The demon thing brags about her latest conquest, and from the depths
of her voiceless despair, Becca discovers there may still be a way to
win.
No Obligation
By Randalynn
Part 4
"Victory Through
Defeat, Or A Paradox Beats A Joker Every Time."
"Generally speaking, the Way of the warrior is resolute acceptance of death." -- Miyamoto Musashi, the Book of Five Rings
The demon thing smiled.
"I'm very proud of the way I played her, Becca. She was a wreck today, all
red-eyed and sniffly, sleepwalking into work, staring at the picture of Jack on
her desk. She was trying so hard to be brave, and to stiff me out of a meal.
And honestly, on the surface, she was succeeding. I could see, over time, how
she could come to terms with what I'd done." She frowned, and anger
flashed in her eyes. "That meddling joy eater! I could have been fed for
years on your disappearance -- not to mention your ongoing sorrow for causing
your family such pain."
I kicked my feet and pounded the seat with my tiny fists,
and the face in the mirror brightened. "Now at least I have you to feed on
again. The anger and frustration, seasoned with sadness ... mmmmmmmmm."
You lost all three of them to get even with me? In
spite of the pain, I smiled at her. You're stupider than you look.
"Oh, your family has
its stubborn side, Becca," she replied happily. "Got it from you, I
imagine. Eventually, they would have accepted the change in you and gotten on
with life as best they could, if for no other reason that to keep me hungry.
They still had you, after all. Now to them, Jack died a while back. They lost
dear old Dad, but they still have baby Becca. Such a cute bundle of joy you
are!" She smiled. "Now the happiness Becca brings them doesn't hurt
me at all. But when they treat you like the baby you are instead of the man you
were? Ooooh, yes, I can live quite nicely on what you're going to be feeling
for some time to come."
I don't believe this, I thought furiously. How
could you possibly get Carolyn to even talk to you?She knew what you
were, what you did.
"Oh yes," the
demon thing sneered. "She wouldn't let ME get within a thousand feet of
her. But that would presuppose she knew her visitor was me."
The image in the mirror blurred, and a view of Carolyn's
office took its place. Carolyn looked so sad, so broken up, my heart melted for
her. All my fault, I thought, and I heard a small contented sigh come
from somewhere above me.
"Every time you kick yourself, you're ringing my dinner
bell, baby!" I could hear the derision in her voice. "So tasty."
Suddenly, the space in front of Carolyn's desk seemed to
shimmer, and a young man appeared. Carolyn looked up from my picture and
smiled.
"Hey," she said softly. "I thought you had
gone. That you couldn't stay."
"I can't," the man replied. "But I feel as if
I haven't done enough."
I heard the demon thing laugh in my ear. "Too
true," she snickered. "I didn't get to do nearly as much as I wanted
to, to any of you."
"Oh, but you have!" Carolyn protested, looking up
at the newcomer with grateful eyes.
The figure shook his head. "There's still so much I
could do. You're so unhappy, you and the children."
Carolyn sighed, and looked down at the desk. "I know.
We shouldn't be. I mean, we didn't really lose Jack. He's ... well, she's still
with us. And what you did allowed us to keep her. Even though ... she'll never
be the father and husband he was, he didn't disappear. And that's ... well,
that's something."
"But it makes you sad, thinking about what you and the
children will miss. Every time you look at Becca, you'll think about the Jack
that was. All of you, seeing Becca and remembering the husband and father who
isn't there. Always remembering." The young man shook his head, and as a
tear fell down Carolyn's face, I could see him shudder slightly. Carolyn
nodded, her lips tight, unable to speak. The man came around the table, and put
a hand on her shoulder.
"I think I can help," he said simply. Carolyn's
head jerked up, and she looked into his eyes.
"You can?"
He nodded. "I can make you and the children feel
better, right now. Make it easier for you to live with the change and move on
with your lives. I can't tell you how, but it's the last thing I'll be able to
do for you. If you're willing." The figure leaned forward. "You need
to trust me, though. Do you?"
