Ten Sigmas & Other Unlikelihoods

by Paul Melko

  Haron was there first, kneeling and pushing his eye into the space. Edeo danced around him, tried the other two windows to no avail.

  “Watcha see?”

  “Shhh,” Haron said, not because he was afraid Fruge would hear them but rather because he had nothing to report. All he saw was an empty, cement-block-lined basement.

  Then Fruge appeared, coming down steps on the far side of the basement. He carried a bag. He laid it on the ground and drew from it a crowbar. Then he pulled open a door and thrust the crowbar into the small dark space beyond. He wiggled it, urging something forth. He reached in and grabbed a rope and pulled.

  Something moved forward in a huddle, sliding across the floor. When Haron saw what it was, he jumped back, which was enough for Edeo to take his place at the window.

  Edeo gasped. He turned to his friend and said, “He has a snail.”

  It was just stuff everybody knew, stuff from school, stuff from parents, stuff from older brothers. The colony ship arrived with eminent domain. There was no way the ship was going back! That would have been outrageous.

  And the snails weren’t even that intelligent. No tools, no language, no cities. Not really molluscs, but they looked enough like their namesake, if two meters tall instead of two millimeters. How can a snail be sentient?

  And when humans figured out you could pry the pretty gems off their carapaces and they’d grow back, well. That was just another resource to be used. The fact that the crystals had different composition depending on what you fed the snails, that was just grease for the herding and round-up of twenty million slugs.

  By the time Edeo and Haron were born, there wasn’t a snail on the northern continent, and only a handful on the southern. But Fruge had one in the basement of that abandoned building, and he was prying the gems loose to sell. And now Edeo and Haron knew.

  They shared a horrified glance, and then they ran. They ran home as fast as they could in the face of this unfathomable perversion, all the way home.

  They skidded to a halt outside Edeo’s building, their chests heaving, their legs leaden.

  “We should tell . . .” Haron started, then stopped.

  Edeo shook his head, then they swore each other to silence and promised to meet the next day. Haron asked for the stone, but Edeo swore it would be safe with him. He snuck it upstairs to the room he shared with Gremon without seeing his brother and slipped it under his mattress. Perhaps Gremon would forget all about the indignity Edeo had foisted upon him. But probably not.

  Haron, sworn to secrecy about their snail, was not so sworn on snails in general.

  “Mom, any snails around here?” he asked.

  “Snails all gone, sweetie,” she replied, her head mounted unmoving in front of the vid.

  “Yeah, any still around?”

  “In the zoo, maybe. Maybe on the south continent. Shush now. My favorite part.”

  Haron shrugged and went off to bed, sleeping fitfully on his mattress that protected no stone. Edeo slept just as poorly, but they both met ready the next morning.

  “What happened to you?”

  Edeo touched his tender eye. “Gremon.”

  “Yeah. Got it?”

  “Got it.”

  “We should go to the zoo. See if there’s any snails there,” Haron said.

  Edeo shook his head. “Naw. Zoo’s three buses away. Take all day.”

  “What then?”

  “Where’s Fruge right now?”

  “In his store.”

  “He’s there all day, right?” Edeo said. “He’s not with the snail.”

  “What are you saying?”

  Edeo said, “Let’s go look at the snail right here.”

  Haron shook his head, but he already knew he’d be going with Edeo. They walked back to the spaceport ruins, hiding in their doorway, waiting until they were sure the building was empty, then they sauntered across the road and tried the door.

  “Locked,” Haron said.

  Edeo knelt down and jiggled the window they’d looked through the night before.

  “Locked too,” Haron said.

  Edeo surveyed the street; he walked along the length of the building. The building to the left was in much worse a state of decay than Fruge’s. Its door hung off its hinges and it looked liked squatters had camped there not too long ago. Both buildings were the same height.

  “Roof,” Edeo said. They pushed their way through the door, blinking in the darkness. Right there, steps led up. Edeo took them first, testing each one with his weight. On the first landing, rats scurried away into dark shadows.

  “Cool,” Haron said.

