There was a line of people waiting for treatment. What had once been a ticketing booth was now a registration area, and the arrivals board displayed numbers that were being served. Once he made it to the front of the line, Mort(e) flashed his badge and gestured to his new sash. Within minutes, his number appeared, far ahead of the sick puppy to his right and the coughing old horse to his left.
To his surprise, the doctor was a bear wearing a white physician’s coat. Mort(e) had not seen a bear outside of an army unit. Culdesac always spoke highly of this species, referring to them by their proper family name, the Ursidae. He said they understood one another. That was ridiculous, of course. Culdesac understood almost everyone. No one understood him.
The bear took Mort(e) through the battery of tests: temperature, respiration, pressure, vision, hearing, reflexes. She drew blood and had him urinate into a cup. She said little, although the sound of her breathing through her large snout was incredibly loud, especially when she leaned in to listen to Mort(e)’s heart and lungs.
“So what brings you here so soon, Captain?” she asked.
“I’ve been working in the field,” Mort(e) said.
“Haven’t we all?”
She nodded to her leg. Mort(e) noticed that the limb was prosthetic. Even though the calf and foot had fur on them, the ankle joint was a plastic hinge. He wondered how she lost the leg. Who knew with these wild animals? Maybe she gnawed it off to get out of a trap.
“I wanted to see if I was exhibiting any signs,” he said.
“Signs of what?”
Mort(e) was quiet for a moment, hoping she would not make him say it. But she stood there, clipboard in hand, checking things off with a blue pen.
“That which we cannot name,” Mort(e) said.
She chuckled, revealing her white fangs. “The Big E?” she said. “If you had that, you wouldn’t have come here asking for a diagnosis. Or treatment.”
“But you should give me the test.”
“I already did,” she said. “No one has to ask anymore. And no one has to grant permission, either.”
She left the room and returned with the test tube containing his blood and the beaker filled with his urine. There was a green strip circling the inside of both vessels. She tipped them toward the light so that the fluid drained away from the marker.
“See the strip? Green is clean. Yellow is … well, I don’t have a rhyme yet, but it’s definitely not mellow.”
“I’ve heard that they were testing these things,” Mort(e) said.
“They just came in. The shipment was signed by Miriam herself,” the bear said. “If you see something, say something.”
She explained that they were using the strips more often. And with all the reported illnesses in the sector, she’d already had to order a new batch. Mort(e) felt only partially relieved at his negative result. How many quarantined settlements had tested negative up until the day the ants came and destroyed them?
“Relax, sir,” the bear said. “You don’t have a single symptom, and your blood and urine were clean. And no, I don’t want any other fluids.”
“You’re right,” Mort(e) said. “But you must know about the crazy stuff that’s going on around here.”
She did. She asked if he knew of the deer suicides. He said yes.
“I helped with the autopsies,” she said. “In my expert opinion — based on four years of medical training — they died from jumping off a cliff.”
Mort(e) smiled. He liked this bear.
“Sir,” she said, “it’s not EMSAH. I’ve been around, seen some things. And I know when a soldier is starting to confuse stress and fatigue with something worse.”
The predictability of this response was slightly comforting. That was something.
“You’ve seen some things,” he repeated. “Seen a human lately?”
“Are you seeing humans?”
“Either humans or very ugly animals.”
“I haven’t seen a human in a long time,” the doctor said. “It was way up north, away from all the settlements. I think he was a drowned pilot. Or a paratrooper. I don’t know why the Queen hates them so much. They’re delicious.”
Mort(e) laughed. He told her that there were merely rumors of humans in disguise, and none of the reports had been confirmed. Then he rose from the table, agreeing that he was probably stressed, and asked if there was anything else. The doctor waved him off.
Mort(e) was about to leave when he realized that he did not know the bear’s name. He asked her.
“Rigel,” she said.
“I thought that was a boy’s name.”
“It’s a bear’s name,” she said.
Mort(e) was no longer thinking of her quip, whatever it was supposed to mean. Rigel was the name of the sandal in the Orion constellation. Maybe Briggs had set up this meeting. Mort(e) shook it off. This was a coincidence, he told himself. Lots of animals named themselves for stars. He could see the constellation in his mind’s eye: three glowing white orbs to represent the belt, along with a few others to demarcate the shoulders, feet, and sword. It was fitting that the belt was most prominent to those early humans. The ants were probably right; the humans were obsessed with their own bodies, fixated on the area that housed their greedy stomachs and lustful genitalia. The constellation had probably started as a waistline and nothing more. The warrior Orion must have been added later, to keep things respectable.
With a nod, Mort(e) gathered his paperwork and left the doctor’s office. He went straight to the barracks, hoping to avoid Culdesac and Wawa. If they were monitoring his work, they would see that he had signed in. Fine, he thought. Let them think he was actually doing his job. It probably wouldn’t matter soon, anyway.
Bonaparte was not in his office, so Mort(e) headed for the mess hall. There he found the pig alone at a table, his snout in a tray filled with some kind of corn slop. He had been careless enough to get some of it on his oversized vest. Bonaparte was not as quick as the others, and was so engrossed in his lunch that he did not notice Mort(e)’s presence. Culdesac chose members of the Red Sphinx well, but Bonaparte seemed to be more of a mascot, a representative of how things could be if the animals put aside their differences and worked together. He no doubt had skills, which must have included an unquestioning loyalty and stubbornness — pigheadedness, the humans would have said. Still, though it may have been noble for the Red Sphinx to incorporate other species, this corn slop session must have been one of many habits that separated Bonaparte from the others. While the cats now ate a protein supplement manufactured by the Colony, this outcast still had to eat the same feed from his slave days. Like many livestock animals, Bonaparte probably couldn’t adjust to the new food supply, and had to get an alternative prescribed by a doctor. The carnivorous cats must have picked on him for having to haul his special diet around on their missions like some high-maintenance invalid.
As he fished for something in his pocket, Bonaparte spotted Mort(e). He scooped up a napkin with both hooves and wiped the corn mash from his nose — a delicate operation that he performed with surprising dexterity. When he saluted, the object in his pocket jingled. Mort(e) could tell that it was a flask. Perhaps Bonaparte had taken it from the farmer who owned him. The pig inherited both the flask and the drinking habit, it seemed. It made Mort(e) smile. Tiberius probably would have befriended the pig for that alone. Then Bonaparte would not have been such an outsider.