Twig

by wildbow

  The familiar scratching of the pen seemed to relax number three. He put the pen down and reached into his open drawer for a treat, handing it over.

  The experiment had no head, only a wreath of tentacles, and it used five of the tentacles to feed the treat into the gaping, toothless hole in the center. That gave Duncan the opportunity to take a measurement of the legs.

  “Forty-three nineteen for leg length. Shoulder breadth to leg converts to…” he paused. “One point seven. Perfect for Wollstone ratio five. The Branck pattern swap must have worked.”

  He noted everything down as he said it.

  “Are you going to be calm if I try to measure one of your primary tentacles, number three?”

  The experiment slowly tensed as he moved the calipers closer to its head.

  “Relax,” he said. “Be calm. You know me. I’m where you get your food, right?”

  He smiled at the experiment, even though it didn’t see by conventional means, and wouldn’t understand the expression if it did.

  “Calm,” he said. “Calm…”

  A sharp knock at the door startled him and the experiment both.

  He pulled away, but the tentacles were already reaching out. One caught him by the chin, another by an ear. A third managed to find anchorage in a tuft of hair.

  Calipers dropped, he gripped the edge of the table, bracing himself, to avoid being pulled closer to the bars. His feet moved out to the table legs, bracing there as well. Once that was done, he managed to move a hand out, fumbling for the tranquilizer needle.

  “Be calm,” he said.

  A second knock sounded. He could feel the experiment startle, the jerk vibrating down the length of each tentacle.

  Four seconds had passed, but it felt like a hundred. His abdominal muscles were already crying out for mercy, as his entire body fought to resist the insistent tug of a creature a third of his size.

  Once the syringe was in the right place, he brought it around to what he’d termed the creature’s collar, the rim of denser tissues and muscle that bridged the bases of the tentacles and the creature’s shoulders.

  The movement might have startled the experiment, because he felt another tentacle seize his wrist. It pulled his wrist in closer, winding the tentacle around the arm for a better grip as it did so. Not a bad thing, except the jerk of movement made him stab the bars of the cage instead of the creature. The syringe slipped from his hand.

  A moment later, it hauled his head just a little closer, reasserted its grip, then hauled his head the rest of the way in. All at once, there was only darkness, no air, and the tight muscles of the collar gripping him around the chin and neck.

  Blind, he had to fight to get into a position where he could fumble around with his one free hand. He was already blacking out, and knew it had to do with the pressure on his carotid.

  Join the Lambs as a peripheral member and on-site medic, die in a lab at home.

  He felt a euphoric rush, his thoughts scattering. He took it to be the ‘light’ he’d heard talk of, the surge of chemicals that was bestowed in the moments before death and oblivion.

  But it wasn’t that. The grip on him had been relaxed. The euphoria was blood and breath returning to him. He hauled himself free, surprised at how weak he felt, and gripped the desk and a nearby windowsill to steady himself.

  It took him nearly forty seconds to get his bearings. He realized someone was in the room with him. A good foot shorter than he was, with red hair neatly looked after. Not a person, a Lamb.

  “Ash—” he said. He stopped mid-word, still gasping for breath and wincing at the pain at his throat.

  “Ashton. My name is Ashton, not Ash.”

  “Yes. You’re right,” he said. “How silly of me. You knocked, I take it?”

  “Yes. I was told to always knock. It’s polite.”

  “Not always,” Duncan said. “Not if you’re on a mission, am I right?”

  “Yes. I suppose that makes sense.”

  Duncan managed a smile. Ashton mimicked the smile with one of his own, and this one actually looked genuine.

  “Good smile,” Duncan praised the experiment. Training it wasn’t so different from training the likes of chimera number three. He did hope the end result wouldn’t be so dangerous for him.

  Chimera number three, he noted, had relaxed considerably, as if it had been tranquilized after all. Duncan didn’t protest as Ashton reached into the cage and gently pushed at the chimera. At the push, it sat, then lay down, before lying down, letting its tentacles go limp.

