PATCHER

by Martin Kee

  How anything can live here is beyond him. He only got a brief glimpse of the planet before the ship hit whatever pulled it from its orbit, smashing it to pieces. The smell of fear, the look in Val’s eyes as they held hands, plummeting to the ground through clouds so thick they should have been solid, watching the Luxemburg fall apart like a shot bird. Feathers of graphene, spinning in the sky. Bodies spilling from flute holes in the hull. Val’s tears against his cheek, the cocoon pressing them together. Impact. Darkness.

  Val had pulled him free, pulled him up, told him they had to get moving. She was the motive, the action, the Now. She’d been the fearless one, the one who approached the little black cats—the one to shoot them when they turned on her.

  Val was the gun, the fist, the strength.

  He looks at her weapon, an X-ray pistol with half a battery left. He could get maybe a dozen shots off with it on low, a few off on high. If he really wanted to cook something, he could ramp the charge all the way up—put the gun in his mouth, silence that implant for good. He blinks and realizes it’s already there.

  He pulls the gun out, tasting the sand and plastic on his tongue. He licks his lips, making a sour face at the thought.

  Have to keep going. If Val and I could make it, there could be more out there, more people like us.

  Something moves in the foliage and Chaz ducks behind a rock. One of those cat things they’d seen a few days ago, emerges from the bushes. It steps over the blood, its stomach opening in the middle, exposing a pink tongue that dabs at the blood, then retracts like a tape measure. Dabs. Retracts. Chaz sees needle teeth every time that tongue licks at Val’s blood and the image makes him sick. He sets the gun on low. The animal is small. One shot should do it and he’s starving. He squeezes the trigger. The gun hums in his hand and the little monster falls over.

  It’s so easy he almost laughs, but catches himself. Others might be nearby. He’s seen what kind of cannibalism goes on in this world. He dashes out, grabs the fallen cat-shaped creature by the legs. The skin is hard, chitinous and bug-like.

  But it tastes just fine once he cracks through the thin shell, enough to quell the hunger pains in his stomach and silence the chirping in his head. As he slices off muscle with his knife he realizes that the implant is silent for once, satisfied that his eyes have already seen this before. The novelty is gone. The meat tastes like lobster.

  Chaz wonders what the other creatures on this world taste like.

  Chapter 22

  “OUCH!” THE girl pulls away instinctively as Bex dabs at her arm with sanitizer.

  “What happened?” Bex asks.

  “I fell on a tool.” A lie. It’s a small wound, circular. Teeth.

  “Uh huh…”

  The girl rolls her eyes. “It wasn’t anything, okay? Ouch!”

  “You have to hold still,” Bex says. “Otherwise I won’t be able to properly patch it. Do you want a scar?”

  “I don’t care about scars,” the girl says.

  “I imagine your mother would.”

  The girl feigns surprise for a second, then frowns. “How do you know my mother?”

  “I’d be pretty blind not to notice your mother,” Bex says. It’s no lie. The Matriarch of the local mercantile chapter is a big name… even if it eludes Bex at the moment. She’s seen the woman though, walking through town in her beetle ornaments, her tusk jewelry. Her daughter’s name is Kloe’l. “That’s a nice pendant, by the way.”

  Kloe’l looks down at the complex knot around her neck and then grows more embarrassed. “You won’t tell her, will you?”

  “Explain why I shouldn’t?” Bex steps back, crossing her arms. “Tell me the truth. What bit you?”

  It takes the girl a while, her eyes tracing the room, searching for a distraction, an excuse to change the subject. She looks out the window behind Bex, where a massive creature lumbers around the yard.

  “My mother says that giant is dangerous. She said it could crush a house.”

  Bex glances over her shoulder. Scoop is out back, lifting the old fence that held in some livestock. She’s noticed he’s moving slower these days, and wonders if maybe it has something to do with the umbilical cord he’s always sucking from.

  “Well, considering he could and he hasn’t makes me think he isn’t as dangerous as your mother might think.” Never mind that she would probably rather reap a profit from his hide given the chance. “If he were dangerous, don’t you think he’d actually hurt someone?”

