Bad Cow

by Andrew Hindle

  Moskin’s blades had come from his grandmother, and a rather more classical and beauty-oriented era and sociological context than that which had seen the creation of Gyre’s blunt and brutal ‘stickers’.

  Sacrifice was technically legal in cases of extremely well communicated and recorded mutual knowledge, competence and consent, and even in Fade that was a very strictly overseen set of observances. There was always the illegal route, and Moskin had always been more concerned with what was right than what was legal, but of course it was easier to obey the law of the land wherever expedient. It placed fewer obstacles in your path.

  In cases where the would-be sacrifice was dying anyway, or was otherwise eligible for assisted death, ritual slaughter to the glory of God and the Lost Disciples was considered one of the nobler ways to end a life that society had deemed appropriately expended. Indeed, for the Áea-folk, especially for older and more traditional members of the species, sacrifice was preferred to simply ending one’s life. The precepts of sacrifice entailed practical utilisation of the body and organs for medical purposes, and served numerous other cultural, social and religious purposes. It gave the dying person solace in his or her closing moments – the knowledge that after a life lived, even death and reduction to meat was serving a greater good. A vast majority of so-called enlightened and civilised sentients went to their final fate with no such consolation.

  “Like I said, Soki has taken care of the required paperwork,” Gyre said. “And I have another surprise for you.”

  Moskin waited politely. Gyre grinned, rummaged at her belt, and passed him a rolled-up infopaper almost as old as Moskin’s birth blades. He opened it, and the stored information bled tastefully out onto it in elegant loops and twists. A couple of images also appeared, and Moskin studied them, read the text, and studied the pictures again.

  “Is this…?”

  “Her name is Grodnak Gradd,” Gyre said, “and she’s an old friend of your dear slimy Hargrondt friend Scadmerion Bail.”

  Moskin had a number of Gróbi friends by now, but Scad had remained one of the best he shared with Soki. They formed a slightly-extended magic triangle of Pinian-descended species, including the assortment of Gyrlei they’d raised over the years.

  He looked back down at the Grób in the pictures. She did indeed look old. He wasn’t good at judging Gróbi ages, but he recognised the thick rolls and mottled, leathery folds, and judged that she must have been over four hundred years old. That was more logic than knowledge of Gróbi anatomy, of course – Gyre was offering him a second sacrifice. Part two of three, and as complication-free and acceptable as the ancient Elf was.

  “She’ll be at the party,” Gyre said, “and staying the following day.”

  “She’s prepared herself?” Moskin asked. “I mean … digestively, as well as spiritually?”

  Gyre cackled. “Even if she has, you’re in for a treat. The things that come out of a thoroughly-cleaned Grób are almost as disgusting as the things that come out of a filthy one.”

  Moskin leaned forward, picked up his cup, then set it down again. He was mildly surprised to find he was on the verge of tears. “This,” he said, “is … a very important thing. A great gift to give, for a cause greater than I can say.”

  Gyre snorted. “I certainly hope so,” she said. “I’d hate to think I was giving myself up for sacrifice to a whim.”

  AFTER THE PARTY

  The birthday party was a noisy affair as only an Áea-folk party with a dozen Gróbs thrown in could be, especially since half of the Áea-folk brought Gyrlei with them. The yipping lizards were all varying degrees of non-sentient, none of them as intelligent or articulate as the Thalaar family Gyrlei, but they could still make a mess – and the mess they could make was nothing compared to the noise they could make.

  Moskin mingled politely with the guests but kept largely to himself, especially when conversation turned towards the Lost Disciples and the vanished worlds, as it invariably did at any social gathering in Fade. It wasn’t that Moskin couldn’t talk about the vanishing until his teeth fell out by the row, but in this case he felt keenly that he should be stepping back from the endless debate.

  Nobody mentioned the sacrifice, and Moskin realised that only a handful of them knew about it. And most of that handful was occupied by Grodnak Gradd, a truly ancient Grób with a patchwork hide and a brass-and-gold-chased gravity pad. The heaving, wheezing, watery-eyed old monster glided around the room wrapping affectionate tentacles around Elven waists and across Gróbi bulks, booming deep bullfrog gusts of laughter that were the equivalent of Gyre’s elderly-Áea cackles.