Carolyn nodded eagerly. 'Of course! After what you've
already done for us, how could I not?"
The man grinned, and squeezed Carolyn's shoulder. I squeezed
my tiny fists and pounded on the arms of the car seat. The demon thing laughed
a laugh only I could hear.
"Okay, Carolyn," the figure in the mirror said.
"Before I can do anything, you need to give me a dollar."
"A dollar?" she asked. He nodded. She nodded back
and reached for her purse. Grabbing her wallet, she pulled out a crumpled bill
and slipped it into his hand. He smiled.
"Now, close your eyes." Carolyn did as she was
told, and I felt my own tears start to flow. He bent down over her and
whispered a single word in her ear.
"Forget."
I saw rather than felt the reality wave ripple out from the
two figures behind the desk. Then the mirror blurred again, and the bitch thing
was back.
"Not a single lie in the entire conversation," she
purred. "I AM good. And once again, you humans see and hear only what you
want to." Her eyes closed, and her lips twisted up in a grotesque smile. I
could feel her savoring my grief and despair. "Pitiful, really. 'A bargain
struck is a bargain made.' And such a deal -- all that grief erased for a U.S.
dollar." She opened her eyes and grinned down at me. "Of course, it
buys me all your grief and then some, so it's a win-win for me. And a lose-lose
for you."
Her face disappeared from the mirror, and I caught Carolyn's
eyes looking at me with concern.
"Are you okay, baby?" she asked, and I looked down
and just cried.
###
The tears had stopped by the time we reached home. I was
red-eyed and blotchy from crying, but I had gone numb from shock. Every time
I start getting a handle on all this, the game changes. I thought bitterly.
How many jerks on reality's chain will it take before I just snap?
Carolyn opened my door and
reached down to unbuckle me. She saw my runny nose and my stricken expression,
and I watched her heart melt for me.
"Oh, Becca baby," she said softly, picking me up
and cradling me against her. "What's wrong? You had so much fun with Gina
today, and now you're all sad! Do you miss her so much?" She took a tissue
from her purse and wiped my nose, then she held me close and gave me a squeeze.
I closed my eyes wearily and relaxed into her arms. I was totally spent,
without hope or any chance for redemption. I was stuck as Becca, voiceless and
doomed to babyhood. I had no more tears to give. I had nothing. Even thinking
of the Arbiter didn't raise my spirits. He had left and not returned. Maybe I
wasn't worth the effort on his part.
I felt her pick up the diaper bag and her purse. Still
holding me tight and murmuring softly, she closed the car door with her hip and
made her way into the house.
It was chilly and dark outside, but being carried into our
home was like entering an oasis of light and warmth and noise. I still felt
numb, but my spirits seemed to lift almost immediately. It was ... Home. A
little neater, maybe, with some of the furniture moved around. The television
was on, and Jeremy was watching some technology show on cable. I could smell
something cooking in the kitchen, something Italian with garlic and tomato
sauce, and the smell filled me with hunger.
Carolyn walked into the kitchen to find Emma hovering over
the stove.
"Hey, honey," she said, giving her a kiss with me
still in her arms.
"Hi, Mom," Emma replied, focused on the cooking
but smiling when she felt Carolyn's lips. "Dinner will be ready in a
few."
"Good to hear," Carolyn said, walking through the
kitchen to the living room.
"Jeremy? Would you watch Becca for a few minutes?"
Jeremy didn't even look away from the screen. "Sure,
Mom," he said, holding out his arms. Carolyn handed me to him,
purposefully blocking the screen until he looked up at her. When he did, she
kissed his nose.
"Mo-om!" He ducked his head, protesting with a
grin.
"Honey, Becca's sad for some reason," she
whispered. "She cried in the car nearly the whole way home. She needs
extra attention. Give her some cuddling, okay?"
"Sure, Mom!" He held me close against him and
squeezed.
