Zenn Scarlett (18 page)

“Pa had gotten into debt. Way in. He was gonna sell Gil’s genny, get some cash together. Like I said, it was night, dark. He didn’t know Gil kept the two sandhog sows in there. They tore him up pretty bad.”

“Liam…” Zenn’s voice trailed off. She had no idea what to say to this.

She glanced up. Liam wasn’t looking at her, but was standing, body rigid, staring a hole in the far wall, his fists clenched, knuckles white.

“We found him the next morning. He’d made it as far as our front porch. He was propped against the wall. And he was dead. That’s how Gil lost those two sows. Pa never shut the gate behind him after he… We couldn’t tell people what happened. No way I was gonna have the whole damn town think my pa was a thief. He was just doing what he thought he had to do. He deserved better.”

He turned his face to her then, eyes brimming.

“You won’t tell?” he said. “I’d appreciate it… if you’d not tell.”

“Of course I won’t,” Zenn said, forcing her attention back to the screens. “I just wish you’d been able to talk to somebody about this. Before now, I mean. To carry this around inside you… Liam, it must’ve been…”

“Terrible. Yeah.” He was in motion again, pacing. “But hey. We all have our secrets, huh?”

I can relate to that
.

“I understand better, now. Your feelings… about aliens. But Liam, you know they didn’t mean to do that. The hogs.” She wasn’t sure he wanted to hear this, but she felt like she had to say it. “They didn’t kill your father on purpose.”

“No? Well, that may be.” He spoke quietly now, the rage drained from his voice. He sat heavily on the bench by the wall, elbows on knees. She looked up to see him rest his head in his hands. “But, it doesn’t really make him any less dead, does it?”

EIGHTEEN

After Liam’s admission about his father’s death, they’d both gone silent for a long spell, the room echoing faintly with the hum and clatter of the Mag-Genis as it worked methodically from one shredded organ or bone to the next, Zenn making her minute adjustments again, then again, then again.

When Liam finally spoke, the sound startled Zenn out of the attentive trance she’d fallen into.

“Ya know, Scarlett, I guess people just don’t really get the aliens, your animals, the way you do. I mean, know their personalities, get close to them and all.”

“Well, I’m not really supposed to… get too close. Otha says they’re patients, not pets. That it’s important to keep a professional distance. But sometimes that’s hard.”

Liam had approached the Mag-Genis unit, and he bent down now to check on Zeus. The cat twitched slightly in the cushioning sling.

“Yeah. I can see how it could be. Hard.” His voice cracked ever so slightly as he spoke. He rubbed one hand across his face. “So,” he said, straightening up, the smirk back in his voice as he turned his attention to the v-screens, “what are you doing to my poor defenseless little alien now?”

“Just starting to knit together some capillaries. These supply blood to the right rear paw. See, they form a little net inside each toe…”

Twenty hours into the operation, the first of the damaged vertebrae had been rebuilt and the nearby spinal column nerves regenerated. After standing up for a quick stretch of her aching muscles, Zenn sat down again and began to guide the unit’s work on the second shattered piece of Zeus’ backbone.

Twenty-six hours in, there was a problem reforming the nutrient-absorbing cellular structures lining the small intestine. Zenn sent Liam to the ultratheer birthing pen to ask Otha for a work-around.

“Here,” Liam said when he’d returned. “It’s a v-film. Otha says this will show you what to do.”

“Great, thanks,” Zenn told him, taking her eyes off the Mag-Genis screens long enough to scan the film. “Yes. Perfect.”

“Um, have you ever seen an ultratheer giving birth?” Liam asked.

“No. And I’m really sorry to miss it.”

“No. You aren’t. It’s disgusting. Really disgusting.”

She grinned at him. Her legs had fallen asleep again.

After thirty hours, Zenn’s eyes burned in their sockets like tiny suns, her back muscles periodically spasmed with pain and she nearly nodded off at a particularly critical moment. When she actually fell asleep for a few seconds during the rebuild of Zeus’ bladder, she knew she was in trouble and sent Liam to the refectory kitchen. He came back carrying a large thermos, a mug and a glass jar packed with a mix of leafy orange-brown plant material.

“What did you call this stuff?”

“Mettra yerba,” Zenn said, her mouth dry, her vision starting to shimmer around the edges. She’d also had a headache for the past several hours. “Put it in the mug, and pour the hot water on it.”

