Chapter Four
In the ceremony of the Seedhouse, a Dreen’s need for dominant mass is made basic to his nature and this is reinforced whenever he uses his idmage powers. Shapeshifting into reduced mass is seen by a Dreen’s subconscious as a threat to his existence. But whether he shapeshifts smaller or larger, he must return quickly to his body’s remembered mass. The longer he remains offsize the more difficult it is to resume Dreen normalcy.
—“The Dreen Subconscious,” a Zone Patrol report
On the trillion and eighty-first cycle of Habiba’s reign, afternoon of the second day in the Dreenor week (varying from seven to seventeen days depending on the season), Habiba made a mental note that this was officially New Story Day.
Sunlight, tinted green by the visuplex of her witch’s-cap cupola atop the Supreme Cone, felt warm to her but did not ease the chill in her seedglands. Her towering cone, riding on a floating island at the center of an ancient sea, put her high above the walls of an extinct volcano. From this vantage, Habiba now exercised her secret and exclusive power to see to the limits of Dreenor’s horizon and deep into the sea. To the west across the distant Flats, she identified Mugly the Elder’s yellow cap and the green smocks of his aides. They stood beside a low building.
A shallow dent in the soil nearby revealed where the stolen Excursion Ship had been.
It’s gone, Habiba thought. It’s really gone! Jongleur was right to bring me the full story before Mugly comes ranting in here.
Habiba wore no garment, permitting the taxables who might chance upon her to be reassured by sight of the great brown-skinned mother-body in its cupola greenhouse. The green silk of her hair, sprouting like a wild garden atop her mounded head, lay draped over her ears in a calculated tangle. Her large horn snout stood out prominently between her bulbous brown eyes. Her mouth, its dendritic pulpers withdrawn, formed a shocked oval.
Is this how it must end? she asked herself.
Far down below her pinnacle, visible in a sweeping panorama from the top of the Control Cone, ancestral homes of her people lay like scattered childhood toys—mud-colored copies of her dominant abode.
She thought them rather pitiful in their immobility.
A swirl of pumice dust drifted around the cone but did not settle on the sea that filled the extinct volcano below her. The clear water of the sea glistened with reflected sunlight.
Mugly the Elder and aides could not see her in the distant cone but they stirred and glanced toward her, then looked away.
Mugly will think I incited the child to steal the ship, Habiba thought. He will not come right out and accuse me but he will think of it. Poor Mugly. He believes his plans to erase Earth are such a secret.
Despite the great distance, she identified his seven companions by their distinctive movements. Two of them attracted her special attention.
Deni-Ra and Prosik are in for a hard time. I will have to make some reassuring gesture in their tax assessments. Mugly goes too far sometimes.
Mugly glared across the Flat in the direction of the eroded volcano. The shiny green surface of Habiba’s cone poked above the rim. He turned back to look at Deni-Ra, a young adult female of low parentage. Short and plump with deep creases beneath her eyes, Deni-Ra displayed only limited Storyteller signs. She crouched on all four legs while holding an ear flap open with an extruded hand, the better to hear Mugly’s words.
“You’re sure the ship was operational?” he demanded.
“With a Storyteller captain such as yourself at the controls, Patricia was fully operational,” Deni-Ra said.
“I intended to be that captain,” Mugly growled.
He twisted his floppy yellow cap, badge of his membership in the Elite Storytellers, to a firmer position on his head. The tiny silver pin on the cap, symbol of his rank as third in command behind Habiba and Jongleur, jabbed into a finger and he suppressed a cry of outrage.
“Which of you was on duty when my ship was stolen?” Mugly demanded. He swept his glowering gaze across the seven Dreens who stood in a semicircle around him.
Six sets of eyes twitched in the direction of Prosik, a tall, thick-eared Dreen, but Mugly pretended not to notice.
So it was that stupid Prosik!
Mugly fixed his gaze on Luhan, youngest of the group and second-brightest of the seven behind Deni-Ra despite a deformed but still extrudable right arm.
Or perhaps he is bright to compensate for the deformity.
Luhan remained calm. So Luhan was not connected with this disaster.
Mugly shifted attention to Alade, so neatly turned out in forest green, the big pockets of his smock empty as usual and pressed flat to show the sleek lines of his ideal Dreen form. A conformist who followed orders with lackluster consistency, always taking into account a way to avoid blame, Alade would be sure to have an impenetrable excuse for his part in this affair. He displayed a certain tension, though.
Ah, yes. Alade was one who recommended Prosik.
Mugly turned and stared directly at Prosik.
