14
F ragment reassembled an hour or so later, which was just about enough time to finish explaining everything to Roger. I would have preferred to skip that bit, but he’d gotten past Kent and seen enough not to be put off easily. Also, there was the matter of Thunder.
“You said you found him near the mine?” Ingold asked.
“Yeah. Ate like a horse, but the best dog. Watched over me drunk or sober. And you’re saying this thing replaced him?”
Ingold and I exchanged glances. “It’s possible that it always was him,” Ingold said gently.
“But he was a dog!”
“This creature could look like a dog.”
“But why’d it look like my dog?”
We went around on this three or four times, until Fragment finally appeared and Ingold gratefully seized on the interruption. “Did you learn anything?” he asked.
NO. SENTRY DID NOT WISH TO JOIN WITH ME.
“What does that mean, in practical terms?”
I DO NOT KNOW. IT HAS NEVER HAPPENED BEFORE. BUT I WOULD NOT FORCE A JOINING. He wiped the slate clean and wrote, COULD HE HAVE GONE MAD FROM LONELINESS?
“Uh ... I’m no expert on your people, Fragment. I don’t know.”
“Happens to humans,” I offered.
BUT HE DID NOT HAVE TO BE ALONE! Fragment underlined the word BE twice. I could see a faint red radiance coming from the skin that wasn’t covered by clothes or goggles.
Ingold got the hunted look of a man trying to explain psychology to an alien jellyfish creature.
(It’s rare, but you know it when you see it.) “It’s complicated, Fragment.
Sometimes when people hurt for a long time, they start to think that hurting is part of who they are.
And then anything that helps the hurt, even healing, feels like it’s trying to strip part of them away. ”
This gave both Fragment and I something to think about. Roger, however, was not given to such introspection. “But why’d he take my dog?”
Fragment wrote, PERHAPS HE WAS LESS LONELY BEING YOUR DOG?
I bit my lip. Ingold winced. Roger stared at the slate, blinked twice, then burst into tears.
***
“It’s all right,” I told Fragment wearily, after Kent and Angus had taken Roger away to recover himself. “You didn’t know.”
BUT I DID NOT MEAN TO DISTRESS HIM!
“I know you didn’t.” I patted his arm, unthinking, and felt the flesh give a little too much, which made me realize that I’d treated him as I would an upset human. It’s true what they say, I suppose. You can get used to anything.
I suppose if settling into pleasant debauchery doesn’t work as a career, I can hire myself out as an alien ambassador .
Ingold stepped into the written recriminations and said, “Fragment, I’ve been meaning to ask why you glow red sometimes. That was what let us find you in the first place.”
Fragment turned his goggles in Ingold’s direction. IT IS LIKE HUMANS TALKING, he wrote. IF A HUMAN IS ALONE, IT TALKS TO PRETEND ANOTHER HUMAN IS TALKING.
I started to protest that that wasn’t why humans talk to themselves, then realized I couldn’t possibly explain all the nuance, then further realized that I didn’t understand all the nuance myself, and shut my mouth.
WHOLENESS GLOWS. Fragment tapped the chalk against the slate. I wondered if that was an actual nervous tic or if he was imitating something he’d seen humans do. I DO NOT ALWAYS REALIZE I AM GLOWING.
“An unconscious behavior,” murmured Ingold. “Fascinating. But I’m curious about the mechanism. Can you glow deliberately?”
Red light began to leak from Fragment’s skin in answer.
“Amazing. And is this a specialized kind of cell, or ... ?” Ingold and Fragment rapidly descended into jargon, all about “bioluminescence” and Saint Elmo’s fire. (In Gallacia, we call it “the candles of St. David.”) I gave up and went out to check on the horses, to find Denton already there.
The doctor flushed when he saw me and looked away. “Easton ... Alex ... I ... ah ...”
I held up a hand. “You didn’t do it. That’s all that matters.”
He stopped, cigarette halfway to his mouth. “Err ... but I did do it. Many times.”
We stared at each other in baffled silence. “I’m talking about dumping oil on me and Fragment.”
“Oh . I meant ... um. John and I.” He was turning red behind his beard.
“Oh, that .” Christ’s blood, did he think I cared? Americans were so bizarre. “Denton, I do not know about anyone else’s military, but if half the Gallacian troops weren’t tossing each other off occasionally, I’d worry they weren’t getting enough to eat.”
Denton’s explosive snort unfortunately coincided with him taking a puff of the cigarette and he choked. I pounded him on the back until he could breathe again. The horses eyed us with grave suspicion.
“I mean, that , yes,” the doctor said. “But I didn’t know he felt that way. I thought it was just that ... well, I was there, and convenient. We didn’t talk about it.”
