Lunarians were metamorphs too.
Why did Terrans go on, when sophotects did everything better?
Except being human.
He had wondered if those opposing presences and examples might be the underlying reason why few of
his species had ever made radical changes in themselves. Technologically it was quite possible. A person might almost casually shift body form, sex, temperament, anything. But no real demand existed, and therefore the means did not, and whoever did wish for transformation must do without. Could the sheer blind instinct for survival make people, metamorphs included, hold fast to the identities they had? Societies had likewise never become as different from what the past had known as he could imagine them having done. Were they also both driven and bound by a biological heritage that went back to the prehuman?
The waiter interrupted his reverie by bringing his beer. He paid and gulped it.
“Buenas tardes, Captain Kenmuir.”
He looked up. The heart thuttered between his ribs.
“I am Irene Norton,” the woman said in a musical, young-sounding contralto. Otherwise she was undistinguished, pale face, shoulder-length brown hair. Of average height, she muffled her shape in a slit poncho and wide-bottomed slacks. That wasn’t uncommon, but he didn’t suppose she intended stylishness.
He half rose. She waved him back. “May I join you?” she asked. When she took a chair, the motion was lithe.
“D-do you care for a drink?” he stammered.
She gave a steady look out of a visage held expressionless. “No, gracias. This is simply a, a convenient place to meet.”
“No eavesdroppers?” What an idiotic question.
She shook her head. “And I know the neighborhood and those who live in it, a little. Let’s not waste time. We’ll have to go somewhere else for serious talking, but first—“ She leaned forward. Her arms-came out of the poncho to rest on the table. “Has anything unusual, anything at all, happened to you on this expedition?”
“Why, uh, well—“ He barked a laugh. “The whole business is unusual, isn’t it?”
“I mean, have you noticed something that could suggest, oh, you’re being watched?”
It came to him with a start. He should have seen earlier, when she first gestured. The hands and wrists before him were well-formed, strong, and … golden-brown. That was a life mask on her head.
She should have been more thorough about her disguise, or more careful in her movements. And she spoke almost as hesitantly as he. No professional, then. Another amateur, maybe just as bewildered and anxious? What was driving her?
The sense of equal responsibility braced him. He saw what a funk he had been in, and how much it was due to feeling like a pawn—he who had taken a boat , down through a gravel storm, on his own decision, to rescue five men stranded on a cometary nucleus.
“I don’t know,” he said slowly. “Let me think.” He did, aloud, while he stared into his beer mug or sipped from it. “If Lilisaire is under suspicion and monitored, they could know she called me back from space. Have you been told about that? And of course they’d know I visited her at the castle. I took the regular shuttle from Port Bowen to Kenyatta. Somebody could have ridden with me or called ahead and had somebody else waiting to trail me. But—I’m no expert at this, you understand. However, she and I had discussed my procedure at length. When I rented a volant at Kenyatta, I debited the account of an Earthside agent of hers. I left it in a part of Scotland I know, with instructions to return home next day, and went on foot about thirty kilometers across uninhabited Highland preserve to where another volant was waiting for me. That had been arranged by messenger or quantum-coded transmission, I’m not sure which, but in either case it ought to have been secure. I saw no sign of anyone else, and cloud cover—which had been forecast—hampered satellite surveillance, if they were zealous enough to order that. In Lake Superior Hub I changed vehicles again, and proceeded to aresort community on Vancouver Island, where I made a local call to Guthrie House and arranged an appointment with the Rydberg. I phoned San Francisco from there. The Rydberg told me it was safe, and I do believe it would take a special operation to tap that line. Today, according to the orders I got, I flew here without incident.”