He did as she said and passed the steaming mug to her.

“The strainer? Did you…”

“Yeah, here it is.” From his shirt pocket, he produced a short, silver straw that flared out at the end, where it was perforated with numerous small holes. She drew the hot, bitter liquid up the length of the straw, designed to filter out the small plant bits.

“So,” he said, “if this yerba stuff is so full of that super-caffeine stuff, why didn’t you have some before?”

“I didn’t want to unless I had to,” she told him. “Now I have to.”

“What? You’re too pure here in cloister-world to drink caffeine?”

“No. It’s really acidic. Rots my stomach.” She took another long pull on the straw, felt the warmth flowing through her, felt the sting in her belly. But it worked. She felt more alert almost immediately.

“Now, see that shelf? No, that one.”

He went to the wall.

“Smallest white bottle at the right end. Yes. Would you bring that here please?”

Liam brought her the bottle.

“More meds for Zeus?”

“Meds for Zenn,” she said, popping the lid and taking out two sovprin tablets. “For my head. It’s splitting.”

She took another pull on the hot liquid and swallowed the tablets.

“So, how’s that yerba stuff taste?”

“Like week-old dish water. Want some?”

Thirty-seven hours and fifteen minutes after Zenn had pushed the Mag-Genis start button, she leaned far forward on the stool and squinted at the control panel, no longer at all certain her eyes were being honest with her, no longer able to keep her mind on a single thought for more than a few seconds.

“I…can’t… believe it,” she croaked, her throat parched, the words barely forming.

“Huh? What?” Liam bolted upright on the bench, coming awake with his hair wild, eyes darting around the room as if he had no idea where he was. Heaving himself unsteadily to his feet, he staggered over to stand behind her.

“What is it?”

“It’s over,” she said, barely managing more than a whisper.

“What do you… No. Zeus. You mean he’s…”

“I mean we’re done. It worked. He’s… going to be fine.”

Zenn stood stiffly, stinging eyes blissfully closed, muscles exquisitely, deliciously sore. She reached out her aching hands, fingers, arms, stretched luxuriously, like a cat. The next thing she knew, she was lifted off her feet by Liam’s unexpected embrace. The hug was quick, surprisingly strong. He set her down and stepped away, grinning, a swipe at his hair also meant to dry his watering eyes.

“Nine Hells. You did it, Scarlett.” She was afraid he was going to hug her again. “You saved him!”

He turned from her and bent low over the unconscious cat. Zenn realized her body was prickling, as if charged with some exotic current. It was impossible to say if it was simple exhaustion… or the sense-memory of Liam’s arms around her.

That was… odd
.

So, was this Liam being more “friendly” as Hild said? Or was it just his entirely logical response to the long-shot survival of his favorite cat? The faint electric feeling lingered within her, and Zenn reminded herself of the Rule. It had kept her safe and pain-free in the past. There was no reason to start doubting it now. Was there?

NINETEEN

The following morning, Zenn had walked with Hamish out to the southwest edge of the compound, to the grouping of cages and fenced enclosures that occupied most of that corner of the grounds. After a full fourteen hours of blissfully dreamless sleep, she felt almost fully recovered from the Mag-Genis ordeal.

“Well, here it is.” She gestured at the rows of cages. “Our Rogue’s Gallery.”

“They do not appear roguish,” Hamish said, bending close to peer into a cage holding a pair of Akanthan axebill warblers. The eight-foot-tall, ostrich-like birds responded by bobbing their heads and opening their massive hooked beaks to produce a brief, bubbling measure of song together, their mournful tune delivered in perfect two-part harmony.

“I guess rogues in this case is more a term of affection.”

Hamish’s antennae fluttered in agitation. “Yours is a confounding language, if you don’t mind my saying.”

“You’ll get the hang of it,” she told him. “This is our bad boy, Rasputin.” She gestured at the next enclosure, its woven wire fencing roofed over with a crisscrossing layer of heavy-gauge alloy chain. The area inside the fence was strewn six feet deep with shredded plant material, rocks and other debris. Unlike most of the other cages at the cloister, Rasputin’s had a double door arrangement, with a space in-between. Anyone entering the cage had to close and lock the outer door behind them before opening the inner door. Both doors were secured with combination locks: an extra safety measure for an animal as fast as it was vicious. And if Rasputin ever escaped, there was no recapture plan. He would need to be put down, quickly and ruthlessly, before he set any of his five beady hunter’s eyes on any other living thing.