  Moskin felt obligated to socialise with her a little, considering the direction their relationship was destined to take. Grodnak declared proudly that she was four hundred and eighteen years old, confirming Moskin’s estimation of a few days earlier. Four hundred years was about the upper limit of the lifespan for a healthy and well-preserved Grób, and downright miraculous for the comparatively rough-and-ready lifestyles enjoyed by most of Fade’s Hargrondt. Certainly Grodnak seemed to enjoy the finer things and didn’t appear to be the Gróbi equivalent of fit. Moskin wasn’t much of a judge of that either, but an athletic Grób’s enormity had a muscular sleekness to it, while a more standard Grób had a generous amount of subcutaneous fat and assorted fluids.

  She was also, he couldn’t help but notice, helping herself to an awful lot of food suited to Áea and Gróbi alike, none of it particularly healthy, almost all of it known for its digestive untidiness. He had to admit that, if one knew one was going to die the next day, there was no compelling reason to observe much dietary caution. Gyre Thalaar was being exceptionally courteous in her intestinal preparations for the event – but it was a courtesy. And not one, it was important to remember, that Grodnak Gradd would need to apologise for neglecting. Moskin resigned himself to dealing with a messy corpse, and focussed on not adding a hangover or boiling-fury-stick-inflicted stomach ache to his woes.

  The following morning, or the Fade equivalent, Moskin crossed the front yard past a couple of grimacing-in-their-sleep Elves and one great snoring brown mound that was a Gróbi guest who’d misplaced his ambulation unit in the course of the festivities. Soki met him on the front threshold where she was bidding farewell to another Áea-folk guest in considerately low-pitched tones as befitted the older woman’s evidently delicate state. Soki herself seemed as strong and ferocious as ever.

  “They’ve gone down to Thrabney Point,” she told him, “but they’ll be back in time. You’re to get started. Wait here, I’ll get Hucklecomb for you.”

  She turned and slipped back into the house, which had already begun to vent its warm smell of food and smoke and strangers. Its usual underscent, that of tasteful decay with a veneer of incense and old-Elf unguents, was creeping back. Moskin found it reassuringly familiar after all these years – the house, aired out and filled with the aromas of socialising, had seemed alien to his senses.

  Soki returned a few moments later with the crusty-scaled, white-eyed Gyrlei draped over her arm. He raised his snout and turned it in Moskin’s direction, tasting the air with a forked black tongue.

  “Mossin,” he said, sounding not entirely displeased. Moskin usually had some treat or other for the toothless old lizard. And indeed, he did this time – how could he not?

  “Huck,” Moskin said, reaching into a pocket.

  Unknown Provenance and Boxbury had passed away many years since, but their great-grandchildren Lady Painful, Thorias, Boxbury the Fourth and Hucklecomb were various grades of elderly, with offspring of their own and two clutches of grand-eggs down at the local hatchery. Hucklecomb was the eldest of the three, and easily the brightest. You could actually have a conversation with him – in fact, you could have three. No more, no less. The conversations had to be about breeding with Lady Painful; which kinds of raw meat were best; or how much he’d liked chasing his favourite flittertail toy when he was a hatchling, but they were definitely conversations.
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br />   The Gyrlei extended his head still further, tongue flicking, and snagged the morsel of slightly-decomposed rock eel Moskin unwrapped and peeled away from the pack he’d been marinating since his conversation with Gyre a few days before. Rock eel, according to Conversation #2, was Hucklecomb’s clear favourite, and the rot and marinade made it easier for his old jaws. Moskin peeled off another slimy strip of fatty white flesh and let Hucklecomb gulp it down. If it was the most disgusting thing he had to handle that day, he would consider it a good day.

  Soki waited until he’d finished swallowing, then handed the Gyrlei over to Moskin. Hucklecomb went happily enough.

  “Mossin,” he said again.

  “That’s right, Huck,” Moskin said, surprised to feel his voice thickening. “That’s me.”

  “Time to sleep?” Hucklecomb asked, as Moskin juggled his gnarled length and fed him another piece of eel. Moskin glanced at Soki in surprise.

