PATCHER
Page 31
Scoop points at the package, then her leg, screws up his mouth and says, “Fix.”
She takes Veerh’s leg and begins to heal.
Chapter 38
CHAZ GROANS. Heat engulfs him, numbing everything. He licks his dry lips and they tingle. Drunk. His tongue feels like a leather strip in his mouth. He wants to call out for water, but his face won’t cooperate at first. All he manages is a tired groan.
For a long time he doesn’t want to look, doesn’t want to see them taking him apart, pulling layers of skin away, the way they stripped Valerie. He just wants it to be over. But it isn’t over.
Something tugs at his arm.
At first it’s all just a bright smudge, a lens behind cellophane. Blurred figures move back and forth in the light, fuzzy shadows, nothing close to human. Someone tugs again on his arm. Urgent, like a child trying to get his attention. He dreams of Valerie pulling on his sleeve and smiles for a moment.
His shoulder moves, though he has no control over it. His clothing pulls on his skin. His head lolls over to the right, and looks into the face of a spider.
Chaz stifles a scream. Two large eyes blink above an array of smaller black lenses. He can see eyelashes and small rings of stitches and scars, like buttons sewn onto a ragdoll. A facetted mouth opens and whistles birdsong at him as it continues to tug, tug, tug on his arm, pulling his sleeve down from the shoulder. He’s being fitted for a new suit, the tailor stretching the fabric where it resists, getting the fit just right.
“Who’s getting married?” he asks, the drugs making him giggle and wheeze.
The creature chirps.
“Someone’s getting married or you wouldn’t be making me such a nice suit.”
Patchwork ragdoll faces look to one another, chittering and whistling. They come to some agreement and then step aside. The crowd parts, letting through a new face.
It looks like any other random assortment of parts: eyes, nose, hair, all from different animals, all pieced together. Only the mouth is human, the jaw and teeth huge and awkwardly mounted on the bottom of the face. A larynx vibrates, sewn to the outside of the creature’s neck as it plays the human mouth like a tuba.
“YOU. LIFT. ARM,” it says to him in staggered, emotionless speech. “YOU. FIGHT. NOW.”
The tailor who had pulled his sleeve down steps away. He tries shrugging the creature off, realizing that his upper arm is still bound to the table.
“I can’t move,” he says.
“MOVE. ARM. TEST.”
“Look. I can’t move—”
There’s a pop and his wrist comes free. His hand is gone. There is, however, a long, thin machete-shaped blade carved from bone. Bolts and stitches jerry-rig the weapon to the end of his wrist. There is no sleeve. No fabric. No tailor or wedding. Just his own skin. Chaz begins to cry.
“What did you do?” he sobs. “What did you assholes do?”
The spider-faced creature pulls again at the skin on his shoulder. More pink slime spurts from an orifice in its chest, splattering on Chaz’s arm, loosening the skin, pulling it taut over the adhered bone blade. Another limb appears from behind the spider face. It sets to work, nailing tacks into the bone, leaving rivets in his skin. Another splat, and more pink goo congeals onto the seam.
Chaz opens his mouth to scream, but laughs instead.
*
“You promised he’d be safe,” Bex says to the poacher. “That’s our deal. You protect Scoop.”
“I gave you my word that I would not harm him,” Ak’klin waits at the gate for her. “You may need to make separate arguments to convince the Ameer. He may see your ward as something useful.”
“And you?”
“I will accompany you to collect my pay. Then I will return to my village. There is a king’s offer standing for the town. I will see to it that they take him up on his offer and that the offer is fair.”
“Why?” Bex asks. “Why suddenly so interested in the Ameer and what he thinks? It’s more than just money. Has to be.”
“The world is changing, Tr-Bex,” says the poacher. “It may be ending for all I know. War approaches from the west, and soon nobody living in the towns will be safe.” He looks up at Scoop, then out across the desert. “This is only a sign of things to come before the Slumber.”
“What?”
“Change, whether good or bad. It signals change, that our time here is perhaps short, that the world is perhaps much larger than we are able to understand. If creatures do exist beyond the Godcloud as Veerh says…”
Don’t look at me, Veerh says, just visible in her periphery vision. Was all a dream as far as I’m concerned. I’d just as soon forget it.
The Poacher gives her leg a glance. “Your graft is setting well. You could still be a fine Patcher if you chose.”
