Carlsson lay face-down on a mattress, his back bare to the heat of another stove, four slashes ripped across the skin, wounds stained with antiseptic and sewed up with black sutures. Looked like he’d been mauled by a bear. A sheet covered the rest of his big body, sweaty, molded to his shape so she could pick out his belt and back pockets through the thin cotton.
And his leg ended a little below the knee.
“Jesus Christ. Something chewed his leg off, and he’s recovering out here?” She didn’t expect an answer—just talking to herself, letting the shock out.
“Nah. Lost his foot in ’Nam. Years ago.” Alice’s voice came from behind her.
Susan felt as if those words had punched her in the gut.
“Oh . . . Sweet . . . Jesus.”
Vietnam. She staggered away, weak, as if she’d been the one mauled, the one to lose a foot. I thought he was swaggering. He was limping. I thought his face said anger, said hate when he dropped that mug. It said memory. I’ve been a total asshole.
She found another door, the one into the treatment room, she opened it and stepped through, looking for a place to hide from herself. Dark, warm, dim kerosene lamplight in one corner glowed just enough to keep her from tripping over things. The room smelled of fish.
“Hey, don’t go in there . . . .” She just slammed the door on whatever might have followed.
XVII
The door clicked behind her, closing out her stupidity. Her total-asshole-ness. She’d been calling him a fucking racist. What did that make her?
Comforting darkness hid the treatment room. She remembered it from her other visit—other attack seemed more accurate from his side of the world—and placed herself in that mental map so she wouldn’t bump into anything sharp or expensive. She took a deep breath and leaned back against the door, trying to sort out the racket in her head. Disabled vet, lived alone on a point of land that was flat-ass beautiful. Had as little contact with people as he could, wizard with animals. Reported to be rich, but didn’t act as if he was. Those were the things she knew.
Live by facts. You’re a scientist. Act like one.
Plus he was big and built like a brick shithouse and good-looking in that blue-eyed blond Viking sort of way, American teenage girl’s sex-dream, but she’d already blown that all to hell. Social skills and her straight-as-a-fence-post Gook body sort of ruled out anything further along those lines. She’d given up on the “Susan Tranh, Sex Goddess” bit when she was about fifteen, when it became obvious that certain things just weren’t gonna happen. Just weren’t gonna grow.
The room wasn’t actually dark. Dim, yes, but bit by bit her eyes adjusted from the dazzle of sun and snow. She could make out shapes now, and a yellow glow in one corner that she compared with her mental map and identified as a kerosene mantel lamp turned way low. Like a night-light.
Why would they have a lamp burning in here in the daytime? Forgot it? Less painful to wonder about that than think about her own colossal fuck-ups. She took another deep breath, closing her eyes and hiding from the echoes of things she’d said.
The room smelled of fish. Fish, and faint burning kerosene, and disinfectant, and something musky. Something musky and sick, furry sickbed sweat, like a veterinary hospital. The treatment room, she remembered, but this seemed too fresh for the animals she’d seen. Those had been old injuries, cripples that couldn’t make it in the wild, nothing new that needed treatment.
Her memory flashed pictures of that coyote, that bobcat, missing paws. Just like him. No wonder he didn’t ski. The connection made her stomach churn. How could she have been so fucking stupid?
A new hurt animal. Concentrate on that, less painful. Something Bouchard hadn’t mentioned to her, because he knew she was an asshole? Something related to those claw-marks on Carlsson’s back? Looked like he’d been mauled by a bear.
More echoes in her memory, “Don’t go in there!” An injured bear, here in the dark with her? Focus, girl, focus—hurt animals are dangerous. Forget about your sins until your next confession.
Her eyes snapped open. She could make out highlights and shadows now, her sight more dark-adapted, she picked out remembered shelves and treatment table and fluorescent light fixtures overhead for when he was working. And a dark shape lying on a lighter pad of some kind on the floor, maybe a foam mattress. It looked bear-sized, but not bear-shaped, too long and not wide enough. She blinked. She focused on the smell of fish, rich oily fish, herring or mackerel. A seal? No mention of marine mammals on his rehab license.
