Lydia's Mollusk

by Sean Monaghan

  They would want to keep her here.

  "Will I be able to go home?" she said. "After this?"

  "I'd want to have you stay for observation," Samena said.

  "I figured. But I feel well."

  "And your brother?"

  "I got a clean bill of health, remember?" Arnt said. "I hate to admit it, but I think it was just a psychosomatic reaction. You know, I freaked a little bit. Seeing those tendrils digging into my skin. I just passed out from the thought of it. Not from any physiological reaction."

  From the corners of her eyes, Lydia saw both Samena and Mel turn toward him.

  "Oh," Arnt said.

  "That's your opinion?" Samena said.

  "Well. Considered opinion."

  "I saw your chart," Mel said. "There was a physiological reaction. That's the key to all this."

  "I feel fine."

  "Lydia," Samena said. "How did you feel when you woke after your encounter with the mollusk?"

  "I felt fine. Still do."

  "How long before those first nodules appeared?"

  "Pretty quickly. Certainly it's been longer since my tendrils grabbed his arm, than between my mollusk grabbing me and when my nodules appeared."

  "Arnt," Samena said. "Let's take another look at that arm."

  "It's fine."

  The ring had reached Lydia's waist. She felt a tingling through her belly.

  "Should I be able to feel that?" she said.

  "Feel it?" Mel said. "You shouldn't be able to feel anything."

  It was getting worse. Or stronger, at least. Kind of electrical. Sharp, tiny jolting shocks.

  "All right," Samena said. "Arnt, there have been changes there. At the sites of the punctures. I need to have another proper look. And run some more tests."

  "Blood?"

  "Exactly."

  "I need to focus on Lydia now, though." Samena came back into Lydia's view. Peering down at her.

  "Hi," Lydia said.

  "Hello."

  "Hurting?"

  "Tingles and tugs. Little electric shocks."

  "I'm shutting it off," Mel said. "We've got good data anyway."

  The ring continued to hum and tremble, but both were diminishing. The arms carried on along the ceiling rails, drawing the ring along. Samena stepped back and the ring folded back into the ceiling. The hum faded away to nothing.

  Lydia's nerves still tingled.

  Samena put her hand on Lydia's head and peered into her eyes.

  "How are you feeling now?"

  "Not great."

  Mel joined Samena, standing on the other side.

  From the window came a quiet clunk.

  "What is up with that animal?" Arnt said.

  The tab restraints that had been holding Lydia's head folded away. Likewise the ones on her wrists and ankles.

  She looked at the window.

  The gazelle’s head was high. The animal had to be standing up at it, back legs on the ground front legs on the wall.

  The gazelle tilted its head forward. The tip of one of its horns tapped the glass.

  "Drawn," Arnt said. "As if things go both ways. You to the ocean. Wildlife to you."

  "How is that both ways?" Lydia said. She sat up and swung her legs from the table.

  Everything ached. There were twinges all over. Mostly through her left arm and into her shoulder and neck. Her fist had clenched.

  She took a step toward the window, but her left leg didn't quite go right. It was a minor thing. A slight drift outward. No more than an inch or so.

  A little like that moment when, falling asleep, she would dream-imagine herself going up a step and missing, just by a fraction. The sudden jerk of her legs would wake her.

  Samena grabbed Lydia's elbow, steadying her.

  "I'm okay," Lydia said. But she was trembling. Something fluttered through her muscles.

  The gazelle had its head inclined. Its eyes were wide. Lydia reached the window. She put her hand up, right by the gazelle's face.

  The gazelle leaned back.

  "It can't see you," Mel said.

  The gazelle licked the glass again. But right where Lydia was touching. As if it was licking her hand.

  "I should go out to it," she said.

  "Lyds," Arnt said.

  "I can't recommend that," Samena said. "The garden and the animals are certainly part of the hospital's therapy philosophy, but we still don't know enough about your condition."

  "I know enough," Lydia said. She put her right hand on Samena's. The one holding her elbow. Lydia pushed the hand away.

  She turned and headed toward the door.

  "Hold on," Arnt said.

  "Don't you try to stop me either."

  "Wouldn't dream."

  "You can't go out there," Samena said. "We've held the people off, but they'll accost you."

  Mel had opened a hidden closet and she pulled out a white robe. Plush toweling. The kind of thing a slightly up-market hotel might provide.

  "If you're going," Mel said. "At least wear something more than the smock."

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  It was cooler in the hospital corridor. People strode around. Some in scrubs, some in plain clothes. An automatic trolley squeaked by, laden with plates and utensils and leftover meal scraps.

  The tingling continued through Lydia's body. But it was in a good way now. Strong and vibrant. Even those little moments of electrical charge were uplifting.

  She kept the toweling robe tight at her waist. The fabric was soft and kind against her skin. She strode along the corridor. Just another patient. Just another person with every right to be here.

  How did she get to the garden, though? She'd been along this corridor already, and had only seen the rooms. Doors along each side. Nurses' station at intervals.

  From the rooms she'd been in, she hadn't even seen any access doors from the building's wall. At least, nothing on the other side.

  Arnt caught up with her.

