to communicate underwater without some special equipment.”
I was smiling again although my whole body felt numb.
But we needed to cut to the chase. I needed to know what he was able to find out about what happened to her. Whether he could give me any leads. Because I’d surprised myself by not being able to watch the autopsy. Weirder and weirder. I’ve seen dozens of them, and I was only sick once, the first time. But something about her, so still and perfect and secret. Relying on me to find out what happened. I couldn’t watch her get cut.
And maybe it was more than that. Maybe I was just getting squeamish about death as my own appointed time drew closer. As I wondered if I’ll be lying on some slab, just like Blondie…
So I’d sneaked outside and avoided the temptation to ransack the morgue for stray cigarettes, raiding the fridge instead. Larry keeps it stocked. Three bagels, four slices of cheese, two quarts of orange juice and three Hershey bars later, Larry was done. “So did she give anything away? About her death?” My voice sounded shaky and I didn’t like it, so I tried again. “I mean, probably not, I know. Nothing visible from the outside. Anything internal?”
Larry scratched his big grey beard again as he spoke carefully. “Most things seem to be in place. Far as I can tell, of course, not being an expert on what ‘in place’ is supposed to look like for her. But there was something odd.”
I leaned forward, desperately curious and sick inside at the same time.
“It’s her ears,” Larry said. Then paused, like he didn’t quite have it right. “Okay, not her ears exactly. More like deep inside the ear canal.”
“What is it?” The creepy fingers of fear I hadn’t shaken off tightened their grip.
“It’s like…” He searched for the right analogy. “The tissue in there’s all been melted.”
“Melted?” I was confused. “Like with heat?”
“Yeah,” he sighed. “But… not. I mean, it looks melted. Hmmm… no. Dissolved. Turned to mush and nothing.”
My mouth was suddenly very dry, and I got a sheen on my top lip. But I wasn’t gonna lose my lunch in front of Larry, so I reached for the jar of kool mints and gobbled four of them in a row. He silently handed me a glass of water.
“Anything else?” I was asking more to keep busy than anything else.
Larry consulted some notes he’d made on a little pad next to the kool mints.
“Um,” he said, and was I just imagining it or did he look kinda shifty?
“Stomach contents are pretty standard vegetarian fare, but I’d say she’s from the city. God knows you can’t get a good no-meat chow mein round here.”
Huh. I was listening but not computing.
“Otherwise seems to be in good health. No surgery, broken bones, illness.”
Again, not surprising. Aegirans don’t get sick often. With little pestilence and crime, they keep themselves nice well into their sixties and beyond.
Larry went on. “She’s never had a baby.”
I shouldn’t have been surprised. Watch-keepers are young, focused. But Larry’s words made my throat close over. No babies. And now she’ll never have any. They love children, in Aegira. They got population control sorted out several millennia ago, realizing the population couldn’t grow like on The Land if they were to continue to hide. So Aegirans have only one child, but each belongs joyfully to the community, and they share and delight in every birth.
Larry put his book down.
“Rania. There is one other thing, and I don’t know what to make of it so I’ll just tell you.”
He paused again. I’d never seen him look so uncertain as he ran his hands again over his mouth and rubbed at his beard. “Actually,” he corrected himself. “Maybe I’ll just show you.”
He lifted the sheet that he’d used as a modesty cover for Blondie. Her legs were slightly apart underneath it, and the gold of her skin looked impossibly smooth and unbroken against the white of the cotton. Larry pointed, high on her thigh, almost to the top of the inside of her leg. I could see another tattoo, blue-green like the watch-keeper fish. But fresher, a very recent tattoo. I could see the angry red lines indicating it had just been done. And this time it was a name.
My name. Rania Aqualina.
Me.
I’m the reason she was here. She came for me.
Suddenly, in my mind’s eye, I saw that big old aquarium, and things started to make sense. I knew how she