PATCHER

by Martin Kee

  Even the gun is left behind, sitting inside the clinic, so good luck if anything tries to attack them.

  But I guess that’s what Veerh is made for, she thinks, watching his broad back as he moves methodically up the path, plates and spikes shifting as he walks.

  The Tender’s Guild Hall hasn’t come into view yet. All she can see are corridors of steep, sheer cliff. Most people don’t like being this high up, so high the valley stretches far behind them. From this altitude, she can almost make out the distant sliver of Bone Sea, but then decides it’s probably a mirage.

  “You sure it’s this way?” Veerh asks.

  “We’ve all been made to memorize maps in training,” she says to him. “It’s past those columns, then another half day or so.”

  The columns in question are Horns of the World, huge arching pillars of ivory-white. They lie dormant now, their growth halted by the first Matron herself some uncountable generations ago. It’s said that she spoke to them and they simply stopped, no longer feeling the need to sprout. Bex wonders if that’s something that can be said to the other spires that have been appearing in the desert, sharp and creeping upwards like tumors.

  I would have liked to have seen those. The thought is not her own, the internalized voice belonging to someone else, someone younger. She thinks of the girl, Kloe’l, so curious and just on the verge of growing into her own, becoming something that could give back to this dying world. Now Kloe’l follows her as a ghost, the girl’s voice echoing through the wind and whispering to Bex when her mind becomes too silent.

  What will you say to the Matron? Will you tell her how you’ve recruited a new Tender, a girl with no fear? I hear she would make a fine candidate, not even afraid of a giant, bold and curious. She would have been a terrific pledge.

  Bex looks up at the spires, tries to distract herself, wishing she could silence the voice, quell the rising guilt like bile in her soul. But with every step the girl’s voice grows louder, more pressing.

  Will you stop my killer? Or will you bring him into your new home where he can kill another child? Will you offer him succor? Or will you simply put him down before he kills again?

  She isn’t sure. She isn’t even sure that Scoop did it. According to Veerh, he didn’t, but what does Veerh know? The soldier is old, maybe too many grafts. Sometimes that happens. She’s seen it—augment addiction, collecting them, hoarding new augmentations even after they can no longer move from all the extra limbs. Nothing left but a mass of legs and arms, mouths and eyes, a wretched thing to be cared for and fussed over. It usually happens only to the wealthy. Veerh hardly seems the candidate for such mental illness.

  Statues appear out of the stone cliff face, primordial images of generations past. Stone ghosts, she muses. They stare unblinking at the travelers with small, simple eyes, their bodies intact and plain. Like me, she thinks. As they pass through archways and rock corridors, the statues change, some now with horns or teeth that don’t seem to fit. It’s a forced evolution, bodies lumped onto bodies, shifting the landscape of faces so that they resemble new animals, new people. The ancient guardians watch as she, Veerh, and Bindo trudge along towards the hidden sanctuary of the Tenders.

  “What do you want with her?” Bex asks.

  “Who do you mean?” Veerh asks without turning around. “The Matron?”

  “Who else?”

  “Same thing you want,” he says. “I want to prove that Scoop is innocent. I want to prove that you were wrongfully driven from the town. I want to return with something that provides a little order to the world.”

  “Stop lying,” Bex says. “You could have brought order back there. In fact, you could have just arrested me and held a trial. But you didn’t.”

  “I guess I could have.”

  “Why?”

  He takes a breath that echoes like wind through the canyon. “I overheard what the Lady of Meat and Bone spoke of with the Mayor. Maybe you didn’t, but I did. They don’t care one way or the other if Scoop did it. They only wanted you out. Had you stayed, you would have been put on trial. Maybe even harvested.”

  The thought chills her—torn limb from limb, her body used to patch others, her organs beating inside other bodies or sold. She hadn’t considered just how far the grieving mother and the Mayor might go.

  “But why come with me?” she asks. “Why come all this way when I was perfectly capable of seeing the Matron Tender myself?”