  “I heard he killed a bunch of poachers,” Kloe’l says.

  “In self defense. They were trying to kill him. Wouldn’t you fight back?”

  Kloe’l looks down at the wound on her arm.

  “You know, some animals don’t understand what you’re trying to do with them. They see pain as a reflex, a reason to attack and defend themselves. Is that what happened?”

  “No…” Kloe’l’s voice drifts. “Well, I mean, my pillcatcher has some really nice scales. I thought maybe if I just took one, you know… maybe she wouldn’t mind.”

  “Pillcatchers have a nasty bite,” Bex says, pulling a small strip of kelp tape from a drawer. She moistens it with saliva, cuts a strip, and turns back to the girl. “You’re lucky to have all your fingers.”

  “But I told her I was just taking one.”

  “Not all animals understand language,” Bex says. “Just because they sometimes parrot us doesn’t mean they understand.”

  She places the kelp along the cut, covering the marks. The girl flinches but doesn’t pull away this time, and looks out the window again at the giant.

  “Does he understand words?” she asks.

  “What do you think?” Bex says, feeling the pressure of the patch, making sure it sticks.

  “My mother says it’s just stupid, that it’s like a baby.”

  “It might be,” says Bex. A baby with a picture and language. Writing. When she goes into the barn sometimes she sees marks along the wall, scratches in rows, every fifth one crossing the other four. Every day there’s more of them. “I think he might be smarter than some people give him credit. He can say his name after all.”

  “Does he know it’s his name? Or is he just parroting it?” Kloe’l asks.

  I wish I knew. “I like to think he knows.”

  “But you aren’t sure,” Kloe’l says. “I talk to my pillcatcher all the time. I say to Pinn ‘you should let me take one of those scales because they’re so pretty’ and Pinn whistles it back. She can say ‘pretty’ and she can say my name.”

  “That doesn’t mean she understands,” Bex says.

  “But you think that giant understands and my Pinn doesn’t?” She points out the window. The girl is insufferable. “Why must your pet get to speak, but mine is just parroting?”

  “Just because we want something to understand us, doesn’t mean it does,” Bex says, holding the patch firmly in place until it stays. She sees the girl wince a little and lets off, feeling ashamed. It’s not her fault. The girl’s grown up privileged, the only child in a complete set of clothes, the only child with a pet, the only child who can afford to visit a Patcher without their parent present. Why am I punishing her for what her mother is? “All I know is that Scoop helped me. He understands who I am. He comes when I call his name.”

  “So does a staggox.”

  Bex takes a breath. “All I’m saying is that Patching is a lot more complicated that simply telling the animal that you’re taking something from them and hoping they understand. It requires empathy, not just from you, but from the animal.”

  “How do you know then?” the girl asks. “How do know when they understand?”

  “They’ll tell you,” Bex says. “You just have to be listening when they do.” She pulls the patch off and sees that the puncture marks have set, filled with small scabs. She smiles, satisfied. “There. That should be smooth enough to fool your mother.”

  The girl hops off the table and stands at the window. “Can I talk to him?”
>
  “Probably better you don’t,” Bex says, cleaning up, packing the rest of the kelp tape safely away. “He’s still a little shy at times.”

  “But what if I want my own giant?” She looks at Bex, then looks out the window. “What if I want that giant?”

  “That one’s mine,” Bex says, feeling a prickle up her spine. “And as far as I know, I’m the only person he trusts.”

  “I could have my mother buy it from you. She’d pay you well—land, houses, goods. She has a lot of money.”

  “Of that I have no doubt,” Bex says with a sigh. “But he’s not for sale.”

  “Are there others?”

  “Not that I know of,” Bex says. “None that are living as far as I know.”

  “Then I want that one. How much do you want for him?”

  “Were you even listening?” Bex asks, impatient. “I told you he’s not for sale.”

