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Card, Orson Scott - Changed Man and the King of Words, The

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Author: Orson Scott Card

Title: The Changed Man and the King of Words

Original copyright year:

Genre: short stories

Version: 1.0

Date of e-text:

Source:

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Comments: Please correct the errors you find in this e-text,

update the version number and redistribute

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THE CHANGED MAN AND THE KING OF WORDS

by Orson Scott Card

EUMENIDES IN THE FOURTH FLOOR LAVATORY

Living in a fourth-floor walkup was part of his revenge, as if to say to

Alice, "Throw me out of the house, will you? Then I'Il live in squalor in a

Bronx tenement, where the toilet is shared by four apartments! My shirts will go

unironed, my tie will be perpetually awry. See what you've done to me?"

But when he told Alice about the apartment, she only laughed bitterly and

said, "Not anymore, Howard. I won't play those games with you. You win every

damn time."

She pretended not to care about him anymore, but Howard knew better. He knew

people, knew what they wanted, and Alice wanted him. It was his strongest card

in their relationship-- that she wanted him more than he wanted her. He thought

of this often: at work in the offices of Humboldt and Breinhardt, Designers; at

lunch in a cheap lunchroom (part of the punishment); on the subway home to his

tenement (Alice had kept the Lincoln Continental). He thought and thought about

how much she wanted him. But he kept remembering what she had said the day she

threw him out: If you ever come near Rhiannon again I'll kill you. He could not

remember why she had said that. Could not remember and did not try to remember

because that line of thinking made him uncomfortable and one thing Howard

insisted on being was comfortable with himself. Other people could spend hours

and days of their lives chasing after some accommodation with themselves-- but

Howard was accommodated. Well adjusted. At ease. I'm OK, I'm OK, I'm OK. Hell

with you. "If you let them make you feel uncomfortable," Howard would often say,

"you give them a handle on you and they can run your life." Howard could find

other people's handles, but they could never find Howard's.

Side 1

Card, Orson Scott - Changed Man and the King of Words, The

It was not yet winter but cold as hell at three A.M. when Howard got home from

Stu's party. A must attend party, if you wished to get ahead at Humboldt and

Breinhardt. Stu's ugly wife tried to be tempting, but Howard had played innocent

and made her feel so uncomfortable that she dropped the matter. Howard paid

careful attention to office gossip and knew that several earlier departures from

the company had got caught with, so to speak, their pants down. Not that

Howard's pants were an impenetrable barrier. He got Dolores from the front

office into the bedroom and accused her of making life miserable for him. "In

little ways," he insisted. "I know you don't mean to, but you've got to stop."

"What ways?" Dolores asked, incredulous yet (because she honestly tried to

make other people happy) uncomfortable.

"Surely you knew how attracted I am to you."

"No. That hasn't-- that hasn't even crossed my mind."

Howard looked tongue-tied, embarrassed. He actually was neither. "Then-- well,

then, I was-- I was wrong, I'm sorry, I thought you were doing it

deliberately--"

"Doing what?

"Snub-- snubbing me-- never mind, it sounds adolescent, just little things,

hell, Dolores, I had a stupid schoolboy crush--"

"Howard, I didn't even know I was hurting you."

"God, how insensitive," Howard said, sounding even more hurt.

"Oh, Howard, do I mean that much to you?"

Howard made a little whimpering noise that meant everything she wanted it to

mean. She looked uncomfortable. She'd do anything to get back to feeling right

with herself again. She was so uncomfortable that they spent a rather nice half

hour making each other feel comfortable again. No one else in the office had

been able to get to Dolores. But Howard could get to anybody.

He walked up the stairs to his apartment feeling very, very satisfied. Don't

need you, Alice, he said to himself. Don't need nobody, and nobody's who I've

got. He was still mumbling the little ditty to himself as he went into the

communal bathroom and turned on the light.

