Neverness (21 page)

   I turned to look at the tondo. The alien painting, a culture of variegated, programmed bacteria pressed between two sheets of clary, mutated and shifted colors and shape as I watched. The pretty, flowing colors depicted the epic of Goshevan of Summerworld and the birth of his son, Shanidar; it was an impressive display. Of course, private possession of such technology was illegal, but I said nothing.

   "A famous castrato who had lost his voice - I'm sure you know his name - gave me this painting in trade for his restoration. Restore him I did! I cut at his larynx until he sang like a bell, and to prove my good will, I stitched new testes into his empty ball sacks for free. So that he could be a man again while he sang with a young boy's voice! No, I'm not a venal man, no matter what my enemies say."

   I explained what I needed, and he closed his nostrils and said, "The price will be six thousand city disks, a thousand for each body I sculpt and -"

   "You're joking! Six
thousand
city disks?"

   "Have some more coffee," he said, pouring the pungent liquid into my mug. "The price is high because I am who I am. Ask any cutter or splicer on the street, and they'll tell you who is the best. Did you know I apprenticed to Rainer? The cutter who sculpted Goshevan?"

   He was lying, of course. I had consulted the City archives before choosing a cutter. Mehtar, although he looked decently old, was really quite young, much too young to have been Rainer's apprentice. He had come to Neverness as a young boy having witnessed the death of his planet, Alesar, in one of those rabidly hateful religious wars which occasionally destroy isolated societies. His family had belonged to a schismatic sect of spiritualists - I do not recall the exact nature or substance of their belief - and he had watched them die the marrow-death as he vomited blood and swore he would never again put his faith in ideals he could not see or feel or possess. He had come to Neverness determined to enrich himself while wreaking vengeance on any flesh that came his way. Therefore in little time he had become the best - if strangest - cutter in the City.

   "Six thousand disks!" I repeated. "Nobody needs access to that much information. It's indecent."

   "You won't buy my services by insulting me, Pilot."

   "We'll pay you a thousand disks."

   "That's not enough."

   "Two thousand."

   He shook his head and made a tisking sound with his tongue. "That will buy you the services of Alvarez or Paulivik, any of the lesser cutters. Maybe you should go to them."

   "Three thousand, then."

   "I don't like amounts containing the number 'three.' It's a superstition of mine."

   "Four thousand," I said, realizing that I should have persuaded Bardo to come with me. I had rarely paid money for anything in my life, while he had a lifetime of experience arguing over the value of land or haggling with whores over the price of their bodies.

   "I can sculpt four of you for that price."

   "Five thousand city disks. Five
thousand
."

   "No, no, no, no, Pilot."

   I slapped the table so hard that my mug rattled and coffee slopped over the rim, I muttered, "You would think you'd sculpt us for free. Doesn't the quest mean anything to you?"

   "No, it doesn't, Pilot."

   "Well, five thousand is all I can pay." I was certain that if I had brought Bardo with me, he would never have agreed to pay the six thousand disks that Mehtar had originally asked for.

   "If that is all you have," he said, "that is all you have. But you will never know how fine it feels to wear an Alaloi's body, how good it is to be strong." So saying he grasped his empty mug with his hand and squeezed. It shattered into crumbs and slivers, one of which drove through his palm. He held his hand up so I could watch him slowly draw the bloody white sliver from his punctured flesh. At first the wound spurted blood in rhythmic pulses, and Mehtar said, "Clearly, I've sliced the artery." He closed his eyes, and the muscles of his upraised hand began to tremble. The pulses of red slowed to a steady flow and then to a trickle. When he opened his eyes, the bleeding had stopped altogether. "I can give you powers over your sculpted body as well as strength. There are hormones to keep your balls overflowing with seed, or a neurotransmitter wash to dissolve your need for sleep. And, more practically, with a little splicing, various of your tissues can be programmed to pump out glycopetides [sic; probably "glycopeptides" - reb], to keep your flesh from freezing on your expedition. I, Mehtar Constancio Hajime can do this. My price will be six thousand one hundred city disks."

   "Six thousand ...
one hundred
?"

   He pointed to the pieces of the mug scattered across the table. "I must factor in my advertising costs. They blow these mugs on Fostora, and you must know, it was precious."