  “We explained it to him earlier this morning,” she said with a shrug. “He seemed pleased.”

  “Sleep,” Hucklecomb slurred around his mouthful. “Rest with Gannygyre.”

  “He understands,” Moskin said, a little shaken.

  “Of course he does,” Soki murmured, and her gaze met Moskin’s fiercely.

  Soki didn’t seem resentful, but she didn’t seem to be glad, exactly. She was … vigilant, a parent seeing her child off on a first courting. Moskin supposed it was a difficult thing to come to terms with. Her grandmother was ready to die – and apparently so was the patriarch of their little Gyrlei family. This was what Gyre Thalaar had chosen, and it was objectively a better death than wasting away in a bed … and yet, it was still brutal. And Soki would miss her grandmother keenly.

  “There’s some lulldream in the marinade,” Moskin said, stroking the rough scales. “I got it a few months ago from some Molren in return for a bit of help with some heavy lifting. In these amounts it will make him euphoric and dull the–”

  “You make it fast anyway, Moskin Stormburg,” Soki said. “You just make it fast.”

  “I will.”

  Soki nodded, managed a smile and a reassuring squeeze on the arm Moskin wasn’t using to hold the Gyrlei, and stepped back into the house. “Same goes for Grodnak and Grandmother, of course,” she said, “although in their case I think making it fast might be the safest thing for you as much as it is the kindest thing for them,” they both chuckled. “Tell Grandmother that I said it was seventeen,” Soki instructed as she closed the door. She smiled again. “She’ll know what I mean.”

  Moskin was sitting in his stark little kitchen26 rolling a scented kangoss ball to the blind Gyrlei when Gyre and Grodnak returned from Thrabney Point. The gloriously mismatched pair of old ladies respectively strode and floated in through his front door like they owned the place, laughing at some joke the Grób had just told.

  “Ah,” Grodnak said expansively, wobbling and looking dangerously close to overflowing from her gravity pad, “here’s our lad.”

  “I should warn you,” Gyre said, “although I’m well and truly cleansed, we just had a huge and very greasy breakfast. I’m reliably informed that it will be largely undigested and so not noticeably more disgusting than it was when it was on the plate.”

  “I, on another frond,” Grodnak said, coiling a slimy, affectionate tentacle around Moskin’s shoulders, “am a complete midden from one end of my digestive system to all four others.”

  “I thought Gróbs only had three external sphincters,” Moskin said in mingled amusement and apprehension.

  “Most Gróbs do,” Grodnak said coquettishly, “but most Gróbs haven’t had a bifurcated blasglag.”

  “Their loss, I suppose,” Moskin replied.

  Grodnak boomed. “You’re right,” she said to Gyre. “He’s luscious.”

  Gyre picked up Hucklecomb, who had raised his blind old head and announced Gannygyre as soon as she’d entered the room, and then fixed Moskin with a pointed look. “Shall we get on with it?” she asked. “Or is there some sort of ritual?”

  “It’s a ritual sacrifice, fuckteeth,” Grodnak chuckled. “Of course there’s a ritual.”

  “We’ll be performing the Ceremony of the Fire of Barnalk,” Moskin said to head off any arguments, however good-natured. “It’s actually a unified ceremony, despite coming from Barnalk Low. I understand a Gróbi priest interpreted it from the words of a Gyrlei.”

  “That’s a confidence-inspiring thought,” Grodnak snorted.

  “I like how he said we’ll be performing this,” Gyre remarked, stroking Hucklecomb.

  “Naturally he did,” Grodnak said. “We’re critical to the whole venture.”

  “Anyway, the ceremony is very simple,” Moskin went on. “All the actual ritual elements are done with the body parts after you’re dead, so there’s nothing you need to worry about.”

  “And when do we start?” Gyre asked, rubbing her hand down Hucklecomb’s back with a mutually dry rasp.

  “Whenever you like,” Moskin said. “I’ve never done this before,” he added, then felt like an idiot when the Elf and Hargrondt roared with laughter.

  “And we have!” Grodnak gurgled gleefully.

