Galaxy's Edge Magazine: Issue 2, May 2013 (27 page)

For one reason or another, though, I don’t seem to be much like them. In so many ways…

“Are you ready to record, Ghost?”

“I’d have much more to analyze with video.”

I waited. A moment later, Ghost sighed. The ancient’s body dissolved into static for a moment, then returned as a young woman in an
Ibn Battuta
officer’s uniform, though a fanciful, brightly-colored scarf was tied over her eyes like a blindfold. The voice changed also, from an elderly male quaver to a female soprano. “Recording into
Ibn Battuta
memory. Audio only log: 101 September 41. The voice is Anaïs Koda-Levin the Younger, Generation Six. Go ahead, Anaïs.”

I gave Ghost a sidewise look, swearing—as I had a few hundred times before—that I’d never understand why Gabriela had programmed her AI with such a quirky sense of humor and strange set of idiosyncrasies. “All right. This is another examination of the Miccail body found in the peat bog—and this will be very cursory, I’m afraid, since I’m on duty in the clinic tonight. Ghost, you can download my previous recordings from the Mictlan library.”

“It’s already done. Go on, Ana, you have my undivided attention.”

I knew that wasn’t true—there were still three other working projectors scattered among the compounds, and Ghost was no doubt talking with people at each of them at the moment, as well as performing the systems work necessary to keep our patchwork and shrinking network of century-old terminals together, but it was a nice lie. I shook my hair back from my eyes once more and leaned over the table.

Imagine someone unzipping his skin, crumpling it up, and throwing the discarded epidermis in a corner like an old suit—that’s what the corpse looked like. On its side, the body was drawn up like someone cowering in fear, the right arm folded around its back, the left thrown over the right shoulder like a shawl. The head was bowed down into the chest, crushed flat and turned to the left. I could see the closed lid of the right eye and the translucent covering of the central “eye” high on the forehead. A mane of dark, matted hair ran from the back of the bald, knobbed skull and halfway down the spine.

I gently pulled down the right leg, which was tucked up against the body. The skin moved grudgingly; I had to go slowly to avoid tearing it, moistening the skin occasionally with a sponge. Tedious work.

“Most of the body is intact,” I noted aloud after a while, figuring that Ghost was going to complain if I didn’t start talking soon. “From the spinal mane and the protrusions around the forehead, it’s one of the type Gabriela designated as ‘Nomads.’ If I recall correctly, she believed that since the carvings of Nomads disappear from the Miccail’s stelae in the late periods, these were a subspecies that went extinct a millennium or so before the rest of the Miccail.”

“You’ve been studying things you’ve been told to stay away from.”

“Guilty as charged. So that makes the body—what?—two thousand years old?”

“No later than that,” Ghost interrupted, “assuming Gabriela’s right about the stelae. We’ll have a better idea when we get the estimates from the peat samples and measurements. Máire’s still working on them.”

“Sounds fine. I’ll check with her in the next few days.”

I was lost in the examination now, seeing nothing but the ancient corpse in front of me. A distant part of me noted that my voice had gone deeper and more resonant, no longer consciously pitched high—we all have our little idiosyncrasies, I suppose. “Two thousand or more years old, then. The body evidently went naked into the lake that later became the bog—there’s no trace of any clothing. That may or may not be something unusual. The pictographs on the Miccail stelae show ornate costumes in daily use, on the Nomads as well as the rest, so it’s rather strange that this one’s naked.…Maybe he was swimming? Anyway, we’re missing the left leg a half meter down from the hip and…”

The right leg, boneless and twisted, lay stretched on the table. Fragments of skin peeled from the stump of the ankle like bark from a whitewood. “…the right foot a few centimeters above the ankle. A pity—I’d like to have seen that central claw on the foot. Looks like the leg and foot decayed off the body sometime after it went into the lake. Wouldn’t be surprised if they turn up somewhere else later.”

