“Yeah, couldn’t hurt, I guess,” Ren said, not convinced.
“If you’d mention the idea to the council I’d appreciate it,” Otha said. He gestured at a nearby bale of hay. “So, have a seat. You can be our guinea pig.”
“Not sure I like the sound of that,” Ren said. But he sat down on the bale. “Can’t stay long, though. And speakin’ of pigs, I hear your novice here has quite a talent with sandhogs.”
“Oh? How’s that?” Otha said.
“From what Gil Bodine says, she does indeed.” Zenn looked at Otha, who just raised an eyebrow at her and turned back to Ren as he continued: “Gil says that big sandhog boar of his was about to come down on you like a ton of bricks. He says…” Ren smiled. “He said little Zenn here put the evil eye on that hog. Turned the thing meek as a puppy, just like that.” He gave her a sly look. “Quite the talent.”
“Gil is a bit of a storyteller, as we all know,” Otha said. “That hog just moved a little slower than I could run, that’s all. That and some bad feed.”
“Well, whatever happened out there, it didn’t do you any good, with the council, if you get my drift. A sandhog boar on the loose? Bad timing for something like that.”
“What are you getting at, Ren?” Otha said, frowning at him.
“Just that you people out here might want to… re-evaluate your priorities. Far as selling the cloister. Council votes against you, your rights to the land get revoked. Leaves you all in a bad way.”
“Our priorities are just where we want them, Ren,” Otha said, leveling his gaze at the constable. “You know where I stand on selling out. And I’ve done some thinking about what you said, about talking to the council. If Warra could do it, I guess I can too.”
“Well, the council will be all ears.” The constable looked around then, surveying the surroundings, seeming to measure the weight of what he was about to say. “About Warra – look, I understand what he went through after Mai… after the accident. But your brother’s making some people pretty unhappy. With what he’s up to out on Enchara.”
“What do you mean, ‘what he’s up to’?” Otha said, squinting at him.
“You know. Refusing to let things go. Stirring things up, making the Authority look bad, just when Earth is trying to get back into contact with the other planets in the Accord. And with Mars. It’s politics, Otha. Big boy politics. People are noticing, and not in a good way.”
“So, you're in direct contact with the Authority on Earth now? Didn’t know that was in your job description. Ren.”
“Hey, I’m a public official. When higher ups on the food chain ask me questions, I give ’em honest answers.” He lowered his voice. “Do Warra a favor. Tell him he’s in over his head out there.”
“Warra’s a big boy, Ren. I don’t see how he needs any advice from you or the Authority. They may run things on Earth. But they don’t run things on Mars.”
“No, they don’t... yet.” He sucked his mustache. “But,” he gestured at Zenn, “don’t let me hold ya up. On with the show.”
Otha gave Ren a look, seemed about to say something, but instead turned to Zenn.
“You all set?” he asked her, kneeling by the pod.
“Yes. All set,” Zenn said, though she could do without Ren’s presence. Still, the prospect of the coming procedure outweighed that minor irritation. She lay down again, rested her chin on the bench’s forward cushions, tested the tension of the seat-belt harness and made sure the two view screens were functioning. One screen could be switched between the view straight ahead of the pod and behind the stern. The other screen’s signal came from a camera mounted on the roof of the tool shed, and showed a wide-angle shot of the entire pool. This allowed the one piloting the pod to see how the patient was reacting from the outside.
“Take it slow, don’t rush,” Otha told her. “Let the peristalsis action carry you whenever possible. Only engage the cilia if you have to.”
“Yes, Otha, I know,” she said, her voice breathy with excitement. “See you on the other side.”
“You mean ‘at the other end’,” Otha said, grinning.
“Yeah… right,” she answered, in no mood for his breezy exovet humor about the obvious conclusion to a two-hour journey through a sloo’s intestines
Zenn toggled the lever next to her right hand and the pod lid closed, hinges complaining all the way, the wrap-around cushions gripping her body in a firm embrace. Otha slid the pod down the ramp’s tracks. Zenn watched the outboard monitor screen, and saw the sloo respond to the pod’s motion, raising its head for a better look.
