Zenn Scarlett

by Christian Schoon

  Zenn hurried over to him.

  “Hamish, I’m so sorry. I thought you knew we had one of these. I didn’t mean to scare you like that.”

  “You… did not… mean,” he muttered, still crouching. “Very… well. You did not… mean the scaring.” He raised up slowly to his full height, mirror eyes riveted on the animal slithering back and forth on the other side of the fence. “I will state… that I was unaware of this slaughter-creature… confined here.”

  She felt terrible. Of course she shouldn’t have provoked the animal like that. Not without warning Hamish. Rasputin was a Sirenic Scolopendra colossi – a giant, multi-legged arthropod; more or less consisting of a huge, florescent-orange centipede back section with what looked like a tarantula growing out of its front end. With roughly seven hundred legs on the hind portion of its flattened, segmented body, and scimitar-sized mandibles in front, Rasputin’s kind were the alpha predators in the densest jungle regions of Hamish’s home moon. Voracious and swift, the big insectoids were ambush hunters, and careless coleopts – like Hamish – still fell prey to them from time to time.

  “I’m really sorry,” Zenn said again.

  Hamish said nothing as they moved beyond the bloodcarn’s cage, with Hamish giving it an especially wide berth. The creature emitted a parting hiss at them, then returned to the center of its cage. Vibrating its multiple legs in unison to agitate the leaves and rocks around it, it quickly submerged out of sight and was still.

  “Here, Hamish,” she said after they’d gone by several more cages. She’d stopped in front of one of the larger fenced enclosures. “This is where we keep the yotes.” He eyed the pen suspiciously, and halted several feet away. She tried to sooth him: “No surprises here, I promise. Did you bring the syringes?”

  He patted the satchel slung from a strap around his shoulder.

  “I have them here, as instructed.”

  “Good,” she said. “We’ll be vaccinating Ernie today. He’s the big guy, over there.”

  “Yes. He is a large… guy,” Hamish said, taking one step closer and eyeing the yote dozing in the sun in the far corner of the pen. A little taller than an Earther buffalo, yotes looked to Zenn like morbidly obese hyenas, with short legs, a pig-like corkscrew tail and gray-green leopard-spots over bristly, dirty-yellow fur. “What do these mammal-yotes eat?” he asked.

  “Not beetles, if that’s what you’re thinking,” Zenn said, seeing the nervous twitching of Hamish’s antennae. “They’re scavengers, from the savannahs on Procyon. They eat carrion, dead animals left over from the kills of bigger predators. See those jaws? Yotes can snap an ultratheer’s thighbone like a Solstice candy cane.”

  “You will feed him dead ultratheer creatures?”

  “Not specifically. Otha saves stuff for the yotes from the surgery. Excised tissue, body parts, bones. And garbage from the kitchen. We put it all in here.” Zenn went to the recycled fifty-five-gallon biodiesel drum that held the yotes’ food. “It has to decompose in here for a few days. Otha calls it ‘ripening.’ Then we feed it to them.”

  “And they like it? All rotten?”

  “You could say that.” Zenn thumped the top of the drum with one hand, and Ernie came instantly awake. Spotting her, he galloped heavily over to the chain link fence, massive jaws already streaming ropes of thick saliva.

  “Ernie, this is Hamish,” Zenn said.

  “Greetings, yote-Ernie. I am joyful to meet you.”

  Ernie ignored this, eyes locked on the food drum. Extending her arms as far as she could to maintain maximum distance from the stench of decayed flesh and kitchen slops, Zenn popped open the lid of the barrel. The smell was still overpowering. Ernie pushed up against the fence in anticipation. A globular, blue-veined pouch of exposed flesh protruded from the yote’s throat. As Ernie shoved at the fence, it sloshed back and forth, producing a sound that always made Zenn slightly queasy.

  “What is that, on his neck? The bulging?” Hamish pointed with one claw.

  “That’s his neck crop. It’s still half-full from his last meal. Yotes like their food really rank. He stores it up there until it’s broken down enough to swallow.”

  Zenn opened the small feeding door in the fence, then took the ladle hanging from the side of the barrel and sloshed some of the disgusting contents into the trough below the door. Ernie buried his face in the trough and, with a sound of slurping liquid and crunching bone, ate with gusto.