  Duncan swallowed hard, then, at seeing someone walk past the open door to his little lab, he walked over and closed the door.

  “No need for that,” Ashton said. He smiled again. “I’m being careful. Only pushing it out in this direction.”

  “You’re getting better,” Duncan observed. His voice was hoarse. How very obnoxious.

  Ashton nodded.

  “Good job. I like that your smiles are different from one another. Helen has been working with you, hasn’t she?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. That’s really good,” Duncan said. He slumped against the wall, then raised his hand, looking at the back of it.

  A small smile crept across his face.

  “Your control is very good, but it’s not perfect,” he said. He showed Ashton the back of his hand. He watched a very practiced look of puzzlement pass over Ashton’s features as the experiment examined the faint stripe of blue that had appeared.

  Duncan crossed the room, to his chimera number three, and put his hand nearer the cage. The blue took roughly four seconds to intensify, but it did intensify, until it looked like a stripe of paint.

  Ashton stared, silent. The young experiment raised a fist, moving it closer, then opened it very suddenly, fingers splayed.

  It took about two seconds for the red stripe to appear, next to the blue. There was something of a pattern as it solidified into a paint-like stripe of color, coloring the points the spores had hit first or in higher concentrations.

  Chimera number three reacted, the tentacles coiling as it began to work to stand again.

  “Away from the experiment, if you want to keep testing,” Duncan said. He moved away from the cage, and Ashton followed. He tapped his hand, “This is a little pet project. I altered some bacteria that the Academy uses for detecting invisible gases, and primed them to respond to your spores. You remember when I asked for the samples?”

  Ashton nodded. He did the motion with his hand again.

  Nothing.

  Another motion, again, with no response after a few seconds. The red and blue were fading, Duncan was pleased to note.

  A fifth gesture, a movement of Ashton’s hands, and the blue and yellow stripes illuminated.

  “Which was that?” Duncan asked.

  Ashton was quiet, staring.

  “Ashton, pay attention,” Duncan ordered. Once he had the experiment’s attention he asked again. “Which spore did you just use?”

  “Agitation.”

  “That shouldn’t have lit up the blue. Something to correct. But it’s neat, isn’t it?”

  Again, Ashton was quiet.

  Duncan moved his hand. Ashton’s head turned to track the motion of the hand, like a dog might do with a good bone that still had some meat on it. Duncan moved his hand left, right, down, then up, until the little experiment could no longer see the patch of color. The little experiment stood on his tiptoes, straining to see, until he lost his balance and stumbled.

  He drew a handkerchief from his lab coat pocket and scrubbed the back of his hand until the colors were muddied and nearly gone. A few rainbow traces remained.

  Ashton stared at the hand, looking around a little as if he was wondering where the color had gone. Then he met Duncan’s eyes.

  “I want some, please, Duncan. Can I have some?”

  “It’s very unusual for you to want anything material, Ashton. Usually you want changes to your environment, and even then, it
’s pretty mild, like wanting to be warmer, or wanting a fire.”

  Ashton nodded.

  “It’s very interesting to have some feedback about what you’re doing, isn’t it? More than just people acting different?”

  “You didn’t answer my question,” Ashton said, very simply. “I asked politely. I didn’t huff and puff at you, because I can’t, but I asked politely and people are supposed to do what you ask if you ask nicely and if you’re being reasonable. Am I being unreasonable?”

  “You’re not being unreasonable. Where did huff and puff come from?” Duncan asked. “Wait. Don’t tell me. Helen?”

  “Helen, yes. If I’m not being unreasonable, then can I please—”

  “I might be able to give you some,” Duncan said, cutting the experiment off. “I’ll give some to your doctors, and if they say it’s okay, either they can give you extras, or I can quickly whip up some vials for you and the other Lambs. How’s that?”

