Chapter 59
In Which the Crew Is Obviously Having a Bad Time, and I Feel for Them, Absolutely, but It Honestly Is a Bit of a Bother.
Oh, come on. Your captain shouldn’t have said all that.
Of course you helped. Everything you’ve done has been perfectly civilized!
” I petted the nearest floating machine in what I hoped was a reassuring manner.
After our brief communication with the crew had gone so disastrously, the poor ship needed a shoulder to lean on—metaphorically, as the sheer weight of it would likely crush me into jam.
“Must you always be blabbering?” said Merulo, his new eye blazing.
The ship had set the dragon siblings up with projected displays in the med-bay, which, given the reduced number of the buzzing machines, now seemed pleasantly spacious.
I didn’t think he should be standing, let alone absorbing all this new, sharp-edged information, but he and Hydna were pawing at the displays like kittens at yarn, scrolling through dizzying arrays of text and photographs.
“Must you always be . . .” I couldn’t think of anything appropriately cutting, nor did I really want to. “Mean to me? Anyways, you just came back from being three-quarters dead. At least sit down.” I patted a space on the operating table next to where I sat, feet swinging.
“He may feel perky now, but once my drugs wear off, he will crash,” the ship agreed in my ear.
Merulo’s look of attempted menace was undermined by his dress; the shift tied about his neck flapped open at the back, exposing bony white butt-cheeks. “This is information I would tear my remaining arm off to access. And you’d have me, what? ‘Take a load off?’”
Their assembly had taken mere hours compared to the intense days of labour and study he and Hydna had poured into his previous limbs, but Merulo’s arm and leg now moved smoothly enough to be mistaken for flesh.
The polished black plastic was all that gave them away.
Burnt blood flaked off the limbs as he moved, having served its role as fuel for the spell.
“Honestly, Merulo, it’s like you enjoy shedding limbs.” I lay flat on the table—which had been sprayed clean of fluids by the floating machines—and felt warmth radiate through the muscles of my back, unknotting them. “Come on, Hydna, talk some sense into him.”
“Hmmmrgh,” Hydna grunted, absorbed in a display of tiny humans on a screen. “Not now.” She hulked over the display, her tunic and breeches looking oddly rough in the smooth, oyster-dome room.
“Lunatic Freak?” I rolled on the table to give my front a turn with the heat. “Before we meet the people from space, could you please give Merulo some clothing? It’s just, we can see a rather lot of him right now. Particularly in the rear.”
“Would that I had my magic,” the sorcerer seethed. I had to swallow a peep of joy as he turned from a projected display to direct dark attention my way. “Perhaps the vulture was too generous a form for you. Yes, how about one of those scurrying rodents that you so liked to prey upon? Hydna?”
“Not! Now!” she hissed.
“Here’s what I have to offer.” The ship spoke through some hidden orifice in the ceiling. Both wall displays switched to scrolling images of clothing, leaving the dragon siblings to shout their frustration.
“Sorry, Mer. You said a rodent? Did you have a particular species in mind?” Hydna turned to me with a storm in her face. Unlike her brother, who so often channeled his fury into activities I enjoyed, Hydna’s anger genuinely chilled me.
“Uh.” I eased myself off the table, carefully circling around it to place Merulo between myself and his sister. “Could we choose outfits, first? It’s just another type of research, if you think about it, finding out what these moon people wear.”
“Don’t hide behind me. I won’t protect you,” Merulo muttered, but my words had worked.
The siblings regarded the displays with fresh curiosity.
From the sheer number of items scrolling past, this couldn’t possibly be what the ship contained, but, as with the limbs, what it had the potential to make.
“I need clothing, too,” I said to the ceiling. “Mine are drenched in various bodily fluids, and they’ve never quite fit.”
“So many styles.” Hydna looked hypnotized, her fingers hovering over the display.
“Hey, Mer. This is how humans dress without enforced monotony. They must not have a Church. Or maybe several Churches, that’s how it used to be.
And—give me the material composition please—plastics?
Wasn’t that a problem in the old world, the constant creation of plastic with no means to dispose of it? ”
“We have genetically altered bacteria now,” the ship chirped. “The little guys devour it, and can in turn be used for fuel, fertilizer, or various foods. There’s a pricey alcohol on Luna which comes from microorganisms fed on an exclusive diet of discarded celebrity undergarments!”