Barely awake and leaning his weight on his two left feet, Prosik fought to stay alert. His eyelids fluttered.
Bazeel hangover! And Prosik doubtless is one of those who calls me “Mugly the Characterless.”
Mugly waited, letting tensions build. The aides stared at him nervously. Mugly did not deceive himself about what they saw. There were few creases, supposedly marks of storytelling ability, in his light brown face.
I’m a great Storyteller despite my lack of character lines!
No false pride inflated Mugly’s recognition that he could captivate large audiences with charm and wit.
I’m every bit as good as Jongleur!
But these aides were more immediately familiar with his dark side: Mugly’s fiery temper and ability to deceive. He was a person deeply frustrated by Dreens who promoted the much-touted peaceful nature of their kind.
“Prosik!” Mugly barked. “Look at you! Is this any way for my chief monitor to appear? What’s the matter with you?”
Prosik’s eyes became bird-alert, then dull.
“Speak up, Prosik!”
“I ahhh … I’m …”
“Bazeel, isn’t it?”
Prosik lowered his gaze. Confession enough. But the chief monitor outraged Mugly even more by what he said next.
“I have already told the full story to Jongleur.”
He dared go over my head! He has a sneaky intelligence.
“What did you tell Jongleur?”
Prosik stared along the bridge of his horn-tool nose at the ground. “Ryll, Jongleur’s son, has been raising bazeel and providing it for me. The boy obviously did it to incapacitate me and permit him to steal the ship.”
“You see?” Mugly swept his gaze across the other aides. “You, who share our secret that Earthers capture and imprison Dreens, must now have no doubts about the peril from that deadly planet!”
They knew what he meant. Bazeel, a terrible substance with no antidote, the only drug known to alter Dreen behavior, had originated on Earth. More and more insidious things were appearing from that place once considered the product of a Great Story—Wemply the Voyager’s supreme creation.
But the bazeel!
Earthers, totally unaffected by it, spiced their food with bazeel. Despite severe warnings, Dreens persisted in bringing back large quantities of bazeel from Earth. Clandestine bazeel gardens had been found even on Dreenor.
“I want the full story,” Mugly said.
They listened quietly while Prosik recounted his sorry tale. Prosik spoke loudly so Mugly would not be forced to lift an earflap, a thing certain to increase the Elder’s irritation.
“You frequently let him board Patricia?”
“He was a gifted student and Jongleur’s son. I thought he was just playing. He said his classes bored him.”
“A gifted student, indeed! He undoubtedly figured out the controls in short order.”
“He gave me his solemn promise he wouldn’t touch the controls without an adult there to guide him.”
“A solemn promise! I’m sure that makes this whole affair acceptable.”
“I assumed the son of Jongleur would act with honor.”
“Honor? From the family of Jongleur? But is he not one of those who oppose erasure of Earth?”
“Habiba herself opposes it,” Prosik ventured.
“But I do not! Tell me, Prosik, to whom do you owe your Eminence? You owe it to me! Did you not consider the possibility that Ryll might be his father’s agent sent to sabotage me?”
Prosik shifted from left feet to right feet and back. “But how could they have known the ship’s purpose?”
“Bazeel addled your brain!” Mugly accused. “They chose the perfect attack time—when the ship was ready to go.”
“It is rumored that Ryll does not get along with his father,” Deni-Ra said. “The boy is known to have objected to the school for gifted children.”
“Are you suggesting this was a schoolboy’s lark?”
“It must be considered,” she said.
She’s right but that doesn’t help matters. Damn them! My ship could go nowhere but Earth. Erasure is another matter. I am the only one who knows the full sequence. I should have made the erasure automatic. Why didn’t I plan for this contingency?
Mugly was forced to be honest with himself.
I wanted personal credit for eliminating this terrible danger, that’s why! By the blasted-off hind foot of an untaxable demon! My ego got in my way.
“It’s going to rain,” Luhan said.
Mugly looked up at the suddenly cloudy sky. This would be the afternoon we ordered rain!
“We should go inside,” Deni-Ra said. She looked pointedly in the direction of the Supreme Cone, reflecting Mugly’s suspicion that Habiba could watch them wherever they were.
Mugly agreed and, once in the guard station, took the only stool to sit and think while the others stood in obedient silence.
What now? Other than secrecy, what resources do I have?
Mugly believed he concealed his thoughts during the Supreme Tax Collector’s weekly Thoughtcons. It was then that Habiba absorbed stories from people Mugly invited to her Sharing. Mugly’s aides certainly suspected his ability but knew better than to inquire. He had stumbled onto the method: idmaged disconnection of those neurons carrying conspiratorial memories—a piecemeal alteration Dreens considered impossible. It was timed to last a day and left him feeling hazy, wishing Dreens had doctors.
