Deviation from a Theme

By

Steven Utley

Teacher Payeph wagged her wattles in exasperation as she surveyed the shambles I had made of my first continuum.

"How many times must I tell you?" she demanded. "The smaller, the better! Random factors produce effects which spread outward in waves in all directions! Subtlety, Ellease! Subtlety is called for in order to have a smoothly running continuum." I bent a spine into the apologetic position and said, "I am abjectly sorry, Teacher."

"I'm certain the fact that you're sorry will console all the life-forms suffering in your continuum." She settled at my side and became solicitous, stroking my frill with her whiskers. That egg-gummer Myosa looked up from her continuum and snickered on my private frequency.

Payeph always feels warmth for the retards.

Expel it from your nether vents, I told Myosa and shut her off.

Payeph punched MAXIMUM REDUCTION on my console slate and picked up my continuum. It hung in her pincers like a punctured bagaloon. I colored and clamped the lids shut on my dorsal vents, lest my embarrassment offend.

"What is wrong?" Payeph asked as she returned my limp creation to its mount. "Are you having trouble with your vision? Can't you perceive fine details? Or is it that you simply don't care?"

"Oh, no. It's just … I'm clumsy, Teacher. I try to work on a small scale, but every time I attempt to manipulate my life-forms, I accidentally gouge the side off a mountain or punch a hole clean through the planet. Once, I missed altogether and ruptured the sun."

Payeph looked sad. "I think you need more practice, Ellease, before I turn you loose on another continuum of your own. Come over to mine."

I risked a glance at Myosa. She was smoking with envy. It was no secret that Payeph's continuum was the best in existence. Her decision to let me practice there was an undeniable show of favor. I rose and followed my teacher past Myosa, at whom I surreptitiously twitched a nipple.

When we came to her continuum, Payeph punched MINIMUM REDUCTION. Everything became gray shading into black or white.

"Of course," said Payeph, "I can't simply turn you loose on my pride and joy."

"Of course, Teacher." My hearts sank.

"But I am going to allot you control of a quasi-world."

I cocked a spine at her. "A quasi-world, Teacher?"

"A sort of alternate reality which the life-forms in this sector have erected and preserved on light-sensitive film. The absence of color disconcerts you, Ellease? You'll soon become accustomed to it. The process by which images are preserved is rather primitive at this point in my life-forms' development as a technological race. But they learn quickly. They're imaginative, after a fashion. Now I want you to review everything here, and then I'll let you practice handling the random factors."

"Yes, Teacher."

I reviewed the material. Payeph's creations' creations were two-dimensional in addition to being monochromatic, but I nevertheless found them fascinating. My teacher's five-pointed life-forms had grasped the rudiments of continuum-building and, while keeping within the limitations of their technology, had constructed neat, succinct worlds wherein everything contrived to move itself to this point to that. It was rather like a primer in construction.

"I think I have it now," I finally told Payeph.

"You may begin. Just remember to be subtle when selecting your variables." And I began.

#

Time was running in circles now, doubling back and catching up with itself, enfolding Ann Darrow in a scramble of images. A skull-shaped mountain rising through the fog. Black hands lashing her between the weathered stone pillars. Monsters crashing through the jungle, blundering into one another in their eagerness to get at her. It had been a harrowing night for Ann, a night of bad dreams come true, of fearful childhood imaginings spilling over into reality. She had no way of telling how long or how far she had been carried in her monstrous abductor's paw. She could no longer scream. Her throat was raw. She had lost and regained consciousness more times than she could number, and, always, the awakening had been the same

In the limbo separating nightmare-filled consciousness and total awakening, she tramped the sidewalks of New York City, moving mindlessly, mechanically, like a zombie. She was tired and hungry, but she had no money, no job, no place to go, and it was cold, so very cold.

But the fetid stench in the air was that of decaying vegetation, not automobile-exhaust fumes and ripening garbage. Her clothes were pasted to her skin with perspiration. And a far greater horror than exhaustion or hunger bore her in its hand as though she were a doll.

In the limbo between unconsciousness and awakening, Ann prayed for deliverance. Make the bad dream go away!

Don't let me wake up to that thing again!

Please, somebody, save me! Save me!

But the awakening was always the same.

#

"Ah," said Teacher Payeph. "I'm impressed, Ellease. You reveal a distinct talent for subjectivity." I retracted my mandibles, a sign of profound thanks, and then, carefully, nervously, started restructuring events in the quasi-world.

#

Tyrannosaurus sniffed the hot, damp air and began to move through the jungle. The sky was just beginning to lighten, but a thick mist was rising, keeping visibility to a minimum. The dinosaur ploughed through the gloom unconcernedly, letting his acute sense of smell guide him.

