everybody else and this one sure looked like a fairy-tale frog, standing on its hind bow legs, balancing on big webbed feet.

There were others around too—halflings that were half human and half something else, almost anything else it seemed, and probably more that I never fully recognized as such because they were so completely transformed. They never came into town, though, and were generally shunned by people, although I suppose somebody had to trade with them on at least a barter basis—how else did the frog get his or her cigars? There was supposedly a small colony of them out on the point north of the town, but nobody ever went there that I could find.

I saw more of them on Company lands, since people there were more at the mercy of Company officials and the local sore and apts. I was out at Thunderkor, a Company that was basically involved in softwood logging and milling, when I had my first direct encounter with a changeling. I was on my way back from the mill after checking production schedules, and I’d decided to walk rather than ride back to Sanroth Hall, the Company headquarters, because it was a nice day and I felt I was getting soft, when I ran into her.

She was a halfling and at one time had obviously been a very beautiful young woman. The woman’s body remained, down to the lower chest, but from that point it became the bottom part of a uhar or uhar-like animal, with powerful saurian legs and, coming out from the spine, the long, thick saurian tail. Her color was a leaf-green rather than the blue of the uhar clan, including her long hair which was, however, a far darker green in color. She walked with the peculiar angle that showed that the tail was needed as a counterbalance, and she was walking up the road about ten meters in front of me. At first I took her for some kind of animal—there were a great number on Charon—and she heard me despite the fact that I stopped in my tracks; she herself stopped and turned around. Her face showed more annoyance than surprise at the sight of me, and certainly no fear. Hers was a pretty face, even in its shades of green, exotic and quite sensual, though she did have a long, sharp horn protruding from the center of her forehead.

She stood there, and I stood there, and finally I decided that it was the better part of valor to keep on. Besides, I was more curious than fearful or repelled.

“Good morning!” I said cheerfully as I approached. After all, what else do you say to a half-woman, half-lizard standing in your way? “A nice day, isn’t it?”

She stared at me strangely for a moment, and I wondered if she could still speak—and which half, the human or animal, was in control. That thought hadn’t really occurred to me until I was too close to run.

She was large, in proportion to her saurian half, and almost towered over me. Almost everybody did, of course, even Zala, but I was used to that disproportion. This was more than the usual—she was certainly over two meters, even slightly bent like that.

“You’re the new T.A. from Outside,” she said, her voice sounding deep but otherwise quite ordinary. I was relieved.

I stopped near her, just out of range of that horn, and nodded. “Park Lacoch.”

“Well? What the hell you staring at?” she snapped.

I shrugged sheepishly. “Remember, I’m new here—not just to here, but to Charon,” I reminded her. “Let’s just say you’re a bit, ah, different, than most of the people I meet.”

She laughed at that. “That’s true enough. Am I the first changeling you’ve ever seen?”

“No, but you’re the first one I’ve met” I told her.

“And?”

I wasn’t sure if she was fishing for a compliment or spoiling for a fight. “And what?” I responded. “I find you—and the whole idea—fascinating.”

She gave a sort of snort. “Fascinating! That’s one word for it, I guess.”

“You work here for Thunderkor?”

“What else? They hitch me up and I pull things they want moved. My arms aren’t much use but I’ve got real pull in the legs.”

I looked at them and wasn’t in any mood to argue that point. “What did you do—before?” I asked as delicately as I could.

“Before? Hah! I was a river-woman. Ran log floats, that kind of thing. Takes more skill than strength.”

I was impressed. “I would have thought you’d have been up at Sanroth,” I told her. “With your looks…”

She smiled grimly. “Yeah. My looks. That’s what got me into trouble. I was born and bred on the river, into a family of river people. I had the talent and loved the work, ever since I was little, but everybody said I was too pretty for it, that I should get married and make babies. Hell, I loved that job. Even the men admitted I was the best—that’s why they wanted me out of there. I embarrassed them.”

I could see the situation in this particular culture.

“Well, anyway, one day this old guy, Jimrod Gneezer, comes down from Sanroth and sees me. Next thing I know I’m ordered up to the Hall—never been there in my life. Real Mr. Ego, too.”

“I think I’ve met him,” I told her, recalling a distinguished-looking man of middle age.

“Well, he thinks I’m supposed to swoon all over him. I tell him where to go. He gets real mad, tries to force himself, and I belted him one—knocked him cold, walked out, and went home. Next thing I know, Simber, the dirty sore, comes down, tells me I better go back. He reminds me that he could cast a spell and I’d be Gneezer’s willing slave. I tell him to go ahead, that that was the only way I’d go back to the bastard, but it turns out that the guy’s got such a big head he don’t like no spells for that. His pride’s hurt So Simber takes some hair and nail clippings—I couldn’t stop him, he being a sore—and the next thing I know this little brat of an apt, Isil, shows up and tells me all about how I’ve been given to him now and he’s very creative. Yeah, very.”

