The Silkie Read online

  Cemp, in the C-Silkie stage entirely a creature of space, settled awkwardly on the deck. The special bone structures that had once been legs were sensitive to molecular activity within solid masses; therefore, it was through energy interchanges within the bone itself that he felt himself touch the metal.

  In a sense, then, he stood there. But he balanced himself with energy flows and not with muscular contractions and expansions. There were no muscles. It was with magnetic force that he attached himself to the deck and with internal control that he moved, one after the other, the virtually solid blocks of highly differentiated bone.

  He walked forward like a two-legged being, feeling the stretch of the elasticised bone of his legs. Walking was an intricate procedure for him. It meant softening the tough bone each time, then rehardening it. Although he had learned long ago how to walk, still he was slow. He who could streak through space at fifty G's acceleration walked on the deck of the V liner at a mile an hour and was happy that he could show a semblance of movement in such an environment.

  He walked to where the V's stood, pausing a few feet from the nearest chunky figure.

  At first look, a V seemed to be a slightly smaller Silkie, but Cemp knew that these bitter creatures were Variants — V for Variant. It was always difficult to determine which type of V one was looking at The differences were internal and not readily detectable. So he had his first purpose — to establish the identity of the V's on this ship.

  To communicate his message, he utilised that function of his brain which, before it was understood, had been labeled telepathy.

  There was a pause, and then a V who had stood well back in the group replied, with the same communication method, 'We have a reason, sir, for not identifying ourselves. And so we ask you to please bear with us until you understand our problems.'

  'Secrecy is illegal,' Cemp replied curtly.

  The answer was surprisingly free of the usual V hostility. 'We are not trying to be difficult. My name is Ralden, and we want you to see something.'

  'What?'

  'A boy, now nine years old. He's the V child of a Silkie and a breather, and he recently showed extreme variant qualities. We want permission to destroy him.'

  'Oh!' said Cemp. He was instantly disturbed. He had a fleeting awareness that his son, from his own first mating period, would now be nine.

  Relationship, of course, didn't matter. Silkies never saw their children, and his training required him to put all Silkie offspring on the same footing. But in the uneasy peace that reigned among the ordinary humans, the Special People, and the two surviving classes of Silkies, one of the nightmares was that a high-ability V would show up someday in the unstable world of Variants.

  The fear had proved unfounded. From time to time, Silkies who boarded the V ships learned that some promising boy had been executed by the V's themselves. Far from welcoming a superior child, the V's seemed to fear that if allowed to be come full-grown he would be a natural leader and would threaten their freedom.

  The extermination of promising boys now required the permission of a Silkie, which explained the secrecy. If they failed to obtain permission, they might still kill the youngster, trusting that the murder ship would never be identified.

  'Is that the reason?' Cemp demanded.

  It was.

  Cemp hesitated. He sensed within himself the entire remarkable complex of sensations that meant that he was about to change. This was no time for him to spend a day or so aboard a V ship.

  Yet if he didn't stay, it would be tantamount to granting permission for the execution, sight unseen. And that, he realised, could not be permitted.

  'You have done well,' he communicated gravely. 'I shall come aboard.'

  The entire group of V's moved along with him to the lock, huddling together as the great steel door rolled shut behind them, closing them away from the vacuum of space. The water came in silently. Cemp could see it exploding into gas as it poured into the utter emptiness of the lock. But presently; as the narrow space filled up, it began to hold its liquid form, and it roiled and rushed around the extremities of the beings in the little group.

  The feel of it was exquisitely pleasurable. Cemp's bones tried to soften automatically, and he had to fight to hold them hard. But when the water closed over the upper part of his body, Cemp let the living barrier that made up his outer skin grow soft. Because the feel of the water excited him, now that the change was so near, he had to exercise a conscious restraint. He wanted to suck the warm, delightful liquid with visible enjoyment through the gills that were now being exposed, but it seemed to him that such a display of exuberance might give away his condition to the more experienced V's.

  Around him, the V's were going through the transformation from their space form to their normal gill state. The inner lock opened, and the entire group swam through with casual ease. Behind them, the inner lock door slid shut, and they were inside the ship itself or, rather in the first of the many big tanks that made up the interior.

  Cemp, using his vision now, looked around for identifying objects. But it was the usual dim watery world with transplanted sea life. Seaweed swayed in the strong currents that, Cemp knew, were kept in motion by a powerful pumping system. He could feel the surge of the water at each impulse from the pumps. As always, he began to brace himself for that surge, accepting it, letting it become one of the rhythms of his life.

  * * *

  II

  CEMP HAD no problems in this environment. Water was a natural element for him, and in the transformation from Silkie to human fish he had lost only a few of his Silkie abilities. The entire Silkie inner world of innumerable sensations remained. There were nerve centers that, both separately and in combination, tuned in on different energy flows. In early days, they would have been called senses. But instead of the five to which, for many centuries, human beings had limited their awareness, the Silkie could record 184 different kinds of sense impressions over a wide range of intensity.