Prey-scent was abundant. He crossed the cooling spoor of a nocturnal stegosaurus at one point and, further on, followed the trail of a swamp-dwelling giant until the ground fell off sharply into a bog. Unable to proceed into the swamp, Tyrannosaurus roared out his frustration and swung his twenty-meter length about to seek food elsewhere. He was aptly named, this Tyrant Lizard; a striding maw of a creature, with teeth like carving knives and jaw muscles like steel cable. He walked on his splayed, talon-tipped toes and held his small forearms close to his scaly chest. He hardly needed the forearms. He did his killing with his jaws and the weight behind those jaws. He was aptly named, this Tyrannosaurus, and the other denizens of his world feared and respected him accordingly. In their marshes, the thunder lizards headed for deeper water when he approached on the shore. The pterodactyls climbed into the sky. The stegosaurs crouched under their rows of dorsal plates and flicked their spiked tails in alarm. Tyrannosaurus paused abruptly and listened. He heard a muffled roar in the distance, followed by a series of thin shrieks and a dull crash. There was a sound of large branches snapping. Then the slowly moving air of the jungle brought a faint scent which evoked a fleeting impression, a dim flash of recognition, in the dinosaur's mind: ape. The Tyrant Lizard began to move again, uprooting saplings and tearing up great clumps of sodden earth as he walked. A lesser scent, intermingled with that of the ape, impinged upon his nostrils. It was a completely unfamiliar odor. Vaguely perplexed, the carnivore slowed his advance. He came to the edge of a clearing and tensed for the attack, for the ape-scent was thick there. But there was no ape in sight.

A high, plaintive screech brought Tyrannosaurus' head around. His glistening eye fastened upon a strange white thing wedged into the fork of a lightning-blasted tree at the far side of the clearing. It seemed hardly more than a mouthful, hardly worth the trouble, but its noise was annoying. He hissed and strode forward, and he was almost upon the walling thing when an enormous ape burst into the clearing like a black mountain on legs. Tyrannosaurus immediately forgot about the irritating white creature as he wheeled to meet the ape's attack. The simian was as tall as the dinosaur and, though considerably less heavy, very powerfully built. Jaws distended, the reptile lunged. His opponent ducked under his bead and clamped its shaggy arms around his neck. He raked his teeth across the beast's broad back, shredding flesh.

Back and forth across the clearing they raged, biting, tearing, kicking, clawing. Locked together, they crashed against the dead tree, felling it. The ape lost its hold on the dinosaur and went down on top of the tree. Before the mammal could rise, Tyrannosaurus planted an enormous foot upon its stomach, bent down and bit out its throat.

#

Payeph fluttered her wattles approvingly. "Very good," she said, "but don't forget that the alterations you've made will have a direct bearing on everything which follows."

"Of course. Teacher."

#

She awoke with a splitting headache. She was pinned beneath the fallen bole, with only a short, thick nub of branch holding it away from her. For several seconds, she could not remember where she was. Through a rift in the jungle canopy, she could see that the stars had faded from the sky, but the effort required to keep her eyes open and focused served only to worsen the agony behind them. She closed her eyes and pressed her cheek into the warm mud. Then a basso profoundo grunt shook her out of her daze. She twisted around as best she could and gave a short, sharp scream. Her erstwhile captor's inert mass was sprawled across the trunk.

The giant ape was dead. Looming over it was the monster to end all monsters. Blood dripping from his jaws and dewlap, Tyrannosaurus looked up from his meal when he heard the scream. He peered down at the strange white creature. A growl started to rumble up from his long, deep chest. It had been a bad night for Ann Darrow. A worse day was dawning.

#

"Not at all bad, Ellease. See how simple it is?"

"Yes, Teacher."

"All you have to do is exercise the same meticulous care on a cosmic scale. Take your time. Pay attention to details." She clacked her mandibles. "And watch out for your own elbows."

"Yes, Teacher."

"Do you think you've got the hang of it now? Or would you like to practice with another alternate-reality?" I turned to have another look at the gray quasi-world and quite accidentally ground Tyrannosaurus to mush underfoot just as he was about to nip off Ann Darrow's head and shoulders. Payeph moaned.

I pulled my head down into my carapace. "Er, should I fix it all back the way it was at first?"

"No! I mean, no, Ellease. Let's, uh, leave well enough alone."

"Yes, Teacher." I backed out of the quasi-world as she punched MEDIUM REDUCTION on her console slate. Several of my feet became entangled in something. I gave a tug and pulled free. "Teacher, won't the life-forms who constructed that quasi-world notice the changes I made?"

Payeph made a hooting sound and inflated her wattles in dismay. "I think they have more serious matters to consider now." I looked into her continuum and groaned. Pulling my feet free, I had broken something else.

"Ellease," Payeph said, "perhaps you should try another line of work." I stared disconsolately at the mess I had created. Stars were blossoming like variegated flowers. For a brief moment, an entire galaxy flared up into a bouquet.

"Yes, Teacher," I said.

# # #

Steve Utley rose to prominence in the s-f field during the 1970s, when he joined a group of science fiction writers in Austin, Texas, which included Lisa Tuttle, Howard Waldrop, and Bruce Sterling. The group was later formalized as the Turkey City Writer's Workshop. Since then he has published prolifically in and out of the science-fiction field, and The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction has called him "a figure of edgy salience."

Utley may be best known for his Silurian Tales series, launched in Asimov's Science Fiction in 1993 and continued in not only that magazine but also The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Analog Science Fiction and Fact, and the e-zines Sci Fiction and Revolution Science Fiction. The series describes the adventures and misadventures of a scientific expedition in the Paleozoic Era.

Since 1997, he has made his home in Tennessee.

"Deviatins from a Theme" was originally published in Galaxy in 1976. Sentinel S-F is proud to print it again.