He heard a gurgling sound from the toilet stall, a hissing sound. Had someone

been in there with the light off? Howard went into the toilet stall and saw

nobody. Then looked closer and saw a baby, probably about two months old, lying

in the toilet bowl. Its nose and eyes were barely above the water; it looked

terrified; its legs and hips and stomach were down the drain. Someone had

obviously hoped to kill it by drowning-- it was inconceivable to Howard that

anyone could be so moronic as to think it would fit down the drain.

For a moment he thought of leaving it there, with the big-city temptation to

mind one's own business even when to do so would be an atrocity. Saving this

baby would mean inconvenience: calling the police, taking care of the child in

his apartment, perhaps even headlines, certainly a night of filling out reports.

Howard was tired. Howard wanted to go to bed.

But he remembered Alice saying, "You aren't even human, Howard. You're a

goddam selfish monster." I am not a monster, he answered silently, and reached

down into the toilet bowl to pull the child out.

The baby was firmly jammed in-- whoever had tried to kill it had meant to

catch it tight. Howard felt a brief surge of genuine indignation that anyone

could think to solve his problems by killing an innocent child. But thinking of

crimes committed on children was something Howard was determined not to do, and

besides, at that moment he suddenly acquired other things to think about.

Side 2

Card, Orson Scott - Changed Man and the King of Words, The

As the child clutched at Howard's arm, he noticed the baby's fingers were

fused together into flipperlike flaps of bone and skin at the end of the arm.

Yet the flippers gripped his arms with an unusual strength as, with two hands

deep in the toilet bowl, Howard tried to pull the baby free.

At last, with a gush, the child came up and the water finished its flushing

action. The legs, too, were fused into a single limb that was hideously twisted

at the end. The child was male; the genitals, larger than normal, were skewed

off to one side. And Howard noticed that where the feet should be were two more

flippers, and near the tips were red spots that looked like putrefying sores.

The child cried, a savage mewling that reminded Howard of a dog he had seen in

its death throes.

(Howard refused to be reminded that it had been he who killed the dog by

throwing it out in the street in front of a passing car, just to watch the

driver swerve; the driver hadn't swerved.)

Even the hideously deformed have a right to live, Howard thought, but now,

holding the child in his arms, he felt a revulsion that translated into sympathy

for whoever, probably the parents, had tripd to kill the creature. The child

shifted its grip on him, and where the flippers had been Howard felt a sharp,

stinging pain that quickly turned to agony as it was exposed to the air. Several

huge, gaping sores on his arm were already running with blood and pus.

It took a moment for Howard to connect the sores with the child, and by then

the leg flippers were already pressed against his stomach, and the arm flippers

already gripped his chest. The sores on the child's flippers were not sores;

they were powerful suction devices that gripped Howard's skin so tightly that it

ripped away when the contact was broken. He tried to pry the child off, but no

sooner was one flipper free than it found a new place to hold even as Howard

struggled to break the grip of another.

What had begun as an act of charity had now become an intense struggle. This

was not a child, Howard realized. Children could not hang on so tightly, and the

creature had teeth that snapped at his hands and arms whenever they came near

enough. A human face, certainly, but not a human being. Howard threw himself

against the wall, hoping to stun the creature so it would drop away. It only

clung tighter, and the sores where it hung on him hurt more. But at last Howard

pried and scraped it off by levering it against the edge of the toilet stall. It

dropped to the ground, and Howard backed quickly away, on fire with the pain of

a dozen or more stinging wounds.

It had to be a nightmare. In the middle of the night, in a bathroom lighted by

a single bulb, with a travesty of humanity writhing on the floor, Howard could

not believe that it had any reality.

Could it be a mutation that had somehow lived? Yet the thing had far more

purpose, far more control of its body than any human infant. The baby slithered

across the floor as Howard, in pain from the wounds on his body, watched in a

panic of indecision. The baby reached the wall and cast a flipper onto it. The

suction held, and the baby began to inch its way straight up the wall. As it

climbed, it defecated, a thin drool of green tracing down the wall behind it.

