PATCHER Page 6

  All things know that this is the way of the world, she thinks. And it’s true. Somewhere, deep down at the core of all living things, perhaps well below the land of the final pilgrimage, lies this truth.

  Bex gets down on her hands and studies the belly of the plainsteer. The stunted leg is useless, a gnarled branch that looks almost ready to fall off on its own. She grabs it and pulls, twisting slightly. The calf kicks a little, but only out of discomfort. Eventually he finds a tuft of hay and starts grazing to take his mind off the procedure. She twists again and the dead subleg falls free with a crunch. Crust comes away, and Bex has to use her knife to scrape the remaining scab from the wound, doing the same to the grafting part of the leg she is holding.

  “Okay, buddy. Let’s get this over with.”

  There’s a little blood, but that’s fine. There needs to be for the two ends to successfully bond. Her birth-hands, the hands of a Tender, secrete an enzyme which helps further the process, and after only a few stitches and a little molding, the limb stays. The differences between it and the other subleg are small. In a matter of weeks, it will be as if the calf was born with it. Bex imagines one day when the calf is old, it will have acquired numerous patches and farming limbs to do any number of jobs required of livestock.

  She rolls out from under the calf and stands, placing a hand on the soft hide, feeling the skin twitch under her touch—and in some deep part of her dream mind, Bex knows what’s coming next, the dread rising in her chest as she says the words. She fights against it, slowing time in her dream as if simply not saying them will change the course of time, but they appear in her mind nonetheless, said by her voice, and she feels her blood go cold.

  “I think you’ll be okay—” As an explosion rocks the stalls, as the calf bellows in fear, as screams come from outside the stable walls, as bone-swords clash and flames rise, as smoke fills the stable, as the other livestock bucks and cries, as the calf turns to her, pleading for escape, as smoke fills her lungs.

  And then she is choking, coughing, and something huge is carrying her from the stables where she sees nothing but bodies…

  *

  Her eyes open to the morning sky, the distant hills, the gray overcast, the horns of the world. Bex closes her eyes again and takes a few breaths, then sits up and gathers her things. Downstairs Vin has already packed, and he taps his cane on the floor impatiently.

  “Let’s go.”

  She blinks. “Go?”

  “That egg… or whatever it was. That’s worth a dozen pelts in my book. Scavenge it and we’ll split the excess profit.” He grabs his bag and slings it over his shoulder. His skin seems crustier than it did yesterday, or maybe Bex is just imagining it. “There won’t be anything left if we let the poachers get to it first. I’d like to study what’s inside even if it’s dead.”

  She wants to ask what he plans to do if it’s still alive, but doesn’t. She doesn’t even know the answer to that herself.

  An hour later she’s wiping the sleep from her eyes atop Bindo as they ride into the cold morning desert. Their long blurry shadows stretch along the dewy sand as she yawns. Bindo complains because they left without feeding him and makes every attempt to eat things along the way. She tries to keep him moving with promises of food once they arrive.

  Vin rides next to her on his orehorse and she sees now that the animal is probably even older than Vin, its skin already calcifying, cracked at the joints. As they reach the gorge, she fully expects the egg to be gone, and is relieved it isn’t. But it has settled further into the ground.

  “They are trying to bury it,” says Vin, stepping off his mount. “They’ll probably continue after dusk if we let them.”

  He walks over to one of the traps he had laid down when they left the previous night. It has caught a stalker, the blades sheering off the legs. The creature has bled to death in the night. Vin kicks it with a hollow sound.

  “Well if this turns out to be for nothing, at least I have this.” He pokes it with his cane one last time before turning away to face the gorge. He slings the dead animal into a pouch on his orehorse’s flank and they begin to ride the long trail down to the bottom of the canyon. The wind has uncovered the other husks as well, and now they emerge gray and thin in the sand. Bex collects these as well.

  “I don’t suppose you’d be willing to part with any of those husks you found…” Vin asks.