I straightened the right arm carefully, laying it down on the table, moving slowly from shoulder to wrist. “Here’s one hand—four fingers, not five. Wonder if they counted in base eight? These are really long phalanges, though the meta-carpals must have been relatively short. The pads at the end of each digit still have vestiges of a recessed claw—would have been a nasty customer in a fight. There’s webbing almost halfway up the finger; bet they swam well. And this thumb…it’s highly opposed and much longer than a human’s. From the folds in the skin, I’d guess that it had an extra articulation, also.”

I grunted as I turned the body so that it rested mostly on its back. “There appears to be a large tattoo on the chest and stomach—blue-black lines. Looks like a pictogram of some sort, but there’s still a lot of peat obscuring it, and I’ll have to make sure that this isn’t some accidental postmortem marking of some kind. I’ll leave that for later…”

The remnant of the left leg was folded high up on the stomach, obscuring the tattoo. I lifted it carefully and moved it aside, revealing the groin. “Now
that’s
interesting…”

“What?” Ghost asked. “I’m a blind AI, remember?”

I exhaled under the surgical mask, resisting the urge to rise to Ghost’s baiting. “The genitalia. There’s a scaly, fleshy knob, rather high on the front pubis. I suppose that’s the penis analogue for the species, but it doesn’t look like normal erectile tissue or a penile sheath. No evidence of anything like testicles—no scrotal sac at all. Maybe they kept it inside.”

“They’re aliens, remember? Maybe they didn’t
have
one.”

I accepted Ghost’s criticism with a nod. She was right—I was lacing some heavy anthropomorphism into my speculations. “Maybe. There’s a youngpouch on the abdomen, though, and I haven’t seen any Mictlanian marsupialoids where both sexes
had
the pouch. Maybe in the Miccail both male and female suckled the young.” I lifted the leg, turning the body again with an effort. “There’s a urethra further down between the legs, and an anus about where you’d expect it—”

I stopped, dropping the leg I was holding. It fell to the table with a soft thud. I breathed. I could feel a flush climbing my neck, and my vision actually shivered for a moment, disorientingly.

“Anaïs?”

“It’s…” I licked suddenly dry lips. Frowned. “There’s what looks to be a vaginal opening just below the base of the spine, past the anus.”

“A hermaphrodite,” Ghost said, her voice suddenly flat. “Now there’s synchronicity for you, eh?”

I said nothing for several seconds. I was staring at the body, at the soft folds hiding the opening at the rear of the creature, not quite knowing whether to be angry. Trying to gather the shreds of composure.
Staring at myself in the mirror, forcing myself to look only at that other Anaïs’s face, that contemplative, uncertain face lost in the fogged, spotted silver backing, and my gaze always, inevitably, drifting lower.…

The Miccail body was an accusation, a mockery placed just for me by whatever gods ruled Mictlan.

“Gabriela speculated about the sexuality of the Nomads,” Ghost continued. “There were notes in her journals. She collected rubbings of some rather suggestive carvings on the Middle Period stelae. In fact, in a few cases she referred to the Nomads as ‘midmales’ because the stelae were ambiguous as to which they might be. It’s all scanned in the database—call it up.”

“I’ve read some of Gabriela’s journals—the public ones, anyway. Gabriela said a lot of strange things about the Miccail—and everything else on this world. Doesn’t make her right.”

“Give poor Gabriela a break. No one else was particularly interested in the Miccail after the accident. The first generation had more pressing problems than an extinct race. As an archeologist/anthropologist she was—just like you, I might add—a dilettante, a rank amateur.”

“And she was your lead programmer, right? That explains a lot about
you
.”

“It’s also why I’m still working. Ana, I’m running out of time here.”

“All right.”

I took another long breath, trying to find the objective, aloof Anaïs the bog body had banished. The leg had fallen so that the tattered end of the ankle hung over the edge of the table. I placed it carefully back into position and didn’t look at the trunk of the body or the mocking twinned genitals. Instead, I moved around the table, going to the Nomad’s head. Carefully, I started prying it from the folded position it had held for centuries.

“Looks like she…he…” I stopped. Ghost waited. My jaw was knotted; I forced myself to relax.
Do this goddamn thing and get it over with. Put the body back in the freezer and forget about it.
“She didn’t die of drowning. There’s a large wound on the back of the skull. Part crushing, part cutting like a blunt axe, and it probably came from behind. I’ll bet we’ll find that’s the cause of death, though I guess it’s possible she was thrown into the lake still alive. I’m moving the head back to its normal position now. Hey, what’s this…?”

