An Anatomy of Beasts

by Olivia A. Cole

  And suddenly the dark fades. From where the dim figure of June crouches, there comes a thunk, and the halo of light from the kawa spreads onto the floor like a puddle. But then it seems to leak forward, on and on, as if in a vein that fills with light like blood. It gains momentum, the light snaking in a straight path ahead in the passageway for at least two hundred yards before veering abruptly to the right for a short distance and then snaking back toward us. The light creates a glowing rectangle, giving off illumination a similar shade to dawn. The light streaks back toward the kawa in its vein and then seems to feed into the egg on its other side, a complete circuit.

  “Stars . . . ,” Alma whispers, motionless, but I’m already moving past her, down the three carved steps beside the kawa, toward the rectangle of light and what it contains.

  It’s like my father’s office, but far more vast and strange. Skeletons, some massive and some small; the enormous ones rooted on the floor with wooden supports, the small ones elevated on white clay podiums. Square transparent cases with the intricate bodies of leaves and roots crystallized inside. Clear cylinders as tall and thick as Kimbullettican filled entirely, from what I can tell, with soil: some of it richly black, some reddish. One cylinder farther down the row seems to contain a fine blue powder that gives off a slight glow. Many long trellises, transparent like the cylinders, with rows and rows of seeds, arranged by size, suspended within.

  “These are the archives?” I breathe.

  “On Earth we would just call it a museum,” June says. She’s moved down the steps as well and stands with one steady, wrinkled hand on a cylinder bearing mottled green soil. “Here, it is a record of all the places the Faloii have been and what they brought back.”

  “I do not understand,” Kimbullettican says. They have not moved from the steps. In the Artery, their confusion is a shifting cloud of deep blue.

  “This may come as a surprise,” June says gently, “but your people used to travel.”

  “We are a stationary people,” Kimbullettican says, seeming stubborn for the first time.

  “It’s been a long time.” June pauses, taking in Kimbullettican’s clustered facial spots. “Humans aren’t the only ones who keep secrets.”

  “Why did they take all this stuff?” Alma says, wandering slowly down one row of artifacts.

  “To learn from,” June says. “To observe what other planets and their species do well. The Faloii are mostly stewards on Faloiv, but occasionally they step in to help species . . . improve.”

  “It is rare,” Kimbullettican says, finally coming down closer to the rows of archived materials. “We do not like to do it. But it is the purpose of voyages like Adombukar’s. To monitor ecosystems and ensure they are functioning effectively.”

  “What kind of changes do you make?” Rondo says. He stands near a glass case as tall as he is, studying what appears to be the fossilized form of a massive insect.

  “Small ones,” Kimbullettican says, their eyes sweeping over the many objects the archives contain. “What the humans call ‘tweaks.’ Mostly to encourage symbiosis. If one species develops a new adaptation, it may affect other creatures in its ecosystem. Sometimes these changes mean extinction of another species, which may be the best possible outcome. Other times we need to tweak other species in the ecosystem to ensure their continued survival.”

  “Wouldn’t that happen on its own? Eventually?” Alma says.

  “Sometimes.” They turn to June. “Why did my people enter the stars? Leave Faloiv? It is not something I have ever been told of.”

  “Those tweaks,” June says. “Some of the material they needed to make those tweaks wasn’t on Faloiv. They went far to get it. As far as Earth.”

  “Where are the artifacts from Earth?” Alma says, turning to June, who has moved farther down the row. It’s hard to focus on one thing here: there is so much to take in. Soil. Bones. Plants. In some cases, vials of what looks like air, or fumes of some kind, swirling endlessly, trapped within the transparent containers.

  “Just here,” June says, gesturing. Alma is at her side in a flash, but I move toward her more slowly. My heart has begun to pound, sending blood thrumming through my veins in a war dance of . . . what, I can’t decide. Anxiety. Anticipation. Part of me would rather walk back toward the steps carved into the ground and disappear down the black tunnel toward June’s qalm. But the greater part of me is magnetized. I am drawn toward June’s cloaked back, and when I stand at her shoulder, I’m surprised by how little there is to see.

