“This is where I keep my beh-bies. My beh-bie shack.”
Finally, something gives and the hatch lifts on its hydraulic hinges. If I didn’t know better, I’d suspect she doesn’t even have a key. But she’s probably simply putting on airs of being mysterious to amuse herself/shock me and she could have easily gotten it open any old time.
The room is small, but only for two people. For its inhabitants, it is perfectly well suited. She flips on a light and the grotesque feeling of unease I had in the darkness abates, but only slightly. The darkness was full of monsters, but only very mundane ones. Small, furry, scaly, and occasionally slimy, blood-drinking ones.
“Hematophages,” I whisper.
“Ding-ding-ding,” she says, as though I’ve won a prize at a fair.
Here are the creatures she alluded to at the meeting. A pair of leeches in a small, murky brown aquarium. Two vampire bats, hanging from a perch in their cave-like enclosure. There are ticks, birds, butterflies, a number of worms, and almost a whole bulkhead of various mosquito species.
“Two of each?
She nods.
“Breeding pairs. A regular Zanib’s ark.”
“You don’t prefer just keeping frozen seed on hand?”
“You ever try to inseminate a mosquito by hand, virgin?”
I grin.
“No, I suppose I haven’t.”
“Well, then. Trust me on this one.”
I’m not normally squeamish – and I’ve never considered myself to be superstitious – but as I approach the furthest bulkhead of Zanib’s little menagerie, I can’t keep from feeling that someone has stepped on my grave. The hairs on the back of my neck stand up and I feel a chill run through my spinal column.
The water is murky, murkier even than the brackish enclosures for the leeches. I approach with trepidation, transfixed, waiting for something to show itself, when suddenly something slams against the glass, so alien in appearance and visage that I nearly drop to the deck, clutching at my heart.
A circlet of teeth presses against the glass, the teeth pointing in all the directions of the compass and then some. And in the center of this jawless monstrosity’s throat is what appears to be a toothed tongue. This must be one of Zanib’s lampreys, the creature most like what she expects to find on the fleshworld below.
“I see the stonelickers have caught your attention.”
I nod, hoping I’m not looking too pale, but all the blood seems to be rushing away from my face, as if avoiding its natural enemy in the tank there.
“Is this every species of lamprey?”
“I have them all here. The saltwater ones are in a separate enclosure. Would you like to meet Crassus here? He seems eager to meet you.”
“Oh, no…” I start to protest, but it’s already too late.
With the deftness and rough-and-ready nature of a born zookeeper, Zanib reaches into the tank, and barely seems to be rifling around before she latches onto the lamprey and drags him out of his little freshwater home. I shudder as a loud, audible pop accompanies his mouth being pulled off the glass.
She approaches me with confidence, as though wrangling a long, eel-like fish is the most natural thing in the world to her.
“This is Crassus,” she repeats, “He’s a river lamprey. Lampetra fluviatilis. From Earth. And very rarely exported offworld. For some reason.”
I swallow a lump that has suddenly appeared in my throat.
“Is it safe to have him out of the water like that?”
“Oh, sure,” she says, as though fish being out of water is the most natural thing in the universe, “just for a second. Go ahead, pet him. He’s not so bad. He’s just a big baby, aren’t you, Crassus?”
She reaches out with her semi-free hand to stroke Crassus under what would be his chin. He makes a definite attempt to latch onto her arm and begin sucking the blood from it, his sharp tongue pounding like a piston. I can only stare in horror. I know this creature is no more or no less than as evolution and nature made it, and it can’t control its appearance any better than I can, but something deep and reptilian inside of me rejects the notion that this is anything but a monstrosity, an aberration, the greatest crime or joke the universe ever played on us.
“Go on,” she says again. “Now he is probably starting to drown in the air. Just run the back of your hand along his spine.”
My hand is shaking as I reach out to do as she says, and I have no doubt she is enjoying my discomfort, but ultimately, whether because of peer pressure or some deep need inside to prove myself, I stroke the blood-drinking fish. I shiver at the slimy consistency of his skin as she wrangles him back into his tank.
