Transfigurations (6 page)

At last, panting with the sheer momentum of my pursuit, I broke

into an opening among the trees. All at once I realized that the noises drawing me on had ceased. I was alone, and lost, and confused.

Filling the clearing, rising against the sky like an Oriented pagoda, there loomed over me the broad and impervious mass of something built. The resonances of Time dwarfed me. Thunderstruck, I felt panic climbing hand over hand up the membranous ladder in my throat. Oliver Oliphant Frasier had studied the ruins of one of these structures, learning only that the Asadi may once have had a civilization of some consequence. I was staring at a huge, intact relic of that civilization. Amethyst windows. Stone carvings above the entablature. A dome. A series of successively smaller roofs as the eye went up the face of the structure. At last I turned, plunged back into the jungle, and raced wildly away, my backpack thumping.

Where was I going? Back to the assembly ground, I hoped. Which way to run? I didn't know, but I didn't have to answer this question. Blindly, I moved in the direction of the suspicious tickings of leaf and twig that had resumed shortly after I fled the pagoda. The Bachelor again? I don't know. I saw nothing. But in three hours' time I had regained the safety of my lean-to. . . . Now I'm waiting for the dawn, for the tidal influx of Asadi. I'm exhilarated, and I haven't even touched my new supply of P-nol.

Day 57 (Evening): They're gone again. But I've witnessed something important and unsettling. The Bachelor didn't arrive this morning with the others. Could he have injured himself in our midnight chase through the Wild? By noon I was both exhausted and puzzled—exhausted by my search for him and my lack of sleep, puzzled by his apparent defection. I came to my lean-to and lay down. In a little while I was sleeping, though not soundly. Tickings of twig and leaf made my eyelids flicker. I dreamed that a grey shape came and squatted on the edge of the clearing about five meters from where I lay. Like a mute familiar, the shape watched over me. . . .

Kyur-AAACCCCK!

Groans and thrashings about. Thrashings and hackings. The underbrush beside my lean-to crackled beneath the invasion of several heavy feet. Bludgeoned out of my dream by these sounds, I sat up and attempted to reorient myself to the world. I saw The Bachelor. I saw three of the larger and more agile males bearing him to the ground and pinioning him there. They appeared to be cooperating in the task of subduing him!

Ignoring me with all the contemptuous elan of aristocrats, the three males picked up The Bachelor and bore him to the center of the clearing. I followed this party onto the assembly ground. As they had during the old chieftain's two unexpected visits, the Asadi crowded to the sidelines—but without disappearing into the jungle. They remained on the field, buffeting one another like rabid spectators at a World Cup event. I was the only individual other than the four struggling males in the center of the assembly floor, however, and I looked down at The Bachelor. His eyes came very close to changing colors, from their usual clay-white to a thin, thin yellow. But I couldn't help him, couldn't interfere.

They shaved his mane. A female carrying two flat, beveled stones came out of the crowd on the eastern perimeter of the field. She gave these to the males. With these stones the males scraped away the last sad mangy tufts of The Bachelor's silver-blue collar. Just as they were about to finish, he gave a perfunctory kick that momentarily dislodged one of his tormentors, then acquiesced in his shame and lay on his back staring at the sky. The entire operation took only about ten minutes. The three males sauntered off from their victim, and the satisfied spectators, aware that the barbering was over, filtered back into the clearing with all their former randomness. But now, of course, they ignored The Bachelor with a frigidity they had once reserved for me. I stood in the center of the clearing waiting for him to get to his feet, but for a long time he didn't move. His narrow head, completely shorn, scarred by their barbering stones, looked unnaturally fragile. I leaned down and offered him my hand. A passing Asadi jostled me. Accidentally, I think. The Bachelor rolled to his stomach,

rolled again to avoid being stepped on, curled into the fetal position—then unexpectedly sprang out of the dust and dodged through a broken file of his uncaring kin.

Did he wish to attain the edge of the Wild? Intervening bodies blocked my view, but I suppose that The Bachelor disappeared into the trees and kept on running.

What does all this signify? My hypothesis is that the Asadi have punished The Baclielor for leading me last night, whether purposely or inadvertently, to the ancient pagoda in the Synesthesia Wild. His late arrival in the clearing may have been an ingenuous attempt to forestall this punishment. Why else, I ask myself, would the Asadi have moved to make The Bachelor even more of an outcast than he already was?