Howard looked at the slime following the infant up the wall, looked at the

pus-covered sores on his arms.

What if the animal, whatever it was, did not die soon of its terrible

deformity? What if it lived? What if it were found, taken to a hospital, cared

for? What if it became an adult?

It reached the ceiling and made the turn, clinging tightly to the plaster, not

falling off as it hung upside down and inched across toward the fight bulb.

The thing was trying to get directly over Howard, and the defecation was still

dripping. Loathing overcame fear, and Howard reached up, took hold of the baby

from the back, and, using his full weight, was finally able to pry it off the

ceiling. It writhed and twisted in his hands, trying to get the suction-cups on

him, but Howard resisted with all his strength and was able to get the baby,

this time headfirst, into the toilet bowl. He held it there until the bubbles

Side 3

Card, Orson Scott - Changed Man and the King of Words, The

stopped and it was blue. Then he went back to his apartment for a knife.

Whatever the creature was, it had to disappear from the face of the earth. It

had to die, and there had to be no sign left that could hint that Howard had

killed it.

He found the knife quickly, but paused for a few moments to put something on

his wounds. They stung bitterly, but in a while they felt better. Howard took

off his shirt; thought a moment and took off all his clothes, then put on his

bathrobe and took a towel With him as he returned to the bathroom. He didn't

want to get any blood on his clothes.

But when he got to the bathroom, the child was iaot in the toilet. Howard was

alarmed. Had someone found it drowning? Had they, perhaps, seen him leaving the

bathroom-- or worse, returning with his knife? He looked around the bathroom.

There was nothing. He stepped back into the hall. No one. He stood a moment in

the doorway, wondering what could have happened.

Then a weight dropped onto his head and shoulders from above, and he felt the

suction flippers tugging at his face, at his head. He ahnost screamed. But he

didn't want to arouse anyone. Somehow the child had not drowned after all, had

crawled out of the toilet, and had waited over the door for Howard to return.

Once again the struggle resumed, and once again Howard pried the flippers away

with the help of the toilet stall, though this time he was hampered by the fact

that the child was behind and above him. It was exhausting work. He had to set

down the knife so he could use both hands, and another dozen wounds stung

bitterly by the time he had the child on the floor. As long as the child lay on

its stomach, Howard could seize it from behind. He took it by the neck with one

hand and picked up the knife with the other. He carried both to the toilet.

He had to flush twice to handle the flow of blood and pus. Howard wondered if

the child was infected with some disease-- the white fluid was thick and at

least as great in volume as the blood. Then he flushed seven more times to take

the pieces of the creature down the drain. Even after death, the suction pads

clung tightly to the porcelain; Howard pried them off with the knife.

Eventually, the child was completely gone. Howard was panting with the

exertion, nauseated at the stench and horror of what he had done. He remembered

the smell of his dog's guts after the car hit it, and he threw up everything he

had eaten at the party. Got the party out of his system, felt cleaner; took a

shower, felt cleaner still. When he was through, he made sure the bathroom

showed no sign,of his ordeal.

Then he went to bed.

It wasn't easy to sleep. He was too keyed up. He couldn't take out of his mind

the thought that he had committed murder (not murder, not murder, simply the

elimination of something too foul to be alive). He tried thinking of a dozen, a

hundred other things. Projects at work-- but the designs kept showing flippers.

His children-- but their faces turned to the intense face of the struggling

monster he had killed. Alice-- ah, but Alice was harder to think of than the

creature.

At last he slept, and dreamed, and in his dream remembered his father, who had

died when he was ten. Howard did not remember any of his standard reminiscences.

No long walks with his father, no basketball in the driveway, no fishing trips.

Those things had happened, but tonight, because of the struggle with the

monster, Howard remembered darker things that he had long been able to keep

hidden from himself.