   I pounded the table with the edge of my fist and felt porcelain crumbs grinding into thin leather of my glove. "You're a filthy, greedy tubist," I said.

   He looked at me quickly as his nostrils opened and closed. "A tubist, you call me. Yes, it's true, I serve myself, and why not? I used to serve my God, but He betrayed me." He pointed to the tondo and at the case of priceless Darghinni jewelry standing next to it. "Now I collect things. Things do not betray."

   "Too many things," I said. "You're a thingist
and
a tubist."

   "And why not? Certain things possess a luster and beauty that do not fade with age. We arise in the morning to greet our things, a place for each finely made thing, and each thing in its special place. We buy things, perhaps a chair carved of fine-grained shatterwood or a beautiful Darghinni hangnest, and we can be certain that the having of it will increase our worth."

   "I don't believe that."

   He smiled and said, "Nevertheless, it's true. When we own many things, we may trade them to acquire more things, each more beautiful, each more precious, each containing real value against the day of disaster when things will have to be traded to preserve that most precious thing of all: our precious lives."

   "Nobody lives forever," I said. I stared at the silvery strands of the hangnest glittering in its case. I thought of the thousands of Darghinni nymphs who must have died when their nest was stolen. "Maybe you value yourself too much."

   "Well, Pilot, this flesh I wear, it's all I am. What should I value more? Six thousand one hundred city disks - a heavy sum, but there's never enough to insure the sanctity of a man's flesh. Never, never enough."

   In the end I paid the amount he asked. It was bad enough having to deal in
money
; it was far worse to argue over it. The next day when I told Bardo the details of our arrangement he was aghast. "By God, you've been plundered! I really should have come with you. What did the Timekeeper say? He's a miserly old wolf and ... ahhh, he doesn't know, does he?"

   "He won't know unless the master bursar tells him."

   "Good, good." And then, "Do you really trust this Mehtar Hajime to sculpt us?"

   _Did_ I trust the cutter? How could one trust a man who wore smuggled shagshay furs stolen from the flayed body of a once-living animal? "I trust his greed," I said. "He'll do what we pay him to do on the hope that our friends will come to him for sculpting."

   Four days later I was the first to lie beneath Mehtar's lasers. I was surprised to learn that the difference between an Alaloi and a full human was really very little. Unfortunately, these little differences had to be added or deleted from every part of my body. He remade me from inside out, leaving no part of me untouched. He did the bone work first, thickening and strengthening one hundred and eighty of my body's bones. It was during this period, which lasted a couple of tendays, that I felt the worst pain of the entire procedure. Whistling to himself and occasionally telling me bad jokes, Mehtar would lay open layers of skin and muscle and cut among the plates and spicules of a bone's honeycombed interior as I clamped my jaws shut and sweated. He steened the walls with new bone and strengthened the shafts and tendon attachments. "Bone pain is deep," he said, all the while opening and closing his nostrils as he drilled down the length of my thigh bone. "Deep and hot but it doesn't last long."

   There were a few times when my pain blocks failed and Mehtar had to render me unconscious. I suspected he used these times to introduce colonies of illegal, programmed bacteria into my body. The bacteria - I was never able to prove this - found their way into those parts of my bones Mehtar could not reach with his drills. There some of the bacteria disassembled and ingested my natural bone while others manufactured and spun out a webwork of collagens and mineral crystals, layer upon layer of new bone with a tensile strength greater than steel. Once, when I hinted how afraid I was of this technology, Mehtar laughed and said, "You should think of the bacteria as tools, tiny machines, infinitesimal robots programmed to a certain biochemical task. Do machines rebel? Can a computer take charge of its own programming? No, no, no, Pilot, there's no danger in these tools, but of course, all the same, I would never employ them because to do so would violate your City canons, archaic as those canons are."

   I rubbed the glued skin of my arm - he had been working on the humerus that day - and I said, "No one likes to be colonized by bacteria, especially intelligent bacteria."

   "Oh, noble Pilot, even if I was one of those cutters who ignore your foolish laws, I would program the bacteria to die after they had completed their task of course I would! You have my promise!"

   Somehow his promises did not reassure me. I said, "And what of Chimene and the April cluster, then?"

   "Those names mean nothing to me."

