neetha Napew - The Paths Of The Perambulator

Giant single-celled entities, mutated amoebas—Jon-Tom didn’t know enough to be certain exactly what they’d become, but he was glad of what little biology he’d been forced to take.

“This is most disconcerting,” murmured Clothahump voicelessly. “I wonder how limited our present range of movement is.” He extruded a pseudopod and tried to grip something floating through the liquid. This led to the discovery that they could change their positions by shifting their internal mass. It would have upset Jon-Tom’s stomach if he’d had one. Instead he suffered a faint mental nausea.

“What is this? What’ve we turned into?” the Dormas-shape wanted to know.

“My experience does not extend to acquaintance with such shapelessness,” Clothahump told her.

“Well, mine does.” All light-sensing organelles turned to Jon-Tom. “We’ve been turned into something like amoebas, only much larger and far more complex. Just as an example, we’re still capable of higher thought.”

“That’s all right, mate,” said the Mudge-mass. “We’ll all shift back to ourselves in a minute or two. Ain’t that right, Your Blobship?”

“I certainly hope so.” He glanced around. “Our supplies appear to have vanished. This has not happened during any of the previous perturbations.”

It struck Jon-Tom then that his appraisal of their current situation was more accurate than he’d first imagined.

“Our supplies haven’t disappeared. They’re right here, all around us. We just can’t see them in our present states. See, we don’t resemble microscopic organisms. We’ve become microscopic organisms. We’ve shrunk.” He gestured with a pseudopod. “Those boulders over there are probably nothing more than grains of sand, those trees microscopic lichen or something. A light breeze could scatter us, blow us away. It’s a good thing we decided to sleep in a protected glade.”

“How can something so small be capable of thought and speech?” Dormas asked him.

“How should I know? I’m no expert on the ramifications of perturbations. Who says they have to be logical, anyway?”

“The danger is apparent,” said Clothahump grimly. “We cannot wait passively for our return. We must try to do something. But my potions are elsewhere, and I have not the faintest notion of how to begin.”

“How about a spellsong, Jon-Tom?” Sorbl asked him.

“I need my duar, Sorbl. You know that.”

“Can’t you just try without it?”

He sighed, and it washed through his entire body. “It’d just be a waste of time and energy.”

“Perhaps not.” Jon-Tom could feel the wizard’s attention on him. “Since you have no duar on which to accompany yourself, you must try to fashion one.”

Jon-Tom let his simplified gaze roam through their oleaginous surroundings. “Out of what? There’s no wood here, nothing to fashion strings from. Even if I could rig a crude sort of duar, I couldn’t play it.”

“Why not?” Sorbl wondered.

“Because ‘e ain’t got no fingers, featherbrain,” Mudge told him.

“That need not hold him back,” said Clothahump thoughtfully.

“You could spellsing up a duar, mate, if you ‘ad a duar.”

“What do you mean, it needn’t hold me back, sir?”

By way of reply Clothahump twisted a section of himself into an intricate figure eight. “Our present bodies are extraordinarily flexible. They can be stretched into any possible shape.”

“Oh, I see. Even into fingers.”

“No, my boy. Not only into fingers. Into a duar itself.”

“That’s impossible.”

“That word is an obsession with you. Try.”

Jon-Tom shrugged, felt a portion of himself ripple. “Why not? It’s better than sitting here waiting to be blown or washed away.”

How does one go about becoming the instrument one is used to playing? He fought to conjure up a concrete image in his mind. Strings like so, resonance chamber so, measurements such and such—just thinking about it hurt his mind. When he had the mental picture refined to his satisfaction, he began to twist, to contort, to strain.

It was not only difficult, it was painful. But he kept at it, readjusting his tissues, polishing his exterior, until to his very considerable surprise he had molded himself into a familiar shape composed of gleaming gelatinous material.

A song now, he mused. Something appropriate to their situation, something suitable for changing shape and volume. Yes, Paul Williams should work. He began to sing, and to play himself.

The notes didn’t sound quite right, nor did his voice, but he persisted. Distortion was only to be expected under the circumstances. It still seemed a waste of time, until something vast and glowing could be seen coming toward them. It was an enormous lambent shape, like a small sun, though within the light he thought he could make out the dim outline of something almost familiar.

Dormas shrank away from it, and Mudge and Sorbl tried to flee. As Jon-Tom played on, only Clothahump held his position. For he recognized it immediately. Its appearance was not only proof that Jon-Tom’s spellsinging was working, but of the true size to which they’d been reduced.

“Stay,” he ordered the others. “It is quite harmless. It is only a gneechee.”

A single gneechee, those can’t-be-seen specks of light that were so much more. They were attracted to active magic, and this one had sought them out to cavort in the echoes of Jon-Tom’s spellsinging.

As he played himself on, the eerie wail became real music. He found that regardless of the results, he was enjoying himself. It is one thing to play an instrument well enough to feel it is a part of you. It’s quite another to make it all of you.

As he sang on, played on, the sky began to lighten. From a liquid translucence it brightened to yellow, the first true color he’d been able to perceive since the perturbation. The yellow intensified to gold. The sun seemed to be coming straight toward them. Not the gneechee this time but the bright, glowing orb that warmed the world: the true sun.

The by-now familiar mental snap, a moment of complete disorientation, and he staggered momentarily as he fought for balance, clutching with one hand at the duar hanging from his neck and at a rock with the other.

Back again.

A single bright spot of light vanished from the comer of his vision. He bid a silent farewell to the gneechee, hoping it had enjoyed the concert. Music rang through his brain, reverberated the length and breadth of his body. These aftereffects of the perturbation and his time as an instrument did not linger long, for which he was sorry. Not every perturbation made you feel lost or ill. He had been granted a few moments to live the musician’s dream. From now on he would only be able to live up to those moments of musical epiphany in his memory.

Around them the forest stood silent sentinel, seemingly unchanged. Before him he saw their campsite and supplies.

Clothahump lay on his back, kicking violently and attempting to right himself. Mudge sat on a rock, grasping at various parts of his body as if to reassure himself of his restored solidity. Dormas lay prone on the far side of the fire. She quickly rolled onto her knees and stood. Once more capable of flight, a relieved Sorbl took to the air to scan the woods surrounding them, darting in tight, happy circles overhead, whistling the defiant cry of his clan.

Clothahump barked an order at Jon-Tom, snapping him out of his rapidly fading chordal reverie. “Don’t just stand there gaping, my boy! Give me a hand. I’d turn myself, but I fear the transformation has weakened me more than I first thought.”

Lazy, Jon-Tom thought. The turtle was perfectly capable of standing by himself. But he put his duar aside and, together, he and Mudge stood the wizard back on his feet.