Trail of Bones (4 page)

He sips from the mug. “Normally, I prefer
French wine. But such are the concessions of research in the field.
I trust the good Captains will not begrudge me a little of their
grog. Besides,” he adds, “I understand Sally and Brassy used some
of this to minister to you and bring you ‘round.”

“They did?” I lick my lips and move my
tongue, to see if there are any funny tastes in my mouth.

Jefferson is still trying to figure me out.
“So then, young man, are you some kind of abolitionist? Did you
help Brassy escape? Because I will tell you, as much as I’d hoped
to leave politics behind for a while, anything to do with this
slave business will put me in a delicate position. Even out
here.”

“It’s really not so delicate, sir. Slavery
is just plain wrong.” Could I get arrested for talking to a
president like that? “Can I see Thea?”

“I’m afraid, after what happened to my
Treasury agent, Mr. Howard, that may not be possible.”

“What happened to Mr. Howard?”

“He tried on your headdress, squire.”

“You mean my Seals cap?” Oh, no. That will
scramble the time-charge of this Howard guy’s protons. I hope he
hasn’t vanished. Or gone crazy.

“It seems to cause a kind of fever in the
wearer. If it spreads, you may yet cause the president himself to
be quarantined.” After another sip, Jefferson leans over. “Master
Sands, you are clearly a young man of great means and wiles. But
you may yet have to be remanded to United States custody until we
understand the nature of your being here.

“You see, even putting the matter of slaves
aside, my sending of Captains Lewis and Clark and their Corps of
Discovery on a journey west is itself a finely tuned political
matter, and I must orchestrate it well. My goal is to have them
explore the areas of my Louisiana Purchase, a fine expanse of
territory I have just bought from the emperor Napoleon, to record
scientific curiosities throughout the far west, and most
importantly, to discover a direct water route to the Pacific. The
American experiment is expanding toward those shores.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Many in Congress expect this expedition to
fail. They expect the Corps to fall prey to bands of hostile
Indians, or fierce giants, or other creatures that may roam out
there. They think I am ridiculous to fund this expedition.”

He rubs his forehead and sips his whiskey,
then makes a face. “I really should have brought more wine from
home. This is much too rough. But it will serve.” He lowers the
mug. “The atmosphere in Washington is so rancid now that I decided
to slip out of town myself,
incognitum
,
as it were,
accompanying the Corps nearly as far as St. Louis, their true
launching point, in order to pursue a small hobby.”

“What hobby is that, sir?” I try to
concentrate on Jefferson, but being kept from Thea makes me edgy,
plus, there’s suddenly a lot of shouting outside — both the human
and the horse kind.

“Bones, Master Sands. Bones.” He turns
toward the tent flap. “What is that contemptible racket? Are there
no quiet mornings to be had anywhere in this country?”

The morning gets even less quiet. Mr. Howard
barges into the tent. He’s bathed in sweat, and his eyes are
bulging.

“Terrible lizards, sir!”

“Shouldn’t you be getting medical attention,
Mr. Howard?” Jefferson asks.

The cap may not have made him disappear, but
it’s sure affected him.

“Sir, I cannot rest when we have information
on just how dangerous the future of this expedition — and therefore
your electoral future as president—might be!”

“What information is that?”

“I repeat: ‘Terrible lizards, sir!’”

Jefferson sighs. “Which lizards, Mr.
Howard?”

“A French fur trapper has just wandered into
camp! His name is Banglees. He spent last winter in the Dakotas
with the Mandan Indians and the Hidatsas! Said they were telling
stories about a big terrible lizard in the wild who walks like a
man and talks! He said he tried to track the lizard down, but an
awful snowstorm came up and he almost froze. He says now the lizard
may have saved him. Claims it was some kind of creature asking him
for an
orange
, and when he came to, he was back with the
Indians.”

Jefferson shakes his head. “Has this
Banglees been wearing young Master Sand’s fever hat,
perchance?”

“Sir!” This Howard guy says nearly every
word like he’s warning people about a fire. “We may have to cancel
the expedition! We may have to arm them with cannons!”

“Perhaps you should return to bed rest, Mr.
Howard. And perhaps I should attend to this… Banglees.” Jefferson
rises to his feet, sets the mug down and manages to smile at me, a
little. “Perhaps, Master Sands, I am not as far from the
president’s office as I had hoped. We shall resume later.”

But it was hard for me to pay much attention
to President Jefferson right then. I was figuring out how I could
talk to this French fur trapper guy myself.

To find out more about a lizard who asks for
oranges.

Clyne.

Clyne is out there somewhere. He’s been
discovered. And he’s in danger.

Chapter Four

Clyne: Arrak-du

February 1804

This may be my last homework report for two
reasons, both of which accelerate my head-spindles and give me
brain transgressions.

The first of the reasons is this: The
plasmechanical material from my home world of Saurius Prime, the
breakthrough substance that makes so much Saurian technology
possible, appears to be infected with slow pox.

I grant that this is a conclusion based on
field research, using radically imperfect equipment and
gerk-skizzy
methods.

Or perhaps
gerk-skizzy
is too unkind.
But I have had to rely on an old science project trick from Third
Step Elemental School.

“Imagine you are in the
arrak-du
,”
our teachers would tell us, “the lost lands, and you must confirm
the essential nature of a new specimen you have found. How would
you proceed?”

One of the solutions to that problem is to
fashion a basic microscope lens out of a sheet of ice. It takes
much patience and long sitting, and adept use of one’s claws. Due
to the distortions that come with slight ice-melt, I have made
three of them over the last pair of days, in order to confirm my
results.