I watch in grotesque fascination as Crassus begins to undulate in his tank, wrapping around his life-mate and they show some kind of distant, piscine version of affection to one another. Zanib doesn’t even wash or disinfect her hands before putting one of her hamhocks on my shoulder.
“Now how many people do you know who can say they’ve petted a lamprey?”
“Just you and me, to my knowledge.”
She waggles a finger in my face.
“I know you didn’t want to. I know it was uncomfortable. But if you want to make it out here, you’ve got to get comfortable doing the uncomfortable, if that makes sense.”
In a perverse way, it does.
“Well, now it’s feeding time. I’m going to go out on a limb and guess you won’t want to stay for this. It’ll definitely make you lose your appetite.”
I raise an eyebrow.
“Shouldn’t I get comfortable being uncomfortable?”
She grins.
“One step at a time, virgin. Just…”
She trails off.
“What?” I finally prompt her.
“I don’t know what we’re going to be dealing with tomorrow. Or, really, in a few hours, I should say. You know, Paige, some people aren’t made for this.”
It might be the first time she’s called me by my given name. I take quiet note.
“I know.”
“Are you one of them?”
I think about it a moment. Then, before Zanib can stop me, I barge over to Crassus’s tank and snatch him out of the grasp of his lady love. I’m no expert animal wrangler as she is. It takes both hands and all my concentration to even keep him from slithering out of my grasp. But then I have him, in front of me, just his tail dangling down in the murky water, and he is stuck in my grasp, fixed in place, waiting. I’m staring into his eyes.
I press my lips to his swelling, puckering, jawless mouth, and give him a kiss. I feel him latch onto me, his dozens of teeth piercing my lips and chin. He suckles at me and I feel the blood draining away from my face.
“Paige!”
With a yank, I rip the stonelicker away from my face. But I don’t fail to make the loudest lip-smack I can. With the gentleness of a lover, I let Crassus slip back into his tank. I look at Zanib. She’s staring at me in horror, which is gradually giving way to respect, and finally to amusement.
“Your face is a mess. And who knows what he’s carrying. You should report to the infirmary.”
I shake my head, and walk over to the bottle of disinfectant she keeps at the front of the room. I press down on the head of the bottle, squeezing a fat blob into my hand, and rub it all over my lips and chin. I feel the sting from the dozens of penetrations, but I glance at myself in the mirror and it really looks no worse than a bad case of razor burn. Or maybe herpes.
“Nah, I’ll be fine. Got to toughen up if I’m going to surf the ink.”
“All right,” she says, “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
“So maybe I get diarrhea. Wouldn’t be the first time.”
I walk toward the hatch, which obligingly opens for me. I stop, something striking me that hadn’t occurred to me until just then.
“Zanib?”
“Yeah, virgin?”
“When you go to feed these hematophages… what exactly does that entail?”
She smiles.
“Don’t believe the hype.”
I don’t know what that means, but I don’t press. My stomach is grumbling.
●●●
The director is lingering at the register. A few of us have already picked up our meals and are ready to check out, but we hang back by the salad bar, pretending to be pondering adding croutons or cheese to our meals. One of the security goons is dutifully ladling one of the soup bins, as though she may discover some hidden ingredient down in the depths that will suddenly change it from cream of mushroom to white clam chowder. Honestly, I’ve never seen a label on any of the soups, so it could be twat juice for all I know, but no amount of fussing and stirring will ever change it into anything other than twat juice.
The truth is our prevaricating is all horseshit, of course. Aside from the fact that you can’t add salad bar condiments to sandwiches or other food (as countless signs proclaim and countless slapped wrists recall) we really just don’t want to queue up behind Diane. Perhaps we don’t want her to feel rushed (not that I think she’d ever give a shit and certainly wouldn’t show it if she did) or perhaps we just don’t want to be near her. It hardly matters. We can hear every word she’s saying to the cashier anyway.
