Sliding Scales (20 page)

Rudely, questions came flooding back. Dozens of questions, to which he could summon up only a few answers.

She took an alarmed step toward him. “Are you unwell, Flinx?”

He mustered a smile. “No more so than usual, Chraluuc.
Jsstass-ca vss-ibb-tssak.
The sand on which I walk shifts, but is solid underneath.”

Relieved, she gestured understandingly. “Then I will report your conssent to the Ssaiinn. The ceremony will take place in three dayss.”

He was newly alarmed. “Ceremony? You mean, there's more to this than just entering the necessary information into a file?”

She made a second-degree gesture of acknowledgment
leavened with mild irony. “Did you think ssomething sso exceptional would enssue sso ssimply? There iss more to it than that, Flinx. It would be the ssame were the Tier inducting another AAnn.” Turning, she approached and put a hand on his left arm, the claws digging in only enough to reinforce her words. “Do not worry. There iss no rissk involved, and it will not take long. But it musst be done.” Claws capable of ripping out his throat moved up from his arm to scratch him lightly under his chin. Had it been covered in scales instead of skin, he would not even have felt it. “Tradition.”

Soon to become mine as well, he realized. Reaching out with his own hand, he drew his fingertips politely down the side of her exposed, muscular neck. Greatly to his inner embarrassment, he could not escape the feeling that he was stroking the sleeve of an especially well-tanned leather jacket.

It was early morning when Chraluuc escorted him to the convocation hall. Normally decorated lushly in adamantine chromatoswirls by the mated team of Yiicadu and Joorukij, the large circular chamber was bare now except for the diluted sunlight that poured through the domed skylight. It was noon, when the sun was at its highest, and therefore considered among the AAnn the most propitious time of day for the carrying out of ancient ritual. Even in the most modern setting and circumstances, the rapacious reptiloids were as devoted to the maintenance of custom as any primitive species with a long history of unbroken tradition.

Not all were present. As he was led by Chraluuc into the center of the spacious chamber, Flinx tried to give names to those who were absent. Significantly, the participation was not along lines of partiality. Some of those who waited in the chamber were fond, or at least tolerant, of
his presence among them. Others he suspected of actively disapproving, or forthrightly disliking, him. But several of the latter were present nonetheless, proud of their ability to set personal preferences aside for the sake of the Tier.

At Chraluuc's urging he had left Pip behind, asleep in their room. He felt naked without the flying snake snugged around his shoulders and neck. This was not surprising, since he was naked. He felt no shame and believed that he never had suffered from a nudity phobia, but he did feel more vulnerable. In a room abounding with exposed claws and sharp teeth, he was virtually defenseless. Not that the unpretentious attire he normally wore would have afforded much protection anyway against a concerted attack from so many directions. If he was going to go through with this, he had realized from the time Chraluuc had first proposed it, he had to trust the members of the Tier. He had to trust her.

Nudging and hissing to one another, the assembled artisans eyed him with undisguised curiosity. Until he had fallen into their midst, few of them had ever set eyes on one of the notorious softskins. Certainly none had ever seen one unclothed. Swirling around him, Flinx could sense feelings that traveled the gamut from jaded indifference to outright revulsion at the sight of him. Approving or not, everyone held their emotions in check.

Though there were many present he had barely spoken to, there were none he did not recognize. He had lived long enough in the Tier to know everyone by sight. For their part, they all knew him. He was impossible to miss.

The Ssemilionn of the Ssaiinn approached. As the triumvirate of Elders drew near, they turned their backs on him. Chraluuc moved back to take her proper place in the circle. Words were hissed. Flinx felt multiple tail-tips patting his body. The sensation was not unpleasant, but he tensed nonetheless. The age of their owners notwithstanding
, the same leathery tails that were caressing him reassuringly could just as easily knock him senseless.

They did not. Testimonies concluded, the members of the Ssaiinn also rejoined the circle. A moment of silence hung as heavy in the air as a blast from muted trumpets.

Then something hit him. Hard.

