A treatment session with Patient #307. - Parce
“Don’t try and lie to me, boy,” said Shiver as he got to the front door. “I called University this afternoon when I found out about that mayor. Now where’s Dreamer?”
I had no desire to lie. Nor was I intimidated at all. I was more annoyed at this complication, like we hadn’t had a rough enough day already. “She’s upstairs. She’s not well.”
Shiver looked like he was about to say “Why?” but instead he just pushed past me and stormed up the stairs. I made sure to lock the front door this time and then followed him up to my room.
The only light came through the open balcony door, a pale mix of firelight and moonbeams. Shiver reached for the light switch, but that was still dead. Dreamer lay where I’d left her, covered in a blanket, staring at the ceiling. She didn’t move much, and when she spoke it was in such a soft whisper that I couldn’t make out what she was saying.
Shiver went to her side. “What happened to her?”
“Ponder was here. She tried to read his mind, but he reversed it on her somehow. She’s been like this ever since.”
“Why was Ponder here? Actually, why was she here? I told you to leave her alone until she was done with school.”
“Entomber attacked this place. That’s why there’s no power. Shiver, I wanted to respect your wishes, but—”
“I don’t want to hear excuses. Just get the hell out of here.”
I sighed and went out into the hall, closing the bedroom door behind me. Then I joined Swifter in the backyard next to the fire.
“He sounds mad,” Swifter said.
“Ah, he’ll get over it. To tell you the truth, I’m glad he’s here. Frees me up to start digging.” I walked around until I found a suitable spot around the north side of the clinic. I figured my father would want to be near his home but still close to bird territory. Here, his grave would be in view of Ptera Peak. I tore up the grass with my teeth until I had a patch of bare dirt about two feet across, then I started digging down. Once I had a decent-sized hole, I went to get the skull fragments near the fire.
“That’s a fine thing you’re doing, Healer.”
At the voice, my ears flicked. I turned to see Caper sitting on a fencepost. Next to him, perched on the top rail, were the four canaries of the Flaxer family. Swifter looked up from the fire and waved to Caper, who nodded back to him.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
“The same as you,” he said. “Waiting for the hammer to fall.”
I shook my head. “I have no right to complain. This is what I wanted, I guess.”
“That’s correct.” Caper glided down from the fence and helped me pick every white shard of bone out of the grass. “Today a line was crossed, and we can’t take that back. Now that Chugg’s enforcers are being killed, they won’t hesitate to take extreme measures to get things back under their control.”
We put the fragments in the grave and covered it up. Caper’s talons lingered on the soft dirt for a minute. Then he glanced over at Mrs. Flaxer. She beckoned with her foot and then the four of them flew off the fence and landed on the upstairs balcony.
“Your father wasn’t perfect,” Caper said once we were alone. “But you meant more to him than anything else in the world. More than peace or justice or any of those lofty ideals we all threw away our principles for.”
I nodded. “I was disgusted with you both when Dreamer showed me that memory. When I saw that both of you were behind the cloning.”
Caper sighed. “I should have told you myself. That was a failure on my part. The strange thing is that I wasn’t all that concerned what you would think of me. I was worried that it would affect your feelings about your father.”
“Well, it doesn’t. I understand now. I would do terrible things to stop the pigs from hurting my people any more than they already have.”
“Spoken like a ram.” Caper looked up at the balcony. “Dreamer is out of sorts, I gather.”
“Yeah. Shiver is up there with her. She tried to read Ponder’s mind, but he did something and read hers instead. She’s been in some kind of trance ever since.”
“I suppose we had better let Shiver cool off before we approach.”
“Yeah. He told me he called the school and found out she was here. Thanks for ratting us out.”
“I didn’t. I hesitated for just one instant and he knew. He does not have the same powers his daughter does, but he certainly has a keen intuition of his own.” Caper looked again to make sure everyone was still out of earshot. “You didn’t get a chance to ask Ponder about the schematic he sent me, did you?”