Patience, dear God, is nine-tenths of cultural xenology. Mystified, I pray for patience.

Day 61: The Bachelor has not returned. Knowing that he's now officially a pariah, he chooses to be one on his own terms.

During The Bachelor's absence, I've been thinking about two things: 1) If the Asadi did in fact punish him because he led me to the pagoda, then they fully realize I'm not simply a maneless outcast. They know I'm genetically different, a creature from elsewhere, and they consciously wish me to remain ignorant of their past. 2) I would like to make an expedition to the pagoda. With a little perseverance it shouldn't be exceedingly difficult to find, especially since I plan to go during the day. Unusual things happen so rarely in the Asadi clearing that I can afford to be gone from it a little while. One day's absence should not leave any irreparable gaps in my ethnography. If all goes well, that absence may provide some heady insights into the ritual of Asadi life.

I wish only that The Bachelor would return.

Day 63: Since today was the day of Benedict's ninth scheduled drop, I decided to make my expedition into the Wild early this morning. Two birds with one stone, as Ben himself might put it.

First, I would search for the lost pagoda. Second, even failing to find it, I would salvage some part of the day by picking up my new supplies. 1 left before dawn.

The directional instincts of human beings must have died millennia ago: 1 got lost. The Wild stirred with an inhuman and gothic calm that tattered the thin fabric of my resourcefulness.

Late in the afternoon Benedict's Dragonfly saved me. It made a series of stuttering circles over the roof of the jungle. Once I looked up and saw its undercarriage hanging so close to the treetops that a sprightly monkey might have been able to leap aboard. I followed the noise of the helicopter to our drop point. From there I had no trouble getting back to the clearing. Today, then, marks the first day since I've been in the Wild that I've not seen a single member of the Asadi, and I continue to miss The Bachelor. . . .

Day 68: I went looking for the pagoda again. Very foolish, I confess. But the last four days have been informational zeroes, and I had to take some kind of positive action. I got lost again, terrifyingly so. Green creepers coiled about me. The sky disappeared. How, then, did I get home, especially since Benedict's helicopter isn't due for two more days? Once again, the suspicious tickings of leaf and twig: I followed them, simply followed them, confident again that The Bachelor is still out there and steadfast in my decision to make no more expeditions until I have help.

Day 71: The Bachelor is back!

Day 72: The Bachelor still has very little mane to speak of, and the Asadi treat him as a total outcast. Another thing: The Bachelor, these last two days, has demonstrated a considerable degree of independence in his relations with me. He follows me less often. He no longer hunkers beside my lean-to at all. Does a made structure remind him of the pagoda to which he led me and for whose discovery to an outsider he was publicly humiliated? I

find this new arrangement a felicitous one, however. A little privacy is good for the soul.

Day 85: The note on yesterday's supply bundle: "Send up a flare tomorrow night if you wish to remain in the Wild. Eisen is seriously considering hauling you out of there. Only a flare will save you. My personal suggestion, sir, is that you just sit tight and wait for us. Your good friend and subordinate, Ben." I've just sent up two goddamn flares. Day 85 will go down in cultural-xenological history as Egan Chaney's personal Fourth of July.

Day 98: I'm holding my own again. I've survived an entire month without venturing away from the assembly ground. Most of my time has been devoted to noting the individual differences among the Asadi. Since their behavior, for the most part, manifests a bewildering uniformity, I've turned to the observation of their physical characteristics. Even in this area, though, most differences are more apparent than real; beyond the principles of sex and the quality of the mane (length, color, thickness, and so on), I've found few useful discriminators. Size has some importance, certainly—but no matter how tall the Asadi, his or her body usually conforms to an ectomorphic configuration.

The ability of the eyes to flash through the spectrum is another discriminator. Of sorts. The only Asadi who don't possess this £ibility in a complete degree are the old chieftain and The Bachelor.