  The girl huffs a moment. A stifled tantrum, then a slow smile spreads on her face. “Well, maybe I’ll see what my mother says. She says everything has a price.”

  It’s pretty much all Bex can do to keep from tossing the girl out on her ass. But it’s not Kloe’l’s fault. It was her mother who brought her up thinking there was a price tag on everything. If only the girl could see things differently, she might consider that not all beauty can be purchased. She forces a smile, trying to keep her temper in check.

  “Would you like to meet him?” Bex asks her.

  “Really?”

  “You can’t buy him,” she cautions. The girl deflates. “But you can meet him.”

  “Will he… is he dangerous?”

  Bex almost wants to laugh. “Just a second ago you wanted to own him. Now you’re scared?”

  The girl looks down again, embarrassed. “I’d love to meet him, thank you.”

  Scoop moves ponderously through the back paddocks, a huge lumbering thing with long arms and straight, uneven hair on the top of his head. He doesn’t notice at first, then whistles his name slowly.

  “SCOOP.”

  “He talks!” Kloe’l says. She spins to look at Bex, amazed. “I mean, you said so… but… wow.”

  “He only knows a couple words. Mostly I have to gesture, show him things. But he’s a good worker.”

  “What does he eat?” Kloe’l asks.

  “Grains, grasses, some livestock, but that gets expensive. People leave donations and I pay for what I can to keep him healthy with the money I take in from the practice.”

  “Hi Scoop!” Kloe’l sings up to the impossibly high head. The beast turns and looks down at her with strange bright eyes on a flat face. He raises a hand.

  “SCOOP.”

  Kloe’l laughs. “What else can he do?”

  “Scoop!” Bex yells up at the giant. “Lift!”

  “LIFT?” he asks.

  “Lift!”

  Before the girl can react, Scoop reaches down and picks her up with both hands. The girl squeals in delighted fear, a shrill, unabashed gleeful sound and Bex can’t help but smile. Scoop spins the girl a couple of times, seemingly pleased with himself, then looks back at Bex.

  “LIFT?”

  “No, not me… I—WAIT!”

  But the giant already has her, lifting her into the air and twisting in slow circles. She feels the wind against her face as those huge eyes stare into hers. He bares his teeth—those horrible flat shovel teeth. Bex fights the urge to recoil in fear. She’s learned it means something different to Scoop. Pleasure. Happiness. He coughs and puts her down.

  She stumbles a little as the giant goes to one knee, still wheezing.

  “Easy there, big guy,” she says, putting a hand on his knee.

  The giant reaches to the top of a shed where he keeps the strange umbilical mask, pressing it against his face. He breathes deeply, huge billowing breaths, then seems to relax. He places it back on the shed and says “SCOOP.”

  “Is he okay?” Kloe’l asks.

  “He’s sick. Premature, maybe,” Bex explains. “He was barely out of his egg when I found him. It’s a shame really. He still breathes from that umbilical to stay alive. I don’t know if he’ll ever grow out of it.”

  “Can I come back and visit him again?” Kloe’l asks.

  “You can visit him whenever you want. He likes the company. Don’t you, Scoop?”

  “SCOOP.”

  Kloe’l giggles at the giant’s voice and Bex asks her, “So are you going to respect your pillcatcher in the future?”

  The girl thinks on this a moment. “How do I learn how to hear what they want?”

  “That’s all part of Tender training,” Bex says. “We sometimes learn it at an early age. Some are born with it.”

  “How do you do it?”

  “You just have to quiet your mind and listen. Sometimes they understand and sometimes you understand. Everything has a voice, you just have to try to pay attention.”

  “Can I be a Tender?” Kloe’l asks.

  A tricky question. “I’m not sure your mother would approve.”

  “But you’re a Tender.”

  “I am a Patcher,” Bex says. “I left my Tender practice…” When they burned my village. “When I came here. After all, the town needs a Patcher more than a Tender, don’t you think?” She taps the crusting bite wound lightly and smiles.