The pod hit the water, and the bow screen darkened momentarily as the nose cam was submerged, then brightened as it bobbed to the surface. She lost sight of the pod’s position in the pool when the sloo’s body blocked the outside cam view, but the next instant, she knew the sloo had seen her.
With a powerful jerk, the pod was lifted free of the water by the sloo’s muscular tongue and pulled into its mouth, as if a huge rubber band had been stretched and snapped back. The viewscreens went black and flickered on again, the pod’s bow light switched on, and Zenn saw the sloo’s oral cavity displayed on the view screen, yawning ahead of her like a narrow, fleshy cave.
The sensation of being crushed hit Zenn almost at once, and she reminded herself this was normal, everything was fine, no problem. But it didn’t help that the pod was jammed up against the roof of the sloo’s mouth, the huge tongue trapping it.
“She’ll hold you there a moment,” Otha’s voice in her earpiece was calm and reassuring. “She’s just making sure you’re something worth swallowing. Doing alright?”
“I’m good,” she told him. It was a lie. Her mouth was dry, and she had the distinct sensation of being suffocated. She made herself breathe slowly, regularly. In, out, in, out. The trapped feeling subsided… a little.
Zenn focused on the instrument readings. Her hands reached out until they contacted the controls, unseen beneath her on either side. She’d spent hours memorizing the pod’s instrument layout, testing herself until she could visualize every detail. Now, she conjured up an image of the control surfaces and manipulators of the various instruments.
Right hand: forward viewscreen and zoom, toggle to rear viewscreen or outboard cam, hypojection arm, biopsy collection arm and maser-cauterizer. Left hand: polycilia propulsion, pod enviro controls, patient vital signs monitors and sensor probes.
“When she’s ready,” she heard Otha say, “she’ll push you into her laryngeal opening. Wait for it.”
Zenn now heard another sound beneath the hum and tick of the pod’s various systems. Like creaking, or… metal bending? Yes, it must be the outer hull, stressed by the pressure of the sloo’s quarter-ton tongue.
Normal sounds. Not a problem. Perfectly normal sounds.
But the sloo wasn’t cooperating. For some reason, she was refusing to swallow the pod. Instead, she gripped it tightly in the rear of the oral cavity. Zenn wanted to ask Otha what to do. He would be waiting for her to do that, to fall back on him for guidance, reassurance. Of course, she couldn’t ask. Not if she wanted to get the score on this test that she needed. A few more stomach-knotting moments dragged by, then she made her choice, toggled the cilia propulsion on, and, almost imperceptibly, the pod began to slide forward. She felt her tensed body relax.
Good. We’re moving. Good decision.
Now, it was simply a matter of making sure the sloo’s epiglottis was in the closed position, blocking the entrance to the trachea and the lungs. This would give her a clear shot at entering the esophagus and continuing on to the upper digestive tract.
As she moved from the oral cavity into the throat, though, the sloo’s muscles constricted again, halting the pod. Zenn increased the cilia rate.
Abruptly, the creaking sound of the flexing hull increased alarmingly, accompanied by another noise, guttural and grating: the sloo was gagging.
Problem!
The next moment, Zenn was thrown hard against the
pod restraining straps and the external monitor showed the sloo shaking its massive head back and forth. The force of it made Zenn’s hands lose their position on the controls. Frantically, she groped to relocate the instrument pods.
This isn’t right. Why is she doing this?
The shaking grew so violent that Zenn had to give up trying to find the controls and simply clutch the padded bench with both hands. Next thing she knew, the remote cam monitor showed the sloo heaving itself up out of the water, throwing its great, green-and-gray speckled body up onto the shore, its front flippers clawing at the muddy bank. She saw Ren leap up from his seat. The sloo waved its neck and head toward him – and she saw Ren pull his pistol from its holster.
No! Don’t shoot. Don’t attract its attention.
