Transfigurations Read online

  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 behavio
r 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.

  Eisen Zwei lowered the burden from his back. But now, instead of stepping away and permitting a few of the braver males to advance, he took the huri from his shoulder and set it upon the bleeding lump of meat. The huri's blind head did not move, but even from where I stood I could see its tiny fingers rippling with slow but well-orchestrated malice. Then this hypnotic rippling ceased, and the huri sat there looking bloated and dead, a scabrous plaything.

  Without a farewell of any sort, Eisen Zwei turned and stalked back into the Synesthesia Wild. Foliage clattered from the efforts of several Asadi to get out of his way. No one else moved.

  Denebola, fat and mocking, crossed a small arc of sky and made haloes dance in a hundred inaccessible grottos of the Wild. An hour had passed, and Eisen Zwei returned! He had simply left the huri to guard his first offering. Yes, first. For the old chieftain had come back with still another carcass slung across his bony shoulders. He set it down beside the first. The huri animated itself just long enough to shift its weight and straddle the two contiguous pieces of meat. Then the old Asadi departed again.

  An hour later he returned with a third piece of meat—but this time he entered the clearing from the west, about twenty meters up

  from my lean-to. I realized that he had first entered from the east, then from the south. A pattern is developing, I told myself. Now he'll depart once more and reenter from the north. Many peoples on Earth ascribe mystical characteristics to the four points of the compass, and I was excited by the possibility of drawing a meaningful analogy.

  But Eisen Zwei remained on the assembly floor, shattering my hopes. (In fact, as on my 22nd night in the Wild, he still has not left. Under the copper-green glow of Melchior the old chieftain and his huri squat on the blood-dampened ground waiting for the dawn's first spiderwebbings of light.) Instead, he made one complete circuit around the clearing, walking counterclockwise from his point of entrance. The huri did not move.

  This done, Eisen Zwei rejoined his familiar at midfield.

  Here, the second stage of this new and puzzling ritual commenced. Without unloosening the third carcass from his back, E.Z. bent and picked up the huri and put it on his shoulder. Kneeling, he tied straps through the two pieces of meat over which the huri had kept watch. Next, he began to drag these marbled chunks of brown and red through the dirt. He dragged the first into the southern half of the clearing, unslipped the strap by which he had pulled it, and set the huri down once more as his guardian. This procedure he duplicated in the northern half of the clearing, except that here he necessarily stood guard over the second offering himself. The final carcass he still bore on his back.

  Eisen Zwei stepped away from the second offering. Deep in his throat he made a noise that sounded like a human being trying to fight down a sob. This noise, I suppose I should add, is the first and so far the only example of voiced communication, discounting vague growls and involuntary moans, I've heard among the Asadi. The huri responded to Eisen Zwei's plaintive "sobs"—undoubtedly a signal—by hopping off the object of its guardianship and then scrabbling miserably through the dust toward the old man, its rubbery wings dipping and twisting. (I've almost decided the huri is incapable of flight. Perhaps its wings represent an anatomical

  holdover from an earlier stage of its evolution.) When both E.Z' and his wretched huri had reached their sacred patch of ground at midfield, the old man picked up the beast and let it close its tiny hands over his discolored mane.

  Then the wizened old chieftain extended his arms, tilted his head back, and, staring directly at the sun, made a shuddering inhalation of such piteous depth it seemed either his lungs would burst or his heart break. The clearing echoed with his sob.

  At once, the Asadi poured out of their hiding places onto the assembly ground—not simply the adult males, but individuals of every sex and age. Even now, however, in the midst of this lunging riot, the population of the clearing divided into two groups, each one scrimmaging furiously, intramurally, in its own cramped plot of earth. Manes tossed, and eyes pinwheeled with inarticulate color. The hunger of the Asadi made low sad music over the Wild, like summer thunder.

  Slashing at and sometimes half maiming one another, the Asadi quickly devoured the two carcasses. Like piranhas, I thought.

  Then E.Z., inhaling mightily, moaned again, and the confusion ceased. Every lean grey snout turned toward him. The dying went off to die alone, if any were in fact at the point of death. I saw no one depart, but neither did I see anyone lying helplessly injured in the dirt. The Asadi waited. The Bachelor and I waited.

  The third and final act of today's baroque ritual: Eisen Zwei lowered the last carcass from his back, sat down beside it, and, in full view of his bemused tribespeople, ate the monstrous thing piece by piece. He gave the huri nothing, and the huri, inert but clinging, did not protest this selfish oversight. Meanwhile, terribly slowly, Eisen Zwei ate.

  Eventually I retired to the shade of my lean-to, emerging at fairly frequent intervals to check the goings-on in the clearing. By the second hour the Asadi had begun to move about within their separate
territories. By the third hour these territories had merged, making it impossible to distinguish the two distinct "teams" of previous days. The old pattern of Indifferent Togetherness had

  reasserted itself, except that now the Asadi moved with incredible sluggishness, suspiciously eyeing their chieftain and refusing to encroach on the unmarked circle containing him.

  I noticed that The Bachelor had come down out of his tree, but I was unable to find him in the clearing. All I saw was E.Z., isolated by a revolving barricade of legs, peeling away the last oily strips of meat from his dinner and chewing them with an expression of stupid pensiveness. The huri flapped once or twice, but the old man still did not feed it.

  Finally, sunset.

  The Asadi fled, but Eisen Zwei—no doubt as surfeited as a python that has just unhinged its lower jaw to admit a fawn— slumped in his place and did not move.

  Now a single alien moon dances in the sky, and I'm left with a question whose answer is so stark and self-evident I'm almost afraid to ask it: From what sort of creature did the old man obtain and dress out his ritual offerings? Huddled beneath the most insubstantial of roofs, I am unable to fend off the frightening ramifications of the Asadi way of death. . . .

  Speculations on Cannibalism: An Extemporaneous Essay

  From the unedited in-the-field tapes of Egan Chancy: It's a beautiful day, and if I hold my microphone out—I'm holding it out now, extending it toward the Asadi—all you'll be able to hear is five hundred pairs of feet slogging back and forth through a centimeter of hot dust. There. Hear that? Perhaps you don't. Nevertheless, Eisen, it's a beautiful day.