The shape moved. Something separated out from the dark mass, showing the pad underneath. Separated like . . . an arm? A chill ran down her spine. Bears had arms and legs, but that shape wasn’t any bear.
Susan inched along the wall toward the lamp. If that shadow was a man, a hurt man, a shot man, she was going to have to hit her mental reset button again. It’d be a lot more comfortable, though. Not being a total asshole.
She reached the lamp, fumbled for the knob, turned it up to full glow, and watched it for a few seconds to make sure she didn’t smoke the mantel. Old habit—she’d lived with lamps like that for a couple of summers in grad school, fieldwork cabin in the jack-pine woods of northern Michigan. Lamps took a bit of finesse and practice, not just a switch for on-and-off, same as the wood stoves she’d used for heat.
Then she turned back toward the shadow. Arms, legs, man-shaped and a big man, football jock or pro basketball big. Dark clothing. Bandage on one shoulder. But . . . Bandage over the clothing? Made no sense.
Not clothing. Fur. Fur thick and glossy and mottled brown and gray and black, as best as she could tell colors in the yellow lamplight, fur like a seal. She understood what she was seeing. Her breath froze in her chest, possibilities and wonder replacing fear.
A seal with arms and legs. Susan blinked and shook her head and blinked again and shook her head again. It was still there. She held the lamp in one hand, standing over the animal, staring, no memory of picking up the lamp, no memory of the two steps, three steps she must have taken across the room.
Yeti. Sasquatch. Selkie from the Scottish seas and legends, Joan Baez singing of Sule Skerrie. Pointed face and muzzle showing seal-whiskers, rounded seal-ears flat to the broad skull, short thick neck that flowed outward from the head to the strong swimmer’s shoulders and torso. Hands. Feet. Claws on both. She stared at the claws on the hand flopped across the pad. They matched those wounds on Carlsson’s back. Retractile claws, tips barely showing, more like a cat’s than a dog’s, Sasquatch could use her fingers. Her opposable thumbs.
Her. Small streamlined breasts, with gray nipples bare in a circle of fur. Vaginal slit between furry legs. Susan felt her brain clicking into—retreating into—scientist mode, itemizing. It was breathing. She was breathing. She smelled of fish and sickness.
Animal rehab. Carlsson took care of animals, even if they didn’t exist. Even if they damn near killed him. She wondered if he’d ever cared for a unicorn.
Yellow eyes snapped open, round pupils, human pupils contracting with the glare of her lamp, staring. Staring at Susan. The hand moved again, weak, feeble, Susan wondered if that was sickness, injury, dying, or whether the animal was drugged.
She hoped it was drugged. Part of her wanted it to live, her to live, while part of her ached to dissect the corpse. Was this a new species of hominid, arms and legs and body adapted to the sea? Or reversing evolution’s flow, a phocid or otariid returning to the land? Organs could tell, teeth and skeleton and musculature could tell.
Get a grip, Susan. It’s a mutant seal or sea lion, Doctor Tranh. It’s not an alien. You’re a scientist, go with the simplest explanation that fits the facts. This place is fucking with your head.
Blood samples, tissue samples, preliminary exam, she was a scientist. A scientist who needed some specialists for consultation. Marine mammals, paleontology, she’d never studied fossils but didn’t seals have hands and feet in those flippers, must have had arms and legs at some point in the pa
st? Throwback?. Her fingers trembled and she felt her pulse racing with the thrill.
She remembered Carlsson’s supplies, those shelves of lab stuff, veterinary stuff that had caused her final blow-up. Flammables in the same room as an open flame, and how she couldn’t count on common sense, most people didn’t use it. Her face burned for an instant, remembering. Why did he have to punch all her hot buttons?
She stared back at those yellow eyes that stared at her. “Hi, my name is Susan Tranh, and I’m your nurse for the day. I’m also a total asshole, but you don’t need to worry about that.”
She turned away, searching for blood test gear, searching for sample bottles. Tuck them in a pocket to keep them from freezing. She’d need photos, too, have to get her camera from the trailer, make some calls. Phone numbers in her address book, also in the trailer.
Her whole body jittered like she’d chugged a gallon of coffee.
o0o
Dennis heard the door click shut. He waited for the explosion. He didn’t know what it would be—a scream, the bang of the door slamming open again, the soft solid fatal thump of a body thrown against the wall. That animal was strong.
