‘You are quite the solipsistic lady.’
‘No, it’s not that. I want to know who the person was who helped me. Who you really were, before I walk back to that cold island on the other side of the Archipelago possibly never to see you again.’
Cayce gazed at her for some time and gestured for her to enter the hab. Hesitantly she shuffled inside. The darkness abated as he lit a lantern, and the soft glow warmed his anxious face.
Everything inside looked carved from the forest, from the floors to the furniture. Pinned up against the walls were detailed diagrams of the human body, in one corner a stack of books leaned over precariously, whilst thick bundles of paper were scattered haphazardly across the floor. A window faced out across the dark forest crown.
He drew curtains across the window to block out the night, and bolted the door shut — suddenly Lan grew fearful.
‘Sit,’ he instructed, and she quickly collapsed into a wooden chair by the desk.
He stood before her, sliding off his white robe. Then he commenced unbuttoning his undershirt.
She froze, said nothing. Is he going to hurt me?
Very slowly he peeled back his shirt and dropped it to the floor in a pool of his clothes.
Lan’s jaw dropped.
Scar tissue blossomed around his deltoid muscles, and between there and his pectorals she could see severe blistering — no, the faint bubbles of suction cups, some even protruding, pushing up through human skin. He had been very grotesquely altered. The colour of his arms was noticeably lighter than around his abdomen — they did not look to be his own.
He watched her watching him and she began to apologize pathetically for her stunned reaction. From her of all people.
‘Now you have seen,’ Cayce whispered dolefully. ‘I… I was once a Ceph. I once swam underwater with them. I understand, to some extent, how you yourself feel. I longed to be human — deep within me I felt such a distance from the sea. I hated the cold depths. I craved light and knowledge, the land and human culture. I left my people, and am shunned by them now, for they do not appreciate the ways of this island. They are brutal and simple people. At a very young age I was made human by the cultists here, and given all the accoutrements of a human being. I became one of them, I learned their languages and their ways and practised until no one could tell me apart from any other. I grew to be who I am now, and it was not easy, but among this society I was welcomed, and that… that open-mindedness and generosity is something I wish to show others.’
He held out wide the arms that were once not his own. ‘So, Lan, I understand your desire for transformation. That is why I helped you.’
*
There was so much more Lan wanted to know, but it was time to leave Ysla.
Morning sunlight filtered into the hab and she listened as Cayce talked to her from the other side of his desk. He was informing Lan of the details of her transformation, how it would affect her, and she readily drank in his words, trusting him instinctively after he had revealed his own secrets to her. She had no doubt that this man understood her, though it did not make what he said any easier to absorb.
‘We’ve been able to give you as much of a functioning female anatomy as we thought we could,’ Cayce said. ‘And of course, we have.. smoothed away masculine contours from your form, especially on your face, and in other ways — with hair and voice. These were simple enough. So firstly, you should be able to experience intercourse as a full woman, but I cannot say how much pleasure you will receive from it.’
‘I never got much anyway,’ she replied, grinning. Besides, for years she had never gone that far because she ran the risk of being discovered.
Cayce ignored her dry humour, stalling over his next sentence. ‘You’ll also still… You will be unable to have children, and.. there’s no way we can encourage natural menstruation.’
Lan suspected as much, though always retained that vague hope of having the option, but now that hope had ultimately died, a small light in her heart went out for ever.
‘Aside from that,’ he continued, ‘and given that gender is a fluid notion — we are not Neanderthals who deal in binary on Ysla — I think you have many good reasons to be happy,’ Cayce concluded. ‘And are you happy with your physical state?’
‘I always felt like a woman anyway, but, you know, it’s so much more meaningful now? This isn’t just about how I look.’ She allowed a contemplative pause, and it was only in this silence that she realized how much more softer her voice had really become. ‘How much of this will remain a secret?’ Lan asked. ‘I wouldn’t want any of this getting out, is all. How many people know of what you’ve done to me?’
‘I understand.’ Cayce peered up. ‘A small network of cultists will be aware, but that is it. Besides, with all that ice around to worry about, who else will care?’
‘I’ll care.’
Cayce folded his arms, hands under his armpits. He gave her a look of deep empathy. ‘Of course.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Lan said. His words were all very pleasant, but wasn’t she still some experiment to them? This was a mutual arrangement, after all. ‘There’s just so much to cope with.’
‘I told you there would be. People come looking for physical changes all the time, but they don’t understand just how connected the body and mind can be.’
‘I understand,’ she replied.
‘You may always have ghosts,’ Cayce warned. ‘Do not think they vanish overnight.’
Before Lan departed she didn’t quite know what to say. Cayce merely stood there, alongside a doorway at the top of the stairwell leading down to where she’d be transported back to the freezing ice-wastes of Jokull. Others from the island had gathered in their multicoloured clothing — faces with which she was distantly familiar. The sun was intense, as it always was here. She gazed behind into the distance to see Villarbor, and its hundreds of hub communities stretching across the many shades of green that comprised the landscape. What a view… She would certainly miss this island, but was honoured to have at least witnessed such exoticism.
Cayce guided her to the steps. ‘The local tribes like to point out to us that for rebirth, first you must choose the path of death. I would recommend that it is an opportunity to let go of the person you were.’
‘I will,’ she replied. ‘I’ll go to Villjamur — I have just a little money saved, but yeah. No more life at the circus for me.’
‘Very wise,’ Cayce replied.
‘Cayce, I don’t know what to say…’ She was welling up, and thinking her emotional outburst absurd, but how could she thank this man who had given her a new life, the life which she naturally felt for all these years, which was both ever-distant and as close as a dream?
‘The pleasure is, indeed, all mine, sister,’ Cayce said gently. ‘I have explored new science here, and my order are thrilled with the work we have done together.’
She suddenly embraced him, unable to hide her gratitude, and then she turned down the stairs, under the gazes of others, back towards the musky darkness.
To a new life.
FOUR
There was some kind of military operation under way — she could at least be certain of that. Thousands of red-skinned rumels were massing on the snow before her, all garbed in alien clothing, carrying banners with bizarre insignia, and ranked in eerily precise rows. Orders were being issued in that base, guttural language of theirs, and then the sound of marching muted by the snow.
But in the distance she could see thousands of those… things.
Verain shuddered. She cringed at their ragged movements, at their monstrous insectile appearance. Those shells and claws. Though some distance away, they still put the fear of Bohr or indeed any other god into her. Each of them seemed to loom above their nearest rumel counterpart, yet despite the physical dominance, they were somehow subordinate to the red-skins.