He opened his mouth very wide, his tongue quivering in the midst of that round, red hole, deep as an abyss his throat. He screamed a sound that went endlessly out into the world. Not any sound they had ever heard him make before. Not a sound any child should be capable of making, a sound that fled unmuted across the moorlands like the shadow of a cloud, sweeping across the world, south, away: a trumpet, a roar, a shriek, a cry, a whistle, a bellow, a blast … They could almost watch it go!
Leelson grunted, “By my manhood!”
Mitigan shook Lutha by the shoulder. “What?”
She couldn’t tell him. She didn’t know!
And normal sound came back all at once, as though a finger had been snapped.
In the window Leely sucked his fingers, murmuring, “Dananana.”
He had exorcised the ghosts. He had driven them away. What right had he to do that?
They breathed deep into oxygen-starved lungs.
“Lutha!” Leelson demanded. “What is this?”
“Why ask me?” she cried. “How would I know?”
“You’re his mother!” he shouted.
“Bernesohn Famber was his mother and his father,” she yelled back. “Bernesohn designed him. Too bad Bernesohn isn’t around to give us the operating instructions.”
While babble broke out all around, she sat down and wept, feeling her face smart from the salt, feeling her nose swell and turn red, that familiar pain behind her breastbone like a swallowed stone. Obviously, Leelson hadn’t told them what they’d figured out about Leely. Well, neither had she. They were both … what? Ashamed of it? Probably. How can one tell friends and acquaintances that one’s great passion, one’s world-shaking romance is no more than a mating dance between ephemerids, that all one’s achievements count to nothing in the face of a biological destiny hoicked up by a runaway Fastigat in a makeshift laboratory on a very minor planet!
She wept while Leelson explained, as Fastigats do, unemphatically but in great detail and with all possible inferences.
It would have bored anyone. It bored Lutha. He talked so long she tired of sniveling and began wiping the wetness from her face.
“But what is he?” Jiacare Lostre demanded.
“A virus,” said Leelson, without emotion. “To all intents and purposes. Morphologically, he’s human, born of a normal zygote that carries a lot of something else—something Ularian. He’s a hybrid. He has enough brain to get along at the level of a … ”
“A chicken,” Lutha said bitterly, feeling a new gush of tears. There were no chickens left, but the word remained. One of those sorts of words that did remain.
“Something like that,” Leelson admitted.
“Whatever he’s carrying, it gets around the Ularian immune system,” Snark supplied. “I found disrupted cells in the dropped tentacles, and in the dying shaggy.”
Leelson nodded heavily. “He’s also carrying an agent or genetic program that promotes rapid healing in humans. It’s in his saliva. Probably in his blood. Maybe he had to have that to retain human shape with all that Ularian stuff in him.”
“Or it was purposeful, so people would value him,” offered the ex-king. “Maybe Bernesohn was looking ahead. He would want his … virus to survive. He knew people would value something that could heal their ills.” He furrowed his brow, continuing in a doubtful voice: “Of course, that would have depended upon people knowing about it.”
“He prob’ly meant ‘em to know,” breathed Snark. “Meant ‘em to know about the whole business. He sure wouldn’t depend on it bein’ found out like this! By accident!”
Mitigan hoisted Leely high and presented his wounded arm, still festering and red.
“Dananana,” Leely caroled, giving Mitigan’s arm several wet kisses.
“Me,” said Snark. The wound she’d sustained during the Kachis birthing was also inflamed. Leely kissed the bite marks. Lutha had seen dogs lick wounds like that, in old nature chips. She shook her head, ashamed. She had known about Leely’s healing ability the day before. She should have told Snark. And Mitigan.
Saluez noticed her pain. She took Lutha’s hand, peered into her eyes. “Lutha. Lutha, sister.” Her eyes filled and Lutha turned away, unable to bear her compassion. By the Great Gauphin, Lutha didn’t want anyone to share her feelings. Her feelings were her own, singular, unique!