"We can't afford to get you a ten-speed bike, Howie. Not until the strike is

over."

"I know, Dad. You can't help it." Swallow bravely. "And I don't mind. When all

the guys go riding around after school, I'll just stay home and get ahead on my

homework."

"Lots of boys don't have ten-speed bikes, Howie."

Side 4

Card, Orson Scott - Changed Man and the King of Words, The

Howie shrugged, and tumed away to hide the tears in his eyes. "Sure, lot of

them. Hey, Dad, don't you worry about me. Howie can take care of himself."

Such courage. Such strength. He had got a ten-speed within a week. In his

dream, Howard finally made a connection he had never been able to admit to

himself before. His father had a rather elaborate ham radio setup in the garage.

But about that time he had become tired of it, he said, and he sold it off and

did a lot more work in the yard and looked bored as hell until the strike was

over and he went back to work and got killed in an accident in the rolling mill.

Howard's dream ended madly, with him riding piggyback on his father's

shoulders as the monster had ridden on him tonight-- and in his hand was a

knife, and he was stabbing his father again and again in the throat.

He awoke in early morning light, before his alarm rang, sobbing weakly and

whimpering, "I killed him, I killed him, I killed him."

And then he drifted upward out of sleep and saw the time. Six-thirty. "A

dream," he said. And the dream had woken him early, too early, with a headache

and sore eyes from crying. The pillow was soaked. "A hell of a lousy way to

start the day," he mumbled. And, as was his habit, he got up and went to the

window and opened the curtain.

On the glass, suction cups clinging tightly, was the child.

It was pressed close, as if by sucking very tightly it would be able to

slither through the glass without breaking it. Far below were the honks of early

morning traffic, the roar of passing trucks: but the child seemed oblivious to

its height far above the street, with no ledge to break its fall. Indeed, there

seemed little chance it would fall. The, eyes looked closely, piercingly at

Howard.

Howard had been prepared to pretend that the night before had been another

terribly realistic nightmare.

He stepped back from the glass, watched the child in fascination. It lifted a

flipper, planted it higher, pulled itself up to a new position where it could

stare at Howard eye to eye. And then, slowly and methodically, it began beating

on the glass with its head.

The landlord was not generous with upkeep on the building. The glass with

thin, and Howard knew that the child would not give up until it had broken

through the glass so it could get to Howard.

He began to shake. His throat tightened. He was terribly afraid. Last night

had been no dream. The fact that the child was here today was proof of that. Yet

he had cut the child into small pieces. It could not possibly be alive. The

glass shook and rattled with every blow the child's head struck.

The glass slivered in a starburst from where the child had hit it. The

creature was coming in. And Howard picked up the room's one chair and threw it

at the child, threw it at the window. Glass shattered and the sun dazzled on the

fragments as they exploded outward like a glistening halo around the child and

the chair.

Howard ran to the window, looked out, looked down and watched as the child

landed brutally on the top of a large truck. The body seemed to smear as it hit,

and fragments of the chair and shreds of glass danced around the child and

bounced down into the street and the sidewalk.

The truck didn't stop moving; it carried the broken body and the shards of

glass and the pool of blood on up the street, and Howard ran to the bed, knelt

beside it, buried his face in the blanket, and tried to regain control of

himself. He had been seen. The people in the street had looked up and seen him

in the window. Last night he had gone to great lengths to avoid discovery, but

today discovery was unpossible to avoid. He was ruined. And yet he could not,

could never have let the child come into the room.

Side 5

Card, Orson Scott - Changed Man and the King of Words, The

Footsteps on the stairs. Stamping up the corridor. Pounding on the door. "Open

up! Hey in there!"

If I'm quiet long enough, they'll go away, he said to himself, knowing it was

a lie. He must get up, must answer the door. But he could not bring himself to

admit that he. ever had to leave the safety of his bed.

