“I had thought,” she began with a brooding stare into the darkness of the Blot, “that we would take the shape of those two creatures you dispatched down there. I can manage the duplicate creature if you can manage the shape of the Fatman.”
I considered it. When we had destroyed Fatman, we had not much damaged the Fatwagon, and I thought I could figure out how to run it. I could not imagine taking the shape of the Dupies, however, and I asked Mavin how she would manage that.
“I will keep myself low, in the belly, I should think, with bony plates around my brain. The heads of the creature will have to be managed like puppets. With practice, I should be able to make both of them speak at once, though that may not be necessary.” Still she brooded, finally swearing a horrible oath and stepping from her perch. “I don’t like it. It is like taking a shape of shame. The Guild of Midwives has much to answer for.’’
“Not their fault,” I said. “The Dupies said they had been ‘saved from the horrible Midwives.’ I did not understand what they meant at the time.”
She shook her head. “It has to do with the oaths the Midwives take, Peter. With their religion, if you will. I find myself more in sympathy with it, the older I grow.” She saw my puzzled look and went on. “Do you think you have a—a soul?”
Windlow, Silkhands, Yarrel and I had discussed this at Windlow’s tower in the southlands, in a recent time which seemed very long ago. It was old Windlow who had pointed out that each of us was conscious of being two persons, one which did and one which observed the doing. He had told us it was this which made mankind different from the animals we knew. So, I considered Mavin’s question and said, “I have more, perhaps. than a fustigar. Or so Windlow thought.”
“The Midwives believe in the soul. However, they do not believe that it is inborn in mankind. They believe it comes partly with the learning of language (which mankind alone of the animals seems to have) and partly from our fellowmen, a gift of human society to each child. Do you think that sensible?”
“I’m not sure I follow,” I said. “You mean, if I had been born among fustigars, and reared by fustigars, learning no language, I would be more fustigar than human?”
“Something like that. But more. The Midwives believe that only those who perceive their own humanity and perceive that others have the same become ensouled. Some who look like men can never believe that others are like themselves. They do not believe that others are real. One such was Mandor.”
I nodded. I believed her. Mandor had seen the whole world as his fingernail, to be cut at will and the parings thrown away.
“Huld, too,” she went on. “Though he talks a mockery of manners. The soulless ones can be well-mannered, as a beast may be well-mannered. Or so say the midwives who have studied the matter.”
“What has this to do with Dupey?”
“Ah.” She came to herself with a start. “The Midwives take an oath, very solemn and binding, that they will look into the future of each child born, and if they do not see that one gaining a soul, then they do not let it live. It is the Talent of the Midwives to see the future in that way, more narrowly than do Seers, and more reliably. It is called the Mercy-gift, the gift the Midwife gives the child, to look into the future and find there that it will have gained a soul.”
“How explain Mandor, then, or Huld?”
“The great Houses want no Midwife at their childbeds. No. They care nothing for ‘souls.’ They care only for manners, and this they can train into any if they be but strict enough. However, I do not think the Dupey was the offshoot of any great House. More likely he was scavenged from the Midwives, or born in some House where Midwives did not go.” This last was said with a hesitating fall, as thought she knew where that might have been. The talk was depressing me, but it had raised a question I had to ask. “And did the Midwives deliver me, Mother?”
She smiled such a smile, a dawning on her face. “Oh, they did, Peter. And you have had all the gifts we could give you, Mertyn and I. No fear. You are no Mandor. Nor any Dupey. If men all were better, perhaps even a Dupey could be given a soul, but it would take holy men and women to do it. No simple mother could do it. The horror would be too great, and the pain of the child too monstrous to bear. How did he live? And why? While it is true that monstrous things are sometimes born, it takes something more monstrous, evil, and prideful yet to keep them alive.”
“And the Fatman?” I asked. “Legless, he was, with no lower body at all. Had he been born that way, he would have died unless someone intervened. Why? How and why? Well, perhaps Windlow can tell us, for he is very wise.”
“If we can find him. If we can free him. If he yet lives. Well, we will not do it standing here. It is time to go.”
We stayed only long enough to set a boulder before Mavin’s cave. There were things inside which she treasured. We went empty-handed, clad only in our fur until we reached the puddled shadows of the Blot. There clouds of flies rose from the remnants of Dupey and Fatman. There we took those shapes and moved about in them, trying them. They were hateful. They were wrong. There was no logic or kindness in those shapes, and I began to understand what Mavin had tried to say about souls. One could not exist in those shapes without becoming compressed, warped, envenomed. There was pain intrinsic to the shape, and I began to think what it would be like to live with that pain forever. I began to modify the shape to shut the pain away, and I heard Mavin panting.
“I cannot inhabit it,” she said. “I must carry it upon me like a rigging.”
“Perhaps we should try something else,” I offered.
“No,” she said. “My mistake was in trying to take the identity of the creature. We must only appear to be these creatures. We must not be these things or we will become monstrously changed.”
So, we were warned, and I was glad for the time spent in moving and trying that body. It took time, but at last we were able to make an appearance not unlike what had been before while still maintaining our own identities untouched. I was as weary as though I had run twelve leagues.
“Rest,” said Mavin. “Here is food. We will carry some with us, for Gamelords know what will be found within.”
Even in those few moments rest, we found that we shifted away from those shapes. Mavin barked a short laugh.
“Mavin Manyshaped,” she mocked herself. “I do not deserve the name.”
I thought of the shapes I had taken easily, almost without trying. “It is not lack of Talent,” I told her, sure that I was right, feeling it through some internal shrinking as though my spirit shrank from what I was. “The shapes are evil, Mavin. Moreover, they were meant to be evil.”
She did not contradict me, and we went toward the mumble mouth in those evil shapes, building within ourselves certain barriers against becoming what we appeared to be. I do not know how Mavin managed. For myself, I built a kind of shell between me and the image of Fatman, and within that shell dwelt Peter and the Gamesmen of Barish, within and yet no part of that thing. Mavin had evidently observed the Blot for some time, for she knew how to open the mouths by striking them sharply with a stick, crying in the Dupey’s voice, “Open, open, old silly thing. Open and let Dupies come in.”
There were shriekings and clatterings from within, and then the mouth opened to extrude its long metal tongue. Grooved tracks divided it lengthwise, tracks into which the flatcar had fit. The Fatwagon did not fit these, but I managed to straddle them with my own wheels as I followed the Dupey shape up the ramp and into the place beyond. I had expected a tunnel, a place not unlike the catacombs beneath Bannerwell. This place was not what I had expected.