I’d lifted the chin of the Miccail. Trapped deep in the folds of the neck was a thin, knotted cord, a garrote, pulled so tightly against the skin that I could see that the windpipe had closed under the pressure. “He was strangled as well.”

“He? I thought it was a she.”

I exhaled in exasperation. “
Goddamn
it, Ghost…”

“Sorry,” Ghost apologized. She didn’t sound particularly sincere. “Axed, strangled,
and
drowned,” Ghost mused. “Wonder which happened first?”

“Somebody really wanted him dead. Poor thing.” I looked down at the flattened, peat-darkened features, telling myself that I was only trying to see in them some reflection of the Miccail’s mysterious life. This Miccail was a worse mirror than the one in my room. Between the pressure-distorted head and the long Miccail snout, the wide-set eyes, the light-sensitive eyelike organ at the top of the head, the nasal slits above the too-small, toothless mouth, it was difficult to attribute any human expression to the face. I sighed. “Let’s see if we can straighten out the other arm—”

“Ana,” Ghost interrupted, “you have company on the way, I’m afraid—”

“Anaïs!”

The shout came from outside, in the clinic’s lobby. A few seconds later, Elio Allen-Shimmura came through the lab doors in a burst. His dark hair was disheveled, his black eyes worried. The hair and eyes stood out harshly against his light skin, reddened slightly from the cold northwest wind. His plain, undistinguished features were furrowed, creasing the too-pale forehead under the shock of bangs and drawing the ugly, sharp planes of his face even tighter. He cast a glance at the bog body; I moved between Elio and the Miccail. Some part of me didn’t want him to see, didn’t want anyone to see.

Elio didn’t seem to notice. He glanced quickly to the glowing apparition of Ghost. “Is that you, Elio?” Ghost asked. “I can’t see through this damn blindfold.” Ghost grinned under the parti-colored blindfold.

Elio smiled in return, habitually, an expression that just touched the corners of his too-thin lips and died. “It’s me.” Something was bothering Elio; he couldn’t stand still, shuffling from foot to foot as if he were anxious to be somewhere else. I’d often noticed that reaction in my presence, but at least this time I didn’t seem to be the cause of it. Elio turned away from Ghost. “Anaïs, has Euzhan been in here?”

“Haven’t seen her, El.”
Your Geeda Dominic doesn’t exactly encourage your Family’s children to be around me, I wanted to add, but didn’
t. With my own Family having no children at the moment, if I had a favorite kid in the settlement, it would be Euzhan, a giggling, mischievous presence. Euzhan liked me, liked me with the uncomplicated trust of a child; liked me—I have to admit—with the same unconscious grace that her mother had possessed. It was impossible not to love the child back. I began to feel a sour stirring in the pit of my stomach.

“Damn! I was hoping…” Elio’s gaze went to the door, flicking away from me.

“El, what’s going on?”

He spoke to the air somewhere between Ghost and me. “It’s probably nothing. Euz is missing from the compound, has been for an hour. Dominic’s pretty frantic. We’ll probably find her hiding in the new building, but…”

I could hear the forced nonchalance in Elio’s voice; that told me that they’d already checked the obvious places where a small child might hide. A missing child, in a population as small as ours, was certainly cause for immediate concern—Dominic, the current patriarch of the Allen-Shimmura family, would have sent out every available person to look for the girl. Elio frowned and shook his head. “All right. You’re in the middle of something, I know. But if you do see her—”

His obvious distress sparked guilt. “This has waited for a few thousand years. It can certainly wait another hour or two. I’ll come help. Just give me a few minutes to put things away and scrub.”

“Thanks. We appreciate it.” Elio glanced again at the Miccail’s body, still eclipsed behind me, then gave me a small smile before he left. I was almost startled by that and returned the smile, forgetting that he couldn’t see it behind the mask. As he left, I slid the examining table back into the isolation compartment, then went to the sink and began scrubbing the protective brownish covering of thorn-vine sap from my hands.