I sidled closer to Merulo, not quite daring to slide an arm around his waist, but wanting to be present and involved. Thanks to the ship’s administrations, his formerly lank hair now hung black and silky about the sharp planes of his scowl.
“What do you have that’s close to his old robe?” I asked, appraising the strange parade of items. “He never wears anything else.”
Merulo gave another cry of discontent, but my friend the ship had already obliged. “There.” I pointed. “That looks nice. Look at the shoulder spikes! The Order would piss themselves in fear, then slip in it. The piss, that is.”
“Show me what you consider most appropriate,” Merulo said with stiff politeness. The selection narrowed to three near-identical black robes. None of them had spiked shoulders.
“The left robe is most conservative, if you’re feeling dull. The middle looks closest to your old clothing, and the right is interesting. Right would absolutely have me acting up.”
“Middle,” said the sorcerer, wrinkling his nose. Hydna failed to participate in the decision, being absorbed in her own frenzied scrolling and subvocal communication.
“My turn!” I cried, pushing the recently undeceased sorcerer aside. “Lunatic Freak, please show me what a strapping young man in his mid to late twenties might wear. Something suited to a young warrior, abandoning his faith to become a mad sorcerer’s disciple!”
“Disciple?” scoffed the sorcerer. “A magic-less oaf, scrubbing floors clean of his own bird shit? Try to contain your self-flattery. The costume of a serving wench would be more fitting.”
“He really does like me,” I assured the ship, worried that it had not changed the display at the sorcerer’s suggestion. “It’s just how he talks.”
The patching of their relationship accomplished, I gave myself up to the joys of shopping, even if it did feel curiously flattened through a screen.
One displayed costume looked like a thrown net, shaped to a human form.
The knots arranged the net into a lovely geometry, but it didn’t look very warm.
Or modest. Another showed a dress—did the ship know I was a man?
—that slit alluringly over the hips, allowing a saucy length of leg.
I tapped at it. Just to get a closer look. No other reason.
“That looks appropriate.” Merulo pointed to an outfit I hadn’t planned on stopping at, and I swallowed a squeak of dismay. A crisp black shirt, form-fitting black trousers, heeled boots in, you guessed it, black. I wouldn’t have chosen it myself, but if Merulo showed interest?
“Selection locked,” came the voice, and the screen shifted to an abstract display of colour. I couldn’t help but notice that, before the options disappeared, the dress appeared to be highlighted.
“That’s done with, then.” I treated the ceiling to one of my signature smiles. I couldn’t help my relief; black would’ve looked awful with my colouring. “Thank you so much, Lunatic! Is it alright if I call you Lunatic?”
“Of course!” came that sexless voice. “And I’ll call you Cameron.” One of the machines had its eyepiece on me, I noticed, a black circle containing the faint reflection of my own face.
“I will need interior pockets in my robe,” said the sorcerer. “Hydna, I can instruct you in the enchantment needed for them.”
Hydna grunted in annoyance, but I knew how rarely she denied her brother. It was reasonable to have a soft spot for your only remaining family.
Further scrolling was interrupted as the displays swam together, merging into a cube of light that resolved into a grim face.
“Sorry to interrupt,” the captain said in Common, without a trace of accent. “But Luna has cleared us for landing. Please collect your personal belongings and prepare to deboard within the hour.” With that, the face vanished.
The sorcerer’s laughter bordered on screeching. Hydna joined him with her own booming tenor, and even I tried to add a chuckle or two, before deciding I was outmatched.
“We have everything,” Merulo wheezed, once breath had returned to him. “Everything! We win! We get it all.”
“Minus a limb or two,” I said, but he only shushed me.
“The moon!” Hydna shouted. She seized Merulo and spun him in a hopping dance and, to my surprise, he did not protest.
“Careful, careful.” I held my hands out, anticipating disaster. “Not too fast, Hydna. He’s just had surgery. Hydna, you’re being too rough!”
“The moon!” shouted the sorcerer, ignoring me—or so I thought. Pulling free of his sister, he grabbed me by the head and planted a kiss on my forehead. “The moon!”
“The moon,” I agreed.
The lighting of the room shifted, to a kaleidoscope of reds, blues, and greens, whirling in dots across the walls and ceiling. Hydna bellowed, open-mouthed in delight, while Merulo clutched my arm.
“Cameron.” Unshed tears softened his single eye, and something in my chest crumpled with joy. “This . . . all of this. It’s the most wonderful thing I could have imagined.”
I couldn’t help but agree.