  “Perhaps we’d better just do it before I embarrass myself further,” Moskin said by way of recovery.

  “Good boy,” Gyre cackled, then grew serious. “Don’t worry about us,” she said. “Do your job, do what feels right, and we’ll take care of the dying.”

  “I’ll bear that in mind,” Moskin promised.

  “You know you’ve waited this long because it would be an affront to God to sacrifice young ones,” Gyre said, cutting – as she always did – to the very thing he’d been wishing could remain unsaid. “Soki, and Scad. You need to take three who have served their purpose, who have nothing further to offer. Who have this one last trick left in them,” she peered at him, bright and shrewd and birdlike. “That’s why you didn’t do this decades ago. You know that.”

  Grodnak humped her great sagging dorsal slabs in a Gróbi shrug. “Let’s do this before the thunderberry wears off and I have to live with my past month of excess any longer.”

  “Past month…?” Moskin exclaimed. “How long have you three old reptiles been planning to crash my ritual?”

  Gyre and Grodnak laughed until Grodnak belched mightily, filling the kitchen with the smell a swamp might make if it had diarrhoea.

  Gyre gave Moskin an apologetic look. “Might want to start with her.”

  “I think you’re right,” Moskin said weakly. And the Gróbs were the children of the First Disciple, after all – it only made sense to go in order.

  They went into Moskin’s back yard, where he had prepared comfortable beds each in the style of the intended occupant. Hucklecomb, as he’d suspected, stayed with Gyre as she settled in the padded and irrigated receptacle. Grodnak heaved herself out of her gravity pad with another noxious belch and slumped into the much broader dish-shaped lounge he’d installed for her.

  “All my legal work is on the pad computer,” Grodnak said with a wave of her tentacle. “My spawn have been prepared for this. You can just press the call symbol and it will contact them,” she chortled heavily. “I must be getting nervous,” she went on. “You know all this already, don’t you?”

  Moskin had indeed been reading up on his legal and personal obligations since Gyre had brought this proposition to him. “Whatever helps,” he said, and tapped the crossed blades of his knives against Gyre’s battered old things. Then he tapped lightly on Hucklecomb’s front claw, and crossed to Grodnak to cross his blades over the pale, surprisingly delicate twin palps of her vestigial tusks. These were almost on the underside of the enormous female and had only become visible amidst the rolls when she came out of her pad and slumped sideways. They shifted feebly, yellowed with age and yet bleached from constant darkness, barely capable of movement anymore. Hundreds of thousands of years ago, the two limbs would have been heavy cartilaginous weapons matching her two primary tentacl
es, but generations of advancement and culture had reduced them to mere toenails. Well, toenails as long as Moskin’s hand, but toenails nevertheless.

  He went back to Gyre and crouched by her bedside.

  “Soki told me to tell you it was seventeen,” he said uncertainly, and Gyre laughed raucously.

  “You tell that little bitch it was fifteen,” she said, “and that Gannygyre always gets the last word,” she gave Hucklecomb a pat. “Isn’t that right?”

  “Gannygyre,” Hucklecomb agreed placidly. The lulldream was definitely kicking in for the Gyrlei, and the assorted narcotics were making the Elf and the Grób more docile too.

  It was all over quite fast, ultimately. He said his farewells to all three of the sacrifices, leaned over each in turn and sank a ceremonial but still clinically operational spike through into Gróbi brain, Áea brain, Gyrlei brain. He didn’t use his birth blades. They were for the enemies of God, not the beloved.

  Grodnak and Hucklecomb died swiftly and without fuss, although the Grób immediately began to collapse and leak and suffer from the breakdown of the veritable chemistry lab that was her digestive system. Gyre, a Lowland Elf to the end, bared her jagged black teeth and hissed in and out between them for some minutes until her brain finally realised it was dead and her heart pumped its last strong glut of blood down the back of the mattress. Moskin sat with her, held her arms to keep her from instinctively pulling the rod away – it might have been a survivable wound under different circumstances – and murmured soft and pointless reassurances to her as she weakened. He focussed his mind.

  Lost Disciples, he thought. Guide me. Help me to find you. You got out once, show me how. Let these three – souls of your souls – be your beacon.