"Hey, you son-of-a-bitch--" The imprecations went on but Howard could not move

until, suddenly, it occurred to him that the child could be under the bed, and

as he thought of it he could feel the tip of the flipper touching his thigh,

stroking and ready to fasten itself.

Howard leaped to his feet and rushed for the door. He flung it wide, for even

if it was the police come to arrest him, they could protect him from the monster

that was haunting him.

It was not a policeman at the door. It was the man on the first floor who

collected rent. "You son-of-a-bitch irresponsible pig-kisser!" the man shouted,

his toupee only approximately in place. "That chair could have hit somebody!

That window's expensive! Out! Get out of here, right now, I want you out of this

place, I don't care how the hell drunk you are--"

"There was-- there was this thing on the window, this creature-"

The man looked at him coldly, but his eyes danced with anger. No, not anger.

Fear. Howard realized the man was afraid of hun.

"This is a decent place," the man said softly. "You can take your creatures

and your booze and your pink stinking elephants and that's a hundred bucks for

the window, a hundred bucks right now, and you can get out of here in an hour,

an hour, you hear? Or I'm calling the police, you hear?"

"I hear." He heard. The man left when Howard counted out five twenties. The

man seemed careful to avoid touching Howard's hands, as if Howard had become,

somehow, repulsive. Well, he had. To himself, if to no one else. He closed the

door as soon as the man was gone. He packed the few belongings he had brought to

the apartment in two suitcases and went downstairs and called a cab and rode to

work. The cabby looked at him sourly, and wouldn't talk. It was fine with

Howard, if only the driver hadn't kept looking at him through the mirror--

nervously, as if he was afraid of what Howard might do or try. I won't try

anything, Howard said to himself, I'm a decent man. Howard tipped the cabby well

and then gave him twenty to take his bags to his house in Queens, where Alice

could damn well keep them for a while. Howard was through with the tenement--

that one or any other.

Obviously it had been a nightmare, last night and this morning. The monster

was only visible to him, Howard decided. Only the chair and the glass had fallen

from the fourth floor, or the manager would have noticed.

Except that the baby had landed on the truck, and might have been real, and

might be discovered in New Jersey or Pennsylvania later today.

Couldn't be real. He had killed it last night and it was whole again this

morning. A nightmare. I didn't really kill anybody, he insisted. (Except the

dog. Except Father, said a new, ugly voice in the back of his mind.)

Work. Draw lines on paper, answer phone calls, dictate letters, keep your mind

off your nightmares, off your family, off the mess your life is turning into.

"Hell of a good party last night." Yeah, it was, wasn't it? "How are you today,

Howard?" Feel fine, Dolores, fine-- thanks to you. "Got the roughs on the IBM

thing?" Nearly, nearly. Give me another twenty minutes. "Howard, you don't look

well." Had a rough night. The party, you know.

He kept drawing on the blotter on his desk instead of going to the drawing

table and producing real work. He doodled out faces. Alice's face, looking stern

and terrible. The face of Stu's ugly wife. Dolores's face, looking sweet and

yielding and stupid. And Rhiannon's face.

Side 6

Card, Orson Scott - Changed Man and the King of Words, The

But with his daughter Rhiannon, he couldn't stop with the face.

His hand started to tremble when he saw what he had drawn. He ripped the sheet

off the blotter, crumpled it, and reached under the desk to drop it in the

wastebasket. The basket lurched, and flippers snaked out to seize his hand in an

iron gnp.

Howard screamed, tried to pull his hand away. The child came with it, the leg

flippers grabbing Howard's right leg. The suction pad stung, bringing back the

memory of all the pain last night. He scraped the child off against a filing

cabinet, then ran for the door, which was already opening as several of his

co-workers tumbled into his office demanding, "What is it! What's wrong! Why did

you scream like that!"

Howard led them gingerly over to where the child should be. Nothing. just an

overturned wastebasket, Howard's chair capsized on the floor. But Howard's

window was open, and he could not remember opening it. "Howard, what is it? Are

you tired, Howard? Whats wrong?"

