primary organism seemed aware of the other, and they groped toward each
other, the first curling down over the edge of a step while the second
rose gracefully like a flute-charmed serpent to meet it. When they
touched, a transformation occurred that was essentially black magic and
beyond Heather's understanding, even though she had a clear view of
it.
The two became as one, not simply entwining but melding, flowing
together as if the soot-dark silken skin sheathing them was little more
than surface tension that gave shape to the oozing protoplasm within.
As soon as the two combined, the resulting mass sprouted eight smaller
tentacles, with a shimmer like quick shadows playing across a puddle of
water, the new organism bristled into a vaguely crablike--but still
eyeless--form, though it was as soft and flexible as ever. Quivering,
as if to maintain even a marginally more angular shape required
monumental effort, it began to hitch down the steps toward the
mothermass from which it had become separated.
Less than half a minute had passed from the moment when the two severed
appendages had begun to seek each other.
Bodies are.
Those words were, according to Jack, part of what the Giver had said
through Toby in the cemetery.
Bodies are.
A cryptic statement then. All too clear now. Bodies are--now and
forever, flesh without end. Bodies are-- expendable if necessary,
fiercely adaptable, severable without loss of intellect or memory and
therefore in infinite supply.
The bleakness of her sudden insight, the perception that they could not
win regardless of how valiantly they struggled or how much courage they
possessed, kicked her across the borderline of sanity for a moment,
into madness no less total for its brevity. Instead of recoiling from
the monstrously alien creature stilting determinedly down the steps to
rejoin its mothermass, as any sane person would have done, she plunged
after it, off the landing with a strangled scream that sounded like the
thin and bitter grievance of a dying animal in a sawtooth trap, the
Micro Uzi thrust in front of her.
Although she knew she was putting herself in terrible jeopardy,
unconscionably abandoning Toby at the top of the stairs, Heather was
unable to stop. She went down one, two, three, four, five steps in the
time that the crablike thing descended two. They were four steps apart
when the thing abruptly reversed direction without bothering to turn
around, as if front and back and sideways were all the same to it. She
stopped so fast she almost lost her balance, and the crab ascended
toward her a lot faster than it had descended.
Three steps between them.
Two.
She squeezed the trigger, emptied the Uzi's last rounds into the
scuttling form, chopping it into four-five-six bloodless pieces that
tumbled and flopped down a few steps, where they lay squirming.
Squirming ceaselessly. Supple and snakelike again. Eagerly and
silently questing toward one another.