  “This is all?” Alma says, her voice dropping.

  “Our people had already been on a path of destruction for some time,” June says, her eyes hovering just above the artifacts, as if she doesn’t want to look right at them. “By the time the Faloii came, there wasn’t much left of our natural world.”

  I stare at the two objects, one suspended inside a transparent cube on the surface of a smooth white-gray clay pedestal. The second is a smaller cylinder of soil, about half my height, rising from the floor beside the pedestal.

  “What kind of animal is that?” Alma says, indicating the form of the creature suspended in the cube. Poised as it is in air, it’s difficult to tell whether it was made for land or water or both, but the animal itself appears unremarkable. Pentaradial, its five legs splayed symmetrically, its skin bearing a thick and rubbery appearance. Two tentacles extend from its back, which I have to move to one side of the cube to fully gauge the length and function of. It appears to have many little pouches, circular and close to what appears to be a flexible body. The specimen appears to have been perfectly preserved, but its anatomy is a puzzle I can’t decipher.

  Then it moves.

  Rondo and I both jump back, but Alma edges closer.

  “It’s alive?” she says.

  “Yes. I don’t know how, so don’t ask,” June says. “The kawa keep me young, but I don’t know about our little starfish.”

  “But it’s not a fish,” Alma frowns, peering at its rippling appendages. “What is it?”

  “They called it manducavirosa on Earth,” June says. “It doesn’t have a name here. It just is.”

  “Why did the Faloii bring it here?” Rondo asks.

  “It was known for pulling the toxins out of water and turning them into food,” June says, watching the creature with an almost loving expression. “It ate electricity, bacteria. Converted viruses into healthy cells—never a shortage of meals on Earth, in that case. They brought it because it’s a survivor. The same reason they brought me.”

  “And the soil?” Kimbullettican says.

  “Soil was something your family took from every one of their stops. Every planet has many different kinds, but they always take whatever they find most interesting.”

  Alma crouches down next to the canister of soil, her eyes simultaneously focused and dreamy. Her palm pressed against the container, just that bit of glass between her and the planet she has longed for; her yearning seems to expand like a bubble, filling the air around us with a substance that, though unseen, holds us suspended as if we too are a handful of other artifacts, crystallized and waiting to be remembered.

  “This has come a long way” is all Alma says.

  She stands abruptly and turns to June, nostalgia on her face disintegrating into a sudden anger. “Why don’t we remember anything? Why is this all there is?”

  June’s eyes remain on the soil. Her hands don’t touch the canister, but I can almost see her caressing it in her mind’s eye. “I left almost two hundred years ago,” the young-old woman says. Sadness has leaked into her voice. “And even then the world was being flattened.”

  “What does that mean?” Alma demands. “What do you remember?”

  “Oh, I’ve put those things away,” June says softly. “I’ve had too many other things to carry to carry that too.”

  “And what does that mean?” Alma says again. “You don’t remember anything? Nothing?”

  “A gray world,” June says. The unsmiling sm
ile fades completely. “A world with no sky. Metal and metal. Storm after storm. The rest I’ve put away. Those memories haven’t hatched in some time.”

  “But what about us?” Alma says. “The people? Who were we?”

  “We were trapped,” June says. She has allowed her eyes to fall on the soil and the manducavirosa, flexing almost imperceptibly. Her eyes seem to focus, harden for a moment. “I remember their factories. My mother died in one.”

  “What did they make?” Alma says, latching on like a bloodsucking insect. “In their factories?”

  June fixes her with a short, sharp gaze. “Stuff.”

  “So all the Faloii took was soil and the . . . creature?” I say, looking back at the pair of Origin Planet objects. “The Faloii went all that way and they only found two things worth taking?”