I don't feel well. I don't feel well at all.

Dolores put her arm around him, led him out of the room. "Howard, I'm worried

about you."

I'm worried, too.

"Can I take you home? I have my car in the garage downstairs. Can I take you

home?"

Where's home? Don't have a home, Dolores.

Eumenides in the Fourth Floor Lavatory

"My home, then. I have an apartment, you need to lie down and rest. Let me

take you home."

Dolores's apartment was decorated in early Holly Hobby, and when she put

records on the stereo it was old Carpenters and recent Captain and Tennille.

Dolores led him to the bed, gently undressed hun, and then, because he reached

out to her, undressed herself and made love to him before she went back to work.

She was naively eager. She whispered in his ear that he was only the second man

she had ever loved, the first in five years. Her inept lovemaking was so sincere

it made him want to cry.

When she was gone he did cry, because she thought she meant something to him

and she did not.

Why am I crying? he asked himself. Why should I care? It's not my fault she

let me get a handle on her...

Sitting on the dresser in a curiously adult posture was the child, carelessly

playing with itself as it watched Howard intently. "No," Howard said, pulling

himself up to the head of the bed. "You don't exist," he said. "No one's ever

seen you but me." The child gave no sign of understanding. It just rolled over

and began to slither down the front of the dresser.

Howard reached for his clothes, took them out of the bedroom. He put them on

in the living room as he watched the door. Sure enough, the child crept along

the carpet to the living room; but Howard was dressed by then, and he left.

He walked the streets for three hours. He was coldly rational at first.

Logical. The creature does not eidst. There is no reason to believe in it.

But bit by bit his rationality was worn away by constant flickers of the

creature at the edges of his vision. On a bench, peering over the back at him;

in a shop window; staring from the cab of a milk truck. Howard walked faster and

faster, not caring where he went, trying to keep some intelligent process going

Side 7

Card, Orson Scott - Changed Man and the King of Words, The

on in his mind, and failing utterly as he saw the child, saw it clearly,

dangling from a traffic signal.

What made it even worse was that occasionally a passerby, violating the

unwritten law that New Yorkers are forbidden to look at each other, would gaze

at him, shudder, and look away. A short European-looking woman crossed herself.

A group of teenagers looking for trouble weren't looking for him-- they grew

silent, let him pass in silence, and in silence watched him out of sight.

They may not be able to see the child, Howard realized, but they see

something.

And as he grew less and less coherent in the ramblings of his mind, memories

began flashing on and off, his life passing before his eyes like a drowning man

is supposed to see, only, he realized, if a drowning man saw this he would gulp

at the water, breathe it deeply just to end the visions. They were memories he

had been unable to find for years; memories he would never have wanted to find.

His poor, confused mother, who was so eager to be a good parent that she read

everything, tried everything. Her precocious son Howard read it, too, and

understood it better. Nothing she tried ever worked. And he accused her several

times of being too demanding, of not demanding enough; of not giving him enough

love, of drowning him in phony affection; of trying to take over with his

friends, of not liking his friends enough. Until he had badgered and tortured

the woman until she was timid every time she spoke to him, careful and

longwinded and she phrased everything in such a way that it wouldn't offend, and

while now and then he made her feel wonderful by giving her a hug and saying,

"Have I got a wonderful Mom," there were far more times when he put a patient

look on his face and said, "That again, Mom? I thought we went over that years

ago." A failure as a parent, that's what you are, he reminded her again and

again, though not in so many words, and she nodded and believed and died inside

with every contact they had. He got everything he wanted from her.

