Free The Stuff of Dreams by Hideyuki Kikuchi Page A

voice traveled back from the darkness. The sunlight peeking in through the doorway provided a modicum of illumination for the building’s interior, where there were rows of massive chickeners—giant chicks standing up to six and a half feet tall. The way they simply stood there motionless behind the high-voltage lines strung along either side of the pathway, scrutinizing the pair with glinting blue eyes but not displaying any of the rambunctious behavior of normal chicks, was as unsettling a sight as any.
    These giant chicks were a crucial food source out on the Frontier. There were only a few special species that could produce chickeners, and they had extremely sensitive constitutions; a temperature deviation of a few degrees from their usual conditions could quite easily spell death for them. In addition, there was
a multitude of problems involving their feed and their vicious disposition, so a family of five would usually face tremendous hardship in raising just one of them. What was taking place in this filthy, dimly lit hut was nothing short of a miracle.
    Pale sparks shot out in the distance as a chickener touched one of the high-voltage lines. Oddly enough, the chick didn’t let out a single cry of pain.
    “As I recall, chickeners love human bones. Are you able to
get them?”
    Ai-Ling shook her head at D’s question. “Not too easy to come by in our village. So I buy them off the dead carrier.”
    A wide variety of merchants came to Frontier villages from the Capital or other commercial districts. The fur trader, the repair man, the parts dealer, the fruit seller, the ice man, the dressmaker, the weapons broker, the magician, the traveling picture show—some stank of blood while others were cheery, some were stained with grease while still others were dressed in the finest of clothes, but each and every one of them was an indispensable part of the Frontier. The dead carrier was another such merchant.
    Living as they did in such a brutal environment, people didn’t always view the dead with reverence. Organs had their use in transplants, and human hair could be treated with a special animal fat to make communication lines that could carry a
signal any distance. Even bones had an important role to play
in fertilizer, thanks to their high calcium content. In addition,
a guitar made from a carved pelvic bone and hollowed-out vertebrae, and strung with tough intestinal material by a veteran tuner, would make absolutely exquisite music. While the bodies of relatives were handled differently, those who died out on the road might receive a perfunctory memorial service, after which a coffin bearing only their meager possessions would be carried off to the communal cemetery while arrangements were made to bring the cadaver out to a “butcher” on the edge of town for dissection.
    When they still didn’t have enough corpses, dead carriers would sometimes supply bodies they’d preserved with their own flash-freezing equipment, while other times they would prowl around villages and towns like ghouls in search of fresh cadavers. Corpses were often sold as they were when demand called for it; otherwise, certain parts were marketed in their raw state, or were processed and then sold.
    Ai-Ling checked the antiquated temperature equipment at each pen, which each held a trio of colossal, wily eyed chicks. When she got to the second pen’s thermostat, she paused and turned around to face D. “You still haven’t asked me anything. Afraid of distracting me? Even my husband isn’t that considerate.”
    Saying nothing, D watched the chicks.
    Smiling sadly, Ai-Ling reached for the machine. Suddenly, one of the chicks craned its neck, flames shot from the high-voltage line, and Ai-Ling pulled her hand back, a scream trailing out after her. The chick’s sharp beak had gouged the flesh on the back of her hand. Instinctively, she pressed the wound with her other hand, but blood seeped out around it anyway. D’s elegant white