  They found a ladder on the top floor that opened onto the roof. From there they had a fabulous view of the spaceport. A dozen rockets stood beside gangways, ready to ride fire into the sky. They paused to write the numbers on their fins in Haron’s book.

  Though the two buildings had looked the same height, Fruge’s in fact was a meter lower. Edeo jumped down, rolling on the gravel-tar. Haron shook his head and dropped down after hanging by his arms first.

  The roof door was locked, but the lock was so rusted that it gave when Edeo pulled on it. Down they walked, eyes alert for snails in dark corners.

  “Whoa!” Haron said. He had nearly stepped into darkness. The entire first floor was demolished, leaving a view into the basement from the second floor. All that was left was a narrow path to the basement stairs.

  They fell to their stomachs and looked over the edge. The door behind which the snail was caged was invisible in the darkness.

  “No way down,” Haron said.

  “Rope,” Edeo said.

  “No way, man,” Haron said. “It’s just a snail.”

  “Fruge is using it,” Edeo said. “Don’t you see? We have to help it.”

  “This isn’t about getting more jewels?”

  “No!”

  “Quiet!”

  The door of the building opened, and Fruge entered. Light filled the basement as he hit the switch. He carried a bundle.

  Fruge took the steps carefully, then threw his bundle on the ground. It clattered and clanked, revealing that it was metal parts: junk.

  He opened the door and used the rope to pull the snail out. In the dim bulbs of the basement, the snail’s carapace glittered with rainbow iridescence. There were no jewels, though Fruge hunted for any that might have formed. He shined a flashlight around the edges of the snail, which tried to slide away from him, but appeared to have no purchase on the floor.

  “Nothing!” Fruge muttered. “Nothing growing on you today.”

  He crossed to the bundle and pulled out what looked like a handful of steel ball bearings.

  “See what this will do, eh? I lost one, so I need another fast.”

  The snail’s head disappeared under its shell as Fruge approached, but he reached right in and grasped it by the swirling antennae of which the snail had three. The head popped out, and Fruge wedged its mouth open with a knee. He dropped the ball bearings in, and then held the mouth closed.

  “I’ve been trying to find cobalt, but who carries that? It costs more to feed you than I can make in gems off your back. Can’t get but a tenth what they’re worth due to the munis.”

  The snail tossed its head, trying to dislodge its food, tossing its head and grunting. Fruge took a handful of nuts and bolts, pulled opened the snail’s mouth again, and forced them in.

  It slurped and burbled, choking, but the snail was unable to dislodge what was forced into its mouth, unable to vomit. It grunted and twisted, but Fruge held it steady with a grip on its tender antennae.

  Edeo and Haron watched as Fruge again filled the snail’s gullet with bits of metal, even some glass and rocks, all sorts of junk, waiting until the material disappeared from its mouth. When the bag was empty, he pushed the snail back into its cave and left.

  Edeo said to Haron, “See? We have to help.”

  Haron nodded slowly.

  The rope they stole from Edeo’s house.
For a time, his father had held a job as a painter, until he’d started showing up too drunk to climb a ladder. But he still had a neat coil of rope that Edeo snuck from his “workshop” one night while he was passed out on the couch. They gathered lillweed seeds and scattered them all over the street outside the building. As every child knew, a lillweed seed had a bit of compressed air inside that it used to blow itself far from its parent; but, before autumn came, the seeds made excellent noise toys, or, in this case, early warning systems. The third thing they gathered was native plants.

  This proved rather difficult. The colony ship had brought fine strains of plants that ousted the local varieties with little effort. There didn’t seem to be a tree in Old Firstfall that wasn’t an oak, maple, or elm.

  Finally Edeo said, “Ball trees didn’t come from Earth.”

  “No?”

  “No way.” They looked over the fence at Mr. Hebway’s garden.

  “Look at that,” Haron said. In addition to the ball tree, Hebway had lillweed plants, rotordendrends, rozes, and blue-eyed susies. Instead of stealing balls, that night they took handfuls of the native plants, ripping them up by the root or breaking their stems.