  “Maybe I want to meet the great leader of the Tenders,” Veerh replies. “It’s been a long time in that village, staring at the same buildings, the same faces. Maybe I wanted a vacation.”

  “Maybe you’re full of shit,” Bex says.

  “I’ve got no other answer that you would find more believable.”

  “Try me.”

  He stops and looks at her. She can see now that his face is very tired, almost sick.

  “Are you feeling okay?” she asks, her gaze drifting down to the patch under his arm. “I should clean that.”

  “No.” He recoils from her touch, his voice sharp. “I can’t explain it. But don’t touch it. Not for now.”

  “Is this why you want to talk to the Matron?”

  “I just want answers.”

  “To what?” She wants to strangle the Preserver. “What is this big question you can ask a complete stranger and not me?”

  Veerh walks over to a small outcropping of rocks and desert trees. He sits the way someone twice his age would sit, slow, gingerly, until his head rests on the bark of a thick dry trunk behind him. Veerh closes his eyes. Bex waits.

  The old soldier takes a few breaths, his chest rising and falling.

  Great. Now he needs a nap.

  “They are headed to the mountains,” Veerh says after a moment. “They’re talking about plans. Something about starting a… I don’t understand the word. They want something high up in the mountains, something huge, like a house. Once they get there they hope to leave, as if something beyond the Godcloud will come down and save them. But he doesn’t trust the other one. The older one is dangerous, but he doesn’t feel he has any choice. He wants to go home.”

  “Veerh?” she asks, waiting for his eyes to open. “What in the Plainsland are you talking about.”

  “Him. I’m talking about him.”

  “Who?”

  “Scoop.”

  She lets this sink in, then giggles a second before realizing he’s serious. “You just… dreamed that?”

  The old soldier shakes his head, eyes closed.

  “It isn’t dreams. More like images, waiting there for me to see them. I see it through his eyes, hear it through his ears. I hear their language. All the grunts and clicks. They talk, Bex. They have a language, a complex language, like us.”

  She holds up a hand. “I’ve done a hundred patches on people. You have a couple dozen horns, blades, wings, and everything else patched onto you. You’ve never once complained about this from them.”

  “I know,” he says. “Nor has anyone else. Maybe we’re all from the same place. Maybe that’s why. Maybe our bodies just know one another.” He looks up at her, his eyes small with sleeplessness. “I’m not a Patcher, Patcher. I’m just a guardian who hasn’t slept for months now.”

  “Months?” she says, blinking. “That’s impossible. Everyone sleeps.”

  “I sleep short intervals. It never feels like sleep, always looking out those eyes, looking down on the world. For a while I was looking at the inside of the barn. You know those scratches he leaves, the ones you thought were from his fidgeting?”

  “Yes.” She feels her body tremble, the thoughts and suspicions she’d had so long ago put to rest. He’s not from here. He’s from somewhere impossible.

  “That’s math. Counting. He’s ticking off the days he’s been stuck here. Then he left the barn and he ran off chasing your taalbstrider. And that’s where he met another.”

  “Another? You mean another like Scoop?”

  “Yes.” The Preserve
r takes a long stuttered breath. “The other one is older. Says he can get them off.”

  “Off what?” she asks.

  Veerh only shrugs. “It’s impossible.”

  “What is?”

  “Off this place. Out of the valley, past the Godcloud.”

  “Nothing goes beyond the Godcloud.” She is still shaking and doesn’t know why.

  He only shrugs. “That’s certainly what we’re taught, isn’t it? And now I’m seeing things not from here, witnessing things nobody has seen before. Places of vast darkness, filled with the lights of the horizon. Places where nothing breathes and people walk through corridors floating in the sky.”

  Bex shakes her head. “This all sounds crazy.”

  “I know it does.” He grunts. “Maybe it’s just a hallucination from the patch. Maybe some fever dream. You don’t have the answer, so I thought the Matron—” He closes his eyes again.

  She reaches down and feels his skin and recoils. “You’re burning up!”

