Transfigurations by Michael Bishop Read Free Book Online

kind. He was, for all intents and purposes, a mute.
    When I called out to him, though, I believed his dead, grey eyes indicated a complete lack of intelligence. It didn't then occur to me that they might signal a physical handicap, just as dumbness in human beings may be the result of diseased or paralyzed vocfd cords. . . .
    "Come on over here," I urged him again.
    The Bachelor, still staring, didn't approach. He stared at me for the remainder of the afternoon. I tried to occupy myself with note-taking, then with a lunch of some of the rations Benedict had dropped, and finally with cursory observations of other Asadi. Anything to avoid that implacable gaze. It was almost a relief when dusk fell.
    But that evening my excitement grew as I realized that something truly monumental had happened: / had been acknowl-
    The next day The Bachelor paid me little heed. He wandered forlornly in and out of the slow, aimless files of his aimless kindred, and I was sorely disappointed he didn't demonstrate the same interest in me that he had the day before.
    On the 28th day he resumed his shameless staring. I was gratified, too, even though he now pursued a strategy different from that of the previous day: He moved tirelessly about the clearing, weaving in and out of the clusters of Asadi, but always

    staying close enough to the western sideline to be able to see me. His eyes remained as dead as the insides of two oyster shells. I was fighting stomach cramps and bouts of diarrhea, and by late afternoon his stare had grown annoying again.
    I felt better the following morning, my 29th day. The light from glowering Denebola seemed softer, the tropical heat less debilitating. I left my lean-to and went out on the assembly ground.
    Bathed in the pastel emptiness of dawn, the Asadi came flying through the lianas and fronds of the Synesthesia Wild to begin another day of Indifferent Togetherness. Soon I was surrounded. Surrounded but ignored. Great ugly heads with silver, or blue, or clay-white, or tawny manes bobbed around me, graceless and unsynchronized.
    At last I found The Bachelor.
    Undoubtedly, he had had me in his sight all that morning—but, mof/ing with circumspection among his fellows, he had not permitted me to see him. And I had fretted over his apparent absence.
    Then Denebola was directly overhead. Our shadows were small dark pools around our feet, like fallen trousers. The Bachelor threaded his way through a dissolving clump of bodies and stopped not five meters from me, atremble with his own daring. I, too, trembled. Would The Bachelor fall upon and devour me as the Asadi males had fallen upon and devoured the old chieftain's gift of meat?
    Instead, The Bachelor steeled himself to the task he had set and began his approach. My shadow wrinkled a little under my feet. The grey head, the patchy silver-blue mane, the twin carapaces of his eyes—all moved toward me. Then the long grey arm rose toward my face and the perfectly humanoid hand touched the depression under my bottom lip, touched the most recent of my shaving cuts, touched me without clumsiness or malice.
    And I winced.

    A Running Chronology: Weeks Pass
    From the professional notebooks ofEgan Chancy: Day 29: After this unusual one-to-one contact with the Asadi (hereinafter referred to as The Bachelor), I did my best to find some method of meaningful communication. Words failed. So did signs in the dirt. Hand signals attracted and held his attention, but I have no training in the systematic use of American Sign Language or any of its several variants and so eventually gave this method up, too. I don't really believe it's a likely solution to our communication problems.
    Nevertheless, The Bachelor couldn't be dissuaded from following me about. On one occasion, when I left the clearing for lunch, he very nearly followed me into my lean-to. I was almost surprised when at dusk he left with the others, he had been so doggedly faithful all day. Despite this desertion, I'm