  The next day, after they were certain Fruge was well ensconced in his store, they scattered the lillweed seed up and down the street. Then they climbed the building, knotted the rope every foot, and lowered it down to the basement level.

  Edeo glanced at Haron, and Haron shrugged his shoulders. They did stones with their fingers and Edeo lost. He reached for the rope and descended hand-over-hand into the basement, some six meters down.

  “Toss it down,” he whispered, then louder, “Toss it down.”

  Haron dropped the bundle of native plants, and they fell with a thwack on the basement floor.

  “Come on.”

  Haron descended, and they turned to face the snail’s door.

  “Maybe we can just toss it through the door,” Haron said.

  Edeo shook his head. The door was wooden, painted gray, and peeling. It shut with a simple latch. He took a step toward it, then another, and finally reached forward to undo the latch before backpeddling away. The door squeaked, then slowly tilted open thirty degrees before scraping on the concrete floor. Darkness lay within.

  Edeo peered into the space. The snail peered back with its floppy antennae. It emitted a chuff, its mucous membrane rattling above its maw. A whiff of iron, blood-like, washed over him.

  “Phew.”

  “Maybe it’s saying ‘Hi,’” Haron said.

  “Or ‘Where’s Fruge?’”

  Edeo took the bundles of native flora in his hands, reached toward the snail with it. The snail twisted its three antennae, craned them in three directions as if to get a trinocular view of the proffered vegetable matter. Then it jumped forward with more speed than Edeo had thought possible, slurping the material into its gullet.

  Edeo fumbled backward, surprised by the speed. Its face was gray and eyeless. The antennae swarmed and danced, taking in the boys and their food. Its mouth, shaped into a perpetual underbite, was twenty-five centimeters wide and opened into its flabby, sack-like gullet.

  Haron said, “We certainly didn’t have to force feed the thing like Fruge.”

  “No,” Edeo said, mesmerized by the massive snail. It was taller than he was by twenty centimeters and he was taller than Haron.

  The snail chuffed again, then burbled. It advanced, then stopped with a jingle. Haron realized that the snail’s shell was chained to the wall of its cave.

  “That wagger welded him to the wall!”

  Edeo picked up the rest of the bundle and fed it piece by piece to the snail. When the last of the material had disappeared, the snail sent an antenna slithering around Edeo’s palm, leaving a trail of mucous.

  “Ick,” he said.

  Haron laughed, then jumped as another antenna entered his pocket faster than he could back away.

  “Hey!”

  But then the feeler had withdrawn, holding the ball that he’d picked from Mr. Hebway’s ball tree. The snail ate it.

  “That was our last ball.”

  “Yeah,” said Edeo. “We’re going to need a whole bunch more.”

  *

  They couldn’t keep raiding Mr. Hebway’s garden; he’d have noticed pretty quickly at the rate the snail consumed plants. But with the flora in the garden as a guide, the two managed to find small sanctuaries of native plants within a few kilometers of the building. In fact, the fields around the spaceport housed a dozen prairie fields of gila grass, bleet weed, and curdleberries. Of these, the snail showed a distinct bias toward the gila grass, eating this first before anything else.

  They visited the snail every day, determining Mr. Fruge’s schedule quickly. He came every other day with a load of metal to feed the snail. At the same time, he scoured its shell for any new jewels that were forming, and if they were large enough, he pried them off with a crowbar, causing the snail to erupt in mucousy, blubbery moans.

  Watching Fruge feed the snail nauseated Edeo. Finally, after one such feeding, Edeo immediately descended when Fruge left, stuck his hand down the snail’s throat, and retrieved as much of the metal as he could.

  “What are you doing?” Haron shrilled.

  “Getting this crap out of our snail!”

  “Our snail?”

  Edeo dumped a pile of nails on the floor. His arm up to his shoulder was covered in slime.

  “Yeah. We treat him way better than Fruge,” Edeo said.

  The snail sat obediently as Edeo emptied its gullet, then it slid forward and rooted through the pile of junk. It took several blue-colored ball bearings in its tendrils and scooped them back into its mouth.