"Thanks, Jeremy. You're the best!" She kissed his
nose again, and danced backwards away from him, still smiling. She disappeared
from the room. I didn't know where, and I obviously couldn't ask. It stung
briefly, but drifted away with a squeeze from Jeremy, I sat there in my son's
lap with his arms around me and watched the tech show with him for a few
minutes. Life felt almost normal, except for the diaper and the play dress.
Every once in a while, Jeremy would give me a little hug, or a tiny kiss, and
it felt oddly comforting.
I was just getting interested in a report about wireless
technology for gaming when Emma's face popped between mine and the screen. I
started, eyes wide, and opened my mouth to scream --
-- and Emma popped a pacifier in it and kissed me on the
forehead. My mouth closed around it and started sucking automatically, much to
my chagrin, as she picked me up and put me on a play mat on the floor.
Internally, I cringed.
"Come on, Jer," she groaned, "don't you know
what a baby wants? Not that tech stuff, that's for sure."
"She seemed pretty interested to me, sis," Jeremy
said, smiling. "Couldn't take her eyes off the screen. I think she's gonna
be a great gamer someday."
"Is that what you want her to grow up to be -- a couch
potato like you?" Jeremy threw the TV Guide at her, and Emma laughed and
threw it back. Jeremy ducked and laughed, then went back to watching the show.
Emma rolled me over on my back and put a bar full of hanging
toys right over my face and hands. Then she touched different toys to make them
move, and started talking to me in a singsong voice.
"Who's the prettiest girl I know?" she asked me,
spinning a multicolored plastic wheel to try and make me look. "Who's the
cutest girl in the world? Becca, that's who!" I sucked on the pacifier and
dutifully turned my head every time she made a toy do something. She seemed
disappointed, and my heart went out to her. She really was trying to cheer me
up -- Carolyn must have said something -- and I wasn't responding. I couldn't
make her sad. Quickly I gave her a toothless smile and gurgled a bit around the
pacifier, then banged on some of the toys with my hands.
Suddenly she sniffed the air, then looked panicked and ran
to the kitchen. I stared up at the ceiling and sucked, occasionally kicking my
legs to break up the monotony. I couldn't see the television from here, and I
thought briefly about rolling over to face the screen. But I wasn't sure about
being able to do it without getting tangled in the hanging toys, and I didn't
want to get Emma in trouble for leaving me like this if I did manage to get
myself stuck. So I waited, listening to the television drone without actually
hearing it. Every once in a while, I'd nudge a toy with a finger, trying for
precision over brute force. Got to live in this body, I thought. Might
as well learn to use it effectively.
I worked a little rhythm with the different sounds of the
different toys. Eventually my mouth got tired of sucking, and the pacifier slid
out and fell on the play mat beside me.
Right after my conversation
with the demon thing, I had felt utterly empty and alone. I felt like even the
semblance of control had been snatched away, and all I had left was the palest
shadow of my life as Jack. I should have been angry, or outraged, or crying a
blue streak while they all tried desperately to stop me. I had cried like that
in the car, and Carolyn fretted the whole way home, talking to me as best she
could, trying to calm me down. I only stopped because I had no more tears left
in me.
But then I came home. And it calmed me, because it WAS home.
It was odd, because in some strange way, it wasn't. Odd, I
mean. The last vestige of the me I used to be had been stripped away, leaving
me a powerless infant. But I didn't feel particularly powerless, or humiliated,
or embarrassed. In fact, I didn't really feel much of anything. Even though I
couldn't do anything except lie there, it felt okay. I had my family back again
-- and damn if they weren't happier than the last time I saw them. In spite of
all that had happened, it felt good to see them smiling.
Carolyn's smiling face appeared above me, and her arms
pushed aside the hanging toys and scooped me up. She swooped me up over her
head and wiggled me, and I giggled in spite of myself.
"Dinner time, baby!"