   I told him that Chimene was one of those planets where a colony of bacteria had mutated and escaped, consuming all life in the biosphere, disassembling and totally remaking the planet's surface into a mat of purplish-brown, hugely intelligent bacteria - all in a matter of days.

   "And the eschatologists think it only took a few years for them to infect the whole April cluster," I said. "Ten thousand stars swarming with your harmless bacteria." Of all the gods in the galaxy, the eschatologists feared the April colonial intelligence the most.

   "Ancient history!" Mehtar scoffed. "Such carelessness could never happen today. Who would permit it? Again, I assure you, you have nothing to fear."

   While I was healing, he worked on the others in succession. Soli was the second to feel the marrow-pain, followed by Justine, Katharine and my mother. Bardo, wanting to see the results of as many sculptings he could, went last.

   "I've heard terrible things about these cutters," he confided to me one day in the changing room. "Aren't I thick enough that he could leave my bones alone? No? By God, I wish he'd avoid the spine - so many delicate nerves there. What if he sneezes at the wrong moment? One little slip of the laser and Bardo would never mount another woman. I've heard of it happening. Can't you imagine: Bardo's mighty pole rendered as limp as a soba noodle because of a sneeze?"

   To help him relax and block his nerves, I massaged the heavy, fanlike muscles at the top of his spine. I tried to reassure him, pointing out that many people underwent cuttings much more extensive solely for the sake of fad or fashion. I did not tell him my suspicions about Mehtar's bacteria.

   "Well, this
may
be a minor alteration," he admitted after we had talked about certain pilots who had found it useful to pose as one or another species of alien. "But there's another thing. Doesn't this cutter look like that rude Alaloi I tripped the day you broke Soli's nose? Do you remember?"

   Suddenly, I did remember. Suddenly, I knew where I had seen Mehtar before. To reassure Bardo, I said, "I'm sure this isn't the same man." It was a lie, but what could I do?

   "Ah, but what if you're wrong? Suppose he remembers me? Suppose he
dis
members me, forgive the pun, out of vengeance, do you know what I mean?"

   It seemed, though, that Mehtar did not remember him. Either that, or he did not hold a grudge. If anything, Mehtar did his smoothest work on him, probably because he had had all the rest of us to practice on. Bardo, of course, was not satisfied until he had tested his virility on his whores. Everything must have functioned properly because he claimed he had swived twelve whores in a single evening, which was a record, even for him.

   The work on my face began soon after this, in late false winter. Mehtar built me a new jaw filled with larger teeth. The enamel of the molars was thick and layered; the jaw itself was massive and jutting in order to provide greater leverage for the toughened jaw muscles. I would be able to crack baldo nuts or gnaw bones without trouble or pain. The work was delicate, especially around the eyes. Because my entire face, as seen from profile, projected at a greater angle from my skull, Mehtar needed to sculpt great browridges to protect the vulnerable eyes. This he did slowly, taking great care with the optic nerves. I was blind for the better part of two days. I was afraid I would never see again, and I wondered how Katharine made her way through the black prison surrounding her head.

   When the cutter finished this painstaking procedure and I could see again, he held a silver mirror in front of me. "Behold," he said. "You are magnificent, yes? Note the nose, which I broadened while you were pain-blocked and blind. Note the flaring nostrils. Wiggle them for me, please. Very good, open, now close, and open again. A protection against the cold," he said proudly, all the while opening and closing his, own nostrils. "This planet is so cold."

   I looked at the reflection in the mirror; it was not really like looking at myself. Or rather, it was like looking at some mutation of myself composed of two thirds Mallory Ringess and one third beast. My face was strong and well proportioned, at once primitive and as expressive as any human face. My ancestors on Earth, I thought, must have looked as I did. I could not decide if I was handsome or ugly (or neither). I placed my fingertips on my forehead feeling the browridge; it was like the overhang of a cliff. I was not used to seeing myself in a thick beard, nor could I keep my tongue from probing the slippery contours of my huge, new teeth. For a moment I was disoriented and despondent. I had a feeling of intense depersonalization, as if I didn't know who I was, and worse, as if I didn't really exist. Then I looked at my eyes, and though they were set deeply into my skull, I saw that they were my same blue eyes, the eyes I knew so well.