I laughed. “Honestly, between the fight and Dreamer going catatonic on me, I forgot all about those. I’ll tell you, though, after seeing how Ponder looked, I believe he’s done it. He said he’d been studying chemistry. He did something to his body to give him a few seconds of shielding from Entomber’s acid. He’s built bombs somewhere.”
“Do you still think University is safe? I am duty bound to put the safety of my students first.”
“I don’t honestly know anymore—hey, but someone else is here who might. Tenber’s in the upstairs closet. He might know more about what Ponder’s been doing.”
Caper’s brow furrowed. “Why is Tenber here?”
“He blew his cover somehow. It seems like he’s been injured. All he could tell me was ‘Chugg knew.’ I’m letting him recover before I ask him anything else.” I considered whether to tell Caper about what Arghast had told me and Dreamer, but I decided that was for another time.
The old owl’s head scanned the yard. I wondered what it would be like to see as well as he did in the dark. After a while he said, “Chugg will not let Entomber’s death go unaddressed. If their past behavior is any indication of their future behavior, they will arrive in force in the middle of the night.” He counted quietly.
“What are you doing?”
“You, me, Dreamer, Shiver, Swifter, the four Flaxers, and Tenber. A stronger group of allies than your father ever managed to muster in his day, that’s for sure.”
I nodded. “I just wish I had some way to make contact with Ledger and the rest of Boxer’s old students. We could sure use those guys.”
“They carry Boxer’s memory with them. Don’t forget that they all witnessed when Pincher murdered him. When the time comes, they will know which side to take.”
“We’ll see if it matters.”
“It will, before the end.” Caper spread his wings. “You all make what preparations you need and get some rest. I will stand watch for the night.”
“You’re not worried about University?”
“No. It was thoroughly searched earlier today.” He flew up onto the roof, leaving me in the yard. I watched the balcony. Shiver emerged from the room, stared at the Flaxers for a second, and then went back inside. A few seconds later he came out the back door and sat by the fire.
“Hey, kid,” he said to Swifter. “You ever fortified your position before?”
“No, sir.”
“Well, you’re about to learn. Come on.” He headed for the back porch and Swifter followed.
I came up to them. “Hey, Shiver. How’s Dreamer—”
“Shut up.” The black ram walked past me and went inside. Swifter gave me a what do I do look. I motioned for him to keep doing what he was doing. Shiver could be mad at me all he wanted, but at least he was helping.
I stood in the gym and watched for a few minutes. They found flashlights and then started moving furniture and equipment to barricade doors and brace windows. Shiver found the hidden steel window shutters.
“This is pretty good,” he said. “Were these your idea?”
“I didn’t know those were there,” Swifter said.
“Oh.” Shiver glanced over at me with a thoughtful look. “Hmm.”
I left them to their work and went upstairs. First, I checked on Dreamer. Her eyes were closed now and she looked like she was sound asleep. I hoped that meant she was recovering, but I wasn’t about to try waking her up. I left the room and shut the door as quietly as I could.
“Mr. Shiver?” I heard Swifter asking. “What’s it like to be a ram?”
I smiled. I waited, but if Shiver answered, I didn’t hear it. I went around the stairs to the hallway closet and opened the door. No light from outside got in here, so I couldn’t see at all.
“Hey, Tenber. How are you doing?”
I heard him take a deep breath. “Much better, Healer. Thanks.”
“Can I talk to you for a minute?”
“Sure.”
I carefully walked into the closet so I could close the door and sit down. Being in total darkness bugged me a little, but he needed it, so I could deal. “What happened?”
“Chugg figured out who I was.”
“How did they do that?”
“Not them. Him. The actual Chugg, who spoke to you at the pig city gate. The invincible monster pig that won the Canine-Avian War.”
“Oh.” My stomach felt sick.
“I have a lot to tell you,” Tenber said. “I heard Ponder was here today.”
“Yeah.” I gulped. “He looked terrible. He killed Entomber, but then he did something that broke Dreamer’s mind. I’m not sure what memories they managed to glean from each other, but it can’t be good. He ran off like he had figured something out.”