I whistled. “That’s rough” was all I could think to say. “Oh, I could reverse the spell, probably, by going crawling to Gneezer, but I’d rather be like this than do that. Someday I’ll get even with ’em, you can count on it But it’s not so bad. They didn’t mess with my head, if you know what I mean. But he sure got even. I mean, the only thing I could marry would be a bunhar, and who wants to play sexy with a lizard?”

I saw her point and assumed a bunhar was the kind of creature she half was.

“No chance of having a different, more powerful swore undo it.

She shook her head. “Naw. First of all, they got a brotherhood, a code. Even the women. None of ’em will undo what another has done no matter how much they want to, because if one breaks it they all will, you see, and then where’ll they be?”

It was a good point “And none of the unofficial ones can help?”

Again the head-shake. “It’s a good spell. Them amateurs can only make things worse. Besides, there seems to be something in the spell that makes it tougher. Tried it once—and that’s when I got this horn. That’s enough.”

“Are there others like you around?” I was genuinely curious.

“Like me? Not exactly. Some others got some of the same bunhar parts, I guess, and a lot of other stuff. There’s a few dozen around the Company, I guess, of different kinds. It’s a big place, so we don’t see much of each other, and some of ’em are really messed up in the head by what was done to ’em. They don’t do this all that much—we’re the examples, see?”

I did see, and it made me even happier to be both a townsman with a degree of freedom and on the good side of Tally Kokul and the Charon government.

“Did you ever think of leaving?” I asked her. “I hear there are places where changelings can live together. It would probably be—easier.”

“Oh, yeah, there’s lots of that,” she agreed, “but here’s where the dungheads who did it to me are, and here’s where they could remove it—or I could remove them.” She flexed her very human arms and hands, and I could see that at the end of each finger was not merely a nail but a sharp, long curved talon.

“Well, I’ve got to be getting on,” I told her, not making excuses but being honest. My transportation back to town was waiting. “It was nice, and interesting, talking to you. And if I catch your Mr. Gneezer with his hand in the till I guarantee I’ll remember you when I turn him over t6 Master Kokul.”

She chuckled evilly. “Wouldn’t that be something, now!” She paused for breath, then said more gently, “Hey, look. If you get back over this way, stop by and see me, won’t you? Most of the people here, they treat me like dirt. You’re the first person in a long time who’s been nice to me and treated me like—well, like a human being.”

“I’ll do that,” I promised her. We started to go our separate ways, but I stopped and turned. “Hey—what’s your name, anyway?”

“Darva,” she called back. “With no family now I’m just Darva.”

She took a branch path and walked away from me. I stood there for a moment, watching her lumber off—rather gracefully actually. I also made a mental note of the names Gneezer and Isil. One of these days there would be an accounting.

Months passed, and I settled in very well and really enjoyed the job. Zala taught me how to swim more expertly than I had learned as a kid, and we took full advantage of the warm bay. I also learned how to sail, although I couldn’t afford a boat and had to beg or borrow one for the lessons. Zala saved up enough from her loom work to buy a pair of bicycles, obviously made off-world—on Cerberus, as it turned out—and this extended my range and gave me some much needed exercise when it didn’t rain.

Large sailing ships occasionally came into the bay to pick up manufactured goods and non-perishables and drop off what we needed, and I was very impressed by them. Although strong steel ships could be built on Cerberus, which I understood was a water world, the cost of shipping that size and weight here was prohibitive. Charon’s ships were made out of native hardwoods and were the more impressive for it. I noticed that the crews of these ships often contained a disproportionate number of changelings—every kind and variety I could imagine and many I couldn’t. But certain forms and variations were particularly useful in rigging and setting and taking in sail, and in cargo management. The shipping guilds apparently didn’t care who or what you were if you were best for the job. They mostly remained on board when in port, although once or twice I thought I saw longboats heading for Parhara Point where the changeling colony was supposed to be.

Tally Kokul I saw very infrequently—he kept mostly to himself and his “studies,” and I almost never needed him. His apts occasionally got playful in the wrong places though, and I’d have to send him a note or drop in if he was there and get him to control them. They were mostly young boys—with more power than young boys should have. I wondered what he did with the talented girl apts, then reflected that somebody who could turn a young woman into a hybrid creature could easily disguise the sex of an apt if she were really promising.

I also heard very little from the central government of Charon, other than the routine correspondence and manuals necessary to my job, and that suited me just fine as well. It was with some surprise, then, that a clerk came in one day and told me that a very important visitor had arrived, and he wanted to see me in Kokul’s office as soon as possible. “I’d make it possible right now,” he added, shuddering slightly. “You haven’t seen him yet.”

That was enough to get me up there on the double.

