The monster followed a few paces behind.
As they approached the first of the busier districts of Sidetrack City, the monster faltered. It seemed stunned by the number and quality and hustle-bustle of the evening citizenry, reacting possibly also to that citizenry’s startlement at the monster’s own outrageous appearance. The sight of a majestic Noetic caused to monster to freeze completely.
Were it not for Pirkle gently nipping and chivvying with its mandibles, the creature might have remained rooted to the sidewalk for good. But as it was, Pirkle and Crutchsump managed to guide the monster to the borders of the Telerpeton slums, and thence down the short flight of crumbling stairs into Crutchsump’s apartment.
The monster quietly slumped down on Crutchsump’s own pallet of shabby blankets and closed its eyes. Within minutes, a nasal burr accompanied its descent into exhausted sleep. Pirkle settled comfortably into estivation beside the monster as if nothing out of the ordinary had occurred.
Her own tired mind whirling, Crutchsump considered the exotic guest sprawled across her bed.
Did the monster eat the same food as she? How could she get some victuals at this hour? She had the two-scintilla piece she had found, but that would hardly buy a minim of livewater. Perhaps she could rouse Rheaume the bone wholesaler, show him her harvest, and get an advance, even if he didn’t care to process the shifflet bones at this hour. And clothes! What of clothes for the monster, and a real caul? Did anyone make prosthetics for lost introciptors? The sex toy at the Mudflats! That might’ve served, if only she hadn’t tossed it away—
A whole catalogue of chores assembled itself in Crutchsump’s brain. Many exacting tasks, not easy of accomplishment. Challenges and trials.
But somehow they seemed so very unexpectedly welcome.
3. Interview with a Noetic
THE MONSTER WAS “HE” NOW, just shortly after his arrival at Crutchsump’s shabby basement digs.
The lonely-no-more bone-scavenger found it hard, in fact, to recall the early days when she had regarded Lazorg as a non-sentient, menacing thing.
Although he certainly did retain enough oddities of aspect, behavior and worldview to qualify as decidedly freakish, still.
But somehow his eccentricities only made Lazorg more endearing to Crutchsump, as if he were a quirky, knobby ideation—marked down for sale on a seconds shelf, malformed and unaesthetic, dusty and ignored by all the other customers of some third-rate ideatory gallery—whose odd curves and implications only she could appreciate.
Lazorg—still nameless, at this point in Crutchsump’s memory of events—had slept for thirty-eight hours, nearly a whole night and day, after he had collapsed naked and muddy upon Crutchsump’s sweat-redolent doss.
Crutchsump herself had passed the interminable hours of darkness until Watermilk’s rising by sitting uncomfortably on a backless stool, alternately dozing lightly and jerking awake to contemplate the anomalous stranger she had taken in with a feeling of unreal anticipation. She had decided against venturing out for food until daylight, and her own stomach rumbled, engendering odd surreal dreams in her neighboring enteric cortex.
Throughout the long night, her caul—splashed with sea water from the Mudflats, and now brine-crusty—itched her, and she longed to remove it, as was common practice amongst all civilized people during their solitary moments.
But the notion of baring her private parts to even a sleeping monster left her with a mixed feeling of revulsion and illicit thrills.
When at last dim wands of daylight slid in the small windows inset high in the basement walls—windows that showcased only the hastening feet of passersby—Crutchsump roused herself fully. Pirkle, who had not abandoned his own snoozy vigil by the somnolent monster, cranked open one true eye and regarded his mistress as if to say, “Go about your business—I’ve got this one under watch.”
Crutchsump took the wurzel at his unspoken word, and set out, clutching her bag full of shifflet bones.
Rheaume the bone wholesaler operated out of Boxall Alley, from a fairly capacious warehouse with slate floors splotched with organic matter. Beyond doors that rolled open overhead directly onto the alley, a small messy weigh station occupied the front part of the premises: bins for sorting, hand-trucks for toting, a pegboard full of differently colored and shaped discs for identifying miscellaneous lots of bones.
Luckily, Rheaume, in competition with many others in his trade, opened early.
