Robert Silverberg: Tales of Majipoor (collection)

By and large, the Metamorphs kept to their secluded forest homes and the people of the cities and farming districts of Majipoor to the territories they occupied, and each group did its best to pretend that the other was not there, or was, at least, invisible. But there had been a good many ugly incidents. Wherever Metamorph and human interests overlapped, difficulties arose. The Metamorphs held certain places sacred, but who knew which ones they were, until a trespass had occurred? The ever-expanding human population of Majipoor, and its constantly increasing non-human adjuncts, kept pushing outward into new lands where the Metamorphs would abide no intrusion. Reports trickled to the capital of occasional outbreaks of conflict, of kidnappings and killings, of skirmishes, of massacres, even. Information took so long to reach Stee from outlying regions, and arrived in such uncertain form, that no one at the capital could be completely certain of what was taking place; but plainly there was friction, there was violence, and neither side was wholly without blame. Now and again Metamorphs, erupting out of nowhere in the night, had slaughtered human settlers venturing into places that should not have been ventured into. Humans, coming upon some tempting locality that invited settlement, had driven its Metamorph population out by force, or simply destroyed them. There had, of course, been such incidents throughout all the thousands of years since the first emigrants from Old Earth had come to this world. But as the cities spread outward and the agricultural settlements that supported them multiplied, they appeared to be increasing in number, and there were those at court who felt that sooner or later some great precipitating event would touch off an all-out war between the Metamorphs and the humans of Majipoor, and that event could not be many years away.

The court was broken into various factions. Some members of the Coronal’s inner circle, a majority, perhaps, felt that a time was coming when complete separation of the races would have to be enforced, with the Metamorphs packed off into reservations of their own, possibly on the relatively lightly inhabited continent of Zimroel, and permitted there to live as they had always lived, but without access to the territories occupied by humans. An opposing group—not very numerous, but they were exceedingly vocal—regarded that as a futile notion, and were ready to launch an all-out war of extermination, arguing that the Metamorphs could never be confined in that way and such a plan was simply a prescription for an eternity of guerilla warfare.

Stiamot himself, who was by nature a mediator, a peacemaker, had emerged as the leader of a moderate central faction, one that saw great practical difficulties in the separationist scheme and looked upon the idea of a war of extermination as barbaric and repellent. It was Stiamot’s hope that through sympathetic meetings of the minds, a determined attempt by each species to understand the needs and goals of the other, a permanent detente could be established, with clear lines of territorial delineation for each race and complete freedom of travel across those boundaries. In Council he had argued as persuasively as he knew how for such a policy. But Stiamot had not been able to make much headway with that over the extremists to either side of him. So little was known of the real nature of the Metamorphs, and so little had been done to reach out to them, that most council-members looked upon his position as hopelessly idealistic. As for the Coronal, he had stayed aloof from the discussions thus far, lost as he was in what seemed to be some inner anguish that had no connection to any of the governmental issues of the day. But he could not remain aloof forever.

The Coronal’s arrival in Domgrave was still at least a week away when Stiamot saw his first Shapeshifter. It was the quiet time of the morning midway between breakfast and lunch, when the air was dry and still and the sun, climbing toward noon height, held everything in the grip of its insistent force. Stiamot was returning to his lodgings from a meeting with the head of the municipal police, going on foot down a sleepy street of small white-fronted houses flanked by rows of dusty-leaved matabango trees. A tall, very tall, figure wrapped in a flimsy, loosely fitting green robe emerged from an alley fifty feet in front of him, began to cross the street, saw him, halted, turned to face him, stared.

Stiamot halted as well. He knew at once that the man— was it a man?—was a Metamorph, and he was astonished to encounter one right here in town. The few others that he had seen before had been like wraiths, flitting through the edge of some forest glade and vanishing into the underbrush as soon as they were aware that they were being perceived. But here was this one right in downtown Domgrave, unmistakably a Metamorph, tall, thin, sallow-skinned, sharp of cheekbone, with long narrow eyes that sloped inward toward the place where its nose would be if there were anything more than a minuscule bump where a nose ought to be. It seemed as curious about him as he was about it, pausing, standing in that odd stance of theirs, one long leg wrapped around the shin of the other so that it stood with utter and total dignity while balanced on its left foot alone. Its stare was calm and chilly. Stiamot wondered what, if anything, he could do to capitalize on the opportunity that had been so unexpectedly presented to him. “I greet you in the name of the Coronal Lord Strelkimar, whose counsellor I am?” No. Ridiculous. “I am Prince Stiamot of Stee, and I have come here to learn something about –” No. No. “I am a newcomer in Domgrave, and I wonder whether you and I—”

Impossible. There was nothing he could say that would be appropriate. The Shapeshifter clearly did not want anything to do with him. Those cold downsloping eyes left no doubt of that. The purpose of that icy glare was to establish a boundary, not to build a bridge. Stiamot and the Metamorph were separated not only by fifty feet of space but by an infinitely greater gulf of difference, and there was no way to breach that barrier. All Stiamot could do was stand, and stare, and curse himself for a blithering feckless fool, hopelessly unprepared for this meeting with one of the beings he had come here to make contact with.

Then for a single strange moment the outlines of the Shapeshifter’s body seemed to blur and flicker, and Stiamot realized he was watching some kind of brief, barely perceptible metamorphosis take place, a loosening and transmogrification of form that ended as quickly as it had begun, as though the Shapeshifter were saying, mockingly, I can do this and you cannot. And then the Metamorph swung around and continued on its way across the street, disappearing from view in a dozen longlegged strides, leaving Stiamot standing stunned and bewildered in the mid-morning stillness.

There was a second significant encounter much later that same day. Stiamot had fallen into the habit of going at the end of the day with some of the younger staff aides to an inn just off the main square that was frequented by the town’s wealthier planters and any visitor from the outlying plantations who happened to be in Domgrave on business. Since these people were going to bear most of the not inconsiderable expense of playing host to a Coronal making the grand processional, it seemed like a wise tactic for Stiamot to go among them, share a couple of flasks of wine with them in their cramped, dreary little tavern, reassure them that they would find the visit of the Coronal Lord very much to their benefit.

“He wouldn’t have bitten you, you know,” a dry, flat-toned voice said as Stiamot entered.

He turned. “Pardon me?”

“The Piurivar. They’re a damned shy bunch, most of them. If you actually want to get anywhere with them, you’ve got to open your mouth, not just stand there like a gaffed gromwark waiting for them to say something. I’m Mundiveen, by the way.” Stiamot had already figured that much out. Crazy old doctor with a limp, Kalban Vond had said. Eccentric, annoying. Stands right out. That much was easy. The man who stood before him, one elbow hooked lazily over the counter of the bar, was old, small, lean almost to the point of fleshlessness, a short, compact figure with piercingly intense gray eyes and a long, wild shock of coarse, unkempt white hair. Stiamot, who was only of medium height himself, towered over him. Mundiveen held his head at an odd angle to his neck and his body pivoted strangely at the middle, as though there might be some sort of a twist in his spine. It was not hard to imagine that he would walk with a limp.