  The result was an immense amount of internal 'noise' as stimulation poured incessantly in upon him. From his earliest days, control of what his sense receptors recorded had been the principal objective of his training and education.

  The water flowed rhythmically through his gills as Cemp swam with the others through the watery fairyland of a warm tropical sea. As he looked ahead, he saw that the water universe was changing because of their approach. The coral was a new, creamier color. Ten thousand sea worms had withdrawn their bright heads into their tiny holes. Presently, as the group passed, they began to come out again. The coral turned orange, then purple and orange, then other shades of colors and combinations. And all this was but one tiny segment of the submarine landscape.

  A dozen fish in blues and greens and purples darted up the canyon. Their wild beauty was appealing. They were an old life form, Nature-evolved, untouched by the magic of the scientific knowledge that had finally solved so many of the mysteries of life. Cemp reached with webbed fingers for a fish that darted close to him. It whirled away in a flurry of tiny water currents. Cemp grinned happily, and the warm water washed into his open mouth — so far had he softened.

  He was already smaller. There had been a natural shrinkage from the tense, bony Silkie body. The newly forming muscles were contracted, and the now internalised bone structure was down to a length of seven feet from its space maximum of ten.

  Of the thirty-nine V's who had come out to help persuade Cemp to board the ship, thirty-one, he learned by inquiry, were among the common variant types. The easiest state for them to be in was the fish condition in which they lived. They could be humans for brief periods, and they could be Silkies for periods that varied with these particular persons from a few hours to a week or so. All thirty-nine had some control of energy in limited amounts. Of the remaining eight, three were capable of controlling very considerable energy, one could put up barriers to energy, and four could be breathers for extended periods of time.

  They were all intelligen
t beings, as such things were judged. But Cemp, who could detect on one or the other of his numerous receptor systems subtle body odors and temperatures in water and out and could read meaning into the set of bone and muscle, sensed from each of these a strong emotional mixture of discontent, anger, petulance, and something even more intense — hatred. As he nearly always did with V's, Cemp swam close to the nearest. Then, using a particularly resistant magnetic force line as a carrier — it held its message undistorted for only a few feet — he superimposed the question 'What's your secret?'

  The V was momentarily startled. The reflex that was triggered into picking up the message was so on the ready that it modulated the answer on to a similar force line, and Cemp had the secret.

  Cemp grinned at the effectiveness of his stratagem, pleased that he could now force a conversation. He communicated. 'No one threatens V's individually or collectively. So why do you hate?'

  'I feel threatened!' was the sullen reply.

  Since I know you have a wife — from your secret — do you also have children?'

  'Yes.'

  'Work?'

  'Yes.'

  'News, drama, TV?'

  'Yes.'

  'Sport?'

  'I watch it. I don't participate.'

  They were passing through an underwater jungle. Huge waving fronds, coral piled high, an octopus peering at them from the shadows of a cave, an eel darting away, and fish by the dozen. It was still the wild part of the ship, where the conditions of a tropical Earth ocean were duplicated. To Cemp, who had been nearly a month in space without a break, merely swimming here seemed like great sport indeed.

  But all he said was, 'Well, friend, that's all there is for any one. A quiet, enjoyable existence is the most that life has to offer anyone. If you're envying me my police duties, don't! I'm inured to it, but I have a mating period only every nine and a half years. Would you care for that?'

  The implication in his statement, that Silkies could engage in sexual activity only at intervals of nine years or so, was not true. But it was a myth that Silkies and their closest human allies, the Special People, had found it worthwhile to foster. Normal human beings particularly seemed to find great satisfaction in what they conceived to be a major defect in the otherwise enviable Silkie.

  After Cemp completed his reassuring communication, the dark emotion that had been radiating from the V took on added hostility. 'You're treating me like a child,' he said in a grim manner. 'I know something of the logic of levels. So don't give me any of these sophistries.'

  'It's still mostly speculation,' Cemp answered gently. He added, 'Don't worry, I won't tell your wife that you're unfaithful to her.'

  'Damn you!' said the V, and swam off.

  Cemp turned to another of his companions and had a very similar discussion with him. This one's secret was that he had twice in the past year fallen asleep while on duty at one of the locks connecting the big ship with outer space.

  The third person he addressed was a female. Her secret, surprisingly, was that she thought herself insane. As soon as she realised that her thought had come through to him, the substance of her communication became hysterical'.

  She was a graceful being, one of the breathers — but completely unnerved now. 'Don't tell them!' she telepathed in terror. 'They'll kill me.'

  Before Cemp could more than consider what an unexpected ally he had found for himself, let alone decide what made her feel she was insane, the female communicated frantically, 'They're going to lure you into one of the shark tanks!' Her almost human face contorted as she realised what she had revealed.

  Cemp asked quickly, 'What is their overall purpose?'

  'I don't know. But it's not what they said.... Oh please!' She was threshing in the water now, physically disorganised. In a moment it would be noticed.

  Cemp said hastily, 'Don't worry — I'll help you. You have my word.'

  Her name, he discovered, was Mensa. She said she was very beautiful in her breather form.