  “I know.”

  His body is deathly hot. It’s clear to her now that he’s been hiding the fact, letting nobody get close to him. But now she feels him again, and he’s almost too hot to touch.

  “How long?” she asks, fighting the panic. She moves behind Bindo and pulls open a pouch. She had some emergency supplies in here.

  “A few days,” he says. “It hasn’t been that bad, honestly. I’ve been afraid that if I sat, I wouldn’t want to get back up again.” He forces a smile.

  “And you didn’t say anything?” She’d hit him if he weren’t so close to death, she’s so angry. “You could have died.”

  “I wanted to make it.”

  “Make it where? To your Ground Journey? You want to just curl up and die?”

  “Mmmm… sounds nice right now.” She glares at him. Veerh just chuckles. “Joke. I wanted to get close to the Matron. I want to know if this has ever happened before.”

  “Why?” She finds a pouch of hemmish herbs. It isn’t much, but she doesn’t have time to worry about it now. She chews the bitter leaves, rushes back to him and applies the mixture to the patch. “This needs to come off.”

  His hand manipulator hand stops her. “Not yet. Not until we find him.”

  “It’s badly infected. Your body is rejecting it.”

  “I am fighting a war, yes.” Veerh rolls his eyes up at her. “But not one you or I understand. If you remove the patch, then Scoop is lost.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean the second one. He isn’t to be trusted. He tells Scoop one thing and then does another. He holds secrets.” Veerh takes a breath. “Just give me more of that—whatever that goop is. I think it’s helping.”

  Bex applies the salve gently, spreading generous layers, watching his vital signs, monitoring his breathing. It’s like tending a young calf—fragile, shaking. So focused on the task, she’s surprised when she looks up and sees the light has changed. It’s been nearly an hour and her mouth is numb from the root.

  Veerh looks up at her, stands, stretches.

  “Let’s go,” he says.

  She packs away the remaining herbs and follows. All Bex can think about is that there’s another one. One besides Scoop.

  Another one from where?

  The statues give way to murals, entire stories told on the face of cliffs. Bex recognizes most of them from when she was young—childhood fairytales passed down through generations. She remembers sitting in her crèche with her littermates, looking up at the teacher, listening to the history songs.

  “It’s amazing these are still here,” she says, awed. “I learned about these when we were young. It’s all part of the training. I just never imagined I would actually see them in person.”

  “What are they?” Veerh asks at the mixed faces, the montages of wings and claws and open mouths.

  “Pequesmattl,” Bex says. “The Sky Climber.”

  “That’s a children’s story.”

  “A lot of children’s stories are told that way to make them easier to remember,” she says. “It doesn’t make the meaning any less.”

  He grumbles. Sometimes Veerh reminds her of Vin, from whom she inherited the farm. Veerh traces one of the statues with a hooked claw. “Who was Pequesmattl again?”

  “He was an explorer,” she says. “This is back when people invented things instead of scavenging.”

  “Cheaper to scavenge. So he was an artist.”

  “No. He was an inventor. He created new things, things that hadn’t ever existed. He used science to deduce ways to change how people thought about the world and the sky.”

  “So what happened to him?”

  “You never heard the tale?” she asks, amused.

  He shakes his head. “You hear bits and pieces sometimes. I’ve heard the name mentioned once, but it was a long time ago, during the wars.”

  “Pequesmattl had the idea that there could be something beyond the Godcloud, but nobody had ever gone that high. He also couldn’t figure out how to climb that high since not even the tallest mountain touches the Godcloud. Then one day, while playing with gasses and heat, he realized that certain gasses rose in the air while others sank. He used this to create a giant cloth balloon which he filled with air. See? There on the mural. You can see where he’s rising up towards the cloud.”

  “Looks like the cloud isn’t too happy,” Veerh says.

  “It’s not.”

  “I assume it didn’t end well for the inventor.”

