Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town

by Cory Doctorow

wound up and threw the geode as hard as he couldat where he judged Davey's head to be.

  There was a thud and a cry, and the light clattered to the ground,growing more dim as its dynamo whirred to a stop. Green blobs chasedthemselves across his vision, and he could only see Darren rolling onthe ground by turning his head to one side and looking out of the cornerof his eye.

  He groped toward Davey and smelled the blood. Kneeling down, he foundDavey's hand and followed it up to his shoulder, his neck. Slick withblood. Higher, to Davey's face, his forehead, the dent there sandedragged by the rough side of the geode. The blood flowed freely andbeneath his other hand Danny's chest heaved as he breathed, shallowly,rapidly, almost panting.

  His vision was coming back now. He took off his T-shirt and wadded itup, pressed it to Davey's forehead. They'd done first aid in class. Youweren't supposed to move someone with a head injury. He pressed downwith the T-shirt, trying to stanch the blood.

  Then, quick as a whip, Davey's head twisted around and he bit down,hard, on Alan's thumbtip. Albert reeled back, but it was too late: Daveyhad bitten off the tip of his right thumb. Alan howled, waking upEd-Fred-Geoff, who began to cry. Davey rolled away, scampering back intothe cave's depths.

  Alan danced around the cave, hand clamped between his thighs,mewling. He fell to the floor and squeezed his legs together, thenslowly brought his hand up before his face. The ragged stump of histhumb was softly spurting blood in time with his heartbeat. He struggledto remember his first aid. He wrapped his T-shirt around the wound andthen pulled his parka on over his bare chest and jammed his bare feetinto his boots, then made his way to the cave mouth and scooped up snowunder the moon's glow, awkwardly packing a snowball around his hand. Heshivered as he made his way back into the winter cave and proppedhimself up against his mother, holding his hurt hand over his head.

  The winter cave grew cold as the ice packed around his hand. Bobby,woken by his clairvoyant instincts, crept forward with a sheet anddraped it over Alan. He'd foreseen this, of course -- had foreseen allof it. But Bobby followed his own code, and he kept his own counsel,cleaning up after the disasters he was powerless to prevent.

  Deep in the mountains, they heard the echoes of Davey's titteringlaughter.

  #

  "It was wrong to bring her here, Adam," Billy said to him in themorning, as he fed Alan the crusts of bread and dried apples he'dbrought him, packing his hand with fresh snow.

  "I didn't bring her here, she followed me," Adam said. His arm achedfrom holding it aloft, and his back and tailbone were numb with the acheof a night spent sitting up against their mother's side. "And besides,why should it be wrong? Whose rules? What rules? What are the *fucking*rules?"

  "You can feel the rules, brother," he said. He couldn't look Alan in theeye, he never did. This was a major speech, coming from Bobby.

  "I can't feel any rules," Alan said. He wondered if it was true. He'dnever told anyone about the family before. Had he known all along thathe shouldn't do this?

  "I can. She can't know. No one can know. Even we can't know. We'll neverunderstand it."

  "Where is Davey?"

  "He's doing a...ritual. With your thumb."

  They sat silent and strained their ears to hear the winds and thedistant shuffle of the denizens of the mountain.

  Alan shifted, using his good hand to prop himself up, looking for acomfortable position. He brought his injured hand down to his lap andunwrapped his blood-soaked T-shirt from his fist, gently peeling it awayfrom the glue of dried blood that held it there.

  His hand had shriveled in the night, from ice and from restrictedcirculation, and maybe from Davey's ritual. Alan pondered its crusty,clawed form, thinking that it looked like it belonged to someone --some*thing* -- else.

  Buddy scaled the stalactite that served as the ladder up to the loftynook where he slept and came back down holding his water bottle. "It'sclean, it's from the pool," he said, another major speech for him. Healso had an armload of scavenged diapers, much-washed and worn soft asflannel. He wet one and began to wipe away the crust of blood on Alan'sarm and hand, working his way up from the elbow, then tackling theuninjured fingers, then, very gently, gently as a feather-touch, slow asa glacier, he worked on Alan's thumb.

