Structophis Read online

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa, lady. I only just finished confirming you’re even allowed to be here. And you might have some sort of clout, but I’ve still got a job to do, and I’ve still got my orders. I’m not going anywhere until I’m satisfied.”

  “I see. If you’ll pardon me for a moment.”

  She pulled her phone from her pocket and tapped a contact number. “… Yes, this is Ms. Grumman. I am having some difficulty with local law enforcement outside the bistro. They are refusing to leave the investigation to Herr Spiros’s private security. … Of course.”

  Grumman held out the phone to the police officer. “It is the senator’s office. I believe you have new orders.”

  The officer gritted his teeth and took the phone.

  Ms. Grumman took Dimitrios aside. “At the conclusion of this phone call, the officer will reluctantly remove his men from the bistro, but he is still within his rights to take a statement from you, and he will quite rightly demand to do so. You shall tell him the following. Markus Spiros is a former employee and family member. He has had access to both the bistro and its delivery vehicle, with your permission, for quite some time as a favor unrelated to the operation of your business. He has been visiting after hours with escalating frequency in the last seven months, and while this is not the first time he has borrowed the catering truck, this is the first time he has not returned it prior to start of business the following day.”

  “That’s not exactly true. He hasn’t been to the bistro in five years.”

  “I am aware of that, Herr Spiros. But when asked, you will give the information I have provided.”

  “It seems to me you want me to tell an awful lot of lies to the cops. That’s putting me in a tight spot, isn’t it? Why should I take all of this risk?”

  “Because you have been paid fifteen million dollars for your compliance, and noncompliance at any point until the successful acquisition will forfeit the remaining fifteen million.”

  “Oh, right! The rest of the money. Okay, so how often has Markus been visiting…?”

  Chapter 8

  Three hours later, Markus groggily opened his eyes. He’d been sleeping fitfully. It turned out Blodgette was a heavy, heavy sleeper. She snored quite a bit, which would have been loud enough by itself, but since she was outfitted with what amounted to a suit of armor, each heavy inhale rattled her plates like someone trying to open a stuck junk drawer. It wouldn’t have been so bad if she’d curled up in her own room, but she was sprawled out next to Markus, near enough that the very real risk of her rolling on top of him kept him on edge. He’d tried to move discreetly to another room twice over the course of the night, but each time Blodgette had eventually woken up and groggily found him before flopping down beside him again.

  Once sunlight started shining through the windows, he gave up on trying to sleep and shuffled into the hallway. Two rooms away, the clicking of keys drew his attention. He poked his head into a room with a conference table and found Gale seated at it, hammering away at a laptop.

  “Oh, you’re up! Good, I had some questions to ask you,” she said, shuffling through a list of handwritten notes.

  “Don’t you ever sleep?” he asked.

  “Sleep? At a time like this? No, sir.”

  “But… it’s a physical need…”

  She dug into a bag beside her and tossed him a petite black can.

  “Cold-brewed coffee shots. These babies are what got me through the last three exam sessions. Highest caffeine content this side of those trucker pills they used to sell. There’s actually a recommended daily maximum for that stuff, but take it from me, it’s way conservative.” She found the note. “Okay, so would you say you have a genuine interest in Blodgette’s welfare?”

  “Of course.”

  “Would you say you are physically able to fulfill your responsibilities regarding her care?”

  “So far, at least.”

  “Do you have time to fulfill those responsibilities?”

  “Considering I’ll probably be fired if I miss another shift, yeah, I’d say my schedule’s open.”

  She looked to the page. “You don’t have any children. … The money to raise her is still a question mark… Do you feel you are morally equipped to produce an upstanding member of society?”

  “I guess so. What’s this about?”

  “There’s no reception and thus no internet in this place. But while I was on the road I pulled down some wiki pages and a bunch of stuff from legal forums. The law, as it applies to Structophis gastrignae, is a little fuzzy. They’re teetering on the legal definition of ‘person.’ Or, more accurately, ‘citizen.’ I’m thinking we’ve got a pretty good chance, if we get the right lawyer, to make you Blodgette’s legal guardian. You fulfill most of the criteria, and if Blodgette is declared your ward, or even a ward of the state, then she’s no longer contraband or a mistreated animal or any of the other illegal headings she might fall under that could get you locked up. There’d be a potentially new hornet’s nest of child endangerment and stuff, but it’s all such a blurry line that the lawyers could probably duke it out for well over the two years it’ll take for her to ‘leave the nest’ so to speak.”

  “Legal guardian. Like… like I’d adopt her?”

  “If we can get her under the legal heading of ‘child,’ yes! Absolutely. It’s a great idea, if you ask me. And I mean, she already calls you Mom.”

  He leaned against a wall.

  “The weight of it still hitting you?”

  “It comes in waves,” he said.

  A chirp came from the other room, then the distinctive sound of several hundred pounds of pizza dragon pulling itself to its feet. She lumbered through the hallway, chirping curiously until she spotted him, then thumped over and grabbed his hand. She tugged him toward the hallway and pointed to one of the doors with a quiet burble.

  “I think it’s time for a feeding,” he said.