“This is a big opportunity for you, Rebecca,” the director is saying.
“Thanks, boss,” the cashier replies, her Broatoan brogue making her sound even more disrespectful than her baseline level of disdain could.
“I can’t promise you anything, but with Delilah off the payroll, that may free up some chits for you and your staff. I’ll talk to the bursar about it, anyway.”
“Well, that’s the important thing, is chits. Oh, but ain’t you forgetting about one thing, madam director?”
Diane cocks her head.
“What’s that?”
“Them two pennies what go on Lilah’s eyes. Guess we won’t be getting those.”
The director’s face hardens and not the swizzle of a spoon or the drip of a tureen can be heard in the whole galley.
“Well, you’re grieving. I can understand that, Rebecca. We have a counselor available, any time, day or night, for you or your people. I suggest you make an appointment.”
“I surely won’t.”
Diane either pretends not to hear or ignores it. She starts to limp away on her crutches.
“Good. I’m counting on you, Rebecca.”
“No worries, Diane, everyone’s still going to eat.”
Diane turns her back and Rebecca makes the customary Broatoan kiss-off gesture of shitting in her hand and popping the turd in her mouth. A number of the other galley patrons turn away in embarrassment, but I can’t take my eyes off the little fireplug of a woman.
She’s so short she can’t work the register without a stool, and has to clamber up to get on the stool and jump to get down from it. Her hair is clipped close, as most of the food service workers wear it, though hers seems to retain the muscle memory of once having been a mullet.
“Hey! Yo! Ambroziak! Those fixings are only for salads.”
“Yeah, I know I was just deciding whether I wanted chunked salami or, um…”
I look around. My erstwhile friends and allies have abandoned me, shifting their focus to the drink stations and condiment islands. I feel like a character in an old comedy sketch when the boss asks for volunteers and instead of anyone stepping forward everyone else steps back.
Fuck it.
I put my tray down on the register.
“Why lie? I was watching you fight with the director.”
Her right eye otherwise locked on the screen as she punches in the codes for each of my lunch items, the cashier glances briefly at me with her left.
“Oh, yeah? How’d it go?”
I shrug, though she’s deliberately not watching me.
“I’d say you won.”
“Won what?”
“Uh… it’s a moral victory anyway.”
The cashier snorts, so loudly she might be a bear coming out of hibernation. She finally looks me in the eyes.
“Thing you got to remember about the director is, she just don’t give a shit about people. It’s like she knows human people got emotions, but it just don’t click in her head or something.”
“You’re upset about the old chef getting killed.”
The cashier’s face explodes in exaggerated delight, as though I’ve just won a Kewpie doll at a fair. She rings an imaginary bell.
“Ding-ding-ding! And you don’t even know me. That’s sixteen chits, Ambroziak. You want it out of your account or you carrying it on you?”
“Account, please.”
I glance back to see that a line has finally formed behind me. Fucking cowards. I stick a finger in my Ramen. Cold, of course. Not that it was ever particularly more than lukewarm.
“Hey, Ambroziak?”
I look back at the cashier, surprised.
“Account, please. I’m not carrying any cash.”
“Yeah, I know. Are you eating alone?”
Zanib’s busy feeding her little coterie of blood-drinking animals. I could glance around the galley looking for some vague acquaintance whose name I can coax from my semi-ambulatory memory, but why bother?
“I am…” I say, trailing off.
“I’ll join you.”
The cashier sticks her fingers in her mouth and whistles loudly, the sort of whistle I didn’t think people could really make but seems to happen all the time in old movies.
“Yo, Urs! Take over for me here, will you? I’m going to take lunch.”
The tiny woman jumps down from her weirdly low perch and accompanies me, clapping her hands against one another as if clapping off chalk or debris. A white-clad, hair-netted woman emerges from the bowels of the galley in no great hurry to take her place.
“So, Rebecca…” I start to say as I take a seat.