  “I mean…” Kloe’l seems suddenly shy. She looks at her feet, then back at Bex. “I’m going to the Ameer city tomorrow, but... when I get back… do you think I could come here again?”

  “Sure.”

  “And do you think you could teach me how to be a Patcher? Or a Tender? Or whatever.” She looks up at Scoop. “I want to do what you do.”

  Bex blinks, surprised. “I don’t know if I have time for an apprentice… I mean I’m still learning myself.”

  “It’s okay,” the girl says too quickly. “I understand. I’ll see you in a couple of days okay?” She’s already heading for the back gate. Before Bex can stop her, the girl waves and is gone.

  “I think you just found me an assistant,” she says up to the giant.

  “SCOOP.”

  *

  Kendal waits for them to leave before grabbing the mask again. He pulls it to his face, breathes deep. He waits for the world to stop spinning before he looks at the gauge. The needle quivers barely above the red. He taps the gauge and watches the needle dip lower.

  “Well, I knew this day would come,” he says to himself, placing it back on the small shed.

  They always told him when he was little to just stay put. Never go wandering because if you do, the people looking for you might never find you. There’s also no point in wandering to find people who will never come. He came to this conclusion a while ago, watching the horizon for some movement, for some light to pass through the clouds, some human figure to step out into the desert, for some rescue drone to come humming over the plains. But looking at the gauge now, watching the last of his oxygen fade, he begins to believe this has all been fantasy.

  There are days when he dreams he’s home—disturbing dreams where everyone talks like he’s not there, discussing him in the third person. Their faces are a mix of features that don’t go together, eyes that don’t seem to fit with the mouth and nose, mismatched arms. His uncle smiles with his cousin’s mouth, speaks in his mother’s voice, looks at him with Jess’s eyes. Then he wakes up and realizes he’s still here.

  Still forgotten.

  He looks at the barn, the small bedroom the Younger creature has set up for him to live. He isn’t sure if she plans on making something larger. He figures if she did, it would mean she expected him to be around longer. The fact that she hasn’t, means she probably knows he doesn’t have much longer to live in this air.

  Kendal gets the gist of what they want from him. Lift. Carry. Fix. He recognizes these songs for what they are: commands. He’s nothing to them but a laborer, a pack mule, and a resource.

  But he’s seen what they’ve done to the other crew. He’s got it pretty go
od all things considered.

  Before his tiny host leaves, she points to the paddock with the weird miniature antelopes in it and says “fix.”

  He gets it. And it’s honestly fine with him. It’s a good distraction from the impending asphyxiation. He’ll probably just go to sleep one day and not wake up. Not a bad way to go, really.

  The antelope-things look up at him as he enters the small fenced area. They don’t run. They just move out of his way as if he were some odd inconvenience in the way of their grazing. He read once that this was the case with penguins on Earth before they went extinct. Dodos too. They didn’t know what humans were, didn’t register them as enemies, so they just went about their business while people walked up and whacked them with a rock.

  He’s eaten a few of these antelope-things and they aren’t bad. The Younger slaughtered one for him back when he was recovering. Tasted like pork.

  They aren’t really much like antelopes once you get up close to them, more like long-legged lizards, the fur more like scales when you look closely, flattened, thin and translucent, bodies tapering back and ending in a flat tail. The faces have four eyes, two along the sides and two smaller eyes centered over the muzzle. If he looks too long it reminds him of a spider. The ears are rabbit-long and the animals make these funny grunting sounds when he approaches them, like curious pigs. They flick their flat tails at flies. Beneath each animal hangs an udder which clearly belonged to a different creature at some point. The teats hang long and hairy and produce a sort of brown milk that isn’t even used for food, but as a building cement. It smells terrible, worse than a dead skunk.

  He watched his host sew one of these udders onto one of the animals once. It was enough to make him never want to see that again. Something completely casual and unnatural about the way they use each animal for parts yet nothing really dies. All the animals are just building blocks stuck together, reattached and moving like nothing happened.

  “Hello ladies,” he says swinging the gate open to the paddock. “I see you’ve peed all over the fence again.