Sam seemed ready to scream from the hopelessness of the situation. “I can’t believe that your people came on a spaceship with all that advanced technology, and there’s no way to reverse this.”
“Why would they ever want to?” Ukiah asked. “Why would they want to unmake themselves?”
Max sighed. “Ukiah, there’s no technology that could reverse the effects? No drug? No antibacterial, chemotherapy, retrovirus—anything?”
Ukiah opened his mouth to say no and then considered harder. The ovipositor started as a weapon of war against the Ontongard. A race known as the Summ had welcomed the lesser-advanced Ontongard, confident that if a war became a matter of starship against starship, they would win. Only after a quarter of their race was dead or converted did they realize their danger. By then, telling friend from foe was impossible, and a racial cleansing would have needed to start at the heart of the Summ civilization. Recognizing that the war was truly being fought at the molecular level, the Summ worked feverishly to develop tools of genetic manipulations, only to have their lead scientists fall to the Ontongard and corrupt the technology to their use. “Well, part of the ovipositor did complex genetic manipulation. It would create a viable offspring between Ontongard and the native life, a child that could breed with the native stock and produce offspring that the Ontongard could easily infect.”
“So we can use this ovipositor to do genetic manipulation—like to design something that will get Zoey back,” Jared said.
Ukiah shrugged. “The ovipositor was on the ship, and Prime destroyed the ship.”
“Was this where your mother was taken?” Jared asked. “Up in the mountains? Buried in the ground?”
Ukiah stared at Jared in surprise for a minute before answering. “Yes.”
“It wasn’t destroyed,” Jared said. “It was damaged. You went back once.”
“I did?” Two hundred years after puberty, and his voice could still crack. “You know this?”
“My great-grandfather Jay told me about it,” Jared said. “The two of you had gone up in the mountains when he was young. Your mother had told you about finding her way home, when you were very young. She gave very vivid landmarks. While she was alive, she wouldn’t let you go there, and she lived for a very long, long time. But after she died, you and he looked for it.”
“And I found it?”
“Yes, you found it.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Blue Mountains, Eastern Oregon
Friday, September 3, 2004
Ukiah saw the excitement on Sam’s and Jared’s faces and winced.
Max, though, knew the truth. “Ukiah used to know where the ship was. He doesn’t remember anymore.”
Ukiah said, “I lost the knowing when Magic Boy was murdered. I don’t have any memories of living with your family.”
It hurt to see the excitement die out of Jared’s face. Clearly, he felt betrayed and yet struggled to hide it. Worse, Jared had gone pale and trembling as Pack virus surged through him. Ukiah could feel the tendrils of it fighting Jared’s defenses, finding ancient weaknesses created by the Kicking Deers’ exposure to Ukiah’s blood while Ukiah was in his mother’s womb.
Ukiah scrambled to find some hope to offer Jared. The photographs had shown that Magic Boy had been chopped into many pieces. Hands severed from arms. Arms cut off at the shoulders. A nightmarish child’s puzzle of body parts.
Some of Magic Boy definitely went on to form Ukiah. For his memory loss to be so drastic, he would have to start out as just a fraction of that whole. A leg, the headless torso, or perhaps just the arms changed, sometime, somehow, into Ukiah.
Which meant there had to be other parts, in some form or other. If he found one, he could conceivably recall the location of the scout ship—but would he still be Ukiah afterward?
“Maybe if I can find some memories,” Ukiah offered weakly. Sam looked at him with confused, faint repulsion. “Exactly how do you find memories?”
Ukiah glanced to Max, who sighed and nodded agreement that the time had come to be completely upfront. “I’m not so much a person as a colony of cellular beings. If you cut off my hand, then my hand would reorganize itself into something that could survive. It would become a rat or a bird or a fish—and my body would grow a new hand to replace it.”
Sam shuddered. “Oh, I hope you’re talking theory and not practical experience.”
“Theory,” Max said.
“Actually,” Ukiah reluctantly admitted, “maybe practical experience.”