  “That is very good,” Ashton said. “I think that sounds very reasonable. Except—”

  Ashton terminated in the middle of a sentence. He moved his head a little, staring off into space. His expression did change to suggest what was going through his head, which was an improvement from a few months ago.

  “What are you thinking?”

  “I would like more than ‘some vials’, please, Duncan,” Ashton said.

  Duncan chuckled, then winced, rubbing at his throat. “Do you want a bathtub filled with the stuff?”

  “I would like… a paint can. Maybe more than one paint can. I don’t know how many I would need. But I would like enough for my room. I want my room to change colors for me.”

  “Ah.” Environmental change after all. But thinking more about the future! Duncan smiled, “I think that would be a bad idea. It would be hard to explain to the others at Lambsbridge.”

  Ashton nodded.

  So interesting. A human child that was the same age that Ashton was might throw a tantrum, if something they wanted was taken away, but the little experiment was so complacent. No complaint, no grudges, no upset. He wondered why the color was so fascinating, or what process was going on in the experiment’s head.

  “I’ll make you a deal, though,” Duncan said. “If your doctors say it’s okay, I’ll paint my lab here. You can do everything you like while you’re here, visiting me. But—but!”

  He held up a finger, to make it absolutely clear.

  Ashton’s lips moved, echoing the word subvocally. But.

  “You have to help me train my chimeras here. With your spores. It can be practice.”

  “Okay.”

  So easily accepting. Duncan looked at his caged chimera. It was still lethargic.

  “I almost became one of the twenty-three,” Duncan mused to himself.

  “Twenty-three?”

  “Students, a year, who get killed by their own work. The number is really lower than that, but there were four straight years where it was something like twenty-three, twenty-three, twenty-two, then twenty-three again, so the number stuck. Saying I was almost one of the nineteen doesn’t have the same cachet,” Duncan said. He knew he sounded more amused and confident than he should have. But the nice thing about being around this particular experiment was that it didn’t really matter. No judgment here.

  “That was a dumb thing to almost do,” Ashton said, and the judgment was ten times as heavy as it might otherwise have been, coming from a mouth so innocent.

  Duncan pursed his lips, walked to the door, and opened it. He pointed to the sign mounted beneath the number plate. “What does this say?”

  “Do not disturb.”

  “That means no knocking or loud noises, okay?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. Remember that. Because it’s important. Alright?”

  “Alright. Yes.”

  Somewhat satisfied that he’d salvaged his pride and pointed out the reality that it would have been Ashton’s fault for breaking the rules, more than his own fault, Duncan asked, “Now, you came here for a reason, didn’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “What do you need?” Duncan asked, patient.

  “I don’t need anything. But a woman in very nice clothes with a bodyguard and another man with her stopped by Lambsbridge. Ms. Earles answered the door, then she called for me. I was upstairs, looking out the window—”

  Duncan gestured for the experiment to hurry up. He watched as Ashton stopped, pausing, as if he needed a moment to process and think about what he was supposed to be hurrying up to.

  To his credit, he was a lot faster in making the leap than he had been when Duncan first joined the team. “The woman wanted to talk to a Lamb. To Lillian, but Lillian wasn’t there and neither were Mary or Helen. I talked to her and she gave me this, and this.”

  Ashton held an envelope and a slip of paper. Duncan took both, looked at the slip, saw an address pointing to somewhere in the Sticks, then unfolded the paper from the envelope.

  While he read, Ashton talked, “I tried to find the others, but Lillian wasn’t in her room, and I got shouted at for being in the girl’s dormitory. Then I made them calmer and happier to see me. Then they were hugging me like Helen does and telling me I was adorable like Helen does, and they were messing up my hair, which I had to keep fixing.”

  Duncan nodded, taking in the mental image. He might have embellished it by imagining that some of the girls had been on their way to and from the showers, or the like.

  “I envy you,” he said, more to himself than anything.

  Ashton gave him a puzzled look.

  “Nevermind,” Duncan said. No longer distracted by the mental images, he reread the note, actually taking in the contents.