Unlike Zanib, the cashier sits down in the correct position, across from me. In fact, she takes it a step further and sits across and diagonally opposed from me. Perfect.
“Flying fuckballs,” she replies, “nobody calls me that. Becs. Please.”
“Becs. Becs from Broatoa.”
She grins.
“That obvious, huh?”
I shovel a spoonful of noodles into my mouth, and speak again when I’ve slurped a bit more than a spoonful down.
“You could say that,” I answer. “You know, it’s not going to be much of a lunch break for you if you don’t go get something to eat.”
She eyes me as though I’ve sprouted a unicorn horn from my forehead.
“Serve myself? In my galley? I don’t think so.”
As if to prove her point, one of the white-clad cooks waddles out of the back and sets down a tray in front of her. Everything about the tray of food is ordinary – same cutlery, same alloy cup, same everything that everybody else gets – except that the plate is covered with a metal cover and a single flower in a tiny vase adorns the tray.
“Weekday special, Becs.”
“Thanks, Andi,” she replies, stuffing a napkin halfway down the throat hole of her shirt.
Becs lifts the cover from her plate and steam rises from the still-hot meal. I gape in astonishment as the steam clears. Zanib can pack down food like there’s no tomorrow, but they still just serve her ordinary cafeteria food. I don’t get anything fancy, and nothing fancy is all I expect. But here, the newly christened boss of the kitchen has a gourmet meal laid out in front of her.
The meat is a tiny, elegant filet. The potatoes are a delicate, braised affair, and the sprinkle of Hollandaise over the artichokes is almost poetic in its artistry. Becs cuts her meat as though she is teaching an etiquette class to a roomful of petty bourgeoisie. She takes her first taste and nods appreciatively, as though it is completely unnecessary to say, “Perfect.” She takes a sip from her alloy mug as though pairing some expensive wine with her course – Hell, for all I know, she is – and suddenly she notices me staring at her. I must be turning
red in the face like a fat kid caught with her hand in the cookie jar.
“What? You surprised Broatoans know how to eat with a fork and knife?”
I shake my head and almost snort cola out of my nose.
“No. Sorry. I didn’t…”
“Oh,” she realizes, stretching the single syllable out over the course of a few seconds, “you thought we wasn’t capable of making a decent meal back here. That we’re just knuckle-draggers who don’t know kiwi from quinoa.”
I eye her with mock-scorn over my mug.
“You’re shoveling the words in my mouth as fast as you can. I didn’t say anything even remotely like that.”
She sizes me up.
“Yeah, I guess you didn’t. Sorry, Ambroziak. I get it coming and going. It’s not easy feeding a shipful of skinny Gashes. But I do it. And I do it on time. And I do it on budget. And I do it with no fucking staff. And now we’re even one less.”
She stops as though she hadn’t fully thought out what she had been saying.
“I’m sorry, Becs. Did you know Lilah well?”
“Lilah,” she repeats, her head a million light-years away. The second time she says it, she’s halfway cognizant again. “Lilah. Yeah, I knew her pretty good. Half a dozen tours on this tub, her and I. I wasn’t going to come this time, you know. I really wasn’t. I could’ve used some time on Yloft for R&R. It never hurts being off a boat for five minutes, you know? I definitely was not planning on hopping the next light-hearse out of there.”
She seems a million light-years away.
“What changed your mind?”
She fixes me with a gaze.
“Lilah. She begged me. This weird emergency thing came down. I’d reckon you got caught up in it, too. Fat bonuses and overtime?”
“A bonus, yeah.”
She stretches back like a cat that’s been napping too long but wants to nap just a little bit longer.
“Yeah, well, Madam Severity promised even us lowly potato-peelers bonuses and time-and-a-half for actual overtime worked. We was understaffed but we was going to get paid, you feel me? Even so, I wouldn’t have set foot in the ink again for at least six months if Lilah hadn’t begged me to. And now I’m understaffed, and in charge.”
The Hematophages Page 7