  "You're quick on your feet when you want to be," he said.

  "You've always known that about me."

  "Yes I have." He held out one of his cups. "Did you want a coffee?"

  "Can't drink coffee now. You have it."

  "I'll be wired all day."

  "So? I think I could use you wired."

  "What does that mean?"

  "I'm glad you're here? I guess."

  Ahead, a door opened and an orderly backed out, pulling a gurney.

  The wheels squeaked. It was reassuring, really, that this was a busy, active hospital.

  Lydia glanced back. Samena and Mel were following along.

  "I'm glad I'm here too," Arnt said. "In the sense that I can support you. I do mean, I think it would be better if we didn't have to be here at all, right? If you hadn't gotten hurt."

  "Sure. I'm glad I didn't hurt you. Not really."

  Now Arnt glanced back. "That has yet to be determined. They're still checking my vitals you know?"

  He slowed and placed his empty coffee cup into a waste bin. He took a sip from her coffee.

  "Do you know how to get to the garden?" he said.

  "Nope. I figure follow along until the end? There's maybe access at the open end of the H."

  "H?"

  "That's the shape of the hospital."

  "Makes sense. H for hospital."

  "Wow. You should write a children's book."

  "A for Arnt. B for Buffoon." He took another sip of the coffee.

  "M for Mollusk," Lydia said.

  "Great. Now you're going to want a co-author credit."

  "I would never miss the chance." It was good having him around. Being silly, as if they were a couple of kids on a picnic. Just as they had been.

  Samena caught up. "You can't just walk in there," she said, her voice almost a hiss.

  "It's got restricted access," Mel said, keeping pace with Samena. "It's a controlled ecosystem."

  Of course.

  Lydia came to a stop. She turned to fa
ce the two women.

  "So, then?" Lydia said.

  "So what do we do?" Arnt said.

  "Stay here," Mel said.

  "Here? Excuse me."

  "We'll get the custodian access and let you walk through it."

  "We see that it's real important to you," Samena said. "We'll make it happen."

  Lydia sighed. "But you don't want us tromping around the hospital, do you?"

  "We might run into those industry types, huh?" Arnt said.

  "Kind of."

  "But you're not worried about contagion from me?" Lydia said. "Concerned that I might spread this?"

  "It's in the distant background," Samena said. "Far, far distant background."

  "Nobody even knows what it is, yet," Lydia said. "It could be far worse than we've imagined."

  "It's pretty bad for you," Arnt said.

  Lydia was still tingling, still had sparkles running through her legs and torso. Worse through her arms. If it got much more intense, she might need support from Arnt to stay upright. He would have to be on her right.

  "I'm doing all right," Lydia said. "Tired of the poking and prodding."

  "We'll check that resonance imagery," Samena said. "I think that will tell us about everything we will need to know, combined with what we have already. I think we'll find a good way forward."

  "Right now, a good way forward would be to let me into the garden."

  Mel looked along the corridor, over Lydia's shoulder.

  "We should go the other way," Mel said. "The access is kind of complicated."

  From along the corridor came a muted shout. The sound of someone trying to not make too much noise, but still trying to attract attention.

  It came again.

  "Lydia!"

  She turned.

  The shout had come from a tall, thin man, in a black suit with a white button shirt and a red tie. He was already hustling along toward them.

  Not someone she knew.

  There were more suits behind.

  "We should go," Samena said.

  "I'll stall," Arnt said. "You three get moving."

  Before Lydia could object, Arnt had stepped around. He strode toward the approaching group, waving as if he knew them all.

  "This way," Samena said. She hurried along. "We should have gotten you a gurney. Or at least a chair."

  "I'm fine." Lydia did have to step fast to keep up.

  They headed back along into the cross part of the H of the building. Ahead lay the main reception kiosk and some waiting rooms. Behind glass doors.

  But Samena stopped well before them. She palmed a pad beside a black door with a small label in the middle at eye height. Cleaners.

  Behind them, Arnt came around the corner. Right behind him came the tall guy with the red tie. Arnt looked harried. He no longer had the second coffee.

  "Quick," Lydia said. "We'll bypass the custodian and just barrel on through."

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  The Cleaners door swept open and Samena darted in. Lydia followed. Mel snuck through right behind.

  The room was big, for a cleaners' cupboard—it could just about have been converted to a single room—but it was stuffed with shelves filled with supplies. Toilet rolls, mop heads, rubber gloves. The air reeked of vinyl and stagnant water.

  "Don't you two have schedules?" Lydia said. "Patients you need to examine and screenwork to get signed off and filed?"

  "Sure," Mel said. "But this is much more interesting."

  "Access is through this way," Samena said.

  She went beyond the end of a set of racks filled with plastic bags, scrubbing brushes and half-full bottles of various fluids, and into a gap.

  There was a small door there. No handle. More like a sheet of heavy fabric. It shifted aside at Samena's touch and a light flickered on beyond. There was a narrow corridor there.

  No. Not a corridor. A service accessway. There were exposed pipes and cables all along the walls. It was no more than two feet wide.

  The walls were gray blocks, and in places little odd growths of white showed. Water staining too. As if the building was leaking and the blocks were dissolving and recrystallizing as something less structurally useful.