  Sobering.

  Sylvester, no doubt. That meant that Duncan had to figure out how to handle this.

  “We’ll take it straight to the headmaster,” Duncan said, firmly. “He’ll figure out the best way forward.”

  “I was going to ask you where Lillian and Helen and Mary were,” Ashton said. “Because they should read the note.”

  “No,” Duncan said. “Nevermind what the lady told you to do, okay? She was a pawn of Sylvester’s.”

  Ashton frowned.

  “Come on,” Duncan said. Time would be of the essence, if he wanted this to move along smoothly. He suspected things would go more smoothly if the Academy handled it from the start.

  He secured the chimera’s cage, unhitching the sections of the lid so they would fold down, forming impenetrable barriers with air holes rather than the bars with spaces between, latched it, then unhitched it from his desk, moving it over to the corner of his lab where three more of the cages sat.

  Quickly, he snatched up the vials with the spore-sensitive bacteria in them, and slid them into a pocket. He checked he had his wallet and keys, then made his way out of the lab, ushering Ashton out before locking up. He turned the ‘do not disturb’ sign around and wrote in chalk on the backside. Absent. Academy business. Live experiments within.

  That last bit was more for the snoops and saboteurs in the Academy ranks than for anything else.

  His lab was prime real estate, on the top floor of the newly revamped dungeon. Not too many stairs to climb, and less worries about accidentally setting off ever-more-dangerous security features, like the doctors and professors downstairs had to deal with.

  Claret Hall wasn’t far. He walked briskly and trusted Ashton to keep up.

  “You saw my experiment, didn’t you?”

  “Yes. I’ve seen it before, when it was in the vat, too. I’ve been to your lab before.”

  “Yes. With the other Lambs. Listen, silly question, but I’m very interested in how you answer. I feel like it might give me insight into how your brain works.”

  “Alright.”

  “If I told you I wanted to give a name to that experiment, which I’m currently calling anonymous chimera number three, what name would you give it?”

  “Patriot.” Without missing a
beat.

  Ashton’s speed left Duncan dumbfounded. He mentally groped for an explanation, then for the words to express how staggered he was at the sheer speed of the response, and finally gave up.

  “Did you already think of that name?”

  “No.”

  “Then why Patriot, Ashton?”

  “Because Patriot is Good Simon’s dog’s name,” Ashton said.

  “Good Simon?” Every answer left him a little more off balance. He checked his hand, to be sure that he wasn’t getting ‘huffed and puffed’, as Ashton and Helen had termed it, but there were no spores active enough to paint the streaks of chemical. He’d daubed the stuff on when he’d taken his morning pills for resisting Ashton’s influence.

  “Good Simon is from ‘Good Simon Says’, it’s a book series. Simon is a good boy and does things right, he’s faithful, true and obedient, and he listens well. He’s polite. Whatever Simon does right, Seth does wrong. Because Seth is bad. Sometimes there are other characters, like Sadie, who is mean and angry, or Sable, who works with animals, and there are lessons with—”

  “I know the books,” Duncan said, cutting Ashton off. They were part of a series that taught about social mores, emotions, and patriotism to the Crown. The books were popular with very young children, those with social disabilities, and, apparently, experiments who were learning those same things from scratch. “You like the books?”

  Ashton paused. Again, that slight stall before the response. Improving, but still there. “I like the way they look on the bookshelf in the lab, and in my room at Lambsbridge, and in the living room at Lambsbridge. The spines have nice colors and have the character’s faces on them. The third book has Patriot’s face on it.”

  Again with the focus on environment. So many other questions. Duncan was momentarily paralyzed by them. He settled for, “You chose it because my chimera is dog-like?”

  “Yes. Because it’s part dog.”

  “How did you know that there was dog in—no, nevermind.”

  “I will,” Ashton said, quiet.

  Duncan gave up, rather than subject himself to more confusion. He silently tallied up an unwitting victory for Ashton.