I was prompted to do this for several
reasons, among them: the anomalous behavior of the Saurian
time-vessel, which resulted in abrupt ejection for my friends and
me from the Fifth Dimension; my return to Earth Orange, human year
sometime in their nineteenth century, but with no trace of my human
companions nearby; strange interjections from the lingo-spots,
which are suddenly operating on broader frequencies and seem to
want to participate in — and not merely translate — conversations;
and the fact that I am surrounded by vast tracts of snow and ice
and have little else to do at the moment but work on possible extra
credit.

In fact, I may just fashion a fourth ice
lens, and take another small sample of the lingo-spot material from
behind my ear, to confirm these results once more.

I have been consulting the
National
Weekly Truth
, one of the journals of news and logical deduction
distributed in Eli’s time. I have kept a crumpled copy in my
chrono-suit, the one with the heading
LIZARD MAN
IN THE WOODS!
, with an artist’s rendering that follows,
saved as an additional piece of evidence that my time here on Earth
Orange was real, and not the fevered imaginings of someone off in
an interdimensional
arrak-du
of their own.

Though I wonder if now I’ve ended up in a
mammal
arrak-du
: of the few humans I’ve encountered here,
none seems to have heard of oranges.

Meanwhile, the
Weekly Truth
provides
some helpful medical background:

FIVE THINGS THE GOVERNMENT DOESN’T
WANT YOU TO KNOW

ABOUT SLOW POX!

1. This isn’t the “slow pox” of the
Middle Ages — famously seen during the

outbreak in Alexandria around the
year 400. This is a mutant strain

that escaped from a government
lab!

2. There is no cure — but if you
survive, you’re immune.

Remember: this new form of slow pox
attacks not just the

blood but brain function, too. You
might wind up a zombie

subject to outside
control!

3. Aliens don’t catch slow pox!
Could the sudden reappearance

of the disease be the first attack
in an imminent invasion from

outer space? Is our government
helping aliens turn taxpayers

into zombies?

4. The effects of slow pox
work…slowly! But the disease is

still spreading, despite what you
hear from less reliable news sources!

5. Government detention centers are
coming soon! Slow pox will

be the excuse! Will
you
be
the victim? Not if you read the

National Weekly Truth
and
stay informed!

This is my theory: Part of what makes
plasmechanics a “smart” technology is the material’s ability to
adapt and change according to prevailing conditions. Not just
through computation, but by incorporating biology. That’s how the
lingo-spot is able to interact with the vibrations and
synapse-firings of the wearer in order to translate.

From what I know, slow pox acts on mammal
blood and brains: it causes much lobe confusion. It mimics the
cellular reproduction of nerve endings and makes a false version of
the nerve tissue, which reroutes and distorts the signals. This
often leads to paralysis. Similarly, in the bloodstream, real cells
are poorly replicated, so that the blood itself becomes a kind of
wasteland, unable to clean itself or run freely through vein
systems.

A bad set of conditions, biologically
speaking. It makes Searing Scale Syndrome seem like a picnic, in
contrast.

In fact, I initially thought slow pox had
infected that mammal Banglees, when I came across him out here in
these ice fields.

Instead, he was almost frozen.
Cold-flummoxed, by letting his campfire die down while he
dozed.

After I helped respark the flames and thaw
him out, he blinked at me several times.

“Eh — you mean, I am not dead?” he
asked.

“Evidently not,” I told him.

“Then how is it you are here,
mon
ami
, if I am not? Are you not from Heaven, or the other
place?”

I wondered if “Heaven, or the other place”
referred to some kind of
arrak-du
.

“I have taken some very engaging missteps in
space and time,” I told him, “which have all construed to bring me
here.”

“You mean you are lost?”

“I am doing extended field research.”

“Ah, well. If zat means you are lizard
people, I suppose it ees my job to kill you and take your skin and
skull with me.”

“Your entire employment is based on a
graphic recipe for harming me?”

“I am a trapper.”

He tightened the mammal furs — borrowed
permanently, it appeared, from other mammals — more tightly around
himself and moved closer to the flames.

“But I am also cold, and I have been out a
long time, so I am tired. And while I am not convinced
complètement
zat I am alive or zat you are real, I will
spend the next hours until sunup talking to you, if for no other
reason than to make sure I stay awake.”

“Then we will talk of—”

Nika-tc.

The word came out of my mouth before I knew
what I was saying. “Home.” Saurian for “home.”

But it didn’t feel like I was the one saying
it.

It felt like the lingo-spot.

Though I’ve never known a lingo-spot to use
Saurian before.

“You will have to make more sense than zat,
mon ami
, whether you are imaginary or not.”

Banglees and I talked of many things,
including the stories of the lizard people. Once he thawed, he
seemed much nimbly again with the kind of
zrk-kttl
energy I
have come to expect of mammals, and in the morning, he was on his
way.

I believe I have met the lizard people, and
they are me. I wonder, though, if there are others?

Since then, the lingo-spot has still
occasionally whispered to me of
arrak-du
and
nika-tc
.

And looking through the slightly distorted
ice lens I have fashioned to recheck my results, I think the slow
pox has affected the cellular structure of the plasmechanical
substance by allowing a mutation that the microtechnology then
tries to “fix.”

Which is to say, slow pox virus caused
pretend nerve cells to form based on the slightest electrical
impulses between cells. The engineered micro-machines then
“repaired” this suddenly growing tissue. And somehow made it
work.

The slow pox mutation is, in this instance,
allowing a nervous system to form.

And therefore, allowing the plasmechanical
tissue to function at an even higher level of intelligence.

That might explain what happened to the
Saurian time-vessel.

But this is all untested theory, and there
is little equipment here to verify results, until I get home.

Nika-tc.

If I get home.

Can lost lands become home, if one is
stranded in them long enough?

Which brings up another question: If the
plasmechanical tissue was fabricated on Saurius Prime, how could
slow pox affect the Saurian biology?