And Vaughn Robles, who was just a little bit smarter than Howard and Howard

wanted very badly to be valedictoriim and so Vaughn and Howard became best

friends and Vaughn would do anything for Howard and whenever Vaugim got a better

grade than Howard he could not help but notice that Howard was hurt, that Howard

wondered if he was really worth anything at all. "Am I really worth anything at

all, Vaughn? No matter how well I do, there's always someone ahead Of me, and I

guess it's just that before my father died he told me and told me, Howie, be

better than your Dad. Be the top. And I promised him I'd be the top but hell,

Vaughn, I'm just not cut out for it--" and once he even cried. Vaughn was proud

of himself as he sat there and listened to Howard give the valedictory address

at high school graduation. What were a few grades, compared to a true

friendship? Howard got a scholarship and went away to college and he and Vaughn

almost never saw each other again.

And the teacher he provoked into hitting him and losing his job; and the

football player who snubbed him and Howard quietly spread the rumor that the

fellow was gay and he was ostracized from the team and finally quit; and the

beautiful girls he stole from their boyfriends just to prove that he could do it

and the friendships he destroyed just because he didn't like being excluded and

the marriages he wrecked and the coworkers he undercut and he walked along the

street with tears streaming down his face, wondering where all these memories

had come from and why, after such a long time in hiding, they had come out now.

Yet he knew the answer. The answer was slipping behind doorways, climbing

lightpoles as he passed, waving obscene flippers at him from the sidewalk almost

under his feet.

And slowly, inexorably, the memories wound their way from the distant past

through a hundred tawdry exploitations because he could find people's weak spots

without even trying until finally memory came to the one place where he knew it

could not, could not ever go.

He remembered Rhiannon.

Born fourteen years ago. Smiled early, walked early, almost never cried. A

loving child from the, start, and therefore easy prey for Howard. Oh, Alice was

Side 8

Card, Orson Scott - Changed Man and the King of Words, The

a bitch in her own right-- Howard wasn't the only bad parent in the family. But

it was Howard who manipulated Rhiannon most. "Daddy's feelings are hurt,

Sweetheart," and Rhiannon's eyes would grow wide, and she'd be sorry, and

whatever Daddy wanted, Rhiannon would do. But this was normal, this was part of

the pattern, this would have fit easily into all his life before, except for

last month.

And even now, after a day of grief at his own life, Howard could not face it.

Could not but did. He unwillingly remembered walking by Rhiannon's almost-closed

door, seeing just a flash of cloth moving quickly. He opened the door on

impulse, just on impulse, as Rhiannon took off her brassiere and looked at

herself in the mirror. Howard had never thought of his daughter with desire, not

until that moment, but once the desire formed Howard had no strategy, no pattern

in his mind to stop him from trying to get what he wanted. He was uncomfortable,

and so he stepped into the room and closed the door behind him and Rhiannon knew

no way to say no to her father. When Alice opened the door Rhiannon was crying

softly, and Alice looked and after a moment Alice screamed and screamed and

Howard got up from the bed and tried to smooth it all over but Rhiannon was

still crying and Alice was still screaming, kicking at his crotch, beating him,

raking at his fate, spitting at him, telling him he was a monster, a monster,

until at last he was able to flee the room and the house and, until now, the

memory.

He screamed now as he had not screamed then, and threw himself against a

plate-glass window, weeping loudly as the blood gushed from a dozen glass cuts

on his right arm, which had gone through the window. One large piece of glass

stayed embedded in his forearm. He deliberately scraped his arm against the wall

to drive the glass deeper. But the pain in his arm was no match for the pain in

his mind, and he felt nothing.

They rushed him to the hospital, thinking to save his life, but the doctor was

surprised to discover that for all the blood there were only superficial wounds,

not dangerous.it all. "I don't know why you didn't reach a vein or an artery,"

the doctor said. "I think the glass went everywhere it could possibly go without

causing any important damage."

After the medical doctor, of course, there was the psychiatrist, but there

were many suicidals at the hospital and Howard was not the dangerous kind. "I

was insane for a moment, Doctor, that's all. I don't want to die, I didn't want

to die then, I'm all right now. You can send me home." And the psychiatrist let

him go home. They bandaged his arm. They did not know that his real relief was

that nowhere in the hospital did he see the small, naked, child-shaped creature.