Crutchsump found the fat ostealist ensconced behind his scales, sprawled in a spavined chair and noisily eating his breakfast, a mess of looby porridge. To accomplish this meal, of course, Rheaume had loosened the drawstring of his caul and raised the hem above his mouth, thereupon tightening the cord above his upper lip and below his jutting introciptor.
Unlike Crutchsump’s unassuming caul, Rheaume’s head-covering was made of luxurious fabric and tatted out with sewn-on trinkets and charms. Although the overall effect of ostentation was admittedly lessened by grease and sauce and condiment splotches, stains that also afflicted his lilac pantaloons and darker purple blouson.
Spotting Crutchsump, Rheaume licked his fingers clean, readjusted his caul, and hoisted his bulk with no small effort out of his seat.
“Ah, Crutchsump, at last! I began to think that my best freelance scavenger had given up the trade!”
“Not at all. In fact, I’ve got the first shifflet bones I estimate you’ve seen all season.”
Rheaume rubbed his hands together gleefully. “If so, a bonus! Pharmacists across the city are clamoring for them!”
Powdered shifflet bones were reputed to cure many ailments, including dropsy and bale-flux.
Crutchsump upended her sack into the large dented pan of the biggest scale. Already picked clean of tissue by marine organisms, the shifflet bones gleamed white as the eyes of ghosts.
Rheaume discerned the bas-relief numbers on the scale’s dial, did a mental calculation, and then moved to a lockbox. He opened the small vault and began to count out scintillas.
“Eighty, ninety, one hundred! Plus, that bonus. Ten more!”
Always deferential in her business dealings, Crutchsump never contested amounts. Until today.
“Could you possibly add five to your already generous bonus, Rheaume?”
Taken aback by this unusual self-aggrandizement, Rheaume grew flustered and irate. “Why, I never—That is, I suppose—Oh, here, just have it!”
Crutchsump caught the additional five-scintilla piece that was tossed to her. Like all the coins circulating in Sidetrack City, the unit bore no design, and was distinguished from its kin solely by color and shape and size.
Turning to leave, Crutchsump was halted by a question from Rheaume: “May I inquire as to what prompted this sudden avarice?”
“I’ve got two mouths to feed now,” answered Crutchsump.
This reply floored Rheaume even more visibly, and Crutchsump left him shaking his head in wonderment. She was rather pleased with the effect.
The food market was lively, even at this early hour. The impoverished district of Telerpeton hardly attracted the most luxurious foodstuffs or highest-class vendors, but all the wares on display were nonetheless fresh and wholesome and nutritious, albeit the plainest varieties. The close-packed stalls and unrolled rush-mats and tiered baskets held a wide selection, all of which made Crutchsump’s own empty stomach renew its gurgles.
She spent some time selecting a good mix of foodstuffs, items she seldom indulged in for her own enjoyment: lake leeks, star bread, a clutch of faufaws, some roasted medallions of clandestini. She added in some vials of livewater, the amber and teal decoctions. Then, anxious that the monster might awaken in her absence, she hurried to the adjacent district where the dry goods merchants congregated. Here she bargained for a simple taupe caul and dhoti. She also picked up a different kind of livewater, this decoction not intended for ingestion, but rather for ablutions.
Burdened with her purchases
in a sling, Crutchsump hastened home.
She arrived to find the scene in her small apartment unchanged, save for brighter daylight. The monster still snored athwart her pallet, Pirkle adjacent.
The wurzel came fully alert when his mistress approached. Elevating himself, Pirkle stretched his many limbs one at a time—a long satisfying process—then shambled outside to relieve himself of aromatic waste lozenges and to seek scraps.
Crutchsump kneeled beside the monster and unwrapped the chance-found fabric from its head, without disturbing its sleep. The sight of its scarified face again, totally lacking an introciptor, caused her to quail, but only with pity.
Unstoppering the bottle of cleansing livewater, she decanted the liquid on the monster’s face.
The livewater emerged as a coherent shimmering silver blob, exhibiting irregular pseudopod extensions of its body. After gauging the surface it rested upon, it began to clean, absorbing all extraneous, non-living matter into itself. Up and down and underneath the monster’s body it coursed, leaving unsoiled skin in its wake.