She had changed into sweatpants and a scoop neck tee --
comfy clothes, she used to call them. The table was set for three, with a high
chair next to Carolyn's usual chair. The chair I used to sit in sat empty,
still in the same place at the table. She slid me into the high chair, buckled
me in carefully, and clipped the small tray table in front of me. Then she tied
a pink plastic bib around my neck. I watched everything very carefully. Jeremy
finished setting the table, then brought out drinks and a salad. Emma brought
out the pasta with a nice tomato-based sauce on it, smelling of garlic, along
with a loaf of garlic bread and a tossed salad.
Carolyn came to the table last, with a small jar of
orange-colored food and a tiny rubber-tipped spoon. I realized belatedly that
none of the other stuff was for me, and I frowned and heaved a sigh.
"Oh come on, Becca," Carolyn said with a smile.
"You liked the carrots last time you had them."
My eyes grew wide. I did? Since this was my first night as
Becca -- heck, as far as I knew, it was Becca's first night ANYWHERE -- the
demon thing must have managed to create a whole back history for the baby I had
become. How far back did it go? How many memories did it have to spin out of
whole cloth to build a past for a six-month-old? Or had there really been a
Becca in a parallel dimension somewhere, just waiting for the thing to steal her
life?
As my mind spun in circles, Carolyn unscrewed the jar, took
a little bit of the carrots on the end of the spoon, and put them in my mouth.
I half sucked and half scraped them off of the spoon and tasted them. An
explosion of flavor filled my mouth, and I realized I did like the carrots. A
lot. At least this body did. As I swallowed, my arms and legs jerked
spasmodically with pleasure, and I smiled. Carolyn smiled back.
"See? Not icky at all!" She put another spoonful
in my mouth, and I swallowed it eagerly. Not pasta and sauce or garlic bread,
but surprisingly yummy. Apparently these taste buds hadn't been exposed to
anything but breast milk since birth, and solid foods were something new. At
daycare, the apricots were hatefully sweet, and the oatmeal was pretty bland,
but these carrots? Damn, they were good. After a while, Carolyn gave the jar to
Jeremy, and he took over feeding me so she could eat. All around me the family
chattered about the day, and I took it all in with the carrots, smiling all the
while. Before long the jar was empty, and everyone else's dinner was done.
###
But not mine, apparently. Carolyn lifted me out of the high
chair and wiped my mouth with the bib. The children took the plates from the
table and shared a look as we walked out of the room. She put me over her
shoulder and walked over to the rocking chair in the corner of the living room.
She sat down, lifted her tee shirt, and unhooked her bra from the front.
"Our time now, baby," she whispered with a smile,
and I smiled back. Carolyn adjusted me in her arms, getting us both
comfortable, and raised my mouth to her breast. I began sucking, and my eyes
drifted closed.
As I lay there in the arms of my former wife, drinking the
rest of my dinner and listening to my children bantering in the kitchen over
the dishes, I just stopped thinking -- about the day, about the evening, about
my family, and about my own stupidity. I opened my eyes slightly and saw Carolyn
looking down on me, a small smile playing around her lips. She stroked the side
of my face gently, and I heard her humming a lullaby. I sighed, and felt loved.
And with a shock, I suddenly realized that I still had one weapon left with
which to fight the demon thing. Despite my powerlessness, I had one move left
that would stop her in her tracks. The one thing she would never expect.
I smiled around the nipple in my mouth, without stopping.
###
Afterwards, Carolyn burped me gently, then took off the
diaper I had messed while feeding -- still not fun, but when you're as small as
I was, toilets tend to be more dangerous than useful. Then she put a small
plastic bathtub inside the regular tub, filled it, and gave me a bath with a
tiny washcloth. The soap and shampoo she used smelled nice, like lilac and
chamomile (according to the side of the bottle it came in -- and yes, I AM a
compulsive reader, thanks for asking). When she talked to me, I smiled --
primarily because it made her smile. When she washed me, I stayed very still so
as not to make it harder for her. This made her smile, too. I'd always loved
making her smile.
