Morte (21 page)

There was a line of people waiting for treatment. What had once been a ticketing booth was now a registration area, and the arrivals board displayed numbers that were being served. Once he made it to the front of the line, Mort(e) flashed his badge and gestured to his new sash. Within minutes, his number appeared, far ahead of the sick puppy to his right and the coughing old horse to his left.

To his surprise, the doctor was a bear wearing a white physician’s coat. Mort(e) had not seen a bear outside of an army unit. Culdesac always spoke highly of this species, referring to them by their proper family name, the Ursidae. He said they understood one another. That was ridiculous, of course. Culdesac understood almost everyone.
No one
understood him.

The bear took Mort(e) through the battery of tests:
temperature, respiration, pressure, vision, hearing, reflexes. She drew blood and had him urinate into a cup. She said little, although the sound of her breathing through her large snout was incredibly loud, especially when she leaned in to listen to Mort(e)’s heart and lungs.

“So what brings you here so soon, Captain?” she asked.

“I’ve been working in the field,” Mort(e) said.

“Haven’t we all?”

She nodded to her leg. Mort(e) noticed that the limb was prosthetic. Even though the calf and foot had fur on them, the ankle joint was a plastic hinge. He wondered how she lost the leg. Who knew with these wild animals? Maybe she gnawed it off to get out of a trap.

“I wanted to see if I was exhibiting any signs,” he said.

“Signs of what?”

Mort(e) was quiet for a moment, hoping she would not make him say it. But she stood there, clipboard in hand, checking things off with a blue pen.

“That which we cannot name,” Mort(e) said.

She chuckled, revealing her white fangs. “The Big E?” she said. “If you had that, you wouldn’t have come here asking for a diagnosis. Or treatment.”

“But you should give me the test.”

“I already did,” she said. “No one has to ask anymore. And no one has to grant permission, either.”

She left the room and returned with the test tube containing his blood and the beaker filled with his urine. There was a green strip circling the inside of both vessels. She tipped them toward the light so that the fluid drained away from the marker.

“See the strip? Green is clean. Yellow is … well, I don’t have a rhyme yet, but it’s definitely not
mellow
.”

“I’ve heard that they were testing these things,” Mort(e) said.

“They just came in. The shipment was signed by Miriam herself,” the bear said. “If you see something, say something.”

She explained that they were using the strips more often. And with all the reported illnesses in the sector, she’d already had to order a new batch. Mort(e) felt only partially relieved at his negative result. How many quarantined settlements had tested negative up until the day the ants came and destroyed them?

“Relax, sir,” the bear said. “You don’t have a single symptom, and your blood and urine were clean. And no, I don’t want any other fluids.”

“You’re right,” Mort(e) said. “But you must know about the crazy stuff that’s going on around here.”

She did. She asked if he knew of the deer suicides. He said yes.

“I helped with the autopsies,” she said. “In my expert opinion—based on four years of medical training—they died from jumping off a cliff.”

Mort(e) smiled. He liked this bear.

“Sir,” she said, “it’s not EMSAH. I’ve been around, seen some things. And I know when a soldier is starting to confuse stress and fatigue with something worse.”

The predictability of this response was slightly comforting. That was something.

“You’ve seen some things,” he repeated. “Seen a human lately?”

“Are you seeing humans?”

“Either humans or very ugly animals.”

“I haven’t seen a human in a long time,” the doctor said. “It was way up north, away from all the settlements. I think he was a drowned pilot. Or a paratrooper. I don’t know why the Queen hates them so much. They’re delicious.”

Mort(e) laughed. He told her that there were merely rumors
of humans in disguise, and none of the reports had been confirmed. Then he rose from the table, agreeing that he was probably stressed, and asked if there was anything else. The doctor waved him off.

Mort(e) was about to leave when he realized that he did not know the bear’s name. He asked her.

“Rigel,” she said.

“I thought that was a boy’s name.”

“It’s a bear’s name,” she said.

