They endured a lot more insults, but no more violence, on the way to the capital. Suzl went first to the temple to attend to business, then planned to buy what she needed and get out fast. Spirit, of course, was far too claustrophobic to enter, but remained in the square chasing and playing with the birds and drawing a crowd.
The priestess administrator, at least, seemed charitable. Suzl submitted to a full identity photo series, showing front, back, and both profiles of the whole body, and submitted to an examination. It took several hours before it was through and she received the document. She glanced down the vital statistics. Height, 144.62 cm.; weight, 108.86 kg.; sex, male. She—no, he, for now it had been made official and was in fact the way Suzl felt— stared at the weight figure gloomily, although he knew that some of that was in the special bone and muscle support supplied by Ravi’s paid-for wizardry and more was for the stomach that supported the breasts and the rear that counterbalanced it. But it was still higher than it had ever been. What particularly shocked was the height. It was 6 cms lower than it had ever been. Now that he thought of it, though, his head
“I think you ought to see a spell doctor in Flux,” she suggested. “It sounds to me like either you’ve got spells you don’t know about or some are becoming unravelled.”
They were very nice, agreeing to go out for him and get the few items he wanted, and then showing on the map a quick way out of the Anchor that would avoid major population. They understood.
The supplies consisted mostly of two boxes of cigars, a huge box of safety matches, a generalized map of World, and an octarina—a small instrument made from a specialized type of gourd. He had learned to play one on the trail and had lost it long before.
It took two more days to exit the other gate through the route the temple had suggested, but there were only minor incidents and no trouble. They headed now southwest, towards more familiar territory again. Suzl had decided that if he needed a Flux doctor, he might as well satisfy an old curiosity itch and visit Pericles, home Fluxland of the wizard Mervyn, the only publicly known member of the Nine Who Guard.
Pericles itself was off the usual beaten track and visitors were generally discouraged, although it was closer to the four-Anchor cluster in which both Suzl and Spirit had been born than to any other.
The map that Suzl had was pretty barren; it showed only some major Fluxlands and all the Anchors, but it was still something that simply would not have been permitted in the old days. The Church and the stringers had kept geography as much to themselves as possible, so much so that the amazing pattern even this bare-bones map showed was unknown to most of the population, Anchor
Anchors varied in size from as small as twenty by forty kilometers to more than a hundred-and-fifty by two- hundred-and-fifty kilometers, and they varied widely in shape as well—Anchor Logh reminded most people of a shelled peanut, while Anchor Kaegh was an irregular crescent—but the twenty-eight Anchors were clustered in groups of four, all four’s closest inner point being equidistant from a Hellgate. It was evidence of intelligent design that gave skeptics like Suzl pause.
The prime function of the Nine was to guard those Hellgates from any intrusions, and one lived near each cluster in a private Fluxland, although only one let it be known that he was, in fact, one of the Nine. Mervyn was the oldest and the dean of his group, as well as an instructor in Flux power both privately and in the wizards’ mad university town of Globbus, where Suzl’s original curse developed so many years before. Most Fluxlands were open; a few were closed off by a permanent shield of force maintained by the Fluxlord and could be entered only by permission. Pericles was one of the latter.
Because of the shield, the only thing visible to outsiders was a huge, ornate marble archway into which had been set a massive bronze set of double doors. Only this was apparent. One could walk around the gate and even see the other side of the door, but nothing else but void.
Before Suzl could even knock, though, the huge doors swung open to reveal a beautiful scene within. It was green, rolling countryside with lots of trees and what seemed like thousands of different kinds and colors of blooming flowers all around. Insects buzzed about, and the air was warm and humid, the sky a light blue with a bunch of fluffy white clouds. A creature approached them, a creature of Flux that was strange indeed, having the head and torso of a beautiful woman and the hindquarters of a spotted pony. She trotted up to them and stopped, and Spirit gaped. Suzl had seen stranger, of course.
“Welcome to Pericles,” the centauress said. “I’m Melana. I’ll take you to Mervyn.”
“I gather we were expected,” Suzl commented.
Melana smiled. “He knows whatever he wants to know, and what he doesn’t know he devotes the bulk of his time to finding out. Come.”
Suzl urged the mule onward, and Spirit tagged along, keeping pace and just looking at the beauty of the land.
Here and there were columned structures of fine marble and statuary. Museums, libraries, and special collections, Melana told them. The statues and buildings were copies of things Mervyn had seen in some of his treasured ancient books.
Around and about were other centaurs, and there were half-human fish in a wide lake, sunning themselves on rocks. There were many races of strange creatures in Pericles, it seemed, most of them half human and half some animal or another. They all seemed happy and friendly and content, something which Suzl envied. They were as perfectly adapted as any human stock could be to new form; he, on the other hand, was an example of how not to put somebody together.
He had stared again and again at those four photos on the official document, and liked what he saw less and less. He couldn’t understand what Spirit saw in him, and he loved her all the more for not seeing what was so evident. The profiles were particularly shocking, since the size of that belly and ass stood out along with the grossness of the breasts. It had been years since he’d been able to see down past those breasts, and he avoided mirrors. Without the stomach’s support, though, those mammaries now would droop literally to his crotch, and he would be unable to stand. Recently he’d been feeling some pain in the lower back, legs, and ankles, and this helped explain it.
Mervyn met them in a pleasant open glen near one of the marble buildings. He looked old and frail and his white beard was long and scraggly, but he had tremendous power in him, a power which maintained all this for hundreds of square kilometers with lots to spare.
The usual greetings were brief but warm, and Mervyn and Suzl sent Spirit off to frolick with some of the creatures nearby. He then materialized two stuffed chairs in the middle of the glen for them. They looked rather comic where they were, but Suzl sat gratefully.
After explaining the problems and worries, Suzl poured out his heart to Mervyn, how he’d been feeling about himself, his total sense of helplessness, and his tremendous closeness to Spirit which by now was close to worship. The old man listened attentively, particularly at his account of the growing romantic feelings and the emotional bond that created communication and his tale of the curious linking spell.
Finally he said, “All right. While we’ve been talking, I’ve been analyzing both your mind and your spells. I find the rest fascinating, and hope that the two of you will remain here a while so that I may study your bonding. There is something afoot here that is beyond what Coydt intended or I or Sister Kasdi could see. But first we must address your current problem.”
“It’s a spell, isn’t it? Somebody threw another whammy on old Suzl when he wasn’t looking.”
“Something like that. Let’s start at the beginning. You were a normal human woman, short and pudgy, but that was all. Then you got involved in that attempt to remove Dar’s sexual spell and got caught in the crossfire, getting his penis and a variation of his curse. That curse is quite good and nothing for amateurs to deal with. You knew that at the time, and were told the possible consequences of trying to remove it.”
He nodded. “I understand the problem. Anybody who tries to remove it might wind up with nastiness back at them. But I accepted that. I really didn’t mind, after a while, although it took me years to decide on one direction and one identity. I can handle that. But this other…”
“And you really had few problems until you signed on with this Ravi a few years ago?”
“That’s about it. After all those years I just got sick of being on the low rung, and when he offered me a foreman’s job, I took it.”
“But there was a price.”
“Well, yeah, but I just figured he was doing that game with his own power to magnify what he liked. I never thought of it as permanent.”
