her mouth with her hand. I shot her an imperious glare. She laughed harder, abandoning any pretense of swallowing it. Sometimes having cousins can be really annoying.
“We dissected the cuckoo who attacked you in the woods,” said Kevin, apparently realizing that the only way forward was to barrel straight through without hesitation. “The blood we found in her nose and ears was the result of a massive aneurism, leading to an even more massive brain bleed.”
“Is that what killed her?” I asked.
“Not quite.” He removed his glasses, wiping them on his shirt as he spoke, so he wouldn’t have to see my reaction. I almost wished I could do the same. He was thinking too loudly for that; every word was accompanied by an image, whether I wanted to see it or not. And I didn’t want to see it.
“Most intelligent creatures have highly crenulated brains. It’s a matter of biological necessity. Smooth brains have less surface area, which means less space for the neurons to do what they need to do. Crenulated brains have more surface area, allowing for greater intelligence, memory retention, all the requisites of intelligence as we currently understand it. A domestic dog may have a larger brain than an Aeslin mouse, but due to the crenulations, the Aeslin mouse actually has greater surface area and hence more potential for intelligence.”
This was biology 101; we’d all learned this stuff when we were kids. Well, maybe not James and Sam. I still couldn’t catch sight of their minds through their telepathy blockers, and so I had to assume they looked interested enough to be considered an appropriate target audience for this little anatomy lesson.
Kevin didn’t notice that I was confused, or maybe he just didn’t care. He put his glasses on as he continued, “We’ve seen Johrlac brains before, although not many of them, and only one that was undamaged. Our current model for their morphology says that we should have found a brain of the same approximate weight and size as a comparable human brain, but with deeper crenulations, creating a greater surface area and allowing for the development of psychic powers such as telepathy.”
“I know you’re trying to tell us something, but this is all making me feel uncomfortably like I’m going to be the next one on the dissection table, so it would be really swell if you could get to the point before I have to leave the room,” I said.
“I’m sorry, Sarah. I know this isn’t easy.”
I laughed unsteadily. “A member of my own species—which is predatory and sort of evil, and that sucks for me—attacked me. Twice. And then she attacked Artie, and now she’s dead, and you’re tiptoeing around actually telling me why that is. So no, this isn’t easy. It’s confusing and it’s scary and I just want to know what’s going on. Please, can you tell me what’s going on?”
Kevin sighed. “We opened her skull to confirm she’d suffered from a brain bleed, and to add her brain to our specimen collection. We get better equipment every year. We may eventually be able to design better anti-telepathy charms by looking at the structure of the Johrlac brain.”
“We did find evidence of the brain bleed,” said Evie. “It was catastrophic in scope. She must have died almost instantly. I don’t believe she would have had any real time to suffer.”
It was difficult to worry too much about whether or not the cuckoo had suffered. She was dead and that was sad, but mostly because her being dead meant I couldn’t track her down and hurt her for what she’d done to Artie. Being near me shouldn’t have been considered enough to make him a target. It wasn’t right, and it wasn’t fair, and I wasn’t okay with it.
“We also found some alarming morphological changes to the brain itself,” said Kevin, sounding suddenly grim. “Most of the crenulations were either shallower than we expected them to be based on earlier specimens, or entirely gone. The tissue was both dehydrated and less stable than it should have been.”
“He means the brain fell apart as soon as we touched it,” said Evie. “It was like brain pudding. No structural integrity. No elasticity. The trauma she suffered was incredible.”
And unnerving. “Do you think it was pathogenic?”
“We’ve never discovered a single disease in this dimension that can infect cuckoos,” said Evie. “But I thought of that, and I started some cultures. We should know more soon.”