Just walking into the inner office I knew what he had meant. Even before I saw the man, I could sense something, something decidedly wrong. It wasn’t my old agent’s “sixth sense” or any kind of apprehension—it was a real, tangible feeling of unease, almost of dread, like you feel just before you have to stick your hand in a damp, dark hole without knowing what’s on the other side.

He was large and lean, dressed from head to foot in black leather trimmed with silver and gold designs. His face, peering out of a black hood, was lean, hard, even nasty-looking. What really struck me, though, were the eyes—there seemed to be something wrong with them, something odd and not at all human. It was as if his pupils were not solid black, but rather, transparent, like windows into some unfathomable other dimension. It was the damnedest effect I’d ever seen and it was extremely unnerving. Kokul sensed it too, and looked uneasy in his big office chair for the first time since I’d known him. This man was no ordinary man—he was Power, raw, tremendous power of an unknown sort. I noticed the man remained standing even though there were enough chairs, the better no doubt to negate the man-at-the-desk feeling. I, however, just nodded at Tully and sat down. I only came up to the strange man’s chest, anyway. Never, not even with Darva, had I felt so totally small, puny, and weak.

“Park, this is Yatek Morah, from the Castle,” Tully introduced us and I noticed a feeling of unease in his voice. I stood up again and offered my hand, but Morah ignored it. I sat back down. “Any problem?” I asked as casually as I could.

“I am making a survey,” the strange man replied in a voice as cold and emotionless “as an assembly-line robot’s. Coming from a living man it was unnerving, particularly on this planet where robots were impossible. “We are having severe security problems in most of the coastal areas. Ships have been pirated on the high seas and never been seen again. Soarers with important, even vital cargo have vanished, or suffered attack. Important people have been imperiled. As Chief of Security it is my job to put a stop to this.”

I looked at Tully in genuine surprise. “First I’ve heard of it.”

“I’ve had rumblings,” the sore responded. “But nothing in this area.”

“That is exactly why I am here,” Morah told us. “Sixty coastal settlements along the south and east have been hit, either directly or indirectly, in the last three weeks. There have also been more than two dozen incidents in the interior. Practically every community within two thousand square kilometers has been touched—except Bourget. Messages, records, you name it have been destroyed or disrupted all over—except material to or from fat, rich Bourget. Interesting coincidence, is it not?”

“I’ll agree it sounds anything but a coincidence,” I replied, “but I haven’t a clue as to who or where. I’ve been here now the better part of—what?—five months and I’ve never seen a straighter, more basic and open culture than this.”

“A culture that refuses to recognize the Queen and festers the largest cult of the Destroyer on the planet,” Morah snapped back. “A culture with the resources and means to mount a widespread rebellion.”

“Except that all the Unitites want is to be left alone,” Kokul noted. “As far as they’re concerned, they’re on another planet and they’d just as soon keep it that way.”

“That’s about it,” I agreed.

“You have made no attempts to break the Destroyer cult,” the Chief of Security noted.

Kokul shrugged. “What can I do? It’s a safety valve for this kind of culture, and the ones I’ve caught have been genuine fanatics. They have someone of great power at their heart though—they know and completely change and move as soon as I get a clue. It’s as if they had somebody right in my labs.”

“Perhaps they do,” Morah replied. “Perhaps you have been here too long, Kokul.”

The wizard’s face turned red, and he stood up. I had never seen him angry before, and he was a fearsome sight. “Are you questioning my loyalty? Even you have no right to do that, Morah!”

The big, weird man was unmoved. “I have every right to do whatever is necessary,” he replied. However, he seemed to realize he had overstepped his diplomatic bounds if he hoped to get cooperation with a minimum of trouble, and added, “However, I am not questioning your loyalty. Were I, you would be brought up before the Synod, as you know. No, I merely reflect that you have been here a very long time. You like Bourget and its isolation, and as you are intimate with the people, they are also intimate with you. You may or may not have the power necessary to do what needs to be done, but you lack the will in any case. I have no such problems.”

Kokul was only partially mollified, but he sat down.

“You will call a series of assemblies of all townsmen,” Morah told him. “Groups of 500, in one-hour intervals—and I don’t care if it does disrupt things for a day or two. I will make similar arrangements with the Companies. If I read these Unitites correctly, they would be more intolerant than even we of anyone discovered to be in the cult of the Destroyer. We will bring them into the open. We will let your precious villagers discover just who is who. And then we will stamp out this cult in Bourget.”

“Just what are you going to do?” I asked him, still trying, and failing, to look directly into those weird eyes.

“My best troops are even now in the process of sealing off the town by both land and sea,” he told us. “There will be no escape for this band of traitors. Be there for the first assembly tomorrow morning. It will probably be the only one required. I think both of you will find the exercise an educational experience.”