  “I don’t even know what they are,” she says. “Plant, animal… I have no idea.”

  Vin grunts at her noncommittal answer. It doesn’t answer his question, but the egg presents more pressing business.

  *

  The Godcloud is thin today. Under the high desert sun the egg’s shadow is a black smudge against the sand, the surrounding ground darkened further by scratch marks, burnt vegetation, and stalker feces. She sees black eyes peering at them from their dens, too groggy to attack, too wary of the sun to emerge. She hopes they stay that way. It smells like a litter box down here.

  Vin acts even more cautious, tossing stalker traps around the perimeter as a precaution. He won’t go near the egg, just stands, arms crossed, staring at it from a safe distance.

  “It was defending itself last night,” she says to him. “With fire.”

  “You sure it wasn’t my flare?”

  “I know what I saw.”

  “I’m just saying you could have been confused…”

  But Vin can see that for himself—several stalker carcasses lay scattered a fair distance from the egg, charred and black. They’ve already been picked clean by their nestmates, even the carapaces are useless and gnawed.

  “It looked smaller from up there,” he says, his voice steady only through tremendous effort. She can feel it too, standing this close to the presence of its immense uncertainty.

  “It’s too big to move,” she says. “I don’t even think we could move it using both our mounts.”

  Vin nods and approaches. The outside is smudged with stalker ichor and fluids… and it smells. Some ungodly stench emanates from inside, something distinctly non-stalker. He makes a face.

  “I think it’s rotten,” he says back to her, completely unaware of the eyes staring at him, the flare gun aimed at the back of his head. “Probably cracked and died when it fell.”

  “Fell from where?” She laughs a little. “How far does an egg have to fall? And where does an egg like that come from?”

  “Could have started down here…” Vin scratches his chin again. “If something large enough could… lay it…” But even he doesn’t believe his own explanations.

  “That doesn’t explain the crack.” She takes a step away, studying it as Vin begins to make his way around the perimeter.

  As Vin circles the egg, he points out other irregularities: a strange marking, scratched and burned away. It looks like some sort of birthmark. Below it, the shell indents sharply just above the dirt and rock. He steps closer, runs his hand over it, and then freezes.

  He jumps back.

  “What?” Bex asks, her hand going to her pistol.

  He turns and looks at her, walking away from the egg, shaking his head slightly. He just stares at the ground, trying to make sense of it all. “I don’t know what it is, but I don’t think it’s an egg. It’s a statue of some kind… a replica of an egg.”

  Bex looks at the broken sphere over his shoulder. “A monument?”

  “Maybe...” His old eyes turn back to it again. “Maybe the stalkers dug up something ancient, some distant ancestral relic…”

  “And buried it again?”

  Vin doesn’t answer. He just shrugs.

  “Why would the stalkers be after it then?” she asks. “Clearly they smelled something.”

  But he’s already walking fast towards her, taking her arm in a trembling hand, pulling her away from the mystery. He speaks in quick, rushed sentences. “Stalkers are probably just reacting to the invasion of their territory. Let’s go.”

  She shakes her hand free and meets his gaze. �
�Why would someone make a statue of an egg and drop it here… or bury it here? What’s the point?”

  Vin is already trying to move towards his mount. “I’m going back.”

  “We didn’t come all the way out here to just turn back.”

  “I don’t care,” he says. “I don’t like it, don’t like it one bit.”

  “Vin!” She walks over to the charred egg. She raps a fist on it, making a dull sound like stone. “Look. It isn’t doing anything. I thought you were curious.”

  “I was… But that isn’t normal or natural. And if it is normal or natural, I don’t want to be around when it hatches…if it hatches… I deal in livestock—cuts and bruises. On rare occasions I Patch some skin or graft a limb for people. I don’t deal with monsters.”

  “Monsters!” She laughs, but it’s a nervous laugh. She turns to the egg again and runs a finger over the surface. It’s smoother than any eggshell, glossy even under all the dust and scrapes, incredibly tough—like the husks. She runs her hands along the deep indentation at the base where Vin found what he thought was a birthmark.

