Monster, Human, Other by Laurel Gale

Author:Laurel Gale
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2017-09-19T04:00:00+00:00

Isaac still didn’t know whether the voracan was really named Mine, or whether voracans even used names the way humans and clepsits did. It didn’t matter. The voracan that Isaac now thought of as Mine had brought another hamburger and soda. It managed to carry the meal without piercing the paper cup, and the root beer quenched Isaac’s thirst.

“You speak English,” Isaac said when he had finished drinking. He’d had plenty of time to think about this, and it bothered him.

“Yes, yes.”

“Why? Don’t voracans have their own language?”

“Yes, yes, we talk, not with words, not with words, but with pulses, with electricity. It is not as clear as words, though, so we learned yours. We learned to listen, to spy, to spy.” Mine used its quills to shove a wooden box forward. “I found a game for you, a game, a game. So you won’t be so bored.” Isaac didn’t know why Mine cared about his feelings, but he supposed it was because a happy prisoner was less likely to cause trouble. His legs were strapped into the chair at the moment, but his upper body was free. He leaned down to pick up the box.

It was a chessboard. The pieces were inside—most of them anyway. Two pawns were missing, one white and one black.

“Let’s play,” Mine said. “Let’s, let’s.”

Isaac had played a few times before, but always on a computer, and the program had showed him which moves were possible. On his own, he couldn’t remember the rules for each piece. He suspected that Mine knew less, though, so he decided to make up whatever he couldn’t recall.

Mine maneuvered the small pieces easily. Although the voracan sometimes used tools that attached to its quills—things that resembled metal thimbles capped with screwdrivers, hammers, or chisels—now it used no such devices. Its many quills jutted in and out in fast, fine movements, forming clusters that pinched the chess pieces.

Isaac stared, mesmerized.

Mine noticed. “The others are clumsy, clumsy. Their minds are dull, dull. This is why I alone can craft the machines.”

Isaac thought of the huge storage room filled with various tanks and countless chairs. “You built everything on your own?”

“No, no. I had helpers, scouts to look for treasure, workers to move things. But I designed the plans; I created the firsts. The others just copy, copy. All around the world, they copy my designs, and I fix what they do wrong, fix, fix.”

“You designed the chair?” It shouldn’t have come as a surprise, but Isaac felt sick at the thought.

“No, no. The chair is special. The design came from above.”

Above? Mine must have meant a human. “That’s not possible.”

“It is. It is. And now I cannot get it to work, and I don’t know that I want to. You are not what I thought you would be. Not what I thought.”

“So don’t do it. Don’t fix the chair.”

“What choice do I have?” It prodded Isaac’s soda cup. “What choice? What choice?”

They finished the game. Isaac won, due in no small part to the advantage gained by inventing the rules as he went.

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