Analog, June 2002 by Dell Magazines

Author:Dell Magazines
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Science Fiction/Fantasy
Publisher: www.Fictionwise.com
Published: 2001-03-09T22:00:00+00:00

Tongue-Tied by Grey Rollins

Speak softly and carry a big stick?

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A certain amount of paranoia comes naturally in a big city. An attitude that would get you branded as deviant and antisocial in rural Iowa is a cold fact of survival in a metropolis. There are bad people out there who want to do bad things to you. You stay out of the places where the bad people go unless you have a pressing reason to be there.

Martin and I had a reason to be there.

Pete Sims, homicide, had called in the wee hours. The jangling of the phone rattled Martin's brain. Given the size of his brain, the same effect could have been had by dropping a pin. Had it been his gonads, the bells of the Nôtre Dame Cathedral would have been hard pressed to do the job.

An hour later, we were standing in an alley in a part of town that the mayor, the Chamber of Commerce, and the police department would prefer didn't exist. We had two hours to go before the first rays of dawn crawled over the horizon. Pete was looking at Martin, and Martin was looking at me. I was looking at the body.

“Well, Victor, what do you think?” Martin asked.

“I think he's dead.” I answered.

Pete grunted. “Do you think you could be a little more specific?”

“I think he's very dead.” I padded over to the body sprawled on the asphalt, choosing my footing carefully so as not to cut my feet. It wasn't easy; the alley was paved with broken glass. Using my tongue, I gestured towards the man's chest. “There's an awful lot of blood.”

“I was thinking that it might be something from off-world,” Pete offered. “That's why I called you guys in. You're my resident experts on aliens.”

“I don't think he was bitten, if that's what you mean,” I said. “This is going to be some sort of weapon.”

“It's not like anything I've ever seen,” Martin admitted.

“Me, either,” added Pete. “It's like all the blood on the inside of his chest suddenly soaked though the skin.”

I unraveled another foot or so of tongue and unbuttoned the victim's shirt front. Pulling the material aside, I began probing with the tip of my tongue.

“Um, Martin, you said this was a John Doe, right? Perhaps if nobody claims the body in a week or two—”

“Victor! Don't even think about it,” Martin scolded. “You can't eat the corpse! I don't care if the body is never claimed, you can't have it.”

“Too late,” I confessed. “I already thunk the thought.”

For some strange reason, humans waste their dead by burying them. My species are scavengers, thoroughly adapted to decomposing food; the culinary embodiment of the dictum “Waste not, want not.”

As for using my tongue to examine the corpse ... my arms are tiny, vestigial appendages with scarcely enough strength to lift a telephone. My tongue is my primary sense organ, prehensile, and much stronger than my hands. I have an advantage over humans in that I can speak clearly without having to worry about what my tongue is doing.

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