Beholder's Eye (15 page)

Ansky was fond of Christmas, I remembered nostalgically, part of her poetic nature. When not busy on Web business, or studying the Articans, Ansky was a sucker for guided tours. Her last planet-hopping trip had boasted ten consecutive Yuletides.

Although when Christmas fell was a planet matter, and many worlds indulged themselves more than once a planet year, Christmas traditions were amazingly consistent. I was personally convinced this had more to do with traveling salesmen than any Human effort to keep the custom intact. Ansky thought this very cynical of me and insisted I’d appreciate such things better when I was older.

Not inclined to quibble, I howled along with a carol Ansky had learned for me and settled down to enjoy myself.

The Rigellians had sacrificed the traditional evergreen tree, propping the corpse up with plas supports.
Not bad,
I decided, approving the wide range of edible decorations. Snow frosted the tops of hanging cookies and reflected the surrounding lights. The clock at the top of the tree was star-shaped, and, again traditionally, counted down the minutes to the New Year.

Someone squeezed in between Tomas and me—no mean feat since we were already crushed together. The dwarf, no, child, wiggled ahead purposefully. The crowd around us shook like the surface of a jelly as a veritable army of children pushed through at waist height to cluster at the base of the tree. The adults good-naturedly stepped back to give them room.

“Midnight’s coming, Es!” Ragem shouted. I pinned back my ear with a wince, able to hear quite well despite the babble of voices from all sides.

I nodded, watching the clock just like everyone else. The last notes of song hung themselves on silence. Snow whirled above our heads, the tree, the waiting children, and snuck down the neck of my coat again. I shivered with excitement.
One minute to go.
Some worlds claimed they used Terran-standard clocks, but this minute had to be slower than even that myth demanded.

Ten seconds to midnight.
A countdown began, shouted from several hundred throats. “. . . Nine, eight, seven . . .”

I found myself shouting with all the rest. “Two, one . . .”

The clock exploded right on midnight, showering our upturned faces with multicolored sparks that melted just overhead with a whiff of cinnamon. The tree split into four, curving apart from its crown, majestically arching its branches and their treasures down to the eager hands of the waiting children.

“Happy New Year!” The adults grabbed, hugged, kissed, and generally acted without restraint or manners. I lost track of Ragem and Tomas. No one seemed to mind that I licked instead of kissing back.

Ansky hadn’t shared this, or else I hadn’t assimilated her memories properly. I felt an intense belonging, a feeling of welcome almost as strong as that within the Web itself.
Maybe stronger than my future welcome,
I thought glumly. I couldn’t stay glum for long. As the crowd quieted, this time with a delightful sense of exhausted release, someone passed me a huge roll of pastry, steaming hot and fragrant. I bit into it, tasting cloves, raisins, and crunchy bits of sugar.
What wonderful people!

“Es?” Ragem tugged at my sleeve. “Come over here. Tomas found some spurl.”

I was game, whatever spurl was. Lanivarians, on the ground at least, had very capable digestive systems—something I’d proved scrounging on Kraos. Anything my omnivorous primate hosts could safely consume, I could. In point of fact, I could safely consume anything, having only to shift to web-form to deal with whatever became disagreeable. Even Ersh had never encountered a poison fast-acting enough to seriously harm a particular form before she could cycle from it. Make it sick, definitely. But nothing permanent.

Which was good, because eating was such a pleasure in almost all forms. I hooked the paw free of pastry under Ragem’s bulky sleeve and let him find our way through the expanding eddies in the crowd. I finished my treat, licked each slender toe, and speculatively eyed the cookies being carried by children on all sides of us.
Probably not a Christmas thing to do,
I decided, closing my mouth so I wouldn’t drool.

Fortunately, spurl was equally worth drooling over. It was a spiced drink thick as soup, served frothy and hot, and with a sneaky ability to glow along nerve endings by the third cup. The Rigellians, in no hurry to resume their staid reputation, had set up dispensers of the stuff all around the square. The crowd was no smaller, but had become appreciably more mellow. Adults walked around, cup in hand, or sat on benches to watch the children prowl through the remains of the tree. A few groups sang softly to themselves.

