While she talked, mostly for her own benefit, Akotolp changed the dressings on his body. This was moderately painful, but nothing like the pain that he had felt before. “Some of the ustuzou we captured had the same disease, in a milder form. Antibodies from their youth. You had none. I exsanguinated the sickest one completely, made a serum, did the job. There, finished. Now eat something.”
“How… long…” Kerrick managed to whisper the words.
“How long the food? How long the antibodies? Are you still delirious?” Kerrick managed to move his hand in the motion of time significance. “Understood. How long have you been ill? Very long, I did not keep track. It is not important. Now drink this, you need protein, you’ve lost a third of your bodyweight, it is delicious meat enzymed to liquid, most digestible.”
Kerrick was too weak to protest. Though he did gag on the repulsive liquid before he managed to get some down. After that he slept, exhausted. But this had been the turning point. The disease was over, he was on the mend. He had no visitors, other than the fat scientist, nor did he want any. Memories of the Tanu that he had talked to turned over and over in his mind. No, not Tanu, ustuzou, degenerate, warm-fleshed killers. Flesh of his flesh. Tanu. The same people, the same creatures. He had a double-identity that he could not understand and he fought to make sense of it all. Of course he was Tanu himself, since he had been brought here when he was very young. But that had happened so long ago, so much had happened to him since that all memory of this had vanished. He was left more with a memory of the memory, as though it were something that he had been told about and had not really experienced himself. Though physically he was not Yilanè, could never be, he nevertheless now thought like one, moved like one, spoke like one. But his body was still Tanu and in his dreams he moved among his own people. These dreams were disturbing, even frightening, and he was glad that he remembered very little of them when he awoke. He tried to remember more of the Tanu words but could not, while even the words he had spoken aloud slipped from his mind as he recovered.
Other than the perpetual silent presence of Inlènu* he was left completely alone. Akotolp was his only visitor and he wondered at this.
“Are they all still away from the city, all of those who are killing the ustuzou?” he asked her one day.
“No. They have been back twenty of days at least.”
“But no one passes outside, not even the fargi, no one comes in other than you.”
“Of course not.” Akotolp settled back solidly on her tail, her four thumbs laced together and resting comfortably on the thick roll of fat on her midriff. “You know little about the Yilanè, just about this much, the space between my thumbs.” She pinched them together tightly. “You live in our midst yet know nothing.”
“I am nothing, I know nothing. You know everything. Enlightenment would be pleasure.”
Kerrick meant what he said, it was not mere politeness. He lived in a jungle of mysteries, a maze of unanswered questions. Most of his life had been lived here in this city of secrets. There were assumptions and knowledge of Yilanè life that everyone seemed to know—yet no one would talk about. If flattery and fawning could get answers from this fat creature, he would contort himself into every position of obeisance.
“Yilanè do not grow ill. Disease strikes down only the lower animals, like you. I can assume that there were once diseases that affected us. They have long since been eliminated, like the fever that killed some of the first Yilanè to come here. Infections may follow traumatic wounding; they are quickly conquered. So your illness baffles the stupid fargi, they cannot understand it or accept it—so they ignore it—and you. However, such is my skill at working with all forms of life that I am immune to such stupidities.”
She expressed great satisfaction with herself and Kerrick hurried to agree in great detail. “There is nothing unknown to your Highest,” he added. “Could this stupid one presume upon your intelligence to ask a question?”