  “Alright, he’s occupied with breakfast. Hand me the syringe. The big one.” Hamish gave her the pneuma-ject syringe she’d loaded with vaccine earlier that morning.

  She pulled off the tip-protector and was just about to reach in through the feeding door and administer the first shot when her uncle walked around the corner of the nearest enclosure. She was surprised to see he had two boys with him – and they definitely weren’t boys from anywhere on Mars.

  “Here she is. Zenn, this is Areth,” Otha said, gesturing at the older one. “And this is… sorry, I didn’t catch your name, son.”

  “I am Fane, Fane Reth Fanesson,” the younger boy said, looking past Zenn at the slurping yote.

  “This is my niece, Zenn,” Otha said. “She’s a novice here at the cloister. And this is Hamish, our sexton.”

  The boys dipped their heads at them. Zenn raised her hand in greeting, felt suddenly awkward, and dropped it again. The younger boy looked about her age. Both had olive skin, high cheekbones and lean, muscular builds. Their appearance left no doubt: they were from the human colonies established over two centuries ago on the lone planet circling Procyon. Both had the same reddish brown hair, falling long and loose on one side of their head, the other side cut short in the Procyoni style. Each wore a long-tailed shirt of some rough, coarse-woven fabric belted at the waist and animal skin boots that reached to the knees – the older boy’s tunic was tawny gold, the younger boy’s forest green.

  The older boy, she was interested to see, had several anitats. She’d seen these mood-controlled active tattoos once before, on the arms of the Indra groom who’d been there when her mother perished. The boy’s anitats swirled and shifted on the skin visible at his wrists and neck, and he also sported an assortment of metal rings and studs on his face and ears. The other boy had no tattoos or ornaments, but wore colored beads and small feathers woven into his hair on the long side. Zenn realized she was staring, and quickly looked down, then at Ernie.

  “Areth and Fane just came down on the ferry from the Helen of Troy,” Otha said. “They’re here to collect the whalehound.”

  “Oh… you work for the Leukkan royal family?” Zenn said. Of course they did; they were here for the Kiran’s whalehound. She was flustered, having strangers on the grounds. Especially young ones. Especially Procyoni boys. She had to make an effort not to continue staring at them.

  “We have the privilege of serving Princeling Sool,” the older boy said, with a tone of voice and disinterested look that said this fact clearly elevated him above a lowly novice exovet. Zenn felt her face going red. “The Princeling has taken a deck of suites aboard the Helen of Troy.”

  “They’ve brought a bulk container-trailer for the hound; it’s out in the front drive. And,” Otha grinned at Zenn, “they’ve also brought us a little surprise.”

  Zenn was fully familiar with her uncle’s “little surprises.” Like when she was eight. Otha had carefully concealed a Dantean sulpher-newt inside a cast-off eggshell. He then placed the egg beneath a brooding axebill hen. When Zenn arrived and pulled the egg out, it cracked open to reveal the understandably annoyed little lizard, which promptly blew a defensive puff of shockingly bad breath at her.

  “Look what hatched, unca,” she’d exclaimed to him, holding her nose. “A baby dragon!”

  Then there was the infamous case of the Encharan jumpworms Otha had hidden in her backpack. And the birthday cake that sprouted legs and walked off the table. He’d never told her what kind of animal he’d used for that “little surprise,” but promised her repea
tedly no harm was done to the creature.

  No, she had good reasons for not liking the look of her uncle’s mischievous grin.

  “Otha?” she asked warily. “What kind of surprise, exactly?”

  “You’ll see,” was all he said. “Now, I’ve got to go finish up the billing for the hound.” He turned to the Procyoni boys. “When Zenn is finished here, why don’t you boys show her what you brought down from the Helen?”

  “Fane, you will show her,” the one called Areth said to the younger boy. “And be quick about it. Groom Treth will be impatient to have the princeling’s animal safely aboard. I will accompany the director-abbot and meet you at the vehicle.” His tone indicated he was used to giving orders, and used to having them obeyed.

  Otha and Areth walked off, leaving Zenn and Hamish with the younger boy.