After the bath, Carolyn powdered and diapered me, then
dressed me for bed in a large pink sleep sack. She sat down in a rocking chair
next to my crib and cuddled me, rocking and singing until my eyelids began to
flutter. Then she kissed my forehead and placed me carefully in the crib. I was
asleep before she left the room.
I woke quietly in the middle of the night. The nightlight on
the wall by the changing table gave the room a warm glow, but that wasn't what
woke me. It was the cartoon moon in the center of the mobile over my crib. The
happy face on it shifted and twisted until it resembled the demon thing's
female guise, and it smiled down on me in anticipation.
"How was your first night, baby Becca?" it gushed
happily. "How did it feel? Humiliating? Just terrible to be treated like
the infant you are?" I said nothing, thought nothing, felt nothing. The
demon thing reached out, probed my mind, and grew angry. "Come on, baby.
It must have been awful for you. Why not share your anguish with me?"
I just looked at her and let the silence expand. She grew
uneasy. Finally I couldn't hold it in anymore, and I played my card.
I smiled.
"I can't share what I don't have, bitch," I
thought at her, and the smile grew to a toothless grin as I saw her confusion
mount. "Not that I'd want to feed you in any case, but in all your
scheming and playing with me and my family, you overlooked the one thing I
could do to take away your food supply."
She frowned, and her eyes
grew fiery. "Ha! What could you possibly do?"
I looked back at her with
triumph.
"I could get over it, and move on."
She was too shocked to speak.
"You gave me the idea, actually," I
thought smugly. "While you were explaining why you helped my family
forget, just so you could feed off of me. You said, 'Eventually, they would
have accepted the change in you and gotten on with life as best they could, if
for no other reason that to keep me hungry. They still had you, after
all.'"
There was stunned silence from the demon thing. I smiled.
"So I realized that if I accept the change and get
on with my life as best I can, I can keep you hungry, too. Because you need me
to fight this in order to feed. You need me to rage and suffer and howl at the
injustice, and hate you for doing this to me, and hate THEM for treating me
like an infant. But I don't HAVE to do what you want. And I don't WANT to -- if
for no other reason than to keep you hungry." I gave her another grin,
along with a giggle. "As you said, my family IS stubborn -- and yes,
they do get it from me."
"But ... but ... you're a grown man, trapped in a
baby's body!" She sputtered. "You can't talk! You can't move! It
should be hell on Earth in there for you! You should be a mass of raging hatred
and despair right now."
I smiled. "Being a grown man wasn't exactly high on
my list of things to want to be, remember?"
She howled so loud it shook
the bed. "But the Jack I knew, the overachiever, the control freak -- he
must be drowning with frustration. MY frustration! Where's my frustration,
Jack!?!"
"Chew on your own, bitch," I kicked my feet
in the sleep sack and settled back down, giving her a measured look. "Because
you'll get none from me. I'm NOT the overachiever, or the control freak. I'm
not JACK anymore. I'm Becca. And Becca's just fine the way she is." She
stared at me like I was insane. "I'm not saying it's going to be easy,
because it won't be. And God knows I wouldn't have picked this life, but I've
been through a lot worse in my forty years as Jack. I'll survive."
"I ... I'm hungry, damn
it! FEED ME!"
"I can't. I'm not hurting anymore. The one thing
that brought me the most pain earlier was the way I'd hurt my family -- because
I was the one who made them suffer. I took away their Dad and left a baby girl
in his place. That would have taken a long time to heal." I gave her
my biggest smile. "But then you went and erased all that hurt, took away
that memory so you could hurt me. Now they're doing just fine. Better than
fine, because they have Becca, and they love her. Love ME. The way they loved
Jack."
The eyes on the cartoon moon
were filling with an equal mix of hunger and hatred, but I wasn't scared. There
wasn't anything she could do to me without making a deal, and at this point my
family didn't desire anything enough to bargain with her. They -- WE -- were
content.