“And now you know. So that’s all right, then.” And now we were talking about feelings. I would almost rather he had poured the burning oil on me.
Denton grunted. I slapped him on the back again and fled.
***
“It’s odd,” said Ingold at dinner that night.
“What’s odd?” Angus asked. (I almost asked what wasn’t , but restrained myself.)
Ingold shrugged. “Just ... why was Sentry taking all that meat? That much food would last Fragment for a month.”
TWO MONTHS. AND IT WOULD TAKE DAYS TO INGEST.
“I thought you said they couldn’t eat meat,” Denton said accusingly.
“No, I said they couldn’t digest . Something like our stomach acid would eat right through them.
But Sentry was actually very clever—he used gizzard stones!
” He looked around at us triumphantly. I attempted to look suitably impressed, but clearly failed, because Ingold sighed and said, “Like a bird. He made a crop, filled it with rocks, and let them roll around and grind the meat up. Then when the pieces were small enough, they’d pass into a water-filled stomach and become something he could ingest. And of course he was using an actual skeleton so he could chew it to begin with.
In fact, he’d made some modifications to the basic canine skeleton.
I imagine that when he first began killing the people at the shantytown, he was taking bones as well as organs. ”
I put my food down and pushed it away.
I HAD NOT EVEN CONSIDERED SUCH A THING. Fragment frowned. SENTRY WAS MUCH SMARTER THAN I AM. AND HE COULD EVEN TALK A LITTLE. I DO NOT KNOW HOW.
“I wonder if he had a syrinx, like a bird,” Ingold mused.
“You’re not out there stealing other creature’s bones,” said Angus, before Ingold could launch into a treatise on comparative avian anatomy. “That’s the important thing.”
IT IS?
“Rules of life,” Angus said. “Be true to your friends, don’t cheat at cards, don’t piss on the less fortunate, and don’t steal other people’s skeletons.”
“You just added that last bit now,” I said.
“Obviously should’ve been there all along.” He leaned back. “Now then, gents, since we can’t use dynamite, how do we propose to get Fragment here back together with his people?”
***
I’ll spare you the details of the next few days, since most of it was spent tracking down a diamond core bit.
(Apparently most of them are attached to steam-powered machines.
Who knew?) It was a good thing we were in coal country, because Kent eventually found one.
If we’d been in Gallacia, he’d still be looking.
Ingold and Fragment stayed thick as thieves, but in the evening Ingold would stop and go sit outside with Denton.
I assume they were working out the details of their old-turned-new relationship.
I also assumed that it was none of my goddamn business.
The diamond bit cut nicely into the shell around the wholeness.
It still wasn’t easy , mind you. Everyone took a turn turning the drill handle and cursing.
But it made an inch and then another inch and then another and then we all sat around with aching arms and tried to ignore the white faces in the floor, mimicking our expressions.
(Denton didn’t take part in this. No one blamed him.
He was trying very hard, and at least he knew his limits.)
“Why do they do that?” asked Ingold, gesturing at the brilliant floor.
We had brought blankets down to sit on, partly because the floor was hard but mostly because it was extremely unsettling to sit on a floor that was imitating you.
The blankets looked very small and shabby in that pearl and limestone chamber of so much glory, and I clung to mine with deep relief.
IT IS PROTECTION. IF A SHARK COMES, THE WHOLENESS LOOKS LIKE A LARGER SHARK SO THAT IT WILL NOT BE FOOD.
EVEN DREAMING, THE WHOLENESS PROTECTS ITSELF.
Fragment waited until we had read the slate, then wiped it clean and began writing again.
WITH MOST BEINGS, IT IS ENOUGH TO LOOK LIKE THE HEAD OR EVEN JUST THE EYES.
“Oh, of course!” Ingold slapped the blanket. “Like the moths with wings that look like big eyes to scare predators away. The wholeness tries to look like a bigger human to frighten us off.”
Several pearlescent versions of him celebrated this, open-mouthed with delight. I looked away.
“We’re running low on water,” Angus said, turning his canteen to hear the slosh.
“I’ll go get some,” I volunteered. I didn’t like the crawl, but I’d gotten used to it, and now it was only skin-crawling, not vomit-inducingly awful.
We’d all gotten a little lackadaisical about going around the mine in pairs by this point, so no one stopped me. I made my way out of the tunnels, back to the main shaft, and began whistling an old Gallacian tune about the milkmaid and the virtuous wolverine.
I had just gotten to the bit where he offers to scratch the itch she cannot scratch herself when I heard a grinding noise and looked up.
A wall was falling slowly on top of me.