  “It’s jammed full of rock—hey!” She looks back at Vin. “There’s some kind of handle. I think you’re right about it being a statue.”

  Vin watches from his safe distance as she digs away the rock and debris from beneath it. He isn’t leaving, but doesn’t offer help either as Bex scoops away dirt from around the giant pod.

  “The stalkers must have jammed it up in here when they were burying it. I think we might be able to pull it free with the mounts.” She stops a moment and sees Vin frown. “Get the ropes.”

  “Are you crazy?” he says. “They can’t pull that.”

  She walks over to Bindo and pulls one of the husks from the pouch. She carries it back to the egg and holds it up against the surface.

  “It’s made from the same material as the husks, and you saw how light those were. Just get a length of rope. We’ll find out for sure.”

  Vin agrees after a reluctant pause, going to his orehorse and opening its pouch. He pulls the length of rope from within, latching one end to the animal’s bridle and then carrying it to Bex. He stops at a safe distance and tosses the last length of rope to her.

  “Really? It isn’t going to bite,” she says, but Vin doesn’t come any closer. “Thanks.”

  “Your funeral.”

  The rope slips around the handle easily now that she’s dug away the excess gravel and rock. She notices how charred some of the stones are, black as charcoal and still warm even in this chilly morning air.

  “Okay…” She carries the rope back to Bindo and loops it around his bridle. He is too busy munching on a shrub to care. “Let’s see how light it is.”

  They coax their mounts forward, and for just a moment, she feels silly and frustrated. The rope goes taut and quivery and still the thing doesn’t move. But soon she hears the sound of scraping and looks back to see it tilting.

  “I think it’s working…”

  She can already see her mistake as the entire length of shell sheers away, a flap of hardened tissue tearing upwards. It comes apart, and Bex watches with dismay as an entire section of shell breaks free and slides across the ground in a cloud of dust. She swears under her breath and turns to Vin.

  “Stop them. Let’s just stop. I was wrong,” she says.

  They manage to bring the animals to a halt and Bex goes back to look at the damage she’s done. She thought the shell would be tougher than it really was, and now a gaping hole stares back at her, revealing a dark, blackened interior, no yolk—but that could have just dried and rotted.

  “Well, you tried,” Vin says. She can hear the attempt at comfort and the relief in his voice. No monsters, nothing dangerous, just a big empty husk, just like the others she’d found. “Maybe we can sell the shell… Hey, don’t get too close!”

  She feels his hand brush her back as he reaches to stop her, but he won’t go any closer. Her feet have already started trudging towards the egg anyway, and she didn’t come all this way to back off now. If there’s anything worth learning from this, she’s going to learn it.

  I’m still a learner, not a Tender, not yet, Bex thinks as she steps up to the hole in the egg—

  Chapter 8

  AND PEERS in.

  He’s good at hiding. Kendal stares wide-eyed at the invader. The gun sits in his hand, the flares spent, but he doesn’t dare move. He peers from around the cluttered and broken interior of the pod.

  What enters his capsule is clearly a different species than the black alleycats trying to get at him earlier, but that doesn’t make the sight of it any less unsettling. He remains still as it pauses, inspects, pauses again, and sniffs, scanning the inside of his pod with tiny black clever eyes.

  It’s the black goo from the other animals that prevents it from noticing him he decides—or maybe even masking his scent. The way Kendal sees it, he has maybe five to ten seconds before it sees him—before he spends his last flare shell killing it.

  It stands bipedal, maybe the size of a small dog on its backwards hind legs—about two feet tall, if that. The head is thin, pale, with spots—flattened somewhat, making him think of a salamander or axolotl. Slender whiskers surround a thin, lipless slit of a mouth, set below a pair of smart, expressive, black eyes. It’s wearing a sort of vest, or maybe a shell of some sort. It’s hard to tell where the clothing ends and the creature’s skin begins. Bits of rock, cloth, shell, leaves, maybe bits of other animals, all stick to it like the shell of a decorator crab.

