“Jeez!” I interjected. “What’s bitten you, sir? Have you spent too many years down here stewing and licking your wounds? Etta and Della are both free of mind and spirit. They live among Earthers without a qualm. I can’t talk for Floramel, here, but she seems well-adjusted as well. Maybe you should take a trip to Old Earth, you might just learn something.”
The Investigator seemed to consider my words carefully, he usually did that. “Perhaps you’re right, McGill. I may have worked down here alone for too long, but I have my reasons. Come, I’ll show you something alarming.”
He turned and walked off into a tunnel. Floramel and I hesitated, but then we followed him. The trouble was that I knew this man meant business when he said something was “alarming.” That was code for “freaky,” or possibly something way worse than that.
I really should have suspected what I was going to find. The Investigator… well… I don’t like to speak ill of someone my own daughter was directly related to, but he wasn’t normal. In the head, I mean. Not by a longshot.
Bubbling tanks. That was the first hint we got. The second hint was a dank, swampy smell.
These tanks weren’t filled with water, and they weren’t nice and clean like the ones Floramel had showed me back under Central. Instead, they were filled with brackish liquids, almost mud.
There were eleven tanks in all. I counted them, because I wanted to be sure. They weren’t the same, either. Each had its own size and its own shape.
The biggest of them were shaped like a giant’s coffin. More narrow at the top and the bottom than they were in the middle. They were close to ten meters long.
Then there was the second row of tanks. These were broader, almost diamond-shaped. It was my impression these stank the worst, if I had to rank them, but I couldn’t swear to it.
The rest were rather small, man-sized down to tiny. The smallest of them was no bigger than a bucket you’d find in anyone’s barn.
Floramel walked between the tanks, eyeing the contents of each. I could tell she was stunned, as was I. But she didn’t freak out. She was, after all, a scientist.
That changed when we got to the smallest tank—the one that wasn’t much more than a bucket. Inside its murky depths was the body of a gremlin. It was the smallest of the creatures of Blood World. Floramel, for some incomprehensible reason, was sweet on these little imps. They were devils with high voices and horrible senses of humor, but she treated them like her own children—maybe because she didn’t have any.
She wiped away a tear as she gazed into that bucket at the floating lump of flesh. I caught that, but the Investigator didn’t.
He was enraptured by his own work. He talked animatedly about his long years of study, of recent mastery, of fascination and obsession.
“It all started with you, McGill,” he said. “I was working on a project of a similar nature when you last visited me. Do you remember?”
“What? Me? What’d I have to do with this particular stack of crimes against every known law of the Galactics and human decency?”
The Investigator turned with upraised eyebrows. “You dare to make an appeal to morality? Seriously? You’ve slaughtered innocent members of every species represented here. I’m recreating them, not destroying them. How can I be the monster?”
I shook my head and scratched at my neck. When confronted with abominations and quandaries, I sometimes got itchy.
“I don’t know,” I admitted, “but this is plain wrong. Are they even alive?”
“Of course they’re alive. They’re mindless, naturally… I’ve kept them in comas for years.”
Floramel released a puff of air. It was as if she’d been holding her breath for the last minute or three.
“What is the purpose of this… experimentation?”
“To learn, of course. Humanity has never duplicated the technology of the revival machines. I’ve sought to do so—but differently. Rather than using an elaborate flesh-printer, I’m attempting to regrow bodies using a more organic process.”
“Huh…” I said, looking them over. “Let’s see what we have here… The biggest tank—that’s a Wur Nexus, isn’t it? And the next in size is a human giant? Like the ones they grow out on Blood World?”
“Precisely. What do you think of my work, Floramel?”
“I hate them all,” she said, “but I’m intrigued. What made you start this work? You said it had something to do with McGill?”
The Investigator flicked his gaze my way, and I met his eyes. We’d never spoken of the day he’d revived me, after I’d fallen from the surface of Dust World down into this very canyon. He’d grown me back to life in one of these turd-tanks back then, and I didn’t like to think about it at all.
“Let’s just say that James needed to be reborn, and I helped him along.”
Floramel looked up sharply. She put her hand on the Investigator’s wrist.
I could have told her you didn’t just go around doing stuff like that, but the scary old man didn’t flinch or freak out. He smiled instead.
“I see the light of understanding in your eyes,” he said. “You’re fascination grows—like mine did years ago.”
Floramel bit her lip, then she asked a fateful question: “Have you ever grown a saurian?”
-14-
With an even wider smile, the Investigator led us to another chamber. Here, there were more aliens. There was a saurian, a Rigellian bear—even a Vulbite. He had collected them all.
“One thing, sir,” I said, “how did you gather all these bodies?”
He scoffed. “I didn’t gather them. I grew them.”
“Yeah, but… from what? You had to have a seed, or something.”
“Yes. Each of them was