Some time ago, unnoticed, the snow had stopped—as if on cue. The sky had cleared to a black arch. It was too bright in the square to make out stars, but without the clouds the air was cooling quickly. Ragem could make rings with his spurl-warmed breath.

Tomas had left us after sharing the first cup or so, spotting some of the
Rigus’
crew. Ragem, I was pleased to see, preferred to stay with me.

Ragem was just drunk enough to be talkative. He was telling me about Christmas on Botharis, his mother’s homeworld. I was just drunk enough to be content to listen and remember. “We give gifts—always to the kids and usually to each other,” he said, sounding wistful. “Depending on who’s home of course. And we have snow, like this. My favorite part was always the rides we’d take, late at night, under the stars.”

He sipped spurl, its steam curling past his wistful eyes. I hazarded a guess. “Horses?”

“Snowspeeders. But when we were young, my brother and I’d pretend we had horses. Kids do that at Christmas. Riding through the snow.” Ragem stopped talking for a moment, staring into the steam.

I squinted into my empty cup and thought I’d probably had more than my share. “How long since you’ve been home?” I asked him.

“Too long.”

I felt my ears go down in sympathy. We were both a bit maudlin and sentimental—New Year’s does that to beings. Then my ears pricked up as I had a truly fabulous idea. I hadn’t seen any horses (or speeders) in the town, but I knew something even better at running through snow. I’d cheer Ragem up by giving him a Christmas present.

Later, I’d remember this moment and realize just how stupid I’d been.

But that was later.

“I want you to wait here, Ragem,” I said quickly. “Give me ten minutes. Exactly ten. Then meet me by those trees over there.” The trees I pointed to were on the far side of the square.

“What’re you up to, Es?” His coat crinkled in the cold as he turned on the bench to look at me suspiciously.

“I’ve a little Christmas surprise for you,” I said, pushing down on his shoulders as I got to my feet. It kept Ragem still and countered an odd tendency for the ground to spin. “Promise to give me a ten-minute start before you come.”

“I made you promise to stay,” Ragem said with a melancholy sigh, his mind spinning off on an unexpected tangent. “That wasn’t fair, was it? Selfish. My asking, I mean, not your staying. Staying would be nice; you’re my friend. Shouldn’t ask. I’m sorry, Esen, I—”

I cuffed his head gently to shut him up. Too much spurl and too little time to relax, I decided. “I didn’t say I was leaving, Ragem.”
Yet.
“I said I have a surprise for you. Now wait here ten minutes, then meet me by the trees. Okay?”

Ragem tried to scowl but failed. “Okay.” His wandering gaze fixed on the nearest spurl dispenser.

I found that once I started walking, the ground steadied itself—more or less—although everyone around me had a tendency to weave, making it difficult to move in a straight line through the crowd. The snow was packed, but in the cold it creaked a bit underfoot. I looked cross-eyed at the curls of white frost forming on the tiny hairs of my muzzle—better shave in the morning.

Ah.
Finally out from the crowd, out of the lights, and under the stars. I looked for a suitable tree.

Plenty to choose from,
I saw with satisfaction. There were two rows, planted in a staggered fashion to mark the edge of town. Their skeletal shadows cut black lines in the glittering fresh snow. Beyond stretched a night-etched rolling plain, likely farm fields in summer, welling up into low hills on the horizon. The spaceport was just past that horizon, but there were no ships moving tonight.

I compared several trees of about the right mass before settling on one I didn’t think would be missed in spring—it grew much too close to its neighbors. I took off the jacket and boots Ragem had given me and laid them carefully over a nearby bush. Kearn’s telltale belt would just have to drop in the snow. It was hardly my problem if the moisture damaged it.

I took a couple of deep breaths, fur standing up along my back not so much from cold as anticipation. I couldn’t wait to see Ragem’s face. The tree bark was coated with ice on one side. I moved to the other and pressed myself against its cold roughness as tightly as possible. Ten minutes should be more than enough, but it would spoil my surprise if Ragem’s drink-fuddled head couldn’t tell time.

I had always been good at enlarging, better than any of my Elders. They said it was because I was barely formed yet myself. In my opinion, it was more likely that Lesy and the others were squeamish about taking in so much nonsapient mass. As for Ersh—I quickly stopped thinking about her.

