Terraform by Brian Merchant

Author:Brian Merchant
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

THE DUCHY OF THE TOE ADAM

LINCOLN MICHEL

We were being taken to the duchy of the Toe Adam. We had been captured or, as the Toe Adamites saw it, saved from the clutches of the Nose Adam during the battle. There were many corpses strewn across the purple fields. The body parts of the soldiers had been scattered like asteroids across the dark expanse of dirt.

My first mate, Vivian, had two fingers on her left hand sliced off by laser fire. I’d lost an ear and had a bullet in my side. Aul-Wick, our piscine mechanic, had shouted curses in our comms, then piloted his aquatic globe into the smoke and disappeared.

“Fish-faced coward,” Vivian said, hacking up blood.

From the back of the truck, we watched the surviving Toe Adamites stroll somberly through the fields. They lifted the legs of the fallen and sliced off one toe from each. The toes were placed in a gold-rimmed box.

“You’re lucky we found you. The Nose Adamites are monsters,” the Toe Adamite surgeon said as she slurped the bullet out of my torso with a silver hose.

“Is that so?” I grunted.

The surgeon was wearing bright red scrubs. Her eyes were wide and white above the mask. She nodded and her voice got low. “They say that Nose Adam and his followers eat the nostrils of newborn babes. They believe the flesh imbues them with the power of God. That’s why their duchy is strewn with tiny bones that lodge in the feet of the faithful.”

“I don’t remember any fucking baby bones,” Vivian said from her surgical table.

“Well, that’s what they say,” the surgeon said dismissively. She slapped a patch on my side, burned it into place. Then she began working on my missing ear.

“Do you Toe Adamites eat the toes of babies?” I asked.

Both surgeons looked up, gasping.

My surgeon shook her scalpel in front of my face. “Don’t say such blasphemy when you meet the Toe Adam. He’s fair, but not forgiving.”

“Eating babies!” the other surgeon yipped. “Who do you take us for? Those swamp-dwelling Spine Adamites?”

Coming to this planet had been Aul-Wick’s idea. He’d intercepted a distress call from a religious colony on the surface. They’d arrived centuries ago to create a holy utopia, but now were desperate for food, certain sacred herbs, and lots and lots of weapons. Since we were in debt to two gangsters and three galactic federations, I agreed.

I didn’t know if Aul-Wick was warned about the Toe Adamites and Nose Adamites. He didn’t have toes or noses, only gills and fins, so perhaps it meant nothing to him.

When we breached the atmosphere, our sales pitch was met with a surface-to-air missile.

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