"And this is the best
part. I may not like being a baby, but in the end, it's only temporary. I will
grow up again, and time will bring back everything you took away. Speech,
walking, everything. I can wait. I've got my family back. The rest will
follow." I gave her the biggest smile yet.
"And since I wanted to be female in the first place, you've
actually gone and done me a favor." She
trembled, and the mobile shook. I put my hand up and pointed at her.
"Now shut up and listen, because I'm going to do you a favor in return,
and give you some advice. And I'm only going to say this once."
I focused all of my attention on her and put all of the determination
and strength I had behind my thoughts. She froze, almost mesmerized by my
intensity. The look in my eyes was serious.
"Stay the hell away
from me and mine. You're outgunned and outclassed, and you won't get fed here.
EVER. You had two shots at me. You won, then you lost. Now it's over. There's
enough misery in the world for you to feed on. Go find a banquet somewhere else."
She snorted. "Why should I listen to you, infant?"
" Because if you keep
on coming after us, I will kill you." She
felt my resolve in my mind. She knew this was no idle threat, and her eyes
widened. "It might take a lot of time and research to find a way,
but I'm no idiot. I've talked to the Arbiters. I know humans can wield magic.
And since you gave me forty more years of life to work with, it would be my
pleasure to spend them figuring out a way to make you die."
I realized suddenly that I would dedicate my life to
seeing her dead, if I had to. And at that realization, words began to pop into
my head, and I smiled. "It might take a few years to find a copy, but I
could start with Ostragon's 'Hunting the Demonic,' or perhaps Matsumoto's
'Quelling the Demon Hoard.' Both good choices for a demon assassin just
starting out." I felt a glimmer of fear come from the demon, and I
tried to keep my amazement to myself by smiling wider as more thoughts
appeared. "Of course, come to think of it, I bet many human mages have
beaten your kind in the past. Perhaps I could find a mentor to help me along.
After all, my cause is just. Or WILL be, if you don't leave me and mine alone
forever. Starting now."
"This is my last bargain with you, bitch. Leave
now, never come back, and I leave you alone. Stay and you die." I felt
my eyes flash, and felt her shock as a wave of energy rolled over her. "Make
your choice. NOW!"
I saw and felt her terror
solidify into an almost tangible force. When she saw the determination in my
head, she -- and I -- knew that she was beaten.
With a scream that shook the room and my soul, she rose from
the mobile and exploded in a burst of light that soared up and through the
ceiling, leaving no trace. The echo of her scream reverberated in my mind as I
felt her leave, and suddenly, all was quiet.
###
I was feeling zen-like. Placid and unruffled, like a cool
lake on a windless day. The anger and frustration I had felt earlier in the day
was completely gone, replaced with what felt like an endless calm, tinged with
satisfaction. I don't know where all of that came from -- the reference works,
that burst of power -- but I had beaten her, finally. She wouldn't be back. I
could feel it.
And I meant what I said to
her, all of it. I had to accept my status and move on to defeat her. And
truthfully, I didn't really mind just being Becca. I knew I would grow out of
it eventually. I still had my family, and they were happy again. Best of all,
they all loved Becca deeply, as they loved each other. As they had loved Jack.
Suddenly I realized that I had wet myself without even
realizing it, and I sighed. I'm not going to get Carolyn up to change me, I
thought, so I'll have to lie in it for the rest of the night. Not that big a
deal, and probably something I'll get used to, in time.
But there was that loose
end, and I started wondering. Where did that flash of power come from? And
those words -- the ones I threw at her toward the end to fuel her fear? I knew
I had never heard of those books before, or even thought about how human mages
could defeat her kind. I'd only just found out about the existence of human
magic users that very morning, from ...
... the Arbiters.
I smiled and kicked my feet.
From the bottom of a pile of stuffed animals in the corner
of my crib came a muffled female voice. "Well reasoned, Jack!"
I smiled. "It's Becca now, and thank you," I
thought at her.
"You're welcome," she replied with a smile I could
hear but not see as she pushed herself out from under the other toys. The bear
that emerged was very feminine, lavender with long lashes, a cute pink bow
around her neck, and a little ruffled skirt around her waist.