  “Or she wants to take a swim.”

  “No, when she wants a swim it’s more of a high-pitch thing.”

  “Really?” she scribbled it down. “See? You’re already picking up on her vocalizations.”

  They made their way outside, where Blodgette eagerly grabbed some firewood from beside the door and gnawed on it.

  “There’re basically two big problems to solve. The first is any of the legal problems. Whether she’s a child or an animal, if doctors decide she’s been mistreated and find you culpable, we’re in trouble. That’s why this is important.” She pulled out her thermometers. “Temperature time!”

  Blodgette worked her way through the poses necessary to take the various temperatures. The only thing she refused was the temperature in her mouth, which was otherwise occupied with her kiln-dried hardwood breakfast.

  “She’s very stable. I think we can make the argument that she’s had very few physical consequences. That just leaves the money. And this should take care of that.”

  She slipped a folded piece of paper from her back pocket and handed it to him. He opened it and read the words scribbled on it.

  “‘The Marvin C. Wintergarten Endowment for the Advancement of Natural Sciences,’” he said.

  “It’s perfect,” she said. “It’s a massive endowment, and they don’t give it out every year. It only goes to research projects,” she tapped the page and quoted it, “‘that go above and beyond in their pursuit of unique insight into the natural world in areas otherwise inaccessible to scientific investigation.’ I challenge you to find someone who has gone further above and beyond in the pursuit of something as unique as this. A single human, raising a Structophis gastrignae as his own child for the duration of its intellectual development? It’s unprecedented! And that endowment is for $875,000 per year for the duration of the study, if selected. That’s more than enough to support you, support Blodgette, and as a nice bonus, carry me straight through to my doctorate.”

  He nodded, reading over the rest of the note
s on the page. “It does sound as if it would be just the ticket, but I see you’ve got something written here, and it’s underlined twice with a frowny face next to it.”

  “Uh… Yeah. Technically any laws broken in the process of the scientific study are grounds for immediate disqualification for the endowment. But if we can work out that guardianship thing, no problem.”

  He rubbed his forehead. “I’m detecting a loop here. If I can get the money, I can become her guardian; and if I can become her guardian, I can get the money. You’ve put together a nice little Catch-22.”

  “Pick, pick, pick,” she said, snatching the page away. “You call it a problem, I call it ninety percent of a solution. That we can get this close means there’s hope. So quit moping and get to parenting. All the literature says that Structophis gastrignae develop into happier and better-adjusted adults if they are kept constantly stimulated during this stage of their development. Usually there’re at least one parent and an entire community to do the job, but right now there’re just you and I, so we’re going to have to work a little overtime.”

  Markus scratched his head. “Education. So what should I be working on?”

  “There’s been very little research put into seeing how Structophis gastrignae tackle math. Maybe give that a try.”

  “Yeah, okay,” he said, looking around.

  He paced across the courtyard to the shore of the lake. Blodgette watched him go for the first dozen steps, then decided he was getting entirely too far away. Since snack time wasn’t nearly over, she awkwardly grabbed some wood under her arm, then handed a few logs to Gale and thumped out to where Markus had begun to collect rocks. When she arrived, he’d collected a dozen or so similar-size stones and cleared a patch of ground.

  Blodgette must have been catching on to when she was about to get a lesson, because she obligingly took a seat and watched with interest as Markus started arranging the stones.

  “Okay, Blodgette. This is one.” He separated a single stone from the rest. “And this is two.” In a similar manner, he illustrated the rest of the numbers through ten.

  “I’m not sure this is the best way to start with math,” Gale said, briefly attempting to take notes while still holding the rest of Blodgette’s snack. Once she realized she didn’t need to be carrying the wood anymore, she dropped it and scribbled out notes more efficiently. “She doesn’t look engaged. She’s very distracted,” she said.

  Markus glared at her. “Maybe that’s because there’s a hyperactive grad student taking notes and picking nits, which, like most things in the universe, is more interesting than learning arithmetic.”

  “Fine, fine. I’ll give you some room.”

  She backed away, nearly tripping twice rather than sparing more than a fleeting glance away from her notebook.

  “Here’s the tricky part, Blodgette. Listen up. This is two. And this is three.” He illustrated each with arrangements of stones. “And if you put two and three together, you get five.” He made a third pile. “See? This, plus this, is this.”

  Blodgette crunched down the rest of her current snack, released a sooty belch, and leaned down to investigate the piles of stones. She jabbed a finger at the first pile and chirped, then the second with another chirp, and finally poked at the last. A few doubtful glances and warbles of disbelief suggested she was not convinced of his assessment.

  “I assure you, I’m not the best at math, but this I can do. There’re five stones here, and then one, two, three, and then four, five.”

  She shook her head and crossed her arms, now quite certain he didn’t know what he was talking about.

  “You’ve got to assert authority and confidence or she’ll never learn,” Gale called.

  “Stop being a backseat parent! I’m doing this!” he called back with irritation. “Here, Blodgette. I’ll show you. See? Watch.”

  He moved the stones around, positioning the two stones with the three stones until they matched the arrangement of five.

