Need clues, reference points, something to hold on to.
Memory of a cell dividing, seen in time lapse, the very start of independent life, though still dependent.
Hold that image.
Words (names); need words.
Not yet, but… something about turning inside out; a place…
What am I looking for.
Mind.
Whose.
(Silence)
Whose.
(Silence)
Whose.
…
(Silence)
(…
Start again
….)
Listen. This is shock. You were hit, hard. This is just some form of shock, and you’ll recover.
You are the man playing the game (as are we all)… Still something wrong, though, something both missing and added. Think of
those
vital errors; think of that dividing cell, same and not-same, the place that’s turned inside out, the cell cluster turning
itself inside out, looking
like a split brain (unsleeping, moving ). Listen for somebody trying to talk to you.
…
(Silence)
(This from that very pit of night, naked in the wasteland, the ice-wind moaning his only covering, alone in the freezing darkness
under a sky
of chill obsidian:)
Whoever tried to talk to me. When did I ever listen. When was I ever other than just myself, caring only for myself.
The individual is the fruit of mistake; therefore only the process has validity…. So who’s to speak for him.
The wind howls, empty of meaning, a soak for warmth, a cess for hope, distributing his body’s exhausted heat to the black
skies, dissolving
the salty flame of his life, chilling to the core, sapping and slowing. He feels himself falling again,
and knows that this time it is a deeper plunge,
to where the silence and the cold are absolute, and no voice cries out, not
even this one.
(Howled like the wind:)
Whoever cared enough to talk to me.
(Silence)
Whoever ever cared
—
(Silence)
Who—.
(Whisper:)
Listen: “The Jinmoti of—"
…
Bozlen Two.
Two. Somebody had spoken once.
He
was the Changer, he was the error, the imperfect copy.
He was playing a different game from the other one (but he still intended to take a life). He was watching, feeling what the
other was feeling,
but feeling more.
Horza. Kraiklyn.
Now he knew. The game was… Damage. The place was… a world where a ribbon of the original idea was turned inside out… an Orbital:
Vavatch. The Mind in Schar’s World. Xoralundra. Balveda.
The
(and finding his hate, he hammered it into the wall of the pit, like a peg for a
rope)
Culture!
A breach in the cell wall; waters breaking; light freeing; illumination… leading to rebirth.
Weight and cold and bright, bright light…
…
Shit. Bastards. Lost it all, thanks to a Pit of Self-Doubt treble
… A wave of despondent fury swept over him, and something died.
Horza tore the flimsy headset away. He lay quivering on the couch, his eyes gummed and smarting, staring up at the auditorium
lights and the
two white fighting animals hanging half-dead from the trapezes overhead. He forced his eyes closed, then pulled
them open again, away from
the darkness.
Pit of Self-Doubt. Kraiklyn had been hit by cards which made the target player question their own identity. From the tenor
of Kraiklyn’s
thoughts before he’d pulled the headset off, Horza thought Kraiklyn hadn’t been too terrified by the effect,
just disoriented. He’d been sufficiently
distracted by the attack to lose the hand, and that was all his opponents had been
aiming for. Kraiklyn was out of the game.
The effect on
him,
trying to be Kraiklyn but knowing he wasn’t, had been more severe. That was all it was. Any Changer would have had the
same
problem; he was certain….
The trembling began to fade. He sat up and swung his feet off the couch. He had to leave. Kraiklyn would be going, so he had
to.
Pull yourself together, man.
He looked down to the playing table. The breastless woman had won. Kraiklyn glared at her as she raked in her winnings and
his straps
were unfastened. On the way out of the arena, Kraiklyn passed the limp, still warm body of his last Life as it
was released from its seat.
He kicked the corpse; the crowd booed.
Horza stood up, turned and bumped into a hard, unyielding body.
“May I see that pass now, sir." said the guard he’d lied to earlier.
He smiled nervously, aware that he was still trembling a little; his eyes were red, and his face was covered in sweat. The
guard gazed
steadily at him, her face expressionless. Some of the people on the terrace were watching them.
“I’m… sorry…." the Changer said slowly, patting his pockets with shaking hands. The guard put out her hand and took his left
elbow.
“Perhaps you’d better—"
“Look," Horza said, bending closer to her. “I… I haven’t got one. Would a bribe do." He started to reach inside his blouse
for the credits.
The guard kicked up with her knee and twisted Horza’s left arm behind his back. It was all done in the most
expert fashion, and Horza had to
jump to ride the kick tolerably. He let his left shoulder disconnect and started to crumple,
but not before his free hand had lightly scratched the
guard’s face (and that, he realized as he fell, had been an instinctive
reaction, nothing reasoned; for some reason he found this amusing).
The guard caught Horza’s other arm and pinned both his hands behind his back, using her lock-glove to secure them there. With
her other
hand she wiped blood from her cheek. Horza knelt on the terrace surface, moaning the way most people would have
with an arm broken or
dislocated.
“It’s all right, everybody; just a little problem over a pass. Please continue with your enjoyment," the guard said. Then
she pulled her arm up;
the locked glove hauled Horza up, too. He yelped with pretended pain, and then, head down, was pushed
up the steps to the walkway. “Seven
three, seven three; male code green incoming walk seven spinwards," the guard told her
lapel mike.
Horza felt her start to weaken as soon as they got to the walkway. He couldn’t see any other guards yet. The pace of the woman
behind him