Zenn Scarlett

by Christian Schoon

  “That large? It’s difficult to envisage such a thing.”

  “They blot out a pretty big piece of sky when they fly over. That’s why the Leukkans first called them sunkillers.”

  “It is so still, resting in the air.” It was true. The sunkiller, despite taking up most of the infirmary, was almost silent, the two heads emitting only a quiet thrum of barely audible vocalizations. “The wings do not flap. How does it fly?”

  “See the bladders?” She pointed to the underside of the wings. “All those little bubbles are filled with a mix of gases. The sunkillers produce hydrogen, methane and some other gases as natural by-products. The gases are lighter than air, so that’s how they stay up. They mix in oxygen, too, which is heavier and helps them control their altitude. This one has a problem with its methane plexus. That’s the organ that routes the right gases to the right places. It’s up on top of her back, running along her backbone, a big, sack-like sort of thing with tubes running out of it down to the bladders under the wings.”

  “I understand. So this is why the wings remain in one place.”

  “Yes. And since they don’t flap, it makes their body a stable platform for the Leukkans to live on.”

  “The beings of the Leukkan Kire live on top of sunkillers? You jest with me.”

  “No. Really, it’s true,” Zenn said. “You’ve never heard of the Kiran sky-forts?”

  Hamish shook his head.

  “Well, a long time ago, like a thousand years or something, the surface of Kire Secunda was crawling with predators – dire-cats, vampiric fungi, huge packs of giant eviscerenni. Big, hungry things. The Leukkans had to wage a constant fight just to keep from being eaten. Then they tamed the first sunkillers. They realized they could escape the hunters down on the surface by staying up in the air. So, they started building little shelters on the sunkillers’ backs. Then they made forts, then palaces, then entire villages. They’ve been living on them ever since.”

  “Imagine that,” Hamish said. “To make one’s home on the back of such a beast. Does it not pain the animal?”

  “No, apparently not,” Zenn told him. “The Leukkans usually put the first light-weight structures on the sunkillers when they’re small, to get them used to it. That’s what that thing is.” She pointed to the suspended gondola. “They start out by hanging one gondola underneath them, then they add more. They’re really light, woven from reeds and the hollow wing bones of giant Kiran vultures. After a few years, they start putting buildings on their backs. By then the animals are so big they hardly notice. Kind of like a saddle on an Earther horse.”

  “Yes, but a saddle that stays on always. And has organisms living on it.”

  “Alright, Zenn, Hamish.” Zenn looked down to see Otha wheeling the Quark Resonance Scanner into the room. “Let’s see what’s ailing this little girl and get her fixed up.”

  TWENTY-TWO

  After Otha confirmed his suspicion about the sunkiller’s defective plexus valve, hunger finally forced Zenn to tear herself away from the infirmary and head for the kitchen. Crossing through the center of the cloister walk, she caught sight of the sundial. If she hurried, she had just enough time to grab a quick snack before Sister Hild’s lecture on the anatomy of Indra brain ventricles. No sooner had she started for the kitchen when it dawned on her: in the flurry of activity she’d almost forgotten her second assignment for the morning. She never forgot assignments. Well, almost never. But the fact this very important one had almost slipped her mind made her more than a little irked at herself. She changed direction and headed toward the main storage shed.

  Entering the shed, she flicked on the light – only to have the bulb crackle, pop and burn out.

  “I do not have time for this,” she said to no one at all.

  No matter, she decided. She knew the layout of the room well enough to do what she had to do in the semi-darkness. She went to the largest of the three wheelbarrows parked there and rolled it over next to one of the large metal tubs lining the far wall. She could just make out the label, “Dried Tanduan Rhina Grub.” Prying off the lid, she rapidly scooped out enough to fill the barrow half-full. Pushing the barrow over to the tub that held powdered sweetbark, she dug out half a scoop’s worth and added that to the barrow’s contents. Then, she unlooped the water hose from its hook on the wall, cranked on the spigot and propped the hose so it would slowly fill the barrow as she mixed the contents.

  Thinking about what the wheelbarrow’s contents would be used for tomorrow, her breath came a little faster.

