“Huh… so you like, bought chunks of meat or something?”
“Yes, in a manner of speaking. Most recently I bought a Cephalopod. It’s only fitting, don’t you think, that I should be experimenting upon them?”
I faked a laugh. “Ha! Sure thing! But if you had a full body to start with… I mean… that’s not as impressive. All you did was throw them into one of these stewpots and hook them up to life support, right?”
“No, McGill. I seeded each of these from a very small collection of cells. This Cephalopod grow, for instance, I just started this one today.”
I thought about the big squid in the dung pit back in town. Suddenly, that weird incident made sense. Maybe he’d paid someone to push the confused squid through the gateway. The hogs had shot him down, sure… but all the Investigator needed was a small sample of living cells…
“Oh. I get it. Hey, Floramel?”
She was right on hand. She had something in her hands, too. It was the iced remains of one sad-sack lizard named Raash. She handed over the vacuum bottle to the Investigator.
“Can you grow a new body from this?” she asked.
The scientist opened the bottle with his leathery hands. He carried it to his instrument tables, which were strewn with equipment that was a mix of both hypermodern and antiquated.
After fifteen minutes, he returned the bottle to us.
“I cannot. The sample has decayed too far. There isn’t a single living cell in the bottle. What did you do? Burn it?”
Floramel turned me a dark glare. I shrugged and didn’t say anything. When a lady-friend was handing out well-deserved shame and shade, I knew it was best to stay quiet.
She sighed. “This was all for nothing. We might as well go back, James. Investigator, we thank you for your time and your hospitality. I hope you learn a lot from your unorthodox experiments, and I promise not to reveal their nature to Central. I recommend that you do the same.”
Crestfallen, she turned away to leave, but the Investigator called her back.
“You haven’t even told me yet what your experiment entails.”
We paused, and after a shrug from me, Floramel spilled the beans. She told him about Raash, how I’d killed him by mistake and the rest of it.
Of course, the part about it being a mistake wasn’t exactly true, but I kept my yap shut.
The Investigator listened with interest. “And this saurian—this alien from a hostile world—he’s your friend?”
“More than that, if you know what I mean,” I said.
Floramel shot me another dose of hate, but I ignored it. If you wanted to go around screwing lizards, well sir, I figured you had to be willing to own up to it.
“Hmm…” the old man said.
He walked with a ground-eating stride. He returned to the tank where he was growing a saurian. “Will this body do? Or are you overly attached to the one your friend had before he died?”
Floramel blinked in surprise. “I… I hadn’t considered this idea. It seems… unnatural. Impossible, even.”
“What?” I asked, not quite getting it.
“He’s asking if we want to revive Raash, placing his mind into this stranger’s body.”
“Can you even do that?”
“Of course,” the Investigator said. “You have the engrams. They’re nothing but a tangle of neural connections. Unless the brain of the original totally out-classes the brain of the new vessel, they should be compatible. Some editing might occur if there are incompatibilities, but it won’t be anything fatal.”
“Incompatibilities?” I asked. “Hey, wait a second… is this body…?”
I reached my hand down into the tank and felt around for a few seconds. I grimaced a moment later and drew my hand back, shaking it so it splattered muddy nutrients everywhere.
“It’s okay,” I said, “this lizard is a male, at least.”
Floramel looked at me reproachfully.
“Hey, I’m just looking out for the guy. Raash wouldn’t be happy to come back a female lizard, would he? I don’t think you’d like that too much, either.”
“I can’t believe we’re even contemplating this,” she said.
The Investigator eyed us both for a moment. “I’m naturally in favor of the idea, as I believe we’ll learn from the results. However, I’ll leave the decision up to you two.” He walked away then, and we were left gazing down into the brown bubbles.
“Well?” I asked. “What do you think?”
“I think you are a moron, James. Just like everyone has told me for years.”
There was some anger in those words—more than a hint of it. I didn’t get upset, however. I could be the bigger man when a situation warranted. “Maybe we could take him somewhere else.”
“Like where? No one can revive a mass of dead, burnt cells. I should have realized this from the start. This entire trip has been a waste of time.”
“Nah,” I said. “You tried to help a friend, it just didn’t work out, that’s all.”
She looked at me sharply. “You’re saying we should give up? We should walk away? You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
I blinked at her. “Uh… I thought that’s what you just said.”
“No. I won’t do it. Raash—I think he wants to live. I can feel it.”
I looked at her sidelong as she gazed into that turd-tank at the floating saurian body. In my opinion, it was Floramel who wanted things she couldn’t have.
“Uh… you know, he’s as good as permed right now. Maybe we should leave well enough alone. I’m just saying…”
She heaved a sigh. “I can’t do it. I have to try.”
“What if Raash, like, freaks out when he finds out he’s in another body?”
She shrugged. “Then he can kill