“Magic Boy,” Jared hissed, his eyes unfocused as he made all the connections. “When Magic Boy was dismembered, all the severed pieces became animals and ran off. That’s why his body vanished.”
“Yes,” Ukiah said.
Max understood the implications. “But there might be other parts of Magic Boy roaming around with his memories still genetically coded.”
Jared blinked back into focus, surprised. “You don’t think all the parts reassembled in Ukiah?”
“And why do you need them?” Sam struggled to understand. “Don’t you remember? And if you’ve forgotten, wouldn’t have they?”
“It’s possible I’m only a fraction of Magic Boy,” Ukiah fumbled for words. “I could be just his torso or one of his legs. There’s no telling what I went through from the time he died to a time I clearly remember. I could have existed as two rabbits and a squirrel for a decade until they merged into something large enough to make a human child.”
Sam’s hand slid up to cover her mouth, and from behind its protective screen, she whispered, “Oh, that’s soooo weird.”
“When I became human, at that point, there’s a change as to how my memory is stored. Bird, squirrel, or fish—the piece of flesh was big enough to form an adult creature. When my cells decided to become human, they could probably have only formed a child—most likely there weren’t enough of them to make an adult. And genetically, as a breeder, I have to grow to sexual maturity.”
“And like Kittanning,” Max applied what he knew to Ukiah, “your ‘old’ memories were lost as you grew up.”
Ukiah nodded. “For Kittanning’s sake, I’m glad how my father’s mutation works out for us, but I wish I could have kept my memories of my mother and my family.”
“What kind of animals do we need to look for?” Jared asked, already turning to the task at hand.
Ukiah spread his hands helplessly and guessed. “Mice. Snakes. Gophers. Dogs. Cats.”
Sam stared at Ukiah, shaking her head. “I’m looking at you, and I just see a sweet kid. I can’t believe what you’re saying.”
“He is a good kid,” Max said. “Everyone has quirks. His are just weirder than most.”
Jared ignored everything but saving Zoey. “Are you sure these lost parts will remember?”
“No,” Ukiah admitted. “They’ve certainly lost some of Magic Boy’s memories. How much depends on what’s happened to that set of cells since the murder. The fewer changes and trauma, the more that piece will remember.”
“These alien cats and dogs,” Sam said slowly, obviously still struggling with the whole concept, “are they going to look just like other regular animals?”
Ukiah spread his hand helplessly. “They might be black. Certainly, they would be long-lived and nearly indestructible.”
“Little Slow Magic,” Jared said.
“What?” Ukiah said.
“He’s a family pet.” Jared wiped sweat from his face with a trembling hand. “We’ve got pictures of him with my father as a baby. He’s always seemed indestructible; he’s lived through everything we’ve ever done to him, including accidentally running him over with a truck.”
“What the hell is he?” Max asked.
“A turtle.”
Jared vomited in the yard of the Kicking Deer farm. He had held out, growing sicker by the minute, until they arrived. The moment the Blazer stopped, he fought the door handle, tumbled out of the SUV, and threw up in the grass. After the first few wet uphea
vals emptied his stomach, he continued to dry heave, as if his body was trying to force out the alien invaders by any method possible.
Jared’s mother and Cassidy were the only ones at the farm. They swung from being relieved at seeing Jared in one piece to alarm, as he lay sweating and weak on the lawn. Ukiah carried him into the house to a bedroom Jared abandoned along with boyhood. Fever heat poured from Jared, like he was transforming into a being made of flame instead of flesh. Already from his mind, Ukiah caught flashes of delirious thoughts, of rupturing to reveal a creature of the sun trapped beneath the sweat-slick skin.
“I’m sorry.” Ukiah tucked him into the twin bed, dusty from disuse. “I’m a coward. I shouldn’t have let them to do this to you.”
“Could you have really stopped them?”
“I don’t know. Trying would have been better than this.”
“Cub, how would your dying save Zoey?”
“It wouldn’t have.” But at least he wouldn’t have to listen to Rennie’s words come from Jared’s mouth.