  It’s alright. I’m ready. She’d been giving herself the same sort of pep talk all week. She’d gone over the in-soma procedures until her brain hurt. At least, I think I’m ready… No. I’m ready.

  Using a discarded piece of pipe, she stirred the mixture until she had what she thought was the proper gooey consistency.

  A sound at the door made her turn. It was Liam Tucker.

  “Scarlett,” he said. “Didn’t see you. What’re you doing in the dark?”

  “Bulb burned out,” she said, mildly flustered by his arrival. The breeze through the door carried a familiar scent to her: the pleasantly sweet, dry-grass smell of baled alfalfa. She realized why she recognized this. It was Liam Tucker’s scent, from his work in the cloister fields and barns.

  “I, uh, never really said thank you, you know?” he said. “For Zeus. What you did.”

  “I got the idea you were grateful.” She relived the press of his arms around her, something she’d done more than once since that moment in the surgery.

  No harm in that. Not breaking any rules. Rule intact.

  “No, I mean, I didn’t really say what I meant. You saved his life. And I… I don’t know if I really said thanks so you’d know I meant it.” He turned sideways in the doorway. She breathed in the scent of him as she squeezed past. It wasn’t intentional. She was just breathing. It was only the smell of alfalfa. But she suddenly felt she was too close. She moved a few safe steps away.

  “Sorry,” she said, nodding her head in the direction of the scriptorium. “I have a lecture, with Hild. I should go.”

  “Yeah, right,” he said. “Sister Hild. Don’t wanna keep her waiting.”

  “Were you looking for Hamish?” she asked. She really didn’t have time for this. Didn’t have time to be distracted. But she was strangely reluctant to leave. There it was. No point in pretending. Just now, standing in this spot, she was distracted. The Liam-virus-thought, propagating, spreading. This was exasperating. But not in any way she’d been exasperated before. She breathed in the scent of sun-dried alfalfa that seemed to radiate from the boy. And she was… distracted.

  “Oh, yeah. I was. Looking for Hamish,” he said. “But… I don’t really mind running into a novice exovet now and then.” He was smiling at her. Not his Liam-smirk, either. An actual smile-smile. Zenn’s mind was quite blank, then sputtered pathetically to life.

  What? What did he just say?

  “I mean,” he said, “I’m always wondering what poor creature you’re gonna pick on next.”

  Oh, that’s what he meant.

  “So, you know where the big bug is at?”

  “Yes. Hamish. He’s at the infirmary. Helping Otha.” She’d never noticed before, but she really liked the smell of alfalfa. Really. Liked it.

  “Right. Well, I’ll go track him down.”

  Zenn just nodded, then stood there until she felt foolish.

  “Right. Goodbye.” She turned and headed toward the scriptorium. She’d said “Goodbye.” That was idiotic. Why did she say that?

  The Rule, Zenn. Obey the Rule.

  And now, there would be no time to steal a bite to eat. But she was no longer so hungry.

  The Rule. You’re disobeying. Bad Zenn.

  But was she? Being bad? Recently, she’d been toying with an improper new thought: what if the Rule… was wrong. Could that be? What if, for instance, newly discovered information rendered the Rule obsolete, or called for exceptions?
>
  Liam is… interested. Am I interested? And if I am, is it only because he was interested first? Should I like Liam Tucker? Can a person make a decision to like someone? Or is this sort of thing… involuntary?

  No doubt about it – she was adrift now in foreign territory. She felt weightless and unsighted, so much so that she almost tripped over a water spigot at the side of the path. She stopped and stood still. She heard the sound of her own breathing. She crossed her arms and looked down at the spigot.

  Thinking like this was against more than the Rule, of course. There was also the rule about theories and their supporting evidence. But, lately she’d found herself considering that under specific circumstances dealing with emotions, the values in the equations could be changed, more or less at will, producing answers that were just what you needed them to be. It all… depended on how you felt. On your feelings. Stunning. But should she just let this new model of thinking go into effect without further scrutiny?

  Probably not smart...

  It was the water spigot at her feet that finally reminded her:

  The water in the shed. It’s still running.

  Berating herself for this latest lapse, she hurried back to the shed. She’d just stepped through the door when a movement in the darkened interior brought her up short.