Mort(e) was no longer thinking of her quip, whatever it was supposed to mean. Rigel was the name of the sandal in the Orion constellation. Maybe Briggs had set up this meeting. Mort(e) shook it off. This was a coincidence, he told himself. Lots of animals named themselves for stars. He could see the constellation in his mind’s eye: three glowing white orbs to represent the belt, along with a few others to demarcate the shoulders, feet, and sword. It was fitting that the belt was most prominent to those early humans. The ants were probably right; the humans were obsessed with their own bodies, fixated on the area that housed their greedy stomachs and lustful genitalia. The constellation had probably started as a waistline and nothing more. The warrior Orion must have been added later, to keep things respectable.

With a nod, Mort(e) gathered his paperwork and left the doctor’s office. He went straight to the barracks, hoping to avoid Culdesac and Wawa. If they were monitoring his work, they would see that he had signed in.
Fine
, he thought. Let them think he was actually doing his job. It probably wouldn’t matter soon, anyway.

Bonaparte was not in his office, so Mort(e) headed for the mess hall. There he found the pig alone at a table, his snout in a tray filled with some kind of corn slop. He had been careless
enough to get some of it on his oversized vest. Bonaparte was not as quick as the others, and was so engrossed in his lunch that he did not notice Mort(e)’s presence. Culdesac chose members of the Red Sphinx well, but Bonaparte seemed to be more of a mascot, a representative of how things could be if the animals put aside their differences and worked together. He no doubt had skills, which must have included an unquestioning loyalty and stubbornness—pigheadedness, the humans would have said. Still, though it may have been noble for the Red Sphinx to incorporate other species, this corn slop session must have been one of many habits that separated Bonaparte from the others. While the cats now ate a protein supplement manufactured by the Colony, this outcast still had to eat the same feed from his slave days. Like many livestock animals, Bonaparte probably couldn’t adjust to the new food supply, and had to get an alternative prescribed by a doctor. The carnivorous cats must have picked on him for having to haul his special diet around on their missions like some high-maintenance invalid.

As he fished for something in his pocket, Bonaparte spotted Mort(e). He scooped up a napkin with both hooves and wiped the corn mash from his nose—a delicate operation that he performed with surprising dexterity. When he saluted, the object in his pocket jingled. Mort(e) could tell that it was a flask. Perhaps Bonaparte had taken it from the farmer who owned him. The pig inherited both the flask and the drinking habit, it seemed. It made Mort(e) smile. Tiberius probably would have befriended the pig for that alone. Then Bonaparte would not have been such an outsider.

“Sir, we completed the dig,” Bonaparte said.

“Never mind the dig,” Mort(e) said. In fact, he had already forgotten about it. When Bonaparte tried to interrupt him, Mort(e) cut him off by naming several items that he needed
immediately: an old phone book from the area, medical records on the former owner of Olive the dog, and a book on Morse code. He did not really need the first two, but requesting only the codebook could arouse suspicion. Bonaparte immediately left his half-eaten meal to fetch the items. Mort(e) took pleasure in the pig’s newfound obedience. Word had reached the colonel about Bonaparte calling Mort(e) a choker when they first met, an egregious sign of disrespect. Culdesac had probably made the pig run seven miles with his sash tied to his head.

Thirty minutes later, Bonaparte arrived at Mort(e)’s temporary office with the codebook, apologizing for finding only one of the three things, and for the awful stench coming from the book. Almost all the texts at the barracks had been salvaged from the nearby library. The titles had been waterlogged by rain coming through the shattered roof and broken windows. The scent of this book was so putrid that Mort(e) almost reconsidered using it.

“Can I tell you about the dig now, sir?” Bonaparte asked.

“Yes. What did you find?”

Bonaparte looked around before he answered. “A bomb.”

BONAPARTE LED MORT(E)
to a secure room at the far end of the barracks. On the way, he described digging up the dog’s yard. With Olive watching, the pig and two cats sniffed around the numerous mud hills in the lawn. At first it was tedious work. They found the items one would expect from a dog who fantasized about his days as a pet: a bone, a stick, a rubber chew toy shaped like a little green alien—“with three eyes,” Bonaparte added. The pig turned it into a game, placing bets with the cats about who had the best sense of smell. This was an ongoing banter among the species. Bonaparte correctly predicted the contents of the burial sites every single time. Even through a
foot of dirt, he could detect a baseball cap, a catcher’s mitt, and a beer bottle (that last one did not surprise Mort(e)). At one point, Olive even clapped, cheering him on against the increasingly frustrated cats.