Max waited for him in the dim, comfortable living room. “Jared’s mother has gone for his grandfather; he’s a medicine man of some sort. I’ve tried to explain something to Cassidy; I’m not sure how coherent it sounded, but she didn’t ask a lot of questions. She and Sam are looking for the turtle now. Apparently they just let him wander around loose.”
Ukiah closed his eyes and felt. As he suspected, Little Slow Magic felt much like Kittanning, a distant echo of himself. There was a difference, a deeper resonance to the answering note. “He’s out back.”
Max gave him a worried look. “Rennie’s memory made you sicker than hell. You sure you’re going to be okay?”
Ukiah wished he were better at lying; he was too scared to convincingly say, “I’ll be fine.” ’ Max knew him too well. Since leaving Sam’s cabin, implications of absorbing Little Slow Magic slowly filtered in from Rennie’s memories. “I don’t know, Max. The Pack, they try not to share too many memories back and forth; apparently it makes it hard to keep track of who you really are.”
“You never said anything about Rennie’s memories confusing you.”
“There’s enough difference between us that I can tell where I stop and he begins. I was Magic Boy; when I take in Little Slow Magic, I might go back to being him.”
“Shit.” Max rubbed at the stubble on his face. “I don’t think you should do this, kid. You’re risking your whole identity on the hopes to find a hidden space ship intact enough to pull out a piece of technology that might help you save three people who will kill you on sight, if we could find them before the Pack reduces them to ash.”
For a moment he felt relief, forgiven by Max for refusing the danger. Then the memories crowded in. All the times they didn’t warn Kraynak. Zoey’s quick affectionate acceptance of him. Alicia in his arms, feeling safe.
Protect your people, that is what you were born to do.
Was this what the bear meant? The possibility helped calm the raging fear inside him. “I have to, Max.”
“Are you going to recognize what you need? Do you know how to make it work? How to modify it?”
“Yes, and soon Jared will too.”
Little Slow Magic was a large black turtle, and excited to see him. The turtle extended his leathery neck and bobbed his head in the closest thing to being rambunctious as he could get.
Because Sam and Cassidy had already been looking for the turtle, there were four pairs of expectant eyes watching Ukiah lift Little Slow Magic up, feeling that familiar shiver of joy welcome him. He never felt the need to hide taking back a memory before; suddenly the act seemed too intimate to do before two virtual strangers.
“I think I’d like to do this in private.”
Tucking Little Slow Magic in the crook of his arm, he wandered off onto the prairie. When the house and barn were toy-sized in the distance, he sat down on the low grass. The turtle in his cupped hands, Ukiah waited with fear skittering around in his stomach like cold-footed mice.
And waited.
And waited.
It wasn’t going to work. Unlike his other memories, there was no impatient want to merge. Ukiah sensed that Little Slow Magic was mildly lonely—part of a large, loving family and yet isolated by his very form. True, Little Slow Magic was happy to see him, but as a long-lost brother. The turtle had too long been an individual to consider himself only part of a whole.
Ukiah stared at the turtle in his hands, stumped. Rennie’s mouse hadn’t wanted to merge with him; the small crushable bundle of fur submitted only after he nearly killed it. Tearing the turtle into pieces would require a great deal of violence.
The happy burble from Little Slow Magic ended abruptly. Head, tail, and all four legs jerked suddenly into the shell, which snapped tightly shut.
Ukiah eyed the closed shell. Considering that Little Slow Magic was most likely supernaturally strong for a turtle—dealing with him just got even more difficult.
“I need you. Please. Help me.”
It was like throwing stones into a well, straining to hear if there was water at the dark, distant bottom.
“I don’t want to hurt you. Zoey is in danger. I need you to help her.”
Ukiah focused on the girl, the bright smile, the dark eyes, the chin that cocked up in defiance. He remembered her then in the Ontongard shack, struggling to defy the viral alien within her.
“I need to save her.”
From the dark well of Little Slow Magic’s mind, images of Zoey echoed back to him, only these from floor level. Zoey’s bare toes absently rubbing along his chin. Green, succulent lettuce while Zoey droned on about the injustice of being a woman. Toenails, ten for Zoey and twelve for Little Slow Magic, painted to match.