When the livewater had finished cleaning the monster, Crutchsump allowed it to go to work on her pallet, searching for night-mites and other unwelcome visitors.
The lineaments of the monster, freed of their obscuring mud overcoat, were now plain. Its skin, marked with scratches and welts from its time in the Shulgin Mudflats, seemed normal enough. Even the bizarre growth at the crux of its legs looked oddly natural, not teratogenic or unhealthy.
Rocking back on her haunches, Crutchsump pondered the monster for a longish meditative interval. Here was someone more unfortunate than herself, without a friend in the world. The monster’s condition and nature intrigued her. …
At last she was distracted from her reflections by the reappearance of the livewater. The amorphous dirty blob emerged, sated, from within the rags of her pallet, and she coaxed it back into its bottle, for which it had a tropism. Later, she would return it for a partial refund good toward purchase of another such.
Crutchsump arose and laid out the food and the clothing for the monster’s inspection. She took a few items for her own nourishment, and enjoyed them thoroughly. Then she commenced a long wait.
The light through the basement windows circumnavigated the rooms. Pirkle came and went on several wurzelish errands, always making sure to inspect the monster upon each return. Once an unexpected smell or motion caused the wurzel to rear up on a few of its hind legs and display its normally hidden under-beak. But when the monster offered no further challenge, Pirkle subsided.
When the quality of the light began to approach dusk, the monster at last opened its eyes in flickering stages and took cognizance of its surroundings. Looking alarmed and frightened—insofar as Crutchsump could read its mangled face—the monster spoke.
“I—But where—? How did I—?”
Crutchsump discovered that with the monster conscious, she could no longer tolerate its naked face so easily. She picked up the new caul and thrust it forward.
“Here, please—put this on.”
The monster accepted the caul and donned it, aligning the eyeholes with its eyes. The monster regarded Crutchsump to make sure it had done right. The portion of the caul that would normally contain its introciptor drooped in an unintentionally comic fashion, as in some stage farce. Crutchsump found herself stifling a laugh. How could any of the shifflet harvesters have ever been scared of this creature?
Although the monster’s naked body still needed covering, Crutchsump did not press the dhoti upon it right away. Other matters were more important.
“Are you hungry?”
“Yes. I think so. Yes!”
“Here. Help yourself.”
The monster fell eagerly upon the buffet. It brought a crisp-skinned faufaw to its mouth, but the caul intervened.
“Like this,” said Crutchsump, illustrating.
The monster ate its fill, consuming nearly everything. Crutchsump experienced a twinge when she thought of how much of her back-straining labor had gone into purchasing that meal. Could she sustain the monster for very long? But perhaps he might come to support himself somehow….
Once replete, the monster dropped back down upon the clean pallet. Crutchsump used the moment to offer the dhoti to it.
“Perhaps you’d want to wear this …?”
The monster nodded. Standing, it slipped into the loincloth. Crutchsump was impressed with its muscular agility and the obvious utility of its slightly abnormal limbs. Apparently, so too was the monster. Inexplicably, it seemed to admire its own capabilities.
Regarding itself, the monster said, “I’m—I’m different.”
“Different from me?”
“No. Different from what I was.”
“How so?”
“I was—”
The monster held its head in both hands for a moment.
“I seem to remember being old, frail, sick. …”
“That’s obviously not the case now.”
The monster regarded its body again. “No, it’s not.”
“Do you have a name?”
“Of course. Lazorg.”
A perfectly acceptable name.
And with that, the monster was gone, the “it-ness” of it evaporated, and he was only Lazorg.
“My name is Crutchsump. And that’s Pirkle.”
Hearing his name, the wurzel began to buzz in a pleasant fashion. Pirkle rubbed against Lazorg’s leg, looking to have his dorsal ridges scratched. But Lazorg recoiled in distaste.
“This—this is the kind of horror that nearly drove me mad when I first arrived here! Naked, alone, guilty, her blood on my hands—I never—What is it?”