  Liam came out of the shadows abruptly, seeming momentarily as surprised as she was.

  “Scarlett,” he laughed. “You… following me around now or what?” He laughed again.

  “No!” she said emphatically. “It’s the water. I was filling the barrow. Forgot to shut it off.”

  “Yeah, you did,” he said after a slight, bemused pause. “I heard the water running. I shut it off for you. You’re welcome.”

  She looked past him to the wheelbarrow. It had only overflowed onto the floor a little. She wouldn’t have to re-mix the paste. “Well, thank you.”

  “That goo.” He nodded at the barrow. “That for your in-soma thing tomorrow?”

  “Yes. It goes on the pod. It’ll attract the sloo when it’s time for the insertion.”

  “Yeah, better you than me,” he said as they both walked out into the sunlight. “Well, I better go track down the boss-bug. Make sure he hasn’t strained himself doing some actual work.”

  Zenn laughed at this. It was true. Hamish did avoid physical exertion whenever possible. The odd thing was that generally speaking, Liam was just as bad, except when it came to lending Hamish a hand. She watched him go. She thought of Hamish’s friendship with Liam. Whatever it was, Hamish had Liam wrapped around his little finger. Or little claw-digit. She imagined the towner boy lugging bales of straw, Hamish reclining nearby, complaining about having too many chores.

  Hamish owes me one, she told herself as she again made for the scriptorium. Then she allowed herself to consider the scent of new-cut alfalfa once more, and Liam’s smirk-now-a-smile, and the sight of his broad back beneath his torn red shirt as he had walked away from her. She forgot about Hamish and what she was owed.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Early the next morning, Zenn muttered to herself as she moved at a rapid clip toward the cloister’s treatment and nesting pools. She was running through the details of the in-soma insertion one more time. Rather, she was attempting and failing to concentrate on this all-important second test in the end of term trio. Her mind was on the verge of grinding to a gridlocked halt. She felt under siege from all angles: her increasingly disturbing interactions with the animals; Ren Jakstra’s alarming news about the cloister lease; and the unexpected, entirely unintentional way her opinion of Liam Tucker was evolving, like some newly emerged life form. All combined with the usual roster of studies, and chores…

  In the end, desperate, she’d resorted to talking to herself out loud to clear her head of anything besides the day’s upcoming trial.

  “…and keep a light touch on the polycilia throttle,” she intoned, calling up an image of her lecture notes on the subject. “Engage propulsion only when forward progress has ceased. Toggle regularly between bow and stern view screens to maintain locational awareness and gauge proximity to internal organs…”

  She found Otha pushing the wheelbarrow of rhina grub and sweetbark paste down to the edge of the largest treatment pool. It was chilly that morning, causing thick fingers of fog to drift like phantom hands reaching out over the collection of shallow ponds where various aquatic species were housed.

  “Sure you’re ready for this?” Otha nodded at the in-soma pod, its sleek, downy surface shimmering in the slanting morning light.

  “Ready? I can’t wait,” Zenn said, wanting to let Otha hear in her voice that she was focused and confident. She had spent all her free time during the past week studying the digestive tract of swamp sloos and practicing with the in-soma controls. She was ready now to show Otha the disaster with the hound was just a fluke. Yes, she was ready for this test.

  Mounted on a pair of old, reclaimed railroad tracks that led down into the sloo’s pool, the in-soma pod was about seven feet long, barely three feet wide, and shaped like an elongated pumpkin seed. The streamlined surface displayed the silky sheen of artificial polycilia – a layer of microscopic hair-like filaments. Beating in unison, the cilia would silently propel the pod through the interior of whatever gargantuan creature happened to be the subject of the in-soma procedure. Today, that would be the interior of a female Tanduan swamp sloo.

  Otha went to the edge of the pool, kneeled and slapped the surface with his open palm, as he did whenever he fed the sloos. A splashing sound came from the distance and the animal appeared, paddling into view from a great cloudbank of mist on the pool’s far side. This sloo was roughly two hundred feet long, and about forty feet tall. With its slender, tubular snout and long, graceful neck mounted on a body propelled by four, big paddle-like flukes, the sloo struck Zenn as resembling a prehistoric plesiosaur mated with a giant anteater. In any case, it was ideally adapted for invading the huge hive-mounds of the human-sized insects it fed on in the coastal swamps of Tandua.