Silence.
That worried him more than any noise. He turned his head to lie on the other cheek, about the limit of his energy. Now he could see the door to the treatment room, couldn’t hope that maybe she’d gone back out again. Wrong direction for the click, wrong sound to the door. The closed door, with that Viet Cong bitch and the . . . Swimmer on the other side.
He focused on Alice. “I hope you know what you’re doing.”
“Don’t blame me. It was Aunt Jean’s idea.” She was poking through his rack of records, looking for some music she hadn’t heard before. The kid was an addict. At least she seemed to have decent taste.
“Aunt Jean must be getting senile. That critter has already killed two men. Probably three. Damn near killed me. She’s tranked now, but we don’t have a clue what dosage to use, how often to repeat. Her metabolism has to be weird, cold-water predator, nothing like a moose or bear. Drug’s gonna wear off. And there’s a limit to how much Bouchard can snitch from other programs, before people start asking questions.”
“Not a critter. She’s a person, another kind of human. Lactating female, which means she has a family somewhere, babies or cubs or pups or whatever, likely starving. She has a tongue and voice-box damned close to yours or mine, a brain as big as yours or mine, hands with thumbs. Odds are she can talk and use tools.”
He didn’t know how to deal with Alice. She was a kid, a small kid, way small for her age, about two inches taller than one of those Munchkins in Oz. That made you think she was maybe half her age, but she kept talking like an adult. Kept ending up with adult responsibilities. He heard Bouchard zipping up his coat out in the kitchen, filling a Thermos with hot coffee, getting ready to head out on his game-warden rounds and leave command in her hands. With a time-bomb ticking away, Doctor Tranh in there with that critter. That person.
“Who’s this Palestrina guy, anyway?” Alice held a boxed LP set, peering at the liner notes.
“Italian composer, 1500s, those would be polyphonic masses in Latin. No beat, you can’t dance to it.”
“Who the hell wants to dance? I need some calm. You got enough juice in the batteries for me to play this?”
So the tension was getting to her, too. “You checked with the hydrometer last night, you tell me. I don’t think Bouchard used any power. Damn sure I didn’t.”
“Well, your charge chart said 90%, for that density of battery acid. Percent of what, that’s your department. I’ve never run a wind-charger and battery system before. They don’t teach that in eighth-grade Earth Science.”
Smart-ass kid. “Go ahead and play the record. Stereo’s all-transistor, it doesn’t use much power. And God knows we won’t need the refrigerator or freezer for the next few months. Those really suck up the charge.”
That was just blither to fill the silence from the other room. Bouchard stuffed a last chunk of donut into his mouth, nodded to both of them in lieu of mumbling around the crumbs, and clumped through the door. The outside door, the heavy ka-thunk of lock and old solid planks against the weather-stripping most definitely was not the sound the VC bitch had made.
And she hadn’t let in that blast of winter air, either. She had to be in the treatment room. No place else to go, she’d have had to step right over Dennis to get to the boat bay. Was she fucking blind?
Faint power hum from the speakers, pop and hiss and crackle of the needle dropping into its groove, and choral chanting filled the room with peace, the Latin mass echoing past stone cathedral arches. Alice folded her legs and settled between the speakers, eyes closed. She faded right before his eyes, vanishing against the bookshelf and old patterned daisies of the wallpaper.
“Stop doing that. It makes my head hurt.”
Her ghost image formed and faded and formed again. “I’m a witch. I have to practice. If I was doing it right, it wouldn’t bother your head. And I need someone watching to tell me that.”
He wondered what he’d done to get on the inside of that particular inner circle. Damn sure she wouldn’t trust a civilian with the secret. Must be something to do with Bear and Spirit Point. And the fact that he was willing to keep quiet about the Swimmer of Dark Waters. Nobody here but the conspiracy.
And that Viet shrew.
The door clicked again, showed lamplight where it should have shown darkness, showed Doctor Tranh. Speak of the Devil and smell the brimstone.
“Where’d you find that.”
Blunt, no preamble, no hysterics. Ice-cold biologist.