  It scans the interior of the capsule, taking in the equipment. Right now, he looks like a part of the background, but any minute it will notice him as well as it probes around the entrance.

  When it does, Kendal’s heart begins to skip beats in his chest. A slender, six-fingered hand grips the edge of the door. He hears a voice from outside, a chuckling birdcall, and the creature turns its head and clucks something back. The sound and gesture is almost human in its casualness, eerily so. For a minute he thinks it might leave, but it only turns—

  And then sees him for the first time. The black specks of eyes go slightly wider, focusing, seeing him. Its entire body seems to inflate slightly, the way a scared cat might raise its hackles. But it doesn’t attack. They stare at each other for what feels like hours, maybe in reality only a minute, but Kendal feels the trigger under his finger, feels his heart beating in his ears, hears the small breaths from the creature looking at him. It’s gone on long enough, and he decides that at the very least he should say something.

  “Hello.” he says slowly, keeping the voice as calm and even as possible.

  The creature nearly flings itself backwards through the capsule door. Another long flamboyant discussion of birdsong erupts outside, a piccolo duet. He begins to hear other noises too, goat bleats and cat sneezes.

  Well so much for formal introductions, he thinks and leans forward. He sticks his head out of the capsule door, and breathes. The air is just as thin outside the pod as in, and he realizes now that the vinegar smell is in the air, not just from the predators that tried to enter his capsule. It’s breathable, but he can feel his lungs straining. The sun is an Arizona summer sun, behind swirling gray clouds that do little to prevent the heat from reaching him.

  The two bipeds argue just outside his door, with what appear to be pack animals the size of sheep off in the distance. The second biped is almost a different species by comparison, it is covered in crust and thick flat plates, its legs gnarled and covered in what appears to be scabs or a buildup of some kind of mineral. It leans on a cane holding it with two hands—and Kendal realizes that it has a second, functioning arm stitched to its shoulder. A white crust barely hides the scar there. Patches of skin, repaired in a similar fashion, covering its body like an old quilt.

  Emerging from the capsule feels like exiting a tomb, and Kendal rests at the lip of the pod as the two creatures stare at him with wide, wary eyes. He looks at the flare gun, pops it open, and then places it
on the floor of the pod. If hostilities haven’t occurred by now, he doesn’t want to start.

  The pain when he breathes must have something to do with the air, and Kendal pulls the mask to his face and breathes as the two pseudo-salamanders step back almost comically.

  “Just air,” he says.

  Frozen, they stare. He takes a few breaths and then feels his lungs begin to relax. The canister says ninety percent. Just a matter of time before I die.

  The pack animals ignore him for the most part, more interested in eating the scant scrub brush on the dirt. One resembles a pygmy cow, with a wide mouth. Its back is covered in mottled leathery skin, its tail long and flat. But that’s about where the similarity ends. The hooves are long and sharp enough to slit a throat. Between the hind legs—he realizes that what he thought was an udder is actually two additional legs inside the hindquarters. They drop occasionally with idle laziness as it eats, occasionally feeling for food and uprooting plants.

  Next to it—and somewhat more nervous of his presence—is a more muscular, slender animal with a dragon’s head and a thick hide. Crusty, gray rhino skin covers the body as large prey eyes study him.

  The argument erupts in birdsong again as the two bipeds resume their discussion, a dueling aria of woodwinds. It’s beautiful in a way, an intelligent, back-and-forth, call and answer. When the music concludes, the smaller (and maybe younger?) of the two salamanders approaches him, but otherwise ignores him. The door has been pulled free and now lies a dozen feet or so away. The salamander unties a length of twine from the door and walks back to the pigmy cow, where it runs a hand along the animals flank.

  A marsupial pouch opens up in the animals hip and the salamander places the twine inside. It turns back to him and then—

  *

  She looks at Vin, and for a while the two of them just stare.