Looking down, he saw that he had been struck by a blob of iridescent color. It clung to his waist, twisting and coiling like a line of live neon freed from its tubing. Something else smacked into the back of his head. Reaching up, he drew back fingers stained with moaning ocher. The sound fit the color. Turning slightly, he sought a friendly face in the circle. His gaze immediately settled on Chraluuc's. With one hand she gestured first-degree reassurance. With the other she flung something bright and green at him, too swiftly and accurately for him to duck. Striking his left arm, its roots quickly wrapped themselves around his elbow, securing a firm perch. That was when it hit him.

He was being assaulted by art. Every member of the Tier present was assailing him with some variant of their particular forte. The intent was not to injure, or to wound. The clinging iridescence, the moaning tint, the grasping carefully nurtured plant: all were intended to combine to form a single unified composition at the center of which was—himself. He was becoming not an art form, but an art formed.

Clenching his teeth, arms held loosely at his sides, he tried to shield his more vulnerable parts as best he could without flinching. Otherwise, he stood and took it. Though it seemed as if the induction took hours, in reality it lasted much less than that.

Then there came a moment when he opened his eyes to see that no one was hurling anything in his direction. Battered and not a little bruised, he struggled to make sense of the alien emotions that filled the room. Most smacked of
approval—and not a few of admiration. Though whether this was for his display of stoicism in the face of the artistic assault or the aesthetic results, he could not say.

His sight was blurred by the sparkling lights that danced before his eyes—part of the redoubtable Naakuca's luminescent work. Through the twinkling he could see a figure approaching—Chraluuc. A mix of respect and satisfaction radiated from her.

“Almosst finisshed,” she hissed softly. Her pointed tongue flicked out to touch his chin. “Come with me.”

Taking his hand, she led him toward one side of the chamber. The assembled members of the Tier stepped aside to make way for them. Confronted by an ordinary mirror, Flinx found himself gazing at a figure that was barely recognizable. It was himself, transformed.

A Naakucan torus hovered around his head. Flowers bloomed from his elbows and knees (Chraluuc's work, he knew, and that of the Tier's several other botanical artisans). Colored lights formed patterns around arms and legs that were splattered with sculpted paint that shifted and heaved like sentient sculpture. Tinted sand spiraled around hips and torso, held in place close to his body by shaped charges of static electricity. It itched, but he refrained from brushing it away. He was as beautiful as he was unrecognizable.

And it was all temporary, he knew. All rendered solely for the sake of his induction. He hoped.

“What next?” he mumbled to his escort. “Everyone takes pictures?”

A soft hiss of amusement issued from between powerful jaws. “All necessary recording hass already been done. All that iss needed now iss to complete the compossition that you have become.”

He wanted to groan. “There's more?”

Reaching into a pouch, she withdrew a familiar stylus. “The opuss iss not finisshed.
You
have to finissh it.”

He was startled. “Me? What am I supposed to do?” Gazing into the mirror at the extravagant image of himself, he could not see where anything was lacking.

“It doess not matter. Sso long as it iss part and parcel of yoursself. The artisst musst complete the art.” She stepped back.

Turning back to his reflection, he gazed bemused at the kinetic wonderment he had become. What could he possibly do to enhance the dramatic resonance? What could he add to complete inspired perfection? It didn't matter, Chraluuc had said. What was important was that he do something. He was not sure he entirely believed her, but since he couldn't think of anything else to do anyway …

Reaching up with the activated stylus, he drew. When he was done, he turned to face the expectant multitude. If anyone had any objections, either aesthetic or personal, to the mustache and beard he had drawn on his face, they kept these to themselves.

He sensed approval. There was only one more thing to do to complete the ceremony. There remained the business of bestowing on this inducted oddity a proper name. The task fell to the female Elder Xeerelu. As she approached him, Flinx perceived her ambiguity. He contented himself with the belief that she now disliked him somewhat less than previously.

“We welcome you as a creative ssentient,” she hissed simply, “as one of uss, to the Tier of Ssaiinn, Flinx LLVVRXX. May the footsstepss from your hunting be wet with blood, your accession swift, your family prossperouss, and your art dazzling to the mind and heart.”

