At last, the lizard did stand up and salute—well, not exactly. He kind of had a conniption, flapping his limbs and lashing his tail around so hard he rose up and came down hanging half over the side.
“Continue! Continue!” the Investigator roared.
Floramel, with her shoulders hunched and her eyes all squinty, twisted the knob—but I think she slipped this time. She really goosed it.
I saw a crackle of electricity, and I heard a pop. A wisp of steam rose up from that awful liquid, and then… the mindless lizard rose with it.
He surged up, then flopped down over the side, falling on the stone floor. It became dark with fluids, and there was plenty of snot and blood included.
Wriggling in obvious agony, the creature shivered and squirmed. The Investigator stepped forward, extending his hands toward the pitiful beast on the floor between us.
“Have you ever seen the like? After all my years of work, my achievements continue to amaze even me. Never have I managed such a vivid simulacrum of a non-human life-form.”
“That’s it?” Floramel wailed. “After all that effort and torment? You’ve created an idiot that exists only to feel the agony you afflict.”
The Investigator straightened, and his smile faded away. He looked at us both reproachfully. “What did you expect? A genius of the arts, perhaps? You gave me an engram to imprint onto the jellied brains of some random beast from Cancri-9. I’m a scientist, not a miracle worker.”
“Come on, Floramel. Maybe we should go.”
“That’s all you can think about? Taking me away from Raash?” she demanded, turning on me and venting.
“Uh… that’s not really Raash. It’s a tortured monster.”
“The Investigator is right. Your motives should always be suspect.”
She turned and ran out of the caverns into the harsh Dust World winds.
Sighing, I turned back to the Investigator and the sloppy mess we’d made on his stone floors. “So that’s it? The best you could do was get this lump of meat to twitch and jump around a little? That’s a shameful thing, Doc. You should do better by Floramel. She’s a sweet woman.”
“Admonishments? Dismissal? I suppose I should expect nothing better.” After saying this, the Investigator proceeded to ignore me while he continued his work. He prodded the lizard and shocked it some more, but it had stopped moving once it had flipped up out of the tank onto the floor.
Disgusted, I walked away to find Floramel. I searched the catacombs, then the cooling rocks and the windy night outside. It was pitch dark, and she wasn’t running any of her body-lights.
Frowning in concern, I lifted up my hands to my face and called for her. I bellowed until the walls of the great canyon rang with my voice.
Nothing came back to greet my ears. Sighing, I consulted my tapper, got a bead on her whereabouts, and marched off toward the lake in the middle of the valley.
Every inhabited mud puddle on Dust World had a swampy body of still, deep water in the center of it. These pools were dangerous, infested with ravenous rockfish and worse.
At the swampy edge of the water, I found Floramel sitting in a clump of reeds. She was despondent, more so than I’d ever seen her since we’d slaughtered her gremlins back on our old transport, Legate.
“You okay, girl?”
“No. I’m not okay. I let my hopes and fantasies get away from me. I blamed you for this—but I shouldn’t have.”
I moved up slowly and sat beside her. “You really loved that old lizard, didn’t you?”
“Yes. He also loved me, as no one else ever has. For all his flaws, his emotions were real.”
That stung a bit. I liked Floramel. I’d had a thing for her for years. We’d had some good times, and we’d slept together off and on. But love…? I wouldn’t use that word.
The trouble was, I was such an old soul—and not in a good way. I didn’t have much innocence left in me. I’d been living and dying at random for longer than any man was ever meant to. Sometimes, a man who’s wandered the stars for decades became callous about the feelings of others. That was the way things were between Floramel and I.
I patted her lightly, making sure not to grab her or hug her or anything. For one of her kind, such a move indicated carnal interest, and I was trying to play the gentleman.
“Do you want to go back to Earth, now?”
“I don’t know. My work at Central all seems so clinical, so—”
Just then, we hear a wailing cry. It was long, weird, and full of pain. It warbled and moaned for perhaps ten seconds before suddenly ending.
We both stood up and looked back over our shoulders.
“That came from the Investigator’s cave, didn’t it?” I asked.
“I think so.”
“You don’t think…?”
Floramel was already running. I could have stopped her or tried to talk reason into her, but I didn’t bother. I just trotted after her instead. Whatever had happened, I knew she was going to have to see it for herself.
-16-
A big blue stood over the Investigator, who was a bloody mess on the stone floor. Saurians came in lots of colors, but usually they were kind of tan or light green. Not this bad-ass lizard. He was as blue as a summer sky.
“Raash?” Floramel asked. “Is that you?”
The lizard turned toward us. His muzzle dripped gore. The Investigator wasn’t moving. He had to be dead or at least unconscious.
“This creature is not Raash. It cannot be Raash. My… my scales are not right.”
“That’s who you are to me, Raash.”
“What is this place? Who is the ghoulish human?” Here, he pointed at the mess on the stone floor.
“That used to be the Investigator,” I said reproachfully.