  The access ended in a gray block wall, but there was a hatch in the floor. Steel and painted dark green. Patchy with rust. It was like something from a submarine, rather than a hospital.

  "Supposed to keep us from contaminating the garden," Samena said.

  "Are you sure you need to go?" Mel said.

  That image of the gazelle licking at the window swam at Lydia.

  "Yes," she said.

  "All right then," Samena said. She crouched and unclipped some latches from around the sides of the hatch. It creaked and hissed.

  Lydia lifted it, the hinge squeaking. Cool air swirled up around Lydia's legs.

  There was a hole. A rung ladder on the side.

  Dark down there.

  "You first?" Samena said to Lydia.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Lydia peered into the hole. It smelled oddly. A mix of animal and industrial.

  "There's another hatchway on the other side," Mel said. "Opens from the inside. It'll let you out into the garden."

  "We'll come right behind you," Samena said.

  "All right." Lydia took a look at her hand and wrist. The holes, the nodule, the twisting tendrils. Alive and within her. Using her.

  She crouched. Moved around and sat on the edge of the hole. Stretched out her foot and got it on one of the rungs.

  "If it's a symbiote," she said. "What am I getting out of it?"

  "That's the question, isn't it?" Samena said.

  "Really is." Lydia leaned forward and took a rung with her right hand. She began her descent.

  The ladder was only six or seven feet down to a solid floor.

  She was in another narrow corridor. A basement area. Along one wall there were nooks or alcoves with more sundry items. Some gardening shears, a spray bottle, some rolls of already-used twine. Dim Strip lights along the ceiling barely lit the space.

  Lydia continued on along. Samena dropped to the floor behind her.

  "This is very cloak and dagger," Lydia said. "Couldn't you just have a door? I could have climbed out the window from the room with your magnetic ring."

  She was still tingling from the experience.

  "I agree," Samena said. "But that would make it too easy to get to."

  "That's what management tell us," Mel said, coming down after Samena.

  "It's not supposed to be a petting zoo," Samena said. "It's a critical part of running the hospital."

  "What keeps them in at the other end?" Lydia said.

  "Other end?" Mel said.

  "The open end of the H. There's a fence?"

  "Glass wall," Samena said. "Silvered like the windows, just the other way around. The animals can see out, but people outside the building can't see in."

  "Gotta be a patient to see the animals, huh?"

  Ahead the lighting came to a stop over a steep stairway.

  There was another hatch above, but longer. There were hydraulic stays built into it, and it was hinged right above the bottom end of the stairway.

  It was as if they'd entered some medieval castle. Like kids, almost, exploring hidden passageways.

  Samena squeezed right by Lydia and tapped at a small code panel that was almost hidden in the decaying gray blocks. These ones were in worse shape than those above. More water marks and a whole lot more powdery white residue.

  "This whole thing is going to fall apart," Lydia said.

  She touched one of the white patches and, sure enough, it crumbled beneath her finger.

  But it was familiar. The recrystallized calcium carbonate. From the dissolution of the blocks. And the blocks were made from old limestone. Crushed and repacked.

  Limestone from ancient seabeds. From the shells of mollusks.

  It seemed extraordinary that, over the eons, there had been so very many
mollusks that entire mountains were made from their shells. That vast parts of the human built environment had come from such tiny, hungry creatures.

  A clank came from above, followed by a hissing sound from the stays at either side.

  Light flooded through from the opening gap around the long hatchway.

  Someone was looking through at them.

  Two someones.

  Both of the gazelles Lydia had seen earlier.

  "They knew you were coming," Mel said. "They're here, ready and waiting."

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  With the light from the hatchway came the overpowering smell of the garden. It was so rich and full and delicious.

  Lydia started up the steep stairway.

  "Mind your head," Samena said. "The hatch doesn't open all the way up, so you have to bend to get through the gap when you get to the top."

  "Got it." Lydia kept her head down.

  The two gazelles stared at her. One of them—the one who'd been at the window—made a quiet bleating sound and poked out its tongue.

  "Well," Lydia said. "Baa to you too." She likewise poked out her tongue.

  Bending further, she scooted out from the stairway onto the damp, gritty ground. The gazelles backed away. Kept their eyes on her.

  From behind Lydia came voices. Not Samena and Mel.

  Male voices.

  And footfalls. Hurried footfalls.

  "Do we have company?" Lydia said.

  "Sure do," Samena said, coming up the stairs.

  "I'll hold them off," Mel said.

  Samena stepped through next to Lydia. The hatch gave a click and a hiss and began closing up.

  Yelps came from below.

  "It's all right," Mel said. "You don't need to—"

  The rest was cut off as the hatch closed up.

  "All right," Samena said. "Let's have a talk with your new friends here."

  Lydia turned to face the gazelles.

  They were each about four feet tall, at the top of their heads, one a little larger than the other. Their horns stuck up another foot. A pair of sharp prongs—the tips pointed enough to draw blood, probably. They were scalloped, with fatter ridges every few inches, as if they'd been made on a potter's wheel, and cinched at regular spacing.