Free Thirteen Specimens by Jeffrey Thomas Page B

to look more closely...
         “Yes,” he replied numbly. He thought of what Nietzsche had said, about the abyss staring also into you ...
         “It has come to our attention that you are administering reconstructive processes to a female of our kind. A female of my family.”
         “Your family...” Fleck echoed.
         “We discourage you, in the strongest possible terms, from conducting these procedures.”
         “Well, I’m sorry,” Fleck said tightly, realizing that he had begun to tremble, “but the procedures are all but finished, and my patient has made a fine recovery considering the severity of the damage that she suffered.”
         “Then...we are too late.”
         “Yes. She is healed. Sorry, but that’s what we do here.”
         “You must undo it, then.”
         “What? We don’t undo the work we perform to save people’s lives and make them healthy again. Are you insane? You people...you people should be arrested for what you did.” The forcers were in fact looking for the particular family members who had tortured the female, though the punishment meted out to them might not be too great if they argued passionately enough that it was an important cultural or religious practice. Fleck thought he should trace this call, and surreptitiously fingered a few more keys. In a corner of the screen, the information came up. The being was wisely calling from a payphone at the Canberra Mall.
         It stood there immobile, as if embalmed. Just the webs blowing. Judging from the thin neck and boney shoulders, it was somewhat humanoid in form, and almost skeletal...but the voice as translated was bold and strong. “You had no right to interfere in our judgment. You have undone an important ritual that we were bound by our traditions to perform. What you have done is akin to spitting on the steps of one of our temples.”
         “I’d rather spit on a temple’s steps than bite huge holes out of a living person’s body!”
         “Your arrogance is unforgivable.”
         “My arrogance? Mine? Look...who are you? Her brother, her cousin, what?”
         “I am her father.”
         “Her father? Her father ...” He was wagging his head in dumbfounded disgust.
         “Justice must be restored...”
         “You stay away from her, you hear? Anyway...anyway...she’s already on her way to a place where you won’t find her. Ever. We sent her away yesterday,” he lied.
         “Justice must be restored.”
         “Bite me,” Fleck snapped, and hit a key, expelling the abyss-faced entity from his screen. Then he realized what he had said. Not so funny, taken in another light.
         The eager icon circled round and round his wrist. With a surge of hatred, Fleck plunged his right hand back into the open drawer, located the can, and sprayed his arm as if it were insecticide with which to kill the glowing red parasite. The thing lost his scent, became oblivious to him, drifted up toward the ceiling where it might bob idly like a moth against a lampshade until it finally faded away, an hour or two later.
         He placed a call to the hospital’s security office, and talked to the sergeant on duty, a heavy-jawed KeeZee with three impassive black eyes; as nonhuman as he looked, at least he had features. “I want a guard on Room 40 at all times, until whoever is coming to take her away gets here.”
         “Yes, doctor.”
         Fleck signed off. He discovered that he still held the can of ad repellant in his hand like a gun, his index finger poised upon its button.
    *     *     *
         After Fleck had reported the call that threatened further violence against his patient, the organization that would give her sanctuary in the Outback Colony, down south, flew two of its people up to Punktown earlier than planned. They arrived the day after the call...first meeting with the being, and then with Fleck.