"A pleasure to meet you, Becca," she said,
fluffing her skirt. The voice was decidedly female, but the speech rhythms and
word choices were clearly those of the bear I had met this morning. "You
had her beaten. She just needed an extra push to run. I was happy to see you
figured out how to defeat her."
I shrugged -- hard to do lying down, but worth it. "Suddenly
I realized it wasn't torture to be loved by the people I loved, and that
treating it that way was giving her exactly what she wanted. I had to truly
surrender to Jack's death and embrace Becca. I had to become what I fought
against becoming. Once I did, she held no power over me. In giving up my life as Jack, I found ...
victory."
We were silent for a time, me on my back, her sitting beside
me. As I lay there, I remembered something else from that morning.
"Earlier today, you said you might be able to help
me," I thought, "before you were ... called away." Then
I paused. "What DID call you away?"
The bear shook her head and
looked at me. "What the Other did, to your ... mother, actually. Not
strictly against the rules at the time, but extremely bad form. Personal
demonic involvement with a particular family over time upsets the balance of
chance and history. Tampers with free will and causality. She lost ... and won
... but she couldn't let it go. She knew the Universe frowned upon vendettas,
but accepted its displeasure knowing she was within her rights, within the
rules." Her voice trembled with suppressed anger. "It infuriated the
Arbiters. We spent the time since I left you arguing amongst ourselves,
considering how much interference with the activities of the Others the
Universe would countenance, and presenting a proposal to the Omnipresence. It
was accepted."
"Now we want to offer
you the help we promised."
I felt a chill and turned on
my side to face the bear. "I'm listening."
The bear looked at me, and
her gaze was as serious as you could get from a cute face with button eyes and
a stitched-on smile. "As I told you earlier, we cannot change you back.
You cannot become Jack again. To do so would invalidate her bargain without
just cause."
I waved my hand. "As I said before, I've already let
go of my life as Jack. Tell me what you can do for Becca."
"We can strike a new bargain that preserves the essense
of what she did to you without violating the previous agreement. Do you
see?"
"Honestly, no," I thought. "But
I'll take your word for it. It's your business, not mine."
The bear hesitated, and I caught a hint of something hidden.
I looked at her critically, and she paused, then nodded.
"You are very perceptive, Mister ... Miss Barnes. And
it's true. Our gift doesn't come without a price."
"Then it's hardly a gift, is it, Arbiter?"
Her button eyes flashed.
"We could have just left you and your family to your fate, Becca. We chose
not to, because you have earned our respect. But the truth is, we can't just
'give' anything to you. There really IS 'no such thing as a free lunch.' It
happens to be one of the guiding principles of this universe. There is an echo
of it in your laws of physics, particularly the one that states matter can
neither be created nor destroyed. You can't get something for nothing."
"But you altered my
voice before without even asking me, let alone haggling."
She heaved a tremendous sigh. "We were able to alter
your voice without striking a bargain because as Arbiters, we are allowed to
make small changes in transformed individuals to help us communicate more
effectively. It makes it easier to reach an understanding in the course of our
own deliberations. But it is beyond even our power to give you something as
large as what we want to give you without 'haggling," as you call
it -- even if we wanted to."
I thought about it for a
while, and she let me. I sensed the time passing, but the Arbiter didn't seem
in any particular hurry. Finally, I nodded.
"Okay, it makes sense. So what do you have to
offer?"
"We can twist the fabric of space-time in your favor,
to free you from this prison of infant flesh. We can make you older, add as
many years as you wish ... to a point. And we can change other things to help
you become part of this reality again, in an older form."
"So basically, you're offering me a life where I
have some control again, given the constraints of the existing bargains." The
bear nodded. "And in return, you want... what, exactly?"
There was a long pause, and the bear looked right into my
eyes.
"We want to offer you a job," she said calmly,
"which would make our business your business, unless I'm very much
mistaken."