Something struck him hard on the back and he whirled around—only to see Hiikovuk, one of the younger artists, striking him respectfully with open palm, claws retracted.
Soon he was being warmly pummeled from all sides. Chraluuc joined in, battering him as enthusiastically as any of the others. Methodically, courteously, they beat the art off him, until he once more stood naked among them, flushed (a condition that they found attractive), and sweaty (a condition that even those who liked him most assuredly did not).

Responding to the physical fusillade of congratulations as best he could, he excused himself before he suffered any serious injury and hurried back to his room. Pip was waiting for him, airborne and anxious. Letting himself into the makeshift shower they had fashioned for him, he washed and scoured away the remnants of the ritual. Only when the last daub of motile paint, the last grain of electrostatically charged sand, had been scrubbed off did he allow himself to relax a little and reflect on the ordeal he had just undergone.

So I am one of them now, he reflected thoughtfully. As much as it was possible for a softskin to become AAnn. And not just AAnn, but an artist, respected for what he could create as much as for who he was. At that moment, in that place, he found that he did not miss others of his kind. Wasn't he supposed to? Landing in his lap as he sat on the edge of his bed of smoothed, heated sand, Pip recognized him as both tired and conflicted. Since there was nothing she could do about either, she curled up and promptly went to sleep.

I should do the same, he told himself. Though quite aware that something exceptional had just taken place, he did not feel any different. Whether he felt more AAnn or not he was not yet able to say for certain.

Not a bad life to look forward to, he decided as he lay down on the warm, sterilized sand. An artist among friends. He certainly could survive as such, at least until
this or that memory returned that might dictate he should be and do otherwise.

If any such remembrance ever did return, he reminded himself.

Several weeks passed, during which time he occupied himself with coming to terms with his new status and in striving to improve what seemed to him a wholly inadequate ability to draw. It was mid-morning of a fine sunny day marred only by a few high clouds when Chraluuc interrupted his work.

“I have ssomething to sshow you,” she told him. Though her expression remained unchanged and her tone formal, he could sense the excitement within her. “It wass felt that it wass time.”

“Time for what?” Setting aside the small landscape he had been working on, he rose to join her.

Yellow eyes glistened. “To introduce you to The Confection.”

Pip riding his shoulder, he allowed himself to be led out of the room. “Sounds tasty,” he quipped.

“It iss. But not in the way you are thinking. Remember that we of the Tier are defined by what we do.”

So it was some kind of artwork, he decided as they ascended the access ramp and emerged into the hot sunshine of morning. That didn't rule out the possibility that food was involved. He had come to enjoy the daily menus that were prepared in the Tier's kitchen, though the meat-heavy diet forced him to exercise regularly and to seek out wild fruits and nuts to supplement the almost exclusively carnivorous bill of fare.

They passed the floating obelisk of the air sculptor Giivet and the dancing garden on which Chraluuc herself had collaborated. The sprayed paving of the walkway they were taking dissolved into loose gravel mixed with
sand. The Tier's complex receded behind them. If there was food to be had out here, it would have had to have been hauled out on somebody's leathery back, he reflected.

Unexpectedly, she turned off the main path onto an even narrower trail that led down into a steep-sided canyon whose entrance was hidden from above. Instead of sandstone banded taupe and umber, they found themselves in an isolated fragment of Karst terrain. Rain and running water had carved the dark gray stone into an array of shapes as fanciful as they were lethal. Every rock, every pillar and pinnacle, was sharp-edged and bladed. It was as if they were hiking through a forest of ancient weapons.

“Thiss iss a favorite place,” she told him. “It hass been sso ever ssince the Tier ssettled on, and in, thiss part of Jasst.”

Studying the lancet-like hoodoos and grimacing limestone goblins that now surrounded them, Flinx could understand why. Whereas humans favored shapes that were soft and rounded, the AAnn gravitated to the jagged and prickly.

The canyon narrowed until it was barely wide enough for a single individual to pass through without turning sideways. Abruptly, it dropped away. A ladder, that most functional and basic appliance common to nearly every bipedal species, bridged the gap between canyon's end and the floor of the slightly wider chasm beyond.