Anvil of Stars

Martin was laddering between the first and second homeballs when he heard shouts echoing from below. He clambered down to the neck join and saw a radiance of cords streaming from a pile that had just seconds before been a braid.

Rex stood to one side with a metal baseball bat, face pale and moist. He stooped and swung the bat lightly from one hand. With the other hand he fanned a sharp odor of turpentine and burned sugar.

He turned and lifted his eyes to Martin’s face. “Help me,” he said, voice flat. “This slicker attacked me.”

The braid had completely dissolved. The cords tried to climb the walls and fell back with sad thumps. Three cords lay writhing in the middle of the join, smearing brown fluid on the floor—the first time Martin had seen cords bleeding. “What the hell happened?” he asked.

“I just told you,” Rex said, pointing the bat at Martin. “It grabbed me. I had to fight it off.”

“Who was it?” Joe Flatworm asked, dropping from a ladder field behind Martin. “Which Brother?”

“I don’t know and I don’t give a damn,” Rex said, lowering the bat and standing straight. “It was a big one.”

Two of the three injured cords had stopped moving. Two more Brothers wriggled through cylindrical fields from the level below. They immediately set about bagging the uninjured cords.

Ten more humans and three more Brothers gathered in the dome. Paola Birdsong stooped beside the still cords. Twice Grown slid forward and gently picked up one of the two, not bothering to bag it.

“Is it dead?” she asked.

“It is dead,” Twice Grown said.

“Who did it belong to?”

“A cord of Sand Filer,” Twice Grown said.

“What is this, a goddamned funeral?” Rex shouted.

Martin approached Rex carefully, holding out a hand and wriggling his fingers. “Give me that,” he said.

Rex dropped the bat and stepped away. “Self-defense,” he said. Martin picked up the bat and handed it to Joe.

“He was part of your training team,” Martin said. “Are you sure he attacked you?”

“It put its claws on me and it pinched like it was going to break my arm,” Rex said, backing away from Martin, who kept edging closer.

“Was he trying to do more exercises with you?” Martin asked, working to contain his anger.

“How the fuck should I know?” Rex said. “Stop pressing me, Martin, or I’ll—”

“You going to knock his brains out, you slicking baboon?” Hans pushed through the humans and sidled around Martin, then grabbed Rex’s sleeves and shook him once, twice. “You—are—a—piece—of—SHIT!” Hans shouted, then dropped Rex and turned back to the middle of the room. “Twice Grown, is Stonemaker coming here?”

Twice Grown consulted his wand. “I we have requested such,” he said.

“I hope this one’s not badly injured.”

“Two cords still, one hurt,” Twice Grown said. “Will not be complete Sand Filer.”

“We’re very sorry,” Hans said. “Martin, Joe, take Rex to his quarters. Joe, watch and make sure he doesn’t leave.”

“What?” Rex cried indignantly. “I said it was self-defense, damn it!”

“Do it,” Hans repeated coldly.

Rex did not fight them. Rosa watched, hanging from a field in the neck as they passed. “What happened?” she asked.

“Fuck you,” Rex said.

Joe grabbed Rex’s shoulder with his free hand. “You’re swimming in sewage, buddy,” he said firmly. “Don’t stop paddling or you’ll sink.”

Rex wiped his eyes and forehead and shook Joe’s hand off. He walked between them in silence.

The inquest was held a day later, Stonemaker, Eye on Sky, Hans, Cham, Joe, and Martin presiding. Rex stood between Cham and Joe, considerably subdued. Hans had interviewed him for an hour after the incident.

Stonemaker made the first remarks. “I we have asked the individual Sand Filer for a telling, but memory is degraded. Sand Filer does not see what happened. We we must rely on your individual for testimony.”

Hans sat on a rise in the schoolroom floor and folded his arms. “Tell us, Rex.”

Rex looked at the humans in the room, all but Hans. “It’s a misunderstanding,” he said.

“Tell us,” Hans said, tone neutral, eyes downcast.

“We met in the neck join. I was going my way—”

“Carrying a bat?” Hans asked.

“The moms made it for our games. We were going to play baseball in the gym.”

“We?” Hans asked.

“We were going to choose teams,” Rex said.

“Who?”

“Four or five of us. We wanted to see how baseball was played. Do some normal, Earth-type games.”

“You met Sand Filer in the join,” Hans prompted.

“Yes. I didn’t recognize it—”

“ ‘Him,’ ” Martin said softly, “That’s the accepted pronoun. ‘Him.’ ”

Rex swallowed hard but was not about to argue. Martin saw the apprehension in him, and something else—a blunt kind of defiance, no admission to himself that he had done anything wrong.

“I didn’t recognize him,” Rex said. “I didn’t know who it… he was. He was big, though. We passed and he reached out to grab me. It hurt. He hurt me.”

“Did he give you any warning?”

“He said something, but I couldn’t understand. I can’t understand any of them.”

“Do you understand I we?” Stonemaker asked.

“Mostly, but you speak the best English,” Rex said. “It was an accident. He frightened me.”

“Did you figure out later what he might have been trying to say?” Martin asked.

“Gentlemen, we have procedures here,” Hans interrupted with a heavy sigh. “I’ll ask my questions, and Stonemaker will ask his questions.”

Martin agreed to that.

“It’s a good question, though,” Hans said. “What was he trying to say?”

“I don’t know,” Rex said.

“Something about being on your team in the exercises, the grab races?”

“Maybe,” Rex said. “I just didn’t hear him clearly.”

“Then what?”

“He got me with those claws… Grabbed me around the chest. It hurt like hell. I thought he was attacking me.”

“And?” Hans pursued.

“I defended myself.”

“Was there any reason he would want to attack you?”

“How should I know?” Rex said.

Here it is, Martin thought. Plain as can be.

“You mean, the Brothers are unpredictable,” Hans said, face clouding.

“I don’t know them,” Rex said, smiling as if on firmer ground.

Hans turned to Stonemaker. “Rex Live Oak has been to Brother orientations. He participated in the grab races. He’s carried Brothers, and been carried by them.”

“It wasn’t like that,” Rex said. “It—he tried to crush me.”

“You have bruises?”

Rex dropped his shoulder straps and showed livid bruises around his ribs and abdomen.

Stonemaker rustled, rearranged his coils. Hans put his chin in one hand and bent to examine the bruises. “Did you do anything to frighten him?”

“Nothing. I swear.”

“No reason for him to attack you.”

“Hey,” Rex said, his smile broad now, shoulders lifted.