Free Thirteen Specimens by Jeffrey Thomas Page A

body.
         Still, she had not begun to shriek again, and she had not thrashed or even flinched. Could she have found his touch...soothing? Gingerly, lightly, he laid his bare hands upon her again, feeling at other areas he had mended with his magic.
         “I wish there were an easy way we could communicate. I know you can understand me, at least.” A translating chip on an adhesive disk was stuck to the back of the being’s head. “Do you know how to write any English?” Fleck asked, suddenly hopeful, but his patient made no rumbles in response.
         His hands slid gently forward, to her head, and he felt at the skull that had been fractured with blows but fused whole again. The huge orifice was not an excised face, as he had feared in the ER; it was all she had for a visage. The inside of the deep crater was filled with cobweb-like strands that were ever blowing outward on a weak exhaust, a bit chilly and unsettling but at least without scent. He wanted to roll back the one tire-like thick lip, to see the gums from which her rows of lamprey fangs had been pulled, but he had not had to repair in there and felt awkward about examining her in that way.
         “I’m told there’s a safe place in the Outback Colony where you’ll be taken in another few days. I’m glad to hear that. I don’t want you to be attacked again.” Still, no thundering noises to acknowledge his words. Uncomfortably, he prattled on, “It’s very tragic...what happened to you. I don’t understand it. How a person can injure anyone in that way...let alone a family member.” He thought better of expressing his personal opinions so candidly, and bit off his words as he concluded his visual inspection of his artistry. All he would say when he finished was, “There – beautiful again, eh?” Without thinking, he patted her flank as though she were a horse. He hoped she understood the smiling expression on his own face.
         He was heading for the door, and off to check on the progress of a less exotic patient, when he heard a rolling boom at last behind him. He paused in the doorway to look back. The dormant volcano of a face gaped at him inscrutably, and the tiny brown forelimbs hung idle like the useless arms of a Tyrannosaurus. He waited a few beats, but nothing more.
         “Have a good evening,” he told her. “Ring the nurse – that button there, you know – if you need anything...”
         He had taken only a few steps down the corridor when his hand phone beeped, and he plucked it from his pocket. A woman on screen said, “Dr. Fleck, you have a call on line 12. Would you like it here or in your office?”
         “Emergency?”
         “No...well, it’s about your patient in Room 40.”
         A newspaper? VT crew? There had been a little bit of media interest in the story; he had even rather proudly bought a copy of a paper that mentioned him and Midas, their work to restore the disfigured being after her harsh punishment.
         “I’ll take it in my office, thanks. Be right there...”
    *     *     *
         When Fleck was seated at his desk and switched his comp on, a bright red logo for Fl’eye Communications instantly leapt off the screen and began to orbit his wrist like a bracelet. He muttered a curse under his breath, his right hand fumbling through a drawer of his desk for a can to spray himself with so as to repel the pesky thing. With his left, he tapped a key to bring up his call. But when he saw the face – or lack of a face – on his screen, he forgot about the parasitic logo.
         “Dr. Fleck?” the creature on the screen said, its voice translated into English. The huge O of its mouth, of its entire countenance, did not move. Cobwebs stirred outwards from the thing’s continuous exhalation. Fleck found himself staring into the maw for the dim glimmer of teeth in overlapping rows, but didn’t see any. He almost wanted to hit a magnifying feature,