It occurred to him—or rather struck him with considerable force—that he was satisfying a longing of his Pilot Caste that went far deeper than Piloting.
He drove powerfully with his wings, felt tonus across his back, shot forward and up. He thought of the controls of his ship. He imagined flowing into them, becoming part of them, as he had so often done—and for the first time in his life the thought failed to excite him.
No machine could compare with this!
What he would give to have wings of his own!
…Get from my sight, Shapeless One!
The Displacer must be planted, activated. All Grom depended on him.
He eyed the building, far below. He would pass over it. The Displacer would tell him which window to enter—which window was so near the reactor that he could do his job before the Men even knew he was about.
He started to drop lower, and the Hawk struck.
* * * *
It had been above him. His first inkling of danger was the sharp pain of talons in his back, and the stunning blow of a beak across his head.
Dazed, he let his back go Shapeless. His body-substance flowed from the grasp of the talons. He dropped a dozen feet and resumed Sparrow-shape, hearing an astonished squawk from the attacker.
He banked, and looked up. The Hawk was eyeing him.
Talons spread again. The sharp beak gaped. The Hawk swooped.
Pid had to fight as a Bird, naturally. He was four hundred feet above the ground.
So he became an impossibly deadly Bird.
He grew to twice the size of the Hawk. He grew a foot-long beak with a double razor’s edge. He grew talons like six inch scimitars. His eyes gleamed a red challenge.
The Hawk broke flight, squalling in alarm. Frantically, tail down and widespread, it thundered its wings and came to a dead stop six feet from Pid.
Looking thoughtfully at Pid, it allowed itself to plummet. It fell a hundred feet, spread its wings, stretched its neck and flew off so hastily that its wings became blurs.
Pid saw no reason to pursue it.
Then, after a moment, he did.
He glided, keeping the Hawk in sight, thoughts racing, feeling the newness, the power, the wonder of Freedom of Shape.
Freedom.…
He did not want to give it up.
The bird-shape was wondrous. He would experiment with it. Later, he might tire of it for a time and assume another—a crawling or running shape, or even a swimming one. The possibilities for excitement, for adventure, for fulfilment and simple sensual pleasure were endless!
Freedom of Shape was—obviously, now that you thought on it—the Grom birthright. And the caste-system was artificial—obviously. A device for political and priestly benefit—obviously.
Go away, Shapeless One…this does not concern you.
He rose to a thousand feet, two thousand, three. The Displacer’s pulse grew feebler and finally vanished.
At four thousand feet he released it and watched it spin downward, vanish into a cloud.
Then he set out after the Hawk, which was now only a dot on the horizon. He would find out how the Hawk had broken flight as it had—skidded on air—he wanted to do that too! There were so many things he wanted to learn about flying. In a week, he thought, he should be able to duplicate all the skill that millennia had evolved into Birds. Then his new life would really begin.
He became a torpedo-shape with huge wings, and sped after the Hawk.
WARM
Anders lay on his bed, fully dressed except for his shoes and black bow tie, contemplating, with a certain uneasiness, the evening before him. In twenty minutes he would pick up Judy at her apartment, and that was the uneasy part of it.
He had realized, only seconds ago, that he was in love with her.
Well, he’d tell her. The evening would be memorable. He would propose, there would be kisses, and the seal of acceptance would, figuratively speaking, be stamped across his forehead.
Not too pleasant an outlook, he decided. It really would be much more comfortable not to be in love. What had done it? A look, a touch, a thought? It didn’t take much, he knew, and stretched his arms for a thorough yawn.
“Help me!” a voice said.
His muscles spasmed, cutting off the yawn in mid-moment. He sat upright on the bed, then grinned and lay back again.
“You must help me!” the voice insisted.
Anders sat up, reached for a polished shoe and fitted it on, giving his full attention to the tying of the laces.
“Can you hear me?” the voice asked. “You can, can’t you?”
That did it. “Yes, I can hear you,” Anders said, still in a high good humor. “Don’t tell me you’re my guilty subconscious, attacking me for a childhood trauma I never bothered to resolve. I suppose you want me to join a monastery.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the voice said. “I’m no one’s subconscious. I’m me. Will you help me?”
Anders believed in voices as much as anyone; that is, he didn’t believe in them at all, until he heard them. Swiftly he catalogued the possibilities. Schizophrenia was the best answer, of course, and one in which his colleagues would concur. But Anders had a lamentable confidence in his own sanity. In which case—
“Who are you?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” the voice answered.
Anders realized that the voice was speaking within his own mind. Very suspicious.
“You don’t know who you are,” Anders stated. “Very well. Where are you?”
“I don’t know that, either.” The voice paused, and went on. “Look, I know how ridiculous this must sound. Believe me, I’m in some sort of limbo. I don’t know how I got here or who I am, but I want desperately to get out. Will you help me?”
* * * *
Still fighting the idea of a voice speaking within his head, Anders knew that his next decision was vital. He had to accept—or reject—his own sanity.
He accepted it.
“All right,” Anders said, lacing the other shoe. “I’ll grant that you’re a person in trouble, and that you’re in some sort of telepathic contact with me. Is there anything else you can tell me?”
“I’m afraid not,” the voice said, with infinite sadness. “You’ll have to find out for yourself.”
“Can you contact anyone else?”
“No.”
“Then how can you talk with me?”
“I don’t know.”
Anders walked to his bureau mirror and adjusted his black bow tie, whistling softly under his breath. Having just discovered that he was in love, he wasn’t going to let a little thing like a voice in his mind disturb him.
“I really don’t see how I can be of any help,” Anders said, brushing a bit of lint from his jacket. “You don’t know where you are, and there don’t seem to be any distinguishing landmarks. How am I to find you?” He turned and looked around the room to see if he had forgotten anything.
“I’ll know when you’re close,” the voice said. “You were warm just then.”
“Just then?” All he had done was look around the room. He did so again, turning his head slowly. Then it happened.
The room, from one angle, looked different. It was suddenly a mixture of muddled colors, instead of the carefully blended pastel shades he had selected. The lines of wall, floor and ceiling were strangely off proportion, zigzag, unrelated.
Then everything went back to normal.
“You were very warm,” the voice said. “It’s a question of seeing things correctly.”
Anders resisted the urge to scratch his head, for fear of disarranging his carefully combed hair. What he had seen wasn’t so strange. Everyone sees one or two things in his life that make him doubt his normality, doubt sanity, doubt his very existence. For a moment the orderly Universe is disarranged and the fabric of belief is ripped.
But the moment passes.