  When he was done, Alan's hand was clean and dry and cold, and the woundof his thumb was exposed and naked, a thin crust of blood weeping liquidslowly. It seemed to Alan that he could see the stump of bone protrudingfrom the wound. He was amazed to see his bones, to get a look at across-section of himself. He wondered if he could count the rings andfind out how old he was, as he had never been really certain on thatscore. He giggled ghoulishly.

  He held out his good hand. "Get me up, okay?" Bobby hauled him to hisfeet. "Get me some warm clothes, too?"

  And he did, because he was Bobby, and he was always only too glad tohelp, only too glad to do what service he could for you, even if hewould never do you the one service that would benefit you the most:telling you of his visions, helping you avoid the disasters that loomedon your horizon.

  Standing up, walking around, being clean -- he began to feel likehimself again. He even managed to get into his snow pants and parka andstruggle out to the hillside and the bright sunshine, where he could geta good look at his hand.

  What he had taken for a bone wasn't. It was a skinny little thumbtip,growing out of the raggedy, crusty stump. He could see the whorl of afingerprint there, and narrow, nearly invisible cuticles. He touched thetip of his tongue to it and it seemed to him that he could feel a tonguerasping over the top of his missing thumbtip.

  #

  "It's disgusting, keep it away," Marci said, shrinking away from hishand in mock horror. He held his proto-thumb under her nose and waggledit.

  "No joking, okay? I just want to know what it *means*. I'm *growing anew thumb*."

  "Maybe you're part salamander. They regrow their legs and tails. Or aworm -- cut a worm in half and you get two worms. It's in one of my Da'sbooks."

  He stared at his thumb. It had grown perceptibly, just on the journeyinto town to Marci's place. They were holed up in her room, surroundedby watercolors of horses in motion that her mother had painted. She'draided the fridge for cold pork pies and cheese and fizzy lemonade thather father had shipped from the Marks & Spencer in Toronto. It was thestrangest food he'd ever eaten but he'd developed a taste for it.

  "Wiggle it again," she said.

  He did, and the thumbtip bent down like a scale model of a thumbtip,cracking the scab around it.

  "We should go to a doctor," she said.

  "I don't go to doctors," he said flatly.

  "You *haven't* gone to a doctor -- doesn't mean you can't."

  "I don't go to doctors." X-ray machines and stethoscopes, blood testsand clever little flashlights in your ears -- who knew what they'dreveal? He wanted to be the first to discover it, he didn't want to haveto try to explain it to a doctor before he understood it himself.

  "Not even when you're sick?"

  "The golems take care of it," he said.

  She shook her head. "You're a weirdo, you know that?"

  "I know it," he said.

  "I thought my family was strange," she said, stretching out on her tummyon the bed. "But they're not a patch on you."

  "I know it."

  He finished his fizzy lemonade and lay down beside her, belching.

  "We could ask my Da. He knows a lot of strange things."

  He put his face down in her duvet and smelled the cotton covers and hernighttime sweat, like a spice, like cinnamon. "I don't want to dothat. Please don't tell anyone, all right?"

  She took hold of his wrist and looked again at the teensy thumb. "Wiggleit again," she said. He did. She giggled. "Imagine if you were like aworm. Imagine if your thumbtip was out there growing another *you*."

  He sat bolt upright. "Do you think that's possible?" he said. His heartwas thudding. "Do you think so?"

  She rolled on her side and stared at him. "No, don't be daft. How couldyour
thumb grow another *you?*"

  "Why wouldn't it?"

  She had no answer for him.

  "I need to go home," he said. "I need to know."

  "I'm coming with," she said. He opened his mouth to tell her no, but shemade a fierce face at him, her foxy features wrinkled into a mock snarl.

  "Come along then," he said. "You can help me do up my coat."

  #

  The winter cave was deserted. He listened at the mouths of all thetunnels, straining to hear Davey. From his high nook, Brian watchedthem.

  "Where is he, Billy?" Alan