  “It wants those, apparently,” Haron said. The rest of the junk it left on the floor.

  Edeo’s head whipped around at the sound of popping on the street.

  “Fruge!” he cried. “He’s coming back!”

  Haron jumped for the rope, scurrying up onto the second floor. “Come on!”

  Edeo looked around the floor at the piles of slimy junk. Fruge would know for sure that someone had found his snail. Edeo grabbed a handful of the metal and threw it behind some barrels.

  The popping sound grew louder.

  “Come on, Edeo!” Haron said. “Leave it.”

  “No! Pull up the rope.”

  He took another handful, tossing the junk atop the rest with a clatter. He pushed the snail back into its cave and grabbed the last of the metal, hiding himself with the junk behind the barrels.

  A key rattled in the lock of the door.

  He searched the floor for some sign of them, then made sure Haron had pulled up the rope. Nothing in sight.

  Then he saw the half-ajar door!

  Cursing issued from the front door, as Fruge searched for the right key. Edeo bounded forward, slammed the door shut, slid the bolt, and dashed back to his spot just as the light flashed on.

  Edeo listened and Haron watched from above as Fruge creaked down the steps. His bag jingled with scrap. Edeo crouched lower as he saw his shadow pass on the floor not far from him. Fruge opened the gate and dragged the snail out.

  “You need more junk, I think, if I’m going to get more jewels,” Fruge said.

  Edeo listened, his anger growing, as Fruge stuffed their snail with heavy metal. After he had left and the last sounds of the lillweed seed popping under his feet had faded away, Haron descended again.

  Edeo turned to him. “We have to get our snail out of here.”

  *

  They tried a hacksaw that Haron had swiped from a trike repair shop while Edeo distracted the owner, but the blade didn’t even scratch the chain that held the snail in its cave. The far end was embedded in the rock wall, not into plaster, but into granite with spikes that must have been twenty centimeters long. The only thing that had any effect on the chain was a rasp file that Edeo stole from his step-dad’s workshop, but it was soon clear it would take days of muscle-numbing work to get thr
ough the metal.

  “This is useless,” Haron said.

  Edeo was bent over the back of the snail, rasping. The snail was sniffing at Haron’s pocket for the ball he had hidden there. He giggled as the tendril plunged in and pulled it out. The snail was far better than a dog.

  “Is not.”

  “Snail won’t eat anything but curdleberries today. We’ll have to go get some more.”

  Edeo looked up. “Not even the lillweed roots. He loved those before.”

  “Naw. Balls and curdleberries is all he’s eating.” Haron looked around. “And a kilo of copper wiring.”

  “Sheesh.”

  Haron’s head tilted. “What was that?”

  They pushed the snail back into its cave.

  “It’s way early for Fruge.” After a week they had his comings and goings down: every other day to feed the snail and check for new jewels. And sometimes he brought a second load of metal, so they had to be careful.

  Just as Haron was going for the rope, it jerked up into the air.

  Someone laughed above them.

  “Gremon,” Edeo whispered fiercely.

  “What you little boys doing in the basement all alone? Comparing sizes?” His head appeared over the edge.

  “None of your business,” Edeo said.

  “Yeah? You think?” He slid down the rope, one hand out raised. “Let’s see what you’re doing down here.”

  Edeo moved to stand in front of the gate, casually with one hand on the wall. Gremon looked around the basement, smiled once at Edeo. “What’s behind the door?”

  He pushed Edeo out of the way, pulled the door open.

  “Marbles? Dirty pictures? Rock co —” His voice shriveled inside him, as he backed away. He pushed Edeo in front of him. “What!” He tripped over his own feet as the snail slid forward waving its antennae. A weird trilling sound came from the snail, one that Haron and Edeo had never heard before.

  Gremon ran up the steps, his face white, his pants wet. He slammed against the locked door, turned the lock with fumbling hands, and disappeared into the street.

  The snail’s trilling turned to a heavy chuff.

  “I think he’s laughing,” Haron said, rubbing under the snail’s mouth.