Mugly knew his concealment technique was dangerous.
Do I create a different self by my disconnections?
She gives no sign she suspects me.
Habiba was always more interested in stories of lesser Dreens—the brightest Junior Storytellers, government tax collectors and the like. She displayed obvious fascination in these stories that were the currency of Dreenor. And along with stories went every other morsel of data in the minds of the ones Mugly invited to a Thoughtcon.
She thinks she knows everything and that’s supposed to keep us honest. But the good of our universe requires me to carry out my conspiracy.
Mugly did not know if he were the only Dreen capable of hiding his thoughts and he dared not discuss it with anyone, not even with those who served him.
If two people know a thing, it is no longer a secret
That was one valuable concept acquired from Earth.
I do this for the love of Habiba, he told himself.
He loved Habiba, as did all Dreens, but disagreed fiercely with her claim that nonviolence was intrinsic to Dreen nature.
Mugly saw something he called “the larger picture.” In it lay a total catastrophe destroying all Dreens. Dreenor might be a planet of tranquility and restoration for weary Storytellers home from their creative travels but that universe out there contained wild pockets of supreme peril.
I care not for other matters, but Earth must be destroyed!
This belief he buried in his deepest thoughts, ready for disconnection at the slightest sign of prying. Except on Thoughtcon days, Mugly considered this several times each day.
As long as I control invitations to Thoughtcons, Habiba will continue to believe I have only pure thoughts, and my plea for erasure of Earth is no more than an intellectual thing without plans to carry it out. And I will never permit her to share with those who serve me.
Still, Mugly worried. If only he had been able to design and idmage Patricia by himself! The size and complexity of the task had forced him to enlist these aides, all of them young and possessed of comparatively low storytelling skills. They were, however, energetic idmagers when he guided them. Most vital, they agreed with him that the destruction of Earth was for the good of Dreen posterity.
But only I know all eight parts to the puzzle of Patricia.
And Patricia was needed because the long-ago Storyteller who had idmaged Earth had set in motion a vehicle of destruction.
Strange that Wemply the Voyager’s idmage of Earth has created such a cult of imitations. Why is it so popular? The death and destruction are easy to see. Earthers are sick with a fascination for weapons and attacks on other life forms. I’m sure they would attack even us if they learned about us.
Mugly sighed. What could he suggest to his aides?
“Perhaps Ryll hoped to be a hero,” Deni-Ra said. “Is it possible he learned of Patricia’s purpose? He might have thought he would save our universe and return triumphant.”
“There’s no way he could have learned,” Prosik said.
“Yes,” Mugly agreed. “He most likely would not have gone if he had discovered the secret, because that also would have told him the operator of the ship is likely to die in the erasure.”
“Not to mention the deaths of the Dreen prisoners the Earther Zone Patrol is holding,” Luhan said.
“Is there some way this could be turned to our political advantage?” Prosik asked. “Could Habiba be made to suspect Jongleur sent his son to steal your ship?”
Mugly looked at Prosik with new interest. Despite the bazeel addiction, Prosik showed sparks of real intelligence.
“Thoughtcons will tell her Jongleur had no part in it,” Deni-Ra said.
Yes, always the Thoughtcons to complicate conspiracy.
“Let me go after Ryll and activate the erasure ship,” Prosik said. “Give me the chance to redeem myself.”
Mugly listened to the rain on the guard station roof for a moment, thinking, What if Jongleur, too, can hide his thoughts?
“You will be tempted by bazeel on Earth,” Mugly said.
“I swear I will not touch it! Believe me.”
“I thought of following him myself,” Mugly said. “But I hold knowledge valuable to the Earthers and if I were captured …”
“And we need you at the Thoughtcons,” Deni-Ra said.
“Prosik,” Mugly said, “how do we know we can trust you?”
“I will dedicate myself.”
Again, Mugly listened to the rain on the roof. The tempo was subsiding. He studied the penitent expression of Prosik’s face. Yes, Prosik was most easily spared.
“Very well. I will share the secrets of activating Patricia and you will go. Take my personal Excursion Ship, the Kalak-III. But flee rather than be captured!”
“What will you tell Habiba?” Luhan asked.
Trust Luhan to ask the most worrisome question!
“I will tell her a truth—that my aides took it on themselves to prepare a ship in case Habiba agreed to erase Earth. But now, Jongleur’s son, Ryll, has stolen the ship and that may be disastrous.”