“I don’t think any of us are bound to our titles anymore,” she says. “You, a Poacher turned bureaucrat. Me, a Tender turned Patcher turned—I don’t even know anymore.”
“A trainer, perhaps,” Ak’klin says. “Already your beast speaks.”
She wants to correct him, but it’s pointless. Minds change slowly in her world.
The market stretches out before them, a sprawling gridwork of streets, awnings, shops, and apartments. The Ameer’s palace predominates all, looming in the distance with its clusters of turrets and windows. Here on the streets, bodies mingle about, customers, salesmen, crafters, merchants and thieves. They cook, eat, barter, haggle, joke, and argue. The variety of faces, torsos, limbs and clothing is staggering. But these people are hers, a culture of adaptation at any cost, a society that’s lasted for thousands of generations.
They’ve been standing here over an hour and she’s still not sure she’s ready.
“We have an appointment,” Ak’klin says.
“I know. I know. I’m just not used to so many people.”
“These are the outliers,” he says. “This is the new city, with new strength to hold back our enemies.”
“You mean the Deep King.”
Ak’klin stares out across the city. A small shudder runs down his back. He scratches his side nervously. “Maybe the arrival of your pet is a sign of the inevitable, but I come from a long line of tradition. I don’t intend to let change dictate my life to me.”
“We have a choice,” Bex says. “We always have a choice.”
“Bex.” A voice so deep and loud it still startles her. It isn’t an exact pronunciation of her name, but it’s close enough. Scoop towers over her, points out into the city and says more in that slow, sloppy voice. “Lift?”
“Sure,” she says. She looks down at her new leg, so mottled and war-worn. It seems silly to have a leg so armored. Still it makes her think of Veerh, and that makes her happy in a way. Until it heals completely, she knows she has to stay off of it. She looks up at the giant and says, “Lift.”
The giant picks her up with his hands and places her on his shoulder. The world shifts and now she sees farther than she ever expected, towering above the crowd of refugees into the city. Maybe all that matters is a difference in perspective, Bex thinks as she looks out across the streets and buildings, where the Ameer’s palace sits like a burning gem at the city’s heart.
* * *
Afterword
This is the second and hopefully not the last of the Patcher series. I’ve always been a fan of pulpy science fiction. I hoard Heavy Metal magazines. Growing up, I was extremely fond of David Brin’s UPLIFT series, a collection of books that sticks with me still today, and a terrific take on alien cultures and all the varied shapes and sizes they might be.
The creatures on Bex’s world speak in a language we should barely be able to understand. It’s a kind of birdsong, in a high range, where every pitch and tone matters. Every click and chirp has a nuance that could mean numerous things at once. Kendal is not only ill-equipped to speak it—he can barely make the sounds—but his ear also doesn’t pick up every overtone. Hence, communication is an eternal barrier between him a
nd the inhabitants of Bex’s world. It’s also a challenge for me, as the author, to properly convey this persistent obstacle. It makes not only for misunderstandings, but can also lead more closed-minded individuals to assume Kendal is stupid.
This sort of inter-species misunderstanding is all too common in our world today. Only within the last few decades has science begun to show signs that all animals live in a much more complex reality than we’d been giving them credit for. I look forward to the day we decipher dolphin speech and hear the first one ask, “What the fuck are you guys doing to my ocean?”
I have to thank a number of people for helping this book become a reality: My editor, Lucy Stone, who was a tremendous help in cleaning up the final draft. Present-tense can be a tricky style to write in. I’d also like to thank my wife for her inexhaustible support. Beta readers include Charles Barnard, Fertessa Allyse Scott, and the wonderful feedback circle at Critters.org.
-MK
Moscow ID, January 1st 2016
Martin Kee is a native of rural California, where he spent much of his childhood inventing methods of entertaining himself. Writing emerged as the most legally defensible of these activities, one which he still pursues today. He has written a number of books, including A LATENT DARK, GLEAN, and BLOOM (Or, the unwritten memoir of Tennyson Middlebrook). His stories typically involve people dying in unusual and horrible ways.
He lives in Idaho with his wife and a menagerie of small furry animals.
For updates and news, you can follow him on:
Twitter @fersnerfer https://twitter.com/fersnerfer
His Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/martinkeeauthor
And his blog: http://martinkeeis.me/
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38