He had purged himself. He was free.

Howard was taken home in an ambulance, and they wheeled him into the house and

lifted him from the stretcher to the bed. Through it all Alice hardly a word

except to direct them to the bedroom. Howard lay still on the bed as she stood

over him, the two of them alone for the first time since he left the house a

month ago.

"It was kind of you," Howard said softly, "to let me come back."

"They said there wasn't room enough to keep you, but you needed to be watched

and taken care of for a few weeks. So lucky me, I get to watch you." Her voice

was a low monotone, but the acid dripped from every word. It stung.

"You were right, Alice," Howard said.

"Right about what? That marrying you was the worst mistake of my life? No,

Howard. Meeting you was my worst mistake."

Howard began to cry. Real tears that welled up from places in him that had

once been deep but that now rested painfully close to the surface. "I've been a

monster, Alice. I haven't had any control over myself. What I did to Rhiannon--

Alice, I wanted to die, I wanted to die!"

Alice's face was twisted and bitter. "And I wanted you to, Howard. I have

never been so disappointed as when the doctor called and said you'd be all

Side 9

Card, Orson Scott - Changed Man and the King of Words, The

right. You'll never be all right, Howard, you'll always be--"

"Let him be, Mother."

Rhiannon stood in the doorway.

"Don't come in, Rhiannon," Alice said.

Rhiannon came in. "Daddy, it's all right."

"What she means," Alice said, "is that we've checked her and she isn't

pregnant. No little monster is going to be born."

Rhiannon didn't look at her mother, just gazed with wide eyes at her father.

"You didn't need to-- hurt yourself, Daddy. I forgive you. People lose control

sometimes. And it was as much my fault as yours, it really was, you don't need

to feel bad, Father."

It was too much for Howard. He cried out, shouted his confession, how he had

manipulated her all his life, how he was an utterly selfish and rotten parent,

and when it was over Rhiannon came to her father and laid her head on his chest

and said, softly, "Father, it's all right. We are who we are. We've done what

we've done. But it's all right now. I forgive you."

When Rhiannon left, Alice said, "You don't deserve her."

I know.

"I was going to sleep on the couch, but that would be stupid. Wouldn't it,

Howard?"

I deserve to be left alone, like a leper.

"You misunderstand, Howard. I need to stay here to make sure you don't do

anything else. To yourself or to anyone."

Yes. Yes, please. I can't be trusted.

"Don't wallow in it, Howard. Don't enjoy it. Don't make yourself even more

disgusting than you were before."

All right.

They were drifting off to sleep when Alice said, "Oh, when the doctor called

he wondered if I knew what had caused those sores all over your arms and chest."

But Howard was asleep, and didn't hear her. Asleep with no dreams at all, the

sleep of peace, the sleep of having been forgiven, of being clean. It hadn't

taken that much, after all. Now that it was over, it was easy. He felt as if a

great weight had been taken from him.

He felt as if something heavy was lying on his legs. He awoke, sweating even

though the room was not hot. He heard breathing. And it was not Alice's

low-pitched, slow breath, it was quick and high and hard, as if the breather had

been exerting himself.

Itself.

Themselves.

One of them lay across his legs, the flippers plucking at the blanket. The

other two lay on either side, their eyes wide and intent, creeping slowly toward

where his face emerged from the sheets.

Howard was puzzled. "I thought you'd be gone," he said to the children.

"You're supposed to be gone now."

Alice stirred at the sound of his voice, mumbled in her sleep.

Side 10

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Card, Orson Scott - Changed Man and the King of Words, The********************************************************Author: Orson Scott CardTitle: The Changed Man and the King of WordsOriginal copyright year:Genre: short storiesVersion: 1.0Date of e-text:Source:Prepared by:Comments: Please correct the...

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