  Cemp had already decided that since she might be useful, he would have to let himself be drawn into the shark tank.

  It was not obvious when it happened. One of the V's who was capable of energy output swam up beside him. Simultaneously but casually the others fell back.

  'This way,' said his guide.

  Cemp followed. But it was several moments before he realised that he and his guide were on one side of a transparent wall and the rest of the group was on the other.

  He looked around for his companion. The V had dived down and was sliding into a cavern between two rock formations.

  Abruptly, the water around Cemp was plunged into pitch darkness.

  He grew aware that the V's were hovering beyond the transparent walls. Cemp saw movement in the swaying weeds — shadows, shapes, the glint of an eye, the play of light on a grayish body... He switched to another level of perception, based on shadow pictures, and grew alert for battle.

  In his fish stage, Cemp could normally fight like a superelectric eel — except that his energy discharge was a beam requiring no actual contact. The beam had the bright flash of chain lightning and was strong enough to kill a dozen sea monsters. It was formed outside his body, a confluence of two streams of oppositely charged particles.

  But this was not a normal time. The change in him was too imminent. Any fight with a denizen of this sea in space would have to be with logic of levels, not with energy. He dared not waste any of his precious store of energy.

  Even as he made the decision, a shark swam lazily out of the jungle of waving fronds and just as lazily, or so it seemed, came toward him turned on its side, and mouth open, teeth showing, slashed at him with its enormous jaws.

  Cemp impressed a pattern on an energy wave that was passing through his brain toward the beast It was a pattern that stimulated an extremely primitive mechanism in the shark — the mechanism by which pictures were created in the brain.

  The shark had no defense against controlled over-stimulation of its picture-making ability. In a flash it visualised its teeth closing on its victim and imagined a bloody struggle, followed by a feast. And then, sated, stomach full, it imagined itself swimming back into the shadows, into the underwater forest in this tiny segment of a huge spaceship cruiser near Jupiter.

  As the over-stimulation continued, the shark's pictures ceased to connect with body movements. It drifted forward and finally bumped, unnoticing, into a coral embankment. There it hung, dreaming that it was in motion. It was being attacked through a logic related to its structure, on a level that bypassed its gigantic attack equipment.

  Levels of logic. Long ago now, men had titillated themselves by opening up the older parts of the human brain where suggested pictures and sounds were as real as actual ones. It was the best level of logic, not human at all. For an animal like a shark, reality was an on-off phenomenon, a series of mechanical conditionings. Now stimulation; now none. Movement always, restless motion always — the endless need for more oxygen than was available in any one location.

  Caught as it was in a suggested world of fantasy, the motionless shark body grew numb from insufficient oxygen and began to lose consciousness. Before it could really do so, Cemp communicated to the watchers, 'Do you want me to kill this game fish?'

  Silently, the beings beyond the transparent wall indicated where he could escape from the shark tank.

  Cemp gave the monster control of itself again. But he knew it would be twenty or more minutes before the shock could wear off.

  As he emerged from the shark tank a few minutes later and rejoined the V's, Cemp realised at once that their mood had changed. They were derisive of him. It was puzzling that they had adopted this attitude, for as far as they knew they were completely at his mercy.

  Someone in this group must know Cemp's true condition. So...

  He saw that they were now in a tank of water so deep that the bottom was not visible. Small schools of brightly colored fish skittered by in the green depths, and the water seem
ed slightly colder, more bracing; still delightful but no longer tropical. Cemp swam over to one of the V's who was capable of putting out energy. As before, he asked, 'What's your secret?'

  The male V's name was Gell, and his secret was that he had several times used his energy to kill rivals for the favors of certain females. He was instantly terrified that his murderers would be found out. But he had no information except that the administrative officer of the ship, Riber, had sent them to meet Cemp. The name was important information.

  But even more vital was Cemp's disturbing intuition that this task of duty on which he was embarked was much more important than the evidence had so far established. He divined that the shark attack was a test. But a test for what?

  * * *

  III

  AHEAD, SUDDENLY, Cemp could see the city.

  The water at this point was cystal clear. Here were none of those millions of impurities which so often rendered the oceans of Earth murky. Through that liquid, almost as transparent as glass, the city spread before him.

  Domed buildings, duplicates of the domed undersea cities on Earth, where water pressure made the shape necessary. Here, with only artificial gravity, water was held by the metal walls and had only what weight the ship's officers elected to give it. Buildings could be any reasonable size, delicately molded and even misshapen. They could be beautiful for their own sake and were not limited to the sometimes severe beauty of utility.

  The building to which Cemp was taken was a soaring dome with minarets. He was guided to a lock, where only two of the breathers, Mensa and a male named Grig, stayed with him.

  The water level began to drop, and air hissed in. Cemp transformed quickly into his human shape and stepped out of the airlock into the corridor of a modern air-conditioned building. All three were in the nude.

  The man said to the woman, 'Take him to your apartment. Give him the clothes. As soon as I call, bring him to Apartment One upstairs.'

  Grig was walking off, when Cemp stopped him. 'Where did you get that information?' he demanded.