Alice formed out of the bookcase and wallpaper. “Her, not ‘that.’ She came ashore about a hundred yards from here. She needs to rest and heal. Leave her alone.”
Typical Haskell, just sit there calm and giving orders, no mention of any other excursions or corpses in the wake. And the emphasis on her, a person rather than a thing, a woman needing protection.
Tranh didn’t seem to have noticed the vanishing act and the sawed-off witch reappearing out of thin air. Not part of her world-image, so she didn’t see it. According to Alice, that was part of why it worked. The rest was body-language, persuading the watcher’s brain that what he saw wasn’t a threat, wasn’t important. Human brains filtered out ninety percent of what people saw and heard.
“I took blood samples, hair, snipped some tissue from the wound edge. Couldn’t find a dental extractor, but I’d like to take a molar for taxonomy. You got one?” She stared at Dennis, ignoring Alice. That “leave her alone” was water off a duck’s back.
She’s got no right to barge in here . . . Dennis pulled his hands in under his chest and tried to push up off the mattress. Get his foot, strap it on, stop that bitch.
He managed halfway up and then his left arm collapsed under him. Dennis thudded back on the mattress and rolled toward the edge, groping for his foot, black spots swirling through his sight. His heart raced and fire slashed across his back when he rolled on it. His hand knocked the foot over, plastic thump, and he couldn’t make his fingers work right to grab the damned thing, much less fit it to his stump and work the straps.
“What’s wrong with him? Those scratches don’t look that bad.” Her tone said she didn’t really give a shit.
“He called on Bear to help him carry her up from the shore. That’s not like you calling on Eagle when you ski. Eagle doesn’t use muscle when he soars. Bear needs Power. That’s twice he risked his life for her. Can’t you respect that? Can’t you keep her secrets?”
Cold sweat and searing flame. He tried to focus on Tranh, glaring at the bitch. “Throw those samples in the stove! Right now! You can’t report this. Private property, you’ve got no right to be here, you’ve got no right to use my stuff.” He stopped to gasp for breath. Scratches, hell. “I’ll throw your ass in jail, trespass, theft. Swear out a complaint for that assault. Court order barring you from my land.”
She
matched his glare. “Try it, buster. You’ve got an animal in there that isn’t on your license. You agreed to let the state inspect your rehab any time, night or day. I’m the state. I’m inspecting. Try to keep me out, I’ll slap a search warrant on your ass so fast you won’t have time to blink. That’s the biggest find in wildlife biology in a hundred years! You can’t keep it quiet!”
Alice was on her feet, between Tranh and the door, small woman and smaller kid looked like a couple of bantam hens facing off for a fight. “Not wildlife! Not a thing! She’s a person, damn you! She’s got babies! You’ll put her in a goddamn cage! On a goddamn autopsy slab! Listen to Eagle. ‘Guard her. Keep her secrets.’ Think, dammit!”
Tranh pushed through Alice, pulling on gloves, settling knit cap on her head. “I’ll be back with a camera. With a couple of specialists and a search warrant if I have to. Don’t try to keep me out.”
She jerked the door open to an icy gust of wind with the smell of coming snow on it, pulling a puff of maple smoke from the stove. Dennis shoved himself up and then fell back when his back flared again, each of those clawed gouges a napalm strike. He heard scuffling at the door, couldn’t see what, probably Alice. Why the hell couldn’t she witch up some kind of spell, freeze that bitch to the door handle, cast the sleep on her? Where’s a real witch when you need one?
Alice snarled, frustration and then words. “I swear, I can’t figure out what Eagle sees in you.”
The door slammed, heavy, final. He heard the clatter of skis and poles and the crunch of snow.
Dennis waved toward the door, toward Alice somewhere in the fog. “Follow her. Stop her.”
“Man, there’s no way I can catch Eagle. She skis too fast. And what am I supposed to do, shoot her? Even she’s bigger’n me.”
“Got to move the Swimmer. Hide her.” Dennis forced himself up to sitting and fumbled with his foot, fumbled with the straps and seating the cup on his stump. Got it in place, somehow, buckled any which way. Crawled to the wall, climbed it, called out to Bear for the strength to walk, took a step.
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