“We have to watch him,” Tenber said. “Things with Ponder have the potential to go very badly.”
“How so? It seemed like he was still on our side.”
“He thinks he is, but this whole situation is far worse than we knew. Chugg completely broke him. The only reason Chugg let this clinic of yours go forward was to test Ponder’s loyalty.”
I felt the blood drain out of my face. “He made Ponder choose whether to let me get killed or blow his cover.”
“That’s right. Healer, I hate to say this, but I tried to talk him out of it. I told him it might be better to… you know, pass the loyalty test.”
“You mean sacrifice me to stay in Chugg’s good graces?” I thought for a minute. “I would have told him the same thing. The goal was to save all sheep from Chugg. So don’t worry about that.”
“OK. But the problem is, Ponder has gone to the other extreme. He was talking about letting all other sheep die to save you and Dreamer. He’s developed this contempt for sheep because they can’t fight for themselves.”
“He said something like that in his last letter.”
“Chugg’s got a plan,” said Tenber. “He’s opened that Chugg Cybernetics division and they’ve been working on their clones. He wants to make perfect sheep clones and then round everyone up and lock them up somewhere to have a food source for Toxid for all time.”
“And Ponder said sheep would deserve their fate if they didn’t fight back.” I covered my mouth with one hoof. “Gods, have mercy.”
“Chugg was using Entomber to sacrifice sheep in his stead so he could focus on developing the cloning technology and building the sheep farm,” said Tenber. “He acted worried about what Toxid would do if something ever happened to Entomber.”
“It’s too obvious,” I said. “He was hanging Entomber out to dry. A big, fat target for Ponder.”
“Right. I thought the same thing, and I tried to warn Ponder. But he wasn’t having it. If he’s killed Entomber, I bet he thinks he’s won, and all we have to do now is survive while Toxid goes after Chugg for his debt.”
“It would be nice if it were that simple,” I said. “But if Chugg was lying, if he doesn’t need Entomber anymore, does that mean the cloning tech is ready to go? Why doesn’t he just make cloned sheep and leave the rest of us alone?”
“Ponder asked Chugg that question in person. I think Chugg just wants you all to suffer. He said, ‘after what they did to my boy.’ I don’t know what he was talking about.” Tenber paused. “Anyway, Ponder didn’t take it very well. After that meeting was when he struck off on his own. He took Mauler with him.”
“How was Mauler doing?”
“He was having misgivings, but he’s going to follow Ponder no matter what.”
“Yeah. He is.”
“Anyway, I didn’t go with them. That was the last I saw of them. I tried to keep my cover, but that meeting must have been when Chugg sniffed me out.”
“He remembered you from when you tried to kill him before?”
“More like he noticed a pattern. Then he attacked me with focused light. I’m sorry it took so long to make it back here, but I could only travel at night.”
“What do you mean, he noticed a pattern?”
“This conversation can’t leave this room.”
I got comfortable. “You have my word, Tenber.”
“OK. Chugg and I have met before. On a different world. The world where I was born, in fact.”
I blinked. He’d said before that he wasn’t from this world, but this was a new one. “So Chugg is like you? He can travel to different worlds?”
“He’s not exactly like me. He’s something else. I swear I saw him die. But that’s the thing—I’m starting to believe he can’t. Do you remember what I told you in Boxer’s gym?”
“Mostly. You said you came here and lurked in the shadows on your own. You were… looking for a demon. And you thought the pig god Toxid might be that demon. Right?”
“Yes. The demon I’m looking for goes by a lot of names. Most often he’s called the Destroyer. But he’s gone by Créach, the Eld, the Devastation, the Egregog, Moloch, and other names that your ears wouldn’t tolerate. But he appears on every world, born from the evil inherent in people. Here, the closest thing to him I’ve found is Toxid.”
“Why do you think that?”
“Because of Chugg. He has always served the Destroyer, and now he’s here serving Toxid. The Destroyer must have brought Chugg back to life, and not for the first time. At least the last time I saw him, he was able to die. But this is different. My strongest form couldn’t even scratch him. Something else is going on here.”