  Blodgette blinked and pointed, trilling with surprise and clapping. He may as well have done a magic trick, turning something that was not five stones into something that definitely was five stones.

  “See? Told you I knew what I was talking about,” he said. “Now let’s try another one.”

  For ten minutes Markus worked his way through a handful of simple addition problems. The dragon watched like a child at a puppet show, bouncing and twittering with excitement every time he illustrated the answer.

  “I don’t think she’s actually learning. I think she’s just being entertained,” Gale called again.

  “Do you want to do this?” Markus said.

  “Yes!” she said.

  She marched over and handed him the pad.

  “Write down anything notable she does,” Gale said. “You see, you don’t start with addition and subtraction. Early learning, particularly with animal intelligence, is supposed to focus on comparison. Greater than and less than. It’s the simplest inroad to mathematics, because the mind of a living creature is designed around the concept of seeking more, so she should already have an instinctive understanding.”

  She took three of the remaining bits of firewood and arranged them in front of Blodgette, one stack of two, and one by itself.

  “Which one is greater, Blodgette?” she said loudly and slowly. “Take from the one that has more.”

  Gale turned to Markus. “See, first you teach her that some numbers are larger than others, then you start getting into absolute value and all that.”

  She turned back and watched Blodgette expectantly. Blodgette stared back at her, blinking now and then and waiting. The dragon had the same posture and expression of someone watching an unfamiliar comedian and was growing weary waiting for the punch line.

  “Which one is more?” Gale repeated.

  Blodgette huffed a sigh, then reached out and gently gripped Gale’s shoulders, guided her out of the way, and pointed to Markus, then to his piles of stones.

  “Hold on. I’ve got to write this down. ‘Gale… failed… mis-er-ab-ly.’”

  “Oh, ha ha,” she said, marching up and snatching the book. “The joke’s on you, because finding out what does and does not work for education is absolutely the sort of thing I’m trying to learn. So this is a successful experiment. But let’s see you do better.”

  Markus stepped up, and immediately Blodgette’s disposition brightened and she became more interested. Again he arranged stones, this time two and three again.

  “Here we go. Show me how many is two plus three,” he said.

  Blodgette looked at the two piles, then looked to the empty spot beside them and pointed expectantly.

  “No, you fill that in. You show me how many go there.”

  She twisted her head, then looked down again, face screwed up in deep contemplation. She selected a stone from the pile of spares and hovered it over the empty area awaiting a solution. She paused for a few seconds without dropping it. Suddenly Markus could practically see the lightbulb light up over her head. She tossed the stone back where it came from, then reached down and gathered the piles of two and three, brushing them together into one pile, then sliding the pile over to the “answer” spot. When she was through, she pointed and chirped.

  Markus considered this. She’d arranged the correct answer, in the correct spot, and didn’t do any math to do it.

  “Honestly, Blodgette? I think you might be smarter than both of us,” he said appreciatively.

  She held up a hand expectantly.

  “Heck yeah, high-five,” Markus said, obliging her. “But let’s see if we can get the right answer the hard way.”

  Blodgette clapped and watched excitedly as Markus arranged a new problem.

  “Got any commentary, Ms. Documentarian?” Markus asked.

  “I’m not sure if it’s educational, but it’s definitely enrichment. Keep it up, this is good stuff!”

  “Happy to oblige,”
he said.

  As he went to work, his belly rumbled. This brought the lesson to a sudden and immediate end as Blodgette completely disregarded any attempted arithmetic and chirped in concern. She grabbed one of her precious hunks of wood and handed it to him, patting his stomach.

  “Yeah, uh. Though it may be breakfast time, this isn’t going to cut it for me. Don’t worry about it, I’ll get something to eat after—okay then, I guess we’re going.”

  Blodgette had heaved herself to her feet and grabbed his hand, tugging him along back toward the building. Gale followed after them, scribbling eagerly on the pad.

  “I’ve never seen anything like it. Powerful maternal instincts at an age while she is still dependent on her own parents. Fascinating…”

  #

  A police car cruised slowly along a gravel road in the mountains nearby. Ever since Gale’s rather absurd and unlikely escape, he had been weaving through the local service roads looking for some indication of where the truck had gone.

  “Seems like an awful lot of trouble for reckless driving, Jonesy,” remarked the man in the passenger seat, Officer Henderson.

  “Do you have something better to do, Henderson?” he said.

  “No, sir, but it was just some crazy kid in a lunch wagon. She’s bound to turn up again.”

  “If you set aside that we’ve specifically been dispatched to find her, the facts are that the state’s pretty darn hot on this one. All points, all that. So it’d look pretty good for any department that turns it up, or more to the point, it’d be pretty bad for a department that lets it get away.”

  “Even so, Jonesy, the truck itself obviously isn’t around here. So what do you think we’ll find?”

  Jones squinted along the side of the road, then pulled over. “What’s that right up there, Henderson?” he said, pointing to a shiny piece of metal by the side of the road.

  Henderson popped the door and hauled himself out. He knelt beside the bit of debris and brushed it off, then picked it up. “Looks like a passenger-side mirror, Jonesy. From the looks of it, it ain’t been here long.”