“You probably know this, but Rasputin’s from your neck of the woods…”

She gave the cage’s chain netting a strong, noisy rattle – and the largest debris pile in the center of the pen instantly exploded in a blur of thrashing legs and writhing, tubular body. The thirty-foot creature that emerged threw itself into the cage wall in front of them with a loud, fence-shaking impact. Hamish leaped backwards in alarm, landing several body-lengths away in a defensive crouch, antennae rigid and quivering with fright.

“Bloodcarn!” he managed to gasp, his Transvox barely getting the word out.

Zenn hurried over to him.

“Hamish, I’m so sorry. I thought you knew we had one of these. I didn’t mean to scare you like that.”

“You… did not… mean,” he muttered, still crouching. “Very… well. You did not… mean the scaring.” He raised up slowly to his full height, mirror eyes riveted on the animal slithering back and forth on the other side of the fence. “I will state… that I was unaware of this slaughter-creature… confined here.”

She felt terrible. Of course she shouldn’t have provoked the animal like that. Not without warning Hamish. Rasputin was a Sirenic
Scolopendra colossi
– a giant, multi-legged arthropod; more or less consisting of a huge, florescent-orange centipede back section with what looked like a tarantula growing out of its front end. With roughly seven hundred legs on the hind portion of its flattened, segmented body, and scimitar-sized mandibles in front, Rasputin’s kind were the alpha predators in the densest jungle regions of Hamish’s home moon. Voracious and swift, the big insectoids were ambush hunters, and careless coleopts – like Hamish – still fell prey to them from time to time.

“I’m really sorry,” Zenn said again.

Hamish said nothing as they moved beyond the bloodcarn’s cage, with Hamish giving it an especially wide berth. The creature emitted a parting hiss at them, then returned to the center of its cage. Vibrating its multiple legs in unison to agitate the leaves and rocks around it, it quickly submerged out of sight and was still.

“Here, Hamish,” she said after they’d gone by several more cages. She’d stopped in front of one of the larger fenced enclosures. “This is where we keep the yotes.” He eyed the pen suspiciously, and halted several feet away. She tried to sooth him: “No surprises here, I promise. Did you bring the syringes?”

He patted the satchel slung from a strap around his shoulder.

“I have them here, as instructed.”

“Good,” she said. “We’ll be vaccinating Ernie today. He’s the big guy, over there.”

“Yes. He is a large… guy,” Hamish said, taking one step closer and eyeing the yote dozing in the sun in the far corner of the pen. A little taller than an Earther buffalo, yotes looked to Zenn like morbidly obese hyenas, with short legs, a pig-like corkscrew tail and gray-green leopard-spots over bristly, dirty-yellow fur. “What do these mammal-yotes eat?” he asked.

“Not beetles, if that’s what you’re thinking,” Zenn said, seeing the nervous twitching of Hamish’s antennae. “They’re scavengers, from the savannahs on Procyon. They eat carrion, dead animals left over from the kills of bigger predators. See those jaws? Yotes can snap an ultratheer’s thighbone like a Solstice candy cane.”

“You will feed him dead ultratheer creatures?”

“Not specifically. Otha saves stuff for the yotes from the surgery. Excised tissue, body parts, bones. And garbage from the kitchen. We put it all in here.” Zenn went to the recycled fifty-five-gallon biodiesel drum that held the yotes’ food. “It has to decompose in here for a few days. Otha calls it ‘ripening.’ Then we feed it to them.”

“And they like it? All rotten?”

“You could say that.” Zenn thumped the top of the drum with one hand, and Ernie came instantly awake. Spotting her, he galloped heavily over to the chain link fence, massive jaws already streaming ropes of thick saliva.

“Ernie, this is Hamish,” Zenn said.

“Greetings, yote-Ernie. I am joyful to meet you.”

Ernie ignored this, eyes locked on the food drum. Extending her arms as far as she could to maintain maximum distance from the stench of decayed flesh and kitchen slops, Zenn popped open the lid of the barrel. The smell was still overpowering. Ernie pushed up against the fence in anticipation. A globular, blue-veined pouch of exposed flesh protruded from the yote’s throat. As Ernie shoved at the fence, it sloshed back and forth, producing a sound that always made Zenn slightly queasy.