  I thought we were getting to something that would make sense of what I have unearthed about Albatur: the reasons that brought him here, the coincidence that June calls the humans’ decision to stay.

  “Three,” June says, her sliver of a smile more genuine now. “If you count me.”

  “And what did they leave behind?” Rondo says. He’s leaning with his hands on his knees, peering intently at the soil, as if he’ll find something sparkling in the grains of it. “You said the Faloii always exchanged, right? What did they exchange for the soil and the animal? And you?”

  “They tried to give what was needed,” June says, rubbing her hands together as if cold. “They weren’t always right.”

  “What does this mean?” Kimbullettican says quickly. I glance at them but can’t tell from the arrangement of their facial spots whether they are defensive or not. I think back to what they said that night in the qalm—this all must be very strange—discovering a side of your people that you never knew existed.

  June sighs, a long deep breath that seems to leave her hollow. “Well,” she says, turning away from the pedestal and the cylinder of soil. “I might as well show you.”

  She moves farther into the archives and I follow, enchanted, gazing at the rows of artifacts on either side of us like quiet sentinels. They seem to stare back as I trail her down the long wide aisle, the light from the kawa surrounding us in its glowing rectangular cage. Dozens of cylinders of soil, uniform white clay pedestals bearing various objects, crystallized specimens, the bones of creatures from planets even farther than my own people’s. June approaches the last pedestal within the light the kawa provides—beyond is a narrow bit of dark empty ground before it runs into the flat cavern wall—and I know before June speaks that I recognize the object on the platform’s surface.

  “This,” June says, reaching out and taking the narrow black cylinder in her hand, “is what your family left behind on Earth.”

  “A kawa,” I say.

  “A piece of one,” she replies.

  She opens the cylinder, letting the object slide out onto her palm. It shines deep purple, its edges jagged. I’m not sure how I even recognized it in its broken state: it’s a feeling that emanates from the object in June’s hand. A warmth, vibrating with power.

  “This bit came back home,” June says, “in one of those capsules from the ship.”

  “One of the capsules?” I say. “You’ve seen one of the capsules?”

  She ignores me. “This is what was given in exchange for these few objects. Not an even trade, I would say. But the Faloii were generous. Too generous.”

  “What do you mean?” Alma says. “What do the kawa do?”

  “What do the kawa not do?” she counters. “For Faloiv, they carry the promise of new species. They are coded with the past and the future. Energy. Humans call them eggs, but they are more akin to seeds. Faloiv cannot go on without them.”

  “But what about for Earth?” Rondo says. “The humans wouldn’t have been interested in creating species for a new planet.”

  “Power,” June says. “Energy. That’s what was needed, and the Faloii try to give what’s needed, don’t they? Leave it to our people to ruin this gift, and then dare come looking for more.”

  “What are you saying?” I interrupt. “The Faloii gave Earth a kawa, and then the humans came to N’Terra to get another? To get more?”

  “I’ll give them some credit,” June says, as if she hadn’t heard me. “They figured out how to use the kawa they did have as a map. Somehow they accessed its memories and it led them back here.”

  “Because Earth was dead?” Alma says. “They decided to come here?”

  “Mostly dead,” June corrects. She stares lovingly at the piece of kawa. “Most of them boarded the ship to make a home here. But every ship has its rat, as I said. Every ship has its rat.”

  Beneath my feet, the ground seems to give a long shuddering sigh.

  “What was that?” Rondo says, looking around. I do the same, expecting, perhaps, the thick bones of one of the larger fossils to be coming to life, thundering toward us. But the archives are still, the cylinders of soil and other artifacts as dead and motionless as before. The only response at first is another shudder through the ground.

  “Is it going to cave in?” Alma says, jerking her chin up, her eyes searching.

  “No,” June says, but she frowns, tipping the purplish piece of kawa back into its cylindrical nest, placing both back on the platform. Her eyes look slightly unfocused. Listening, I think.

