The Body Scout: A Novel

by Lincoln Michel

  “Don’t curse.”

  There are a lot of strange zootech out here. Creatures escaped from the labs, breeding on their own in the desert dust. You see flocks of uncanny birds, herds of elongated antelope. Maybe it isn’t right to call them zootech anymore. They’re evolving on their own. Newforms infesting the new world.

  I shine a light in its direction and hoot. It peeks over a rock at me. Its eyes red and oblong. Then it scampers off into the night, scaly tail slapping against the dirt.

  I take out some of Zunz’s pellets and say, “High five.” Hold up my hand. He doesn’t do anything. Doesn’t even understand the words. I give him a pellet anyway.

  He hunches over and shoves it in his mouth. Seeing him gets weird feelings spinning in my guts. I wish Lila had left him in Setek’s laboratory, but how can you tell a girl who lost her dad for a second time she can’t smuggle out one of his tiny homunculi clones?

  “Couldn’t you have gotten a freagle instead?” I say. “They’re cleaner.”

  “Be quiet, Kobo. You love our little Z. Plus, this one can’t mess up my life the way the other one did.”

  I look up at the night sky. There are a lot of stars, and even more space between them. A red streak or two that could be comets or targeted missiles. The air is as cool as a freshly opened refrigerator.

  I think it would be nice to have Dolores here. But she hadn’t been ready to give up the life or the city, and I hadn’t been ready to forgive her. The Sphinxes promoted her for the Mets operation. She’s vice president of scouting and counterintelligence operations. They paid her enough to pay off her parents’ medical debt, start building a down payment for a barge house off Long Island. Even without Arocha, the data she downloaded helped them catch up in the duplication race. Pretty soon there will be Pyramid Pals or some such on the market.

  Before we left New York, Dolores took us back to her place. Put headphones on Lila and shut the bedroom door. Let our bodies entangle for a final time. In the morning, she passed me a bytewallet beside the coffee.

  “I can’t take this.”

  “Spare me the modesty. It’s your cut. Couldn’t have done it without you. Sphinxes have big plans. We’ve already signed a contracts with the Democratic Party and the NNBA.”

  “Politics suits you.”

  “Money suits me, Kobo. It suits everyone. That’s the way it’s all set up.”

  “Aren’t we supposed to tear down that setup?”

  Dolores rolled off me, began pushing me out of her bed. “Just take it. It’s enough to get you and Lila to the Free State and fix your arm.”

  But I decided I needed an arm less than Lila needed healthy lungs. I’d been through enough right arms. It was time to try not having one at all.

  It took a lot of convincing, but Lila eventually agreed.

  “You quit smoking erasers and I’ll get a new lung,” she said.

  “Deal.”

  Now, I look at her and she’s scarfing down pizza without even breathing. She’s healthy, strong, and growing.

  I don’t know what happened to Natasha and her Neanderthals. They’re hiding out in some corner of Siberia, building a new society and scrambling the drones and satellites that come looking. As for the Sassafras sisters, well, despite everything I hope they’re still together, one way or the other.

  The Zunz I used to know appears on TV sometimes, and when he does Lila and I change the channel. We prefer to pretend he’s just gone. A memory from a long time ago. Even that memory is starting to fade.

  As for me, I’m still an old liar. I watch streams with Lila, then tell her it’s time for bed. I go outside and as soon as I close the door, I pull out an eraser. I keep a pack tucked inside my bionic arm, where the old motor had been. Outside and alone, I light one. A little blue flash in the black night.

  I walk a hundred paces and sit on a rock. Suck all the numbing heat into my lungs. It feels good, like nothing at all.

  Acknowledgments

  Publishing a novel is a team sport and there are many people I would like to thank. My coach, the genius Angeline Rodriguez (I’m ready to pitch whenever you’ll put me on the mound!). My general manager, the fantastic Michelle Brower, and the rest of the front office at Aevitas Creative Management. And my murderers’ row of early readers: Chloé Cooper Jones, John Dermot Woods, Nadxieli Nieto, Adrian Van Young, and Mika Kasuga. The book was vastly improved by your notes and insights.

  I’m thankful also to John Cotter for giving the novel a read on issues of disability and deafness. Jonny Diamond and Lit Hub for publishing an early excerpt. My parents and my brother for their support. Adam Wilson, James Yeh, Helen Phillips, Adrienne Celt, Theo Gangi, and everyone in the group chat (you know who you are) for enduring sessions of spitballing and complaining. The Believer and the Paris Review softball teams for allowing me to pinch-hit now and then. Lauren Panepinto for designing this brilliant cover. Rachel Goldstein, Bryn A. McDonald, Xian Lee, Rachael Herbert, Vivian Kirklin, Diane Miller-Espada, and everyone else at Orbit who worked on this book.

  This novel began percolating in 2015 and in the years it took me to complete I was fortunate to have time and space to work at CATWALK Institute, the Mastheads, the (unofficial) Sifnos Writers Retreat, and Lighthouse Works.

  The authors who inspired me are too numerous to list, but I will single out Kōbō Abe, whose pioneering science fiction novel Inter Ice Age 4 and postmodern noir The Ruined Map provided some early inspiration—as well my main character’s name.

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