  “So… Fane… you have something for us, in the trailer?” Zenn asked.

  “As the healer just said.” The boy’s expression was blank, his dark eyes unapologetically scanning her.

  “Can you tell us what it is?” Zenn said, trying hard to be patient.

  “It is an animal. A large animal.” He made no effort to elaborate and, it seemed to Zenn, enjoyed keeping her in suspense.

  Alright. Be that way. I don’t care, then.

  From behind her, Ernie crunched a particularly thick bone in the trough, reminding her that she had work to do. Giving the yote his shots was going to be tricky enough, even without some strange kid looking over her shoulder.

  “Ever seen yotes? In the wild, I mean?” she said, affecting a casual tone and holding the pneuma-ject syringe up to check the dosage it held.

  “They are from Procyon, my world. I am familiar.”

  Not exactly chatty.

  She took a little longer than strictly necessary to check the syringe in her hand, thinking she probably looked very professional to this boy in his homemade tunic and rustic boots. Here she was, a Ciscan novice exovet, just going about her everyday duties, wrangling a big, male yote, expertly giving him injections, no big deal, really.

  “They’re prone to common distemper, you know.” she said, gesturing with the syringe. “But we’ve never had a case here, at the cloister.”

  “Hm,” the boy said, folding his arms. “Does this injection hurt them?”

  “No. Well, not much, if you do it right.” She moved close to the small door in the fence, breathing through her mouth to avoid the stench of the animal’s breath, fetid with the smell of decaying flesh. When Ernie dipped his head into the trough again, Zenn darted her hand through the feeding door and touched the pneuma-ject tip to the back of his huge neck. He flinched and reared, but she had already stepped back – quickly, but not so quickly the boy might think she was afraid.

  “And that’s that,” she said, trying to sound nonchalant. “It’s not that tough. When you know what you’re doing.”

  Ernie made a throaty, low-pitched groaning noise, his head suspended above the trough.

  “Is he upset?” the boy asked.

  “No. He’s fine. Yotes often vocalize like that.”

  Ernie stood very still.

  “He seems upset.”

  What? This Procyoni boy is going to educate me about my own yote?

  “No. Actually, we’ve had this yote here for over a year,” she said, taking a second syringe from Hamish and holding it aloft. “And I’ve never…”

  A ghastly, retching sound suddenly detonated from inside Ernie, his jaws fell open, muscles contracted, and in a single, concentrated stream of thick saliva, rotting meat and half-digested body parts, he emptied the entire contents of his neck crop onto Zenn. A second later, she added to the reeking semi-liquid substance that encased her by also vomiting herself.

  TWENTY

  Both Hamish and the boy had jumped back out of the way and stood looking at her. The boy’s mouth was slightly agape. Then he laughed. Not a long laugh. Just a short, derisive “Heh.”

  “Novice Zenn.” Hamish came up to her, reached out, but stopped short of actually touching her. “Are you injured?”

  “No,” she said, attempting to speak without opening her mouth and being forced to taste the substance covering her face like a warm, wet mask.

  “The yote was upset,” the boy said. He laughed at Zenn once more for good measure, although, she also told herself later, this laugh might not have been as mocking as the first one.

  It took Zenn a full ten minutes to clean up. And she still smelled foul enough to almost make herself gag. When she finally emerged from the small bathroom at the back of the infirmary wearing a clean pair of coveralls, the boy was standing by the back wall, reading one of the anatomical charts hanging there. Hamish had been called away to help Hild in the garden. He seemed happy to be as far from Zenn as possible.

  The boy turned as she entered the room. Zenn wondered if he’d smelled her coming.

  “We should go to the trailer now,” the boy said. “Areth will want to get back to the ship.”

  She was almost over her intense embarrassment, but could feel her cheeks continuing to burn.

  “So, what do you do?” she asked him as they left the infirmary and started across the grounds. “I mean, on the ship?”

  “You are familiar with the term ‘groom’s sacrist’?” He came up close behind her as she walked, then dropped back a few paces, waving one hand in front of his face. She pretended not to notice.