But when the sloo whipped its huge head closer to him, Ren pointed the gun into the air and fired. The sloo reacted instantly to the sound. Zenn watched in horror as the long tongue lashed out and wrapped itself around the constable’s midsection. Ren got out one short, high scream before he was whisked up and into the animal’s snout.
Zenn stared at the monitor in disbelief. Before she could even begin to think what to do next, there was the distant, muffled sound of another gunshot and a loud hoot of pain from the sloo. The monitor from the tool shed cam showed a small, red cloud of blood and tissue puff out into the air from inside the animal’s snout. Ren had fired again.
And then the sickening, familiar feeling hit her, like a fierce wind gusting up out of nowhere, like her body and mind had been instantly submerged in some deep well of unnamable sensation. She was gripped by two strong, distinct impressions: heat, searing her mouth; and intense, stinging pain in her nose, as if her nostril had been pierced by a thick needle. But even as her eyes teared from the pain, she knew the sensation wasn’t coming from inside her mouth, or from her own nose. At that second, she was feeling what the sloo felt.
Then, the sloo gagged again, jolting Zenn back into her own head, the spasm rotating the pod until it was upside down. Fumbling frantically, her hands again found their way to the controls – but which was the propulsion toggle? Inverted, disoriented, she was suddenly unsure of the instrument layout. First toggle on the left? Or second? Which side was her left?
Now, the suffocating sensation rushed back, worse than before. The walls of the pod pressed against her from above and below – the hard metal pushing in, crushing the breath out of her lungs. The viewscreens dimmed – or was she blacking out? Was that smoke in the cabin air? Yes, smoke. Almost invisible, but she was sure it was smoke, curling up from the instrument panel. Her head was swimming, panic rising. Then something stung her in the small of her back: a tiny pinprick of heat, growing, radiating outward – acid. Digestive fluid, leaking in from outside. Hull breach.
“Otha,” she gasped into the mic. “I need to come out. The cap…”
Her voice was drowned out as the sloo produced a deafening retching sound, and the shaking increased. Zenn punched at what she thought must be the polycilia control. It was. The tachometer red-lined and the pod lurched – backwards. She’d moved the control the wrong way. The pod shoved itself into the soft palate at the rear of the sloo’s mouth, and the animal reacted. With an explosive hacking sound the pod shot down the long snout – and out into the air.
For a split second, the in-soma pod was in silent freefall. This ended with a skull-rattling impact as it hit the ground, bounced into the air again, then hit something else that made a horrible, splintering sound. Finally, it struck the ground with a painful jolt, rolled several times and stopped.
A few moments later, the lid creaked open, and Otha was standing over her, pulling at the straps that held her, lifting her up into the bright light and fresh air. As she was raised upright, pain radiated out from several different points on her body. One elbow was bleeding, probably, she thought dully, ripped by the edge of the control toggles. Her left hip ached from hitting the side of pod when it hit the ground; her ribs felt badly bruised.
“Zenn! Are you alright, girl?” Otha held her at arm’s length, rapidly scanning her up and down, turning her around to examine her for injury. As he turned her, she saw what remained of the shattered tool shed she must’ve hit, saw Ren Jakstra, sitting half-sunk into the mud at the edge of the pool, covered in sloo saliva, clasping one arm, grimacing in pain.
“Acid. I felt acid,” she told Otha, breathing hard. “It was collapsing – a hull breach.”
“No, girl,” Otha said. “I monitored you every second. There was no problem with the pod.”
“But… smoke. I saw smoke from the panel. Acid, burning my back.”
She stared at the pod in disbelief, looking for the rupture, the crumpled metal, the residue of acid. The pod looked intact. She realized her back was one of the few parts of her body not hurting. It struck her at once… Of course. There was no acid in the mouth of a sloo. Only saliva and mucous. She’d imagined it. The smoke, the burning sensation. When the pod flipped upside down, she’d lost her bearings – and panicked. She wasn’t ready… nowhere near ready for the test. She turned away from Otha, her face flushing. She saw the sloo then. It had re-entered the pool, and was still shaking its head.