“Get to the bomb, Bonaparte,” Mort(e) said.

There were grooves carved into the driveway, Bonaparte said. The indentations created a straight line from the dog’s SUV, along the asphalt, and through the grass, terminating at a large mud hill at the edge of the property. Even Bonaparte could not figure out the scent, although both he and the cats could detect metal and plastic. So they began digging. When they found the device, Bonaparte called the barracks and requested more soldiers. He wanted the house surrounded. Olive was probably not involved in this, but it wouldn’t matter now. While Bonaparte spoke, Mort(e) imagined an overhead view of poor Olive’s home, with a red dot marking her house. The dot expanded into a lake of blood engulfing the entire sector.

Mort(e) and Bonaparte arrived at the room. Two Red Sphinx soldiers stood guard. They stepped aside when Mort(e) showed them his identification.

Inside, a single table furnished the windowless room. The bomb sat on top, still caked in dirt. Bonaparte assured Mort(e) that it had been disarmed. It was a black box infested with red and blue wires, like a clown’s wig. The cords connected an electronic timer with a block of plastic explosive. Mort(e) was relieved—though only slightly—to see that the device carried no biological agent. In other words, it was not a weapon intended to spread the EMSAH virus. Averroes himself had tested negative for the disease. Moreover, the device did not have bits of shaved metal or nails in the casing. It was meant to destroy a building rather than kill or maim a group of soldiers.

“The neighbor must have seen this,” Bonaparte said.

Mort(e) nodded. “Averroes had to kill him to keep him quiet,” he said. “Had no choice.”

If Thor had not spotted Averroes with this device, then the bomb almost surely would have been used at the sanitation plant. An explosion there would have been the kind of warning that Briggs had mentioned. A population ruled by its sense of smell would have to pay attention to a destroyed sanitation facility.

Where did Averroes get the material for this? He was no soldier. But if there was a network of saboteurs out there, it made sense that they would recruit someone like him. Maybe another member of the resistance planned to dig up the bomb and finish the job.

“There’s one more thing,” Bonaparte said. He lifted the bomb and turned it on its side. There was a message carved into the plastic. When Mort(e) read it, he heard the words in the voice of Briggs:

THE QUEEN IS BLIND
.

It was a direct response to the mantra—the threat—under which the animals lived every day since the war started. The Queen sees everything, they were told. Presumably she saw this. And now what? This was how a quarantine started, Mort(e) realized. If EMSAH could make a person kill his own family, then who could blame the Queen for trying to wipe it out?

“I’ll report this to the lieutenant,” Mort(e) said. “Good work, Specialist.”

“You’ve seen this before, right?”

“No, I haven’t.”

“But you told Culdesac all this was inevitable,” Bonaparte said. “So you must know something about how EMSAH works.”

“I’m starting to think that no one does.”

“I’ve been thinking that for a while myself.”

“Then keep it to yourself,” Mort(e) said.

Discouraged, Bonaparte saluted and went on his way, his hooves clicking down the hallway. Mort(e) ran his finger over the carved message again. He mouthed the words. Then he whispered them.

MORT(E) RETURNED HOME,
entered his garage, and opened the codebook. It was not even noon yet. He had over twelve hours to refresh his memory and write a fake report on the investigations he had conducted that day.

This EMSAH outbreak was somehow coupled with a conspiracy to bring down the sector, to bait it into quarantine. He had never heard of the disease spreading in this way, but Culdesac had always warned the Red Sphinx that every case was different. There was no limit to the depravity of humans. But they had promised him Sheba, and so he went ahead with setting up his telescope despite everything that Culdesac had taught him. The quarantine could begin tomorrow, for all he knew, so he might as well see what Briggs was talking about while he still had the chance.

Mort(e) waited. The sky grew dark, a wasteland pocked with stars. For so long, he had viewed the world horizontally. Had it not been for the Queen and her grand design, he never would have gazed up into the sky and wondered. He would have died having learned nothing, like so many wasted generations before him.