Still, I can recognize on sight several Asadi other than these prominent two. I've tried to give descriptive names to these recognizable individuals. The smallest adult male in the clearing I call Tumbull because his stature puts me in mind of Colin Tumbull's account of the pygmies of the Ituri and of my own work among that admirable people, now gone and unrecoverable. . . . A nervous fellow with active hands I call Benjy, after Benedict. . . . The old chieftain continues to exert a powerful influence

on my thinking. His name I derived by simple analogy: Him I call Eisen Zwei.

The Bachelor now seems intent on retaining his anonymity. His mane has grown very little since the shaving. I would almost swear he plucks it at night, keeping it short on purpose. These last few days, after ascertaining my whereabouts in the morning and then again before sunset, he's completely avoided me. Good. We're both more comfortable.

Today was another drop day. I didn't go out to retrieve my parcels—too weary. But I've sworn off Placenol, and the psychological lift attendant on this minor victory has made my physical weakness bearable. As I've tapered off the "nonaddictive" drug, the amount of P-nol in each drop has correspondingly decreased. To hell with the base-camp computer. I refuse to let the predictability of my victory detract from its beneficial effects on my mental health.

Tonight I'm going to read Odegaard's official report on the Shamblers of Misery. And then I'm going to sleep. Sleep, sleep, sleep.

Day 106: Eisen Zwei, the old chieftain, came back today! I first saw him enter this clearing ninety days ago. Has a pattern begun to emerge? I can't interpret its periodicity. I don't even know what sort of life span the Asadi have. . . . But to come back to the issue at hand, Eisen Zwei entered the clearing with the huri on his shoulder, sat down, remained perhaps an hour, then stalked back into the Wild. The Asadi, of course, fled from him—motivated, it seemed, more by loathing than fear. . . . How long will I have to wait until ole E.Z. returns?

Day 110: The behavior of the Asadi has undergone a very subtle change, one I can't account for.

For the last two days every member of this insane species has taken great pains to avoid stepping into a rather large area in the center of the clearing. As a result, the Asadi have crowded

themselves into two arbitrary groups at opposite ends of the field. These "teams"—if I may only half facetiously call them that—do not comport themselves in exactly the same way as did the formerly continuous group. Individuals on both sides of the silently agreed-upon no-man's land exude an air of heightened nervousness. They sway. They clutch their arms across their chests. They suffer near epileptic paroxysms as they weave in and out, in and out, among their fellows. I sometimes believe they writhe to the music of an eerie flute played deep in the recesses of the jungle.

Sometimes staring matches take place between individuals on opposite sides of the imaginary chasm. But neither participant puts a foot inside the crucial ring of separation, which is about thirty meters long and almost the entire width of the clearing. Not quite, mind you—because there's a very narrow strip of ground on each sideline through which the two "teams" may exchange members, one member at a time. These exchanges occur infrequently, with a lone Asadi darting nervously out of his own group, down one of these unmarked causeways, and into the "enemy" camp. Do they avoid the center of the clearing because that is where Eisen Zwei once made his bloody offering of flesh? I really don't know.

The Bachelor has reacted to all this by climbing into the branches of a thick-boled tree not ten meters from my lean-to. From dawn to sunset he sits high above his inscrutable people, watching, sleeping, maybe even attempting to assess the general mood. Occasionally he looks in my direction to see what 1 make of these new developments. But I'm only good for a shrug. . . .

Day 112: It continues, this strange bipartite waltz. The dancers have grown even more frantic in their movements. Anxiety pulses in the air like electricity. The Bachelor climbs higher into his tree, wedging himself in place. The nonexistent flute that plays in my head has grown shrill, stingingly shrill, and I cannot guess what the end of this madness must be.

Day 114: Events culminated today in a series of bizarre developments that pose me a conundrum of the first order. It began early. Eisen Zwei came into the clearing an hour after the arrival of the Asadi. He bore on his back the carcass of a dressed-out animal. His huri, though upright on his shoulder, looked like the work of an inept taxidermist, awkwardly posed and inanimate. The people in the clearing deserted their two identically restive groups, fleeing to the jungle around the assembly ground.

The Bachelor, half hidden by great lacquered leaves, unsteady in the fragile upper branches, leaned out over the clearing's edge and gazed down with his clay-white eyes. Surrounded now by the curious, loathing-filled Asadi who had crowded into the jungle, I clutched the bole of the tree in which The Bachelor resided, and all of us watched.