I loosened my grip on the Lanivarian form, cycling into web-form after one last look around. In that state, almost as amorphous as the Ycl, I inserted my tissues into the contacting tissue of the tree, climbing like sap in spring through every branch and twig. As I became almost-tree for an instant, my thoughts slowed, smothered into a rigid order, consumed by purposes my mind labeled
survival
and
growth.
I clamped down on the familiar sensation of mild panic, knowing it was just the proximity to nonintelligent life.

The rest of the process was automatic. Tree tissue readily re-formed itself into more of my tissue along each of my extended strands, my sense of myself expanding in size with each acquisition, my thoughts quickening again so that I knew the moment when I had gathered the mass I needed. I cycled.

There.
I pulled my rear foot out of the frozen soil with only a bit of a struggle. I’d judged it nicely. It wasn’t easy to avoid the roots, and embarrassing if not dangerous to wind up half-buried underground.

The spurl no longer affected my system, but I tingled with another kind of exhilaration. I shook myself from head to foot, admiring the cascades of heavy fur that blanketed my rippling muscle.
Wait till Ragem took a ride with me!

“My God.”

Ragem stood about three meters away, absolutely motionless. I’d forgotten how tiny Humans were compared to this form.

“Rag’m,” I boomed, having forgotten for a moment that the Crougk had only rudimentary vocal cords and fewer vowels. I loosened my tongue. “L’k g’t?” I asked hopefully, bending my head down as far as possible so my faceted eyes could see under his hood, my mouth agape in a fanged grin, breath frosting with each word.

Ragem took a step back, his hand reaching out for support and slipping on the icy trunk of the next tree in the row. Another step, clumsy and urgent; he almost fell in a snowdrift.
What was the matter with him?

Suddenly, Ragem’s face tilted, caught a moonbeam’s worth of light. It was enough to show me his lips drawn back from his teeth in a horrible parody of a smile. His eyes were worse. The terror in them tore out my heart.

Whirling on my powerful haunches, I flung myself away, leaping over the snow, heading for the distant hills and the spaceport beyond. My wide feet barely sank into the drifts. Each curl and extension of my legs sent me farther and farther, faster and faster, until the wind in my ears and my heaving breath came close to drowning out any thought.

14
:

WHEN Thomas had originally referred to Rigel II in less than glowing terms, I’d assumed he was complaining about its lack of amusements for a crew newly in from space, hazardous space at that. I kicked one huge foot pensively in the snow, glaring at the gate in front of me. I now shared his opinion. Any planet without automated credit access was less than a hole in my terms, too.

Some time before Humans traded bits of shell with one another for fish, Ersh had concluded that the ability to change form, especially on civilized planets, was not enough to ensure safety or comfort. She considered the amassing of physical wealth to be a necessary descent into ephemeral concerns, one which she could luckily leave to unusually long-term investments. So, barring an unpredictable collapse of the entire Commonwealth economy—and likely even then—the Web had a credit rating to turn most system governments green with envy, had Ersh ever kept it all in one account or under one name. Suffice it to say, I could travel to any civilized world and access the appropriate currency to allow my form’s self to meet the demands of a comfortable life.

Which meant I had more than sufficient funds at my disposal on this particular planet to buy passage on any of those ships, so temptingly near on the other side of this gate. If I wanted to risk Ersh’s outrage, I could pick one, buy it outright, and return home in style, a thought I definitely tucked into private memory.

If Rigel II’s spaceport had a proper automated access point, that is. What was before me was plainly a gatekeeper’s booth, where one would doubtless have to deal directly with some being, a procedure at minimum requiring clothing and other civilized accoutrements: at worst, proof of ID and inconveniences such as a credit chip.

There were other ways.
I shed excess mass as water, too shaken by my experience with Ragem to enjoy the effect as the liquid turned to whirling diamonds of frost around me as I shrank during my cycling. My final form bore no resemblance to the Crougk. In fact, it bore no resemblance to anything ever seen on Rigel II before, this species having the misfortune to inhabit a world whose atmosphere shredded to nonexistence during a near-collision with a comet shortly before Humans spread to this part of space.