“What is your strongest form?”
Tenber hesitated. “Nothing like it exists in this world. It’s called a grizzly bear.”
“A what?” I heard Tenber moving around on the floor. Then something touched my hoof.
“Here. Be careful with this.”
I took the object he had placed on my hoof. It was about four inches long, curved, rough at one end and extremely sharp at the other, almost like one of the broken pieces of my father’s horns in the next room.
“What’s this?” I asked.
“This is a bear claw from my home world. I’ve carried it with me to remind me of my mother, but in this world I’ve been able to use it to take a bear form myself.”
“What is a bear?”
“The closest thing to it on this world is a dog. But bigger. Far more powerful. Almost like Mauler, or Karkus. But not exactly. It’s hard to describe.”
“Can I see?”
“Not now. My body grows so big it’s impossible to stay hidden. But if we can get Toxid out in the open… you’ll see it. I promise.”
I handed the claw back to Tenber. “What’s it like being on other worlds?”
“Honestly, a lot of them were the same except for this one. This is without a doubt the strangest world I’ve ever visited. The usual rules don’t apply here. In most places, animals don’t talk. Bodies don’t transform like they do here. And I wasn’t like this. I had a real form of my own. I wasn’t this shapeless blob that has to form around objects.”
“What did you look like?”
“Remember how I was before I went undercover as a dog? I always wanted clothes so I could be shaped like Ponder and walk around on two legs? That was as close as I could get to my original body.”
“Speaking of which,” I said, “I have something for you.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.” I reached up into the dark. “That leather coat Boxer made for you is in a box up on the top shelf. If only I had some light, I could find it for you.”
“I can see it just fine.”
I heard movement. Then the box dropped to the floor next to me. More sounds and the smell of leather. Tenber must have laid the coat out on the floor.
“Healer, this is incredible. You reinforced the stitching all on your own?”
“It took a while to learn, but yeah. There are some gaps in the seams on the back and shoulders.”
“So I can extend tentacles. I see that. Excellent. This will hold up in a fight much better than a T-shirt.”
“I thought you could even wear other clothes under it so you don’t lose your shape if it gets damaged.”
“That’s a great idea. But… you lined the inside with fur? No, this is wool.”
“My wool, yeah.”
“That’s why you’ve been shearing off your coat. What did you do that for?”
“I don’t know. I figured the extra shock absorption would do you good. And I thought you should have something of us sheep when your mission is done.”
“I really appreciate this, Healer. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome, Tenber.”
He was quiet for a long time. “Tenber isn’t my real name. Like your father, I thought going under an alias around here would be wise. Not that it did me any good against Chugg, of course.”
“What is your real name?”
“It’s Ethan.”
I nodded, although that name sounded completely alien to me at the time. “Well… Tenber, your dog disguise might be blown with Chugg, but it might still be useful around here. Can you make another collar?”
“Yeah, if I have materials.”
“There are leather scraps in one of these drawers from when I was working on the coat.”
He moved again. “Got it. I’ll work on this.”
I stood up and opened the closet door. “Come on out when you’re ready.” I shut the door behind me and went back to check on Dreamer again.
She was still sound asleep. The sliding door was open. Shiver and Caper were both standing on the balcony. When they saw me, they ended whatever quiet conversation they were having. Caper went back up to the roof and Shiver came into the room.
“Look, Healer,” he said, “I shouldn’t have gotten that upset. I didn’t want to believe how bad things were getting.”
“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “You’re concerned about her, just like me.”
“Well, I’m sorry anyway. And all we can do is wait.” Shiver touched his daughter’s forehead. “Besides, we’re not doing any good standing around here. We should be downstairs.”
“You and Swifter need help reinforcing the place?”
“No, we’ve done as much as we can. But I got to look around while we were working on it. That’s a great setup y’all have going on. Wide open space, padded floors. It’s a perfect place to train.”
“That’s true,” I said. “If we live through this, we’ll have to find some time to—”
“We have time right now. Get down there.”