“Damnation, Scarlett.” It was Ren, on his feet now, walking rapidly toward them, spitting and coughing as he came. “That thing… damn near… killed me.”
“Ren, I don’t know what happened,” Otha said. He gestured at the constable’s arm. “Are you alright? Here, let me take a look at that.”
Ren pulled away sharply, shielding his arm from Otha’s touch. “You? Are you kidding?” He glared at Otha, then at Zenn, and stalked off, shoes squelching with every step.
“Ren, you need to get that attended to,” Otha yelled after him.
“I’ll send you the damn bill,” he shouted without stopping. “Damn straight I will.”
TWENTY-FOUR
“Blister-gnat?” Zenn said, setting her mug down so hard it slopped tea onto the kitchen table. She was still adapting to the thick flex-skin bandage constricting the movement of her injured elbow. “That’s impossible.”
“I analyzed the residue in the wheelbarrow,” Otha said, frowning down at her where she sat. “Almost thirty percent pure blister-gnat. That’s what made the sloo go ballistic. Must’ve set her mouth on fire. Ren has a broken wrist. We’re just lucky no one was killed.”
“But I mixed that paste myself – rhina grub and sweetbark. How did blister-gnat get into it?”
“That’s what I’d like to know, novice.” He pulled a chair out from the table and sat, leaning forward to address her. “You certain you didn’t mix up the containers, something like that? You double-check the labels?”
“Yes, well, no. I…” She thought back. “The light was burned out. In the storeroom.”
Otha ran one hand over his eyes. “Uh huh. So it was dark when you were making up the grub-paste. Too dark to see?”
“Kind of,” Zenn grimaced. “But I know exactly where everything is in that shed.” It was a weak defense, but she was sure she couldn’t have made such a blunder. Almost sure. “I don’t see how I could have gotten blister-gnat by mistake. I mean, it looks completely different from rhina or sweetbark.”
“If there’s light to see by, maybe.” Otha sat for a moment, then rose heavily with his coffee mug in hand. He went to look out the open window overlooking the garden. “And as for what happened once the sloo went berserk...” He turned back to her. “You lost control of the pod, Zenn.”
She knew he was stating the simple fact. But that didn’t make it any easier to hear.
“I should have practiced more.” It was all she could think to say. “I should have been better prepared.”
“You think?” He wasn’t joking, and let the comment hang in the air. “This… feeling you supposedly get sometimes. Did that happen again? Was that the problem?”
“No, it wasn’t that.” This was no time to have him questioning her mental stability. “I just lost my grip o
n the controls. Sorry.”
“Don’t apologize to me. It’s Ren who’s nursing a busted wrist, convinced our animals are running wild out here. That we’re a menace to the community. And you can be sure he’ll express that to the city council.”
Of course he would, she thought. The constable didn’t try to hide his feelings when it came to the Ciscans and their “monsters.” He was just like the rest of the towners. Yes, just like the rest… The thought caught her attention, held it. And Ren was there when the sloo went crazy. But when had he arrived? Early enough to doctor the paste mix before Otha went to get it from the shed?
And why did the constable pick that day to bring the mortgage docs out, the very day of her in-soma test? All he’d need was thirty seconds or so. More than enough time to dump blister-gnat in the rhina-grub paste. On the other hand, there was the fact he’d gotten himself sucked up by the sloo. But the only reason for that was because Otha asked him to stay. The idea prodded at Zenn. It certainly made more sense than her using blister-gnat by mistake.
She twisted in her seat, grit her teeth as her arm flared with pain, and glared down at the table. What about the other times? Was that Graad with the whalehound, and Ren now, with the sloo? Could they be working together? Several trains of thought sped off in different directions inside her. Maybe it was time to bring her theory out in the open. Yes. Even without definite proof, it was time to tell Otha, before something even worse happened.
“Otha,” she said. “What if someone else, someone from outside was tampering with the animals?”
“Someone from the outside…” he said. “Tampering? What do you mean?”
“What if someone didn’t want us to get our lease renewed? They might try to make us look bad. Like we couldn’t control our animals. That would give the council a reason to vote against us.”
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