The work wasn't hard, but there were some sacrifices.
You had to give up hope and freedom--and being human!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, November 1963.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
I
The girl with the Slider egg glittering in her hair watched the
bailiff lead Asa Graybar out of the courtroom. He recognized her as
old Hazeltyne's daughter Harriet, no doubt come to see justice done.
She didn't have the hothouse-flower look Asa would have expected in a
girl whose father owned the most valuable of the planetary franchises.
She was not afraid to meet his eye, the eye of a judicially certified
criminal. There was, perhaps, a crease of puzzlement in her brow, as if
she had thought crimes were committed by shriveled, rat-faced types,
and not by young biological engineers who still affected crewcuts.
Tom Dorr, Hazeltyne's general manager, was her escort. Asa felt
certain, without proof, that Dorr was the man who had framed him for
the charge of grand theft by secreting a fresh Slider egg in his
laboratory. The older man stared at Asa coldly as he was led out of
the courtroom and down the corridor back to jail.
Jumpy, Asa's cellmate, took one look at his face as he was put back
behind bars.
"Guilty," Jumpy said.
Asa glared at him.
"I know, I know," Jumpy said hastily. "You were framed. But what's the
rap?"
"Five or one."
"Take the five," Jumpy advised. "Learn basket-weaving in a nice
air-conditioned rehab clinic. A year on a changeling deal will seem a
lot longer, even if you're lucky enough to live through it."
Asa took four steps to the far wall of the cell, stood there briefly
with his head bent and turned to face Jumpy.
"Nope," Asa said softly. "I'm going into a conversion tank. I'm going
to be a muck man, Jumpy. I'm going out to Jordan's Planet and hunt
Slider eggs."
"Smuggling? It won't work."
Asa didn't answer. The Hazeltyne company had gone after him because
he had been working on a method of keeping Slider eggs alive. The
Hazeltyne company would be happy to see him mark time for five years
of so-called social reorientation. But if he could get out to Jordan's
Planet, with his physiology adapted to the environment of that wretched
world, he could study the eggs under conditions no laboratory could
duplicate. He might even be able to cause trouble for Hazeltyne.
His only problem would be staying alive for a year.
An interview with a doctor from the Conversion Corps was required
for all persons who elected changeling status. The law stated that
potential changelings must be fully informed of the rights and hazards
of altered shape before they signed a release. The requirement held
whether or not the individual, like Asa, was already experienced.
By the time humanity traveled to the stars, medical biology had made
it possible to regenerate damaged or deficient organs of the body.
Regeneration was limited only by advanced age. Sometime after a man's
two hundredth year his body lost the ability to be coaxed into growing
new cells. A fifth set of teeth was usually one's last. As long as
senescence could be staved off, however, any man could have bulging
biceps and a pencil waist, if he could pay for the treatment.
Until the medical associations declared such treatments unethical there
was even a short fad of deliberate deformities, with horns at the
temples particularly popular.
From regeneration it was a short step to specialized regrowth. The
techniques were perfected to adapt humans to the dozen barely habitable
worlds man had discovered. Even on Mars, the only planet outside Earth
in the solar system where the human anatomy was remotely suitable, a
man could work more efficiently with redesigned lungs and temperature
controls than he could inside a pressure suit. On more bizarre planets
a few light-years away the advantages of changeling bodies were
greater.
Unfortunately for planetary development companies, hardly anyone
wanted to become a changeling. High pay lured few. So a law was passed
permitting a convicted criminal to earn his freedom by putting in one
year as a changeling for every five years he would otherwise have had
to spend in rehabilitation.
"What types of changelings do you have orders for right now, doctor?"
Asa asked the man assigned to his case. It would look suspicious if he
asked for Jordan's Planet without some preliminary questions.
"Four," answered the doctor.
"Squiffs for New Arcady. Adapted for climbing the skycraper trees and
with the arm structure modified into pseudo-wings or gliding. Then we
need spiderinos for Von Neumann Two. If you want the nearest thing we
have to Earth, there's Caesar's Moon, where we'd just have to double
your tolerance for carbon monoxide and make you a bigger and better
gorilla than the natives. Last, of course, there's always a need for
muck men on Jordan's Planet."
The doctor shrugged, as if naturally no one could be expected to
choose Jordan's Planet. Asa frowned in apparent consideration of the
alternatives.
"What's the pay range?" he asked.
"Ten dollars a day on Caesar's Moon. Fifteen on New Arcady or Von
Neumann Two. Twenty-five on Jordan's."
Asa raised his eyebrows.
"Why such a difference? Everyone knows about muck men living in the
mud while they hunt Slider eggs. But don't your conversions make the
changeling comfortable in his new environment?"
"Sure they do," said the doctor. "We can make you think mud feels
better than chinchilla fur and we can have you jumping like a
grasshopper despite the double gravity. But we can't make you like the
sight of yourself. And we can't guarantee that a Slider won't kill you."
"Still," Asa mused aloud, "it would mean a nice bankroll waiting at the
end of the year."
He leaned forward to fill in the necessary form.
Since it was cheaper to transport a normal human than to rig special
environments in a spaceship, every planet operated its own conversion
chambers. On the space freighter that carried him from Earth Asa
Graybar was confined to a small cabin that was opened only for a guard
to bring meals and take out dirty dishes. He was still a prisoner.
Sometimes he could hear voices in the passageway outside, and once
one of them sounded like a woman's. But since women neither served on
spaceships nor worked in the dome settlements on harsher worlds, he
decided it was his imagination. He might have been dead cargo for all
he learned about space travel.
Nevertheless his time was not wasted. He had as a companion, or
cellmate, another convict who had elected conversion to muck man. More
important, his companion had done time on Jordan's Planet before and
had wanted to return.
"It's the Slider eggs," explained Kershaw, the two-time loser. "The
ones you see on Earth knock your eyes out, but they've already begun
to die. There's nothing like a fresh one. And I'm not the first to
go crazy over them. When I was reconverted and got home I had nine
thousand dollars waiting for me. That'll buy a two-year-old egg that
flashes maybe four times a day. So I stole a new one and got caught."
Asa had held a Slider egg in his hand as he gazed into it. He could
understand. The shell was clear as crystal, taut but elastic, while
the albumen was just as clear around the sparkling network of organic
filaments that served as a yolk. Along these interior threads played
tiny flashes of lightning, part of some unexplained process of life.
Electrical instruments picked up static discharges from the egg, but
the phenomenon remained a mystery.
Hardly anyone faced with the beauty of a Slider's egg bothered to
question its workings. For a few expectant moments there would be only
random, fitful gleamings, and then there would be a wild coruscation of
light, dancing from one filament to the next in a frenzy of brilliance.
It took about four years for a Slider egg to die. Beauty, rarity and
fading value made the eggs a luxury item like nothing the world had
ever seen. If Asa had found a means of keeping them alive it would have
made him wealthy at the expense of the Hazeltyne monopoly.
"You know what I think?" Kershaw asked. "I think those flashes are
the egg calling its momma. They sparkle like a million diamonds when
you scoop one out of the muck, and right away a Slider always comes
swooping out of nowhere at you."
"I've been meaning to ask you," Asa said. "How do you handle the
Sliders?"
Kershaw grinned.
"First you try to catch it with a rocket. If you miss you start leaping
for home. All this time you're broadcasting for help, you understand.
When the Slider catches you, you leap up while it buries its jaws in
the mud where you were just standing. You dig your claws in its back
and hang on while it rolls around in the mud. Finally, if the 'copter
comes--and if they don't shoot off your head by mistake--you live to
tell the tale."