  “Depending on who you ask, he was either eviscerated and fed to a billion insects, or his body simply fell apart and was spread on the wind where it was scavenged and passed down from generation to generation. Some think it was lightning that killed him. Nobody knows for sure.”

  “They don’t know because it’s a children’s story,” Veerh says.

  “That doesn’t mean parts aren’t true.”

  “I can see that someone might want to try something like that,” Veerh says. “I’ve known crazy enough people. But this?” He traces the feathered wing. “This isn’t even something that exists in nature. I challenge you to find me one thing that has wings like this, wings this big. Tales are nice and all if you’re trying to get to sleep at night, but they shouldn’t be taken as actual fact.”

  “Maybe you should learn a few more tales to sleep better,” she says. She means it as a joke but he doesn’t laugh.

  “Let’s just get to the Matron. I need to ask her if something like this has ever happened before.”

  “Why would it?” Bex asks. “We’ve never seen emergent creatures like this before. We should have had more time to study them before—”

  “Before people started grafting parts of them to us?” Veerh interrupts.

  “That was different! You were dying, and I had never done it before.” She takes a breath. “Fine. It’s my fault. Blame it on inexperience, but you’ve had more than one opportunity to have it removed and you refuse. I don’t share all the blame.”

  “We’ll let the Matron Tender decide.”

  “What?” Bex squeaks. “You brought me all the way here to turn me in? Have me revoked?”

  “Not as a Tender,” he says. “But as a Patcher you were thrust into the job. It’s not your fault Vin didn’t have time to teach you. Everything you learned was from the Tenders. How could anyone expect you to think differently?”

  “I was learning! And what puts you in the position to judge me?”

  “I’m a Preserver. It’s exactly my job to make sure things run smoothly in the town and as you can see by now or maybe you can’t, but there’s a dead child. Unsalvageable! And a runaway—whatever you call them these days.”

  “Scoop.”

  “Scoop has run away, you placed a clearly untested graft on me.”

  “To save your life!”

  “And now the clinic that Vin worked his entire life to build is in shambles. Did you know that people were starting to go elsewhere for care?”

  “
What?”

  He nods. “They were travelling a day, going into the next town, just to seek care from someone with more training. They don’t trust you, Bex. I’m sorry to be the one to say it, but they don’t.”

  The truth hurts more than an insult. She wants to slap him, push him over the rocks. But deep down, she knows nothing would change the truth. Veerh is the closest she has to a friend now, and he could be dying. Because of me.

  Instead she only asks, “And you?”

  “I’m not sure either.” He scratches his face. “Look. Just because you think you’re right doesn’t mean you are right. People don’t trust you, and you’ve done nothing to make them change their minds. From the moment you inherited that clinic, you’ve run it like your own personal project. You’ve been keeping experiments and livestock where people can’t get to them. You’ve performed any number of questionable patches on people, not to mention the religious crap you spout off every time they go in there. I’m honestly surprised they waited this long to tear it down.”

  Bex walks in silence, listening to the breathing of Bindo behind her and the crunch of gravel under their feet. “I just wanted to help.”

  “Of course you did. Everyone wants to help in their way, but that doesn’t always mean they’re equipped to help.”

  The last mural leading to the guild hall portrays the history of life. The shapes are familiar, embryonic shapes, the shapes of people before they decide to be people. There’s a vague evolution to the figures, with arms opened wide, growing and shrinking. Some of the figures lie in disarray, broken from vandalism, cemented to others so that they appear instead as spidery, multi-limbed creatures, neither animal or person. Some are all leg, some are all arm. Some are simply one big head. Other figures stretch along extended spines and legs, becoming things Bex can’t even label, abandoned evolutions, hardly recognizable as complete creatures. There is history beyond history here. She feels it like a whisper against her back.

  The road bends, curving around a steep rock face, and the guild hall comes into view, a massive dome, surrounded by ancient spires. Horns of the World lie dormant around its perimeter like the ribs of some long dead beast. Insects swarm around nests built into the cavities of statues and bricks. But aside from their buzzing, the entire area is silent.