The Transformer Trilogy by M. A. Foster

Author:M. A. Foster
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: DAW
Published: 2010-03-01T05:00:00+00:00

Kham thought that his appearance always convinced the women he met that he would be violent, stormy, tempestuous. For some, who seemed to expect this most, he allowed himself to be. But with others, who would allow him to be himself, he was softer, gentler, more feminine. He let Arunda create the situation, let her manifest what was deepest in her. They had both been without for a long time, they both had needs. This was no deep striking of the thunderbolt, but a truce, a sharing, a treaty. It was not really what they wanted, either of them, but it was good for a while.

Now they lay side by side in the cold dark, wrapped up in the rough homespun blankets of Tartary, hearing the wind moan and fret outside, angry at finding this stony obstruction in the midst of this empty land of boundless air and spaces.

She said softly, “In the old days, I never saw much of you; when I did, you never looked at me the way you did at others.”

He: “You were too important. Not Glist, or whoever had been before him. Just a figurehead. You did the summations, the real work. No disrespect—to the contrary.”

“I know. I always spent the nights with real Lisaks. None of the mission people.”

“That’s why they always thought you cold-blooded.”

“There were many of us who did it that way. It was dangerous for associates to have affairs. Aril, who was always carrying on with our own people, she was the first one pulled in when the trouble started, and her links with others ... we knew it would come that way. And you?”

“Much the same. I was terrified of it, though. I always feared that I’d become entangled with some Lisak girl ... and I’d want to give her everything. Take her offworld, the whole thing. Doubtless she’d have thought it worse than leprosy: ‘I gave you diamonds, you gave me disease.’ Returning to a universe of flux and change, inbred for generations to hate it.”

She: “They were less like that in Clisp, in Marula.”

“True about Clisp, although not as much as you might think. Remember that province is the one that retained a royal family more or less covertly—the very epitome of conservatism. As for Marula, that was only surface. They were deeply even more extreme than the rest. You could never trust anyone in Marula, and one never forgot it, either.”

Arunda sighed. “That wasn’t such a bad world.”

“True. I miss it already. Things seem less clear, now. I don’t like this business at all. I’ve done my duty, very well, but it’s not like before. The lightness is gone out of it.”

“I, too. Well-said. The lightness is gone. But what can we do?”

“I considered vanishing back into Lisagor. The Morphodite may be worth all that trouble, but I’m not. I could disappear. So could you.”

“Is this a proposal?”

“No. An alternative. We can run.”

She: “Not very far. And you only saw them at the end, when they had already made up their minds.

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