Majipoor Chronicles

Nismile hoped for a time that it would return with a flask of wine, but he did not see it again. Curious creatures, he thought. Were they angry that he was camped in their territory? Were they keeping him under surveillance out of fear that he was the vanguard of a wave of human settlers? Oddly, he felt himself in no danger. Metamorphs were generally considered to be malevolent; certainly they were disquieting beings, alien and unfathomable. Plenty of tales were told of Metamorph raids on outlying human settlements, and no doubt the Shapeshitfer folk harbored bitter hatred for those who had come to their world and dispossessed them and driven them into these jungles; but yet Nismile knew himself to be a man of good will, who had never done harm to others and wanted only to be left to live his life, and he fancied that some subtle sense would lead the Metamorphs to realize that he was not their enemy. He wished he could become their friend. He was growing hungry for conversation after all this time of solitude, and it might be challenging and rewarding to exchange ideas with these strange folk; he might even paint one. He had been thinking again lately of returning to his art, of experiencing once more that moment of creative ecstasy as his soul leaped the gap to the psychosensitive canvas and inscribed on it those images that he alone could fashion. Surely he was different now from the increasingly unhappy man he had been on Castle Mount, and that difference must show itself in his work. During the next few days he rehearsed speeches designed to win the confidence of the Metamorphs, to overcome that strange shyness of theirs, that delicacy of bearing which blocked any sort of contact. In time, he thought, they would grow used to him, they would begin to speak, to accept his invitation to eat with him, and then perhaps they would pose—

But in the days that followed he saw no more Metamorphs. He roamed the forest, peering hopefully into thickets and down mistswept lanes of trees, and found no one. He decided that he had been too forward with them and had frightened them away — so much for the malevolence of the monstrous Metamorphs! — and after a while he ceased to expect further contact with them. That was disturbing. He had not missed companionship when none seemed likely, but the knowledge that there were intelligent beings somewhere in the area kindled an awareness of loneliness in him that was not easy to bear.

One damp and warm day several weeks after his last Metamorph encounter Nismile was swimming in the cool deep pond formed by a natural dam of boulders half a mile below his cabin when he saw a pale slim figure moving quickly through a dense bower of blue-leaved bushes by the shore. He scrambled out of the water, barking his knees on the rocks. "Wait!" he shouted. "Pleasedon't be afraiddon't go " The figure disappeared, but Nismile, thrashing frantically through the underbrush, caught sight of it again in a few minutes, leaning casually now against an enormous tree with vivid red bark.

Nismile stopped short, amazed, for the other was no Metamorph but a human woman.

She was slender and young and naked, with thick auburn hair, narrow shoulders, small high breasts, bright playful eyes. She seemed altogether unafraid of him, a forest-sprite who had obviously enjoyed leading him on this little chase. As he stood gaping at her she looked him over unhurriedly, and with an outburst of clear tinkling laughter said, "You're all scratched and torn! Can't you run in the forest any better than that?"

"I didn't want you to get away."

"Oh, I wasn't going to go far. You know, I was watching you for a long time before you noticed me. You're the man from the cabin, right?"

"Yes. And you — where do you live?"

"Here and there," she said airily.

He stared at her in wonder. Her beauty delighted him, her shamelessness astounded him. She might almost be an hallucination, he thought. Where had she come from? What was a human being, naked and alone, doing in this primordial jungle?

Human?

Of course not, Nismile realized, with the sudden sharp grief of a child who has been given some coveted treasure in a dream, only to awaken aglow and perceive the sad reality. Remembering how effortlessly the Metamorph had mimicked him, Nismile comprehended the dismal probability: this was some prank, some masquerade. He studied her intently, seeking a sign of Metamorph identity, a flickering of the projection, a trace of knife-sharp cheekbones and sloping eyes behind the cheerfully impudent face. She was convincingly human in every degree. But yet — how implausible to meet one of his own kind here, how much more likely that she was a Shapeshifter, a deceiver—

He did not want to believe that. He resolved to meet the possibility of deception with a conscious act of faith, in the hope that that would make her be what she seemed to be.

"What's your name?" he asked.

"Sarise. And yours?"

"Nismile. Where do you live?"

"In the forest."

"Then there's a human settlement not far from here?"

She shrugged. "I live by myself." She came toward him — he felt his muscles growing taut as she moved closer, and something churning in his stomach, and his skin seemed to be blazing — and touched her fingers lightly to the cuts the vines had made on his arms and chest. "Don't those scratches bother you?"

"They're begi

"Yes. Let's go back to the pool. I know a better way than the one you took. Follow me!"

She parted the fronds of a thick clump of ferns and revealed a narrow, well-worn trail. Gracefully she sprinted off, and he ran behind her, delighted by the ease of her movements, the play of muscles in her back and buttocks. He plunged into the pool a moment after her and they splashed about. The chilly water soothed the stinging of the cuts. When they climbed out, he yearned to draw her to him and enclose her in his arms, but he did not dare. They sprawled on the mossy bank. There was mischief in her eyes. He said, "My cabin isn't far."

"I know."

"Would you like to go there?"

"Some other time, Nismile."

"All right. Some other time."

"Where do you come from?" she asked. "I was born on Castle Mount. Do you know where that is? I was a soul-painter at the Coronal's court. Do you know what soul-painting is? It's done with the mind and a sensitive canvas, and — I could show you. I could paint you, Sarise. I take a close look at something, I seize its essence with my deepest consciousness, and then I go into a kind of trance, almost a waking dream, and I transform what I've seen into something of my own and hurl it on the canvas, I capture the truth of it in one quick blaze of transference—" He paused. "I could show you best by making a painting of you."

She scarcely seemed to have heard him. "Would you like to touch me, Nismile?"

"Yes. Very much."

The thick turquoise moss was like a carpet. She rolled toward him and his hand hovered above her body, and then he hesitated, for he was certain still that she was a Metamorph playing some perverse Shapeshifter game with him, and a heritage of thousands of years of dread and loathing surfaced in him, and he was terrified of touching her and discovering that her skin had the clammy repugnant texture that he imagined Metamorph skin to have, or that she would shift and turn into a creature of alien form the moment she was in his arms. Her eyes were closed, her lips were parted, her tongue flickered between them like a serpent's: she was waiting. In terror he forced his hand down to her breast. But her flesh was warm and yielding and it felt very much the way the flesh of a young human woman should feel, as well as he could recall after these years of solitude. With a soft little cry she pressed herself into his embrace. For a dismaying instant the grotesque image of a Metamorph rose in his mind, angular and long-limbed and noseless, but he shoved the thought away fiercely and gave himself up entirely to her lithe and vigorous body.