“It’s my companion, a wurzel. The wild ones of the Merhamet region are dangerous, but the domesticated ones are good, clever friends.”
Lazorg crumpled back down to the pallet. He cradled his head. “These words, these things—I don’t know any of them! What language are we speaking? It hurts my throat! How can I understand you? Why do you cover your face? What’s the strangeness under your mask?”
The monster-who-had-been began to weep. Crutchsump felt a renewed stab of pity for Lazorg. Wherever he originated, he was plainly adrift and lost and hopeless, far from his kind.
She moved to his side, sat down on the pallet, and tentatively rested her arm over his shoulders. Lazorg did not flinch from her touch, but rather buried his face against her flat chest and continued to sob.
Crutchsump stroked the back of Lazorg’s oddly contoured head through the fabric of his caul. She considered doffing her own head-covering and disclosing herself to him in all her nudity, to satisfy his curiosity. But ultimately, she could not quite bring herself to this level of intimacy—at least, not yet. … So she resorted to words only, ones that might be used with a questioning child.
“People carry their organs of generation beneath their cauls. This organ is called an introciptor. We go face-naked only with our lovers, or during certain bathing rituals.”
Lazorg ceased weeping and looked up with an astonished expression at Crutchsump. After a moment he began to laugh, softly at first, then louder and louder, till he verged on the hysterical.
“Oh, God, no, but this is—this is priceless! I’m in hell for my sins, truly I am—”
Crutchsump grew offended. She disengaged from Lazorg and stood brusquely up.
“I don’t know this word ‘hell,” but it’s plainly a place of disgrace. I would have you know that this world is perfect as it stands, and does not deserve your dishonor. The world arises from the Conceptus, and nothing the Conceptus does is less than ideal.”
Lazorg halted his laughter. He stood up as well, and Crutchsump realized how bulky he was compared to her, how he towered above her. A momentary fright quivered through her. Pirkle stridulated a nascent warning tone.
Lazorg’s demeanor was repentant, contrite. “I’m very sorry to have mocked the solemn proprieties of y
our kind, Crutchsump. I did not mean any disrespect, especially to the only being who’s helped me so far during my troubles. It’s just that everything—everything is so alien and strange to me here. For instance, you mentioned a being called the ‘Conceptus’ just now. I have never heard that designation before. Who or what is he?”
“Why, how can you not know of the Conceptus? The Conceptus is the origin of everything you see around you.”
“The Conceptus is God?”
“What is ‘God?’”
“How can I explain God?”
“How can I explain the Conceptus?”
The two fell silent. Then Crutchsump ventured: “We need to visit a noetic. They specialize in such knowledge, and possess the skillful words to convey high truths.”
Lazorg’s eyes brightened at the prospect of illumination. “You’d take me to such a person?”
“Yes. But let’s wait until darkness. Your malformed face will attract enough attention even then. People will stare and point. Are you ready for that?”
“Nothing could be worse than being the bare-assed monster of the marshes!”
Crutchsump laughed at this description, and Lazorg chuckled too.
They passed another hour or so until full night in silence, Lazorg investigating with minute scrutiny all the common and shabby appurtenances of Crutchsump’s apartment, as if they were the fixtures of a palace in the Bullacre district. Crutchsump partook of some livewater and a faufaw, and devoted some attention to a neglected Pirkle.
When darkness reigned, they set out, Pirkle too.
“The local noetic is named Palisander. He’s just a hedge noetic, not a sophisticate like the ones who officiate at all the ceremonies in Liviabelle, for instance. But for simple questions like yours, he’ll do just fine.”
“I wish I had your faith that my questions were so simple and easy of resolution.”
“Once you understand about the Conceptus, everything will be clear.”
The nighted streets harbored many citizens going about their errands, legal or otherwise. Here, a slumming voluptuary, regal in striped robe and jeweled caul; there, a beggar in dhoti and dirt. True to Crutchsump’s prediction, people did point and stare at the drooping, impotent introciptor pouch depending from Lazorg’s caul. But the ex-monster was too intent on his destination—or too blind to propriety—to be properly ashamed of even the jeers of children.
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