  She’d heard this term – the sacrist was some sort of assistant to an Indra groom. And she knew the position involved the rituals surrounding the groom’s work as starship pilot, but that’s all. The esoteric ceremonies conducted in a starship’s Indra chambers weren’t exactly public knowledge.

  “You’re an assistant, then. The groom’s helper.” She looked at him hopefully.

  Maybe this will get him talking. Boys like to talk about themselves, don’t they?

  “A sacrist is no simple helper,” he said, sounding offended at her ignorance. “They are the keeper of the Shuryn Dohlm – the sacred altar. They are also the chamber’s mechanical worker and the speaker of the Path to Threshold prayer. They harvest the salviapine branches of offering that are placed on the Shuryn Dohlm, and gather the herbs bound into the incense that is burned. Without the sacrist, the groom would be unable to enter into commune with her Stonehorse.”

  “Yes, the incense,” Zenn said. “I’ve always wondered why you do that. Burn it in the Indra pilot room, I mean.”

  “Why burn incense?” He laughed another of his brief laughs. “Without the smoke to lift our prayers to the realm of the Ghost Shepherds, they would turn their faces from us. The Stonehorse would refuse the groom’s communing. Tunneling would not be possible. Starships would go nowhere.”

  “The Ghost Shepherds. You really believe they watch over the Indra herds? That they’re actually out there, somewhere, listening to you?”

  “Clearly they are there. The proof is abundant. The Stonehorse tunnels at the groom’s summoning, do they not? It is the Shepherd’s blessing that permits this.”

  “But couldn’t it just be the Indra, responding to the groom’s intentions? I mean, the groom visualizes the destination, and the ship’s computer interface transmits this to the Indra, and then it tunnels.”

  “Without the Shepherds’ blessing? Impossible. The groom’s thoughts would be… gibberish without the Shepherds’ guidance. Humankind is too lowborn to commune with the Stonehorse without the Shepherds’ intervention. This is the way of things. This is the truth passed down every generation within the Procyoni people.”

  “Yes, but just because your elders say it’s true, doesn’t make it so,” Zenn said, growing exasperated with the boy’s apparent unwillingness to argue according to her idea of the facts. “New research shows that Indra are responding to cortical theta waves – to the electrical activity inside the brains of their grooms. The nav-computer records the waves and…”

  “Waves? Heh.” The boy laughed. “We need no waves to show u
s the truth of the Ghost Shepherds. The fact that the communing allows travel among the stars is all the proof we require.”

  “Yes, but that’s my point,” she said. “Things happen for a reason. If you just accept somebody’s word, and they just accepted somebody else’s word, you’re just believing things because you’re told to. Not because you actually know the original cause.”

  “The original cause of the Stonehorse’s power? That is hidden from us. It lies in the hearts of the Shepherds, and we cannot know it. It is much too awesome a thing for a lowly human being to comprehend.”

  “But…” Zenn fought to keep her voice from rising to a shout. “You might as well believe in magic then. And… and… garden fairies.”

  “Fay-reeza, yes,” the boy said, looking solemn. “I have heard of these beings. On Tandua. They lurk in the dens of swamp sloos and are known to turn men into mud-hoppers.”

  “No! No, they do not live there, and they do not turn men into mud-hoppers!” Zenn’s exasperation had now reached the point that she hardly knew how to respond.

  “Oh? And you can bring me proof that a certain mud-hopper was not once a certain man?”

  “No, I can’t prove that. You can’t prove a negative, alright?”

  “Ha! As I thought.”

  Zenn was fighting to cool down enough to marshal a counterattack when they stepped through the side gate into the cloister drive. In the center of the gravel expanse, the container-trailer was parked behind the separate truck cab that pulled it. The trailer was about one hundred feet long, and consisted of a thick-walled, rectangular metal structure that could be lifted off its wheels and stacked in a starship hold. The gleaming white trailer appeared brand-new and bore the shield-like coat of arms of the Leukkan Kire royal household. The truck that pulled the trailer was, however, obviously Martian – old and rusted, but looking as if someone had at least taken the effort to hammer out the larger dents.

  The boy walked around the side of the trailer, and she followed.

  “Oh,” she said, pointing. “You’ve got vomit. On your boot.”