“We,” came the impression, not words, “will save her.”
What was Little Slow Magic pressed against Ukiah’s palms, and then seeped into him, cautiously joining with him. He felt the genetic links move through him, rushing with his blood, like someone opened his veins and poured lava in. He gasped in surprise and took in a deep breath . . .
. . . panting air clearer and crisper than any he remembered breathing. He was young, a baby of two or three, but pleased that he’d gotten so far from his mother’s watchful eye. He stood on the ridge that would someday house the Red Lion Hotel and the I-84 overpass. On the far ridge, unfarmed prairie stretched out as far as the eye could see, golden grass waving in the wind. Huts of tule-reed mats clustered in the river valley, racks of drying salmon promised a winter of plenty . . .
A jump, memory lost.
. . . The wind outside was howling against the tule mats, making them rattle. His family lounged around a fire on furs. Four boys tumbled together like puppies. He was the oldest, but still very young. Eight? Nine? The other three boys were seven, five, and three years old. A woman sat with an infant at her breast. A man sat watching them with contentment in his eyes.
“Tell us about the crow people, Mother,” one of the other boys cried.
“Yes, Kicking Deer,” said the man. “Tell us about the crow people.”
The woman breastfeeding the infant looked up, and he saw it was his mother. She was older than when Prime took her, a woman of her midtwenties, not of her midteens.
“Aiieee,” she said, rearranging her clothing. “Don’t you ever tire of that story?”
The boys cried out for the story, and she hushed them all. “The crow people came the summer before Magic Boy was born. All winter the crows had night roosted in the river bottoms, closer to the village than anyone could remember, so many more than ever before. It was like all the crows had invited their kin to come roost with them. Their klaahs drowned out the sound of the river and the wind.
“Always, that spring and summer, when you looked, you would see a crow. They watched us with their all-black eyes. You could not leave out food or string or shells. They would swoop in on black wings and grab it up. But if you picked up a bow to shoot them, before you could nock the arrow,
the crow, he would fly away.
“One day, there was the sound of thunder in the clear sky, and it went on and on. Mother called, ‘Look, look,’and I look up and see a thunderbird. It came from the setting sun, and it carried a stolen firebrand in its beak, and the flames danced all around the thunderbird, but did not consume it. Everyone fell to the ground, afraid. The thunderbird swooped down and landed in the mountains. The ground shook, and the firebrand put up a great plume of smoke. All the crows flew up, shouting klaah klaah, as if they knew and were happy.
“We gathered around, asking, ‘What does this mean? Why did the thunderbird come without clouds? Why did it steal part of the sun?’ And we did not notice until later that the crows had all gone away.
“The next day, the man of the crow people came. He was naked, tall, with spindly legs. His hair was stiff and black as a crow wing. And his eyes were all black, without any white, just like a crow.
“At first we did not fear him. He was only one and we were many. We had our bows and arrows, and he was naked. We met him with friendly words, and offers of gifts. He did not speak, only pointed, and the person at whom he pointed, they would drop dead as stones. He pointed, and my mother dropped. He pointed at my older sister Magpie Song, and she dropped. My brother Willow Branch shot the man with an arrow. The man pointed at Willow Branch and he dropped like a stone. The man pulled the arrow from him and did not even bleed. We saw we could not kill this man of the crow people, and we ran away, scattering in all directions. I ran down to the river, and hid in the berry bushes.
“I heard a noise, and I think it was the man of the crow people. But it was Coyote. He crouched in the bushes with me, and he said, ‘Little female, take this stone and swallow it. When the man of the crow people points at you, you will not die.’
“So I swallowed the stone, and it sank down to settle like a lump in my stomach. I went then to help my family. The man of the crow people was picking up the dead and putting them in a stone boat that sat on land. He saw me, and he pointed at me, and I started to turn to stone. I fell down and got all stiff, but the stone in my stomach protected me. He put me in the boat with the others, and the boat rose up into the air and flew into the mountains.