Charlie Hackett grimaced. He needed to hurry up and get this over with, before those yearning eyes got to him. He sank his arms into the water, up to the elbows, and gripped Snowy by the waist as she tried to wriggle away. She pawed his hand softly and crooned. Trying to talk him out of it in the only way she could. He looked away from her plaintive little face and hefted her, swinging her dangling silver fins clear of the glass, and plunked her down on the gurney. She was already emitting a series of harsh, quick, bursting shrieks. He pinned her expertly with one hand while he used the other to bundle her tail in a pile of dripping, salt water–soaked towels that would protect it from drying out too soon, then turned to the task of strapping her to the gurney.
He couldn’t stand those eyes, their frantic blue gaze lapping at his face like hungry waves, and he draped another towel across the top half of her face to stop her from gawking at him. That helped a bit, though she was still shrieking. Her muffled fins thudded rapidly against the steel like a dog’s wagging tail beating at a chair. As fast as he could, Charlie Hackett spun the gurney around and thrust it ahead of him.
An older, drab-faced man and an older grayish woman stood up a bit awkwardly as he charged through their door. Both of them wore lab coats, and a rolling table of equipment waited beside them. The woman already had the syringe in her hand, holding it not far from her own cheek. Her face was tight and perturbed, and—unusually—she didn’t greet him as he entered. The skin around her eyes was purplish, crumpled and heavy. The man was making notes in a black logbook. A video camera, pointing downward, was positioned over the taped markings that showed where the gurney was supposed to park. With only a tremor of hesitation, Charlie Hackett rolled the larva to the correct spot. Then, without thinking about what he was doing, he caught Snowy’s tiny, spongy hand and squeezed it protectively.
He’d already watched four larvae die in this room, and he had no faith in the potion in that syringe. Snowy had at most twenty minutes left to live. Her tail thumped on and on, a nervous stifled drumroll, but at least her shrieks had died down to a whimper.
That wouldn’t last, of course.
“Her name is Snowy,” Charlie Hackett said. “Snowy.” Naming her—forcing these doctors to know her name—was the best approximation of courage he could manage.
The man glared at him imperiously, but the woman gave a weary nod as she approached, her needle glinting in the pallid light. This business was taking a toll on her, too, Charlie Hackett noted with some satisfaction. It was only fair that she should suffer for what she was about to do. For an instant he was tempted to tell her so, loud and clear. Then he looked down and obediently turned Snowy’s arm outward for the injection.
“Snowy,” the woman breathed out. Tentatively she touched the larva’s damp shoulder then twitched her hand back with evident repulsion. “Snowy, it’s going to be okay. I have some medicine here for you that will help you feel better. All right, hush now. You’re going to feel . . . just a little poke.” The needle slipped into the larva’s arm, the plunger depressed, and the silver tail kicked so violently that a drenched towel slumped off the gurney and landed on Hackett’s ankle with a squelch. Snowy started yowling. It didn’t sound quite like a normal baby’s cry; it was shriller, stranger, touched by a hint of unnatural music: a noise that made human flesh quiver and shrink.
When her screams started, they wouldn’t sound much like a human baby screaming, either.
“Remove the rest of the towels, please, Charles,” the woman said quietly.
He did it, tugging them free of the jerking fins and dropping them in a sodden heap to one side. Then, for the first time, he wondered why he had done it. But wasn’t it better for Snowy to have someone she loved and trusted at her side now rather than to find herself abandoned to uncaring strangers? It was only by doing exactly what they told him that he could have the opportunity to be here for her and the other larvae—just as he had to obey Secretary Moreland if he wanted to spend time with Anais. If he didn’t follow their instructions exactly he would be fired, and then what would become of Anais without him?
“Take the towel off her face, too. We need a complete record of the effects.”
Hackett removed the towel silently. He was doing it for Anais, his darling, golden Anais, so that he could stay here, so that he could continue to serve as her protector and her knight.
Snowy’s blue eyes swung wildly around the room as if she was looking for someone who might save her. Her brilliant silver tail dashed violently against the cold steel table. She screamed again and again, her racked body slamming against the restraints so hard that her stomach began to weep beads of blood around the straps. For two full minutes the humans stared mesmerized at the dying larva, their minds like sails filled by her screams.
Then Charlie Hackett felt himself breaking through entrancement as if it were some slick membrane. He groaned sharply. “It’s not working! It’s not working! Just do something for her!”
The lab-coated man looked up from his notes. “It’s hardly appropriate for you to second-guess our work. It’s a new formula, it should—”
“I’m upping her dosage,” the woman interrupted. Her voice was barely audible over that throbbing scream. Another needle drew a bright clear line across the air, straight into Snowy’s neck. The little larva was in convulsions now, and the luster dimmed on her silver scales. They had turned the color of old tin, as dry as scabs, loose-looking and ashy.
Snowy couldn’t even scream anymore now, only sigh. Charlie Hackett knew from experience what that meant: she was near the end. Her scales were flaking away, winding into a kind of silvery smoke. Her spasms ceased, her blue eyes closed, and she shuddered. She seemed surprisingly quiet all of a sudden, actually, her small body suddenly gone soft and limp. Her hands made tiny fists then opened again. She gave a long exhalation.
And then two babyish legs sagged on the gurney. Snowy lay silent, unmoving. The gray woman moved forward and rested a hand on that small pale chest, feeling for a heartbeat.
He might as well get back to the rest of the larvae, Hackett thought. It would take at least an hour of coaxing and petting before they would be calm enough to eat their dinner. And then there was Anais, who probably hadn’t heard any of the bizarre, incomprehensible news coming out of San Francisco. He wasn’t supposed to tell her anything about the outside world, of course. Talking too much was the kind of small defiance he felt ready to risk. And as his reward she would murmur to him, turn her azure eyes on his face, laugh and play and tell him her secrets.
Snowy’s corpse had a faint blue tinge and a subtle luminous quality that marked her, even in death, as having once been something more than human. Hackett ran a hand over his face and turned to leave.
A whispery moan came from the air behind him. The woman gave a sudden cry.
Charlie Hackett spun around. The moaning stopped for an instant and then came back more loudly.
There was the thump of a small foot kicking steel. Two sapphire eyes opened, and then Snowy let out the full-throated cry of a hurt human toddler. The change in her voice startled Hackett even more than the change in her body, even more than the fact that she was miraculously still alive. She suddenly sounded like any other frightened child.
The gray woman was unbuckling Snowy’s restraints with trembling hands. She scooped the howling little creature up and cradled her close against the coarse white lab coat. “Oh, you poor little thing, you poor little thing. Oh, you’re going to be fine . . .”