  The sloo looked on with interest as Zenn and Otha prepared the pod for insertion, tilting its great head this way and that as it watched.

  She knelt to activate the pod’s door mechanism and it split open, hinges squealing. Inside was a padded bench.

  “Sounds like it could use a little oil,” Zenn said.

  “Well now, this unit has served both your mother and me well enough over the years.”

  It occurred to Zenn the pod was a good deal older than she was.

  “It’s been through a lot though, huh?”

  “No worries there,” Otha said, shifting the wheelbarrow closer to the pod. “Hull plating and software are all fully functional. Truth is, these early Gupta-Merck models were built better than anything on the market now. You can’t get this kind of craftsmanship these days.” He patted the open lid of the pod to demonstrate its soundness, but his touch only made the hinges screech even louder.

  “Changed large animal medicine forever, these first in-soma units,” Otha went on, attempting, Zenn assumed, to distract her from the pod’s age. “Before in-somas, major surgery on the big animals was a real nightmare. You should’ve seen it. Took four, five exovets at once. Incisions twenty feet long and yards deep. Of course we lost most of the patients – massive bleeding, post-op infection, shock.”

  Otha pulled the pushbroom out of the wheelbarrow’s load of watered-down grub bits and smeared the substance on the side of the pod.

  “And the experience of it. An in-soma run is like nothing else, I can promise you that.”

  “I guess today I find out for myself,” said Zenn, trying not to sound giddy.

  “That’s the spirit. So, how are you feeling now, about being inside?”

  “I feel good,” she said, nodding her head and doing a fair job, she told herself, of looking self-assured. “This past week, I spent lots of time in the pod. Closed the lid and ran through procedures. Piece of cake.”

  Otha patted her ar
m. “You are your mother’s daughter, true enough.”

  A high, fluting cry came from the pool. The sloo’s mate was calling to it from somewhere inside the wall of fog. Otha stepped over to a control pad mounted on the side of the small tool shed next to the pond and flipped a switch, activating the energy fencing behind the female. This would keep her penned up where they could work with her.

  She watched the creature’s long, tubular nose waving in the air. The sloo had picked up the scent of the paste-covered pod. Zenn was only mildly reassured by the fact that sloos had no teeth. They devoured their prey whole, licking them out of their hives with a sticky, thirty-foot tongue. This animal was selected for Zenn’s in-soma exercise because it was both larger than the male and relatively docile. As she contemplated being swallowed by a two-hundred-foot-long insectivore, however, “relatively” was a word that carried little comfort. Still, she was thrilled to be on the verge of her first in-soma run. She stepped into the pod and lay face down on the bench.

  “Otha.” The shout came from a short distance away. Zenn raised up in the pod and saw it was Ren Jakstra. He stood beyond the tool shed, eyeing the sloo. “Is it safe to come down there? Got these for ya.” He held a sheaf of v-films aloft.

  “It’s safe, Ren,” Otha said, waving him on. “This big girl’s gentle as a baby.”

  “Glad to hear it,” the constable said, watching the sloo as he approached them.

  “So, what’s this all about?”

  “The cloister mortgage docs. Bank in Zubrin sent them via my office. They’re gettin’ antsy.”

  Otha took the films from him and scowled.

  “I’ll look these over later. Our novice here is about to take her first in-soma run.”

  “That so?” Ren gave the pod a skeptical look. “Hmph. She really gonna go inside that behemoth? All the way in?”

  “That’s the idea,” Otha said. “You’re welcome to stay and watch. In fact, I wish you would.”

  “Oh?”

  “It’s something I’ve been mulling over lately,” Otha said, rolling up the v-films and putting them into his back pocket. “I think we could be doing a better job of reaching out to the community. You know, get folks in Arsia more familiar with what we do out here. I’d like to have some groups come out and observe now and then. Might defuse some of the… well, might make people a little more comfortable with having us as neighbors.”