  “It is a storm,” Kimbullettican says, and their forehead spots frown too, concerned. “So sudden. I did not smell this coming.”

  “That’s thunder?” Rondo says when the ground shakes again. I’m suddenly glad we’re underground, away from any trees that might be felled by lightning. But now that Alma has said that about the ceiling caving in, I don’t feel safe here either. The qalm seems so flimsy compared to the thick walls of the N’Terran compounds; I’ve never been beyond their boundaries for one of the gales that blow in from the jungle. I always assumed the storms weakened by the time they reached our settlement—now we’re here in the thick of it, where the thunder and lightning begin.

  I wouldn’t be so nervous if Kimbullettican didn’t also seem unsettled. They take several steps away from the pedestal, back toward the entrance that leads into June’s qalm, but before they can get much farther, Hamankush appears at the end of the archives’ long aisle, at the top of the three stone steps.

  “Quickly,” she says, her voice echoing toward us. “The eyenu.”

  Above ground, the rain has not yet come, but the smell of it ripples through the air, heavy and thick as the breath of a beast. The jungle is hushed, even the night dwellers, the Artery full of murmurs. Hamankush and June lead us back along the worn path toward the quarry where we had left the eyenu, and every time the thunder rumbles in the near distance I leap in my skin, expecting both sky and ground to open and for us all to vanish into one or the other.

  What do you plan to do? Kimbullettican says to Hamankush, allowing me into the conversation as well.

  We need to move the eyenu into their cave, she replies. The anxiety I sense emanating from them does nothing to settle my nerves. I trip on a stone and find Rondo’s hand on my shoulder, steadying me. This storm’s suddenness is very strange. Ordinarily we would have more time to prepare.

  “What’s going on?” he says when the next roll of thunder has died. “Do you know something we don’t know? Feel something we don’t know?”

  “Not exactly,” I say. “It’s just something is weird. From what I can tell from Hamankush and Kimbullettican, this storm wasn’t expected.”

  “Storm after storm,” Alma says to herself, and it takes me a moment to realize she’s echoing June’s words about the Origin Planet in the archives. It puts shivers down my spine in spite of the hot veil the thunder seems to lay across the land.

  “Don’t animals usually protect themselves during a storm?” Rondo asks. We round what I remember to be the last corner on the way to the eyenu’s sleeping grounds, June hurrying ahead now with surprising agility.

  “I think the ey
enu are different,” I say.

  As soon as the animals are in sight, I know I’m right. Where the other creatures in the jungle are surely hidden away in strong trees or below ground, the eyenu cluster together in the open of the circle of rocks June had called their nest. When the lightning cracks the sky, it illuminates their wide eyes, all fixed on June where she comes hastening down the slight hill. In the electric light, the colors of their bodies, which had seemed so glorious in the daylight, look pale and washed out, the storm and their fear draining their brilliance.

  Why are they still? Kimbullettican says. As June hurries down toward her flock, the rest of us pause, awaiting instruction. Above, the thunder rumbles on. It feels nearer, its breath hotter and stronger.

  They rely on the archivist for much, Hamankush says.

  “Why did they take her?” I call to Hamankush over the rising din. “Why is June here?”

  This is what they do not want you to see, she tells me, and I’m jolted back to the jungle near Mbekenkanush, where she had shown me the memory. The Faloii are as hypocritical as your own people.

  June turns and I sense that she and Hamankush are communicating, their eye contact and the blur of Hamankush’s thoughts extending out to the woman like an arrow.

  “What?” I shout. “I need to know! Why does June keep the kawa? Why June?”

  “When my people traveled the stars, they were searching for perfect cells. They found them in June. Part of her lives within the eyenu. She has made them perfect.”

  Two planets, June says as she tends to her flock. Two that need my blood.

  If your people knew, Hamankush says silently, they would take her home. And they would believe they have a claim to the kawa.

  This is home, June says.

  “What is going on?” Alma shouts, looking back and forth between us.

  A roar of thunder silences any response.